Mel sighed and stretched out on his own bed. One night on the couch was quite enough for his liking, especially with the midnight drama that had unfolded yesterday. He could afford a half hour lost in a good book before he drifted off to sleep, hoping that the strange dream wouldn't repeat itself. Amber had asked him to stay, but he knew that in the circumstances it was unlikely her mother would approve.

He reached out to straighten his duvet, and then he was in the meeting room, with Violet staring across at him.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, and then glanced around. Jack wasn't there, and neither was Alex. They were alone for now. "Has something happened to Jack?"

"No, he's resting. And Alex is looking through the library, trying to find anything about your dream. But I need to talk to you."

"What about? Have you worked something out?"

"No, it's about that... dream. Or whatever it was. I had one too. I was in this city, everything was made of like marble and diamond, with tiny lights inside. Like the one you described. And Nico was there too. It seemed so real, I've never had one like it before. I reached out for... I was doing the dream thing, you know? Pulling people into a shared dream. That was my power back then as well, so it really was me. And then it was like falling down a hole, and then I'm here, and I'm calling for you. I didn't mean to, it was just like that part of my spirit was already coming back, and I knew I needed you."

"I wondered why you didn't warn me before calling me," he shrugged, "I was in bed already, at least. And I think your dream's the same as mine. It doesn't feel like prophecy, or like magic. It feels like a real memory, somehow, but a little bit different. Because your spirit actually went there, to wherever forgotten memories go, rather than just remembering it."

"Could you actually be going back in time?" Jack's voice surprised both of them, they hadn't felt him return. "Not just remembering, but really being there? Would it be possible to change history like that?"

"No," Violet answered, quite sure of herself. "Because when I was Roudi, I didn't remember being me. So even if it is the past, we can't change it. We'd never know what we had to change because you can't remember the future."

"It could be travelling in time, I wouldn't rule it out," Mel nodded, "But not in any way that's useful. I don't think we could ever know, or do anything about it."

"I don't think it is, anyway. I was using a computer there," she ignored Jack's incredulous stare, "Like, it's made out of these glowing crystals that are right through the walls of the city. Made with alien technology, and it had a heart. Like, it had a spirit I could connect to, and I could use it to extend my powers, like I could see every spirit on the planet, all at once. I think somehow the library is in that computer, and we're still using it without even knowing how. It's supposed to be a backup, I think. I was putting my memories in there, and other people we cared about. Like, when important people die, I was supposed to take their spirits and put a copy of all their memories in the computer, before they go off to... wherever they go. It's a backup, in case something happened to us again."

"Again?"

"I don't know. But that was what I thought. I was scared because a demon had attacked a month before. I'd been in the gym every day, working out so hard I was hurting myself, and I wasn't the only one, but I still had to get up to the pinnacle chamber to make sure we had emergency backups."

"This supports the theory of ancient technology," Alex joined the conversation, reappearing as she spoke. "I have to wonder how we could have developed something so powerful at a time when modern science thinks we hadn't even evolved. We know how long it has taken for ancient humans, cavemen, to develop to the modern age. If we've had computers the size of a city, and the science to make diamonds, before that, then how long has humanity really been around?"

"Who says we were human?" Mel finally brought himself to say it. "Evolution is a thing, we know that. If we're really talking about millions of years ago, we can't have been the same race we are today. We could have been carrying the same souls from one body to another, all the way back to some kind of monkeys. Jumping between bodies could even explain the time – or times – when there was a gap between incarnations."

"I was thinking..." Violet started, but she didn't have the courage to say any more. She knew that her idea was idle speculation in any case. The thought had been on her mind when she came back, but she didn't know if it was her own speculation, or Roudi's, or something that her ancient ancestor actually knew. She couldn't believe it herself, so there was no point sharing that with the others.

"How do backups work?" Mel broke the silence. "I mean, when you have a backup of something on the computer, you've got a disk somewhere with the data on. Or tapes, or something, if it's really old. How do you back up a computer the size of a city, and have nobody find it?"

"You... I don't know if this is true, right? It's where Roudi imagined sending the data to, but I don't know if it's actually where they are. Like how future-us could remember some of our memories and think about a stork bringing babies. But I thought about sending the backups to other computers, in space."

"If there's a city-sized object in orbit somewhere, I think NASA would have found it by now."

"I imagined them being in Saturn's rings. Hidden where there's thousands of other bits of city-sized crystals. I really hope that's true, because it means we really thought about where to put things so they'd last."

"Why is that–"

"Because," Alex interrupted Jack's tirade before he could start, "if our ancient selves thought so far ahead, they must have planned for the situation we're in now. There must be a way we can find the Princess, someone who could do that wouldn't leave a huge hole in the plan."

This chapter is dedicated to twilight, with many thanks for all the support you've given me on Patreon. To everyone else, you should thank twilight for giving you an extra chapter; or consider sending me $1 so you can see even more :)