Location: The Address on the Paper
Time: 2:00 PM, February 14th 2108
With Jacob doing most of the work, it didn’t take long to transport Karen the Icicle the rest of the way. The location in question was just a nondescript looking building.
Well, everything in this fake city was a nondescript looking building, but this one in particular didn’t stand out. I’m not even sure if it was meant to be a fake house or what.
Either way, Emily and I agreed that it wasn’t a good idea to bring Jacob inside, so I gave him my insider information.
It wasn’t very much. I just told him that Emelia Emin has been a target more than once now, and that Hana would almost certainly go to her, bringing Olivia along for the ride. If anything dramatic were to happen, it was going to be there.
Now I didn’t actually know where Emelia was in the first place, but I just played that off as an unimportant detail that wasn’t my problem. An airhead like me wouldn’t think about that detail. I’m sure Jacob would accept that, and I’m sure he could find them if he looked hard enough.
But that’s not important.
Emily and I slid Karen the Icicle onto the blanket I had been sitting on. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Karen was starting to melt. That certainly made it easy to slide her around though.
We each grabbed a corner of the blanket and pulled her into the building. The inside seemed to be completely unfinished, with no walls or structure beyond what was visible from the outside. Apparently, not every building was as detailed as the one our team initially set up in.
Standing in front of some machines I didn’t recognize was a woman I didn’t know.
Her skirt was cut a bit shorter than I’d have suggested, revealing mismatched red and black tights. Her upper body was almost completely covered by a black hoodie with sleeves that extended past her hands. The left side of her face was also covered with her unnaturally black hair that had clearly been styled to do just that.
Despite the fact that I’d never met her before, I instantly recognized her. Even if she didn’t bear a resemblance to Allison, I’d have known who she was.
Alexis Albright.
I mean, she is the one we came to meet, so I can’t exactly act like that’s a particularly skillful deduction.
“Perfect, you’re doing perfect. Everyone is doing perfect. This is the one. Here” Alexis started talking, more so to herself than to us. Then she threw something toward Emily, who caught it.
“What is this?”
“An icepick. You need to get Karen out of that ice. It shouldn’t be too difficult, it should already be melting.”
“Alright, I’m on it.”
Without asking any more questions, Emily started chipping away at the ice encapsulating Karen. It didn’t take long for major cracks to start splitting open.
“Wait. If she won’t ask, then I will. What is happening? Why are you having us do this?”
“We’re going to save Karen.” Alexis started messing with the electronics that I didn’t recognize. One seemed like a tanning bed, and the other was some kind of fish tank-like thing filled with an opaque liquid. I’m pretty sure there was something floating inside, but I couldn’t see through the liquid enough to tell. At least, that’s what I decided to think. I’m not the kind of person to dwell on the fact that whatever was floating in the tank was clearly human shaped and sized.
“No, that’s impossible. She’s dead. I saw her die myself. I let her. . . She’s dead, ok? Saving her at this point is impossible.”
“Exactly. Saving her has always been impossible. Why do you think I’ve been struggling for so long? But we’re finally here. I’ve finally found the route to overcome the impossible. It’s time to break the laws of this reality.”
How grandiose. I didn’t really understand what she was saying enough to believe it or not. I just knew that she seemed to believe what she was saying.
“Then why did you want us? I’m an idol and Emily was working with domestic terrorists.” That was the second major thing on my mind from the start. Someone like Alexis could have surely recruited more useful people to help transport Karen’s body.
“Because it had to be you two. Sure, there are plenty of better options, but they’ll never be able to act outside of the path we’re all forced to take. I’m no different. But for whatever reason, his involvement affected your lives enough to slightly alter your character. That let you make a choice you otherwise never would. That’s what I needed.”
“His? Whose?”
“Jaxon Charlotte. The nullifier.”
Emily reacted to hearing his name, but whoever that was, he meant nothing to me.
“Who? I don’t even know who that is.”
“Irrelevant. This isn’t the time, but let me humor you. If not for Jaxon’s involvement in the slums, Emelia Emin would have been critically wounded by Hana, which would have made it impossible for the Hana and Emelia tag team to chase off Sara, meaning that Sara would successfully capture Emelia. That would have allowed Eren to enact his plan more boldly, removing the need to try and sneak Zea into his custody. And with that no longer necessary, Sara wouldn’t have met Vier, she wouldn’t have been hurt by Emelia, and she wouldn’t have failed both of her missions; so she would have nothing to distract her on her way to kidnap Olivia. The final result here is that she never would have mistakenly kidnapped you. And while you weren’t kidnapped for very long, the reality of having that happen to you, or perhaps the compassion shown to you by Mock Turtle, I can’t be entirely sure; either way, it altered your character enough to change things.”
Stolen story; please report.
Uh huh. What? I had no idea what she was trying to say. I just wanted to know who this Jaxon Charlotte guy was.
“I’m done!” Emily was wiping away the last of the powdered ice from Karen’s body.
“Perfect. Alright, you two, lend me a hand. We have to put her in here.”
Alexis finished messing around with whatever those machines were. The top half of the tanning bed looking thing opened up, revealing a cavity big enough for a person to lie down in.
It really was like a tanning bed.
Spurred on by the other two, I did my part in helping to lift her body into the tanning bed.
“You’ll have to pay me big for this. Usually idols don’t do their own physical labor. This is why I shouldn’t work with amateurs.”
“But this time you are.” Alexis smirked at me.
It was annoyingly difficult, but the three of us managed to get Karen’s body inside the tanning bed. Alexis then hit a few buttons and the top half closed back down. After a few more button clicks it started to emit a purple glow along with a faint humming sound.
“What is this thing? Medical equipment?” Emily asked a question that I wasn’t interested enough to ponder further.
“It used to be. This is the kind of machine hospitals would use to scan an augmented’s brain while they were connected to the information dimension.”
“Then why are you using it to scan Ms. Kaldsen?”
“Do you want to know?” Alexis had a look on her face that was just as annoying as her tone of voice.
“Of course! I’m probably not smart enough to understand, but if it helps save Ms. Kaldsen, then I want to know.”
I didn’t really care, but we’d come this far, so I decided to listen as well.
A big mistake. I really shouldn’t have. She went on for way longer than I thought possible. Anyway, I’ll try to summarize what I can remember.
So basically, Karen was dead. Dead as could be. But that was in the physical world. In the information dimension, the idea, or eidos, of the person known as Karen Kaldsen still existed. In time it would fade, but for now it was still present.
So the plan was to use that tanning bed to scan Karen’s physical body in order to grab a copy of her eidos, of the idea of Karen Kaldsen from the information dimension.
Now it doesn’t take a scientist to know that a medical scanner isn’t capable of performing such a feat, but Alexis assured us it was possible. She extracted some data from some artifact called the philosopher’s stone in order to augment the machine. Apparently, the stone can perfectly break down and reconstruct any idea that exists in the information dimension.
Yeah. I didn’t understand that part at all. I didn’t even understand how she came into the position of anything that unique. She said something about always giving it to someone else for safekeeping before mentioning that she won’t need it again, so she traded it for the fish tank looking thing that was hooked up to the tanning bed.
The fish tank was basically a pod that is used to grow artificial humans. That explains why there was a body floating in there. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. Now that in and of itself wouldn’t be that impressive. Sure, they weren’t exactly common, but there were plenty of industries that were based on growing artificial humans, or at least specific body parts.
This one was different though. A normal pod like that could never produce an augmented. Our brains are just too complex. There’s only one place that can create augmented artificial humans.
Numbers.
That fish tank was a pod to grow Numbers.
When Emily heard that she mentioned something about hearing something or other about one being stolen, but I wasn’t familiar with anything like that. Although it did make sense why she had to trade her valuable stone for it though. Something like that definitely wasn’t easy to obtain.
So, to summarize what everyone probably gathered before I even bothered to try and explain things, the tanning bed scanned Karen, and that information would be sent to the fish tank where Karen’s new body was being grown.
“But, will that new person really be Ms. Kaldsen? Or just a copy of her?”
Emily voiced a complaint that I didn’t really understand. Karen was Karen. What we saw her as made her who she was. Idols are always being replaced by a new, younger talent. That’s why idols never grow old. The character might change faces, but they’ll never die.
“No, it will be her. I’m not just scanning her thoughts or her memories and using that. Thanks to the information I gathered from the philosopher’s stone, I’m recreating the idea of Karen inside a new body. I’m doing something that shouldn’t be possible, but that’s what it takes to cheat an unavoidable destiny.”
“And with these things you can do that?”
A little late to be asking that, don’t you think?
“Statistically? No. By my rough estimates, even under the perfect conditions, there’s only around a five percent chance Karen’s idea can be forced into a different body. Odds are, the idea will instantly be in conflict with the fact that her physical body has changed, and the whole thing will fall apart.”
“Five percent? You had me take part in this performance for a five percent chance? I would never take the stage for something so unlikely. An idol might take risks, but she can’t waste time.”
“No, Olivia, even if it was only a one percent chance, we still needed to try.”
Yeah right, like I care.
“Hold on, hold on.” Alexis tried to calm the situation before I could respond to Emily trying to placate me. “It’s true that the odds aren’t in our favor, but I’ve got that handled. I sent Vier to pick up a woman who can control probability. She’s already made sure there will be a one hundred percent chance of success.”
My phone started to vibrate in my pocket.
“It’s your boyfriend, you should pick up.” The mocking tone in Alexis’s voice became even more pronounced.
“I don’t have a boyfriend, don’t start spreading rumors like that about me. An idol’s only love is for her fans.”
“My apologies.” She gave an exaggerated bow. “He didn’t like that joke much either. Perhaps I should’ve referred to him as your organ donor.”
Why was she bringing that up? Just to show me that I had no secrets? Just to mess with me?
“So what everyone says is true. There’s nothing you don’t know.”
“I appreciate the compliment, but-”
“It wasn’t a compliment.” I cut her off before she could finish her thought. I’m sure she only brought it up to get a rise out of me, but I couldn’t help myself.
Either way, I answered the call. It was in fact Olivier, asking where I was. Oakley called him to come pick us up.
After discussing the situation with Alexis and Emily, it was determined that Emily should just go back to the city with us. Alexis was adamant that if we went back to the city with Oliver, the two of us would be safe, but she couldn’t guarantee anything if we stayed with her. She kept saying that we weren’t meant to be there in the first place, even though she was the one that called us there to begin with.
Alexis’s ramblings aside, I wanted Emily to go back with us already. There were things we needed to discuss, and now that Olivier was on his way to get me I couldn’t stay behind with her.
It was a little annoying that we had to leave before we could see if Karen actually came back to life, but Alexis assured us that she was incredibly grateful for our role in everything, and would make sure to bring Karen around to see us soon.
You know, I didn’t think about it at the time, but why would she need to bring Karen around? Karen would probably come see us on her own.