There was a time in my life where my response to having a problem and a tool that might plausibly solve that problem was to just insert tab B into slot A and prepare to laugh either maniacally or sheepishly.

Relatedly, there was a time in my life when I was young.

What I want to do is a little bit more complicated, and I’m not sure how to pull it off. I don’t really have a way of getting Sara’s attention other than thinking really hard about how I’d like to have it, which worked eventually last time but seems unreliable. I can’t really affect that pipe, it’s not particularly compressible and the wall or membrane’s ability to actually exert force on it is basically nonexistent, so there’s no, like, direct interaction.

It takes me a matter of minutes to realize I’m being an idiot, and then I open my eyes.

I’m still sprawled on the couch in more or less the same position I was before. I had somehow expected blood to be coming out my skull-holes, possibly in seven or so places, but the only sign of what’s been transpiring is some drool that vanishes off of the pillow it was on; it doesn’t even bother drying before disappearing as though it was never there.

“Hey, Sara.”

My voice is soft, a little giddy, a little lost in the clouds. Her reaction to it is far more emphatic than I had expected; she slams to her feet, and the pipe she’s been working through almost rips itself out of the socket it had established for itself. It’s brutally painful; not the removal but the absence, leaving me cramping from my ass up to my neck, doubled over and retching all over the couch.

That, I figure, might be a reason to be on the couch with all the self-cleaning enchantments.

It’s absolute agony. I’ve had, on one memorable occasion, a case of constipation that blocked my bowels as churning diarrhea built up behind it, and the pressure mounted as I cramped from that and gas alike until I went in for medical attention; those cramps had me weeping with pain, but they were local to only one small part of my body. These are more intense, and the cramps run all the way up my spine and to places where I don’t even have muscles. They’re cramps in my soul, conveyed as such by a malwired sensorium that doesn’t have the right words, and unconsciousness would be a mercy.

My awareness stays solid, somehow. There’s a pair of gentle, adamant hands holding me down and stopping me from thrashing, and there’s something shoved into my mouth that I’m biting into, and slowly, slowly, I somehow lean into the feeling of Amber’s hands and the knowledge that they’re there to take care of me, and millimeter by millimeter I relax. The sense of alienation that makes me feel like my limbs aren’t my own fades as I do, by her touch or by coincidence.

By the time I pry my eyes open again, there’s no trace of anything. I’ve spat out whatever was in my mouth, or they pulled it out when I stopped convulsing, and any fluids that leaked have vanished. Well, vanished off of the couch; there’s the taste of bile in my mouth, and I croak out something unintelligible that gets me a wide mug full of water in my hand.

“Of all the foolish things you’ve done since I was woven into this world,” Amber finally says into the heavy silence, and then trails off.

I drink, waiting to see if she’s going to say anything else. There’s a hint of some flavor in the water, and it’s a bit of an embarrassment that it takes me several long sips to identify it as some sort of lemon extract; not the sour juice, but just the limonene, a familiar both startlingly familiar and also strangely unusual. “Disturbing the soul mage who was actively operating on me wasn’t exactly my intention,” I say eventually, trying for wry humor. “To be fair, though, I wasn’t entirely thinking things through. I mean, I was not-thinking-things-through more than usual.”

“No shit.”

Amber’s departure from her usual formality sets me off into a fit of giggling. She fusses over me, not really showing any reaction as she cleans a variety of vile fluids off of my face with a succession of damp washcloths. There’s a tightness in her hands when she’s cleaning near my eyes; I figure she’s just being extra careful, though it’s not like she can’t regrow my eyeballs if she accidentally… I shift my mind away from trying to visualize anything in that line of thought.

It’s a few moments before I’m recombobulated enough to take in my surroundings. Zidanya is kneeling by the door, hands in her lap, toes tucked under her as though she’s about to lunge forwards; guard mode, then. Amber is quiet, hand resting at my waist, and Sara… ah.

I stand up and walk over to her, at the table on the other side of the shelves.

“Sara.”

“Sir.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“There’s a language gap that Omniglot doesn’t bridge.” I think she was going to say something after the sir, but I barrel ahead regardless. “In the Fleet, there’s a sort of standard thing, we call it veitor, it means I’m sorry and you were right and I shouldn’t have doubted you, and a few other things besides. If I said that, fists at my shoulders and eyes closed with my chin high, I don’t think it would mean anything to you, and you’d have no reason to know any of the… the responses. I’m sorry I startled you; that was idiotic and thoughtless of me, and it only happened because I was impatient.”

Sara’s hands are flat on the table. They were shaking when I started talking; they’re still now, having found their way there slowly as I spoke. I look at them, gripping and letting go almost rhythmically as she, I presume, searches for words, and I wait.

“You persist in treating me as though I am not your subordinate.” Sara exhales audibly. “I will, to the best of my ability, respect the relationship you wish to establish. In that vein, and leaving aside the impossibility of what you did, why? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I had a way to scale up what you were doing, maybe? And save you a bunch of time. You and me, that is. I worked on it in the Visor inside of some sort of… metaphysical visualized space.” She stares at me like I’ve said something particularly ludicrous, and I blush a little, sheepishly. “I wasn’t thinking very clearly. That… hypnotism, I guess? It was like I was floating and drifting away, and I’m surprised I was able to even form words.”

“You should, by all the reports I have read, been past sleeping, though awake. You should not have found yourself able to form coherent thoughts; it is described, in the most reliable of those records, as a feeling of drifting down a river, where no attempt to reach the water succeeds. Remarkably absent, according to all of those reports, are the ability to work, visualize anything more complex than a vague notion of directionless motion, speak, or wake of your own accord.” Sara clasps her hands together, then unclasps them and lays them flat on the table again. “I have come to the conclusion that records should be categorized as those pertaining to Outsiders and those pertaining to anyone else, and this is untidy.”

She says that last word as though it’s the worst vicious of curses, and I giggle despite myself. “For what it’s worth,” I say, grinning a little, “I think it might also have to do with a Trait I have.”

“I have seen what you speak of, I believe.” Her voice is guarded, tense. “No tome of Safaran contains the name, but despite Her best efforts, some knowledge eludes her; no God can know a secret never shared. Even so, it is not sufficient to explain all four of these things, which should be impossible.”

“I know it’s kind of a rude question, but impossible according to whom? How many case studies are we talking about?”

“Three properly attested and two less-so.” Sara drums on the table, grimacing. “Most practitioners of soul magic refuse to discuss their actions with the Temple, even when their opportunities to elude justice have ended. They are often… spiteful.”

“So they refuse to contribute to the public knowledge even when continuing to refuse gains them nothing, and probably had terrible investigatory rigor regardless.” My mouth twists. “They sound like real winners. Also, that’s not a whole lot of people.”

Sara shrugs, which I think is deliberate, given how stiff and segmented the shrug is. “Their instructions for inducing the necessary state functioned adequately, and their information in most other regards was invaluable.”

“Okay. Um.” I’m fidgeting, and I realize that I’m nervous. “Do you want to… is there even a way I can have you look at my code? At the action that I’d be empowering my Visor to take?”

Sara blinks a few times at that. “Not… easily,” she eventually says. “None of us perceives anything in your Visor when you are using it. We would have to reestablish that state. It is considered… somewhat inappropriate for me to even suggest it. Each additional time means that I can more easily bypass or subvert your soul’s defenses in the future.”

“Good!” I beam at her as she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “It was an interesting experience, but I’m sure it took a bunch of time, and I don’t want to waste yours. Or mine! We totally don’t have time to dive back in now, though, do we.”

“Fifteen minutes remain of your ninety, my lord.” Amber wraps her arms around my shoulders, pulling the back of my head into her stomach. I had almost forgotten that she was even with us, in my combination of distraction and excitement. “Need I ask?”

“Probably not.” I murmur it into the air, eyes closing. Her fingers are on my scalp, and my brain’s amplitudes feel dimmed, like someone threw a very cozy shade on. “Do you ever need to ask?”

“Often; with each and every surprise you bring to me, those many since our meeting.”

My smile is a little giddy. “Sara and I will need to spend some more time doing that. I think I have a way to speed things up, and I guess once we’ve done that, we can do other things. Things that actually change stuff. But for now, no new or restored capabilities.”

“With respect, sir.” I open my eyes. Sara is actually smiling, a little smug smirk. “There is one.”

She taps the side of her head, where the earpiece that amplifies and modifies my Conjure Visor spell rests on my ear. I fire it up, and a heartbeat later, my jaw drops.

“Well.” I grin. “That. That is pretty cool and changes a thing or two, doesn’t it.”

I lock eyes with Sara, and for once, her grin matches my own.