I ask not to be safe from my enemies, but dangerous to them.

–Anarchist's Prayer

This wasn't Earth. The Taco Bell didn't belong.

It was surrounded by hundreds of black statues, all of which had been on this green hill for thousands of years. None of the subjects were remotely Human.

The carved ebon people were all in various poses, incomprehensibly alien, or hostile, or embattled, or serene. They stretched all the way to the edges of the fog and beyond.

The place was called the Obsidian Chorus, even though the statues made no sound. I was grateful for that. The scattered foam plates and paper wrappers all over the green grass mitigated the creepiness.

It wasn't even the whole Taco Bell building, just a chunk of it. And it was torn, not neatly chopped or sawed or whatever one would do when relocating a fast-food restaurant to another planet. Salmon-colored stucco, an arch containing glass doors. That big plastic bell over the logo.

Then a gaping hole where one could see the booths, floor, napkin dispensers and a drink machine.

The Radio, my badge of office as Steward, was playing music from the pedestal of one of the statues. It switched to a new song: "And now Pecadora by Lalo Guerrero."

"Radio, what do you make of this?" I ran my hand over part of the torn structure. The drywall- and-metal framing wasn't shredded and warped where it was broken. Nor was it burned or sawed. It was smooth, rounded.

Still torn but oddly neat. Like it had been beveled and sanded. And I know what I'm talking about; I failed a woodshop class in middle school.

The Radio spoke over its own music like a DJ failing to hit the post. "Owen knew these were similar to his observations at the other sites."

"A four-dimensional push."

The other sites had been a rusty cement truck in a jungle. Then a section of shopping mall, its tiled fountain and broken escalator decorating a cave a mile underground.

Both sites had been torn like this, but with rounded, smooth edges where the things were left incomplete. The cement truck had actually been squeezed like a tube of toothpaste, twisted into a point halfway through the chassis. It had looked wrong, like an error in video game geometry or a mid-nineties photo manipulation.

The Radio: Its golden cloth speaker, a perfect circle, its little window with incomprehensible frequency numbers beneath and finally its silver tuning knob on the bottom. All three were temporarily installed in the base of one of the black statues. The pedestal itself had nothing standing on it.

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But it did have something hovering over it. A thing that resembled a flying python, frozen in place, sculpted in an elegant series of comfortable loops. Its black eyes were shinier than the rest of its scaly body. The monument was unkempt; flowers and moss were adorning its north side.

"How does the statue float like that? And long enough for things to grow on it?"

"The Coilborn were agravitational."

"That's not an answer, but okay. Are they still around?"

"The Coilborn, or more formally the Children of the Verdance, have been absent from the Slice for thirty thousand years. They were dancers and playwrights. They were missed."

"I'll see if I can find anything in the Library about them. Anyway this Taco Bell. It's the third thing from Earth in a month. And these are just the ones we know about."

"Owen was worried. As usual."

"People from Earth are pushing things through. They're finding ways to move stuff from slice to slice. From Earth to … this. We were warned about it."

"A taunt from a defeated foe wasn't necessarily a valid warning."

"Well sure, Harrigan was all talk. But here we are at the Taco Bell. And it's busted up, so I can't even order a Quesadilla Slider Pizza or whatever things they make with their seven available ingredients."

"The Green Radio was wondering how it could help. Of all its Stewards, Owen was one of them."

"Thank you, I know you mean that sincerely. I'd like to increase sensitivity to four-dimensional incursions. From Earth or anywhere."

"Owen had never asked for anything like that. No Steward had."

"Does that mean you can't do it?"

"Of course not; it just meant that Owen was weird."

But Human people barging in wasn't the only thing bugging me. It was bad, sure. Nobody wanted to be invaded by rich jerks from Earth. But also: "How do people earn a statue here, Radio?"

"The Obsidian Chorus is a cenotaph for the transcended."

I knew that a Cenotaph is a kind of diet gravestone, a memorial that can be anywhere, not just a cemetery. This world was lousy with them. "What's transcended mean here?"

The Radio played an old-timey musical score, one evoking mystery. "Transcension is the reason this world is full of ruined cities, buildings, great works. Evidence of the mighty, empty and unpeopled."

"Does everyone do it?"

"No. Some civilizations simply destroyed themselves or were destroyed by others."

"We have a little civilization of our own. How long does a society last?"

"On average: not long. At all, Owen."

"Hello?" called a voice. A human one, from inside the semi-Taco Bell. "I'm stuck."

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