“You will become a Governor.”
She heard, and adjusted the hair around her receptor. She was still not getting used to it.
The first thing the Governor had said to her, after appearing in its hologram, shaped like a woman holding a ball of an unstated substance in its upraised hand. The first thing the Governor had said after being asked, Where is Tr’aedis, and she had almost added, my friend, but had not. Biting her lip, she rested back against her chair. A Governor. Occasionally, she knew, the Governors would give points of advice, reprimands, or what they called ‘prognostications’; none of her friends’ experience told to that, but she had heard from Anderi that Sector U’s Thought-pod had done studies, and students who sought out Governors for personal problems, if they were extraordinary, received prognostications which were sometimes realized.
She was a good student. She knew that; she knew it every day; she almost laughed out loud in front of the Governor’s hologram, as still and perfect as what its original must have been.
“Thank you, Governor. I will do my best.”
“Your acquaintance is no longer in this world, Eleanor.”
Eleanor’s cheeks burned.
There was a portal malfunction. Eleanor knew that. She knew she could not simply portal to Highpoint and from there to the Government Seat where all the Governors convened. Specific conditions had to be fulfilled. They’d only just started learning about them, and it was going to be on their Governing final.
He was no longer in the world. The hologram figure carrying the flame seemed to flicker once before resolving itself back into clarity. He was no longer able to enact the casual freedoms of terrible acting. Tr’aedis was gone. Eleanor knew very little about the portals; she didn’t know what happened when a malfunction occurred. Tr’aedis might as well have been taken to a new stage, one where Eleanor wasn’t in the chairs of the audience, adjusting the settings while he ranted. On and on. On and on he spoke.
“Will I see him again?” she asked instead.
“You control that possibility,” was her reply. As if she controlled anything.
“Thank you,” she said. The Governor’s hologram seemed to nod; she took that to mean their meeting was over. Eleanor reached over to her receptor, placed across the nexus tube. Somewhere in High, up past Highpoint and tiers of bureaucracy, its counterpart receptor emitting the hologram was being touched in the same way by its Governor wearer. Somewhere out there.
So much for truths. The Governors knew where he was, but it was secure information that they could not reveal to an ordinary citizen. She knew how this worked.
Eleanor sighed.
If only they were acting. Student Governors was acting; this was the real thing. What the Governor said, if not the truth, was the truth said to Eleanor. She was no longer with Tr’aedis in the world. She could no longer put up with his acting and his drama. She was moving on and on to the world beyond. Beyond high school, at least. She knew where she was applying. She had better grades than most of her friends. She knew that she would know this truth, at least, once she received her midsemester determining exam grades, submitted them to the Sector Application Portal, and was admitted to the appropriate university of this Sector.
There were other Universities, of course. There were other Sectors. But, like Tr'aedis, she could not do anything about that part of her world. Maybe the Governor was right. Maybe she wanted to be a part of something new, a realm where she could walk through the long hallways of school, see Tr’aedis pass by. They’d catch eyes, and notice each other; of course, they’d never met before. He would be turning his head left and right, laughing with his friends and donning the colors of the Blazon actors. She would look on, and think—oh, for one to be so much their own person, one who is this way with their own, and that way on the stage; to the world—and continue walking on. On and on through the hallways of her own life.
Through her own future, off the stage. One where she had not for the past nine years acted a friend—and in her own world, become more of one than she had ever meant to be.
Scene 5
Tr’aedis saw that there were two of them, and the five Myodors, alongside Puræ, were each kneeling, all as one. Tr’aedis stood where he was, thinking he should kneel to those seated on the dais. There were two of them.
A second before, the dais had been empty.
A second later, and the dais was now full. Two people were sitting on it. They were people. Of that he was certain; but he tried to look. He tried to look. He tried to pierce the symbols that lay on their bare chests, that looked to be a part of their skin, if skin it was; it appeared green—the symbols were.
He could not decipher the symbols at this time.
“You honor us,” Tr’aedis then heard, in the language that was called Neo English, back on Earth, from the year 2236, Sector I, the levgion Plent, District S. The words did not come out of his lips or on a receptor, but he looked, and he saw, and he saw that the person on the right of the dais was moving their lips. And suddenly, while he was far away, standing behind Puræ and the others, he could see the unblemished surface of the vermilion border.
“Children, friend of the court, please stand.”
The Myodors and Puræ stood, and Tr’aedis knelt, lowering his face to the floor, which did not reflect anything. He could not see the barest hint of a shadow.
“There is no material in the Rosary,” the person on the left of the dais said. “But you do not possess the substance in you, so you would not know.”
They were speaking Neo English; the language of the words he knew, the lines he spoke, the blood of rehearsal—Blazon High! He could go back! These must be porters. This was all a show; this was entirely an act, by a troupe from High, putting on a performance for him.
He waited for them to tell him to rise. He would give them libation. And then he would see them all emerge from their holo-costumes and speak lines that he knew.
“Ila ce, he appeared during your game, within the sphere,” the person on the right said, and Ila ce nodded; her hair that fell like beams of sunlight across her shoulders was still. “Magcreat-hol Puræ flænde. Tr ædise morise worn Ligaeryen nort,” Ila ce said.
‘Majukreat’, ‘flauhndai’, ‘noir’; all words they had used, when they were on the water that reflected.
But soft! How was Ila ce able to comprehend the porters? If the porters could speak Neo English and she could understand, then why did she not speak the same with him?
“A pox on both your houses!” Tr’aedis said from where he knelt, directed at Ila ce, not in apostrophe, for she too was a participant in this idle sequence, and he was the fool…
Ila ce did not respond to him, but from the dais came: “Human, we are not speaking your language with you, but in divine speech that the hearer will understand regardless of their language. Your language is not known among the Nötr.”
“A plague on—”
Divine speech?
He remembered, once, asking himself, Are there gods? And in reality, while the world religions had lost the significant portion of their followers in the past hundred years, he never questioned that possibility, and here, in the Rosary, a word of the still-extant Catholicism, which if he only heard their words in Neo English, ‘Catholicism’ was the closest thing to the two on the dais, who were—And he was called Human. These people weren’t human beings? Were they descendants of the haloed priests? Administering the sacraments to the unbeliever?
He raised his head by increments; they were still there. The skin on the two on the dais shone, the green letter written on themselves—it was a part of themselves—and there were two of them. Two letters, they were the same, and the letter was—
R
Scene 6
There was a weight on his eyes once more. He had to put in some effort to raise them. And once he did, he remembered.
This was the second day.
All the world that was not—but real. These were real, speaking persons, with a language of their own. These were persons who bore a certain variety in features that suggested something… different between them, on a physical level, and perhaps even further—but they were all equally their own.
And he was different from all of them, on a fundamental level that marked him as different from the moment he stepped onto the water. They were not unkind; the one named Puræ had been assigned to be his guide of sorts, and he had entered and been shown a community of ones named Myodor, who knew each other, and paid respects to certain higher beings, who spoke his language, and then he remembered. None of these people were human beings.
Unerringly, his mind twitched to those of Faerie, as Shakespeare knew. He was joining them, and the two who bore a truth on their chests were Oberon and Titania. Where were the other folk, Puck, the other humans? Or was he the only one, secreted away into the untouchable land, by his dreaming of Shakespeare, never to return? Never to finish high school—never to receive another chance at the stage for university. Never to act again.
There was something important he was neglecting in this farce of paradise, and he did not know what it was. What he did know was that what he was experiencing was real. He felt his hands, palm to palm. He touched his fingers to his cheeks. He ran his hands through his hair, which was slightly tangled from the night’s sleep. So he had indeed slept, and passed a night here.
Tr’aedis was in a different world. He knew then that a core component of how he understood the world to be had been changed, with the existence of these people, and what they did he saw, it was getting close to that thing he knew he was missing in his understanding. Well. There was much he did not understand, and all he knew was to follow. If he was in a different world, the way of return was unknowable—unless—unless the people here knew of his world. They had asked him about a Jaceus. What if—what if? What if Jaceus was one of their own, and was in his world? And they were asking for his knowledge of Jaceus, and—
But this was all speculation. He was in a different world, an entirely new stage. Everything was different. It was as if he was inside a V-movie that knew no ending.
He did not know what to do then, so he remained there.
Leveran’s curve is a parabola descending from the top left to the bottom right, Eleanor thought as she Thought the line across the page of her V-book. There. Last question. She threw down an imaginary pencil in her head. If she were living here two hundred years ago, that’s what she would have done.
Eleanor looked up, and glanced down at the seat just below her. Klost as usual was staring off at Jule, still working on their exam. She looked to just behind him, meaning higher ranked before the exam, Anderi—she was twiddling with her ear, waiting for her receptor. She noticed Eleanor and gave a thumbs-up; Eleanor nodded.
To her right, but just a nod below—ranked second by a few centimeters—was the high schooler who was already a Netbanker for their family. Proen iHiela. From day one three years ago, they’d been noticed by the entire class for having a fashion of name even rarer than the apostrophe in Plent, the ibef. Meaning a direct descendant from the original family line back in the mid-21st century who’d constructed their entire lives within their own small city by smart technology and had almost lost their minds. But Proen was a genius, a fact everyone also found out on day one, and normally didn’t attend class as a student because they’d often help Ms. Hort with the actual teaching.
Stolen story; please report.
Proen was looking right back at her, trying to match expressions. Well, they’d probably become rank one after this. Eleanor looked away and scanned the other students near the back, moving through the long, rectangular classroom to the front, at the students who’d never even think of putting their names in for the Sector’s premiere institution of higher learning. Worst case, they’d attend the schools in Lowers, which no matter what curve you used to describe the economy, always just got the remainder from Might, Plent, and High.
It seemed that everyone was just finishing as well, and Ms. Hort was entering the classroom from the right. She stopped to stand by the main platform desk, and Uploaded to reveal the box containing their receptors. Eleanor waited a few moments before Ms. Hort laughed loudly, and returned the box to its V-locker. She mumbled something to herself, and then, Eleanor’s receptor dropped out of the air in front of her. She caught it this time. Blazon was still coordinating individual desk V-lockers, which could only contain their receptors. But Eleanor put hers on. She Thought Eleanor Vyaedus Dorr, and her Thought-feed appeared. She moved through School, Classes, Economy, MSDE. Anderi’s name was on top—not ranked first necessarily, but first in the alphabet—and she scrolled down.
Daren Puter—Thoughtcode 1023
Eider Sera—Thoughtcode 1024
Eleanor Vyaedus Dorr—Thoughtcode 1025
Emeno Vardis—Thoughtcode 1026
Forti Forti II—Thoughtcode 1027
Giya Igre Bis—Thoughtcode 1028
Eleanor Thought 1025 for her MSDE. They should’ve risen a few points for the ones below 100%.
Economy—99%. Rank 4. So Anderi did beat her out. And two others—Proen, and—it couldn’t have been Klost. She glanced down; Klost was now staring at the ceiling. Anderi was nodding her head, staring in front of her. She was looking at her Thought-feed and seeing that she was higher ranked, probably. Eleanor waited. She watched as Proen’s desk rose a few centimeters, and then hers lowered some—but kept lowering, and lowering, and Anderi and Klost now sat higher. Well. Rank four? Still good enough to place for Sector U as she was ranked in the top five in all her classes. She’d have to see her overall class rank after the Governing MSDE.
But rank four? Klost?
She shook her head. “Good job, Eleanor,” came a voice from above. Proen was smirking down at her.
She entered her Thought-feed. Proen iHiela. Proen, we're both making Sector, you know.
I don't know, the competition's High this year.
Such as?
Giya, being one. Mii na Ten, the visiting student. You.
A compliment from Proen themselves. They must really be confident in their performance, she thought. They did just have Governing left, or maybe they already took it. Either way. They were both going to Sector. Blazon’s typical retinue of ten or so students accepted into Sector University each year would include herself. Would include Proen iHiela. Giya Igre Bis, president of Student Governors and Form Governors. Overall rank 1 or 2 their first two years. Mii na Ten had gone to High most of his life where things were even more competitive of course. The chair system started there, after all. Eleanor Dorr, daughter of a Netbanker who had started in Might and made a name for himself in the next levgion. Eleanor Dorr, daughter of a former techist from Might who had taken to making her home a palace and staying there permanently.
Scion Element’r.
That’s only four people, iHiela. We’re all getting in.
As you say, Eleanor. Proen finally turned away, probably going to talk ranks with someone else in their cohort. Proen had their own friends, not necessarily overlapping with her own group. From her group—some would go. She hoped Anderi joined her; Klost didn’t have a chance. He’d probably go to BlU or University Laconica, High or Plent, he’d be happy as long as he could follow nice hair. She could scroll and Thoughtcode for his score and rank on Economy. She Thought and scrolled.
Giya Igre Bis—Thoughtcode 1028
Kamen Raider—Thoughtcode 1033
Klost Louv—Thoughtcode 1034. Hmm. She thought for a second, and then—
Tora Tailor—Thoughtcode 1078
T’pior Ignitio Dain—Thoughtcode 1079
Uviera Mell—Thoughtcode 1080.
“Eleanor, let’s go.” Klost’s chair was returning to the ground level and descending past hers. “Jule, you coming?” he called, and Jule responded from up front. Eleanor nodded, and Thought back to her chair settings, and adjusted them. She watched her view change slightly as she descended back to the floor.
She got up and smiled at Anderi. It was time to eat.
She joined them outside the classroom. As they walked through the hallway to the cafeteria, sharing ranks, she smiled again. It felt nice. It felt nice to be turning her head left and right, seeing the people in her life she could be herself with. It felt—
She couldn’t remember what it felt like.
Jaceus stood outside the portal, and thought of magic.
He always thought of the three Scions here who’d impressed him; the Scion Zarr with an incredible immunity to anything Jaceus threw at him, even his shape. The white-haired boy Scion who tangled with his mind, infringing upon his earliest memories. And now Skylark, who truly had the will, to pursue her trait further.
He sat down on the green, imperfect grass that bore no resemblance to the free plains of his world, and thought.
He’d only told the Furies that he’d told the Agent Mik’vael that they were no longer worth the Government’s consideration. He’d not included himself. It seemed to him that the Porters were a separate branch of the Agency, as he’d only encountered one. Agate’s misinformation on their role here evinced that.
Jaceus sighed. He’d tried so hard not to think of it but over twenty years of his life he’d spent in a world where magic was breathing. An understood breathing, a conflation of the substance that resided in every being, with the material that in his world existed everywhere. But here there was none. He took a deep breath, up from his chest as it was taught. He felt, and his substance beckoned; it was still there. It always was… he breathed in more deeply, and reached outside of him instinctively for the nonexistent material… searching the surroundings of the portal as well, but there was nothing.
He looked up around him; and as it was the day he came here, there were no birds. He thought back, to first learning how to use his substance, reaching out with his fingers as he sat on the Pillars, seated next to his sister, Ila ce, who even then, even then, shook her small head at him, and motioned for him to stop, telling him that “all it took was listening to the music of your soul,” ha, that the eight-year-old Jaceus would understand that substance alone could produce. That substance alone could reify.
How long was it, since he had last used real, formative magic. Endowments were natural to the Emulae. Using his ⧮ was mere enhancement. How long… he hummed deeply as he placed his hands on the portal’s surface. Nothing swam in the glass that did not reflect.
And suddenly, he felt it. The material. That had not been outside him before. Jaceus opened his eyes and looked at the portal wall that held his hands; it was clear, but he felt. It was there, beneath his hands. He pressed more firmly, and thought.
⧮ ¬
A shape that he did not recognize, separated from his own by what he understood to be the physical material of the portal.
Jaceus left his hands there for a single second, and released. He stepped back.
He was brought back again to a lesson, long ago now it seemed, where he sat by Ila ce and his elder sister Etr ce, as Triomphe was explaining the attainment of one’s shape—that each person using their own substance, created and understood their own form, as they would their name upon the Givening—that each of the six races could manifest it. Each of the six races with magic. Jaceus knew the shapes of his siblings, and of Puræ and Triomphe, and some others. He knew most strongly as he tried to remember Triomphe’s words, again and again in his mind—each of the six races.
This portal had one as well; and Jaceus hesitated to shatter it as he had originally intended.
The implications were formidable. A sense of foreboding rose upon him, and he felt himself walking back, back to the portal walls—only to touch it, and see the—the space inside the portal materialized to include another, a human being, one dressed in long folds of a cloak, which only inspired more memories that he had suppressed. She had clung to her back a long shaft of what appeared to be wood, with a handle or hilt extending from it. She remained standing there for several long seconds, not noticing his presence.
His immediate thought was that she was one from home. His second was that he had succeeded in bringing about a Porter, alerted by his magical contact with the portal, because they were crafted by the Government, and placed entirely around human society, and so the Porter was alerted by his alarm, of discovering—the Porter spoke, still not facing him.
“Dyen, Emulus real, to the first Sector. I am the Porter Qumulo,” she said, in a voice uninterrupted.
I welcome you, she had said, in the language he knew as a child.
Jaceus almost quested her if she, too, had her own shape. He almost responded in his own language with felot, a foreign person who is not known, or gönhel, a person of the same place, in politeness; and perhaps, being a Porter and then the second to speak his language in this world, she would respond in kind, but—but he had come here for answers by destruction, and he had received a shuddering mystery to add to the one already had.
“I am the Emulus Jaceus, yes,” he said. And then—“You are not from this Sector,” he probed.
The Porter then turned to face him, walking out of the portal—her cloak billowing from zero wind. “You are correct, Jaceus. I just ported from Sector II, directly from skyport. Hence the wear.”
“You were expecting me, Qumulo?” he asked. He did not believe she had malicious intent, but he mentally opened the doors to enhancement.
“Somewhat of that kind, and I was called by the Porter Perry, whom you met, as well as other reasons not, I hope, involving you.” She faced him, and behind her clear eyes he detected a willingness on her part to use what she had on her back if necessary; she continued. “A dysfunction occurred between portals here, one with your passage, and as Perry was directly involved with the last occurrence fourteen years ago, bringing a Magy’cal over to this world, he did well in contacting the others.”
“The others. The other Porters, I presume,” Jaceus said. And Magy’cal. He didn’t—he dared not think of what that meant.
“That’s right. We are few, but that is the original way. Only one is assigned for each Sector, chosen and hailed by—well, you don’t need to know that. Each of us may choose an apprentice as well. Although not all of us do. The incident with Perry occurred when he was an apprentice himself, and First Agent of this Sector’s Agency.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Jaceus asked. She had come here for a reason. Was it because of his discovery? Or different.
“You stride too close to truths, Jaceus. Your dysfunction brought one from this Sector into your original world. He is there now; Perry wishes to go, and bring him back; but he has been vetoed by the other three.”
Jaceus considered these words, and thought. One from here was now there. Their circumstances had been exchanged… if this world bore hidden truths, was it his role to open them? Or continue, for it seemed that return to H‘trae was—was now possible. As he had hoped. It seemed… that he could go back. Perry had been obstinate; waving him off a year ago had been a trouble, and Qumulo seemed more than competent in comparison. But there was a way. He would not fight it now—he would find the way himself, with the others, first by Sector II.
Qumulo was examining him closely, he now saw. Perhaps she considered a real Emulus a threat. Jaceus briefly wondered what kind of training the Porters had to endure to face those of the real blood. “I had no hand, Qumulo. I ventured towards the Lowers of this Sector, and was by the portal’s will brought to High, but briefly, I took my original course. It was likely at that time that the other was brought to H‘trae.”
She nodded, and only then did her cloak cease to wave. “As long as you do not interfere.” She then put a hand to the receptor on her ear. “Perry has taken action, Jaceus. He is with your Scions now. He has the Magy’cal with him as well. It is your decision what to do, with that truth.” Qumulo gave him the slightest indication of a nod; turning, she re-entered the portal; and not a second later, disappeared the way she had come. Back to Sector II. His destination; but first, his newly gathered group were threatened. And a Magy’cal… “Nota! Lvve aeros,” he finally said.
A brief sense of wind, felt from high above on the Pillars…
Jaceus entered the portal, and Thought for home that is not my home.