Omega was in a sea of information.

The little cylinder seemed so innocuous in its size but then so were most totems and instruments from terra.

But by associations and protocol it reached out like fulcrum of a vast ever shifting web of information.

Every single being seemed to thrum and pulse with its own meaning. Broadcasts audible and open to all, private missives hidden but for the vague absences that suggested a current of knowledge was running where none had seen.

Omega had been familiar with the networks of terra, with the grand choirs and the deep memories of academic archives.

She knew the web of lies, figments and delights that was the aggregate orgy of social madness that most of the afterlife of Terra consisted of.

Where ideas, flavors and impressions could be woven into tapestries that no living soul could ingest or appreciate for their bodies and brains would scramble and twist it into meaningless gibberish.

Omega suspected even Quarti would not really be able to understand the deep spirit courts of Terra while embodied.

But then again she would not have believed anyone could have survived longer then recorded history (the majority of that time spent un-bodied to boot!).

Redweed’s networks though made Terra’s info ecology seem barren as a desert as far as Omega could see.

She had never wandered into the terrible wilderness of souls beyond familiar prayer and social circles.

But this was a canopy, a forest and a deep garden all at once.

It extended in every direction, even the ones that only could be barely scraped at in spirit.

And it nestled down and inward too.

The very fibres of the grab hold their orb bot was anchored too seemed to be laced with information markers in resonance.

Stress records, repair dates, manufacturing signatures, work crew identifiers, even reviews from passengers complementing the grip, tensile strength or positioning.

And it just expanded out from there, the loop they were in was a mass of teeming records and aggregated opinion and observation.

Even though she was seeing with vision not from her eyes the hubs of what she could only guess were ‘cities’ were too bright and thick with information to stare at in their entirety. Flaring searing corruscating infernos of activity punctuated along this loop and a larger vaster one that this one only brushed.

And beyond those echoing and pulsing pillars with a raging thrum like a million hearts feeding arteries that crisscrossed and filled the sky was the REST of Redweed.

If she had not known they arrived here from Terra she would have thought It went on forever. Omega could not grasp or even scrape at the edge of it.

They might as well have slipped into a cosmos of foreign spirit and civilization.

The entire after life of terra and all the libraries and works of the living would have been but a grain of sand to the mountains of Redweed’s civilization that towered around her.

However as was often the case, the majority of this vastness was banal and meaningless to almost anyone but a small section.

Omega could feel the touch of layered societies and guilds and cohorts and possibly even long forgotten cults that were never to be seen again but left indelible scrawls in the resonance of Redweed’s water pipeline records.

Oh and advertising, appeals, presentations and appeals.

She honestly did not understand what even half of them were.

Was that music? Was it porn? Was it love poetry? Was it a marriage proposal?

Omega had no idea, even with the translation and the hints deeper in the resonance there was nothing she could say.

Even with hints of memory left over from her foray with Pylo it was a mystery.

The names though helped, whatever list of identifiers that were being mapped between one and another when ‘Sixdottir’ mentioned where they were going she got a hook and a thread to follow.

And she pulled on that thread and reasoning to find where the knowledge and opinion of their ‘Gastronomist’ (whatever that meant).

Petalweft Salts was from what Omega could surmise a massive metropolis of a city by any standard of terra.

The sheer number of personal addresses and the traffic of messages public and smothered indistinctly for privacy that she felt humming up and down her spine was on par with the biggest cities of Terra.

The Academies at their peak population when training the active colonists.

The thickest soul choirs nestled in the temples of remembrance to breath the life giving prayers of families, friends and supporters.

To be remembered and in being remembered restored and fortified for more years before their reincarnation.

Petalweft Salts was dense in song precisely like each of those pinnacles of Terra had been.

[https://i.imgur.com/JWXH7Re.png]

Omega would not have been able to pick it out amongst the unending vista of so many similar or larger lights in just the vicinity of them.

But with a name she could cling too it.

Focus on it and embrace the feeds of knowing and sharing that were what Omega would think of as a spire of Redweed for her own sanity.

Don’t think of the looming expanse of ‘culture’ heaving all around.

Just the one place, the spire.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Petalweft Salts.

Within it were many neighborhoods, organized like beads around the transit loops, linked together in a fabric of chaining loops that folded and furled like a blanket crumpled and then lifted up in a twisted tower.

She could just about get the whole thing as a sketch of a map in her mind via the translator.

Then with a tilt of her head she thought and reached across to sing the next part.

A title, a job, a vocation and connection to Sixdottir.

‘The Gastronomist’

The list of connections heaved, pruned, exploded and bloomed.

Many avenues reached out and away from them and away from Petalweft Salts and with a bit of attention Omega culled them from consideration.

Sixdottir also was a veritable explosion of connections to other beings.

But most of those did not go to Petalweft Salts either.

So they too were shed from the picture.

There were signals and markers that had her puzzling a moment, layering and linking in filaments and branches.

But then with a shift of focus she saw them fold away.

Apprentices, assistants and affiliates.

An industry of secondary, tertiary and quaternary steps with a single individual at the peak.

Sitting in the center of the hub with a strong list of recommendations and less clear private discourses between Sixdottir and the individual.

“The Gastronomist of Petalweft Salts, Esteemed master of low metal tolerance eukaryota nutrition”

The web of opinion and experience and commentary unwrapped from the kernel, filling the proverbial space of her soul.

She could feel a burn itching at her spine and forehead.

Omega narrowed the amount she was grasping until it was just a few dozen anecdotes at a time.

On the sheer volume of literature written on this individual, the mountains of correspondence and even in such a morass of material the over all ‘positive’ ledger of those reviews gave Omega a hint that at least they were going somewhere well esteemed.

The specifics though left her unsure of the nature of this individual they were going to meet.

> “Best party companion yet! Left me just florping in delight with his decadilez! Only suffered a mild toxicity rejection after! to his ability is definitely my need!”

So maybe a party drug dealer or loose moraled pharmacist?

> “Very smooth, so smooth, good tactile partners to get you want you want while he ensures you have what you NEED, so gushy!”

Massage? Seems to work with others in some capacity, does not strictly speaking sound like he even deals with food.

The network of connections and referrals is probably the ‘partners’ referenced.

> “AWful terrible service! Advertised mastery of metal intolerance but in my session claimed I didn't HAVE a metal intolerance! refered me for a psychometry miscalibration! Yeah so what if normally I have the compound in my framework I am totally intolerant to it! It makes me Zgurgiglix all over with my bondmates! That’s atrociously embarrassing! But he refused to give me recs for a new diet saying it would leave me malnourished! I know what I need and what I’m intolerant of! I didn't come here to be told I don’t! I hope he gets eyefulls of spuck over this!”

That was one of the definitely negative reviews but Omega could not tell if it meant the reviewer or the Gastronomist was incompetent.

> “Good interviewing manner, very clean prescription, nice associates to maximize flavor. Left me turgid with sufferings! Would recommend!”

That one SOUNDED positive but maybe it actually meant something bad?

> “The absolute best! I never even realized I was feeling so bad because of a deficiency! He said this must have been affecting me since childhood development and growing me up snarled! After trying his diet I feel like the world finally makes sense for the first time! So great! Fertilize all my eggs you wonder!”

And now they sound like some kind of miracle worker or a doctor? Also that proposition at the end? Was it serious? Did they follow through with it?

> “Great service recommendation for getting Lead supplements with the right lacing of arsenic! I’ve been looking for seasonings for my gumbo everywhere!”

And her also does referrels for getting supplements, that apparently contain horribly toxic stuff for a terran.

> “The blood pours and at last we can shred our fruits and burst our bones in exaltation mortality! Enjoy the feast of my corpse at the funeral!”

Omega does not even know what to call that one.

She was about to dig down another heap of reviews and referrals when her ears rang so loudly she fumbled her song and lost the resonance with the network.

She blinked around as her normal senses and body reasserted themselves.

Glancing at Aleph and Quartie.

“You two mind keeping it down? I was kinda busy”

She guessed she would have to grab a quiet moment to dig into the rest of the network later.

Hopefully she would have a better idea of it when they finally got something to eat.