On this planet, and almost all others, humanity is a complementary binary: “male and female He created them,” as the prophets of that God said.
A religious observation of a secular truth: that within the race of men there are two distinct natures, or hypostases, with an individuated yet symbiotic telos that, when united, propagate the species.
This is a part of the Dharma, Dào, Logos, or Ṛta of this world, regardless of the existence of a Creator.
Only a small percentage deviated from this telos: twisted by hormonal and chromosomal disorders that leave them with a broken or ambiguous sexual nature.
Regardless, even among these natural deviations, their nature within the binary can be easily assessed by the simple question of whether their natures orient them towards motherhood or fatherhood.
Whether their bodies produce sperm or ova.
Whether an SRY gene is present on the sex chromosome or not.
This is where I differ from all others. My nature on Earth is unique. I am the only person to truly unite the male and female hypostases into one person.
The explanation for this union is quite simple: I am a Metahuman. We inherit our powers from our parents, regardless of whether they are biological, adoptive, foster, or merely gestational.
Normally this gives us some ability appended to our human nature, such as the ability to remotely perturb fire or even transform into a wolf, but sometimes these powers are heteromorphic: twisting our bodies into a supernatural, apparently inhuman, form and overriding phenotypical and genotypical traits inherited from our parents.
At conception, my powers activated. A mutation in utero caused me to develop the complete reproductive systems of both sexes and their natural potencies. If I were to choose to unite with a wife, I would become a father, whereas if I were to conjoin to a husband, then I would become a mother.
Genetic testing has shown that this power has even restructured my gametes. As a father, I can only propagate this hybrid nature, whereas as a mother, I can only propagate the traditional sexual nature provided by my hypothetical husband.
This is because I do not possess an SRY gene, which encodes the male essence onto the Y chromosome, but rather a novel gene that encodes this chimeric structure.
My legal name is Elden Bunchûai, and I am a fourteen-year-old, 153.6 cm tall, 46.7 kg, apparently feminine, currently standing alone in an underground cyborg hanger. I’m watching a team of cognitive scientists, mechanics, and physicians darting about like Lilliputians as they work on the various units to prepare them for deployment.
I am dressed in a tight form-fitting, dual-layer, moisture-wicking, odor-reducing, compressible, elastane-like full body suit. It is equipped with a helmet and digital visor, which I have lifted, an electronic choker where the helmet joins the body, weighted-knuckle gloves, a movement-minimizing full-cup brassiere, a hermaphroditic pelvic protector, and five-toed shoes. The arms and legs of the uniform are black, the body and deltoids are red, with the brassiere and pelvic protection being pink, and the helmet colored cyan.
Tailors have inscribed my name above my right breast and my rank in the center of my chest, just below the clavicle. On my left hip, there is a fifty-caliber gas-operated semi-automatic pistol and a bowie knife holstered through an external harness.
The Lovecraftian behemoth I am tasked with piloting was eighty meters tall. It was a titanic humanoid trapped in dual-purpose armor-bindings designed to protect us and ensnare it. Maintenance checks regarding the entity’s autonomic nervous system required the removal of its normally opaque, biker-like combat helmet. This revealed the uncannily human-like face that was usually hidden.
The behemoth had a flat face, proportionally low cranial vault, full lips, bone-crushing teeth, an occipital bun, and eyes so large that a ring of bones was required to anchor the muscles controlling its cat-like pupils. What unnerved me the most about it, besides its eyes, was its supernaturally vibrant red hair.
My job description was simple: to enter its body while it sleeps, make telepathic contact with it, synchronize our hearts, wear it like a second body, and kill kaijū.
We are the Global Strategic Self-Defense Operations, founded under a different name in 1910. We omitted the operative noun omitted from our title because we define ourselves by what we do, as opposed to what we are. However, as a pragmatic concession, in all official translations of our name, the commanders have chosen us to be known as the “Global Strategic Self-Defense Forces.”
We were the first organization to unite traditional humans and metahumans. Our forefathers, originally from across the United States and Commonwealth Realm, united to covertly rescue the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians from the Ottoman campaigns of genocide from 1913 to 1923. As a result, at least eight percent of the men from these groups would join our ranks, radically altering our cultural and ethnic makeup.
Then the Imperial Japanese Army raped Nanking, the Third Reich made a horrifying sacrifice by fire for their racial socialism, and the Soviets cast a famine on the Ukraine and deported an entire economic class of their own citizens to an icy death in pursuit of their own class socialism. It simply never stopped. This was the origin of our Human Salvaging Operations: programs designed to spirit victims of extermination campaigns to safety.
Then we discovered the existence of fairies and a monster sealed away in suspended animation deep within the Marie Byrd Land, and we forged a new directive alongside our original: to defend mankind against eldritch powers.
It’s from those very Human Salvaging Operations that the substantial presence of Greek, Armenian, Assyrian, Cossack, Ukrainian, Romani, Manchurian, Nigerian Christian, Polish, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Serbian, Bosnian Croat, Chinese, Bengali Hindu, Khmer, East Timorese, Maya, Hutu, Tutsi, Acholi, Lango, Korean, Mbuti, Arab Christians (including Copts), and Yazidi men would all band together within a paramilitary brotherhood founded by men from across the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations circa the 1910s.
Of course, being rescued from the killing fields, most of these salvaged recruits married endogamously to create large families. On average, there are ten children per marriage. Their children and grandchildren often engaged in admixture, which is how I came about. My maternal ancestors were Manchurians salvaged from the horrors of the Second Sino-Japanese War, while my paternal ancestors were Siamese Americans.
Contrary to what you might expect, this was not some multicultural free-for-all. Rather, all members of the GSSDO must assimilate into our unique paramilitary culture, which was largely derived from Anglo-American traditions. That said, it was also common for recruits to maintain elements of their native culture by integrating flourishes of their homeland, practices, and worldviews into this new cultural substrate.
In particular, the GSSDO’s hierarchy encourages the preservation and transmission of the myriad of languages within families, which proved useful for information encryption. Many potential candidates rescued from death were preemptively disqualified because of a thorough screening process to weed out incompatible religious and political views. As a result, the GSSDO rejected many potential recruits because of their adherence to Nazi, Communist, Socialist, and Islamist ideologies.
In particular, the Bosniak, Chechen, Ingush, Crimean Tatar, Kurdish, Isaaq, Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, Arabic Shia, Uyghur, and Rohingya, despite all having been the subjects of HSOs, yielded a very low recruitment rate because of doctrinal issues.
Despite being in an underground hangar, this was not a domain of modernist sterility. The floor upon which I stood comprised a beautiful mosaic depicting a series of serpents interlacing with each other in a manner evocative of Irish illumination. After all, multiple generations living in an ever-expanding geofront quickly discovered that sterile functionalism was unlivable. It became common to beautify the chthonic architecture that enclosed us.
This movement against functional sterility is the root of our beautifying our weapons as well. I, for example, had my pistol etched with acid to evoke a styling of the Qīng Dynasty, with laser engraving on the barrel in Thai calligraphy.
I heard a familiar young female voice behind me, in Mandarin, say, “I knew I would find you here Gōngdézhù (功德助).”
Gōngdézhù is a stylized translation of my surname into Mandarin. Down here, we were all fluent in the English language’s spoken, written, and manually encoded forms. However, almost all of us native-born to the Marie Byrd Land also spoke several other languages. In fact, it was not uncommon for people to be fluent in 11 different languages, despite it not being strictly necessary.
So, I had also heard my name pronounced as Gongdeokjo (공덕조) in Korean, Công Đức Trợ in Vietnamese, and even Kōŋ-tư̄g-zras in an alien pygmy tongue. Soon, I would also hear it pronounced in Japanese, though I didn’t know what that pronunciation might be.
When I turned around, I saw my dear friend; a fourteen-year-old Sino-Korean girl clad in the same suit, except with a female pelvic protector, the torso and deltoids being charcoal gray, the brassiere, pelvic protection, and helmet being white, and the Han name Xǔ inscribed on it.
I responded in Thai “Hyechin (惠珍), what are you doing here?”
Hyechin walked up to the rails next to me while asking without changing languages, “Why are you speaking in Thai?”
She walked up to my side, placed her right hand on the rail, leaned on it, and faced me.
I turned towards and reminded her, “This is the only place in the world where speaking in Manchu can’t ensure privacy.”
Hyechin probed, “What’s with the secretiveness, then?”
I deflected. “Do I need a reason?”
There was a reason I was being intentionally exclusive with our conversation, but I didn’t want to admit it to her. Not that it mattered when speaking to someone I knew, since as far back as I could remember anything. The hellish panic that ensued after the atomic annihilation in Japan left me exhausted. We prepared not just for our revelation to the world, but for immediate humanitarian aid, as well as in anticipation of a public deployment in the event of another attack.
Hyechin placed her left hand on my shoulder and confessed, “It’s okay to be anxious about our upcoming deployment.”
I confessed, “While I am anxious about our deployment, it’s what we trained for; so that’s not what I’m particularly worried about.”
Hyechin asked, “Then what is it?”
Deviously reaching her hand opposite to me out, she said, “Do I have to read your mind?”
I jumped away from her, demanding, “Don’t even think about it!”
She pouted a bit, admitting, “Relax, I don’t have telepathy today. Now tell me what’s bothering you.”
I calmed down a bit and told her, “I’m worried that they might deploy me in the EU or America.”
Hyechin asked me, “What’s wrong with Europe and America? I wouldn’t mind being stationed in either.”
I probed the issue. “You hoping to meet a guy? You were always into Mediterranids.”
Hyechin ignored that comment and asked me, “What are you worried about, Gōngdézhù?”
I hesitated to explain, “It’s my condition.”
Hyechin’s brow raised inquisitively.
I continued, “The GSSDO is a profoundly religious organization. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, even Mohists and Stoics count among our ranks, and I have never had an issue with any of them. To them, I was always just Elden. Sure, I was born with a congenital deviation, but our culture conditions us to see each other as possessing intrinsic dignity. Never was I merely a means to an end. However, in the West, there is a militant cult that falsely presents itself as a science. They not only cannot see me as I am, but would also actively try to use my existence to justify their deviant delusions… and they are an extremely nasty bunch, embittered with their loss of institutional backing.”
Hyechin noted, “Socialists usually are a nasty bunch. The Queer Marxists are insufferable.”
I sat down on the bench and sarcastically remarked, “It’s gonna be interesting to see salvaged recruits react to their bullshit.”
Hyechin chuckled awkwardly and saw a gracile young woman, only 140 cm tall with straight navy hair tied in a waste length pony tail, red irises, medium-dark brown skin, a narrow nose, large forehead, Mongolian folds, micromastia, weak body hair, and a red floral bindi in an engineer’s uniform run past us behind the open doorway and said, “Hey, Gōngdézhù, is that Zleŋ‘?”
I barely saw her passing by, but I could tell it was her. After all, there was no one on Earth who looked like her, and there might be no one on Second World who looked like her either.
I looked at Hyechin and answered, “Oh, you mean the one in the ASSDF uniform? Yeah, that’s her. You think we should try to talk to her at some point?”
Hyechin told me, “You know she’s alalic.”
It was well known within the GSSDO that Zleŋ’, a magician from another Earth-like planet, could not produce language, but she could understand it. This was not because of a deficiency of her mind or body, but was rather a symptom of an extremely sophisticated curse.
To get around this, she had perfected the use of body language, gestures, and noises to communicate complex information paralinguistically. She had also developed a series of artificial intelligences that could communicate her ideas, though imperfectly, on her behalf. Additionally, she was skilled in kything, or the communication of ideas telepathically without language.
Despite this limitation, her memory and intellect were unparalleled among metahumans and magicians alike. With an utterly eidetic memory, an unprecedented IQ, and an insatiable curiosity, she was the first one of her subspecies to effortlessly merge our superscience with her alien wonderworking.
I told her, “Figuratively, you dolt.”
The smirk on her face transitioned into one of surprise as Hyechin immediately snapped to attention and saluted, sending me into a momentary panic as I copied her. We switched to a dialect leveled English, but she only managed the first syllable of “Attention!” before we heard a kind and amused laugh, “At ease, girls.”
We relaxed, and I asked, “What brings you to the USSDF, Warmaster Jeż? I thought you were currently working with the SDMC.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The GSSDO comprised several service branches:
* The Terrestrial Strategic Self-Defense Force (TSSDF) handled ground warfare.
* The Maritime Strategic Self-Defense Force (MSSDF) for maritime warfare.
* The Ærospatial Strategic Self-Defense Force (ÆSSDF) for aerial warfare.
* The Cosmic Strategic Self-Defense Force (CSSDF) for space warfare.
* The Chthonic Strategic Self-Defense Force (XSSDF) for subterranean warfare.
* The Special Strategic Self-Defense Force (SSSDF) for special operations.
* The Self-Defense Medical Corps (SDMC) for paramilitary medicine.
* The Strategic Cyberdefense Force (SCF) for cyberwarfare and cybersecurity.
* The Self-Police Corps (SPC) for paramilitary law enforcement.
* The Self-Defense Intelligence Organization (SDIO) for intelligence operations.
* The Logistic Strategic Self-Defense Force (LSSDF) for paramilitary logistics.
* The Emergency Strategic Self-Defense Force (ESSDF) for emergency management.
* The Academic Strategic Self-Defense Force (ASSDF) for research and development.
* The Preternatural Strategic Self-Defense Force (PSSDF) for fey warfare.
Then there’s my branch: the Ultra Strategic Self-Defense Force (USSDF). Responsible for intercepting and slaying kaijū using our own enslaved kaijū.
He was a 188 cm tall, 100 kg, Caucasian man with a .50 caliber semiautomatic pistol holstered on his right hip, both thighs, both ankles, the small of his back, and right breast. The Warmaster, as per our tradition, each assigned firearm beautified with acid etching and laser engraving. Like all Warmasters, his standard arms included a telescopic ceramic baton on his left hip.
Warmaster Jeż informed us, “Officially, I am, but being a Warmaster comes with its liberties, which allows me to check on our brave pilots.”
Hyechin asked him, “Does that mean the Supreme Commander will visit us?”
Hyechin had always admired the Supreme Commander, partly because he was a handsome man and she was a teenage girl, but partly because he was a fatherly man, despite not being a father. She had a similar admiration for Warmaster Jeż as well, who was a mentor to her despite their differences in religion.
He told us, “I doubt he will have the time to check on the Neodei pilots, given he now has to establish a diplomatic relationship with around two hundred countries.”
The only two heads of state who were previously aware of our existence were simultaneously ecclesiastical heads: the British Monarch, who is simultaneously the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Bishop of Rome, who is the absolute monarch of the Vatican City State. While we are autonomous, they were uniquely permitted the right to inquire into and influence the internal workings of the GSSDO to ensure the spiritual needs and rights of the Anglican and Catholic members within our ranks.
Hyechin deviously asked, “So, Warmaster, do you have any new powers for us?”
Jeż, like all Warmasters, wasn’t born with powers of his own, but had to show himself worthy of his position. He underwent one of the most extreme special forces training programs in the world before every cell in his body was violently reprogrammed, his nervous system chemically transformed, and his brain and vital organs placed into the most advanced prosthetic body in the world. Only after all of this could he undergo the rites of empowerment.
Most Warmasters kept their powers to themselves for security, but Warmaster Jeż was never afraid to be open about his powers and limitations. The rite blessed him first with the ability to temporarily copy and slot the powersets of others by simply seeing or touching them. While he could only use one borrowed powerset at a time, he could freely switch between those powersets he copied.
His second blessing was not only the power to share the abilities he copied but also to automatically augment them during the process of transferal. This meant that whoever he temporarily empowered would have greater abilities than he himself received.
His final blessing was the ability to regenerate the lost or damaged powers of others.
He told her, “Not today, Ms. Xŭ.”
He felt an affinity for us Neodei pilots because we ourselves must undergo a training regimen which would’ve been classified as torture if revealed to the UN counsel of human rights, but we survived and became more resilient through it.
A thought crossed my mind, “So I guess you heard the conversation we had before you arrived?”
The look on Hyechin’s face showed me she didn’t even consider that certainty.
The Warmaster reminded us, “Of course I did.”
It was easy to forget just how superhuman the senses of a Warmaster were. Given that a Warmaster could clearly hear the heartbeat of a mouse three meters away, a conversation wasn’t difficult to pick up. That, combined with the fact that Warmasters had access to semantic translation applications in their exocortexies, meant that any potential for Thai to provide us with a private conversation was voided.
But he admitted, “Although it is improper to eavesdrop on private conversations; so, I did not.”
He then asked, “Why? Should I be involved in this conversation?”
Hyechin told him, “No sir. We were just discussing pre-deployment anxieties.”
He gave a compassionate but confident expression to which I confessed, “It is likely that my medical condition will eventually come out, and there is a certain branch of metaphysically illiterate activists that will use my condition to push their incoherent narrative. It’s not that I can’t defend myself, but that they might use my nature to ensnare others into their intersectional cult that worries me.”
It’s obvious that my unique pelvic protector would give away my secret, but Warmaster Jeż merely said, “Your concerns are understandable, but this is neither a secret to keep nor something warranting disclosure for your role. As soon as they find out about you, they will lie about you. Performing their kitmān and taqiyya to reinforce their delusions, and when you speak up against them, they will slander you, even call you a Nazi, regardless of what the facts may be…”
The GSSDO’s historical education was quite thorough, a consequence of our origins as a response to the horrors of World Wars. There’s a great deal of diversity of thought within our ranks: republicans, aristocrats, monarchists, meritocrats, timocrats, and technocrats all co-operated for a common goal with common enemies established over more than a century of covert operations. Of particular note, we did not use Fascist, Nazi, or Marxist, as recklessly as the people seem to do in America and across Europe.
He reminded me, “Your primary physician is a trained theologian of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Here you have friends well versed in metaphysics and biology, so you do not have to worry about that. There are plenty of people here who will gladly defend your honor against the ontological postmodernism of ideologically possessed degenerates in the occident.”
Hyechin chimed in, “More like the demon infested.”
Both I and Hyechin were Buddhists, whereas Warmaster Jeż was a devout Catholic who attended Eucharistic adoration every opportunity he got, so that possibility certainly would not have been out of the question even if our scientists hadn’t empirically confirmed the existence of incorporeal intelligences otherwise known as angels. Angels, were not to be confused with fairies, which are otherworldly, corporeal intelligences. Neither of which are human.
It wasn’t the judgement of a crypto-Hegelian cult that troubled me, but that they would weaponise my medical condition to lead people away from the dharma, which caused concern.
Admittedly, the Warmaster’s words helped, and I told him, “Thank you, sir. I still intend to keep a low profile, but that really does make me feel better, and thank you for not eavesdropping.”
Warmaster Jeż promised me with an enthusiastic smile, “I will keep you in my prayers, little mouse.”
Patting my helmet, he confessed, “I think the author of being has something important planned for you beyond paramilitary activity, so be bold, seek the truth, and discover who you are beyond being a trained killer. What you’ll find will surprise you.”
He looked at Hyechin and told her, “That goes for you too, small rabbit.”
Addressing us both again, he said, “Well, I’m going to check on miss Dźugi. Godspeed, you two.”
We both responded, “Wilco, Warmaster!”
He paused before leaving and informed us, “By the way, Zleŋ‘ is performing her first human trials on the new rite she designed.”
Hyechin asked him, “So she reconstructed the crossworld transportation rite?”
He said, “I need to go, but if you can, you should watch her activation test.”
He left.
Hyechin was a little jealous about the physical display of affection offered by the Warmaster. I turned to peer back over to my neodeus and saw dentists crawling out of the mouth of that unbreathing catatonic giant.
I confessed, “Mālhlin asked to talk with me in private.”
Hyechin lit up with a shit-eating grin, “Oh, you are sweet-talkin’ the noblewoman?”
I explained to her, “No! She just wanted to discuss an exchange.”
This piqued Hyechin’s curiosity. “Of what?”
I told her, “She saw me teaching Dźugi how to play shōgi (将棋) the other day and offered to teach me Elven chess so long as I taught her shōgi as well. She also offered to teach me lūdus latrunculōrum if I taught her makruk (หมากรุก), but then I told her it’s not too far off from ok (អុក)… which she already knows.”
Hyechin probed, “That doesn’t make sense. There’s far more qualified personnel she could consult with if that’s her goal.”
I sarcastically remarked, “Thanks for the encouragement, but how many people here do you think know how to play shōgi? It’s not like we have that many Japanese people in the GSSDO.”
“Present company excluded, of course.” She said sarcastically.
I responded, “And that’s precisely what makes me certain that the higher ups won’t station me in Japan.”
The GSSDO salvaged my Manchurian ancestors from the Rape of Nanking. One of them had endured diabolical savagery, having been sexually violated by a unit of Imperial soldiers before being spirited away from her impending death. The child she conceived would later marry a warrior within the GSSDO, and I am the descendant of their union.
To her dying day, she held a deep hatred for the Japanese government, but decades of therapy eventually allowed her to let go of her animosity towards the Japanese people. Her children did not inherit her hatred of the Japanese state, as it was an alien and distant nation to them.
Personally, I find Japanese pop culture and philosophy fascinating, particularly their contributions to the Pure Land traditions.
Hyechin thought about it. “Yeah, it would be easier to find someone to teach her Janggi (장기) or Backgammon, but considering what happened in Japan, we’ll probably get an influx of new recruits. Happens every Human Salvaging Operation, after all.”
I criticized, “We’re not spiriting people out of concentration camps or killing fields, so this isn’t a Human Salvaging Operation, but I believe your general assessment of the future is likely on point.”
Hyechin rounded back to the prior topic. “I assume the talk she wants to have with you won’t be about board games.”
I continued, “I also asked her if she could teach me a language from her world.”
Hyechin asked, “Which one? Last I heard, she speaks nine…”
I corrected, “Eleven, and I didn’t specify, but she offered to teach me Mưn-ŋan.”
She gave me an inquisitive look, and I clarified, “The Rose Pygmies’ Chinese.”
Hyechin remarked, “That’s not a particularly alien language.”
“The Rose Pygmies’ Chinese is the language of politics and academia in the Greater Blue Rose Empire, and over sixty percent of the vocabulary of Halfling is from Old Chinese.” I reminded her.
Hyechin told me, “Yeah, but in context I’m pretty sure she could tell you meant something like Kyanonesian, High Elvish, or even Goblish.”
I recoiled at that last one. “Hey, we both had to learn traditional and simplified Chinese… I’m fine with not learning that weird Mayan, Egyptian, Chinese, Arabic… thing…”
Hyechin sympathized with that statement, “Yeah, I asked one of the Goblins to explain how their writing works, and while I understand the general idea, it’s so far outside my wheelhouse that I simply cannot keep up with it.”
She looked directly at me and told me, “She’s pretty cute. If you’re’nt going after the prodigy, then why…”
I interrupted her. “Why are you so interested in my love life? You know Neodei pilots are ageless, so it’s not like I have a biological clock to contend with.”
Hyechin bluntly told me, “Are you assuming that we’re going to die fighting against kaijū?”
That question hit to the heart of my assumptions.
She continued, “We have the whole GSSDO behind us, and within the year, even the most stubborn nations will have to support us.”
I pointed out, “That is assuming, even with all this, that mankind has the power to overcome the onslaught of monsters that lie in waiting.”
She again rebutted, “But you’re operating under the assumption that we can’t, or worse, that there aren’t metaphysical powers which might be on our side.”
She reminded me, “We are not vain Modernists. As Buddhists, we believe in a dharma beyond this material world: the will of Heaven is on our side, despite the evil that men do.”
I did not have a retort to that as she quoted the GSSDO’s motto, “For the Greater Good of God,” and continued “We’ll keep each other alive, and barring that we will never cease in caring for the souls of our friends.”
I reminded her, “The Manuṣya domain will survive even without Earth. As far as we know, the role of the GSSDO in the greater scope of history is to spread the Dharma to the countless worlds across the galaxy.”
The lineage to which Zleŋ‘ belonged was not from Earth, but they were undeniably human. Therefore, they belonged with us in the Manuṣya domain, which represents the totality of the state of being human. This domain is just one of many desire realms that we Buddhists believe souls wander through during their transmigratory journey.
Alongside the Manuṣya domain, there exist other domains, including the Deva domain inhabited by heavenly divinities, the Asura domain of disordered divinities, the Preta domain encompassing hungry ghosts, the Nāraka domain binding hell-beings or nārakis, and the domain of sensible animals.
While our superscience has empirically demonstrated the existence of a soul and described how it bonds to bodies to generate consciousness, we have not yet devised an experiment that can demonstrate the immortality or mortality of the soul or reveal where it goes after the death of its body. These questions remain within the domain of eschatology and metaphysics.
Hyechin nudged my arm with her fist and told me, “It would, but it won’t because we won’t let it.”
I smiled at her and asked, stepping away from the rails, “I know, and thank you.”
Hyechin smirked and changed the subject. “So, do you want to meet our new guests when they arrive?”
I admitted, “I’m up for it.”
Hyechin began walking ahead of me and said, “Then let’s get going!”
We left the hangar, easily found some ASSDF members, asked about the schedule of the test, found out we had a few hours to wait then went to my residence to play some Janggi until it was time to leave so that we could catch the rite’s provisional activation test. Abstract and hybrid strategy games were a popular pastime in the GSSDO, partly because our melting pot circumstances allowed people from across the world to form bonds by playing games with each other.
The GSSDO’s architectural layout took into consideration the possibility of a future conflict with human powers. Anticipating the future possibility of an occasion of invasion from any of the world’s military superpowers: curved hallways and blast-resistant concrete barriers (covered with murals of various styles) projecting from the walls provide floor-to-wall cover in the instance of a firefight. Doors were hermetically sealed and reinforced against common breaching techniques.
The windows of the rooms were ballistic, one-way mirrors. Opaque from the outside but transparent from the inside. Even if you could see through the glass, such as by placing a sufficiently intense light against it, architects positioned the windows in such a manner that not all the room was visible. If you were to look up at the ceiling, you might notice the security cameras strategically placed or the smoke cannons ready to flood the chamber with lacrimatory or incapacitating agents.
Every aspect of our architectural foundation was fortified for combat: hidden bombs, pipe systems of quick-drying resin ready to flood and seal hallways, explosive bolts designed to collapse passageways on unwanted intruders, blast doors designed to anticipate nuclear hellfire, and secret passageways for escape and ambush were only but a few things concocted over a century of doomsday preparations.
When we finally arrived at our destination, we scanned our ID cards and the door opened. Entering the well-lit chamber, we noticed there were a few people in the observation room, spying on the wonderworker from behind a thick pane of glass. Archmagi, a few Warmasters, ASSDF personnel, and Mālhlin were there. Seeing us enter the room, she smiled at me, then returned to watching the mute woman’s works.
Although, the most important of the spectators present in the room was Queen Rue. The sole surviving member of the House of the Blue Rose, and therefore the rightful queen of the Greater Blue Rose Empire. At only 109 cm tall, 18 kg, with geisha white face paint concealing pale skin, jet painted eyebrows, vibrant red lipstick, a red floral bindi, large forehead, coarse, straight, blonde hair, narrow nose, green Mongolic eyes, and large head she, like everyone else from her homeworld, looked completely out of place among the people of Earth, despite having been raised on Earth since infancy.
Her Majesty was dressed in a vibrant red and blue díyī, with oriental phoenix and dragon patterns woven across it, as well as a jade-jeweled crown of gold decorated with the image of a blue rose wreathed in dragons. She was only 12 years old, but given the evolution of her lineage, it was entirely likely that she would grow no taller than she stood now.
I looked down and saw a lovely 14-year-old blonde, blue-eyed, Nordic woman in a long-sleeved white blouse, ankle-length blue dress, and black flats with her waist length hair tied in a ponytail. Her surname was Breedlove. She wasn’t a member of the GSSDO, but was under our protection. She wasn’t a particularly bright woman, in fact, I suspect she had a communication disorder, and she wasn’t much of a fighter, but regardless her powers made her one of the most important people on Earth: as she was the backup plan. If Earth were to fall to eldritch powers, then she was to be an ark to save humanity from drowning in the primal chaos.
Zleŋ‘ was completely naked and unashamed. Painting an absurdly complicated array that covered her face, neck, torso, arms, hands, legs, and feet in jet body paint. We only caught the tail end of the painting, after which she got dressed in an alien rúqún. She had already encoded incantations directly into the fabric of the clothing she was wearing via stitching. Zleŋ‘ walked over to Ms. Breedlove and grabbing her face with authority and gentleness to paint a symbol on the girl’s forehead with her index finger, after which she walked back into the center of an array drawn on the floor.
We all noticed the complementary arrays she designed on the ceiling and walls as well. I understood nothing of this witchy business, and from the looks of confusion on the archimages’ faces in the observation room, neither did they.
She took a pose as if to preform qigong, then Ms. Breedlove anxiously extended both her hands out to her, and I knew the summoning rite was about to begin.
If you had told me that someone would record all of this, I’d have assumed that it would best represent a science fiction, but at the end of all things, it turned out to always have been a sekaikei. Although it wasn’t my relationship that would save the world. Instead, my story was to aid in cultivating the character and spirit needed for the one chosen by the logos preceding all universes to defeat the invincible chaos.