It is okay, reader. I assure you that Rusty is not dead, and this story is not over. We will return to the boy in due course (who is not in such a poor state, as we will discover). For now, however, I invite you to ask another question, if you may, and the question is...
Who is Sonic?
We know her real name: Ariadne. We know where she is from ('Honduras, kind of') because she told Rusty earlier, and the fact that she peppers her speech with Spanish is a giveaway, of sorts. More interestingly, we also know when she is from: the year 2005.
But how do we reconcile what we know about 2005 with what we've seen her do? Teenagers from 2005 do not travel between Universes. They do not conjure futuristic weapons out of thin air. And, by her own account, she was still a teenager in 2005, despite turning fifteen much earlier, in 1992.
And, oh yeah, what about that story she told Rusty earlier, as they walked toward the summoned wall of the Custodian? The story of a time traveler from half-a-million years in the future, of the sunderings of our Universe, and how this time traveler started a 'police force' that she was a part of?
How about all of that?
Well, it's all true.
It all happened.
Every single thing she mentioned, and many more things that she didn't mention, and isn't it unfortunate that Rusty cut her off before she finished her tale?
Your next question may be: where is this 'police force' today, as you read this story? The answer is that they've gone, of course (I don't see any future people around, do you? Unless they're skulking here and there like the 'Men in Black', but no-one believes in them either). And when this 'police force' departed from Earth some years ago, they wiped all traces of being here. Completely. There is no evidence now on Earth that the 'organization' Sonic belonged to, a standing army that called itself the Humanoid Police Inter-universal (or H.P.I., for short), ever existed.
But they were here. And Sonic was here.
And, sometime in 2005, after a brief sojourn into Anomaly, Sonic was here again, popping back into our Universe.
She totally wasn't expecting it.
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Robe
FantasyWhen Dresden encounters a strangely-attired boy lying unconscious in the forested hills of Hep Duatab, he is perplexed: the boy is clearly an 'outsider', as those who are from beyond the Hepstraad are known. But what was he doing here, and how did h...
