[It's so hard to think. It must've been the dusty grit clinging to the palms of his hands, or the corpse, that summoned this new wind of change. The desert sands are shifting, alternatively uncovering and devouring. It's not all human corpses-- there's a simple charred sedan and there's no way anything lives inside it anymore-- there's the metronomic beeping of medical equipment-- there's suitcases, contents revealing they're ready for a trip that would take month for the business executives they belonged to.

There's the silent and fresh bodies of Z and Owens, their faces frozen in hurt and their chests sliced open. The humvee and camouflage tarp is (and always had been) tauntingly out of reach.

There's a lot of death and it's not even the tip of the iceberg. But this is where things went wrong, where his life burned down (it always is burning. pain? he's had worse. he's survived it all.) and when he began to owe the Demon for his favor.

(It's all because of those damn spiders.)]

A Mother Box is...

[Far above his pay grade to wrap his head around, much less explain.

This world-- they're never going to get out of it.] They were created in New Genesis. They have masters. They know everything and they're like computers. [But alive? They can mourn.

Tim knows mourning.] I don't know. I don't know much about them. [--] I didn't want to bring back the dead. [--] I just wanted to know where to find him, in Time. That's it. I did. I don't know why I even mentioned the Box. It was a dead end.