<div dir="ltr"><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-031cdd44-7fff-f632-89be-2adc0904bb89"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Mission: The Flames of Purity</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Day: 16  </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Stardate: 2445.09.16</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Gamma Quadrant – The Planet, Abandoned Shrine – FO Lt(sg) Ailynn Bracken - 1002)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Ailynn, was getting antsy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Time was winding its unerring ebb toward finality.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">However, this time, finality might actually mean precisely that for a sizeable number of people. Numbering in the Trillions.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Standing at ease, her conscious, daytime thinking mind was utterly focussed on her current situation. There was little to nothing that she could do about this at the moment, so she allowed it as a constant. ~Did you exchange a walk on part in a war...for a walk on part in a cage?~ an ancient song lyric crossed her mind obliquely.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Her hindbrain however, was ramping things up, it envisioned a game. It was perhaps the hardest game ever constructed in the human mind.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Jost and herself were playing chess, a game that both players excelled at. It was a difficult game to truly master , and in her imagination they were playing it in three dimensions, across two universes.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Ailynn’s intellect up until a certain point had been stretched to the limit, the verbal games with Jost, trying to find a way out, failing, failing again. And then remembering the presence of her tricorder. Suddenly, the game had changed. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">She’d introduced a fourth dimension.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">One that her wraith counterpart had no idea about, no true comprehension of. Sure, the machine in front of her was literally built around it, but a child knew what a sweetshop was, but had no idea what damage it may do.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Suddenly, a tingle-spasm down her right leg made her grunt, involuntarily.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Covering it, she stretched and made the same noise, sounding bored.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The tingle however, had signified something, her last few pieces were now on the board, or rather one of the boards. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">One that didn’t exist yet.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Ailynn closed her eyes as she relaxed, the feeling that she was the centre of happenstance flowing around her. She wouldn’t be so grandiose to say that she was instrument’s fate, that she was Lachesis, a judgement to all. But even decades later, she looked on this pivotal moment in her life, and had no better words than she possessed that day.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">She considered her mental chessboards.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~mate in three~</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">She smiled, a cold, hard smile, the smile that you never want to see in an opponent.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~I’m going to win.~</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Reply none)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Lora,serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Posted by Mark)</span></p></span><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"></div>