Sakurako looks over the continually building up sections of what is soon to be her new home. The gleaming panels of her main residence and the research lab domes are already a majestic sight. Builder drones and robots carefully and precisely place the framework of the domes with machine-like effectiveness. Already, several rooms of her residence have already been constructed and erected inside the residence dome. And the front entrance's overhangs and the main foyer already are impressive. Although quite un-decorated as of yet. Sakurako walks the empty and somewhat dusty halls.

The heat is off in the still embryonic building, and the warming functions of her white cloak barely keep her comfortable. She can see her breath in the air. It's about 40 degrees within the compound. She looks out from a still open hallway into the main dome, and watches 50 busy robots placing carefully fabricated hinopolymer and eufiber struts down, while placing plates that would become a wall, or floor. Like a well oiled team they continually work. Exceeding her expectations.

She walks out, and starts to head back to the dock dome that will house her ship and jet when complete. It's clear polymer sections allow filtered sunlight to come in. Although It is still quite open and plenty cold, it's beauty is apparent. At least to an engineer's mind.

She walks by some storage domes, where she has placed some equipment to be moved to the labs later when complete. Their positive-pressure design keeps them inflated and outside dust and what not out. They're practically sterile. Perfect for Sakurako's needs to protect her fragile equipment. She walks in to the largest of the storage domes, into an airlock room. She hangs up her cloak, and strips down to put on a clean-suit. She walks in to a separate alcove where a blast of air removes any contaminants.

She walks in, and checks her equipment. Everything is still sealed in their sterile boxes. A good thing she thinks, since that the people she'll have help move later on won't be thinking as much about her gear as she does. She takes some time to look around before heading back to the airlock. She changes back into her clothes, the same she wore at the symposium, and puts on her cloak one more, before stepping out.

She closes the airlock door and carefully checks the systems to make sure everything closed properly. She holds the clean-suit she used, no longer so useable for inspections in the storage dome's clean environment, and decides it's now best to be used for painting later on.

She makes her way into the dock dome, and to her ship. She walks in through a side door-hatch, and sighs. Already she's started boxing all of her earthly belongings. The ship itself is starting to look more and more like a cargo-hold and not the proud gem in Sakurako's crown. She makes her way up to her quarters, taking a mag-lev elevator to the residence level.

She walks into her room after making her way through a long corridor. Her room's doors hiss open, and she slowly walks into her room. She haphazardly tosses her cloak unto the floor, hearing it's heating elements switch off, while hanging the clean-suit over a chair. She then jumps back-first unto her bed. Looking up at the ceiling of what will be just her own quarters when taking a leisure cruise. She never intended her ship to be a residence for so long, but it did it's job.

"Everything is going smoothly..." Sakurako thinks, sighing. She adjusts the neck of her blouse a bit, while opening her blazer.

"If it's not pouring over Daedalus proposals, it's baby-sitting my robots. At this rate, they might howl for a union... Huh?"

Sakurako feels a presence. Another nova.

"I wonder who that can be..."

She's been around other Novas all day. "Who'd be intruding now?" she wonders.

She's sort of worried. Deathwatch has been too quiet. While she still has the bracelet Ronin gave her for emergencies, she is in no mood or preparation for a fight.

All she can do is wait.

Walker sat down crosslegged in a forest clearing, it was time to try and pay back a favour to an old friend. Walker concentrated and focused his perceptions downward sharpening and attuning them. Everything on the macroscopic level, the trees, the sky, the blades of grass, everything started to bend as if seen through water going down a plughole. Down Walker spiralled, past the bacteria and dust particles that his enhanced perception enabled, past the level where his enlarged node could perceive quantum energies as a visual impression, down and down like Alice following white rabbits until reality dissolved. The universe stopped and become nothing more than quantum wave functions that could be followed much like the forest trail that had led him to the clearing in which he sat.

Maintaining his focus Walker searched out the path that contained his own destiny and followed it forward, watching as it expanded becoming larger and more varied as the possibilities multiplied. Here, here, some part of his mind seemed to call and Walker expanded the view outwards, the wave functions collapsed into concrete reality and Walker received/perceived a vision of the future. As frequently happened some part of him wondered, was he just observing this future or actually creating it, fixing it into being out of the The answer remained elusive, indeed did the question itself make any sense? Regardless of such seeming paradoxes Walker perceived himself taking his leave of Sakurako in 3 hours, 41 minutes and unlike previous glimpses of this course of action, safely. For both of them. That was the important thing.

Walker snapped out of his altered state, regardless of the subjective time that appeared to have elapsed, in real terms, in the objective world that everyone shared, it was no more than a few seconds. Walker visualised the distant place and deliberately refrained from sketching a shape in the air as an aid to this visualising, time to throw away such baseline crutches, take up thy bed and walk, he mused with a deliberate sense of irony. As the visualisation solidified in Walkers mind, so a gateway expanded out of nothing in front of him, an orange glow framed a picture showing the deck of a ship, Walker stepped through.

On reaching the other side of the gate Walker froze. Two small but menacing looking robots seemed to have stopped moving across the deck and turned to face him. Walker's immediate thought was that his glimpse of the future had proven inaccurate, like most nova powers it was a conscious skill and as such, some times you screwed up with it, especially if it was a skill you used infrequently. Next thought was that he hadn't been shielding his quantum expression as carefully as he had imagined, some how they had found him. Then it occured to Walker that these robots some how had the look of something made by Sakurako, ahh, security robots then. Wonder what they're armed with? Hey, not a bad little train of thought for a few milliseconds, Walker complimented himself. Finally a thought made it through to his conscious mind. I don't feel any danger. Walker had observed in the past that when he was in immediate peril there was a distinct feeling. It was hard to explain exactly what this feeling was, it wasn't like his conscious attempts to see the future but it had proven time and again to be reliable. Especially of late. Therefore he refrained from a dive backwards through the warp gate.

Walker considered what to do next. With a bit of concentration his MR-Node told him that there was one other nova on board, Sakurako he deduced, who was staying in one place. The robots started to move as he thought, apparently patrolling the deck, making an odd ultrasonic humming as they went. Oh well thought Walker and he took a few steps forward, the robots froze again and turned to face him. Walker stopped, still there was no sense of danger and after a little while the robots moved on. It dawned on Walker exactly what these robots were and he started giggling. Fuck, spooked by cleaning bots, he laughed, they were only trying to decide whether to clean me, put me away or ignore me.

Walker started looking for a way into the ship. When he found one he started moving towards the other Nova he had sensed on board calling out loudly, "Sakurako, Endeavor, YOOO-HOOO!! It's me."

Sakurako had been listening. Her cleaning bots are also very well placed spies on her ship. Sometimes she'd send a whole platoon of cleaner bots out just to scope the happenings on deck. Because they're unarmed, cheap to make, and well equipped with microphones and cameras, they are easy to position for surveillance. Under the cover of simple janitors.

Their behavior was programmed well. Stop, turn to face the potential intruder, and then move on, while occasionally keeping a weary eye.

She saw Walker for the first time in the flesh through them. It had been quite a long while. And she still owes him a trip undersea. She pipes up over a loud speaker.

"Head down the hallway to your left. To the room marked "Common Deck Meeting Hall", I will meet you there. We can sit in comfortable surroundings. If you get lost there are some signs that can guide you and maps you can call up. I will be there shortly."

She gets up from her bed, and re-adjusts her blouse before buttoning up her blazer again. She really wanted to change out of these clothes she wore to her meetings with Daedalus, but she shouldn't keep walker waiting on that. She dashes over to a separate mag-lev and heads down to the common deck, and heads to the meeting room to meet Walker.

She somehow beat him to it, since she took the elevator that went directly into the Meeting Hall. But, just as she steps off and towards a table, the main doors to the hall swish open. Walker and Sakurako are in perfect view of each other.

She immediately goes around a table, and runs toward Walker.

"Walker! It has been so long!"

Her mood and expression changed dramatically. She felt a flood of emotion and friendship she hadn't felt in a while. The last time was with Ronin at the Symposium. Or perhaps even more so with Ronin at the Pow-Wow. She glomps unto him with quite a hug. But then slowly breaks off.

"Er... Sorry Walker, I just hadn't seen you in quite a while..."

She turns sheepish, embarrassed at her... childish display.

Walker looked at Sakurako's sheepish expression and pointed a finger accusingly. "Don't you be giving me any of that reserve nonsense", he mocked, before closing the distance between them and returning Endeavor's hug.

"It's good to see you too kido. I really have missed our little get-togethers. Sorry I haven't been able to make it here sooner, stuff kept getting in the way." Walker said with sincerity right next to Sakurako's left ear, then letting go his bear hug and stepping back slightly he asked with an impish grin. "So I guess you're just dying to know what I've been up to for the last year? Tell me what everything you've heard, I hope it's all been good."

"The unfortunate thing is, Walker, I haven't heard nothing but what you've been writing on the forums. You've been... rather quiet."

She smirks.

"I mean, what, we not good enough for ya?"

She pokes him in the ribs with a friendly jab.

"Quite honestly, you fell off of the planet for a while. I quite honestly heard nothing from you. Or about you. For at least a year."

"Well in a way that's kinda good", Walker said nodding his head slightly. "Though in a way it's kinda bad too coz it means that I've certainly made some powerful and spooky enemies." There was a certain emphasis laid on the word spooky stressing the spook part.

"The good part is, I'm not that wanted, they aren't gonna start throwing Team Tomorrow at me. S&T still probably want me for questioning but they aren't plastering my face all over the seven o'clock news and they haven't been turning over my associates looking for clues." Walker looked pointedly at Sakurako at this point. "I was thinking that the large part of my usefulness to them was over anyway."

"The bad part is, of course, that when S&T bust people they usually make it as public as possible. You know the sort of thing, make an example of 'em, keep the others in line." Walker made a stern face such as a school teacher or conservative politician might make. "None of that's happened here and yet I'm still being hunted. I know that for a certainty. Haven't got any evidence for it," Walker shrugged slightly, "but I know" he tapped his extensive and veiny forehead. "So who-ever it is after me they're being pretty circumspect about it."

"This is the reason I dropped off the earth, as you put it, I was running for my life. literally off earth a lot of the time. Then when I stopped running, I spent the most part of that missing year learning stuff." Walker grinned, here is the part where she thinks I've really lost it, he thought. "Oh yeah and joining the Teragen." Walker said this last part dismissively as though it wasn't important but knowing it would be what Endeavor would probably find most interesting.

"Ever thought that you following Teras would make you a target of those that either want to keep the status quo, or by those that want to keep Novakind down?"

Sakurako's comment is sincere. And suprisingly... accepting of Walker.

"I've figured eventually every Terat would eventually be a target of someone." She says with a sigh. "We're both in the same boat now, if you're being tracked. I know, bad pun, but the fact is there. So now, we just gotta deal with it as it comes. Frankly, if it's S&T they probably want all your specs so they can lock them up in some warehouse somewhere."

Her facial expression sours.

"Leave it to the Baselines to fear the gifts their gods give them. Even if they aren't deities, and only given that lofty position by superstition."

Walker considered Sakurako's words OK, she took that better than expected, good. Then he spoke, "It's not the case that being a follower of Teras made me wanted. It is because I was wanted and I needed protection that I joined up. In truth I was headed that way regardless, certain members of the Teragen had already made efforts to enlist me".

Walker reached out suddenly and took hold of Sakurako's left hand in both of his. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a few moments following Endeavor's destiny to a point several months hence. He shook his head before saying, "No you're not going to get any flak from this, at least not in the next few months." Walker opened his eyes and stared directly into Sakurako's. "It's not that I am being tracked as such, just hunted for, they aren't gonna know I'm here, though I should say that it probably wouldn't be wise to say that we've met. Keep that under your hat, maintain a fiction that you haven't seen me in person, just to be on the safe side." Walker grinned slightly, "Do you really think I'd do anything to put you in danger? That's why I've left it so long before coming to see you, if they were conducting surveillance on you to see if I turned up then it has ended by now." Walker spoke with certainty as he let go of Sakurako's hand.

"I've spent a lot of time lately looking at the future determining exactly when it would be safe to see you, this is why I've turned up right now, today. Besides when you disappeared off", Walker made a hand motion to indicate something going sideways, "Then came back I listened to your story. I just wanted to repay your trust with my own." Now it was Walker's turn to look sheepish. "Sorry I was unannounced but once again the reason was so that I didn't put you in any danger from whom ever it is chasing me. I'm not exactly convinced that S&T is wholly behind this, S&T violations just made a convenient cover. I don't know how to make nuclear reactors, or asteroid colonies, or decryption programmes and according to the S&T warrant that is what they were after." Walker paused to let this sink in.

Sakurako waves off his worries.

"Walker, There is no problem. I have learned to trust you like a family member. Quite honestly, you're a bit of a father figure to me. You are more than welcome to stop by at any time needed."

"I am also aware that you would take the utmost care in not endangering at the very least my comfort or at most my life or others. You are a very considerate man. At least in terms of being a considerate Male."

She smiles awkwardly.

"It is sort of hard not to use baseline syntax if you were raised by it."

She sticks out her tongue playfully, then she gives him a playful slug on the shoulder.

"You're a great guy, Walker."

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence love," Walker grinned. "Now, shall we sit down? I've got quite a lot to tell you, it may take some time." Walker indicated the chairs which were scattered around tables in the large hall they were in. "And don't worry about using Baseline syntax, I won't be offended. Old habits die hard, sometimes even I forget myself and do filthy stuff like breathe." He added with mock horror and an ironic intake of breath as he sat down.

After they had both got themselves comfortable in their chairs Walker asked Endeavor, "So where would you like me to start? Getting kicked out of the Daedalus League and raided by S&T or joining the Teragen after a spell on the run?"

"Start with Daedalus. After all, I just got contracted with them. I need to know more about them."

Sakurako steepled her fingers. Showing interest. And amusement from Walker's current Jovial nature.

"Well first off I must say, now that Kovsky and myself are no longer involved with the Daedalus League there is nothing untoward about them at all." Walker threw back his head and laughed, slapping his thighs, after a few moments he adopted a more serious tone.

"On returning to Earth after my decade wandering space I was interested in focusing my attention on developing my social skills, they were a bit rusty after all, I soon discovered a little quantum trick I could use. It started off as a general ability to help a group achieve its goals, a synergy or gestalt if you like, but then blossomed into something else, I became a snake-oil salesman supremo. I could take coals to Newcastle, sell snow to the Eskimos and promise you all the gold you could eat. No matter how silly the thing I tried to do, The League followed, truly frightening." Walker paused considering his words, yes it was frightening.

"By selling your own ideas you sometimes cut off other people and their, maybe better, ideas. You risk becoming the emperor walking around naked, everyone agreeing that your clothes are a lovely shade of green. So when I decided that what the Daedalus League should be doing was setting up an asteroid colony using what-ever technology was appropriate, that's exactly what the Daedalus League did." Walker rolled his eyes upwards as if saying oops but he couldn't keep a slight smirk off his face.

"The appropriate technology that we're talking about here was a novel type of fission power plant. If you're setting up a colony in the asteroid belt complete with labs and workshops then you need a power source and that far out, solar panels just won't do. There's not enough sunlight, so nuclear is really the only way to go. This power plant could take any radioactive material and burn it down the decay cycle until you were left with a non radioactive element. It was something that Kovsky invented. WOn a slightly different note when the S an' T raid came down some decryption algorithm thingies that Kovsky had come up with were confiscated as well. These decryption programs were developed as part of the Space Telescope project. You remember that? 20 kilometres across, built to receive across the electromagnetic spectrum, out in Jovian Orbit? The League started building it early 2013, unfortunately it'll now take longer without my help," Walker shrugged regretfully.

"The idea was to subject all the information received from the telescope to these decryption programs whether it was radio waves, visible light, gamma rays, the lot. The aim was to see if there are any little green men out there sending a signal. All studies so far have focused on radio wave lengths and very specific wave-lengths at that, this would have been full spectrum. Kovsky developed these powerful decryption algorithms having previously proven mathematically that it would be statistically impossible to determine signal from noise unless you were familiar with the encoding method used in any signal, plus you're dealing with an awful lot of potential information. These algorithms, Kovsky called them, pseudo-quantum-computational-meta-languages, were an attempt to solve the problem, an attempt to be able to decrypt any encoding system. Don't ask me how they worked exactly, Kovsky said they were the next best thing to having a quantum computer and could reduce time to crack codes drastically, hence their utility. For all sorts of code cracking problems. I think that was the problem for S an' T, they thought that rather than spying on the heavens we would rather be spying on stuff down here," Walker snorted derisively.

"Anyways, S&T were really only after Kovsky, I was guilty through association, by fencing this technology and some irregular accounting. I made sure that no other Daedalus League members, nor the League itself, were implicated. In fact I made it easy to pin all the blame on me, I made sure all the traces led back to me and the companies I started to launder money gained from the sale of asteroidal metal. We needed money you see, an awful lot of money, to get those things that couldn't be made from the materials we had to hand and we didn't want to admit to what we were up to. We sold a lot of asteroid metal, mainly nickel, which is rare enough on earth to get a decent price, plus some platinum and tantalum we'd found, which bought in an even better price, being rarer still."

"As to why I didn't want anyone to know what we were up to. I had this dream, you see, of setting up the colony, maybe declaring independence and making a brave new world. We were out of anyone's jurisdiction, except maybe the UN under the terms of some old agreement, so why not?" Walker raised his eyebrows and held his hands up, palm outwards, as if asking Sakurako to consider how reasonable and ever-day it all sounded.

"Was going pretty well too, we had a habitat called Minos with labs, quarters, gardens, recycling, the works, and all in the interior of this metal rich asteroid we were mining." Walker went on at length describing the colony, its polished metal walls, the robots relentlessly and patiently chipping away at the minerals contained within the asteroid, the workshops that could churn out yet more robots and the aquaculture system they had set up to provide food and oxygen.

"I think that even if S&T had found out at that stage they would have been content to protest but leave us alone," Walker said thoughtfully, "Something else came up, my friend Kovsky developed a rather unusual condition whilst he was at the colony. He went into what Terats call Chrysalis. I can give you more on that later, but what's relevant at the moment is that Kovsky was unable to delay his Chrysalis sufficiently to be able to let me know what was going on. So when he turned into this sphere lurking almost invisibly in the middle of one of the labs we had set up in Minos, I naturally panicked and started posting stuff all over the Opnet trying to get some sort of clue as to what was going on. You may remember some of my questions a year or so ago on that board we both frequent? My guess is that that is what blew the cover and sparked the interest of who-ever it was that raided Minos."

Walker leaned forward towards Endeavor, shuffling to the edge of his seat, "Science and the media have a couple of terms for Novas like me, Mega-Perceptive and Mega-Cognitive. It's based on the ability to form patterns in the mind out of sensory information, to seek out meaning that the Baseline would miss. Like the fictional Sherlock Holmes we can deduce a hell of a lot from the sparsest of clues." Walker frowned in concentration and said what came next slowly, stressing each phrase and tapping his finger on the table, "You know, I've had time to think about this, and to me, it's elementary, that raiding the asteroid colony, for banned technology, was simply a cover, what they were really after, was Kovsky's Chrysalis." Walker paused having realised that he had, rather rudely, gone on for ages without allowing Endeavor to get a word in edge-wise. "Sorry, went on a bit there. Feel free to ask what ever you want," Walker said reclining backwards into his chair.

"The question on my mind then, is what happened to Kovsky, and the base? Then, what happened after that?" Sakurako looks gravely concerned. She knows Walker got into a heap of trouble, and Kovsky as well. Plus being out in space makes things much harder to escape from. Especially for someone in that sort of Chrysalis.

"I would assume then that S&T has a few Utopia hounds whipping them in which ever direction on this." She sighs, to let Walker continue.

"The base got completely and utterly trashed by the Nova team that dropped by to pick up Kovsky. Well it wasn't entirely their fault, Kovsky built a fail safe into his powerplant that I didn't know about," Walker put his hands together as fists before splaying his fingers apart as if something had just exploded in his grasp.

"He dirty bombed the colony, irradiated all that metal with a mini gamma ray burst as the reactor overloaded. Kovsky is like that, if he can't have it no one else can, maybe S&T were right about the dangers of his technology. As much as I was playing games to get what I wanted, Kovsky was playing me like a fiddle, he's admited as much. His plan was to use the base as a secure place for fellow Terats to under go Chrysalis, thus boosting his status within our..." Walker paused briefly, selecting the right word, "...Movement. At the time he didn't trust me enough to tell me this though, I was after all, not a Teragen member."

"When the raid came down there was only me on base watching over Kovsky. There were seven of them that hit the base, six of them were Novas. The baseline and four of the Novas were wearing armoured space suits and carrying some sort of big-fucking-gun. The two unarmoured Novas were very scary looking. My guess is that they used a warper to get in, one of the armoured Novas I suspect. Luckily Kovsky had insited on some internal security and at my insistance Kovsky had retrofitted some Kuro-Tek security robots with foam guns. Very useful in zego-gee plus non-lethal. Unluckily The rading party encountered these robots near the area where the mining robots were and obviously feared the worse. They lashed out with everything they had and one of the Novas hit out with some sort of EMP blast which trashed a few base systems into the bargain. This in turn started off Kovsky's fail-safe, the computer cheerfully announced over the intercom in English and Russian that the whole place was due to self-destruct in 30 seconds. I was patched into the security cameras and saw what was going on."

"I had enough time to say, Oh Shit, before attempting a quite difficult feat. I made a warp gate capable of moving through space, that could envelop a stationary object. Kovsky's Chrysalis got sent back to Earth and I followed swiftly behind. If they had any sense the intruders did the same and got the hell out of there. I wasn't really too concerned about their safety," Walker grinned.

"I'm not even sure that Utopia was behind this supposed technological regulation raid. Here's a question, have you heard of the term Sphinx as it applies to mega-brainy Novas?"

"They're the ones the Conspiracy theorists like to rant about, right?" Sakurako knows different, but she's... being careful. Ever since being approached by one to join their ranks, then refusing their offer, she's been quite nervous.

"This is getting deep, Walker." Sakurako steeples her fingers, her hair shading her eyes. A posture that could be considered either sinister, or deep in thought.

"Some people abuse their talents, Walker, from what I hear of Sphinxes, they're one of them. Outright meddling in people's lives directly or indirectly as they did is both low and dispicable. Especailly when using a baseline in a hazardous environment."

"OK, so you've heard the theory, here's another theory, these Sphinxes motivated by a combination of boredom and ambition play games against each other." Walker looked carefully at Endeavor he could tell she was uncomfortable about this turn in the conversation. It was a matter of familiarity and keen perception, Sakurako knew more than she was saying.

Walker decided not to press the point too much and instead continued, "I made a chance remark once, that a few rounds of game play against Sphinxes might prove instructive. It was considering the rumours of manipulation behind the scenes, the Sphinx hypothesis, that made me come up with my little colony plan. So maybe I myself had dreams of becoming one of these Sphinxes. Maybe I reasoned that if there where Novas out there doing that sort of thing then they needed to be countered by someone who could see the future, was just as manipulative, could play games well but had respect for life. Of course I have no firm evidence that any such things as Sphinxes exist. My one source on the matter was an individual who was prone to playing mind games anyway." Walker smiled in fond remembrance.

Walker changed the subject, "Of course on the other hand most of the Terats I've spoken too have the opinion that Utopia was behind the raid and that the Chrysalis was destined for the Rashoud facility at Bahrain. From what I've heard Utopia have gone to extraordinary lengths in the past to capture any Chrysalis they find out about. Maybe the Abberants are right, maybe there is some dark heart lurking at the center of Utopia, truly I don't know one way or the other. Something fishy was definitely going on with that raid though and whoever carried it out has some degree of influence over Utopia's Technological Regulation Department." Walker proclaimed with sincere belief.

"There are always puppets, even in something as public as Utopia. If it's that Proteus we keep hearing about, or the "Directive", or whatever." She knows that Walker knows that she held back.

"I haven't just heard of Sphinxes, Walker." she puts flatly. "I was approached by one to join their "game" as it were. My mother was one and this one wanted me to carry on her legacy. My answer was a blunt NO. At first I thought it was all in fun." She sighs, half from guilt, half from regret. "Then I saw the peices they used in their games."

"I've been reluctant to say anything up to and past my most trusted friends and relations about this. I'm honestly scared of them, Walker." Her expression turns to concern. "We should not talk about them further."

"So, we're at the point where you're about to get yourself and your friend out of Dodge..."

"Right, well I warped Kovsky to Earth and quickly followed. By this time I had established that what had happened to him was some sort of Teragen thing. As I said before the Teragen where already making overtures to me so I was able to get in contact with them pretty easily. I turned the matter of Kovsky's Chrysalis over to them, they seemed best placed to look after him given what had happened."

"My intuition and glimpses of the future convinced me it was a very good idea to keep moving so thats what I did. Mainly on other planets and moons, every now and then coming back to earth. S&T put the frighteners on my family and The League so that really put paid to my relationships there," Walker had a sorrowful air about him for a few moments.

"There was one thing though, one thing that my mind kept coming back to again and again, Kovsky's Chrysalis. It grew to be an obsession, I simply couldn't get it out of my mind. What was it exactly, by what method or technique did a Nova become one, how did it relate to my quantum impressions of it as a singularity of quantum energies, why did it not show any signs of Kovsky's taint?" Walker spoke with a real sense of wonder as if he were asking these questions for the very first time.

"So my mind full of questions I made contact with the Teragen again, I even offered to join. They were somewhat reluctant to help answer my questions and even with allowing me to join given the heat they knew I was under. As I understand it they were still seeking Kovsky's Chrysalis using some sort of ESP or Telepathic Scanning. My guess is that one of the invading Novas got a good lock on him and me. When ever they discovered my location I could simply move, but I had some narrow escapes. Nova powered intuition isn't always one hundred percent." Walker used his usual finger tap to the forehead to indicate his paranormal powers of perception.

"But I needed help had a bee in my bonnet and I always have utility as a free taxi service anywhere in the world and beyond." He said grinning ear to ear at Sakurako in a meaningful way.

"So, pretty much right now you have bloodhounds on your tail. And after you leave, I can expect a visit from Agent Smith and his clones, then?" Sakurako says, straightening her blazer with a tug.

"What's on my mind now, is that have the Terats allowed you to join up, or are you an independent Terat?" She says this with a bit of curiosity. "I'm sorry if I'm prying about that."

"I did indeed join the Teragen. If the Teragen carried cards then I could be said to be a card carrying member," Walker conceded.

"I very much doubt that Agent Smith and his clones will turn up after I have gone. What would be more likely to happen would be that while we were sitting here talking they would turn up, armed and dangerous. I'm the first to admit that my powers to see the future do not always ensure me immunity from misfortune but I made as sure as possible that nothing bad is going to happen to you because of me coming here today. Maybe If I had visited yesterday things might have been different." Walker looked Endeavor squarely in the eyes as he said this allowing her to read his expression perfectly.

"Some techniques I learned from my benefactor in the Teragen have helped me avoid their attentions almost completely. I am virtually unable to be captured now, to capture a thing you must observe it. I am like the Quantum Cat, I am in the box state indeterminate. In fact I am the cat in the box digging my claws into the lid stopping any old Tom, Dick or Harry trying to get the lid open. So please don't worry about your safety Endeavor, I said earlier that I'd never do anything to put you in danger and I meant it."

A thought occured to Walker, "And for Mals sake don't you go looking for these people, Endeavor." He waved a warning finger at Sakurako a stern expression on his face, trusting her earlier coment about being like a father figure would give the words and gestures added weight.

Shall I burn a little juice to make these words stick? He thought, Not with dear little Sakura. It would be interfering with the destiny of a fellow Nova anyway.

"Who? Your bloodhounds or your peers? Your peers I do know I'm not supposed to just search out. They'll find me when it's time. I'm in no hurry. As for your bloodhounds, they sound like a bunch of pit-bull terriers. In this case, it would not be in my best health interests to look for them either." Sakurako leans foreward. "You may be a father figure, Walker, but that doesn't mean you have to worry about me like one."

She sits back. "Relax. I've gone through that phase of tilting at windmills. Looking for some righteous cause to latch on even if it was foolish. I've learned that it's better to observe first. As for this situation, one I already know not to look for, and the other... I wouldn't tangle with even if my life depended on it." She smiles. "Although, and perhaps I'll pay for it by saying it... I've been waiting to prove myself to the terats that I'm worthy of someone to latch on to me as a mentor. So far... no one has ringed my phone, saying it's time to go down the rabbit's hole."

Sakurako looks out the window of her ship, as a group of robots put in another clear panel in the dome, ratcheting it in place after welding supports like a spider making a web. "Within my heart... something tells me it's time to grow... it's time to learn what my potential and my abilities can truly achieve."

"I think you know what I'm getting at... Walker... I don't care what anyone else thinks that are sitting outside of this. I'm ready... And prepared for the worst..."

"I meant that you shouldn't go searching out the bloodhounds, that would be extremely dangerous my friend," Walker said cautiously. "If you want to go and find the Teragen, I don't see what's stopping you. As I understand it a Nova such as yourself would be expected to work out that the Teragen had the right idea and go seek them out. Perhaps that is why no one has given you the call you were expecting. I should say at this point as well that it is not my intention to convince you to run off and join the Teragen. I am here for personal reasons, to tell you my story because you are my friend. I hope that doesn't disappoint you."

Walker appeared to examine Endeavor briefly before continuing, "I'm curious though, what do you currently know about the Teragen? You've mentioned the words, it's time to grow, Terat and Mentor, what do you understand about these terms in the context of the Teragen? Also what do you understand by the term Teras? You seem to be somewhat informed about the movement already."

"It never dissapoints me to hear from you Walker. I never expect anything more." Sakruako says, before losing herself in thought for a few moments. "From what I know of the Teragen, at least as Humans call them, they are a radical Nova rights group with loose at best association with each other. Teras on the other hand is the Nova belief of being able to rise above their limits and achieve a greater understanding of being a Nova."

"From what I gathered, a Nova most of the time is picked... It would seem my assumption is wrong. But there's no "Fraternal Order of Teras" lodges to become a member of." She says with a kidding, but respectful tone. "What I do know is that for a while, as the new Terat is trained or taught about the way things are, that there is a Mentor... someone who helps them along with their first couple steps. After there is a suitable plateau reached where the student can go on their own, they're allowed to explore personal aspects of their existance as a Nova."

"This is what I know. And it is very little, for the rest is conjecture that serves no purpose nor has any verifiable basis in fact."

Walker paused for a few moments considering how to best describe the situation as he saw it. "You could say that the Teragen is a loose association, a collection of organisations or even a large fractious family. The common theme would be that members of the Teragen consider Novas are different to Baselines. In fact, not just different, the belief is that the Nova has transcended the Baseline," Walker nodded his head satisfied with his words, "Of course, not every Terat would put things in those terms but that description will do for now."

"As to what the Teragen does, that's impossible to pin down simply," Walker leaned forward his eyes shining, talking animatedly, "Certainly there are those in the Teragen that stand up for Nova rights, doubtless you have heard of Nova Vigilance. You may have also heard of the Cult of Mal and the Pandemonium. So you see the Teragen is a radical Nova rights movement, a religion or spiritual tradition and a social network. It is also an information network cum political movement, a place of refuge for high taint Novas and a lot more besides all that."

"All sorts of Novas call themselves Terats, the term Terat most properly means a member of the Teragen. Several ex-members call themselves Terats though as they still hold central philosophies in common with Teragen members. There are those who have never been in the Teragen but have simply read the Null Manifesto or are convinced that they are superior to Baselines, they call themselves Terats as well. To be fair to them, if they are sincere in their beliefs, they have every right to consider themselves Terats under a broader idea of Terat-ness. Conversely a very narrow definition of Terat might be, somebody who follows the paths of Teras." Walker leaned back and stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"Your definition of Teras is on the mark when you talk about, rising above human limits and achieving a greater understanding, by the way. You could say that Teras is the core philosophy of the Teragen. You are also somewhat correct when you talk about mentors, to really be on the paths of Teras a mentor is required at first. What happened with me is that having learned about Teras and chosen a path, my mentor, as you put it, approached me. There are some things that are best taught directly, you need to see and experience them in action," Walker nodded to himself once again.

"If these concepts and techniques of Teras were just explained, or you tried to figure them out by yourself you would be sitting there a long time," Walker added as an after thought.

Sakurako laughs.

"Indeed. It's not really a thing you can't pick up from a library and learn on your own. Trust me, I've tried to figure it out, and I'm still stumped."

She leans back in her chair, the dying light of sunset begins to reflect off of some of the buildings in the Tokyo skyline, filtering through the dome windows and the windows of the Hikari Maru.

"I'm not even going to kid myself. I don't know jack about this nor will I on my own. It's just that something about it... I don't know... I guess it rings true here."

She points at the center of her chest.

"I can't explain it, but when I read the bits of the Null Manifesto and whatever I could cobble up regarding the way of Teras... It makes a resonance with me. I am not Human. I am a Nova. I have needs that the Baseline world can no longer give. I must find my way. Then perhaps, Humanity can march in lock step with me to their future."

Walker couldn't help grinning at Sakurako's laughter, he had to admit he was pleasantly surprised by her words. "You know, Endeavor, when I came here I was half expecting you to throw me out on my ear once I said I was a Terat," Walker told her, "Maybe I should have foreseen things a little better."

"I guess in my heart I had come to a similar conclusion to yourself, I had come to accept that Novas were different to Baselines. At first I thought, so what, different doesn't mean inhuman, maybe we are a new species of humanity," Walker shrugged, "By the time I joined the Teragen however I was starting to realise that in fact the separation between Nova and Baseline was a whole world of difference. Nova definitely does not mean human in any sense. Or rather where Novas are ultimately going is something beyond humanity, something that utterly transcends what it means to be human, maybe even something totally beyond human comprehension." Walker gazed upwards into thin air as if contemplating a yet more fantastic concept still. He sighed slightly and bought his gaze back down to look at Endeavor.

"It is a noble aim you have of bringing humans along on your travel, helping them to find their future, I think that certainly humans and Novas have things in common. However it seems increasingly likely to me that the journey we Novas have embarked on is one that will have to be walked by us alone. I'm speaking largely metaphorically about this subject here but, almost by definition, if humans were to come along with us they would cease to be human any more."

"Well then..." Sakurako sighs as she straightens herself in her seat. "However the chips fall, as they may... At least I think that's how it goes..."

She smiles.

"Walker, again, you didn't have to worry. I've learned not to trust what the press says beyond sports, stocks, and weather. Even with stocks I take that with a grain of salt." She winks playfully. "At one time, I was probably slipping toward Utopia even... but... Knowing now what I should have known then, I'm glad I didn't. After what Saimhe has gone through and what not, my relationship with Humankind is thread-bare. I still hold out hope that where we go, Humanity will soon follow, but I'm afraid even after meeting with my peers, that it may not be possible."

She looks down at the table.

"But I still have hope... Then again, I might be the strangest Terat around, eh? At least to the Media. Here'd they expect me to become some sort of technological terror, and here I am playing trailblazer, expanding my own, and the world's knowledge. Walker, you compare the way of Teras to a religion? I sure hope there's no babticm involved or some freakish ritual."

She giggles a bit, lightening the mood with some humor.