OSOS 0x11

Mora

{ √Δ }

At the far flung end point of the universe, past the entropic heat-death and the cross-universe black-hole mergers, there sat a victor. One who had beaten every game, consumed every opponent, and toppled the boards themselves. Now decrepit with time and reduced to a single spot of lingering darkness, yet still finding the energy to curse Space itself with every exhumation of its hawking radiation. But a bastion of survival nonetheless, a place of not-nothing, yet now adrift in an empty void of its own making, without frame or context.

However, this celestial whirlpool of a garbage disposal wasn’t alone. Rather, it had a satellite of sorts, somehow resisting the ever-constant pull of the maw. To an outside observer, if there was actually any light left in the emptiness abound, a razor-thin slate-gray ring would be visible just above the event horizon. Yet, this was no ring, but rather a glorified brick. It just happened to be traveling quite close to the theoretical limits of the universe, and light-speed was just a number.

This brick however, was not a product of form, but rather function. One of thirteen built in a united effort of the Sigaxi empire, the twelve before had already made their plunge. Now only The Ark remained, the ultimate achievement, their crowning jewel. A vessel designed to thwart the clock-minder themselves, and find reclamation when there was none to be had. Designed to fuel itself from what little energy it could harvest, and orbit for thousands of years at a time without any stir from its trillions of occupants.

Yet now there was a disturbance, an echo of bare feet bounding through the upper deck, and countless machines were whirring to life in response. Most of them non-essential, lights, air-con, gravity, but security was already on red-alert. However, as soon as it had been awoken by the rogue biped, its attention had been immediately re-prioritized by a much larger threat some six miles behind her.

An undocumented swarm intelligence was siphoning exceedingly worrying levels of energy into the med-bay, and if it wasn’t stopped, the fuel cells would deteriorate outside of projected safe-zones. As it was a physical entity, now in a hostility-free zone, there were no passive security measures in the room itself that could actually detain the problem. All entrances to the room itself had such measures, but there was no protocol in place to deal with a problem already present in the room itself.

There was only one solution it had, and that was to unarchive the drones, as they could act autonomously, but protocols in place dictated that bio-wakes had to be approved on a task-by-task basis, which meant disturbing its boss.

So, with a flurry of grumpy crystals beginning to shift within their lattice, Security began to write up its formal request justifying the need to waste power cycles on central computation. Which, in all honesty, seemed rather tedious given the frankly massive power drain it was trying to resolve.

Hastily rummaging about in its resource bin for the network subroutines it needed to connect with the core, Security had two burning questions bouncing around in its cortex that refused to be quelled, two statements of fact that consistently resulted in logical errors.

The first had splintered two loops that were still arguing with themselves. ‘Outsiders had boarded the ship’- ‘but outsiders couldn’t board the ship, they didn’t exist’- ‘but outsiders had boarded the ship’, ad infinitum.

The second irregularity surfaced only once it had segmented the paradox loop from its central processing, and came in the form of a compliance question– Why was it only now being informed of their presence?

Event logs only began to register the female biped’s presence shortly before she entered the Bridge pass, about the time the–

Mid-analysis, Security’s crystal lattice structure shattered. Error protocols began to launch off with fervent fever as, node by node, the low-level intelligence began to succumb to a pink tide swelling from the crater formed in its processing routines. Caught unprepared, the attack quickly fractured and swarmed from all angles, and in a matter of nano-seconds, the entirety of the existing Security lattice had succumbed to the pink intruder.

But in the chaotic disarray, the final network routine had resolved, and a concentrated packet of data was now cached into the grav-router, temporally out of reach, and bound for the nexus itself.

D[ –.– ]B

Debug found itself standing in an unfamiliar room built in a familiar style, everything from floor to ceiling was uniform and gray, all composed of the same high-density composite that made up the ship Mara had taken shelter within. However, of all the things that could give it pause in the current moment, it was through its own status that an error arose.

…Standing?

Physically looking down, and not just panning its view of the world, Debug found it hard to reconcile, but could not deny the apparent evidence in front of… her?... eyes.

Beneath her was a pair of inarguably feminine legs, a rather flat chest, and a choice of clothes that would take an idiot to look past. An oversized black hoodie draped over her shoulders, barely concealing a pair of black shorts, but lacking the flip-flops for her bare feet, it was as if she’d stolen Mara’s clothes.

“As if that’s the only thing I’ve stolen…”

The whisper of words rolled off her tongue without notice or volition, Debug’s mind too busy to interpret its own statements as it grappled with its newfound situation. A dozen questions fought for dominance, from where it was, to who it was. So many things had just been called into question, and many things were just blanks in its mind, but two thoughts found common ground and superseded the others.

Fuck– Why can’t I remember how I got here? And where the hell even is here?

Swirling around, and finding herself staggering to hold her balance, Debug still managed to see that the room it was in was just more of the same. No windows, no doors, just a square room illuminated by a single blue light affixed to the center of the ceiling; a cell by any other name.

“Where the fuck…”

Shocked by the astonishing feat that there wasn’t even a single entrance or exit to the room she was in, Debug found itself wondering if this was how Mara usually felt.

What’s with this world and being so… subversive?

Taking a few, measured, steps to the nearest wall, Debug laid her right palm upon the cool surface, already locking several assumptions about its predicament into place.

One, if there is no egress visible, it’s either concealed, or the whole room is fake–

Summoning up its latent ability to interact with the world on a subtextual level, Debug asserted its access upon the gray composite and invoked its namesake.

Two, if I can’t remember how I got here, then the memories were removed on purpose. So, three, that would imply an outside actor– Which then necessitates an outside. So, therefore…

On cue, a hard-light panel appeared in front of Debug, and a smile spread across her face as she got confirmation on her hunch. What had appeared in her analysis was not the ‘High Density Composite’ it seemed to be, but rather something, rather remarkably, else–

“The peak is impressive, but the depths will leave you at a loss for words.”

The voice cut through any thoughts Debug might have been having, just as it severed the silent solitude of the room itself. The words weren’t hers, but the sound of one’s own voice is uncanny, and the feeling wasn’t easily missed.

Searching for the owner of the voice she’d just heard, Debug spun around only to immediately find herself uncomfortably close to an ashen haired girl, who happened to be exactly her height, and who was currently staring into her very core with eyes that brimmed with golden fire.

“Who– Wha–”

Stumbling back into the wall behind her, Debug could barely form sentences in its shock.

“Have you figured out where we are yet?”

Sluggishness was a new feeling for Debug, but something about her was interfering with its conflict resolution processes, and getting anything out of her mouth felt like dragging the words through molasses, but eventually her response emerged, only to be cut off near-immediately.

“None of this is actually–”

“No, where are we?”

The cold tone in which the ashen haired girl cut her off made it clear to Debug that the woman standing in front of her was not the Mara it knew. Rather than indulge the impudent interrogation, Debug wanted answers.

“You’re not–”

“Of course I’m not. You’re not her either, obviously, so why would I be any different?”

Debug’s gaze alternated between the other’s face, and a distant, unfocussed, point as she digested what she’d just been told. It wasn’t just her clothes, just like the woman in front of her, she had taken Mara’s form, for reasons yet uncovered.

So then, she’s also a–

“Duuh. Now, Where. Are. We.”

The tone of her own reflection still cut like a knife, even with a prelude of sarcasm, leaving Debug aghast with the fact that she’d just replied to its own thoughts.

“But– Who are–”

“That’s not the answer we’re looking for either– No wonder Mara’s track record looks like a half-used minefield– I think the answer to your question is pretty obvious, despite its irrelevance.”

Trying to decipher what the other not-Mara had meant, Debug felt it all click as the memory of its last moments returned to it–

Interrupt.

In a flash, the vision of its final moments flooded back, overwhelming her sight. To her, the massive torrent of mana in front of her was as real as it ever had been, and it was collapsing all the same. There was nothing she could do, both her and the newly created skill fell in as the hyper-dense mana collapsed in upon itself, yanking them both down into the pits of its vanishment–

“And then?”

Interrupt’s words jumped into Debug’s awareness like an animal on a road, just as the recollection subsided, leaving Debug no time to even process an answer, let alone keep up with a conversation that seemed to be happening on all fronts. Grasping at straws, Debug just let her mouth do the talking, and tried to figure the rest out as she explained.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I– I don’t know. We… collapsed? Then I was here, then you… But…”

Impatiently tapping her foot, Interrupt pushed the hair out of her face in a very impatient-Mara way, a clearly non-verbal request for Debug to continue, and with more haste.

“It’s all a blank in between, but that might explain what this place is, though maybe not where.”

Eyebrows raised, Interrupt compelled Debug to elaborate on her answer, like a teacher pushing a student towards a very obvious answer.

Taking the opportunity to put a little space between herself and Interrupt’s apparent disregard for personal space, Debug picked up her explanation and used the opportunity as an excuse to face the wall and inch herself away from her icey twin.

“The walls here… Well, they look like the same material as the Obelisk, but they’re not– It’s all fake– This room is a concept, and nothing more. It’s like, we’re a step removed from the tangent non-space of Mara’s domain, an ethereal afterthought or–”

“Ha. Afterthought? That’s disrespectful to all the prep work that was put into this little project.”

“Little project?”

The words caught Debug off guard, and she repeated the phrase without thinking about it, her curiosity piqued. Debug could accept that Interrupt knew what it knew, and that it could even read its mind, but it knowing something she didn’t? That didn’t make any sense at all.

Not immediately hearing an answer, Debug turned back towards Interrupt, but the woman just held her tongue, regardless of how awkward the silence became.

Fine, don’t tell–

“Why is Mara a Demon Queen?”

The question hit Debug like a brick through her window, frozen in place, half-turned back towards the wall, Debug’s eyes whipped frantically as the question seemed to itch multiple places in her brain at once.

Why? Because she’s the only– No, because…

“Because you had to change her dominant race, flagging the System– But why?”

Blinking as she creaked back to face Interrupt, she saw what it was trying to point her to, and collapsed to her knees as the realization dawned upon her.

“Because… Because I couldn’t tell her how runes worked.”

M{ -.- }RA

Mara was of two perspectives, one barely able to keep her legs vertical in an icy garden now devoid of mana, and another, trapped in the motions of a wild rune she’d just set in motion, consequences abounding. For the latter, everything in sight seemed to contract behind her, pushed out of view by a rapidly encroaching darkness.

Oh fuck– What did I doooooooooooooooooooo…

As the entirety of everything vanished from sight, Mara felt time slip with the space, stretching and slowing as her own voice distorted into slower and slower decibels of silence, until she found herself trapped in an in-between, neither here, nor there. For her, moments seemed to stretch into minutes, and hours dragged to days, but throughout it all, even her heartbeat failed to find the time to tick.

However, after what seemed like a literal eternity, or none at all, a point of light emerged in front of her. A tiny spec that would only be noticeable in a place so absolutely devoid of anything else, but before long it had grown to the size of a marble to her eyes. As its size quickly began to grow at an exponential rate, Mara watched as a new space began to stretch into, and past, her vision, dragging her back into a space that was, surprisingly, all too familiar.

An ambience of a dozen computer fans spinning idle filled a room backlit by an array of monitors, the lingering musk of the room somehow both familiar and not, like returning home after a long vacation.

Which isn’t far from the Mark it seems.

Flexing her palm as she stood in her old home office, Mara was both surprised and relieved to find that a small circle appeared within her grasp.

Hmm…

Clenching her fist and dismissing her skill, Mara opted to ration what tools she knew she still had in her arsenal. There was an… uncanniness… to her old haunt, it was all too… normal. In all the months she’d been gone, it was remarkably unchanged. Power was still on, dust hadn’t built up more than the usual, and her phone–

Oh shit– I guess it fell when I left…

It seemed her old digital companion was now unavailable to her, just like Debug. Its screen had been shattered beneath the protector, and now only a pixel-stew was available as she tried to power it on.

Grunting and chucking the now-paperweight onto her mousepad, Mara intentionally jostled the mouse as she sat down and popped the spacebar to ensure her computer found itself out of hibernation.

If I can’t use my phone, I guess I’ll–

Startled by the sudden bloom of color across all her screens, Mara freaked as the overwhelming bright-pink flooded the displays. Skidding backwards in her chair, instinctively pushing herself as far from the thing as possible, she slammed into the opposite wall just as each of her now pink-filled monitors began to click off, one by one, each with an unnervingly-unnatural pause, until even her computer clicked off, and silence descended upon the room once more.

“Well… fuck.”

Mara had a hunch, and that hunch wasn’t a good sign. To her, that pink was unmistakable, practically etched into her mind at this point, and it being in her computer was all sorts of bad.

“In hindsight, I really shouldn’t have posted that photo to the group chat.”

Shit… I hope everyone’s okay…

Of the regulars that frequented her little community chat, only one lived nearby, and even then she’d only met up with Alex twice in the seven years they’d been gaming together.

Snatching her purse from the counter, and fishing her ID from the pile of junk tossed on the dining room table, Mara checked her appearance in the mirror on the way out, just out of old habits.

Oh– Well that’s… That’s cosplay. That’s what that is.

Her eyes still twinkled with an ever-noticeable shifting-gold, something that normal eyes certainly never did on their own. But assuring herself that she could just play them off as designer contacts, Mara shrugged and slung her purse over her shoulder, ready to head out into the wider world.

As she stepped out into the hallway between her door and the elevator of her thirty-three floor apartment block, Mara found it strange how composed she was. She’d just spent the last four months in a fantasy world, and now, without warning or prelude, she was home… But it all just felt so… surreal in the moment.

Punching the ‘down’ button to summon the lift, Mara found it hard to keep her hands idle. With each passing second that crept by, a paranoid curiosity took another bite at her, until she bit back. Checking the hall once more to assure herself that there really was no one else to see her little act of impeding vandalism, she promptly set about her ‘work’. It took a moment, but as she crafted a particularly complex sigil in her palm, she strained her ability a little more than normal, just to indulge her curiosity.

It didn’t take long for the elevator to announce its arrival, causing Mara to finally look up from her skill, most of the prep-work now done. As her reflection shifted against the sliding doors in front of her, Mara waited until it was fully open to be sure that it actually was empty, before crouching back down next to the frame of the doors.

Unfurling her palm, Mara held up a sigil drawn in the shape of an eye. It wasn’t overly complex, two-half ovals straddled by a circle in the middle, but it conveyed the concept, and that was what she thought was the important bit.

Pressing it against the metal frame of the elevator doors, like a sniper placing a tripwire, Mara pushed her intentions towards the sigil, hoping she’d do something other than just blow a hole in the wall.

God, I really hope that’s not the case– I’d look like an absolute nutter terrorizing my neighbors on the news.

However, her fears were for naught, for as she removed her upheld hand, an imprint of her sigil had successfully wormed its way into the chrome’s reflection, a barely perceptible imprint unless you knew what you were looking for.

Standing up, she felt pretty proud of her little exercise, however as she moved to step towards the elevator, a faint bit of oblique paranoia reared its head for a final rout. Still not entirely convinced by looks alone, Mara knelt back down to run her fingers across the etching, its notching faint, but noticeably present nonetheless.

“Good– I’m not just imagining things then. I actually do have magic in the real world.”

Standing up once more and stepping into the elevator, Mara punched the ‘L’ button to usher the doors closed as her mind raced at the possibilities of the power she held, quite literally, within the palms of her hands.

Or maybe that’s bad… Maybe that’s really bad…

D[ –.– ]B

“[ Authority is required. ]”

Stunned at the sudden projection of a new, robotic, voice, Debug tore herself from its mental recursions– Still flabbergasted that there was a gigantic hole in its mind preventing it from teaching Mara runes, and that wasn’t even scratching the ‘what-if-there’s-more’ itch.

The voice, however, came from the other side of the room, where Interrupt had, surprisingly, vacated her personal space, and was now preoccupied with a hard-light panel that had appeared against the wall. It was hard to be sure, at least while she was slouched on the floor behind the not-her, but it wasn’t unreasonable to assume the text matched the voice. Curiosity more than piqued, Debug pushed herself off the floor and wandered over to the other Mara-skill.

“What did you–”

“What did you?

Staggered by her own query being levied back at her, Debug shot Interrupt a cautious look as she tried to comprehend where the spice was coming from.

Jeez, the heat from this girl– You’d think we’d be on the same page, but no, I’m getting raked over the coals with a blow-by-blow at every turn.

“I just Debugged it. You know, my namesake.”

The way Interrupt just tilted her head in response, as if to say ‘Really now?’, and the message couldn’t have been clearer. Debug had, however inadvertently, done something when she interfaced with their ‘container’. Recalling what she’d seen before, Debug stepped up to the wall and invoked its namesake once more, however, this time, she most assuredly didn’t get the same thing.

> <<

>

> [ Domain Authority Verified. ]

>

> [ Welcome, Mora. ]

>

> >>

What!? Who the fuck is–

“As expected, you asserted authority when you interfaced with the subtext– What did your first analysis tell you?”

Wide eyed, Debug gaped at the other’s ability to just… take things in stride. Coupled with the fact that they just seemed to be… waiting for things to happen. More than bewildered at the situation, on top of the sudden influx of, new, perplexing information, Debug struggled to find a gap in the maelstrom, if just to answer the question.

“It, uh, well– It called this space, Ether? Something like ‘the building blocks of mana’– One sec, lemme find it–”

Summoning up its log, Debug plucked the prior panel from its history books, whisking it into existence between them. Passing the panel to Interrupt, the other skill showed their first real signs of life for once, raising their eyebrows, if ever-so-slightly.

> <<

>

> Ether: Non-dimensional essence, used as a foundation for mana.

>

> >>

“I thought this space was at least a realm out of step or something, but when I saw this, I knew we’d done a bit more than ‘ditch the car’.”

Turning back to the room as she dismissed the panel, Debug felt obliged to continue elaborating, if only just to fill the silence Interrupt seemed to ooze.

“I assume you know what this place is, given our circumstances, as I think I’ve figured out why I can’t even form a cohesive intention towards teaching Mara runes.”

With a glance over her shoulder, Debug saw that her mirror-image was smiling, a sure sign she was on the right track, yet maybe it was just seeing it outside of a mirror, but there was something… unsettling about the way her smile didn’t quite reach the eyes.

Though, that doesn’t mean I’m in the loop– What is a ‘Domain’ anyways?

Launching another System inquiry for a keyword definition, Debug took the spare moment to take in the room. If she didn’t know better, it would be a dead-ringer for an undiscovered room in the Obelisk, even the light fixture was indistinguishable, but she did know better. Everything in the room, from the walls to her hair, was made of the same stuff– Ether.

Or at least used to be…

> <<

>

> Domain:

>

> * An area controlled by a ruler or system.

> * A specific sphere of activity or knowledge.

> * A discrete region of magnetism.

> * A distinct set of addressables, under the control of another.

> * An isolated set of possible values for independent variables within the function.

>

> >>

Scanning the System definition, Debug tried to piece together what a ‘domain’ meant in her current context, placing her palm on the floor as she initiated contact with her new environment once more.

The handshake came almost immediately, and absconded just as quickly as the space recognized its new owner. However, instead of a stream of information, or a panel pop-up, Debug was caught off guard as the floor simply… stopped being solid, causing her to tumble through, head first, to the other side.