Invisible Networks (2022 edition) #1: Slime Computation

 It took a few hours of scrolling before Clara understood why NeoncortexT was causing a small voice of anxiety to rise in the background of her mind.

The garbage wasn't there. The ads for products she never wanted, the "hot takes" from vile people trying to grow rich from a platform built on hate, the topics that she didn't hate but also had no interest in. She hadn't encountered anything close to something she could be consciously certain she didn't want to see. It was too good to be true. It had to be a lie.

It took a few minutes, but through the lens of an alternate account with specific changes to the profile Clara was able to find that the landfill of the internet did extend to this platform as well. NeoncortexT presented a timeline that assumed that the user was the kind of person who would vote to repeal every human right they could, and it somehow managed to hit through her desensitization towards that bleak side of humanity. So she put the phone down, focused on some stress relief techniques for a few hours, then picked up the phone to switch back to her main account.

But the presented timeline wasn't the corrosive mess she saw earlier. Now it was back to the uncomfortably pleasant feed that her main account was supposed to show her. How did it adapt so quickly, how did the algorithm know it was her?

It bothered her enough to spend a few minutes of each subsequent day performing "research" in the form of browsing other platforms for discussions on how NeoncortexT worked. Apparently this was the first social media platform to use that new processor tech that exchanged microcircuits for a vat of modified algae. Official statements talked about how it could emulate organic thought well enough to give its users the content they actually wanted to see. The actual workings were proprietary, so the closest she got to details on its actual workings were the varied and implausible theories that formed a forest thick enough to hide whatever the singular tree of truth looked like. Clara's friends shared her initial reaction to the new platform, which was already being condensed into "NexT" for shorthand reference, agreeing that it was uncanny to see an app actually know what they wanted.

It didn't take long after that for the unease of using NexT to fade. No matter how implausible it was for the timeline to follow even her most recent thoughts and whims, the accuracy of its algorithm made it that much harder to excise it from her habits. Finally, like most everyone else, she stopped questioning it entirely. It was a part of life, a welcome replacement over its contemporaries. So it was easy to ignore when a whistleblower from NexT claimed the company seeded the algae in the drinking water. The claim was rather far-fetched. An algae that would briefly parasitize a person until it could leave with a rough neurological imprint of its host? That the NexT corporation would fish out these expelled algae at the water treatment plants and add them to the main vat, all so it could wait to synchronize to the account of its former host? Nonsense.

The claims never went anywhere. NexT had enough capital to stall or shut down any investigation into its activities. Clara never made the connection when she was diagnosed with a brain abscess a decade after she had started using the platform. Corporate-acceptable collateral harm from algae mutations wasn't even a possibility to be considered. She died three years later, spared the sight of watching the rest of humanity succumb to the same fate through the remainder of the century.

Nullfortunate

The temporary command center was abuzz with the expected noise of professional scientists and military personnel scrambling at a seemingly chaotic tangle of tasks, but uniquely accentuated by the continuous rumble of rolling dice. Marisha stopped briefly to glance at one of the booths where a young man in military uniform rolled a d20, examined the result then repeated the process with mechanical efficiency. The task seemed entirely mundane, and somewhat nonsensical given the seriousness with which he was performing it. She continued further into the tent towards where one woman in a general's uniform was somehow managing to orchestrate the traffic of reports and pending orders that passed onto her desk. She looked at least two decades older than Marisha, though the stress of leadership may have put excessive lines of age into her caramel skin. Still sharp though, as she noticed and made eye contact with Marisha despite the dozen or so people between them, curtly beckoning her over all while listening to a scientist's report.

"-should minimize subjectivity's interference in how we detect its intensity." The scientist was saying by the time she got into earshot. The general took barely a second to make a decision and respond.

"Do it. But safely!" She turned, providing a firm handshake to Marisha when she approached. "Doctor Estelle, I'm glad you've arrived unharmed. I'm General Calder. Did you have time to fully read the briefing materials during your flight here?"

Marisha released the handshake and nodded. "I did. Any new developments since that draft was sent?"

Calder grimaced in a manner of frustration. "The others have agreed on a working theory on why the examination team dropped dead. Given Marshall's medical history, it's assumed that ten meters was close enough to automatically cause an existing embolus to arrive in his brain. The rest made it to three meters before they died with no obvious symptoms we could observe from a safe distance, so the current theory is that Brownian motion completely fails at that range now. We have equipment coming in that we'll use to try to detect living bacteria within the crater to see if they're affected as well."

The briefing folder slipped from Marisha's hands and almost hit the ground before Calder caught it. "That . . . that's not how Brownian motion works." Marisha's throat became dry as she considered the implication.

"Normally you'd be correct, but statistical aberration seems to be the Object's specialty. We've already established a system for detecting where the field it generates reaches the five percent threshold." Calder gestured to the group of uniformed people rolling dice. "We were able to round up the tabletop gamers and have them roll d20s. Given their inherent regard for a roll of one to be unfortunate, they're the best thing we have to a reliable measurement system at the moment. We'll relocate this command center as soon as they start to only yield 'critical failures' with every roll."

"So the effect is definitely subjective?" Marisha asked, intent on grasping the situation. "Have other common biases from games of luck been tested?"

Calder looked a bit more dismayed and shrugged. "I'd have more people flipping coins, but the variance in whether they prefer heads or tails interferes with the results and has made it difficult to pin down the fifty percent threshold. Cards and other forms of dice are used in too many games with different rulesets to force a consistent poor outcome within the Object's field. We haven't been able to pin down if subjectivity matters outside of games of chance."

"Ok, so run me through the basic confirmed behavior of the Object. Maybe we're missing something." Marisha replied, a touch of urgency entering her voice as she began to grasp the daunting task she was taking part in.

Calder sighed and opened a folder on her desk and spreading out photos and documents. "The Object, as we're calling it for now, alters random events to always be their most unfortunate outcome. The further the event is from the Object, the higher its chance of failure has to be in order for the alteration to take place. We think the field of this effect did not manifest, or at least begin to expand, until it landed two days ago. With the eyewitness accounts we have from the people who got there first, it's likely the field wasn't able to affect anything significant until roughly five hours in, when older vehicles within fifty meters of the Object began break down. Three civilians died from tripping and breaking their necks while within one meter of the Object during that first day, and there were thirty more within one hundred meters that died from sudden complications to preexisting medical conditions over the next two days."

Cataloguing the details as she listened, Marisha had to suspend some previous notions from her field of work. "Any idea of the composition of the Object? Did an observatory manage to detect its approach?"

"Current theory is that it's some kind of naturally-occurring alloy, since it definitely seems metallic but doesn't look like any metal we know of." Calder grimaced, moving another document to the front. "We're still analyzing visual footage and spectroscopy from the three days before the impact, but no results yet. I don't give it much weight, but a couple scientists think it didn't lose any mass upon atmospheric entry." She paused. "If they are correct, though, then that lends credence to the presumption that the Object is artificial. This would then make it more likely that its arrival was intentional."

Marisha took a moment of concentration to suppress some of her nausea at the thought of what that meant. "So what will my role be in this? I imagine I was called in specifically to identify a more precise set of mechanics for this phenomenon."

"No, Doctor. Your role here is to lie." Calder held her gaze, a living monument of composure and resolve. "All attempts to damage the Object with conventional weaponry and tools have failed, due to the intensity of the effect surrounding it. The only option we have to stop it is detonating a nuclear bomb in close enough range to vaporize it. If we wait too long, electronic or mechanical failure will make every bomb we send turn into a dud at best."

"So you'll take this fantastical anomaly of probability and embellish in ways that will make the men in charge shit themselves on the spot. We might have weeks until humanity is wiped out by this threat, but we need them to think we have a day or two left to live so they don't mire this solution in bureaucracy."

It took Marisha by surprise. The General was speaking of a course of action that could get everyone there disgraced, court marshalled and worse. But the thirty or so people in earshot didn't bat an eye at it. "But . . . surely there's a chance they'll listen if we're honest. We don't have to put so much on the line."

The tent suddenly fell silent, everyone in sight turning to look at Marisha with grim, resigned expressions. "You haven't personally witnessed the early days of this, Marisha." Calder said, her voice heavy with determination beyond what she showed earlier. "Leaving this up to chance will kill everyone."

Mistakes to Reflect On

The shock of hitting her head on the floor after tripping on the top of the stairs was more than she expected, though in a strange moment of mid-panic clarity she considered that it was part of human nature to underestimate how distracting a concussive impact would be. As she placed her hands under her to rise her mind began running the calculations, an uncooperative partition calmly presenting an estimate of the time lead lost by this blunder. A firm grip with a noticeable vibration of adrenaline hauled her up, mercifully reducing the impact of the mistake.

"Come on, Janice! We're almost there!" Maurice hissed as he helped Janice get to her feet and reach running speed again. Moments after the stairway was out of sight she heard the shattering crash of a shotgun, probably through the door given the sound of splintered wood that followed. They hadn't even tried locked the front door in their rush, but their pursuer preferred direct efficiency over subtlety. The ensuing footsteps weren't rushed, but heavy and methodical. If either of them pulled their pistol and tried to ambush at a corner, their foe would be too likely to match the shot with the more favorable weapon of the fight.

Janice scrambled into the master bedroom right after Maurice. No mirror. Maurice opened the door on the far right side of the room. A closet. No mirror on the inside door. In that moment of Maurice's dismay, Janice managed to reach the other side and throw open the door, feeling a burst of jittery relief as it revealed the master bathroom. This was definitely a house that neither of them could ever afford. It was even bigger than the dining room in her parent's house. She fumbled for the light switch so she could see where the mirror was, and the fluorescent glow treated her to the sight of a full-wall mirror opposite of the bathtub and shower. "In here!" She quickly shouted to Maurice. As her partner ran in she noted the absurd scale of the amenities. Surely the bath and shower could each hold a dozen people properly, wasteful unless the owners intended to hold orgies in this house. Realizing she was wasting time as the rhythmic sound of booted footfalls grew ever louder, she turned and threw herself into the mirrored surface.

The other side was, of course, a reflection of the world they were once in, but at the same time even more alien. Light here behaved strangely, giving everything a color palette both darkened and inverted from the original. Janice turned just in time to see the path to the reflected bedroom, and the barrel of the shotgun peer past. Reflexively she grabbed Maurice and pulled them both inside the bathtub. The reflection of their pursuer couldn't see them, but the original could still see them through the mirror if they weren't careful.

Hidden behind the lip of the tub, Janice considered their options. Their noise and image would travel back to the unmirrored world without hindrance, so they had to move with stealth. If they were spotted, the enemy would shoot the place they should have been standing in the real world, then quickly begin to piece together what was actually happening. He'd shoot the mirror, and the shockwave resulting from the shatter would leave them a gory mess before they'd get out of range. It was why this method of hiding was their last resort. Most surfaces reflective enough to do this with were fragile and had easily killed other agents, so they didn't know the full possibility of what could happen.

The pursuer stopped, grunted with frustration and stomped away, their reflection moving towards the tub Janice and Maurice were hiding in and leaning over to look in. This was the other part that kept agents out of the mirrored world. Living things were obviously represented on this side as well, but it didn't work the same way. Features would distort, skin rippled as if it merely housed air, which it possibly did. No one had tried to see what was inside of a person's reflection yet. The effect gave this man the impression of lizardesque frills on his neck in constant oscillation, with the less pronounced ripples adding to the sense of intellect and cold malice on his face. Presumably satisfied that the tub was empty, the original's footsteps moved towards the shower stall, and the duplicate moved in kind.

Janice quietly move her hand to her holster, pulling out her gun. Objects launched from this side would pass through the mirror and land in the real side without problem, given what few tests they had done with the technique. Though it was always rubber bands and paper airplanes and other things that wouldn't shatter the mirror and kill the tester if the mechanics didn't work as expected. Gunfire was untested. Maurice shifted position next to her and looked at the gun, then to her. His expression became severe. Wait it out. He mouthed, not daring to speak the words.

She hesitated. Surely this killer would eventually leave and give them the chance to reenter the real bathroom and escape. This world didn't hold up well enough outside of proper line of sight to a mirror, otherwise they could have already been on their way to pick any mirror within several blocks to exit from and make their escape. As she thought through the rustling of the shower curtain stopped, and the blast of the shotgun rang from both bathrooms, amplifying the deafening noise and shattering plaster. He was checking for hidden wall compartments, and would soon shoot the mirror in order to eliminate that possibility. Ignoring Maurice's urging, she sat upright in the tub leveled a two-handed grip on the killer in the real world, and fired eight shots into his back.

Their pursuer hit the ground as Janice took in the fact that she was still alive. The mirror didn't shatter from this side, allowing her to execute the perfect ambush. As the shotgun stopped clattering on the ground she heard a second, closer thump. She turned to see the reflection of the dead man on his knees, shocked expression staring into the empty space of the damaged shower stall. Maurice was watching him as well, white as a sheet. The dead reflection lifted its hand to stare at, and Janice immediately used the remaining seven shots in her gun, aiming for the head.

Each shot hit its mark, but barely embedded past skin level as patterns like the opaque shattering of bulletproof glass formed around each bullet. The creature, this clearly was no longer person or person-adjacent, didn't even flinch or show signs of impact, and the undamaged portions still rippled as if barely sufficient air pressure was what kept it in its current shape. It turned to look at Janice, alien curiosity on its cracked face. Maurice took his turn next, emptying his gun in a perfect pattern to rupture heart and lungs, should this entity have that equivalent. The results were the same as Janice's attack, but the strange creature wearing the reflected skin of a dead man showed no reaction except mild annoyance.

As Maurice moved his jaw to shout something, the creature grabbed the pearl-white reflected shotgun and swung it stock-first at his head. There wasn't even a shout, just the sickening wheeze of air unable to find a head at the end of his esophagus.

Both Janice and the creature looked at the spatter of off-color gore, her with shock and it with something akin to fascination. Logic began to slowly click back into place for Janice as the creature seemed enraptured by something with in results of its brutality, continuing to hold the shotgun by the barrel as if it couldn't fathom its intended application.

Can't fight it.

Maurice is gone.

Need to escape and destroy the mirror.

Aided by seemingly impossible reserves of adrenaline, Janice sprinted across the bathroom and dove through the mirror, crashing back into a world with normal colors and a corpse that followed the normal rules of mortality. She looked back to see if the monster within the mirror had followed her, but only saw a normal reflection of a damaged bathroom with the unusual addition of more blood spatter than one body could account for. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the dead man, relieved to see that he still followed logic and remained dead in the shower stall.

As she reached for the shotgun by the corpse her world suddenly went white for a flash, then she was staring into her dead pursuer's face. She tried to orient herself, but felt a strangely malleable foot press her head to the floor. The monster's colors were still the darkened inversion of the man it was based on, and it leered over her as she noticed another smaller bloodstain the stock of the shotgun it still held club-like. The expression on it was once again different, not surprised or fascinated, but with a sickening joyous malice.

It raised the shotgun to strike again as darkness took Janice . . .

Lostward

While it was near noon when the ship had embarked, it had only taken until sunset to reach a stretch of ocean where no land and no other ships could be seen. It was a freeing feeling to leave port with such speed, no longer weighed down by months of supplies. Below deck they had only packed enough hardtack and thin mead for three weeks on top of their settler tools, a manifest which had baffled the harbormaster. He wouldn't have understood that given where the ship was going, the crew would need less time than that to know if they had succeeded or were doomed. A hefty bottle of poisoned rum was kept in the captain's quarters should the latter become apparent.

Bartholomew crossed the deck with the smooth and sure strides of someone who had grown to find the rocking of the waves more familiar and steady than dry land. He stopped at the base of the main mast and took a deep breath before shouting to be heard. "Leonard! See anything on the horizon?"

Immediately the response came back from directly above. "No, Captain Barry! All clear as far as the eye can see."

Bartholomew closed his eyes and nodded to himself. Everything was just about in place. "Well come on below deck! You know the stars well enough to get in the way of what the others gotta do!" He turned away from the mast and began to feel the nervous excitement build in his stomach. Only a few moments more then they'd be committed. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his sextant, the only one on board, and gazed at it with nostalgia. It had served him for decades but its presence could be enough to stop this new adventure. With a slow and reverent pace, he used some twine to tie a fist-sized rock to it then threw the tool overboard.

He gazed into the water where it had vanished for a few moments, then turned around to address his crew. They had come to a standstill, waiting to see what he would do next. Six of them were people who sailed with Bartholomew for decades and were the only ones he trusted with helping prepare for the true nature of this voyage. The other eight were young men and women, with a need to escape old ties and equipped with the navigational skills of an oyster. It was clear from the looks on their faces that they knew this wouldn't be a normal voyage.

"Well, lads and lasses, we're not actually crossing the Atlantic. For the next week, myself and the other seafaring veterans here will be locked below deck, not even allowing ourselves to look outside. You fresh folk will run the normal operations of the ship, including steering. You can use the hatch on the inner door to consult any of us on questions you have about sailing the ship, but we can't give you directions. Important thing is that if you find fog, head towards it and do your best to avoid leaving."

One of the younger crew, an adolescent woman with a french accent and knife-fighting scars spoke up. "Captain? This will only ensure that we'll be lost. We all talked and figured out that you recruited us exactly because we couldn't navigate the ship." The other recruits nodded in agreement, murmuring their trepidation.

"That is exactly the point, Louise." Bartholomew responded, refusing to let their hesitation spread to him. "The map has closed itself into a proper sphere, and most everyone thinks there's nothing left to discover. It's not true, though. I was a deck rat in my growing years, keeping a ship clean while the adults did the complex stuff. It was over here on the colony side of the sea that we were hit by pirates." He began to gesticulate to add emphasis to his tale. "Surrounded by three ships, no chance of escape. I made it to the dinghy in the chaos, and no one else did. Once the pirates took what they wanted and sank the rest, I was left with an empty horizon and no idea of where to go. Three days of confused paddling in clouded and foggy seas found my way to land. The sand of the shore was blood red, and hardly a hop and skip past that was the forest. The trees had a pale blue bark, patterned like the scales of rattlesnakes, and were far too close together for me to squeeze past. They had these round fruits that I was able to sustain myself on, growing at the top and falling to the sand. Vivid purple things with the texture of squash and a taste that was a blend of pork and yam."

Bartholomew took a breath and looked at the crew, who were listening with fascination and mixtures of doubt. "The forest seemed to go for miles and there was no sign of civilization, so I loaded up as many of those fruits as I could in the dinghy and set out to sea again. It was a repeat of being horribly lost in fog for several days, but a trader vessel found me when I came out of the other side. Since then I've explored all of the Atlantic and talked to everyone who might have seen the place, but no one has. Not even the lads who sailed the other oceans heard of anything similar. It's not a place meant to be found if you know where you're going, which is why we have to intentionally be lost. I can't even guarantee we'll arrive at the same shore and see the same damned trees, but we'll discover new land beyond what the cartographers say there is. That I'm certain of."

Now the younger contingent of the crew were less doubtful and more worried. It was more on course with what Bartholomew was expecting, and it'd work in his favor for making sure the ship remained lost for long enough. "Alright, youngsters! The ship is under your control until we're on the other side." With that, he turned and went below deck with the veteran portion of his crew. After locking the door and hiding the key when the others weren't looking, he settled down in the lamplight and pulled a faded blue seed from his pocket. He was never able to make those seeds germinate in normal soil, so he had that one dried and preserved as persistent proof that the encounter with the lost island was real. He put it away after a few minutes and turned to one of the several dozen books stockpiled to keep himself and the others occupied.

He wasn't even through the first chapter when one of the young crew opened the door hatch and reported sighting a fog bank. Out of season, of course. After telling the lad to hold course for it, he put aside the book and quietly cried tears of relief and joy. The land that had captivated his dreams for fifty years was finally in reach again.

The February Exile

It took Jason a good bit to get used to the vibe of this party. He knew his girlfriend claimed to practice witchcraft as a hobby, but most of the details went over his head. He just knew that today was the Leap Day, an important day for Clarice's specific practices, and apparently one hell of a party for which she was the guest of honor this year. It didn't initially appeal to him, but then promise of a good time and a good high was enough for Jason to accept her invitation to join them.

So far it was definitely poppin', if not in the way he was used to. Retro-as-hell folk music, herb-infused wines to curl the stomach as much as the tongue, and strains of mushrooms that he didn't recognize but was willing to give a try anyway. After the initial nausea passed, he began to feel both the booze and shrooms take effect, and it was proving to be a nice mixture to pry away his grip on reality. In the full swing of the substances, the music sounded far more interesting and the chanting had a rhythm that he hadn't noticed before.

He wobbled his way over to the main crowd where Clarice was, then clumsily planted a kiss on her cheek before whispering in her ear. "I now understand why you throw this kind of party. It's just a shame it's once every four years." She responded by smiling and leaning against him affectionately, apparently also in the thrall of the drink and drugs, though Jason thought maybe not quite as strongly as he was.

"If it was simply about this part of the gathering, I'm sure we'd be doing it every weekend possible." She whispered back. "But there's a purpose to this whole thing. The ritual is coming up soon. You can watch, but you'd have to be a full member to receive an explanation of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Important secrets that we have to protect." Pushing through his muddled thoughts, Jason nodded and simply basked in the music with her, sipping wine and nibbling mushrooms as needed to maintain the smooth high.

Then it was almost midnight, time for the ritual. One of the other witches changed their phone to a different Spotify playlist, this one more ominous but still feeling appropriately folk for the situation. Clarice moved Jason's head off her shoulder and moved towards the center of the room where some kind of occult sign just about finished being drawn. Clarice stopped a few feet before the sigil, then stripped to her underwear and allowed the other women to paint unfamiliar symbols onto her skin. When that was finished, they began clothing her in some kind of ritual garb, black cloths with similar symbols stitched into them. Jason had a delayed double take when a witch brought out an M16 with full military attachments and adorned with charms. As Clarice began examining the gun and the clips, which seemed to be stuffed to the gills with herbs around the bullets, Jason could see trepidation on her face.

She's nervous, this means a lot to her and she doesn't want to mess it up. Jason thought through the impairing mental haze. Am I being a good enough boyfriend by simply attending the event with her? I should be next to her during this preparation, to show her that I don't need to understand what's happening to know that she's doing it well and that I'm proud of her.

Taking a moment to build resolve, he staggered forward to stand supportively at Clarice's shoulder. It only occurred to him at the last steps that the wine was much stronger than he initially thought. As he made the final step to stand next to her, he tripped over another witch's feet and pitched forward towards the sigil on the floor. Through the rush of peril seeming to slow down time, Jason could see the looks of panic form on everyone. Clarice most of all seemed terrified and tried to reach out and catch him, but wasn't fast enough to stop him from slamming his head into the floor.

Then, in the black silence, the sound of his own heartbeat was all he could feel.

It took a few moments for Jason to get over the stun from hitting his head, then he tried to take stock. He only saw blackness and couldn't hear the expected shouts of surprise from Clarice and the other witches. Did people go blind and deaf when concussed? He couldn't remember. Then he began to make out some muttering.

"-damn Stolas. Amazing he managed to predict that humans would make repository devices." The voice stopped, and a sharp sniffing noise could be heard. "Strange though, electricity and electromagnetic wavelength transmission. Not even the slightest bit of corvid bone in its construction. I'll need to rub it in his face that he doesn't actually know everything."

Jason could begin to make out the faint glow of a smartphone screen, his smartphone, a few feet away in the gloom. It did a poor job of illuminating the face of the . . . person? It met the basic criteria for a human face, but in the bad lighting he was certain something was wrong, out of place. The figure took notice that Jason was awake, slipping the phone into a pocket of the billowing . . . cloak? Maybe it was black wings? The impenetrable gloom of this place made it impossible to tell.

"No protective measures, no weapons, no training. And that look of confusion on your face. It seems like today is the day it all begins." The creature examined Jason and considered. "There is still some waiting to do, so I'm willing to indulge some questions. The past four hundred years have not allowed me talkative visitors." Something in the tone of its voice was scratching at some primal fear in Jason, but it hadn't quite found its grip yet.

"Who . . .  who are you? Where are we?" Jason tried his best to sound resolute as he lay on the ground, too scared to move lest he provoke this being that seemed more unnatural the more he looked at it.

"I am an exile, someone considered a rebel and traitor by many. As for this place? It's a 'when', not a 'where'. Currently we occupy the calendar space of February 30th. Quite an unfair temporal liminal space. February 29th works similar when it isn't a leap year, a time and place that shouldn't be yet must be crossed over in order to reach March. The Vatican bastards were clever enough to create their special calendar just to trap me, not sacrificing any existing days but scrounging together spare seconds to create a temporary day with a new border. Normally with how these sort of spaces work, waiting twenty four hours would safely deposit you in the next day, but this one is too disconnected normally."

The distant horizon began to dimly glow with faint sepia tones, and the creature smiled. If a children's joyous smile could be described as a beautiful sunrise, then this being's expression was a solar eclipse. "Because I'm disconnected from time and classical mortality, my presence isn't enough to make time move forward here. And the visitors sent to beat me down every four years were able to train themselves to abandon their sense of time while they were here. But you . . ." The smile deepened, as an impossibly expanding moon might cover even the solar corona. "Your unexpected, and assuredly unplanned, arrival has been enough to dislodge the seconds and send them forward. Congratulations! It is all because of you that the first February 30th will complete and I can step out into March 1st!"

The injury and drugs were still slowing Jason's mind, but he began to grasp at pieces. The witches' Leap Day ritual, the strange decoration on Clarice. The adorned gun. The best plan he could come up with was to negotiate, to buy time for himself in hopes he could get a chance to warn Clarice. "But won't you need a guide? You've been here for so long, if you gave me my phone back I could help you learn what's new."

The creature changed posture, cocked its head curiously. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to realize the true gravity of the situation you're in. Unfortunately, your service won't be of use to me." It reached back into its cloak and produced something metallic and somehow gleaming in the gloom. The object looked like a scalpel, until it started writhing like an agitated centipede. "But your component parts will serve me very well."