Searg the Akashic records for more ammradie had nded, suddenly, on his feet. Soft light poured through a wide viewport into the strange room, halfway between a sci-fi ship ded an early 00’s home theater on a rap stars budget. It took him a moment the source of light as something familiar.

  “Is that earth?” A blue and white hemisphere floated iarless bck outside.

  “You don’t reize it?” said Philip. “School nowadays as bad as they say?”

  “I thought the Allworld was this world's version of earth?”

  “Yeah, kinda,” said Nova. “But this is something else. Our owion.”

  “How?” Gradie asked. Nova seemed to misuand his question.

  “If your i is specifiough, the Other will create whatever you want, not just cram you in the Allworld with all the archetypes.”

  Gradie remembered how hard it had been just to make his mask. The thought of these two twenty-year-olds crafting a duplicate earth made him feel just as insignifit as he had that first day with Michael, watg crafts move into the Allworld from distant unknown pces. Despite his days flying around the ball, he knew he had only grazed the surface of this new world, and the true depth of it all still evaded him, like the dim lights out in the bck.

  “Think of it like a 3d map,” said Angel. “It’s a responsive fragment, crafted pletely from memories. Really, it’s an illusion. Just a ve way for us tanize memories from the Real and the Hardworlds.”

  “God damn. I thought Michael was exaggerating,” Lindsey said, in awe.

  “Thought you makers were supposed to be all about expanding the boundaries of hyperreality and all that shit,” Philip said. “Would think w with some Hardworlder’s memories of waiting in a parking lot for an afternoon would put you to sleep.”

  “Hell no, I love w with the Hardworlds,” said Nova, his eyes lit up by some kind of monitor invisible to Gradie. “Keeps you grouhe goals are more crete. ‘I need a gun’. ‘Make me a bomb that does this’. ‘Prime a self that did this here’. None of that ‘build me a space that ehe Spirit to refle its childhood’ bullshit. Or ‘I his craft to have a presenmense age.’” Nova had put on a voice, an imitation of some former t, that sent Angel into a fit of ughter.

  “Yeah, man. Not to mention how fug batshit crazy makers get when they only work with the Other. Spend every day rew memories ten times removed from ay, and it's like your mind expands so much you're just a vapor in the void.”

  “Sounds fun,” said Philip.

  “hilip? You hate all that shit!” Nova ughed.

  “If I was not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

  “What?”

  “Ignore him,” Lindsey said. “He wants you to ask about it. Are you going tradie into this?” she waved at the h, still gawking at it like it was singing to her.

  “Yeah, but we gotta ease him into it. Get a lo how his Spirit eats. I’m bringing up his rht now.” Nova‘s eyes fluttered and his fingers moved subtly in front of his chest.

  “So, Philip says you’re pretty new,” Angel said. “How much do you know about the Otherworld?” He flicked his hand across his fad the earth outside rotated. Lindsey swore.

  “Just what Michael told me,” said Gradie. “I’ve mainly just been flying—”

  “Oh yeah? Did he show you that little movie?” Nova yelled from his seat.

  “Yeah. Why? Is it bullshit?” Gradie remembered how emotional and inspired the story of underdog dimensional travelers versus astral demons had made him, a a wave of embarrassment.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Angel said. “But there is a lot more to it than just what it shows. I think one of his old friends made it ba the day.”

  “Let me guess,” Philip asked, smirking. “Did it have an overwhelming stench of new-age bullshit g with a hardcore Christiaainty?”

  “Uh,” Gradie tried to put the feeling of the ‘video’ into words, but the only ohat came to mind were ‘hopeful longing’.

  “You knew Michael ba the day?” Angel asked, sounding suddenly animated.

  “We were acquainted.”

  “How long was he operating? We looked through all the mem he gave us and I couldn’t figure out—"

  “Room’s ready,” Nova said.

  A door lit up in the wall with a sound like deep-set locks opening in a bank vault. It in door, plucked out of any office building Gradie had ever been in, and he wondered if even now the twins were drawing on his memory to create it.

  “All right bro,” said Nova. “We o get a lo you, so get a clear image of what the room oher side is like, something simple, but make sure it has shelves or something so I load the structs into it.”

  “What?”

  “Just imagine a room and open the door,” Angel said, shaking his head.

  Gradie looked at the door and tried to imagine a room. The first thing that came to mind was his bedroom in the Real, but he tore his mind away from that in a hurry. It was harder to do than it should have bee the feeling everyone was watg. It got worse.

  “Are we just going to be standing here watg you two wave your hands around,” Lindsey said.

  “Nah. Once I get a lo him I’ll pull his feed up,” Nova said.

  “Meaning,”

  The light in the room ged and Gradie turned around. The earth and space had disappeared from the viewport, and it was now a massive s of TV static, with a neon green CH 03 in the er.

  “Once he goes in, this will show what he sees. First-person style,” Nova said proudly. Gradie felt whatever was standing in for his heart in a world of thought shake in his chest.

  “Which hopefully will be this year,” Philip said, gring at him.

  “All right.” Gradie turned back around and faced the door.

  A room. Ok. A room to help me go into the Hardworlds.

  Guns. A gunroom.

  It fshed in his mind and he held the image. A carpeted room lined with gss-covered shelves, filled with guns, and a rge work table in the ter.

  Annnnnggggg

  It sounded like he was being buzzed into a gated do and a light over the door went green.

  “Got him,” said Angel.

  “All right bro. Go on in,” said Nova. He sounded excited, and Gradie tried to feel some of his positivity, but the memory of neon blue eyes burning through his past weighed him down. He nodded like a doomed man and grabbed the handle.

  “Gradie,” Angel called. Gradie turned around.

  “We’re not gonna be digging into you like Lucy did. This is gonna be fun, alright?”

  “Yeah, bro. Get excited! You’re about to do some interdimensional assassin shit!” Nova made a fist and Angel shook his head with a weary smile.

  Gradie nodded and turned back to the door, and took a breath. His own voice boiled up from the rolling boil of his fears.

  Whatever it takes, you’ll do it. Whatever es, you’ll be ready, Hardworlder.

  He opehe door and stepped into the gunroom.

  It was almost exactly as he had pictured it, but infinitely more tangible. The experience of having something imagined just moments before burst into life as a plete reality was overwhelming. He ughed and fought back tears. His mind danced like a lottery winner and he felt an intoxig sense of power.

  “Holy fuck!”

  “I told you it would be fun,” said Angel, his voiing in through a loudspeaker in the ceiling.

  “Step over to the table. There’s something for you.”

  While the Vault trol room and the beach before it had only highly suggested walking, the gravity of the gunroom dema. Gradie approached the table, and noticed that not everything here was as he expected.

  There was a single pistol oable. An old friend.

  “Is that—”

  “Your Five seven from the st job,” Angel said. “This is your record room. It will hold all the mem from the selves you drop into, after Lucy processes them.”

  Gradie remembered Michael taking him to Lucy’s floating pace immediately after he had made it back from the Office Job. She had told him to remember everything, and the first thing that had floated out at him was the gun firing in his hand. The rest of that other him had poured out backwards from that moment, flowing into the dark sky above him. A siar had bloomed in the dark, then the sky had rotated and he lost it forever. All in all, it had been a far more pleasant experiehan their first meeting.

  “Oh yeah, speaking of Lucy,” said Nova. “She gave us your readout, and I gotta say, I like the way your mind arranges memory. Very tactile. And time has a spatial poo it. Almost syhesia-like. Really strong creative visualization too. Could be a damn good maker if you put the work in.” He spoke more to himself than to Gradie at the end.

  “Based on her analysis, object-bound memories in a cssic mem pace structure work best for you,” said Angel. “But if that’s not the case we always try something else. Every Hardworlder stores their mem differently. I’ve seen rooms, sounds, fvors, outfits, videos, even Poroids.”

  “Why ’t I just remember them normally? Like keep them in my head?” Gradie felt the question was so obvious he almost hadn’t asked it.

  t yourself lucky, kid,” Philip said. “Most s cut their Hardworlders off from the mem pletely.”

  “What? Like erase my memories? How?”

  “Memory from Hardworlds isn’t static,” said Angel. “If you pull it a into it, you ge it. That’s kind of the trade-off. Memory from the Real is more b, but it’s also more crete and immovable.”

  “But why erase them? Isn’t the point of this that I need—”

  “Most teams do it as a precaution,” Angel tinued. “So their agents don’t go spilling memories of their jobs all over the Other. But we don’t really have that issue. Bes of a smaller more dedicated team. You got lucky, man. Your teammates are here food. If you could talk to other Hardworlders, you’d hear some horror stories.”

  “No shit,” said Philip.

  “But you still lock them in this Vault. Isn’t that kind of like keeping them from me?”

  “No, cause we’re not keeping shit from you,” Nova snapped. “The Spirit doesn’t mesh well with memories from the Hardworlds. They dissolve and decay almost immediately. Which is why you have to go to Lucy right after you drop out, when they’re fresh.”

  “But Philip keeps his in his head, right?”

  “My methods are beyond your uanding and far beyond your ability.”

  “If you want to hoard your job records in your head,” said Lindsey. “Where Lud the twins ’t use them or help you analyze them, then go ahead and try. But keep in mind that Philip is Philip, and I’d prefer not to have another one oeam.”

  “One of a kind.” Philip had ughter in his voice.

  “You use the Vault too?” Gradie asked Lindsey, looking up uselessly at the speaker.

  “Not like this. The twins secure my mem, but I have a hardlio it from my realm. I prefer to drop in without ag.”

  “Alright bro, enough theory,” said Nova. “Pick up that pistol.”

  I've heard each mind tains a universe. So how big would that make the Otherworld? ime, Gradie gets a run down oools of the trade, and learns how to learn in a world where memory be mainlined. episode: Memory aamorphosis