Portal Fantasy

[Reynard69]

Ever since I can remember I've been in love with stories. When a particularly passionate storyteller told me a tale, or I read the right book, the work of fiction would just seem to come alive in my mind. I could see the heroes and their trials, hear the dialogue as though it were being properly voice acted, and sometimes I even imagined I could smell the environment being portrayed to me. That last part wasn't always for the better as what I believed then to be my imagination could summon some pretty horrifying odors to assault my poor abused senses.

Explaining this to my friends and family got me pats on the head, more stories and the assurance that I would one day develop into a great storyteller in my own right. That maybe, if I studied hard enough, I would become a best selling author, a box office breaking movie producer; or my personal favorite; a AAA Game Developer. It wasn't until I was 16 and at college that I learned the truth was far, far stranger.

Portal Fantasy (Jumpchain SI)
Arc 1 Bioshock Infinite​

The event occurred at 4:30pm on October 31st. I was hiding in Dr Barletta's practical physics classroom watching Goblin Slayer when the portal opened. I was supposed to be with the rest of the student body suffering through a seminar on Diversity Inclusivity and Equity and how Halloween was racist colonialist white supremacy and probably toxically masculine as well, but honestly; no amount of shaming was going to stop tonight's halloween bash. It was as close as America came to a state sanctioned excuse to drink, cosplay and have wild unprotected sex, and only a true zealot was going to pass that up.

Besides, I had better things to do with my time! And the universe it seems, agreed. Though we had somewhat different priorities.

My first indication that something was wrong was when my headphones switched abruptly from the dulcet tones of Yui Ogura to a sound halfway between a fire alarm and knives on a chalkboard. I ripped the wifi headset off with a yelp and stood up in the same motion; almost immediately panicking and fumbling as I saved my laptop from being dashed against the cyclotron.

Only, Dr Barletta's cyclotron wasn't there anymore.

In its place was a… hole. It wasn't like a disk or a door, but as if a graphics error had scooped out a sphere of space whose edges were defined by electrical sparks and replaced it with a clipping object. Only instead of an object, it was two people and another office.

"Brother," the first one spoke, turning to the second "did you check the clock? The temporal calibration seems to be wrong." I stared, somewhat dumbfounded as what appeared to be a Victorian woman. Her hair was long and done up in a bun large enough I'm certain it would fall to her waist if unleashed. It was an indeterminate shade of auburn that could have either been brunette or ginger, depending on the light and accented a high broad forehead and face full of freckles. She was wearing a three piece suit in khaki, tan and white with a green tie and brown skirt.

"No, all reads and settings are proper," the other one, the man replied " everything is as we calculated. Occam's Razor would suggest the subject simply isn't here as arranged." He looked remarkably similar to the woman, wearing a masculine cut of the same outfit; with a similar shade of hair, eyes and skin. I couldn't see their features well enough through the static and clipping to tell if they were siblings, twins or just a narcissistic couple; but I had a feeling.

The man walked over from what looked to be a bank of controls and tapped on what looked to be a tesla coil with… a wrench. I knew it was a wrench, because the image of the room on the other side of the disturbance immediately cleared up. "Boy, go fetch your professor; there's a good lad."

"Ahh…" I reply brilliantly, shaking myself. "I could call him," I reached for my phone. If anything was important enough for Barletta to be here, and not at protecting his job from the campus communists, it would probably be his particle accelerator exploding into an open portal. Glancing at my computer I could see it was no longer fuzzing like it was under attack, so rather than going to the wall phone I pulled out my cell and pulled up Barletta's number. It was his student contact number, so chances were, he wouldn't respond; but I sent him a text and photo of the pair regardless.

"Message sent;" I told them. "But it'd help if I knew who was calling?" I asked, fishing for information. Whatever this was, it was BIG, and I had the oddest feeling that I knew these two.

"Robert," The man replied, "and Rosiland," the woman added, "Lutece" they finished together. The niggling feeling of familiarity spiked again, but something still wasn't connecting. Granted, I read a lot of conspiracy scientists websites and occasionally listened to the Alien Scientist Podcast but that didn't feel… right somehow.

I nodded, "and the guy in the suit?" I asked, pointing behind them to the man in an expensive looking long-coat and top-hat who had just entered the room. "He your patron?"

Rosiland stepped out of the portal area and they both turned to scowl at the man. "Jerimiah," the woman said, reproachfully "for the last time, we won't sell."

Several thuggish looking men came out of the doorway behind Jerimiah, and started cracking their knuckles. "I'm aware. Even at double, even free from the responsibility for float field maintenance so you can focus on your science crap, you still refuse my generous offer." Jeremiah grinned broadly under a rather impressive mustache. "Lucky for me though; you an yer brother have been real naughty. Naughty enough for the Prophet to sanction this here hostile takeover."

He gestured to his men. "If you would escort the siblings into their device," he drawled, "w-what the hell?"

Fink was looking down at his lapel where a beam of green light had created a shaft of illumination that was sparking smoke where the light glittered on his coat. "This, Mr Jerimiah," I replied, "is a laser. It's a device that emits a beam of energy which, when charged, can burn through solid steel and make it drip like hot wax. I imagine you're a bit less durable than steel."

Of course, my toy was a bit less powerful than I'd suggested too, but Jeri didn't need to know that. It could still set his suit on fire if I got the beam on the same place for a few seconds, or blind him in half a second, but no cutting up him and his goons like a James Bond villain. I typically used it for messing with cats, burning leaves out the window of a boring class or charring graffiti into walls. The school does have lasers that are powerful though; particularly that cyclotron the portal had replaced with these jokers and the wielding lasers in the shop classes; but those were rather unwieldy and made for poor weapons.

Then one of the toughs sprouted glowing veins across his face and arms and charged me; putting himself in front of his boss and passing through the portal.

That was his mistake.

Upon passing through the portal the wall of meat abruptly collapsed and began convulsing as his body fuzzed and clipped like the portal had when it first opened.

"HOLY SHIT!" I shrieked, jumping back. My bluff had been called, but the guy was in even worse shape than I'd have been able to put him in. I don't think of myself as a coward, and casually slaughtered millions in video games; but seeing something similar in real life, was more than a bit alarming.

"Boy!" Robert Lutece shouted. "Fire your device! NOW!"

I did as asked without even thinking, and Lutece slammed his wrench into the portal machine again. The portal spazzed out once more, but this time the electrical arcs glomed onto the beam and turned it into something blinding and loud!

The roar of the portal caused me to jump and drop my laser pointer, flinging the beam out of line of the portal and cutting off the reaction. When I could look at the portal again, the scene was one of devastation. A foot wide section of wall had simply been wiped away in an arc and was rimmed in glowing red and white embers. Rosiland Lutece was already spraying the edges with some sort of fire extinguisher while Robert was clutching the burnt stump of one hand.

The men who were attacking them though… Jeremiah was cut in half, as were 2 of his four men. The third had just stopped convulsing at my feet and the fourth was missing an arm and mercifully unconscious. His chest still moved up and down, in heavy labored breaths; but he was also limp and blessedly not screaming.

I on the other hand was.

Now, on one hand, I'd slaughtered literally millions of entities in video games and seen the results of a Laser Induced Plasma Channel before this. On the other, using one to kill three people? I was wrestling between stunned shock and full blown screaming panic. At least I hadn't started throwing up yet, but bloody fucking hell, this was too much for any afternoon, let-alone one where I was trying to relax and play hookie.

Thankfully, there were still pressing needs extant to distract me. As with all men, work is a good escape from worry.

"Boy. BOY!" Robert Lutece barked at me from the other side of the portal. "Help me get that one back on this side of the tear. I'm a bit out of sorts, right now," he held up the stump of his wrist, which he was jabbing an absolutely ENORMOUS syringe into.

"Right," I nodded, a bit too sharply. "Right. This man doesn't belong here. It'll be hard enough to explain the light and noise. It'll do no good for me to have to explain a man who doesn't exist as well..."

Quite how I was certain the man didn't exist in this world I was unsure, but certain I was. "So," I started as I quickly found an equipment cart to lever the beefy, easily 250 pound tough onto. "Why exactly did crossing through the portal... afflict him, like this?" I asked, grunting every few words as I worked. "Is it a sort of gravitational lensing as the body passes the event horizon? Or does the mass-energy need to be converted somehow? Like how my laser became a plasma channel. Would moving slowly change the severity of the trauma or is it the same for everyone?"

"The body and mind have a magnetic field that resonates in a certain frequency," Robert explained as I stopped babbling. "That frequency is harmonic with the place on either side of the portal. Passing through the event horizon as you call it causes the traveler to ring like the proverbial bell, until you once again synchronize. Whether you're synchronizing with new spatial, temporal or dimensional coordinates the malady is different, but in each case, there does tend to be a… reaction. Said reaction is strongest when you yourself already exist on the other side of the portal somehow, be it temporally or dimensionally as you and your duplicate ring together. "

I finish wheeling the big guy over as he talks and fiddles with his portal device. It's a bit hard to hear him over the shifting distortions, but I figure I got most of it. It confirms my suspicions about them being from another dimension though; or… almost. Dimensional travel was mentioned, though it was not said whether this particular trip was dimensional or merely temporal/spatial.

Hah… MERELY. Spatial portals, never-mind temporal ones would be the biggest development in the history of… everything! And here I was shocked into a state of being unable to process the enormity of that.

Probably for the better, that I just go with it, honestly. Freaking out properly as my gut insists this deserves would be incredibly embarrassing.

As I tilt the cart into the barrier, electricity plays across both the man;s frame and the cart, but while the cart behaves as expected and zaps me like a taser, the man stops convulsing. Incredibly odd, though, given the explanation I've just received, perhaps it should have been expected.

Though perhaps taser isn't the right analogy. While my muscles do spasm and it hurts like a bitch; rather than feeling numb and rigid, I feel… almost warm and refreshed, like I've stuck my arms too quickly into a too hot Jacuzzi with all of the vents on full blast.

"Woah! Stand back, we're having a power fluctuation…"

I jerk back and it ends

"Odd,.." a feminine voice enters our conversation. "Items are usually best able to handle transition; it's humans, and particularly the human mind, that causes the most fluctuation." She looks at me, and Robert goes back to fiddling with the machine, the stump of his hand now having regrown most of the palm and starting on fingers.

"It occurs to me you never introduced yourself," she states, cocking her head to the side only slightly.

"Your, ah, friend, distracted us." I deflect. "Ah, Devon. Devon Jolly. Friends call me captain."

Rosiland's brows raise. "Oh, and why would that be? You seem a bit young and shell-shocked to be in the army. Was there a major war?"

"Um… well, yes and no. My middle name is Roger. Jolly Roger, arrg pirate, captain, see?" Though assholes call me other things. "As for War, honestly, which one? But no, not for me."

The lady sighs at that last remark. "As ever, it seems." She clasps her hands together in front of herself. "Well, Mr Jolly, I wish I could say it was good to meet you; but it seems we must say adieu; each of us has quite a bit to be getting on with, I expect; what with the fallout."

"We're going to need to step up our timetable; now that Comstock knows what we intend." Robert stated, the portal clearing and settling again. The name Comstock sends that suspicious feeling of familiarity rocketing up to a feeling of alarm bells; but the Luteces keep on, oblivious.

"What you intend, Robert. I'm only going along with this because I love you." Rosiland sniped, irritably. She turned back to me, a forced smile in place. "I wish I could say it's been a pleasure."

"It has," Robert adds.

"But tempus fugit."

I nod and stick out my hand to shake through the barrier. There's SOOO much more I want to ask, especially now I feel I've almost figured them out; but they seem in a hurry. "No rest for the wicked." I say, already debating plunging through the portal to join them; just on the off chance my suspicions are true.

Those words are punctuated by the strangest reaction yet. As my hand penetrates the portal, it fuzzes once more, and painful, scratchy, pounding warmth spreads up my arm; accompanied by arcs of electricity. As the sensation spreads, the portal rapidly shrinks until with a shout of alarm from the other side the sound of latch being thrown heralds the portal snapping shut entirely.

In its place, is professor Barletta's Cyclotron, and atop it… an old DVD copy of Bioshock: Infinite.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

I'd say I stood there staring at the game box and contemplating the warm feeling of fullness spreading through my body, open mouthed in shock, for a good half an hour; and under other circumstances, I might have. Unfortunately the pounding of feet outside in the corridor don't leave me much room to procrastinate. I snatch up the DVD case off the particle accelerator and stuff it in my bag, praying against fate that this isn't actually a dream (as that would make the most sense) and nobody here has RPG super-plot senses.

I have barely enough time to get back to my computer and pull up a screen full of porn before three professors, two rent-a-cops and a hated "student representative" burst into the room. Quite how they let that useless prick into the party, I'll never know, but at best guess, all six of them were at the assembly I, admittedly, should have been attending.

There was a lot of shouting as seven people tried to talk over each other. First they accused me of being in a restricted area (I'm on file for having the Physics department's permission) and of firing the cyclotron (the machine had no evidence of being used). Then they tried to accuse me of setting off bombs, which again, clearly no evidence, as that was in another world. Then the councilor tried to accuse me of patching into the campus light and intercom and seized my computer. I may have made things worse for myself by breaking out laughing when he saw what was on my computer; but again, no log evidence on my laptop or the campus system of me accessing the schools systems beyond wifi or any foriegn attempt at access using me as a proxy. Give me some credit, I keep good firewalls.

Eventually, they had to let me go; though the D.I.E. priest scheduled an appointment for me in his office that I doubt I'm going to attend. Rebel that I am.

Eventually it was just me and professor Barletta.

"So what really happened?" He asked. I opened my mouth to deny everything again and he glared at me; before setting a white noise generator on the desk beside us and turning it on. "I know when you're lying out your ass, Jolly. The truth."

I held back a grimace with forced calm. "Does the name Lutece mean anything to you?"

His face darkened then paled, and he hissed between his teeth. "What did they tell you?"

"Very little;" I groused. "But then, it's hard to miss a pair of video game characters famous for interdimensional portals portalling into your hooky spot."

The professor snorted. "Even harder to admit too, if you don't want a psych eval," he grumbled. Then he sighed "we were supposed to meet again tonight." He explained. "I would have missed the staff Halloween party, which would be no great loss or surprise, and exchanged a few more pages of theory on quantum superposition. They're good people, the Luteces."

I bit my lip and the man's gaze sharpened on me. "I think… they would have missed that meeting." I explained haltingly. "Or perhaps might have appeared without a portal." Barletta's brow raised. "The date on their side is 1909. According to the game timeline, Jeremiah Fink sabotages their machine on Halloween that year, turning them into omnipresent, omniscient but unfortunately only human-potent, gods." Barletta swore. "The light and noise was caused by an interaction between the portal and my laser pointer" I held up the device and twirled it around my fingers, "developing into a plasma channel."

He winces. "Dammit, Devon, I told you to throw that thing away." I shrugged and he glowered at me. "What happened then?"

I draw in a shuddering breath. "I-I think I may have k-killed Fink." I replied. "About 2, 2.5 years early. On one hand, guy is more or less the sorta person who'd actually give DIE a legit point for existing; he's everything wrong with capitalists, racists and men from 1910. On the other hand, I helped a man tear out his chest with an unstable dimensional rift and it did NOT feel like a video game!" I was hyperventilating and speaking through clenched teeth by the end of that statement. Grabbing my head I closed my eyes and fell into an office chair. "I think I'm going to have nightmares about this shit."

The professor leaned back against his accelerator and hummed. The event was probably too distant for him to really feel much about it, but he looked pensive. "You… may not have changed as much as you believe." He said, slowly. "Among other things; the game makes a point of just how many parallel instances of that reality there are, first with the coin trick at the beginning of the game showing you that booker's tried to save his daughter 122 times already; and again at the end when Elizabeth shows Booker the field of lighthouses. Players counted a thousand there, with 12 Elizabeths' who became dimensional gods. Following that, and what I've been able to get out of them about reality formation and collapse, your interaction likely caused a new scattershot of temporal branches with short half lives…"

"What DOES create or collapse realities?" I ask, jerking forward in the chair. I had wanted to ask the Luteces this, but things proceeded too quickly. "Is it infinite like Hollywood suggests with every decision causing a new branch? Or…"

"No. Or, not usually." Barletta interrupts. "Under… normal circumstances, for whatever value that word has in such a conversation; realities are formed in two ways. The first is a variance in quantum constants. One reality has a slightly different value for one quantum constant than another, or a set of differences, or an entirely new or missing constant. The variance this makes in the parallel reality can be minute enough to miss or large enough that everything, even causality, is different; and I've had little luck thus far determining quite what the pattern here is. Too little data; and my perspective being limited largely to earth itself. But the fact remains that the primary foundation of the multiverse seems to be based on quantum laws of reality and their variables. Each is incompatible with each other, and so form, exist and persist independently. There are, however, enough of them to give a convincing illusion of infinite realities."

"The second way…" He grimaces here. "The second way is to get the dimensional branes to interact. Similar to DC Comics Infinite Crisis. Only that's the story of universes with the same quantum foundation collapsing into each other rather than being born. When two dimensional branes collide, such as some hero or mad scientist opening a portal or the Luteces and their tears; a new universe or thousand are born based on the interaction almost in a big bang type fashion with the universe spreading out from the point of contact. DC and Bioshock have so many universes and it was so easy to collapse them all precisely because of all of the dimensional interaction. New universes are not born by mere human whim…; except in such cases. Comstock was likely creating and collapsing such universes constantly with his prophet act; aging by literally experiencing a thousand self contained time loops. Or fractions of them, at least."

He puts a hand on my shoulder. "As for your killing Fink in self defense; you and he currently exist in a quantum superposition of that having happened and NOT having happened simultaneously. That reality was created the moment the portal opened, likely collapsed as soon as it closed, and in the off chance it was strong enough to survive your rather violent interaction, will be different from the one I was in regular contact with."

"How would that work, exactly?" I asked, leaning forward. I very much wanted to believe him, but it seemed… well, as far fetched as bioshock existing in the first place!

"When the portal opened, a minimum of two new realities were created. One paralleling ours, another paralleling theirs, differing from the original reality on the decision to open the portal" he replied. "When the portal closed, the strength of the interaction, based on the length of time it was open and the amount of variation that occurred due to the interaction would then determine whether a new reality was born entirely, branching off from that point, or whether the new realities would integrate back into the originals, as fragments of dreams and deja vu. If, like in DC, the portal were open for weeks or months and spawned entirely separate storylines from each of the contributing universes before closing again, maybe something more substantial would happen from the collapse."

"Like a retcon, or new continuity."

He shrugs. "Your experience was only a few minutes; it's honestly out of character that you remembered anything at all. I have to work with the Luteces for hours at a time and exchange physical data for it to stick; and even then, sometimes papers I remember exchanging with them still have to be recreated from dreams and memory. Likely as not, this reality will collapse into a day-dream of yours where our meeting here will be a feeling of guilt for you and suspicion for me."

With those words, he dismissed me from his workshop.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

I didn't forget though. Professor Barletta never brought up the gamebox I'd taken from his lab and it didn't disappear into my dreams over the next two weeks; though the professor himself appeared to have done so. Instead, it lay on my desk in the dorms, Booker Dewitt and Elizabeth Comstock staring out at me from the cover accusingly.

The game itself was an oddity as well. Once loaded, it would play on Steam or the 2K games launcher precisely as normal, without any differences from what I remember playing it new when I was 7.

But with the DVD in the tray…

With the DVD in; the DLC menu would occasionally spaz out, messing up small to large portions of the screen like a glitch. It took me until Veterans day to finally click on it.

 

[Reynard69]

Spoiler

I tried a couple of times to write this chapter without exposition dump, but it kept coming back. Its... a habit, I guess. Hope turning it into a dialogue makes it less blargh.

---

The portal data was… unusual, to say the least. Rather than playing as Booker Dewitt, I could choose to play as Rosalind or Robert Lutece. Whichever I chose, the other came along as Player 2 in the same way Elisabeth did once you got her out of the Monument. Both exposition dump and ammo-box.

After that though, the gameplay became largely different.

Where Bioshock Infinite was primarily a First Person Shooter with a bit of narrative world exploration, the dimensional glitch (called Operation Anna) was a stealth game. I could kill everybody carrying a weapon between me and the monument much like the first game, but the Lutece twins had… well, it was more what they didn't have, which was any sort of durability whatsoever. Like with a lot of stealth games, getting found out had a 4 in 5 chance of one or both of them dying before the encounter ended, and sending me back to the save-point.

And I was GOOD at shooters. No-scope-head-shots from half the map away with a pistol on the regular. Probably better than the real Lutece's could manage.

Or the real me, for that matter. A habit of playing FPS games does not a soldier make.

The optimal strategy, I found, was using Robert to interact with the environment. Lorewise, the man was a brilliant engineer and designed or outright built most of the devices the twins were credited with. Playing as Robert, you could sabotage buildings, commandeer security turrets and leave traps to distract, attract or kill soldiers and police. Also, listening to Rosalind's advice was critical. As playing her held most of the stealth and detection mechanics; If she said to run, walk, duck or follow someone, it was pretty much always best to do so, as not heeding her meant almost inevitable capture, death, or a shootout.

After a good 30 deaths (most of them in the beginning) I made it to Monument Island.

It is, almost expected, that Elizabeth is where things begin to break down. As the Luteces go into a cut-scene, talking to her, my computer once more begins to glitch out, the screen breaking down into increasingly clipped fractal nonsense, as if the chips themselves are burning.

The screen suddenly clears for just a fraction of a second, and I get a close up of her face, before The Lamb of Columbia jams her fingers through my screen and across dimensions, tearing the rift wide.

Technically speaking, I had time to jump away, throw my laptop, or otherwise escape. It doesn't take much imagination to see where the path has been leading me, after all. Nonetheless, I'm caught in the opening gateway.

As my laptop dissolves and the bubble of broken space surrounds me, I'm once again struck by the feeling of being submerged into a Jacuzzi with the water jets turned up to max. This time though, instead of a single hand, my entire body is hit by the feeling. I luxuriated in the feeling as something deep in my chest, head and stomach swelled with a soft warmth, like drinking warm milk.

Then The girl staring me in the face eeped, and leapt back.

Behind her, Rosalind Leutece spoke in… french of all things? "Oh, je suis terriblement désolé; Elizabeth, ferme ça… Devon?"

Not wanting to be caught by the portal closing, this time I stepped through, a toothy grin on my face. "You remember me?" I thought I'd been going crazy for a while there. I HAD had nightmares about killing Fink, after all; despite professor Barletta's talk with me about dimensional uncertainty. But I'd also had time to think. What would I do… if Bioshock Infinite WERE real? Why did dimensional friction seem to affect me differently than it did Barletta, or the characters in the game? And why had my daydreams involving many stories I read, watched or played with suddenly get so much more vivid after the incident on Halloween?

There were two theories that could tie everything together.

Theory 1; was that the stress of pushing my way into college 3 years early through self study and a wish to avoid the reinstated draft had caused my overactive and creative mind to crack, forming a psychotic reality in which I was special and an… admittedly unexpected avenue of wish fulfillment was only a teetering step away off the pier of my sanity.

Theory 2; was that the Cassandra Theory of Literature was true, and I WAS a special. Simply put, the Cassandra Theory of Literature states that the most successful entertainers, past and present, weren't simple creatives as most believe, but seers who looked into other worlds and when they failed to convince people of their ability to see, sold their prophecies as entertainment in order to make a living.

Zachariah Comstock, The Divine Lutece twins and Elizabeth/Anna-Comstock/Dewitt were artificial versions of the second concept; powered by phlebotinum. None of them were natural born seers, but in the case of the Twins and Elizabeth, MUCH more powerful for it. Of course, that led to the question of if I was naturally born, or perhaps some side effect of the Lutece's experiments. After all, Elizabeth was the way she was because she existed on two sides of a tear. The Lutece's had been playing with tears for longer than I'd been alive. How was I to know I hadn't grown up with one in my room like Dr Who's Amy Pond?

The giant problem with all of that was me dreaming or being crazy was 1000 times more plausible.

"Of course, we do." Rosalind replied, brows knitted.

"Hard to forget," Robert agreed, boosting my ego a bit. "It was only an hour?"

"Yes, and hour ago." Rosalind confirmed. "The laser."

"Fink hardly saw that once coming." Robert chuckled.

"It would have been difficult for him to miss." Rosalind sniffed.

"Yes, it was quite bright, wasn't it?"

"And straight through his chest."

"You two are horrible!" Elizabeth interjected. There was no fond exasperation in her voice though; only shrill condemnation. "And YOU!" she rounded on me. "You helped them kill a man? One of our founders!? How could you? And peeping on me besides!"

I rubbed the back of my head self consciously as she ranted, until with that last sentence she slapped me full across the face. There was a surprising amount of power in the blow; I've been slapped by angry girls… once or twice before for actually being honest when they demanded it; and had to catch my arm centimeters from her ear about to deliver a retaliatory blow.

Equal rights, equal treatment, right?

But I didn't want to hit her. Reality, dream or broken mind, I WANTED Elizabeth to like me. To put her trust in me and my presence, as she had for Booker, repeatedly, before learning that he was her Dad. "I'll forgive that one;" I reply quietly as her eyes dart between my hand and my face. "I was watching you through that tear, and I did kill Jeremiah. But I wasn't 'peeping', I was following the Lutece's and I didn't want or deliberately try to harm Mr Fink. Unfortunately, he was trying to kill the Lutece's and I, and I've got a bit of an automatic reaction to being attacked," I explained, lowering my arm. I forcibly changed tone after that and continued. "Personally I blame bad public schooling." I finished, grin once more in place. "I'd say you're lucky to have all these books, but well,"

I was cut off by a statue off to the side tooting out a pipe organ and I shrugged, gesturing to it.

Elizabeth paled and swore, while the Lutece's looked annoyed.

"Devon, it's perhaps best if you head back through the portal now." Robert stated grimly.

"Yes," Rosalind added. "Though I'm deeply invested in knowing how you passed through without experiencing phase sickness."

"I had noticed that," Robert added. "Another time maybe?"

I roll my eyes and grin wider. The twins thing was always a good gag. "Sir, if you could, ahem, rapidly deconstruct the statue, the songbird would cease to be an issue. Elizabeth just needs to play a few notes on the whistler device inside."

Elizabeth lunged at me as I said that, grabbing handfuls of my shirt. "Truly? It doesn't just call Songbird and respond to his cries? It can hurt him?"

"Eh…" I replied, shrugging and waggling my hand just off to the side of her vision. "I suppose it probably has a function for that too, but I was thinking about the control phrase. C.A.G.E. Play the notes on the recorder, and Songbird will transfer loyalty from Comstock to and take commands from whoever sung them to him. There are a bunch of other command phrases, but I don't know them. He understands human speech though, or at least YOUR speech, so I figure that'd work well enough."

As I speak to Elizabeth, Robert, soon joined by his dimensional sister, is already dismantling the statue as I asked. They're like Piranhas or car-gangs from Chicago in just how fast they strip that thing down to the bolts. They have the head disassembled and the Whistler device out by the time I finish talking; which I suppose makes sense as in the game, Elizabeth was able to remove it safely using a freaking wrench as a bludgeon.

Elizabeth lets go of me as Rosalind hands the device to her. "I think YOU should be the one to wield this, dear."

"Yes, indeed," Robert agrees. "Though the question is HOW she should wield it."

"I suppose you don't want her to make the songbird give her a ride to Paris?" I ask jokingly.

Elizabeth, who has been looking down at the mechanical pan flute in her hands, nonetheless snaps her head up at my words, eyes bright and full of hope. "Paris! Oh, that'd be Wonderful!!"

"And quite out of the question." Robert cut her off as she was examining the controls.

"I don't think songbird could even fly that far." Rosalind agreed.

"You'd need to commandeer and Airship at least;" Robert added.

"In order to have provisions for you both, if nothing else." Rosalind confirmed.

There's a screech outside and the giant plate Booker falls onto Elizabeth from in canon begins to lower out of the ceiling. "Elizabeth could portal there." I countered dryly, watching the plate lower. "I think the more pressing matter is what to do about Comstock and the million parallel timelines you two have created."

I would have pressed the point, but it was then that the big bronze elevator had lowered enough for Songbird to stick his head out over the lip and catch sight of us. The image in the game really didn't do justice to this steampunk monstrosity. Gears and pistons could be seen shifting and moving under the leather sheath that made up the creature's skin. And I'm not talking just the way you see muscles flex and bow under normal skin, because there were tears in the fabric and the seams were held together with bailing twine. The body was obviously mechanical, in a way I'd compare to a Warhammer marine's chassis rather than a Big Daddy's Frankensteinian fusion of divers suit and man. If this thing were based on the same science at all, as the game insisted, then the tech bases must not have transferred, and the projects went wildly divergent from there.

Among other things, the songbird is easily four times the height of any of us, where the Big Daddy is only 50% larger than a normal human. Frankly, how the songbird manages to fly at all is somewhat baffling. The wingspan is only about that of a sparrow's, and rather than the hundreds of weight reducing evolution's non-kite-family birds use to keep in the air, it's solid metal. I'd call it completely impossible, except for the Lutece Field xenoscience. Given the almost jet-like movements that were shown in the game, I could imagine him having 5 or 6 different Lutece Fields mounted somewhere in the primary chassis that were switched on or off depending on what elevation the songbird needed to operate on.

Finally there was the neck and head. It was almost as long as a human body and I'm left at a loss for how the operator's head is supposed to actually be in the head compartment, or why he'd need the oxygen tube connecting there rather than somewhere closer to the body. Maybe the body I was looking at was entirely mechanical, and what remained of the poor Pilot WAS all in the neck? It would certainly simplify the mechanics of the powered suit that allowed such a behemoth to act… but it brought up all sorts of other questions. Like control mechanisms, and life support.

All of this passed through my head in the time it took the giant green lamp eyes almost as large as my chest to scan the four of us, unleash a shriek of outrage, and rotate to the red lens. I noticed, almost absently, that it scanned the Lutece's without changing IFF status, only getting made when it found ME. Now, me I understand, I'm not on the registered guest list; even if I deserve to be there, I didn't exist in this reality until just now… But the Lutece's? Comstock obviously didn't have all of his ducks lined up for this betrayal, if he didn't (or couldn't) remove them from the IFF. SURELY he wasn't arrogant enough to believe his tear-visions were Ironclad?

No matter; I'll figure it out later. "Elizabeth!!! Any time now!"

The songbird lurches forward to grab me, but misses as one of the wires holding up the elevator snaps 2 years early. The creature falls, plowing headfirst into one of Elizabeth's book-cases as she plays the first two notes, shrieks and drops the device. Swearing I dive for the flute, as the golem picks itself up and meet Elizabeth as she does the same. Our eyes lock and I debate pulling the whistler from her hands and playing it myself. With it, I could solve most of the problems of this reality, and do it before they could even react.

But I wouldn't be able to solve the BIGGEST problem.

I push the recorder to her. "Play!" I order. And she does 'Do di doot doo. Do di doot doo. Do di doot doo!!!'

My entire body pulses with the hammering beats of my heart as fingers as big as my arm stall in their path. Red light, casting a shadow of my head on the carpet switches to yellow, then green and finally moves away.

'Do di doot doo!'

The hand moves away from my prone form and Songbird starts screeching randomly as it bows before Elizabeth. I take the opportunity to look up at the pair and see Elizabeth stepping into the mechanical monstrosity's cupped hands. She lowers the flute and puts a hand on the face, just beneath the eye. It leans into her touch as though it can actually feel the human contact and I wonder again if that's where the real pilot is after all.

"Please don't hurt him," the girl says. "He's my friend."

Hell. Yes. Now i just need to deal with the terror of almost being crushed to death by a giant mecha. Small mecha? Is it even a mecha? Or just a really weird steampunk cyborg? Ah, the places my mind goes to avoid dealing with shit…

"That was a brave thing you did." Robert murmurs in my ear, as he and his sister drag me to my feet.

"Ultimately stupid," Rosalind adds matter-of-factly.

"Trusting someone he doesn't know, to save his life counts I think." Robert counters.

"Perhaps, but it was an unnecessary risk." Rosalind argues. "He could have just played the tune himself. And from our interactions, I suspect he knows far more than we thought originally. Don't you, boy?"

"Later," I replied as I force my breathing under control. "Right now, we need to make sure Comstock can't play the capture tune himself and recover Songbird. Which, unfortunately, means we probably can't use Songbird against him directly."

"A reasonable assumption," Rosalind concedes. "We'd had the same thought."

"Which was why we didn't use him to break in." Robert added wryly. "Songbird is too much a blunt instrument for that." He dusts me off. "You have a plan though, don't you?"

I shrug. "Depends on what our mobility is now. Do you know where all of the Lutece Field generators are?" The 'twins' looked at each other, before shrugging and nodding.

"We need to sabotage the Order of the Raven, The Hall of Heroes, Comstock House, The Hand of the Prophet and expose his lies about things like Anna Dewitt, Lady Comstock, his corruption of the founders, the true source of his prophecies… and de-fang Daisy Fitzroy."

The pair look at each other again before turning back to me in confusion. "Fitzroy? Whatever for?" Robert asks.

"Because she's too far gone. If our work to take down Comstock causes enough damage, her revolution will trigger, and then she'll murder half of the city in revenge." I reply flatly. "She may have been framed, but that only makes things worse. It gives her the conviction to do some pretty horrible things in the name of vengeance."

"We hadn't planned on Dealing with Comstock at all." Rosalind admitted.

"My primary goal was to reunite Anna with her Father" Robert agreed. "She deserves more than the life of a La… prisoner." I suspect he was going to say Lab Rat, but stopped himself with the girl listening in.

"Which can be accomplished from here."

"A controlled shutdown of the Siphon device."

"From there, Elizabeth should be able to find her way by homing in on her missing finger."

I stared at the pair of them, blinking slowly. OK… I suppose that makes much more sense than dismantling their life's work or seeking revenge on existence as had been the endgame of Bioshock Infinite, but… "I see two primary problems with that course or action." I rebut. "First, is that so long as you or your Lutece field are available to be coerced or studied, Comstock from one reality or another can follow Elizabeth and seek to reclaim her. Second, if the prime timeline is allowed to reach its conclusion; Anna Dewitt is going to seek to collapse all timelines where Columbia exists at all." I deliberately use the name Anna due to Elizabeth being here, listening. "I'll survive, as will Robert, but the girls won't." I glanced at Rosalind.

The pair of them are silent for almost an entire minute and Elizabeth looks on with wide eyes. Of the five here, only Songbird seems clear in expressing his feelings. That being, his hands are opening and closing in the manner of someone who's seething as they contemplate extreme violence.

"This will require some discussion." Rosalind said eventually, pulling her brother off to the side.

She wasn't the only one though; Elizabeth also wanted to speak privately and pulled me around to the other side of Songbird the moment the Luteces went their own way.

"How did you know all of that?" She asks, crossing her arms under her breasts and putting on what I think is supposed to be a serious face. Mostly it just looks cute. "Are you like the Prophet?"

I scratch the back of my head and shrug. "I suppose I have as much claim to the title as he does; given we got our information the same way. Or near enough. But no, I can't see the future under normal circumstances and I don't receive visions from angels. Or demons." I'm pretty sure. Assuming this isn't a particularly powerful dream or psychotic break, higher beings make as much sense as any of my other guesses.

"And what is that?" She asks, frowning, eyes darting back and forth as though she's looking at something I can't see. "The tears? People hear and see things through them, and you came to us through one… are you from the future?" She finished, suddenly excited. I'll give the girl this much, she's not unintelligent. Maybe her occasional hogging of the idiot ball in the game was more trauma than character?

"Close enough for government work." I agreed. "I come from the year 2026 but also from another world entirely. On my side of the portal, Columbia was nothing but a story I…heard, as a kid. The Luteces were never born there, you see, so a city in the sky was never something we could build." Also the part where if the explanation I'd been given earlier by Barletta was true, my universe was missing a quantum reality that would have even allowed for the Lutece Field to be discovered independently.

Elizabeth unfolded one of her arms and placed a finger on her lip. And began pacing back and forth. "A hundred and seventeen years. And you came through a tear. Tears move through TIME as well as space and worlds. The Prophet has been using tears to see the future. And you used them to see us; at points in our past, present and future. Alright, makes sense." She looks up sharply and locks eyes with me. "What happens to us? What… what terrible thing… happens to ME?"

"You caught that, did you?" I chuckle nervously. Like I said, smart girl.

"You weren't being very subtle about it," the girl scoffed. "I may not get out much, but" she gestured to her Beauty And The Beast style library "I have thousands of books, and little else to do. There's an entire section on psychology, including a volume or two on cold reading. I… ah," she became sheepish once more and looked away blushing, "I may have tried to use what I learned to manipulate my captors a time or two. Trying to get out of here, you see." Her head dipped and she hugged herself. "It didn't work very well."

It might have worked better than you think, I mused silently. Robert Lutece is going to some pretty extreme measures to get you out. Aloud I said: "to answer your question, we have to start a bit before you were born. Around 1970, a group of American senators opposed to the right of the people to bear arms managed to convince the president to violate the second clause of the bill of rights to start confiscating guns. As these things normally go, they picked on a group with the least representation in congress first, the American Indian. They only had a single congressman at the time. The target was the American Indian separatists, known as the Ghost Dancers Movement. As you can imagine, the natives didn't take this very well, and there were several massacres where Indians defending their rights refused to give up their guns and were killed by the Cavalry to the last man, woman and child."

Elizabeth's expression grows more horrified as I continue to speak, hands going to her mouth, and she slowly backs up into the arms of her Golem Protector. "That's horrible! Why didn't they fight back; or submit and disarm themselves, instead?"

I snorted. "Some of them did, in both cases. When they fought back, they killed entire cavalry divisions, until they were overwhelmed years later over the course of multiple battles which were justified to congress by their resistance. When they gave up their weapons willingly in expectation of peace, well… the cavalry came back a week later and murdered most of them anyway. If you look over history, this is a pretty common theme. Any group who gives up their arms for a bit of peace, will shortly thereafter be murdered by their government. It'll only get worse after the great war engulfs Europe in 1914. But back to the Indian wars; your father, Booker Dewitt participated in one of those battles. Well, they call it a battle now, but in the future, it's known as the Wounded Knee Massacre."

"Dewitt…" Elizabeth breathes, moving her hands down from her mouth to her breast. "My name is Dewitt…" She looks sharply at me again. "But you said Anna Dewitt will collapse the worlds!"

Interesting, the stuff she grabs onto. "Yes, but we're getting ahead of ourselves here. May I continue?"

She nods, hesitantly. "Yes, yes I think you should."

"Anyway, your father, Booker, had enlisted in the Cavalry only a few months prior to the incident, and as early as he could legally do so. I imagine he had some sort of vendetta against the Indians, because he made a name for himself there as a war-hero and brutal savage. After a young Lakota who was fighting to keep hold of his weapon fired, accidentally or on purpose, killing a cavalryman in the process, battle was joined, and Booker Dewitt personally slew and scalped over two dozen Indians."

The look of horror was back, but now there were tears in her eyes.

"Booker was given promotions and medals and proclaimed in the papers to be The White Injun for his deeds that day, but whatever reason he had to fight, he had nightly terrors about his actions there for two years after. Eventually, he came across a priest by the name of Father Daniel Witting. In my world, Booker Dewitt died there, drowned during his baptism." Or didn't even exist, as I can't actually find anything saying he did and bioshock said they built the character wholesale. Before coming here, I'd have agreed with that company statement, but if this is real, it's likely one of those effects of dimensional variance. "In the world where you were born, Booker refuses his baptism, believing that not even god could wash away the guilt and blood on his hands. In this world, Booker saw a tear in the sky, accepted and survived his baptism. He came out renaming himself Zachariah Hale Comstock; a new name for a new life, spent in repentance."

Elizabeth snorted, snot bubbling on her nose. She squeaked and turned away, pulling out a handkerchief and blowing her nose before turning back. "Why do I feel you're about to shatter that image of The Pro… of my father?"

I sneer. "Because I am." Schooling my expression. "In the world where you were born, Booker left the cavalry before joining the Pinkerton's private army and meeting your mother, Annabelle Watson. In this world, Zachariah Comstock followed the visions he saw in the tear and sought out Rosalind Lutece. Comstock also met Annabelle, but building Columbia rapidly increased the number of tears he was watching and, well… he never got around to it."

"And so I was born, Anna Dewitt, child of another world…" Elizabeth murmured. "But then, how did I get here?"

"The tears Comstock used to see the future weren't without a cost. He experienced decades of time, in the space of a few years, and this made him infertile. Where Booker the Pinkerton had a child, you, Comstock the Prophet could not. Desperate for family, he turned to the Lutece's. 'Find me a child,' he told Rosalind; and she did. She talked to her brother, through a tear, who lived in Booker's world, and investigated him."

"Booker… was not doing well. While Comstock was busy building Columbia with Jeremiah Fink; Booker's Annabelle died in childbirth and Booker sank into despair. Believing he was cursed for his sins in the Cavalry, he drank and gambled, took out loans and stole, and built up a massive debt. When Robert Lutece came to him, he made an offer. Give your more successful self the child, and Booker the Prophet would settle the debt. It seemed like a good deal. You would be with family, in a far better situation, and he would have the reset he'd himself denied at his baptism. But as Comstock took you in his arms, your father changed his mind. You were all he had left of his Annabelle; he could deal with the debt, but he couldn't lose you."

The expression on Elizabeth's face was… complicated. I'm not the best at facial expressions, especially on women, but I figure she's warring between familial pride and disgust, and is having a hard time assigning one or the other to either of her fathers.

"Comstock and Dewitt fought over you." I continued after giving her a moment to process. "Robert went through the tear, and as Comstock wrestled your father, with you in his arms, you reached out through the tear to Booker. Comstock ordered Rosalind to close the tear and it snapped shut, cutting off your pinkie finger." I explained, slowly taking her hand, as I spoke, and holding it up before her. "A part of you remains on the other side, kept by your father as a memento of his failure."

"I'd always wondered how that happened." She murmured. "But you say that as if it's… more important than just that."

"It is. …I think." Elizabeth glares at me. "Ok, the Lutece's think so. They believe that because of your finger remaining on the other side, you never properly harmonized with this reality. Because a piece of you remained in a different world while in you were this one, you became a sort of Living Tear. And as a living tear, you're able to sense and open other tears. Even ones too small and fleeting to be noticed by others."

"When I was little," she agrees, sounding somewhat guilty "but I've stabilized. Haven't I? It's Hard to do that now. It has been since I was seven."

Seven years to replace every cell in your body, flits through my head before I shake myself. "Well, yes and no, we're getting ahead of ourselves again. Lady Anna Comstock was never told where you came from, and though she was willing to take you at first, as your powers grew, she became frightened. She accused Rosalind of being your mother, and refused to live in the same house as you. Comstock had to choose between you and her, so he split the difference, and had the Luteces build this house inside the tower. The tower is more important than just a place to keep you though; as it was originally built to control the tears across the city, and stop them from growing out of control."

"They're using it to keep ME under control." Elizabeth ground out. Her face had become stormy as I spoke about Lady Comstock, but now it was mutinous.

"Ding ding ding!" I agree. "Got it in one.

Then she seemed to deflate. "Knowing doesn't really change anything though, does it?"

"Eh, like most things, it does and it doesn't." I temporized. "It all builds up to what you originally asked me. How does Anna Dewitt destroy the world? Because you're a living breathing hole in reality and this tower is the only think keeping you in check, when the Elizabeth's of other timelines use Songbird to destroy the tower, everything becomes unleashed. But because of how she learned the things I just told you, and the pain she went through to learn it naturally, she decided it was all too much. To save all the Elizabeth's in every reality, and punish all of the Booker's and Comstock's for their failure as fathers, She was going to go back to that tear above Booker's Baptism, and ensure he died as he did in my world. No Comstock, no Prophet, No Columbia, No suffering."

"But she went too far," Elizabeth murmured. "She also killed her father, stopping herself from ever being born."

"Its possible she only collapsed the timelines where Booker becomes Comstock. The Anna , born to a Booker the Pinkerton, would never have your powers without a Comstock to want her."

"But the Lutece's would still be there. Even if Comstock never existed, fate could intervene." She insists. "Given all you've said, my having powers seems too big to have been an accident. No. There is no Booker to bear me, and so there is no Anna to meet the Luteces. The implication is that I truly end myself with that action. Along with any other me's who didn't feel we had suffered so deeply."

That… didn't entirely track, but it was the implication the Game wanted to push. At least until Burial at Sea started wildly and randomly retconning things. Even so, Robert doesn't seem to have anywhere near the drive or business sense Comstock did, and so would likely simply have faded into obscurity, as many revolutionary scientists do. The chances that Robert Lutece and Anna Dewitt would meet without Columbia are… astronomically small.

And without Columbia, there aren't enough tears to cut those odds down to a reasonable chance of it actually occurring. Heck, even if Robert had the business sense to do the logical thing, and start an air transport company (a flying city is rather bombastic, TBH) tears only form around concentrations of Lutece Fields, so even with airports and sky-lanes, it likely wouldn't become the same issue as with the city where every building has multiple fields to keep them afloat. At least until everybody is flying sky-cars.

"Obviously, the plan has to change."

I startle a bit as the voice isn't either mine or Elizabeth's. Turning around, I find the Lutece Twins have rejoined us at some point. Damn those two are ninja's. Even without being temporal-spatial anomalies, they're sneaky. Rosalind is the one who spoke.

"What's the new plan?" I ask, interested. "Because mine more or less amounts to repeating the main timeline while cheating wildly."

The twins look at each other and nod. Then Robert speaks.

"We've been concerned about the tears for some time, as you know, and built this tower and the equipment within in an attempt to study and control the process. Meetings with many other scientists, like your Mr Barletta, formed the foundation for our theories and experiments. The original plan, was that once we returned to mine and Ms Elizabeth's world, we would use one of my devices to seal off the universe from the tears. But… after hearing your version of events…"

Rosalind huffs and steps forward. "We plan to set up a series of devices that will trigger a controlled collapse of the timelines. All of them."

 

[Reynard69]

"How are we going to do that?" I ask, fascinated. "You mentioned a controlled shutdown earlier. Just turn the tower off?" Elizabeth could collapse the timelines, after a fashion anyway. Feeding all of that power into a single timeline sounds like a reasonably cinematic way to do the same thing.

"Oh, heavens no!" Robert scoffed. "If we did that, the tears would, ahem, tear… the city apart."

"Useful in certain circumstances," Rosalind added "but catastrophic here."

I shake my head. "Elizabeth would catch most of it." I explain. "That's how it happens in the main timeline. I was thinking about your earlier com…"

"Yes, well, she probably left that reality immediately after didn't she?" Robert asked.

Thinking back on it, that was true enough. Elizabeth had immediately fled to Rapture, taking Songbird with her, so that the depth crushed him. Then she'd left Rapture for the tower and entered the tangled web of this reality node's multiverse. It didn't take long after that before she collapsed most of said reality and erased herself.

"I can see by your face, you realize it now." Rosalind said. "She collapsed reality right afterward."

"So what do we do?" I asked, frustrated. "You said you had a device?"

The twins nodded and went to one of the walls. After fiddling around with what had first seemed a solid wood panel, but revealed itself to be a complex puzzle lock, the twins led Elizabeth and I downward into the heart of the facility.

"One of the nasty bits about dealing with quantum mechanics" Robert explained as soon as Elizabeth had finished sending the Songbird off "is that every rule has multiple stable states it can fall into, and those states often can't properly be categorized by a wave pattern as more solid physics does. A good analogy would be to say that the wave moves on multiple axes instead of a single one, but even that falls short of the true frustration of calculating quantum particles. The reason for this is superposition. Because quantum states are so small, multiple states can be superimposed upon each other without directly forming a contradiction in what they're up to. These states can even be added and divided into different states that were not introduced into the original input, with the right circumstances. It turns the whole thing into an artform as much as a science."

Rosalind took up the thread as her brother moved to open another wall. "How this relates to our problem is what happens during reality collapse. The sub-branes formed by the tears Want to collapse back into each other, and when they do, they don't mind layering atop each other. The obvious problem with this is that it makes an absolute snarl of causality. How does one thing happen when the reason for it was in another separate phase? How do you settle the interaction when the reason for the interaction cancels itself out?"

"You can't." Robert spoke up again. "The two realities shred each other, until cause and effect once again match up. For small short tears, this results in things like false memories, brownouts, and off season auroras in the sky. For larger tears like we're proposing to consolidate… well, that's when things become rather supernatural."

Like how the people Booker kills on one phase feel it when Elizabeth pulls a nearby one into it.

We'd left behind the house now, and even the observation rooms from the game. We were now moving on a cat-walk beside a wall of metal where the grains seemed to sparkle and rearrange themselves whenever I wasn't paying attention.

"Obviously, we don't want that." Rosalind Agreed. "Our original plan was to open a tear to my bothers world, put Elizabeth back where she belongs, settling her existence as a walking tear, and set the phase of reality where we succeeded to… deconstruct itself, as the tears the city is based on flow out of control, and unravel everything. Comstock would be unable to follow and the energy of this sub-dimension would then flow into the rest and strengthen their reality. But if another Elizabeth is going to do the same to all realities where her father survives, then we'll get caught up in that regardless."

We walked past a break in the metal walls as she said this and I almost lost them at the breath-taking scene beside us. A gigantic crystal structure sat inside an even more enormous chamber. Particle effects that bridge the gap between rainbows, flame and electricity spewed out of it in great arcs and spirals before falling back into the gem. At a glance the structure could be described as being similar to the Shock Jockey engines Booker has to use throughout the latter half of the game for various puzzle traps and checkpoints, but within each facet of the gem matrix I can see, no, FEEL events taking place.

This is the Syphon. The heart of the contraption that was supposed to keep the tears, and Elizabeth herself, from going out of control. And there in the center, was all of the captured dimensional energy. Amazing how it hadn't exploded yet. Amazing too, that the Songbird could smash through it and survive. I guess it must have been a strong enough existence that even with the forces involved it's reality remained. Also makes sense why the tower would be so suddenly abandoned when Booker arrives, after it suffered two years without the Luteces there to keep everything stable.

I put my hand on the crystalline metal as I continued to follow the Luteces and felt the warmth from the tears I'd encountered until now flow down my arm, much gentler than it had before. I kept it there, trailing the wall as the Luteces continued to explain the principles behind their device, until finally, they opened a storage room and ushered Elizabeth and I inside.

Spread out before us, was a workshop, much like the one I had first encountered the Luteces in. Large high voltage latch computers lined the walls and frankenstein tesla coils and disks were hung, stacked or mounted everywhere. In the center of the room stood what looked to be an inverted triangular pyramid made of struts and coils that snapped and sparked the tear floating above it undylated.

"This is the device we've been working on to control the tears," Robert stated matter of factly as he threw a latch. The tear above the device undulated wildly before snapping into a perfect disk, not where it had been hovering before, but atop the upward plane of the pyramid. "If you look here, you can see how long this tear has been open, and how strong the dimensional fabric is on the other side." He shuffled aside, ushering Elizabeth and myself in to see an analogue readout. "This tear, right inside our facility, has been open for about a week. If integrated, it should result in nothing worse than 5000 people suffering dreams of things they might have done."

"How do you integrate it?" I asked. "Professor Barletta said just closing the rift would see the two drift back together, but that wouldn't require a device to initiate."

"Like this." Rosalind replied, throwing another switch. As soon as the sparks hit the latch, the now contained rift seemed to invert on itself, the core becoming a solid bubble of… for lack of better descriptors, our current world… and the energy of the dimensional tear emanated out from it like a miasma. "By activating this device, we introduce a variable that alters the nature of the interaction between the intersecting branes. Now, rather than the friction between our two dimensions creating more in an expanding wave of reality; the energy of the other branes bleed into ours. For a week or so of variation, the effect should complete in seven hours, give or take based on various factors."

"The degree of variation mostly." Robert clarified.

"Yes," his sister agreed "mostly. Also whether or not the variation can be integrated without needing to be broken down somehow."

"Superposition." They declared in unison.

"The problem with this is that it makes this reality stronger." Rosalind grunted.

"More stable." Robert demurred.

"Stability when we need fluidity." Rosalind insisted.

"Fluidity for what though?" I pressed. "You didn't like my plan, so what is it you're going for?"

"Speaking Ideally?" Robert asked.

"Ideals are rubbish." Rosalind stated. "But what we want…"

"Yes, our goal." Robert agreed. "Is to restore Elizabeth's childhood and family."

"To stabilize her against being a living tear," Rosalind added.

"To preserve the City we built." Robert spreads his arms wide.

"I built," Rosalind counters.

"You started," Robert denies. "I was here for much of the process."

"To stay by my brother's side." Rosalind continues ignoring the interruption.

"And remove Comstock." They both finish in unison.

"He's become entirely unreasonable." Rosalind noted.

"Grandiose"

"Insane,"

"Megalomaniacal,

"Genocidal."

"A bad business partner."

"A traitor."

"To be fair, we are the ones who went back on the deal." Robert hedged. "Me for the girl."

"You went back on the deal," Rosalind countered. "If he'd tried to kill you, that'd have been one thing. I'd have destroyed him for it anyway, but I'd have been more circumspect. He tried to kill both of us though. That's just Rude."

I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache. Unfortunately I couldn't tell if it was just the Twin thing wearing thin, the roundabout way they were building their 'plan' or what the device was doing. The dimensional energy was flowing into me by contact as it had before up to this point, but I seem to have reached some sort of limit, where I was feeling… bloated is the only way I can really describe it, but that doesn't really capture the feeling of outward pressure I'm feeling from every part of my body simultaneously.

The twins don't seem to notice my obvious discomfort, but Elizabeth does and she places a hand on my back. Instantly I begin to feel… not better, because there's a sensation of draining, like when the nurses pull out the plunger on the large syringe, but the pressure also lessens to a degree.

"Devon?" she asks, voice concerned. "Devon, what's wrong? Here, look at me…" Her hands move to cup my face and the drain follows, but at least the headache recedes. At least until she starts prying open my eyes and looking around for something. "Hmm, your pupils are flexing erratically. We probably should have checked you over for concussion earlier. Follow my hand..?" She shifts her grip to pry open my other eye and moves her other hand from side to side, snapping her fingers occasionally.

"Hmm? AH!"

I do as she asks, but there's something wrong as she snaps those deceptively strong digits. A sort of… ripple? There are lightless sparks both on the tip and base of her thumb that sort of ripple outward and interfere with each other. It's hard to describe and focusing on it causes me to wince as my headache returns with a vengeance.

"Devon, Your eyes! They're bleeding..!"