Maxwell both liked and trusted the Scholar. He reminded Maxwell of his grandfather. He was friendly and chatty, and he had offered him cocoa. If Maxwell had to have his mind dilated by anyone, the Scholar seemed like a good choice. Truthfully, he did not understand, or particularly like the idea of someone opening his mind, but he was eager to prove to Marigold that he wasn’t quite as cowardly as she seemed to think he was.

He placed his hands on those of the Scholar. Somehow, they were even more unpleasantly moist than Marigold’s.

“Look into my eyes and breathe with me,” the Scholar said.

The Scholar’s eyes were dark and bottomless. Once Maxwell peered into them, he felt as if he could not escape. The darkness was transporting him somewhere. He was no longer sitting beside Marigold in the warm confines of the study. Maxwell had crossed a bridge into the Scholar’s mind, and a scene unfolded there.

It was the central hall of the Archive immediately after the war. Maxwell felt the Scholar’s desperation and pangs of uncertainty as if they were his own. He saw through the Scholar’s eyes, knew the contents of every book that surrounded him, and the names of each of his thousands of colleagues. Maxwell knew it all as if he had always known it, for there was no longer a clear distinction between Maxwell’s thoughts and those of the Scholar.

There was a feeling of desperation. The Scholars had been locked away in their Archive and abandoned. What’s more, an old curse had been cast—one of the last in existence. It produced a sticky feeling, and Maxwell understood that it meant neither he nor his companions could ever again leave their Archive. They were trapped, all alone, and bound to starve down here in the dark.

Then, in the memory that Maxwell was witnessing, a noise sounded from the top of the hall. An unfamiliar figure was making its way down the sloping ramp, and the Scholars all turned to see who had the gall to break the treaty and intrude on their space. There was a shard of rage when the Scholar recognized the figure as an Analyst—a new god with silver skin and black hair. She was carrying a heavy grey bag with her.

“You can’t be here,” Maxwell felt himself say with the Scholar’s voice. He could hear the strength and surety in the Scholar’s voice, but he could feel the uncertainty that lay behind the words. The Scholar feared this creature had come to eradicate them.

“Please hear me out. I haven’t come to fight. I’ve come to help,” the new god said.

Rena, the Scholar’s closest friend and confidant, stood to his right. She seethed at the sight of the Analyst.

“She won’t help us,” Rena whispered. “No matter what she says, she’ll only destroy what’s left.”

“What can we do but listen?” the Scholar whispered back.

*

Maxwell blinked, and the scene shifted again. The Scholar and Rena were in a small library. Sitting across the table from their enemy. They had gotten her away from the crowd, who would just as soon tear an Analyst apart as listen to what they had to say.

“I’m Celestine,” the tall, silvery Analyst said.

She was a creature called a pryan. Maxwell knew this because the Scholar knew this. Unlike the Scholars, the Analysts came in all shapes and sizes, and a half dozen facts about pryan diets, cultural norms, and history popped into the Scholar’s head. He had never met this creature but was sure he knew more about her than she knew about herself, not that he was about to give her the benefit of his wisdom. She did not deserve it.

“Why would you come here? After everything that’s happened, why would you think you could just walk into the Archive?” Rena asked.

“I had no choice. Things are falling apart outside.”

“And what is wrong with your new grand order?” the Scholar asked in a bemused tone.

“It doesn’t unify. There’s fighting, shortages of everything. Nobody knows who to follow or what they should do. We need a way to guide them.”

“I thought you were fighting for an end to control,” the Scholar said.

“We fought to end your stranglehold on knowledge, and we have, but with nobody to take your place, order is crumbling. Many no longer want to follow the whims of humanity, some would have us sever ties altogether. They would let the universe fall into decay.”

“I’m tempted to say that this is no longer our problem,” the Scholar said. He looked over at Rena, who smiled approvingly at his tone.

“But you won’t,” Celestine said.

“How can you be so sure?” the Scholar asked.

“Because I haven’t come empty-handed.”

She reached down and grabbed her bag, spilling its contents onto the table. Papers, binders, books, and magazines—precious new information. These were accounts of everything that had happened since the end of the war.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The Scholar looked over to Rena and knew that she, like him, was starving. Maxwell could feel the Scholar’s helplessness. He knew they were not being offered a choice at all.

“What are you proposing exactly?” Rena asked.

*

The scene shifted again. It was years later. They had struck a deal. The Analyst came twice a month, provided new information for the Scholars, and together they charted a fresh course for the universe. Nobody outside of the Archive was to know what was going on. Celestine kept others from ever visiting.

The Analyst stood in the middle of the central hall with dozens of Scholars encircling her. They were looking down at pages of charts and graphs, endless words about fate and desire that meant very little to Maxwell, and tracts on temporal ontology and quantum engineering that meant even less. What Maxwell understood from the excited collaboration taking place was a sense of compromise.

Too much time had been wasted for too long. Even the most stubborn Scholar could concede the Analysts had been right about that much. With the constant human wars, plagues, and routine consumption of lead, people had been dropping like flies for centuries. When humans spent their whole lives dying, it did not leave a lot of excess time for the Backend. The answer, however, was not a retreat into the old ways, like the Scholars had wanted. They would develop a new plan.

The universe was to be reset, but nobody would know it had happened. There would be new machines, new ways of thinking, and new possibilities that would point people where they had to go without ever knowing they had been pointed at all. Humans would need to believe they had come to these innovations on their own. Creatures in the Backend would be similarly oblivious.

*

Maxwell blinked. Years had passed, decades, maybe centuries. Celestine had been true to her word. She and the Scholars had been successful, and for a while, it had been enough, but in recent years things had changed. Celestine grew distant, lost. The Scholars would pour over documents, and suggest improvements and new efficiencies, but Celestine seemed less and less interested. She had taken to wandering the Archive, disappearing into the furthest corners in search of something.

As she had done many times before, Rena had followed Celestine in secret, but unlike the other times, Rena had not returned. Maxwell felt the Scholar’s rising panic as he ran through the hidden corridors of the Archive in search of them. Then, he felt the Scholar’s rage as he discovered Rena unconscious on a mildewed stone floor. Nearby, Celestine had pried open a cage that protected some of the Archive’s more profane texts. She held one in hand as she stepped out of the shadows and stood over Rena’s prone form.

The Scholar recognized the book. It contained rituals from the early days of the universe, back when the Scholars absorbed not just information but entire lives, back when they were not a thousand unique minds but a single devouring one.

“What are you doing?” the Scholar asked.

Celestine turned around unsurprised. “What we’ve been doing all along. I’m uniting my thinking with yours. I’m solving problems.”

“What problems?”

“The one’s we’ve created.”

“But we’ve solved problems. Have we not done everything you’ve asked.”

“You have, but I was the one that was wrong. Everything we’ve achieved has come at the cost of what made us gods. We’re barely different than humans now. You should see it.”

“And what do you propose?”

“The old order united with the new. No more fragmentation, no more small tweaks. The devourer you once were needs to be reborn.”

The Scholar looked at the book in her hands. A flash of a memory passed through the Scholar’s mind and Maxwell could remember the Scholar’s distant past.

“There was a reason the first Scholars fragmented themselves,” he said. “The hunger was too great.”

“And that’s why it will work,” Celestine said. “Everything must be integrated. It’s the only way to stop it all from falling apart. Another war is coming, and it won’t be like before. This one will end everything. For centuries now, self-interest has been all that drives the order we’ve built. You and I have tried to steer that self-interest, but it doesn’t work without a mind guiding it. I’ve been working on a system that will provide just that, one that will unite your deep wealth of knowledge with my precise, analytic understanding.”

“To what end?”

“To create a new order, one that enjoins the fragments of a long disintegrating universe. That’s why I’ve been working on the machine. The System will provide limits and controls. Our centuries of work will be complete. I just need her knowledge.” Celestine motioned to Rena’s body.

“We’ll figure out something else,” the Scholar pleaded. “Please, don’t take her. If you want knowledge, take the books.”

“How many more centuries will that take? Besides, aren’t you always reminding me that analysis is useless without a mind that can turn it into wisdom? No, it’s too late. The ritual has already started.”

Celestine spoke the last words from the book. The Scholar charged forward, and a fight ensued. Wresting the book from Celestine’s hands, he shoved her out of the ritual circle, but not before he felt the ripple of the spell taking hold. The Scholar watched in horror as it rendered Rena’s essence, her entire being, into light. The light rose from the ground and laid itself against the Scholar’s body, illuminating him from head to toe. Then it was gone.

The rest was a blur. Maxwell saw a group of Scholars barge in. He saw Celestine pivot and escape. Then, his vision blacked out as the Scholar collapsed.

*

That night, the Scholar woke in his quarters, but he did not feel as he had before. Rena was there with him, in his mind. She was talking to him, comforting him. He had not lost his best friend. They were closer than he could have ever hoped. The feeling of otherness that had been a wall between them was gone. They flowed freely into each other. He felt more complete, and he knew he had to add to this completeness. Perhaps this was the old hunger, but it was not gnawing or ravenous as he had remembered. It was a gift to share. This was like feeding, but infinitely more satisfying, for he had not consumed a single scrap of information— he had devoured an entire world.

He walked over to his mirror and discovered a mouth where there had not been a mouth before. A small smile embedded below his left eye. No, not his eye, never again his eye alone. It was their eye now. He and Rena were both the Scholar. The first of parts of a new union. They would enjoin themselves with the rest of their colleagues trapped there, and together, they would become something better. After that, it would just be a matter of waiting. Eventually, someone else would visit them, and the Scholar would absorb them and finally break free of this place.

*

The memories ended there. Maxwell was alone in the dark of the Scholar’s mind again. He could not move or speak. He knew nothing of the present other than what the Scholar wanted him to know.

Something was telling him that Marigold had fallen. She had tried to fight the Scholar and failed because she had made the mistake of thinking the Scholar was one being instead of many. It was easy to take her by surprise, and like Maxwell, she, too, was about to merge into something new.