Her enemies (“the cortical democracies”) believed any attempt to attract the attention of the Hypotheticals was not only doomed but suicidally dangerous, and not just for Vox itself. The disagreement had occasionally escalated to the point of open warfare, and twice in the last five hundred years Vox had nearly been destroyed. But her population had proven to be more disciplined and clever than her enemies. Or so Treya declared.

When Treya’s slightly breathless narrative began to slow down I said, “How did you come to pluck me out of the desert?”

“That was planned from the beginning, long before I was born.”

“You expected to find me there?”

“We know from experience and observation how the body of the Hypotheticals repairs and restores itself. We know from geological evidence that the cycle repeats every nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-five years. And we knew from historical records that certain people had been taken up into the renewal cycle in the Equatorian desert—including you. What goes in comes out. It was predicted almost to the hour.” Her voice became reverent. “You’ve been in the presence of the Hypotheticals. That makes you special. That’s why we need you.”

“Need me for what?”

“The Arch that joins Equatoria to Earth stopped functioning centuries ago. No one has been to Earth in all that time. But we believe we can make the transit, as long as you and the others are with us. Do you understand?”

No—but I let it pass. “You said ‘the others’—what others?”

“The others who were taken up into the Hypothetical renewal cycle. You were there, Turk Findley. You must have seen it, even if you don’t remember it. An Arch, smaller than the ones that connect the worlds but still very large, rising out of the desert.”

I remembered it the way you might remember a nightmare by the light of morning. The earthquakes it caused had been deadly. Hypothetical machines had been drawn to it from across the solar system, falling from the sky like toxic ash. It had killed friends of mine. Treya called it “a temporal Arch” and implied that it was part of some cycle in the life of the Hypotheticals. But we hadn’t known that at the time.

I shivered, despite the warm air and the comforting pharmaceuticals coursing through my bloodstream.

“It took you up,” she said, “and held you in stasis for almost ten thousand years. It marked you, Turk Findley. The Hypotheticals know you. That’s why you’re important. You and the others.”

“Tell me their names.”