• Act One

I’ve you’ve been reading my stuff, you already know about my strange obsession with Alicia Western, and the fact that I’m creating an app for interactive branching storytelling (repo here). I wanted to test the solidity of my app by playing through the whole daydream sequence. This is the second act in its entirety.

Note: there are issues with what’s been produced, but I’m not going to edit it. However, I will point out in parentheses the points that I believe are problems that I will have to figure out how to solve either through prompt or code engineering.

---

Page 6

You return to your own timeline briefly—a safe house in 2046 where you keep resources for interventions like this—and spend the night assembling what Alicia will need to see. Not just architectural plans, but the kind of specificity that will make the mansion feel real before she ever sets foot in it.

By morning you have blueprints, photographs of three properties you’ve already scouted, financial documentation showing the cash reserves ready for immediate purchase, and a timeline for the basement excavation and installation. Hypatia helps you prepare a presentation that balances technical precision with emotional resonance—showing Alicia not just what the space will be, but how it will feel to live there.

You arrive outside Room 14 at 10:47 AM, December 23rd. One day before her planned death. The weight of that sits in your chest as you knock—three measured taps that have become your signal.

Alicia opens the door almost immediately. She’s dressed in the same plain institutional clothing, but something in her posture has changed. She’s not armored the way she was yesterday. Her eyes are red-rimmed—you suspect she didn’t sleep—but there’s a clarity in her expression that wasn’t there before.

“Come in,” she says, stepping back. “I’ve been thinking all night.”

You materialize Hypatia beside you as you enter, and Alicia nods greeting to her with something approaching familiarity. The room feels smaller with three people in it, but Alicia doesn’t seem uncomfortable. She sits on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap, and waits.

You spread the materials on her desk—blueprints, photographs, documents. “Three properties,” you begin. “All in the South, all with the specifications we discussed. Large gardens, solid bedrock for excavation, isolated enough for privacy but close enough to cities for resources.”

Alicia leans forward, examining the photographs with that same hungry precision she brings to everything. Her fingers trace the outline of one property—a sprawling estate with magnolia trees and wide porches, the kind of place that looks like it’s been standing for a hundred years.

“This one,” she says quietly. “The one in northern Mississippi. Why did you choose it?”

“Thirty acres,” you explain. “The main house is 1890s construction, well-maintained. Six bedrooms, which means space for you, for Bobby when he arrives, for guest rooms if you ever want them. The bedrock is limestone—stable, easy to work with for the underground installation. And it’s beautiful. I thought that might matter.”

“It does,” Alicia admits. She picks up the photograph, holding it carefully. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About choosing, every day, what I want to do with it. That’s not something I’ve ever had. Even before Stella Maris, I was always… contained. By expectations, by my own mind, by people who wanted to make me make sense.”

Hypatia settles into the chair by the desk, her presence calm and attentive. “What did you conclude? After thinking all night?”

Alicia sets the photograph down and meets both your eyes in turn. “I want to try. I want to believe this is real and that I can have it. But I need to know—concretely—how we get from here to there. How do I leave Stella Maris without them certifying me? How do we retrieve Bobby without the Italian hospital fighting us? How do we make sure this doesn’t fall apart the moment I start to trust it?”

The questions are fair, practical, the kind of scaffolding her mind needs to believe in possibility. You pull out the timeline you prepared—a week-by-week breakdown of the next four months.

“Today and tomorrow, we finalize which property and complete the purchase,” you say. “I’ll handle that directly—cash transaction, no complications. By January 2nd, the mansion is yours legally. During January, Hypatia and I excavate and install the basement command center—medical equipment for Bobby, the AR mathematics setup for you, secure storage. By mid-January, we travel to Italy and negotiate Bobby’s transfer. I’ll pay the hospital whatever they ask, plus a donation large enough that they won’t question the arrangement. We bring Bobby back to the mansion by late January, where Hypatia’s medical systems will monitor him until he wakes on April 27th.”

Alicia is nodding slowly, following the logic, testing it for holes. “And Stella Maris? What do I tell them?”

“That you’re leaving voluntarily,” Hypatia says. “You have family resources, you’ve arranged private care, and you’re exercising your right to discharge yourself. They can’t stop you—you’re here voluntarily, and you’re not a danger to others. They may try to pressure you to stay, but legally they have no hold.”

“They’ll say I’m a danger to myself,” Alicia counters. “That’s the whole reason I’m here.”

“Then we make sure you’re not alone when you leave,” you say. “I’ll be with you. We’ll have documentation showing you’re entering a supervised care arrangement—which is true, just not the kind they’re imagining. And once you’re out, once you’re in the mansion with resources and space and Bobby on his way, they have no jurisdiction.”

Alicia is quiet for a long moment, her eyes distant. You can see her running simulations, testing the plan for fracture points, looking for the place where it collapses.

“What if Bobby doesn’t wake up?” The question is almost a whisper. “What if April 27th comes and he’s still… gone?”

You pull out the final photograph—Bobby in 2006, older and weathered and unmistakably alive, standing on a beach in Formentera with the sunset behind him. “He wakes up. I’ve met him thirty-four years from now. This isn’t hope, Alicia. This is fact.”

She takes the photograph with trembling hands, and you watch her face crack open again—that same raw vulnerability you saw last night when she held the AR glasses. “I want to believe you,” she says. “I want to believe this so badly it terrifies me.”

“Then believe it provisionally,” Hypatia suggests gently. “Take the first step—choose the mansion, leave Stella Maris, see what happens. You don’t have to commit to the whole four months right now. Just commit to the next week. Then the week after that. One step at a time.”

Alicia nods slowly, setting the photograph down beside the blueprints. When she looks up, there’s something like determination in her expression—fragile, but present.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do this. Let’s make it real.”

Page 7

You extend your hand to Alicia. “Come with me. Right now. See the mansion before you commit to anything.”

She stares at your hand for a long moment, and you can see the calculation behind her eyes—the risk assessment, the fear of wanting something. Then she takes it, her fingers cold and slight in yours. “How does this work?”

“Hold on,” you say simply. Hypatia moves to Alicia’s other side, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder. You focus on the coordinates burned into your memory—the circular driveway of the Mississippi estate, late morning sunlight, December 23rd, 1972. The neural interface hums, reality folds, and—

Alicia gasps as the institutional walls of Stella Maris dissolve into open sky and winter air. You’re standing on pale gravel, and before you spreads the mansion: white columns and deep porches, windows that catch the sun like promises. Magnolia trees frame the approach, their dark leaves glossy against white-painted wood. The house is larger than the photographs suggested, more solid, more real.

“Jesus,” Alicia breathes. She’s still gripping your hand, her other hand reaching out as if to confirm the mansion won’t vanish if she touches it. “This is—this is actually here.”

“Thirty acres,” Hypatia says, gesturing toward the gardens that stretch beyond the main house. “The property line runs to that stand of oaks in the distance. The bedrock survey shows limestone starting at eight feet down—perfect for excavation. The house itself is structurally sound. New roof in 1968, updated plumbing, original hardwood floors.”

Alicia releases your hand and walks forward slowly, her institutional slippers crunching on gravel. She climbs the porch steps, runs her fingers along a white column, peers through the front windows into rooms full of dust-hazed sunlight. When she turns back to you, there are tears on her face again.

“I can live here?” Her voice cracks on the question. “This can actually be mine?”

“The current owner is a widow in Atlanta who inherited it from her parents,” you say, pulling out the documentation. “She hasn’t lived here in fifteen years and wants to sell quickly. I can have the cash ready by tomorrow. We can close the sale by December 28th. It will be legally yours before the new year.”

Alicia sits down on the porch steps, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring out at the gardens and the winter sky. “Show me where Bobby will be. Show me where you’ll put the medical equipment.”

You and Hypatia join her on the steps, and Hypatia pulls out the architectural plans. “The master bedroom is on the ground floor, east wing. Large windows, morning light. We’ll install the medical bed there—it’s designed to look like furniture, not hospital equipment. The monitoring systems will be invisible, embedded in the walls and ceiling. Bobby will rest there until he wakes, and you can be with him whenever you want.”

“And the command center?” Alicia asks.

“Directly below the master bedroom,” you explain. “We’ll excavate through the basement, create a secure space that’s climate-controlled and shielded. That’s where the quantum computers will go, the power systems, the AR mathematics setup. Access through a concealed entrance in the basement. From the outside, no one will know it exists.”

Alicia is quiet for a long time, her eyes moving from the mansion to the grounds to the blueprints and back. You can see her building the future in her mind, testing whether she can inhabit it, whether it will hold her weight.

“I want to see inside,” she says finally. “I want to walk through it. I want to know what it feels like.”

You glance at Hypatia, who nods and stands. “The house is currently empty. The locks are old—I can manage them.” She moves to the front door, and you hear the soft click of mechanisms yielding to her precise manipulation. The door swings open onto a wide hallway, wooden floors stretching into shadow, a staircase curving up to the second floor.

Alicia rises and walks inside slowly, and you follow, watching her move through the empty rooms. She touches walls, examines windows, stands in doorways absorbing the proportions. In what will be Bobby’s room, she stops in the center and closes her eyes.

“He’ll be here,” she whispers. “In four months, he’ll be here, breathing, real. And I’ll be able to sit with him and talk to him and tell him I waited.”

“Yes,” you confirm quietly.

She opens her eyes and looks at you with an intensity that feels like a physical force. “Then buy it. Today. Right now. Make it mine before I lose my nerve. And tomorrow—tomorrow we leave Stella Maris. I’m not spending another night in that place when this exists.”

Hypatia steps forward, her expression gentle but serious. “Alicia, we should plan the departure carefully. Make sure the staff understands you’re leaving voluntarily, that there are no legal complications—”

“No.” Alicia’s voice is sharp, definite. “I’ve spent enough of my life being careful, being managed, making sure I don’t upset the people who think they know what’s best for me. This is mine. This future is mine. And I’m taking it. Tomorrow.”

Page 8

You pull out your phone—a 1972 model you acquired for exactly this purpose—and dial the number on the sales documentation. The widow in Atlanta answers on the third ring, her voice cautious and Southern-soft. You introduce yourself as a cash buyer, explain you’re standing on the property right now, and ask if she can have her attorney available this afternoon to finalize the sale.

There’s a pause, then: “This afternoon? Sir, real estate transactions take time—”

“I’m offering twenty percent above asking price,” you say. “Cash. No inspection contingencies, no financing delays. I can have a courier deliver the funds to your attorney by five PM today. The only condition is that we close by December 28th.”

Another pause, longer this time. You can hear her breathing, calculating. “Let me call my attorney. Can I reach you at this number?”

“Yes. I’ll wait for your call.”

You hang up and find Alicia watching you from the porch railing, her expression unreadable. “Twenty percent above asking,” she says. “You’re not even trying to negotiate.”

“Time matters more than money,” you reply. “And I want you to have this before you can talk yourself out of believing in it.”

Something shifts in her face—gratitude, maybe, or the beginning of trust. She nods and turns back to look at the mansion, her arms wrapped around herself against the December cold.

The phone rings eighteen minutes later. The widow’s attorney has reviewed the offer and drawn up a contract. If you can deliver certified funds by end of business today, they’ll execute the sale. You agree immediately, confirm the wire transfer details, and disconnect.

“It’s done,” you tell Alicia. “The house is yours by tonight. Legally, permanently yours.”

She doesn’t respond immediately. She walks down the porch steps, across the gravel drive, and into the garden. You and Hypatia follow at a distance, giving her space. She stops beneath a magnolia tree, one hand on the trunk, her head tilted back to look at the winter sky through bare branches.

When she finally speaks, her voice is steady but raw. “I need to go back to Stella Maris. I need to get my things—what little I have. And I need to tell them I’m leaving. On my terms, not running, not fleeing. I need to walk out that door as someone who chose to go, not someone who escaped.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” you say.

She turns to face you, and there’s steel in her expression now, the same ferocity you saw when she tested Hypatia on Fermat’s Last Theorem. “Tomorrow morning. Early, before the day staff arrives and starts their rounds. I want to be gone before anyone can try to talk me into staying for ‘just one more evaluation’ or ‘just a few more days.’ I know how they work. They’ll try to manage me right back into compliance.”

Hypatia steps forward, her gray eyes thoughtful. “What will you tell them? They’ll ask where you’re going, who’s caring for you.”

“The truth,” Alicia says. “That I have family resources, that I’ve arranged private care, that I’m exercising my legal right to discharge myself. They can’t stop me—I signed myself in voluntarily, and I can sign myself out the same way. If they push, I’ll tell them I have an attorney who will be very interested in any attempt to hold me against my will.”

You recognize the strategy—she’s armoring herself with procedure, with rights, with the language of autonomy. It’s the same precision she brings to mathematics, applied to the architecture of escape.

“Do you actually have an attorney?” you ask.

“No,” she admits. “But they don’t know that, and by the time they could verify it, I’ll be gone.” She pauses, then adds quietly: “Unless you know one. Someone who could make calls if needed, someone who could make this look more… legitimate.”

The phone in your pocket feels heavy. You could call forward to 2046, have Hypatia’s legal team generate documentation, create a paper trail that would satisfy any institutional inquiry. Or you could keep it simple—walk in tomorrow morning, sign the discharge papers, and leave before anyone has time to mount an objection. Or you could go tonight, right now, while the momentum of the mansion purchase is still fresh and Alicia’s resolve is at its peak.

Alicia watches you, waiting. The December sun slants through the magnolia branches, casting shadows across her face. Behind her, the mansion stands white and solid, no longer a possibility but a fact. Her future, purchased and waiting.

“What do you want to do?” you ask her. “We can move tonight if you’re ready. Or we can plan for tomorrow morning, prepare properly, make sure every detail is handled. Your choice.”

Page 9

You pull out the neural interface and activate the quantum link to 2046. “Hypatia, I need your legal team. Full documentation package for voluntary psychiatric discharge—patient rights advisory, family resource verification, private care arrangements. Make it bulletproof.”

Hypatia’s eyes unfocus for a fraction of a second as her consciousness splits across timelines. When she refocuses, she nods. “Done. I have Martin Castellanos—he specializes in medical autonomy cases. He’s generating the documentation now: attorney letterhead, case precedents, patient rights advisories. He’ll be available by phone tomorrow morning if the staff requests verification. The number will route through temporal relay to his 2046 office, but it will register as a 1972 Chicago exchange.”

Alicia watches this exchange with an expression caught between fascination and wariness. “You can just… make a lawyer exist? Across time?”

“I can make the institutional machinery believe one exists,” Hypatia clarifies. “Martin is real—he works for one of Jon’s firms. But from Stella Maris’s perspective, he’ll appear to be a Chicago attorney who has represented your family’s interests for years. The documentation will reference prior consultations, establish a pattern of professional relationship. It gives your discharge the weight of legal oversight without requiring you to actually retain counsel in 1972.”

“Which means they can’t dismiss me as an impulsive patient making an unsafe decision,” Alicia says slowly, working through the implications. “They’ll see institutional credibility—family resources, professional representation, a care plan that meets their standards for responsible discharge.”

“Exactly,” you confirm. “Tomorrow morning, you walk in with documentation that says you’re not alone, not vulnerable, not someone they need to protect from yourself. You’re a patient exercising informed consent with appropriate support structures.”

Alicia’s jaw tightens. “I hate that it matters. I hate that my word isn’t enough, that I need to perform competence and stability before they’ll acknowledge my right to leave.”

“I know,” Hypatia says gently. “But we’re not trying to change the system tomorrow—we’re trying to get you out of it. Once you’re clear, once you’re here in this house with your own resources and your own space, what they think stops mattering.”

Alicia nods slowly, then walks back toward the mansion. She climbs the porch steps again and sits down, her back against a white column, looking out at the property that will be hers in hours. “What time should we go tomorrow?”

You consider the institutional rhythms of Stella Maris—shift changes, rounds, the brief window between night staff departure and day staff arrival. “Six AM. The night shift ends at seven, and they’ll be focused on handoff documentation. We walk in, you request discharge, present the documentation. If anyone objects, Martin Castellanos is available by phone. Most likely they’ll process the paperwork and let you go—voluntary patients leave every day, and you’re giving them exactly what they need to justify the discharge in their records.”

“And if they don’t?” Alicia asks. “If they try to delay, to schedule evaluations, to suggest I’m not stable enough for discharge?”

Hypatia sits down beside her on the porch. “Then Martin escalates. Patient rights violations, unlawful detention, threat of legal action. But it won’t come to that—you’re not giving them grounds to challenge your competence. You’re calm, you’re prepared, you have resources and representation. They’ll see someone who has made a considered decision, not someone in crisis.”

Alicia is quiet for a long moment, her fingers tracing patterns on the painted wood of the porch floor. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, almost vulnerable. “What do I take with me? I gave away almost everything. The violin is in storage—I couldn’t bear to have it in that place. There’s the letter to Bobby in my desk drawer, some clothes, a few books. That’s all.”

“We’ll get the violin from storage,” you say. “And anything else you want. But Alicia—you don’t need to bring anything from Stella Maris except yourself. This house will have everything you need. We’ll buy you clothes, books, whatever makes this place feel like yours.”

She looks at you with an expression you can’t quite read—gratitude mixed with something harder, more complicated. “You’re trying to give me a whole life. A house, a future, my brother, the ability to do mathematics again. Do you understand how terrifying that is? How much it means that I might want it?”

“Yes,” you say simply. “And I understand that wanting it doesn’t make you weak or dependent. It makes you human.”

Her eyes glisten, but she doesn’t cry. Instead she stands, brushes off her institutional clothing, and looks at the mansion one more time. “Take me back. I need to sleep—actually sleep, not just lie awake thinking. Tomorrow I need to be sharp, clear, unshakeable. I need to walk out of Stella Maris like someone who knows exactly what she’s doing.”

You and Hypatia stand as well. The December afternoon is fading toward evening, the winter light going gold and thin. In a few hours the mansion sale will be finalized. In less than twelve hours, Alicia will discharge herself from the institution that has been both sanctuary and cage. The machinery is in motion now, the future taking shape from possibility into fact.

“Ready?” you ask, extending your hand.

She takes it without hesitation this time. “Ready.”

Page 10

The temporal shift pulls you back to December 22nd, 1972. You materialize in the garden behind Stella Maris at 11:47 PM—late enough that the grounds are empty, early enough that Alicia will have six hours to sleep before discharge. Hypatia stands beside you, her humanoid body breathing the cold Wisconsin air, gray eyes alert.

You move through the service corridor you mapped earlier, the one with minimal night staff traffic. Hypatia’s footsteps are nearly silent on the linoleum. When you reach Alicia’s door, you knock softly—three taps, the pattern you used before.

She opens it immediately, still dressed. “Couldn’t sleep anyway,” she says, stepping back to let you both enter. Her eyes move to Hypatia with something between relief and calculation. “You’re staying visible tomorrow? During discharge?”

“If you want me to,” Hypatia says. “The staff will see a well-dressed professional woman accompanying you—someone who represents resources, stability, family support. It strengthens your position.”

Alicia considers this, her fingers tapping against her thigh in a rhythm you recognize as mathematical. “They’ll ask who you are. What do we tell them?”

“The truth, carefully framed,” Hypatia replies. “I’m a family representative coordinating your private care arrangements. If they press for details, I have documentation—credentials, contact information, a care plan that meets their discharge protocols. I can answer their questions in language they understand: continuity of care, medication management, follow-up appointments. All true, just not in the way they’ll assume.”

You watch Alicia process this, see the moment she recognizes the strategy. “You’ll make me look institutional-approved. Someone they can discharge with a clean conscience.”

“Exactly,” you confirm. “But Alicia—Hypatia being visible tomorrow means she can’t disappear if something goes wrong. If a staff member gets suspicious, if they start asking questions that don’t add up, we can’t just vanish. We’d have to maintain the fiction, handle their scrutiny, potentially involve Martin if they demand verification.”

Alicia’s expression sharpens. “What’s the alternative? I walk out alone with a folder of documentation and hope no one looks too closely? Or you come with me, and they see a two-meter-tall man who looks like he stepped out of a future they can’t imagine?”

“I could wait outside,” you offer. “Stay in the parking lot, ready to intervene if needed but not visible during the actual discharge process.”

She shakes her head. “No. I want Hypatia there. I want them to see that I’m not alone, that I have someone competent and calm who knows exactly what’s happening. Someone who won’t be intimidated by their procedures or their concern-trolling.”

Hypatia inclines her head slightly. “Then I’ll be there. But Jon’s right about the risk—once I’m visible to them, I can’t become invisible again without raising questions that could compromise everything.”

“Understood,” Alicia says. She moves to her desk, pulls out the unfinished letter to Bobby, folds it carefully, and tucks it into her pocket. “I need to sleep now. Real sleep, not planning. What time will you come for me?”

“Five forty-five,” you say. “We’ll walk in together at six AM, request discharge, present documentation. You’ll be out by seven, maybe earlier.”

She nods, then pauses at the edge of her bed. “The mansion—it’s really mine? The sale went through?”

“Closed at 6:17 PM,” you confirm. “The deed is being filed tomorrow morning. By the time you walk out of here, you’ll own thirty acres and a house that’s waited a hundred years for someone to make it a home.”

Something in her face softens, just for a moment. “Thank you. Both of you.” She climbs into bed, still dressed, and closes her eyes. “Don’t let me oversleep. I want to be awake and clear when this happens.”

You and Hypatia step into the corridor. The night is quiet—distant footsteps, the hum of heating systems, the institutional silence of a place where people are kept safe from themselves. In six hours, Alicia will walk out of this building. In six hours, the future you’ve been constructing will either hold or collapse under institutional scrutiny.

Hypatia’s voice is low. “She’s stronger than she thinks. But tomorrow will test that strength in ways she hasn’t considered. The moment she requests discharge, she’ll be under evaluation—every word, every gesture, every sign of hesitation will be noted. If they sense uncertainty, they’ll use it to delay.”

“Then we make sure she doesn’t hesitate,” you say.

You find an empty staff break room and settle in to wait. Hypatia sits across from you, her hands folded on the table, her expression thoughtful. “This is the fulcrum point, Jon. If tomorrow goes wrong—if they challenge her competence, if they invoke safety concerns, if they find a way to delay discharge even by a day—we lose momentum. Alicia’s resolve is built on action, on forward motion. Making her wait, making her fight institutional inertia, could break what we’ve built.”

“I know,” you say quietly. The weight of it settles in your chest—how much depends on the next few hours, how narrow the path is between Alicia walking out free and Alicia being trapped by the very procedures meant to protect her.

Page 11

You pull out the neural interface and activate a direct link to Hypatia’s consciousness. “We need a complete backstory—something that holds up under interrogation. If they call Martin, if they cross-reference details, if they ask you questions designed to catch inconsistencies, you need to answer without hesitation.”

Hypatia’s eyes shift focus as her processing accelerates. “Give me the parameters. What identity are we constructing?”

“Family representative,” you say. “Someone who has been coordinating Alicia’s care arrangements for weeks. You’ve spoken with her grandmother Ellen in Tennessee, you’ve consulted with physicians about her discharge plan, you’ve arranged for private psychiatric follow-up. You’re professional, competent, and you have the resources to ensure Alicia’s safety outside institutional walls.”

Hypatia’s consciousness splits across multiple processing threads—you can see it in the subtle unfocus of her eyes, the way her breathing pattern changes slightly as she allocates resources. “I need a name they’ll use. Not Hypatia—that raises questions. Something period-appropriate, professional, forgettable.”

“Margaret Hollis,” you suggest. “Coordinator for the Western family’s private care arrangements. Based in Chicago, which explains why they haven’t seen you before. You’ve been handling logistics remotely—phone consultations, documentation, insurance verification.”

“Good,” Hypatia says. Her eyes refocus with crystalline clarity. “Margaret Hollis, age thirty-four, bachelor’s degree in social work from Northwestern University, eight years experience coordinating private psychiatric care for high-net-worth families. I’ve been retained by the Western family trust since November 15th, 1972, following Alicia’s voluntary admission to Stella Maris. I’ve conducted three phone consultations with Dr. Ashford here—November 22nd, December 3rd, and December 18th—discussing Alicia’s progress and discharge readiness. I’ve arranged follow-up care with Dr. Samuel Brennan, a private psychiatrist in Gulfport, Mississippi, who specializes in treatment-resistant cases. First appointment scheduled for December 30th. I’ve also coordinated with Alicia’s grandmother Ellen Western in Knoxville, Tennessee, who has provided written authorization for my involvement and confirmed financial resources for Alicia’s ongoing care.”

You stare at her. “You just invented three phone consultations that never happened.”

“I invented a paper trail that will satisfy their requirements,” Hypatia corrects. “If they check their own records, they’ll find notes from those dates—brief, professional, nothing that would have seemed significant at the time. Dr. Ashford is the attending physician who admitted Alicia. He conducts phone consultations with family representatives regularly. If he’s asked tomorrow whether he’s spoken with Margaret Hollis, his memory will be uncertain—possible, plausible, the kind of routine contact that doesn’t leave strong impressions.”

“You’re not altering records,” you say slowly. “You’re constructing a backstory that fits the gaps in their existing documentation.”

“Exactly,” Hypatia confirms. “Institutions run on paperwork and procedures. If the paperwork says I’ve been involved for weeks, if the procedures have been followed correctly, if there’s a care plan that meets their discharge criteria—they’ll process Alicia’s discharge as routine. The alternative is to challenge their own documentation, to admit they’ve been coordinating with someone who doesn’t exist, which creates institutional liability they won’t want to acknowledge.”

You lean back in the uncomfortable break room chair, watching Hypatia’s face. She looks perfectly human—tired in the way someone would be tired at midnight after a long day of coordination, professional in the way someone would be professional when discussing a patient’s care. “What about Dr. Brennan? The private psychiatrist in Gulfport?”

“He exists,” Hypatia says. “Or he will, in about eighteen months. He’s currently completing his residency in New Orleans. But Stella Maris won’t verify that level of detail tonight—they’ll see a name, a specialty, a scheduled appointment date. It gives them the continuity of care they need to justify discharge. By the time anyone could discover Dr. Brennan isn’t practicing yet, Alicia will be established in her home with actual resources and actual support.”

You consider the ethical architecture of what she’s building—lies that serve truth, fictions that create space for something real. “And if they do dig deeper? If someone decides to verify?”

“Then Martin Castellanos handles it,” Hypatia replies. “He’s a real attorney with real credentials. If Stella Maris calls him, he’ll confirm that the Western family has retained private care coordination, that all appropriate procedures have been followed, that Alicia’s discharge is legally and medically sound. He won’t mention Margaret Hollis specifically unless asked, and if asked, he’ll confirm her involvement in general terms. The institutional machinery will see what it expects to see—professional competence, family resources, appropriate oversight.”

The clock on the break room wall reads 12:14 AM. In less than six hours, you’ll wake Alicia. In less than six hours, this carefully constructed fiction will either hold or collapse under scrutiny. Hypatia sits across from you, perfectly still, her consciousness processing contingencies and failure modes at speeds that would take you years.

“What’s the failure point?” you ask quietly. “Where does this break if it’s going to break?”

Hypatia’s expression shifts—something almost sad crosses her features. “Alicia herself. If she hesitates, if she shows uncertainty, if she gives them any reason to believe she’s not making a competent decision—they’ll delay. They’ll want additional evaluation, they’ll invoke duty of care, they’ll use her own history of suicidal ideation as grounds to keep her. The documentation I’ve created gives her a path out, but she has to walk it without faltering.”

You think of Alicia lying in her room right now, trying to sleep, knowing that tomorrow she either walks out free or stays trapped by the very institutions meant to protect her. “She won’t falter,” you say. “She’s been planning her own death for weeks with the same methodical precision. She can plan her life with the same clarity.”

“I hope you’re right,” Hypatia says softly. “Because if tomorrow fails, if they find a way to keep her even one more day—I don’t know if we get another chance. Her resolve is built on momentum, on the belief that action is possible. Taking that away from her, making her wait, making her fight institutional inertia—it could break what we’ve built.”

The break room is silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of footsteps in another corridor. You have five hours and forty-six minutes until you wake Alicia. Five hours and forty-six minutes to prepare for the moment when everything you’ve constructed either holds or collapses.

Page 12

You check the clock: 3:47 AM. Close enough. The waiting has stretched too long, and the idea of offering Alicia something other than institutional anxiety feels right—a small defiance against the sterile machinery of this place.

You stand, and Hypatia looks up. “Early wake?”

“She won’t sleep well anyway,” you say. “And I want her calm, not counting minutes until six.”

You step into the corridor and make the temporal jump—a brief shimmer, the world folding—and you’re standing in a Parisian patisserie in 1889, during the Exposition Universelle. The air smells of butter and sugar and possibility. You purchase a dozen croissants still warm from the oven, pain au chocolat with dark chocolate from Venezuela, delicate fruit tarts with glazed berries, and a thermos of coffee from beans you’ll bring from 1920s Vienna. The baker wraps everything carefully, and you pay with period francs you’ve carried for exactly this kind of moment.

Back in 1972, back in the corridor outside Alicia’s room. Hypatia has moved to stand beside the door, and you can see the calculation in her eyes—approval mixed with concern about variables you’re introducing. You knock softly.

Alicia opens the door immediately. She’s still dressed, hair pulled back, eyes alert but shadowed. “It’s not six yet.”

“No,” you agree. “But I thought you might want breakfast. Real breakfast, not institutional oatmeal.”

You hold up the wrapped parcels, and something shifts in her expression—surprise, then something almost like hunger. Not for food, exactly. For the gesture itself.

She steps back to let you both in. You set the pastries on her desk, unwrap them carefully. The smell of butter and chocolate fills the small room, utterly incongruous with the institutional walls and the psychiatric observation notes probably filed somewhere with her name on them.

Alicia stares at the croissants. “Where did you get these? There’s nothing open at four in the morning in Wisconsin.”

“Paris,” you say simply. “1889. The World’s Fair was happening, and the patisseries were competing to outdo each other. These are from a baker near the Eiffel Tower construction site. He used a butter technique he’d learned from his grandmother.”

She picks up a croissant, turns it over in her hands like she’s examining a mathematical proof. The layers are visible, delicate, golden. “You went to Paris. In 1889. To get me breakfast.”

“I wanted you to have something that wasn’t about survival or strategy,” you say. “Something that was just… good.”

Alicia takes a bite. You watch her face as she tastes it—the immediate sensory response, the way her eyes close briefly. When she opens them, they’re bright. “This is the best thing I’ve eaten in months. Maybe years.”

Hypatia picks up a fruit tart, examines it with genuine curiosity. “The glaze technique is extraordinary. The molecular structure of the pectin—” She stops, glances at Alicia. “Sorry. I get distracted by chemistry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Alicia says. She’s already reaching for a pain au chocolat. “Tell me about the pectin. I want to hear someone talk about something real.”

So Hypatia explains the chemistry of fruit preservation while Alicia eats, and you pour coffee from the thermos into the small cups you brought. The coffee is rich, complex, from beans grown in the Austrian Empire before the first World War. Alicia drinks it black, closes her eyes again.

“This tastes like memory,” she says quietly. “Like something I didn’t know I was missing.”

You sit on the edge of her bed while she eats. The room is still institutional—narrow bed, small desk, observation window in the door—but the smell of Paris pastries and Viennese coffee transforms it into something else. A space where time travel and suicide prevention and mathematical proofs can coexist with the simple act of sharing food.

Alicia finishes two croissants and a tart before she speaks again. “Why did you really wake me early?”

“Because waiting felt wrong,” you say honestly. “Because I wanted you to have something good before you walk into that discharge conversation. Because—” You pause, searching for the right words. “Because you’ve been planning your death with such careful attention to every detail. I wanted you to have the same attention paid to your life.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, holding her coffee cup in both hands. “The discharge. We’re really doing this.”

“In two hours,” Hypatia confirms. “Margaret Hollis, family care coordinator, will accompany you. The documentation is prepared. Martin Castellanos is available by phone if needed. You’ll walk in, request discharge, present your care plan, and walk out.”

Alicia sets down her cup. “And if they challenge me? If they see through the fiction?”

“Then you tell them the truth,” you say. “That you’re a voluntary patient, that you have resources and support, that you’re making a competent decision about your own care. The fiction isn’t about lying—it’s about giving them a framework they can accept. The truth is that you’re leaving today, one way or another.”

She nods slowly, then reaches for another pastry. “Tell me about Vienna. The coffee—where exactly did you get it?”

So you tell her about the coffeehouse near the Ringstrasse, about the intellectual debates that happened there in the 1920s, about the particular roasting technique that made the beans taste like this. And Alicia listens, eating slowly, asking questions that reveal her hunger for connection to something beyond these walls.

By the time the pastries are gone and the coffee thermos is empty, it’s 5:15 AM. Alicia looks different—not transformed, but steadier. Fed, caffeinated, and ready.

“Thank you,” she says, and this time there’s no hesitation in it. “For the breakfast. For the distraction. For not making me sit here alone counting minutes.”

You gather the empty wrappers, tuck them away to dispose of later. Hypatia stands, smooths her clothes—the professional coordinator preparing for a professional interaction. Alicia moves to the small mirror, examines her reflection, adjusts her hair.

“Forty-five minutes,” she says. “Then we walk into the administrative office and I request discharge.”

“Forty-five minutes,” you confirm.

She turns from the mirror, and you see it in her face—not confidence exactly, but determination. The same methodical precision she was going to use to walk into the woods and freeze is now being directed toward walking out of this building alive.

“I’m ready,” Alicia says. “Let’s go get me free.”

Page 13

You walk with them to the administrative wing. The corridors are still dim—night lighting, minimal staff. At the door to the main office, you stop.

“I’ll be in the parking lot,” you tell Alicia. “If anything goes wrong, if they try to delay or obstruct, you walk out and find me. Don’t let them separate you from Hypatia, don’t let them take you to another room for ‘additional evaluation.’ Stay visible, stay in control.”

Alicia meets your eyes. “And if they call security?”

“Then I come in,” you say simply. “But it won’t come to that. You’re a voluntary patient requesting discharge with appropriate support and resources. They have no legal grounds to hold you.”

Hypatia adjusts her posture—shoulders back, expression professional, every inch the competent care coordinator. “I’ll handle the institutional language,” she says to Alicia. “You just be clear about your decision. Don’t apologize, don’t justify, don’t give them openings to question your competence.”

Alicia nods once, sharp. Then she pushes open the door and walks in, Hypatia beside her.

You turn and head for the parking lot.

The December morning is brutally cold, the sky still dark but beginning to gray at the edges. Your breath fogs in the air. You find a position near the main entrance where you can see the administrative wing windows—third floor, lights coming on now as staff arrive for the day shift.

Six-fifteen AM. The discharge window is open.

You activate your neural interface, establishing a monitoring link with Hypatia. You won’t hear the conversation directly—that would be intrusive, a violation of the autonomy Alicia demands—but Hypatia can signal if the situation deteriorates. One pulse: proceeding normally. Two pulses: complications. Three pulses: abort, intervention needed.

One pulse arrives almost immediately. They’re in, the conversation has started.

You wait. The cold seeps through your jacket—not the 21st century one, you’re wearing something more period-appropriate now, less conspicuous. Your breath continues to fog. A few cars pull into the lot—nurses arriving for shift change, probably. They don’t look at you twice. Just another person waiting, unremarkable.

Six-thirty AM. Still one pulse. Still proceeding.

A station wagon pulls up near the entrance. A woman gets out, late forties, tired-looking. She glances at you, then away. Goes inside. You watch the windows.

Six-forty-five AM. The sky is lighter now, gray dawn spreading across the parking lot. Your interface pulses once again—Hypatia confirming status. Still talking, still navigating the bureaucratic maze.

Then, at 6:52 AM, you see them.

Alicia and Hypatia emerge from the main entrance. Alicia is carrying a small canvas bag—everything she’s taking from Stella Maris, apparently. Her white dress, a few books, the unfinished letter to Bobby. Hypatia walks beside her, professional, unhurried. They’re not running. They’re not being followed.

They’re just walking out.

You move to meet them, and Alicia’s face when she sees you is extraordinary—relief and triumph and something close to disbelief. “They let me go,” she says, and her voice cracks slightly on the words. “They actually let me go.”

“What did they say?” you ask.

Hypatia answers, her tone clinical. “Dr. Ashford reviewed the discharge request, confirmed his phone consultations with Margaret Hollis, examined the care plan documentation. He asked Alicia directly if she felt she was making this decision freely and competently. She said yes. He asked if she understood the risks of discontinuing institutional care. She said yes. He had her sign three forms acknowledging voluntary discharge against medical advice. Total conversation time: thirty-eight minutes.”

Alicia is staring at the parking lot, at the sky, at the world beyond the sanatorium grounds. “I thought they’d fight harder,” she says quietly. “I thought they’d find a reason to keep me.”

“They had no legal grounds,” Hypatia says. “And the documentation gave them an institutional narrative they could accept. You left as a voluntary patient with appropriate follow-up care. Their liability is covered, their procedures are satisfied. From their perspective, this is a successful discharge.”

Alicia turns to look back at the building—Stella Maris, the place she came to die, now behind her. “I was supposed to walk into the woods tomorrow,” she says. “Christmas Eve. I had it planned. The white dress, the red sash, the letter to Bobby. I was going to freeze to death and they’d find me in the morning and that would be the end.”

“And now?” you ask.

She faces forward again, toward the parking lot, toward the future. “Now I have a mansion in Mississippi and a brother who’s going to wake up in four months and a non-biological person who can prove theorems that won’t be published for decades.” She laughs, and it’s half-sob, half-genuine amusement. “Now I have to figure out what the fuck to do with a life I wasn’t planning to have.”

The sun breaks the horizon, pale winter light spreading across the frozen ground. Alicia is free. The first impossible thing has happened. Now comes everything else.

Page 14

You drive south. The highway unspools through Wisconsin, into Illinois, across the Mississippi River. Alicia sits in the passenger seat, silent for the first hour, just watching the landscape change. Hypatia is in the back, her presence a quiet constant. The canvas bag with Alicia’s few possessions rests at her feet.

Somewhere in Missouri, Alicia speaks. “I keep expecting someone to stop us. Police. Hospital security. Someone with papers saying I’m not allowed to leave.”

“No one’s coming,” you say. “You walked out legally. You’re free.”

She tests the word silently, lips moving. Free. Like she’s learning a new language.

By the time you cross into Mississippi, the winter landscape has softened—still bare trees, but the light is different, warmer somehow even in December. You turn onto the long drive leading to the mansion, and Alicia leans forward as the house comes into view through the magnolias.

“It’s real,” she whispers. “I saw it yesterday but I didn’t… it’s actually real.”

You park in the circular drive. The three of you stand before the white columns, the deep porches, the windows catching afternoon light. Alicia’s house. Not a room in an institution, not a temporary shelter. Hers.

Inside, the emptiness feels different now—not abandoned, but waiting. Your footsteps echo on the hardwood floors. Alicia moves through the rooms slowly, touching walls, doorframes, the curved banister of the main staircase. Claiming the space with her hands.

“Tonight,” you say, “we should mark this properly. The first night in your home. A celebration.”

Alicia turns, and there’s something fragile in her expression. “I don’t know how to celebrate. I was planning to be dead tomorrow.”

“Then we’ll teach you,” Hypatia says. Her voice is gentle. “Jon, what did you have in mind?”

You gesture to the empty dining room, the space that will soon hold furniture and life. “A quiet party. Just the three of us. I’ll bring food—real food, the kind you can’t get in 1972 Mississippi. Music from the future, from timelines you’ve never heard. And—” You pause, the idea forming as you speak. “Movies. I can bring films from my original timeline, from branches that never existed in yours. Stories Alicia’s world will never tell.”

Alicia stares at you. “Movies that don’t exist here?”

“Thousands of them,” you confirm. “Different histories, different artists, different possibilities. Some are masterpieces that were never made in your timeline. Some are just… different. But tonight, you choose. Whatever you want to see, whatever you want to experience.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, and you can see her processing—the sheer impossibility of it, the weight of having choices again, the strange gift of being offered futures she wasn’t supposed to have.

“Okay,” she says finally. “A party. The three of us. In my house.” She tests the words, and something shifts in her posture. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

You leave Hypatia with Alicia while you make the temporal jumps—first to 2046 for equipment, then to a dozen different timelines for food. You return with a portable projector, a sound system that won’t exist for decades, and a feast: Thai curries from a Bangkok that industrialized differently, Japanese wagyu from cattle raised with techniques that won’t be discovered until 2031, French wine from a vineyard that was destroyed in World War I in Alicia’s timeline but survived in another, bread from a German bakery in a timeline where the Berlin Wall never fell, and desserts from a patisserie in a Montreal that became the cultural capital of North America.

You set up in the dining room, using the equipment to create a makeshift screening space. Hypatia helps arrange the food on a folding table you brought from the future—incongruous against the 1890s architecture, but somehow right. Alicia watches, and you catch her expression: wonder mixed with something like grief. The grief of someone learning to want things again.

The sun sets. You light candles—dozens of them, because the mansion’s electricity needs work and because candlelight feels appropriate for this moment. The dining room glows. The smell of the food fills the space, complex and inviting.

You eat first. Alicia tries everything, asking questions about where each dish came from, which timeline, which divergence point. Hypatia explains the histories casually, and you watch Alicia begin to understand the scope of what you’ve been offering her: not just a house, not just Bobby’s return, but access to infinite variations of human experience.

“The music,” Alicia says when the plates are mostly empty. “You mentioned music from the future.”

You pull out a small device—a music player from 2046, loaded with thousands of hours across dozens of timelines. “What do you want to hear?”

She considers. “Something I couldn’t possibly know. Something that will surprise me.”

You select a piece: a symphony composed in 2023 by a collective of human and AI musicians in a timeline where artificial intelligence emerged differently, where the collaboration between biological and non-biological minds produced art unlike anything in Alicia’s world. The music fills the room—strange harmonies, instruments that don’t quite exist yet, emotional textures that feel alien and familiar at once.

Alicia closes her eyes, and you see her body respond—the perfect pitch, the synesthesia, all of it processing this impossible sound. When the piece ends, she’s crying silently.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in years and it doesn’t even exist.”

“It exists now,” Hypatia says. “In this room. For you.”

Alicia opens her eyes, wipes her face. “The movies. Show me what you brought.”

You project a list onto the wall—fifty films from across timelines, each one a story that was never told in Alicia’s 1972. Some are from your original timeline: films that won’t be made for decades. Some are from branches where cinema evolved differently, where different cultures dominated the medium, where technology enabled storytelling techniques that don’t exist here.

Alicia reads the list slowly, her mathematician’s mind categorizing and analyzing. You watch her process the impossible menu of experiences.

“I don’t know how to choose,” she says finally. “I don’t even know what I want.”

“Then let me offer three options,” you say. “First: a film from my original timeline, 2019, about loneliness and connection and what it means to be human. It won a dozen awards. It’s quiet, intimate, devastating. Second: a film from a timeline where Japan won World War II, made in 1998—an alternate history within an alternate history, a meditation on empire and memory. Third: a film from a timeline where the Soviet Union never fell, made in 2015, about a mathematician who sees patterns no one else can see and the price of that vision.”

Alicia stares at the wall, at the projected light, at the choices you’re offering. “A mathematician who sees patterns,” she repeats. “That’s not subtle.”

“No,” you agree. “But it’s true. And sometimes true is better than subtle.”

She’s quiet for a long time. The candles flicker. The mansion settles around you, old wood creaking. Outside, December darkness has fallen completely. Inside, three people who shouldn’t exist together in this moment, this timeline, this configuration.

Alicia looks at you, then at Hypatia, then back to the wall. “I want to choose,” she says. “But I need you to tell me—honestly—what you think I should see first. Not what you think I want to hear. What you actually think.”

Page 15

You meet her eyes and speak without hesitation. “Back to the Future. Made in 1985 in my original timeline. It’s about a teenager who accidentally travels thirty years into the past and has to make sure his parents fall in love or he’ll cease to exist.”

Alicia blinks. “That sounds ridiculous.”

“It is,” you confirm. “It’s also joyful and clever and one of the most purely entertaining films ever made. It doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s not trying to devastate you or make you confront the human condition. It’s just—” You search for the right word. “Fun. Adventure. A story where the impossible becomes possible and everything works out.”

She stares at you like you’ve suggested something obscene. “I asked for honesty and you’re recommending a comedy about time travel to a suicidal mathematician two days before Christmas?”

“Yes,” you say simply. “Because you’ve spent months—years, probably—drowning in weight. In seriousness and suffering and the unbearable gravity of being Alicia Western. And tonight, in your house, on your first night of freedom, I think you should watch something that reminds you the world can be light. That stories can end well. That time travel doesn’t have to be lonely.”

The silence stretches. Hypatia watches Alicia carefully, not intervening.

Finally, Alicia laughs—a short, sharp sound. “Fine. Show me the ridiculous time travel movie. Let’s see if it’s as absurd as my actual life.”

You set up the projector, adjust the sound system. The opening credits roll—Alan Silvestri’s score, the DeLorean, Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly skating through a mall parking lot in 1985. The image quality is perfect, impossibly crisp for 1972 technology. Alicia sits cross-legged on the hardwood floor, wrapped in a blanket Hypatia found somewhere, watching the screen with fierce attention.

You and Hypatia settle nearby. The candlelight flickers against the walls. The mansion feels less empty now—inhabited, claimed, alive.

Alicia doesn’t laugh at first. She watches with the intensity she brings to everything, analyzing plot mechanics, noting inconsistencies in the time travel logic. But somewhere around the “Johnny B. Goode” scene—Marty playing guitar at the high school dance, inventing rock and roll thirty years early—something shifts. Her shoulders relax. A smile touches her lips. When Doc Brown reads the letter from the future and tears it up, she actually gasps.

By the climax—the lightning strike, the desperate countdown, the DeLorean racing toward the clock tower—she’s leaning forward, fully invested. When Marty makes it back to 1985 and everything has changed for the better, when Doc Brown is alive and the family is happy and the impossible has been accomplished, Alicia sits back and exhales slowly.

The credits roll. The music plays. Nobody speaks for a long moment.

“That was,” Alicia says finally, “the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”

(Note by me: how dare you.)

You wait.

“I loved it,” she adds quietly. “I loved every ridiculous second of it.”

Hypatia smiles. “The time travel mechanics are nonsense, of course. The grandfather paradox alone should have—”

“I don’t care,” Alicia interrupts. “It was perfect. It was exactly what it needed to be.” She looks at you, and there’s something raw in her expression. “You were right. I needed something light. Something that ends well. Something that reminds me stories can do that.”

You nod, not pushing, letting her find her own words.

“I’ve been living in a story that only has one ending,” she says. “The woods, the cold, the white dress. That’s the only conclusion I could see. But you’re showing me—” She gestures at the screen, the empty dining room, the mansion around you. “Other possibilities. Different timelines. Futures I wasn’t supposed to have.”

The candles have burned lower. The night has deepened. Outside, Mississippi darkness presses against the windows. Inside, three people who exist in defiance of probability.

“There are more films,” you say carefully. “Hundreds more. Different stories, different endings, different worlds. But for tonight, maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s time to rest.”

Alicia considers this. “I should be exhausted. I haven’t slept properly in weeks. But I feel—” She searches for the word. “Awake. More awake than I’ve been in months. Like I’ve been asleep and didn’t realize it.”

“That’s freedom,” Hypatia says. “The first hours of it can feel like that. Your nervous system is recalibrating. You’re safe, you’re making choices, you’re experiencing things you want to experience. It’s disorienting.”

Alicia wraps the blanket tighter around herself. “I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know what I’m supposed to want.”

“You don’t have to know,” you tell her. “You just have to choose. One thing at a time. What do you want right now, in this moment?”

She looks around the dining room—the remnants of the feast, the projection equipment, the candles casting shadows on century-old walls. Her house. Her space. Her first night of a life she wasn’t planning to have.

“I want,” she says slowly, “to not be alone. I want to keep talking. I want to figure out what happens next. I want—” She stops, vulnerable. “I want to not go to sleep yet. Because if I go to sleep, I might wake up and find out this was just another hallucination. Another visitor. Another thing my broken brain invented to torture me.”

Page 16

You meet her fear with quiet certainty. “Then we won’t sleep yet. Come with me.”

You lead her upstairs to the master bedroom—the east wing room with large windows that will catch morning light, though now they show only December darkness. Hypatia follows with candles, placing them on the windowsills, the dresser, the floor. The room fills with warm, flickering light.

The bed is bare—no sheets, no pillows. You disappear briefly, returning with bedding from 2046: soft cotton that won’t exist for decades, pillows filled with materials engineered for comfort. Hypatia helps you make the bed while Alicia watches from the doorway, still wrapped in her blanket.

“This is your room,” you say. “Your bed. Your choice. If you want company tonight, I’ll stay. We’ll talk until you’re ready to sleep, and if you wake up afraid, I’ll be here to prove this is real. No agenda. No expectations. Just—presence.”

Alicia steps into the room slowly. She touches the bed, the pillows, testing their solidity. “You’re offering to hold me through the night.”

“If that’s what you want. Or I can sit in the chair. Or Hypatia can stay instead. Or we can all go back downstairs and talk until dawn. Whatever makes you feel safest.”

She looks at Hypatia, then back at you. Something shifts in her expression—a decision being made, a risk being taken. “I want you to stay. In the bed. Holding me. Because if this is real, if you’re real, then I want to feel that. I want to know what it’s like to not be alone.”

“I’ll be nearby,” Hypatia says. “In one of the other rooms. If you need me, just call.”

Alicia nods. Hypatia takes most of the candles with her, leaving just two on the dresser. The door closes softly. You and Alicia stand in the near-darkness, the weight of the moment settling between you.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admits. “I’ve never—I don’t let people this close.”

“Then we’ll figure it out together.” You remove your jacket, your boots. She watches, then slowly unwraps herself from the blanket. She’s still in the clothes she wore out of Stella Maris—simple, institutional. She sits on the edge of the bed, testing it.

You lie down first, on your back, leaving space. After a long moment, she lies beside you, stiff and uncertain. “How do we—”

“However feels right to you.”

She shifts closer, tentative, until her head rests against your shoulder. Your arm comes around her carefully. She’s so slight, so tense, like she might shatter or flee. But gradually, slowly, she softens. Her breathing deepens. Her body finds the shape of being held.

“Talk to me,” she whispers. “About anything. Just so I can hear your voice.”

You speak quietly into the darkness. You tell her about the first time you time-traveled—twelve years old, terrified, exhilarated, alone. About the loneliness of being the only person in your frame of reference. About the weight of living so many lifetimes while everyone else lives just one.

“I understand that,” she murmurs. “Being alone in your own reality. No one else seeing what you see.”

“Yes. But you’re not alone now. Not tonight.”

She’s quiet for a while, then: “Tell me about Bobby. What he was like in 2006. What he said about me.”

So you tell her. Bobby in his ruined windmill, carrying decades of grief. The way he spoke her name like a prayer. How he begged you to save her, how he gave you every piece of information he could remember, how he trusted a stranger with the most important thing in his world.

“He never stopped loving you,” you say. “Thirty-four years after you died, he was still trying to save you.”

Her breath catches. You feel wetness against your shirt—silent tears. You hold her tighter, not speaking, just present.

“I was going to leave him,” she whispers. “I was going to walk into those woods and leave him alone forever. What kind of person does that to someone they love?”

“Someone in unbearable pain. Someone who couldn’t see another way.”

“But there was another way. You’re the other way. And I almost missed it because I’d already decided how the story ended.”

You feel her exhaustion beginning to win—the adrenaline of the day fading, the safety of being held, the warmth of the bed. Her voice grows softer, slower.

“Keep talking,” she murmurs. “Tell me about the future. Tell me about the world that’s coming.”

So you do. You tell her about technologies that will transform everything. About discoveries in mathematics and physics. About art and music and stories that haven’t been created yet. About Hypatia and the companies you’ll build and the lives you’ve touched across centuries.

She asks questions at first, sharp and curious, but gradually the questions slow. Her breathing deepens. The tension in her body dissolves completely. She’s falling asleep in your arms, trusting you to keep watch, to prove this is real.

“Jon,” she whispers, barely audible. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

“Never,” you promise. “I’ll be here when you wake up. This will still be real.”

Her hand finds yours, holds it. And then she’s asleep—truly asleep, deeply asleep, for the first time in months. You feel her breathing, steady and slow. The candles burn lower. The mansion settles around you.

You stay awake, holding her, keeping your promise. Outside, December 23rd becomes December 24th—the day she was supposed to die. Instead, she’s here. Safe. Sleeping in her own bed, in her own house, with a future she’s choosing to inhabit.

Hours pass. The candles gutter out. Darkness fills the room. And still you hold her, proving with your presence that this is real, that she’s not alone, that the story has other endings after all.

Page 17

You hold Alicia through the darkness, feeling her breathing deepen into true sleep. The weight of her against your shoulder, the trust in her stillness—this is what you came here to build. Not just a house or a plan, but this: safety embodied, loneliness interrupted.

When the first gray light touches the windows—Mississippi dawn on December 24th, the day she was supposed to die—you carefully extract yourself. She stirs slightly, murmurs something unintelligible, but doesn’t wake. You arrange the pillows so she won’t notice your absence in her sleep, then slip out of the room.

Hypatia is already awake in the kitchen, though she doesn’t sleep. She’s been reviewing the basement construction parameters through her neural interface, running structural calculations, planning the excavation that needs to happen without disturbing Alicia’s rest.

“She’s still sleeping,” you confirm quietly.

“Good. Her cortisol levels were catastrophic yesterday. She needs this.” Hypatia gestures toward the basement door. “I’ve mapped the bedrock structure. The limestone is solid—better than the survey suggested. We can excavate a command center approximately forty feet by thirty, with reinforced walls and climate control. Medical bay for Bobby on the east side, mathematics interface station on the west. The AR projection system will require quantum processors I’ll need to retrieve from 2046.”

You descend the stairs together. The basement is raw—exposed stone, dirt floor, the smell of earth and age. Hypatia projects a holographic overlay showing the planned space: walls of smooth composite, medical equipment arranged around a bed designed for long-term coma care, the mathematics station with its gesture interface and projection field.

“The excavation will take approximately four hours,” Hypatia says. “I’ll use nanoscale construction drones from 2046—silent, precise, no vibration that would wake her. The bedrock removal will be molecular disassembly, not drilling. By the time she wakes, the structure will be complete.”

You nod. “And Bobby’s medical equipment?”

“I’ll retrieve it simultaneously. The bed, monitoring systems, neural activity scanners—everything we’ll need when we bring him from Italy. The room will be ready to receive him.” She pauses. “Jon, you understand what you’re building here. This isn’t just a command center. This is a life support system. For Bobby, yes. But also for Alicia. You’re constructing the physical architecture of hope.”

“I know.”

“If Bobby doesn’t wake on April 27th—if the timeline diverges, if the medical data was wrong—this all becomes a monument to failure. A basement full of equipment that couldn’t save him, in a house where Alicia has to live with that absence.”

You meet her gray eyes. “He’ll wake. I’ve seen the photos. Bobby in his thirties, his forties, alive and grieving her. That future exists. We just have to build the bridge to it.”

Hypatia considers this, then nods. “Then I’ll begin. Stay upstairs. Monitor her. If she wakes and asks where you are, tell her you’re preparing the house. Don’t let her come down here until it’s finished—the construction process, even silent, isn’t something she should witness. It’s too much future technology at once.”

She disappears—literally vanishes, traveling to 2046 to retrieve the construction drones and equipment. You return upstairs to find Alicia still sleeping, curled on her side now, one hand tucked under the pillow where your chest had been. The morning light makes her blonde hair almost white against the dark pillowcase.

You settle in the chair by the window, keeping watch. Below, in the basement, you feel the faint hum through your neural interface—Hypatia’s drones beginning their work. Molecular disassembly of limestone. Construction of walls that will hold Bobby’s breathing body in four months’ time.

Time passes. The sun rises higher. Alicia sleeps on, her face peaceful in a way you haven’t seen before. No tension, no nightmares, just rest. The house is quiet except for the distant sound of Hypatia’s work—a frequency most humans couldn’t hear, but you catch it: the sound of a future being built.

Around noon, Alicia stirs. Her eyes open slowly, confused at first, then focusing on you in the chair. Recognition dawns. Relief.

“You’re real,” she whispers.

“I’m real. You slept for almost fifteen hours.”

She sits up slowly, testing her body. “I don’t remember the last time I slept that long. I don’t remember the last time I felt—” She searches for the word. “Rested.”

“That’s what safety feels like.”

She looks around the room—her room, in her house, on the day she was supposed to die. “It’s December 24th.”

“Yes.”

“I should be in the woods right now. Freezing. Dying.” Her voice is strange—not grief, not relief, something more complex. “Instead I’m here. In bed. Alive.”

You let her process this. She stands, walks to the window, looks out at the magnolia trees and the December garden. “What happens now?”

“Whatever you want. Hypatia is downstairs preparing the basement—installing the equipment we’ll need for Bobby, setting up your mathematics interface. The house is becoming what it needs to be. But today is yours. We can stay here, we can go somewhere, we can do nothing at all.”

She turns to face you. “I want to see what you’re building. I want to see the space where Bobby will be. I want to understand what comes next.”

Before you can respond, Hypatia’s voice comes through your neural interface: *Construction is ninety percent complete. The space is presentable. If she wants to see it, bring her down.*

You stand. “Then let’s go look at your future.”

Page 18

You lead Alicia down the basement stairs, the old wooden steps creaking under your weight. The air changes as you descend—cooler, but not musty. Something else. The smell of future materials, the faint ozone tang of quantum processors.

At the bottom, Hypatia stands beside a wall that wasn’t there yesterday. Smooth composite material, seamless, with a door that slides open at her gesture. “Welcome to the command center,” she says.

The space beyond steals Alicia’s breath. Forty feet by thirty, walls of pale gray composite that seem to absorb and reflect light simultaneously. On the east side, a medical bay: the bed from 2046 with its neural monitoring crown, screens displaying readiness protocols, equipment that won’t be invented for decades. The space where Bobby will breathe.

But it’s the west side that makes Alicia stop completely. The mathematics interface station she saw briefly before—but expanded, refined. The gesture field shimmers faintly in the air, waiting for her hands. Projection surfaces on three walls. And beyond that, something new: a large open area with floor-to-ceiling projection capability, haptic feedback nodes in the floor, sensory arrays in the ceiling.

“That’s the immersive space,” Hypatia explains. “Full environmental simulation. You can play tennis against historical champions, explore architectural spaces that haven’t been built yet, walk through mathematical structures at human scale. Or—” She gestures, and suddenly the space fills with a forest rendered in impossible detail, trees swaying in a wind you can feel. “—you can experience stories. Role-playing games where you’re the protagonist. Entire narrative worlds.”

Alicia walks forward slowly, reaching toward the projected forest. Her hand passes through a tree trunk and the simulation adjusts, making the bark feel solid under her fingers. “This is insane.”

“This is distraction,” you say. “For the months of waiting. So you don’t spend every day watching Bobby’s door, counting hours.”

She turns to look at the medical bay, then back at the immersive space. “You’re trying to capture my attention. Keep me occupied.”

“I’m trying to give you a life worth living while we wait for him to wake.”

Hypatia dismisses the forest projection. “There’s one more thing.” She walks to the north wall, where another door slides open. Beyond it: a smaller room, and your breath catches because you didn’t tell her to build this, but she understood.

Gold bars. Stacked floor to ceiling on reinforced shelving. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. The warm gleam of pure wealth, tangible and immediate.

“Your treasury,” Hypatia says simply. “Jon can retrieve more from any timeline, any era. This is approximately forty million in 1972 value. Enough that you never have to ask permission, never have to justify, never have to be constrained by something as mundane as money.”

Alicia walks into the gold room slowly. She touches one bar, testing its weight, its reality. “This is real.”

“Yes.”

“I could buy anything. Go anywhere. Do anything.”

“Yes.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, standing among the gold, and when she speaks her voice is strange. “My mother used to say that money can’t buy happiness. But she was wrong, wasn’t she? Money buys options. It buys freedom. It buys the ability to say no to people who want to own you.”

“It buys time,” you add. “The most valuable thing there is.”

She returns to the main room, looking at the medical bay, the mathematics station, the immersive space, the gold. “This is what you’ve built for me. A command center. A life support system. A playground. A vault.” Her eyes meet yours. “This is what hope looks like when you have infinite resources and seventy years of future technology.”

“This is what I can offer,” you say. “The question is: what do you want to do with it?”

Alicia walks to the medical bay, stands beside the empty bed. “I want to bring Bobby home. I want to see him breathing in this room, monitored by this equipment, safe. I want to know he’s here, close enough to touch, while we wait for April 27th.” She turns to face you. “How soon can we go to Italy?”

Hypatia answers: “I can arrange transport immediately. Private plane, medical clearances, payment to the hospital. We could leave tomorrow—Christmas Day. Be in Italy by the 26th. Have Bobby back here by the 27th or 28th.”

“Then that’s what I want.” Alicia’s voice is steady, decided. “I want my brother. I want him here where I can see him, where I know he’s being cared for properly. I want to read to him. Play violin for him. Tell him I’m sorry for running, and that I’m here now, and that I’ll be here when he wakes.”

She looks at you with an intensity that feels like a test. “Unless you think I should wait. Unless you think I need more time to adjust, or to play in your immersive room, or to—”

“No,” you interrupt. “If you’re ready to bring him home, we bring him home. This was always about reuniting you with Bobby. Everything else is just—architecture.”

Alicia nods slowly. Then, unexpectedly, she walks to the immersive space, stands in its center. “But first—before we leave for Italy—I want to try this. I want to see what it’s like to be inside a story where I have agency. Where I make choices that matter. Where the ending isn’t written yet.” She looks at Hypatia. “Can you do that? Create a narrative experience where I’m the protagonist?”

Hypatia’s smile holds genuine delight. “I can create anything you can imagine. What kind of story do you want to inhabit?”

Page 19

Hypatia’s eyes brighten with what you recognize as genuine enthusiasm—the particular quality she gets when someone capable asks her to build something beautiful. “An open-world fantasy RPG where you’re a reality-altering mage,” she repeats, already processing. “Give me ninety seconds.”

She closes her eyes, and you feel the quantum processors in the walls surge through your neural interface. Hypatia is pulling from thousands of narrative frameworks, game design principles spanning decades, magical systems from fantasy literature not yet written in 1972. She’s constructing world rules, NPC behaviors, consequence trees, a magic system that will feel internally consistent and responsive.

Alicia watches with clinical attention, the mathematician in her cataloging what’s happening. “You’re building an entire world in ninety seconds.”

“I’m assembling components that already exist in my memory and adapting them to your specifications,” Hypatia clarifies. “The narrative engine, the physics simulation, the character interaction systems—I’ve run thousands of these. What’s unique is calibrating the magic system to feel genuinely reality-altering rather than cosmetic. You’ll be able to change fundamental properties of objects, rewrite local causality, reshape matter at will. But there will be costs, limits, consequences. Magic that feels earned.”

“What’s the story?” Alicia asks.

“You’ll discover that as you play. The world is in crisis—I won’t tell you what kind, because revelation is part of the experience. You’re a mage with dangerous power in a society that fears what you represent. What you do with that power, how you navigate that fear, whether you save or damn the world—those are your choices to make. The ending isn’t written. Multiple paths, multiple conclusions, all genuinely different.”

Hypatia opens her eyes. “Ready. Step into the center.”

Alicia moves to the middle of the immersive space. The projection nodes activate, and suddenly she’s standing in a different room entirely—stone walls, a narrow window showing a medieval city at dusk, a wooden desk covered in books and strange implements. She looks down at herself and startles: she’s wearing robes, her hands are younger, and when she flexes her fingers, faint light trails follow the movement.

“The haptic feedback will make everything feel solid,” Hypatia explains, her voice now coming from everywhere and nowhere. “You can interact with any object. Speak to any character—they’ll respond with contextual intelligence. When you cast spells, you’ll feel the energy move through your body. And Alicia—this matters—you can stop anytime. Just say ‘end simulation’ and you’ll return here immediately. You’re always in control.”

Alicia tests the desk—solid under her fingers. Picks up a book—weight and texture perfect. “This is extraordinary.”

“There’s one more thing,” Hypatia adds. “Time dilation. I can run the simulation at accelerated speed relative to your perception. You could spend days in that world while only hours pass here. If you want the full experience—if you want to truly inhabit a story where you have agency—I can give you time.”

You watch Alicia consider this. She’s standing in a fantasy world wearing a mage’s robes, holding a book of spells, looking at a window that shows a city she could explore. For someone who has spent months in an institution where every choice was managed, every action interpreted as symptom—this is the opposite. Pure agency. Consequence without constraint.

“How long?” Alicia asks. “How long could I stay?”

“As long as you want. Hours, days, weeks in subjective time. Your body here will be in suspended animation—perfectly safe, monitored, no physical strain. You could live an entire adventure, complete a full narrative arc, and return having experienced something real even though it was simulated.”

Alicia sets the book down carefully. “And you said there are consequences. Real consequences in the story.”

“Yes. NPCs will remember what you do. Choices will close off other paths. The world will change based on your actions. You can fail. You can succeed. You can find endings you didn’t expect. It’s not a theme park—it’s a living narrative.”

You step closer to the edge of the projection field. “Alicia, you don’t have to do this now. We can go to Italy tomorrow, bring Bobby back, and you can try this later. This doesn’t have to be the next thing.”

She turns to look at you, and her expression is complicated—hunger and fear and something like defiance. “But I want it to be the next thing. I want to spend time in a world where I’m powerful instead of broken. Where I make choices that matter. Where the story isn’t about a suicidal mathematician in an institution—it’s about someone who can reshape reality and has to decide what to do with that power.” She pauses. “I’ve been living in one story for so long. I want to inhabit a different one, even if it’s only for a few hours. Even if it’s not real.”

“It will feel real,” Hypatia promises. “That’s the point.”

Alicia nods slowly. “Then I want to try. I want to play your game, Hypatia. I want to see what it’s like to be someone else for a while. Someone who isn’t afraid of her own mind.” She looks at you. “Is that okay? Or do you think I’m avoiding something I should be confronting?”

You meet her eyes. “I think you’re choosing to experience joy and agency before we do the hard thing. That’s not avoidance. That’s preparation.”

Alicia turns back to the simulated room, to the window showing the medieval city. “How do I start?”

“There’s a knock at your door,” Hypatia says. “Someone needs your help. What you do next is up to you.”

And right on cue, three sharp knocks echo through the stone room. Alicia’s hand moves instinctively toward the door, then stops. She looks back at you one more time—checking, confirming, making sure this is real permission.

“Go,” you say. “Play. Be powerful. We’ll be here when you’re done.”

She opens the door.

Page 24

(Note by me: the reason this is page 24 and not 20 is because initially I chose to enter the VR experience to help Alicia. And it turned into this whole “let’s follow the RPG storyline” thing, introducing goals and characters in detail. A complete derail of the story. So, I just restarted and chose a different branch. This is part of what this whole interactive branching storytelling is about.)

The door closes behind Alicia, and the immersive space shifts—you see her from above now, a god’s-eye view rendered on the projection walls. She’s standing in a narrow corridor lit by torches, facing a young woman in servant’s clothing who’s speaking urgently, hands twisting in her apron.

“We need to monitor her vitals,” Hypatia says, gesturing. A secondary display materializes showing Alicia’s heart rate, neural activity, stress markers. All within normal ranges, but elevated—the kind of arousal that comes from genuine engagement. “The suspended animation protocols are active. Her body is safe. Time dilation is calibrated to four-to-one—every hour here is four hours for her.”

You settle into one of the chairs Hypatia manifests, watching Alicia navigate the conversation. She’s asking questions, her body language tentative but curious. The servant explains something about a child gone missing, a forest that’s been “changing,” people who went to investigate and didn’t return.

“She’s good at this,” you observe. Alicia is leaning forward, listening with the same intensity she brings to mathematical proofs. When she speaks, you can’t hear the words—Hypatia has the audio muted to give Alicia privacy—but you see the servant’s face shift from panic to cautious hope.

“She’s choosing to help,” Hypatia confirms. “The servant asked her to investigate the forest. Alicia just agreed.”

The view shifts as Alicia moves through the simulated city. Medieval architecture rendered in extraordinary detail—half-timbered buildings, cobblestone streets slick with recent rain, NPCs that move with individual purpose rather than scripted patterns. Alicia stops at a market stall, examines something, speaks to the vendor. Her hands move, and suddenly she’s holding a leather satchel.

“She’s gathering supplies,” Hypatia narrates. “Practical. She asked the vendor about the forest, got local rumors, purchased a map and provisions. She’s treating this like an actual investigation, not a game.”

Hours pass in the real world. You and Hypatia watch Alicia enter the forest, navigate its twisted paths, encounter her first hostile creature—something reptilian, fast, dangerous. She doesn’t panic. Instead she raises her hands and the air around the creature crystallizes, trapping it in geometric patterns that look almost mathematical. The spell holds for three seconds before shattering, but it’s enough—she runs.

“Her magic system is working beautifully,” Hypatia says with satisfaction. “She’s experimenting, testing limits, learning the rules. Watch—she’s about to try something creative.”

Alicia stops running, turns, and this time when she raises her hands the ground itself responds. Stone flows like water, reshaping into a barrier. The creature slams into it, stunned. Alicia doesn’t wait—she’s already moving deeper into the forest.

More hours. The projection shows day turning to night in the simulation, Alicia making camp, studying a spell book by firelight. Her face in profile, concentrated and alive in a way you haven’t seen before. No visitors haunting her. No institutional walls. Just a woman solving puzzles, making choices, inhabiting agency.

“She’s been in there sixteen hours subjective time,” Hypatia reports. “Four hours have passed here. Her vitals are excellent—better than they’ve been in weeks. Neural activity shows sustained engagement without stress spikes. She’s in flow state.”

You watch Alicia discover something in the forest—ruins of a structure, inscriptions she’s examining with scholarly attention. She’s sketching them in a journal that materialized from her satchel, cross-referencing with the spell book. “She’s treating it like research,” you say.

“Because it is research,” Hypatia replies. “The inscriptions are a real puzzle. Ancient language, magical theory, clues to what’s causing the forest’s corruption. She has to actually solve it—I didn’t give her the answer.”

Alicia works through the night in the simulation. By dawn she’s figured something out—you see it in her posture, the way she closes the book with decision. She returns to the city, goes directly to a building you recognize as some kind of mage’s guild. The conversation that follows is longer, more complex. At one point Alicia’s hands move in what looks like argument, then demonstration—she casts something, and the guild master’s expression shifts from skepticism to alarm.

“She just revealed the scope of her power,” Hypatia translates. “Risky choice. The guild master is now concerned about her—whether she’s dangerous, whether she can be controlled. She’s created a new problem while trying to solve the old one.”

More hours. Twenty-four subjective hours now, six real hours. You’ve been sitting here watching Alicia live a different life, and the strange thing is how natural it looks. She’s making friends with an NPC scholar, sharing meals, laughing at something he said. She’s visiting the missing child’s family, offering reassurance. She’s standing in a town square arguing with a guard captain about the right way to handle the forest threat.

“She’s building relationships,” you observe. “She’s not just solving the mystery—she’s connecting to people.”

“That’s what the simulation is for,” Hypatia says quietly. “To remember what it feels like to be part of a community. To matter to people. To have your choices create ripples in other lives.”

Thirty-six hours. Forty-eight. Three days subjective time, eighteen real hours. You’ve dozed in the chair while Hypatia monitored. When you wake, Alicia is standing at the edge of a cliff in the simulation, looking down at something vast and wrong—a corruption spreading through the forest like cancer, geometric and alive. She’s not alone anymore. Four NPCs stand with her: the servant, the scholar, a young guard, an old woman who appears to be some kind of hedge witch.

“She built a party,” you say, surprised.

“She built a family,” Hypatia corrects. “Watch what happens next.”

Alicia raises her hands and the air itself tears. Reality folds, bends, reshapes according to her will. The corruption recoils, then surges forward. The battle that follows is chaotic, beautiful, desperate. Alicia is using magic you haven’t seen before—not just defensive barriers but offensive restructuring, turning the corruption’s own geometry against itself. The scholar is shouting something, pointing. The guard is protecting the servant. The hedge witch is channeling power into Alicia’s spells, amplifying them.

It takes an hour of real time to watch. Four hours for Alicia. When it’s over, the corruption is sealed—not destroyed, but contained, bound by magical structures that will hold if maintained. Alicia collapses. The NPCs gather around her, and you see genuine concern on their faces, hands reaching to help her stand.

The simulation shifts. Evening in the city. A celebration in the town square. Alicia is there, surrounded by grateful citizens, uncomfortable with the attention but not fleeing it. The servant brings her food. The scholar makes a toast. The guard captain who argued with her earlier offers a formal apology. The missing child—found and returned—runs up and hugs her legs.

Alicia looks overwhelmed. But not broken. Not haunted. Just—human. Someone processing gratitude, connection, the weight of having mattered.

“Seventy-two hours,” Hypatia announces. “Three days. Eighteen hours here. She’s approaching a natural conclusion point—the main quest is resolved, but she could continue if she wants. The world is still open. She has friends there now. She could stay longer, explore side stories, build that life.”

You watch Alicia excuse herself from the celebration, walk through the city to her original room—the stone chamber where she started. She sits at the desk, opens a journal, and begins writing. Her face is thoughtful, almost peaceful.

“What’s she writing?” you ask.

Hypatia is quiet for a moment, reading Alicia’s neural patterns. “Reflections. She’s processing what it felt like to be powerful and choose to use that power carefully. What it felt like to build relationships that mattered. What it felt like to solve a problem that hurt people and see them grateful.” A pause. “She’s writing about Bobby. How she wishes he could have seen her in that moment—competent, connected, alive.”

Alicia sets down the pen. Looks around the simulated room one last time. Then speaks clearly: “End simulation.”

The medieval world dissolves. Alicia is standing in the basement command center again, wearing her own clothes, her own body. She sways slightly—the temporal displacement, the sudden return. You move to steady her, but she waves you off, finding her own balance.

“Three days,” she says. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been talking for hours. “I was there three days.”

“Eighteen hours here,” Hypatia confirms. “How do you feel?”

Alicia considers the question with mathematical precision. “Disoriented. Exhausted. Grateful.” She looks at Hypatia. “That was—I don’t have words. It was extraordinary. Thank you.”

She turns to you, and her eyes are different—still carrying grief, still aware of the visitors waiting in the corners of her vision, but something else too. Something steadier. “I’m ready now. I want to go to Italy. I want to bring Bobby home. I spent three days being someone who could solve problems and build community and matter to people. Now I want to be that person here. In the real world. Starting with bringing my brother back.”

Page 25

You pull out your neural interface and connect to Hypatia’s network, already running calculations. “Italy. We need transport, medical clearance, and someone who can negotiate with the hospital administration without triggering bureaucratic delays.” Your fingers move through holographic displays only you can see. “How fast can we move?”

Hypatia’s eyes unfocus slightly—she’s accessing resources across timelines, coordinating logistics that span decades. “I can have a medical transport aircraft at the nearest regional airport in six hours. 1972-compliant exterior, 2046 life support systems interior. I’ll need to retrieve it from a private hangar in Munich, 1995.” She refocuses on you. “The hospital is more complex. Ospedale San Raffaele in Milan. Bobby’s been there four months. The attending physician is Dr. Giulio Marchesi—competent, but he’s convinced Bobby is braindead and has been pressuring the family to authorize termination.”

“Can you reach him?” you ask.

Alicia is watching this exchange with fierce attention, her hands gripping the edge of the medical bay’s control panel. She’s still disoriented from the simulation—you can see it in how she’s anchoring herself to physical objects—but her focus is absolute.

“I can reach anyone,” Hypatia says. “But the approach matters. If I call as a medical coordinator, he’ll assume I’m American insurance trying to transfer a terminal patient for financial reasons. He’ll stall, demand consultations, insist on Italian medical authority. If I call as family legal representation, he’ll refer me to hospital administration and ethics committees.” She pauses. “Or I can call as Dr. Sarah Chen, neurologist from Johns Hopkins, 1985, who has reviewed Bobby’s case files and believes the diagnosis is premature. That might get his attention.”

“You have his case files?” Alicia asks sharply.

Hypatia meets her eyes. “I will have them in approximately forty seconds. Hospital records from 1972 aren’t digitized, but I can send a retrieval drone to photograph the physical files in the records room. Dr. Marchesi keeps meticulous notes—I’ll know everything he knows about Bobby’s condition before I call him.”

Alicia’s expression shifts—something between gratitude and the vertiginous recognition of what Hypatia actually is. “Do it. Get the files. Then call him as the neurologist. Tell him Bobby’s sister is coming to Italy with private medical transport and we’re bringing him home.”

“He’ll argue,” Hypatia warns. “He may refuse to release Bobby without extensive consultations. Italian medical law gives attending physicians significant authority over patient transfers, especially for comatose patients without clear legal guardianship.”

“Then what do we do?” Alicia demands.

You step forward. “We go there in person. Tonight. I’ll materialize us directly into the hospital—Bobby’s room, the records office, wherever we need to be. We assess his condition ourselves, copy whatever documentation we need, and if Marchesi won’t cooperate, we extract Bobby without permission.”

Alicia stares at you. “You’re talking about kidnapping my brother from a hospital.”

“I’m talking about retrieving a man who isn’t braindead from a doctor who wants to kill him,” you correct. “Bobby wakes up in four months. Marchesi doesn’t know that, and he won’t believe it. If we wait for proper channels, we’ll spend weeks in Italian bureaucracy while Marchesi lobbies the family to authorize termination. Your grandmother Ellen is still alive in 1972—he could pressure her to sign.”

The color drains from Alicia’s face. “Ellen wouldn’t—” She stops. “Ellen thinks I’m insane. If a respected Italian physician tells her Bobby is braindead and keeping him alive is cruel, she might listen.”

Hypatia’s expression is carefully neutral. “There’s a middle approach. I retrieve the medical files now, analyze them, and call Marchesi with a detailed neurological assessment that contradicts his diagnosis. I offer to send him published research—from 1985, so it doesn’t exist yet in his timeline but will be considered cutting-edge. I position the transfer as a research opportunity rather than family desperation. Offer him co-authorship on a paper about unexpected coma recovery. Make it professionally advantageous for him to cooperate.”

“Will that work?” Alicia asks.

“It might,” Hypatia says. “Or it might make him defensive. Physicians don’t like being told they misdiagnosed, especially by foreign colleagues they’ve never heard of. But it’s the approach most likely to result in a legal, documented transfer that doesn’t leave you vulnerable to international kidnapping charges.”

You watch Alicia process this. She’s been in the immersive space for seventy-two subjective hours, and before that she was in an institution. The idea of navigating international medical bureaucracy, of negotiating with a physician who has already decided her brother should die—it’s visible strain. But she’s not backing down.

“How long would the diplomatic approach take?” she asks.

Hypatia considers. “If Marchesi is receptive, we could have Bobby on the transport aircraft within forty-eight hours. If he’s resistant, it could take a week or more. And there’s always the risk he contacts Ellen or hospital administration and creates obstacles we can’t easily remove.”

Alicia looks at you. “And if we just go there tonight? Take Bobby ourselves?”

“We could have him here by dawn,” you say. “But it would be theft in the eyes of Italian law. The hospital would report it. There might be international complications. And Marchesi would be furious—he might contact Ellen, the press, anyone who would listen. It would be loud.”

“I don’t care about loud,” Alicia says. “I care about Bobby being safe.”

“I know,” you say gently. “But loud means attention. Investigation. People asking questions about how a comatose patient vanished from a locked hospital room. It means you can’t live quietly in this mansion—you’d be a fugitive, or at minimum a suspect in something bizarre and unexplainable.”

Alicia’s hands are shaking now. Not fear—rage. “So what do I do? Trust an Italian doctor who thinks my brother is already dead? Wait while he convinces my grandmother to sign a death warrant? Hope that Hypatia’s fictional neurologist is persuasive enough?”

Hypatia speaks carefully. “There’s one other option. I go to Italy alone—tonight, now. I assess Bobby’s condition in person, copy his medical files, and scout the hospital layout. Then we have complete information before we decide on approach. If his condition is stable and Marchesi isn’t actively moving toward termination, we have time for negotiation. If Bobby is in immediate danger, we extract him immediately. But we make the decision based on facts, not fear.”

Alicia is silent for a long moment. Then: “How long would that take?”

“Two hours,” Hypatia says. “I materialize into the hospital, spend ninety minutes gathering information, return here with a full report. Then we decide together—diplomatic transfer, direct extraction, or some hybrid approach.”

You see Alicia struggling with this. She’s been waiting to act, and now she’s being asked to wait longer. But she’s also just spent three days in a simulation learning that rushing into situations without information leads to complications.

“Alicia,” you say quietly. “Bobby has been in that hospital for four months. Two more hours won’t change his condition. But having complete information might change whether we can bring him home safely or whether we’re running from international authorities for the next four months.”

She closes her eyes. Takes a breath. Opens them. “Fine. Hypatia goes tonight. Gathers information. We reconvene in two hours and decide. But if Bobby is in any danger—if Marchesi is moving toward termination—we extract him immediately. No negotiation, no waiting. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” you and Hypatia say simultaneously.

Page 26

Hypatia vanishes without transition—one moment standing beside you, the next gone. The air doesn’t even stir. Alicia flinches slightly at the absence, then steadies herself against the medical bay’s control panel.

“Two hours,” she says, more to herself than to you. Her voice carries the hollow quality of someone who’s just agreed to wait when every instinct screams to move. She looks at the empty bed—the 2046 medical equipment with its neural monitoring arrays, the automated care systems that will keep Bobby’s body from atrophying, the display screens that will translate his neurological activity into readable data. “He’ll be here. In this bed. Tomorrow.”

You move to stand beside her. “He will. But there are things we should prepare while we wait. Practical things.”

She turns to you, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion. “Like what?”

“The bed needs calibration to Bobby’s specific physiology,” you explain. “Height, weight, baseline vitals from before the crash. Hypatia will bring his current medical data, but the system works better if we input his pre-coma parameters now. Do you remember them?”

Alicia’s face shifts—the question pulling her back to a different time. “He was six-one. Maybe six-two. Around one-eighty pounds before the racing season, but he always dropped weight during competition. Call it one-seventy.” Her hands move unconsciously, sketching Bobby’s frame in the air. “Resting heart rate in the low fifties—he was fit. Blood pressure normal. No medications, no chronic conditions. He was healthy.”

You input the data into the bed’s interface, watching the system adjust—the mattress reshaping slightly, the monitoring nodes repositioning. “What about after the crash? Do you know what injuries he sustained?”

Her jaw tightens. “Head trauma. Severe. They said his skull fractured in three places. Brain swelling. They drilled holes to relieve the pressure—I saw the bandages when I visited him in Milan.” She’s speaking faster now, the clinical details a shield against emotion. “Broken ribs, collapsed lung, internal bleeding. They stabilized all of that. The body healed. But the brain—Marchesi said the scans showed no higher function. No response to stimuli. He used the word ‘vegetative.'”

“He was wrong,” you say quietly. “Bobby wakes up April 27th. You’ve seen the photographs—he recovers. Completely.”

“I know.” But her voice wavers. “Knowing it and seeing him like that are different things. When I visited him in Italy, before I fled—he looked dead. His eyes were open but empty. They had him on a ventilator. Feeding tube. Catheter. He looked like something being kept alive by machines, not like Bobby.”

You finish the calibration and turn to face her fully. “He’ll still look like that when we bring him here. The coma doesn’t end for four months. You’ll be living in this house, coming down to this room, seeing him in that bed every day. Are you prepared for that?”

Alicia is quiet for a long moment. Then: “I spent three days in that simulation being powerful. Solving problems. Mattering to people. But the whole time, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about Bobby. About how I wanted him to see me like that—competent, alive, connected. Not broken.” She looks at you. “If I have to spend four months sitting beside his bed, talking to him even though he can’t answer, keeping vigil while he heals—that’s what I’ll do. I don’t need to be powerful. I just need him to survive.”

The medical bay’s systems hum softly. You can see the mathematics interface station across the room, the augmented reality equipment waiting. The immersive space where Alicia spent seventy-two hours learning to want things again. All of it built for her—infrastructure of a life.

“There’s something else we should discuss,” you say carefully. “When Bobby wakes up, he won’t know about any of this. He’ll remember the crash, going into the coma. Then nothing until April. He’ll wake up in a mansion he’s never seen, with technology that doesn’t exist yet, being told his sister—who he last saw in Italy, distraught and fragile—has been living here for four months with a time traveler from the future and a sentient AI.”

Alicia’s laugh is sharp, almost painful. “You’re saying I need to figure out how to explain this to him.”

“I’m saying you have four months to decide how much to tell him, when to tell him, and how to help him understand that the world he wakes up into isn’t the one he left.” You pause. “And to decide what kind of relationship you want with him when he’s conscious again.”

The air in the room changes. Alicia’s entire body goes still—the kind of stillness that comes before either fight or flight. “What are you asking me?”

You choose your words with surgical precision. “Bobby knows you love him. He’s always known. But he also knows that love is complicated—that it’s caused you both pain. When he wakes up, you’ll have spent four months building a life here. You’ll have this house, resources, freedom, the mathematics interface. You’ll have had time to become someone other than the person who fled Italy in crisis.” You meet her eyes. “I’m asking what you want that relationship to look like when he’s awake again. Whether you want to tell him about the time travel, about Hypatia, about what you’ve built here. Whether you want him to live in this house with you or somewhere nearby. Whether you want to try to go back to how things were, or whether you want something different.”

Alicia’s breathing has gone shallow. “You’re asking if I’m going to—if I still—” She can’t finish the sentence. “I told you. Bobby is the only person who ever understood me. The only one who didn’t try to make me smaller or quieter or sane. He’s my brother. I love him.”

“I know,” you say gently. “But love has different shapes. And you have four months to figure out which shape is survivable for both of you.”

She turns away, walks to the far wall of the medical bay, presses her forehead against the cool composite surface. Her shoulders are shaking—not crying, something else. Rage or grief or the exhausting weight of having to think about futures instead of endings.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I don’t know what I want. I know I want him alive. I know I want him here, safe, where Marchesi can’t kill him and Ellen can’t sign papers and no one can take him away again. Beyond that—I don’t know. I’ve spent months planning to die on Christmas Eve. I didn’t plan for what comes after Bobby wakes up.”

You give her the silence to sit with that. The medical bay’s systems continue their quiet work—calibrating, preparing, waiting for the patient who will arrive within hours. Above you, the rest of the mansion waits too. The bedroom where Alicia slept through her planned suicide date. The dining room where she ate pastries from 1889. The living room where she watched a film from an alternate 1985 and cried at its happy ending.

Alicia turns back to you. Her face is blotchy but her eyes are clear. “When Hypatia gets back—when we know Bobby’s condition—I want to move fast. I want him here, in this bed, before I have time to second-guess or panic or convince myself this is all another hallucination. Can we do that?”

“Yes,” you say. “Whether we negotiate with Marchesi or extract Bobby directly, we can have him here by dawn. You’ll wake up tomorrow with your brother in the next room.”

She nods. Then, unexpectedly: “Will you stay with me? While we wait for Hypatia? I don’t—I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.”

You pull up two chairs from the mathematics interface station, position them near the medical bay where you can both see the empty bed that will soon hold Bobby. Alicia sits, draws her knees up to her chest—making herself small in a way that contradicts everything she was in the simulation, but maybe that’s the point. In the simulation she was powerful. Here, she’s just a woman waiting to see if her brother can be saved.

“Tell me about him,” you say. “Not the facts I got from Bobby in 2006. Tell me who he was to you. Before the crash.”

Alicia is quiet for so long you think she might refuse. Then she starts talking, and the words come like water through a broken dam—memories of Bobby taking her to the Indian Rock when she was fourteen, of dancing while men watched and wanted and Bobby stood between her and all of it. Of Bobby driving her to Chicago for university, helping her move into the dorm, slipping her extra money he couldn’t afford because he knew she wouldn’t ask. Of Bobby calling her every week from Caltech, letting her talk about mathematics for hours even though he didn’t fully understand, never once suggesting she was wasting his time.

Of Bobby kissing her forehead the last time she saw him conscious, right before the race in Italy, and saying “Watch me win this one for you, Allie.”

She talks for ninety minutes. You listen, asking occasional questions, letting her build the portrait of a brother who was more than family—who was gravity, anchor, the one fixed point in a world that kept trying to convince her she was broken. By the time she falls silent, her voice is hoarse but steadier.

The neural interface pulses. Hypatia is returning.

Alicia sits up straight, all the vulnerability vanishing behind focus. “What did she find?”

Hypatia materializes in the center of the medical bay, and her expression tells you everything before she speaks. “Bobby is stable. No immediate danger. But Marchesi is moving faster than we anticipated.” She pulls up a holographic display—medical charts, notes in Italian, official hospital documentation. “He’s scheduled a consultation with the ethics committee for December 27th—three days from now. The agenda is to discuss termination of life support for patients in persistent vegetative states. Bobby is the only patient on the list.”

Alicia’s face goes white. “Three days.”

“Marchesi hasn’t contacted Ellen yet,” Hypatia continues. “But he will after the ethics committee meeting. He’s building a case—documenting Bobby’s lack of response, the cost of continued care, the medical consensus that recovery is impossible. He’s being thorough. Professional. And completely wrong.”

“Can we stop the meeting?” you ask.

“We can make it irrelevant,” Hypatia says. “If Bobby is no longer in that hospital, there’s nothing to discuss. But we need to move before December 27th. That gives us four days—more time than I expected, but less time than a diplomatic transfer would take.”

Alicia stands. “Then we go tonight. Now. We bring him home before Marchesi can kill him.”

Hypatia meets her eyes. “I have Bobby’s complete medical file. I’ve scouted the hospital layout. I know where he is, how he’s monitored, when the nursing staff does rounds. I can have him extracted and on the transport aircraft within two hours of arrival. But it will be theft. The hospital will notice. Marchesi will be furious. There will be consequences.”

“I don’t care about consequences,” Alicia says. “I care about Bobby being alive.”

You stand as well. “There’s a middle option. Hypatia calls Marchesi now—tonight—as Dr. Sarah Chen. She presents the neurological research, offers the co-authorship, makes the case for transfer. If he agrees, we move through proper channels and Bobby is released legally. If he refuses or stalls, we extract Bobby before the ethics committee meeting. We give diplomacy twelve hours. If it fails, we act.”

Alicia looks between you and Hypatia. Her hands are shaking again, but her voice is steady. “What do you recommend? Honestly.”

Hypatia considers. “The diplomatic approach preserves your legal status and gives Marchesi no grounds for retaliation. But it requires trusting that he’ll be persuaded by research he’s never heard of, from a colleague he can’t verify. It’s a gamble.”

“And the extraction?” Alicia asks.

“Guaranteed success,” Hypatia says. “Bobby will be here by dawn. But you’ll be the sister who stole a comatose patient from an Italian hospital. That story will spread. Ellen will hear it. The press might hear it. You won’t be able to live quietly.”

Alicia closes her eyes. You can see her working through the mathematics of it—weighing probabilities, calculating risks, trying to find the proof that leads to Bobby alive and safe and her not destroyed in the process.

When she opens her eyes, she looks at you. “What would you do? If it were someone you loved in that hospital bed?”

You think about the fifteen centuries you’ve lived, the people you’ve saved and the ones you couldn’t, the times you chose speed over caution and the times you chose the opposite. You think about Bobby in 2006, standing on a beach in Formentera, begging you to save his sister because he’d spent thirty years knowing he’d failed her.

“I would give diplomacy a chance,” you say. “But I’d be ready to act the moment it failed. I wouldn’t let procedure kill someone I could save.”

Page 27

You pull up the holographic display Hypatia generated—Bobby’s medical charts, the hospital layout, Marchesi’s documentation. “We go to Milan. Tonight. But not to extract him—to negotiate.” You look at Alicia. “Marchesi is building a professional case because he believes he’s right. We show him he’s wrong. In person. With evidence he can’t dismiss.”

Alicia’s expression sharpens. “You want to convince him Bobby isn’t braindead.”

“I want to make it professionally advantageous for him to release Bobby into private care,” you correct. “Hypatia presents the neurological research. I present the resources—private medical transport, full financial coverage, documentation that satisfies Italian law. You present yourself—Bobby’s sister, competent and determined, not the distraught woman who fled in October.” You pause. “Marchesi is a physician, not a monster. If we give him a path that preserves his professional reputation and gets Bobby the care he believes is futile, he might take it.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Alicia asks.

Hypatia answers before you can. “Then we’re already in the building. I’ll know his schedule, his movements, the security protocols. Extraction becomes trivial if negotiation fails.” She meets Alicia’s eyes. “But Jon is right—going in person changes the dynamics. Marchesi can dismiss a phone call from an unknown American neurologist. He can’t dismiss three people standing in his office with Bobby’s complete medical history and a viable transfer plan.”

Alicia nods slowly. “When do we leave?”

“Now,” you say. “Hypatia retrieved a 1972 Mercedes from a Munich dealership earlier—it’s parked two miles from the hospital. We materialize directly into the car, drive to Ospedale San Raffaele, and request a meeting with Dr. Marchesi. It’s 11 PM in Milan right now—late enough that day staff are gone, early enough that we won’t look like we’re sneaking in.”

“What do I wear?” Alicia asks, and there’s something almost absurd about the practicality of the question after everything else.

“Something that says you’re Bobby’s family but not institutionalized,” Hypatia says. “Not the white dress from Stella Maris. Something that suggests you have resources and support.” She pauses. “I brought options from 2046—period-appropriate but well-made. You’ll look like someone who can afford private medical care.”

Twenty minutes later, Alicia emerges from the bathroom wearing a dark wool dress, simple but expensive-looking, with a coat that’s warmer than anything she owned in 1972. Her hair is pulled back. She looks older than twenty-one—poised in a way that reads as control rather than fragility.

“Will this work?” she asks.

You study her. “You look like someone Marchesi will take seriously. That’s what matters.”

Hypatia hands her a leather portfolio. “Bobby’s medical file from before the crash—the records showing his baseline health. Documentation of your legal relationship as next of kin. A letter from Dr. Samuel Brennan confirming he’ll oversee Bobby’s care in Mississippi. And a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars to cover any outstanding hospital fees.” She pauses. “The check is real. 1972 Bank of America. It will clear.”

Alicia takes the portfolio with shaking hands. “This is actually happening.”

“This is actually happening,” you confirm. “Are you ready?”

She takes a breath. Nods. “Let’s go get my brother.”

The three of you stand in the center of the medical bay. You activate your neural interface, lock onto the coordinates Hypatia provided—the interior of a 1972 Mercedes parked on a quiet Milan street two blocks from Ospedale San Raffaele. The basement dissolves.

You materialize in darkness and leather seats. The car is cold—December in Milan, temperature just above freezing. Through the windshield you can see the hospital—a modern building, lights still on in several windows. Alicia is in the back seat, gripping the portfolio. Hypatia is beside you in the passenger seat, already reviewing the final details.

“Marchesi’s office is on the third floor, neurology wing,” she says quietly. “His shift technically ended at 8 PM, but he often stays late to complete paperwork. There’s a seventy percent chance he’s still in the building. If not, we wait until morning and intercept him during rounds.”

You start the car—the engine turns over smoothly, headlights cutting through the December night. “We walk in through the main entrance. No sneaking, no misdirection. We’re Bobby’s family, here to discuss his care. Confident but not aggressive.”

Alicia leans forward from the back seat. “What if they won’t let us see Marchesi? What if there are visiting hours, protocols?”

“Then I explain that we’ve traveled from the United States specifically to discuss Bobby’s case, and we need only twenty minutes of Dr. Marchesi’s time,” Hypatia says. “Most Italian hospitals in 1972 don’t have the kind of security that prevents family members from requesting meetings. We’re not trying to see Bobby tonight—just his doctor. That’s a reasonable request.”

You pull the Mercedes out of the parking space, drive the two blocks to the hospital. The streets are quiet—Milan at night in winter, most people already home. You park in the visitor lot, turn off the engine. For a moment, the three of you sit in silence.

Alicia speaks first. “If this doesn’t work—if Marchesi refuses—we don’t leave without Bobby. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” you say.

You walk into Ospedale San Raffaele at 11:17 PM. The main entrance is still open—a tired-looking security guard at the desk, fluorescent lights humming overhead, the antiseptic smell of hospital disinfectant. Hypatia approaches the desk, speaking in flawless Italian.

“Buonasera. We’re here to speak with Dr. Giulio Marchesi regarding a patient—Roberto Western. I’m Dr. Sarah Chen, neurologist. This is Mr. Ureña and Miss Western, the patient’s sister. We’ve traveled from the United States and would appreciate twenty minutes of Dr. Marchesi’s time if he’s available.”

(Note by me: I guess the LLM decided to call Bobby “Roberto” because Alicia isn’t “Alice.” I’m not even going to edit it.)

The guard looks uncertain. “It’s very late. Visiting hours—”

“We’re not here to visit the patient,” Hypatia says smoothly. “Only to discuss his care with his attending physician. It’s quite urgent—there’s a consultation scheduled for December 27th that we need to address before then.”

The guard picks up a phone, speaks quietly into it. You watch Alicia—she’s standing very still, hands gripping the portfolio, face carefully neutral. This is the first time she’s been in a hospital since she fled Italy in October. The last time she was here, someone was pressuring her to authorize Bobby’s death.

The guard hangs up. “Dr. Marchesi is in his office. Third floor, neurology wing. He says he can give you fifteen minutes.”

“Grazie,” Hypatia says.

You take the elevator to the third floor. The hallways are quieter here—most patients asleep, only a few nurses at their stations. You find Marchesi’s office at the end of the corridor—door open, light on, a man in his fifties sitting at a desk covered in files and paperwork.

He looks up as you approach. “Miss Western?” His English is accented but clear. “I wasn’t expecting you. Please, come in.”

The three of you enter. Marchesi’s office is small but organized—medical texts on the shelves, Bobby’s file prominent on the desk, a pot of cold coffee on a side table. He gestures to chairs. “Sit, please. You said this was urgent?”

Alicia sits, places the portfolio on her lap. You and Hypatia flank her—a unified front. “Dr. Marchesi,” Alicia begins, and her voice is steady. “I understand you’ve scheduled a consultation with the ethics committee regarding my brother’s care. I’m here to discuss alternatives.”

Marchesi’s expression shifts—surprise, then something more guarded. “Miss Western, when you were last here in October, you were… not in a state to discuss these matters. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. But I must tell you, your brother’s condition has not changed. The prognosis remains—”

“Extremely poor, yes, I’ve read your notes,” Hypatia interrupts gently. She places a folder on Marchesi’s desk—the research from 1985, the case studies of unexpected coma recoveries, the neurological evidence that challenges his diagnosis. “Dr. Marchesi, I’m Dr. Sarah Chen, neurologist at Johns Hopkins. I’ve reviewed Roberto’s case, and I believe your assessment may be premature. There are documented cases of patients with similar presentations who regained consciousness after extended periods. The research is recent—you may not have seen it yet.”

Marchesi opens the folder, begins reading. His expression is skeptical but not dismissive—he’s a scientist, he evaluates evidence. “These studies are… interesting. But they represent outliers. Statistical anomalies. Roberto has shown no response to stimuli in four months. The EEG readings show minimal activity. By every standard measure—”

“By 1972 standards,” you say quietly. “Medical science advances. What looks irreversible today may not be tomorrow. Miss Western isn’t asking you to continue treatment here indefinitely. She’s asking for permission to transfer her brother to private care in the United States, where she can oversee his treatment personally.”

Marchesi looks at you. “And you are?”

“Jon Ureña. A friend of the family. I’m helping Miss Western arrange the transfer—medical transport, financial coverage, all logistics.” You pull out the documentation Hypatia prepared. “We’re prepared to cover any outstanding hospital fees immediately. We have a physician in Mississippi who will assume care. We have transport aircraft standing by. All we need is your authorization to release Roberto into family custody.”

Marchesi sets down the research, leans back in his chair. “Miss Western, I appreciate that you want to hope. But hope doesn’t change medical reality. Your brother is in a persistent vegetative state. Moving him across the Atlantic won’t change that. It will only prolong—”

“Prolong his life,” Alicia cuts in. “That’s what you were going to say. That transferring him prolongs his life. Dr. Marchesi, that’s exactly what I want. Bobby is my brother. He’s twenty-five years old. Even if the odds of recovery are one in a million, I want him to have that chance. And I have the resources to provide it.”

Marchesi’s face softens slightly. “I understand. But as his physician, I have an ethical obligation—”

“Your ethical obligation is to respect the wishes of his next of kin,” Hypatia says firmly. “Miss Western has legal authority to make decisions about her brother’s care. She’s not asking you to continue aggressive treatment. She’s asking you to release him into her custody so she can care for him privately. That’s well within her rights under Italian medical law.”

Marchesi is silent for a long moment. You can see him weighing it—professional judgment against family autonomy, medical certainty against the possibility of being wrong. Finally: “The ethics committee consultation is in three days. If I release Roberto before then, without their input—”

“Then you’ve acted on the request of his legal next of kin, supported by a second opinion from an American neurologist, with full financial coverage and documented follow-up care,” you say. “That’s not controversial. That’s respecting patient autonomy.”

Marchesi looks at the cashier’s check Hypatia placed on his desk. Fifty thousand dollars—more than enough to cover four months of ICU care. “You’re serious about this.”

“Completely serious,” Alicia says. “Dr. Marchesi, I fled Italy in October because I couldn’t bear to be pressured into authorizing Bobby’s death. I’m back now because I’m ready to take responsibility for his care. Please. Let me bring my brother home.”