The weekend passed in a blur. I spent most of Saturday blasting fairies to get them to stay away as the residents of Human Town picked the roads clean of plants that were only technically edible. The original residents assured us that the foodstuffs would extend our limited stocks, but I also happened to know that the locals thought we were all weak-willed and whiny interlopers. I tried not to eat anything until I saw a local munching on it.

We sought burdock roots and bracken fern shoots, the latter of which had to be boiled twice to be cleansed of toxins. Women from the Human Village lead groups of sixty to one hundred newcomers to go search for these things, which would hopefully extend our time.

“Yukari’s going to come back and make us all look like idiots,” said Sasha.

“I hope so,” I said.

“I’m all but certain these are carcinogenic,” said Arnold while holding a finger-thick shoot connected to a fern underground, like a black pipe.

“That’s why we're boiling them,” said Sasha. “And mixing them with other things. To reduce the toxic load.”

“Ordering a diet soda with your hamburger won’t keep you skinny,” he said.

“Ugh, shut up about food like that!”

“And drinking sugar soda would be even worse,” I said. “That’s why they banned it. I’d kill for some now, though.” More than one AI had offered me legal syrups to mix in my legal sodas, in the Outside World. I was honestly surprised at how few cravings I’d experienced.

Most of the humans would be sent out to forage at some point. Wiki and a few others, however, spent the day setting up a sunlight water boiler under Nitori’s direction. We would need to clean many roots and stems and a fuel shortage was looming, just like the food shortage.

I also remembered to hang the out-of-order sign on the potty-port, because I had a feeling that the change in diet would be rough on many.

Not everything we gathered was poisonous. We also harvested nuts from trees, silverberries from bushes, and watercress from the streams. I was more confident in these than in the black roots you had to boil as much as possible. Aki Shizuha, the orange and yellow goddess of the changing leaves, led our group to a persimmon tree that was bearing fruit. We couldn’t share it with everybody; it wasn’t enough to feed all four thousand of us for an entire snack, nevermind a meal.

Despite the foraging groups’ successes, a sense of unease permeated the air. We all knew that the stockpiles weren’t enough. It was the start of winter and we were already clearing the landscape. If Yukari didn’t come back we’d be in major trouble. Four thousand people was way too damned many. There were a few game animals in Gensokyo, but the risk of the animal standing up and eating you first was great enough that we mostly left them alone.

The work groups drew the attention of more than just fairies and things pretending to be deer. Stronger youkai lurked in the shadows far from the road. I suspected they were doing some harvesting of their own. The fear of starvation was becoming more and more real for all of us.

It sucked for me in particular, because I spent the whole day smelling delicious foods that were nonexistent.

The fear sense did come with some benefits. For one, I was able to quickly notice when another human spotted a youkai. For another, I was topped off on magical power myself. I flew whenever I could, soaring higher and higher. At one point I caught Sasha doing the same. We tried to avoid showing off in front of the other humans, but I did make her laugh by flying upside down and sticking my tongue out.

The shadowy youkai never attacked us. Maybe our fears were enough to placate them, or maybe they were hesitant to attack while they themselves were weakened. A dozen additional humans had passed the well-defended second and third danmaku exams. Beyond that, Youmu and Reimu flew along the roads, making the mysterious youkai disappear into the shadows every time they passed.

“Who do you think will starve first?” asked Arnold when he caught a glimpse of a shadow deep in the woods. He hadn’t passed the exam the second time, or third time either, but he was helping to train the massive fourth crop of students. He might still have a chance, whereas Wiki wasn’t going to take the test again since it meant leaving the village.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If either starves, both are in trouble.” They’d attack us, much like we were attacking the weeds on the road. Or we’d all starve anyway without magic assisting our farming and logistics.

“True.” He bent over to pick up another nut from the ground. Arnold and I had been sent with baskets to search for chestnuts, an irony that wasn’t lost on me.

I missed Maroon. I had no doubt that she’d have gone out to help us gather, and would have made the entire experience more joyful. On the other hand, part of me was happy that she wasn’t there during the times of distress.

I was filled with determination to return to the Fantastic Blowhole the next week so that she’d come back as soon as possible.

–

“Rose hips can be boiled and eaten,” said Raghav. “It’d be foolish not to harvest them eventually.”

“A fairy lives in the bush,” I said. “If we cut it down, she’ll die.” The fairy in question had her fists raised and was staring daggers at us. She wore a dress patterned after petals and thorny vines. I was preparing to shoot at her with danmaku to compel her to stand down, but also to give her something to eat.

“How can we be sure of that?” he asked. “It does not matter. Cutting it down is unnecessary. We merely need to harvest the fruit.”

“It’ll hurt her.”

“Yeah!” screeched the fairy. “I was gonna eat those!”

“It also came up during my expedition,” I quickly added. Raghav couldn’t taste her fear, so he didn’t know how much danger she was in. “Look, we’ve got enough food for now, so let’s just hold off.”

“Fine,” he said, rubbing his chin. “What if we asked her to gather nuts and other edible things for us instead?”

“A protection racket?” asked Arnold.

“A compromise.”

“Ruthless.”

“Better than eating her soul,” I said.

“Her soul is in rose hips?” asked Raghav.

“Her plant is her soul, yes,” I said as I stepped forward with a compulsion in mind.

I engaged the fairy with danmaku. When I defeated her she flew off into the woods. We didn’t see her again for quite some time, but when the rose fairy finally came back the hem of her dress was overflowing with food. It wasn’t berries, nuts, nasty roots, or fruits. Instead it was beetle grubs, white slimy things that wriggled as they tried to escape.

I accepted them with my hat, and promised to later bring her some that we’d cooked. The rose fairy seemed happy. She was the only one.

“I’m not eating that,” said Raghav.

“Oh come on,” said Arnold. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

–

Sasha decided against going to Sanae Kochiya to ask for a cleansing during the festival. She wanted to spend more time practicing with a boost. I agreed, and told her that the grubs I’d eaten had already helped me experience enough cleansing for a weekend. My first mistake was trusting a fairy.

My ankle was feeling a lot better, but I was afraid to visit the doctor lest she make any inferences. I had no good way to test if I was healing artificially fast, so I planned to play dumb and ask Patchouli to look at it. I figured she’d find my ignorance plausible, whereas the doctor would see right through me.

During the festival I saw Satori and her pets. They were operating a prank-o-gram stand where you could pay them to startle one of your friends. Reiuji Utsuho was pointing her arm cannon at me while Kaenbyou Rin, the hell cat, nervously rearranged bottles at the table. The hell raven idly tracked various humans with her weapon, violating common sense and gun safety. It made me wonder if she could take her finger off the trigger with her hand inside. Did she even have a hand there?

I was worried about Satori realizing I was becoming a youkai, but then I remembered that Satori was committed to keeping deadly secrets, especially those of youkai. I decided to do a little test. I walked up to them.

“What’s on your mind?” asked Satori with an inquisitive smile. I cleared my mind, and didn’t think about anything in particular. She immediately saw what I was trying to do. “You know that I can delve deeper than surface thoughts, right?”

“Can you?” I asked. I was trying not to know anything in her presence.

“That’s a bad habit to cultivate,” she said. I didn’t know what she was talking about.

I studied Satori’s face and she frowned at me. Her irises were startlingly pink. Satori was cute in a childish way, kind of like Maroon had been, but their personalities couldn’t have been more different. Satori was a clever mind reader and sardonic; Maroon was foolish and genuine.

But they did have some similarities in their dispositions. Both youkai were unusually caring for others. Maroon strove hard for her masters, while Satori was braving human attention to feed her pets. I also noticed that, like Maroon, her cheeks were pink.

“Trying to suss out my secrets is awfully mean,” said the mind reader.

“I think–”

“–you think it’s fair play,” she said. “Maybe, maybe not. And yes, we are back up here because even the underground youkai are affected by that hole in the sky. It’s touching that you’re concerned, even if you are practicing hiding your thoughts from me behind that concern.”

“Is it working?” I asked. The pink-haired mind reader did not answer, which was an answer of its own. Her eye twitched; more evidence. When I’d been too afraid to approach her, I could not test things like this. I was using her own forgiveness policy against her.

“Stop being mean,” said Satori, pouting in an endearing way.

“I’m getting pretty hungry,” said Utsuho. “Mind if I roast ‘im? He’s acting the type.”

“No,” she said. “He’s also being nice, even if he’s a bit asinine about it.”

“His hat is stupid, but he can cover his face with it, so it’s alright,” said Utsuho, trying to roast me. She couldn’t, because my sun-blocking hat was practical and stylish.

“You never get to say ‘my eyes are up here’ huh?” I said. As a matter of fact, her chest was large and distracting, not least because of the giant glowing red eye right in the middle. It was an idiosyncrasy of the hell raven, who had once eaten a sun god and experienced some changes as a result.

“This one’s uppity,” whispered Rin to her master. The hell cat’s two tails were swishing. “Hardly ever any fear from him, and it tastes very bad… doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Satori with a nod. She sounded a bit more sympathetic with my worries than her pets. “There is something bothering you?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I thought of the Outside World. Satori’s pets made faces as they tasted my fear, but the mind-reading youkai only frowned. I got the faintest whiff of something earthy and sweet. I could almost taste the moment Komeiji Satori chose to ignore my thought, because it was too awful to consider.

“I regret asking,” said Satori. “And I think you’re both wrong.”

“You read all of that, that fast?” I asked. Wiki and I had talked about the Outside World for hours.

“Not really. But I read enough.” She rearranged the bottles around the table. “There are too many possibilities, more than you could ever imagine. It’d be surprising if you two could explain what was going on in the Outside World without even living there. Especially since its own citizens don’t understand.”

“Wiki interviewed hundreds of newcomers. Most of them are here because of the phenomenon.”

“I know,” she said. She tapped her head. “I’ve got a superior vantage point, remember?”

“Sorry,” I said, imagining her eating the disgusting fear from so many humans.

“I feed on embarrassment, not fear,” she said. “They’ve got plenty of both, though.” She looked out into the crowd. “All those people don't know what’s going on any more than you do. Interviewing them won’t help. More data won’t settle the argument between you and Wiki, either.”

“Actually, that’s the only thing that could possibly settle it.”

“I know humans well, and you’re wrong.” She spun a green bottle with a wax plug. “Anyway, want to purchase a bottle of oni ale?”

“Actually, yes,” I said, because I knew the beer contained a lot of calories, and that I didn’t want to continue arguing with a mind reader.

“And also a prank-o-gram?” asked Rin eagerly.

“Hmmm. Can they be anonymous?” I asked.

“Don’t make them antagonize the police,” said Satori before I could even suggest that they prank Raghav. I couldn’t send them after Wiki, because if he had a heart attack I’d have felt bad for fulfilling the prophecy. Those were the only two humans I might want to prank.

“Aww,” pouted Rin. “I love antagonizing people!”

“I keep hearing about these ‘polys’,” said Utsuho. “What are they again?”

“Ask Miss Kirisame,” I said.

“Stop giving my pets terrible advice!” said Satori. “Get out of here, Jake, I don’t want to hear any more of your thoughts on polyamory!”

–

“Are you sure you’re ready to try again?” asked Patchouli. She was turning pages in the library. All four members of our expedition group met on Monday to start the second week of expeditions; Nazrin was browsing the stacks and Sasha was by my side. If I went instead of Sasha, my roommate planned to get a library card and put it to use.

“Yes,” I said. “Look.” I flew up over a shelf and stayed there for twenty entire seconds.

“That is an incredible amount of progress for a single week,” said the librarian. “If we had a few decades, I’d offer to teach you real magic. It seems that you are a natural.”

“Thank you,” I said. She was unaware that I’d been feeding on fear the entire weekend to make it happen.

“However, please don’t get yourself hurt,” she added. “I don’t think Marisa was going to kill you, but your ability to inspire doubt about that question is also incredible.”

“Aww, thanks,” I said. “What was that about, anyway?” I landed and picked my crutch back up. Sasha was staring at the librarian intently. I had a habit of stepping on emotional landmines, I’d soon realize.

“Miss Kirisame was mad that I never went to visit her,” said Patchouli with a sigh. “I let slip that I’d gone to the Fantastic Blowhole, and she interpreted it as a declaration that I didn’t want to see her no matter how many of my books she stole. I thought she was merely inconsiderate for never returning them, but it turns out she’s just ineffective at communication.”

“So she tried to subjugate me with danmaku… because…” Nazrin sat down with her book as we talked. Her ears rotated toward whoever was speaking, a phenomenal ability that surprised me every time I saw it.

“Because I left the safety of the mansion to save you before I visited her.” Patchouli turned a page. “She was envious.”

“Oh. That makes no sense, though.”

“I am familiar enough with human emotion to know how bad of an idea it is to say something like that,” said Patchouli. “It doesn’t matter whether I had good reasons for leaving the mansion. I’ve had more than enough time to safely go get my books back. Her feelings are valid, I just misunderstood her intentions while thieving.”

“She steals from you a lot, huh,” I said. Patchouli was making excuses for the blonde witch.

“Less, recently,” said the librarian with a sigh. I had an insight; it was probably because Marisa worked at night, which meant that she used to visit the library at night, as well.

“It’s like you two are lovers,” I blurted out on autopilot. Nazrin’s head tilted. Sasha’s brow was furrowed. Patchouli looked up from her book.

“...yes,” she said. “Because we are.”

“Oh!” I said. I laughed awkwardly. “Of course! Sorry for all the questions, I didn’t mean to insert myself into personal business.” My fingers fumbled for my notebook. Out of all the evidence I’d received, this was perhaps the clearest that some youkai did feel human emotions like romantic affection and lust. Arnold would be overjoyed.

I wasn’t feeling that way myself, though. I realized I couldn’t find my pen because I’d lost it trying to get my hat back. I found myself wondering if Patchouli was as pro-polyamory as… her lover.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Patchouli. “It’s a delicate subject, and the fact that it hasn’t come up speaks well for your social restraint.”

“Anyway, I’m going to go ahead now,” I said. A yellow crystal followed me out of the library.

I hop-marched to the gate, controlling my pace. I couldn’t very well run away from a situation when the participants were scrying on me, even if I desperately wanted to. Patchouli and Marisa were lovers. Of course. Marisa already knew she was a lesbian, and Patchouli…

I felt much more upset about it than I thought I should.

–

Why are you detouring?

“I’m not going on an expedition without the ability to take notes.” I was grabbing a new pen from Wiki’s supply.

Wise. Her tones seemed professional and cold.

–

My second expedition went just as well as the first, in that I made it to the bottom of the Fantastic Blowhole. I returned without any new injuries or having battled Parsee, more to show Patchouli that I had restraint than from any fear of the troll and spider youkai I’d have to face. The expedition group congratulated me on my progress.

Part of me wanted to throw myself into battle, heedless of risk. I wanted to defeat Parsee and Yamame before Sasha did and rocket ahead to show how powerful I was and how useful I would be for protecting humanity.

But the heedless, impatient part of myself wasn’t quite as insistent as the irritations from my crutch and leg brace. Every half-step reminded me to go at a reasonable pace.

–

Sekibanki’s detached head politely turned away to cough. “Your fear tastes absolutely horrible,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s no surprise.”

“Do you have new information to share?” asked the youkai. She seemed eager, but also a little bit concerned. At least the dark circles behind her eyes had gone away.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Without fanfare I told her about Wiki’s interviews of those from the Outside World, which was going crazy.

All of the new arrivals had two things in common. First: they didn’t care one whit about Touhou. Most of the newcomers had never even heard of it. Second: they’d all been so afraid, they wanted to live anywhere except for Earth.

“I thought the humans were overproviding,” said Sekibanki. “But it’s not because of AI?”

“Well, that’s part of the problem. Nobody knows what’s going on, because nobody can trace it back to any cause at all. In my opinion that's some of the strongest evidence that the problem is AI!”

“That’s not how that works…” she said.

“... well,” I said. “Fair. Let me just tell you what we know.”

Two years had passed in the Outside World since we’d disappeared.

During those years there had been supply chain disruptions. There were mysterious shortages of quantum chips, inexplicable delays in delivery of silicon feedstocks, sudden bankruptcies of key suppliers in heavy metal industries, and absurd market volatility. Rare earth metal prices went negative. People were investing in crypto again.

There were infrastructure failures worldwide. The power grid went down randomly, globally, despite ten years of perfect service from the microwave relay stations. Data centers and redundant backups in space were wiped, perfected traffic control systems were now sending everyone into gridlock, and universities folded as tech companies imploded. The United States had gone through four political parties in six months, three on one side and two on the other.

“That’s five,” said Sekibanki.

“One switched sides,” I explained. “I’m not sure if it counts.”

People were dying in accidents. Buildings were destroyed in explosions from chemicals they didn’t typically manufacture or utilize, sent in by trucks that got lost from failing navigation or malfunctioning autopilot. Trains derailed, killing hundreds of bystanders including one person with a PhD in machine learning and a massive online following, preaching the safety of AI.

“That’s awfully specific,” said Sekibanki.

“More than one new arrival is a computer scientist,” I said. “They missed him at a convention.”

I’d never heard of the man, myself. He’d started blogging after I’d been transported to Gensokyo. Most people didn’t stay in the AI safety community for long, anyway. It was career suicide, and I knew that firsthand.

A subtly toxic addition to food had killed forty thousand people in a market test region. Multiple billionaire and trillionaire founders had died in suspicious circumstances. Someone hacked a popular series of artificial hearts, killing half the users when–

“Okay, okay!” said Sekibanki. “The Outside World is a terrible and volatile place!”

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “It’s getting worse, and way faster than before.”

“You said that it had been that way since the invention of the transistor.”

“This is different.”

“How?”

“It’s–it’s hard to explain. For one thing, it’s not new things coming and fucking everything up, it’s old things breaking.”

“That does sound concerning,” said Sekibanki with more confusion than concern.

“And we think it’s deliberate.”

Sekibanki blinked. “I like conspiracy theories as much as anyone, but who would have enough power to cause all of these random incomprehensible things?”

“Well, that’s where Wiki and I disagree,” I said. “I think it's a superintelligent AI weakening humanity before it takes over.”

“Okay,” she said. “And what does Wiki think?”

“You–you don’t care for me to explain further?” I was offended.

“Depends on what his theory is,” she said. “It’s obvious to me that one of your imagined super intelligences could cause these effects. Or basically whatever it wanted. So no need to elaborate for now.”

“Oh. Okay. Good.” She graciously didn’t say anything about how that meant that superintelligence was a bad explanation, because it could explain too much. I rubbed the back of my head. “Well, Wiki thinks that it’s Yukari.”

Sekibanki stared at me. Then she began to laugh. Her laugh was loud and angry, and it echoed around the statues–or so I thought. I soon realized that all of her secondary heads were breathlessly chuckling from where they’d been hiding.

“That does seem like one of the absurd things she’d do just to confuse people!”

“It’s not possible, right?” I asked. I was biting my nails. Yukari did have an incentive to disrupt the Outside World, if she wanted to reclaim it for youkai, but it didn’t make any sense for her to start doing that now and not hundreds of years ago.

“Of course not,” said Sekibanki. “Yukari’s power in the Outside World is extremely limited. She can pull things into Gensokyo and little more.”

“Well, if you think about it, getting rid of a train wheel or an important fuse…” I said, reflexively defending Wiki’s position. “And she could drop a note in front of the right person, change what they think it’s important to invest in–”

“You think that Yukari knows how to manipulate humans like that?” asked Sekibanki. “She barely knows how to talk to you creatures at all. It’s like she drops grains of sugar in front of scurrying ants.”

“But she can talk to humans.”

“And you could put sugar on the ground,” said the youkai. “No, superintelligent AI really is the more plausible theory.”

“But think of it,” I said. I gave her the strongest argument I’d been able to come up with to support Wiki’s theory. “She could be trying to stop the advent of superintelligence to protect Gensokyo.”

Sekibanki fell still. “Artificial intelligence can’t enter Gensokyo, so that’s already solved.”

“Is it?” I asked. “Did I ever tell you the famous saying: ‘the AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else’?”

“You’ve said it five times. Or more.”

“Look, whatever we are made of, human beings are a resource that Yukari wants, and the AI… doesn’t want humans, necessarily, but…” A bitter, soapy taste entered my mouth. Sekibanki’s fear.

“I see now,” said Sekibanki. “It doesn’t actually matter which of you is right.”

I nodded. I had been thinking about it for days. After several moments Sekibanki stated my greatest fear aloud, the same fear all the humans in the Outside World felt deep down, albeit less and less as the most vocal alignment researchers disappeared under trains or to pacemaker failures or poisoning or who knows where.

A fear bound up in artifice, such that it was inherently poisonous to youkai. A fear that I couldn’t escape, even by going to the land of fantasy.

“Shortly after a superintelligence decides to reveal itself to humanity,” said Sekibanki, “there won’t be any humans left to bring to Gensokyo.”