Lore:Assumption
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Assumption is a Lore book introduced in Monument of Triumph. Entries are unlocked by collecting case files, which are only available in any destination with an active Distortion event. The entries serves as a biography of Lodi's life prior to his current service as the Emissary of the Nine.
Lodi, Wisconsin, 1929
I'm four or five years old. Faces, moments, feelings. I'm meeting the world for the first time.
Uncle Tomás says, just wait until you see Jenny.
I think that's a pretty name because it rhymes with Penny, which is my favorite coin because it's the name of my teacher, who is pretty.
The sound of her rumbles in my chest, like big cicadas. I'm sitting on my dad's shoulders and the summer sun, the band playing loud, hot and itchy sweat down the back of my neck, and then I saw it.
That biplane is the prettiest thing in the whole world. It sounds like thunder when it flies overhead! A great big bird made out of wood, wire, steel, and canvas. Pop again tells me they named it Jenny. I ask who and he says everyone. I think that means they all can see how pretty she looks, up there, between the clouds, where only birds and angels go.
I say I'd like to be there one day.
Me too, says Ben. He's right next to me.
Uncle Tomás says, sure, kid! It's grand up there. He has a thin mustache and keeps his cap at an angle and wears a silk scarf. They all do that. They all look like they should do that.
Uncle Tomás kneels and puts an arm over Ben's shoulder and points at Jenny in the sky. Anytime you want, I'll take you and Louis up there, Ben. You think it looks grand now, but you can't imagine.
Really?
You go higher than the angels, my uncle says, and you can see what God sees.
What's that, then? My pop asks. Uncle Tomás takes his arm off Ben's shoulder and smiles and says, you know the sound the wind makes, when it's so loud you can't hear anything at all?
I know that sound, my pop says. But hearing ain't seeing.
That a fact, Benito?
It's Ben.
Pop hates being called Benito. He hates it so much he named himself Ben, and my brother Junior, he named Ben too.
Jenny roars overhead again. We all look up.
I like all their names. They stick. Like they're never going to go anywhere. Not without me.
Assumption, Illinois, 1938
I'm 13 years old. I stole my pop's old truck, and now I'm driving to see Uncle Tomás. I didn't plan for Ben to come along. And I didn't plan to run out of gas.
"'Why don't you put some lead in your foot?'" Ben says, his voice high and mocking. He walks behind me, hands shoved in his pockets. "'We're not gonna get there until the '40s, how slow you're driving.'"
"Can it," I snap. "And my voice is deeper than that."
"A big ant is still a little bug," Ben says. He kicks a rock off the highway.
We are somewhere far south of home on Route 51. I lug a gas can. It's my turn since Ben carried it the last mile.
"Think there's a gas station up there?" I ask. Ben doesn't respond. I stop trudging. I look up from the ground, squint against the bright light, look at him, then look at what transfixed him.
"Assumption," Ben says. "Like at mass."
"Weird name for a town," I reply. The town sign is blurry, but I can still read it, for the most part. It's bright.
"Who's that?" Ben says. He points just beyond the sign.
A silhouette wavers, like heat low over the road, only it isn't hot enough for that. The figure swaggers toward us, limping, then not. Dread nausea swirls like sick in the back of my throat.
"Get behind me, Lou," Ben says. He shoves his hand into his pocket and draws his pocketknife. The blade catches the sun and flashes, and then he stops moving.
Cold air, like what I imagine the sky to taste like. Acrid coal. I feel a buzzing thing shoot through me—a sunburn from the inside out.
my name is garden and cradle and the mass by which all other bodies are measured and i am your mother
do not be afraid ask me a question before death hastens me from this moment
screaming is not a question dear one
ben will be fine you will not cause him insurmountable pain
one more question
no dear one i cannot blindless is your fate though you will see into the great beyond
"LOU OH GOD WAKE UP HOLY MOTHER WAKE UP." Ben slaps me, and I wake up screaming.
Ben pulls me into an embrace. I can feel his heart beating against mine. He clutches his pocketknife in a trembling fist, blade stabbing toward Assumption. One day, I'll understand that his fear was not of the thing we saw, but of what it could have done to me.
"Was that the Devil?" Ben whispers.
"It's all right, Ben," I say. "I don't think it was the Devil." We part. I don't think it was something holy either.
I think it was a third thing.
Holland, Occupied Netherlands, 1944
I'm 20 years old, and I've just been shot down.
I can't really move. My webbing is tangled, hooked on every possible surface inside the cockpit. My left arm is pinned, but my right is free, and I can turn my head. I'm listing to the right and a little down, on account of how my Lightning came to rest.
Low roar. Waves in the distance. Wet, dark sand. I'm on a beach in Holland, or maybe somewhere further north, but certainly on a beach in the Netherlands.
I've been shot down. I can't help but laugh, then gasp. I definitely have some broken ribs. I check myself with my free hand. I have a pistol, a tin of syrettes, four tins of canned rations, a roll of guilders, a signaling mirror, and a pocket phrasebook.
Spanish won't help me, especially when it's in Pop's Jalisco accent. Ben said I should learn Dutch, but I told him that all the Dutch girls I wanted to meet spoke French, and anyways, I didn't plan on getting shot down. But here I am. He's yucking it up in Hawaii, and I'm busted up on the beach with no Dutch. If we see each other alive again, he won't let me live this down.
My knee hurts. I'll stick with French and English if I see anyone. German—I don't know. I know Wisconsin German; I'd sound like a time traveler.
Someone's got to come running soon. I flew over a few towns on the way here. Yeah. Sure. Someone's going to come soon—
I wake up. It's nighttime. I'm nauseous. Water runs up and into the cockpit. The tide is coming in. The waves aren't here, but their bitter fingers patter the side of my crashed bird and dribble into my boots.
Hell. I gotta get out. My left arm is cramping, spent too long wrenched in that awkward position. I don't want to drown inside my plane.
"Help," I shout. "Help! Aide-moi, aide-moi!"
I can hear someone coming. Footsteps, familiar footsteps, sloshing through the surf. I thrash in the cockpit, trying to free my arm, trying to draw my gun. An acrid stink—is that my plane on fire? No, it's coal—
I wake up to hands on me. Knives flashing in the pale morning light, sawing through my restraints. I stammer something in French about being American, and I'm quickly hushed.
"You're safe," the men say. "We are friends. You're safe, you're safe."
Peenemünde, German Democratic Republic, 1954
I'm 29 years old, and I'm freezing cold, mucking up from the surf off a rain-swept beach into the woods near Peenemünde, an old V-2 launch site.
It's nighttime. The Company likes to send me out at night. The boys call me Orlok; the sunlight hurts my eyes. I hate the night shift. It's like I'm walking through a nightmare. But it's my job. It's how we win.
A cluster of concrete buildings damp and dribbling. An airstrip. Old blast pits where V-2s once launched to buzz over the North Sea into England. South, the horizon glows. A city.
A truck trundles into the base. It stops. Idles. A person gets out, lights a cigarette, and limps into the only standing building. He leaves the door open.
"What the hell?" I mutter. I draw my pistol.
Inside, the rain hammers on the rusted roof. I can hear water churning; whole sections of the building are flooded. This place has been dead for years. Something gravitational draws me deeper in.
"Amerikanisch, Britisch, oder Deutsch?" A voice echoes through the building. Gently accented German.
"Amerikanisch," I answer. I don't holster my gun.
"English fine?"
"If that works for you."
"English is good. I am practicing."
I follow the voice to the center of the structure. A factory floor, or large warehouse of some kind. Dark but for a single lantern on a solitary table. The man sits in the pool of light, smoking a cigarette. Rain falls through the perforated roof, dribbling on rusted machinery. An empty chair sits opposite him.
"Not much of a space program," I say.
"No," he says. "Sit, please." He gestures at the table, an unlit cigarette pinched between his fingers. "You smoke?"
I remain standing.
"Are you going to kill me?" I ask him.
"You're the one with the gun, amigo. Are you going to kill me?"
"No," I say. "Where is Dr. Heuer?"
"Dead."
"What?"
The dark-eyed man mutters a soft, frustrated curse in Russian. "Gone," he says, slowly. "We killed him. Вы понимаете?"
"Не совсем. Я учусь," I say. "Why?"
"He was a fascist," the Soviet says. "What would we need him for after we captured his rockets? He's been dead since '45."
I sag down into the chair.
"Sorry to bend your paperclip." He grins. "How is my English, by the way?"
"It's good," I assure him. "How's my Russian?"
"Your pronunciation is fine."
"Thank my brother," I say.
"You could continue practicing with me."
The immensity of the offer stuns me. I see a different life, one lonely but wild, in a red world far more ancient than my own. A different tongue, a different set of stars. I am alone, but special.
"I can't do that," I lie.
"Как жаль," he sighs. "OK. Go now."
"Why?"
Distant, mingled with the driving rain: the thud of approaching helicopters.
The Soviet stands, leaving the unlit cigarette on the table.
I run.
Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, 1960
I'm 35 years old and sweltering. It's summer in South Dakota. The sun hangs in the sky like a man in the gallows. I stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier that has manifested in a lonely ravine.
A major greets me.
"Director Moffat sent you?" she asks.
"Yes." I offer my hand. "Linguistics and Deniable Comms."
"DC? Desks don't usually come out on field trips."
"It's not my first rodeo, Major," I say. "Lead on."
We walk across the deck to a lift, where the corpse of a Hellcat rots. She punches the down button on the lift. I take my glasses off and pull on my respirator.
I follow her deep into the carrier. I can hear muttering from somewhere ahead. Someone moans in the darkness. The major clicks on a flashlight and illuminates the corridor, revealing the air to be thick with particulates.
We follow the voices. I hear two or three speakers. One sounds familiar. I don't wait. I run to the sound of my brother's voice.
Ben is fused to the wall. A saline drip runs into his free arm. His left is lost inside the metal bulkhead with the lower half of his body. A pair of medics attend him. This can't be my brother. Ben is probably having a beer in his barn as he brushes his horses. I take a moment. Compose myself.
"I'm Agent Yero," I say. My mouth is so dry that I cough. I've got to keep distance. This isn't him. "What's your name, Lieutenant?"
"Small world," Ben says. "We got the same last name." He doesn't recognize me with my respirator on. He looks around the hallway, his eyes glazed and wandering. "Really small world. Where am I?"
"South Dakota."
"Pretty far from the Pacific."
"That's where you were?"
"Yeah, three days out from Formosa. Going to wallop Mao's boys."
"How did you get here?"
"One step at a time," Ben jokes.
"What ship is this?"
"The 'Hornet.' CV-8. Mighty old gal." His gaze wanders over the scene. "You military? That suit looks out of place."
"Army Air Corps. B-17s, then an F-5 during Market Garden."
"My brother died on a B-17," Junior says.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Lieutenant." I make a note that in his world, I am dead. "Does 'Assumption' mean anything to you?" Ben's idle, pain-killed smile vanishes.
"Who are you?"
"Please, Lieutenant, we don't have much time."
"I saw the Devil there," Ben says. "She walked up and gave me a kiss. Told me I would live for 80 years. I won't die here. The Devil told me so."
I can smell the coal. My Ben may have seen it first, but it chose me.
He only saw the sunrise. I saw the sun.
"Gimme more," Ben groans.
The medics look to the major, who looks to me. I nod: I'm finished.
The major finds me back at camp. My head is swimming.
"He's dead," the major says. "Ten minutes after you left." She tosses a file on my fold-out desk. "You handled that well. Family manifestations are tough."
"That wasn't my brother," I say.
"A doppelganger, like the outbreak in '59."
"No," I reply. "The CV-8 sank in '43, and Ben was never at Formosa." I massage the back of my neck. My head is pounding. Vacuum tube static spreads inkblots across my vision, starting from the left. "This is something else. A, uh, tulpa, maybe."
"But it knew what you were asking it about? 'Assumption'?"
A wave of nausea. "It's a town. Ben and I saw something there as kids. It's a focal moment. Fixed time. Matter is constant—it repeats, and time happens in parallel. Deniable Comms investigates the meaning of those fixed points. We think they have, uh, external meaning."
"Aliens?"
"Could be. Or ghosts. Other times. Other realities." I lean forward on the desk and close my eyes. "I need a constant to help navigate phenomena. Ben is my constant. I know him. That wasn't Ben." He's still out there.
"So, what was that?"
"Chirality. Variegation. Not sure: It depends on where I am observing this from," I say, and for a moment, I am trillions of years old. Understanding backfills, then purges. I forget nearly all of it. I see what happens next.
"Major," I say, "the trash can, please. I think I'm going to be sick."
Lodi, Wisconsin, 1962
I'm 37 years old, and my hands are cold. I'm beginning to know what to expect.
Pop's dead and we've got to settle accounts. I've got to let my brother Ben know about everything. All of it. See if that doesn't make an anchor we can both hang on to.
I loiter on the corner of South Main out in front of the bank. I check my watch. Ben's late. Sunset is a rotten orange. Wildfires in Canada, the news said.
Lodi is quiet. It's been about five years since I've been to the farm. Takes work to make it out there. Logistics of the heart.
Pop's ancient truck comes rumbling around the corner of Portage Street, and for a sharp moment, I think he's driving it, but that moment passes in a flash of sunset across the windshield. Ben really does look like him now. He pulls the truck to a stop behind my car and greets me with a warm, sad smile.
"Hey, Lou," he says, stepping out of the truck. He pulls me into a hug.
I straighten out my suit after we part. "I can't believe that old thing still runs."
The truck is clean, painted a cheery mint green. I stay quiet too long. Ben is a doctor. Good bedside manners. He can read a patient.
"You OK, Lou?"
I lean back against my car and massage the bridge of my nose. I'm 37 years old. Lodi, Wisconsin. Here's where I've got to tell him everything. Ocean between us.
"I don't know how to keep things straight," I say. "How to talk about it."
"Well, we're talking right now," Ben says. He leans on my car next to me. "I'm your older brother. I'm also a damn good doctor with a valid script pad. What's ailing you?"
War. Total war. We split the atom and put our world on a map. Now all the beasts of the dark forest know. They know about me and you.
"I feel like some mean bastard up there is hammering a wedge between us," I say. "And a different bruiser is whacking that wedge the other way." I shake my head. "I'm sorry. I'm all mixed up."
"I know," Ben says. There's something knowing in his eyes, and I realize part of him has always known about me. The fatigue he carries is the same as the nameless weight I cannot find words for. Maybe in a different language.
"You remember when we stole that?" I ask, pointing to the truck.
"We ran outta gas," Ben says. "Near some small town."
"Assumption."
"Did we ever actually make it to Uncle Tomás? I can't recall."
"Not yet."
Ben's back there again. Time to jump in.
"You remember what found us? That third thing."
An epiphany. Ben understands: We are each other's witness. Each other's constant, minted that day on the road to Assumption. He's right here next to me, finally.
"What did it say to you?"
"That everything is gonna be OK."
The bank door swings open, and a young woman steps out. The manager's secretary. She waves us over.
"If you can believe that."
Ben nods. He wipes a tear from his eye. He stands from the car, stuffs his hands in the pockets of his chore coat, and takes a few steps toward the bank. He stops. Turns back.
"Come to dinner tonight."
"Already there," I say.
LOCATION UNKNOWN, UNIVERSE UNKNOWN, DATE UNKNOWN
I'm back. I know when this is: I'm thirty trillion years old.
Hey, Ben. Welcome back. I missed you too.
I found you. I'm sorry it took so long. I lost myself there for a bit, but I felt you out here. I'm stretched between epiphany and confusion, but at this moment, you're meeting me when I know how to introduce myself again: Call me Lodi. It's an old "nom de guerre." Yes, I know it's the name of the town we grew up in. I was on the spot when they asked me, all right?
Listen: All matter that is going to exist, exists. None of it can be destroyed, but it does change. Time dilates matter out beyond meaning, but it's not meaningless. It can all come back, in time.
I've been a constellation 3 degrees off the horizon. I'm the tail of a comet. I'm a coin tossed into the night. I'm the god who is your younger brother, and there's something we need to do: Help me find the rest of them. Betty, Philip, Benito, Fernanda, Mom, Pop, Uncle Tomás—all of them, like I found you. God, Ben, I missed you too.
Why now?
Because now another star has kissed ours. Our solar system is going to die. It'll only take centuries, but our nine worlds are going to be flung out into interstellar space. Whatever we are won't be able to stick around, so we gotta work fast; if we don't, our window closes.
Our family is still out there. I felt you out there and spent trillions of years putting you back together, building a monument of proof that it can be done. I've spent trillions of years leaning on you to carry me through this darkness. I've spent that same amount of time alone, drowning in an ocean of time. But I learned something: An ocean is a single body. Everything in it is connected, even if it's far apart. And at last, here you are. You're right next to me.
C'mon, quit crying. Now you've got me crying too—
Thanks for being my constant, Ben. Now it's time for me to make it up to you. Clock's ticking: If we want to find everyone, we should get going.
Everything is gonna be OK.
