If there’s one thing that rankles about The Force Awakens, it’s that a lot of its world-building is left to the array of tie-in media that launched with the movie on December 18th. It’s a bummer that there are so many questions left unanswered, but we’ve combed through all these books for all the most important details about this new look at the Star Wars galaxy.

Naturally, there are going to be major spoilers for the entirety of Star Wars: The Force Awakens below.

Much of the information sourced for this article comes from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary, a guidebook released by DK to coincide with the film’s release. Like several other tie-ins such as Alan Dean Foster’s novelization or The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it gives some fascinating insight into the world behind the movie, and it’s all straight from Lucasfilm’s story group, ensuring that everything sits right in Disney’s still fledgling reboot of the Star Wars canon.

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Who the Hell Is Lor San Tekka?

Max Von Sydow’s mysterious character Lor San Tekka is barely in the film; he’s the old man who gives Poe Dameron the missing piece of the map to Luke Skywalker at the beginning of the film, and shortly thereafter he gets cut down by Kylo Ren in a fit of rage. Some of his dialogue (including some pointed remarks about Ren’s heritage that act as teasers for the eventual reveal of his real name) hints that Tekka was meant to be a big mystery, perhaps a connection to Star Wars’ past—many rumors pegged him as an elderly Boba Fett, or even a character from the prequels!—but the real answer is rather simple.

Since the fall of the Empire, Lor San Tekka has been a galactic traveler who eventually worked with the New Republic (and later the Resistance) mapping the remote fringe of the galaxy, before retiring to Jakku. Additionally, Tekka is also a religious man. He and most of the villagers he lives with are followers of the “Church of the Force,” a faith that gathered people who were not sensitive to the Force, but worshippers of Jedi codes and practices. The church operated in secret during the time of the Empire, but apparently flourished after Palpatine’s death.

Throughout his mapping expeditions, Tekka became intimate with the history of the Jedi and Sith orders, making him a prominent figure in the Church and giving him a reputation as a source for galactic secrets the Empire had clamped down on for decades.

The Resistance Is Much Smaller Than You Think It Is...

The Rebel Alliance was always meant to be seen as a plucky upstart group striking out at the big evil force, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, they’re massive: they’ve got capital ships, wings of fighter squadrons, the whole shebang. On the other hand, the Resistance is tiny.

Although the novelization emphasized Leia’s distaste for the New Republic, in The Visual Dictionary it’s pretty much acknowledged that the Resistance is an independent, private force “tolerated” by the New Republic, but not officially condoned or supported, due to a fear of conflict with the First Order.

This makes the Resistance’s actual military might incredibly small. In terms of ships, the organization has no capital vessels to call on, and its Starfighter corps is woefully light—two squadrons, Blue and Red, and Poe in the lead with his Black X-Wing. That’s it. On the ground, it fares slightly better, but there is apparently an emphasis on droid support, charged and used constantly to support what little the Resistance has in terms of ground crew, while the biological members often pull double duty as support and frontline staff.

...And the First Order Is Much Bigger

The First Order, on the other hand, is far bigger than the New Republic hopes it is. Hiding in a section of space called the Unknown Regions, the First Order has been building itself out of a group of dissident Imperial Admirals and Moffs who openly defied the signing of a peace treaty (dubbed “the Galactic Concordance”) after the Battle of Jakku 30 years ago, taking what soldiers and ships they could to the fringe of the galaxy to rebuild the Empire.

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And rebuild they did. Despite officially being defanged militarily and forced to pay huge reparations to the Republic, the Empire secretly pumped what money it could into building new fleets of ships, and invaded fringe worlds to establish itself as a dominant power again. The Finalizer, Kylo Ren’s Star Destroyer seen in The Force Awakens, is massive—twice the size of the Empire’s old Destroyers—and this isn’t a solitary vessel, but the flagship of a massive fleet of similar capital ships.

With the New Republic fleet largely wiped out during Starkiller Base’s attack in The Force Awakens, it seems like there’s a really grim fight ahead for the Resistance.

The Mystical Secrets of Maz Kanata

Maz Kanata is one of The Force Awakens’ biggest mysteries. We know some of her scenes were cut from the film too, leaving her even more mysterious.

While the film does heavily hint that Maz can use the Force, the Visual Dictionary confirms that she is indeed Force Sensitive—Maz is familiar with the Jedi and had many Jedi acquaintances before the Empire, but “never went down that path,” according to the book. Instead, she quietly used her Force abilities to keep her alive during her hundreds of years of adventures as a pirate.

When Maz retired to Takodana in the wake of Palpatine’s death, she began using her abilities openly—tracking force-strong relics and collecting them as a safeguard... which led to her sensing Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, lost in the bowels of Bespin after the end of The Empire Strikes Back, and eventually retrieving it for her collection.

The Force Really Did Awaken

A minor thing, but the book also does briefly mention why Force-strong people like Rey and Kylo Ren have started emerging again around the time the movie begins—apparently the Force went dormant after Ben Solo and the Knights of Ren slaughtered Luke’s fledgling Jedi order:

Since the disappearance of Luke Skywalker and the shattering of his fledgling Jedi following, the cosmic Force has lain dormant, seemingly quieted to those able to sense its presence. The adventures of Rey and Finn on Jakku coincide with a turbulence in the cosmic Force, a sudden ripple indicating the awakening of newfound ability. With the Jedi and their records vanished, few—other than Kylo Ren and his mysterious master—are able to appreciate the occurrence.

The Force Experiences Turbulence was probably seen as being nowhere near as catchy as The Force Awakens.

Why the Starkiller Base Didn’t Blow Up Coruscant

When The Force Awakens first came out, there was a lot of incorrect information that the planet destroyed by Starkiller Base as the seat of the Republic Senate was Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic shown in the prequels. Later it was confirmed to be Hosnian Prime, a previously unheard of planet.

So why didn’t the Republic use the former Capital after it signed its treaty with the Empire? Apparently, to convince New Republic worlds that this government was different. Just as Chancellors served terms, the Senate also regularly voted to move itself to a different member world, to reflect that all worlds in the Republic had an equal say in the shaping of Galactic politics. Hosnian Prime was just the unfortunate current host.

Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber Has Important Links to the Old Expanded Universe

There are still many fans left sore at the ejection of the old Star Wars expanded universe in favor of Disney’s own canon material, and some of the sorest are fans of the “Old Republic” era, a setting thousands of years before the events of the films popularized by the hit Knights of the Old Republic video games. Although Disney have remained quiet about whether that era still remains part of the new canon, The Visual Dictionary does throw KotoR fans a bone in a description of Kylo Ren’s unorthodox lightsaber design.

As well as revealing that the saber housed a cracked crystal (hence its volatile beam and the need for crossguards to vent the energy), the description describes Kylo’s saber hilt as “an ancient design, dating back thousands of years to the Great Scourge of Malachor.” Malachor, or more specifically, Malachor V, played a huge role in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and was a major planet in the Sith Empire and had powerful links to the Dark Side of the Force. Not exactly confirmation that Knights of the Old Republic is canon, but interesting insight into how deep Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke are plunging into Sith history.

Insight Into Deleted Scenes

First Order snowtroopers board the crashed Millennium Falcon on Starkiller Base. Source: Visual Dictionary, via /Film.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about The Visual Dictionary is that it’s packed with pictures of scenes that didn’t make it into the film’s final cut. Snowtroopers actually make up most of the new images, from a shot of them inspecting the downed Millennium Falcon after Han crashes it on Starkiller Base, to scenes of a snowspeeder chase featuring Finn and Rey.

Also included are several shots of Maisie Richardson-Sellers’ cut character, Korr Sella. Sella, a diplomatic aide to Leia, would have been sent to Hosnian Prime to petition the New Republic for the Resistance, with Starkiller Base as proof that the First Order broke the peace treaty—only to die when the planet was destroyed. J.J. Abrams has stated that there’s probably only around 20 minutes of cut scenes from the film, but so far this is our only official look at some of the filmed moments that didn’t make it into the movie.

One of the easiest ways to make anything look “retro” these days is to give something a pixelated 8- or 16-bit look to make it look like a classic video game. But this X-Men fan series manages to twist that pixelated look by applied it to fully 3D models—and look surprisingly slick in the process.

X-Men: Danger Room Protocols, created by Canadian YouTuber and animator Joel Furtado, promises to be an 18-episode web series that borrows the visual aesthetic of the classic ‘90s X-Men: The Animated Series as it imagines the X-Men in various scenarios created by Professor X’s Danger Room, a holographic training simulator.

There’s an emphasis on the “promises” there, because while Furtado hopes to begin airing the series on his YouTube channel on January 19th, there is a chance that Marvel and Fox could come knocking for his use of copyrighted characters. Furtado’s hoping that, as a simple fan webseries not made for commercial purposes, he skirts their ire and Danger Room Protocols goes ahead—and frankly, we’re hoping so too, just so we can get even more shorts that look as interesting as the above introduction video does.

io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we’ll be featuring a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “The Savannah Liars Tour” by Will McIntosh. You can read the story below or you can listen to the podcast. Enjoy!

Image © 2016 by Galen Dara.

The Savannah Liars Tour

Will McIntosh

My essence, my soul, whatever you wanted to call it, burst into that place beyond places. After dozens of trips, the ecstasy of the reverse-explosion was as intense as the first time.

I was in downtown Savannah in Chippewa Square. Streaks of perfect lemon-yellow sunlight peeked through a canopy of live oaks. Cars and tour buses glided past, silent, spewing zero pollution because they didn’t exist. Most were cruising several feet above the ground.

I caught sight of Delilah running across the street toward me, her feet flying wildly as only Delilah’s could, and felt a rush of pure, unfiltered, unqualified, innocent, overwhelming love.

You never love someone the way you do when you’re twenty. When you fall in love at thirty, or forty, your past comes with you—your broken hearts and shattered illusions—and there’s just so much of it, so many additives and preservatives mixed in that your emotions are never as pure as they were when you were twenty.

Delilah rushed to hug me, her eyes bright. She still looked twenty. Always twenty. And when I was with her, I was twenty, too.

“Hey, you,” she said.

I was tingling, full to overflowing with Delilah. I wondered if this time my hour would feel like five minutes, or a week. Time dropped through a maze here; there was no telling how quickly or slowly it might pass.

“You’ve got to hear this new song,” I said as we separated. “From a new band. They played The Bastille last week.” The Bastille had closed eight years earlier, but I liked to use locations Delilah knew.

“It’s good? Let’s hear it.”

I’d been listening to the CD every day so I’d be able to recreate it almost perfectly from memory, moving the music from my mind into the streets of our Savannah. It wasn’t what Savannah looked like now, or even what it had looked like when Delilah died; it was the Savannah we created when we were together here.

A tour trolley came around the corner. I wasn’t surprised to see it was Delilah’s trolley, the one she’d died in.

• • • •

The woman standing at the front of the trolley, clutching a steel pole to avoid being thrown when the trolley made turns, was grinning like she knew a secret—a secret that could burst the world open at the seams and have everyone dancing in the streets and hugging strangers. She seemed far too young to know such a secret. The trolley was passing a beautiful old home—a mansion, really. The bright new banner draped along the length of the interior of the old trolley, the one that read Savannah Liars Tour, flapped in the breeze coming through the open front of the trolley.

The woman pointed at the mansion. “That lovely house was built by Savannah’s founder, a Viking named Erik, who was driven from the city when Europeans arrived, outraged to find the Vikings had gotten there first.”

Laughter from the passengers, mostly tourists from out of town. Delilah’s job was to tell outrageous lies, to make them up on the spot as the trolley threaded the squares of Savannah’s Historic District. It was obvious she loved her job, and was perfect for it.

I was not a tourist. I lived in a tiny apartment on Whittaker Street, a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I was also in a band. Drums. We played the Bastille frequently. I took the Savannah Liars Tour every day, so I knew better than anyone that Delilah never told the same lie twice. I was in love with her long before I ever mustered the nerve to speak to her.

• • • •

“Ben? Wake up, Ben. Come on.”

I opened my eyes and tried to breathe, but I couldn’t, because my lungs were filled with fluid. I could hear the dribbling of the fluid draining through the tube clenched between my chattering teeth. The cold went straight to my bones, like fish hooks made of ice.

If entering the afterlife was like a thousand simultaneous orgasms, returning from cryogenic sleep was a hell unimaginable to those who had never experienced it.

I knew they couldn’t cover me with the thermal blanket until I was breathing on my own, but if I’d been able to speak I would have screamed for that fucking blanket. One of the aides pressed on my chest; blue water jetted from my mouth. I inhaled, choked on fluid that burned my throat like bleach, then I fell into a coughing fit. Each cough was agony.

Finally, finally, the blanket appeared. I was swaddled like a giant, quivering infant.

• • • •

Jillian was waiting at the curb with the Mercedes running, the heat cranked uncomfortably high for my benefit. My old, familiar friend guilt joined me as I slid into the passenger seat.

“Good visit? How are your Mom and Dad?” The corner of Jillian’s eye crinkled as she smiled, but it was a tense smile.

“Great. Great. No sign of Mom’s cancer recurring, and you’d never know Dad had suffered a massive heart attack.” It was an old joke, and my delivery was wooden.

I turned on the radio, tuned it to NPR, where a journalist was relating a conversation she’d had with John F. Kennedy in the afterlife.

“You want to have lunch at Chur—”

“Did you see Delilah as well?” Jillian asked before I could finish. For the past few months, Jillian hadn’t asked that question. The question—the only truly irreconcilable thorn in our eight years of marriage.

“You know I always do.” I tried to sound matter-of-fact, but defensiveness leaked into my tone.

“What did you talk about?”

“Just . . . nothing much. Music, mostly.”

“You still haven’t told her about me?”

And there it was. “She’s dead, Jillian. It’s not like I’m seeing another woman. I’m visiting the soul of my late wife.” I dragged my hand down my face, feeling exhausted, knowing the route this conversation would take and dreading the ride.

“How much of the hour did you spend with her?”

I folded my arms across my chest, realized what a stereotypically defensive posture that was, and quickly unfolded them. “You know how hard it is to judge time in there. I visit the people I’ve lost. You knew who I’d lost when you met me, and you knew I visited them.”

Things had become so much more complicated since that innocent time when I’d promised Delilah I’d always visit her, no matter what. Everyone in Delilah’s life had broken promises—her sister, her mother, the men she’d loved before me. She deserved to have one person she could believe in, and twenty-two years ago I swore I’d be that person. When I made that promise, Delilah said she wasn’t asking me to never love again, only that I reserve a small corner of my heart for her.

The thing was, my love for Delilah never managed to stay in one small corner of my heart. It took up more like half, try as I might to contain it. Did loving her too much mean I should renege on my promise?

I shouldn’t have allowed myself to love someone else in the first place. When I met Jillian, I’d been alone for ten years. That had seemed like enough time to grieve, even if visiting Delilah tended to keep the wound open.

Jillian pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition. “It’s dangerous, going under as often as you do. You’re not twenty-five anymore.”

“The Surgeon General says cryogenic sleep is safe up to fifty.” What Jillian was really saying was the visits were expensive. Outrageously expensive. We could afford it, though. I wasn’t driving us into bankruptcy or anything.

Jillian sighed. She took my hand. “I know you’re in an impossible position. I know that. But you have to see how hard this is for me, especially with us talking about having a child.”

I squeezed her hand. “I do. I’m sorry this is so complicated.”

• • • •

On the trolley, Delilah pointed out Chippewa Square, a cozy park shaded by huge Live Oaks.

“At last count there were seventeen hundred such squares in Savannah.” She was speaking to everyone, all of the tourists on her trolley, but she was looking right at me. Her gaze sent a thrill through me like nothing I’d ever experienced. “Under no circumstances should you go near any of them. They look friendly, but they bite, and many carry disease—”

According to Delilah, a creature lived in the Savannah River that could swallow the Loch Ness monster whole. The Buddha was buried in a local graveyard.

Today was the day. I was going to speak to her.

With the tourists chanting her name, Delilah stepped off the trolley, took a bow, waved to or shook hands with each person as they exited her magic trolley, onto the cobbled street, back in the real world.

I lingered so I’d be the last off. My heart tripped as I climbed down the steps. As I paused in front of her, I could find nothing to do with my hands. They felt wrong on my hips, wrong in my pockets, wrong dangling like dead fish at my sides.

“Your show is really something,” I stammered. “I’m spreading the word, telling all my friends.”

“I was wondering when you were finally going to talk to me,” Delilah said.

• • • •

“Try another year,” Jillian suggested.

I pulled up another year from the woman’s memory file, chose a clip at random. In the clip our client—now in her fifties—was sitting in a bridal shop watching a thin woman in her twenties model a wedding dress.

“I’m not sure that’s the right dress for you, sweetie,” our client said as the bride-to-be examined herself in the mirror.

“Why not? I like this one.”

“You need a dress with more going on around the bust line. You know, because of how F-L-A-T you are.”

The bride tried to mask how much the comment stung.

“I’m trying to understand why anyone would want a permanent reminder of what this woman was really like,” Jillian said.

“She requested the monument herself, post-mortem.” She seemed like just the sort of woman who would retain control of her estate, instead of leaving it to her relatives. The cryo-trips her attorney’s representative had to make to keep her apprised were probably eating away big chunks of it. “Hey, instead of searching for those few instances where she was not horrible to someone, what if we chose a selection of her bitterest moments and harshest comments?”

“Her greatest hits.”

We both cracked up.

“Or we could show her at her best,” Jillian said. “When she’s not speaking. We choose clips of her eating a sandwich, watching TV, sleeping.”

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” our client said to the devastated bride in her incredibly whiny, nasally voice. That got us laughing harder. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. Jillian had tears running down her cheeks.

It took me a moment to realize they weren’t tears of laughter.

“What?” I asked? “What’s the matter?” I already knew, though.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t stop the thoughts. Any time we’re having fun together, I see Delilah’s face. I can’t compete with a woman who died when she was twenty, who doesn’t ever change.”

“You’re not competing with her.”

“I am. You know I am.” Jillian grabbed a tissue from the box on the table, blew her nose. “I understand the corner you’re in, I do. You’re loyal to a fault. It’s one of the reasons I love you. But you can’t be loyal to two women, not in that way.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “You can’t love both of us.”

“I don’t love Delilah. I loved her.” I couldn’t look at Jillian as I said it. “She’s—”

“She’s not alive. I get that. But the part of her that matters—the part you fell in love with—is still intact. Otherwise, there’d be no reason to visit.”

I opened my mouth to say something I’d already said countless times in this perpetual argument, when a realization struck me with the force of a marauding elephant.

I turned away. I didn’t want Jillian to see me cry, because I was crying for Delilah.

Jillian was right. How could I have not seen that before? She was completely right, and I was completely wrong. She deserved all of my love, especially if we were going to have a child. And I wanted to have a child with her. I did.

For years I’d been arguing that Jillian was being unfair; I’d built my case, reinforced the weak points with fresh logic, all the time feeling sick inside, because deep down I knew I was wrong.

I had to let Delilah go. I had to say goodbye. The realization was like a gunshot to the belly; it hurt more than anything I’d ever felt. Except Delilah’s death.

• • • •

The trolley wasn’t moving fast. It was a combination of things, the multiplication of slightly poor judgment on the part of Delilah, the trolley’s driver, and the individual who commissioned a local artist to create an iron mailbox that was a replica of Bird Girl, the famous bronze casting that graced the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the most famous book ever written about Savannah.

Delilah was hanging out the door of the trolley, deftly gripping the rail with one hand. The driver was watching Delilah instead of the road. The mailbox was jutting too far into the street, and it was too solid, too well built. A beautiful old wrought iron Savannah mailbox.

They had to keep the casket closed at Delilah’s funeral.

Two years later Petra Beregovoi came back from the deep freeze with her incredible news; three years after that I visited Delilah for the first time.

• • • •

Delilah leaped into my arms. We were on River Street, in front of Kevin Barry’s Pub, where we used to get drunk while listening to Harry O’Donoghue belt out “Whiskey in the Jar.” The fatigue of two consecutive nights of zero sleep, of two days of eating almost nothing, had been left behind with my body. I was bristling with energy.

“So what do you want to do?” Delilah asked. She had no idea it had only been four days since my last visit, so she had no reason to suspect anything was amiss. “You want to go to the beach?” She took my hand and pulled me in the direction of Tybee Beach.

We walked along the causeway, sea marsh on either side, egrets stepping through the shallow water, nonexistent cars gliding past.

When we reached the beach, white-crested waves crashed at our feet. Sand pipers foraged and pelicans glided on the breeze. The wind smelled like sun and salt.

I didn’t tell her.

It was one of those visits that only seemed to last a few minutes. That’s what I told myself, and what I told Jillian.

Next time. I swore I’d do it next time.

• • • •

Sigmund Freud was coming out with a new book, dictated to an army of volunteers who memorized a few paragraphs at a time and brought them back. Hemingway was doing the same. Meanwhile, the truly ancient souls, who were barely human at this point, were uninterested in human pursuits. I swept aside the newsfeed hanging in the air.

The world had been so much simpler when the divide between the living and the dead was absolute. When Petra Beregovoi had opened her eyes and dropped her bombshell, it had seemed like the most wonderful thing. But change is always complicated, even if on the surface it seems like the best, most miraculous change ever.

I went back to work, although that didn’t provide much relief. Owning a business that created walking, talking holographic memorials of people’s deceased loved ones didn’t exactly take my mind off my problems. I hadn’t slept in five days. I was no longer tired; I’d progressed into a strange hyperactive stupor that featured a constant headache.

My phone burbled. I didn’t recognize the ring at first, then realized it was the emergency tone. The somber face of a stranger materialized.

“Mister Revere?”

A jolt of terror rippled through me. “What happened? Is Jillian okay?”

The stranger kept her expression a flat neutral. “She was in a vehicular accident. She’s been injured, but not badly.”

I was already sprinting for the door.

• • • •

Jillian cried when she saw me. There was such pain, such grief in her sobs that for a moment I was sure the doctor had lied when he said the truck had only clipped her, that a shattered elbow was her only serious injury. I wrapped my arms around Jillian as gently as possible, and cried with her, staring in horrified wonder at the bright plastic cast on her arm.

“Is the pain bad?”

“I thought I was dying, and I was glad. Just as it happened, when I thought I was going to die, I felt this sudden burst of joy,” Jillian whispered.

I jerked my head up to look at her. “Why?”

“I was so relieved.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you hope you were dying?”

“It was one of those crazy things you think, that just comes out. If I died, then you would love me as much as Delilah.”

I buried my face in Jillian’s neck, drew her hand up against my wet cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I looked up into the pain in her eyes. It had been there for years. I’d refused to see it. “I’ll make it right. Today. I promise.”

Jillian turned her head to one side. “Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t. You have to wait a few weeks, at least.”

I couldn’t wait a few weeks. I had to make this right, and I so dreaded making it right. “I just want to get this over with. I want it behind us.”

• • • •

I had to sign half a dozen waivers before they would freeze me for the third time in eight days. I scrawled my name on the forms.

How was I going to do this? Delilah didn’t deserve this. She was utterly blameless. She’d taken care of her grandmother, who didn’t eat enough because she was always trying to feed the framed photos that lined her desk and dresser. Once she’d found Grandma packed inside the side-loading dryer in the laundry room, and as Delilah helped her out, Grandma had accused Delilah of putting her in there. Delilah never complained, never lost patience or her sense of humor.

It wasn’t just hurting Delilah that I dreaded, it was losing her. I looked so forward to seeing her. I didn’t want to lose her laughter, her magic. As they prepped me, I took deep, tremulous breaths, trying to calm myself, craving the sedative like never before.

One day I would be in the afterlife, but for now my place was with the living. My promises to the living had to take priority over my promises to the dead. Those were the rules. That was how it was meant to be. I saw that now, with clear-eyed certainty. But that certainty did nothing to banish the terrible anguish I felt.

• • • •

“Hey, you.” As Delilah drew closer and saw my face, she stopped, frowned. “What’s the matter?”

I choked on the words. “I have to break my promise to you.”

A single tear popped free and rolled down Delilah’s cheek. “Why?”

“Because I’m married.”

Delilah pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth and turned away. I reached out to touch her, to turn her around and sweep her into my arms, but I stopped myself. I had no right.

“I was afraid to tell you—”

“No, I’m glad you never told me.” Delilah turned to face me, her eyes bright with tears. “I suspected. It’s been so long, after all. I didn’t want to know. I wanted our world to stay just like it is.”

“I did, too.”

“Here, that’s possible. But where you are . . .” She let the thought trail off.

“I’m so sorry.”

Delilah tried to smile, didn’t quite manage it. “I knew this day would come.” The words were meant to absolve me, but I could see how much she was hurting. The despair in her eyes almost brought me to my knees.

“Can I ask one last favor?” she asked.

“Anything.”

“Can we pretend this is like any other visit?”

I took her hand, and we walked the streets of Savannah. We passed Alligator Soul, our favorite restaurant. We wandered Market Square, past the antique and junk stores. Then along River Street and through all the squares. There were twenty-four squares, not seventeen hundred as Delilah had once claimed on the Savannah Liar’s Tour. As we walked, I realized we were saying goodbye to our Savannah, as well as to each other.

“Is she good to you? Is she a good person?” Delilah’s words broke the silence. We were in Forsyth Park, standing in front of the fountain, where Greek gods blew jets of water out of horns.

“She is.”

“Do you have children?”

“Not yet, but we’re talking.”

“You’ll be an awesome dad,” Delilah whispered.

We walked on, hand in hand, toward The Sentient Bean, where they sold the best brownies in the world, our palms never growing sweaty, our feet never aching.

It was, blessedly, one of the visits that seemed to last a long time.

We ended up back in Chippewa Square, under the live oaks. “I keep expecting you to be gone, but you’re still here.” Delilah smiled, squeezed his hand. “Goodbye. I love you. I’ll always love you.”

“I’ll always love you, too.”

A trolley floating close by crashed to the pavement, startling us both. Up and down Bull Street, vehicles that had been floating slammed to the ground.

“Ben.”

For a moment I couldn’t quite grasp that Jillian was walking toward us, along the worn brick path that bisected the square. I let go of Delilah’s hand.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” Delilah said.

“She’s never come across,” I said, stunned. “She said she never would.”

Jillian stopped a few paces away, her eyes wet with tears.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Aren’t you even going to introduce us?” Jillian asked.

“I—” I wanted to say there was no need, that we all knew who we were, but I stopped myself. “Jillian, this is Delilah.”

Jillian stepped forward and shook Delilah’s hand. The sight of them standing there together made my head spin. Jillian turned to me as she released Delilah’s hand. “Can I speak to you in private?”

“Sure. Of course.”

I led her past the Savannah Theater and around the corner, burning with guilt that Jillian had caught me holding Delilah’s hand. “Are you leaving me? I told her—I swear. We were saying goodbye.”

“No Ben, I’m not leaving you,” Jillian said. “You left me.”

“What? No, I told Delilah. I told her about you. I told her this was the last time.”

Jillian stopped walking. “I came to say goodbye. I need that closure, but after this I won’t be coming back.”

It was as if she was speaking in a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”

“You died, Ben. You died. You’re never coming back.”

I dropped to my knees. It had seemed like such a long visit. We’d gone everywhere, seen everything. Even with the slippery translation of time, I should have known something was wrong. It just never crossed my mind that I could die this young. “How?”

“Heart attack.”

At forty-two? “I’m so sorry.”

Jillian folded her arms, looked at the ground. “Let’s not go there. Let’s just say goodbye. You were being pulled in two directions, and it was pulling you apart. Something had to give. You had to choose. And you did.”

“What?” How is dying of a heart attack on the cryo table a choice? I hadn’t swallowed a bottle of pills or hung myself in the garage, I’d had a fucking heart attack. That wasn’t exactly voluntary.

I opened my mouth to say that to Jillian, and then I closed it. The technicians had implored me to wait a few weeks, but I wouldn’t listen.

“I have an hour,” Jillian said. “Do you want to walk?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. We walked, saying very little. It was a different Savannah. There were fewer wrought-iron railings, but more azalea bushes. The edges of the buildings were sharper, the live oaks’ branches less gnarled. It wasn’t just my and Delilah’s Savannah.

Half of my heart was breaking. It just wasn’t the half I’d expected.

When the cars and buses and trolleys all rose into the air, I didn’t have to look. I knew Jillian was gone.

Delilah was still in Chippewa Square, sitting on the grass in a patch of sunlight. When she saw me, she stood and squinted, as if I could be an illusion.

“I don’t understand. How can you still be here?”

“Let’s walk. I’ll tell you while we walk.” I took Delilah’s hand.

[end]

Please visit LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the January 2 issue, which features 8 science fiction and fantasy short stories, plus a novella, nonfiction, and novel excerpts. You can wait for most of this month’s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $3.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition at a via the link below.

http://www.amazon.com/Lightspeed-Mag...

If you thought the Kepler spacecraft’s glory days were over, think again. Today at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers announced a whopping 234 new exoplanet candidates discovered by Kepler in 2014. The best part? All of them are just tens of light years away.

The deluge of planetary candidates are distributed among 208 star systems, which means we have the honor of welcoming many new multi-planet systems to our cosmic neighborhood. While these candidates aren’t confirmed yet, there’s a good chance most of them will be, according to Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, who presented the findings today. All 234 were found during the first year of the K2 mission, which is scanning stars across the plane of our solar system, moving from one field of view to the next.

Add these K2 planets to the 4,600+ candidate worlds (1,918 confirmed planets) discovered during Kepler’s original mission, and it’s fair to say this little telescope has become one hell of a planet hunter.

From 2009 to 2013, the Kepler telescope stared at a fixed point in the sky, scanning targets located 500 to 1,000 light years away. It was searching for the faint dips in starlight that indicate planetary transits events, with two major goals in mind: root out rocky, Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars; and get the overall statistical distribution of all planets in our galaxy.

For four years, the telescope performed beautifully, uncovering over a thousand planets and thousands more candidate worlds. Three of these planets— Kepler-438b, Kepler-442b, and Kepler 452-b—are very similar to Earth in terms of their size and stellar radiation, leading to the tantalizing possibility that they might be habitable.

Artist’s impression of habitable-zone planets with similarities to Earth: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-452b, Kepler-62f and Kepler-186f. At the right is Earth itself. Image Credit: NASA

Extrapolating from Kepler’s cosmic census, astronomers now believe there could be up to a billion rocky, Earth-sized worlds in our galaxy alone. In other words, thanks to Kepler, finding evidence of life beyond Earth is no longer a pipe dream.

But by May of 2013, Kepler had lost two of its stabilizing reaction wheels. No longer able to maintain its laser-focus, the original Kepler mission was over. But since all of the scope’s optical instruments remained fully functional, the Kepler team submitted a new proposal for the telescope, and the K2 mission was born.

Since the spring of 2014, Kepler has moved across the plane of our solar system (the ecliptic plane), observing different parts of the northern and southern hemisphere skies for 80 days at a time. The scope is currently on its eighth K2 observational campaign, and it’s still going strong. With a little luck and NASA’s blessing, we can expect at least ten more campaigns over the next few years. Moral of the story? Never say a broken telescope is useless.

Before today, the K2 mission had officially confirmed 32 planets and identified just over a hundred candidates. Now, it’s yielded over a hundred more. So far, the distribution of these planets, in terms of their size and orbital distance, matches quite closely to the Kepler census planets discovered before K2.

Image redrawn by M.Stone from data presented by W. Borucki in May, 2015.

“We’re basically finding the same kinds of planets,” Vanderburg said. “We’ve found 234 candidates in the first year of data, and there’s more to come.”

While the K2 candidates still need to be verified with additional observations, you can bet astronomers are going to be giving them a close look over the coming years. These worlds are much, much closer to Earth than the planets identified during the original Kepler mission. That makes them promising targets for future, high-res imaging studies, which begin with the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.

Indeed, K2 planets are among the first extrasolar worlds whose atmospheres we’ll be able to study in detail. Once we can decode atmospheric chemistry, we can start to say with confidence whether any of the myriad worlds beyond our solar system are habitable. Just maybe, we’ll get lucky and find ourselves a true Earth-twin, right in our cosmic neighborhood.

Follow the author @themadstone

Top Image: Artist’s impression of a planet encircling Gliese 667Cb, via ESO/L. Calçada

The Indian film industry’s largest realm, Bollywood, dove into the zombie genre with several different 2013 releases. Now Kollywood, which releases films in the Tamil language, rouses the undead with Miruthan. From the guns a-blazin’ looks of the trailer, it’s very much an action film, with music. Plus: zombie dog!

The trailer is sadly devoid of English subtitles, but you really don’t miss ’em. The dead rise up; the military is like “Oh crap;” and one tough guy (played by Tamil superstar Jayam Ravi) rises to kick ass, lead humankind, get the girl, etc.

Zombies are the universal language, after all!

[Via Bollywood Life]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is out there fighting for civil liberties and privacy on the Internet and the digital world generally. And now, you can help support them—by reading a brand new science fiction book!

The EFF just published a new book Pwning Tomorrow, featuring short fiction by Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Cory Doctorow, Annalee Newitz, Kameron Hurley, Neil Gaiman, James Patrick Kelly, Eileen Gunn, David Brin, Madeline Ashby, Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Hannu Rajaniemi and several others (including yours truly.) The collection ends with a novella by Carolyn Jewel, the lead plaintiff in the EFF’s long-running lawsuit against warrantless surveillance of electronic communications.

The book is Creative Commons-licensed, and you don’t have to donate to get a copy. But the EFF is requesting donations of between $25 and $2,500 per copy. You can donate, and download your copy in e-book format, here.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming in January from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.

Say what you want about Gotham—that it’s a bad show, that it’s insane, that it’s horrifically violent given how goofy it is, or that it’s one of the most fundamentally inaccurate Batman stories ever told—but you can’t say the show doesn’t have its moments.

Case in point: Casting Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens as burgeoning crime lord Oswald Cobblepot’s father.

It’s perfect casting, which we know because 1) look at that picture of Reubens and actor Robin Lord Taylor, holy crap, and 2) Reubens already mastered the role of Daddy Pengs in Tim Burton’s 1991 movie sequel Batman Returns.

The only way this could be better is if Reubens was sporting another pencil-thin mustache. However, given that Gotham is legitimately insane enough to have the Penguin’s dad murder, say, butler/child-punching enthusiast Alfred, I feel like the shenanigans of Daddy Pengs are not going to disappoint us.

Contact the author at rob@io9.com.

Koko, the gorilla who uses sign language, is capable of discussing almost anything that human beings might want to see Koko discuss. If you enjoyed the video that’s going around the internet in which Koko shares her thoughts on the global climate-change summit, you’ll definitely be wowed by her review of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

It’s now official: George R.R. Martin’s next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, won’t come out before the next season of Game of Thrones. That means we’re going to be living in a world where the TV show is continuing the story beyond where Martin himself has told it.

Spoilers for already-aired episodes of Game of Thrones, and already published books, ahead...

And yes, it kind of sucks that Dad is letting the kids drive, and we’re going to be taking some brand new curves at unsafe speeds here and there. But one thing’s for sure: Whenever Winds of Winter comes out, it’ll still be a huge big deal, and it will still be full of surprises.

We were discussing this a lot in the comments of the article about Martin’s announcement the other day, and I thought it was worth amplifying. Yes, some huge plot developments in Winds of Winter (and the final book, A Dream of Spring) will get spoiled on television before we get to see them play out in the books. But at the same time, I don’t think the TV show could possibly “ruin” the books for us, because so much stuff will wind up being different.

There are a few things that need to be pointed out here:

1) It’s all in the execution. Whatever winds up happening with Arya and Daenerys and other major characters, even if it’s roughly the same outline on paper as on television, the execution might be wildly different. Just because of different media and different approaches to storytelling, Martin’s book version of those same events may come across very differently when we finally see it.

2) On a related note, there’s a huge difference between the showrunners reading Martin’s book and then adapting it to television, versus Martin telling them verbally, “Oh, and then Jon Snow wargs into a goat and spends the rest of the series trapped in a goat body,” and them putting this into a script. In the first case, Martin has provided a detailed account of the events (i.e., in the first five books) and the TV writers can draw on it in whatever way they want. In the second, though, it’s bound to be much looser.

Even if Martin then goes ahead and writes the same “Jon Snow wargs into a goat” storyline, his final execution of it will probably vary considerably from what he told the producers before.

3) We’re starting to reach the point where the books and the TV show really are different creatures. A lot of the subplots in Martin’s books will never even get to television at this point, including the Griffs and a few other apparently major things. You have to assume that these added complications, which are probably a huge part of why Martin is having so much more trouble bringing all the threads together in the final books, will end up having a big impact.

4) Meanwhile, the TV show has also taken huge liberties. Off the top of my head, Sansa’s marriage, Jaime going to Dorne, Tyrion making it to Meereen early on, and a few other things. Even if Martin had miraculously published Winds of Winter in the next couple months and we all speed-read it, I guarantee a lot of events in season six of Game of Thrones would still come as a massive surprise. And that means the reverse will also be true—if you see the next season of Game of Thrones and then read Winds of Winter some time later, you’ll still be completely surprised by a ton of stuff.

As Martin himself writes in his blog post, the TV show and the books have diverged, and even small changes will have huge impacts down the line, meaning the stories are going to look less and less similar. He points out:

Just consider. Mago, Irri, Rakharo, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Pyat Pree, Pyp, Grenn, Ser Barristan Selmy, Queen Selyse, Princess Shireen, Princess Myrcella, Mance Rayder, and King Stannis are all dead in the show, alive in the books. Some of them will die in the books as well, yes... but not all of them, and some may die at different times in different ways. Balon Greyjoy, on the flip side, is dead in the books, alive on the show. His brothers Euron Crow’s Eye and Victarion have not yet been introduced (will they appear? I ain’t saying). Meanwhile Jhiqui, Aggo, Jhogo, Jeyne Poole, Dalla (and her child) and her sister Val, Princess Arianne Martell, Prince Quentyn Martell, Willas Tyrell, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Lord Wyman Manderly, the Shavepate, the Green Grace, Brown Ben Plumm, the Tattered Prince, Pretty Meris, Bloodbeard, Griff and Young Griff, and many more have never been part of the show, yet remain characters in the books. Several are viewpoint characters, and even those who are not may have significant roles in the story to come in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING.

5) The ending won’t be the same at all. Sure, Martin supposedly told the HBO producers how his books will end, but the devil is in the details. And even if the two endings have the same one-sentence summary, along the lines of “the dragons and snow zombies kill each other off, and everyone dies except Theon, who becomes King of Westeros,” you could imagine that playing out a lot of different ways. There’s probably a lot of stuff that might land better or worse, depending on how you set up all the dominoes.

And some people are going to hate the ending of the HBO show. This is pretty much a given, because it’s rare to find an ending that pleases everybody. Already, some cracks are appearing in Game of Thrones, but I’m hopeful they can stick the landing. At the same time, I guarantee that even if George R.R. Martin publishes A Dream of Spring 10 years after the HBO show ends, people will still be desperate to read the “real” version of the ending.

So even if Game of Thrones gets to reveal the fates of Arya, Sansa, Tyrion and Daenerys before George R.R. Martin does, in a very important sense, we still won’t know how the story ends. The TV show may “spoil” the books in some ways, but there’s no need to worry that it’ll replace or supplant them.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming in January from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.

For a few hours, Undertale is a solid, charming game. Then you get to the ending—the real ending—and suddenly you get why everyone’s so obsessed.

In fact, I’d argue that Undertale’s true final boss—which you can only see by completing the game as a pacifist—is on par with the best finales in RPG history, rivaling games like Earthbound and Chrono Trigger in sheer gut-wrenching poignancy. Undertale might also have the best boss music of any video game to date. (Don’t listen to it until you’ve fought said boss, though.)

If you’ve finished Undertale but haven’t gotten the true ending, you haven’t really finished Undertale. The good news is that it’s not hard to get: Just complete the game without killing anyone and make sure to befriend every major character. If you’re level 1 at the end, you’re golden. Go finish the game and then wander around until you get a phone call. Follow the directions from there.

If you have seen the true ending, let’s talk about it.

SPOILER WARNING: DON’T SCROLL PAST THE DOG IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED UNDERTALE.

Let’s set the stage. Asriel, the misguided demon prince who has been following and hounding your character for the whole damn game, has absorbed your friends’ souls and emerged from flower form just in time to play with you.

“It’s me,” he says. “Your best friend.”

This is something of a shocker: You’d heard of Asriel, the child of Asgore and Toriel, but who would’ve thought he was actually Flowey the whole time? The first character you meet in the game, the one who tries to convince you that the mantra of Undertale’s world really is “kill or be killed”? That was Asriel all along? It’s a good thing you never listened, or else you wouldn’t be here.

Anyway, Asriel’s here to fight you. And he brought along one hell of a theme song.

At first this feels like any other fight, one you can win by outlasting your opponent and saying the right things. But you’ll soon realize that your only interaction options are “Hope” and “Dream”—certainly not enough to convince this demon child to go away.

As Asriel starts firing attacks at you, whipping out shooting stars and energy beams in an attempt to blast you to oblivion, he’ll explain that he just wants things to go back to how they used to be. He wants to hit the reset button and go back to before. Before that first human ruined everything. Before an interloper named Frisk started trying to save the world.

At some point during this barrage of bullets, you might lose all your HP. You’ll start to see the standard Game Over screen. Then this will happen...

You can’t die, of course. You just can’t. You’re too determined.

After a couple dozen rounds with Asriel, he’ll start to realize that he can’t destroy you. He’ll say you’ve only seen a fraction of his true power—classic RPG boss, am I right?—and then he’ll grow technicolor wings. The music will swell once again.

You don’t have many options at this point. Your health is low but you can’t use healing items. You can’t fight or spare or even try to run away. Your only command option is “Struggle,” which is more than a little disconcerting. You begin to worry that you did something wrong and that you’ll have to start again.

At this point it becomes clear that, if you’re going to win, you’re going to have to do something drastic. Earlier, you’d learned that you the player can manipulate events in the world of Undertale through save-files, so that’s what you’ll try to do. But Asriel stops you. By absorbing all of those souls, he’s gained the ability to block your powers.

“Seems SAVING the game really is impossible,” Undertale tells you. “But... Maybe, with what little power you have... You can SAVE something else.”

That’s when you figure it out. You’re going to have to save your friends.

There are six major “friends” in Undertale, and up until this battle, I hadn’t cared too much about any of them. I found Papyrus’s brash stupidity to be annoying, not charming. I thought Asgore was a big dumb doofus and I just couldn’t stand Alphys and her nerdery. (Undyne can do so much better.)

Then this fight happened.

As the music swells up and down, you’ll gradually save each friend, dodging their old attacks and bringing them back from the abyss by reminding them of the memories you’ve shared. Crosswords! Spaghetti! Butterscotch pie! It’s an incredible few minutes, enhanced by the stakes, the music, and, for me, the sudden realization that these characters are actually kinda cool. Yeah, even Alphys.

Once you’ve rescued your friends, you’ll realize that you have one more soul to save. And if you’re not already bawling as you mash the SAVE button over and over again during the final part of this fight, well... You will.

The whole sequence is spectacular—the payoff of this battle justifies even the slowest of Undertale’s setups. And the music. Dear lord, the music! Over the weekend I listened to the final boss theme while doing dishes and it was wonderful. Felt like I was saving those plates’ souls.

For a long time I was skeptical that Undertale could live up to the hype, and even as I played through the game—on New Year’s Eve of all days—I didn’t buy into the breathless adoration. Then I fought Asriel. It’s hard to imagine a better ending to 2015.

You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

Some of the best art takes your favorite thing and presents it in a new, fun way. Kevin Greene is a master at this. He takes famous, recognizable sci-fi characters and makes them look like they belong on a wall at a famous Italian restaurant.

Greene has released a book called Heroes and Villains: The Sci-Fi Caricature Art of Kevin Greene and the work in it is instantly recognizable, but also different and very aesthetically pleasing. Here are just a few examples of his sci-fi caricatures.

And here’s a tribute to 2016, the 50th anniversary of Star Trek.

For more, visit his Deviant Art Page. And here’s a link to the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Villain...

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

It was a little behind schedule, but El Niño delivered its wrath upon California today, flushing the state with the first of many punishing rains. And you know what happens in punishing rains. Trash cans take to the streets. By themselves.

Supposedly CES is all about autonomous vehicles this year so it’s a shame we didn’t see more of these at the show. I mean it’s no burning palm tree, but surely Google’s working on one of these, right?

[@BradWalsh]

So I had this idea of Nazi artifact hunters crossed with a Harry Potter-type young hero who inherits one of those artifacts. At the time I was planning on writing a science fiction novel, but when I thought about it… Come on, how could I not write about magicians fighting Nazis?

The trouble was that my idea was built on a now tired cliché—the “Chosen One” trope. We’re all familiar with it—the young boy who is given a special power or responsibility, and it his his destiny to use it for good. Think Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and a wide range of heroes going back to the roots of the genre.

TV Tropes lists the Chosen One as a “somewhat discredited trope.” With that in mind, I wanted to start with a Chosen One and do some new and interesting things with him and his role. The good news is that the readers loved the idea.

http://www.amazon.com/Tommy-Black-St...

As soon as my first novel, Tommy Black and the Staff of Light, was published, I had young girls and boys telling me that they wanted to see more of Naomi. Naomi is Tommy Black’s best friend, and, like Hermione Granger, she is a hard-working and astonishingly skilled magician. Also like Hermione, she has turned out to be a very popular character.

Unlike Hermione, however, Naomi is all forward momentum, and as Tommy struggles with the unreliability of his powers in book two, Naomi shoves him aside and jumps in to save the day on a number of occasions. She is not the Chosen One, but as the series progresses she more and more fills the role.

Cover artist Mike Corley handled this dynamic perfectly. We have ominous Nazi magicians arrayed against Tommy and Naomi, but the one in front is Naomi. (Corley’s a master, by the way. I highly recommend you check out his work here.)

With that in mind, below is an excerpt from chapter twelve, where we see the above happening. It’s the kind of scene I would have loved as a young boy, full of action and magic. At the same time, it illustrates a key moment when the Chosen One trope is tossed aside.

An excerpt from Chapter 12 of Tommy Black and the Coat of Invincibility:

We were heading toward the north end of Denmark, and Naomi and I took up our customary positions of standing along the gunwale of the ship, surrounded by water as far as we could see. We spent a lot of time next to each other staring out at sea while we talked. I used the staff to reflect light off the caps of waves, and Naomi did her best to follow the sparkling light with a detonation that would explode into the wave. It was both game and practice. I lit the target, and Naomi blew it up.

Her speed was extraordinary. I had seen master level magicians casting detonations when I had been attacked by Djinn at Kings Cross Station and marveled at their speed, but Naomi made them look slow. I finally stopped and looked at her. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Cast that spell so fast. You unleash them like a machine gun. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Naomi smiled. “Thank you, Tommy!” She opened her hand and looked at her palm. “But this spell is really simple. I’ve cast it so many times that I barely even think about it anymore.” She looked around and then whispered in a conspiratorial voice. “Want to see a really powerful spell?” Before I answered she had already conjured the black ball that she had said was the Hammer of Jamshid.

“Please. Anything to break the monotony of this trip.”

Naomi lifted her hands, glanced back at me, and winked. The ball in her hand started to expand, and there was a snapping and crackling sound. It became a bit hard to breathe as I felt a pressure against my chest. Naomi then extended her arms and the swirling black ball shot toward the horizon. She had aimed it very far off, and it skimmed across the water, appearing to get larger and larger as it flew far beyond where I could make it out.

A moment later a huge ball of shimmery light filled the horizon. Naomi turned back to me with a big smile on her face when a massive boom filled the air and I felt a whoosh of air push me back away from the gunwale. As I regained my balance a big wave slammed against the ship, knocking me off balance again. I had to hold onto the gunwale for support as the boat rocked violently as a succession of waves broke against the hull.

“That exploded about a mile from here!” Naomi exclaimed, barely able to contain her excitement.

“Wow. Exactly how powerful was that?” I asked, wondering if Naomi could flatten a city.

“That’s the biggest one I’ve ever cast.” Naomi looked sheepish as she smiled at me. “I didn’t expect it to be that powerful. I guess I could flatten a large building or perhaps a city block, maybe more.”

“That definitely would destroy more than a city block,” I replied, which elicited more smiles from Naomi.

I was going to compliment Naomi again when there was the pounding sound of footsteps, and the angry voice of Mister Ali. “What was that?!”

Naomi shrugged. “The Hammer of Jamshid. I think I probably killed some fish. Sorry.” She didn’t sound very sorry.

“You foolish girl! Do you not understand that these seas are teaming with U-Boats and German ships? You will get us killed!” Naomi shrugged.

“I thought we were bait,” I replied.

“Tommy, use your head. Just because we are bait doesn’t mean we want to be eaten by a fish.” Mister Ali looked at me and then Naomi and then back at me. Not seeing the response he wanted, he shook his head.

He pointed out to sea and was about to say something when his eyes went wide. “We are under attack!”

I spun around and looked out to where he was pointing. Naomi did, as well. “I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Just some seagulls,” Naomi added.

“They must be using illusions. There!” He pointed to his left. “Is a cruiser. There!” He pointed a little further to the right. “Is a smaller gunship.” He turned to us. “We are in grave danger. They will radio for U-Boats, and they may fire at any moment.” He looked at Naomi. “Can you cast a shield?”

Naomi glanced back out to sea, looking skeptical. “Against cannon fire and shielding a ship this size? That would require the Wall of Jericho, and it would take me an hour to cast that.” She faced the sea and called up the Hammer of Jamshid spell. The ball of destruction hovered in her hand.

There was a clanging in the distance, and Mister Ali stared out at something I couldn’t see. “We are in luck. Your spell must have scared them or put them on the defensive.” Mister Ali looked at me. “Can you make us invisible, Tommy?”

Of course! I squeezed the staff and smiled at Mister Ali. “Yes! I can bend light around us, and then you can guide Naomi’s attack spells.”

“That’s a great idea, Tommy!” Naomi said. I beamed as I held the staff up for effect. I didn’t really have to do that, but I found that using the staff that way intimidated and impressed people. With a thought I bent light around the ship.

“Are we hidden?” Mister Ali asked. I looked at the staff. It was dead in my hand. Light was not bending around the ship. I hadn’t affected light at all.

The staff had failed me again.

I looked at Naomi, and I don’t know how I appeared to her, but she looked frightened. “It didn’t work?” she asked. I shook my head. Naomi clenched her teeth and turned toward the sea. “Mister Ali, tell me where the biggest ship is.” Her voice was all business.

“Look out straight from the ship. No. Turn to the right a bit. That’s good. Now. Look about forty-five degrees to your left. Yes, there you go. Almost to the horizon is a cruiser. You said you saw seagulls. That is the illusion hiding the ship. If you aim for the seagulls you will hit it.”

Naomi made a few motions, and I again felt my whole body compress, as if the energy of the spell was pushing against everything around it. Naomi extended her hands, and the ball once again flew across the caps of the waves. I watched as it let loose its energy near the seagulls. There was the loud boom of an explosion, and I knew a huge wave was going to hit us, as this was a lot closer than the previous casting of the spell.

“Very good, Naomi! Your spell clipped the rear of the ship, and it is sinking!” The sound of boots filled the air, as the crew poured out of the door leading below decks. “Get out of here, you fools! We are under attack. You must tell the captain to go to maximum speed and to notify our escort!”

At that moment two sounds competed for my attention—the sound of machine gun fire from somewhere out at sea, and the sound of bullets hitting and ricocheting off the metal of the ship. Men scattered everywhere, while Mister Ali and I dove for the deck.

Naomi, however, stood tall. I glanced up at her and she waved her right arm back and forth in a wide arc, as if she were a bull fighter, and the bullets were bulls. “I can handle bullets,” she said. The sharp clang of bullets hitting the ship turned into a soft thudding sound from right beyond the ship.

“There,” Naomi said, looking down at us. “That shield will protect us for about ninety seconds.” She reached down and offered Mister Ali her hand. “Get up and show me where the other ships are. I need to destroy them within the next minute or so.”

Mister Ali took Naomi’s hand and stood up. He scanned the horizon. “Straight ahead and speeding toward us is a smaller boat, it is zig zagging but mostly approaching us.”

Naomi nodded, as she squeezed her hands into fists. She opened them again, and both palms held the bright light of a detonation spell. “I’m going to cast constantly. I’ll need you to tell me directions to hit the target like ‘closer,’ ‘further,’ ‘left,’ or ‘right.’ Okay?”

Mister Ali nodded. “Of course.”

Without any further delay, Naomi launched detonations at a speed that was otherworldly. I watched as both hands moved forward and back, balls of explosive light shooting out in a constant stream, each one a destructive spell that exploded in the distance. She cast them in a straight line, giving Mister Ali time to let her know how to adjust.

“Quite a bit closer. Left. Further left. No. A little right.” With each direction from Mister Ali came a stream of spells. I stared in awe at how quickly the spells flew from Naomi’s hands. “It is moving too fast for us to hit.” Naomi cursed, and then Mister Ali added, “They must fear your spells, they are turning away from us.”

Naomi shook her head. “Hold on.” With her left hand she made a series of movements. An orange light flickered and then she held her hand up above her head.

“Is that?” Mister Ali asked, his voice full of awe.

“Yes.” Naomi looked at me with her arm still extended above her head. “Tommy, can you at least blind them?”

I didn’t even bother to respond. I connected with the staff. It was there. It was part of me. Its light shone within me. I could have cried out in joy at its return. The understanding between us was total. I filled the entire ocean, from horizon to horizon, with the blinding light of a thousand suns, shielding only those of us on the merchant ship.

Naomi and Mister Ali were blinking their eyes. “Wow,” Naomi said, before turning to Mister Ali. “Guide me.” With her left hand in the air, she cast detonation spells with her right.

“This is impossible. You cannot be maintaining the illusion while casting another spell.” Mister Ali stared at Naomi. “It is impossible.”

“Guide me!” Naomi looked annoyed.

“They are not dodging but moving straight to the left away from us. You are too far to the right.” Naomi moved and started shooting spells to the left, adjusting her fire after every few casts.

While each detonation ended in an explosion, I could tell from the different sound of the last one that Naomi had hit her mark. “You did it!” Mister Ali exclaimed.

Naomi looked around. “What about the third ship? You said there was another one.”

“It fled.”

Naomi dropped her hand and turned to look at me. I was shocked. Her hair was tousled mess, with strands sticking against her forehead and cheek, which were wet with perspiration. There were deep circles under her eyes. She started to sway, and I ran over and grabbed her arm.

“Not bad for a girl,” she said before fainting into my arms.

I held her while frantically looking around for a soft place to lay her. “Help!” I cried out. Mister Ali walked over and put his hand on my shoulder.

“She’ll be fine, Tommy.” I held Naomi against me, her head resting on my chest. She felt much lighter than I expected, and she smelled of sea and sun and the faint fragrance of ancient books. I was frightened, as the last time I held her like this she had been teetering on the edge of death. “The magic she just performed—” Mister Ali shook his head. “—It was beyond exhausting.”

Get Tommy Black and the Coat of Invincibility from Amazon, KOBO, Google Play and Apple iBooks.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...

The internet streaming company that’s promising 600 hours of new original content next year has just taken a huge leap in its march toward global domination.

CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement today in Las Vegas: Netflix is now available in 130 additional countries as of today, including emerging markets like India, Indonesia, Russia, Azerbaijan, and developed markets like Singapore and South Korea. Then Hastings made a loaded statement. “While you have been listening to me talk,” he said. “The Netflix service has gone live in nearly every country of the world but China—where we hope to also be in the future.”

Hastings failed to explain what’s happening in China, but he did call Netflix a global television network. Of course, you might just call Netflix another tech company that wants to take over the world. Regardless, it’s good news for fans of Jessica Jones worldwide.

Image via Getty

Gizmodo’s on the ground in Las Vegas! Follow all of our 2016 CES coverage here.

Bradley Cooper, star of the original Limitless movie and an executive producer of the CBS TV version, has made most of his appearances on the show in constantly re-aired flashbacks (plus the time he voiced a talking CGI fetus). Coop returned on last night’s winter premiere, and his sleazeball character made me question everything we love about our hero Brian. Spoilers ahead!

Dunno about you guys, but there were definitely a couple minutes where I thought Brian really killed Piper. But, duh, of course not! The show gets dark sometimes, but having a murder hanging over Brian for the rest of the series would’ve way been too much. I also loved the throwbacks to the pilot: “I know a thing or two about jumping in front of subway cars.” And how great was Georgina Haig as the scholar who became the NZT immunization scientist-turned assassin?

Naz continues to be the stern but chill-when-she-needs-to-be Professor McGonagall of the bureau. “The form is just a bunch of lawyers trying to save their asses,” she tells Rebecca after shooing away HR forms Rebecca should’ve signed detailing her office romance. “You think I haven’t slept with anyone here?”

It was a relief to learn that Brian didn’t fall to the dark side after all... but then we’re greeted with Senator Edward Morra’s Frank Underwood-ian announcement and we fear for the future:

And oh god, Rebecca’s getting closer to the truth. Just thinking about the eventual Rebecca-Brian confrontation over the NZT connection to Morra makes me want to crawl into a corner and sob.

And finally...

“GoatWhore?”

“Yeah... I liked them in high school.”

What’d you guys think of the first episode after Limitless’ mini-hiatus?

Images via CBS.

Contact the author at bryan@gizmodo.com, or follow him on Twitter.

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While it may sometimes seem that History exclusively airs back-to-back episodes of Pawn Stars, the cable channel will soon be adding a new scripted drama to its schedule: Knightfall, about the Knights Templar. And it’s got major star power behind it, courtesy of The Avengers’ Jeremy Renner.

Here’s a description of the show via Deadline, which broke the news:

Knightfall chronicles the mysterious but true accounts of the Knights Templar, the elite warriors of the Crusades. It delves into the great secrets protected by the Templars and tells the story of faith, loyalty and brotherhood that help sustain these warriors on the battlefield, and the dark events that would forever sear the infamous date of Friday the 13th into the world’s psyche.

Knightfall received a 10-episode run and will aim to replicate the success of History’s other battle-hewn drama, Vikings. According to Deadline, Renner will executive produce and guest star—or even possibly become a recurring cast member, if his day job starring in movie blockbusters allows (in addition to his Hawkeye duties, he’s in the next Mission Impossible and Bourne films, as well as the adaptation of Ted Chiang’s scifi tale “Story of Your Life”).

Top image: A soldier wearing the uniform of a Brother Knight in the order of the Knights Templar. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It’s January, which means it’s already time for the merchandising market to start salivating over the next Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War. Kicking of the proceedings in the battle for whether or not Team Cap or Team Iron Man gets to rummage through your wallet and make your earnings disappear is Bandai!

The Japanese company have unveiled first looks at their new Captain America and Iron Man toys that will release as part of their Civil War line, which will eventually include all the members of each side of the conflict—Scarlet Witch, Sharon Carter, Falcon, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier, and Ant-Man on Team Steve Rogers, and Vision, Black Widow, War Machine, and Black Panther on Team Tony Stark. The only look at Iron Man’s new suit comes in the above splash image on Bandai’s Tamashii Nations wesbite, but the Captain America figure has been revealed in all its glory.

The roughly 6” tall articulated figure of Cap in his Age of Ultron/Civil War-style supersuit will come with his trusty shield, sets of alternate hands to pose him as either throwing said shield or ready to punch someone, and, pretty niftily, an alternate unmasked head of Steve.

While it’s not the perfect Chris Evans, it’s not all that bad—especially considering that whenever Hasbro have done unmasked Cap figures before they’ve tended to skew more to looking like the comic book cap rather than the live-action version. It’s a pretty decent attempt for Bandai’s first take on doing a Steve Rogers sculpt.

The Civil War Captain America Figuarts releases in Japan this May, for the price of 5,800 Yen—that’s around $50 USD.

[Via Dengeki Hobby]

Toyland: We love toys. Join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

In the early ‘80s, a group of friends decided to do a shot-for-shot remake of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. The herculean task became an Internet legend, and this summer you can watch the entire story unfold on the big screen.

Drafthouse Pictures has picked up the rights to the documentary Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made with plans for a limited theatrical release, as well as digitally and on demand, this summer. Here’s the trailer, in case you missed it.

Directed by Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen, Raiders tells the story of three friends, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb, who at the age of 11 started remaking Raiders of the Lost Ark. They used an old camera, crazy practical effects, and got most of it done over the course of seven years. One scene in particular, however, never got filmed and after their movie gained the attention of the online community (thanks to Eli Roth, Harry Knowles and others), the friends took to Kickstarter to finish their opus.

This movie covers all of that with a real human eye. It’s a great watch if you’re a fan of filmmaking, Indiana Jones, or anything in between.

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.