“Remember, you wouldn’t want that heart to end up inside the worm. She died to give you that heart. Isn’t that right? The real one, not the illusion. We figured it out by allowing the System to conduct a deep scan of all relevant data.”

            The Vven’s face opened up. A blast. The voice went dark, same as the guardian’s humming. It didn’t matter if they were still here. I had to reach the worm. It wasn’t coming to me. It didn’t want to eat me. There in its eyes, I could see it: her.

            “If you really remembered her,” I screamed, stumbling towards it. “You’d do it! You’d eat me!”

            The guardians came hurtling in, and were met with the Vven’s breath. None survived, yet there was always more.

            “It must be hard, right?” The voice asked, emanating from the surface of the Terminal. “Living with that guilt, we mean. She died so you could live. Her core was much too little to support long term operations, but it held this long, didn’t it? Almost a miracle. Inconceivable, almost. A near nil chance of survival on such a power source.  But, if you used that gift to undo everything, well, that would be more than unsightly It would be…”