Junior District Manager for Security Concerns Williams watched as the manager for the second-rate Duel Tenders knocked on the door to the reception lounge.
“Miss,” he called out, “we have other customers waiting. May I come in?”
She signaled her subordinates, a handful of men and women clad in dark gray uniforms with a blue and yellow patch on their arms.
She quickly checked the box her system provided, acknowledging that her orders had been delivered for a third time, as her team simultaneously sent their own notifications of receipt.
There was no reply from within, and the manager turned to her with a helpless look. She glared back at him, and he turned back to the door.
“Miss, I’m opening the door now. Please forgive the intrusion.”
To William’s mild surprise, the door opened easily when he pushed on it. She had half expected their targets to have blocked the opening with furniture, or something similar.
“Hello?” the manager called out peering into the room. There was a moment of tension, before the man took a step back and turned to her. “It… appears to be empty,” he said.
Williams suppressed the flood of irritation she felt at the man’s operational incompetence. With a gesture, she sent the two forward members of her team to investigate the space, bookmarking the moment on her sensory stream for the inevitable debriefing.
“Clear!” came two reports in short order.
She turned to the manager, filling out the ‘Request for Authorization to Interrogate Unaffiliated/Associate-Level Individual within Corp Jurisdiction’ as she did.
***
Crouching in the corner of the reception lounge, Lilijoy was kicking herself for dismissing Marcus’ custom bugs so easily in the past. True, she had studied them, replicated enough to use and played with them a bit within the boundaries of her own mind. But it wasn’t until she saw them in action, watched the truly brilliant way they manipulated the universally inherent augsight capabilities of systems by emulating and then piggybacking on the local broadcast signals, that she truly appreciated the old alchemist’s creation.
With effort, she could do much the same with the general capabilities of the Tao System, but Marcus’ bugs made a great case for specialization. When combined with the rest of her system though, she thought she could do things Marcus had never anticipated. As she understood it, Marcus had needed to spend large amounts of time understanding and seeding the environment he wished to control. Lilijoy had her midges and their senses to help her understand and replace her environment in real time, the vast power of her system to convert her desired sensory signals into the correct format, and then Marcus’ bugs to deliver it as a final step.
The only, possibly fatal, flaw was if someone had their augsight turned off completely. That hadn’t been a concern for her just now though, when the Walden security team entered the room. She had been watching them for some time through her airborne armada, and had already seeded them with small amounts of her system, just enough to know their settings and snoop in their communications. Unlike Sinaloa’s Suenos System, the system used by the Walden clan associates was wide open to her. Their communications were encrypted, which mattered not at all, since she could see them before they were sent.
She was amused, and appalled, by the sheer amount of forms and checklists they were each completing at ever step of the operation. Unfortunately, their orders didn’t have any information about the reason she and the others were to be apprehended, nor the fate of Pineapple.
The ease with which she could penetrate their systems and even coopt their sight and hearing through augsight made her wonder if her best strategy might not be to stay within the archology and gradually infiltrate Walden until she could steal an airship from them. When she ran the numbers in her head though, the size of the task was daunting. It was one thing to subvert a single squad, to control the augsight signals in a single room, but she would quickly become overextended if she overreached. All it would take was one Associate who hated augsight, or clan members with more secure systems, and her plot would unravel and put everyone in danger.
No, she decided. Let Attaboy be the irresponsible idiot on the team. I need about ten times as many people with ten times as many bugs to make any real move at this point. Our single biggest advantage is that no one knows what I can do, and this is not the time to ruin that. I need to be… subtle.
The next problem was how to leave, both their current location and the archology. She had no doubt that Walden associates were scouring the area for people matching their description, and neither she nor Nykka could possibly blend into the crowd. She could move her sensory domain with them, to a limited extent, though they would need to avoid the larger open spaces. Her ability to supplant the augsight signals required a certain degree of environmental saturation, and she thought that observers more than twenty feet away would certainly detect them. Her swarm gave her some control over this, with their ability to relay the signals, but she needed to be careful to keep the swarm itself hidden as well.
She included Maria in the message, though she wasn’t entirely sure the woman knew how to reply, or if her system, debased and corrupted by design as it was, was even capable of such.
Lilijoy agreed.
The map she sent wasn’t a tenth of what she could if she had her whole swarm with her. A few thousand midges didn’t go very far. The only upside was that she didn’t need to consider hiding the full extent of her capabilities from Nykka.
It appeared that the Duel Tender had relinquished whatever degree of sovereignty they might have claimed, in the interest of staying on Walden’s good side. They had closed their doors, and the patrol was systematically going through the little complex room by room. Lilijoy had no problem with waiting. Boredom wasn’t part of her reality, and her system could defer any bodily needs indefinitely. She was a little worried about Maria though.
When she checked in with the Tao System elements she had placed in the young woman’s body, she was even more worried. Maria was terrified, shaking and muttering some kind of prayers under her breath. Lilijoy quickly adjusted the young woman's brain chemistry to quell the worst of it, and then slowly made her way to the corner of the room where she huddled in fetal position.
She received a furtive head shake in response.
It was a matter of seconds to intercept Maria’s senses and bring her to to a sunny meadow environment that Lilijoy sometimes used. She thought it would be better for Maria than the forest that she herself preferred, given her experiences as a gatherer in Averdale.
“Whadya think? It’s kind of like the Trial, but no bees.” Lilijoy said.
Maria looked around, shading her eyes against the sun. “My first dream,” she said. “Mo has tried to explain all of this to me, this… magic with tiny machines, gods upon gods, worlds within worlds. He told me the truth about his dark past, and the demons that still haunt him, even after you broke their hold upon his mind.” She looked at Lilijoy, still shading her eyes. “You bring me to this world so easily, like it’s nothing, and I should be afraid, but you take away my fear. Even the High Lady of Sinaloa defers to you.”
Lilijoy wasn’t sure how to respond. She could feel Maria’s unasked questions, the same questions everyone had when their lives were shaped by forces they didn’t understand, forces they could not control. The same questions she had asked herself over and over with each new layer of mystery and understanding on her own journey.
“You want to understand why,” she said. “Why you have been swept up in all of these happenings.” Maria watched her with wide eyes. “I’m not a god, you know, just a girl. Not too many months ago I knew less than you about the world. I was weaker in every way. Now I’m…” she hesitated, unsure what to say, uncomfortable with Maria’s worshipful attention. “I’m still figuring it out. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” She turned away and watched a butterfly, enjoying its movement even though she knew it was following a subroutine buried deep within her own processing.
“Would you like to figure it out together?” she asked at last.
***
Everybody hates me now, thought Attaboy. He wedged himself back into the small nook he had found, an odd indentation running from floor to ceiling just after a junction of two halls on the way to the auction. Virtually everyone was moving past him, into the auction area, and no one had looked back to see the ragged boy, or if they had, no one had been inclined to do anything about his presence.
This was a marked improvement from his treatment only a few minutes earlier, when he had tried to move with the crowds and enter the auction zone. Then, a stone-faced man had intercepted his progress, grabbed him by the back of his robes and hurled him back down the hall, to the surprised laughter of the onlookers. The man had yelled something after him, but Attaboy had been too busy orienting himself in the air and then rolling along the floor to hear what it was.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He doubted it was anything he needed to hear anyway.
Unharmed, but humiliated, he had pushed along the wall until he found his little island of semi-anonymous shelter. There, he had little to do but alternate between impotent anger and profound regret, with occasional bouts of anxiety about his own mental state.
Damn it! What the hell was I thinking? What happened back there?
For weeks now, he had been plagued by the sense that none of this was real. Mostly, it simmered in the background, at times leaving his consciousness entirely, but there were times where it roared into his awareness with a vengeance, a dizzying phantasmagoria of surreal detachment. When that occurred, he couldn’t tell who was thinking his thoughts, couldn’t differentiate between his various sensory inputs and imagination, between memory and perception. During these episodes, his body continued behaving normally, his mouth could form the expected words in conversation, but it didn’t feel like it was him.
Djian kept him centered, to some extent, his system working overtime to renormalize his neurochemistry and dispel any lingering effects. Attaboy tried his best to contain the memories of his previous life, to stay in the present. But it wasn’t always enough.
Ironically, the problem was much stronger on the Outside. It seemed the Inside was a place all parts of him could agree upon; it was supposed to be fantastic, surreal and disorienting at times. But the Outside? There lay the constant torment of reminders of a world long passed, a world that should not, could not be.
He had taken to retreating to his Soul Space when he could, furnishing it with comforts and reminders of his previous life. A couch, an old fashioned two-dimensional screen and memories from his first childhood were arrayed in a domed structure much like the one he and his parents had moved to when he was ten. He knew he was clinging to the childhood memories he much preferred over those from Night’s Safety and the Piles.
He couldn’t help wondering just how Lilijoy had used her Soul Space. The topic had never come up, partly because he was too embarrassed to admit what he had done with his.
Damn it! he thought again, stomping on the floor of the little alcove, unable to contain his frustration with himself, with reality.
There was a hollow cracking sound, a sense of give that traveled up his leg.
Now that’s interesting, he thought. Looking down, he saw that the floor beneath him had visible cracks, that the material he had assumed was a type of synthetic stone was only a thin layer over empty space.
Just what is it with this place? Stairs that don’t fit and random holes that have been patched over?
He shrugged inwardly and glanced around to see if anyone had noticed him breaking the floor of the Corps’ continental headquarters. As before, people strolled past, their backs to him. No one had any reason to turn away from the tasks and activities that beckoned in the auction zone. He looked up, and wasn’t surprised to see a hexagonal hole on the ceiling, three of its sides forming the alcove in which he stood.
It must be some kind of ventilation shaft, he decided. Maybe something they built and then realized they didn’t need. I wonder where it goes?
Grateful for a distraction from his ongoing mental crisis, he decided to find out.
***
It was difficult for Lilijoy to tell how much Lowly understood as she tried to teach him. Heck, it was difficult for her to tell how much she understood. Not only was his frame of reference disorienting to her, but his character sheet, if it could even be called such, wasn’t anything like hers. She knew from many conversations with her friends that Insiders had a much different internal experience when it it came to their personal quantification, but Lowly had different traits, or possibly different sets of traits, that he didn’t or couldn’t, differentiate for her.
I suppose it makes sense, she thought. He’s sort of a two in one, or a one in two. His body and his essence-self mingle, and I’m not sure he fully understands which is which.
The truly notable qualities were an exceptional Water Affinity, and his Nameless title. The affinity for the water element wasn’t much of a surprise, she supposed. When he, after much explanation and cajoling, had tried to show her his character sheet, she had received not words and numbers, but something more like a series of cross-linked containers of varying sizes and flexibilities that flowed and rearranged themselves as she watched.
After observing it for some time with her system in full gear, she was able to get an… adequate feeling for what the containers represented. Most of them anyway. There was a natural trait for something like elasticity and viscosity combined, in addition to the usual four. His Charm containers were tiny, shriveled things, which made her wonder if they could inflate, while his Fire Affinity, also tiny, was little more than a fixed stub of a bulb. In comparison, his Water Affinity was enormous, dominating all the other traits.
We’ve got to find him a water source, she thought. Or maybe he already has one? Is one?
The main takeaway for her was that Lowly would benefit most with serious help from Insiders who knew a great deal more than she did. She remembered the amazing diversity of forms and species among the Academy faculty, and realized that she had to get Lowly there. Thanks to his Nameless title, which apparently rendered him immune to Charm and Scan, she was only moderately worried he would end up the victim of the same kind of mysterious Academy machinations as Jess.
I never did find out what that was all about, she realized. I wonder if Master Rosemallow would be willing to explain it now?
In the meantime, she did her best to explain how her character sheet worked, along the way introducing such 'esoteric' topics as written symbols, language and the fact that there were such things as Skills and Abilities that one could learn. She was sure Lowly must have a Skill list buried somewhere, but he had no idea where to find it, a disappointment to be sure, as she had been looking forward to seeing just what kind of weird skills and abilities a being like Lowly might possess.
“What do you want to do now? Would you like to see what the surface world is like?” she asked, when it was clear that Lowly had reached his capacity for new intellectual concepts.
“I saw the blue roof in the spider’s world, in the time after exile,” he replied. “It hurt my thoughts.”
“So that’s a ‘no’?”
Lowly hunched into himself and shivered, which seemed to be all the reply she was going to get.
“Do you want to stay here for now? I wouldn’t go up the stairs if I were you, but you can explore the rest of the caves. I need to get back to my friends, but they’re on the surface, so I can’t stay here any longer.”
He nodded.
“All right. I’ll come back in a couple days. Don’t go so deep I can’t find you. Oh, and you might want to avoid the hot caves. They have many creatures that will try to eat you.”
Since he was tempered now, she was less worried for him, but she still didn’t want him to get killed over and over. Lowly nodded again, and with a last wave, she pulled herself to a new location within the Trial Space.
She had decided to delay further attempts on the fire source until she was a bit better equipped to hold off the ram and tentacles, which left her with two theories she wanted to explore before resorting to another respawn. Leaving the Trial Space without dying was her goal, and it seemed to her that the best places to look for a solution were at the beginning and end of her own Trial experience.
She appeared at the broken gate of Fort Groveship. The charred remains of the broken furniture were still visible through the outer portcullis, but her goal wasn’t in the Fort.
I wonder where all the kids went? she thought as she made her way through the dense patch of brambles where she had been when the Trial ended. It was a small mystery left over from her Trial. Though she had searched the human town, she had never found any sign of Toad, or Golden, or Andrew, or any of the children who she had met and fought beside in the last phase of her Trial. She imagined that they must have vanished back into the mind of Guardian, to be eternally recycled for a million other Trials. She found this notion terribly sad, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
She found the spot without much difficulty, the small open area under the spreading branches of the thorn bush. Not entirely sure what she was hoping to find, she sat and closed her eyes, expanding her mana senses in meditation, looking for something, some fluctuation indicating a lingering presence of her previous exit.
The birds sang, the wind rustled and the natural mana of the area swirled gently. It was peaceful, idyllic really, and she was almost reluctant to give up when it became clear that there was no residual sign that might provide an alternate exit from this space.
Oh well, on to the next idea, she decided. Let’s try the beginning.
She struggled just a bit to summon her diamond energy, and realized that she was a little apprehensive about returning to the place she had taken her first steps in the trial. It was a vague feeling, one that she couldn’t explain. Through her Trial sight, she could see the jasmine and wisteria draped arbor and the dark wooden door within, but beyond the door… nothing.
In the end, she found a compromise within herself, a return to the location, but a different goal.
“Hello, bees!” she announced, once she had made the spatial transition. “Remember me?”
There were only a few bees around her, harvesting nectar from the coneflowers and daisies of the meadow. They seemed to ignore her presence, while she fought off a mild sense of vertigo brought on by being in two very similar places at once, her meadow, where she was still talking with Maria, and the Trial meadow she had modeled it on.
I’m going to need to come up with a whole new set of terms to describe these sensations. Maybe plusieur vu? I wonder if Maria will be the first person I share them with, or if Attaboy will get his act together. Or maybe Anda will decide to pursue Stage Two after all, once we get to Taos.
More bees gathered as she mused, behaving much as they did her first time through, though none of them chose to sting her. Their buzzing thickened the air as they arrived and gathered around her, vibrating her skin as they landed and began to explore her skin.
This tickles even more than I remembered, she thought as the bees crawled over her face. When the time felt right, she activated Two Minds One Self, and fell into communion with the swarm.
We explore, we gather, we defend, they thought. We keep, we hoard and we dance.
In another world, a far-off land as close as her heart, she turned to Maria.
“Give me a minute,” she said. “I’m talking to bees.”
She immersed herself further in the collective entity, the literal hive-mind, that covered her body, putting away her selfish goal of obtaining more of the miraculous honey she had once been gifted. There was something deeper here. She remembered the older Emily’s words gifted her by Shadow.
It’s a shame the flowers have been giving a soliloquy for the past century, the older woman had said. Their conversation partners are long gone. Now the conversation only exists across time, much like ours, my dear. Only momentum remains, the residue of past motivation. It’s why the bees are there, in the Trial, you know. Very few Outsiders can pass their test. I wonder how you did?
She wondered that too.
She poured herself into all that was common between her and the bees. Their mind contained multitudes, roles and motivations shifting in dizzying spirals. Elemental joys of exploring, finding, gathering, fierce determination to defend, to preserve and something more.
We keep. We hoard. We protect. For the future, we sustain.
And then their shared consciousness, the primal motivations of the hive and the narrative powers of Lilijoy’s mind found a new synchrony and she understood. What they kept was not honey, what they preserved was not food to sustain the next generation. There was a deeper purpose in their presence, in their being, and what they were sustaining and guarding was… themselves, massive data structures that contained everything it was to be a bee, in a dazzling array of diversity and forms. A vast trove of data where a genome was a single point in a multi-dimensional space of bee-ness, expanding outward in dimensions of time and evolution, of variation and speciation, where the distant edges overlapped with planes of existence that were no longer ‘bee’.
Why didn’t she just tell me? Lilijoy thought of Emily as she returned to herself. It’s not just the bees. It’s everything. Is this the Inside’s true purpose?
Even as she had the thought, she knew she was wrong, thinking like a human. There was no ‘true purpose’ in anything. Everything connected to Guardian had a vast geometry of potential purposes, an architecture of meaning, and she was only capable of looking at a single room, or perhaps a single beam. But the piece, the element of Guardian’s mind she could see now was beautiful to her, a beacon of hope after so much confusion and ugliness.
The Inside is an Ark, a bank of all that has been lost on the Outside, just waiting for the right time. And perhaps the right person.
She opened her eyes and looked at Maria.
“What are bees, and how do you talk to them?” the young woman asked.
She must not have even had that context when she started the Trial, Lilijoy realized. Or maybe Sinaloa manipulated her system so that she wasn’t very present during those experiences.
She opened her hand and showed Maria the fuzzy striped form she had just created, its wings already flickering toward flight.
“This is a type of honeybee called a queen,” she said. “Someday, we will bring her back with us to the Outside.”