Chapter 35

Quinn needed a long time to study for this task.

Personas were a complex science, even among the mew. Their creation was a lost art, vanished to workshops of their ancestors called "Starforges." They were so much more than simple AI assistants, churned out in any number of corporations in his own world. Preserving one would not be easy.

More than difficult, creating a true "backup" of the persona was impossible by any definition he knew. But the persona's true self could be removed from the vessel, leaving a shell behind to preserve vital functions until the detonation.

He couldn't study the topic all the time, obviously. He had a young daughter to raise, and an adoptive son who spent some of his time with Quinn each year. More and more he wanted to venture out into this world, with its numberless Pokémon and humans.

Quinn couldn't stop him. He wouldn't be able to stop Rose either, if she wanted to go. What would happen to their plans for the past if that happened?

Rose didn't waver, though. Maybe that was why she had visited them during the jump, showing herself the importance of what she would become.

She didn't take the same interest in Quinn's "modern" world that Cedrin did. He often found her out on the balcony of their hidden home in the jungle, little paws dangling off the side.

"I miss the terraforming platform," she would say, whenever he asked. "I wanna go back up there. Get some ice cream. Play with kittens my age."

"There are kittens your age here," he said. "You could go with them. Lane's kids, and… recruits."

"Tried." She stuck her tongue out. "Don't tell them I thought this, Daddy. But they're dumb. This whole place feels… dumb. They forgot all kinds of things they never should've."

Quinn pulled her in close and patted her back. "Mommy and Daddy were dumb too. It's not their fault they were human once, they'll learn. It just takes us longer than you, because you're so wonderful."

She rolled in the air, then stuck her tongue out at him again. "I know. I don't blame them. I just…" She sighed again, deeper. "Miss home. I wanna go back one day. Live in Starfall again."

"You will," he said. "And when you're a little older, you'll be able to help make a world that's safe. You never have to be in this time if you don't want to. You'll be a grown-up cat." He scratched under her chin, the way she liked best.

At some point, he just had to accept that his daughter was also a cat, and he had long since reached it.

"It's more your time than this is too, Daddy," she eventually replied, when she was done purring. "You and Momma spend more time then than now. You were only kittens in this… future. When all our missions are over, we could go back there. Find another terraforming platform, help them…"

"Maybe." Quinn pointed out over the balcony, at a jungle settlement not that different from the village they had once visited. This one was smaller, with fewer Mythical Pokémon and more humans. Team Infinity sent recruits here to prove themselves, and to keep them safe after they changed into Pokémon.

"But I wonder what the future looks like. The ancient mew knew what they were doing. Their terraforming worked. But what kind of society will we have in a thousand years? More? Maybe we'll be smart enough for you then."

"I doubt it," Rose said. But she didn't sound as confident this time. "You think we'll get to terraform another planet someday?"

If he succeeded, maybe they could. Avery was in place to help save one planet's Pokémon. Quinn would save all the ones that weren't even born yet.

The day came, eventually. The ancient interface turned cloudy, and he had to replace its power source a few times. Eventually he'd absorbed everything the ancients knew about moving personas—detailed his plan, evaluated it in simulation on the little device. It was finally time to act.

That did unfortunately mean involving an old contact, someone who had a connection to the events in question. Only someone who had been there could take him to that time.

Lane the Mew was not so insufferable as she had once been, after his efforts to save her village hadn't met with her desired level of success. But she hadn't ever apologized for that reaction, either, leaving a constant tension when they flew together. They didn't even have to go that far from the housing used by Team Infinity. The site was probably chosen deliberately for that purpose.

Even cats could be sentimental, though the place that Avery felt sentimental about was a deep black crater in the jungle, only now recolonized by the first wave of plants along its borders.

"I assume you know how to keep from changing anything else while we're there," Lane said, bobbing unhappily in the air next to him. They floated beside the crater's edge, beside trees with mutated branches and discolored leaves. The radiation had left its mark, even all these years later.

He shrugged. "After all the time travel I'm done, I'm still a little unclear on how it works. Sometimes I can make changes, other times no. Sometimes I have to worry about paradoxes, other times I remember what made me want to go back even after I made the change. But if you mean about your mom… wasn't that the point of having you pick the time? When she's not around?"

Lane nodded uneasily. "I wasn't exactly observant at the time. I never knew where she went, or how long she would be gone. She could've been somewhere else in Starfall, and I wouldn't know. If she recognizes me, I'm not sure what would happen."

Quinn shrugged again. "Look like me, then. I've seen you do it before. You can be my apprentice. Just… don't expect me to teach you how time travel works. I promised your friend I wouldn't."

She stretched out in the air, glaring at him. After a few seconds like that she changed. She was very good at it, better than any cat he'd ever known. A few seconds to turn green, lose her tail, and gain wings instead. She'd even managed to be smaller than he was, though she was an older and more powerful Mythical Pokémon.

"Will this do?"

He nodded, impressed. "Much better than last time you tried. Even got the colors right."

"Don't you start on that too. I already get that enough from Shiloh."

He didn't reply. Quinn certainly wouldn't have remembered every little detail that annoyed this Mew, in case he ever needed something to tell her. "I need you to see the inside of the place in your memory, and share with me. We'll use your connection."

She bobbed a little lower in the air, adapting to her new wings. Then she showed him a place he'd never seen: the inside of Starfall.

What was left of it, anyhow. In his view, it was a vast city constructed onto the surface, with many nested, connected growths of the old starship. Those were all gone by the time Lane lived there, harvested or cut away for purposes unknown. Only the core of the old ship remained, buried by sediment and stone.

He drew strength from the jungle, reached out for her memory, and they were there. No more crater, no sickly trees or radiation. Instead, there was an ancient city, rock buildings and ball courts and pyramids once home to a human culture long gone.

Quinn took a moment to recover from the jump, adjusting the satchel over his shoulder with the tablet and a few pieces of equipment. Hopefully what he needed would be there, if he looked far enough.

Lane led him through it all, lingering briefly beside an abandoned tent covered in a layer of leaves. A pink hoodie lay out in the mud, stained brown and partially covered with fallen leaves. Lane took a moment to lift it out of the slime, and toss it into the collapsed tent.

"Don't really need a cleanup crew if it's all about to get vaporized," Quinn said. "Tragic about the ancient history in here, but—"

Lane zipped the tent closed. "I'll bring it with us, if we get the chance. I never could sew another that fit quite as well."

Quinn flew close to her, alert every second for anyone who might be watching. There was a powerful Mew in this era, stronger than Lane or Quinn, and raised wild. Lane's mother would make for a dangerous enemy, if she wanted to be.

But they didn't see her, not during the flight through the ruins, into a narrow opening in a broken airlock, then into the lights of Starfall. They came on as they passed, illuminating the interior of a starship somehow intact despite the vast expanse of time.

The Mew who built this ship had been another kind of creature entirely. Maybe one day they could be like that again.

Lane lingered near one hallway, with a faint smell of soap and berries lingering in the air. She sniffed once, then waved them to fly past. "Nope. I don't remember meeting Celebi yet. I can't go in there."

Quinn nudged her forward with one hand. "Let's not go contradicting things. We're here for a reason."

She shrugged. "I've never seen the persona mainframe. I know where the reactor is, but that's something else. Didn't get to live here for very long."

To think this was the home of those who had slaughtered so many innocents. The ones who thought him and other Pokémon weren't worthy of life had all sprung from one ship, crashed so long ago. Now all their mighty works were gone, their numbers collapsed so far that humans of his day thought they were extinct. And they might've been for real, if it wasn't for Lane.

He wouldn't have known how to operate the ship either, before. But now he flew to one of the consoles, held his foreleg over it, and concentrated. "Direct, Persona Mainframe."

The black screen lit blue, pulsed once, and a voice echoed into his mind. One he hadn't heard since his days of work on the terraforming platform. Though that one had not sounded quite so sad.

"Quinn," it said. "I was told you are here to… rescue me."

He nodded, though he didn't know if the persona still had any working cameras to see him. "That's correct, Sinnoh. I'm sorry to keep you waiting."

The machine sent amusement along with its words, the same flow of emotions that a mew might use. "I was not designed to falter or fade with the passage of time, Quinn. If I could be made to change from my course, the admirals of this new world might have reprogrammed me to see you as they do. They could not erase my memory of a better world. Or extinguish my hope that I would see another born, one day."

"You will," Avery sent, imitating him. Apparently she was getting the same messages he did. "We're trying to rebuild what used to be. If you're willing, we could use a teacher like you. If you could be… patient with us. Most of us were uplifted. Even those who were born to this life were raised by Pokémon who weren't. We are clumsy and lost, reaching blindly in the dark."

The persona did not take very long to reply. "Lane the rebel is here," it sent, with laughter. "The Admiralty were right to fear persistent variants. But not the other Pokémon—it was those who sacrificed their essence to become as the ancestors who they should have feared most. Your kind would have all their evil undone."

"Proudly," Lane said. "With your help."

"First, I require yours," the persona said. "His. Quinn, do you know how to make a transfer?"

"Arceus, I hope so." He levitated something out of the satchel—a glowing tool, with little fiber pieces on the end and crystals embedded in the handle. "Show us where to go."

They found another Pokémon waiting for them in the mainframe, a large pink feline that bobbed irregularly up and down in her flight, rather than holding flat. She watched them enter with frustration on her face, flicking her little claws, then retracting them again.

"Afternoon," Quinn said, lowering the tool. "Don't mind us, we won't take long."

The cat vanished from across the room, reappearing directly in front of Quinn. She hissed, baring her teeth at him. "What is the forest guardian doing in my home? Where did he steal those tools?"

She reached for the datacell actuator, but Quinn pulled it back, fighting against her tug. "Nowhere. I made them using Starfall specs. Took a while, but we called in a—" He trailed off. Even incidental details about the future could change what this Mew decided to do. Given how tightly his history tied with Lane's, that could get messy very quickly.

There were threads here, knots and weaves of them wrapping between him and both other Pokémon in the room. He saw them with his antennae. Navigating them wouldn't come easy. Lucky for him, he could look a few seconds forward, see how the Mew would react before she knew what she was doing.

"Sure you did. This was a Mew ship, Celebi. You have your home, your shrines, your worshipers. You have no place here. Leave."

She shoved him back. Not quite so hard or as much pressure against Lane, she was too focused on him. The other Celebi followed, keeping her head down. Anything to avoid attracting attention, and anger…

"How do you think it's still running?" he asked, floating back to her. "I'm not that Celebi. My apprentice and I are the maintenance crew. We're here to perform a critical task to keep your home working."

"I'm sure you are," she said, radiating with doubt. "Maybe I would've let you rob us before. But not right now. There's a kitten upstairs. She's dumb as a Slowpoke right now, but that doesn't matter. She's mine, and she deserves a home. This home. I'm not letting you take it away from her."

"We're not," Lane said. She spoke slowly, overwhelmed with powerful emotions. So much for hiding her identity! "We're helping keep it safe, Korina. Please, just give us a few minutes. You won't notice the difference when we're gone. But if we don't do this, Lane will lose her home forever. You both will."

She turned on the other Celebi now, bobbing angrily towards her. She didn't make it all the way over, stopping halfway across the room. Her anger melted to confusion, and she glanced between them both. "How long will this take?"

"Not long," Quinn said, gesturing towards the glass cradle at the center of the room, surrounded by cooling vents and fiber cables. "The ship will run much more efficiently when we're done. You should free up a lot of extra power."

Because you'll be running on the emergency AI instead of a persona. But that was fine, she wouldn't have long enough to discover the difference.

Korina floated past them one last time, before sinking dramatically to the floor. "Fine, I guess. I feel you… don't want to rob us. And somehow, you know my daughter."

Quinn floated past her to the central hosting cradle, levitating the tool again, along with the densely padded shell they would use to transport the persona away from this place. He didn't just have to keep his face flat, but his emotions too. "I might have. But anything I tell you about her could… influence how you care for her."

The cat made a frustrated, feline sound. Not quite a growl, but not one of the usual mewing calls either. "Fine, fine. You've already told me all I need to know. She survives. And… remembers me enough that you know I'm her mother. She doesn't keep hating me forever. One day, she understands what I did for her."

Lane nodded weakly, barely a twitch before she realized what she was doing and froze. "Yeah."

Quinn waved her over, impatient. "Come on, apprentice. We've got a job to do here. We can't linger."

They didn't. Within the hour, they'd carefully extracted a shimmering crystal lattice from inside the cradle, then sealed the system back up. All it took was a little subroutine Quinn had written to keep the alarms from going off, and the Starfall would act as though it still had its persona.

More or less. If this half-wild Mew tried to use any of the most important systems, she would realize what was wrong. But by then, they'd be long gone.

"What about that old part?" Korina asked, when the core was dark again. "Maybe I'd like to keep it. Souvenir."

Quinn shook his head forcefully, tucking it back into his bag. "The Mew we're bringing it to would like to figure out how it works. They need the old model to study."

"Oh." she looked away, running one wistful paw along the wall. "I guess that's fine. Say hi to my daughter for me."

Quinn glanced once at Lane, preparing his powers to take them forward again. "I will, promise."