29 – i – Outside Context Problem

Reality fractured, splitting apart at the seams.

It began at the macro level, with large, whole objects. The old motel’s walls shuddered as paint bubbled and peeled away in slow-motion waves. Windows melted like wax, glass pooling on the sills before the windowsills cracked and split into thousands of identical fragments. The bed elongated, stretching to fill the room even as the legs twisted and knotted together like tree roots seeking water.

Light itself bent, creating pockets of blinding white and bubbles of total darkness; hues spanning the rainbow stretched between, even as less possible colors slid into the gaps. Sounds warped and overlapped, turning the hum of a vending machine into a perpetually falling tone that never seemed to end. The concept of physical space began bleeding, with the idea of the bathroom stretching out into the corridor until the corridor no longer existed.

The reality known to humans continued fraying, moving down levels. No longer were walls existent; bricks spread apart as the mortar holding them together forgot what it meant to adhere. Chunks of rock and dirt in the gravel dispersed and crystalline patterns shattered. Covalent bonds unwound as the localized area decided that atomic theory no longer mattered.

The Fixer moved through the melting world as easily as an Olympic swimmer might navigate the waters of an inflatable child’s pool. Spindly limbs grasped nothingness, finding purchase amid the ruins of reality to propel themselves forward. This was not Outside, but it wasn’t far off. Spacetime was the framework in which processes could occur—or, more reductively, space and time were the foundations upon which the rest of reality existed. When one of those two stretched to the extreme, things started to go sideways.

Reality itself was not a conscious actor. To say that reality would dislike what The Fixer was doing would ascribe too much personhood, too much individuality to what was little more than a tapestry upon which all was drawn. Such descriptors were good for explaining situations that could not be experienced by others, but woefully inadequate for the… reality of it all.

Unlike an inert sheet of colored fabric, reality did have its defenses. When something started tearing at the threads, they would come.

The Fixer could sense one approaching. From the moment they had abandoned the guise of Lavender, they had… heard it coming. It wasn’t quite audible, for it made no sound, but the sensation was similar to the ring of tinnitus in the back of the skull.

Tinnitus, The Fixer had learned upon taking the condition for cobbling together the existence of Mister Dice, was truly irritating. They had discarded it almost immediately, gaining nothing from that particular transaction but a long-lasting pity toward anyone who suffered from its effects.

A shape flickered at the edge of perception, neither present nor absent. It was a shadow cast by a light that did not exist, a possibility bleeding into the chaotic mess of reality that The Fixer caused. They regarded it with surprise, limbs stretching through spacetime to twist themselves toward the shape. Directionality didn’t exactly exist at the moment, but perception was in the eyes of the beholder.

In the midst of the primordial chaos, a being stood, whole, intact, and coherent. Gleaming brass plates covered mechanical innards, each crafted with care and precision to resemble the more popular depictions of angelic figures. Wings made of golden blades spread out behind it, allowing it to glide through the chaos as easily as The Fixer crawled, while a long, segmented tail whipped back and forth, swatting away dangerous spikes of potential. Long trails of order followed in streaks behind its splayed fingers, stitching together the pockmarked tapestry, but the action was more of an idle afterthought than a conscious decision to repair reality.

It set The Fixer on edge.

In their previous experience, reality guardians would always focus on symptoms over causes. They would fracture reality via extreme time dilation, trusting that a guardian would come along and focus on fixing it, allowing them an opportunity to escape and blend in with humans once again.

Luminous, golden lenses swiveled and found The Fixer. A calculation engine whirred and clicked, adjusting the physical state of the wheels and axels within the guardian. Even before its evaluations completed, it drew back its wings, streamlining its profile to jet through the chaos. The trails of ordered reality left in its wake ceased as it devoted its processing to its new target.

The Fixer did not hesitate. Hesitation was for those who believed time still held meaning here in this unraveling. Time was a suggestion at best—a polite fiction. They twisted, folding their form through a gap that was not a gap, slipping not between wheres, but whens.

The guardian appeared in the distance, attack completed, while The Fixer moved when they were before, analyzing the situation—each face rotating to keep the guardian in view.

The guardian’s golden-brass wings snapped shut, slicing through the airless void with precise efficiency. Carvings of reality gleamed through the slices—like looking through a window at the old motel, a horde of police officers, and cars traveling through the street. All were blissfully unaware of the nightmare realm of potential they had crafted.

Ordered time bled through the chaos, spreading like lightning.

The Fixer swept their scythe-like legs back, clawing themselves further into the chaos. For a brief thought, they believed the guardian had gone back to the normal actions, focusing on repairing the damage they had caused, only to watch a comet-trail of restored time scrape overhead. The Fixer twisted, folding their body through a moment that had not yet occurred, but the guardian’s lashing tail struck the polished metal of one of their heads. Shattered shards scattered into the void, dissolving into the chaos of the area.

Pain—real, immediate, and unfamiliar—coursed through their awareness.

They retaliated, scythes carving through when the guardian wasn’t an instant ahead of when it was. Their blades appeared deep into the gleaming brass, only rending large gouges as causality caught up. Claws embedded in the machine, The Fixer tried to stretch the localized time to the breaking point once again, but the machine-angel simply ignored the manipulation, head swiveling a full one-eighty to face The Fixer.

Darting longways, The Fixer slipped between instants, avoiding a second strike to one of their heads.

For a heartbeat, reality reasserted itself in full. The motel returned. A brick wall, appearing directly between The Fixer and The Guardian, crashed down around them as blows neither had yet made connected. Police and onlookers ran for cover as debris scattered. The guardian paid no attention to any commotion, sweeping one of its bladed wings directly at The Fixer’s heads. A flash of sped time ruined reality once more as The Fixer no longer existed in the present, but in the near future.

The angel waited with the patience of a machine, casting a shadow that erased possibility. Another of The Fixer’s heads cracked, the face of calculation splitting down the middle. A flinch from the pain sent The Fixer back into the folds of time.

The Fixer remained, waiting and stationary, just outside the regular flow of reality. For them, time did not pass. One instant, they were about to take a blade straight to their main mass. The next, they fell back into a perfectly ordinary reality, catching themselves on Mister Dice’s hands and knees, panting and sweating bits of molten machinery. They rolled to the side, sloughing off flesh like a snake shedding their scales, fully expecting the guardian’s wings to have cleaved through where they once sat.

Nothing attacked.

The Fixer remained on their back, breathing heavily as they stared up at the ruined, boarded up husk of an old motel room. Someone had gone through it, taking the television, lamps, and clocks, but leaving the ruined bed and covers, along with the damaged walls. Plywood covered both the window and the door. The only light squeezed in through some narrow gaps between the boards and the jagged, ruined windowsill.

The guardian wasn’t present. The distant whine of tinnitus that signified its presence was completely absent.

The Fixer did not question it in the moment, choosing instead to remain still, recovering. The Dice guise wouldn’t hold up for long, especially not now, injured as they were. They would have to switch to Leah soon, but there was time enough to regain some composure.

Though it had been a literal instant from their perspective, that was the longest they had ever spent between the folds of time. The Fixer wasn’t actually sure how much time had passed. The light streaming in through the cracks meant that it was daytime now, but was it the next day? Several days? Months?

Years?

It felt uncharacteristic to be so uncertain. Time was their domain, they knew it like the back of their hand… yet the damage they had wrought to the flow of time in their escape attempt left eddies and currents that left them unable to tell. The guardian had repaired it as much as was possible, they could tell. With time, even the eddies would fade away. Until then, occupants of the motel might hear random whispers from the past or see lights on when they currently weren’t.

Just another haunted hotel. The Fixer didn’t dare fix it. For all they knew, the guardian was nearby, watching and waiting for their reappearance while concealing that tinnitus-aura they projected.

Deciding that getting lost in the crowd of humanity was more important than pretending everything was fine for Leah, The Fixer slowly stood up, steadying themselves with the ruined bedframe. After ensuring they had their balance, they pried back one of the plywood boards, peering outside to ensure there was no trouble waiting, but they found only an average street, cars driving along like nothing was amiss. Police tape stretched across a portion of the parking lot, blocking access, but there were no visible officers or squad cars.

Once positive that there was nothing that would prove dangerous to Leah, The Fixer ripped the rest of the plywood off the doorframe and stepped outside.

Daylight blinded them, bringing back the nausea of what had been in full force. One hand pressed to their forehead, The Fixer leaned over and changed. Passers-by might report that a drunkard had emerged from the boarded up window, vomited all down the sidewalk, and then disappeared into the city. No human would be able to associate that man with the woman they now were.

Leah looked around once, The Fixer still in full control, and hurried away. With the change, the nausea and pain diminished—it remained in the back of their mind, but distant; Mister Dice, as a mere construct of cobbled together parts of other people’s lives, was far less real than Leah was, and thus was far closer to The Fixer’s true self.

However, a new panic welled up inside them, one not entirely The Fixer’s own. Part of that was that The Fixer had not handed over control, which was something that only happened in dangerous situations. Normally, The Fixer tried to collaboratively share their body, even ‘leaving’ Leah on her own unless they were needed, at which point they would swap back and forth depending on who best could resolve any given situation—often answering questions for Erika and Carter.

What happened? Leah’s voice rang in their mind, echoing back and forth. Speech wasn’t necessary, as they shared her mind, but she found it helped normalize their situation. Something’s wrong. I feel… hurt? Or sick? Dizzy. Like I sat in a swivel chair and spun around for an hour straight.

“My true form suffered not insignificant damage,” The Fixer spoke aloud, hurrying away from the motel down the Chicago sidewalk. The Corolla was gone, towed away or retrieved by Erika, which unfortunately left them stranded out in the middle of nowhere.

Not insignificant? Leah repeated, speaking almost snidely. If there were any wonder about where Erika got her attitude… What happened?

While not active, Leah’s consciousness fell into a stasis of sorts, leaving her with missing time and gaps in her memory. Opening a portion of their own memory, The Fixer filled those gaps, letting Leah remember as if she experienced the events of the motel for herself. The only moments The Fixer left out were the moments when the guardian destroyed parts of their body and the immediate pain that followed, sparing her the unnecessary suffering.

She still let out the mental equivalent of a pained hiss as she absorbed the memories.

“Are you alright?”

Am I alright? Idiot. That’s my question for you!

“I’m fine. I’ll recover.”

You lost two of your heads. A brief pause passed before Leah added, You have four heads.

“This may come as a shock to you, but I am not human. That form especially.”

Don’t be cute with me.

The Fixer stopped at the intersection a short distance from the motel, wondering if there were any bus stops nearby. “It’s just a flesh wound,” they said.

Don’t quote Monty Python at me either.

“Nothing to worry about, it’s no worse than a human losing their arm.”

Most humans would consider that a pretty huge deal.

“I suppose I should add that I can repair it, eventually. Unlike humans, my consciousness is not stored in my head. Any of those heads,” they corrected. Repeating; rephrasing, The Fixer added, “My physiology is not analogous to anything in this world. Unless I’m worried, you shouldn’t be worried.”

A long silence hung in the back of The Fixer’s mind, lasting until Leah spoke again, this time in a more subdued tone. You still got hurt.

“Yes.”

That thing could have killed you.

“Their intention was likely to damage components, especially anything that allowed me to escape, then shunt me out of reality while I couldn’t significantly react.”

Same thing.

“Close enough,” The Fixer agreed. “Those heads are more like decoys. Obvious targets. As long as my chronosphere remains intact, I should always be able to escape.” Letting out a long sigh at just how far away from the heart of Chicago this motel was, The Fixer started walking. “I didn’t want to use it to this extent, but the guardian forced my hand. It is still winter, so we haven’t been shunted too far… unless, of course we went so far into the future that it is now winter again.”

They had thought that their disorientation came from the chaotic timestream around the motel, but even after distancing themselves, The Fixer couldn’t quite grasp when they were. The lack of awareness was deeply unsettling, even more concerning than the pain and damage they had sustained. The guardian might have damaged some component responsible for chronological awareness.

That would… make time manipulation far more difficult.

The Analyst might be able to diagnose what was wrong, if they were willing to speak to The Fixer without demanding the world in return.

Why haven’t you called Erika?

The Fixer stopped abruptly, thoughts and movement both coming to a halt.

You didn’t even think of calling Erika, did you? Or anyone else either; Leslie would have come, so would Rick, even some of my coworkers would probably have driven out here to pick us up—though they may have had a few more questions.

Slowly, The Fixer reached into the pocket of Leah’s coat. They did not pull the same trick that Erika often did, retrieving items from afar. Clothes, small items, and other minor effects all went into stasis along with the guise when The Fixer changed states, and it all returned when The Fixer changed back. They had a perfectly ordinary cellphone in their hand, one which even displayed the correct date and time thanks to automatically syncing upon reconnecting to a nearby cell tower. Dozens of missed calls and unread messages filled the notifications, but The Fixer’s eyes were locked on the clock.

This was, perhaps, the first time they had ever needed to seek an external source for the time.

“It’s been two weeks,” they said, still unable to reconcile the listed date with their internal, malfunctioning chronometer. The Fixer had hoped that seeing the correct time would jostle their faulty sense back to normal, but it was not to be. Something inside them was fully broken.

Call Erika, Leah insisted. She’s right, you know. You’re too set on doing things alone.

“It’s how it has always been.”

You’ve never had an ally you could call when you wake up dazed and confused weeks later than you were supposed to wake up? Leah let out a sardonic, mental chuckle. That has happened to me more than I would like, back before I met you. Doubt I would have made it until I met you if I didn’t have at least one friend back then to call for a ride home.

“I’m not human.”

Obviously. Leah laughed again, though it sounded sad this time around. I don’t know how it is for you Outsiders, but humans have only accomplished everything they’ve managed by working together. We help each other, build up communities, cover for each other’s faults… Mostly, anyway. I’ll admit that there are some vile people out there doing their best to ruin things for everyone else, but none of that applies here. We have people we can count on. Erika and Carter if no one else.

The Fixer opened the phone’s contact list, scrolling through it, past the hotel coworkers, through each of The Hunters—and Piper King—and then moved back up to the top where Erika and Carter were listed. Numb fingers tapped the top number.

The call dropped instantly, going directly to voicemail. Three more increasingly concerning attempts all resulted in the same instant voicemail. Leah’s agitation started to edge onto The Fixer’s calm demeanor, both worried about the same thing.

Erika did not turn off her phone. Something was wrong.