She smiled sadly. "Hello, Mr. Genneth. Are you gonna be nice to me now?"

Biting my lip, I forced myself to look up at the stars overhead. However angry I was, I'd told Pel I'd try to talk to &alon. Losing my cool would mean breaking my promise, and that, I refused to do. I'd turned over a new leaf, and the only way to undo it was to drag me there, kicking and screaming.

So, I manned up, breathed in deep, gave my bowtie an apotropaic squeeze, and then looked the little eldritch horror in the eyes.

"I'm…" I sighed. "You need to listen to me, &alon," I said. "What you're doing is wrong, and you have to stop. Stop infecting people. Stop turning people into wyrms. Just… stop." I nodded. "And the quicker you stop, the better."

She frowned. "Why would you say that?"

"Because it's the truth! You're killing people!"

She flared her wings. "I'm saving them!"

"Killing people isn't saving them!" I was already raising my voice at her, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

"But I keep them safe!"

"That doesn't matter!"

"So what do you want me to do?" she asked me. "Nothing? 'Cuz doing nothing won't stop the darkness, and it won't stop the meanies, either!"

"The 'meanies'?" I asked.

She glowered. "The Scary-Shinies!"

"The aliens," I said.

"Aliens?"

I nodded. "That's what I'm calling them."

"Well, it's not fair! Why do I have to stop, but the ay-lee-uns don't!?" She stamped her feet like any other belligerent child. "It's not fair! It's not fair!!"

"This isn't about fairness, &alon, it's about doing what's right!"

"I am doing what's right, Mr. Genneth! I don't want to be sad and lonely anymore, and I don't want anybody else to be sad and lonely. So, I save them! I save them, and I learn from them. But the aliens just want to hurt me! And they hurt the wyrms, too!"

The little patch of patience I had left to cling to was rapidly shrinking. I held onto it by the skin of my teeth.

I spoke my next words through clenched jaws. "&alon…" I had to pause just to relax my mouth. I slowed my speech, focusing on enunciating each word. "Have you ever stopped to think about why they're trying to hurt you? Or why they're so angry with you?"

Fists clenched, she stiffened her arms. "Because they're mean!"

&alon was like Jules had been, when she'd been little. Only worse. So much worse.

"Is that why you changed our colors?" I asked. "Because you remembered how much you resent us?"

She shook her head and pointed at me accusatively. "Nuh-uh, you were the one who did that!"

I crumpled my nose and brow. "What?"

"I made them the color they're supposed to be! Before I 'membered, you made me think the wyrmehs shoulda had different colors, cuz they're not supposed to look like the fungus. But they're supposed to look like me! They're my family! They're all I have!"

This was getting ridiculous.

I found myself beginning to miss the days when my worries were limited to my lies betraying my colleagues and Hell's impending invasion of the earth. That, at least, would have made for a much worthier opponent than the one I was up against: a sentient, world-ending fungal plague-god with the mind of a petulant five-year-old! I couldn't tell if this was the high point or the nadir of my medical career.

It was as I stood there that a thought occurred to me. It was more malicious than my thoughts usually were, mostly because it came from a place of abject terror.

"&alon… if you want me to be nice to you, why haven't you kidnapped my family?"

She tilted her head in confusion. "W-What? Why would I do that?"

I blinked in disbelief. Total depopulation of the biosphere? A-OK. But kidnapping? That's where she drew the line.

Kidnapping.

I swallowed my stupefaction and tried to carry on as best I could.

"One of the reasons I ran away from everyone is because I'm terrified that you're going to try to hold Pel and my kids hostage to get me to do what you want me to do."

"Hoss-tage?" she asked.

"You could take them away from me, and threaten to hurt them if I don't listen to you."

The way she looked me in the eyes, you would have thought I was the villain, here. "They're your family," she said, turning misty-eyed. "Why would I take them away from you, Mr. Genneth? That would be so mean, and I'm not mean! That's why I'm saving you all. You get to be together!"

Well, at least the concerns I'd described to Pel were being borne out. However far I'd fallen, I could take solace in the knowledge that, despite everything else, I was able to properly analyze the psyche of a troubled little girl. I know, I know, considering my wife was dying, I didn't really want to have a "I told you so" moment with her—even if I'd thoroughly earned it—but, if things kept going like this…

&alon was just nuts, there was no two ways about it. It would have been sad if it wasn't so gosh-darn awful.

"&alon," I said, "if you understand that it is bad to separate families because that makes them upset, you should understand that it makes people upset for you to kill them, destroy their world, and forcibly transform the rest into some really monstrous librarians."

I was at the end of my rope here!

"But I'm helping!"

I sighed. "Believe me when I say that the hurt you've caused is far, far, far more than anything anyone could ever do to you!"

"But the meanies are hurting the wyrms! They kill them!" &alon gave me an icy glare, thought it quickly melted into inconsolable melancholy. "They're ones I tried to save, but they ran away and got so mad and mean! When they kill wyrms… there are so many people inside them, and they're all gone. The number is so big, I don't even know how big it is!"

"Those spirits were doomed to die the moment you 'saved' them."

"No, no!" She clasped her head in fear. "You don't understand! They used a weapon. A super weapon. A super-duper awful weapon. It hurt so much! So much! No one ever hurt me that much before. I was hurt and scared, so I ran and ran and ran, and then I ended up here, with you." She reached toward me. Her face quietly blossomed with a wistful, nostalgic smile, only to break with pain and anger. "I save people. I save worlds. But the aliens… they just destroy! Their weapons destroy worlds. They'll destroy yours, too! It'll hurt Mr. Klay-oh! It'll hurt all the wyrms! And that's what they want! They want to hurt everyone because they're awful!"

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I sighed.

This was just all too much, and I wasn't going to put up with it anymore, not if I didn't have to.

"&alon," I said, "you do understand that you are the darkness that hurt Kléothag, don't you?" I pointed at her. "If the planet gets destroyed, you'll have an all-you-can-eat-buffet of divine power. You'll be even more powerful than ever before!"

But she just ignored me, and logic, and common sense.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"I'm not the darkness!" She yelled, vehemently shaking her head and flailing her arms about. "&alon is not the darkness! I'm not I'm not I'm not!"

"And weren't the fungus," I replied. I gave my inner brat free rein. "You weren't you weren't you weren't, until, boom, you were! How am I supposed to believe anything you tell me?"

It was a genuine question.

"If the meanies use their big bad machine, the darkness will win, and everyone will be sad!"

"I'm pretty sure that ship has already sailed," I muttered. "Everything you are talking about has already happened. We are all miserable."

"Ship?" she asked. "What ship?"

I almost laughed, but instead shook my head. Who was I kidding? I had no business wasting my time with &alon anymore. She was incompetent, pure and simple.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

"What about 'taking us away'?" I asked. "I thought you were getting ready to leave my world to spread yourself to some new ones."

"It's not safe!" she said. "They'll try to stop me, and they'll hurt so many wyrms, and even if we get away, they'll just follow! They always follow! And if they follow us, they might take their shippies to where I am, and then they can hurt the most wyrms!" She looked me in the eyes while her own narrowed with determination. "I'm stronger than I remember, Mr. Genneth. I've gotta stop them. The bad, bad aliens will never ever hurt anybody again ever again, ever! That's the only way we can leave! They'll stop us if we try to leave now, and they'll hurt us, just like they did before! That's why I gotta stop them first, them and their ouchie rays!" She cried. "I know the darkness is here, and it's so, so scary, but, you told me to be brave, so, I'm doin' that! I'm bein' brave! Help me, Mr. Genneth! Help me stop them! Help the wyrms! Help the wyrms!" She flicked her wings in passionate agitation.

Great. Just great. The one time &alon finally showed the assertiveness and initiative that I'd been trying to get her to develop, it's because she wants to commit genocide.

&alon's voice broke. "Don't you care, Mr. Genneth? Don't you want the wyrms to be safe? Don't you want all the people we have to be happy?"

Now, that… that was the final straw. I couldn't take it anymore.

Patience? Screw it!

"Care? Care!?" I bellowed. "What do you think I've been doing all this time? It's caring! Caring caring caring caring caring! You're the one who doesn't care, &alon! You're an evil god! This 'salvation' you bring, it's not salvation. It's death! Death! Do you not understand what death is?!"

"Death is when you go away forever," she yelled. "For! Ev! Er! That's what the Darkness will do to you. I keep people from being taken away! I save them. I keep them here, with me, in the wyrms!" She pointed at me with contempt. "It's you who doesn't understand, Mr. Genneth! You want me to let them all die! If they die, they'll be gone, and if they're gone, I'll know nothing! I'll just be alone and sad and horrible! Horribibble!"

She stared me in the eyes. "I think I was wrong," she said. "I thought you were different. I thought you understood me. But you don't. Mr. Genneth: you don't understand me; you're just like all the others! You're just a hater! You're all hate!" She wept. "And now I'm alone, all over again."

And then she vanished in a plume of blue fire.

Her words echoed on the ether.

"All alone…"

And then all was silence.

The ground fell out from underneath that starry place. There was a brief sensation of falling, and when I landed, I was legless, closed-eyed, and serpentine.

I slowly opened my eyes to see my family looking up at me in concern. Their eyes widened when I shook my head with rage.

"Genneth?" Pel asked. "Did you do it?"

"You bet I did, and it's just like I told you: she won't listen! She's just a child. She doesn't understand!"

And then I doubled back and slithered out of the cavern, puffing out spores as I went.

— — —

Even as it lay dying, the sea was more beautiful than I remembered. With the play of their shape and light fused with my second pair of eyes' perceptions of sound, the waves seemed like fireworks. I saw and knew the movements of the wind as clearly as text on a page. Every time the tide lapped at the sand, it sang out sound waves in fusillades that danced and eddied before my eyes. Biological flotsam sat in the wash like blood clots, stirred and shook every time the current tossed them about. Corpses and fungal growths formed interlinked networks that rocked back and forth on the water's surface. Beside them, infected kelp groves were thickening into islands.

And the water smelled sweet.

I sat on the sand in a loose coil.

"Are you just going to lounge around all day, Dr. Howle?" Babra asked.

I'd brought Mrs. Plotsky's spirit out for company, along with her daughter's.

I motioned my head toward the battlefields in the sky. "Isn't the world busy enough?"

It was like watching a sports match for a game whose rules I didn't know. The combatants chased each other in a chaotic, hateful ballet, crisscrossing lasers, pataphysics, and spore breath across the sky. The losers plummeted, and were swallowed up by the sea.

Ileene wore a chemise and simple pants, in contrast to her mother's slightly more formal wear, which was shaded in autumn's colors. Ileene stood at the water's edge, staring out at the sea much like I had been doing, while her mother sat on a chair I'd hyperphantasized for her on the sand.

It was a really nice chair, with seashell designs carved into its wood.

Ignoring my deflecting question, Babra responded with an inquiry of her own. "Why are you angry with your wife?"

She was definitely pressing the point.

My instinct was to rear up and make it clear to Mrs. Plotsky that I wasn't—and couldn't be—angry with my wife, but I instantly realized I couldn't do that, because I absolutely was angry with Pel, but only because I was angry with myself.

I sighed and shook my head.

"I don't know how, but… Pel still wants to hope that there's a way to fix this. And while I don't blame her for that, it doesn't change the fact that there isn't any way to do that. There just isn't. She and the kids are just retracing my own steps." Turning, I looked Babra in the eyes. "I don't want them to suffer like I did. I'd rather have their illusions shattered than let them betray them."

Ileene kicked up some sand with the help of my psychokinesis and then turned to face her mother and I. "You're being too hard on yourself, Dr. Howle. You got conned, just like I did. &alon betrayed your faith in her. She's holding the wyrms hostage, not to mention all the souls within them."

I shook my head. "I had nothing left to believe in, and then &alon came into my life and gave me hope. But it was a lie. It was all a lie. I guess…" I lowered my head. "I guess I really did have nothing, after all."

Babra held her hands at her hips. "What about what you told us, Dr Howle? It's like you told us: you still have people to believe in, Dr. Howle. And they're real people, even if they're only dreams, or the wyrms that dream them. And, unlike &alon, I'm pretty sure they'll appreciate it."

I shook my head again. "I can't believe how stupid I was. The Lantor Incursion, the War in Paradise… it was all &alon's doing. &alon, the Rebel Angel."

"You're not stupid," Mrs. Plotsky said. "Wyrms like you are as much &alon's victims as everyone else." She looked up at the sky, watching the wyrms as they battled. Nearly all of them were silver-eyed. "Even now, she's forcing the silver eyes to fight against her will."

It made me feel awful.

"You think I don't know that?" I asked.

"My point is," she said, "you don't have nothing. You have people who are hurting, people just like you. Maybe you can find a way to help them? It might not be the kind of change you want, but it's not nothing."

"&alon told me the aliens have this big, fancy weapon," I said. "She wants me to help her stop them from using it, almost certainly because it has the power to destroy her."

"Doesn't that solve your problem?" Babra asked. "Destroying &alon will definitely end her reign of terror."

I would have cried, but my eyes no longer worked that way.

"Babra… if &alon dies, all the wyrms die with her. I die." I looked over Mrs. Plotsky and her daughter. "And you, all the spirits…" I shook my head. "You'll vanish. Forever." I ran a tepid claw tip down my underbelly scutes, lowering my head in fear and shame. "And…Angel help me, I don't know if I can do that."

And then, Ileene said something marvelous. "Dr. Howle… have you considered trying to get the aliens to help take down &alon?" She looked up at the sky, and then looked me in the eyes once more. Her hair was beautiful in the morning breeze. The neon green bolt above her bangs was like a fragment of a crystal.

"If they're so dead-set on killing her, maybe they'll be willing to help you. If you can convince them that the wyrms aren't the enemy, maybe together, you can find a way to defeat &alon, and in a way that doesn't destroy you and us and all the other wyrms."

"And I'm supposed to do this all on my own?" I said.

"You're not alone, Genneth," Mrs. Plotsky replied. "No one is alone."

Ileene smirked. "Dr. Howle, you were able to get me back on friendly terms with my Mom," she said. "If you can do that, talking to those aliens should be a piece of cake!"

I sighed and waved my claws. "Great, so all I have to do is just stop a war and start a new one. That shouldn't be too hard, right?" I was lifting self-deprecation by the shovelfuls.

"It'll be the greatest work of therapy there ever was," she replied.

"I wish I shared your confidence."

"You don't need to be confident, Dr. Howle. I certainly wasn't," Babs glanced at her daughter, "least of all when I was raising my daughter. But you have to try, and if you don't, then you don't get to complain about the outcome."

I chuckled, wafting out spores. "Oh, don't worry, I'm going to try. My guilt wouldn't let me do otherwise."

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