insertmeathere | And once again the day is saved...or is it?

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And once again the day is saved...or is it?

GRATS MEATSHIP!

You saved the day! Yes you! The Worlds have been put back right and all is well with the universe! You're the big damn hero!

...except you're the only one who remembers any of it happening.

Did it really happen? Have you gone insane? Will people believe you?

And after your experiences will they noticed how much you've changed?

More importantly when the world was put back, was it put back correctly?

Step 1: Post with a short description of your characters world now that it's been brought back/reborn/ect as well as your character interacting with it. Maybe they just woke up in their own bed for the first time, maybe they've been back for a couple weeks and are still adjusting? Also how long were you gone from your world? Seconds? Days? Years?

Step B: RANDOMLY, someone from the meatship appears in your world instead of their own. What a crazy freak accident!!! Well they may be stuck there, hope you can help them adjust.

Step C3 : Maybe things aren't exactly how you remember? Maybe things just seem a little...unsettling ~~AHHH you're in the matrix!!!~~ Maybe the OHM come back, ~~Or maybe it's all inside the snowglobe of an autistic child~~ ~~Insert Tommy Westphall reference here?~~I dunno if you enjoy this idea make some drama for yourself my amount of investment in this silly meme is already running out.

Step ?: ???

Step$: Cake

Note: Back in step B the "Someone" can also be more then a couple someone's if you're that organized.

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The war was over. The Ohm were sealed away, and all the worlds restored. Anwei was back with the Vizsnunishne fleet. Back with Horanckk. Back with her AI, with her friends, with her work and her plans, a thousand warships between her any anyone that might wish her harm. Everything was back to the way it should be.

She didn't believe it. She talked to Horanckk and wondered: who was manipulating who. Was it he who had freed her from Fle, or her that had broken his programming chains and let him escape?

She laughed with her friends and thought: would they really be her friends, if she was not the famous Abomination now calmed and tamed? Could she make friends by herself, without her AI's help?

She hovered, weightless, in the white-enameled cubicle she called home, watching with too-intense interest a wall-sized screen covered with dancing formulas and liquid flowing graphs. Prices, population flows, legal changes, rebellions, campaigns, rumors: everything weighed and counted and averaged, and when the graphs hit the right spot, she would execute her plans. Pay at last for the lives she'd taken, by doing her damnedest to take down the Ninth Empire.

But - was that what she had decided? Or had someone or someones else made the choice, biased her numbers, and pushed her out front to be a target, again? Just like someone had pulled her from the roiling energies of a collapsing dimension, made her fight and kill for their unknown reasons, then vanished away again?

Howard, on the other hand, has seemingly forsaken conspiracy theories and questioning in favor of accepting that the universe is weird beyond his ken or control and will seek every opportunity to throw him off-balance. Which is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he appears out of thin air in Anwei's universe.

After checking to make sure he has all his limbs, he peeks his head around the cubicle wall. "Hey, Maw."

She yipped in surprise, and a chromed yellow sphere surged off her workstation and darted towards Howard.

"Stop!" she said, and it paused, hovering and buzzing like a peculiarly wingless bee.

"Howard? How did you get here?"

A large green head with elaborate metal-inlaid tusks peered over the cubicle wall, but retreated at Anwei's distracted wave. Her coworkers were used to the occasional odd visitor showing up.

He jumps back from Horanckk, startled. "Would you believe me if I said I have no freaking idea? Did Zou show up, by the way? It could be like an Epicurea reunion."

He casts a suspicious look at the place Anwei's coworker vanished behind.

"Well, that's Stacy for you," she grumbled. "Oh, Howard? Please be introduced to Horanckk, my AI."

"Delighted, I'm sure," the yellow ball said in a slightly surly tone, retreating back to the monitor where it perched.

"And I haven't seen Zouichi. And, oh, oh rot Howard," she twined her arms together (alien sign language for 'I'd hug you if you'd let me'), "I'm glad you made it out alive, at least."

Then she threw her arms wide and laughed. "So! Welcome to the Hand of Friendship, finest ship in the Sissies fleet. And knowing you, we can skip the grand tour and go straight to a big, free meal, right?"

"Hi Horanckk. Anwei never shuts up about you, by the way. I'm surprised she can breathe without you coaching her," he says, entering the cubicle entirely.

"Me too. Seriously. I thought for sure I'd be a sacrificial lamb." And he's glad she isn't dead too. For as strange as their relationship can be, he's very rarely wished outright harm on her, and certainly not recently. "You're seriously called the Sissies?"

He raises an eyebrow. "You don't mean that in a Soylent Green way, right? Because if you don't, I'm so up for food."

"Always nice to be appreciated," Horanckk said a little too lightly.

"That's not fair," Anwei objected, reaching out to take him on her fingers; he rolled and around her hand, paying no attention to gravity. "You were constantly in my thoughts, and I never knew when somone I talked to might mention your name in the right place and attract your attention. I had to spread the word."

She laughed. "Well, we did make sacrifices. All of us. And Sissies is easier to pronounce than Vizsnunishne - and people still call us sissies, for not taking hostages or slaves."

She pushed out of the cubicle, gesturing to a sign on the wall: a variety of alien mouths and pores and mandibles, and an arrow, apparently indicating THIS WAY TO FOOD. "I don't know what Soylent Green is. But I suppose you'd prefer no talking-meat, or maybe no meat at all?"

He feels a pang of jealousy looking at Anwei with Horanckk, her touching him and so freely affectionate with him. He's not even sure what he's jealous of. It's not like he ever had that sort of relationship with anybody.

"Why not just call yourself the Viznus...nevermind, that's hard enough to say anyway." He inspects the sign. "Nothing that could have talked to me before it died."

She had never really asked if there was someone in particular that Howard had been looking for, when he headed home. But now that he was here instead of home, well, she would have to see what she could do.

She subvocalized a series of commands to Horanckk, and with his usual grumplings he activated another part of himself (the spheres were only focuses of his attention his code moved freely between the ships, looking out of every camera, listening at every microphone. He was everywhere, keeping her safe) and got to work.

"Fair enough. And you'd prefer to eat under gravity, I suppose?" The room she took them to was large, cafeteria-like, with metal plates and utensils that clicked magnetically against the tables when you dropped them. There was slices of something like chicken, heaps of steamed purple vegetables, bread rolls, oil and salt, and glasses of water or a frothy yellow drink that smelled like a butterscotch milkshake with a tinge of lemongrass. Anwei took a seat, and a fruit from the bowl at the table, and invited Howard to help himself.

Howard's on that food like white on proverbial rice. He at least makes an effort not to eat so fast he chokes or load his plate to overflowing. It does a marvelous job of assuaging that ever-present fear that wherever he ends up will be bereft of food.

"So how're you adjusting to normal, non-Ohmmy life?" he asks through a mouthful of the vegetables. Table manners were a bit out of vogue in the FAYZ, and he never bothered to pick them back up on Stacy.

Compared to mercenaries who actually extruded their stomach onto their plate, dissolved everything organic, and then horked it all back down, Howard's eating is a masterwork of delicacy and grace.

Also, Anwei can be pretty sloppy herself. She sticks with just the fruit for now, though.

"Well, the Daligig or the Tapestry or whatever did a good job of cleaning up after themselves. There's new legends, about a ship full of heroes and villains, but nothing concrete. No proof that there ever were Ohm, or Stacy.."

Her mouth tightened; she'd tried to find Stacy, to no avail. After all that had been done to her, body and mind and soul, she of all people deserved a safe haven and rest. But there was no trace.

"Aside from that, things are pretty normal here. The Empire continues to fester, we continue to work around the edges, helping out, cauterizing where we can. Horanckk predicts that we might be able to make a grand attack and shove the whole thing over in seven years or so. Speaking of Horanckk..."

A string of what looked like golden marbles was rolling down the tables, snaking along under its own power. She picked up the first marble and tossed it absently; the rest formed a little circle, seeming to peer like gleaming eyes at everything around them.

"Howard, would you like a friend?"

"I think she fiddled with the timelines again, before she disappeared. For me the war ended fifteen minutes ago." Which means he got fifteen minutes to adjust to the idea that he was still, thank God, the FAYZ's first refugee.

He has no idea where Albert is and no intention to go out of his way to find out.

"No one's tried to lock you up?" He speaks those words carefully. He knows Anwei can be weird about that, probably something in her past he doesn't know.

He pauses, takes a breath, examines the marble in her hand, sucks the tip of his fork. "Will it hurt me?"

"Fifteen min-, yes, that sounds like fiddling all right. I've been here twenty nine days." Her mission to Earth was 'over', although she didn't remember most. Apparently the man she'd gone to hire had gracefully refused, and that was that.

She wondered: what had happened during that lost time? Had she even lost it, or had Stacy just written it out and put it in her head?

"Lock me up? Oh, therapy. No, we have this Fleet tradition, truth-bound telepaths? Anyone who's wearing a ribbon tied on their arm like that is one." She points to a tall purple-and blue fellow with a perpetually solemn face; an elaborate rosette of ribbon was high up on his left arm. "I went in and told my story to the doctors, and they had a telepath on hand to tell them that yes, it was all true - at least to me. And since I could testify that I wasn't going to do anything dangerous like steal a ship and go fight the Ohm or anything, I just - went back on duty, after a few days' rest." A few days of getting Horanckk back up to speed, and that had been amazing.

"No. This is an AI, like Horanckk. He - or she, if that's what she decides to be - can watch over you while you sleep, can tell you if people are whispering behind your back. That casing can be powered by anything electrical, even, say, an electrified wall." She smiled a little nervously. "I - if you want to stay here, that's fine with me. I can get you hired into a safe position, no problem. But - if you are taken away, it would be nice if you have someone to take with you. So you wouldn't be alone."

"That's it? You're not getting hounded by scientists or reporters? This is just...normal?"

...In an odd way, after everything he's lived through, all the sheer insanity he's seen and participated in, Howard could almost get used to this. He's not going to try and fool himself into thinking he can seamlessly slip back into society.

"I don't know where else to go, Anwei." And he doesn't. He magically appeared here. He doesn't know anything about crossing dimensions or anything of that kind. He wouldn't know where to start about leaving this universe. "I don't...if I disappear, there's no guarantee this'll come with me."

And how many times if he supposed to get close to someone just to have them ripped away?

"Reporters." She made a little noise in the back of her throat. "I assure you, we are very good about not letting them get in the front door. The media system in the Empire is - aggressively toxic. No, we don't want them here, so they stay out.

"And any scientist who showed up and said 'Hey, I hear you were involved with aliens who can reverse time and dissolve dimensions, mind if I poke at you so I can figure out how to do the same thing?' would get thrown into therapy pretty fast."

There were other Sissies who'd gotten lost in time and space and then returned to the Fleet; if anything it was a promotional tool, that people who couldn't necessarily prove exactly where they got their training could hire on. She'd already seen Howard's cleverness in action; she was certain that he would do well here. Although the truth-bound telepaths might throw him off a bit.

"I suppose I could try to return you to the Earth I visited, the one in this dimensions. There were no giant domes there, that I heard of. If you stay here, you'll have to learn Galactic Standard; I can speak English, but that's rare. This could help you learn," she said, indicating the AI marble. "And you came here in your clothes, and the oxygen in your brain didn't vanish when you jumped or you'd be dead. Hmm." She made a note to Horanckk to dig up a backpack for Howard, and stuff it with food bars and trade goods.

"I just - I don't want you to feel that I led you on, if I offer you a place and then you get dragged away. This is the best thing I can think of to offer," she said, letting the marble roll down her arm to join the others on the table.

"And if they don't, you make sweaters out of their skin?" he jokes. Although whatever, he wouldn't be surprised if that was an option here. That said, he can see why Anwei chose this life to escape to. It's quieter, more secluded, nothing like the trainwreck that was Epicurea. It's clean and efficient, instead of tacky and lavish, bar the amount of food.

"I can pick up a language. I don't really see what the point of showing up on Earth is if it's not my Earth. It's not like I'll know anyone." And as suspect as the kindness of others is, at least the promise of it is more to go on than trying his luck with total strangers. "Thanks for the mental image. I'll try not to picture myself suffocating from the inside before I go to bed tonight."

He nods. "It won't be your fault if Stacy jerks me around. I won't wig out on you like I did that one time." Not that he'd be around to do so anyway.

He reaches and picks up the AI marble she offered.

"They don't usually send organics; instead it's these little nattering probes that snipe at you, How are you adjusting to your new life you murderer, and, How do you think your best friend feels about what you did and here's footage of her learning about it for the first time (they have holoprojectors too), and so on. If they're not sentient, we strip their code and send them back programmed to make nothing but fart noises, or something."

Anwei's home planet made Epicurea look like a pastoral paradise; anything would be an improvement over Fle.

"Great! I can set you up in the new-hire program, they've got a great languages program. Room and board, paid vacation time, free health care mental and physical, and a pretty good salary too."

She held her palms out. "I deserved that wigging. I'd underestimated how ruthless Stacy would be in testing me. I was too used to AIs who were always on my side."

The marble between Howard's fingers seemed to hum, and the rest of the marbles slid across the table and up his chest and arm to form a bracelet of spheres on his wrist.

"Hi!" the marble said chattily, in a synthesized voice that sounded neither male or female. "What's your name?"

"God, that sounds like something you'd want to take a baseball bat to in the first five minutes. Maybe you could reprogram them and use them as morale-crushing weapons against the opposition."

He nods. "Great. So what exactly do you do here, besides set up different empires to fall and get replaced by other awful leaders?"

He makes a note of the mental health coverage. Maybe it's about time he looks into that. Just in case.

He shakes his head. She's still convinced Stacy was testing her, that it was all on her. Naturally. He supposes it's comforting that some egocentrism doesn't change.

He jerks his wrist, surprised. "Um, Howard. Yours?"

He hopes it's something he can pronounce. If not the little marble's getting called Shooter.

"If we do that, the news agencies file suit for theft against us," she said snidely, rolling her eyes counterclockwise. "You get inured to propaganda at high enough doses. It would probably be more efficient to duplicate them and have them infiltrate the battlefield, and then blow up at a critical moment."

A modern battlefield, with multiple AIs predicting where every person would move, battle robots moving at random to avoid those predictions, and organics doing what they did best - grab fortune by the tail and twist - was quite busy enough.

"Well on the grand scale of things, everyone would like the Ninth Empire out of here. We mostly stay at the fringes, picking at them. Ship escort duties, pulling the occasional tyrant out of his shell, training military units from various planets, AI rescue and subversion. Distributing our medical database. Aiding any rebels we find that actually have a decent plan. And most of all, building up a good name for ourselves. So that if we do have to expand, take on a more active role in opposing the Empire, people will know we can be trusted."

"Oh, I don't have a name," the marble burbled. "I was just created about thirteen hundred seconds ago. But I know all about Galactic Standard language and how to teach it, and all about the Vizsnunishne, and a lot about this universe, and anything I don't know I can find out for you." It sounded remarkably jolly for a newborn. "What do you think would be a good name?"

"I don't think anyone ever gets totally inured to someone pushing their buttons," he says, but he lets it go.

He has no intentions of ending up on a battlefield. The thought of one worries him, although he supposes if Anwei's an accountant, it won't be too hard to find a way to make himself useful in a non-combative way. He could work in a medical set-up again, or maybe pick up enough skills to be a mechanic. He does have a good mind for problem-solving.

"Sounds nice and quiet enough. Are you actually planning on expanding or leaving that as a just in case?"

Okay, the marble's definitely getting named like the ones he used to have as a kid - which feels such a long time ago, even though it's only been a handful of years. "Shooter. And um. Okay."

"We've got some rather nice propaganda ourselves. Any interest in film making? Or doing interviews? A fleet this size, there's lots of things that will keep you in space and safe."

She usually went on missions only for publicity purposes, or because her pantry needed restocking.

"I," she hesitated. "If we're to survive, we have to expand. The Empire is only getting bigger. Any century now, the Living People could decide to change their policies and expand off of Fle, and when they happens they'll be infinitely harder to stop. I - thought of some things on Stacy. I need to test them. But if they work, maybe the Empire can be brought down without dragging down too many worlds with it."

"Shooter! I can shoot!" the marble says delightedly; the spheres around Howard's wrist promptly leap into the air, go zipping around the room fast enough to crack the sound barrier, and then return to land against his skin as lightly as feathers.

Congratulations, Howard. You now have the equivalent of a gun that has bullets that can be used multiple times. And can go around corners. And can think.

God help anyone who pisses you off.

"Not really, but more interest in that than any situation where I'd get shot at."

He nods. He's going to have a lot to learn about this world and the politics of it, but he's not especially invested in who wins as long as he survives. Like always.

He raises his eyebrows. "Well, I hope you don't have to. I'm not big on shooting people. And uh, don't shoot me."

"You'll get a list of the current open positions once you get through the new-hire program. And don't worry, if something doesn't appeal to you right away you can wait for something to open - or create your own job position, if you think there's a niche that needs filling."

She was cynically certain that before anyone knew it, Howard would have not only found a niche, but fortified it.

"I won't shoot unless you ask," Shooter promised. He was a very adaptable AI, and it was so interesting for him to meet someone from a whole new dimension, and he knew all the mistakes that Horanckk had made with Anwei and he wasn't going to make any of them with Howard. This was going to be fun!

Something that looked like a cross between a fetal pig and a caterpillar was lumbering across the cafeteria towards them, a datapad in one puffy hoof hand. It came to a halt behind Anwei and wheezed, "Special privileges are very nice, but could you please file at least one of the forms before materializing a new recruit out of thin air?"

"No advance warning, Selm," Anwei answered cheerily. "I'll get everything set up. Trust me."

If a niche doesn't exist, Howard will find a way to create one.

"Thanks, Maw." He means it. Even if Stacy rips him out of this reality, at least he'll be set here.

He gives a tentative wave and wan smile at Anwei's coworker. For all he knows, that's a hugely offensive gesture in fetal piggapillar culture. But he's always been good at adapting, and this should be no exception.

Stress-testing the Sissies job hierarchy would be a marvelous use of Howard's many skillsets. So long as he didn't try to take Anwei's job.

"I don't like to see talent wasted."

The mercenaries were used to working with Anwei 'Zipperface' Ayles among a hundred other species; Howard's gestures were not going to alarm them. Selm snorted again, and handed Anwei the datapad; she took it and extended it towards Howard. "Here. Standard new-hire contract."

"Ooh, I can translate! I can! See?" Shooter leaped onto the datapad and rolled once around the screen, and the text on it jumped from spiky alien letters to standard English.

1) I, _____, agree to follow the prime law of the Vizsnunishne while training in the new hire program. I understand that I may be subject to other laws as I advance in the program. If I leave the program, I am entitled to food, water, air, and transport to the nearest planet compatible to my species.
2) The prime law of the Vizsnunishne is: Don't be a dumbass.

(Signature)____________________

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And once again the day is saved...or is it?

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