There was a particular kind of trouble that came with intelligent people.
The smarter someone was, the more ways they could become inconvenient.
An average person could misunderstand something and still move on with their day. Most people had work tomorrow, messages they had forgotten to reply to, bills to pay, food to buy. There was only so much attention anyone could afford to spend dissecting a single odd sentence.
Unless, of course, it was the sort of thing that lived in your head long enough for you to start coming up with imaginary comebacks in the shower.
A clever person could become much more troublesome.
Give them an answer and they might ask why that answer had been given in the first place. Give them a rule and they would wonder who wrote it, what problem it was meant to solve, and whether the problem still existed. A contradiction that most people would shrug off as someone misspeaking could keep them occupied for hours, because somewhere inside it might be another explanation waiting to be uncovered.
There were plenty of names for pieces of it.
Need for cognition. Intellectual overexcitability. Hyperfocus. Obsession. The inability to leave a question alone once it had lodged itself somewhere inconvenient.
Sometimes it was temperament. Sometimes neurodivergence. Sometimes anxiety, compulsion, or simply the unfortunate habit of having a brain that refused to shut up when everyone else's had already moved on.
Whatever the reason, it came with its own kind of isolation.
★★★★ Charlotte Holmes — The Lonely Witness
"There are no perfect crimes, Doctor."
Just like the famous fictional character, Charlotte Holmes belonged to that peculiar category of geniuses.
The white disappeared.
Cold rain replaced it.
Charlotte's shoes struck wet concrete, the abrupt return of weight and sound followed almost immediately by the hiss of water somewhere beyond the open side of the building. For a moment she simply stood there, one hand still half-raised from where the Doctor had been holding it.
The multi-storey carpark had returned around them. And the chamber she had been in, gone.
Bare concrete pillars. Faded parking lines. A row of abandoned vehicles sitting beneath weak fluorescent lights, several with their doors left open as though their owners had expected to come back. Rain swept through the exposed sides in thin sheets, carrying with it the distant smell of wet asphalt, petrol and something faintly rotten.
Beyond the railing, Lincol stretched into the night.
Charlotte said nothing.
The Doctor glanced at her.
Under proper lighting, she looked even more out of place than she had inside the white space. Magnolia-yellow hair rested loosely around her neck, already darkening where the rain caught it. A pair of round glasses sat before narrow teal eyes that had stopped moving for perhaps the first time since she had woken. Her cropped white coat left her shoulders mostly free, one of them marked by the faint yellow geometry of Cyverse augmentation, while beige checked culottes and white stockings completed an outfit that belonged nowhere near an abandoned carpark during the end of the world.
There was also the more ordinary problem that Charlotte was attractive.
Not in the untouchable, almost artificial way some of Cyverse's more extravagant Operators had been designed to look. Charlotte was simply very much a woman standing a little too close beneath ordinary fluorescent lighting. The cropped coat drew attention to the shape of her waist, the fitted turtleneck beneath it did little to hide the softness of her figure, and the culottes left enough of her stocking-covered legs visible that his gaze lingered.
...Just the sort of instinct a healthy twenty-seven-year-old man still possessed, apocalypse or otherwise.
His eyes returned to her face.
Charlotte's had already found his, smirking knowingly.
"...If you want to avoid standing out in this world, we'll probably need to get you new clothes."
Charlotte slowly took off her glasses.
Wiped the lenses against the inside of her coat.
Put them back on.
"How thoughtful."
Her eyes dipped briefly to where his gaze had wandered moments earlier.
"Though judging by your inspection, Doctor, I wasn't aware my clothes were causing you quite that much concern."
He looked away.
"I was checking what would stand out."
"Mhm."
Charlotte's gaze drifted lower.
Twenty-seven years of healthy adulthood, made obvious at a poor time.
[Affinity has increased by 3.]
Her smile sharpened.
"...You're going to be annoying about this, aren't you?"
"I haven't decided yet."
Charlotte turned away first, mercifully, though the little bounce in her step suggested mercy had very little to do with it.
The Doctor waited until she had moved several paces before following.
A soft metallic click came from ahead. She had stopped on the stairs below and taken a seat.
Charlotte pulled the Lumen Stylus from her hip. Instead of activating the narrow Photon edge he had seen earlier, she twisted the centre of the instrument between two fingers. The casing shifted with a series of tiny mechanical movements, shortening slightly before a dim ember-like glow appeared at one end.
She placed it between her lips.
The Doctor stared. Charlotte noticed immediately.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You remember this, don't you?"
Another pull.
The end brightened.
When she exhaled, the smoke that left her mouth was anything but ordinary. Thin ribbons of colour curled through the damp air—blue into violet, violet into a strangely luminous pink—before breaking apart beneath the rain.
It looked suspiciously hallucinogenic.
The Doctor took half a step farther away from where she sat.
Charlotte's eyes followed him.
She drew from the Stylus again, then deliberately turned towards him.
The Doctor's eyes narrowed.
Charlotte leaned closer. Her cheeks puffed slightly. Then she stopped. For the first time since leaving the white space, the mischief disappeared from her expression. Her gaze flicked over his face, then lower towards his neck and arms.
"...Right."
She turned her head and blew the rainbow haze harmlessly over the side of the carpark instead.
The Doctor watched it disappear into the rain.
"If I'd blown that into your face, there was a non-zero chance we'd have discovered what human skin looks like after direct exposure."
Charlotte took another drag, now finding the amnesiac Doctor more amusing than suspicious.
"Perhaps you should consider becoming less chemically fragile, Doctor."
She smiled around the Stylus.
Then, as though the conversation had never happened, she began walking down the stairway.
"So."
The Doctor followed.
"We're retrieving something, aren't we?"
"Several things."
Charlotte's eyebrows lifted. The Doctor glanced off to the side. Only for a moment. Then again, a little higher this time. His eyes settled on empty air with the peculiar focus of someone reading something at a fixed distance.
Charlotte took another slow pull from the Stylus.
"Doctor, what'chu looking at?"
A pause. The Doctor adjusted the strap of his backpack.
"Maybe I'm just thinking."
"When people think, their eyes wander."
She raised two fingers towards the empty space in front of him, then, frighteningly close, traced out the rough shape of a rectangle.
"A screen of this size, perhaps?"
His expression tightened slightly.
[Affinity has increased by 1.]
"Oh, don't look so frightened~ I haven't even started measuring."
Her fingers shifted a few centimetres, as if starting to adjust the invisible rectangle.
The Doctor let out a breath through his nose.
"Fine."
Charlotte lowered her hand, visibly pleased.
"I awakened to something after coming here."
"Awakened?"
"That's the closest word I've got." He glanced towards the invisible display again.
"It's not Cyverse technology. At least, I don't think it is. But the way it presents information is... similar to the holographic screens we had."
Charlotte's eyes sharpened, as he explained.
"Floating windows. Information layered over what I'm looking at. Maps. Markers. Sometimes prompts."
Her gaze dropped briefly to his neck, then his arms, as though mentally replaying the scan she had already performed.
"Yeah, I don't have an implant on me or anything. It's weird."
That earned him a different look. Interest.
Charlotte stepped closer and raised the Stylus between them, its ember-like tip fading as she twisted the casing back into place.
"So whatever awakened with you can generate a private visual interface, feed you spatial information, and remain completely invisible to my equipment."
"If you put it that way..."
"And you don't know what's producing it."
"Well, no. I'm flying blind here." He adjusted the strap again. "It's useful, at least. I don't think it's trying to hurt me. I survived all this way because of it."
"Hehe. Something being useful to you does not mean it is harmless."
She tapped the Stylus lightly against his shoulder.
"A parasite can benefit greatly from keeping its host alive."
"..."
The Doctor glanced towards the invisible map again.
"Anyway, I need someone to accompany me in picking things up. It's guiding me to places with helpful supplies from our world."
"..."
"Cyverse," he corrected. "You know what I mean."
"Mhm."
[Affinity has increased by 1.]
That smile again.
"How many?"
"A few nearby."
"And you know what they are?"
His gaze settled briefly on one of the markers.
★★★ Field Battery Pack
"...I think so. We'll know when we get there."
Charlotte took the Stylus from her lips and rolled it between her fingers as they descended.
"You think so? ...Hmm."
[Affinity has increased by 1.]
The Doctor glanced at her.
She was smiling again.
There was something universally satisfying about looking for things.
Children did it with Easter eggs and scavenger hunts. Adults merely learned to give it more respectable names—shopping, bargain hunting, estate sales, clearance racks, finding a missing charger at the bottom of a drawer.
The principle was the same.
There was a destination, something desirable waiting at the end of it, and just enough uncertainty between here and there to make reaching it feel earned. Dungeon crawling in games worked on exactly that instinct.
Wandering through a dead neighbourhood in search of fallen supplies was not entirely different.
The streets became corridors. Convenience stores became treasure rooms. Abandoned cars became containers nobody had bothered to loot properly. Every stairwell, alleyway and shuttered unit carried that small, irrational promise that there might be something useful just beyond it.
Add another person beside you and the whole thing could almost become pleasant. The sort of pleasant that came from having somewhere to go together, even if neither person would ever call it a date.
"Is that it?"
The Doctor followed Charlotte's gaze.
There was really no mistaking it.
Half-hidden between a fallen road barrier and the side of an abandoned van sat a metallic cube roughly large enough to require both arms to carry. Its surface was smooth, almost featureless, save for thin seams running along each edge and a faint blue glow bleeding from somewhere beneath the metal.
More importantly, it was completely dry.
The rain had stopped some time ago, but the pavement around it was still dark with moisture. Small droplets clung to the barrier, the van, the weeds forcing their way through cracks in the asphalt.
None remained on the cube.
Charlotte stood a short distance away, openly studying it.
A single bead of water slipped from the edge of the van above it.
It fell.
Then, perhaps two centimetres before reaching the metal, changed direction sharply and skipped away as though it had struck an invisible surface.
Charlotte's eyes followed the droplet.
"That's definitely not from here."
They had been fortunate to get here first. Not much time had passed since the summon, and apparently nobody else had stumbled across the drop yet. Still, the pair were far too conspicuous to linger around something this strange for long.
"Let's retrieve it quickly."
Charlotte was already moving.
"Wait."
The Doctor caught up just as she crouched beside the cube.
"What?"
"You don't know what it does."
That only seemed to encourage her.
"You brought me here to help, no?"
The Lumen Stylus slipped from her fingers with a metallic click. She twisted its centre once, and the ember-like tip vanished beneath its casing. A narrow yellow line illuminated in its place before spreading into a thin lattice across the cube.
Charlotte's eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
"Residual Index." For once, there was no teasing in her voice. The words seemed to pull something taut inside her. Her expression emptied of everything unnecessary, the faint smile gone as her attention narrowed entirely onto the object in front of her.
"The Lonely Witness".
Another pane quietly unfolded beneath it.
The lattice crawled over the cube again.
Charlotte tilted the Stylus slightly. She shifted her wrist. The yellow lattice tightened, individual lines passing over the cube at different angles now. A faint shimmer appeared where the Photon touched the invisible boundary, like light bending over the surface of clear glass.
Charlotte leaned closer. Another adjustment. She pointed the Stylus towards a bead of water hanging from the van above.
Finally, she said.
"Watch."
The droplet fell.
It struck the unseen boundary and bounced sideways.
Charlotte's eyes followed it all the way to the pavement.
"Momentum is being redirected rather than absorbed."
The Stylus gave a soft chime. For a moment, a handful of tiny geometric symbols flickered across Charlotte's lenses. She went still, then crouched lower.
"There."
"What?"
"A discontinuity."
The Doctor followed where she pointed.
He saw nothing.
Charlotte traced one edge of the cube without touching it.
"The field isn't uniform. It's thinner along this seam."
"...So?"
"So whoever designed this expected it to open."
Her smile returned.
"Which means the field isn't protecting the cube."
She tapped the Stylus against her chin.
"It's protecting whatever is inside."
A soft notification appeared.
[Charlotte Holmes has gained 1 Aporia.]
"I'll let you do the honours, Doctor." She gave him a small, theatrical bow.
The Doctor approached, as if he'd expected this conclusion.
Up close, the cube was perhaps a little larger than he'd first judged, coming almost to his knee. There was still no handle, no latch, nothing that suggested how a normal person was supposed to get inside.
Charlotte watched expectantly from his side.
He placed his palm against the top.
The reaction was immediate.
Blue light raced beneath his fingers and followed the seams Charlotte had identified. The invisible barrier collapsed with a faint ripple, allowing several waiting droplets to finally strike the metal.
Charlotte's eyes followed every one of them.
A second later, the four upper panels separated and folded neatly outward.
Nestled inside was a rectangular device wrapped in thick black housing, two recessed grips built into either side. Blue indicator strips pulsed along its front beside several unfamiliar ports.
A System window appeared over it.
★★★ Field Battery Pack — Consumable
A high-capacity field power unit. Supplies energy to Cyverse equipment and compatible augmented devices.
Contains a flexible internal regulator for adapting output to connected equipment.
Current Charge: 100%
The battery came free with more weight than its size suggested. He caught it against his chest, adjusted his grip, then lowered it carefully onto the pavement where there wasn't any moisture.
Charlotte was already beside it.
"Don't turn it on."
"I wasn't going to."
The Stylus lit again.
A narrow band of Photon swept over the casing, lingering around the recessed ports before moving across the seams.
The Doctor crouched beside her.
Charlotte glanced sideways, and frowned.
"All this for a normal battery pack. What gives."
"It's not normal here." The Doctor spoke.
"No?"
"We don't have portable energy sources anywhere near this dense. Once you're talking that kind of power, you're usually looking at fixed infrastructure. Industrial systems, power stations, nuclear plants..."
Charlotte looked at him.
"Nuclear?"
A small pause.
"That's still considered high-end here?"
"For large-scale energy generation."
"I see." She looked back down at the battery, and to her Lumen Stylus, then immediately extinguished the Stylus. Her eyes returned to the battery.
"Doctor, you're thinking of rebuilding infrastructure, aren't you."
Charlotte crouched and rested one hand on the battery casing.
"How many more did you say there were?"
"A few nearby."
Her eyes rose to his.
"Then I suggest we stop calling them supplies."
"What would you call them?"
She smiled, ambitious eyes narrowing into crescents.
[Affinity has increased by 3.]
"The building blocks to a new paradise."
A sharp burst of static cut through the moment, before the Doctor could say something.
The Doctor's hand immediately went to the relay at his ear.
Charlotte's smile faded by a fraction.
"Doctor?"
Lunallu's voice came through clearly enough to make him straighten.
"Luna. I'm fine. Yeah. How's your end?"
The change was subtle.
The guarded edge that had followed the Doctor for most of the night seemed to loosen almost immediately in his conversation.
Charlotte stepped aside with a lazy little wave, as though the conversation had already ceased to interest her.
Her eyes, however, remained fixed on him from the corner of her vision.
While the Doctor spoke with Lunallu, I let my attention drift back over the short journey that had brought us here.
I had spent most of the walk looking everywhere except where we were going.
It was difficult not to.
Even in darkness, this country the Doctor called Eden was strangely legible.
Street lamps still burned along stretches of road where nobody remained to use them. Power lines were strung openly between buildings instead of buried beneath layers of infrastructure. Cars rested at the kerb with engines that relied on liquid fuel and controlled combustion. Drainage channels ran openly beside the pavement, carrying away what remained of the earlier rain.
None of it was especially sophisticated.
"Those cables supply the buildings?"
The Doctor followed my gaze upwards.
"Mostly electricity. Some communications too, depending on the area."
"Exposed?"
"They're insulated. No one messes with them here."
Awfully crude.
A little farther on, I stopped beneath one of the street lamps.
"And these switch themselves on according to ambient light?"
"Timers too. Depends."
"No municipal intelligence managing them?"
"Muni... Probably not."
Heh. Do I just pretend not to know that he failed to understand the word?
"Hm."
Simple systems layered upon simple systems until millions of people could live between them.
"Your world is very... honest."
The Doctor glanced sideways.
"Outdated, you mean. ...You were thinking it."
I laughed.
By the time we found the cube, I had already accumulated enough questions about this world to occupy several very pleasant weeks.
Perhaps this world was truly as the Doctor had described.
A new, untainted world for us.
... ...
The cube itself had been ordinary only in shape.
The material was familiar enough. A field-alloy composite, the sort of thing designed to survive being thrown into places where equipment was expected to be abused. The internal energy signature had also been recognisable.
But its properties were peculiar.
The rain had never touched the casing. Not because it had evaporated. Not because of electrostatic repulsion either. The droplets simply reached a boundary and had their momentum redirected. I had checked for thermal displacement first. Nothing. No localised temperature spike, no vapour, nor any measurable heat gradient around the casing. Electrostatic repulsion was equally unconvincing. The field was not absorbing force so much as altering its direction.
Except there had been a discontinuity along one edge. The field weakened there by a measurable amount, tracing the same line as a physical seam beneath it. Not enough to compromise whatever protection it provided, but enough to establish intent. A permanent shell had no reason to be weaker precisely where its container was designed to separate.
Therefore the field had been constructed around access. Which meant protecting the cube itself was never the point. It was protecting the contents while still allowing the container to open.
Having concluded my analysis, the Doctor had simply placed his hand against it.
And inside was an ordinary battery that I recognised immediately.
Here, however, the Doctor had looked at one as though it were something precious.
I remembered something he had said in that white place.
... ... ... ...
"You're saying more people will come?"
"If I'm right."
"From Cyverse."
"Yeah."
"And what exactly are these people expected to do?"
"... ...Help me save this world."
I had smiled at that.
"You?"
"...Us, eventually."
... ... ... ...
At the time, it had sounded like another conveniently heroic piece of his already ridiculous story.
Now, however, I began to piece together the Doctor’s intentions.
People would need weapons. Weapons needed ammunition. Augmentations required power, maintenance and replacement components. Medical equipment required supplies. Communications required transmitters, relays and energy. Even something as simple as the Stylus between my fingers had become a finite resource the moment I arrived here.
One Operator was an anomaly. Ten were a group. A hundred would require logistics.
Thousands would require an economy. And if the things accompanying us were not random curiosities, but ordinary objects from our lives... My eyes settled on the battery. Then perhaps the Doctor was not merely bringing people into this world. He was bringing the pieces necessary for those people to continue existing. Because once you could preserve one technology, you could study it. Once you could study it, you could reproduce it. Once you could reproduce enough of it...
My gaze wandered over Eden's darkened buildings.
Power grids. Hospitals. Transport. Communications. Manufacturing. Defence.
...The Doctor may be essential to us.
The Doctor had spoken about saving this world. He had never said what it would look like afterwards.
A small smile crept across my face.
Judging by the slight frown on his face, though, attributing that much cunning to him might have been generous.
...Perhaps he hadn't thought that far yet.
A burst of static clicked against the Doctor's ear.
His hand rose immediately to the relay.
"...Luna?"
I looked over. He had reacted to the voice before I could properly hear it through the tiny receiver.
"Doctor." A woman's voice crackled faintly from the other side.
The change in him was subtle.
His shoulders loosened.
"Luna. Everything okay?"
I decided to grant him the appearance of privacy.
"Go ahead."
I turned away and busied myself with the battery pack. His voice carried easily enough behind me. Softer than it had been with me, less careful.
I found myself listening rather closely to it.
Strictly for investigative purposes, naturally.
Lunallu, the Violet Warden.
I'd never met her personally. I had, however, seen her on the news.
I began building a picture of the Doctor's first companion in this world, for our eventual meeting.