RETRIEVING DOCUMENT
There are seven names on the checklist.
I have been working through it since March. Administrative clarity for inactive team members: supply chain flags, equipment returns, authorization holds, personnel status. The kind of work that does not appear in a mission debrief but keeps a facility functional.
Rex Splode — closed. Shrinking Rae — in progress, but moving. The others have their own columns, their own open items.
I got to line five on Thursday.
Amanda — Monster Girl. Connors — Robot, though his paperwork is more complicated than that.
Both alive. That much is confirmed in the last position report before the Flaxan gateway closed. They made it through. They knew what they were walking into. Robot had a plan; Robot always has a plan. Whether the plan survived contact with a civilization that runs at a different temporal rate than this one is not information the GDA currently has.
I opened the standard status form. The options are:
Active Inactive — Reserve Inactive — Medical Inactive — Deceased Inactive — Missing
I sat with the form for a while.
"Missing" is not right. Missing means we do not know where they are. We know where they are. We just cannot reach them. The portal closed. The GDA has no recovery protocol for inter-dimensional displacement of this type, because we have never had two team members voluntarily enter an enemy dimension and lose the exit behind them.
"Active" is wrong for different reasons.
I called GDA central records and asked if there was a provisional status category for dimensional displacement. The person I reached read me back the five options. I thanked them. Hung up.
Then I did something I have never done with this checklist. I wrote my own entry in the local facility database.
Status: Active — Dimensional Operations (Pending)
I do not know if anyone at GDA will ever process it. It has no form number. It will not appear in the quarterly headcount. But it is accurate in a way the other options are not.
One more thing I do not write often: time runs differently in the Flaxan Dimension. A few months here can be years there. I do not know what that means for them — for the planning, for the math, for how long they have been fighting a war I cannot see from this side of a closed door.
Their chairs are still at the table.
Four plus two is still six. However the math works out on their end.