#real math

John snorts.

Rose looks you up and down, still smiling but also clearly staring at the bandages you hastily applied to the multiple cuts on your legs and arms. “Goodness,” she says. “What happened to you?”

It’s the Witch of Life who mentions the obvious. “What happened to the boat?”

The mind cop speaks in a monotone from the top of the gangway. “Ran into trouble.”

“Yeah, one of your pets slip its collar or something?” you speak up. You have no fear of her. You don’t think you’ve been brought here as a guest just to die, which to your mind works as a free pass for the fieriest top-tier sarcasm your teenage tongue can spin. “Don’t suppose you put out any posters offering a reward if you run into Fido the Monster Lobster?”

“How about calling it the Mobster?” suggests John.

“Sure. If you find our Mobster, please return him to this tiny secret island in the middle of nowhere. Reward: lifetime supply of butter and lemon sauce.”

Jade frowns. “A lobster?”

The goddess of Life doesn’t look any less cheerful. “Oh, dear. Well. Some creatures are not very well-trained. Let me see that.”

She takes you by the arm, and you open your mouth to object to the manhandling, but then your wounds vanish with a prickling, shivering warmth. No scabs. No scars. Just the slight tingling sensation, like pins-and-needles.

The Leviathan Mother smiles toothily at you. “While we’re here, want me to add anything extra? Fins? Spines? Tentacles?”

“Uh,” you say, thoughts flatlining (wtf tentacles ) and then she’s moving on to John, healing his cuts in seconds.

Then, when she makes him the same offer, he says: “Can I have wings?”

Wings? He’s got to be kidding.

“Sure!” says the goddess. “I should let you know, though, that you wouldn’t be able to fly, even if I made them large enough. Humans just don’t have the aerodynamics or endurance for flight. And if I changed that , then you’d end up not looking very human-like anymore. Wings make fun decorations, though!”

“Oh, uh,” says John. “I was just joking.”

Jade speaks up: “Maybe just try them temporarily! I had wings for a few days once, it was neat, even if I couldn’t fly.” She makes eye contact with you, glittering green in your mirror shades, for just a moment. “I think you’d look cute with wings.”

Suddenly, your firehose of a gabber won’t open. Oh, godsdammit. Gods fucking dammit. Say something.

After several awkward moments of struggle, you work your jaw loose and- “Depends on what kinds of wings we’re talking about, here. Godly wings? I dunno dude, I guess those are coming eventually but I don’t think the whole gossamer tinkerbell look is for me. A little bit too ethereal in this hizzouse and that’s not my jam. Maybe bat wings, those’d be badass. Might have to change my name though. Be all like who’s this Bruce Wayne guy? Bam surprise, it’s me, time to kick The Penguin’s ass with my real motherfucking wings. Batman’s got nothing on this bitch. Nananananananana. D-Stri!” You turn to John. “Damn, will I need to dress all in spandex? With bat nipples?”

John looks gobsmacked, Jade is giggling quietly, and Rose rolls her eyes.

“You want bat nipples?” The Witch has an all-too mischievous glint in her eyes, and you cross your arms in front of your chest.

“Fef!” exclaims Jade in mock-offense. You don’t think she was going to do it, not really. You hope not.

Jade leads your merry band back up the jungle-covered hill to her house, while the Witch stays to chat with the mind-cop. And heal her, probably. Anyway, Jade has a lot to say about the island.

“There’s the shooting range and the garden and the observatory and the basement is full of these creepy stuffed animals, and we could also explore the ruins and the reefs and the jungle! There’s so much to show you! Are you sure you can’t stay longer than the weekend?”

“They haven’t even been here an hour, Jade!” says Rose. “Slow down a little.”

Jade’s eyes are shining. “I could show you my music! Oh my gosh, we should form a band!”

John snickers. “I can play keyboard. What should our band name be?”

You smirk. “Wait so like, you play the bass and Rose plays violin and John plays keyboard, and I guess I can mix it, but like what is our genre? Island metal wave? Ghost noise? Tentacle thrashback? Deified dubcore? House trap?”

“Do we need a genre?” asks John. “I like Ghost Noise as a band name though.”

“It could be a genre of one,” suggests Rose. “Fitting, that way.”

“How about the Dogs Gammit?” adds Jade. “As a band name. It’s like a spoonerism.”

“Is a spoonerism about dogs like a Snooperism about Doggs?” You ask, and John gives you a fist bump. 

“Oh right!” Jade grins. “You haven’t met Bec yet. I’ll call him!”

You pause a moment on the path. “Wait, you mean your weird radioactive hellbeast? The one you should’ve taken out behind the barn long ago?”

“I take him out back all the time, and give him cuddles!” says Jade. “He’s great.” She puts two fingers between her lips and whistles, and the weird radioactive hellbeast just appears , glowing an unearthly white-green and panting, green tongue flopping.

“Good boy!” Jade coos over the massive dog, burying her hands in his fur. “Bestest boy!” She looks back at you and smiles. “You can let him sniff you to say ‘Hi.’ ”

Rose is unperturbed and John looks awed by the creature, but… You’re unsure. Becquerel kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies. Not that you’d admit that.

You hold out your hand, and Bec sniffs it, breath hot and moist. The green tongue flicks out to taste your fingers. You wipe your hand on your pants as soon as the dog moves its head away. Gross.

John holds out his hand, too. Bec sniffs it, too, but then something about the dog’s body language changes. Its ears go back, it crouches its front legs, and it barks commandingly, then whines.

“Uh, hi?” says John. But before he, or any of you, can say anything else, it lunges at John, and both of them vanish.

“What the fuck?” you shout, alarmed. “Where’d they go?”

Rose turns to Jade. “Jade?”

Jade is frowning, but doesn’t look nearly as worried as she should be. “Oh, this isn’t like Bec at all! He only takes people away because he thinks they’re an intruder, or when he plays with me.”

Jade then puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles, but this time nothing happens.

“Did he think John was an intruder?” asks Rose.

Before Jade can answer, you interject: “Why John? Why would he think John is an intruder, but not me?”

Jade shrugs helplessly. “I dunno! But he looked more like he was happy before they went, not angry, so maybe he’s playing? We can look for them, though I should warn you they really could be anywhere.” She whistles again. Nothing.

“Anywhere… on the island?” Rose prompts.

She shakes her head. “No. Anywhere in the universe.” At your horrified expressions, she quickly amends: “Bec still needs to go somewhere with air! So John is probably fine.”

“Probably???” You echo her loudly. “What if he isn’t?”

Jade shakes her head. “I, I really don’t know! I’ve never had visitors who weren’t gods before, so this was never a problem…” She pauses. “I’m going to ask Feferi for help.”

“Already here, dear.”

You jump and turn, and the goddess is directly behind you, pink wings fluttering and looking completely unconcerned.

“Fef, Bec took John somewhere and we don’t know where!” says Jade.

The Witch just smiles. “I’m sure they’re both fine. In fact, I just got a message from a good friend that informs me they’re still on the island!”

A good friend?

Jade, however, seems to get it immediately. “Oh, was it Terezi? Did she say where they are, exactly?”

“No,” says the Witch, and shrugs. “But consider this: finding them will be an ex-shell-ent team building exercise!”

Jade bites her lip. “Okay, Fef,” she says, but Rose is frowning.

You voice your opinion: “I thought this was supposed to be a low-stress vacation?”

“I promise he’s safe,” says the goddess, still smiling. “So, no need for stress.” And with a flutter of her wings, she is gone.

“She could have asked the Seer where exactly they are,” comments Rose. “And not left before we could question her about withholding information.”

Jade shrugs and smiles. “That’s just how she is. Anyway, it might still be fun! I can show you around the island while we look.” -----

After visiting Jade’s garden (the lemons have faces and it’s fucking you up), Jade’s room (she uses a literal teleportation device to get there), and Jade’s basement (that’s a big-ass snake), you trudge back out to the beach, no nearer to finding John than when you started. You’re getting a little tired of this.

Jade is gazing at the mountain with a thoughtful expression on her face, and no, no fucking way are you climbing a mountain today. You are about to say so, when Jade speaks up instead:

“You know, there have always been areas of the ruins I couldn’t get to, either because Bec always teleported me away from them or I couldn’t figure out the puzzle locks… maybe John is there?”

“These ruins aren’t at the top of that steep mountain, are they?” you gripe.

Jade smiles. “You’re not scared of a little hike, are you, Dave?” she says, and giggles at your expression. "It’d be easier if we could fly, huh?”

Huh. “Nah, a hike is fine, I just uh, don’t really feel like doin’ it in these comfy-ass flip flops.”

Rose looks like she’s considering it. “I have boots.”

Jade shakes her head. “I wasn’t going to hike up the mountain anyway.” She points into the jungle. “There’s ruins in the bay that I’ve never quite been able to fully explore - let’s try there?” -----

Your jaw actually manages to drop when she summons giant lilypads by playing the bass guitar. Is this whole island set up like a fucking video game?

So yeah, you jump across the lilypads like it’s fuckin’ Frogger, and then Jade shows you the door to the stone tower which… has a giant frog statue on the top. Okay. Cool. Absolutely rad.

“I’ve never been able to get in because of the pressure plates,” explains Jade, pointing at some hand-sized depressions spaced out near the tower’s entrance. “They’re too far away to reach all three at once. I’d have to have three extra-long arms! And when I try to come up with a solution, like with my robot, Bec just teleports me away.”

Rose frowns. “Maybe he takes you away because he smells something dangerous? Not that his opinion on what’s dangerous is necessarily a sufficient reason.”

Three depressions. Three of you. “Maybe it’s all a setup,” you say, and Rose meets your gaze for a fleeting moment.

“Let’s give it a try!” prompts Jade.

With all three of you pressing the plates, the door opens with a grinding and screech of clockwork.

The inside of the frog ruins are surprisingly nice-looking. Like, you’d expect lots of dust and spiderwebs and crumbling walls and shit, but it looks more well-kept than your apartment. Not that it’s a high bar.

At the top of a long stairwell is a round room, the walls covered in weird inscriptions. The room only contains two objects. One is a desk with an old gas lantern, and lots of drawers and papers scattered around. Fancy-ass fountain pens wait in their fancy-ass holders. There’s even a coffee mug imprinted with a faded decal of a mountain. If you squint, you can even maybe make out the writing on it: I ♠ Mt. Everest.

The other object is a platform with a digital counter on it, and a giant pink flower bud on top. The counter has three minutes on it, counting down.

Also, John is there. And the dog, laying down next to the door and panting. John looks up from the papers he’s reading and smiles sheepishly. “Oh, hey guys. Bec wouldn’t let me leave.”

“Hey man, glad you see you in one piece,” you say. “We were worried you’d fucked off to outer space or some shit.”

Rose smiles at John. “I, too, am relieved that you’ve merely been held hostage in this old ruin, rather than left in hazardous circumstances.” 

Jade squeals and throws her arms around him. “Found you!”

John returns the hug, if awkwardly. “Yeah… Hey Jade, what is all this stuff?” He holds up the paper. “It’s like, science notes??”

Jade shrugs. “I haven’t been here before. Bec always kept me away from this part.” She turns to the dog and kneels to pet him. “But you were too busy with John, weren’t you, boy? Beccy boy! Best friend!”

“May I see them?” Rose asks, and John hands over a sheaf. You peek over her shoulder. The handwriting is all in fucking cursive. As if you can read that.

While she pores over the illegible papers, you glance back at the flower. Two minutes. “Uh, guys? The fuck is that counting down to?”

Jade looks up from cuddling her hellbeast and shrugs again. “I’m sure Bec would take us away if it was dangerous.”

But you just said he always did before, is what you think. And he brought John here. You don’t trust that dog one bit.

Still, Jade walks up to the weird digital flower.  The dog accompanies her. She pokes it, looking thoughtful. Nothing happens. “It can’t be that dangerous. Maybe it’s something Fef made?”

“That doesn’t exactly mean it’s not dangerous,” you point out. “She makes giant fuckin’ monster lobsters for fun.”

“Your grandfather was studying it,” says Rose, not looking up from the pages of handwriting. “As well as the ruins themselves.”

“He was??” Jade looks over Rose’s shoulder as you do so on the other, but the cursive is just as bad as the first time. “Oh my gosh!! That’s so amazing!”

You glance back at the bud. One minute. Why the fuck is no one else concerned about this?

“Yeah, he wrote that he thought it was, like, a time capsule!” John adds. Guess he can read cursive too. “But he couldn’t figure out how to open it.”

Gods dammit. No way in shit you are gonna be the first one to look scared. You kinda wish you had one of your shitty swords, though. A little.

“Well, it looks like we’re going to find out on his behalf. Very shortly.” Rose puts the sheaf of papers down.

Jade claps her hands excitedly.

John stands up.

Becquerel pants.

Five seconds. You tense up.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

And the flower blooms, opening in moments to reveal… a manilla folder. A regular-ass Manilla folder.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” you say, to distract everyone from your shiver of relief. Jade steps forward and picks it up. As she flips it over, you can see what’s written on it by hand:

  2 ♊

A moment later, the flower wilts and withers to dust, revealing a new, tiny bud beneath it. The timer also resets, to a full 400 years in the future. Weird. And creepy.

“It’s for the Mage!” exclaims Jade, eyes huge behind her glasses. “We should get this to him!”

John frowns. “How?”

“I’m sure he’ll come over if I call his name,” Jade says. “I’ll show you: Sollu-”

“Wait, hold on,” you interrupt her. “You don’t want to even look at it yourself first? Not even a peek?”

“The contents seem rather slim,” observes Rose. “But it must be important.”

“Er, right!” says Jade, looking at Rose in apparent relief. “It’s important, so we should just…”

“We can still give it to him in a minute,” you press. “But come on, let’s look at it. Secret god business is our business too, ‘cause we’re like, gods in training.”

“I don’t think there’s a special tool or anything in there, right?” says John, stepping up to look more closely at the folder. “It’s probably just papers.”

“Papers can hold information, and information is power,” Rose reminds him.

Jade glances around at the three of you, surrounding her. She holds the folder tight. “But… It’s not ours…”

“He will forgive us,” says John. “I’m sure of it. Since we are the special destiny god kids or whatever. I think we can flip through his mail once or twice.”

Jade sighs, and relaxes her grip. You snatch the folder in a flash and open it.

The document inside shows a picture of… something. Like a surgical table? And surgical implements? Scalpels and saws and pins and shit under harsh lighting. But the... patient being cut up is just a dark blot that your brain refuses to process, refuses to see. It’s leaking purple fluid onto the table. And even though you can’t seem to focus your eyes on any features, you can tell it’s dead.

Rose frowns and takes the top page, considering it. You, on the other hand, just feel a headache coming on. You glance away, thankful for your shades.

“Whoa, what the fuck?” says John, voice rising in pitch.

You glance at Jade, who is shaking her head rapidly. “That’s… I don’t know what that is. I don’t like it.”

Rose looks fascinated by the image. “I almost feel like I could make it out if I look hard enough,” she says softly, and her eyes are wide, unblinking, and dilated. She looks weirdly gray.

“Nuh-uh,” you say. “No way. That’s some eldritch bullshit there.”

“Yeah, you should probably put it down, Rose,” Jade adds. When Rose doesn’t respond, the island girl forcefully plucks the image from her hands. “Maybe take a little break?”

Rose blinks, and you can practically see the color return to her cheeks. “Hm? Jade, I almost had it!”

“Maybe “it” isn’t something we should have,” says Jade, looking solemn. “This could be dangerous.”

But the way she’s holding it, you can see the picture, and you notice something odd. Or, well, odder. Sort of. Odd because it’s so normal?

There are little pixelated squares near the edge of the surgical table, and around some of the tools. JPEG artifacts. JPEG artifacts on the eldritch photo. Like in SBaHJ. What the fuck even. You look back at the folder, at the next document.

It’s- What the fuck. Math??

“I think this is the Mage’s handwriting,” says Jade, putting the disturbing photo back into the folder. She holds the weird math page out so you all can see it. “That’s how he texts.”

You all lean in close, bumping shoulders. Your shoulder bumps Jade’s. You attempt to decide whether to remain in contact or pull away a bit, but she doesn’t seem to mind, so you leave your shoulder in place.

“What does it mean, then?” John asks.

Jade shrugs. “I don’t know. It has the number of space and time dimensions here, but that’s just geometry and I don’t see how that connects to tachyons. Maybe it has to do with multidimensional matrices?”

“Ugh, math sucks,” you state. Your opinion is absolutely objectively correct, even if you haven’t been to school since seventh grade.

“Look at these symbols,” Rose says, pointing at the wiggly “U” and the doodle of what looks like three grapes on a toothpick. “The “U” here is Ophiuchus, the heretical 13th Zodiac sign. And the other one… it might be a caduceus, but it lacks the sigil of Hope. Maybe this is a study about the gods that came before ours?”

“Weird,” says John. “But tachyon-two - or does that mean tachyons? - are about faster-than-light travel, right? That’s what they were in the movie K-PAX starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. Maybe this is about space travel!”

“Wasn’t that the one panned for the exoticism in its portrayal of extraterrestrials?” Rose asks, raising an eyebrow, and John grins sheepishly.

“I still liked it,” he admits. “It really doesn’t deserve that bad of a reputation.”

The three of them turn to look at you. You take a deep breath.

“I mean, I don’t know anything about tachyons or Ophi-whatever, but this bit,” — you point with authority at the part of the chart labeled “unprediictable / ultrahyperboliic” — “That sounds pretty cool. I mean, ULTRA-hyperbolic. Those must be crazy insane moves. No one can predict it."

Jade smiles, but when she speaks she does not sound impressed. “Do you know what ‘ultrahyperbolic’ means, Dave?”

“It’s ‘ultra’ and ‘hyper,’ so it must be a fuckton of bolic. So much bolic. So much.”

Jade gives an uncertain smile. “Um. Kind of.”

John grins. “That sounds like “ball lick.”

“Ew!” exclaims Jade. “Gross!”

“Excuse my intrusion on this…highly intellectual moment,” says Rose. “But perhaps we should save copies of these pages for ourselves, before we hand them over to their intended recipient?”

“On it.” You whip out your phone and snap a pic of the weird math. Jade won’t let you at the other one.

Once both papers are back in the folder, you all leave the frog-shaped chamber, dog beast trailing behind you.

“Sollux Captor!” Jade calls, and you brace yourself. “I think we have your mail!”

It’s a fair few seconds before he appears, and damn, he looks a mess. Hair sticking out everywhere. Shades aren’t even on straight. Face drawn, almost emaciated. He’s a rumpled, hunched-over beanpole of a god, clutching onto an ipad like he’s Gollum and it’s the One Ring. He kind of smells.

“Fuck. This is a bad time, Jade. Is it important?”

“Yeah,” says Jade. “There was this time capsule that looked like a lotus flower that we found in the frog temple, and inside there was this!” She holds out the folder.

“Dude,” says John. “What happened to you?”

“Hello again to you, too,” says the god sourly, taking the folder. “I’m at the end of a work cycle. Gimme a minute to reboot myself and I’ll be all better.”

You wonder when John had ever met the Mage of Doom, but Jade’s the one who replies.

“I don’t like it when you do that. It’s sad.”

“It’s the most efficient method of managing bodily needs,” snaps the Mage. “As we’ve gone over before.”

There’s something in the set of Jade’s jaw that makes it look like she’s up to actually argue with this weirdo, but Rose steps in instead. “Actually, we have some questions about the contents of the folder.”

“Yes. I imagine you would, after you all looked through it.” 

Aw, damn. He doesn’t look furious, though. Only slightly annoyed. He opens the folder and takes out the chart, scanning it swiftly. His expression is neutral.

“So, what does it mean?” John asks, finally.

The Mage peers at the lot of you, red and blue blinking in steady appraisal. Finally, he speaks. "I know that none of you have a strong background in physics, so I'll explain this in simple terms: By substituting real-number variables, what we might call 'real time' can be rotated through Minkowski space into a corresponding imaginary time (not because it is unreal, obviously, but because the real numbers have been substituted by imaginary numbers) and then —"

“Oh no,” groans Jade.

“Wow, what the fuck, was that English or like… Latin?” You’ve never heard of any of this shit.

“If it was Latin, I might have understood it,” comments Rose, looking a bit lost, herself.

“Time is… imaginary?” asks John warily.

The Mage grumbles. “Fine, let’s try again. Imagine that instead of three dimensions in space and one dimension in time, there were four spatial dimensions, one of which was merely timelike (and possibly seven hyperspatial dimensions, for the record, but these are curled up so tightly that you could only notice them if you were very small or very, very attentive, and perhaps one or two large extra dimensions —" 

This time, Jade nods along, but the rest of you protest again, still lost.

"You could at least wait to interrupt me until I had finished my parenthetical. The unbalanced parens is going to bother me all week. Anyway, now we know why the papers were addressed to me, then, and not a couple of fourteen-year-olds." 

"We're fifteen, actually," says Rose. 

"Shit, really? No wonder I thought the Callipoline Diplomacy Project was ahead of schedule." The Mage sighs, and flicks his yellow wings. “I appreciate you delivering this to me. Now, I need to go run some tests on the other image. But it was a pleasure as always, Jade.”

“Wait a minute,” John says. “What was with the other image? It was all fucked up!”

But he’s already gone.

“Ruff,” says Bec, and teleports all of you back to Jade’s garden. 

You kind of wish you knew what was going on.

⇒ Be Terezi