image [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/A_Sunday_on_La_Grande_Jatte%2C_Georges_Seurat%2C_1884.jpg/1200px-A_Sunday_on_La_Grande_Jatte%2C_Georges_Seurat%2C_1884.jpg?20200707010858]
SEURAT, 1884-86
Scene 27
Tr’aedis opened his eyes. The sensation made him feel light.
He pushed himself up from the dream-bed. Its threads moved like water. They caressed his fingers, encouraging him to return to sleep; but he needed to feel his hair and make sure it hadn’t been a dream.
He moved his fingers through it; it had hardened over the night, now feeling like the surface of mindo, but broken up into various shards. He almost Thought for his hologram, but then remembered that he’d never figured out how to use that function; before remembering that he hadn’t put on his receptor ever since first taking it off. If he were in Lowers, he’d have one of those enlarged pieces of glass they used to see themselves; and here, he hadn’t seen anything like that.
Water. He could go back to that place, the surface of blue, where he’d come here. No, it couldn’t reflect his face. The water around the Myodor residence; that was water. He could go there. But he didn’t know where anything was beyond the general vicinity of the school, and he was certain at this point, the Myodor siblings were like Governors. Especially Ila ce. Sometimes he just said her name in front of students. And immediately, their eyes turned bright.
It was different; because Governors didn’t walk around society. Here the Myodors visited the school often, or at least Ila ce, with Triomphe and Puræ like her fabled retainers. But no, Triomphe was almost a principal of the school, and Puræ was practically a Myodor himself.
Tr’aedis pushed himself completely out of the bed, heaving his legs over. Another day with the toddlers. Koko, as far as he could tell, was a good teacher; if a little bothered by having a fellow Ligaeryen in his classes.
A word that Tr’aedis heard around him yesterday, pronounced by first Koko and then others; a word that many said differently, accenting an a or e or the rye. Of course he wasn’t Ligaeryen. But his newfound golden hair, which he was beginning to suspect had shined in the sun, must have been an indication.
He touched his ear; no receptor. Habit. No Thoughts from his parents, or Eleanor, or Blazon. Only thoughts of language. Yesterday were the words for trees, sun, and warmth. Or tree, sky and light. The word for “sky-light,” valie, sounded close to some words he’d heard. But he still wasn’t certain. It was harder than he’d thought to learn these lines, when he had to learn first the words. And there were still no records he’d found in these few days of their written language; High English had still adopted, or merely modified, the original alphabet of Neo English, just changing the pronunciations; so Tr’aedis knew that each and every spelling in his mind was only his own cloth and paper.
Standing still, Tr’aedis moved out of the bedroom; and as he expected, he then heard the early morning clamor of his fellow students at the Taenim Laev. The school he was now a part of; its meaning he did not know, but the tae was the short word before anyone said their surname. But ‘family name’ being within the word for school, academy, institution, and so on lent him little, other than the students considered themselves a ‘family’ of sorts. But, of course even the consideration of family here might have been different, as while he’d seen many toddlers, he had yet to hear or see of parents. Not to speak of the practically indiscernible markings of age, only their color bands indicating their year, and those without monochrome designations being teachers. And he still had yet to see the world beyond the Taenim, after he’d first come through it.
“Dyen, Traedis,” said the student coming rather lethargically out of the chamber immediately near Tr’aedis’s, as she usually did attempting, without great success, to maneuver her waist-length silver hair into sitting on her shoulders, like a lethargic animal itself. Which reminded Tr’aedis of the lesson for today, or at best what fehel meant, in light of the words felot (‘stranger’), gönhel (‘acquaintance’), and different of course from a word he’d only heard from the Myodors, tæhel ri. There was always that ‘el/hel’ part, that to him indicated familiarity. But yesterday Koko had ended the lesson by saying fehel a few times, to the children’s confusion, indicating a new word, and Koko had had the most wondrous and terrifying of creatures, the first Tr’aedis had seen, which had resembled the hair (but was now settling back over the shoulders) of Enela, who was still taking her time to awake, but was also looking at him in confusion as he hadn’t responded.
“Traedise felot,” he said, letting out the briefest of laughs; one element of language that had stayed the same.
Enela, scratching her eyes, yawned once more and nodded, before reaching into a pocket of her shirt-cloak for a light yellow ribbon, which she tied around the bottom wisp of hair as she walked away. Yellow for Lye or third year, like Koko. Tr’aedis looked to his left wrist. His grey tassel was still looped around it. Still not even a first year, Arc. The children and himself weren’t given a name. He sighed, rubbed his wrist around the tassel, and then saw Areum emerging from his own chamber.
Tr’aedis waved out of instinct; he retracted his hand, but his friend saw, and the Arc, his frizzled red hair sparkling, smiled and returned the movement; of course Tr’aedis did not know what he had actually done, but sharing at least the hallway, Areum and Enela, as well as Auder (Raf, second year, orange) and Bobe (Nam, sixth year and the student who oversaw their hallway, purple), the lattermost of whom he rarely saw, either because Bobe didn’t sleep, or at least didn’t sleep where he/she was supposed to: these students saw him the most (besides Koko), so they understood sometimes when he spoke in Neo English or waved.
Areum came closer; Tr’aedis had thought at first that their first year would correspond, if the seven years to mediary and high school, to roughly around ten. But Areum looked closer to his age, seventeen, if not slightly older, but again, Tr’aedis could not truly tell, as Areum’s skin was molded in pulsating red, moving of its own; which Tr’aedis could never stop looking at.
Areum pushed Tr’aedis’s head away, with his index finger.
“Ris, virx,” Areum said. Friend, stop that (but with a positive meaning). Of the various people he’d seen so far, it was the people like Areum, the Nam Uerora of scarlet, and Puræ, with their skin that wasn’t like any human skin he’d seen, or even in V-movies for when the robots lived among them; but one thing was certain, and this Tr’aedis knew—it was more beautiful than any color of hair he’d seen. For Areum he wasn’t sure if it was ornamentation, congenial style, or an assertion—but this he knew, and as he moved his head away, Tr’aedis came to feel that changing the color of your hair in Sector I, this entire time, or the color of your eyes, your face’s contours, was just touching the surface. There was another world underneath.
He walked with Areum out of the hallway, and Tr’aedis thought of what he’d practice saying before they arrived at the place where the teachers crafted their breakfast.
I’m learning from Koko again. Koko + student + today/time. Koko tr’aenim—he didn’t know the word for “today” or “time”. There was that command he sometimes heard, from Emeli to a student, or Triomphe to nearly everybody: drin. It may not match the tense, but—
“Koko tr’aenim drin,” he said, as they passed a sculpture in the sheerest silver of what looked like an immense Y.
Areum shook his head. “Koko tr’aenim dirne,” he said, emphasizing the i so that it sounded like dire. Tr’aedis nodded. “Koko tr’aenim DIRne.” to which the first-year laughed, making exaggerated opening movements with his mouth. While Tr’aedis recognized the distinction in pronunciation, the more he learned this language, the more it sounded like the smatterings of High English he’d hear from his parents’ holo-meetings they’d occasionally hold in their storied chambers, one engineer to another, with just enough physical presence needed to conduct mathematics. In High they spoke differently, or at least those of the Governing families, a language they spoke among themselves, their technocracy. But this was not High, this wasn’t even Sector I, and probably wasn’t Earth.
But Tr’aedis laughed away these vagrant thoughts, for they made him uneasy.
They were entering the wide and broad chamber, the cafeteria, and again the spreads of red, of orange, of yellow, green, blue, and violet, the six demarcations of class, only Crea the seventh years who, like their teachers, discarded the monochrome distinction and favored their own colors. A wide and open sea of faces. Shocks of light on hair. That beautiful colored skin. Silhouettes of shadow that, to him, felt like walking reflections, of students who saw themselves, like some of those libraries in v-Art University.
Areum was leading him to a series of upraised, tabular platforms, around which some Arcs were standing. Tr’aedis saw that they didn’t have their food yet; but Areum greeted the others by name, dipping his head in Tr’aedis’ direction, and Tr’aedis restrained himself from waving with his hand. He felt conspicuous with his grey tassel, seeing on the others’ a red hairband, just out of reach of the eyes; a tassel around the wrist like his own, but red; one Arc had no such accouterments, but her eyes, irises of a faint gold around amber pupils, burgeoned red as he looked; and the fourth’s had a small red cloth wrapped slightly around his neck.
Tr’aedis, moving himself to stand just between Areum and the one with the cloth, held his left hand at his side, below the platform. Looking more closely at the platform itself he noted its surface to be somewhat granular, and rather faded but still visible, etches and lines put into its surface of different colors, corresponding to those of the Taenim Laev. He wondered if it was ritual for these students, upon ascending a color, to etch their new color into one of these standing-platforms; perhaps their first meal as a Raf, or Lye, and so on.
That would be me, some day, he thought, and as without flair as he could muster, returned his left wrist to above the platform, resting on it. Areum glanced at him, but didn’t give comment; instead continued conversing with the other Arcs, Emeli being interspersed throughout, but Tr’aedis as he usually did, chose not to pay too much attention to understanding, he reserved that for his classes with Koko. With that thought, he thought he glimpsed the sleek brown-haired Lye stepping through the sheen of other groups similarly situated, as they all awaited their teachers for the daily ritual of Nutrieat, which Tr’aedis thought of as “making breakfast,” or “making food,” and so far his favorite portion of the day; and so with that thought, he felt a soft whisper appear throughout the crowd, through the students standing around their tables; with that thought, he felt his stomach with his hands, and found it empty; with these thoughts he glimpsed Emeli, descending feet first from the sky.
She was holding onto feet. Her unimpeachable mane of hair seemed to float as she descended, and she laughed with her mix of hearty disdain and unbridled exhilaration. Emeli had on a cloak robed in all the colors Tr’aedis knew, and the feet descended, followed by long blue pants, matched by the same on the torso, in seamless serration; and then by, arms crossed, a tint of further blue on the chest, Avien, with clouds for wings. They brushed out into the air. The air seemed to take it in. Avien embraced it. As Emeli touched the ground, simmers of light touched out onto the ground beneath her feet. The areas of light that enabled all to see in the space around them was swimming with faint touches of blue. An ocean blue.[1]
Tr’aedis felt his stomach surge.
As they were, the students were silent; simply watching. As Avien descended to the ground himself, Emeli extended her right hand, palm flat and fingers closed, facing the floor; that was the signal. From the left side of the cafeteria came the children and Koko, leading by a long golden thread, thin but recognizable, a hardy and fat and beautiful creature, making low bellows of sound in pleasure, as she waddled along towards the center of the space. An animal Tr’aedis recognized as the Earth-extinct cow, and from what he remembered, sacred in some ancient cultures, and while this was not his first time in the Nutrieat, he again saw it as beautiful and lustrous, its skin of the clearest pearl, these great splotches of natural paint sprinted across, its mighty natural shoes in shining ochre, her eyes that brought them all into her gaze, the creases above its pink nostrils that beckoned an inner wisdom.
“Moo,” it said, and the students returned its call, Moos echoing throughout the cafeteria, and Tr’aedis felt a pain clinch into his cheeks: he had been smiling for too long. He returned them to their normal expression but after the moos subsided, he saw that the cow was also smiling, and Emeli was speaking softly to her, her face bent just besides the cow’s, and Avien stood by, waiting.
“Moo,” the cow said once more, and Emeli raised her head.
“Aveï, fehel,” Emeli said, and the students said the same, Tr’aedis too; Thank you, creature, but with a light of estimation and gratitude in the latter identifier. Certainly more than felot or even gönhel. The cow gave an expression that Tr’aedis couldn’t identify, but he thought he saw a like gratitude, accompanied by recognition, acceptance, and contentment.
“Moo,” she said once more, and then, Avien, clapping his wings once—causing a clap of air to emanate from his blue—made a gesture with his hands that Tr’aedis only saw during the Nutrieat, and only when it was a fehel they were about to consume: making a fist with one hand, and enclosing it with the other. If it was a winglike motion like the rest, like a wing enclosing a stone; or perhaps an egg. Emeli stood, dusting off her hands on her cloak, over the sepia-toned part; smiling to them all, she turned and placed her hands, slowly and gently and quietly, over the cow’s eyes.
The cow sighed; and then, her paint-like splotches began to change and swirl, evolving, becoming a unified spleen of pink, an amorphous shape, that gathered together moved across her skin, to her face, and moving into Emeli’s hands, as she continued to hold them there. Then she moved them away.
Her hands and arms, and into some of her shoulders Tr’aedis knew, were pink.
The cow, now barren of her former paintlike splendor, sighed again, but more quietly; like she had lost something, which she had. She dipped her head, and the students in the crowd seemed to appreciate her sadness, murmuring amongst themselves; Emeli, her normally mysteriously benign expression morose, nodded to Avien, who weaving his arms through the air, conjured up a basket; Emeli thrust her arms in, and wove her hands in and out; pushing them in and out, her shoulders heaving with the effort, the pink in her arms slowly undulating down, some froth and drips of pink substance coming up from the basket, but she caught them all, not allowing any to spill; and the crowd were silent. Tr’aedis felt a slight pang in his stomach; he was hungry; the children who had come in, who had disappeared into the crowd with their entrance, reemerged, Koko leading them, taking by their unified hands the long golden thread, and leading the cow away.
Tr’aedis watched them leave.
He turned his eyes back to the Nutrieat. Emeli was finished, rolling up her sleeves, and Avien was holding the basket. The students in front of Tr’aedis were gathering themselves into a line. Someone was touching his arm; Tr’aedis turned his eyes again, it was Areum, making an eating motion with his hands, and Tr’aedis followed him into line. He was hungry; the cow had given much, but there was much to share. He watched as the Arcs and Rafs and others in front of him took the rosy, pink bars into their palms, one by one, saying thank you over and over again, some looking in the direction of the artist who had graced them with her skin. He watched as they partook. Tr’aedis took a pink bar of his own from the basket. Emeli was smiling with her own, returned expression, Avien’s wings gently shaking.
Incoming Thought-message from Adventa Rosan, Sector Class of 2237.
Eleanor let out a long breath as she sunk back into her floafa. It was finally here.
She pushed herself off her floafa, letting her legs first hit the floor; standing, she walked over to her nudd trees, checking if Mincy was still in the right position and Bode’s leaves were hanging in the right way. They had to be drooping; she knew that from now on, once she accepted her Color Guide’s Thought-message and officially began her orientation—that every day would be one in a long tide of the anticipation and splendor that meant, she was going to college; her nudd trees had to be sadder than her. Their days were simpler. They weren’t going to college.
She let her fingers roll off Bode’s lower branches; they felt lukewarm to her fingertips. Her leaves fell back into place.
Eleanor reentered her Thought-feed. Acc—
She turned back. She looked at her floafa. It was bright and orange. She left the Thought-feed and entered the House system, Thought for Eleanor Dorr. She changed her room settings to Dim. She looked again at the floafa; now, only parts of it still showed orange; the others were shadowed, closer to black. She sank into it.
Accept.
Why are you here?
Adventa’s Thought came with no sense of query; not really curiosity, more, just that—a question. Thoughts of flame seemed to flicker at the background of Eleanor’s thoughts; dimly, she felt for the floafa around her, feeling its alternating textures as her body shifted in place. She was here; she was sitting in her isolation, the room of Eleanor Dorr on the fourth floor of the Dorr palace, and somewhere within its stairs and hallways walked her parents. They were here; she was here, and she just knew she didn’t want to be.
She closed her eyes. She imagined leaving her body, and having all of it sort of shimmer away out of the confines of that room—a place she couldn’t leave, but still a place she knew. She kept imagining. She seemed to float up and out of mind and body and… something else, there was something else sitting in the darkness. A pallor of flame that as she continued to rise above herself, began to hold its own light. A shape. An orange globe.
She reached down. She tried touching it—but just before she placed her palms on the sphere, upon closer inspection, somewhat imperfect, lines and runaway diagonals etched into its surface. The world lay for her below and it was imperfect. She opened her eyes into the darkness and Thought, Accept.
Orange is my favorite color because there’s this coffeevenue in High that’s broken. It never gives you orange, it gives you all the other colors, even red and yellow but still never orange. Oh, hi, alter hello – Eleanor Vyaedus Dorr, are you? Welcome.
Yes, I am. She stared into the unwelcoming, nearly absent light, that filled her surroundings in eddies and swells. She stretched her eyelids wide with her fingers—causing bulges and splotches to fuzz in and out. Blazon High, Plent. Happy to join the Orange Route.
Eleanor! Adventa, Eleanor is a Governor. Although you might not have noticed her during the orientation, you were sleeping for most of it. Eleanor recognized the voice of Giya; the low tenor. Eleanor was a Governor, apparently. In the six days since officially meeting Giya as a cat, clambering up the cyber tree, she’d yet to dispel that illusion. It’d be so easy—No, Adventa Rosan, I am not a Governor, and I don’t plan to be. I pretended for six days. Not answering specific questions about what it was like to be a Governor, to Giya over Thought-message, or when Giya stalked her, panther-like, in the cafeteria. Eleanor had to go to a raider game, something she normally didn’t do, just to avoid those paws.
I live in Plent by day. I am a Governor by—hologram.
Various cries of exclamation issued into the Thought-feed. There were more than just her, Giya Igre Bis, and Adventa Rosan… but how many, she couldn’t tell. So that was why you accepted twice. Adventa. A note of query still… and yet, Eleanor couldn’t bring herself to clear the curtain. All of her memories of how they were taught about Governors in class came rushing back to her in bits and pieces; information she had thought irrelevant and useless but had now gained this moment of clarity. Governors had no minimum age. Governors operated in Governing families, typically in Governors’ residences in High, with exceptions (like Eleanor) where a child became elected. The exact number, no one knew, but any citizen of the Sector could TM any one of them at any time, and usually receive answer. They were the abstract and brief chronicles of the time for when the Government made an intractable error. They were the ruling class, a fact one of her teachers had made clear once, but only once; the highest class in their society.
They also made Prognostications. To her, that she would become one; to Giya, that she would meet one, and to select orange. The thought came to her that if a real Governor were in this Thought-feed, they’d somehow send their Thoughts differently. But she remembered what the Governors in orientation had been like—there certainly had been something different about them. But they weren’t necessarily different themselves, only in appearance. Only in hologram. Eleanor wondered how many of the others here came from—but no, was that even—
My name is Dhoria Tsenter. I’m from Beret High in Might. I’m a techist, but chose to go to Sector for a different reason. Not the reason I selected orange, which is my favorite color, as it’s the sometimes color of topaz; which my family uses.
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That is your reason, alter welcome Dhoria, Adventa said. I am Adventa Rosan, and for anyone else Accepting, I am your Color Guide for Sector University for the Class of 2237.
Eleanor thought for a moment that, like orientation, she would be able to see everyone else in the Thought-feed. But it was just an ebb and swell of orange tide. She had missed some introductions; and thought that if she could see them, she could have a better sense.
But, for now, for them—she was a Governor. This disillusion was not hers to dispel. It was only that; it wasn’t real. And none of them were seeing her hologram.
I selected orange. Like a dawn that you forget, she said. As if its imprint in the sky were only her memory. Emotions of understanding flowed through the Thought-feed. I’m Giya. I selected orange, like the dusk that you remember, came Giya’s pretend tenor, and Eleanor stifled her immediate response, to laugh. Welcome Giya, came Adventa’s voice, and then, Weather and stones and coffee. What about the color I feel when I’m in a V-movie, and (in the V-movie) eating real oranges. I’ve had apples and I don’t actually taste anything but I feel it. I’m Senra, came another. Senra Beaudicious.
Eleanor thought, like bounteous and delicious, and to how many prior Beaudiciouses Senra had descended. Senra Beaudicious, I do like V-movies.
I like orange because it’s between red, the color of blood we never spill, and yellow, the sun we are shown by the calendar. Something like that. Juara Torneo.
Welcome, Juara. Adventa’s voice. Rhythmic. In beat, like Hi-fi, with each person’s inclination of color. With all the weather and stones and coffee and V-movies, or blood and the sun, Eleanor thought. Adventa Rosan’s voice was a hidden sheen, the slipping curtain showing a glimpse of sunlight, the semblance of orange that spilled into the day. She liked listening to it.
How did you become a Color Guide?
That is all of you. Again, welcome to Sector University. I am Adventa Rosan, and thank you for selecting orange.
Adventa left the Thought-feed. Eleanor felt that eddy and burst of space open up from within, the space her Color Guide had been occupying in their Thought-feed. Like an orange button, trying to button up a Lowers shirt for something of ceremony, and it popping off.
That was alter short, came Giya’s licorice alto, So what do we do next?
Adventa was surprised, wasn’t she? That she even made it to Sector. So she had to have been made a Color Guide with her admittance, Dhoria said.
I can see that, said Giya. Weren’t we supposed to receive an assignment? This is Sector.
Eleanor thought she’d seen TM you with next steps in that earlier message, but everything had been so… hazy after orientation. Still. She had to remind herself that she was still physically seated on her floafa, which wasn’t floating. Sigh… Maybe all they had to do was select a color, and be—
I have an Exhibit at my school, have to go, said Dhoria, and they left.
I liked Adventa, Juara said, she made sure all of us say why orange was our favorite color. None of us had the same reason.
That was true. Although Giya’s had only been the opposite of hers. Eleanor touched the soft-and-also-hard material of her floafa; it was like an invisible planet, of unknown make, of her being the galaxy. Her eyes still closed, its color was hidden to her. She was at the center; she was the orange sun. Around her, she felt, there was only that continued, meandering ambience from before she'd entered the Thought-feed; and as she looked at Mincy and Bode, their leaves bent, their own feelings slanted, she reached over and pressed them down.
It was nice to meet all of you, she said.
Silver.
I awake to see shadow. My eyes blur. It’s cold, and there’s a weight on my eyelids.
A silver castle on an open plain.
I open my eyes, pushing them open with slightly more pressure. Silver rushes and all I see is white. It’s mounted on the wall, which is silver. It appears like water. But as my eyes adjust its surface ripples, reflecting the shadows that my awakening has provided.
“Melea.” After a moment of thought, I recognize it as my sister’s voice.
My first sister. Mik’vael.
“I’m up.” I sit up. The wall was the ceiling. But then I see the wall which is the same. I reflexively lean back but before I fall through, an arm grabs it. It steadies me as I reach with my right arm to see—behind me is emptiness.
Oh. I understand. I’m in a restoration chamber.
I turn to Mik’vael; when our eyes meet, she shakes her head. “You’re not fully healed, Mel.” Her lavender hair is in disarray; she looks like she hasn’t slept in three days. Because I know she can go two full days. Back in preuni we tried and after fifty hours we both admitted we were tired and that was while we were going for best in the Sector.
“I feel alter.” I move her arm away; but then as I move to shift into a full sitting position, a shock steels through my left leg. It feels—my knee is the mountain. The leg below it is the river. The thigh is the cloudy canopy shrieking into the sky. A hidden, great palace welcoming its guests.
“What?” I say in protest. Restoration chambers are few in High; for even with the weighted gold launchpads striking bone or collar, anything short of immediate death—which of course with our body-maintenance prescriptions never occurs—can be healed after the body is placed into the restoration chamber. It’s 2237. Cancer was cured a hundred years ago.
“Mel—TM me the reason.”
“There’s no one here to overhear.” No more “doctors.” But I enter my Thought-feed and find Sis.
I have an oldest sister. We have an oldest sister. But to my sister: I have Governor Gene. You must too.
What is that? Is that different from what you Scions have? In the real world, Mik’vael carefully presses a finger into my knee. My right leg angles up on its own. I think so. How could we both not have known about Majine? I gently move her hand away from my knee. “Was I hit that badly?”
Mik’vael lets out an unexpected burst of laughter. It’s nice to see. She’s far too serious, has been ever since she became Second Agent. She attempts, weakly, to rearrange her hair. It just crinkles back into place.
“Your captain, Siara, she says she warned you. But you got hit by two at once.” I can tell that, seriousness besides, she’s… actually retaining her composure with the utmost strength she can. It reminds me when I watched her at the Agency Examinations… back when she hadn’t had her aegis, so with her favorite weapon at the time, made from one of those Lowers exercise machines, a long steel bar. Throwing it forty meters and hitting the portal so hard that it rang. Unrestrained… her face, glowing with excitement. Her deep purple hair falling back into place.
Now she’s barely twitching, as if she’s about to cry. Mik’vael.
“Vael, I’m a half-Governor, or whatever that means.” No one’s listening; and they know everything. “Maybe this is… you know, like in Lowers, when they give you a steel leg. But I have the steel inside, and it didn’t—awake until now. Until I was hurt hard enough.”
“Would Governor Gene be superior, though? And you’re a Scion. You’re already physically improved from the best BMP’s out there. I know because we’ve tried so much.”
Because I’ve practiced against her and won in bouts of pure endurance. I force my leg over. The energy that rippled through it comes back but in tighter, shorter points. I force my other leg over, and both hit the floor. Alter titanium; zero percent reflective.
“I’m healed. Mostly. See?” I take a step; nothing happens. I take another; I’m fine. Half-Governor…
How are they born?
“Hmm.” She is still tight-lipped, but isn’t having to hold back anything. “Isn’t your Scion trait physical enhancement? I’m still surprised, I think.”
“It might work differently with Governor Gene.” But I don’t tell her that my true trait—quarterly projections—they know everything—my true trait is something else. This proved it for once and for all.
“Maybe ask our parents? They decided to have their genes be put into birthport,” she continues.
“No. I feel like it’s something different.” I didn’t ask her if she was a tree. “Group of Ten”… just how many Scions are out there, unknown to the Government, or the Government does know, of them and the “Paradisiac Company,” as they did the Furies. “Vael, you forget that I was knocked out by that Agent, name started with an R. And that was not as hard as a two-meter by two-meter circle of solid gold. Two of them.”
“That’s true… I wonder who’s doing the more dangerous thing, you or I.” She forces another laugh, but this time it’s more genuine.
“I wasn’t paying attention. Majine contacted me during the game.”
“She what? I thought Governors have to be—oh. I see.” I start walking; she nods and we leave the chamber, its silver-perfect glow irradiating calm as we step out. A portal is right by the exit aperture; the chamber aide nods as we step into it, their receptor blinking. “Thanks. I’ll go back to the Beacons now—”
“No. Stay in my place for a while. We need to talk more about this.”
“OK, all right.” I send a Thought for Home of my sister, Mik’vael. She does the same; and the emptiness echoes of bright nothingness into our eyes as it all disappears and I open my eyes again to see a tall, tall dome. A wide, open campus of grassy courtyards, a whale-shaped building off in the distance, a tall tree of ochre. White paths that go through it. Various individuals walking through, some holding weapons in the sun. All wearing suits of flynder, iststarkes on their feet, their uniforms bearing their names.
The Agency. I haven’t been here since Mik’vael tried out. Thoughts all enter my mind.
I have to go to this “shareholder’s meeting.” From a raider’s game—by Governor’s Seat. I press a finger to my receptor. Access other Thought-messages. I see a column of names… Siara, Bodi Ayer, Vie. I read them as Mik’vael leads me onto the grounds of the place I once fought against. Former Fury, dabbling with raiders, now part Governor. A player in a game by those above… whose trait is a piece, a piece of it all.
I wonder… I barely hear Mik’vael introducing me to the first Agent we come across. I wonder if even the Powers, Agate and Jaceus and the others, in Sector II are connected to this. Or the world Jaceus came from. Or how it all began… Scions’ traits and magic in a world so controlled by technology. I wonder if purification itself…
The portals.
“She just came out of restoration, and it’s her first time here…”
I shake my head hard and clear all thoughts. I look—
—A tall Agent with red hair is standing there, and the hair color’s changed, but I recognize him immediately. It’s that Agent. A name beginning with R.
“… It’s Raegoth now. No, no apostrophe. You’re… d’Voris?”
“Melea.”
He frowns, but then just as quickly nods, as if to himself. “I didn’t know you two were siblings.” Mik’vael shakes her head in frank amazement.
Incoming Thought-message from Raegoth Ni’rial. He’s wearing a receptor. He hadn’t before, I realize. Accept.
Given events recently I suspect your visitation is of similar significance. What were you last thinking of before I spoke to you?
My prior suspicion falls. I’m just a piece…
Portals. It’s all the portals. Everything.
Just as I thought. Just as I thought. Thank you. “I was her partner, too. Time passes so quickly,” he says, and Mik’vael responds, “She knows that. Sara still challenging you?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m outside. If she does so again, it’ll be in full view of the Agency…”
Mik’vael laughs, and I hesitate. Where does he fall into all of this?
Who are you? I ask.
In the real world, he’s smiling and talking well with my sister. His eyes are ordinary and they see what I do. But now I no longer trust what I do see. Scion, Governor, full-blooded… where does it end?
I’m nearly there. Or I’m just at the beginning. I’ve been writing. “What is being a raider like, Melea?” he asks.
“It’s fun. But I’m not on the Beacons yet.”
“They’re a good team.” Writing helps me to remember. My ancient memories I’ve learned to transport there instead. And I’ve realized this.
“Nice seeing you, Mik’vael. Melea—welcome to the Agency.”
If the portals reflect the two we have here, the ones for purification… My former partner, you won’t remember, but his name was Hector, and he had blue hair. My future… my past. He was my portal. And to him I was the purification. And to me… is the god Horus.
“You too, Raegoth. Nice meeting you.” He steps away, and Mik’vael, shaking her head in comic disagreement, points ahead to the tree. Its dark red boughs seem to shake lightly in the wind that passes us. “That’s the Thousandtree. We pretend it’s been there a thousand years…”
Is that a metaphor? I’m not following you. I’m sure you know about Governor’s Genes and the other world with magic but gods can’t be—
‘Metaphor.’ Everything is. I’ve remembered many things I’ve forgotten. I’ve still many, many years to go. But my advice for now—
Don’t go into the portals. They alter your memory.
Raegoth leaves the Thought-feed.
They—
A rush of images, all the times I’ve casually stepped into one. Thought for home. Thought for my sister. Thought for HQ. Thought for Beacons…
A memory, so faint it’s lighter than a hologram appearing in a dream…
Hands, lifting me out of birthport. I shouldn’t be able to see, but make out two like birthports, two to my left. Both are empty. One of them is wet. Glimmering with the residue of a golden liquid.
Mik’vael and Majine. The memory fades but I now remember. How had I forgotten? Born with two sisters, one of whom made into a Governor out of birthport. Out of portal. They may not have the same shape but they are the same shape.
Each and every time.
Each and every time.
We are being purified.
What do you know of the god, Horus, I asked.
Senra looked at me askance, as they looked up from the book they were reading. Staring at the letters from above and mirror, I could discern a description of a child sitting in the rain, waiting for it to continue, as their schoolteacher designed bodiezes on the bench beside them. In that moment I could have used my receptor to identify its title and author, but then I thought, of the thing in my mind, about that boy in the sky, flying his great blue bird with its golden wings.
It was something I had written. Something I could continue rather than wait. The thought of its existence continually surprised me, like departing the chamber of dreams to find one who comforts and completes you; perhaps still there, but still there with you.
He doesn’t have enough adaptations, Senra said. A few. Some treat the god in the long form, as they should, since he is immortal. But none long enough.
I could sense their disappointment. But then again, Agent Senra, known also by the epithet Avalon, was rather disappointed by most questions that penetrated the fictional veil. After these past few meetings, my first conclusion has remained, that of any human being I had met in my memory, Avalon was the only one who had read more than I.
I stood to move over to the aisle; running my fingers over some titles. All those I had read. Do any of those adaptations treat him as real, was my following question, and Senra turned the page, answering his portrayal by the Kingslayer, but I think you mean differently, and it was the penultimate, for Senra was a vivacious reader, one both fast and astute. I enjoyed these meetings; while I learned little, in Senra’s wide swathe of knowledge, I often enjoyed watching them read.
Is Horus real, is your question, they said. I nodded. Great golden wings. In a rush of wind and blazing light. I know to some he is, or rather was, by belief in their worlds. But I also think about this myself sometimes, Raegoth. Whether the world of fiction can ever truly break our own. With those words Senra themselves stood, closing the spine; the pages partly falling into place with the diminishing space. Once our visionices is ready, you should go there. It’s the last medium, they said, as they adjusted the lining of their vest collar, making the A in AVALON briefly wink out, like a star. They nodded, and I the same; they then left the library, stepping along on the tiles.
I looked at my hand; it was resting over a V-book. I Thought for the title: Turtle Titanium, book 1 of the Gallant tetralogy, by Rennie Jay. Xeric’s favorite. His first time in our library he’d requested a tome from William, or the Agent who had supervised the aisles before Senra, had received this saga of a visiting architect, one who’d constructed a visorface of a turtle, and proceeded to build tortollan empires around the world. Meeting great fishes, writing short stories with racing hares, but eventually choosing to live solely within their titanium artifice, losing all traces of their former human courage.
Why the Agent, then only six, had favored such a story, was beyond I; but, as Senra had explained, stories found an intrinsic attraction with individuals, in such a way that regardless of author, it was this common imagination that one dipped into, this immense, infinite water, which us readers swam. Some of us spent our lives merely looking at it, occupied by what weathered us, conversing with those beside us, or waiting; some sat close to it, watching also, but relaxed, or fretful with anticipation, observing the shore for a chance to dip their feet; some few sailed the waters, the subject of their curiosity; and yet some others, distant and near the far forest, too small to make out, seemed to be walking on the water itself.
I returned Turtle Titanium to its place, and moved to seek another Agent; or, as they could be, a future reader.
I was in a small library, for as I had discovered, all of the titles we contained were those we had chosen, and Agents frequently borrowed from our aisles. I first scanned the space around me, leaving the table where Senra had sat, surrounded by an aisle nearly a full circle, with a space open, through which I left. I was not near the coffee rotary nor the special space for the aforementioned visionices, that silver sphere I had seen my first time here; but coming upon another series of aisles, spaced together, or rather apart, each about a librarian’s breadth in circumference and height, I soon heard the turning of white, and moved through the standing aisles into a section grouped like those still in Lowers, a series of rectangles with space between them for walking. I walked across the tiles, and saw their shapes, and felt their smooth.
Agent 1123 was standing within this one. The Agent was turning the pages of some three books, between some raised small tables, one after another, reading all three at the same time. I Thought for their titles, three different translations, in Neo, High, and modern English, of the same text: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. The three laws wouldn’t be very much changed, I thought, and moved on, catching the scent of coffee in the yellow color; in the next aisle, sitting on a floafa, was Istria, alternating between sips and taking Thoughtnotes from a V-holobook, out of which a great charity of peoples, animals that no longer lived, various stills of flora emergent from its pages, this title too I did not recognize, but Istria shook her head as she saw me.
“Not today, Raegoth; I’ll take a look after you finish the first chapter.” She turned a page, causing a monkey and dog to scamper out of her fingers’ way. I nodded and moved on; in truth, I had only written but two pages, the sensation of just having, or rather that boy in the sky existing, by my hand, or rather by my thought, the simple and powerful child of an idle brain… was enough. But it wasn’t for my fellow Agents, none of whom, including Senra, willing to read those two.
“I’ll try it first. It might be poisoned.”
A twange in my stomach; I did not remember who had said those words. In the next group of chairs, the Agents Ari Cato, Danara, and Liebeslied, all reading their worlds, all contemplating what scheme of character, all giving such temples of the material such V-books were made their royal thought. Ari Cato would on occasion hold his V-book up and out in front of him, as if he were espying the true shape of the galaxy through an early iteration of the telescope; Danara was stifling the most immense sorrow, his shoulders hunched, and barely acknowledged my offer to read the boy in the sky. Agent Liebeslied did look up at me, or rather at my uniform, or rather past me, as if they were still reading, the words and voices somehow behind me. “Behind me, the dancer plunged,” she said, and I turned, but then—
“SNAPE KILLED DUMBLEDORE!!!” screamed Agent More Barry, nearly running into my legs as she nimbly dodged, doing an Olympic leap onto the rim of the couch between Danara’s quaking shoulders and Liebeslied’s right ear, her small arms pummeling its soft material as if she were trying to kill Dumbledore herself; neither the throes of a broken man nor the ear muted to all sounds of the world interrupted by our youngest Agent’s revelation. I laughed, picking up the little Agent, and planting her solidly, but gently, on the floor; her resisting with surprisingly great strength. I knelt before her.
“The Agent Raegoth doesn’t laugh at Agent More Barry’s joke,” she whispered, and I realized her failed attempt at getting her three superior Agents to heed one from another Bureau.
“I was only asking if they’d read something I’d written,” I said, to which More Barry nodded, her face glum, but also serious.
“Can I see?” she asked.
My heart leaped—
—it remained there, hovering, steadfast like the boy in the sky himself; forever unable to continue his flight, so lazy on this Sunday was his creator. I smiled and plucked at the button on More Barry’s overalls. It didn’t come off.
“I’ve only written two pages,” I said; but without thinking, I Thought for V-book I wrote, and the holy cylinder emerged, come into creation, sliding out of nonexistence or shimmering like the angel’s wing, barely seen—no, like the starship departing hyperspace, or the moth, its wings frenzied, escaping the harsh light of the lamp above the porch in the quiet evening of a 1982 Japanese mountainside village; or rather, like the first portals’ failure to fully teleport, their volunteers only partially forming, forever to be. Anne had been particularly irate then.
“More Barry likes the two pages.” The 9th Agent did a soft punch into the R of my uniform. “She wants to read more.” More Barry beamed, and handed the V-book back to me; I could barely hold it. “The person in front of her doesn’t know what to do next.” She giggled, a sound like the bubbles in a fish tank, and happily skipped off. I could barely notice where; I was still holding the thing that I had written, a newfound feeling, for it had weight, it had substance, it had material. A person had read it. It now existed. All my thoughts from it before now made no sense.
I could barely hold it any longer; I dropped the V-book, and slumped back onto the tiles of the floor. The V-book fell flat, opening to the current page; some empty white space, plain and inviting, lay below the most recent words. More empty white space, plain and inviting, continued onto the next page, and onto all the following pages—as a V-book had infinity. The great beyond. A harmless sight of some sort of unknowable abyss. I had to remedy it. I had to fill that great beyond with life, with flight, with feeling. Sensation and stardust and the little in-betweens.
I looked up; I looked back down, at the floor tiles. Covered triangles. My shoulders shook; I couldn’t see past them.
“Yeah, it’s like that,” Agent Ari Cato said, patting my shoulder.
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[1] Avien di Wae’s song – “Ocean Blue” by nanobii, released on his 2017 album Sunshine Express