CHAPTER 10
“So, let me get this straight,” Max said, later, and took a deep breath.
“We died.”
“Yes,” I replied.
“And then we came back to life.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
“Because some parasite got shoved into our brains.”
“More of a symbiote attuned to...” Emma began, then trailed off. “But yes.”
“And there’s monsters.”
“Yes,” I said, again. This was not the first time I’d helped Max grapple with recent events, and somehow he never seemed to get much more of a grip on them.
“And aliens,” he continued.
I didn’t say anything, just to see what’d happen.
“Alien space knights,” Max continued, without missing a beat.
“I think you can go with alien or space, really,” Emma said. “Like, if they’re alien knights, they’re from space, right?”
Max kept on, “And now we can alter the super-reality under everything.”
“Well, then it would be a sub-reality,” I begin, trailing off. “Essentially, yes.”
“To get superpowers.”
“Seems like it.”
Max nodded. I hoped he’d manage to process it this time.
“And, on top of that,” Max said, frowning, “there’s some freaky-ass shadowman who might’ve also been the one who killed all three of us and then sicced some freaky-ass monster dog on us when it didn’t take.”
I didn’t think that was quite the case, but I also didn’t have any better idea as to what happened in the cave.
“Something like that,” I replied.
Max went quiet. We sat in the bizarre alien temple for a little longer, with its walls and floors of weird not-quite stone. I thought of something my history teacher had told me the year before. That there was this saying that people liked to attribute to Lenin, but one he did not actually say. Mister Fisher was very firm on this point—Lenin did not say it, you could not trust everything you found on the Internet. The quote was: there are decades when weeks happen, and weeks when decades happen.
As I sat there, I thought that whoever had coined that term had gotten it wrong. Weeks when decades happen? Try hours when lifetimes happen, Vlad. If Lenin had said that, then no wonder he’d made a better revolutionary than mathematician.
At the other end of the room, a section of wall slid away and Kree stepped inside. There was some other things Max had left out. The aliens were hanging around or living in or near (or in?) Stonestead, and one of them really liked chocolate.
“Want one?” Kree asked, holding out a handful of bars. Her full-black eyes and fanged smile still did not seem remotely friendly, no matter what brand of confectionery she offered.
“No, I’m good,” I replied. She offered the bars to Emma and Max, and both of them just waved her off.
“Suit yourselves,” Kree said. “More for me. But I’d have some, if I were you.”
“And why’s that?” Emma asked.
“Because it’s time to begin your training.”
And, I hoped, to get some answers.
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A part of me thought I was stupid to stick around, but it was clear that Kree and her associate, a man who was apparently her father in the biological sense because who else could he be, weren’t going to just let us leave. Who would let someone, or three someones, just walk away with the keys to the cosmos?
And, like the cave, like him, I had to know what was going on.
Kree led us deeper down the halls and corridors of the strange place that I could only think of as a temple but felt more like a crypt. She led us into an open space that made me think of an auditorium, and she settled before an altar, turning to look at us.
“Attention, novitiates!” She barked the words like she expected compliance. “I have been instructed by Knight-Marshal Maarek’taal to guide you through the initial stages of ontological shock. You may refer to me as Initiate Kree’taal.”
“My mind is pretty thoroughly blown at this point,” Max replied. “Maybe keep it to the small words?”
Kree’s eyes narrowed. She set one hand on the altar. It occurred to me that she only had four digits on each hand. Above our heads, the wandering firefly lights twisted and coalesced and multiplied into dozens, hundreds, and more—until I realized were looking at a vast projection of the Milky Way.
“Whoa,” Emma murmured. “Not bad for Daddy’s Little Girl.”
“Emma,” I muttered in response, just as Kree cleared her throat.
“This,” she said, “is our galaxy.” It was demarcated with lines into areas and sections that I couldn’t even guess at the meaning of. A bright golden dot pulsed within one of the spiral arms. “This is the location of your home star, and the world you call Earth. And this,” she continues, pointing to a vast swath of green on the other side of the galaxy, “is the Galactic Star League.”
“That’s...” I tried to run a quick estimation in my head. “That’s half the galaxy. You control half the galaxy?”
“Control is not the right word,” Kree replied. “The Star League simply is. It has existed longer than your species has known the written word.”
“Alright,” Max said. “Okay. I can handle this.”
I said, “So how do you Incarnates fit into it?”
Kree drew herself up, and her bearing became somehow more imperious. “We are one of the oldest institutions within the League. We embody the Pax Systematica—its first adherents, its facilitators, and its guardians. Where the League is threatened, where the Pax necessitates intervention, we are there.”
“Funny,” Emma said, “Because it looks to me like you’re a long way from home, purple-streak.”
“Part of the responsibilities of our Order is to guide all forms of sentient life into the greater harmony of the Pax, the ecumene. That is why my father and I came to your world, although we have since become stranded. But, as they say, all good things come in threes.”
“Isn’t that the other way around?” Emma asked me, but quietly.
“So,” I said, “half the galaxy operates under the...” How had her father put it? “Interface that allows them to manipulate what underlies reality.”
“That’s correct.”
“Then why are you all the way out here?” I gestured at the galactic projection. “Look at how far we are away from the League. And why Stonestead, of all places? Why not just roll up on the UN and go ‘hey, want some superpowers?’”
Kree bit her cheek. I wonder if that was an expression all sentient life shared, or if she’d picked it up from our media.
“I do not know. I do not believe your world is ready. But if the Pax has guided us here, then there must be a reason. Your world must be necessary. A piece in the design.”
“You keep talking about this Pax thing,” I began. “What exactly is it?”
Kree tilted her head back again.
“It’s a solution,” she said, like it was obvious.
“To what?”
“Limitations. The ecumene learned quickly the facts of the universe—that space is finite, that consumption shall outpace resources, and that evolution crawls toward imperfection. Existence is not infinite. And the greatest minds from across the League knew that crossing any of those thresholds, whether through population collapse or open conflict, would result in the deaths of trillions and the loss of entire civilizations.”
I stared up at the map of the galaxy and tried to imagine the scale of it.
“Like you, the ecumene once thought that reality was only what they could perceive—what they could see, hear, touch, and taste. They created the Total Codex—a record of all knowledge within the League—and, through it, created the Pax Systematica.
“Initially, the Pax Systematica was the answer to material limitations: a system of regulated growth and watchful guardians. A doctrine of stability and equilibrium. A systemic order that would delay any existential crises to the last possible moment, if not avert them entirely.”
“I get it,” I said, nodding. “‘Systematic peace.’”
Kree nodded. “Only there was a problem. The systematic doctrine was still built on a limited, material understanding. In that sense, it was as finite and fallible as anything else, and just as limited by entropy.”
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Max raised his hand. “What’s entropy?”
“It’s to do with energy, I think,” I replied. “Themodynamics. How things go from order to disorder—if you heat up an ice cube, it turns into water. Stuff like that.”
“A fair appraisal,” Kree said. “The Pax became what it is today with the discovery of the symbiotes—the Others, Those Beyond. With their assistance and perspective, it allowed the Pax Systematica to become truly transcendental. The way my father tells it, the League is a bazaar of wonders, a cosmic ecumenopolis, the peak of civilization, of life itself...”
She trailed off, looking up at the galactic map.
“You’ve never seen it?” Emma asked.
A moment’s pause. “No. But perhaps, one day...”
“And these... Others,” I said. “That’s what is sitting behind my eyes right now.”
“Yes,” Kree replied, looking at me.
“Okay. So, uh, what is it?”
“It is a non-local acausal phenomenon-entity, a being that exists two steps below the substrata of our universe. Think of them as components of how the universe keeps itself running.”
Max groaned. “I’m lost.”
“Semi-sentient energy that operates outside causality,” Kree said, frowning, as if we were stupid for not getting it, as if any of it made sense, as if anything would make sense again. “When combined with a conscious mind, when incarnated within our strata, they allow one to manipulate the underlying framework of the universe.”
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“I’m sorry,” Fletcher says. “What?”
I lean back, sighing.
“You have to stop interrupting me.”
“I just don’t understand how this makes sense.”
“Now extrapolate that response by seven billion and multiply it by the total number of nuclear warheads, and you’re seeing why they had to keep quiet.” Of course, that’s not the full truth, but I don’t know if he’s ready for that. The same way I wouldn’t have been.
I gesture to the scattered, crystalline remains of the Necker diagram. “Think of the cube. Your brain can’t handle ambiguity. It just isn’t designed to. Things are zeroes or ones. It decides whether the cube is one way or the other. When faced by some kind of paradox, your brain just decides that one perspective is more true.”
“But it could be wrong,” he says.
“Could be?” I ask. “Think of the brain like an fleshy mass in a calcium box. It can’t do anything without senses—your eyes, ears, nose, hands.”
“An interface.”
“Yes,” I reply, nodding. “And it’s not perfect. Like Maarek said, our standard interface selects only for reproduction. Think about your eyes. There’s so much information just hurtling around the universe and we can see, what, three hundred nanometers worth of it?”
Something like that. I hope Fletcher can correct me, but I know he can’t.
“We don’t need to see anything more than that in order to reproduce, so we don’t see any more than that.” I consult the symbiote, and it whispers to me: 0.0035 percent. “We can’t even see a single percentage point of the information that’s out there. These senses—” And I wave at my face, not caring that I might seem completely unhinged, “—are completely bullshit. And even then, our brains don’t comprehend everything our senses tell us. We assume so much, and know so little. Our senses are products of mindless evolution and they are great for what they are, but they are limited—and limiting.”
“And the symbiotes... remove the limits?”
“Something like that. They’re just a better interface. But they have limitations, too. But color, light, sound? What even are they, Agent? You think your senses are the be-all end-all? Come on, even on this planet we’ve got sharks that can sense electricity and birds that can guide themselves via magnetic fields. Oh,” I add, thinking. “And the dodo.”
“The dodo,” Fletcher replies, dubious.
“It’d evolved isolated from anything that might prey on it. It wasn’t afraid of humans. Evolution hadn’t prepared it for humanity. It hadn’t prepared them for the things humanity brought with them: dogs and pigs and cats and deforestation. The dodo evolved for a very limited slice of a very limited part of a very limited planet. Millions of years of blind reproductive strategy rendered extinct in under a hundred. It’s the height of arrogance to assume we are any different.
“Especially when we know we are not alone.”
“But if this was true,” he says, unable to free himself, “there’d be some evidence. Something. Anything. Something would be evident.”
I shrug. “What does it mean for something to be evident when evolution has made it so you can’t physically see the evidence?”
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Kree ordered us to sit on the floor cross-legged, and we did. She made us rest our hands on our knees and I half-expected her to start chanting ohm.
“There is one thing I must guide you through, before I take you to see the Knight-Marshal. You need to learn how to process and interpret your relationship with the symbiote through these initial stages. It’ll be easier if we do this one at a time. Caleb, we’ll start with you. Relax, focus, and let the symbiote pierce the veil.”
Being ordered to relax and focus at the same time felt like a riddle. How can you relax your mind while asking it to hone in on a particular detail? I don’t know how long I sat there but, just as I was about to say something, the air rippled, and the tesseract unfolded before me again.
But this time, I could make sense of it. It was like a holographic projection of a thought. I could see it, yet also see past it. Like a mental image that had been pressed into my eyes.
“What is this?” I asked.
“We call it the tesseract,” Kree replied. “A bridge as your mind adjusts.”
YOU
Caleb Cross
Species: Human
Class
-̷̜̩͒͠_̷̧̞̬̫̣͍͐̽̂̓̀-̶̭̖̜̜͈̺̓́̍̆̇̂̓̕_̵̭̼͚͓̼̈́͒̈́͠-̸̨̻̘̜̩̜̓̾̎_̵̹̗̤͈̀̂-̷̨̟̘̯̠͎̠̲̂͂̊̀̆
Well, it’d gotten that right. “I can read it,” I said, and I scrolled through it.
US
Status: Synced
Condition: Healthy/Lucid
Synchronicity: Stable
Synergy: 1/5
QP: 3/3
XP: 0
“Your relationship with your symbiote is nothing like you’ve experienced,” Kree said. “You are not just Caleb Cross anymore, but a new being. These readings are good—it is important to monitor them. Losing coherency or becoming unstable...”
“The thing in the cave,” I said.
Kree nodded. “What you encountered there was the danger you now pose to yourself and others—the entity in the cave was, we believe, a disentangled psyche. One that has become unstuck in time. A symbiote without a host. Raw energy on the cusp of dissipating into cosmic radiation.”
“What was it doing here on Earth?” Emma asked.
“I do not know. It may not be possible for us to know. Either way, it isn’t immediately relevant. Know this: the relationship with your symbiote is the core part of being an Incarnate. It is simple in nature: act in accordance with the Pax, utilize the powers of your symbiote, and it shall reward you.”
“And if we don’t?” Max asked.
“Then your synchronicity will mis-align, and you risk disentanglement. Caleb, please, continue.”
I nodded. “I’m seeing some words and some... numbers.”
COMPEL
GUIDE
RESIST
POWER
Strength
1/5
Intelligence
1/5
Presence
1/5
GRACE
Dexterity
1/5
Manipulation
1/5
Agility
1/5
NERVE
Endurance
1/5
Sagacity
1/5
Volition
1/5
“And they all say one,” I finished. “Is that normal?” I asked, lamely.
“For now,” Kree replied, “it is. There are two numbers that hold special resonance to our symbiotes and, through them, the Pax itself. They are three and five.”
Something rolled through me like a pressure wave. Distantly, I was aware of something. Did my symbiote... like that?
“Did anyone else feel that?” Max asked.
“Buddy,” Emma said, “I think I tasted that.”
“Do not worry about these statistics overmuch,” Kree said. “At this moment, your symbiote is translating the Pax into something your mind can understand—eventually you will, like myself, be free of it. Still, it can be useful from time to time.”
“Right,” I said.
“These statistics underpin the Pax Systematica. Broadly speaking, they reflect one’s ability to compel, manipulate, and resist local phenomena. While your biological processes have been restored, and still function, you’ll find that honing your abilities via the Pax is much more efficient than more traditional methods. These statistics also broadly align with aspects the Triadic Order. Caleb, please—the next section.”
I read each one out.
FIRST ORDER
Forces
0/5
Matter
0/5
Mind
0/5
SECOND ORDER
Life
0/5
Death
0/5
Space
0/5
THIRD ORDER
Chronos
0/5
Kairos
0/5
Arche
1/5
At each word, I felt something twitch in my skull, something speaking, but the words were indistinct, as if out of a fading dream. Kree nodded. “The symbiotes are the source of our power, but the Triadic Order is how we may utilize it constructively, for the benefit of the Pax and all sentient life.”
“Okay, look, does your dad turn into a truck?” Emma asked.
Kree tilted her head, and moved right along. “There are three Orders of three Aspects with five Semblances each, moving from least complex and dangerous to most complex and dangerous. You will start with the first Semblance—the art of Knowing an aspect of reality—and, by the time you have reached the final Semblance, the act of Invoking, you will be in tune enough with the Pax Systematica to know when and how to utilize such power.”
Again, that odd note of resonance within my mind, like fingers through the crevices of my brain.
“These Orders must be learned in sequence,” Kree said, but I could pick up on the bubbling excitement undernearth her words. She may have been an alien paladin, but I don’t think she was much older than us. Had she lived here for her whole life, wherever this place was?
Had she ever shared this with anyone? Had any friends?
“The First Order concerns itself with inorganic substances—Forces, Mind, Matter. From there, you can progress to the Second Order, which opens up the ability to affect organic substances—Life, Death, and Space. And lastly, there is the Third Order, which is influencing beyond matter.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Time and fate,” Kree replied, and her demeanor cracked: “And trust me—it’s pretty fucking radical.”
“Did you just say radical?” Emma asked.
Kree tilted her head. “Is that not proper slang?”
“Hey, so,” I interrupted, before it could go any further. “I’ve got eight zeroes and a one in Arche. What does that mean? How do I go about unlocking this awesome cosmic power?”
Kree grinned, showing off her fangs.
“Well, how about we take this outside?”