Patton retold the part about our interlude on the Timelance with a level of editorial distance that wasn’t present for the rest of the story. He plainly reported what had happened to me with the nectar addiction and the daily dredgings, while saying little about himself. Curious, I pressed him. He couched it in as favorable terms for me as he could, but it was impossible not to see the truth. Engulfed by my addiction and obsessed with my search for the Chime, I’d left him to languish, even to die if it came to that. He blamed the nectar, but there was a note of hurt in his voice that made me think I’d more willingly surrendered to it than fought it and lost.

After everything, there had been more than enough guush – that’s what they call money here – from the first investors for Naecia to purchase a ‘galax cruiser’ called the Stellarcade. She renamed it the Electra, after the aircraft flown by her third prior, some famous Earth pilot named Amelia Earhart. It was currently the only ship in the universe with a Switch Drive. And while the drive was a revolutionary technology, it was also a potentially cataclysmic one. For one, it rendered borders meaningless, which was problematic for a whole host of reasons, or as Patton explained it, ‘the machine could be used to put everyone up everyone else’s asses’. So, as of right now, Naecia wasn’t selling. Just offering services as an instantaneous transporter/courier and occasional do-gooder. Anywhere in the universe in no time. The slogan was a work in progress.

Something nagged at me. “What’d you do with the Chime?” I asked.

“Well, we tried your plan first,” he said, taking a sip of a thick, grey drink. I couldn’t help but grimace as he gulped at it. “Farglack scrote milk, dude. Don’t knock it.”

“My plan?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. It sounded pretty good, too. So, I left Naysh and Izairis here, took the ship out to a black hole of my choosing, and droned it in.”

“And?”

“Well, see, it ate it.”

“That’s good, right?”

“No, no, Ben: The Chime ate the black hole.”

“Holy shit.”

“That’s what I said.”

“How did you destroy it?”

Patton glanced around the room like he hadn’t heard me.

“You didn’t, did you?”

He leaned over and lowered his voice. “Before I tried to chuck it, we did some analysis on it.”

“What kind of analysis?”

“Scientific analysis,” he said. “It’s over sixteen billion years old.”

“So, it’s old, who cares?”

“Our Universe is only fourteen billion years old, Ben. It didn’t come from this dimension. And it doesn’t seem like anything in this dimension can kill it.”

“What did you do?”

“Well–”

“You hid it somewhere, didn’t you?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Where’d you hide it?”