Narrator X: In the correct and accurate words of the narrator from the previous episode of the science-fantasy podcast Unend: it is time to go. 

[Amped music begins.]

Narrator M: And, if you’ve been following along, you know by now what going requires – at least according to Merlin, who frankly insists upon a countdown. 

M: (Merlin) “Journey’s mercies, everyone.”

Narrator S: Merlin is on the Shipwide teletheric – incredibly unnecessary, because everyone else is here in Control with him, floating weightlessly mere feet away. But you know Merlin. He will not pass up an opportunity to orate at volume. 

M: He will not be stopped. 

X: The Biological Man, it seems, also maybe cannot be stopped. He says, 

M: (Biological Man) “No one could have believed we could do it. But we will. Or we won’t.” 

S: Merlin blinks his eyes. 

M: (Merlin) “Uh, yes.” 

S: The Biological Man’s speech intuition is still developing. 

M: So, Merlin inclines his head to Felix. (Merlin) “On your mark, Mr. Hustleworth.” 

S: Felix glances up from one serious-looking clock. (Felix) “You got it, man.” 

X: He is waiting for the optimum time. It could be here at any time. 

S: (Felix) “Merlin… I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you before, about all the time stuff. This has all just been such a mindfuck, you know?” 

M: (Merlin) “Oh, Felix. It’s either going to be okay or it’s not going to matter, so I invite you to join me in moving on.”

X: Hey, what happened to that countdown? We were told there would be a countdown. We were doing the whole, the countdown music and everything.

S: It’s coming. Hold your horses.

M: Hosses.

S: We must wait for the correct time.

M: Is it… now?

X: Uh, apparently not? No? Not yet?

S: Felix has a really complicated expression on his face. His eyes are kind of misty, and because of that, it’s sort of making Merlin’s glowy blue eyes look a little misty too in Felix’s vision, like a pair of blue traffic lights over a dark country road on a foggy, rainy night.

X: Merlin blinks his eyes off and on again. 

M: (Merlin) “It is time to move on. Literally. Figuratively. I’m being serious, Felix.”

S: (Felix) “I am too.”

M: (Biological Man) “So am I,” says the Biological Man, 

S: somewhat unnecessarily. 

M: (Merlin) “Therefore, Felix–” 

S: (Felix) “I’m doing a fuckload of math, Merlin. Give me a sec. I want to do this right. It’s the final countdown.”

X: [humming] Da-da-dee-dee–

M: [interrupting] No.

X: Steve and the Granddaughter, across Control, have turned their attentions to the inactive Foldlight, preparing themselves for communion. 

S: Everett and Tzila are readying punch-discs. 

M: Micky is consulting dark city maps and dialing directional headings into the navigational compasses, making ready for… whatever the fuck is about to happen.

X: (Steve) “We’re going to make it, everyone. I know we are. And I’m here to help, I swear to you. It is time to go.” 

S: (Felix) “Everybody STOP with the TIME and the GOING stuff! I am Timekeeper! I will tell you when!” 

X: Oh god, oh jeez, any second now! Only the Timekeeper knows!

M: (Merlin) “I’m thankful you’re here now, Felix. That’s what counts. Thank you for spending… time with me.”

S: (Felix) “Time humor.”

X: His sunburned hands are shaking. 

S: (Felix) “You really know what makes me tick.” 

X: The entire crew is on tenterhooks, poised for action, so ready to get back to the world they knew. 

M: So afraid of what it will take to actually get there. 

S: Will they? Can they? Maybe that time… 

X: Will never… 

S: (Felix) “Ten.” 

M: Now! It’s time! [Countdown music intensifies.] Cleo stills a punch-disc she was nervously spinning on her finger like a pizza crust. 

S: (Cleo) “Ooh, okay, okay, oh boy.” She tucks some loose strands of her hair back behind her ear. Her hands are shaking, too. She looks to Dot, but Dot’s eyes are already closed. 

X: Their bare hands are on the glass of the darkened Foldlight as they stand beside Steve. (Hambing) “We need you with us on discs, Cleo!” Hambing calls. “Over here!” 

S: (Felix) “Nine,” Felix calls. Then, “Uh, shit, sorry– I mean six.”

M: (Merlin) “Wait, really?”

S: (Felix) “Yes. Five.” 

M: (Merlin) “Oh, good grief…” 

S: (Felix) “Four.”

X: (Rawfield) “Everybody hold on,” Rawfield calls, hovering. “Ship’s gonna move fast.”

S: (Felix) “Three.” 

M: Everyone is bracing, hands on levers, ready for action. 

S: (Felix) “Two.”

X: Merlin is reaching for the Foldlight’s on switch. 

S: (Felix) “One.” 

M: Merlin and Felix lock eyes.

S: (Felix) “To the end.” 

X: At the flip of a switch, the Foldlight illuminates.

[Music intensifies even more.] 

M: Immediately: punch-discs spinning, levers are thrown. 

S: The Ship seals its hangar door. Heading and speed information is instantly disked. The Foldlight swirls and flashes, and, for the first time since they have entered this godforsaken cosmos, the Ship FLIES, slicing straight out of its tranquil fold bubble, racing into the sunlit void. 

X: Instantly, the sunbeam is upon them. [Sentinel sound.] A huge black silhouette blocks the sun – but then it is gone, and the sunbeam is aimed elsewhere, targeting another weirder tearror somewhere further distant in the enlivened sun-shining cosmos. 

M: The sun strobes distractedly – and then is back on the Ship, oh shit! – and then it’s gone again, drawn away by momentarily bigger problems. 

X: (Everett) “What the HELL, fuggin’ GO GO GO, this is our chance, GO!!” Everett is yelling. 

S: Everybody is yelling. This is crazy. Holy shit, here goes nothing. 

M: Here goes everything.

S:  The Ship soars, flashing through the fold belt, huge swirling torrents of fold whipping by as they circulate around the blazing sun. 

M: The speed is insane, WAY faster than they would ever go under normal circumstances, and everyone inside Control is hanging on for dear life as the g-forces threaten to toss them around like ragdolls, as they whip around the DID WE MENTION THE FUCKING SUN?!

[Music intensifies even MORE.] 

S: They are flashing across the cosmos in mind-melting moments, hurtling toward the curved edge.

X: Cleo’s lights are starting to flicker to life. Their directionality confirms it: they are going the right way. 

S: The dark city is coming into view, a column of circulating fold spiraling down, down, toward one very particular exit portal.

[Sentinel sound.] 

M: Eye of Sauron. The sunbeam is back, flaring through Control, and a black form slams onto the Ship, grappling onto the exterior. 

X: The ship slews violently, crew slamming into walls and floors. Dot and Steve are flung against the ceiling as black clawing appendages dagger across Control’s windows. 

S: (Steve) “No, no, no! Keep us on course!” 

X: Steve is bellowing, hauling himself and Dot back to the Foldlight, brachiating through zero gravity. 

(Dot) “Get us to the exit!” Dot is calling. “I’ll do the rest!” 

M: Micky is sideways and upside-down, battling through a mass of weightless papers and mapping tools, scrambling to dial in a corrected heading. (Micky) “Hang on!!” 

X: She throws a lever, the Foldlight strobes, and the control deck pivots on a dime around the weightless crew like a carousel as the whole Ship rotates instantly back on course, flinging the Sentinel loose. 

M: (Biological Man) “Go, go!” 

(Merlin) “Go, go, go!” 

X: The Biological Man and Merlin are yelling.

(Hambing) “Go now!!” roars Hambing. 

(Everett) “Ah, fuckin’ shit!!” Everett throws one lever, Cleo throws another, and the Ship both goes forward and goes fast. 

S: Loose shit breaks and flies. Cleo nearly goes down. Rawfield grabs her. 

M: Sunbeam.

X: (Tzila) “No!” Tzila cranks the thrust disc, and the Ship jolts ahead as a vast form grapples for them but does not connect. 

(Steve) “Yes!” Steve yells. 

S: Sunbeam. 

X: (Steve) “No!!” 

M: Steve changes his mind. 

X: Cleo discs. The deck spins around them, rolling, a shrieking jagged claw raking a window. 

S: (Cleo) “Agh!” 

X: Cleo is tumbling in midair. 

M: Sunbeam. 

X: Rawfield throws a lever. The Ship dives under an onslaught of reaching limbs. 

S: Sunbeam. 

X: Black appendages everywhere. It’s like racing through a storm cloud, evading lightning strikes. (Everett) “Argh, I wanna shoot it so bad!!” 

M: (Merlin) “No, Everett! That’s how it–” 

X: (Everett) “I KNOW, Merlin! I’m daydreaming!” 

S: A black wall of city spans dead ahead, a vortexing column of fold rushing straight for it, draining toward a certain yawning chasm: the way out. 

M: (Micky) “Come on!” Micky’s yelling.

X: Merlin couldn’t agree more. 

M: (Merlin) “COME ON!!” 

X: The Ship is locked in, okay to go. The way is clear– 

[Music cuts.]

S: Until it isn’t.

[Sentinel sound.]

X: Lit by the glorious sun, illuminated at last in nightmare solar clarity, the Sentinel materializes in space, dead ahead. 

M: They are headed straight for it at great speed, and this time, it simply hovers, turning to face them, opening its arms, patiently awaiting their arrival.

X: A vast black spider, scutigera, centipede. Segmented like a lobster, bristling with a hundred midnight bedrock limbs. 

S: Boiling with liquid tearror. A hive of rippling obsidian hands.

M: An eldritch construct. The puppet of the sun.

X: (Tzila) “Oh my god.” (Hambing) “Oh my god,” Tzila and Hambing say, in science horror and wonder. 

M: (Merlin) “Cleo!! Evasive maneuvers, now!”

S: But Cleo is staring at the dark mica sword on her hip, frozen. She makes no move to alter the Ship’s course. 

X: Black arms opening, inviting, awaiting. A maw of hands. 

M: Merlin makes a lunge for her station. (Merlin) “MOVE!”

S: (Cleo) “No!” she shouts back, swatting his hand away from the lever. “We fly straight at it!”

M: (Merlin) “What?!”

S: (Cleo) “The Ship is a sword!” 

X: Her eyes are beginning to illuminate, twin rings of bright neon pink. 

S: (Cleo) “The Ship is a sword.” 

[Action music resumes.]

M: If Merlin had human eyes, they would go wide with dawning comprehension. But he doesn’t, and they don’t. And there isn’t time for all that eye business, anyway. (Merlin) “Go,” he says. 

S: And Cleo puts the pedal to the metal, so to speak. With a burst of speed, the Ship fires straight at the Sentinel, very much like a gigantic sword in some kind of climactic mid-air kaiju showdown. 

X: (Rawfield) “Brace yourselves!” Rawfield bellows. 

M: (Merlin) “We can do better than that!” Merlin thunders, and he activates one very particular disc. 

S: Control bricks solid with spare mass. Everyone is instantly entombed just as the entire Ship, like a mirrorhawk spearing its prey, plunges prow-first into the Sentinel at top speed. 

[Heroic music.]

X: The impact is extreme. Cleo feels blood spurt in her mouth even with her face vacuum-sealed in crystal. 

S: But the Ship slices directly through the Sentinel’s bedrock plating and bursts out the other side, cleaving its body cleanly in half. 

M: Merlin’s bocular hand is frozen in contact with the spare mass lever. He cannot move, cannot unbrick them. Fuck! He didn’t think this through all the way.

X: But just as suddenly, they are free – dark mica unsealing, unmolding, melting back into the walls and floors. The Foldlight flashes and sparkles, its swirling fold mimicking Steve’s and Dot’s hands on the interior of its glass. 

S: (Steve) “Yes!” 

X: Steve is shouting. 

S: (Steve) “Well done, Granddaughter! Direct command! Tell the Foldlight your intent!” 

M: (Merlin) “Thank you, Dot!”

X: Behind the Ship, spiraling in space, the severed halves of the Sentinel are adrift, oozing black droplets. 

M: But gooey ropes of tearror, like sticky black frog tongues, begin to harpoon between the two halves, pulling them closer, stitching them back together. 

X: (Everett) “Whoa, it’s not dead, we gotta GO GO GO!” Everett is yelling. 

S: Micky slams the lever, and the Ship hurtles toward the dark city once again. 

M: (Micky) “Cleo, you are crazy!”

S: (Cleo) “Sorry! I–”

M: (Micky) “That’s a compliment! The Violet Fury trained you well!”

S: (Cleo) “Haha! Thanks, Micky! Thanks, Granny.” 

X: The Ship is locked in, on course, and they’re starting to feel the pull of gravity once more. Everyone and everything in Control begins to drift toward the forward windows of the prow, toward the dark city, increasingly down. 

M: The dark outflux chasm yawns ahead, a cavity in the enamel of the cosmos, torrenting fold spiraling toward its darkness. 

S: And it is into that downpour that the Ship maneuvers, immersing itself in the deluge of dark matter, riding the current down, down, down, toward that abyssal exit. Torrents of fold gush past the windows on all sides, softening the sunlight into a rippling underwater glow. 

X: (Hambing) “Here we go!” 

M: (Merlin) “Yes!” 

(Biological Man) “We are doing it!”

S: (Felix) “It’s time! Holy shit, it’s really time this time! INTO THAT SUCK-HOLE!” 

X: Gravity increases rapidly. Everyone and everything in Control plummets toward the forward windows of the deck, towards the down of the city, directly ahead, and–

[Sentinel sound.]

X: (Everett) “NO!!!” Everett screams as the sunbeam flares, a black shadow blocking out the light. 

S: And the Ship dives directly into the yawning mouth of the tunnel a half-second ahead of the Sentinel’s final lunge. 

[Music cuts to ominous ambience.]

M: Like a leviathan trapdoor spider, the dark Sentinel looms over the mouth of the pit, perched on void-black bedrock as the Ship escapes into the abyss below.

[Distant Sentinel sound.] 

S: The crew aboard have one last fleeting glimpse of a titan centipedal silhouette, backlit by the flaring sun, drenched in a downpour of fold. A shadow. A solitary warden watching them flee, but unable– 

M: or unwilling–

S: to follow them as they hurtle into the dark.

X: Fathomless nothingness gapes, awaiting. The spotlight of the retreating sun dims and vanishes behind the Ship, and blackness swallows them whole. 

M: Gravity evaporates. The crew drift weightlessly once again, and Control suddenly snaps into automatic redlight mode, reacting to the crushing darkness outside. The Foldlight, too, shifts crimson. 

S: Like a sailboat swept along by ocean wind, the Ship rides a torrent of surging fold into emptiness. If the outflux tunnel still has walls or edges, they cannot see them. 

X: The crew is drifting, eyes reflecting the eerie red Foldlight – and Cleo’s bioluminescence, which still shines directionally, pointing forward, dead ahead into the dark. 

M: (Tzila) “I really hope you’re right, Cleo,” Tzila murmurs quietly, her eyes wide. “I really hope we’re going home.”

S: (Cleo) “Yeah, me too,” whispers Cleo. “I really hope so, too.” 

X: Steering the Ship is no longer necessary. The surging fold current has them in its all-encompassing grip. They are going where they are going, and nothing can stop them now.

S: They are on their way, their destination and its cost perhaps once again inevitable.

X: Dot clings to the Foldlight with both hands, focusing with all their might on the task before them, struggling to silence everything in their mind except for one thought: the will to send the Ship home. A plea for survival. An offer of exchange. Steve hovers beside them, brain-bulb dark, blank. 

M: (Steve) “Are you ready, Granddaughter? Are you now prepared?”

X: Are they? They really thought they were, but now that it’s almost here, can you be prepared for this, really? They’d better GET ready, fast, because…

S: In the darkness, a single light.

M: (Merlin) “Oh my word,” Merlin says.

S: Dead ahead, a tiny point – far distant, like a single star in a black night sky. A far cry from the crushing sunset of the far Delta, but also the same, somehow. A silent pinprick. A light at the end of a long, long tunnel. 

(Cleo) “Oh, no…” Cleo’s lights are glowing brighter. 

X: Dot’s eyes are closed, but they see the light as well, though not outside the Ship. It is before them as though in a dream. Perhaps the Foldlight’s dream, perhaps their own.

M: Beneath their hands, dark fold traces the shapes of their fingers on the other side of the bulb’s glass, mimicking their touch, mimicking Steve’s. 

X: (Dot) “Please let us pass. Please let us live. Please take me if you must take anyone.” 

M: (Steve) “Focus, Granddaughter. All attention on your purpose.” 

X: A growing light, like a doorway opening at a great distance. (Hambing) “I-I don’t know about this…” 

M: (Merlin) “I don’t know, either,” 

X: Merlin says with strange tranquility. 

M: (Merlin) “In fact, I don’t know that I really know anything at all.” 

S: The crew is frozen, transfixed, all eyes on that eerie light ahead, hovering bodies redlit, starlit, Cleo-lit, weightless.

X, S, & M: (Foldlight) “I am not distracted from my purpose. I am waylaid by no obstacle. I am safely and successfully navigating back to Midst.” [Whispering repeats in the background.]

X: A voice within a memory within a dream. The Foldlight recites it, recalling.

M: (Steve) “Who is that? What is that?” 

X: (Dot) “You hear it?”

M: (Steve) “I do. The instructions of your master?” 

X: (Dot) “His very last, it would seem. I had no idea.”

M: (Steve) “His words may help you in your task. I am sure he would be very proud of you.”

X: Cleo’s lights are growing brighter than ever as the Ship sails toward the distant pinpoint, faraway light sharpening into an unearthly beacon. It is their destination. It is where they will meet their fate. 

S: With zero-gravity slowness, Cleo glides across Control and alights beside the Foldlight, a fairytale princess. She looks at Dot wordlessly, pink irises aglow, an expression of stubborn terrified devotion on her face. She puts her glowing green hand on the Foldlight’s warm glass, right next to Dot’s. 

X: Dot does not open their eyes. They do not need to. They know that Cleo is there. 

M: A moment later, Merlin’s mechanical hand lays against the Foldlight’s glass, too. Then the Biological Man’s. Tzila’s.

X: Everett’s. Micky’s.

S: Rawfield’s. Hambing’s. Felix’s. 

X: The others cannot commune with the Foldlight as Steve or the Granddaughter do, but they do feel its warmth and wonder at its shimmer as they give their support. 

S: Tendrils of its fold map their hands from within the glass. 

M: The Christmas-tree-like glimmer of its lights is turning from red to amber gold, like a crackling campfire. It is to them an extraordinary comfort in the extraordinary dark.

S: Perhaps they comfort it in return. 

X: (Dot) “I am not distracted from my purpose. I am waylaid by no obstacle. I am safely and successfully navigating back to Midst.” 

S: Ahead of the Ship, that light is widening, brightening. 

M: (Steve) “The door is opening, Granddaughter.” 

X: Steve’s voice emerges from the dream. 

M: (Steve) “The final step is yours to take.” 

X: And they’d better take it soon.

S: The light is starting to lens, to refract, separating as though through a prism. 

X: (Everett) “Oh god, oh shit.” Everett is squeezing Micky’s hand. 

(Dot) “Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.” 

M: Something is coming. Something inevitable. 

X: The Granddaughter can feel the presence of the Foldlight snagging on every involuntary flicker of consciousness within their mind, like velvet catching on sandpaper. (Dot) “No, no! No! No, no, no…” 

S: Steve’s head-liquid shivers, alarmed. 

M: (Steve) “Granddaughter?” 

X: It doesn’t matter how pure their intent is, how desperately they try to quiet their mind – they are not a Mother. They are human. They are not, and have never been, empty.

[The ambience cuts away to a singular tonality.]

X: But they almost were, once. They remember how it felt in the highest heights, when their fold essence was being drained out of them, summoned by the will of an irresistible light, a singing command from above. That serenity, that silence – that is what they need right now. 

X, S, & M: (Foldlight) “Your attention is a beam of light which you direct.”

X: The Granddaughter opens their eyes. Before them, the Foldlight glimmers, swirls. Consciousness in a bottle. Light feeding and directing fold. Fold heeding and consuming light. 

(Dot) “Oh,” Dot says. “I see.” 

And as a kaleidoscoping convergence consumes the Ship, the Granddaughter turns every ounce of their attention inward, looking within with every last iota of that inner light. And all the fold that lives within them looks directly back.

(Dot) “Take them home.”

And their fold heeds and consumes their light.

[Profound organ chord.] 

M: Gravity. 

[An unfamiliar soundscape emerges.]

S: Stillness. 

M: The crew lay scattered across the floor of Control, heads pounding, limbs heavy, bathed in the gentle illumination of the still-functioning Foldlight– 

S: and of Cleo’s bioluminescence, which brightens and dims by turns in a slow, rhythmic pulse. 

M: One by one they stir, taking stock of their situation.

S: Beyond the windows of Control: no sun, no black expanse. No Fold. No Un. 

M: A towering and interminable hall of doors stretches endlessly ahead, the Ship like a shard of glass suspended in the center of the titanic shadowy corridor.

X: The Granddaughter lies beside the Foldlight, dead. They open their eyes.