---

Liv wasn't accustomed to getting caught.

She'd taken Picassos from stately old mansions with dogs patrolling the grounds. She'd taken jewels from tiny rowhouses with eyewatering property values and nosy neighbors. Rare books from libraries staffed by eagle-eyed librarians backed by portly security guards had been no issue. So she was damned if she was going to let herself be caught by — she glanced over the three in front of her once more — the Hawaiian giant, a local cheerleader, and Ms. Purple.

Though, she reflected, Ms. Purple did make that suit look good.

Ms. Purple was staring at her. "What are you doing in my house?"

Liv clutched the box against her chest. "I just came to get something that belonged to me. I'll be going." She'd come to take anything worth taking that wasn't nailed down, but having found a box with her name on it, she sure as hell wasn't leaving without it. It was like the universe wanted her to have it.

"You can't just break into someone's house," the Hawaiian giant began, but Liv pushed past him. The cheerleader didn't try to stop her.

Liv glanced over her shoulder briefly as she headed back through the kitchen to the front hallway, the door at the far end a light at the end of the tunnel. Her heart was pounding, but she kept her breathing controlled and her focus sharp. She reached the door, grabbed the handle, flung it open, and stepped through. She was free! She was...

...back in the hallway, facing the kitchen she'd just walked through^[1]. "What the fu—?" her voice trailed off. Ms. Purple was there now, hands still on her purple-suited hips, just staring.

Liv stared back. "What?" She turned back for the door. She must have been imagining things. She stepped through again, and found herself in the hallway. Again. She felt ice crawling up her spine.

She made herself get angry. Angry was more useful than scared. "What's going on? Is this some sort of trick?"

Ms. Purple kept the flat stare going. "Sometimes it's like that," she said. Beside her, the Hawaiian giant looked puzzled. Behind him, the cheerleader was covering her mouth with her hand again, like it was the only gesture she knew how to make.

Liv flung the door open and ran through. Twice, three, four, five times. She gave up. It had to be a trick. The anger was rapidly yielding to the ice. "Let me out of here," she said. She hated that she could hear herself pleading.

Ms. Purple leaned back against the kitchen counter. "It isn't up to me." She nodded at the box in Liv's arms. "What's in the box?"

The question was absurd. Liv stared back. "Let me go!" She bit the end off each word, baring her teeth.

"In my experience, if the doors don't work, the rest of the house is waiting for something." Ms. Purple pointed at the box. "Since there's a box for you, most likely he wants you to open the box." She made it sound self-evident.

Liv crouched and set the box on the ground. Fine. She'd rather leave empty-handed than be stuck here. She backed away, then ran through the door — and was back in the hallway, standing in front of the box on the ground. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

"You should really just open the box," Ms. Purple said. "I've never won one of these arguments. He can be pretty stubborn when he wants to be."

"Should I call the police, Alma?" The Hawaiian giant was turning his phone restlessly end-over-end in one giant hand.

Ms. Purple — Alma, then — shook her head. "The box is hers, obviously. She just needs to open it. And you and Charity should open yours."

Charity clapped her hands. "I have an idea." She beamed at them. "Let's all open them together!"

They all stared at her. She just smiled back. "I'll go get them. Jeff can help — they're heavy!"

She skipped off without waiting for an answer. Jeff threw his hands in the air, shook his head, and followed.

---

Charity carried her box and the one for Alma back toward the kitchen. Alma's was much larger, but both boxes felt weightless. She hoped they weren't empty, though she supposed it would be a funny twist if they were. Maybe a little bit cruel, though.

Jeff trailed her with his box, but he stopped on the way out of the storage room. "Hang on, what's this?" Another large box was sitting on the opposite aisle.

Charity took a step backwards, peering at the label: MUSIC STUFF (MISC). "Hey, that sounds like it might be useful!" It had an interesting stamp on it, all neon yellows and pinks and blacks, like a synthwave band had vomited a QR code onto it.

Jeff tucked his box into the crook of one heavily muscled arm and hoisted the new one to his free arm with ease. "I agree."

In the kitchen, Alma and the thief were still glaring at each other. "Tell it to Housebert," Alma was saying. "But I don't think he cares."

"Housebert?" Jeff raised an eyebrow.

Alma gestured around her vaguely. "The rest of the house. Housebert."

Jeff set his boxes down on the dining table. "Alma, what the hell did you do to my house? You've only been here six months. You remodeled the whole thing by yourself?"

Alma shrugged. "I didn't do anything to it. Your house is around somewhere. Maybe behind the rest of the house. Maybe under it. Who knows."

Charity didn't like the tension. Time for a distraction! It worked on little babies, and in her experience, it also worked on big babies. She held up the boxes. "Guys, let's open these! It'll be fun. Like Christmas." She offered Alma the box with her name on it.

Alma sighed. "Housebert always wins." She took the box and ripped it open with one hand, not bothering to cut the tape holding it together. She opened it and stared at the contents. "Huh."

Charity clasped her hands together. "Well?"

Alma reached into the box and slowly pulled out a sleek bass guitar. The body was metallic, glossy royal purple, sharp-angled like a starship captured in instrument form. The knobs, keys, frets, and pickups were platinum-accented. It looked simultaneously horrendously expensive and menacingly indestructible. She picked it up, looking for once almost reverent. "This is...really nice."

Charity looked up as the thief tried to leave again. It was funny to watch; a small, angry figure marching out the door — and simultaneously marching back in. The other girl didn't disappear and reappear; somehow, she overlapped herself. Her lips trembled under the mask. She kicked the box next to her, then hopped up and down on her other foot. "Ow!"

Charity was surprised. Her box had been light. But she felt bad enough to go over and put a hand on the thief's shoulder. "Hey, it'll be okay. Why not just — ahhh, that hurts!"

The thief had her in some sort of fancy kung fu arm trap, bent over with her arm twisted behind her. "Hands off," she growled at Charity.

"Okay, okay, just let me go!"

The thief held her a moment longer, then let her go. Charity rubbed her shoulder. "That hurt, but it was pretty awesome." She grinned at the other girl as she bent to pick up the box on the floor. "Where'd you learn to do that?" She lifted the box, expecting it to be much heavier, and stumbled backwards. "It's really light, Yu... Yu-e... Um, how do you pronounce your name? Can I call you Ling?" The label was clear enough — YUELING... — but she was pretty sure she had no idea how to say it.

The other girl stared daggers at her and then darted for the kitchen window that looked out over the grass toward the sea. She threw it open, jumped out feet first—and her boots almost knocked the front door from its hinges as her arms cleared the kitchen windowsill. She landed abruptly in the hallway, stiff as a tree, and screamed a sound of pure frustration. Then she sank to her knees.

Charity recovered the fastest from the scream. She walked over and held the box out. "Just see what's in it, Ling?" She tried to make it encouraging.

The girl on the ground took the box without looking at it. "Fine, whatever. Just stop calling me Ling. That's only half my name and you'll butcher the rest of it. Liv — you can say that without butchering it." She threw the box on the ground. Three pairs of eyes leaned in to look. Charity could have sworn the walls themselves moved an inch closer to get a better view.

Liv glanced at all of them. "Ugh." She ripped the box open and reached in, pulling out a strip of silvery fabric. She dangled it for a second from a finger, staring at it like it was a snake, then reached in again. There was a small zapping sound. She jerked her hand back and dropped a pair of sticks on the floor in front of her. "What the hell?" She opened and closed her hands a few times. "That hurt."

Charity dropped to her knees next to Liv and leaned forward to look. "A mask! And..."

Jeff grinned widely. "Drumsticks! Hey, are you a drummer?"

Liv let her arms fall to her sides. "I hate every one of you."

---

"There's no cable jack on that bass," Jeff observed. "That's weird."

Alma nodded. She hesitated briefly, then gingerly plucked the low E string, and everyone froze as the sound reverberated around the kitchen — gently. There was only the faintest purr from the dishes drying next to the sink. Alma's eyes widened, then she started running through scales, eyes closed.

She was good, Jeff noted. Not just acceptable, but really, technically good. Every note was precise and clean. And — was that a hint of a smile? It was strange to see on her face.

In the hallway, Charity was still kneeling next to the thief. "I'm Charity. And that's Jeff, and that's Alma," she was saying.

"I have eyes and ears," Liv snapped. Her eyes were locked on the fabric in her left hand and the drumsticks in her right.

"Why don't you try it on?" Charity nodded toward the mask. "It even has that cool helix symbol on it."

The lights in the hallway flickered oddly, seeming to brighten above Liv's head and dim slightly everywhere else^[2].

"Seems Housebert agrees," Alma said.

Jeff was still mentally head-scratching trying to figure out what the hell Alma had done to his house. It had been a pretty simple affair, a one-bedroom bungalow with a small attached garage. It still looked the same outside, but the inside...he ran a hand through his hair. It was not the same at all. He turned his attention back to the thief, pulling out his phone as he did so.

Liv removed the black mask she was wearing. The light over her head brightened more, and Jeff used the extra illumination to snap a couple of photos of her face by habit without really looking at her. Back on the ship, whenever he encountered troublemakers of any sort, he'd learned to grab a photo or two; it often proved useful later when trying to establish who was responsible for what mischief. He slid his phone back into his pocket, and then actually looked at her.

He tried not to stare, but failed. He was in grade school again, his brain simultaneously trying to compose an ode, make his hands fix his hair, and compensate for the sudden wobbliness of his knees. And Charity's open mouth and Alma's raised eyebrow made it clear they had the same reaction.

Liv rolled her eyes at them and pulled the new mask around her eyes. A symbol appeared on the fabric at her left temple: a helix, glowing faintly platinum. Charity closed her mouth. Alma lowered her eyebrow. Jeff stared at the drumsticks instead. The overhead light dimmed slightly. Liv glanced up at them all. "What?"^[3]

"Uh, nothing," Jeff said, clearing his throat. "So, the drumsticks. Are you a drummer?"

She held up the sticks, examining them more closely. They gleamed, each made of polished black wood seamed with thread-thin golden lines as if they'd been shattered and repaired by a dwarf from one of Tolkien's stories. The sticks were tipped with small, geometric crystalline spheres that caught the light. "Never touched one of these in my life," she said. She twirled them in her fingers. "Cool sticks, though."

"You look like you know how to hold them," Jeff observed.

"Oh, this?" The spinning stopped. Liv shook her head. "Martial arts."

Jeff nodded. "Oh, martial arts. Of course." He'd done a bit of boxing, but you couldn't exactly spin sticks with padded gloves making your hands feel like polar bear paws.

The kitchen window slid shut with a bang, making them all twitch^[4]. Liv hadn't closed it, Jeff realized, but apparently she hadn't properly propped it open, either. He shook his head.

"Alright, let's see what's in this box." He held up the one with his own name in it and opened it with a small pocketknife he always carried. He took a deep breath. "Still don't understand why there's boxes for us in the first place," he said, then reached in.

He pulled out a strange object, two long cylinders bundled together, straight handles protruding from each end of each cylinder. A scroll? It looked like a scroll, but when he pulled it open, it lit up like a command panel from the bridge of a Star Trek ship, clusters of shapes and waveforms and color, but oddly familiar. "Hey, this is a mixing board. Or a mix...scroll?" He felt the hair on the back of his arms stand up. "Alma, what the hell's going on here? We're all getting band stuff?"

"Housebert does what it wants," Alma said.

Jeff stared at the mix scroll, holding it up. There was a wireframe of some kind floating behind the controls. He turned the scroll this way and that until it clicked. The layout of the room and the house was represented on the display, one view corresponding to the direction he was facing and another that was like a mini-map floor plan. Complicated.

He rolled it back up. "What's in your box, Charity?"

---

Alma watched Charity open her box with interest. Housebert was behaving oddly today, she had to admit to herself. The 5,183 boxes were now 5,187. She couldn't recall the total having been over 5,185 before.

When she was younger, she'd tried opening boxes that didn't belong to her, but there was always some urgent reason not to: something fell off a shelf somewhere else, or the doorbell rang even though no one was there, or the lights went out. Eventually she'd gotten the message and given up trying. So she'd seen the outside of lots of boxes, but the inside of very few.

She supposed anyone else would find Housebert freaky, and at first she'd been a little scared when the closet door to her childhood bedroom back in New York had suddenly led to the rest of the house when she opened the door. She'd tried to show her parents, but the closet door had jammed every time they tried to open it. It seemed Housebert had opinions about who could come in, even back then. Her father had scheduled a repairman, but Alma had gone through the door, and when she came back out, she'd breathlessly told her parents that it was working again, nothing to worry about.

Sure, it had been nine parts haunted house and one part adventure the first time through, but Housebert had done his best back then to make things welcoming for a ten-year-old girl, the walls painted in bright colors and papered in unicorns and puppies. It didn't take long for her to think of it as ten parts her best friend. As she'd gotten older, Housebert had reverted to more normal decor, sometimes even outright boring just to prank her, which is why she'd been up to her neck in purple paint just a couple of hours ago.

"Alma?"

She pulled herself back to the present. Charity was waving a hand in front of her face. She stepped back. "What?"

"Scissors? Anything to open this?" Charity was gesturing at the packing tape holding the box closed.

"You can just use this." Jeff held out the pocketknife he'd used for his own box.

"Oh, thanks." Charity placed her box on the table and sat down, humming something lilting as she carefully cut through the tape. She handed the knife back. "Thanks!" She beamed at the box. "I love presents! It's...the anticipation, you know? The thrill?" She rubbed her hands together, looking at Alma. "Did you get it for me?"

Alma shook her head. "The boxes just show up." She still remembered the first one, before there was even a door to the rest of the house. It had shown up on her doorstep with her name on it in the block labeling that would become so familiar: ALMA ROSARIO-OKOYE...

Charity smiled. "Still, it's always such a nice surprise." She started to open the box, then paused. "I don't know if I can do it. I mean, it's kind of scary, you know, to get a box when you don't know who sent—"

Liv stomped over to the table and threw the box open. "Just open the damn thing already," she growled. "I want to get out of here."

Alma raised an eyebrow, impressed, but Charity's lip...quivered? The girl was actually upset?

Jeff seemed to notice it too. "Hey, take it easy," he said to Liv. "Just let her do it at her own pace."

Charity managed a cautious smile and reached into the box. She pulled out a flattened metal container of some sort, brushed aluminum with heavy latches, and set it on the table. "There's something else," she said, the excitement coming back into her voice. She pulled out a long white stick—and threw it onto the table. "Ew, ew, ew!" She backed away. "What the hell is that thing?"

Alma leaned over to take a closer look. The stick wasn't a stick. It was pale, bleached-looking, organic. More like...bone? One end curved gently. Not just a single bone, she realized. "That part is like a...spine," she murmured aloud. It did not look human. The other end terminated in petals of bone that formed a calyx, like a skeletal rosebud * * I don't get paid enough to have to look at this. .

They all gathered around the table, staring at the thing. Even Liv came closer, despite her clear desire to leave. "What the hell is it?"

Alma glanced in the box. There was something in there. She pulled it out—a sheet of paper. Well, not paper. She had no idea what the material was; it felt slightly rubbery, a little oily, and faintly electrified; not dangerous, just a mild tingle. "I think it came with instructions."

There were three images on the sheet, no text. The first depicted a vaguely humanoid shape holding the bone object by the curved end and using it as.... "A cane, I think." The calyx was a ferrule, apparently.

The second showed the humanoid holding it the other way around, with a conical set of arcs emanating from the humanoid's head toward the curved end. "A microphone?"

The last one had the humanoid figure holding the cane-microphone near the curved end, with the ferrule over its shoulder and a parasol extending from it while jagged lightning symbols and water droplets bounced off the parasol. "Uh, it's also a parasol. Or umbrella. Whatever." Alma scratched her head. The bass was great, but now she was feeling mildly envious.

"A paramicrocane?" Charity giggled. "Cool." She touched the handle end gingerly. "I just don't know why it has to be all weird and bony."

"What's in the container?" Jeff asked.

"Oh, right." Charity pulled it toward her and flipped the latches open with some difficulty. There was a hiss as she opened the lid. The inside was lined with pyramid-dotted foam; a gunmetal gray torc nestled in the foam, two parallel rails that fused into single, sharp stylus-like points on each end. The two points docked on a raised grey block inlaid with intricate gray-black circuitry. Another instruction sheet fluttered out onto the table, showing a humanoid with the torc around its neck, the points in front.

Alma narrowed her eyes. Liv was leaning closer, her eyes wide. Alma cleared her throat, staring meaningfully at Liv, and the thief backed away, looking both guilty and defiant.

"It's jewelry!" Charity covered her mouth with her hands and squealed. "Okay, okay, let me try this on." She lifted the torc reverently. "It's...weird, but it's kind of pretty, too." She pulled the ends apart. "That was easier than I expected."

She placed the torc around her throat, and the lights went out^[5]. Somewhere, Alma heard the faint sounds of a typewriter.

---

1. Entity TRTH appears capable of converting thresholds into closed timelike curves at will. Entity YL appears protected from self-collision by a small Δt offset between ingress and egress. While this behavior has been observed before, it is still relatively rare. ↩︎

2. TRTH appears to have synchronized a low-amplitude luminance modulation with Subject YL's heart rate. The other subjects present did not appear to consciously notice. ↩︎

3. Two members of the field team were relieved of duty and ordered to report to DSP medical facilities for neurological examination due to acute attentional dysfunction. ↩︎

4. An attempt was made to insert an insectoid optical mapping drone into TRTH using the open window as an entry vector. The drone was violently crushed by the window sash when it was approximately 0.01mm past the plane of the glass. ↩︎

5. Despite the phase difference, all monitoring equipment lost power for approximately one minute at this point. ↩︎