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PRESENT TYPE LORE EXCERPT

Should she depart this time, there is no coming back. Not only will she be required to start anew and exist off the back of–in this current time legally–forged documents, she will never return. Type recognizes that the targeted era will provide no means of return. It’s a one-way trip. Though she will leave not much behind, what she will leave behind means the world to her. Sel, of course, is included in that amalgamation of things.

“If I leave, I will not be coming back.” Type says this with a serious expression, and yet Sel’s knowing gaze does not change. “Do you understand how serious that is?”

“Of course I know.” Sel sits in one of two empty chairs across the desk and gestures for Type to take her own. Instead she remains standing, shifting her weight side to side in anxious movement. “Type, you’re wearing yourself down moving around like that. You don’t have the energy to expend on useless movements like those.”

Acquiescing, Type takes a seat in her chair, though not before realizing the irony in a guest taking control of the situation. “Fine. But, Sel. I won’t come back. I’ll be leaving everything behind. Everything.”

“You keep saying this as if I don’t understand the ramifications of what will happen when you go on this expedition, Type.”

“Stop speaking of it as if I’ve already made up my mind.”

Sel knows her.

“You’ll go,” they say easily, waving a hand listlessly in the air. “And I will miss you. But I’ll see what you made of your time there with my own two eyes and through that I will know you’ve done well.”

Sel knows her and seems to know her future in a way that she has never, in all the years they’ve known one another, been able to understand. They speak in straightforward sentences that always feel more like riddles when it’s about anything but science, upon which their language is so blunt it feels like you’re being beaten over the head by a club in some primitive sort of manner.

“Sel.”

“Type.”

“Why do you speak as if I’ve already left?”

Type is, in this moment, desperate for any signs from Sel asking for her to stay. But there is no indication of that sort of sentiment from her friend, and the hope in her that it exists slowly dies the longer they sit there in silence. Sel is carefully choosing their words, a rarity from them, and Type can see it in their gaze once they settle on what they have to say. She holds her breath, unconsciously leaning forward.

“Because in my mind, you have.”