Thirty minutes later, I was sitting at a little table in the corner of the convenience store, phone plugged into a wall outlet, pre-packaged sandwich in one hand, as I tried to explain the situation to Boddy without looking like a crazy person talking to a bee. I accomplished this mainly by hooking my ear buds up to my phone and pretending I was on a call.
Yes, I suggested that Boddy might want to take human guise for a while so we could talk about what was going on. He didn’t go for it. Apparently, being a bee is pretty cool.
I had just gotten to the part of my story where I described the object itself.
“A…chain with a hoop?” Boddy confirmed. “I don’t understand. What’s the point of the chain with the hoop.”
“I thought beings of irrealis were innately aware of symbolism?”
“Not outside symbolism. This is something…artificial. Human-made, or at least human-engineered.”
“Technically, isn’t that true for your whole realm?”
The bee on my shoulder (and yes, that had been commented on by the clerk. I assured him it was under control) buzzed irritatedly. “Yes, but in an organic fashion. We can grasp the nature of the realm itself. We can grasp the purpose of the different Houses and various traits thereof. But a deliberate creation like this? Only its creator has innate understanding of it. If even them.”
“Well, Carver told me it was ‘symbolic’. I realized when we got to Opulence and saw the crest there that the symbolism was doubled. First, the symbolism of the object itself, and second, the symbolism of how it was delivered. He may have needed a realis body. I assume that part was true or you and everyone else on the staff not part of his plan would have been really suspicious.”
“Sure. He can’t send formal symbols by irrealis courier.”
“Right, that’s what he told me. But the real neat trick here is how he got me to agree to the delivery.”
“By…hiring you?”
“By hiring me for an impossibly overwrought amount of money.”
“I don’t understand.”
I figured it was probably as safe here in realis as anywhere. I finally flipped open the case so Boddy could get a good look at the item inside. “The chain is the other part of the symbolism. Chains are pretty good metaphors for different things, in human culture. Out here in realis, metaphors are almost fun. At least, they don’t rear up and attack people.”
That earned me a back-and-forth shuffle from the bee, but no comment. By context I guessed it meant something relevant, but I don’t understand bee body language well enough to say what that was.
“Anyway,” I continued, “One thing a chain can symbolize is servitude. Prisoners wear them. You can put one on a dog to control it. In the military, they talk about the “chain of command”, where each link is a person so you can always point to a group of people and say which one is in charge.
“Another symbol the chain can stand for is unity. We have sayings like ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’, we make human chains to stand united, stuff like that. The chain is a greater whole made up of smaller pieces.
“There are probably others. I think there’s something about chains being used for continuousness, something like that. But I think the relevant one here is--”
“The first one.” Boddy buzzed. He was crawling on the chain, examining the different characteristics of it. “But…not with Community at the top.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s a pretty clear ‘owner’ and ‘servant’ end to this particular chain. And they’re labeled.”
“So Mister Carver was…was giving away the House to serve as vassals of an Alley House?”
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“Not just Community, either. I don’t even know if he has the authority to negotiate that relationship, but apparently he was selling out eight other Houses.”
Boddy crawled along the hoop part of the chain, inspecting each of the flattened pieces that bore a crest. “He has the authority. I’m not sure how he earned it in every case, but I know he negotiated certain alliances with each of these Houses. Technically, they have all joined their purposes together. A House could take action to cut themselves from the alliance. But any House in the group speaks for all of them until otherwise noted.”
“Thought he must have something.” I checked my phone. 30% charge. Plenty for what I needed to do. I powered it on and opened my maps app. First thing was to find out where I was. Looked like…yup. Los Angeles. Or some nearby city that was all but part of it, at least. That would explain the rich houses.
“Boddy,” I asked as I started looking for rooms for the night. It wasn’t the most hopeful search I’ve ever done. There were plenty available, but the pricing here…it almost made me wish I had completed my delivery. The payment would have been helpful. For avoiding Carver’s goon squad. “Why did my own construct side with Carver against me? Rookie, I mean.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Boddy answered, flying back over to my shoulder and watching my phone. Well, probably. Compound eyes being what they are he was watching a lot of things and my phone was on the list. “I’m not sure that construct was from you to begin with.”
“But I am a thought constructor. I was able to incorporate the metaphor. Thought you said those were rare?”
“There’s rare and there’s rare, Daniel,” It was the first time Boddy referred to me by my name without a Mister. I’m not sure he noticed. “I think the chances of a human being a thought constructor are about one tenth or one twentieth of a percent.”
I stopped reading for a moment as I shifted the decimal places accordingly in my head. “One in every one to two thousand people?”
“Yes.”
“Boddy, that’s still a lot of thought constructors.”
“Well, most of them are just potential constructors. It isn’t like every one of them is going to experience the irrealis in a way that makes them start developing their powers.”
“But some of them? I mean, like me, not ones that are Masters of some House?”
“Plenty of those. A few of them work freelance. Mostly they just avoid the whole place. You might have noticed but your powers can go a little ugly if not controlled properly.”
“I had. But there are others. A decent number of them?”
“I’ve personally met a dozen or so freelancers and at least one head of House that are also constructors. Yeah, they’re around.”
“So you think one of the other constructors put Rookie in my head. Can they even do that?”
“It’s been done, at least temporarily. It never sticks in the long term. Constructors tend to develop a greater sense of…original thought. They can tell when their mind has been messed with, more than other people. The outside construct either becomes integrated or it gets destroyed by the host mind.”
“What about non-constructors? Their minds would be more vulnerable?”
“Less, actually. They lack something that gives the construct proper autonomy. Illusion is more effective against people without the knack for construction.”
“So Rookie couldn’t have been there long, but he was planted by someone. Someone who knew I was a thought constructor before I even knew what that was. Someone who wanted me to complete that delivery without any second thoughts. Rookie took the role of ‘thought police’, supposedly keeping my mind free of illusions and controlling my inner monologue so as not to have metaphors. He probably monitored those second thoughts without my noticing for a while.”
“Seems likely.”
“But it’s only been three and a bit weeks since my first step inside irrealis. Who had the ability, the reasoning, and knew I would be there?”
Boddy read my tone correctly. “Mister Carver is not a thought constructor.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’ve worked for him for two centuries, Daniel.”
“You didn’t expect him to sell the House out, either.” I pointed out.
Boddy fell silent. I resumed my search. Hotels got less expensive the further away from the center of LA I looked. I eventually started pulling up my rideshare apps and comparing fares. I only wanted a place for one night, so saving twenty on the room wouldn’t help if I was spending twenty extra on the ride.
Eventually I settled on something that meant I would be having plain pasta a couple nights this month. Assuming I still had a job. I checked my calendar. It was Wednesday. I had been off shift Monday through Wednesday. That was good. I just had to call in tomorrow. Dana would understand, right? Well, she’d probably understand in both senses of the word. Hopefully that landed with me still having a job.
“Alright Boddy, climb on up. I’ve got us a place to crash for the night. And I think…I think I’m going to need some coaching. I need to learn thought construction in the next few hours before Maps and Rookie work out how to come looking for us.”