Olga Marie Animusphere had woken up the way she did most mornings, before her alarm rang and with anxiety sweating off her pores, from terrible dreams she could not remember and from the rest of the day lying ahead. As soon as she opened her eyes, she wished to close them again and crawl back into the darkness.
On the mornings when her sleep was dreamless, she woke up from it far more tired than when she had closed her eyes. And yet they were better than the mornings where she did remember her dreams, as they were the nights where she dreamed of her father. Neither option prevailed today, so she considered herself lucky.
For now, her luck consisted of forcing herself off the bed and shambling off to her personal bathroom to puke her guts out. Far from easing her feeling of dread, the purging did little but reduce the dread to unease, and it settled somewhere in her stomach. She still had the usual, irrational feeling that something would go terribly wrong and it would all be her fault, but it wasn't as overwhelming as it could be.
How lucky she felt, kneeling on the floor bent over the toilet, her throat and mouth burning, and her silver white hair, usually so neat, matted to her face and neck with sweat. The luckiest woman in the world.
Foolish Marie, she could hear Trisha say, in that stern tone of hers. It's like she's eleven again. Poor, stupid, idiotic Marie. You dumb little girl. You useless trash.
Olga eventually stopped retching and took a quick shower to wash away the vomit, sweat, and tears, and dressed up while looking over her holographic screens for the schedule of the day. She put on red stockings and a formal three-quarter-length white dress, wearing a black and amber coat over it to conform to the dress code's designated colors for the uniforms of female employees (which was black and turquoise for the male workers). She did however adorn her outfit with a square scarf of red silk, held in place by an expansive amber gem as ornament, and her coat was decorated with silver embroideries: she may be the Director, but she was also a noblewoman. She needed to show her staff that she was in a different class than the rest of them. Besides, she read somewhere that a real leader could command respect and exude authority simply from the way they dressed.
Unease still in her stomach and holding a perfumed handkerchief over her mouth and nose, Olga exited her room, the door opening automatically with a quiet hiss by means of electronic sensors. Her first order of business was giving the mission briefing and welcome the new arrivals, so she headed in the direction of the central division to reach the command center, walking the white curved hallway hugging the outer ring of the facility. Her stiletto heels clacking on the hard metallic floor echoed loudly over the muffled whistling of the perennial blizzard outside blowing harsh gusts of snow against the tall, narrow windows lining the hallway. Visibility was rarely more than a few tens of meters on the best of days, so you could not see the rest of the mountaintop caldera the base was nestled within, nor even one speck of the sky, despite the fact that they were situated 6,000 meters above sea level. The swirling mess of white was backlit by the sun—slightly dimmer, now, in the early morning, but a permanent fixture of the Antarctic summer.
Olga was so lost in her thoughts that she did not notice the man walking in her direction until he spoke, startling her. "Director! I was hoping to see you before your speech."
She almost reflexively scolded the newcomer before she saw who it was, and, despite herself, a smile broke on her face.
Professor Lev Lainur Flauros was all smiles, a middle-aged man with long, lustrous curly brown hair atop which sat a top hat, dressed in a long green dress jacket that broke the dress code, the very picture of the aristocratic pedigree she admired and aimed to emulate. She felt herself instantly relax: the head researcher, a former colleague of her father, was the person she trusted the most in the entire organization, someone competent in the sea of mediocrity, the very reason why he was her unofficial advisor. She could finally feel that, maybe, everything would be all right.
Foolish Marie.
She slowed down so he could fall into step beside her. "Good morning, professor," she said. "Is something the matter?"
"Not to worry, it's nothing urgent. The preparations are going smoothly and we are on schedule." He checked the hallway, empty save for the both of them, and his smile dipped a little, his voice dropping in volume. "I just wanted to check up on you. Are you alright? You look a little pale. Have you eaten?" His voice was full of concern.
Olga knew his worry was strictly out of platonic friendship, but she hated that a small part of herself could not help but feel joy at his care. Years ago, at a ball, she had made a fool of herself and drunkenly declared her love for Lev. The man had been a perfect gentleman and let her down gently, and had never again brought up the matter, but she had never forgotten how deeply ashamed she had felt, and it had quickly joined her dreams with all the other mortifying moments of her life. Sometimes, when her dreams replayed the humiliation, the story changed and Lev cruelly turned her down in front of the entire high society of London, smiling a blood red smile with far too many teeth and utter disgust in his eyes when looking at her.
What is with me today? she thought. Why can I only think of unpleasant memories?
She shook her head to clear her thoughts, which Lev seemed to take as an answer to his question. "You should really eat something. I know your stomach is easily upset, but it is not good to go on with your day on an empty stomach." He produced a plastic pill bag from one of his coat pockets. "Romani gave me some medicine. If you're in pain, you should take this."
She did not like the implication that the head doctor was talking about her health issues to other people. She resolved to give him a talk later and remind him of the meaning of medical confidentiality. "I am a grown woman, professor. I can take care of myself." She still accepted the bag.
He sheepishly drummed his fingers on the brim of his hat. "I am being meddlesome, I know," he said. "It's just that this is the big day, what all our work has been building up to. I don't think anyone would blame you for being nervous."
"Ha!" Olga snorted. Her voice sounded higher pitched and slightly hysterical to her ears. "They are waiting to blame me. Everyone here is just waiting for me to fail, to confirm what they all say, how I am a poor replacement for Father."
Lev's face fell. "Olga…" He only called her that in private.
"What, are you going to say that's not true?" she said, her voice rising even higher against her will. "Do you think I don't know? I can hear them talk! They are all complaining about me, calling me a bitch and mocking me behind my back! Do not take me for a child."
She felt a little winded, despite her walking speed not being that demanding, and stopped walking, Lev coming to a stop beside her. Black spots floated across her vision, from her outburst or from sheer anger she could not say. "You should have been the one to become the Director, Lev," she said, calling him by his name like she always did when they were alone, her voice now barely above a whisper. "Everyone in the staff likes and trusts you. You were always more suited than me." Her head hung down, she murmured, "I can't measure up to my father."
Lev sighed. He put his hand on her shoulder and she had to resist the urge to lean against him for comfort. He looked into her eyes: she expected to see annoyance or pity, but instead she was stunned to see warm affection in his gaze. "Your father once told me, 'Doing your upmost is the pride of the Animuspheres'." He smiled, illuminating the room. "I've seen your efforts, Olga. You have done the best you can to follow in his footsteps, and I dare say you did an excellent job. Even if no one else sees it or understands you, I do. I will always support you."
She would have cried here and there, but she already felt embarrassed enough. "Thank you, Lev," she only said. And that was that.
They resumed walking, took the elevator down into the rock, and eventually reached the massive sliding double gates of the central command room. Engraved inside an hexagon on the doors was a stylistic letter C in the form of a crescent moon with a flowery lower end, enclosed within a circle itself within a right-facing olive laurel: the symbol of the Chaldea Security Organization, her father's creation and now her responsibility.
Olga shot Lev one last glance and he nodded to show her his support. She took a breath and walked inside, her stomach tied into knots.
ℂ
The briefing went as well as it could have. Olga had explained Chaldea's mission to forty odd candidates from across the globe, speaking in English and pausing often so the translators could relay her words in French, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, and Russian, the other official languages of the United Nations, their biggest backer. The presentation done, she spent the remainder of her day overseeing the preparations for the deployment, witnessing the training simulations, triple checking the coordinates, and assessing the vitals of the candidates with Dr. Romani. One team, the B-Team, suffered from side effects such as nausea during the simulations, so they were dismissed from the mission and put on hold for the time being. Unfortunate, but not unexpected, certainly not enough to stop the operations.
When everything was ready, she was still looking over the teams down in the central control room, a huge cavernous area inside the mountain itself, the walls lined with uneven striped blocks of smooth metal lines stacking up to the ceiling, something the unaware could mistake for cubic architecture but was in actuality Chaldea's constantly running supercomputer. Its processors were humming quietly, bathing the whole room in a tranquil blue glow from their lighting that brought to mind Cherenkov radiation. In front of her, the candidates wore the form-fitting bodysuits that served as Chaldea's combat uniforms and each one was stepping inside their assigned Klein Coffins, cylindrical pods rising out of an ankle-deep storage pool of demineralized water.
And suspended above the pool was the crown jewel: CHALDEAS, all capitalized letters like LORD in some Bibles. A massive terrestrial globe surrounded by perpetually gyrating concentric rings and floating holographic screens, serving as an environmental model of the planet able to run simulations up to 100 years in the future. It being completely dark was the very reason they were doing this.
Looking at her father's creation made Olga feel like its very weight pressed down on her shoulders.
Above them all was the glass-walled command center where Lev was supervising the operators tapping away at haptic keyboards and scrolling their holographic screens, analyzing every bit of data and making verifications to ensure the launch would proceed unimpeded.
Her wristband beeped and Lev's voice came out of it. "We are good to go."
"Alright. Start the countdown for…"
That was when Olga saw her. Her blood ran cold.
A little girl with long cinereous hair and amber colored eyes, wearing a frilly dress the colors of Chaldea's female uniform, standing in the water right below CHALDEAS. Her eyes fell on the expansive amber gem at her neck, which held a silken square scarf of deep, red velvet. She was an exact mirror of Olga when she was eleven years old.
Her doppelgänger spoke. Though her lips never moved, somehow Olga could hear her voice, whispering in her ear.
The future will not change.
It happened instantly. Olga could distantly hear Lev's voice, far, far away, before it was drowned by the cacophonous noise of the world tearing itself apart. Searing heat, searing pain tore her from limbs to limbs. Something was burning.
Olga tried to scream. Tried to scream.
ℂ
Olga Marie woke up, dread and anxiety sweating off her from troubled sleep.
On other mornings where her sleep was dreamless, she woke up from it more tired than when she had closed her eyes. And those were the best times, because when she dreamed, she dreamed of Father.
She didn't really remember the dream, only fragments. Not that she remembered much of her time with her father much, he had never really paid attention to her, leaving her to the care of Trisha Fellows, her tutor and distant relative, while he built Chaldea and focused on "finding the future", whatever that meant. She had asked him once: the Animuspheres watched the stars to look into the future, but what did that mean? What future were they looking for?
He had only laughed. What does it mean, I wonder, had been his only response.
The future will not change, she thought, with no idea of what the thought meant. The words were vaguely familiar, but they were just a disconnected snip of dialogue, a half-heard sentence of a passerby on a busy street.
Foolish Marie, she could hear Trisha say, in that fond tone of hers, an underlying kindness she struggled to express openly and that someone who didn't know her could mistake for severity. Trisha always told her to think things through, to not let her emotions get the better of her when she could instead analyze. She was an Animusphere, and most importantly, she was a mage: she had to act like it.
Olga got up and went to her bathroom to get ready for the day, though a sudden wave of nervous nausea overtook her and she spent a few minutes vomiting. She felt slightly dizzy, getting that disconcerting feeling that she had done this before, but she let it pass. Emptying her stomach was almost a daily ritual for her at this point, the familiarity was to be expected.
After getting ready, she activated her magic circuits, the mystical nerves mages possessed to produce magical energy, and casted a simple reinforcement of her constitution to be able to get through the day without eating. Adjusting bodily functions was the most basic requirement for mages after all.
She exited her room and walked down the length of the curved hallway, lost in thought. Today was the big day: the very first mission of Finis Chaldea, the Organization for the Preservation of the Human Order. The crowning achievement of her father, Marisbury Animusphere, a secretive organization with UN backing working to ensure the continued survival of mankind and the preservation of the timeline of human history, using the unprecedented collaboration of scientific technology and mystical magecraft.
Her father had died three years prior, leaving Olga as his successor and the Director under which Chaldea's mission would finally be realized. She was the one to shoulder the responsibility of saving the future, and more importantly, the one who would shoulder the blame should anything go wrong, should they fail.
No pressure.
Olga was so lost in her thoughts that she almost did not notice the man walking in her direction until he spoke. It's Lev, Olga thought. And indeed it was, Professor Lev Lainur Flauros wearing his typical attire, a long green dress jacket and a top hat, marking him as an aristocratic mage, same as her.
"Director! I was hoping to see you before your speech." he said, and somehow she knew every word he would say before he said it. The feeling was back, and strong. She'd had this before, but never so strongly. That was not normal.
She felt dizzy.
"What's wrong?" Lev asked.
"Nothing, really. I have that…feeling. We've been here before, that kind of thing. You know the one, with a French name?"
"Déjà vu," he said.
"That's it," she said. She shook her head like she was getting rid of cobwebs. She suddenly felt curious. "Do you know if there is a magical explanation for it?"
"Hm." He rubbed his chin. "If I recall, mundane science says it's a result of delayed neural signal in the brain's neurochemistry, causing new experiences to be identified as old data. Or that dreams may increase the frequency of it, especially in people with good memories." He shrugged. "I am not aware of much magecraft research into the topic, but my own personal guess is that any mystical experience of the same nature would likely be due to magical sight."
"Like precognition and retrocognition?"
"Something like those, yes. Visions of the pasts or visions of the future." He smiled at her, a slight mischievous turn to his lips. "Perhaps you have become a seer, Director."
"I really doubt it." she snorted. She felt better now that she talked to him. He always knew what to say.
But the feeling didn't go away.
It came and went all day long. All her words sounded rehearsed, copied. She could predict almost certainly who she would see, what they would do, and what they would say.
It came on even stronger in the control room, as she was giving the candidates for the Rayshift procedure some last instructions. CHALDEAS, her father's Mystic Code, was looming overhead, pressure on her brain, like a malign black star seeking to crush her, to devour her. The alchemical supercomputer, the TRISMEGISTUS Calculation Engine, hummed ominously in the walls, giving the room the sickly, alien light of Cherenkov radiation.
Then, she saw her. Like she had always been there. A little girl wearing the same clothes as her, looking impassively at her. It was like seeing her own ghost, a double of herself when she was eleven.
The voice was no more than a whisper, yet somehow Olga felt that she was standing just behind her.
The future will not change.
"Olga?" came Lev's voice from so, so far.
She moved towards the apparition.
It happened instantly. A shockwave of air transporting the most cacophonous noise, like the world was torn asunder. Olga was suddenly off her feet, heaved upwards and forward in a low, slow arc, with her broken legs trailing behind her. She almost felt like she was flying. There was time to see her shadow sliding along the ground like a bird's; there was time to see a spray of red droplets in the air just above her; there was time to see the walls of the control room breaking apart and fall down in an avalanche of debris; there was time to see rocks and snow falling through great ripples in the walls, before she went through one and found herself outside.
I am an Animusphere, she thought deliriously. I aim to reach for the stars.
Then she came back down to earth and hit the ground hard, the snow muffling the sound of her skull fracturing, her spine breaking, her ribcage exploding as her lungs were punctured by brittle thorns of bone, her intestines coming out unanchored.
All went black.
ℂ
She opened her eyes. She was lying on her back in the snow outside, snowflakes and wind buffeting her face, but strangely, she barely felt the cold. She barely felt anything, in fact. She could not feel her legs at all, like everything below her waist was missing. She had the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. It all felt so numb.
She had the acrid smell of smoke in her nostrils. Somewhere behind her, far, far away, she could hear the crackling roar of a fire burning. She could not feel its heat.
Her younger self stood over her, a sad expression on her face.
The future will not change, she murmured, as softly as the wind.
Olga could not talk to her even if she wanted to, so she instead opted to sputter blood and ignored her. Instead, she looked at the night sky, somehow clear despite the blizzard.
The stars above her were strange. They were mad, moving faster than they should, cruel radiation bleeding across improbable distances, dancing wildly in a pulsating wake. They were racing faster and faster in arcs of starlight, leaving behind luminous trails of concentric circles around the celestial South Pole, like someone had hit fast forward on the heavens. The sight would have driven Copernicus insane.
Her brain hurt.
The stars were going so fast now that the entire sky was lit up in bright white light like it was daytime. Her eyes hurt, but before the refulgence burned her corneas, she saw the entire universe above her turn impossibly red, the very atmosphere of the planet on fire.
She screamed.
ℂ
Olga woke.
I had this story trot in my head for a while now. Ever since FGO showed that Kirschtaria Wodime went through a simulation of all seven Singularities of Part 1 multiple times in fact, so the original idea was taking that and making it a time loop on the day he was "killed". Especially since I also wanted to do a story about Chaldea itself and its human employees, instead of the usual story about the wider FGO plot, Ritsuka Fujimaru, or the Servants. But then I was thinking about the proto-story and how Wodime would bond with people throughout the loops, and when it came to Olga Marie, it just did not work. I just couldn't find believable a story where Wodime was the one to help her work through her (numerous) issues
So I thought, why not have Olga Marie be the one looping?
Part of the appeal of good time loops is seeing someone with lots of personal issues work through them. Wodime, as much as I love him, more or less solved his shit by the time he gets to Chaldea. Olga Marie, on the other hand, is a complete mess of issues and mental illnesses (affectionate), so she has way more to work to do. Her personality also basically ensures it would be way more difficult for her to get out of the situation. Reading her excellent From Lostbelt chapter basically cemented the decision in my mind.
Honestly, the only reason I didn't write this sooner is because I'm a hack, I wanted to see the personalities and backstories of all Crypters before doing something featuring them heavily. I ran out of excuses once LB7 came out, and the New Year contest basically kicked my ass into gear.
A little girl with long cinereous hair and amber colored eyes, wearing a frilly dress the colors of Chaldea's female uniform, standing in the water right below CHALDEAS. Her eyes fell on the expansive amber gem at her neck, which held a silken square scarf of deep, red velvet. She was an exact mirror of Olga when she was eleven years old.
Her doppelgänger spoke. Though her lips never moved, somehow Olga could hear her voice, whispering in her ear.
Love the fact you are bringing into play Olga's Vision Problem, Seriously the fact that even before her Father's 'Death' she was haunted by both the Foreign Priestess(SHEBA's Avatar which was based off her mind) and the Foreign Goddess(Her future as the False Beast/CHALDEAS' Intended Vessel) is quite horrifying, Seeing the panel were she was depicted in the palm of U-Olga's Hands was horrifying.
Are you going to include the Melty Blood BAAN connection which explained how Sion learned about the coming end from the Human Revision Order, and made a back door into Chaldea?
Love the fact you are bringing into play Olga's Vision Problem, Seriously the fact that even before her Father's 'Death' she was haunted by both the Foreign Priestess(SHEBA's Avatar which was based off her mind) and the Foreign Goddess(Her future as the False Beast/CHALDEAS' Intended Vessel) is quite horrifying, Seeing the panel were she was depicted in the palm of U-Olga's Hands was horrifying.
Are you going to include the Melty Blood BAAN connection which explained how Sion learned about the coming end from the Human Revision Order, and made a back door into Chaldea?
I do wonder how she'd react to the truth of her Father's Lies being revealed, as in the backstory behind his 'victory' of the 'only' Grail war. Also I wonder if you are going to do anything with Lev, considering one of Flauros' Characteristics is being a Liar, and his presence in Lostroom indicating his faith in Noveau Chaldea to deal with Marisbury's Machinations
