“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.” - Euripides

What the hell?

I mean seriously, how am I even supposed to feel about this. Kacela is a slave in a loving relationship with her captor? I mean sure there’s Stockholm syndrome, but is that all it is? They greet each other pleasantly, embrace in moments of stress, and I haven’t seen any timidity born of abuse. Did she love him first or was she enslaved first? Does the order matter?

The man with the books has left, without me even noticing. Was he there when I came back from recording this Ether-script? Nevermind, focus; does the order matter? If she was enslaved and then fell in love she’s in Stockholm territory. If she fell in love and then was enslaved it’s just culturally odd. But just odd, no worse than some of the cultures in the real world.

So, it’s a matter of normative ethics. If ever I tried to build a system using normative ethics I would lose my mind before I finished. Reconciling the different branches alone would be impossible. But if a society decided on a single branch of that philosophy, they might be able to pull it off for at least a century before the generational values would start to conflict. Maybe longer.

Calmed down a bit, I decide on a new task: find out more about how Toric and Kacela fell in love.

At that very moment someone taps me on the shoulder.

“Are you ready to go?” It’s Toric.

“Is there somewhere I can put these books? I still need to reference them.”

“We can put them in my lab, come on.” Toric gestures with his hand and starts for the door.

I close the open books as well as the notebook and hold them in a stack against my stomach. Toric leads the way back to the lab and I spend the journey looking around for more slaves. I don’t spot a single one among the research staff, but I see a couple emptying bins. I leave the book-stack in the lab and snag the geode before returning to Toric who’s standing by the door. He guides me through the rest of the complex and we meet up with Kacela outside her office, near the front door. She nods a greeting to me and hugs Toric. It seems genuine, not perfunctory. When the three of us get outside it’s already dark; only a few stars are shining alongside the crescent moon. It’s a cloudless night but the air is warm. I wonder if this is a warm climate or a warm season.

When we get back to Kacela and Toric’s house, Toric breaks off up the stairs to get Emmaline.

“Come, cook with me again.” Kacela doesn’t even give me time to look around. ”You’re not awful.”

As we pass the guest room, I toss the geode on the bed before going into the kitchen. Kacela is already in the fridge and pulling ingredients. I wonder who does the shopping. Do they even need to shop or is this some variant of communist society? There are; some possible fruits that look like a potato had a baby with a strawberry, a couple vegetables that look like those flowering onions but are eggplant purple, and what looks like a bunch of peapods big enough to hold grapes. She leaves these on the counter where I worked last night then pulls some meat and places it where she worked.

“Dice these,” she points to the potatberries; “Pluck these,” the flowering eggplants; “Shuck these,” the peapods. “Grab that bowl up there and you can just toss them in and I’ll spice and cook them.” She lays out a knife and pulls out the garbage can again then leaves me to work.

I expect her to start humming again, when she doesn’t I feel disappointed; her voice had added an otherworldly quality to the kitchen last night and without it it’s too easy to think I’m in the real world. It occurs to me that I could do all the work she assigned me with entrainment but it almost feels rude. Like, why would she have laid out the knife if I wasn’t expected to use it. I try to think of something to say but I only prepped for during-dinner conversation and so I’m left lacking. I don’t want to pick up our conversation from earlier today so I focus on the work.

The potatberries turn out to be more of a melon than anything and the flowering eggplant oozes a sweet juice when you squeeze too hard. The peapods hold a blue bean with white spots. It doesn’t take long to get everything prepped and after I put it all in the bowl for Kacela she motions to the dinnerware cabinet. I grab the dinnerware and bring it to the dining room. I take the moment to look at the sculpted walls. There are happy families, great feasts, even what looks like a birthday party.

I hear Kacela call for Toric and then she enters with the food. Toric arrives shortly after with Emmaline and places her in her seat before sitting down. Kacela serves herself the fruits and vegetables, which appear to have been pan fried as one side has a dark brown crisp. Toric takes some of everything while Kacela starts mashing up her mix for Emmaline. I follow Toric’s lead and give everything a try.

“Mmm, excellent.” I don’t lie. The sweetness from the flowering eggplant matches well with the spice from the beans while the potatberries provide a cool mellowing flavor to cancel out the spice.

“Thank you,” says Kacela, getting only some of the food on the spoon to stay in Emmaline’s mouth.

“So, how did you two meet?”

“Toric, take over.” Kacela smiles as she passes the spoon to Toric. “It all started on the Day of Bindings. We were thirteen and our families agreed to bind us. From then on we were, I mean are, sorry dear, paired together for our training and expected to live together and share family and fortunes.”

“At thirteen?” My history is a little shaky but arranged marriages at thirteen sounds so young. At thirteen, I was still interested in rocks and bugs and books. I am still interested in rocks and bugs and books but- nevermind.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Some families bind earlier but ours had a lot of negotiating to do. Toric always did better in academics than me, but I had him beat on the training ground. Never lost a sparring match.”

“Which was a little emasculating until the tournament. That shut everyone up.” Toric’s lack of attention to Emmaline allows her to grab the spoon and mush the food between her fingers.

“Shut them up about you, but it got me more attention.” Kacela smirks, “After the binding you move into a city-wide training system. The tournament is the first chance for the fighters to see how they place on a city-wide scale. My final match was close but only because he had so much weight on me.”

“How old were you then?”

“Only fourteen. I think they give us a year to get used to everyone before something as divisive as the tournament happens.”

Only two years until she leaves for the forest, not to return for fifteen years. And she comes back to Toric? I try to say it delicately:

“What kept you together?

“I confessed my love right after the tournament,” Toric says, his face spread in a grin.

“I wasn’t ready.” Kacela looks at her plate and takes a slow bite. “We were friends and I knew we had our whole lives together, but…”

“And then you came back.” Toric provides, leaving the fifteen year gap undetailed.

“Of course my family had disowned me. They wouldn’t even open the gates. I went to Toric’s family estate but they wouldn’t let me in either. So, I just waited outside. I’ve never been more scared.” Kacela takes another bite without looking up.

“I saw her as soon as I came around the corner. I was working on my third master thesis and all week my mind had been nothing but Ether-script. Work, home, meals, walks, I was always thinking about it. But when I saw Kacela it all stopped. Of course, I tripped. Books everywhere.”

“It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.” Kacela actually blushes. “I went to help him, no idea how I was going to pick up a book with my hands shaking so bad. And before I could even bend, he hugged me.” Kacela places a hand on Toric’s forearm, squeezing gently. “Like I’d done nothing wrong.”

Toric smiles and squeezes her hand gently before going back to feeding Emmaline.

“He asked if I was back. I was. I asked if he still loved me. He did. And before anyone could ask anything else he took me by the hand, like a lost kid, into his estate to see his family.” Kacela stabs a potatberry a little too forcefully. “They argued. In the end he took severance and we set up here. We had Emmaline a little while after that.” As if wanting to contribute Emmaline takes that moment to burp up a bit of food that Toric clears away with a cloth.

I’m still not sure when the stoli came in. Was it on the Day of Binding or after she came back? If she ran away it doesn’t seem likely she had it then but when and why she wears it now is unclear. And more importantly it seems like it would be in poor taste to ask about it after such a touching recounting.

“What about you? Anyone in your life, wherever you came from?” Kacela asks.

“Not since I was twenty-three. I focused too much on work and then-” I trail off as I pay mind to note my feelings. I was afraid? Disinterested, angry, recalcitrant? It’s been seven years and I haven’t really thought about it much. I return to speaking, “I stopped fitting in with the world. I saw things that upset me, things I helped make that should never have been.” I take a moment to examine the grain of the granite table before returning to my dinner, not looking at Kacela and Toric.

Toric breaks the silence after a few minutes, “Is that why you came here? To escape that world?”

“Probably. But I still stand by what I said earlier; I came to learn. Mostly about myself, but the pure joy of learning anything is a great way to occupy my mind; entrainment has been a unique experience.” Again, I become focused on my being and think within myself. Why am I rambling? Just to move off the topic of my romantic life? I can’t stop myself from continuing the ramble by voicing my thoughts.

“It allows me to rethink everything I’ve previously learned and apply it in new ways. Usually learning is just like adding pieces to a slowly completing puzzle but entrainment is like building a machine.” Relating this reminds me tangentially of programming and as I remember the impact of Hal in reality, I’m reminded that programming, and the power it affords me, is a little uncomfortable. I look up between bites and everyone is eating, thankfully.

The rest of dinner finishes in silence. Well, as silent as the presence of a baby allows. Emmaline likes to slap her hands on the table and blow raspberries as often as possible. Kacela and I clear the table and place the dishes in the sink, where the cooking pans already reside. My guess is whomever watches Emmaline cleans the house as well. Toric follows us through the kitchen with Emmaline against his shoulder, already half asleep.

“See you in the morning,” says Toric as they pass my room and Kacela nods her farewell.

I flop down on the bed with my clothes on and kick off my shoes. I find the geode and toss it a few times straight up while I think things over. Kacela and Toric love each other; or as close to love as I can understand. I still need to understand the stoli circumstances better. How about cultural ethics? Not enough information. There’s something in the families abandoning those who go wild but without hearing the argument itself there’s no way to judge.

But, what do I care? What do I want from this world? Working on the Diamond Causeway sounds profoundly boring but I don’t see myself staying here with Toric and Kacela much longer. The higher-ups seem intractable, but a scientific revolution might be interesting. But also dangerous. Maybe I could start my own society? But who would follow me?

I want to fly. I want freedom. And I want the power to stay free. All this nonsense of society and its demands and problems is exactly what pushed me out of reality. But in reality the threat of death and displeasure keep me in line. Obedient. Subservient.

I toss the geode into the nearby chair and close my eyes. I open them a moment later and I’m back in my house, at the table, in the dark. The clock says 9:00 and I wonder again how time works inside the Claw. I’m not tired yet, so I go for a walk on the grounds.

Graveyards are extremely pleasant at night if you can get over the spooky reputation. There are no lights and no cars, nice and quiet. I walk to the small frog pond and lie down near the bank, gazing up at the stars. A river of lights arcs overhead in the cloudless sky. I remember looking up at the Milky Way with my father and finding planets with the telescope. It feels like there are multiple lifetimes between that memory and this moment. First I didn’t want to hang out with my father, my pride as a teenager on the line. Then college and work in the city meant the stars became a memory. Looking up, then, I couldn’t help but feel alone, all black, like the rest of the galaxy had gone out around me.

Several bats fly by silently. How will I fly? Altering my structure to be lighter than air sounds like a great way to die. Altering the air around me to provide lift (thank you Bernoulli) might work but the force of the wind would be extreme. Also, complicated; I don’t have an aerospace degree to work with. Or I could use anchoring on nearby geographical features like mountains to move however I want. Anchoring, like the stoli.

They bother me. Maybe it’s just the ethics of the culture I was raised in, but I can’t stand to see slaves. But what alternative could I give them? Surely they have friends and families they would have to leave behind. And their conditions aren’t horrible. No one is whipping them or beating them. Maybe I should talk to them? I’m trying to decide so much with so little perspective afterall. I decide I’ll start with the jumpy woman in the library.

The walk back to my house is uneventful and I brush my teeth before going to bed. I feel like I’ve been up for two days and I’m out in an instant.

* * *

In my dreams, I’m playing a game in an arcade. As I stand at the cabinet I can see people reflected from behind me in the glass. Just dark shapes, but they feel patiently malevolent. Like they are waiting to strike. It’s not clear what will set them off but I have no allies. Then, it’s over. I’m staring, unseeingly, at my bedroom wall and a pervasive sense of threat rises with the sun.