The experiment that was Noloth was of a society supreme–a preservation and further compounding by securing the stock of esteemed individuals to create a “perpetual greatest generation.”
Such was the theory to what they sought to practice, but in practice, I can only describe their habits as enforced cultural and ideological inbreeding.
There is a horror to being human–to “thinking” human. We are simultaneously too conscious and capable of self-perception, yet our senses and biology are so easily hijacked by the feedback from our environment.
For all of Wahakten’s sacrifices and efforts, I fear the menagerie he has built resembles little more than a cliche dedicated to the replication of its own shape.
“Cancerous code,” as the administrators might describe.
Instead of each life passed into the cycle of dragons, adding to the eternal city, I think they are consumed by it. Boiled away by the norms and narratives already present and made to conform to the same beliefs.
Even now I… find myself paranoid against my very own thoughts–my very own beliefs. If not for my love severing the hand of my old master from its place upon my nape, I doubt such thoughts could have ever even developed, nor would we have been spirited away to a place of destined salvation.
Humans pursue belief. This is the culmination where external impulse and inward perceptions meet. The shape of the exterior is bent to match the mood of the interior, and without forceful feedback, frictionless belief is a capricious thing, and more often we flee from the harshness of possible truth toward palatable comfort. To see the world made so for a feeble few would come at the cost of all others, and so, I have glimpsed the truth of Noloth’s great rot.
It is, at its core, not a city, but a nursery. A nursery for the traumatized, the fearful, the deluded.
What began as an impeccable engine to deceive the gods and direct the path of society has turned into little more than a cult itself. Now, it grows still, but it can no longer be sculpted. It grows and grows and must keep growing for it has no will nor spirit to confront the wound at the heart of its own design, and with each setback it faces, its psyche tears, and more lives are demanded by its gluttonous gestalt.
It is not eternity or control it hungers for, but self-assurance.
And so, it is with this justification–and perhaps delusion of my own–that I condemn them to their fate.
When the Ladder is finished, they will attempt to take hold. But I have not told them what serves as the bridge between the world that is and will be.
For the world to cross over, everything must be reborn from a final memory, and it disturbs me how suited they have become to serve as the conduit of such a sacrifice…
-Jaus Avandaer on the construction of the Flayed Ladder
16-7
Choice of Skins (III)
The first difference between an ansible and an Auto-Seance was a matter of groundedness. An ansible did not work beyond the bounds of reality but within it. There was a reactivity to its effect–a counter-push from gravity and data. An info-tunnel across the reach of space dipped and formed, the curvature of bending gravity caused Avo’s thoughtstuff to spike far outward, turning needle-thin as Denton’s did all those times.
Understanding graced him as he realized she wasn’t casting ghosts out. Not truly. This was an act of direction the flow of his Sprites, and as the metaphysical bandwidth connected to this Neurodeck reshaped itself via a language he was only beginning to grasp.
There was little direct intuition with the codes. The colddata didn’t greet him with the intimacy of mem-data. What composed the structure of software were just numbers and keys serving as signifiers of information without any of the lingering humanity that still echoed within the ghosts.
Such was the distinct separation between the two mechanisms. That, and the architecture that existed for ansible was far more expansive.
Accessing Voidnet…
->Ego confirmed: Avo-001 [Admin Status Granted]
“What’s this?” Avo asked. “Admin?”
{That’s mostly from me,} Calvino replied. {As an EGI, I have administrative privileges over most citizens. This allows me to help assist, adjust, or penalize them to ensure that they and their communities live prosperous lives.}
“Sounds like zookeeping.”
{I find the most accurate metaphor to be parenting.}
“Is there a difference?”
{Would you like an equally glib response before I help you override their personal firewalls and construct a shared virtuality.}
“Why not.”
Lines of data began to accelerate across Avo’s perception as a layered world was painted within electric flow of his Neurodeck.
Much like a mem-sim, a virtual environment was a cogno-space that one could alter or manipulate. How the user interfaced with each had too many differences to count, but their ultimate functions were quite similar. What Avo could say was that using the ansible to join his simulated reality with another mind seemed far too easy a process.
All he did was think the commands and the deck generated the actions. Complexity was removed but stacked all the same–the information surging passively, positioning him more like a governor over his mind rather than a laborer.
Avo hated the feeling.
{Oh? It doesn’t feel real unless your forcing something into shape with your own hands, huh?} Calvino asked, sounding curious.
+Feels like its too easy to lose. Too easy to take away.+
Tunnel to [Mayflower-3288-B]; [Terror-3285] linked.
Overriding personal settings…
Constructing shared virtual environ…
Uploading ego-instances - 25%... 56%... 85%... 100%
Egos loaded
All systems stable
A second world loaded within Avo’s mind as he felt his consciousness bifurcate. Part of him was still there in the hanger, listening to Chambers chattering excitedly at the guns and faintly aware of Kae’s presence beside him.
Across the ansible, through an unseen wormhole carrying the data of his thoughts, he found himself standing at a threshold between two rooms.
The first was splash of color and madness. Everything was black and white with angry red lights and a droning industrial beat sounding in the background. It looked like someone had redecorated a garage into a loft, and mechanical apparatuses spun and assembled strange and incomprehensible mechanisms. Upward, a small balcony overlooked the first floor and Avo founding himself meeting the eyes of an immensely squat but densely built man with a cluster of glowing implants instead of eyes and a dozen wires reaching out from the ports in his back.
“The hell,” he muttered, looking around as the surroundings continued to load in.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Unlatching from Avo’s virtual self, Calvino shot to greet the first of the grafters. “Ah. ‘Osjack.’ Good morning. You might know the ghoul. You did some surgery on him approximately a month or two back, after all. He’s here to say hi. I’m here to officially hit you with an indictment for illegally modifying the local populations without proper consent. I hope you had a nice day, because it might be getting worse now.”
Studying Osjack’s virtual self, Avo realized the man had a penchant for decorative patches and leather vests, considering he was wearing no less than three of the things. Paint coated his fingers and there was a stylized dishevelment to his beard and hair. The chaos of his room and apparel was simply too aesthetic to be random.
There was a style on display here.
Osjack opened and closed his mouth several times as he stared at Avo in disbelief. The ghoul considered responding, but the virtual space of the second grafter loaded in, and a clash of flavors was joined.
Osjane’s room was neat. Tidy. Ordered. Everything was white or lavender, while the backdrop of the room presented itself as towering bookshelves that reached skyward and kept going. Pallid drones made from the same substance as voidships delivered books to a floating, rail-thin bespectacled woman with bulging pods growing on her joints and what looked to be hardened resin growing around her eyes.
A hovering table followed her as she spun on an axis, greeting the intruders as if she was in zero-g.
Calvino chimed quickly. “Ah. An interestng separation of subcultures for you to note: John here is descended from a cloned labor-caste created by Jane’s people, who lived on their luxiourious orbitals. This was all the way back in the late twenty-fourth century, of course, but the general details about how there an civil war between their peoples is useful trivia.”
“...Avo?” Osjack–called John by Calvino–said. “Well fuck me, you’re alive. And… with an admin.” He blinked once. “Wait. Why are you with one of our admins?” Two more blinks. “Unless… are we forking spooks into ghouls now? Did I get hit with an entrapment.”
“No, John,” Calvino sighed. “This one’s always been a ghoul. Albeit quite modified in certain respects. I afraid you’re not getting out of community service for this.”
John smacked his lips and breathed out. “Fuuuucccckk.”
“What now,” Jane said, frowning at the intruders.
Firewall deactivated
She frowned, and Avo noticed that an aurora of colors danced beneath her skin while her orifices remained coated under thin chitinous carapaces. He wasn’t sure how she was talking, but considering how the colors of her flesh swirled with each word, he suspected she wasn’t used to speaking with her voice and instead lived using some kind of skin-sign language.
“Quite right,” Calvino said, sounding pleased. “Her clade is adapted to the void. Or was. Her ears are closer to artifacts of ancestry rather than necessary parts of biology.”
Avo swept his gaze across the two grafters and grunted. “A lot more character than the drones you use.”
John, more inclined toward spontaneity, curtseyed while Jane wilted before the attention.
“What is this?” Jane asked. “What do you want?”
“Wondered how you two were doing?” Avo asked.
“We’re also going to be put in re-education,” John shouted, calling down beyond his rails.
“Now, there’s no need to be too worried,” Calvino said. “There might be an arrangement that will ensure everyone leaves happy and pleased. But first, I have to ask: Why break sophont charter? Why go through so much effort to evade our attention.”
John just shrugged. “Hell. I just wanted to see the freaks and geeks down planetside. See what the whole restriction fuss was about. And when I got a glimpse of the freakshow, I just couldn’t get enough.”
Calvino turned to regard Jane and the spacer sighed. “I… am fascinated with the thaumic biotechnology of the Sang. The impossibility of traits offered by their created organs are… I wish to document them. For selfish and communal reasons.”
“It’s all in the name of the enlightenment,” John said, shrugging. “I’d say I’m sorry and won’t do it again but…”
“Yes, yes,” Calvino finished, sounding like a beleaguered parent.
As the scene played on, Avo thought himself an intruder in a play. There was playfulness in the air that simply couldn’t exist on Idheim; there was simply too much warmth between subjects and authorities here.
“They’re not scared,” Avo said.
“Should they be?” Calvino asked.
“Going to punish them.”
The EGI hummed a note of accord. “Indeed.”
“Not asking who you are or what you want–”
“We already know,” John said, waving Avo off. “Listen, ghoulie, buddy, pal… The EGIs do whatever they can to improve the lives of everyone across Voidwatch and we put up with what we will. There’s no point in us asking or fighting over this. If an admin wants you to do something, you’ll end up doing it yourself anyway. You’ll even think it’s your own idea.” He tapped his head. “I think they scramble our brains.”
“John,” Jane said, tone strained with annoyance. “Do not make our predicament worse.”
“Not sure how that’s possible.”
“Greater disappointment is always possible with you.”
“Well, now you sound like original me. Guy complains so much I’m not sure why he cloned himself.”
Jane rubbed her face with stick-thin fingers. Avo noticed her limbs were more like branches than actual arms, a result of atrophy sidestepping into deliberate evolution, perhaps. “Please just tell us what you want so we can go back to our lives,” she said, looking at Calvino. “If we are to be restricted from projecting ourselves planetside–”
“Oh, no,” Calvino said, interrupting. “The terms of this arrangemetn demand that you stay. You’re also getting Cat-Red clearance.”
“You want us to continue working on Idheim?” John asked, confused.
The spacer woman straightened as her bioluminescence brightened. “Go on.”
“Avo. Would you like to explain to them what you need?” With grace, Calvino turned his attention onto the ghoul.
“Going to burn the Guilds,” Avo began. “Eat their people–”
“Maybe just stick to what you need with the sheathes,” Calvino recommended.
“Need new bodies so I can spread myself across New Vultun. Break into Guilder houses. Eat them from the inside.”
“--And now you’re doing it on purpose,” Calvino sighed.
“Cool,” John said, sounding excited. “Wait. Let me guess: you need a duo of wildcards to show you the ropes and make you the best sheathes, bioforms, implants, and organisms that imps can buy.”
“Something like that,” Avo said. “Know you used to work for Mirrorhead. Know you have Guilder contacts planetside. Might have deeper insight into the Syndicates as well. Will want to ask you about that. Currently in the middle of some… culling.”
“Culling?” Jane said.
“Probably going to kill and replace most Syndicates with ones under my control. Choke the city.”
John whistled. “Well, this ‘punishment’ is sounding closer and closer to a fortunate career change by the second. Well, I’m not doing anything special tomorrow. When’d you want me to start cutting?”
“That’s it?” Jane asked. “That’s all it took for you to fall in?”
“What? You’re going to say yes too. Come on, Jane. Imagine packing in some actually cool designs in the ghoul and his bodies. We can finally test some of those illegal ideas you’ve been having.”
“John!” Jane hissed.
But the other grafter just kept talking. “You know. The No-Dragon sweat-spore contagion you were thinking about adapting for use in our habitats to make everyone ‘smell better.’”
“You bastard,” she snarled. “You utter–”
“So we’re both game,” John said, answering on her behalf. He paused. “Wait. How’d you get in bed with an EGI anyway? Weren’t you the Greatling’s newest toy last I saw you?” His eyes swiveled and collapsed into pinpricks, zooming for a closer look at him. “Say, those eels going out your back aren’t ours. And you’re looking a bit taller than I remember. Smells like Sang-shit to me. Still, I’m just surprised you’re alive.”
“Ate him. Broke his sister. Had some family trouble. Set my mind on fire. Decided to burn the city. Got scouted for an interview. Now I’m here.”
“Uh-huh,” John said, accepting the vagueness with a quirked eyebrow. “Well, you’re full of surprises, ghoulie. Let’s trade, then. What’re the concepts? What’s the big idea.”
“Ghouls,”” Avo said. “I want to make something better than them. A superior version. Something that will eat them.”
And choke the Hungers.
“Interesting…” John said. He smiled at Jane his voice took on a thick accent that Avo couldn’t place. “I think our friend here’s going for a Highlander. ‘There can be only one!’”
Avo looked to Jane for an explanation, but she only shook her head. “I don’t bloody know either. Probably one of those old flicks he watches all the time.”
“Don’t worry, Avo,” John said, suddenly next to him. The man was four feet tall but more than half again as well. “I’ll get you cultured, and I’ll get you your bioforms. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
And something inside Avo grew anxious about ever introducing John to Chambers.