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Description
July 14th, 1993

“…all for the morning broadcast, folks. We hope you’ve enjoyed listening to what the brightest minds on Mobius have had to offer today; from here we’ll move on to the week’s top hits, followed by--”

Sally Acorn had left the radio on overnight, tuned to DZYP, and as always, it was one of the first things she heard as she woke up that morning. For a brief moment, she was in her own room at Castle Acorn, ready to clamber out of bed, go through her routine and rush out to spend the rest of the day with her friends--but her quarters were many stories up and it would be rather difficult for Antoine to walk past the window. In full uniform, no less, and with the forest right behind him.

Literally only a day ago, that city had been hers. What was left of it was now in the hands of some lunatic.

With that memory floating back, all her will to even sit up abruptly left her, and Sally just stared with glazed-over eyes at the ceiling of her Lil Bro’s hut. Her Lil Bro was curled up into a ball just on the edge of Sally’s pillow, instead of in his usual bed; she hadn’t seen or felt him climb onto his parents’ bed, so chances were he’d only been asleep for a few hours. She kept her eyes locked upward and tried not to think of the fact that Sonic was the only child to return from Mobotropolis.

Damn them. Sally was among the people who should’ve seen the Empire’s invasion coming, and they were all caught unawares.

If not for the need to relieve herself, she would’ve stayed in bed all day, maybe shut her eyes and pray that this was just some sort of fever dream--that if she closed her eyes long enough, it would all snap back and everything would be fine, and Tristian and Julayla would still be alive, and she would know where her family was. But Sally could still hear inconsolable sobbing outside, no matter what she did.

Groggily, Sally forced herself to sit up and leave the warmth of the bed, careful not to disturb Sonic, and trudged over to the bathroom. Today was going to be a very, very long day.

--

The moment Sally opened the door, its edge scraped against Len’s shoulder, and the hedgehog seemed to wake with a start, but when she turned to face Sally, there were no traces of surprise on her sullen face.

“My shift’s over?”

“What do you mean?” It was such a dumb question, but it was out of Sally’s mouth before she could realize it.

“Makin’ sure no one came by to finish us off.” Len slowly rose, and stumbled into her hut in a half-conscious daze, too tired to remember to shut the door behind her until after she’d taken a seat on the bed, with one arm already out of her uniform. Sally quietly closed it for her, and looked over the village with one hand still on the handle.

Sally hadn’t visited this place too often in the past, but she knew that it housed more than twenty people. Of those twenty, most were sitting outside, away from the huts; the people she was certain were villagers were nowhere in sight. All their group could really do was try to comfort each other over lost family and friends.

As soon as Sally could get a pencil and some paper, she’d have to interrupt them to do role call. Wonderful.

First order of business was to apologize to Bunnie, if she would let her. The rabbit’s hut was close by.

Sally got as far as hovering a fist over the door. Could she really face her best friend again after all that? She had to try, at least; it would never leave her mind if she didn’t.

One faint series of knocks later and Bunnie was peering at her from behind the door crack, covered in a blanket. “Do you want to come in?”

“I would prefer that.” Bunnie didn’t sound angry or even irritated. A good sign?

The inside of the hut looked and smelled the same, dark blue curtains drawn as they always were, but something had changed, something that Sally was aware of but couldn’t place her finger on--not just the clinking of metal on hardwood that had replaced Bunnie’s normal footsteps.

“Bunnie…” She couldn’t stop herself now. “I’m so sorry--I knew you were in the area Sonic and I were in when the bombs went off, but I still didn’t go after--”

Bunnie cut her off. “Sonic was with you.”

“Yes, but--”

“Ya tried to get a little kid to safety. Ah’d say ya did the right thing, Sally-girl.”

All Sally could do for the next few seconds was stare. “You don’t resent me?”

“As ah recall, it wasn’t you that forced me into that contraption.”

Bunnie’s next words might have been to ask Sally not to worry about it, or if Sally was keeping it together--whatever she might’ve said next died on her lips after Sally pulled her into a tight hug; the two remained that way for a few minutes, with the only audible noise the creaking of the floorboards and the soft sound of breathing.

“S-so…” Sally took a step back. “Can you still move around okay?”

In response, Bunnie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and brought out her metal arm from underneath her blanket. It was the first close look Sally had gotten at it; what little light the curtains allowed into the room reflected off of its smooth surface.

“Yeah. It’s…weird. Ah thought there’d be some trouble, but--everything works okay.” Her brow furrowed. “Ah remember Chuck mentioning that the first guy they ran through the machine walked like all his joints spontaneously rusted.”

“That guy looked like he’d been caught in a threshing machine beforehand…” Sally’d only caught a brief glimpse of the man in question as he was led to the roboticizer, but that image would stay with her for years.

“You done a headcount yet, Sally-girl?”

“I’ve got a rough estimate. Of the people who lived here, I know that you, Len, Sonic, Antoine, and Rotor made it back. Rosie never went out that day, and Amy’s over in Mercia. The rest I’m not familiar with.”

“Ah see…”

“Are you going to stay in here all day? I’m sure the others are worried--”

Bunnie gave a sort of awkward shrug. “Ah’m not sure if ah’m ready to yet. Ah’m still tryin’ to process everything that went down last night.”

“…I am too, I think.”

--

Back in the clearing, not much had changed. Antoine was outside now, sitting with his back against the wall of someone else’s home and staring off into the distance. His wounds had been patched up, though by who, Sally didn’t know.

Before taking a seat next to him, she waved slightly. “Can I sit here?”

“Sure.” It was only after Sally yelped in surprise did he think to add, “Ze grass is still wet.”

“Thanks for the warning…”

Whatever she had in mind to say to him, accidentally dampening her legs drove it out of her mind, and after several failed attempts to recall it, she decided against asking him anything.

“Will Len and Sonic be okay?”

“I--I don’t know. Not for a while, I’d imagine.”

“Len’s asleep right now, isn’t she.”

“Probably. Did she stay awake for the rest of the night?”

“Could have.”

“Are you just now getting up, yourself?”

Antoine nodded. “Obvious, huh?”

“I guess…”

There was a gentle breeze rustling the leaves around them, which on any other day Sally would have loved to sit and listen to if there was no official business to take care of. Today she was only vaguely aware of it.

“Rotor has something to give you.”

“He does? Where is he?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. He only mentioned it in passing early zhis morning, when Bookshire was making sure zhose bandages he slapped on me hadn’t already been bled through. Just ‘I have something for Sally‘. I don‘t remember if he mentioned anything specific, because I dozed off about a minute later.”

“I see…” Pause. “Bookshire?”

“Some raccoon who made it to Knothole with us. He said he was a doctor at ze main hospital.”

The only raccoon Sally could see was a middle-aged one sitting slumped over on a tree stump, unaware that she was staring at him.

“Okay. I’ll go find Rotor, then.” With a grunt, Sally forced herself off of the dew-soaked grass. Finding Rotor wouldn’t be too difficult, as the number of people in Knothole who owned a computer could be counted on one hand.

Antoine watched her head off to Rosie’s hut, and resumed counting the leaves on the trees directly in his line of sight--a hundred and fifty when he left off. Ordinarily the sort of tedious pointlessness that he would jokingly compare favorably to perimeter-checking duty, but it beat trying to answer the question of why his father wasn’t in the village.

--

“Hey, Rosie, is Rot--”

Rosie nodded before Sally could finish, and stepped aside to let her in. “I kept telling him that the only things on my computer are Solitaire and that knitting program,” she said as she shut the door. “But he insisted on looking through it anyway.”

“…Knitting program?”

“You know, the one with all these rows of blank rectangles, and you edit them to make a pattern.”

“Rosie, that’s Microsoft Excel. You’re meant to use it for spreadsheets.”

“Well, I’ve never needed to print out spreadsheets, so…” Rosie cast a glance down the very short hallway between the kitchen and the living room, presumably at the end of which Rotor was examining her machine. “He didn’t tell me if there were any specific programs he needed.”

Certainly not a web browser, because Rosie didn’t have an Internet connection. Come to think of it, did anyone in Knothole have one, or even a use for one? There were at least two set up in Castle Acorn, one with graphics and one without, and both had been so painfully slow that for once, trying to look things up at the library without aid of a filing system would have been preferable.

“Maybe he’s just trying to keep his mind off of things,” Sally muttered. “Like I…” She trailed off, and awkwardly stared at her shoes.

“’Like I’ what?”

Was it a good idea to bring this up now, and so abruptly? Probably not, but Sally needed to talk about it regardless; she just hoped Rosie would let her.

“Um--I overheard Sonic the other night,” she began. “Did he tell you about..?”

Though Sally couldn’t see it, Rosie’s face fell. “I can’t really say he told me, but…I heard what he said as well. Poor boy was convinced that it was his fault.”

The news of Julayla’s death would have hit Sally like a train then, if she hadn’t already been so numb. But she remembered what Sonic managed to yell between wailing sobs, and it weighed on her mind along with a thousand other things. And she didn’t know anyone else she could talk about it with besides her late teacher’s cousin.

Well…in theory, she could talk about it. In practice, Sally had no idea where to start.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“Yes.”

The two trudged over to the couch, with Rosie taking a seat next to the armrest so she could retrieve her knitting. Sally tried not to lean against Rosie, but found herself doing that anyway.

“It wasn’t Sonic’s fault,” she said after a long pause, long enough for Rosie to resume work on whatever that length of yarn was going to be. “It was mine.”

The clinking of metal against metal came to a temporary halt. “What do you mean?”

“If I’d been paying more attention to the Empire’s actions these past months, I could’ve let someone know, and they’d--”

“But it wasn’t your job to.”

Sally shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t have been taken by surprise.”

“Sally--”

“The city wouldn’t have been razed, I’d know where my family was, Bunnie wouldn’t be half-robot, and Tristian and Julayla and a hundred others would still be alive. I was actively involved in the kingdom’s politics, ‘my job to’ or not, because I didn’t want to ascend the throne blind. Look how well that turned out.”

She felt Rosie shift a bit. “What good will it do to blame yourself?”

“I’ll remember where I screwed up.”

“I meant--” Rosie sighed, and fiddled with her knitting needles. “The city’s already gone. Does it really matter whose fault it was now? It won’t change anything.”

“Maybe. But it does matter. If we’d watched the Empire like hawks and still got jumped, that would be one thing. But Daddy told me they weren’t as big a threat as we thought, and I believed him and slacked off on keeping an eye on them myself, and now…” Sally slumped forward, so far that her forehead and knees were almost touching. “J-just look at us.”

“King Max said--?”

A door was opened and shut, and Rotor emerged from the hallway, hunched over slightly with visible creases under his eyes, messenger bag bouncing off of his leg with every shuffling step. Rosie and Sally both looked up to face him, but his eyes were locked firmly on the hut’s exit.

“Anything?” Rosie asked.

“Nothing useful. Sorry.” The noise that Rotor made, some sort of cross between a sigh and a whimper, was…troubling.

He made his way across the living room, hesitated, and doubled back. “Almost forgot.” Reaching into his bag, he retrieved a small device, lightly dropped it onto Sally’s lap, and was out the door before she could ask him anything about it.

Sally turned the device--a handheld computer with a hinged cover--over in her hands a few times before setting it aside. “I wanted to talk about Julayla, but…just blathered on about myself. I thought I was better than that.”

To which Rosie shook her head. “Don’t worry about it right now. Tell me what you need to tell me.”

--

Three hundred and thirty-nine leaves counted when Rotor plopped down next to Antoine. Finally, something to keep the two halves of his brain from consuming each other in a desperate attempt to get away from the boredom.

“So I take it you didn’t find what you were looking for.”

“No. Rosie really didn’t have a lot of programs on her machine.”

“I told you she didn’t use it much.” Antoine straightened up and stretched as best as his injuries would allow, wincing at the pain both from them and trying to move his stiff joints. Staring at the trees must’ve made him lose track of how long he was sitting against that wall. “So who else here has a computer?”

Rotor gave a shrug so brief and limp that his friend almost didn’t notice it. “I don’t know. And I’m not gonna break and enter in order to find out.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“Didn’t you say we weren’t the only group to es--”

“And zhat zhere may be more Knothole survivors zhan are currently present. But I assume zhat whatever you have in mind can’t wait for zhem to come back.” Trying to keep eye contact and limber up at the same time wouldn’t be so annoying if Antoine had healed up first. “If you have to enter zheir houses uninvited and zhey bitch about it, well, tough shit. It’s not like you’re going in zhere to strip ze place down to ze floorboards.”

“No, but…eh. It just feels wrong.”

“You were going to try and contact our allies and see if zhey were aware of what happened.”

“And annoy the person whose privacy I inv--”

“Rotor. Forget it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want someone just randomly walking into my room and hijacking my computer, so--”

“Zhat’s just someone being an asshole. You’re not.”

“But if I could send out a distress signal or something without coming in uninvited, and I didn’t because I was too hasty to--”

“Ze Empire only needed one day to crush us. Zhey somehow did zhis without anyone noticing zhem approaching ze city even though ours is such zhat no one’s been able to sneak up on us in decades. Zhese are not ze normal circumstances under which one usually invades someone’s home, and if no one tries to call for help, ze Empire will have little trouble in finishing us if zhey so desire. And zhey’re an Empire, so zhere’s a good chance that if we try to run, we’ll end up in more of zheir territory.”

“I--”

Antoine thrust an open hand in front of Rotor’s face. “Can I assume zhat zhis conversation will just go on and on unless one of us cuts it off ?”

Some fidgeting, followed by a shrug. “I guess so.”

The temptation to lay down on the grass was strong, and Antoine would just do that if it wouldn’t result in jolts of pain through his limbs. And getting wet. “If it helps you to stop worrying…if anyone pitches a fit, tell zhem zhat I authorized it. And if zhey don’t like zhat, tell zhem Sally did, too.”

“But she didn’t. Not yet, anyway.”

“Zhey don’t have to know zhat.”

“Sally might try to correct me, thus revealing that one or both of us lied to the--”

“Rotor?” Antoine was staring him directly in the face. “You keep worrying about things like zhis and you’ll never get anything done.”

“Eeeh…”

--

Rosie hadn’t asked Sally how long she planned on staying in her room, and that was fine by Sally because she didn’t have an answer. She’d spent about ten minutes lying on Rosie’s bed and staring directly at the ceiling, occasionally turning her head to observe the rest of the place. The handheld computer had been placed in a spot where Sally’s shifting-about wouldn’t accidentally bump it onto the floor; it wouldn’t do to damage it before figuring out what was so special about it.

Rosie’s bed was overlaid with several layers of hand-made quilts sandwiched in-between dark-coloured sheets, with a few pillows of varying size piled against the headboard. When Sally was very young, she’d determine what type of mattress someone had by jumping on it--the springy ones were the best, though trying to actually sleep on them afterward was rather unpleasant, if Elias was to be believed. There wasn’t much of a bounce when Sally laid down on this one, though that may have just been due to all the blankets.

Directly across from the foot of the bed was Rosie’s computer, a less powerful version of the ones used in the Castle labs; there was a CD rack right next to the monitor, but it only contained about one or two programs, the rest of the slots being taken up by music discs--all bands Sally was unfamiliar with, either simply from not walking around the related store aisles, or being too young. She could distinctly remember Rosie coming home with a stack of them, positively giddy that she could finally afford to listen to her favourite music without the medium degrading into annoying pops and scratches within a month.

There were drawers on either side of Sally, presumably with clothes contained in one and yarn in the other--she wasn’t about to go rooting through them without permission. The haphazard clutter of assorted belongings of Rosie’s was dusty in some areas and not in others; from the bed, Sally could only see a few uncovered spots. Particles of dust danced about in what little light the curtains let through and settled into the thick carpet, which appeared to be discoloured from age but otherwise unstained. The entire room had this odd smell to it that was sort of perfumey, but at the same time not, as if the source of that fragrance hadn’t been present or used in a long time.

…that little handheld wasn’t going to inspect itself, was it?

Sally reached up and retrieved the device, checked it for a power button, and flipped it open. Its screen took up about all of the top half, with the bottom taken up by a tiny keypad and some buttons of unknown function. There was no fancy start-up sequence; the screen went from black to light blue in a second…with absolutely nothing on it. No text, no icons; Sally wasn’t greeted with anything. Just a blank screen.

She sighed. “I think Rotor forgot to install the OS.”

“Oh no, there’s definitely an OS here.”

The noise Sally made in response to the sudden and unfamiliar voice could charitably be described as “not Mobian”. A second later the computer landed on her lap, and after remembering that she’d flung it straight up in surprise, sat bolt upright and glanced around the room for the source of that voice before it dawned on her.

Where once was a flat shade of blue was now the image of a brown-furred lynx in a lilac top, with black facial and bodily markings and no clear divide between her muzzle and the rest of her face; her long, jet-black hair was tied into pigtails held in place by beads, just visible near the bottom of the screen--the borders of which she was slumped against and clutching for dear life.

“Please don’t do that again,” she said; her voice was almost as clear as if she were a normal Mobian standing right next to Sally. “I’m sorry to have startled you, but--”

“So it was you that talked just then.”

The lynx attempted to correct her posture. “Yes; I don’t know who else could have spoken then. We’re the only two people in this room.”

“Y-yeah, but…” All this had left Sally almost visibly-reeling. “Are you, like--”

On the other side of the world, with this handheld actually being a transceiver? No; the lynx had reacted to Sally tossing it.

“An advanced AI,” was the answer. “My name is Nicole, and you are..?”

Oh. An AI. Well, that made perfect sense.

“Sally Acorn,” she replied, trying not to stutter too badly. “Technically Princess Sally, but…I…I don’t think that title’s of much use anymore.”

Nicole’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” When Sally didn’t answer right away, she braced herself against the screen’s borders and tried to get a good look at her surroundings--why Nicole felt the need to grip the screen would be Sally’s next question, but that wasn’t high on the priority list right now. “Isn’t this your home? Everything seems to be in order--”

“This isn’t my house; it’s Rosie’s--she’s an old friend of my family’s. You see…Mobotropolis--where my home was, and where most of the people outside lived--has just been taken over. We’re actually in Knothole Village.”

“Knothole? I know where that place is, in relation to Mobotropolis--aren’t you a bit too close? What if whoever attacked the city decides to come after you?”

“It’s a possibility, but I’d like to think that we’re not enough of a threat to waste any more time and effort on. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us. We’re just a bunch of terrified civilians huddled together in the woods…” Sally laid back down, resting the handheld on her stomach and angling it so that Nicole could still see her. “They’re probably got more pressing matters to attend to right now. Like patching up the gaping holes they left in everything.”

“Do…do you know why the Empire took an interest in Mobotropolis?”

“Their ringleader spouted a bunch of nonsense about aggressive expansionism. So I guess it wasn’t so much we caught their attention as just that we were in their path.”

Sally shifted around a bit and waited for Nicole’s reply, but there was none. Minutes passed by in complete silence, dragging on and on before Sally sat back up.

“You have some form of word processor, right?”

“I do. Why?”

“I keep thinking that I should take roll call sometime today…after getting something to eat, I guess.”

“You haven’t eaten yet? But it’s nearly eight.”

“Slipped my mind. Along with a lot of other things.”

Description
July 14th, 1993

“…all for the morning broadcast, folks. We hope you’ve enjoyed listening to what the brightest minds on Mobius have had to offer today; from here we’ll move on to the week’s top hits, followed by--”

Sally Acorn had left the radio on overnight, tuned to DZYP, and as always, it was one of the first things she heard as she woke up that morning. For a brief moment, she was in her own room at Castle Acorn, ready to clamber out of bed, go through her routine and rush out to spend the rest of the day with her friends--but her quarters were many stories up and it would be rather difficult for Antoine to walk past the window. In full uniform, no less, and with the forest right behind him.

Literally only a day ago, that city had been hers. What was left of it was now in the hands of some lunatic.

With that memory floating back, all her will to even sit up abruptly left her, and Sally just stared with glazed-over eyes at the ceiling of her Lil Bro’s hut. Her Lil Bro was curled up into a ball just on the edge of Sally’s pillow, instead of in his usual bed; she hadn’t seen or felt him climb onto his parents’ bed, so chances were he’d only been asleep for a few hours. She kept her eyes locked upward and tried not to think of the fact that Sonic was the only child to return from Mobotropolis.

Damn them. Sally was among the people who should’ve seen the Empire’s invasion coming, and they were all caught unawares.

If not for the need to relieve herself, she would’ve stayed in bed all day, maybe shut her eyes and pray that this was just some sort of fever dream--that if she closed her eyes long enough, it would all snap back and everything would be fine, and Tristian and Julayla would still be alive, and she would know where her family was. But Sally could still hear inconsolable sobbing outside, no matter what she did.

Groggily, Sally forced herself to sit up and leave the warmth of the bed, careful not to disturb Sonic, and trudged over to the bathroom. Today was going to be a very, very long day.

--

The moment Sally opened the door, its edge scraped against Len’s shoulder, and the hedgehog seemed to wake with a start, but when she turned to face Sally, there were no traces of surprise on her sullen face.

“My shift’s over?”

“What do you mean?” It was such a dumb question, but it was out of Sally’s mouth before she could realize it.

“Makin’ sure no one came by to finish us off.” Len slowly rose, and stumbled into her hut in a half-conscious daze, too tired to remember to shut the door behind her until after she’d taken a seat on the bed, with one arm already out of her uniform. Sally quietly closed it for her, and looked over the village with one hand still on the handle.

Sally hadn’t visited this place too often in the past, but she knew that it housed more than twenty people. Of those twenty, most were sitting outside, away from the huts; the people she was certain were villagers were nowhere in sight. All their group could really do was try to comfort each other over lost family and friends.

As soon as Sally could get a pencil and some paper, she’d have to interrupt them to do role call. Wonderful.

First order of business was to apologize to Bunnie, if she would let her. The rabbit’s hut was close by.

Sally got as far as hovering a fist over the door. Could she really face her best friend again after all that? She had to try, at least; it would never leave her mind if she didn’t.

One faint series of knocks later and Bunnie was peering at her from behind the door crack, covered in a blanket. “Do you want to come in?”

“I would prefer that.” Bunnie didn’t sound angry or even irritated. A good sign?

The inside of the hut looked and smelled the same, dark blue curtains drawn as they always were, but something had changed, something that Sally was aware of but couldn’t place her finger on--not just the clinking of metal on hardwood that had replaced Bunnie’s normal footsteps.

“Bunnie…” She couldn’t stop herself now. “I’m so sorry--I knew you were in the area Sonic and I were in when the bombs went off, but I still didn’t go after--”

Bunnie cut her off. “Sonic was with you.”

“Yes, but--”

“Ya tried to get a little kid to safety. Ah’d say ya did the right thing, Sally-girl.”

All Sally could do for the next few seconds was stare. “You don’t resent me?”

“As ah recall, it wasn’t you that forced me into that contraption.”

Bunnie’s next words might have been to ask Sally not to worry about it, or if Sally was keeping it together--whatever she might’ve said next died on her lips after Sally pulled her into a tight hug; the two remained that way for a few minutes, with the only audible noise the creaking of the floorboards and the soft sound of breathing.

“S-so…” Sally took a step back. “Can you still move around okay?”

In response, Bunnie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and brought out her metal arm from underneath her blanket. It was the first close look Sally had gotten at it; what little light the curtains allowed into the room reflected off of its smooth surface.

“Yeah. It’s…weird. Ah thought there’d be some trouble, but--everything works okay.” Her brow furrowed. “Ah remember Chuck mentioning that the first guy they ran through the machine walked like all his joints spontaneously rusted.”

“That guy looked like he’d been caught in a threshing machine beforehand…” Sally’d only caught a brief glimpse of the man in question as he was led to the roboticizer, but that image would stay with her for years.

“You done a headcount yet, Sally-girl?”

“I’ve got a rough estimate. Of the people who lived here, I know that you, Len, Sonic, Antoine, and Rotor made it back. Rosie never went out that day, and Amy’s over in Mercia. The rest I’m not familiar with.”

“Ah see…”

“Are you going to stay in here all day? I’m sure the others are worried--”

Bunnie gave a sort of awkward shrug. “Ah’m not sure if ah’m ready to yet. Ah’m still tryin’ to process everything that went down last night.”

“…I am too, I think.”

--

Back in the clearing, not much had changed. Antoine was outside now, sitting with his back against the wall of someone else’s home and staring off into the distance. His wounds had been patched up, though by who, Sally didn’t know.

Before taking a seat next to him, she waved slightly. “Can I sit here?”

“Sure.” It was only after Sally yelped in surprise did he think to add, “Ze grass is still wet.”

“Thanks for the warning…”

Whatever she had in mind to say to him, accidentally dampening her legs drove it out of her mind, and after several failed attempts to recall it, she decided against asking him anything.

“Will Len and Sonic be okay?”

“I--I don’t know. Not for a while, I’d imagine.”

“Len’s asleep right now, isn’t she.”

“Probably. Did she stay awake for the rest of the night?”

“Could have.”

“Are you just now getting up, yourself?”

Antoine nodded. “Obvious, huh?”

“I guess…”

There was a gentle breeze rustling the leaves around them, which on any other day Sally would have loved to sit and listen to if there was no official business to take care of. Today she was only vaguely aware of it.

“Rotor has something to give you.”

“He does? Where is he?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. He only mentioned it in passing early zhis morning, when Bookshire was making sure zhose bandages he slapped on me hadn’t already been bled through. Just ‘I have something for Sally‘. I don‘t remember if he mentioned anything specific, because I dozed off about a minute later.”

“I see…” Pause. “Bookshire?”

“Some raccoon who made it to Knothole with us. He said he was a doctor at ze main hospital.”

The only raccoon Sally could see was a middle-aged one sitting slumped over on a tree stump, unaware that she was staring at him.

“Okay. I’ll go find Rotor, then.” With a grunt, Sally forced herself off of the dew-soaked grass. Finding Rotor wouldn’t be too difficult, as the number of people in Knothole who owned a computer could be counted on one hand.

Antoine watched her head off to Rosie’s hut, and resumed counting the leaves on the trees directly in his line of sight--a hundred and fifty when he left off. Ordinarily the sort of tedious pointlessness that he would jokingly compare favorably to perimeter-checking duty, but it beat trying to answer the question of why his father wasn’t in the village.

--

“Hey, Rosie, is Rot--”

Rosie nodded before Sally could finish, and stepped aside to let her in. “I kept telling him that the only things on my computer are Solitaire and that knitting program,” she said as she shut the door. “But he insisted on looking through it anyway.”

“…Knitting program?”

“You know, the one with all these rows of blank rectangles, and you edit them to make a pattern.”

“Rosie, that’s Microsoft Excel. You’re meant to use it for spreadsheets.”

“Well, I’ve never needed to print out spreadsheets, so…” Rosie cast a glance down the very short hallway between the kitchen and the living room, presumably at the end of which Rotor was examining her machine. “He didn’t tell me if there were any specific programs he needed.”

Certainly not a web browser, because Rosie didn’t have an Internet connection. Come to think of it, did anyone in Knothole have one, or even a use for one? There were at least two set up in Castle Acorn, one with graphics and one without, and both had been so painfully slow that for once, trying to look things up at the library without aid of a filing system would have been preferable.

“Maybe he’s just trying to keep his mind off of things,” Sally muttered. “Like I…” She trailed off, and awkwardly stared at her shoes.

“’Like I’ what?”

Was it a good idea to bring this up now, and so abruptly? Probably not, but Sally needed to talk about it regardless; she just hoped Rosie would let her.

“Um--I overheard Sonic the other night,” she began. “Did he tell you about..?”

Though Sally couldn’t see it, Rosie’s face fell. “I can’t really say he told me, but…I heard what he said as well. Poor boy was convinced that it was his fault.”

The news of Julayla’s death would have hit Sally like a train then, if she hadn’t already been so numb. But she remembered what Sonic managed to yell between wailing sobs, and it weighed on her mind along with a thousand other things. And she didn’t know anyone else she could talk about it with besides her late teacher’s cousin.

Well…in theory, she could talk about it. In practice, Sally had no idea where to start.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“Yes.”

The two trudged over to the couch, with Rosie taking a seat next to the armrest so she could retrieve her knitting. Sally tried not to lean against Rosie, but found herself doing that anyway.

“It wasn’t Sonic’s fault,” she said after a long pause, long enough for Rosie to resume work on whatever that length of yarn was going to be. “It was mine.”

The clinking of metal against metal came to a temporary halt. “What do you mean?”

“If I’d been paying more attention to the Empire’s actions these past months, I could’ve let someone know, and they’d--”

“But it wasn’t your job to.”

Sally shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t have been taken by surprise.”

“Sally--”

“The city wouldn’t have been razed, I’d know where my family was, Bunnie wouldn’t be half-robot, and Tristian and Julayla and a hundred others would still be alive. I was actively involved in the kingdom’s politics, ‘my job to’ or not, because I didn’t want to ascend the throne blind. Look how well that turned out.”

She felt Rosie shift a bit. “What good will it do to blame yourself?”

“I’ll remember where I screwed up.”

“I meant--” Rosie sighed, and fiddled with her knitting needles. “The city’s already gone. Does it really matter whose fault it was now? It won’t change anything.”

“Maybe. But it does matter. If we’d watched the Empire like hawks and still got jumped, that would be one thing. But Daddy told me they weren’t as big a threat as we thought, and I believed him and slacked off on keeping an eye on them myself, and now…” Sally slumped forward, so far that her forehead and knees were almost touching. “J-just look at us.”

“King Max said--?”

A door was opened and shut, and Rotor emerged from the hallway, hunched over slightly with visible creases under his eyes, messenger bag bouncing off of his leg with every shuffling step. Rosie and Sally both looked up to face him, but his eyes were locked firmly on the hut’s exit.

“Anything?” Rosie asked.

“Nothing useful. Sorry.” The noise that Rotor made, some sort of cross between a sigh and a whimper, was…troubling.

He made his way across the living room, hesitated, and doubled back. “Almost forgot.” Reaching into his bag, he retrieved a small device, lightly dropped it onto Sally’s lap, and was out the door before she could ask him anything about it.

Sally turned the device--a handheld computer with a hinged cover--over in her hands a few times before setting it aside. “I wanted to talk about Julayla, but…just blathered on about myself. I thought I was better than that.”

To which Rosie shook her head. “Don’t worry about it right now. Tell me what you need to tell me.”

--

Three hundred and thirty-nine leaves counted when Rotor plopped down next to Antoine. Finally, something to keep the two halves of his brain from consuming each other in a desperate attempt to get away from the boredom.

“So I take it you didn’t find what you were looking for.”

“No. Rosie really didn’t have a lot of programs on her machine.”

“I told you she didn’t use it much.” Antoine straightened up and stretched as best as his injuries would allow, wincing at the pain both from them and trying to move his stiff joints. Staring at the trees must’ve made him lose track of how long he was sitting against that wall. “So who else here has a computer?”

Rotor gave a shrug so brief and limp that his friend almost didn’t notice it. “I don’t know. And I’m not gonna break and enter in order to find out.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“Didn’t you say we weren’t the only group to es--”

“And zhat zhere may be more Knothole survivors zhan are currently present. But I assume zhat whatever you have in mind can’t wait for zhem to come back.” Trying to keep eye contact and limber up at the same time wouldn’t be so annoying if Antoine had healed up first. “If you have to enter zheir houses uninvited and zhey bitch about it, well, tough shit. It’s not like you’re going in zhere to strip ze place down to ze floorboards.”

“No, but…eh. It just feels wrong.”

“You were going to try and contact our allies and see if zhey were aware of what happened.”

“And annoy the person whose privacy I inv--”

“Rotor. Forget it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want someone just randomly walking into my room and hijacking my computer, so--”

“Zhat’s just someone being an asshole. You’re not.”

“But if I could send out a distress signal or something without coming in uninvited, and I didn’t because I was too hasty to--”

“Ze Empire only needed one day to crush us. Zhey somehow did zhis without anyone noticing zhem approaching ze city even though ours is such zhat no one’s been able to sneak up on us in decades. Zhese are not ze normal circumstances under which one usually invades someone’s home, and if no one tries to call for help, ze Empire will have little trouble in finishing us if zhey so desire. And zhey’re an Empire, so zhere’s a good chance that if we try to run, we’ll end up in more of zheir territory.”

“I--”

Antoine thrust an open hand in front of Rotor’s face. “Can I assume zhat zhis conversation will just go on and on unless one of us cuts it off ?”

Some fidgeting, followed by a shrug. “I guess so.”

The temptation to lay down on the grass was strong, and Antoine would just do that if it wouldn’t result in jolts of pain through his limbs. And getting wet. “If it helps you to stop worrying…if anyone pitches a fit, tell zhem zhat I authorized it. And if zhey don’t like zhat, tell zhem Sally did, too.”

“But she didn’t. Not yet, anyway.”

“Zhey don’t have to know zhat.”

“Sally might try to correct me, thus revealing that one or both of us lied to the--”

“Rotor?” Antoine was staring him directly in the face. “You keep worrying about things like zhis and you’ll never get anything done.”

“Eeeh…”

--

Rosie hadn’t asked Sally how long she planned on staying in her room, and that was fine by Sally because she didn’t have an answer. She’d spent about ten minutes lying on Rosie’s bed and staring directly at the ceiling, occasionally turning her head to observe the rest of the place. The handheld computer had been placed in a spot where Sally’s shifting-about wouldn’t accidentally bump it onto the floor; it wouldn’t do to damage it before figuring out what was so special about it.

Rosie’s bed was overlaid with several layers of hand-made quilts sandwiched in-between dark-coloured sheets, with a few pillows of varying size piled against the headboard. When Sally was very young, she’d determine what type of mattress someone had by jumping on it--the springy ones were the best, though trying to actually sleep on them afterward was rather unpleasant, if Elias was to be believed. There wasn’t much of a bounce when Sally laid down on this one, though that may have just been due to all the blankets.

Directly across from the foot of the bed was Rosie’s computer, a less powerful version of the ones used in the Castle labs; there was a CD rack right next to the monitor, but it only contained about one or two programs, the rest of the slots being taken up by music discs--all bands Sally was unfamiliar with, either simply from not walking around the related store aisles, or being too young. She could distinctly remember Rosie coming home with a stack of them, positively giddy that she could finally afford to listen to her favourite music without the medium degrading into annoying pops and scratches within a month.

There were drawers on either side of Sally, presumably with clothes contained in one and yarn in the other--she wasn’t about to go rooting through them without permission. The haphazard clutter of assorted belongings of Rosie’s was dusty in some areas and not in others; from the bed, Sally could only see a few uncovered spots. Particles of dust danced about in what little light the curtains let through and settled into the thick carpet, which appeared to be discoloured from age but otherwise unstained. The entire room had this odd smell to it that was sort of perfumey, but at the same time not, as if the source of that fragrance hadn’t been present or used in a long time.

…that little handheld wasn’t going to inspect itself, was it?

Sally reached up and retrieved the device, checked it for a power button, and flipped it open. Its screen took up about all of the top half, with the bottom taken up by a tiny keypad and some buttons of unknown function. There was no fancy start-up sequence; the screen went from black to light blue in a second…with absolutely nothing on it. No text, no icons; Sally wasn’t greeted with anything. Just a blank screen.

She sighed. “I think Rotor forgot to install the OS.”

“Oh no, there’s definitely an OS here.”

The noise Sally made in response to the sudden and unfamiliar voice could charitably be described as “not Mobian”. A second later the computer landed on her lap, and after remembering that she’d flung it straight up in surprise, sat bolt upright and glanced around the room for the source of that voice before it dawned on her.

Where once was a flat shade of blue was now the image of a brown-furred lynx in a lilac top, with black facial and bodily markings and no clear divide between her muzzle and the rest of her face; her long, jet-black hair was tied into pigtails held in place by beads, just visible near the bottom of the screen--the borders of which she was slumped against and clutching for dear life.

“Please don’t do that again,” she said; her voice was almost as clear as if she were a normal Mobian standing right next to Sally. “I’m sorry to have startled you, but--”

“So it was you that talked just then.”

The lynx attempted to correct her posture. “Yes; I don’t know who else could have spoken then. We’re the only two people in this room.”

“Y-yeah, but…” All this had left Sally almost visibly-reeling. “Are you, like--”

On the other side of the world, with this handheld actually being a transceiver? No; the lynx had reacted to Sally tossing it.

“An advanced AI,” was the answer. “My name is Nicole, and you are..?”

Oh. An AI. Well, that made perfect sense.

“Sally Acorn,” she replied, trying not to stutter too badly. “Technically Princess Sally, but…I…I don’t think that title’s of much use anymore.”

Nicole’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” When Sally didn’t answer right away, she braced herself against the screen’s borders and tried to get a good look at her surroundings--why Nicole felt the need to grip the screen would be Sally’s next question, but that wasn’t high on the priority list right now. “Isn’t this your home? Everything seems to be in order--”

“This isn’t my house; it’s Rosie’s--she’s an old friend of my family’s. You see…Mobotropolis--where my home was, and where most of the people outside lived--has just been taken over. We’re actually in Knothole Village.”

“Knothole? I know where that place is, in relation to Mobotropolis--aren’t you a bit too close? What if whoever attacked the city decides to come after you?”

“It’s a possibility, but I’d like to think that we’re not enough of a threat to waste any more time and effort on. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us. We’re just a bunch of terrified civilians huddled together in the woods…” Sally laid back down, resting the handheld on her stomach and angling it so that Nicole could still see her. “They’re probably got more pressing matters to attend to right now. Like patching up the gaping holes they left in everything.”

“Do…do you know why the Empire took an interest in Mobotropolis?”

“Their ringleader spouted a bunch of nonsense about aggressive expansionism. So I guess it wasn’t so much we caught their attention as just that we were in their path.”

Sally shifted around a bit and waited for Nicole’s reply, but there was none. Minutes passed by in complete silence, dragging on and on before Sally sat back up.

“You have some form of word processor, right?”

“I do. Why?”

“I keep thinking that I should take roll call sometime today…after getting something to eat, I guess.”

“You haven’t eaten yet? But it’s nearly eight.”

“Slipped my mind. Along with a lot of other things.”