#didymos

The DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) just successfully slammed into Dimorphos, which is the moonlet of the asteroid Didymos (also affectionately called Didymoon). Over the next few days astronomers around the world will observe Didymos and Dimorphos to see if there has been a change in orbit from the latter. This is humanity's first real attempt at altering the course of a "killer" asteroid, even if this one isn't hazardous to us.

>>>Didymos, Didymus: Ancient word meaning "Twins". We now know why it named itself that.

>>>Our Voladore contact identified it as "La Pulga" or "the Flea." As they oft reside within Blinkspace, research into this entity has been painfully slow.

>>>Twins. Fleas. There is never only one.

>>>//INFESTATION

Last session one of our pilots unironically proposed a death pact with Emma's NHP and this was basically his response

You feel the edge first. Then the weight. Then nothing else.

Didymos doesn’t ask. It defines.

This is not softness. This is silence in steel.

I'm so sorry. You failed.

Water, flowing up, so fast it felt like falling. It was in her eyes, in her nostrils, warm like human skin. Something, a little like lips but disturbingly sharp, nibbled at her toes.

I can't escape no matter how I try.

The man below the catwalk slowly nodded at her. The lock-on warning went off. Mom was trying to silently cry in the living room, thinking she was asleep. A school of hands swam past.

It's like drowning but never being safe.

Scintillating colors. The universe in paint. Everyone on the streets of Tharsus Civica looked up. A primitive ship struck an iceberg and sank. The fireman smiled in an evergreen forest. She walked up the steps only to find a looming face there. Waiting for her. Eyes, eyes, the wrong eyes. Pools of sulfur.

Make it right. Break every rule.

Runrunrunrunrun. Fingers at the back of her neck. Something there behind her ear, something she was forgetting, human shapes leaning in. Dive deeper. She inhaled, trying to swallow the water, her vision unwinding like the strands in a single piece of thread. Everyone walked backwards down the hall. A mech split under a crowbar. Five youths huddled around a glowing screen. Winter came first on a planet she didn't recognize, then summer, fall, and spring. Sickly, shifting pink, and the endless black, and the beautiful song. He wasn't in his own shape, so that only left the other two. Did that mean he was the fury, or the silence?

I understand what must be done.

She drank deeper still. Memories passed like a dream she'd already awoken from, violence and pain she was only distantly aware of. The unraveler fired. She saw herself, crying and crazed, emaciated and distraught. And eyes again, always those eyes, peering into her soul as if she'd disappointed the cosmos. The others split off. One by one they left in anger. She was alone. Always alone. And she deserved it, for unwittingly trapping them all in...

{You don't know that.}

It took a minute (hour? decade?) to realize that hadn't been her thought. He reached out as if to place a hand over her own and all at once she stopped swim-falling. The waters fell still, vanta-black above her and abyssal below, and as her vision wound back together into a single thread he floated down beside her. He appeared in his usual form, but for a fragment of a second, while her sight was yet frayed, she caught a glimpse of him as he truly was, like headlights through a rainy windshield at night.

Fresh tears rolled off her face to join the sea.

I have to find out what happened.

{In the most drastic way possible?} He grinned. {Come on. We already talked about this. We already have a plan.}

I just...

{You're being impatient. You can't think on human time scales, not for something like this}.

Easy for you to say. {Easy for me to say, I know.} they said at the same time.

He pulled her into a hug.

{Come on. Please don't do this to yourself. I'm taking you back.}

I'm so scared.

{I know.}

And everyone's got their own shit going on right now, and most of them are so done with the paracausal crap, I can't...even if I drop this on them, there's no spoons left to care.

{You don't have to.}

It's fine, right? Because I'm the meme kid! I laugh in public and cry in my room where nobody can see it, so they probably think I'm resilient. And nobody ever reaches out to the “strong” people.

{The adults admittedly need some work where emotions are concerned.}

We have to get to Mattica. {We will.}

Even this conversation felt familiar now. Had they already had it a thousand times? Or was that just her paranoia talking?

Alone.

He paused to eye her, quirking a brow. She gazed up at him, feeling her heart drown in the ghostly trenches below.

That's always how it ends, isn't it? No matter how well we do. That's the curse of all this. So we may as well do it ourselves before they leave us.

His gaze sank for a moment, watching the haze dance beneath them.

{That doesn't mean you'll ever be alone.}

Her laugh came out as bubbles. They flowed sideways. I always wanted to be an elf. I never understood why Tolkien always talked about how sad they were. The paw sure curled, didn't it?

{Well hey, if we're going to reference Tolkien, let's go with that other quote: 'All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.'}

Literally all of the time? {Literally all of the time.}

This time they both laughed. The bubbles floated up a few feet and then reversed. The smile he gave was so human.

{Don't be scared.}

Waiting might be the actual death of me. {Heh.}

He took her by the hands.

{But you sure have a lot more to live for now, don't you?}

Something beat and churned the waters around him, the wings she knew he wouldn't let her see. Together they began to rise into the blackness. The swimmers scattered around their ascent, staring. Unlike when she swam alone, they did not follow him.

{Let's go somewhere. I'll craft it for the both of us and pop it in the simulation. Rivendell? Cradle?}

...Home, she said after a moment.

His flight hitched ever so slightly. It wasn't the answer he'd been expecting.

{Home-home? Like your old apartment?}

Yeah. The one I share with Mom. I think right now my greatest fantasy is just...pretending like everything's normal. Like I'm just a girl with a normal-ass life again.

{A normal-ass life it is, then. I'll make myself normal-ass, too. Why are you giving me that expression?}

They breached the surface together. But she was the one who paused them in midair, before they crossed the threshold back into three dimensions.

Sam.

{Yeah?}

If I—if we never—If TEOTL is actually...

{We'll figure something out. I'll wait as long as it takes, Emma.}

You don't have forever.

{I do. We do. We always do.}