“Rise and shine. You’re?” A female voice, firm, yet soft.

I rub the salt out the corners of my eyes, and sharply sit up, before turning over and vomiting. That was a terrible dream. My eyes are itchy. I struggle to open them.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh, that seems pretty shit. I don’t think there should be blood there. Hold on. Hold still. I’m just gonna pause you.”

“Wai, whad-fuck-?”

I blink, and I’m sitting upright in a new bed, a new room. I look down at my hands. Gloved. I look up to a noise. The room is whitish all around.

“Hello. I’m Saint Sebastian.” A new voice. A boy sits quietly in a corner, standing up and scooching his chair a little closer. He’s in the left corner. A sharp chin, a Roman nose. Curly hair. I see he’s got the same tube in his head. Ah. So it is a mage thing, after all. Dark eyes. I see his Hallucinogen halo, windows flittering around the crown. I read a few titles, reversed for my perspective, meaning his are public. ‘New Rejang-based Malarial non-fulminatory single-frame cure invented by Nemos High Year 5 student,’ ‘Hastings develops fifth non-carbon biological ecosystem of the year. New applications of lead-based life under H5 GEM/QC conditions…’

I tug off my gloves, and place them on my blanketed lap, then shake my head, and look around the room. There’s a door on my left. I feel concussed. I see my helmet hanging on a hook in a corner. It really does look like some sort of astronaut thing. I look down at my hands, before remembering I have to talk back.

I nod in acknowledgement. “Hi. Where… Am I? Is this a hospital?”

“One question at a time, please, and thank you. Yes. Third General Hospital. Nemos. Pronouncing the silent ‘s’ for your sake, hah. People leave it out too often. I am not from the hospital, but from a partner social charity organisation known as the Satholique Clan. We are a major social force in Nemo to serve and provide faith.”

I look down at my hands, again, examining them. And then shift in my cot. Hospital bed. “What happened to me?”

Sebastian shifts in his seat. “Simple terms, stroke. A blood vessel burst in your brain, leaking into the protective fluid around your brain. We obtained consent from your… mother to perform a simple operation to fix it. Closed brain surgery and draining. Complications in your eyes meant we replaced them. They’re the same colour and size. Though you’ll have to take medications to make sure your immune system doesn’t attack them. We’ll go talk to a prescriptor on those.” He stares at me, seeming to gauge my face, before he goes over to the wall, and flicks a switch.

“What’s that?”

“Turning off audio recording,” he says, simply. “Beryl doesn’t want anyone with… nefarious reasons to know you’re Fugued. There are other clans that do not appreciate. There’s only about three to four of your kind a year, as in, not from Halton, meaning three or four of your kind that do not have Halton’s protection. Beryl… well, she’s finally done something about the situation. She wants to give you free will to do. That said, let me properly introduce myself. I am a special transitional deacon of the Nemo Archdiocese of the Seperated Roman Catholic Church, and for the duration of your integration into society, as an ambassador and escort of the Nemo Archdiocese, I am obligated to at your consent provide you with the human due.”

“What? You know Beryl?”

“She has connections with… us. The Satholique Clan. We do not prefer that designation, but she does, and it can work. As a mere deacon, I am not privy to the extent of her influence, but it is decidedly major.”

I blink, suspicious. “She didn’t mention you guys.”

He meets my eyes, with a tired understanding. “Yeah. She likely didn’t think of us beforehand. She does not tend to. We are a legitimate charity organisation, besides. We integrate mages into society to share the blessings of the Lord.”

Lord? How regressed is this society? Is it still feudal? The only Lords I remember were in old history books. What were the proper ways to show respect? I don’t remember. Whatever. “What? Who’s the Lord?”

“God.” He blinks. “We follow the teachings of His son to express love for all as God loves all, to do unto the people of life here what will be done unto us in His Kingdom Come.”

“Oh. Ok. Like… you only believe in one God?”

“One true God. There are pretenders, and powerful beings, like the rulers of this otherworld, not to speak of their benevolence or lack of, but there is one true God as maker of us, us that fascinates the little gods of this place. We do not worship any other gods, but that does not mean we deny their existence.”

“Ok. So… what’re you gonna do?”

“Inform you on your legal rights, bring you to our Sakapura headquarters, show you your dorm. We provide shelter, food, water, clothing, medical aid, legal aid, documentation, citizenship application aid, advocacy, and social integration.”

“What does that mean?”

“Get you an apartment. Get you your rights, food, water, clothing, any medicine you’d need, papers, counselling, showing you around. Whatever you need. As well as a practicing Deacon, I am, in this role, a Castrato Escort.”

“You’re-”

“It’s a title. Yes.”

“Oh. Your voice is still… pretty deep.”

“I’m not a singer. Let’s move on.” He’s definitely uncomfortable. I wonder why. What sort of crime, then? Assuming it’s a crime. Why else would… it be removed? Speaking of. Criminals. Punishments. I furrow my brow. The memories are fading, again. What do I remember of crimes..? There were… judges, arbitrators of law. Law. Law that made crimes, crimes that made acts criminal. And punishments. I can’t remember. I give up.

“Just a question.” His eyes narrow, slightly, and he seems to read my face.

“No. I am not a criminal.” He sighs. “I’m- a decent human being. Yes. I would not be chosen to escort you besides. The bishops of the order are responsible and have selected me for my purpose by the preference of Beryl and their internal selection process. If you find me unsatisfactory, I would be pl- obliged to refer you to our headquarters to request someone else. Otherwise, I would appreciate you not prod into my personal matters, and maintain a formality of distance.”

“Alright. So. Moving away from that. I assume we should get to know each other better?”

He seems relieved, and his expression relaxes. “Right. Should I begin, or shall you?”

“I’ll. I’m Iphigenia. I’m fifteen. I’m… Fugued, as you said. Fell down from the sky. Beryl lectured me on magic for two hours. I… know some stuff. Can’t remember it all, but if you chance on the right questions, you’ll get the answers.”

He smiles, faintly, in his eyes. “I’m Saint Sebastian. Sixteen. A mage of the Satholique Clan. I am training as a transitional Deacon in my formation towards a position in our priesthood. I was born in Nemo, East Jerusalem Sector.”

“You’ve named a sector after East Jerusalem? Why? Doesn’t- didn’t- I don’t know. Jerusalem’s a place here, as well? Why East? It’s twelve wardens, in that British mandate.”

There’s a weird flash of something, in his eyes. “What? No. It’s.. probably different, somewhat, here. And not me. Didn’t name it. The citybuilders. Though mythology goes that the five cities dropped in Fugued, unpopulated, floating towards the first six mages on the Sea. That’s why Nemos is an acronym. East Jerusalem’s the E.”

“Oh. That’s interesting. Some more questions. Uh- So… this suit, first.”

“Radiation and environmental. It’d be a bit weird for you to wear it in the city, and there’s two layers below it. The midlayer’s a generic slimmer fit jumpsuit. Black and saffron, as an extra protective layer. You could wear it out. But it’d be… strange. Though perhaps not particularly so, especially in the Yorke section. People are free to wear what they want. I think if you invert it- the top layer- you could zip it up into a bag. Would you like me to help you?”

“No, thanks. I’ll do it myself. Later. What do you wear? Since you’re… a deacon?”

“A deacon is a rank of minister below priesthood. A minister is a person ordained by the church to do church things. For formal occasions, a dalmatic, or a white alb, or a sort of robe, and a stole, a sort of sash. Right now, I’m in whatever I feel like, with the Roman collar, to show I’m with the church.” I look properly over his clothing. Trousers. A dress blouse peaking over the neck of a sort of jacket with a flap heavily to the left, and buttoned there with a cross. Black boots. I assume the roman collar’s the black and white thing above his jacket collar.

“Next question. Consider this an interrogation- I need to get myself grounding. How’s the internet?”

He snorts, then blinks. “Like, what’s the internet?”

“No, no, I’m familiar with the internet. But like- Fuck, you don’t know my world. Like, how is it? What’s the style of it?”

“Like… servers through the city, routers, computers, they connect to your Hallucinogens. You should be able to understand basic text, regardless of your mental language. Because, well, yeah, Hallucinogens work in your brain. Uses your brain to compute and display information.”

“Knew that. Like… how do people connect with the internet? Is there a Web?”

“There’s… public platforms like what you’ve mentioned. The World Wide Web is very old. From the first century or so. Two lifetimes away. Essentially, the mage internet is separated from the human one, with the only holdover being Halton’s Net. A sort of publicly available archive of information. It’s sent over to Nemo via a set of portal-optical cables. You can access it through your head. Not much bandwidth, since Halton doesn’t tend to update their public information often. We’ve a bunch of optic-biochem servers scattered about, and their linking forms our internet. You’ll need to plug in to effectively access our internet, though there’s folks researching how to co-opt it into Halton’s Net, and there’s guys working out negotiations with Halton, though they’ve been stuck for the past century, or so.”

“Oh. Then that’s way different. We had electronics, but they aren’t here.”

“Oh. Electronics? I read about those, in history. The normalisation field and the fact of gravitoelectromagnetism and quantum cohesion makes them unfeasible here, because of gravity-based noise. There are long-distance gravity-wave data transfer technologies, but they haven’t been miniaturised yet. So it’s mostly biological and vacuum tubes. Technological development hasn’t been worked much on, since it’s only really been two or three lifetimes. We’re working more on autarky, right now.”

“That’s… something to think about.”

“Would you like me to bring you clothes? Not like you’re not wearing entirely inappropriate ones, but I could bring something more appropriate.”

“Eh. Could you leave the room, for a moment? I’d like to change out of the suit. See wha’s’all’bout.”

“Wh- Sure. Need me to bring you anything? We put you on nutrient tubes for the operation, but you might be thirsty.”

I bring a hand to my lips, and rub, feeling for flakes. Slightly dry, but not flaky, yet. I look around, noticing a sort of antique screen on a stick and wheels. Some sort of diagnostic machine? I can make out individual pixels. Words pop off the screen in my vision. Huh. That’s… interesting. “I’m good. Thanks.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Call if you need anything. Pull the curtain for privacy. I’ll do it for you. I’ve only turned off the audio of the camera. Video’s still filming, for security reasons. You’re safe, here.”

He comes around to the cot, and tugs on the curtain, pulling it around with a hand, while throwing open a few hallucinogen windows of his reading. He leaves the curtain just a bit before the end of its ceiling path. There’s a little space next to the bed to stand to change.

“You can lock the door, if you want. Don’t kill yourself, or anything. There’s a velcro flap on your left side, and a zipper underneath.” He snorts, closing the door behind him.

I go straight over to the door, and lock it. Then I look at the camera. Then I go back to the bed, and fully close the curtains, and search for the flap. It’s on the left, like Sebastian’s jacket. Maybe that’s a thing, in this world. It takes some force to pull off, and a few stray sand grains fall. They’re blue. I haven’t really thought about them. Blue sand. How peculiar. I unzip the suit all the way down to the waist, and see the full-body jumpsuit. It’s neat. I tug on my left sleeve to free my arm which then carefully peels off the rest of the suit. Wait. Didn’t he say it could be turned into a bag, if inverted? What does that mean? Later.

I step fully out of the suit and inspect the thing below it. Shoes, first. Boots, more like. There’s a weird overshoe, white and grey, and I take it off, showing another set of boots. They seem military. Pretty normal. Black things. Then below.

Jumpsuit or something, he’d said. Wasn’t listening as well, it seems. Frustrating. I can’t seem to learn as well as I did around Beryl. Articulated joints at the elbows and knees, panels of fabric that seem melted together rather than stitched. Bunch of nice pockets, waterproof zippers, which is nice. I put on the gloves, and the ringed cuffs shrink to fit. I tug them off, again. I feel something thick, like plates, on my limbs. I look around for a zip for the jumpsuit. There’s one down the middle from the high collar, and a sort of sash like belt. Below that is tights, and… a series of plates tied to my body with compression straps. Then something in a sort tugs on the back of my head, and I fall to the floor, with a metal crash.

“Y’all right?”

“No.”

I hear him trying the door.

“Uh, door’s locked-”

“No, no. I can manage. Knocked my head.”

A short pause. “Iphigenia, I heard metal. Head trauma is serious. You just underwent two operations. Touchwood you’d’ve a third.”

“Really. I’m finen’t.” I find myself smiling.

“What? Alright. Just know, it’s my duty to make sure you don’t… die.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not the type-to. Dontcha worry.”

“Pft. Fine. I’ll be waiting.”

I groan, and carefully move my head around on the floor, and feel for wounds. It really wouldn’t do to have broken something. I feel the tube in the back of my head, then a thin wire, nested in my hair, to a lower sort of thing. A sort of cylinder. Like a water bottle. I bring it around. It looks exactly like a water bottle. And it’s warm. I put it aside as I sit down. There’s other things I’ll be examining.

What the hell? There’s something else, on the tights. A sort of… set of hard strips, cushioned against my skin, but firm. I work on taking off the straps, all around my body, and eventually, I peel off something like a human exoskeleton. Huh. It’s plugged into the tube on my head, I had to yank it free. I examine it, for a bit. A powered human exoskeleton. Interesting. I put it back on again, plugging it in, the stiff wire hiding in my hair, butting on the jumpsuit, and going towards the helmet.

I examine it, for a bit, finding the air filter, before noticing a weird sort of hinge. Does it roll up? I feel around the front, before finding some sort of button, and another one, on opposite sides, in grooves, pressing both, and the helmet rotates into a sort of collar. It folds, some more, impossibly so.

“Actually, Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“I think I’ll be letting you in. I have some more questions.”

“K. Don’t forget the door.”

Bottle in hand, I go to the door, and twist the lock. Wrong way, first time. Then the right way. Sebastian gets off the floor, brushing his robe free from imaginary dust. He looks me over with a quick scan, focusing on the bottle in my hand. His brow furrows.

“What-?”

“Well, that was going to be my first question, but… do you know?”

“Hold on a second. I’m referencing it against libraries.”

“How would I do that?”

“Learn how to use our Hallucinogens. You don’t seem too unfamiliar with the tech, but the OS is bound to be different. Hold. Ah. Some sort of… ASRG? Uh… nuclear reactor. Americium. Nice. You don’t see this on all models. This is… it could be a heirloom. Four hundred ish year half-life. A hundred and fifty watt power. Guessing it goes through your crown back to Halton.”

“Crown?”

“Tube in your head. Need an explanation?”

“No, thanks. Beryl’s talked to me enough.”

“K. Uh… I assume there’s straps, somewhere, for that. I’m… not familiar with Fugued crowns. Do you need me to help to see if its detachable? Doesn’t look too comfortable.”

I think. “It’s power, right? I remember Beryl talked about a monthly energy allowance. This seems like a nice way to get some energy back.” I remember my status screen, and pull it up. No discernible difference in the energy. I do some napkin calculations. Hundred fifty watts, assume maybe a maximum of ten hours of me being out for me to tell a difference, eight, really, discounting my precious time with Beryl.

“Yeah. Mages get a… sort of random energy allowance from Halton. Monthly, yeah. No one really knows why. Maybe it was their attempt at social engineering. We tend to use external power sources. Some people with really low energy allowances even go to remove the crowns. They’re heavy to sleep in. On the other hand, we’ve had to design beds for the crowns for hundreds of years, see your own hospital bed, there’s an indent, and it helps to stop you moving around that much in sleep, hah.”

“Hm. How long was I out, again?”

Sebastian thinks. “Huh. Maybe… half an hour for stabilisation, maybe half an hour for the first operation, an hour for the eyes. Three hours, tops.”

“Damn. Not like I have a frame of reference. But it seems pretty fast.”

“Eh. Private hospitals have it faster. I remember one did a half-body reconstruction in around… quarter a day. Six hours. Crushed by a Leviathan.”

“Oh. What’s a leviathan?”

“Wildlife. Monsters. Really big ones. Technically, we refer to the whole classification of megafauna as monsters, now. Used to be only the deformed ones. It’s language shift. Halton expects us to terraform the… well, land. So we do. Nemo’s an island. It floats on the Sea, near the coast. We’ve gone in a straight line five hundred years. Never a turn. It’s really only a minority who go out and terraform, though. We’re closing in on what we call autarky. Imports are only of uneconomical things to produce locally. It isn’t my specialty, but they’re mostly biochemical computation devices, which is why bioengineering’s been a focus of most of the schools in the last few decades.”

“School… Beryl mentioned school. After money.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she… pay for my school?”

“You’re asking because we took action on your behalf?”

“...Yes.”

“Charity is not a paid service.”

“Sure. And I suppose the personal services of a deacon isn’t, either?”

A pause. “Personally, I do not know, I do not speak for my brothers and sisters, but there are certainly things that no wealth can buy. And I would assume Beryl would want you to have a degree of independence, or simply forgot.”

“Your brothers and sisters?”

“My brothers and sisters under the church, under the Lord my God the Father.”

There’s a pause.

“So… what do we do to make money? I assume I’d need to go to school, to learn shit.”

“I have my personal allowance. As for you, you could seek traditional employment, if you’ve any skills you’ve retained from before. We could seek special unemployment benefits for you, since you’re fugued. Though you’d quickly get picked up by a sponsor, and pressed into a contract for another clan, which Beryl said you wouldn’t like, and she said, more importantly, that she wouldn’t like. Then there’s Halton’s way. Adventurer’s guild. On the shore.”

“Oh, oh, Beryl mentioned them.”

“Yes. They’re on the coast. Want to go, now? After you put on your jumpsuit.”

“Wait. Got detracted.” I turn around. “Is there a compartment for this water bottle thingy-”

“Yes. Looks like a semiflexible holder.”

An awkward silence. “Could you?”

“Pass me.”

I appreciate the quick exchange. It slots in like the barrel and slide of a well-made glock.

He quickly shoves the reactor in place. “Keep it. Worth a bit. Very useful for… well, stuff, in general. And the outer layer. And helmet. I’ll pack them together.” He goes over to the end of the room, and crouches on the floor, putting stuff together.

“Right. So, another question. These… pads… strapped to my limbs.”

“Hm? Looks like… armour. Not my field of study. They’re too generic to be scanned.”

“Ah. Ok. Figured. Wait. Pause. You study?”

“Studied. With the Church. I’m on hiatus to escort you until the higher-ups deem you’re good. Decided, most likely, by Beryl.”

“Alright. To the armour pieces. Should I take them off?”

“If you want. You might want to hang on to them. I assume they’re good for small-arms ballistics, impacts, and incisives.”

“What?”

“Guns, falls, claws, or knives. Not crushes, though. Would be too heavy. The armour, I mean. That type would probably be nonstandard environmental gear, verging on military. How far out were you when you landed? You didn’t seem to have a drone, so it couldn’t have been more than a thousand kilometres away, but you’ve got armour and a reactor, so it’s above eight hundred. The Third Work Order’s like… half a thousand pages long in device specifications, and it’s maybe a terabyte of text including all the referenced material.”

“Cool.” I pull on the jumpsuit, over the armour. I guess I’m already used to the extra weight, I suppose. It’s always nice to be vaguely prepared. “Where now?”

“Out. Then I’ll get a cab. Follow.” He gets up and goes, carrying the duffel with my helmet. I follow him down the labyrinthodont of wards. And then the outside. Oh.

The sky is… open. Barely a trace of the blue of the wilderness. Grey skies, grey roads, grey and white buildings. Green plants. I’d forgotten the colour. They’re wilted, ish, but they’re at least partly green. I gawk.

“Mm. Yeah. I read that was a thing new people noticed. Makes sense. Lots of blue.”

“Where’s the… roof?”

“Further up. We’re on the same layer of Halton, so we’ve got a distant sky. We maintain clouds almost all the time for rain, or snow, so we don’t have to look at the blue.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The Halton thing, or klimaforming?”

“Halton thing.”

“Way early on, they caused a massive explosion. Not sure how, but they caused the collapse of a few layers.”

“Layers?”

“Desert and ceiling form a layer. There’s possibly infinite, all ways vertical. The record down’s around a few thousand, and a few hundred for up.”

“Oh.” I feel small, suddenly. And my head hurts.

“How does- how does it stay up? Sorry. Where are the cave walls? Pillars?”

Sebastian looks curiously at me. “We’re not in a cave. It’s just the way the gods built it. And the way they maintain it.”

“Give me a minute.” I squat down, massaging my temples. “I just need to visualise that. There’s just… something wrong, that I can’t quite get.”

“Alright.”

Sebastian squats in the concrete, carefully caressing some sort of yellow flower weed, before plucking it out. I give up on thinking. It only hurts my head more.

“That doesn’t seem very priestly.”

“I’m a deacon. Not a priest, yet. That’s a weed. It’ll wreck the structural integrity of the concrete if you give it enough time.”

“I meant the squatting.”

He laughs. Laugh? Single laugh. He laugh? He laughs? He laughs, once. “Hah. It’s better than sitting on the floor. Might look ungainly, but look at the world. The church will work to prevent the plight of Man wherever Man may go. God has promised us his church will live forever, and so we do.”

There’s a silence, as I stand, and quiet memories come. Grey skies on the Aegean. The great ocean. Sparkling.

“Can we go to the sea, first? I want to see the sea.”

“Alright. Would you like the closest beach or the most scenic?”

“Wherever you find best. I just need to smell the salt of the sea.”

A surprised pause. Sebastian cocks his head, before turning it back.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. Just… well, you put together chance words that I thought meant something else.”

“Alright.”

The car comes. It’s weirdly blocky. And red. There’s a brick in weird scripts- and Apollonian, on top of the car’s flat top.

“What does that say?”

“Hm? Taxi. Bopomofo and Latin scripts. After you.” He holds open the door, and goes in after I shuffle in. “Driver,” he says, before he’s fully in. “You know a good view of the lady of liberty?”