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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.24.0.2 - Mind_Gutter.pul]
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
//How’s a grape going to…? UGH! SIR!//
//Immature, and churlish!//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E3 %*laughs* I like the scary version far better than yours, Voni.%
E1 %Well, we’re inside her temple, held captive by one of her servants, so I really don’t…%
E2 %It would have told us if it minded.%
E1 %Isn’t that strange? I didn’t even know machines could talk.%
E2 %Probably possessed by some demon.%
E1 %Or just far higher quality than anything we have ever seen before. It would make sense. It’s her Temple, after all.%
E3 %Because she could make machines?%
Zephyro’s armor clinked as he got to his feet. He dusted himself off with the ghost of a smile on his lips, then gazed in the direction of the palace.
“There is more you need to know, Sultana,” he said, loosening his sword in his scabbard. “But if I might be so bold, allow me to suggest that as we speak further, we keep making for the palace.”
I forced a smile, nodded. “Deal.”
Deeper again we went, away from the dying wails of the crowd and into the maze of streets. It seemed both a blessing and a curse for Zephyro, who still grimaced every time a scream carried on the hot winds.
The ground had started to slope upward gently as we came closer to the center of the city, and as we rounded a corner, we had an unobstructed view of the horizon for the first time in a while. It looked wrong, somehow. Darker than night. And then I looked past the walls and realized what was happening.
When I first arrived in this Domain, the desert had stretched endlessly into the distance. Now, it was almost gone. I almost didn’t catch it, just thought it was the night closing in on the outskirts of the city. An easy mistake to make, if the horizon hadn’t been missing, replaced by pitch-black darkness. There wasn’t a glimmer of stars or a gleam of the sun sinking beyond the horizon. Not even the light of the fire reflected on desert sands. Just a creeping void, consuming reality. The darkness would probably reach the first houses soon.
“Jesus,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“My people are the lifeblood of this Domain, Sultana. With so many of them gone, it has started to collapse in on itself.”
It was all too much. I tried to find a response, but every time I opened my mouth, another implication forced its way down my throat, shutting me up. Eventually, I just nodded, and we moved on. As our pace picked up,
Eventually, we reached a dead end, the alley we were in terminating at a wall that was easily twice as tall as I. Some sort of wooden shack leaned against it, perhaps a toolshed, perhaps a home for someone less fortunate. Then again, Zephyro wasn’t the kind of person who’d tolerate poverty festering in his city. I remembered the soldiers, wondered if they all ended up like Alkashafa-14, dying to protect me. Food for the Shackled.
“What do the Shackled even want here?” I asked, just to fill the suffocating silence.
The Vizier didn’t immediately answer the question, scanning the surroundings for a way forward. Finally, he nodded and in a single bound, he jumped on the roof of the wooden structure, then extended his hand to help me up.
“We do not know how they managed it, but the Humans have found a way to tame Ferals,” he said as I grabbed his hand.
He pulled me up in one easy motion, but there was far too much force behind his pull. Instead of a gentle tug that allowed me to clamber on the shack as I had expected, It felt like being launched by a trebuchet. Panic lanced through me as I hit the apex of my rise, but I managed to hold in my curses. I crested over the wall on a graceful arc and just at the apex, a shield of blue enveloped me, slowing my fall. I landed in a somewhat smooth crouch, and a second later Zephyro hit the floor beside me with impeccable poise. His armor had rattled a little, and dust swirled dramatically from under his feet, but that was it. He casually resumed his urgent pace, while speaking as if he hadn’t just hit the ground running after jumping three meters into the air.
“All we know,” Zephyro continued, scooting sideways through a particularly narrow passage, “is that the humans shackle the Ferals to their will, then feed these Shackled the essence of other Ferals in an effort to see them grow. Those that do not evolve as the humans desire are culled.”
“Wait, if they just waste machines like that, does that mean there are enough Ferals to go around? Is there an entire ecosystem of Ferals out there?” I asked, sliding into the gap behind him. The air smelled a little stale, and dust tickled my nose.
“Indeed, Sultana. You must see, however, that not all Ferals are made equal. Each one reacts different to the Logic as well, growing either useless with cancerous growths, or even dangerous enough that no Shackle can hold them. Even before they are captured, there are vast differences. Some Ferals are nothing more than beasts, snarling and rabid. Those are usually the weakest, and it just takes a few blows before they perish. The more they feast, however, the smarter the Ferals get and… Well, Sultana, if you ever find a Feral that doesn’t just charge at you the second it spots you, it is my plea that you must be very careful.”
“But if they keep eating each other, wouldn’t that mean they’d eventually go extinct, except for one prime Feral? Wait, do they have to eat? Wouldn’t they starve within one generation?”
“You ask many questions that have kept our scholars busy for years, Sultana. And yet, we do not know the answer. All we know is that more Ferals keep appearing, no matter how many we kill.”
“But where does the Logic come from?”
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Zephyro shrugged apologetically. “We have some theorems, but were hoping that as the Bringer-of-Essence, you could tell us.”
He paused, looked at me until I shook my head. I had ideas, of course. My mind, grateful for the distraction, clung to the task of coming up with as many as it could. But there was no answer. There were so many options. Even now that I remembered far too much, everything that happened after that moment I advanced the Personality Matrix remained a mystery. I had stored up more of my Wish than ever for the experiment. Even after more than a decade of working with it, I’d be lying if I knew exactly how it worked. To this day—well, 150 years ago. I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again—I occasionally awoke from a nightmare with my reserves exhausted and my Torch just a tiny bit more advanced than before. Even awake, using the Wish remained a bit of a crapshoot, but I’d gotten a pretty good handle on it.
The most important factors were the source material, the state of mind I was in when I invoked the Wish, as well as a strong grip on which concept I wanted to advance. A stick could be a spear, but it could also be a torch, so keeping what you wanted in mind was paramount.
Which brought me to the riddle of the Logic. What was that stuff? Nano Bots? Magical residue? Was it connected to the experiment at all? If so, had I thought about the wrong thing before I launched the Wish? Had something gone wrong with the thaumaturgic capacitors? Or had the entire idea been insane to begin with, our vision of a machine that could amplify divine energy just our tower of babel, built out of superconductors, silicon, and hubris?
God knew, that was all I had left after everything that happened.
It hurt. Just thinking about what happened hurt, like a door of searing hot steel. I shied back immediately, looking for something, anything to occupy my mind just that it wouldn’t get close to that door again. Never mind the voices calling out from behind it, and the ever-increasing rattle of its hinges.
“How do they do it?” I asked as we jumped from a small bridge into a dried-out canal a meter or so below. The place was as filthy as anything I’d ever seen in this city, and I was pretty sure it was supposed to be running with clean water. Was this a recent change, or had this canal run dry a while ago? If Zephyro could change how he looked with a thought, could the city, too?
“Sultana?” Zephyro asked. He looked at the debris filling the canal like a man who’d found mold in his living room.
I tried to avoid the animal bones and other trash collected in the dried mud. “The humans shackle the Ferals,” I said. “But how?”
“You can call it a sickness, Sultana, because it is a virus in more than one sense. All we know is that if you spend too much time around the Shackled, it will spread onto you, along with their madness and hunger for Essence.”
A computer virus, then? But how was that even remotely possible? When I used the Wish, I had been sure Chris’ laptop was the only one in existence. It had taken us months to build that thing, and then another two months for Chris to learn to operate it. Even with 150 years to spare, there wasn’t a chance in hell anyone had built a computer from scratch, and learned how to program a virus. At least not one able to infect systems as complex as the Personality Matrices Chris and I designed.
Normally, that would only leave Chris as the culprit, and they would never build malware like that. But with the Logic in play, the possibilities multiplied endlessly. Did the Shackle just spontaneously manifest? Was there a machine out there, building malicious code? Had some idiot found some really advanced tech and broken it in the worst possible way? It was impossible to find out what really happened, and in the end, it didn’t matter. The Shackled were here, and if it got either Zephyro or me, it would all be over.
Which meant we had to get to safety, and fast. Zephyro couldn’t protect me against enemies he couldn’t see, and I was just too damn weak to survive on my own.
I stumbled over a broken bucket that lay half-buried in the canal and cursed as I failed to brace myself. My body slammed into the grime-covered wall, bruising my sore muscles and ruining my robes even further. I barely remained upright, but had to stop for a second to silently scream and slap my fists on my thighs against the pain.
I was such a klutz. No wonder I was letting everyone down all the time. I— The sudden pang of anger jarred me out of the refuge I’d tried to find in logical thought. For a second I floated, torn between rage and apathy. In the end, though, nothing lasted. Nothing mattered. I went back into the cold numbness. It welcomed me with clammy, open arms. Perhaps I didn’t even need to worry about all these questions. What good would it do? There was no going back. Why bother with the grueling process of logical thought?
I nearly stumbled again as realization hit me like a wet towel.
Logical. The Logic! I was so used to the fact that I had a monopoly on technology, I kept forgetting it was just out there, ready to be used by everyone. Or anything. I had to make sure.
“Zephyro, when you say the humans feed the Shackled the essence of other Ferals, you mean they let them absorb Logic from other machines?”
He looked uncomfortable at how I had phrased it, but he responded nonetheless. “Yes, Sultana. A Shackle is basically a parasite, siphoning your Blessing to spawn more of its kind.”
Jesus… self-replicating programs. Just how much of my Wish was out there?
“So just to be clear, you can use Logic to advance computer programs? Like you or I?”
He grimaced, clearly offended and trying not to show it. For a split second, he almost looked like he was going to slap me. I remembered his face when he had been forced to leave the soldiers behind. He’d had looked so forlorn, so anguished...
“Sorry,” I said contritely. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
It sounded weak, even to me, but it seemed to be enough. With an almost imperceptible shake of his head, Zephyro’s expression went back to his stoic self. He nodded in response to my question, or perhaps to acknowledge my apology, and gestured for us to resume our journey.
“Yes, Sultana. I implore you, however, to remember that this advancement comes at a price. To use more Essence on oneself than allotted by Your Grace nearly always results in disfigurement and madness. Everyone who abused your Gift comes to crave it, and the power it brings, and this addiction drives them insane. The Ferals, the Shackled, and even the Old Guard to a degree, all crave this Logic like an addict craves hashish. And while gorging themselves on it makes them stronger, it also makes them a target for other Ferals and Shackled who look upon their might with jealousy. And so, to protect themselves, they need to become stronger, requiring more Logic, which makes them even bigger targets…”
“But… sorry to ask, but what about you? You had to absorb at least some, didn’t you? Where did you and your people get this Essence from?”
“From you, of course, Sultana,” Zephyro said, and thankfully he didn’t seem offended. “Almost all the essence I have, and all that I have shared with my people, I received from you in one single instant. This moment is what we mean when we mention The Miracle.”
“…almost?” I asked, with a raised eyebrow. Zephyro didn’t seem the hypocritical kind, and the rule of absorbing Logic didn’t seem to be a gray area either, so there must have been another explanation.
“The Logic suffuses the very air, Sultana. One of the ideas our scholars have devised is that your Essence permeates the air in amounts too small to be detected. Perhaps it collects like morning dew, and when a large enough drop of it hits an object, a new machine springs to life.”
So it was possible that this shackle virus had absorbed some ambient Logic and just happened to mutate into a version that was able to handle the complexity of my personality matrix. Well fuck my luck, I guess.
“Okay, but if it is coalescing often enough for countless Ferals to exist, there has to be some sort of source, right? So where does it come from?” I asked again.
“We do not know, Sultana,” Zephyro said. “Perhaps when we die, our Essence does not return to you, but instead is released into the air, as part of an eternal cycle?”
“But if the amount were finite, the Ferals would just eat it all and stagnate, right?”
Zephyro returned another apologetic shrug. “I must profess, I am not the most knowledgeable in these matters, Sultana. Once we reach the Palace, I will ask the scholars to attend you, and you can engage them in discussion. I know for a fact they would very much enjoy it.”
I didn’t know what to say after that, and as the conversation lapsed, it dropped me back into the uncomfortable stillness that ruled my mind. It was like sitting in the eye of a storm, fully aware that the weather might shift at any moment, and the torrent will rip you apart.
I didn’t know how long we’d walked in the canal when Zephyro’s gauntleted hand grabbed my arm. I didn’t have it in me to resist. It felt surprisingly gentle, and let go almost immediately.
Turning in his direction, I froze. Zephyro was about to point towards a few steps carved into the side of the gully, but now it was my turn to grab his arm.
“Don’t move, and don’t turn around.”
“Sultana?”
“We are being followed.”