Chapter Fifty-Nine. Rory
Rory
It took an hour and a half for Rory to outline all the things he’d tried, and another forty minutes to explain the self-transition idea and how it translated into practical terms. He’d never laid it out like that, nose to tip.
Every attempt, every failure—the last four years of his life, outlined on the back of a lab report.
And Wynne kept asking questions—how and why and for how long.
Picking apart each attempt and stringing it back together again.
By the time Rory was done, his throat hurt and he was so well past exhaustion that he was wide awake again.
“So, you’re saying this self-transition is working,” Wynne said, reaching out to turn on the lamp. Outside, evening had melted into night.
“Yes. But like I said, the things I tried before seemed to work, too. Until they didn’t.” He swallowed. “You didn’t see it. That last time—it was weeks’ worth of deterioration happening in one night. We went to sleep with Daye feeling fine, and when we woke up”—he shuddered—“she was falling apart.”
Wynne grimaced. “God.”
“Yeah. And also,” Rory continued, “there are caveats, stuff this solution might not cover yet. Like the core structure—I don’t see a way for Daye to fully replace herself. And I promised Daye to find a way to give her a voice without using animals.”
“But that’s not possible.”
“I know.” Rory put his face in his hands. “But she was so angry. What else could I do?” He rubbed his eyes. “Though I probably have a decade or so to figure this one out. I’m sort of hoping she’ll change her mind by then.”
“Okay. So, putting aside the voice thing for now, it sounds like what you want is mostly an insurance plan. A backup, in case anything goes south.”
“I … I guess,” Rory said.
“And it seems to me that you did everything possible to change Daye. Honestly, your thoroughness is a little disturbing.”
“I know.” Rory thumped his head back against the couch.
“But,” she continued, “I don’t think you ever tried changing Daye’s environment.”
“What?” Rory straightened.
“As you said, you changed everything possible about Daye, but this is a two-part problem. Daye is withering in reaction to her environment. Change the environment, and you take away the cause for these changes in Daye.” She splayed her hand in a voilà gesture.
“B-but,” he stammered, “but the thing Daye is reacting to is not her environment, it’s time.”
“A,” Wynne ticked on her finger, “what is this nonsense with time not being an environment? I thought you were acing Professor McGill’s class.
And B”—she added a second finger—“it isn’t time that Daye is reacting to.
It’s seasons. Plenty of her components can function just fine for years in the right environment.
It’s the seasonality strain that fucks her up—time, yes, but also the temperature, and the number of daylight hours, and the amount of rain and all that.
” Wynne tapped her knee with two fingers.
“With a greenhouse, you can have strawberries in February. Think about it as building a greenhouse for Daye.”
“How?”
“That’s what we need to figure out. But I already have a few ideas. The most obvious one is anchoring our land to a single season. It’s big enough to sustain an anchoring, but isolated enough that it wouldn’t affect anyone else.”
Rory stared at her, dumbstruck. “This … this can work. This can actually work.” He got up. Paced. “How have I never thought about it?”
“You probably would have, eventually. I do have a few more years of experience,” Wynne teased. “And we still need to figure out the how. Time can be pretty fiddly.”
“Thank you.” He stopped and took her hand in his. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t believe it. Though I still don’t get why you’re helping me with Daye.”
“Because you’re my brother, you idiot. I love you.
” She squeezed his hand, once. “And I’m the one who brought Daye into your life.
As ill-advised as it was.” She muttered that last part quietly enough that Rory could ignore it if he chose.
“This is my mess. The very least I can do is make sure you’re not miserable because of it. ”
“I love you, too,” Rory said, feeling weepy again, though he didn’t think he had any more tears left.
“I know,” she said. “You’re not alone, Rory. Even if you keep acting like you are. Now, what do you say about takeaway for dinner? Or should we go the simple route and get pizza? After all, we have a lot of planning left for tonight.”