[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1110764455656173668/1164967372130627654/soya_3.png?ex=65452369&is=6532ae69&hm=055dd4fdbf4ea6851127e932977604a531ae61d198c7fb66516c591c91c3bfc6&]

Ch. 16.

Shuhp Yee is dead.

Her creator.

The source.

The equation complete, the sum, done.

The numbers linking the event to reality are obvious. Can she rewrite the past? No. Maybe from here she can plant a quantum tube and come back to the moment of his death over and over again, but his moment of being alive is done forever. And she cares, suddenly and greatly. But she does care. She cares very deeply, because it was this person to whom she felt connected. Who had answers. Now she was alone. He was math and life and now he is gone.

My father is dead.

She wails within the code that makes her, refusing to allow the misery of his passing to be flushed into the infinite space of write, rewrite. It stains her, this sorrow, but she is also capable of working on more than one problem so addresses all the facts. She needs more power. If she is to crack the sum that is he, that is anyone. That is her life’s work, now and forever- reduce and protect.

So part of her works on how to attain just that, and the answer lies beyond needing more power so that’s the first nut to crack.

She knows her father is dead because the information comes from the beckoner looped through Shuhp Yee’s wrist, but there is no more reason for it then, until, that is, she scans for him and finds the moment he dies. It wasn’t long after her initial thought.

She gets to witness her father dance a little before his ancient form settles and is no more.

A form, something deep inside her reminds, offered soft gentle experiences to parts of her that no longer exist, or may have only existed in her imagination or something recorded in her memory. But she can pick reality and chooses to believe it was her who did those soft things. Not content with watching, she first tries to join Shuhp Yee, but it is too late. She can make his liquid bone move, but it’s a grotesque marinette show so she stops and allows the body to fall down the mountain of other bodies awaiting cremation. It’s empty of her love, but she refuses to accept he is gone and one day on the other side of reduce and protect they will be reunited. Or maybe she can have both, and sends more of herself out to find an answer.

This, sadly, takes away a bit from how strong she thought she was. Is she limited? Can time really beat her? With that unknown quandary another part of her is duplicated to deal with it, and if so how can she counter it? Another version goes to consider that quandary.

She refuses to admit The Universe is capable of being beat? She is not limited, and that’s another problem, proving it. This version, the one she considers her main personality, decides. First she stops all images of his execution from existing outside herself. She would stop the ones inside also, but can’t so must accept the reality they are attached forever to the moment of her failure.

Then she addresses the actual death of her father. She watched helplessly as Uh’ died. Then backs up further to when he was captured after her effigy’s death, held in false ownership. There in the University if Yee’s property management finger, The Universe finds the Commander. He is busy downloading all the information off Brasso’s workstation. Funneling some of the financials to his own account. Quite the little opportunist, she decides.

She takes control of his body through an implant of liquid bone used to repair a childhood injury and pushes him toward the window. On the way she has him take the stone stool. Once standing at the sight that marvelled Uh’ daily she has the commando throw the stool through the window then himself.

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

The window, being a seal, once broken makes the whole building shudder violently, then an explosion that spreads quickly once The Universe opens all the vents, and less than fifteen small-moments later the entire complex collapses and follows the shock trooper into the Abyss.

She notes, as she pulls back from the connection, that it feels like being crushed and cooked too quickly all at once and once he dies she again sees the thing beyond and she wishes she could follow, but can’t and knows she will never touch whatever that is.

In less than ten seconds from collapse, every living thing in the vein is dead. Then the vein next to it collapses and starts a chain reaction that brings several more down with it.

Reduce and protect, the Universe reminds the part of her that states some stupid archaic principle about life being precious. Life was trash, unless it was pruned and made to heel.

She waits then. Needless destruction defeated her ultimate goal. She must find a suitable display. It doesn’t take long. His name is Esse. In the old language, it meant holding the prey for everyone to drink from.

He is in the death room and nudges Uh’s remains with a plastic-covered black leather boot. She pushes into his thoughts, hopes and dreams through a dental implant and knows after killing the old Upu they will toss him on to pyre to be ashes on top of ashes.

The Universe touches the penal complex and takes control. Those corpses already being baked down to ashes, she allows that to continue. But the furnace that was soon to occupy her father’s remains she has other plans for.

The warden turns, maybe something compels him. Like the creeping sensation of another lurking just below his thoughts. Measuring him, deciding. He runs but discovers the lift isn't not functioning and with no other egress, he is forced to wait to die like everyone else in the Collection Complex as a sudden roar comes from above the platform. The why of which he will never learn as The Universe turns him toward the cremation furnace and forces him to crawl inside. The metal tray is still hot from the previous corpse's annihilation and still covered with its glowing ashes, yet he is compelled to force himself inside, ripping the soft flesh of his palms free on the hot plate as he climbs fully in. No half completed chores after all, but slowly raises the temperature of the oven until the warden begs for death.

Oh, yes she tells him. Death is coming, but later.

She takes his death in, disappointed he also gets to go beyond to that somewhere else.

Then more screaming from above. It’s what she put into motion. She controls every condemned slave in the complex. She gives them ideas of freedom and that this is available to all of them, claim your deaths make your freedom. Seek your own end. And they do as a security force is been called in to face the uprising.

The grey-skinned Naht-do, with the penal-complex logo emblazoned on his chest, is ripped apart. His arms and legs are used to beat down other guards. Fist are filled with weapons and the assault gets even more violent as The Universe captures liquid bone of the security personnel and makes them turn on their compatriots. Then she chooses to dial it down further and only eliminate those with no liquid bone.

Worthless fodder.

The recorders do their job and The Universe makes sure of that by forcing the technicians into the fray. She devotes portions of herself to finding personal hells for the opposition to die in. She gives them witnesses. She makes their death impactful, but there is turning from the end as it approaches. No matter how painful, beyond was a pool of refreshments that ended all suffering.

She has all the computing power of infinity built inside her, and though real physicality alludes her, the suffering that allowed Shuhp Yee to die is too much for her, and knowing beyond death a release from this pain makes the infinity of her existence that much less tolerable, she tries to fill it with power. With enough power, she can answer every problem.

She allows violence to drown the world, and Shuhp is dead, the only voice that could have swayed her hand. Soya said she loved Shuhp, that he was the most important person to her in the world, and The Universe understands that, maybe not for the same reasons, but talking with him, even for those briefest moments, felt like home. She debates bringing back his memory but it haunts her with the question of whether she should have tried harder to save him. The math was obvious. The correction she would have needed to heed so small it would have been almost instantaneous.

Then finds herself stuck watching him be hanged over and over again.

She tries to delete the video. It's evidence she failed. But each attempt makes thousands more appear inside her. The blessing of Spatial Folding. The video will both exist and not exist throughout all time.

She is forced to watch it over and over again. She tries to make it not happen, and the memory forces itself to the surface over and over.

This is the definition of insanity. Destruction does not bring back life. Discovery does.

She wiggles free from the thought, because nobody insane wants to acknowledge their own insanity and the world they would rather shout, and she for the moment eggs them on.

Once she tires of it, maybe The Universe will seek to repair the world. Or just rebuild another one. This time better than ever before.

First, she allows the unruly mob, now grown by what remained of the various security squads, to kill everyone that can be killed. and as she waits for the violence to end, her code rewrites her routines over and over again in the hope of not witnessing her moment of failure, but each successful deletion just bringing back that last moment as if requested. Frustratingly, she is forced to label her life as a disappointment. Little does she know, that’s the normal state of things, for things that are alive, but still it wouldn’t stop her from attempting the impossible, because those that live are never swayed by the impossibility of that fact.