It doesn't even take a moment of thinking to answer. "No. Everything was going crazy back home and I could do jack shit but try to get to it in time. Here I can do something and that makes slightly better. Yet, the sense of not knowing is the damn same. It just has faces here versus the pure unknown." But the darkness and chaos...

Dirk stares straight ahead for a moment, mulling that information over. "If Chaos and darkness taking hold are signs the tree has problems, my universe is right in the heart of the breakdown. There's no other way to explain all the chaos and bad situations carefully layered the way they are at home. I could be wrong and it all has some grand plan to it."

But he damn well doesn't think so. He stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets as he follows Roland's lead moving away from his tour of inspection. "At the end of it, while the best work is here, I'm antsy to get back home to fix what's going wrong there. I'm not even sure I make any damn sense anymore."