“If no one kills me first, yes. Of course, how does one prove immortality? Forever has no endpoint. So, I suppose I’m immortal in the sense that I will live until I die.”

Naecia donned the reconfigured axon diadem and established a link to the machine. Aptat seemed to start, causing Naecia to look up, but the stringhunter quickly regained their usual buoyant affect. “Are we leaving forthwith?”

Naecia surprised herself with the answer. The Switch Drive was ready. There was nothing to further tweak or refine. It was go or not go. “We are.”

“Now?” asked Oush.

Naecia mumbled in the affirmative, then, “Which direction did the Earth man’s voidscull container go?”

Aptat brought up a map showing the voidscull’s trajectory before it entered bulkspace, a simple straight line headed out from the Silent Child. “It was aimed here,” said Aptat, circling what seemed like a random spot of black. “This is where the Scythin broadcasts originated from. I don’t think they’re moving around. They’re waiting.”

Naecia’s eyes flicked to the scale on the map. “So that’s where we’ll go,” she said. “Also...”

Aptat looked up from the nav where a macro display of the galaxy’s Dasma Arm appeared. “Also what?”

“Also,” said Naecia, rocking her head side to side, “I think we have to do it twice.”

“Twice?” asked Oush. “I’m starting not to love this.”

“Same,” echoed Izairis.

“According to the Earth scholar Payne-Gaposchkin, the protoparticles that make up thought mass are chiral – the literal reverse of each other. Unsuperimposable...” She glanced around at their blank faces. “Point being, the drive is going to bind us to these Fray particles at a distance. If we use the drive once, then the resulting “us” will be the polar opposite of what we started out as. It’s probably best to limit our time in that state. This is why we have to unmirror–”

“What does that even mean?” asked Oush. “How will we manifest when we get to the endpoint? Will we turn inside out?”

“Another great question, Oush,” added Aptat. “Will I regain ownership of the Silent Child? Will the rest of you go back to being merchandise?”

“What if we all become the opposite of who we are now?” asked Izairis. “Aptat becomes a good person and we become evil? Oush shrinks to the size of a boblet.”

Naecia filled her cheeks. Any of them could be right. But it was wrong to assume that chirality would manifest in any one way. It didn’t automatically mean behaving in the opposite. It could simply mean being in a state of chirality while behaving in the exact same way. “I think we just have to do it and find out. We’ll execute the Switch twice.”

Naecia checked the particle catalogue, adjusted the axon diadem, and glanced to the map showing their best guess as approximate location of the Timelance, plus or minus ten million mylics.