7 - Plan Q
Lyra Heartstrings - 20th of Megan, 29 AE
Deck 13, USS Phoenix - Phoenix
I was starting to understand exactly why Sherbert had been so nervous about trusting Chem. He really was extremely good at creating a convincing character. We'd arrived at Vinyl’s house and he immediately inspected the place, seemed to like it, and then after seeing where his sister lived (and how she lived) he pointed out the very simple fact that he had to be able to integrate into our little social circle as seamlessly and convincingly as possible.
That's a bit trickier than most people think it would be. After all, Chem was literally coming into our lives out of nowhere. He had no real background or explanation for his existence other than the truth. These things would need to be crafted, carefully and elaborately created with more care than even I would put into my O&O characters.
For starters, Chem would at the very least need Vi’s dad to agree that he existed and was his kid. We couldn't exactly just go back to her dad's place and fill him in on all the details. After all, they were preparing for that foreign dignitaries visit today. Who knew how long that would last? Not us.
Since the very most basic and fundamental part of a cover story could not be crafted as of right now, Chem had elected to follow me home and hang out with me until we could get a good story worked out to explain where he came from.
I wasn't exactly used to having visitors. Not that my friends never came to see me, of course. They did, it's just that they usually only ever came over for us to go somewhere else.
As my apartment doors hissed open, the sparse, fairly unwelcoming environment was revealed for Chem to see. I didn't really have anything in the way of decoration, just a few houseplants to add some nature to the place. Everything inside my apartment was practical because I never intended to stay here for any real length of time.
Yes, it had become a few decades, but I wouldn't be living here for much longer. Just having the basic furniture elements didn't matter anymore. It had never mattered. I had two couches and a game table, a dining table and four chairs, and then my workstations in my bedroom, and the bed. That was it.
The rest of the apartment was just blank white walls, and the pre-installed tech that came with every home built in the Emerald Changeling’s hive. A big flat panel television-like display, the smaller panels in the walls for controlling the rooms temperature, humidity, the lights, ambient sounds, and so on. And of course, the molecular printer that never really printed anything that well.
Oh right! And my bookshelf. I mean, that was sort of part of the workstations, but I still had some novels on there too. I still had some fun, it wasn't all work.
Chem whistled as we walked into my apartment. it wasn't the sort of whistle that you would use if you were impressed by what you saw, this was more of a way to say ‘wow. Really?’
“So uh, you don’t exactly seem like the sort of anti-fun person who would live like this. Am I being pranked?” Chem asked with an amused smirk.
I sighed and shook my head slowly. “No. This is my place.”
Chem raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “Seriously?” He asked as I walked inside.
“Look I wasn't exactly planning on staying very long okay?” I explained with a lash of my tail. “The only reason I'm living here instead of back in Ponyville is they let me study Dream Magic here. That stuff's illegal back in Equestria. I really only started renting this place to use as a workshop. But, I wound up living here as my work just took more and more time.”
“Oh,” Chem said as he followed me inside, looking around curiously. “I can see that. So how long have you been working here?”
“Ummm,” I said tapping my chin in thought as I flash back across the years. “I'd say around uh, about thirty years?”
Chem froze, his eyes widening in surprise. He stood there, shocked, long enough for the doors to close on their own behind him.
“You mean to tell me that you've been living in a place, for three decades and you haven't felt the slightest need put up a poster, or buy some lamps, or paint the thing something other than depression grey?” Chem demanded incredulously as he waved a hoof at his surroundings.
My ears drooped with embarrassment. “I- uh, well…” I closed my eyes and sighed, letting all the grief out in one long breath. “I am a pretty single-minded pony okay? I'm here to work on breaking a curse that took my girlfriend from me, and prevents us from getting back together. She was my world. I never felt like anyone else ever really cared about me.
“I'm not bad-mouthing my friends. I mean care about me in the way that you have an actual relationship go, you know? Bonbon was my only real family. My parents? My dad does love me, but I'm still a reminder that he was once completely controlled by the evilest bitch imaginable who didn't become some kind of Evil Overlord.
“He's only just now starting to treat me like it his actual daughter, instead of a reminder of the time in his life when he was screamed at for simple things like just trying to spend an afternoon with a friend having a dinner or a drink.
“All I had for a long long time was Bon. And then a nightmare took her from me. So I'm going to get her back. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care that my house doesn't look pretty. Cuz I'm not going to be here forever. I'm going to get her back, and things will go back to the way they were before, and she'll get to do all the decorating like she did last time and it will be beautiful.
“Until then, I can put up with the whole sterile industrial look. Because I don't care okay? It's not important.”
“What do you mean it’s not important?” Chem asked looking at me with one of the most perplexed looks I've ever seen in my life. “The place that you are sitting in when you're trying to study or learn or invent or do any kind of mental activity is one of if not the most critical steps in the entirety of the process of invention, discovery, all that stuff!”
I shrugged. “Well I mean I got this far, right? I figured out that I'll need an Aether Crystal, how to trap a nightmare, how to convert it to energy, I've got everything done really. The only thing I have yet to figure out yet is how to actually extract one from reality after it's become a part of it.”
Chem frowned and looked at me uneasily. “I thought you said you were cursed,” he said with a suspicious look. “Why don't you tell me what's really going on? After all, I'm an Eldritch Abomination. It's not like you have to worry about keeping secrets from me lest I go mad. Are you dealing with another of my kind?”
Now that was an interesting question. Was I?
The discovery I made yesterday which linked the magic of the Void with the magic of the Dream Realm did have some serious implications. Maybe nightmares were some form of Voidborn? That was certainly possible, but I doubted Discord could miss something that big.
“I don't know. I might be,” I admitted. I turned around to face Chem so we could talk properly. “It is a curse. It follows all the rules for a curse, at least in The Big Picture level. What happened is I encountered a creature that we call a nightmare. They live in a place known as the Dream Realm.
“It is sort of a pocket dimension where, well, your dreams exist. According to legend, it was created so that when mages dream we won't accidentally cast a spell on our sleep. Instead, that magic will occur in the Dream Realm, and you don't burn down your village.
“But as a consequence of this, apparently our actual dreams become living creatures there due to all the ambient magic floating around in that place. Nightmares are what we call the creatures that are formed from our nightmares. The only thing these creatures want to do is to escape the dream realm, find the person who dreamed them up, and then they manifest themselves. Meaning they modify the rules of reality itself, and turn your life into whatever nightmare they specifically are.
“Whatever happens to you in that nightmare you had, will then happen to you, in reality, no matter how absurd it is or how impossible it is. The normal rules are completely overwritten. Anything is possible.
“In my case, my nightmare was Bonbon leaving me because she became straight due to a curse, and also because of the curse she would not consent to being fixed magically, and even worse, everyone I asked to help couldn't help. That was actually my worst nightmare. Got to say, it's just as bad as I dreamed it would be. But I'm very close to finding a way to pull that nightmare out of space time or whatever happens to it when it manifests as its whole ‘reality edit’ thing, and reversing what it did.”
Chem nodded thoughtfully and trotted over to the couch on the left side of my living room and sat down. “I see,” he said slowly, “I don't feel any force compelling me to not help you. Would you like some help? I can think of a few ways I can actually fix this right now.”
I felt my heart leap in my chest. With how little energy Chem had said was in his system and how close to death he was, I hadn’t dreamed that he be able to help me physically anytime soon. Of course, I had plans on asking him lots of different questions to get information from him. After all, it seems like void-related things were immune to their nightmares effects. But this?
“Y-you can lift the curse? Like, right now?” I stammered, awestruck at the idea that in one simple night of work all of this hell would be over. “I thought you’d need way more power before you could even think about doing something like that!”
Chem laughed and then nodded a few times. “Well, I did get a good amount to eat on the way over. I don't think I'm starving to death anymore. I've got enough to sustain myself for a little while, and enough to have a little bit of fun.
“Of course, it does take a lot of power to rewrite the rules of a reality. I don't think I could just reach out and rip some creature out of the miasma underpinning your reality. But I do have some solutions if you care to hear them. Ones I could enact right now.”
I nodded, my enthusiasm diminishing a little bit. Transforming from a raging bonfire to a smoldering pile of coals.
“Okay, let's hear them,” I said as I took a seat on the other couch opposite Chem.
Chem looked into my eyes and smiled. “All right, don't be afraid okay?” He asked.
Before I could wonder what he was going to do, let alone ask him, Chem waved a hoof through the air seemingly grabbing onto the air itself and tearing it apart with a rather savage downwards yank. The air split apart forming a portal. Well something like a portal at least. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't quite the tamed wormholes I was used to seeing. It was more of a window.
The window gave me a view of another place, and in that place, I could see Bonbon. She was sitting down with her back facing me, on the top of a hill I had never seen before which overlooked something which could have been the Everfree Forest, but felt different somehow.
Perhaps... Something about the trees?
“What are you doing?” I asked Chem, my eyes hardening as seeing Bonbon like this felt as if we were invading her privacy.
Chem grabbed the edge of the tear he had made and rotated it, changing the view so that I could see past BonBon's back. It immediately became clear that I was not looking at my Bon.
First of all, she was missing an eye. The injury couldn't have been recent because the scarring around the socket was all old, and healed as well as it would ever be. Also, she had a patch, not an organic eye or a bionic replacement like she could easily have gotten.
Secondly, she was looking at my gravestone. And crying. And had just put flowers down at the base of the stone. Because I was dead.
I felt the fur on the back of my neck stand up in terror. “W-what is this!?” I yelped fearfully.
Chem rolled his eyes. “Calm down,” he said in a kind voice. “This is Plan A. You are looking into a universe that isn’t your own. You see, there’s an infinite number of universes. Every single possible permutation of every single possible reality exists. In fact, it exists an infinite number of times in that exact same configuration.
“Right now, there is an infinite number of yous, who have all lived the exact same life, under the exact same conditions, and are all right now, missing their loved one. This is due to the nature of universes, and the matter based creatures like yourself who live in them.
“I, along with my kind, are the exact opposite. There’s only one of me. There are no alternate versions of myself, nor are there parallel versions, nor copies. Only me. This is because there is only one void, and there can be no other.
“This means that only the version of yourself, which you are right now, is able to have this conversation. Of all the infinite yous that exist, only this one, only you, are here and talking to me. You have just made yourself unique, you just broke free of the mold from which all other yous are cast.
“As such, there won’t really be any problems if say, we make a major change to your life. My mere presence here makes reality more mutable, makes destiny subvertable, because I am an entity of pure potential who would like to be your friend.”
“That’s all good and well,” I said as I stared into the tear. “But what’s that have to do with this… this hole?”
“That is a window into another one of the infinite realities like your own,” Chem explained, pointing into the tear with his left hoof. “This one is not parallel to your own, it’s divergent. In this particular world many things are different from how they are for you, here and now.
“Specifically the you that lived in that universe has died. I don’t know how, I’m not yet powerful enough to look outside of this universe and immediately analyze everything I see like back in the old days. But I can still find places where you no longer exist or never existed, but Bonbon does.
“As you can clearly see, she survived whatever event that took your life in that world. She misses you, she’s grieving. She too feels the same pain that you do from missing your other half. I could, with a small expenditure of my energy, pluck her from that world and place her right here. Right in this living room. Right now.”
I felt my face scrunch up slightly. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. I opened my mouth to ask a question, but Chem cut me off with a raised hoof.
“Now, I know that you will likely have some problems with that idea,” he said understandingly. “Just hear me out.”
I frowned, unsure of what exactly I should say. so I just nodded.
Chem nodded in return. “Thank you,” he said. “The first obvious problem: that is not really fixing things. Your world’s Bonbon would still exist and still be affected by the curse. However, you did say that part of this curse has her being happy with the change right? She doesn’t want to be turned back?”
I nodded. “Yes. That’s true, but I mean, that’s not her decision. It’s not her own free will. It is a curse.”
“Yes,” Chem agreed. “But she is happy. It’s not a bad fate. Eventually given enough time, I am certain she will find a nice male and settle down with him. It’s not like she was cursed to constantly poop an infinitely long, neverending, single solid poop or something else truly horrifying.”
I felt my stomach turn at his idea of a horrifying curse. “EW!” I exclaimed, doing my best to keep my guts from rebelling.
Chem nodded. “Yeah. That one would be particularly horrific,” he said with a casual nod. “But the point I was making is that this is a curse that still permits her to lead a full and happy life. As such, it’s not immoral to leave her alone and to instead simply focus on making you happy.
“Since you do want her back in your life, and since there are infinite versions of her, just like how there are versions of you, we can take any one of her who has lost her 'you' and bring her here.
“She would very most likely be happy about this. Yes, she was pulled into another world, one which could be very different from her own, but she would have you again. The person she loved and lost. The person who was her world. You would have the same thing returned to you.
“True, it wouldn’t be exactly the same. There would be differences in how you remember the relationship going. It would technically be a brand new relationship. But you would be the same people. You would get along in the same way as you and this world’s Bonbon did. In time, you would be completely satisfied and never regret this decision. Well, with a little luck at least.”
Chem paused for a moment to give me the chance to think. I mulled the idea over in my mind, focusing on every detail that I could. It was a solid plan, but it didn’t quite feel right.
“I don’t know,” I sighed slowly. “I mean, yeah, maybe that could work. But are we seriously just going to snatch that mare from that hilltop right now?”
Chem shook his head. “No. Of course not,” he said with a laugh. “It is the absolute most foolish thing possible to take the first one we saw the moment we saw her. For all we know, in this universe, the two of you were serial killers. And the reason why your grave is out in the middle of seemingly nowhere is that she had to bury you in a place the law wouldn’t be able to find her because she’s currently at large.
“No, Lyra. Instead, the two of us would just sit here in this room, and channel surf realities. We’d sit here and watch, and watch, and watch until we found the Bonbon who had lost you, wanted you back just as much as you want her back, and is either the closest possible version we can find to the Bonbon you were with, OR, one that you especially like. Then, I would step out for a moment, and invite her to join us in this world. How does that sound?”
I bit my lip, my face scrunching in discomfort. “Let’s... That’s an okay back-up plan, but, I don’t really like it just for the one that we’re going to try for. It doesn’t quite feel right. But I mean, maybe if I get really desperate?
“In theory, the curse is supposed to end after a few hundred years because the nightmare will have run out of power. They can’t change things forever. If worst comes to worst, I can wait. I’m a vampire, I’ll still be alive, and so will she.”
Chem nodded twice, leaning back against the couch. The tear in reality vanished as he nodded at it with a dismissive look on his face.
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “You know, unless something kills one or both of you. You’re immortal, not indestructible.”
I cringed and turned away from him for a moment. “Let’s... Let’s talk about another plan. You said you had a bunch what’s Plan B?”
“Plan B is a little bit simpler, but it would take more energy on my part,” he explained casually. “I think I would actually have to feed a little bit more before doing it, but it’s still something we could do today.
“Plan B involves you letting me read your mind. I would copy every single individual memory that you have of her in perfect detail. I would then go to her, and do the same thing. This would give me complete and total knowledge of every last part of your relationship with her that either of you could possibly ever remember.
“Using this information, I would create a body from Voidstuff. An exact duplicate of her in every single physical way, into which I would place all the knowledge I had obtained creating a copy of your Bonbon in every single way that matters. A perfect simulacrum. Absolutely no one would be able to tell the difference between her and the original.
“Except for the simple fact that the copy, well the clone as I suppose I should call her, she would love you just as she had before the curse was inflicted upon you. How do you like that idea?”
I shook my head immediately. “No. We’re not doing that,” I said with my ears laying flat.
Chem tilted his head to one side. “Too distasteful?” He asked with a frown. “I’m sorry. It was just an option.”
“Yeah, well... It’s not one will be taking,” I said adamantly.
Chem smiled at me. “Understood. Would you like to hear Plan C then?”
“As long as it doesn’t involve you reading her mind without her consent in order to make a clone of her, yes I will hear plan C,” I said hoping that that would leave no room in his mind for plans which required the violation her free will.
“Um, quick question before I tell you about Plan C. Are you objecting to that plan because I didn’t say that I would get her permission to copy the memories? For the record I would have obtained permission. I despise breaches of the mind’s privacy,” Chem asked me with the concerned frown.
“Sort of,” I agreed, giving him an ambivalent look. “It also just kind of skeeves me out. The idea that we can just replace a person, with another person who is exactly the same in every single way.”
“That would be a problem with Plan A too,” Chem pointed out shifting on the couch slightly so he would be closer to me. “Of course, in that case, we could actually acquire a version of her with some differences from the original. In fact, I could do that with the clone too. She wouldn’t have to be an exact duplicate, but she could be if you desired.
“Is that the problem? You don’t want to replace her but to regain her?”
Shit. Yeah, that was the problem.
I look down on the floor and sighed. That was the only response I need to give him.
Chem stood up and walked around the coffee table. To my surprise, the disguised Eldritch abomination wrapped his arms around me in a caring hug.
“I understand loss too,” he reminded me sadly.
I returned his hug for a brief moment before letting go. “Are these all plans you came up with to deal with losing your sister?” I asked, my voice full of sympathetic sadness.
He nodded, his eyes looking down at the floor sadly has he returned to his previous position on the couch.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Not the first one though. That plan will not work for me. You are very fortunate that it will work for you, should you choose to allow me to help you that way.”
My ears perked up as I came to a sudden realization. “Wait a minute,” I exclaimed standing up in surprise. “You went with Plan B! You made another one of her.”
Chem smiled at me. “In a way I did. In another way, I did not. You do need to remember that I used my sister’s remains. I didn’t take memories out of my head and cram them into the stillborn foal Vinyl’s parents brought to me. But I do agree that I did do something similar to that.”
Now that I understood that Chem had thought most of these plans through enough to use them himself to solve the problem of his own broken heart, I knew that he wasn’t simply pulling these off the top of his head. He would never create a cheap copy of his sister. So if I did decide to let him use Plan B at some point in the future, I would be guaranteed a quality result.
Not that made Plan B feel any better ethically.
“Anyways,” I said as I sat back down. “What is plan C?”
“Plan C,” Chem said slowly and apprehensively. “You’re not going to like plan C. But, it’s probably the healthiest option available to you.”
I raised an eyebrow suspiciously.
“Plan C involves you allowing me to once again enter your mind,” Chem explained. “Instead of copying memories, I would play the part of a therapist. I would find every single part of your mind which still screamed out in pain, and I would silence them.
“To put it another way, I would allow you to move on. To get over her. To no longer care about the curse and be able to live your life in any other way then this endless 'Pursuit of the Magic Bullet' required to return everything to the way that it was before. I could even make you forget the details of your relationship with her entirely, so there would be no chance of this pain ever returning.”
I felt my stomach turn. He was right, that was probably the healthiest way. But it wasn’t the Lyra way.
“Pass?” Chem asked me, looking into my eyes with an understanding grin.
“Pass,” I agreed.
“I knew you’d say that,” Chem laughed, shaking his head slowly. “If there’s one trait I share with mortals, it’s that I absolutely, unequivocally, always, will do everything in my power to get things to go my way. Lucky for you, I’m not a jerk and my way is most always good for you.
“I do have another plan, well, two more plans. But only one of them can be executed right now and would solve the problem right now. Would you like to hear them?”
I nodded twice. “Duh,” I said rolling my eyes. “That’s what we’re here for. Figuring out how you can help me. Um, of course, if you do help me I will absolutely return the favor.”
Chem laughed and flashed me a smile. “You don’t need to do anything for me,” he said simply. “I’m helping you because I understand your pain. Now, Plan D.
“Plan D is one I’m certain you will absolutely object to. It would be either the same thing as A, or B. Except before we enact either of those plans, I would modify your memories so that you would have absolutely no ethical or moral problems with the plan, and could be assured that you go on to live a happy life with either the Extra-Universal Bonbon, or the Clone Bonbon.
“But, as I now know you will object that sort of thing thanks to this conversation, we won’t be doing that. This is my final plan for now. It won’t solve things now, but I guarantee it will speed your plans up quite a bit.”
I laughed and nodded in agreement, sliding forward on the couch somewhat in order to look Chem in the eye.
“You’re damn straight we’re not going with Plan D,” I said shaking my head slowly. “I have already spent thirty years trying to bring her back to me. I don’t mind waiting a little bit longer. Especially, because… Um, well, I have no idea of what to do now that I actually have the crystal.
“I really wasn’t expecting to get that for another year or so. Maybe even five years. And well, that places me pretty far ahead of schedule. I don’t really even know what to do in order to start the next phase.
“I know that I have to find a way to extract a nightmare, but, well, you know…”
Chem frowned sadly. “Yes, I imagine it would be quite hard to do that. And if after thirty years of constant study, you have no idea of even where to begin... Well, it’s safe to say that you’re probably the first person to do this.”
I flinched, recoiling back against the couch cushions. “Sisters! I hope that’s not true. I really hope it’s not true. I’m not sure that I could find a way to do that from complete scratch.”
Chem pursed his lips nervously for a moment.
I raised an eyebrow, both out of curiosity and fear. “What is it?” I asked nervously.
“Well,” Chem began with an awkward and worried look on his face. “You’re also assuming that it’s even possible to extract a Nightmare after it’s applied itself. Could very well be impossible. I really hope it isn’t, but it could be.
“That’s why I told you of the other plans before this one. I want you to know that while it’s very unlikely we’ll succeed using the methods you desire, there’s still a way to get what you want in the end. Even if, well, you object to it.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. It could be impossible, but I don’t give a buck. I’m going to try. And if it’s impossible, it’s impossible. And we’ll learn if it is by hitting that brick wall at full speed,” I said with a grim nod.
Chem cleared his throat and flashed me a smile for a brief moment. “Heh, I like you,” he said shaking his head. “Well then, Miss Heartstrings, the final thing I can do to help you is to work as your lab assistant. Not only can I provide you with a good amount of knowledge that you would otherwise be completely unable to obtain, even if you became besties with your universe’s Chaos God, but that arrangement benefits me as well.
“You see, while your friends and I have decided that this identity of mine will be a chemist, or at least an alchemist, I am not sure exactly which your universe uses, however, I would need a job. What’s more, I need a backstory which explains why I’ve been absent from Vinyl’s life for so long, and why I’ve never been mentioned before. Especially when her friends have frequented her father’s estate and are on friendly terms with him.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much that sounds plausible. Everything will have to be a little bit odd. But one of the least odd things that I can think of would be if I were sent to live in a hospital as we originally decided, and at some point during my life, I vanished. Vinyl’s parents could simply have chosen to not mention me so as to avoid the pain of loss. What’s more, if we say that I am not that much younger than Vinyl, her not remembering me could be as simple as her not having memories from being that young.
“Of course, there’s the matter of how we reunited. I believe that the most plausible explanation we could use is that you found me while looking for information which would be useful to you, on your quest. I came to your home to deliver something and just happened to run into Vinyl when she came over last night.
“The family resemblance was fairly uncanny, so we decided to ask if she had any relatives she was unaware of and it turns out that yes, she did. How does that sound to you?”
I took a deep breath and shook my head slowly. Sherbert really did have a point. A big one.
“You are seriously, really, honestly, scarily good at coming up with characters,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I’m kind of starting to see why Sherbet was terrified that you were deceiving us.”
Chem’s mouth stretched out into an incredibly wide grin. “Heh, well, I am unfathomably old by even your gods’ standards. And for the entirety of my existence, my sister and I have essentially been role-playing. This is what I do. I make up people to be and then be them. Though, it is weird not being a villain...”
“Makes sense,” I agreed with a smile. “Though, that does make me wonder... What is it like to play O&O for eighty and a half quintillion years?”
Chem snickered and shook his head. “Pretty lame really,” he said with a shrug.
I felt my heart fall sadly. The poor guy! He had to just be so bored of it all and-
“I mean, I think you’d agree that no one can actually play a good game in just an hour,” he said flashing me a wink. “Short game sessions are no fun at all.”
I recoiled in pure horror, my ears falling flat against my head as my eyes widened. “Y-you’re THAT old? That feels like a bucking HOUR to you?”
Chem nodded. “Mmmmhm,” he chuckled. “So! I take it you like my plan? Both my plan to have a plausible way to exist here and also to help you, of course.”
“Yeah!” I exclaimed smiling happily. “Yeah, I really do. It’s solid, and any questions people have about it will have mundane answers. It’s a good plan. As for helping me, please! Please do! I need all the help I can get.”
Chem nodded and stood up, walking over to me once more.
“In that case, Miss Heartstrings, I offer you my services as an assistant until such a time as we have solved your problem in a way which satisfies you,” Chem promised, giving me a polite bow. “Shall we get started? I imagine you are eager to continue making progress.”
I laughed and stood up. “You bet I’m eager!” I agreed. “But it is going to take you a pretty long time to get familiar with all my work.”
Chem’s ears flopped backward as his eyes widened in mock horror. “Oh no!” He fake-gasped. “It may very well take several days on your timescale!”
I blinked, then facehooved. “Time... Time just doesn’t matter much to you does it?”
Chem laughed again. “No, not really,” he admitted. “It’s experiences that I care about. I don’t value the day, I value what happens during that day. Please, let’s begin. I want to help you. You seem like a fun person. The kind I would enjoy playing with. But you’re super down right now. Let’s fix that so we can have some fun.”
I nodded in agreement and walked around Chem as I made my way to my bedroom door. It was still open from when Sherbert had examined my notes earlier, allowing me to simply walk inside.
“Everything is in here,” I said as I took my seat at my desk.
After sitting down, I used my magic to float a basic primer on Dream Magic off my bookshelf so I could hold it out to Chem as he entered the room. “We’ll get you started on the basics. Go ahead and read this. I’m going to work on understanding exactly what my last experiment means in terms of the large-scale stuff.
“Once you finish the book, let me know and I’ll get you on the next one. As soon as you know everything I know about this stuff, then I’ll share my notes with you and we can hash things out.”
Chem nodded slowly. “Okay, we could do that. Or, you could let me take all the knowledge from your mind and save me the reading time.”
“I’d prefer it if you got it from the book,” I said with an embarrassed smile.
“Ah, sanctity of the mind and all that. I completely understand,” Chem said as he sat down on the edge of my bed, the book floating over to him and opening seemingly of its own accord.
“Actually, I’m not entirely sure if I understand everything in these books correctly. I would much rather have somebody on my team who had a different perspective than me, rather than a clone of me.” I corrected.
Chem looked up at me, seemingly quite impressed.
“Lyra,” he said. “I think that you and I are going to work very well together.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I agreed as we both turned to our mutual work.
I had an assistant. This wasn’t going to take long at all.
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"BUCK IT! We're going with Plan Q!"
"Plan Q? What happened to Plan A through P?"
"It's best you don't know..."
When all else fails find an extra-dimensional being that can solve it for you
8499345 This will never have any consequences.
8499349 Full-Life Consequences...
You know I can understand where Chem is coming from if your in an environment that doesn't promote at least feeling content then your work is going to suffer, so having a nice looking place even if its just temporary does make sense.
If I was in this position I would have taken plan A, I would have found a Bonbon who had nothing tieing her to that world, brought her here, also gotten her turned into a vampire, then when the curse lifts we can start a herd, maybe we can even get another Lyra as well.
I'm just waiting for Chem and Sky to meet and be like;
Meep you damn tease, I know there is more coming, I know you have some plot twist waiting in the wings, we can only get so hard damn it!
Not sure what to say about this chapter still potentially scarey.
8499349
I sense great foreshadowing in that statement.
8499658
Not ANOTHER Lyra! We have enough already!
Would love me some more SnekBon, though
8499430
What about... Half-Life ones?
Plan E, by far. All of the others were really just patches over the problem, and they really do need to figure out the void/dream connection. Why does a construct for safely containing mage dreams invoke the void and either generate hostile sapient entities and/or let them leak into the universe? That seems like a big deal. Working with Chem as Lyra’s assistant is probably the best bet for figuring all this out.
8499827 "It's a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my sister to defeat the enemies!"
If there's only one Chem in the multiverse, what about his sister, Vinyl? I feel like as a canon show character there's probably a lot of her floating around. Maybe this is the only one with a "voidsoul"? Or she's the only one within Meep's multiverse and we're not counting the other realities.
I think that's how Sam & Max: Season 3 ended.
8499251
"But where could we find a Rastafarian drum orangutan at this time of night?"