Unity 1: The Reality Drive - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Phew. Okay, sorry for the wait folks.

-

“So…” I peered at the screen, poking at it cautiously. This seemed to annoy the little virtual heroine who was standing there. “She made an AI copy of herself?”

“No. I made an AI copy of myself.” The digital Meredith stuck her tongue out at me. “Obviously there’s some degree of separation, but don’t go thinking of me as a separate person from myself. In fact I dare say right now I have more claim to the title of ‘Dr. Meredith Braun’ than my flesh and blood counterpart.”

There was a pause as we both looked over to where said counterpart was currently several fingers deep into herself, and then quickly looked away. Digi-Merry had a point.

“Okay, fair enough.” It wasn’t really a good time to waste my breath asking pointless questions anyway. “In that case, uh… How do we fix…” And I waved my hands in the general at life, the universe, and everything within it. Which would have been a bit too much for the two of us to ‘fix’ on our own, but luckily she got my meaning.

Unluckily, “No idea.”

My shoulders drooped. That definitely not what I’d been hoping for. “What? But you…”

“I what?” She blinked up at me.

Suddenly I felt rather self-conscious. I rubbed the back of my neck nervously. “W-well you made it sound like you had some big plan to save reality…”

“Oh. Uh, no. Not yet!” She coughed into her virtual hand. “But we’ll come up with something. We’re heroes, it’s what we do. We just need to combine our resources, put our heads together, and I’m sure we’ll work it out!”

Even today, I admire Merry’s optimism. It was rarely well founded, but she had a way of making the impossible seem possible. It certainly helped me put my concerns aside. After a moment, I nodded. “Okay. Okay, yeah.” Deep breath. “Let’s do this. So, we know what’s going on, and we have a detector that can… detect the Reality Drive.” I looked at the stick/staff on the desk. Still not glowing. Good. “Did you get enough data to figure out where it is?”

“Scanning…” A little progress bar whirled up over the virtual woman’s head. “Damnit, not exactly. I think I can put together a general area, but the shift was too quick to get a precise lock. Maybe Normal-me could do something better with it, but I’m pretty limited by the constraints of my programming. No go.”

Well damnit.

“Wait, what?” I blinked and then peered at the computer again. “I thought you said you were your other self – why would she be able to do it but not you?”

“Ah, w-well…” Now it was her turn to look embarrassed. “I mean, you know, I’m an approximation. Sadly, my tech isn’t quite to the level of making a fully human-adjacent AI yet, but I did a pretty good job with what I had. My program is based on the thought patterns of my normal meat brain, so I think and act just like my other self! Uh, some limitations, though – I mean, I don’t really have her memories, or experience, just a data archive full of information. Which is fine, really, but, you know, don’t ask me to describe the last time I had a good meal or anything. Even though it was probably Thursday, Thursday is pizza day…”

“So…” This one was tricky for me to wrap my head around, I admit. Honestly I don’t think I ever really got it. “That stops you from analysing data?”

“No no,” she shook her head. “It just kind of impedes my creativity. A lot of ideas are spun out of experience and memory, which I don’t have. Think of it like… Like she has a bunch of ideas that can fit together like a jigsaw so that she can come up with brilliant solutions to otherwise impossible problems! Where as all the pieces of my jigsaw have their edges cut off, so I just have a box of squares.”

I stared. I’m not going to lie, she made my head hurt with that one. I’m not even sure I’m remembering what she said right, it might as well have been gibberish to me.

“So she made an AI of herself… without any creativity?”

She coughed again. It was a weird little artificial splutter on the speakers. “Not exactly, but… I mean, I’m superior in many ways! Just not… that one. But look, I can do all sorts of stuff in here! I have complete control of the lab’s functions, I can look up data instantaneously, I can even keep an eye on the global news feeds to… Oh. Ohhh, wow, they are not good right now.”

“I bet,” I groaned. “A lot of heroes just turned blonde and busty, didn’t they?” I was noticing a pattern with the transformations I’d seen thus far.

But Digi-Merry shook her head. “Worse than that. Also no, they’ve branched out into brunettes and red heads too, so congrats you’ll probably keep your hair colour if the person behind all this catches you…”

I tried not to look too creeped out by that thought. Until that moment I don’t think I’d realised what would happen to me if I wasn’t careful dealing with all of this. It wasn’t a pleasant realisation.

“… But there’s something else. All the news stations in the world just ran a piece simultaneously, without any planning on their part. All in English, too, which can’t have been helpful to the-“ She paused for a split second. “- 87% of the world’s population who don’t speak it. See? Instant fact checking!”

I gave her camera – which is where I assumed she was looking at me from – the side eye. “Congrats. What’s this mysterious news piece saying?”

“Right. Yeah.” She nodded, a media player opening up behind her. “Lemme show you. You need to see this.”

The screen flickered as the video began to play. In the bottom left corner I recognised the local news logo. But that was all I recognised. Everything else was just too alien. I was watching footage of a camera moving through a giant room made of what looked like ice or crystal – that odd transparent kind-of blue-ish colour which made up the walls and the floor – and probably the ceiling too, but the camera didn’t pan up that high. Royal red carpets crisscrossed on the floor, leading seemingly everywhere and nowhere all at once. Torches that burned with blue and pink flames lined the walls. It looked like some strange take on an ancient medieval castle with the colours all set wrong.

And there, completing the image, was a throne at the end of the room, with someone in a pink dress and a golden crown sat upon it. As the camera moved closer, more of the figure came into view. Her dress was tight, clinging to the curve of her large breasts like a man lost at sea clings to his raft. Her waist was devilishly thin, while her hips made it look like her throne, well cushioned in red velvet, needn’t have bothered for they had brought enough padding to be hit by a truck without their owner feeling a thing. Her hair fell around her shoulders in blonde, well crafted ringlets, bound by pink ribbons, upon which the crown rested happily. Her makeup was impeccable, her ruby red lips and pale skin highlighted by the perfect amount of blush, her eyes lined with just enough liner to make them pop., framed by a light haze of pale pink shadow. But what really drew my attention, the thing I absolutely couldn’t ignore, were her eyes themselves.

They were baby blue, and utterly vapid. A look I’d seen all too often that day. I suddenly had a horrible feeling about what I was about to hear.

“Like, hey there everyone!” Her lips parted in a wide, bright smile, revealing perfect rows of perfect teeth as she waved regally at the camera. “I’m Princess Becky, and I’m totally in charge now!”

Oh boy. I looked to Digi-Merry, and she just winced. “Yeaaah…”

Of course, the Princess didn’t stop there. “Yeah, isn’t it great? I’m the Queen of the world now! Or, like, the Princess of the world? I wanna be a Princess more than a Queen, so that’s what I am. But whatever, I’m totally the boss of, like, everything? I’ve been thinking about it and I decided that, yeah, that’s what I want. So yay! Princess Becky, ruler of the world, isn’t that great?”

“She’s…”

“A total bimbo, yep.” I nodded. All the pieces were starting to come together. “If she’s our thief, then I guess now we know why they’ve been so erratic. They must have done this to themselves somehow…”

“Hmm… That makes sense.” Digi-Merry paused the video for a moment as she thought. “From what the report said about how it operates, the Drive seems to create the wishes of whoever holds it automatically. If someone wasn’t careful with it, the slightest stray thought might cause some pretty unfortunate consequences for the user…”

“Well that’s certainly an unfortunate consequence, yeah.” I gave the paused princess another scan. “Just like the Professor and Meredith – the other one, I mean. I wonder if she did this to herself while going after them, or if she did it to herself first… Either way, it explains why she keeps turning people into bimbos – I doubt she can think of much else in her state.”

But my virtual helper didn’t look so certain. “You might be surprised. Keep watching.”

“So, like, really that’s all I wanted to say…” She said, looking rather lost. Pouting, she started counting her fingers. “Lesse, what was I gunna do? I was gunna get rid of all the heroes, yeah. I made my big speech… What else… Oh! I know! I was gunna make sure you all knew you should, like, totally listen to me!”

Despite the warmth of her words, my blood froze. “Oh no. What did she do?”

“You’ll see.”

The image on the screen changed. Suddenly we were looking at… a beach? Well, no, that’s just what I thought at first glance – but looking closer, I saw that it was actually a shot of a sea-adjacent city, taken from over the ocean. It looked normal. The sun was high in the sky, there weren’t many clouds. You could see people out sunbathing or playing volleyball – and beyond the sand, a line of storefronts, cars driving down the roads, lights in the windows, sparkling glass towers in the distance… A city, basically.

Then the film went white, and when the image cleared, everything was different. The city was still there, but it was… Not the city it had been. The buildings had changed shape, the store fronts were all hot pink and signs were in big, simple letters. The cars were all replaced by brightly coloured convertibles. The towers had vanished. And on the beach, the people I had seen were gone – all replaced with big breasted female counterparts who weren’t wearing a scrap of clothing.

You could practically hear the giggling even with the sound muted.

“She just… bimbofied an entire city?”

“Judging by the landmarks and the coast… Corpus Christi. Eighth largest city in Texas. Population… about a third of a million people.” Digi-Merry closed her eyes.

“An entire…” The scale was jaw dropping. Those people had done nothing to her, they weren’t a threat in any way, and yet she’d… She had to be stopped.

“So, you get the point, yeah?” And like that, Becky was back on camera. “Play nice and do what I say, or, like… y’know, I’ll make you!” She giggled and waved. “See you soon!”

The video ended. I slumped. “That might have been the worst ‘Supervillain hacks the television networks to issue their demands speech’ I have ever seen,” I muttered – mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Distressingly effective, though.” My virtual helper sighed. “Well, I think I know where she is now.”

I looked at the detector. It had been glowing throughout the speech. “Okay, good. Then I can get to her and put a stop to this before it gets any worse. We’ll work out what to do with the Reality Drive after we’ve fixed all of this…”

It was a scary thought, if I’m honest – that the only way of fixing this situation, the only way of saving all of these people, was going to be using the same device that had done this to them. After all, look at what it had done to the last person who used it. Princess Becky… Who had she been? Which lab assistant? Given the power of the device, it could have been any of them. And really, it didn’t matter anymore. She needed to be stopped. That was all there was to it.

“Yeah, confirming the location now. It looks like she’s… Uh.” A map popped up on the screen behind her, a scrolling zoom over mountains, plains and seas. “Wait, hold on…” She frowned, the speed of the map scroll increasing. Data points zipped over it, scrolling at random. “I’m missing something… Oh. Ohhhh no. Well no wonder I couldn’t figure it out…”

“What?” At this point I wasn’t sure how this could get any worse, but apparently it had! “What’s wrong now?”

The digital woman winced and looked up at me, her cameras wobbling. “So Strike, quick question – can you fly?”

I did not like where this was going. “Uh. No. Just super speed.”

“Caaan you construct a super tall tower at incredible speed?”

“Not… really? I mean I don’t know how to - No, probably not.”

Incidentally, I can actually do both of those things. Sort of. It’s less flying and more running on compressed air, but- look, whatever, young me was an idiot who didn’t understand her powers. Doesn’t matter anyway, because her third question was a biggie.

“… Can you breathe in space?”

I stared at her, and wordlessly shook my head.

Behind her, the picture changed from a map of the earth, to a picture of the solar system., which quickly zoomed in on the tiny blue planet third from the sun… Or, rather, on the slightly smaller white orb right next to it. The data points converged and started flashing.

“She’s on the moon?!” I was yelling, because it was definitely yelling time. “What’s she doing on the moon?!?”

“I don’t know!” Digi-Merry sounded just as upset as I was. “Maybe she wanted some kind of space princess thing going, I have no idea! She’s a crazy stupid evil moron with the power to do anything she wants, we should be happy she’s not camping on the sun to get a nice tan!”

“I can’t run to the moon! How the hell do we-“ I took a breath. Calm down Strike. Think it through. “Do you have a rocket?”

“… No.” The semi-AI shook her head awkwardly. “I mean, I have rocket legs, but they aren’t powerful enough to- No, I don’t have a rocket.” She looked at the moon map, opening a few satellite feeds to get a better view of the surface. It wasn’t very detailed, but you could definitely see something blue and crystal up there. “I think she’d probably see one coming anyway…”

She probably would have. I momentarily entertained the idea of hanging a banner around the shuttle with the words ‘Party Supplies!’ written on it in big letters, but I didn’t voice it. Some things are just too dumb to try, even if they’d probably work. “Well there’s got to be some way up there. We can’t just leave her. We’re existing on borrowed time as it is!”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking… This is difficult for me!” Digi-Merry grumbled. “All of this information and no way to use it… Don’t you have any ideas?”

“This isn’t my area! I run fast! You’re the genius scientist!” I put my head in my hands. “Ugh. Okay, so we can’t just fly up there. Can we teleport? There are teleporters out there, aren’t there?”

“Uh…” A progress bar popped up over her head again as she did a quick internet search. “Well there were, but most of them are exchanging hair tips and showing off their boobies now. Teleporting meta humans weren’t exactly common in the first place, it looks like she got them all…”

“Damnit…” It really did look like she’d thought of everything. Which, considering that she was an obvious airhead, was really kind of embarrassing. It was like being outwitted by a duck.

“But…” Digi-Merry had her thinking cap on. “Unity has teleporter technology. That was how they used to get back and forth from their satellite base…”

“Yeah, well, Unity is gone.” My head thonked on the desk. “They’ve been gone for months. And if they were going to show back up and heroically save the day, now would be the time.”

It had been hard, you know? Waiting for our heroes to return from… from wherever they had gone. Waiting for them to come back and make everything okay again. This was exactly the sort of situation that we needed them to save us from. I could imagine it – Tempo slowing down the spread of the Reality Drive’s power. Doctor Drone coming up with some genius way of nullifying the device. Spiral using her gateway powers to get them straight to the heart of the palace…

It was a stupid dream. If anything, they would have been the first bunch affected by Becky’s power once she got her villain act going. But I was in over my head and really missing the days when there would have been someone I could count on to save the day. Now there was just me.

Or was there…?

“Merry…” I asked, looking up at the screen with a squint. “How many other heroes do you think avoided being bimboed? I mean, if I got lucky, I couldn’t have been the only one, right?”

“Hm. Maybe.” Digi-Merry thought about it. “Hold on, let me run a web search…” Processing, processing… “I mean, it looks like she got everyone with a real name for themselves…” I tried not to feel too offended by that. “But she must have missed some. Let’s see… I’ll do a broader sweep, try to work out what heroes might be out there that don’t have much of a media presence…”

A list of names popped up on the screen. “Here. I mean, I can’t be sure, but these are the heroes who might have avoided the same fate as the others, like you.”

I read through. I didn’t recognise any of them. “Are any of them teleporters?” Well it didn’t hurt to ask.

She just shrugged though. “Kinda hard to say. Honestly, some of these might just be rumours or something. There’s not much info on them – you know, like you. Quite a lot of people are pretty sure you don’t exist.”

That was disquieting to hear. “… I mean I thought I was building up more of a presence… I was on the news and everything…”

“Well… Uh. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it just hadn’t caught on yet. Lucky, right?” Digi-Merry flashed me a smile. “Anyway. Here’s your list. It’s… not as long as I’d like, but it’s there.” She looked up at it. “So… This might be the complete listing of the world’s heroes. The super-villains are going to be having a field day right now.”

“Yeah…” I took a breath and stood up. “Alright. I’ll go get them.”

She blinked at me. “You’ll what?”

“I’ll go get them.” I shrugged. “Even if they don’t have useful powers, it might help to have them to talk with. You don’t mind if we use your lab, right?”

“…” The processing bar appeared over her head again. “I mean, sure, but… How fast are you, exactly?”

It was my turn to shrug. “No idea – never found a good way to test it. Anyway, back in five.”

And away I went.

… I probably should have hidden the flesh and blood Meredith somewhere else before I left, in retrospect.

-

Running across the country was an enlightening experience – as I started to learn that things were even worse than I thought. It wasn’t just Becky’s bimbofication attacks – other weird things were starting to happen as well. Unicorns were galloping down the highway. Sex clubs were popping up in every city. I passed farms tended to by stereotypical farmer girls in overalls shewing on wheat stalks – with, you know, no actual wheat crops to be seen for miles around – and barns filled with cow girls instead of cows. I spotted a nest of dragon girls as I crossed the Rocky Mountains. Dog girls accompanying the police on patrol. Things were getting weird. Really weird. It was like the Drive was just making every stray thought its user had into reality – which, well, was pretty much exactly what was happening. The longer this went on, the less certain I was that we’d be able to recover from it.

I tried to speed up.

Of course, the problem with trying to find heroes when you’re not entirely sure if they exist or not is that they can be damn hard to actually… you know… find. I went through three names on the list before I hit paydirt.

“Hi!” I said, dropping to a stop next to a woman perched on top of a building dressed in a darkly coloured full body suit and half-face mask. “Are you Sonicheart?”

I really should have looked at the list better. It said ‘suspected sonic wave powers’ right there. And with a name like Sonicheart, what else could I expect?

But no, I was a genius and decided to make an impression by surprising her! So the sonic blast I got to the face in return was absolutely my fault. Lori is a pretty jumpy person at the best of times, honestly, so yeah, me appearing behind her was never going to end well. I’m good at dodging bullets, not invisible force walls.

“Gyah!” I think I heard over the sound of my ears ringing. “Now where the hell did you come from?”

A southern drawl is a weird thing to hear after getting your clock cleaned that thoroughly. I thought I was dreaming until I blinked my eyes open and found her standing over me, looking half annoyed, half concerned. Fortunately having a hyper fast metabolism means I tend to recover from things like that pretty quickly.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I groaned, smiling up at her. I took a moment to rest before I even thought about rising. “I’m Lightning Strike. I don’t suppose you’re interested in trying to save the world?”

She gave me the oddest look. “Tryin’? No. No interest in that at all.” I got the feeling she was grinning under her mask. “Ah don’t suppose y’ve got anything a bit more confident t’ah sell me?”

“Ha.” Oh, it hurt to laugh. “Maybe. Fine – up for saving the world, period, then?”

“That’s more like it.” She nodded and reached down to help me up. “Now what can ah do for you, Miss Lightnin’?”

-

“I’m not sure I understand your plan,” said the cute- the, ah, the cloaked heroine in front of me. She was younger than I was by maybe a year, and shorter than me by a good handful of inches. Her hair was short and chestnut brown, which went really nicely with her earthen cloak, and almost hid the pointy fox ears poking through from the top of her scalp. She looked small, maybe, but there was enough spirit in her to overpower a mountain sized foe! What I’m saying is she was adorable.

… I… I’m spending too much time describing her. Sorry.

“It’s not much of a plan, I admit,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and making a terrible first impression. We were in the town square of some city I don’t remember, and I’d just helped her put down an armed robbery. “Right now I’m just gathering everyone who can maybe… Do something about all of this. There aren’t many heroes left… Unity’s gone… If there’s any chance of stopping this madness before it’s too late, it’s going to have to be us.”

“Huh…” She tilted her head. Her ears wiggled. I thought I caught a hint of a tail waving underneath her cloak. “And you came to find me?”

“You’re the Kitsune, right? You’re a hero, even if you’re keeping a low profile. Of course I came for you.”

She looked embarrassed at that. “I don’t know if I’d call myself a hero… I’m… I’m just doing the best I can to help people…”

Did I not tell you she was adorable?

“Listen,” I said, extending my hand. “Right now, I’d take someone who’s good at card tricks. But I think you’re better than that. Look, it’s no guarantee – but if you want to help, come with me, and we’ll see what we can do.”

She hesitated. Thought about it. But eventually, she took my hand, and nodded with a smile. We were in business.

-

“… You only found two of them?” Digi-Merry was less than happy. That was fair. I wasn’t happy. I’d searched for ages, but either the other names on the list were really good at hiding, or they really were only rumours.

“Think of it another way,” I said, trying to sound confident now that there were other people here. “I found two of them! We’re way up from the zero that we had!”

Digi-Merry looked at Sonicheart, who looked at Kitsune, who looked at me. I was clearly not carrying the room. I decided to change tracks.

“Look, this is just the first wave, the heroes we have left in America. Once we spread the net wider, we’ll add more to our crew, and soon we’ll be an unstoppable global force, just like Unity!” I tried to speak with more confidence than I felt – I needed everyone else to feel like this was possible. Otherwise we’d never get anywhere. “And with all of our strengths combined together… along with a few language dictionaries, maybe… We’ll find a way to reach that mad woman, and bring an end to this crisis! We’ll be heroes! … Moreso!”

The other two heroes exchanged a look. They seemed to understand each other very quickly for two women who’d just met – the quirked eyebrows they both gave me when they looked back were identical. Still, they seemed slightly more buoyed than they had been before.

Until the AI started talking, anyway. “That’s a lovely plan, but I don’t think we have time.”

“What?” I spun around. “Why not? It’s only been five minutes, what else could she have done?”

“Oh, she turned the entirety of Germany into some strange national parody of Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” she said absently. “But no, not what I mean. While you were gone, I decided to check in on our good friend Reggie and see what he was up to. He’s on the move.”

“Reggie? Who’s that?” Kitsune asked. “Another hero?”

“Ah, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Couldn’t really be further from that, no.”

Sonicheart looked at the screen, and then shot forward, her hands gripping the desk. “King Industries? You mean Reginald King?!”

The snarl in her voice told me that they were not friends. “You know him?”

“Oh yeah,” she muttered darkly. “We have history. What’s that bastard doing now?”

“He’s shifting stuff around,” Digi-Merry said, pulling up the files she had access to from King’s server. “People, money, fuel…”

“Fuel?” I frowned. “What do you mean fuel?”

“Rocket fuel.” Ah. “Yeah, I think he knows where the Reality Drive is.”

“Reality what?” Sonicheart looked at me, and even Kit was looking quizzical.

“I’ll explain in a bit,” I said, giving them an apologetic smile. “Merry, how quickly can he get to her? The moon’s days away even in our best shuttles, right?”

The other heroes got quiet. I saw Kit mouth the words ‘The Moon?!’ to Sonicheart, who just shrugged and looked nervous. Hoo boy, I really was going to have to explain this whole thing to them, wasn’t I?

“Try as they might, they’re not as fast as you are, Strike,” the AI admitted. “And don’t call me Merry. But Reggie’s a dangerous one. He has tricks up his sleeves no one else has dreamed of. From what I’m seeing of his internal company messages, he expects this situation to be resolved in hours, not days. I think he has a short cut.”

“Great…” I rubbed my face. “Does this day want to get any worse? Maybe drop a meteorite on our heads, or reawaken an ancient species of dinosaurs hungering for human flesh…?”

Digi-Merry wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Strike, this is serious. Reginald King cannot be allowed to get his hands on the Reality Drive! Take it from me, that is an absolute worst case ever scenario! If that happens we’re out and out done!”

“Ah agree!” Sonicheart nodded passionately. “Ah have no idea what y’all are talking about but if that bastard wants the thing he can’t be allowed t’have it.”

“Exactly!”

“Alright, alright…” I sighed and nodded. “I get it. Trust me, I’m no fan of the guy either. But… Oh, hey, how about if we steal his rocket and fly up there instead?”

Kit and Sonicheart considered it. I was actually feeling pretty proud of myself for turning a disaster into an opportunity… Until I saw the look Merry was giving me.

“What kind of idiot are you? Do you think you can just steal a space shuttle? Do you have any idea how precise those things are? The weight calculations? The Oxygen mixes? Do you have even the slightest clue how to fly one of those things? No, no, of course you don’t! You just think big rocket go fooooom and ignore all the real, hard, science behind the whole operation! Argh, it’s because of people like you that we can’t get any more funding for space exploration because-“

I managed to resist the urge to hide behind Sonicheart. Merry was kind of terrifying when she was mad – it was like watching a boulder rolling towards you with nowhere to escape. She just ignored my attempts to apologise and kept ranting until…

“Alright. Then we’ll destroy it instead, yeah?” Until the only person who might possibly hate King as much as she did spoke up, punching her palm.

“… Well, that’s more doable, yeah,” Digi-Merry nodded, still giving me the stink-eye.

But it was Kit who spoiled their fun. “Ah, would that actually do anything to halt the current crisis, though?” She asked, looking between us all innocently. “I mean… I know I’m missing context, but it didn’t sound like King was the one behind all of this.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Ah s’pose…”

The two pouted – well, Merry did. I assume Sonicheart did as well, but her mask was in the way.

I decided to get things back on track. “Right. So, we need a way to the moon… within an hour or two. That… sounds doable.” It was a shame the track was kind of a dead end. “Mmmaaaybe I could jump it? If I went really, really fast and had a ramp or something?”

“That would be suicidal,” the AI answered immediately, sounding glum. “I thought about it. The calculations would be insanely precise. A single point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one degree of error and you’d go flying off into space forever. Plus if you actually made it you’d have to deal with the lack of air on the moon, and, you know, the whole vacuum thing… It’s just not workable.”

It really wasn’t. I slumped in my seat. “Then what can we do? There has to be a way up there. We can’t just wait for the world to end.”

“Actually…” Digi-Merry had that progress bar over her head again. “I did have an idea there – but it’s going to need more heroes to make it work.”

“Oh?” I looked up. “I thought you said ideas were difficult for you?”

“Yeah!” She looked quite pleased. “I’m really proud of myself! Go me!”

I chuckled and smiled. She was being cute, there was no need to be a jerk about it. “So what was the idea?”

“Well, it was tied to what we were talking about earlier.” She rested her head on her hand, thinking deep. “It would be easy for Unity to get to her, you know. They had secret teleport tech.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Kit said, nodding. “They could get from one side of the world to the other instantly…”

I may have snorted at the idea that that was a big deal. I was ignored.

“But Unity’s gone,” Sonicheart weighed in. “They’ve been missing for months.”

“Yeah.” Digi-Merry nodded. “But what if there was a new Unity? A successor group. One with access to all of Unity’s tech?”

The three of us exchanged looks. We were confused… But we could see the implications. “Then… They could use the teleporter! That’d be amazing – is there a group like that?”

“Not yet.” She smiled up at the three of us. “Not officially, anyway. But I’ve got a plan.”

I should have run away there and then. It was my last chance before things got really mad.