by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025
For all that the wormhole had looked impressive, Fact’s experience of stepping through it felt like nothing more than stepping through an open doorway. One moment, zhe was in a dimly lit cave with stale, musty air; the next moment, golden sunlight constricted zir pupils and fresh, green-smelling air tousled zir silicon fur with playful zephyrs.
Fact looked around in surprise, having expected to find zirself in another cave, albeit in an entirely different set of time-space coordinates within the universe. Instead, the fox seemed to have found zirself in a field of wildflowers, beside a copse of deciduous trees. Birds sang among the trees, and happy children’s voices shouted in the distance.
Tilting zir ears to listen closely, Fact discerned that the voices were most likely lapine, lutrine, and scurius in nature — meaning they came from young rabbits, otters, and squirrels. This matched well with Fact’s historical knowledge of the uplift of various animals on Ancient Earth. All three of those species had originally been uplifted by a scientist in England, who later sold her research to American scientists who used the same principles to uplift all kinds of varieties of dogs and cats. Furthermore, pulling out zir uni-meter and scanning the area, Fact was able to establish that the levels of pollutions in the air and damage to the planet’s ozone layer were indicative of the late twenty-first century, exactly when uplift on Earth first began.
Hearing movement behind zir, Fact turned around to see Galen appear as if out of thin air several feet behind zir, and a few moments later, Consul Tor appeared in the same way, yet another foot farther away from zir. The green otteroid immediately swept the cloak she’d been wearing off of her shoulders and folded it in her arms, allowing the bright, golden sunlight to fall across her exposed fur, revitalizing her.
Fact blinked at zir companions and their strange distance from zir. Reflexively, the android lifted zir uni-meter and scanned the space around them. Sure enough, the wormhole was still there, albeit harder to see in the glaring, summery sunlight. However, it was moving. Slowly but surely, the wormhole was drifting across the field and also deeper down toward the ground. In a matter of hours, it would be somewhere in the forest at the edge of the field and most likely also underground. Perhaps that accounted for the fact that Fact’s head had been found in a cave and not in a wide open field like this.
“The mouth of the wormhole is moving,” Fact said. “If we follow it and guard it until it moves too far underground to be used, perhaps that will be enough to stop the Xophidians from kidnapping the Cottontail family and changing the timeline.”
“Unless they’ve already been kidnapped,” Consul Tor pointed out. The green otter’s fur blended so beautifully with the long, swaying grasses of the field around her that she looked like she could have grown here.
Fact shook zir head. “I can hear rabbit children playing in the distance. So, they must still be here.”
“All six of the children?” Galen pressed. “Are you sure? And what about their parents? What if they weren’t all kidnapped at once? What kind of timeline might be created if we only rescue some of them?”
Fact’s triangular ears skewed at the irrefutable logic of the rabbit’s points. None of those eventualities seemed likely, but Fact couldn’t deny they were possible. Zhe was not sure that all the rabbits were safely still on Earth.
“From what I know of Earth animal religions,” Fact said levelly to the rabbit, “I suspect that you are trying to leverage this situation into an opportunity to meet one of the humans from this time period.”
“Can you blame me?” Galen asked, keeping her face straight, but there was still a small, mischievous twinkle in her eye. Even if Galen’s strongest memories right now were from a timeline where her people had been oppressed by Xophidians for generations, she still had a glimmer of the memories from a universe where she’d lived among dogs and cats who — to varying degrees — worshipped the humans who had uplifted them long ago as if they were actual gods. She was not untouched by the religious devotion canines held for humanity.
Fact didn’t answer the rabbit’s question, instead saying, “Regardless, your points are correct. We cannot risk the possibility that the wormhole returned us to a time after the kidnappings are already underway. We must investigate further.”
“Fact,” Consul Tor said inquiringly, “you know more about Earth history than I do. “What kind of problems are we likely to cause… if we’re seen?” The otteroid gestured at herself, indicating her emerald green fur. “I don’t exactly look like an Earth animal.”
Fact stared at Consul Tor and Galen for a long beat before answering. “If we have been returned to the very beginning of uplift on Earth, when there were only eight uplifted rabbits in the whole world, then even Galen will be recognized as an outsider by people who know those uplifted animals well. That said, she should be able to pass for a member of the Cottontail family to anyone who doesn’t know them well, and I can probably pass myself off as one of the handful of experimentally uplifted foxes.” The android’s narrow muzzle tightened into a frown. “But you are correct that your fur will immediately give you away. It is too green to be easily disguised.”
“I will stay here and guard the wormhole mouth,” Consul Tor said. Then tapping the comm-pin clipped to the strap of her dress, she said, “I know I’m not as strong as you, but as long as these still work, I can always call you back to assist me if the Xophidians appear, and with my green fur, I’m rather nicely camouflaged.”
The comm-pin hidden under Fact’s robe echoed the otteroid’s words, and the android fox nodded in acknowledgement of her plan. “We will return as soon as we can.”
Consul Tor sank down into the grasses to sit peacefully beside the gently roiling air that indicated the wormhole mouth, and she did practically disappear from sight. If someone wasn’t specifically looking for her, they’d be unlikely to notice to the scraps of fabric of her sundress that might give her away, barely visible between the thick, green grasses.
* * *
As they walked together through the field, right at the edge of a forest, Fact anxiously tried to brief Galen on how to handle a mission like this — even in the original timeline, the rabbit wasn’t a Tri-Galactic Union officer. She wasn’t trained or prepared for away missions. And in this timeline, she was barely educated at all. However, she had an irrepressible spirit and an unflappable temperament. Those hadn’t changed. It made Fact wonder: are there fixed points between timelines? Things that can’t be changed? Or are those things just sufficiently likely that more branches of the multi-verse contain them than not, so as one drifts from one branch to another, buffeted about by strange occurrences like finding your own head has been abandoned in a cave in the past, you still have the familiar personality of a friend beside you, even though she lived through an entirely different life here?
The intricacies of the multi-verse were too much for even an individual like Fact with a super-computer for a brain to really successfully wrestle with. Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but let the currents of time throw you to wherever they will and do your best while you’re there.
Galen nodded solemnly at each piece of advice that Fact quickly whispered to her: stay close, don’t say more than necessary, try to avoid being seen, but if you are seen, act like you belong exactly where you are. And above all: follow Fact’s lead.
So, when they came within view of a picnic scene filled with playing animal children on a more carefully mowed section of lawn and their various adults lounging around a picnic blanket, the pastoral nature of the situation was jarringly out of tone with the kind of subterfuge Fact had been preparing Galen for. The two of them stood in the distance, watching as young uplifted otters, squirrels, and yes, bunnies tumbled about playing some version of freeze tag. There were even a couple of foxes, though their fur was ruddy orange, nothing like Fact’s. Whereas the rabbits could all easily have been members of Galen’s immediate family.
The adult animals on the picnic blanket passed pastries, fruits, and sandwiches to each other, snacking and chatting away while the children played, completely unaware of a pair of time travelers watching them from the edge of the forest in the distance.
Watching more closely, Fact noticed there was also a tiny family of uplifted mice taking up one corner of the picnic blanket, and as they watched, a pair of figures began approaching from the far side of the field, where there was a large manor house in the distance. The figures were larger than most of the uplifted animals enjoying the picnic — a human and an uplifted bear, each carrying armfuls of supplies for some kind of yard game: wooden mallets, metal wickets, and a basketful of differently colored balls.
Fact counted up the rabbits at the picnic, but unfortunately, there were only six of them — one adult and five children. One of the adults and one of the children from the Cottontail family was missing. However, based on the easygoing, carefree behavior of the ones in front of zir, Fact could only conclude that if those two had been kidnapped, the rest of them couldn’t possibly know about it.
“Sally Cottontail and one of the children are missing,” Galen whispered, moving even closer to Fact.
“You have good eyes,” Fact replied. They were standing far enough away that zhe didn’t think anyone at the picnic was likely to notice them, but even so, the fox pulled the rabbit with zir into the cover of the trees at the edge of the forest. “This is too small a group for us to approach them without being recognized as outsiders.”
“It’s magical though, isn’t it?” Galen said, a sense of urgency entering her whispery voice. “Seeing history brought to life like this? I can’t even tell you how many times I pictured what it must have been like to be a part of the Cottontail family before the Xophidians captured them. I knew it would have been better than the life I was living, but Even in my most wishful dreams…” The rabbit’s voice caught, and she turned her face away, long ears wilting lower. “It was never this beautiful. I didn’t know how to imagine something this beautiful.”
Fact felt conflicted — zhe wanted to comfort zir friend, but the best comfort wouldn’t be words or reassuring touches. The best comfort would come from returning to a universe where her life was better than in this one. They needed to move forward.
“We should examine the building in the distance,” Fact said. “Perhaps we’ll be able to uncover more information that will prove pertinent to the mission.”
Galen stared at the android fox for a long moment, as if she was trying to work out how zhe could speak so coldly and collectedly about a situation that had her almost entirely undone. She wanted nothing more than to go join the picnic with her ancestors, introduce herself as some sort of long lost cousin — even though she knew that didn’t make sense — and see if she could join in with the treats and games. She wanted to get to know these rabbits, talk to them and find out what it was like to live here with the very human who uplifted them.
But none of that would help restore the timeline, if anything, it might muddy the timeline further. Who knew what results it could have? There was no way to predict, and there’d be no way to undo them.
With a great effort, Galen collected herself, trying to mirror the coolness that Fact was projecting, and simply nodded. “I’ll follow your lead,” she murmured, the words feeling like bitter ashes in her mouth as they warred with the imagined flavors of elusive sweet treats like jam-filled scones and buttered croissants, foods she could see resting on the picnic blanket in the distance, just waiting for someone to claim them, but that she didn’t even have proper words for in this timeline.
The fox and rabbit wove their way through the edge of the forest until they were safely past the picnic proceedings and much closer to the manor house. Staying in the cover of the woods, Fact took out zir uni-meter and scanned the manor house, checking for life signs. To zir disappointment, Fact found there were several large mammalian life signs… but also several reptilian ones large enough to be Xophidians. The worst possible combination. With Xophidians in the house — and they had to be Xophidians as Breanna Schweitzer only uplifted mammals — they had to go inside and investigate, but with the presence of humans or other uplifted animals in the house as well, they had to stay careful and discrete.
Weighing the options and disliking all of them, Fact unholstered zir handheld blazor and held it out toward Galen. “This is easy to use; let me show you.” The white fox quickly explained all of the blazor’s settings; demonstrated how to aim; and indicated how to fire. Then zhe handed the weapon over to the rabbit who had never wielded a weapon before in either of her lifetimes, so far as Fact knew. “I need you to stay close behind me, and if you see a Xophidian–”
Before Fact could say it zirself, Galen said bitterly, “Shoot to kill.”
Fact nodded. Zhe could hear a lifetime’s worth of oppression in those words, and Fact knew the rabbit wouldn’t hesitate to kill any of the snakes on sight. Normally, the android would have felt a compunction against ending the life of another being, but in this case, the Xophidians in the manor house had already infiltrated a world that was not their own, and the actions they would take if left unhindered would turn the tides of an entire universe towards war, oppression, and suffering. They had to be stopped. They’d already made the choices that convicted them in Fact’s mind, and zhe had no doubt that if these snakes could be brought to trial for their crimes — a fair trial that truly accounted for the affect their actions would have on generations worth of rabbits, let alone the rest of the Tri-Galactic Union and affiliated worlds like Cetazed — their scaly hides would be sentenced to the harshest punishments possible.
But a fair trial isn’t exactly possible when the enemy you’re fighting will warp the very nature of reality itself.
All of that aside, Fact didn’t believe the Xophidians they were facing deserved to die. Fact believed in the sanctity of life, and zhe knew that zhe and Galen were neither judge, jury, nor proper executioners. Nonetheless, the situation was that zir backup for this mission was a rabbit who’d been mistreated by these snakes her whole life… who also had zero proper combat training. If Galen psyched herself out by trying to hold back when she got a clear shot, she’d surely miss. Her best chance at actually helping Fact succeed in their mission was to tell her to do exactly what she wanted to do anyway: shoot to kill. Exact a small modicum of revenge for having her entire life, and the lives of all of her relatives through the entirety of her species history, be taken away, obliterated and replaced with the mockery of lives they’d been allowed in this timeline.
* * *
Fact led the way into the closest door of the manor house — it was a large building, three stories high and wide enough to hold a dozen or more rooms on each floor. The exterior looked old in a classic kind of way — simple stonework with faded wood around the many-paned windows — but as soon as they stepped inside, Fact could tell the interior had been renovated and modernized to suit the work of a scientist. The air was fresh and clean, clearly cooled and filtered by equipment that had been set into the walls and would look out of place if the interior walls themselves didn’t look like they’d been torn out and replaced, subdividing larger rooms into smaller ones.
As Fact and Galen worked their way cautiously from one room to the next — always listening carefully and scanning each room before entering it — they found a strange patchwork to the way the building had been decorated. Homey, comfortable rooms filled with the detritus of daily life — rocking chairs, sofas, beds, and children’s toys strewn on the floor — were intermixed with laboratory rooms, stocked full of technological devices and scientific equipment. It was a fascinating setup that spoke to how Breanna Schweitzer had lived among the animals she uplifted — raising the first generation of each species as her own children, and then stepped further back, allowing them to grow into families as she uplifted more and more of them.
An entire legacy had begun here, and Fact could feel the weight of it on zir shoulders. One mistake, and the entire Tri-Galactic Union could be undone. For if anything happened to the families of otters, squirrels, and mice who lived in this house now, then Breanna Schweitzer might not pass her research along to the American scientists who would uplift cats and dogs.
Fact was here to save the rabbits, but it was equally important to keep from interfering in the success of all the others. Without them, there would never have been a bulldog scientist — Dr. Day on Thomicron Eta — to create Fact zirself. In a way — more circuitously, but no less completely — Fact’s origin was in this ancient English manor house every bit as much as Galen’s was.
And yet, neither of them belonged here. Not at all. The only thing that belonged here less was the Xophidian who Fact was leading them toward, dodging rooms with mammals, moving ever toward the closest of the reptilian readings on zir uni-meter. When they finally came close enough that Fact was sure the alien snake would be on the other side of the next door, the android fox said quietly, “Will you guard the door we just came through while I check the next room?”
Galen nodded, her expression grimly serious. The rabbit had no idea that Fact was specifically trying to stop her from getting a shot at the Xophidian before zhe had a chance to try to take it down non-lethally. She simply took up a post by the previous door and held her blazor aimed behind them.
Fact took a calculated risk and burst into the next room faster than a biological organism could have moved. The android became a silver-white blur as zhe rushed upon the snake, disarming the scaly creature and pinning it against the floor in what seemed to be a single deft maneuver. Its green coils writhed in objection, fighting back against Fact’s restraint, but the android was stronger than the snake.
“If you want to live,” Fact snarled through artificial fangs stronger than any natural tooth, “you’ll answer my questions without complaint, argument, or equivocation. Understood?”
By now, Galen had followed Fact into the room with the snake. She tried pointing her borrowed blazor at the Xophidian, but Fact was too much in the way. The rabbit couldn’t get a clear shot, and she needed Fact as an ally even more than she wanted to kill a random member of the race who had enslaved her people. So, instead, she looked around the room and said, “Fact, what is this room?”
There were machines all around — they looked a little like washing machines with the window in the front, except there wasn’t laundry tumbling inside. There were grayscale images — like x-rays — showing the shapes of fetal animals. Some of them were already developed enough to look like rabbits, and some of the most developed ones were moving, twitching, kicking in their electronic wombs. The next generation of Galen’s people.
As Galen marveled at the scene, Fact pressed harder against the Xophidian’s throat — or, at least, the stretch of its body just under its chin — until the snake whimper-hissed, “I understand,” with the flick of a forked tongue.
“What exactly have your people taken from this world so far,” Fact asked, allowing zir sharp claws to unsheathe a little and lightly pierce the Xophidian’s softer belly scales. “Tell me everything, no matter how small or inconsequential it may seem.”
“Nothing,” the Xophidian hissed, tongue flicking rapidly, worrying that this frightening mammal wouldn’t believe its answer. So, it added as a point of clarification, “Yet.”
“What were you planning to take?” Fact pressed, literally pressing zir claws deeper into the Xophidian’s belly. Zhe didn’t want to torture the snake, but Fact knew enough about the Xophidian culture that zhe calculated it was better to make a show of aggression up front than to risk letting the snake think zhe was weak and could be manipulated. Besides, time was a factor here. The more time they all spent in a past where they didn’t belong, the more risk there was that they’d cause even more damage to the timeline.
The last thing Fact needed right now was a third timeline to reckon with. Two was already far too many.
The Xophidian writhed, causing blood to well around the sharp tips of Fact’s retractable metal claws, but the android didn’t relent. Eventually, the alien snake sighed, deflating, and said with a soft hiss, “I’m here for the genetic materialssss. All of the fertilized ovum and fetuses at every level of development for the docile, long-eared ones. I was to take it all. My compatriotsssss…” The Xophidian paused, flicking its tongue. “They are in the forest, waiting for a chance to abduct the fully grown ones — we will need them to raise the others as we grow them. And then our empire will grow strong enough to take over the triple galaxies!”
The Xophidian seemed to forget its compromised position as its words swelled with pride, and its coils squirmed, shifting like twisting strands of a broken timeline.
Fact looked over the objects in the room and was able to tell fairly easily that some of the equipment on the floor didn’t match the technological level of Earth in this time period. However, its design did match the aesthetic style of Xophidian technology, and it looked like a hover-trolly that the Xophidian had been planning to use to cart back its treasures to the wormhole. Fact pointed with zir narrow muzzle at the hover-trolly and told Galen, “Shoot that using the blazor’s highest setting.”
Galen had been expecting to do some shooting, so she didn’t hesitate. The hover-trolley was instantly obliterated, leaving far too little behind to cause any damage to the timeline.
“Excellent,” Fact said. Then taking an even firmer hold of the Xophidian’s neck, the android fox began walking back toward the door where Galen still stood, looking kind of baffled and lost. The rabbit had expected to shoot at the snake, not watch it be interrogated and then dragged away.
“What are you doing?” Galen asked as Fact strode past her. She fell in step beside zir, stepping carefully to avoid the slashing tail of the Xophidian, still wrestling against its restraint.
“I’m bringing this intruder with us,” Fact said, without breaking stride, seemingly completely unbothered by the weight of the Xophidian zhe was dragging from one room to the next of the giant mansion. “We can’t leave it here where it doesn’t belong, and you heard what it said — it hasn’t taken anything from here yet. Now we need only to stop the others from kidnapping the Cottontail family, and get both ourselves and the invading Xophidians out of here. Then the original timeline should be restored.”
“That easy, is it?” Galen asked wryly, dancing on her long hindpaws to avoid the dragging, writhing coils of the restrained Xophidian as she hurried to keep up with Fact. The android fox could move quite quickly, even when zhe was holding back.
They were almost home-free — all they had to do was make it back through the door of the house they’d entered through and then slip away into the woods where they’d be obscured from view — but when Fact flung the door wide, a human stood framed in the opening.
Fact stopped cold, zir brain rapidly recalculating all the choices zhe had just made. Zhe had assumed speed outweighed carefulness. Zhe had been wrong, and now, it was too late and go back. Too late to make choices that wouldn’t lead to a human from the distant past staring directly down into zir golden eyes.
The human had long, wavy, brown hair and inquisitive eyes that flicked quickly over the scene, taking in the arctic fox, rabbit, and restrained Xophidian. “Who are you?” she asked.
Fact was increasingly sure that zhe was staring into the face of Breanna Schweitzer — mother of uplift — herself. There was limited data from before the dark times after humans disappeared from the Earth, before uplifted animals pulled together their own civilization in the ruins. But there were statues of her, and while Fact had never seen any of them in person, there were records of them in archives that zhe had stored in zir brain.
“Are you Breanna Schweitzer?” Fact asked, zir tone even although zir mind was a riotous jangle of thoughts and feelings. Zhe had never expected to meet the mother of modern society — zir own grandmother in a way — in the flesh. How could zhe have? Breanna Schweitzer and her whole society had been dead and gone for many, many years before Fact was even constructed.
“Yes,” the woman said, reservedly. “But I still don’t know who you are.”
In a fraction of a second, Fact’s mind played through all the options available to zir — every possible lie or deception that zhe could think of on short notice. There was no way to know which would work without knowing more about the personality of this historically significant figure. And yet, in spite of the central role Breanna Schweitzer played in every one of Earth’s history books, there was far too little to go on. The foibles and quirks of personality, the flavor of a person’s humor and the shades and hues of their emotions are something that get lost to time if all you have are their actions.
So many authors from the distant past would be people that Fact might have a chance of knowing, because the words they’d written and that had been preserved across time showed the twists and turns of how thoughts had moved through their minds, implying the shapes of their personalities. But the only legacy that Breanna Schweitzer had left behind was the results of her actions: the animals she’d uplifted. She had hardly even written scientific papers, instead leaving that work to her assistants and in many cases, the uplifted animals themselves.
Teddy Bearclaw — the one bear that had ever been uplifted on Earth — had written quite a few papers, as well as several novels and even a slim volume of poetry. Fact knew Teddy Bearclaw’s personality well. But the mother of uplift herself? She was a complete cipher.
And so, Fact found zirself making the most surprising choice of all. Zhe told the truth.
“I’m an android who was designed by an uplifted dog, many years in your future. I’ve traveled back in time to stop this Xophidian–” Fact didn’t loosen zir grip on the alien snake, but zhe did point at it with zir narrow muzzle. “–and its colleagues from kidnapping the Cottontail family and altering the course of history for the worse.”
The human woman stared down at the Arctic fox, natural brown eyes gazing piercingly into artificial golden ones. She didn’t say anything, but Fact sensed in the silence between them that she believed zir. And for a moment, it felt like the entire nature of reality realigned and instead of being trapped in a nightmare alternate timeline, Fact felt like zhe lived in a universe written by a benevolent author who simply wanted this remarkable woman to have a chance to know how much of a difference her actions right now — these years she devoted to her hard work — made for millions of animals in the future. She would be loved for centuries by animals she’d never meet, apart from Fact. And Galen.
The brown rabbit stepped forward cautiously, her nose twitching furiously. Her heart beat in her chest so heavily that it felt like it was trying to escape, like it wanted to beat its way through the walls of reality, shattering the corporeal world that held her here, and take Galen safely back to a quiet moment that didn’t matter… instead of this big moment that she knew would define her for the rest of her life. “The work you’re doing here…” Galen’s voice broke, but she drew a deep, unsteady breath and forced herself back together long enough to say: “Thank you. The world you’re making possible…” As Galen spoke, she wasn’t thinking about the life she’d lived under the rule of cruel, cold-blooded Xophidians. She was thinking about the life she remembered. The life she was supposed to live. “…it’s so beautiful, and every piece of it is only possible because of you.”
“I believe you,” Breanna Schweitzer said, and then her face broke into a smile that would be burned into both Fact’s and Galen’s minds for the rest of their lives. “Maybe it’s just because I’m an egotistical fool, but that’s a hell of a story. Who am I to argue with something like that?”
Fact and Galen looked at each other in bewilderment. They’d been looking upon the face of a god and needed the reassurance of sharing the moment with each other.
“What can I do to help you?” Breanna Schweitzer asked when the white fox and brown rabbit seemed too tongue-tied and overwhelmed to say anything more to her.
Fact pulled zirself together and said, “Nothing, except tell no one about what you’ve seen. We can’t–”
“Change the future,” Breanna Schweitzer said. “Got it.” Her words overlapped Fact’s in a way that felt strangely, deeply intimate to the android. Zhe had shared words with the mother of zir entire people. It would be a moment zhe would never forget, how their voices had briefly overlapped like two vocalists harmonizing.
Would the few moments of this brief encounter mean as much to Breanna Schweitzer? Would she treasure them the way that Fact and Galen would? Always fondly remembering the flash of golden eyes as a reminder of how her work would live on, growing beyond her and returning to thank her. Or would these brief moments drift away into a jumble of half-forgotten memories for Breanna Schweitzer, something that didn’t feel quite real; something her mind couldn’t hold onto because she couldn’t share it with anyone, couldn’t tell anyone about it? Something that would someday feel like it had become a cross between a funny daydream and a misremembered snippet of a TV show that she’d somehow mixed up with her own life — something that couldn’t possibly have happened. Something too preposterous to believe.
Fact and Galen would never know how they lived on in Breanna Schweitzer’s mind. They could only guess, because whatever these moments meant to her, she’d never write it down. It would not stand the test of time.
* * *
Overcome by their encounter with the scientist who stood behind the creation of their entire civilization, Fact and Galen barely experienced the rest of their return trip through the edges of the forest toward where they’d left Consul Tor guarding the mouth of the wandering wormhole. Their paws moved automatically beneath them, stepping deftly through the underbrush, and the Xophidian’s long tail trailed along behind them, no longer even bothering to struggle. Instead, the alien snake only hissed fitfully, halfheartedly voicing its objections.
As expected, the wormhole mouth was no longer in the grassy field beside the forest when Fact and Galen reached it. Similarly, Consul Tor was nowhere in sight. So, Fact rearranged the restrained length of reptile in zir arms, shifting the Xophidian’s stretch of neck to be pressed against zir side by only one arm. This freed up their other paw to tap the comm-pin on their breast, opening a communications channel to Consul Tor.
“Fact? Is that you?” Consul Tor’s voice emanated from the golden pin in a rushed, husky whisper before Fact said anything at all. “I’ve been following the wormhole… it descended underground, but there was a cave. I followed it down… and then…” Her voice broke, but she pulled herself back together. “The Xophidians came through. They had the Cottontail family. All eight of them, tied up. I couldn’t have stopped them if I tried…”
The Xophidian restrained under Fact’s arm let out a whistling hiss, seemingly its version of a chuckle.
“Where are they now?” Fact asked, squeezing zir arm harder against zir side, silencing the laughing snake.
“They went through the wormhole,” Consul Tor said. “I followed them, keeping out of sight.”
With a sense of finality, Fact realized the Xophidians had always needed to succeed at kidnapping the Cottontail family. If they hadn’t, then there would have been no story for Galen to tell zir in the other timeline. This was their descent into underworld, stolen away by Hades. Now it was time for Fact to take on the mantle of a hero and become a legend.
“Come back out of the cave toward us,” Fact said. “We’ll head into the forest in the direction the wormhole was traveling. When we meet up, you can lead us the rest of the way. I’m going to rescue those bunnies.”
Fact tapped the comm-pin, ending their communications. Then zhe hiked up the coil of Xophidian zhe was carrying against zir hip. Finally, Fact looked at Galen — the brown rabbit was too awestruck to say anything, watching her longtime friend in another timeline suddenly become the hero of a bedtime story she’d heard since she was a kit.
“Come on,” Fact said. “Follow me.” The arctic fox charged into the forest, dragging the length of unhappy reptile behind zir.
Galen said, too softly for zir to hear, “Anywhere.” Then she took off after him, at a loping pace, hopping through the underbrush.
It didn’t take long to find Consul Tor. The green otteroid stood beside a rocky protrusion among the trees with a dark, gaping mouth at its base. Her emerald fur made her look almost like a moss-covered statue, placed beside the cave to mark its future importance as an historical site. Until now, it had just been a place where the uplifted animal children who lived in Breanna Schweitzer’s manor house came to play. But today, it had become the entrance to Hades’ realm.
“The wormhole mouth began flickering, as if it were about to disappear,” Consul Tor said, as soon as the others were close enough to hear. “I think it’s unstable.” As she spoke, she turned and led the way into the dark cave.
“Most wormholes are,” Fact said. “But we know this one will hold for us, at least, long enough to save the Cottontails.”
Consul Tor had been thinking about that, but she chose not to say, “But will it hold long enough to save ourselves?” Right now, it was more important to preserve the timeline than to worry about what it meant that Fact’s head had been found in a cave in England — clearly, this very cave — worn down and degraded by the tides of time.
If Consul Tor or Galen had been trapped in the cave with Fact, their organic bodies would have left fewer traces after the passage of centuries than zir artificial one.
Pulling out zir uni-meter with zir free hand, Fact adjusted its settings to serve as a flashlight and then handed it to the green otteroid, indicating that she should lead the way. Without further ado, all of them — otteroid, rabbit, and fox dragging a snake — entered the cave.
* * *
As Fact forged into the dark cave, following Consul Tor with the light, zhe was thinking of many things — whether the Xophidians were injuring the Cottontails; how best to fight a snake; what Captain Pierre Jacques had made of the disappearance of two of his officers along with one of his shuttlecrafts; what zir best friend, Lt. LeGuin was up to back on the starship Initiative; which song would make the best soundtrack for this particular moment in zir life; and ranking the collected works of Arthur C. Clarke by which zhe enjoyed most to least. These were just a few of the several hundred thoughts crossing Fact’s mind. However, zhe knew from experience with organic lifeforms that Consul Tor and Galen’s minds were likely not as fully occupied with a wide array of thoughts. In fact, there was a good chance that each of their minds was wholly consumed with a single thought: fear of whether they would survive this fight.
Fact dearly wished zhe knew if this were the case, because the android wanted to say something comforting if it were called for. But if it weren’t called for… If it hadn’t crossed Consul Tor’s and Galen’s minds that they might well be facing either their deaths or possibly living out the rest of their lives in the distant past, trying not to disturb the future they’d already worked so hard to save… Well, then, saying something that was intended to be comforting might have exactly the opposite effect, instead causing the otteroid and rabbit to add to their list of fears.
On the whole, Fact found it better to focus on accomplishing missions and leave the greater complexity of emotional comfort to others. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of others around right now. So, Fact settled on saying the best thing zhe could think of — both vague enough to avoid stirring new fears but positive enough to hopefully have an uplifting effect on zir compatriots: “However this turns out, we have done our best, and that will have to be good enough.”
Consul Tor arrived at the roiling, swirling mouth of the wormhole and whirled around, shining the light from the uni-meter on the cave floor between them. The green otteroid gave Fact a funny look and said, “I wish I could read your emotions right now, because I think you were trying to be comforting.”
“Was I not effective?” Fact queried, disappointed that zir careful thought on the matter hadn’t led to zir desired result.
“Not really,” Consul Tor said.
Galen held her tongue, but the brown rabbit looked like she agreed with the green otter.
Brightly, Fact countered, “Well, the good news, then, is that you clearly don’t need to be able to read my emotions to have accurately predicted my intentions: I was, indeed, trying to be comforting.”
With a bit of a frown, the green otter — who was made for bright, open fields under wide, blue skies and not dark caverns — said, “I think the least comforting part of all is that you felt like you needed to try being comforting. It implies that you think we’re in a great deal of danger.”
Fact opened zir muzzle to argue but caught zirself before wasting all of their energy on a useless defense. “You are correct. I can see how that would be troubling. Let me assure you of this: the story Galen shared with us about the first rabbits having been saved from the underworld means that we should, at least, succeed at restoring our original timeline. I’m sure you’ve both figured out by now that I must be Helios with the golden eyes.”
Galen looked down at the cave floor, as if the brightness of Fact’s golden eyes was suddenly too much — too godly — for her to look upon. Consul Tor, however, continued staring at the white-furred android steadily.
“Anything after that,” Fact said, “we will find a way to handle. The three of us together have a wide array of skills and cleverness to call on. But first…”
“You should save my family?” Galen said, finally speaking up.
“Yes,” Fact agreed with an air of solemnity entirely appropriate to the situation. “I will go through the wormhole first, because we don’t know what we’ll be facing on the other side, and I will be more resilient to any sort of attack. Also, I will have this Xophidian with me as a hostage.”
The snake pinned against Fact’s side hissed in a grumbly kind of way. None of them paid it any heed.
“We’ll follow after you,” Consul Tor offered. “Blazors drawn, ready to provide backup.”
Galen was still holding the blazor she’d borrowed from Fact, and when the green otteroid mentioned the weapons, she raised it, as if preparing to fight.
“That plan is acceptable,” Fact said. “However, if at all possible, hold your fire. We do not want to endanger the Cottontails with friendly fire, nor do want to unnecessarily take the lives of the Xophidians.”
Galen didn’t look entirely sure that she agreed with the second half of Fact’s reasoning, but she wasn’t going to argue with zir. Fact was a trained Tri-Galactic Union officer in both timelines; whereas, even in the original, better, correct timeline, Galen was a civilian bartender and had never properly been trained in combat nor military strategy. Besides, if this plan worked out right, she wouldn’t need to bear a grudge against the Xophidians for much longer. They’d return to being a minor, peaceful race with no particular connection to her own people of uplifted rabbits from Earth.
With the plan in place, Fact wasted no time stepping toward the shimmering wormhole mouth. Zhe didn’t even bother with drawing zir other blazor — the rifle version, still strapped to zir leg — instead betting on the element of surprise and the utility of keeping zir paws free for managing the hostage Xophidian that had started struggling again in zir arms.
The android fox and writhing snake alien emerged in the same cave deep beneath the surface of the Xophidian moon where Fact had first uncovered the wormhole. The cave looked practically identical, untouched by time having rewound hundreds of years. However, Fact supposed that the warren of tunnels above it would be somewhat different, as the mining outpost was likely not built yet. The Cottontail family and their captors, however, were not in sight.
The snake writhing in Fact’s arms let out a piercing, resonant hiss crying for help before the android was able to clamp its mouth shut. Given a choice, Fact did not want to give up the element of surprise, and that meant zhe needed to move fast, tracking down the Xophidian kidnappers before they had a chance to realize someone was following them.
Dashing through the cave in the direction that zhe knew led upward, Fact didn’t stop to worry about zir backup coming through the wormhole behind zir. Zhe figured it couldn’t have taken more than a handful of Xophidians to capture eight uplifted rabbits, six of whom were only children, and zhe was fully capable of taking on a full half dozen Xophidians in a fair fight. And this fight was not fair: Fact knew what zhe was up against; the Xophidians had no idea of what they were about to face.
Fact caught up with a group of hissing snakes and whimpering rabbits only to find, to zir surprise, that only two Xophidians were herding the frightened, bewildered bunnies. To be fair, the Cottontail family did not exactly constitute a formidable foe. The two adults rabbits had their six children huddled close around them, holding their paws, clinging to their legs. All of their long ears hung low, their shoulders slumped, and their whiskers drooped. Completely subjugated.
The Xophidians each wielded a taser-like weapon, held in the curl of their tail — more primitive than the similar weapons the Xophidian overseers had wielded in the future, but clearly more than dangerous enough for the current purposes.
Fact sized up the situation in a fraction of a second and flung the Xophidian held in zir paws out like a whip, maintaining a tight grip on its neck but allowing its tail to slash across the space between zir and the nearest of the other two Xophidians fast enough to knock the other one down, tangling the two of them together.
While all the rabbits and snakes in the cave were still too stunned to move, Fact kept moving, nearly faster than they could see. Zhe rushed the tangle of snakes — the one zhe’d thrown zir captive at had dropped its weapon, and Fact neatly kicked it out of reach. Next, the android drew zir own blazor rifle — a weapon centuries more advanced than any of these Xophidians had ever seen — and fired a warning shot along an empty portion of the cave’s floor. The blazor’s red beam of energy scorched the rock, leaving a black mark like a lightning bolt.
“Drop your weapon,” Fact sneered at the one Xophidian still holding a taser in its curled tail.
The Xophidian uncurled its tail immediately, and the weapon fell to the floor.
“Now back away,” Fact said. “And let the Cottontail family come to me.”
The Xophidian darted a glance at its dazed companions, still trying to untangle themselves from each other on the floor. But then it glanced back at the arctic fox pointing a blazor at it. The mammal was small and food-like in its eyes, but somehow it had managed to restrain one of its compatriots and fling it across the cave. And the blazor rifle was definitely intimidating.
For a moment, the Xophidian looked like it would fight for the rabbits, but then it hissed a forked tongue and said, “Fine, take them. They’re not worth the effort.” It was completely unaware of how much difference these eight rabbits would have made to the future of its people. It was better that way.
The Xophidian slithered farther down the cave, and the rabbits hopped rapidly toward Fact, recognizing a savior when they saw one.
By the time Galen and Consul Tor arrived to provide backup, all three Xophidians had already slunk away, and the Cottontail children were hopping around Fact with delight; their parents profusely thanking zir.
“Who are you?” Sally Cottontail asked looking into the android’s golden eyes.
Fact didn’t want to lie to her. So zhe hesitated. In that moment, Galen stepped forward and said, “This is Helios, the god of the sun. Zhe drives a shining chariot across the sky each day, but today, zhe saw that you were missing and came down to rescue you from Hades who dragged all of us rabbits away to the underworld to keep us in darkness forever.”
It was a simplified, stripped-down version of the story Galen had told in the Constellation Club in the original timeline. Over the coming years, it would gain embellishments as Sally Cottontail retold it over and over again to her six kits who would clamor to hear it every night as their bedtime story, reliving the most frightening, exciting thing that would ever happen to them.
It was remarkable, Fact thought, to be able to see so directly how a few words could ripple through time, growing and changing, affecting the universe.
Galen was overwhelmed by her own personal feelings of discovering that a story she’d listened to all her life… had always been one she’d been the first to tell. The very first. Every rabbit she’d ever known had heard this story, and in all of history, she’d been the first one to voice it.
* * *
Fact, Galen, and Consul Tor shepherded the Cottontail family back through the cave to the wormhole mouth, through the shimmering wormhole that carried them halfway across the galaxy to a nearly identical-looking cave in England, and then up through that cave to the forest where bright afternoon sunlight still played among the rustling leaves of the forest canopy.
The Cottontail children hopped quickly away, excited to tell the other uplifted animal children about their adventure. It would become a favorite game among this first generation of Breanna Schweitzer’s uplifted animals — Helios thwarting Hades, eventually permuted into “Foxes vs. Snakes” and slowly drifting into something unrecognizable. None of the other animals would ever believe it was more than a bedtime story that Sally had made up for her children, and so the timeline would be preserved.
No damage done.
Except, of course, for the android arctic fox, photosynthetic otteroid, and bunny who’d been displaced from time who returned to the depths of the cave, knowing it was where Fact’s head would one day be found.
Fact scanned the flickering wormhole mouth with zir uni-meter. “It won’t last much longer,” zhe said. “If we want to go back through, we should do it now.”
“You couldn’t possibly move it…” Consul Tor asked, “…you know… so that it will take us back to the future?”
“No,” Fact said, emotionlessly. Though, Consul Tor and Galen both heard sadness in the word anyway. “I have neither the tools nor the knowledge necessary to do so.”
“We’re better off here on Earth, if we’re stuck in the past,” Galen said. “Much better off here than on that Xophidian moon.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Consul Tor objected. “You fit in here. You look just like the Cottontails. You could perhaps build a life.”
The cetazoid’s emerald green fur would always give her away if they stayed. Even among uplifted Earth otters, she would stand out. And Fact? There was no one else who looked quite like zir. At best, zhe could pass for an unusually feline dog or maybe a doggish cat. For a while, zhe might be able to claim to be the sole uplifted fox, but that story would wear thin after a generation or two, as zhe continued to stay the same age while all the organic lifeforms around zir grew old and died.
“Yes,” Galen said, “but also, we know more about Earth’s history. We have a better chance of blending in and avoiding changing the future.”
“The best way to avoid further changing the future,” Fact said emphatically, “is for the two of you to return to it as soon as possible.”
“That would be nice,” Consul Tor said with an acerbic edge to her voice. “But how?”
“I’ve been putting a lot of thought into that problem,” Fact said. “And I think I’ve arrived at a conclusion.”
After several frustratingly long moments of silence, Consul Tor couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Which is???”
“The tools I would need to move the other end of the wormhole back to our own time would be available on the starship Initiative,” Fact said, “and the knowledge I need would require — at least — several decades of processing power for me to calculate.”
“Several decades?” Consul Tor asked with exasperation. The wormhole mouth was already flickering in and out of existence, leaving the air thin and empty for longer and longer stretches of time between its reappearances. It would be entirely gone in a matter of minutes. Not decades. “We don’t have that long.”
“You do not have that long,” Fact corrected. “I do.” Then leaning forward to bare zir neck to their compatriots, the android added, “Please, help me remove my head.”
Galen’s eyes widened with surprise, and Consul Tor squeaked, “What?!?”
“Only my head was found in the cave,” Fact said. “So, I will need you to take my body through the wormhole with you. Place my head on the floor of the cave, fire a blazor at the ceiling to seal its entrance, and then go through the wormhole.”
“Why?” Consul Tor asked.
Galen had watched Fact become the imaginary hero from her childhood today — a mythic legend to her people — so she acted without questioning zir. She simply began helping the android to remove zir head. Once the head was in her paws, Fact winked at her and said, “Once I’ve finished calculating the necessary equations for how the Initiative can pull the other end of the wormhole back forward in time, I will enter sleep mode. When my head is found, the information will be ready and waiting for Lt. LeGuin to uncover it.”
Fact knew that zir best friend, the orange tabby engineer, would never give up on reviving zir other head. Zhe had complete faith he would succeed.
“This plan is crazy,” Consul Tor objected.
“Everything about this day has been crazy,” Galen pointed out, placing Fact’s head gently on an outcropping of rocks. “No reason we should change things up now.”
Unable to argue with that, Consul Tor drew her blazor and fired at the ceiling of the cave herself. Once the mouth of the cave was properly sealed, she said to Fact’s head, laying on the cave floor, “Is there anything else we need to do?”
“Now that the plan is made, it’s already in action,” Fact’s head said. “I’ll see you on the other side of history.”
“Sleep well, sweet Helios,” Galen said, “and dream of dancing rabbits.”
The green otter and brown rabbit each took one of Fact’s arms. Even though the android fox was insanely strong for zir size, zhe wasn’t especially heavy, so they had no trouble carrying the beheaded body through the last flicker of the wormhole between them.
* * *
Fact spent years thinking away in the dark of the cave, staring at the blackness and occasionally indulging in hallucinating bunnies dancing there while zhe calculated equations, carefully balancing numbers, and finally after an interminable amount of time arriving at the exact, precise, complicated frequency of energy beam that the Initiative would need to fire at the wormhole to pull it back forward through time.
Having found the answer zhe needed, Fact closed zir eyes and powered down zir processes.
* * *
The next time Fact’s golden eyes opened, zhe was in an engineering laboratory on the starship Initiative and Lt. LeGuin’s stripey orange cat face was staring directly at zir. And to Fact’s immense relief, Lt. LeGuin was wearing a proper Tri-Galactic Union uniform — one from the original timeline.
“Fact!” the orange tabby exclaimed joyfully. “I knew I could get you working again!”
Before the cat could say anything more, Fact announced, “I need you to hook my brain up to the Initiative’s computer.”
“I need to tell the captain!” LeGuin countered. “And Cmdr. Wilker… They’ve both been beside themselves ever since you, Consul Tor, and Galen vanished right in front of us in the Constellation Club. But then, you probably don’t know about any of that.”
“Actually,” Fact said, “I believe I do. And if you will hook me up to the Initiative’s computer, I can help you retrieve Consul Tor, Galen, and my body from a cave on a small moon near Xophidia.”
* * *
When Consul Tor, Galen, and Fact’s body arrived at the other side of the wormhole, the Initiative was already waiting for them, ready to teleport them out of their nightmare adventure and back to home.
The captain — who wasn’t nearly as gruff when he hadn’t spent his life fighting a war against aggressive, conquering Xophidians — gave them all ample time off to recover from their experiences, and so a few days later, Fact found zirself again in the Constellation Club, talking to the exact same group as before about zir own mortality.
“You mean that you chose to have your head stuck in that cave for hundreds of years?” Cmdr. Wilker barked disbelievingly.
The arctic fox had already assured the collie commander several times that this was the case. “It was the only way out of our conundrum,” Fact said with the same infinite patience that had seen zir through the years of disembodied darkness. “Believe me, though, it is a relief to be back here–” Zhe patted zir delicate paws against zir chest. “–with a body and among friends.”
“What I don’t understand,” the sphynx cat captain meowed, “is how that entire alternate timeline seemed to spring up out of nowhere. One moment, we were all here–” He gestured with a pink-skinned paw to the group sitting around the table beside the wide window looking out at the stars. “–and the next, the three of you had simply vanished.”
“I believe,” Fact said, “that the alternate timeline as you call it was perhaps more of a bubble-universe.”
The captain shook his feline head. “I don’t get it.”
“Think of it like a slipknot,” Fact said. “It was as if time got tangled in itself, creating a loop that could only be untied by pulling on it. The only way out of the bubble-universe was through the bubble-universe.” Even with lifetimes worth of time to think about it, Fact had been unable to come up with a metaphor that would make the situation any clearer. Zhe was less afraid of zir own potential immortality now, having faced a taste of it. However, zhe was dearly glad to have looped back through to a time in zir life filled with noise and the familiarity of friendship.
The captain laughed. “I’m not sure that makes any more sense to me, but–” The cat stood up and patted Fact on zir shoulder. Fact was glad to have a shoulder again. “–I’m just relieved we have you back. All three of you.”
After the collie dog and sphynx cat went back to their duties, the three time travelers continued to sit together beside the stars until Galen said, “Why do we remember the other timeline, and no one else does? Why did we remember this timeline while we were in the other one?”
“Because we passed through the wormhole,” Fact said simply. “It affected us. Changed us.”
“That’s true,” Galen agreed softly. She still had trouble meeting Fact’s golden eyes now. She would overcome that with time, but for the moment, it was still too overwhelming to look Helios directly in zir sun-golden eyes.
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