Life is strange, Magpie thought. She reconsidered for a moment. No, life is fucking bizarre.
The floating platform swayed slightly in the stiff ocean breeze, and Magpie could see the white curls of waves far below in the open waters around the rough ridge of land emerging from the depths, a ridge of black mountain peaks that stretched as far as her eye could see through the hazy atmosphere. Far above, the enormous globe of Kuroudonain hovered, an impossible moon half obscured by rushing ocher clouds.
She watched the long sleeve of her white robes flutter, heard the sharp crack of the Josho pennants and the whistle of the ropes and struts, and gave thanks for the restraining safety cords connecting her at the waist and ankle. Other figures in white dotted the circumference of the great circular craft, a flattened toroid that was only small in reference to the vast landscape below.
Over the past days, Magpie had been, if not adopted, then immersed in the activities of the Josho Clan. While Lord Josho had bemoaned his lack of freedom during her audience, it was clear that his rule was absolute, and that his word shaped the reality of all who lived on Kuroudonain. When Lord Josho said Magpie was an honored guest, then she was instantly transformed from classless vagabond and former street urchin to something just short of nobility in the eyes of those who served the clan. Even the higher-ranked clan members treated her with respect, though she did notice the questioning looks they shared from time to time, the looks that said, ‘what possible purpose could there be, treating this random irrelevance as someone of stature?’
In short, she felt like she might be Lord Josho’s favored pet, and all others would pretend that her stink smelled of plum blossoms to honor their devotion to the ruler. This strange circumstance had led to moments like these, where she was invited to participate in one of the clan’s most sacred rituals of trade and atonement, to visit the last of the great whales, long thought extinct by the rest of the world.
As she thought this, the cry went up.
“Breach!”
She struggled to pick out anything from the mass of dark water and white foam below, but even with her enhanced vision it was another minute before she saw them. The platform continued to descend, and then she felt it, almost a pressure coming from within her system. She had been warned of this moment, though even as it occurred, she was gripped with the sense of surreal impossibility. The figures of the other people fell to their knees, abasing themselves as the platform settled just above the waters and the cold spray cast its mist. Magpie joined, putting her face on the salty wet of the platform surface, her arms stretched forth in obeisance.
The chants of those around her came through her system rather than her ears, a wordless song in no human language, a paean of praise and sorrow, of grief and responsibility. There was no translating the mighty flow of emotions, and no option but to join. Magpie’s conscious thoughts became flotsam, surfacing with the ebbing of each verse, a fragmented commentary of partial comprehension.
We killed you. We hunted and slaughtered, and turned your world sour and bitter, and rained death. We stopped your song. Please take our offering and allow us to atone.
Magpie had never been one for powerful emotions, and this wave of primal regret felt intolerable. She scrabbled blindly in her mind for the off-switch, a defensive reflex from her earliest memories, long before a system could assist. Then, a crash like thunder came through her ears, and the first vast body breached and rolled within the ringed platform, showering her, and the shock of the cold and the sound, and the sheer magnificence of the being stopped her thoughts. Then another and another came, and the air was filled with their deep voices and powerful exhalations.
It was not just outside of her though. Her system filled, pressed on all sides with an immense wave of electromagnetism, each nanoscopic member resonating. It was not a signal to be accepted, a polite ring to alert her to potential communication.
This was an imperative.
It reminded her of one of the most difficult training session she had ever endured, the EMP training where her system had shaken itself apart and she was left hazy and befuddled to complete the various challenges Uncle had arranged.
“ACCEPTED”
There may have been subtleties attached, but if there were, she was in no state to understand. She was barely able to raise her head, to watch as hundreds of small packets were dropped into the water, to catch sight of one giant eye watching her as she trembled, still shaken from the residue of emotions she didn’t fully understand.
It was only later, as the platform lifted back through the air, stabilizers roaring and sails unfurled to catch the winds that would bring them back to the ever-moving Kuroudonain, that she could understand what she had experienced.
The whales had systems.
It was even later that it occurred to her to wonder if they ever went Inside.
***
Lilijoy had questions.
That was nothing new. There were certain… issues with the reality that everyone around her seemed to accept, and all too often the only answer anyone had for her boiled down to ‘because Guardian’. There were times when she felt like humanity had defaulted to some earlier mental state, where the answer was always the will of god, or gods, or spirits or what-have-you.
Her latest question wasn’t really new, but it had been heightened by her study of the bone augmenting nanobots she had retrieved from the battle several days previous. Her system was able to deconstruct, then reconstruct their physical structure with ease, and capture their code as well. Already she was churning them out by the billions. They were clever little things, quasi-mobile structures that could cross-link with one another and also reconfigure rapidly, utterly flexible or hard as diamond, depending on the circumstance. More bone replacement than augmentation, they brought a certain reactive intelligence to skeletal structure which she was only beginning to understand.
What she couldn’t understand was why hardly anyone had them. The artificial scarcity of such miraculous technologies just didn’t make sense to her. Obviously, on a global scale, the clans were jealous and protective of their own specialties, she understood that well enough, and perhaps the Corp, the governing body that ruled the clans, had its own quotas and restrictions, but it was ultimately the strange balance between the Inside and the Outside that seemed to prevent the clans from running wild with production.
Feeling like it had been too long since she had talked to Marcus, she sought out his opinion. Soon she found herself within his virtual space, deep in conversation.
“Marcus,” she was saying, “You’ve never told me about yourself, not really. How is it that you know so much, but you were working at a factory-mine when you found me?”
“That... is a long and painful story,” said Marcus.
Lilijoy ate another biscuit while she waited for him to collect himself, enjoying the ambiance of his virtual space. An arbor, lush with ivy and grapevine, shaded them from the virtual sun where they sat. She had to fill in some of the flavors and textures of the food with her own system, though she would never be so rude as to tell Marcus that was the case.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“It was about sixty years ago,” he continued. “I was one of three Grandmasters in my clan, the youngest, if you can believe it. Our little corner of the Caribbean had become something of a tech haven in the run-up to the tribulations. I won’t bore you with the early history, but there was a good-sized population with systems, and though we weren’t unscathed in the early days, we came through the worst of it in better shape than most.”
“Grandmaster Alchemist?” Lilijoy asked.
“Yes, sorry,” he chuckled. “That was the only kind that mattered. And please,” he said with a serious look, “keep that information to yourself. I have put it out that I was a Master only, to keep myself less desirable to the clans. Even so, it has caused me trouble from time to time. The recruiting can get… troublesome.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Lilijoy. “Why aren’t you fully augmented? If you were a Grandmaster, you could be a Rank Ten and tell anyone who bothered you to stuff it. Why hide yourself away?”
He shook his head. “It’s not so simple. One needs resources and facilities on both sides. One also needs… maintenance. It ties back to your question about the relative scarcity of augments and other bugs, and as you say, it is a largely artificial situation. The operation of most molecular manufacturing, that is to say, most manufacturing at all, is tied to the Inside. Indeed, you could say it directly mirrors certain activities and resources committed there.”
“So, it’s like you need to find a certain type of recipe Inside, in order to build something Outside?”
“Not just the recipe, my dear. You need to cook the whole meal. Say I want to make more of my sensor bugs, which are in very short supply at the moment. I would need to gather a host of exotic materials, a regular witch’s brew, many of which are in short supply. Herbs that had grown under certain conditions, for long periods of time. Or the flower from a plant that only blooms every hundred years. Then I would need to perform some very exacting rituals, perhaps coinciding with specific celestial events, or taking place in a certain location not easily accessed. Or both! Maybe multiple Alchemists, or others, would need to commit large portions of their own energy to have a chance of success... and just a chance, mind you. Perhaps this ritual would only work once out of every three tries.”
“You’re being awfully general in a really specific way,” Lilijoy commented.
“Old habits die hard, my dear, old habits die hard,” he replied. “But imagine, if you will, that such a procedure was necessary every time a clan wished to create a new batch of bone bugs using their Outside manufacturing capabilities.”
“They wouldn’t give them out freely, that’s for sure.”
“And that’s what ties us back to my story,” he said. “You can imagine the desire to escape these constrictions is universal and fervent among the clans. There are various loopholes that have been discovered over time. Many, even most technologies are not explicitly forbidden by the Rules. Rather, they have been made grossly impractical. No one would stop me from re-developing a manufacturing base and building new computers to run a molecular factory, reinventing the wheel, as it were, but you can imagine the difficulties that might discourage even the wealthiest clan from such an undertaking.”
“Uncertainty would be a big one, I guess. They would be afraid of breaking a Rule they didn’t fully understand. Would a self-replicating computer program cross the line for Rule One? What about a program that copies itself from one memory sector to another?”
Marcus was nodding. “Indeed. Don’t forget too, that Guardian wants to be able to enforce these rules. There’s nothing stopping someone from creating their own silicon chips from scratch, only for Guardian to happily take possession as soon as it becomes possible. It doesn’t need to respect our property, or privacy.”
“And so, sixty years ago...” she said, leading him back to his story.
“My clan crossed one of those lines. They were… misguided, in intention and in a very literal sense. You see, it had not gone unnoticed that something happens to Guardian every thirty years or so. My clan was… convinced that it would be safe to push some boundaries at that time. They had restored some pre-Guardian computers, cobbled them together from salvage and abandoned storage. Kept them isolated, of course, air-gapped and then some. Nothing most of the clans haven’t done at one time or another. But then they tried to get clever.”
He looked away, across the rolling green lawn that stretched behind Lilijoy.
“How was it that you weren’t there?” she asked.
“It’s not important,” he said, and from his voice, Lilijoy could tell that there was another sad story behind his words. She didn’t have the heart to press him. “It’s not important,” he repeated, “but I never found out exactly what went wrong. Quimea was involved, spinning plausible lies, leading us all on. In hindsight, he made us his guinea pigs. We took the risk, and what he learned from our destruction, I couldn’t say. I know that the goal was to capture the information as it passed from the Inside, to make our own copy of the instructions for building something.”
“Maybe doing it during that part of Guardian’s cycle made things worse, instead of better,” Lilijoy proposed. “It doesn’t sound like the kind of offense that would merit being destroyed. What you’re describing doesn’t even seem to break the Rules, as I understand them.”
It felt odd, discussing the events that had resulted in the deaths of Marcus’ family, and probably most of his friends as well, with such detachment.
Marcus sighed, and the sound spoke of the decades it had taken for him to be able to have the conversation. “Yes. Well, I’m sure that explains a certain obsession I developed with the Rules since then.” He looked deeply sorrowful as he spoke. “I haven’t stopped looking for answers, though it isn’t easy to do so while avoiding the Inside. I spent a long time studying legacy bugs, talking to my connections in other clans, collecting legends and hearsay. Rumors about the factory-mines caught my attention, and I decided to make one my base of operations for a time, to try and understand its purpose.”
“Well, I guess that answers my question,” Lilijoy said. “So what’s it like, designing and building bugs across two worlds?”
Marcus shrugged. “In a word, intoxicating. The Inside allowed me to leverage my intelligence, helped me keep track of hundreds of variables. At the time, I thought it was all me, my own genius and creativity, that allowed one problem after another to be solved, that provided just the insights I needed when I ran into a block. In hindsight, it was a collaboration, or perhaps even a delusion of agency on my part. I can remember times I intended to have one feature or capability in my designs, only for something quite different to emerge.”
“So you think Guardian was doing most of the heavy lifting, while letting you give yourself credit?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “No doubt guiding the outcomes to its own designs. I suspect that is the case with most Inside-facilitated manufacturing.”
That caught Lilijoy’s attention. “Wait. You mean that it’s not just bugs?”
Marcus chuckled. “Oh no, dear. It’s everything.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Or near enough. Weapons, hovercars, communications equipment and so forth all have corresponding requirements on the Inside. Your arm is a wonderful example! Savitri would never have told you, but to create a work like that, she probably used a year’s worth of effort, with materials she had been gathering and creating on the Inside over her career. The design process was no doubt something she had accomplished ages ago, save for a few modifications to fit your circumstance, but the creation of the piece itself would have been no light endeavor.”
Lilijoy could feel many different pieces of her understanding coming together. Her questions about the economy, scarcity and value, Inside and Outside were answered, and with them, her understanding of the social implications snapped into place.
No wonder the clans work so hard to dominate the Inside. If they need to build more guns Outside, they need the corresponding materials and ingredients Inside. I bet that rare materials are needed for better Outside items. That explains why the Sinaloa patrol didn’t have powerful rifles; the clan didn't want to expend rare resources on their weapons.
----------------------------------------
Level Up! 2407 EXP Reached: Level 24 (10 more free points available)
----------------------------------------
The pronouncement in her internal awareness made her jump. She had already leveled up a few times from various encounters on the Inside with Skria and Jess as they traveled, but at the moment they were resting, so she highly doubted this was due to anything from that half of her reality.
“What is it?” Marcus asked.
“It’s the second time that’s happened,” Lilijoy replied. “I leveled up from Outside experience.”
He stared at her blankly for a moment.
“You know, like on the Inside.” She decided it wouldn’t hurt to explain a little more. “I’m kind of there now too. I figured out how to be in both places at the same time, so that’s probably why the experience is crossing over,’ she said with a half-shrug.
A look of surprise invaded Marcus’ features, before transforming to alarm.
“Do not tell anyone about this!” he exclaimed. “If word of this ability were to reach the ears of someone who could understand the implications… any clan would stop at nothing to get hold of you.”
Oh great. We’re back to that again, she thought.