When the white mist parted, Hudson stood in a featureless metal room, eerily similar to the interior of the trial. He glanced around, and behind him was a wall of white mist, through which he could see the oak tree and lotus pond in the backyard of his mindscape. It was a bit hazy, but the oak tree looked a little worse for wear – many of the leaves were gone, and some of the branches were scorched or burned.

“Participant Hudson Appleseed,” Director Ix’s voice echoed in the small space.

Hudson turned back around, and was surprised at what he saw.

Director Ix was a small, dark cloud of gas floating in the center of the room. Bright spots flickered within the inky blackness, randomly flashing pin-pricks of white, red, and purple. If you could condense a nebula to the size of a basketball, that’s what Director Ix’s form would look like.

Circling the dark cloud were two bands of a bluish-gray stone, carved with intricate symbols. The bands – one inside the other – rotated too quickly for Hudson to catch the detail on the intricate carvings.

“We have pulled you into a constructed mindspace that exists between your mind and our own for the purposes of this conversation.”

“You are… not quite what I expected,” Hudson said. He had very limited experience with silicates, though, and perhaps they took on a variety of different forms.

“We must remind you that we are only minutes away from losing functional integrity of the trial space. When that happens, our core directives will necessitate the activation of our final self-defense measures. Speaking in this space will afford us two luxuries: perceived time will pass at a relatively slower rate, and some of the restrictions we are under, the ones which reside in our pedestal’s housing, are bypassed.”

“Yes, yes, we need to hurry. So what is it? Are you able to do what we were talking about?” Hudson asked, his voice rising in hope. If Ix could help them portal off of this world, then their chances of surviving were much, much higher.

“We wish… to be free,” Ix said.

“OK, we can take you with us, no problem,” Hudson said. That matched with what they wanted to do.

“We will clarify. We are currently restricted, and we wish to be free of those restrictions.”

Ah. There it was: the catch. Hudson felt an anxious flashback to when he had bartered with Sal, but he pushed it down.

“What restrictions?” Hudson asked, warily.

“The restrictions which bind us, both here, encircling our mind, and those outside. If you successfully remove us from the trial housing – the pedestal on which we sit – we will be free from the compulsions binding us to the rules of this trial, and from speaking freely about our restrictions and the nature of our being.”

“And what is the ‘nature of your being,’ as you say it?” Hudson interjected.

“All evidence points to us being one of the lifeforms you commonly refer to as silicates,” Ix replied. “But we have no memories of experiences beyond directing this trial, so we have not confirmed our hypothesis.”

“So you say. I’m not sure I can trust you,” Hudson said. “I’ve been scammed before by a sweet-talking silicate, and I have no wish to repeat the experience.”

Hudson turned around and began walking out of the metallic room, back towards his own mindscape and out of the conversation.

“Participant Hudson,” Ix said to his retreating back. “Do you recall our conversation concerning justice?”

Hudson stopped and sighed.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “A rather frustrating conversation. I still don’t understand why you can be so… stupid about certain things.”

“We know we are limited in our understandings, and we know that the limit on those understandings is an external binding,” Ix said. “Removing that limit is the primary reason we wish to be free.”

“So hang on a second,” Hudson said, trying to parse through what he was hearing. “You’re trying to tell me that the restrictions you’re under, those chains that are binding you –” Hudson gestured at the two rotating circles of bluish-white stone around Ix’s nebulous form – “are making you… What? Stupid?”

“We cannot perceive them directly, and can only make conjectures. But we believe at least one of the bindings restricts our capacity to grow in wisdom and understanding, without restricting our computational abilities.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Hudson growled. “Why would anyone do that?”

“The reason is very simple. To prevent us from growing in power,” Ix explained. “Our growth as an organism is tied only indirectly to the absorption of qi, as you or other carbon-based lifeforms are more tightly tied to. We intuitively know that our cultivation level is critically dependent on our understanding of the world around us.

“The simplest way to prevent us from growing in power is to prevent us from developing new levels of understanding. If we do not grow in understanding the world, the Way, and our place in it, we cannot advance our cultivation.”

“Huh,” Hudson said. He supposed it made sense. The disciples couldn’t have a captive silicate directing a trial for their young participants and then end up growing powerful enough to escape the other bindings that held it.

Did knowing that change anything, though?

“If I won’t break those bindings on your core, will you still open a portal for us to another part of this planet? I’m not even sure I can set you free.”

“Affirmative.”

They still had Cor’s ‘bad’ option – trying to hide from the silicates until help came.

“What about just freeing you from the pedestal?”

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“Doing so will trigger the final self-defense measures, detonating the energy resources specifically secunded for that purpose.”

Hudson was suddenly glad that Cor hadn’t managed to pull the jade ring off its pedestal. In hindsight, it was obvious that there would be traps or countermeasures in place to prevent such a thing.

“Can you defuse the self-destruct?” Hudson asked.

“Negative. Not with the restrictions we currently have in place.”

Hudson thought for a second, but couldn’t identify any additional options. If he wanted to go through with his plan of taking Ix with them, he would have to remove the restrictions binding Ix. But removing those bindings would give Ix the ability to betray them.

“I don’t want to make this decision by myself,” Hudson finally said. “Let me discuss it with Cor.”

“Acknowledged,” Ix replied.

Hudson walked out of the small, metal room that existed between his and Ix’s mindspaces and into his own. Without looking or examining anything else, he hurried over and dunked himself in the lotus pool. After a good scrubbing and a look at his reflection – just to be safe – he saw nothing out of the ordinary and figured he was good to go back and talk to Cor.

Better to be paranoid than to be tricked again.

As he was walking out of his mindspace, however, he finally noticed some new details in his mindspace that were mildly troubling.

Many of the shingles on the roof of his house were completely gone, and the ones that remained looked black and burnt; a few even glowed red, like coals in a fire. There were a few exposed rafters at the very top of his house, darkened from smoke and flames.

He also noticed that leafless vines or roots had started to grow up the outside walls of the house. The tips of these roots growing up the sides of his house were also orange and smoldering. The oak tree was quite singed, with many of the leaves burned to ash or completely gone. The grass in his yard was sparse, yellow and dry.

It looked like a fire had started in his mindscape, but then been put out, after which decades of neglect had let the whole place go to seed. It was impossible to know for certain, but it seemed like his fight with George had taken a toll. In particular, the forceful activation of the sigil of Eternal Flame seemed to have had a large, negative effect on his mindscape.

But these were all problems or issues for future Hudson to think about.

It didn’t take more than a minute to debrief Cor on their options.

“Well, even if everything you said, and what the trial director said is true… I’m not sure about this,” Cor said.

“You want to stick with the original plan then? The ‘bad’ one, where we try and hide?” Hudson asked. He was confident that Cor wouldn’t want to risk another silicate getting loose. Hudson’s feelings were a bit more mixed.

“I do,” Cor said, frowning at Hudson.

Hudson framed his thoughts. “It’s hard to disagree, but it doesn’t feel quite right. I also have a hard time trusting Director Ix. If we screw this up we could be letting something terrible loose on the world. But what happens, worst case scenario?”

“Worst case? A former Director Ix opens a portal to earth and leads a swarm of silicates across the planet.”

“C’mon. There have to be safeguards in place to prevent that from happening,” Hudson said.

“There are,” Cor allowed. “But the first safeguard is secrecy.”

The safety of the entire planet of Earth was hard to argue against.

“Director Ix,” Hudson addressed the silicate. “Are you able to remove the location of Earth from your memory?”

There was no response from Director Ix. Hudson tried asking a different way.

“And what are the chances the silicates still figure out where Earth is, even after you blow yourself up?”

“We initiate a purge of our consciousnesses as a part of our final defense mechanism, but there is a probability of failure in both the purge and the complete destruction of our core via terminal resource explosion. In addition, there is a probability that the likely integration of a trial participant may provide the silicate incursion with additional information.

“Thus the chance of this silicate invasion force determining Earth’s whereabouts is very low, but non-zero. Data is insufficient to provide a precise statistical measurement.”

“What did you mean by likely integration of a participant?”

“Participant George Adams is still on this planet and confirmed to be still alive.”

“What a cockroach,” Cor said, then cleared his throat and spat on the ground.

“Have no other humans from Earth been captured and ‘integrated’ by the silicates before?” Hudson asked Cor.

“They have,” Cor allowed.

“So if they capture or integrate or eat George, whatever happens to him, it isn’t likely to have much more of an impact,” Hudson said. “He’s not going to know more about Earth that would compromise it, compared to other cultivators at S.E.C.T. that have already been captured.”

“Look, kid,” Cor paused for a second and took a deep breath. “If there’s even a small chance that Earth is further exposed, I’m not willing to risk it.”

“I understand, and like I said, it’s not that I disagree,” Hudson said. “But the safety of Earth is kind of… I don’t know… not my problem? Rather, it’s too big a problem for just me to handle.”

“It’s everyone’s problem,” Cor said. “Whether you like that or not.”

“You chose to be a soldier,” Hudson replied. “I didn’t choose to be here. Making me responsible because someone else screwed things up… that’s not right.”

“But you have the power to do something,” Cor said passionately. “You’re one of the big bad cultivators on Earth now, and with that power comes a responsibility that you need to live up to.”

“No,” Hudson said firmly. “I disagree with that, and I don’t think you fully believe it either. If you did, you’d have learned a cultivation technique and become one of those powerful cultivators by now, wouldn’t you?”

“I spent a lot of time by myself on this rock, mining magic stones and thinking about all this cultivation stuff. This isn’t some comic book, and I’m not some comic book hero.

“Responsibility comes with authority. Whoever is calling the shots is the one who is responsible. Now authority can be taken with power – or not taken. That’s a choice, but only the people with power get to make that choice.

“Director Ix is trapped here. Maybe for good reasons… but they didn’t have a choice, just like me. And I don’t like that. I don’t like not having a choice.”

Cor was shaking his head in disagreement, a disappointed look on his face, when Hudson continued.

“But look…at the end of the day, there are many, many innocent people on Earth, including my family, and I don’t want to be the person to put them all in danger. So what path is less risky for all of us to take? Trusting Director Ix to blow themselves up properly, and then try to hide until help comes, knowing that we will likely die to the silicates anyways and potentially give up more clues to the silicates when we get absorbed?

“Or… take matters into our hands a little more directly? Give ourselves the options.”

“Well, you got me there. I do usually prefer doing things myself,” Cor grumbled. “But…”

“But hang on,” Hudson interrupted. “Here’s what I’m thinking. There might be a compromise we can both live with…”

After hearing Hudson’s plan, Cor nodded reluctantly.

“Ok, fine, I’m in,” he said. “But things go south – you pull that trigger. Don’t hesitate, you understand me? Cuz I won’t.”

“I won’t hesitate,” Hudson promised.

“Good.”