Jack stared at the miniature holo-display and sagged in his chair.
Shit!
"What do I do, Sal?" he whispered.
To Duality, the situation was simplicity: temporary chaotic entropy reversal. Dozens of convoluted algorithms flicked and rotated lazily, ticking their convergence boundaries toward infinity, bright red but fading to yellow, and finally a soothing blue. But a few minutes ago, the entire volume was peppered with angry flashing klaxons, highlighted formulas that only Sal could decipher, and a mysterious percentage overlayed over the entire scene that hit 94.2 before receding again to zero.
Jack wished for a day when he was seven and still believed in magic. All this technology and science just confused him, even though he held a Ph.D. in quantum physics. He knew; he could operate; but Sal was fluent. One day she admitted she didn't see calculations or undulating probability curves, just what would happen next.
More than ever, Jack wondered why she rushed away on her damn errand. They had trainees for a reason—or he could have gone. Why her?
Duality ran itself pretty well, but if some other emergency intruded, literally nobody would know how to proceed. She was it: the Alpha, the Omega, the only one who could decipher Duality's tantrums.
Wasn't she?
"Duality?" An idea. Maybe a long-shot, but he'd chanced worse. "Could you translate the warnin's startin' 'bout 'n hour ago?"
"Initiating Human Avatar Correspondence Kit," said a pleasant female voice, not unlike Sal's. "Projecting."
And then Sal was there. Jack had totally forgotten about Sal's failsafe: herself. Duality's projection was a whole lot more analytical, not nearly as friendly, but it would serve. It smiled at him expectantly.
"Well?" he barked. "Get on with't, Duality."
The projection nodded, mimicking a deep breath, indicating the explanation likely skirted or outright violated the fabric of space and time. Jack steeled himself.
"Warnings following the entropy eclipse suggest a powerful influence overwhelmed the rather extraordinary prosperity field employed by Frank Cemtes."
Jack nodded. He'd seen that when the storm stopped. A black dead-zone settled over Kyle's house immediately before Duality abandoned the scene, spouting critical errors and complaining about recursive distortion conflicts. "But the errors? What'd they mean!" Damn computers.
"Uncertain. According to subsequent calculations and scans, the scene in question generated an incalculable improbability well. Phase and dimension background scatter suggested impending destruction of the universe based on this event."
Jack blinked. "What?!"
Duality nodded. "Converging entropy waves became increasingly scarce and threatened to fragment dimensional boundaries. Added stress may trigger infinite fractal cascade and initiate Phase Merge."
Jack closed his eyes and pressed his shaky left hand over them, refusing to believe what Duality just said. Phase Merge was worse than extinction, beyond the viciousness of genocide—it ended everything: all universes through time, retroactively erasing existence. Was that the percentage hovering near one-hundred before the errors waned?
"Why're the errors gone?" he managed to choke out.
"Conflict series resolved: numbers approaching zero."
"Dismiss," said the old man, feeling like a boot left to crack in the desert. Whatever lurked in Tammond Dale, it reacted to Kyle and his father like a maraca filled with nitroglycerin. "Jes's Sal, why did'n' ya say anythin'?"
As reality settled into Jack's mind, he began to shake as violently as his aged muscles could manage. His very existence—everything that had ever been—hinged on a demonic rabbit with a score to settle. Get used to it, Pallie. You'll beg for it, soon enough.
Death? No, Jack stopped fearing that several decades ago. Never being born at all? God never forging his eternal soul? Everything that is, was, or will be—simply gone? Not even oblivion would survive. Phase Merge.
"God, Sal... I hope ya have a good damn plan."