Episode 6.b

>The Hill Above Rome / The Briefing Space, transition out<

Quintus listens to everything you say. He nods, sometimes. He smiles once, at something one of you gets exactly right. When you are finished he stands quietly for a moment, looking out over Rome with you.

"That was well spoken," he says. "All of it. I want you to remember this place. Remember what it looks like from up here."

He pauses. Something has changed. The light on the city below has gone strange, too bright at the edges, and the hill beneath your feet feels thinner than it should. Quintus notices it before you do.

"Ah," he says. "That's the machine. It's winding down." He does not sound alarmed. He sounds like someone who has seen this before. "The simulation has what it needs. The falx is back in its place, the timeline is whole, and the TSTT is closing this instance down. We don't have long."

The city below begins to simplify. The rooftops lose their texture. The roads fade at their far edges. The gardens flatten into blocks of color and then into nothing. The temple of Vesta holds longest, the fire inside it burning clear and sharp while everything around it dissolves, and then it too is gone.

The hill is gone. The warm air is gone. You are standing in a space that has no features at all, just a pale light and the feeling of something very large finishing a very long calculation.

Quintus is still with you, but he is beginning to look as Vulcan did when you first found him: thin at the edges, not quite solid. He knows it. He is not afraid.

"I have to stay in here," he says. "That's how it works. I belong to the machine." He looks at each of you. "But my brother Sextus is out there, and he runs the longer version of this program. Operation LAPIS. He's been hoping for students like you." He grins, and for a moment he is fully himself, warm and sharp and a little ridiculous. "Tell him Quintus sent you. He'll pretend he doesn't know what you're talking about. That's just what he does."

The pale light brightens. Quintus raises a hand. "Go well, Recentii."

He is gone. You are yourselves again. The classroom is around you. The simulation is over.

The only thing that remains is a small blinking light on the TSTT Console...