*

She felt like changing her hair color to purple.

Skylark stood in front of the dinner table. Four nexus tubes' openings sprouted from its flat surface. She rotated between them; today she would use her brother’s.

Skylark sat down in front of it. After Falara had left, she'd moved the house Alterface mirror from where it'd stood during her childhood, besides the plants in the sitting room, to behind the dining table. Today she wouldn’t be having dinner by herself, but by herself looking at her reflection.

She entered the house system by receptor. Food selection––dinner––[1] Meal of the Week [2] Recommended Nutrition [3] Custom [4] Our Chosen Meal For You [5] Random. It was all Blucorps, anyway. [4] Our Chosen Meal For You. Thank you for your selection. The nexus tube in front of her shone blue, and Skylark as she waited looked across at her face in the Alteryear mirror. Access Alterface. Avatar modification.

FACE BODY MIND FITNESS SATISFACTION

People didn’t really select Satisfaction, especially after that one time, she forgot the year, but a lot of people in Might kept on selecting Satisfaction each Alteryear until an entire generation of people in their forties, including Netbank and techist operatives, stopped pushing forward their operations. If you only did it once every few years, it wasn’t damaging, but Skylark never felt the need… until now. She remembered how her friend had pulled at her hair, because Skylark had finally shown her her power.

She looked at the nexus tube, which had completed summoning Blucorps’ chosen meal for Skylark li Agle. She thought about the tube being taken out of the table, broken off from the house’s food store; rising in the air, spinning, then rotating while spinning, the ingredients from the finished meal being thrown in all directions and tossing blue light in remote specks across the curved ceiling, the three other chairs, the walls containing photos of larks, sparrows, and that one swan statue they’d found in a Lowers museum. She thought about a hot calendar day shortly after moving into Might, when Ala had been arguing with Mom about making their own food sometimes, they knew how to cook, and he’d almost hurled wind at her, but Sky held onto Ala’s shirt and touched his hands.

Face

HAIR EYES CONTOURS OTHER

Eyes

COLOR SHAPE SIZE

Color

TINT COLOR ORB RESET

Tint

CURRENT: BRIGHT BLUE SKY

THOUGHT FOR TINT.

Brighter. Maybe as bright as the moon, which we almost never see.

Skylark briefly wondered if the Alterface even had the moon’s color installed. Because of weather towers and another reason involved with the five world governments, she forgot the details, the moon was only visible a few times a year during solar eclipse.

TINT: BRIGHT MOON.

She didn’t feel them, of course, but the nanos from her body-maintenance prescriptions would be alerted by the Alterface’s command, and the ones behind her eyes would change their appearance from the strong blue she had cherished for Alauda whose hair had been that color to that of the moon. The moon wasn’t blue, it never was. She closed her eyes for a second.

She opened them, and saw that the two small pear-shaped orbs reflected in the mirror were now lighter, or grey; but shining dully, not quite blue at all––but perhaps it was there, hidden behind the strange powers held by the Government that made it all.

ANY FURTHER ALTERATIONS?

No, thank you. Alterface completed for 2236.

The dinner made for her sat, still hot, in front of her on the nexus tube, unblemished. She’d eat it.

But first! She had to contact Lucas––it’d been almost two weeks, right? They had to be done with whatever they were doing. She hoped it hadn’t been too dangerous, although they were professionals.

Thought message, to: Lucas Kotaro.

‘Lucas Kotaro’ is not registered, but ‘Luke Kotaro’ is registered, age 25, male, shaky blonde hair, nonworking. 25 and male, shaky blonde… yeah, that was him. Skylark remembered again his eagerness back then in the cafeteria, telling her all these things about how great it’d be to have another Scion Magy’cal. How her powers were needed.

Thought message, to: Luke Kotaro.

Hey! Skylark?

Hi. It’s Skylark. Yeah, from William Restor. Scion Magy’cal, if you guys are still taking Scions, I––

Hmm. Uh, well about that.

He sounded uncertain. Not cool, not the cool Lucas Kotaro she had met at lunch. What happened? You guys got turned over by the Government? Joking, obviously.

Mm, something like that. What? Well, do you want to talk to Melea? She’s right here. She’s new––came pretty recently, sometime after we first met.

Melea? No, she’d been there in the cafeteria. Yeah, I’ve met her. She was with you and Cade.

She was? It was just me, Cade, and Agate. I haven’t met Melea before last week, although Cade tells me I’ve known her for five years. I wish I did. But besides that! You’re still up for joining? Not much to join at this point. He sounded like he was laughing––but here, Melea.

Thought message redirected to Melea Voraëson. Accept.

Hi, Melea. It's Skylark again.

Skylark. It's good to hear from you.

What happened? Lucas is acting weird.

Luke––his name is Luke now.

Uh, okay. He changed his name with the Government? As Alauda must’ve done, if he was still––Luke’s easier to say.

Incoming Thought message from Falara. Hold?

Reject. Did the Government get to you guys, and took some of you away, and they came back strange, as if part of their minds had been trimmed off––

Yes. I’m sorry, Skylark, but you’re right about that. Jaceus––and d’Voris cut off for a bit, before returning, sounding milder––wants to take us in a certain direction.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Jaceus. He was with you. And the Furies still lost?

He was not truly with us.

Skylark paused herself, then, and tried to think about what she had heard; for how earnest Jaceus had appeared to her, before introducing her to Melea, earnestly talking to a Scion when he was the real thing. The Furies. What wasn’t so real about them?

Raising V-books, and moving them towards a Magy’cal who could not use magic.

What was so real about joining the Furies? She had school, she didn’t like it, and going to school made her miss half of her day for practicing, and she’d have to see Falara again. Would Falara still be so eager to see the new technology with Darth?

Raising V-books, and controlling their forward motion, five at once.

Jaceus, a real Emulus, who did use his magic, and she hadn’t seen it yet. Wants to take us in a certain direction. Lucas––Luke––wasn’t as cool as Jaceus nearly, but the Furies did have high schoolers. If they hadn’t been taken by the government, she could try talking to them.

Melea. I want to meet the rest of you.

A drop of surprise on the other end. Do you know how to go to the Lowers, Skylark?

She’d lived there, with one who grasped the wind. She still remembered where the bird statue was.

I do. Tell me where to go.

I will make sure to do so, when we are ready for you.

She closed the Thought-feed.

Break. The nexus tube fell to the tabletop, spilling the binelan onto the table and splashing some onto her shirt.

Holding what remained of the pecan-scented shard, Tr’aedis came upon an end to the place of food creation: an edge to the near-transparent floor, which he now realized was a walkway: and that the edge fell off suddenly into a vast emptiness below him. His vision stumbled, and only an arm from the man named Puræ stopped him from plummeting down, down; he closed his eyes, and again reopened them to see the abyss more clearly.

He first saw that the walkway did not end, but only took an exact right angle

down to slant on a giant floor of its own, or a wall, that stretched to his left

and right for a great distance; gazing down the space as if he were gazing forward,

the wall became a floor, and at the far reaches of its depths he saw

shapes that moved through it. They were large.

Puræ pulled him back up. Tr’aedis saw that this space extended forward for a distance of its own, although its end was visible: trees. Sleek, glittering trees that he knew did not operate on bio terra but on a different, superior energy; he then saw that the sun-haired woman, who had accompanied them this way, had her hand out over the emptiness. Abruptly, another shape burst into appearance, over the plane; Tr’aedis first thought of Blazon props, then of techists. It was a radiant green. It held to an elongated point at the top, to the bottom, and to its sides; it was a cube, he realized. A superior cube tilted on its exact side, with the top and bottom points further out, and the wing that was on her cloak, and Puræ’s arm, was inscribed onto its surface.

A sharp, gentle noise slanted through the air, and the surface of the plane broke––it was not a clear plane, but water, and not the water he had not ruptured on his entrance to this world, for that had not been water, but something further; this was water. The shape that rose from the surface was the same he had sighted when staring horizontally across the abyss; water rescinded gravity like rain. The shape was formed like a banana, Tr'aedis thought, although colored grey and steel and alter blue; it keened, a long, plaintive noise that sounded not like a long-extinct animal––for he now recognized it as the Whale––but like a guardian of the wing-marked cube, one that welcomed Puræ and the one with wings for sleeves. Tr'aedis saw her smile at the whale and wave, calling out to it, and he saw the verdant cube open, a triangle-shaped door appearing on its front face.

“Ila ce, suverhe.” Puræ dipped his head towards the water, and gestured towards Tr’aedis. The woman named Ila ce had one foot on the surface, stepping on it like hyperglass; she moved her other foot onto it as well, standing on the water. Ripples waned from the whale’s entrance, but still reached her feet. “Felot nort.” The cube was still, still above the water, and quite far away. Tr’aedis took a step forward.

“Bulë. Faet nohæn.” Ila ce raised a hand, before placing her palm on the air, as if she were trying to touch her hand to the cube; it moved closer until it was suspended very low over the water, in front of them; the door was now opening, and Ila ce was walking in, footsteps beginning to echo. Puræ followed, beckoning to Tr’aedis.

He entered.

Light filled his vision; the triangle rejoined the face behind him, and then all was dark.

Scene 3

He opened his eyes, and it felt as if he were raising V-books laid on them. It felt as if he had had a dream. But then he heard laughing, and a voice that sounded like the sun-haired woman’s. Sunlight on her shoulders. Who had made food from nothing. A damp, twilit green canvas was the ceiling; he was in a small chamber, and the man named Puræ, who had led him here, was using his black-shorn hands to point to the floor, then to himself, and to Ila ce, standing beside him; she was shaking her head, but she was smiling, too, and the person they were talking to was the one bearing the voice.

He was shorter, standing a meter below Puræ’s shoulder, and his hair was the reams of morning wakefulness bound tightly across two main crests, one on top of the other; the same color as Ila ce’s, and Tr’aedis discerned that he looked like her, although with somewhat stronger eyes, and a sharper chin; his voice was deeper than Puræ’s. He was dressed in the white cloak of wings, and likewise had wings on the sleeves. He was nodding his head in Tr’aedis’s direction, and laughing now and then.

Tr’aedis waved. “I’m Tr’aedis,” he said. He felt like a backstage actor, dressed in one of the suits that wasn’t to be used.

“Trædise. Nex Herceus, tae Myodor. Dyen, gönhel.” His name was Herceus or Myodor, or both. Herceus’ hair resembled plumes of a bird. He saw that Ila ce’s expression showed concern, and then Herceus stopped laughing, and the three became silent, merely looking into each other’s faces much as Tr’aedis had seen the game-players do before, without speaking.

“Myët-t Jaceus, tae Myodor?”

Tr’aedis started. He didn’t recognize the name, but the question had come from another voice, one that rang solidly and along the same lines as Ila ce and Herceus: and he looked to see the voice in form, and they were taller than Puræ, a dazon by appearance, though slightly male; their/his hair was hazy, not the color of sunlight or that of morning, but of the strength returned to the body upon rising from sleep. Their hair was a low-ridged covering to the head, more an ornament than a part of the body, something more to be shown. Tr’aedis thought of feathers; and in addition to wings on the sleeves, they/he had a foreign shape depicted on the front; it looked like ➤.

“Dyen. Nex Apolluceus Myodor. Jaceus—” and Apollo-ceus if that was their name, pointed Tr’aedis’s gaze to what looked like a V-photo on the far wall, a wall that was so clear that he saw his reflection blurred for only an instant—before he saw the wall itself. The V-photo was in between one of Ila ce and another woman, and Apollo-ceus after the woman, and Herceus before Ila ce. The person in it had well-formed golden hair, and Tr’aedis had not seen him before.

“So tell me, R’aegoth. You beat the Golden Fury right there inside the photoshop. I’ve asked N’ziet already. I heard he was strong. Real strong! Was he as strong as me, R’aegoth?”

The babel floret in front of me is considered to be the greatest item of High eating; rather, the hologram image of its tiers and ruffles is forming as I await the nexus tube to produce it for my tongue. Three tiers in all, each equipped with its own parapet of ruffles; a mighty thing to behold. From my study of the piece, the bottom contains its own moat of pinter juice, its mere surface frozen, with that single cold layer not concealing the orange-clementine mixture, liquidated; the layer above that, the mizzenmast, with miniature doors painted with vene. The entirety of the babel was composed of a soft mindo-like texture, and as the hologram image coruscates down in infinite lines into the newly produced babel floret, I note Hector’s own amazement, and nod with satisfaction, because his reaction is meet.

“R’aegoth, I’ll try it first. It might be poisoned.”

“Hector, Hector. That is an archaic thing. Blucorps is directly under the Government’s wing.”

“You’re right!” he says. I nod, as I watch Hector’s blue strands come apart atop his empty head. They are well kept on this morning, and as I look in that direction, I see the Agent N’ziet approaching, his phoenix tattoo curled around his torso. He is still bald, and the phoenix is red. He gives a respectful nod to his superior, and then smirks at my subordinate. “Eating babel today, you certainly are what you eat, R’aegoth.”

“If you refer to my make as an Agent, that is well put, N’ziet.”

“This babel’s real good, R’aegoth!”

“So will I.” I crisply pluck a door off of the middlemost layer, and drop it into my consumptive organ. As I chew and move my tongue around its teeth and Hector stares down at the moat of vene, N’ziet sits down on his chair, the phoenix’s tail flicking up as he does, and a man with hair that is gold on his shoulders and pate steps out of the bakery. “Eat pieces on a day such as this? Have at you, Agent!” he says, and we proceed to bring our limbs together, and Hector takes up the floret into his arms and jumps between his feet, back and forth, lacking his Mr. Krabs, and N’ziet is studying us, not attuning the situation; we exchange powers, Golden Fire and R’aegoth the first, a certain strength adorning his arms, as I weave, and strain, and rinse myself of this man. What is his name? Hector is throwing pieces of cake at us, and N’ziet is quoting poets, and I am hearing triumph, the shape of Jaceus’ energy ringing against my own, for I am human consummate, for I am R’aegoth, and I am grave, gentle, and glorious; and not a name is more than I. Jaceus stumbles, and I swiftly take his left side, throwing it into senselessness; I proceed to his hair, and we are in the Shorning chamber, and I am pulling him from the water of the pool, and motes of light fall from his skin; I order my midday meal, and am dining with Morht, and we are discussing the move of Sara up past Hector, who is now Fifth Agent, and I am proposing we move him down even lower, past N’ziet, who is licking his own babel with a ruddy tongue. “Wake up, Raegoth, let’s go.”

“Hector, my midday dream must not be disturbed. Today’s happened to be most clear.”

“Raegoth, it’s Sara.”

He opened his eyes.