And then Dick’s voice came through the gadget.
“Baby, you should see what’s going on in the sky right now.
Sage says INĀNE showed up.
Only this fat dumbass doesn’t get why.”
Jackie lowered her head and whispered quietly:
“I think… I might know.”
She looked at Blindy.
“It could be because of Slippery Grandpa Pete.”
Blindy snapped around.
“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!”
Jackie continued, calmer now:
“I’m saying—the Cosmic Void Entity showed up because of the Pikaia.”
Dick’s voice cut in, tense:
“Jackie, Baby… you said everything was already accounted for in history.
That them being in the past doesn’t break anything.”
He glanced at the sky.
“Then explain this…
why the hell is there a blob-shaped hole up there?
And why the fuck did INĀNE show up?”
Jackie took a deep breath, glanced at Shiori and Blindy, then pointed at her smart glasses.
“Guys, I’m talking to my partner. They’re outside…”
She shifted her focus back to Dick.
“…I don’t know for sure.
But I think… this might be a coherence drift.”
She caught Blindy and Shiori staring at her blankly and let out a tired huff.
“The self-consistency laws got a little… wobbly.
Not enough to break reality.”
She shrugged.
“Let’s just say—Slippery Grandpa Pete became a temporal artifact.”
Dick blinked.
Blindy blinked at the exact same time.
“WHAT?!” they both said together.
Jackie stepped aside slightly, like she was about to give a lecture.
“Listen. I’m not a quantum theorist or a Nobel Prize winner in time paradoxes.
This is just a guess.”
She pointed at the aquarium.
“Pete might exist in two states of history.
In the aquarium… with Blindy.”
Blindy nodded immediately—too fast, too eager—and Jackie continued, her tone sharpening:
“And most likely… somewhere in a museum on Terra.”
The pause was cut by Phoenix’s voice.
“Pikaia gracilens was first discovered by American paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1911.
Hundreds of fossils were later found, many of which are preserved in museums. For example, in the National Museum of Natural History on Terra.”
There was a brief delay, as if he was refining the conclusion.
“The probability that the First Officer retrieved the exact same Pikaia that later became a museum specimen… is extremely low.
But not zero.”
Jackie nodded, satisfied.
“For us, it’s nothing.
We laugh, we move on.”
She pointed at the hologram.
“But for INĀNE, there’s probably a tiny crack in causality now.
A grandfather micro-paradox.”
Dick exhaled heavily.
“Zeros, you son of a bitch…
had to grab the one worm that ends up in some goddamn museum.”
Outside, the Author, standing next to Dick, snorted quietly and added:
“There were probably millions of them swimming around…”
Phoenix went silent for a moment, processing.
Then carefully said:
“Captain… theoretically…
there is a way to eliminate the micro-paradox.”
Blindy’s head snapped up.
“What—?”
“If Pikaia gracilens is returned to the Cambrian period… to the point of extraction…” Phoenix continued, like he was reading from a manual on temporal anomaly correction, “the probability of restoring causal consistency may—”
Blindy didn’t even let him finish.
“WHA—WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS? FUCK NO!”
He stepped away from the terminal, then immediately changed direction like he remembered something important, stormed into his cabin, and planted himself beside the aquarium—like he was physically putting himself between them and the idea.
“No—no, we ain’t doin’ that.
No ‘sending him back.’
No—uh—time bullshit—none of it.”
He jabbed a finger at the tank.
“This—this is Slippery Grandpa—this’s fuckin’ Pete.
MY gramps—goddammit—
and HE’S STAYING RIGHT HERE.
With me.”
Phoenix’s voice returned, measured as ever.
“But Captain, this could prevent—”
Blindy cut him off again, faster this time, like the argument had already been buried.
“Nope.
No—no—nope.
Not happenin’.
Not even—like—not even a tiny bit.
TOTAL FUCKING NO!”
He leaned closer to the glass, dropping into a softer, conspiratorial whisper:
“Don’t worry, gramps… I—I ain’t sendin’ you nowhere.
You’re good here. Right here, with me, yeah?
I can see it—look—look—smirkin’, you ol’ bastard.
You like it.
Yeah—you love it here.”
Pete drifted lazily, completely unbothered.
Jackie let out a quiet huff.
“Even if you agreed… it’s already too late.”
Blindy blinked, thrown off for half a second.
“Don’t—don’t give a shit if it ain’t—
but I’m—uh—
I’m curious… why?”
Jackie shrugged.
“Pete already existed here.
People saw him. He became… uh… your grandpa.”
She stepped closer and nodded toward the tank.
“Even if you send him back… he won’t become that same Pikaia that was supposed to die half a billion years ago and turn into a fossil.”
Her voice softened slightly, as if laying down something final:
“History already changed.”
Blindy stared at Pete.
Pete lazily bent into an S-shape and released a small bubble.
BLUP
Blindy nodded immediately, like that settled the entire debate.
“See? Did you see that, Jackie?
He’s—yeah—he’s against it too… Like—totally.
You saw that, right? That—that was a no.”
Shiori rubbed the bridge of her nose, exhausted.
“You’re all such baka…
We’re arguing with a worm…
about the structure of time.”