Mathématique: Astria Porta: Expansion Pack

Dr. Levant looks at Colonel Danning, his whole mind burning behind his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says softly.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Astria Porta: Expansion Pack

Eli would legit like to know where the heck people come up with names for these places. Because seriously.

“Your SAT scores are excellent.”

Seriously. “Golden Tree Tutoring: Where Teaching Meets Learning” is fronting as a portal to hell, as featured in the pretty-much-never-to-be-exceeded-in-terms-of-ironic-excellence TV series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Except, this time, instead of hell containing demons and vampires and maybe the odd zombie or two (somehow putting zombies in a hell dimension has never sat quite right with him and so perhaps he shouldn’t conflate hell and the brain-eating undead; it sends his inherent science-sense tingling) GTT:WTML seems to offer evidence that hell consists of arithmetic without theoretical underpinnings and memorization of words without comprehension for eternity.

“Um, yeah, thanks.” He studies the poster on the wall behind his interviewer. It shows a child looking rapturously at an unremarkable and therefore probably nefarious butterfly. Her mother stands at her shoulder, smiling with glazed pride. 

“But I see you left MIT after only one semester.” The interviewer adjusts her glasses and tucks a gray-brown strand of hair behind one ear. “Why is that?”

“I had some, uh, family problems.” Eli tries not to fidget with his pencil or think about anything in particular, especially not Butterfly of the Damned on the wall over there. “My mom was sick. She is sick.”

GTT:WTML should undergo a ritualistic renaming in honor of the suffering it’s inflicting on Eli Wallace. It shall henceforth be known as God Tortures the Talented: Why is This My Life.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Wallace.” His interviewer really does look sorry. “Do you have any plans to resume your college education?”

“I do,” he says. “Sure. Yes. I mean, I definitely do. I’m just looking for something in the short term that might help make ends meet. For me. And my mom.”

The interviewer gives him a look of melting sympathy. It softens her uncool-librarian edges.

Eli tries to look sad.

Truth be told, he’s looking for a job that’ll fund his subscription fee to the MMORPG associated with Wormhole X-treme. His mom doesn’t consider “computer games” to be a necessary category of expenditure for an “unemployed young man,” even if that young man happens to be a gaming prodigy of the type unseen for Generations upon Generations of The World of Men.

“Normally we don’t hire non-college grads,” the interviewer says, “but we could make an exception in your case, given your circumstances. Advertise you as an MIT student on break.”

“Yes!” Eli, genuinely enthusiastic about his coming cash flow, tries not to look at the too-proud mom and the creepy butterfly on the wall behind his interviewer because he does not need that thing in his life right now; it’s stealing his positive energy. “That would be awesome. Also, it’s true.”

His interviewer gives him a look, a little edge back in those eyes.

Oversold it.

She backpedals. “How would you feel about a trial period?”

How he feels about a trial period depends on whether he’ll be paid during that trial period.

“Of course,” he says. “Very reasonable. But, like I said, I’m looking to make ends meet and I do have another interview lined up later this week, so—”

“Is it with ‘Growing Tree’?” she asks sharply.

HA.

No one would name their tutoring center “Golden Tree” unless “Growing Tree” was already taken and they were bitter like days-old coffee.

“Yeah,” he says, casually. “How’d you know?”

She hisses through her teeth. “Call it a hunch.” She looks up at him, knife-sharp and determined. “You’ll start at twenty-five an hour. High school math.”

“Awesome.” Eli lets his real enthusiasm and relief show. “No problem. I mean—thank you.”

“You’re welcome. We’ll be in touch regarding student names and locations. Sessions are held at a library close to the student’s home or school.”

“Great,” Eli says. “I look forward to it.”

“You’ll have a performance review in three weeks.” She stands to shake his hand. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Wallace.”

“Thanks!” He grins at her.

He leaves GTT:WTML and steps into the twilight of late July with the quiet ring of a bell. Even though the sun has already set, the day is punishingly hot. Like freaking Tatooine, rather than Boston, except for all the humidity and the red brick and the asphalt and the lack of Tusken Raiders.

He’s halfway to the bus stop when his phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and glances at the caller ID.

“Luke Skywalker,” Eli says, “here to rescue you.”

“A childish fantasy epic just called,” Rob replies, “it wants its 1D hero back.”

“Oh yeah, like Kirk is soooooo multidimensional.”

“You get it?” Rob asks in a distracted, flat tone accompanied by furious keyboard clicks and taps that tells Eli he’s eyes deep in an intricate game environment.

“I got it,” Eli confirms.

“Good, because you’re not gonna believe what I’m about to tell you.” The clicks stop as Rob pauses the game.

Eli gets chills, despite the warmth of the evening. Chills of ominous, awesome, epic portent.

“New Wormhole X content dropped,” Rob says. “Two hours ago.”

“What?!” Eli breathes.

“It’s a thirty-eight minute cinematic,” Rob says. “Just discovered. Hidden after the party at the end of Replicon 2.”

“Replicon 2!!!” Eli shouts into his phone.

“Yeah man. Replicon 2. At the party. You go into Dr. Levant’s office and—”

“I’m dying,” Eli breathes. “My soul is leaving my body. Please don’t tell me; let’s watch together. I’ll come to your dorm.”

“I got boxed wine,” Rob offers, “and the Lord of Chords is walking the halls of the APC, looking for quest hooks. 

“I’ll pick up some Cheez-its from the Coop on my way,” Eli replies.

“There’s more,” Rob says. 

“Duh,” Eli replies.

“Word is, an expansion pack is queued up to springboard off the back of this,” Rob says. “This thing is the real deal. There’s already speculation it’s gonna require learning a language.”

Eli stops dead on the sidewalk. “Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait. An Earth language?”

“No, think, like, J.R.R. Tolkien and Elvish,” Rob says. “Early access opens this fall.”

“God I love this franchise,” Eli breathes. “This fall? This one? That’s so soon! Do we have a name?”

“We do,” Rob says, “but it gives nothing away.”

“Don’t make me beg.” Eli breaks into a jog as he sees the lights of the approaching bus in the darkening air.

“Mathématique,” Rob replies. “They’re calling it Mathématique.”

“Coolness,” Eli breathes, envisioning the weaves and webs and intricate braids of a canon sprawling from show to game and back again. “What are the pre-reqs for the entry point?”

“Sacred shrine of Kadara needs to be in the hands of Grell’s people. Dr. Levant needs to have faced Hades. The Replicons need to be eliminated,” Rob says.

“That’s far,” Eli breathes.

“It’s for the gaming elite,” Rob replies. “That’s why they’re dropping it this way. Maths isn’t for casual players. Just get here, will you?”

“On my way!” Eli ends the call and sprints for the bus, waving an arm.

Rob’s dorm room is stacked with Comp Sci textbooks and plastered wall to wall with Tolkien decor: oversized posters that list every Elvish word ever defined in size 8 font; maps of Middle Earth; maps of Númenor; the family trees of the Men of the West dating back to the First Age. He’s got a bass in one corner, three boxes of Supercos T-shirts, and, next to his bed, is a respectable stack of Wormhole X-treme comics.

Eli’s prying the guy away from his High Fantasy Roots with nothing but enthusiasm and mathematical leverage, ruthlessly applied.

“Ugh.” Eli’s torn, as usual, between amusement and disapproval as Rob presses a goblet of Two Buck Chuck into his hand. “You’re in college. You’re supposed to be drinking forties.”

“Bring ‘em next time, and we’ll see,” Rob fires back.

“You can’t drink a forty out of a goblet.”

“One can drink anything out of a goblet.” Rob takes a sip of cheap wine and inclines his head in a way that’s probably supposed to suggest the Heart of Elvendom on Earth.

Eli shakes his box of Cheez-Its. “Let’s go.”

Rob shuts off the lights. Eli drags a beanbag close enough to Rob’s dorm room desk that he has a good view of the screen. The game is paused, and Robyn Fretboard, Lord of Chords hovers in the doorway to Dr. Levant’s office. Light spills into the hall, soft and gold.

Rob settles himself in his chair, unplugs his headset, turns the volume up, and reaches for the third of four canopic jars on the archeologist’s shelf. As soon as he touches it, a cut-scene begins.

Dr. Levant’s day-spectrum lights shine on the white braids that adorn the head of the Lord of Chords. Robyn’s clawed fingertips scrape over the stone surface of the jar. He opens the lid and pulls out something wrapped in linen. Carefully, his fingertips separate the strips of time-stained cloth to reveal—

“Is that a video camera?” Eli breathes.

“Perfectly preserved,” Robyn Fretboard murmurs.

He opens the camera, and the POV zooms in on the screen in his hand.

Dr. Levant sits alone in his office, a thick and ancient tome open in front of him, written in Serpentish. Beyond the open doorframe, the iconic soundtrack to the party at the end of Replicon 2 plays, full of joy and dropped bass.

The archeologist looks up at the open door, as though wistfully contemplating joining the celebrations, but his gaze drops to the text in front of him and he flips a page. 

An illustration of Helios dominates the frame. The Serpentis False God is backed by the sun, wearing his ceremonial robes and headdress. In his hands—

Rob makes a small sound.

“Oh my god,” Eli breathes. “That’s a Power Stone.”

Dr. Levant rises from his seat, the book in both hands. He tears out of his office. “Stacey!” he shouts. “Staaaaacey!!!”

The scene changes to the Level 27 Briefing Room, deep in the APC. The Core Four sit around the conference table. The lights shine off Grell’s metallic brand and off the brunette hair of Major Stacey Monroe. Colonel Danning sits at the head of the table. Dr. Levant, next to him, spins the open volume so the colonel can study it.

“That’s—” Colonel Danning makes his trademark dramatic pause, eyes gleaming, “that’s a Power Stone.”

“Yes,” Dr. Levant says. “A Power Stone. On Earth. On the Giza Plateau, in fact, in 3000 B.C.E. In the hands of Helios.”

“The Lost City of Prometheus could use one of these,” Major Monroe says.

“Indeed,” Grell agrees.

“Where is it now?” Colonel Danning asks.

“Oh, uh,” Dr. Levant says, with his trademark understatement, “no idea.”

“No idea? I thought this meeting was supposed to be about getting our hands on it.”

“It is.” Dr. Levant smiles his trouble-maker smile.

Colonel Danning looks into his face, drawing on the eight years of camaraderie, of shared peril, of pain and loss and triumph and—

“No,” Colonel Danning says. “Absolutely not.”

 “We know exactly where and when it is. We have a time-traveling ship. I speak Old Egyptian well enough to get by. And, most importantly, Helios doesn’t know what he has. We can take it without affecting the timeline!”

Colonel Danning looks to Stacey Monroe. “You’re on board with this?”

Major Monroe meets Colonel Danning’s eyes with a look of quiet longing. “I worry about temporal integrity, yes. But Daryl’s technically correct. It’s feasible. And a Power Stone may be the only thing that can save Prometheus from certain destruction at the hands of the Ghoul Host.”

Colonel Danning sighs, looking down at the etched image of Helios. “I’m supposed to be running this place, not tryin’ to pull off some harebrained temporal heist.”

“One last trip,” Dr. Levant says, the words full of promise.

“The integrity of the timeline has to be our top priority,” Stacey says, and the camera lingers on her as the line lands.

Eli watches, clammy fingers clamped around Rob’s goblet, as the trip to the Giza Plateau unfolds. The team joins up with a group of local supplicants. They make it inside the Temple of Helios, where Grell conceals himself in an elaborate headdress to steal the Power Stone.

As they trek back through the sands, something unknots in Eli’s chest. It’ll be all right. This is just backstory for a plot-critical Power Stone. Isn’t it?

But it’s been a while since any content was released with the Core Four actors.

He glances at his watch. Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes out of thirty-eight.

His heart speeds up.

Sure enough, as the team rounds the last dune they see a windstorm has blown an impossible architecture of sand over the contours of the invisible ship. The sand-etched vessel is surrounded by Serpentis Shock Troopers.

“We can take ‘em,” Danning says, pulling his sidearm.

“No!” Major Monroe reaches for his gun, her eyes full of despair. “Sir. We can’t. We have no way of knowing how such an act would affect the timeline.”

The camera pans past Grell’s expression of concern to settle on Dr. Levant. There’s a quiet resolve on his face. It’s the same expression he made when he faced his own death on Trigara, when he walked into the Spirit Realm after the Replicon version of Stacey Monroe stabbed him in the heart.

“I don’t care,” Danning says, his weapon at his shoulder, his stance ready.

Dr. Levant looks at Colonel Danning, his whole mind burning behind his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says softly.

And, like always, Danning stops. Waits. Listens.

“We’ve succeeded.” Dr. Levant looks at the Power Stone in Grell’s hands. “We’ve accomplished our mission. We’ve saved the Lost City.” The words are hopeful, but a tear runs down his cheek as he looks at his team.

“What?” Danning demands, impatient and frightened.

“All we need to do is bury the stone,” Dr. Levant says. “It’ll stay on Earth. Helios will never take it. Three thousand years from now, I’ll find the proof that it’s here. We’ll scan for it. We’ll find it. Where we’d buried it. And our future selves won’t need to come on this mission.”

“But the ship,” Major Monroe whispers.

“All it’ll ever be is an invisible box.” Dr. Levant looks to the Serpentis troopers. “Colonel Danning is the only one who can deactivate the cloak. Open it. Fly it. Make it work.”

“But Daryl,” Danning says. “What about us?”

Dr. Levant gives Danning a look full of compassion.

“No,” Danning whispers. “No.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s the only way,” Major Monroe whispers. A tear escapes the corner of her eye and shines in the sun of the Giza Plateau. “We have to stay. For the rest of our lives.”

“Oh god,” Eli whispers, his throat tight. “They’re not really doing this, are they?”

Rob takes a sip from his elven goblet as the bright desert cuts to an Egyptian night. “I dunno, man. I think they are.”

Colonel Danning paces a restless circle around the crackling fire. Dr. Levant, Major Monroe, and Grell sit in silence.

“There’s gotta be a way to take the Timeship back. Maybe if we wait a few years, Helios will get bored of poking it with stuff, and just—abandon it.”

“Maybe,” Major Monroe says, but her voice is raw. Like she’s been crying for hours.

“Given we know that Helios lived for approximately ten thousand years,” Dr. Levant begins.

“I don’t wanna hear it, Daryl!” Danning shouts into the Egyptian night. “What kind of life is this gonna be? Grell can’t show his face! Let alone there’s no one to maintain his machinery in a place like this! What’s gonna happen when his power source goes? What about Stacey?? She’s—” Danning looks away. “She’s supposed to marry that idiot cop. Sorry Stacey, no offense. You want her to live here forever? Ancient Egypt isn’t exactly an easy place to get by as a single woman with a background in astrophysics.”

“I know that,” Dr. Levant says softly.

“It’s not his fault.” Major Monroe wipes her face. “We knew this was a possibility.”

“No!” Danning shouts. “We didn’t! Not all of us! I was prepped for death, Daryl. I wasn’t prepped for a mission where I spend the rest of my life watching my friends get taken apart by the desert! A life of evading Serpentis patrols, trying not to mix, at all, with anyone—” his voice breaks. He turns away.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Levant says. “But maybe if we learn Egyptian, if we give up our—”

With an inarticulate growl, Danning leaves the circle of firelight, striding into the cold desert.

Eli watches, his heart in his throat, as the scene shifts.

Grell and Dr. Levant sit together inside an expansive tent, wearing robes the color of the sand and the color of the tent walls. Everything is gray and brown and weathered.

“There was a rebellion in 2995 BCE,” Grell says softly, “was there not?”

“Yes,” Dr. Levant says, his brow etched with worry. “A failed one.”

“Then why not allow Colonel Danning to participate?”

“He wasn’t there the first time,” Dr. Levant whispers. “None of us were.”

“He cannot live like this,” Grell says.

“I know,” Dr. Levant breathes.

“Major Monroe cannot watch him suffer this way.”

Wordlessly, Dr. Levant nods. He stares at the sand between his feet and Grell’s. “They’re training the villagers to fight.”

Grell blinks in surprise.

“You thought I didn’t know?” Dr. Levant smiles a small smile. “I gossip with the women at the well every morning.”

Grell, too, smiles.

But then, “Grell,” Dr. Levant says, his smile fading. “You know we can’t overthrow Helios, right?”

Grell stills, his metallic skin gleaming within the tent. “And yet, it is an important battle in the history of your world, is it not? A fitting way to—” he stops before he completes the thought.

“Die?” Dr. Levant asks gently.

Grell inclines his head. “We don’t share your facility with Realm Walking. And, if Major Monroe’s theories are correct, our days will come again. Our path won’t end here.”

“Tell me,” Dr. Levant says, “when it’s time? I don’t want to be left behind.”

Silently, Grell nods.

Eli’s throat closes through a montage of rebellion prep with the locals, through the digging of an underground bunker where stolen Serpentis weapons are racked, through upgrades of tents and robes, skillsets acquired, and one heart-stopping scene where, in the dark of a starlit desert, Colonel Danning tucks a night-blooming flower behind Major Monroe’s ear.

The morning of the rebellion dawns clear and pale. The rebels wear blue robes, the color of the sky and the Nile, the color of the dead and the color of rebirth.

“Well, kids,” Colonel Danning says, “we’ve had a good run.”

“We have,” agrees Stacey Monroe, her eyes glittering.

“We die free,” Grell adds.

Dr. Levant says nothing. His blue eyes shine as he stands with his friends, holding a stolen staff weapon.

“Can he die though?” Rob breathes in the darkness of the dorm room.

Eli, his face aching, shakes his head. It’s been a longstanding debate in the fandom for years, with the most accepted answer being “probably not.” He doesn’t speak. Rob knows the discourse almost as well as Eli himself by now.

The battle commences with the familiar sound of Serpentis energy weapons and the clang of metal on metal. Every member of the team falls to enemy fire, backed by an epic soundtrack. Grell roars his defiance. Monroe steps in front of Danning. He catches her as she falls, lowering her to the sand like a lover. She dies in his arms, their eyes full of the words Air Force regulations kept them from speaking. Danning, blind with grief, charges a knot of Serpentis Royal Guards. The sound of the colonel’s heartbeat pounds behind the music. It falters. Fails.

Only Dr. Levant is left.

He stands on the battlefield, a still point in the midst of a doomed rebellion. His eyes blaze like broken off pieces of sky. The combat blurs around him like a dance.

A woman, serene and kind, speaks in voiceover: “There is only one thing we can ever truly control.”

Daryl Levant looks to the sky.

An energy bolt hits him in the chest. He falls to the sand.

Slowly, the camera draws back.

“Whether we are good,” the woman continues, “or whether we are evil.”

The camera pulls back and back and back, until Dr. Levant is nothing but a speck of blue in the midst of a vast battlefield.

The scene goes dark.

“No,” Eli rasps. “They can’t—”

The screen flickers to life again. This time, instead of movie-quality cinematics, it’s a grainy image of Dr. Levant, dressed in blue robes, his face older, impossibly sad, centered in the small screen that the Lord of Chords holds cupped in one hand.

“I tried to die on that battlefield,” Dr. Levant says, his face lined with grief, his hair bleached by the sun, tangled with desert wind. “But it wasn’t permitted.” He gives the camera a small, sad smile. “I’m meant for something else.”

The archeologist begins to glow faintly at his edges. “It’s been lonely here, living out this closed loop of dead time. I’ll be born again, thousands of years from now. But I do wonder—” he breaks off, studying his gleaming hand, “—whether I was always meant to stay. To live. To guard the integrity of the door I created.” He closes his fist on the light coming from his palm, and it vanishes. “Seems like a fair price. If you’re watching this, if the Empire Serpentis has fallen, if the Replicons are gone, if Grell’s people are free, if Prometheus has the power to hold their shields against the Ghoul Host—” he breaks off with a small smile. “Maybe I succeeded.”

Dr. Levant reaches for the camera, about to end his recording.

He stops.

“One more thing,” he says, hand outstretched. “Before I buried the Power Stone, I imbued it with an energetic message. Travel to the heart of Prometheus. Touch the stone. I’ll be waiting.”

The image flickers to black.

The Lord of Chords gently closes the video recorder, his expression pensive, pained even. Dr. Levant’s office is quiet. Empty. The camera lingers on the Lord of Chords. A chime and a gust of wind stir his long white hair.

The cut scene ends.

Eli looks away from Rob, pounding his goblet of Two Buck Chuck like there’s no tomorrow so he can have a minute to compose himself. The burn of alcohol doesn’t mesh so well with the wall of real grief in the back of his throat. He’d grown up with the Core Four as surrogate parents and, god, what a horrible, hidden, gut punch.

And Dr. Levant, forced to watch his friends fall, forced to live on, alone, spending millennia in the desert, excavating his buried memories of his time as a Realm Walker, eventually maybe existing in parallel with the self that didn’t have to end this way, the self that hadn’t stood with his friends, trying to die—

Eli shakes his head.

“You okay?” Rob asks, quiet in the dark room.

Eli coughs on the wine and the tears he refuses to let fall. “Yeah man. Of course. Obviously. That was, uh—”

“Yeah,” Rob says.

For a long moment, no one speaks.

“You wanna go home and we’ll meet up in the floating city?” Rob asks kindly. “Find that Power Stone?”

“Yup.” Eli wipes his hands on his pants. “Be there in forty-five minutes.” He’s all business, scanning the room for the personal belongings he didn’t bring. He can’t quite look at Rob. “Call up the rest of the gang.”

“You got it,” Rob says.

Eli barrels through the door and down the stairs into the humid July night. He walks through the dark, heading toward his empty house, trying to forget the pity on Rob’s face, the unspoken acknowledgement that this is all Eli has, really, with his education slipping through his fingers, his dad long gone and his mom buried in a job that’s been crushing her since he was eleven years old.

Standing on the MIT campus he’d walked away from, he takes a steadying breath.

The world sucks.

Is it any wonder he’s chosen to spend his life lost in stories where intelligence is valued, where a love of science is a heroic quality, not a villainous one? Stories where unseen sacrifice carries weight, rather than the throwaway grist for a soulless machine that grinds people like his mom to dust every day, even when she’d given her life for the patients she cared for? His mom got HIV from a needlestick during one hellish nursing shift in a stream of hellish nursing shifts. Still she goes back. And what’s in it for her, but exhaustion and grief and pain?

She wants something better for Eli.

But there is nothing better.

That’s what she can’t see. And Rob can’t see. And Eli’s stupid little nemesis of a thesis advisor can’t see.

Maybe if humans were like the Prometheans, trying to be better for the sake of betterness itself, they’d get somewhere. But they’re not. Society is a gluttonous machine, burning life and time and good intentions.

He wipes his nose on the back of his hand and looks at the night sky, washed out with the lights of Boston.

If he ever sees and opportunity to make a real difference, he’ll take it.

But, until then, he’s happy to hone his reflexes and train his mind within the confines of a franchise that’s already taught him more math and philosophy than school ever did.

There are worse things than getting lost in stories of science and spirituality. Of gods, false and true. Of the way torn space films like water to form a circle of blue.