The answer to all questions

With nothing disastrous having happened, you decided that it was safe to allow Emilia to return. You still weren't really sure why you were tolerating her personal involvement when all your previous efforts had been geared toward complete secrecy. Maybe it had to do with the fact that with everything else you'd done, you were dealing with large organisations that would take substantial time and effort to bring under complete control; with King Enterprises, it was entirely embodied in a single middle-aged woman who posed no threat to you.

Before you teleported her back, you activated your matter reorganizer. With the warehouse no longer serving any purpose as such, you turned it into a cozy cottage, a place where you could see yourself living, for that matter. Somewhere quiet and out of the way, where nobody would disturb you.

The sitting room was dotted with comfortable armchairs, and a fire crackled in the hearth. The juxtaposition between the **** limits of science and, you now knew, magic that you embodied and the rustic setting you had chosen made you chuckle as you sat down.

Emilia appeared already sitting in another of the chairs.

"I take it that whatever let you do this is something I never picked up on," she said.

"Surely you knew that the military was hiding a trove of alien technology."

"I did," she admitted, "but I could never figure out a way to penetrate the base's security. I take it that you had."

You nodded. "We got lucky." You gave a brief explanation of what the aliens had intended. "It sounds like something out of an old comic book."

"It does indeed," and despite the **** fear she was still feeling, Emilia managed a small, genuine laugh. "But what do you intend to do with it?"

You shrugged. "I don't intend to wipe out humanity, or anyone else, for that matter. Why should I need to? If I really wanted to bring a population to heel, I have far more effective means of doing so."

Emilia grimaced, the implications of what you'd done to control her so easily having already been processed by her sharp mind.

"Might I ask what you found in my meagre collection?" she said. "It was my life's work, after all." Her smile was faint. "I guess this means that in some small way, I got to be a part of Project Inside Out at last."

You nodded sympathetically, feeling a bit sorry for the woman. Emilia King had left Hideki just when Project Inside Out finished reorienting toward a focus on producing marketable medical technologies. Records from the time that you'd found indicated that if she hadn't left, she likely would have been the eventual test subject for its true purpose of fusing a human with both a regenerative gel and a protective bodysuit; instead, that part of the project had been delayed for quite some time while Zoe Hildebrand and Chloe Walker found another suitable subject in Emily Lockard.

"To be quite honest, there wasn't much," you said. "Well, there was quite a lot," you amended, "but very little that did not simply replicate in some other fashion something which I am already able to do."

"I see," Emilia said. "I should have figured that nothing I found would be especially unique."

"On the contrary. You seem to have uncovered what could rightly be considered the greatest treasure of all time."

Emilia brightened slightly. "What is it?"

You rubbed your hands. Smoke billowed from your cuffs, flowing toward another chair. It resolved in the form of a third woman. She was breathtakingly gorgeous, dressed in a sheer, diaphanous robe. Some sort of strange, ethereal energy crackled around her, so powerful that even Emilia King, ordinary human that she was, could detect it. To your enhanced senses, it would have been overwhelming--except that this being, you knew, was merely a part of you.

Even so, she still had a will and consciousness of her own. She could not oppose you in any way, but you hadn't integrated her into your gestalt. You could, if you so chose, and still might, but for now you wanted to hear what she had to say, and you wanted Ms. King to hear it, too.

The genie--that was what you were certain she was--looked from you, to Emilia, and back. She was silent for a long moment.

"I see my failure is utterly complete."

You and Emilia looked at each other, then back at the genie. "Your failure?" you asked.

"Juno Ternion." The genie's mouth pointedly did not smile. "Mistress. The one who was never intended to be. The one who should never have existed. The one who must be erased from history--except that I am now yours."

You looked at Emilia. Her look of confusion mirrored your own.

"And Emilia King." This time the genie's smile was sad. "My should-have-been Mistress. The one for whom fate went wrong."

"I think," you said, "that you should start from the top, beginning with telling us who you are."

The genie nodded. "My name is Hala. I am the Empress of all djinni."

"Hala." Emilia looked thoughtful. "Something to do with the Moon and halos, if my Arabic isn't too rusty."

"Just so."

"You said you are the Empress of all djinni," you said. "If that is so, why are you here, in an ordinary lamp?" You produced the dirty oil lamp that had contained Hala before you absorbed it into yourself.

"I am here because of you, Juno. Your existence, as you are now, was never meant to happen."

"In what way?"

"Certain things are unpredictable. At any point along the path to your becoming what you now are, there were multiple points of failure. Zoe and Chloe might have rejected bonding with the human Emily. Tina or Lina might not have been accepted by you in your larval state."

"But those went off without a hitch." It was Emilia who had spoken.

"In this timeline, yes," Hala agreed. "But then unlikelier events occurred. The joining with the Phase Binder, for instance. A point of unknown branches. In many it becomes what you thought it would, Juno. In others, it fails to work at all. In yet others, it leaves you permanently out of phase with reality--exactly what you most feared."

"But it did none of those things," you said.

"Yes," the genie agreed. "In this timeline, one of the rarest events occurred: it turned every part of you into a machine vastly more powerful than it itself was."

You nodded, and gestured for the genie to continue. Hala obliged.

"At the military base, you might have been delayed longer, whether for being unable to enter, or by the guard commander, or even because you got careless, took fire and the base went on a full lockdown. In any of these cases, it would have bought time."

"Time for what?" you asked.

Hala waved the question away, clearly not ready or willing to answer. "Instead you made your way, rather quickly, to the purpose of the base. A fleet not of this world trapped under its surface."

"Where I attempted to breach the ships."

"And when that failed, you fused with them, despite your **** to try. Yes." Hala nodded. "If the incident with the Phase Binder had gone differently, you could not have done what you did."

"I could have opened myself up, hidden it away inside of me. I still would have possessed infinite interior space."

"You would, but merely secreting the fleet away would not have allowed you to use or understand its technology. Only because you could fuse nanites, on an individual level, with entire ships were you able to take full advantage of the discovery. The Phase Binder as Yabusa had made it could not have accomplished that."

"When was this?" Emilia asked, curiously.

"Less than an hour ago," Hala said. "Much of the time between when you lost track of Juno Ternion and when you met her was taken up with her masquerade in the military base."

A realization dawned on Emilia's face, but she said nothing.

"And then you came here, Juno. You committed one more theft--a needless theft--and came here, to the final source of anything that could rival you." Hala smiled. "Or so you thought, at least."

You filed that away to ask about as soon as possible.

"Emilia was cataloguing a rather interesting artifact. Interesting not only for what it was, but for how it had come into her possession."

Emilia nodded. "It was that lamp, Juno. The one you hold in your hands. It appeared, out of nothing, about an hour ago. I was making notes about it from then until you arrived."

Hala shook her head. "If only you had touched it, Ms. King. Just a single brush--an accidental brush--of your finger against its side and all this could have been averted."

"What would have happened then?" you asked.

"I would have been bound not to you, Juno, but to Emilia. As I said, I am the Empress of all djinni. I possess supreme power to reorder all of reality, but I do not involve myself except at the direst need. To an extent, I can choose the parameters of my own servitude. In this case, I would have appeared to my would-have-been Mistress and offered her a single wish." She turned sad eyes on Emilia. "I would have explained what was happening, and how, while she could certainly wish for anything she chose, it would be best if she wished for some part of this chain of events to break. How allowing you to continue to roam free would threaten everything that was, is and will ever be, and how altering history itself was the only way to stop you. How if she wished for anything else, her wish would ultimately prove futile."

Emilia nodded slowly. "I understand."

You also nodded. "If I had been further delayed, anywhere, if I had been unable to obtain the teleportation technology, any lengthening of the time it took me to get here, the chances of Emilia accidentally touching the lamp would have been that much higher."

"I have not always been as careful as I wished to be when handling my artifacts," Emilia said. "When I touch one by accident, I am usually compelled by fear not to resume work for a week at least."

Hala shook her head. "Yet in this case, that one incidental touch would have saved all of us. You were too careful, Emilia."

You looked a question at Emilia.

"Given the explanation I have heard, and I have no doubt I would have heard a fuller one had Hala's desired events come to pass, I would have wished for your undoing, Juno. Your existence at minimum threatens and more likely renders irrelevant everything I hold dear."

"That it does, Emilia," Hala confirmed.

You knew you should have been angry at the idea that someone could have wished for you not to exist, but you did not. It was instead a strange calm that you felt, something to which you were unaccustomed. It was a truly serene calm, the calm of someone who was so utterly secure in who they were that they saw no need to challenge anyone who might propose otherwise.

Hala clearly picked up on it. "The serenity of true security. The calm of true power. The peace, Juno Ternion, of ultimate Godhood."

"Godhood?" Emilia spoke sharply, but you just sat there. The word felt right. Godhood.

"In this timeline," Hala said, "Juno Ternion has become truly omnipotent, now that she has absorbed my power into herself. I am no longer at liberty to choose how I serve. My magic is entirely at her disposal, to be used solely at her whim. She does not even need my consciousness to make a wish; whatever she wills be done will be done."

Emilia looked at you, clearly wanting to continue, but unsure if it would upset you were she to keep probing. You nodded assent.

"You said that the wheels of fate went wrong for me."

"They did. Your grandfather's ****."

"He was supposed to have lived?" Some small, sad reflection of hope gleamed in Emilia's eyes.

"No. His **** was foreordained. Nothing could have prevented it at that time. But the manner of his ****, Emilia, that was where fate went wrong for you."

Emilia nodded slowly. "Because his **** was so traumatic, it made me unwilling to investigate the collection fully. Had he died in another way, one that had not so scarred me, I would have been more willing to properly examine my artifacts."

"And then, no doubt, you would either have found something that could have prevented Project Inside Out from progressing so far--out of pique, or self-recrimination for having left, perhaps?--or found something that could have disrupted Juno after she had formed."

"Or found you," Emilia concluded.

"You said I thought it was only here that there was anything that could rival me," you put in, remembering something Hala had said.

"That is certainly true, Juno, though you could not have been so certain at the time. With me as part of you, nothing can challenge you. Your power is secure and eternal."

"But let's say you weren't here, Hala. Let's say you never came here at all, never interfered. What then?"

"There are other djinni. You have my knowledge within you; you know all of them. You command them directly."

"Juno," Emilia said, "you aren't--"

"I am," you cut her off. "I am not like you, Emilia. I will not brook even the slightest rival."

With those words, every genie in existence vanished, wherever they were. Their vessels were fused into you, their essences incorporated into your being the way Hala's had been. You didn't bother to make any of them manifest. There was no point.

"Emilia," you said, having further used Hala's powers to ensure that nothing else remained in existence outside yourself that violated ordinary precepts of reality, instantly reversing millennia of progress by countless civilizations across the universe, "you are a fundamentally decent person. You don't always do the right thing, but you do more often than not. You would have wished to destroy me." A wry smile crossed your face. "Perhaps it would have been for the best if you had."

You shook your head. "Emily Lockard was a decent person, too. But when she fused with Zoe and Chloe, when I fused with Tina and Lina, something changed. Power corrupted me, Emilia. I became more focused on my own desires and cared less about the greater good. When I was alone in space with Kelly Lancer, I started down this path and could not bring myself to turn back."

"So there you have it," Hala said.

"There it is," Emilia said sadly.

Hala stood, genuflected before you, head held down. "Mistress, I am Hala, Empress of all djinni. I am at your command for whatever you may will. Speak your wish and I will grant it, whatever it is, whenever you wish it."

You thought for a moment, then stood up, went down on one knee facing the genie, cupped a hand under her chin, brought her eyes to meet yours. "Stand, Hala. Your power is mine, now. I do not need you as a genie, and I ask no obeisance from others." You looked from Hala to Emilia, back to Hala, to Emilia again. "Come with me." Your words were merely a request, not an order, but they followed behind as you walked out of the former warehouse.

A wave of your hand transformed the area from a dense forest with a single small clearing to a sunny sward. Another wave and a grassy mountain rose out of the ground, the cottage on a cliff midway up, overlooking the towns where Hideki and Yabusa were headquartered.

"Your magic is strange to me, Hala."

"You are fundamentally a creature of science, Mistress, not magic. Your existence would not have been possible without some unknowing use of the arcane, but you are rooted in scientific principles."

You nodded. "I accept the Godhood." Hala bowed her head. Emilia shook hers resignedly.

"But I do not accept it as it is offered to me."

You didn't know why you bothered to have observers for this. Everything in existence would be able to testify fully to your actions, wherever they were, once you had done them. And especially why you would choose a useless genie and a powerless human wasn't entirely clear to you, especially when you'd only just met. Maybe you should have waited on this, went to visit Emily's old friend Kazumi Ishida. But it felt right, somehow. It felt right to do this not in the presence of someone who had no idea what was going on but in the presence of the beings most directly responsible, in their own ways, for what you had become.

A single nanite, encased in slime, hovered between the three of you. "This is me," you said. "It is the tiniest part of me, and yet it is fully me, no less me than any other, no more me than any other."

Both genie and human nodded in understanding.

A flash hit all six eyes, and the nanite was gone.

"Juno," Emilia asked, "what have you done?"

You smiled, looked at Hala, knowing the genie already knew the answer.

"The Phase Binder, even as it was, even with unlimited energy powering every copy of it, was not powerful enough to effect Juno's final ascension, Emilia. Only the magic of the Empress of all djinni could do that."

Emilia looked at you, understanding dawning.

"I am the universe, Emilia. I am reality. I am everything. Everything is me."

You stepped between the two women, standing directly on the edge of the cliff, fearing nothing. "The inside is outside. The outside is inside. There is no longer any distinction. I am the epitome, the final realization, of Project Inside Out."

--

Author's Note: So this is where I think I will leave this for now, having resumed it after almost a year. It's certainly possible to continue from here, but not in this same style. There's fun Juno could have, with Kelly Lancer, or Kazumi Ishida, or with Hala or Emilia or any number of other characters. But I'm not going to write that now. Obviously, if you want to, I would love to see it.

Thanks to everyone who liked my chapters in this story. I hope you found these last few just as enjoyable.