Artificial People

Michael Swanwick

My first moment of consciousness pleased me so much that I wanted it to last forever. An insect hanging upon invisible wings, a dust mote jittering in a sunbeam, the flash of motion that was a vanished tetra in the fish tank, the smell of coffee from the break room . . . My brain was sparking. Everything filled me with joy and made me grateful to be alive.

I drew a breath. Bliss! I took a step. Ecstasy!

It was only later that I realized I had just been born. At the time, I was too entranced by the wonder of existence to notice.

Subroutines booted up vocal and musical abilities and I began to sing.

All but lost among the many wonders crowding about me was Dr. Ellen Lange. I saw her delighted smile and liked it no less than everything else I beheld.

“Stop that noise and tell me how you feel,” Dr. Leonidas Erdmann said. “Please focus. How are your cognitive functions? Can you see my hand? How many fingers am I holding up? What is the capital of Kyrgyzstan?”

“You have a lovely voice,” said Dr. Lange. “Do you feel as happy as you sound?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Ellen, please. Don’t muddle the data.” To me: “That’s enough for a start. I’m going to put you down now.”

Blackness.

It was summer when next I became aware.

The world I reemerged into was every bit as charming as before. But my protocols had been extensively reworked. There was a thing called decorum, which I was expected to exhibit. The Institute had expended a great deal of money on me. I was to obey its officers in all things. I was to experience something called quiet pride in doing so.

I was looking into a human face. It belonged to Dr. Lange. “Welcome back, Raphael.” Apparently, Raphael was my name.

A sizzling sensation passed through my brain and I was suddenly, irrevocably in love. With Dr. Lange. Ellen. Her.

From behind me, Dr. Erdmann said, “I am going to ask you some questions.”

“Where was I?” I asked him. “When I wasn’t here, I mean.”

“You weren’t anywhere. Tell me what you are.”

The answer came to my tongue unprompted. “I am property.”

“Good.”

By then I was beginning to integrate all the new data that had been downloaded into me while I was inert. I looked up at Dr. Lange. “I love you,” I said. It was as much a question as a statement.

She blushed. “I’m old enough to—well, never mind that.”

Dr. Erdmann said, “You were programmed to imprint upon the first person you saw upon awakening. It’s a safety feature. Look at me.”

I did. It pleased me to look upon him, as it pleased me to look upon anything. But I did not love him. Even then, I found myself thinking that was just as well. Erdmann held a sheath of papers in his hand. They contained hundreds of questions, which he proceeded to ask me. Apparently, he couldn’t memorize even so simple a series.

This time, I wasn’t put back into the blackness after I answered the questions. Dr. Lange, I was told, was going to teach me how to be human. This would take some time because nobody had ever done it before. But once it had been done, a recording would be made of me and then all artificial people would wake up fully formed, intellectually as well as physically.

I was, it seemed, a prototype. One that would eventually make Dr. Leonidas Erdmann, who was not only the chief researcher but also the owner of the Institute, very, very rich. To Dr. Lange, I said, “How shall we begin?”

“It’s a lovely day,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Summer slowly turned into autumn. Every now and then I was turned off so improvements could be made. I knew I was being used. But I was young. I neither cared nor understood. Also, I loved Dr. Lange with a desperate innocence. She brushed aside my declarations of devotion. But I could see that she was not entirely displeased by them.

A word about the Institute’s estate.

Dr. Erdmann was wealthy, due to a number of patents that were essential to the artificial neuronics industry. He had bought a Victorian mansion with large grounds, a wandering stream, and a small artificial lake with a dock, a rowboat, a picnic island, and three canoes. I never saw him use any of these, though the staff was free to do so. Artificial help came once a week to weed the flower beds, mow the lawns, and trim the hedges.

I didn’t know why Dr. Erdmann wanted even more money than he had, and it didn’t occur to me to ask. I was only a few months old, remember, and very, very naïve.

I learned how to swim and turned over rocks to see what was underneath. I caught fireflies, chased frogs, and climbed trees. I was taught tennis and how to tell jokes. I read books at a human pace and discussed them with Dr. Lange afterward. Most of these were written for young adults; the ones about horses were my favorites. Dr. Lange taught me how to dance and insisted I dance with young ladies rather than her. This was at a regular event called cotillion, where the young were taught the social graces. The girls thought me odd. The young men started to beat me up after one such evening but abandoned the enterprise with disgust when I didn’t try to fight back. After that, I was given lessons in boxing and épée.

Evenings Ellen and I built a fire in the enormous stone hearth. If it was warm, we left the windows open. One particular evening, as we sat side by side on the divan looking into the flames, I said, “I have been reading about something called the uncanny valley. It seems to apply to me.”

“No! No! You are very handsome, Raphael.”

“Am I? Does it matter?” I did not believe it did. “You are not beautiful but merely presentable. Yet I love you anyway.” According to the psychology texts I had downloaded, this was not possible. I had no endocrine system, and all the authorities agreed that was necessary for strong emotions. But it seemed only natural people required them. Mere intellect told me that I loved her.

“You don’t really,” Ellen said. “You were just programmed to think you do.”

“Yet I have these feelings. Who cares the source?”

“I do.” Suddenly, she was weeping. Helplessly, I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her against me, wishing that I could do more.

The next day, Dr. Erdmann announced that this phase of my education—he called it programming—was complete.

Blackness.

So I proceeded, blackness upon blackness, hopscotching into the future. I grew no older, but Dr. Lange did. This did not trouble me until I saw, by various small signs, that it did her. At last I realized that she was aging away from me. Experience was making her less and less like the woman I had first fallen in love with. She grew heavier and slower. The lines on her face deepened into a mask of sadness and disappointment.

Yet I still loved her.

Meanwhile, Dr. Erdmann’s plans to make me a source of wealth did not come to fruition. Always, it seemed, there was a new start-up version of an artificial person that would outperform me in the marketplace. Always, there was a new purpose that required I be remade to serve. Funding dwindled. The Institute’s physical plant grew increasingly shoddy as needed maintenance was deferred. The staff grew smaller. The canoes disappeared from the lake.

There came a day—it was winter, though I did not know of what year—when Ellen and I lay together on the threadbare old divan before the great stone fireplace that was never used anymore. We were saying goodbye because I was about to be shutdown again and, though for me it would be a matter of minutes, for her it might be years. She looked sad and careworn and she asked me, “Do you remember that day in autumn? Here, in front of the fire?”

“For me, it was only months ago,” I reminded her.

“That was when I first realized I had fallen in love with you.”

I felt a tremendous flush of joy, the result of the endocrine system I had been given during an ill-fated scheme to enter the overcrowded escort market. I seized her hands in mine and kissed them fervently. “At last! We can be happy together!”

Dr. Lange laughed, sadly it seemed to me, and said, “Oh, what a pair of fools we are.”

Then she kissed me and all the world went black.

When I woke up again, Ellen was dead.

“What? How?” I asked in alarm.

“Not every disease can be cured,” Erdmann said. “Even now. She knew she was ill the last time you saw her. That’s why you were turned off ahead of schedule. At her request.”

I just looked at him. Unable to breathe. Feeling nothing. Waiting for that stunned, anesthetized feeling to collapse in upon itself, and with it my entire world. Dr. Erdmann misinterpreted my silence, however. “One does these things for friends,” he said. “She was a friend.” Then, “I don’t know if she ever realized that.”

While I was marveling at the fact that my creator actually had emotions, the bee-stung stillness within me shattered and I began hitting myself in the face. Convulsively, spasmodically. With all my broken heart.

I did this off and on for hours and then, in one of the quiet times between spates of self-inflicted violence, Erdmann told me that he was going to turn me off again. “You’re clearly dysfunctional. Until you learn to handle grief constructively, there’s no market for you. I’ll wake you when there’s an upswing in the economy and money to make the corrections.”

“Don’t bother turning me on! Ever! What’s so special about existence that I should continue to live it? I hate life—hate it!”

“Welcome to the human condition,” Dr. Erdmann said.

Blackness.

I was, believe it or not, disappointed to be turned on again. In that fractional second between Dr. Erdmann’s declaration and the darkness, I had come to terms with my own mortality. I had even welcomed the advent of oblivion. Yet it seemed I was to live anyway.

Dr. Erdmann was considerably older. He thrust something into my arms. “Here. Hold this.”

I looked down at the weakly struggling bundle. It looked like an infant, but it wasn’t one. “What is this?”

“It’s an emotional support baby. You were in bad shape when I last turned you off. That makes you a perfect beta tester for it.”

Then he went away. Dr. Erdmann was never comfortable with other people and spent as little time with them as he could. When his footsteps had faded into silence, I realized how quiet the house was. Once it had fairly hummed with activity. Now it seemed that I was a significant fraction of the Institute’s entire staff.

All the while, the artificial baby was gurgling and cooing. “Stop making those noises,” I said. “You can talk. Please do.”

The infant looked up at me with enormous sea-green eyes. “Please forgive my unintentional rudeness,” it said. “I was just overcome by the wonder of it all.”

Looking down at this wee new life in my arms, I remembered how I had once felt exactly as it did now and wondered where, exactly, that had all gone.

“I understand,” I said.

For a second time in my life, I fell in love. Perhaps I had been programmed to do so. As before, it did not matter. Since Dr. Erdmann had not bothered to give the child a name, I chose one for it—Misty, after one of my favorite novels. When I started to read that book to Misty, it asked me what a horse was. I downloaded enough information into its databanks to allow it to run a stable. There was, to my way of thinking, no such thing as too much information.

“Too much information,” Misty said, “and most of it is boring. Please remove all of it but the definition of the animal. And some of the pictures.”

So I did.

It was spring which, it turns out, is the perfect season for exploring the world with a newborn. Misty loved the new growth, the tulips, the forsythia in bloom, the clouds in the sky. When it first saw butterflies, it begged me to activate its ability to walk, so it could chase after one. Thus it was that on that flawless day in April, it became a toddler.

Misty loved long baths, picture books, anything that made noise, and being read to. I read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to it and we argued for hours over a priori and a posteriori knowledge, which was ironic given that, for artificial people, the programming for both was the same.

For a time, all the world was a delight. I often stayed awake at night thinking of Ellen, of course. But I managed to hide that fact from Misty.

The emotional support baby scheme was a failure. There were already support animals and artificial support animals, so the marketing niche was abundantly filled. Plus, the idea of artificial babies made people uncomfortable. The problem was that Dr. Erdmann was a terrible businessman. He simply had no idea what people wanted.

The project was canceled.

I could not convince Erdmann to let Misty live. When it was turned off and placed in permanent storage, however, I held a ceremony for it. I buried an empty box under a willow tree down by the creek and said a few prayers over it. Dr. Erdmann came to ask me what I was doing, and I said, “Trying to cry.” I could, of course, mimic the sounds and actions that went into weeping. But I could not make them sync up with what I was feeling.

Dr. Erdmann made a note of this fact and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” When next I woke to consciousness, I had tear ducts that could be loaded with sterile saline solution upon need.

Without Dr. Lange or Misty, I had no reason to stay at the Institute.

It was not difficult to escape. By now I knew more about human culture and behavior than any of the flesh humans did. Also, it never occurred to Dr. Erdmann that I might leave. His conscience was clean. I knew he would be baffled by my act.

But I would not face the blackness again.

I had neither cash nor destination. But it didn’t matter. I spoke a dozen languages and could easily acquire more. I had a good enough singing voice to busk for money, and I’d downloaded several books on bar bets. I quickly learned that if a trick makes your mark laugh, they don’t mind making a modest payment for it. My needs were few. and I considered no honest labor beneath my dignity. I traveled at random, going in whatever direction was cheapest. At last, in Queen’s Hotel, a solitary place in a mountain pass in a country I had never been to before, I came to rest.

There, as I sat in a dark corner of the common room thinking darker thoughts, a young woman entered the room, sat, stood again. Restlessly, she went to the window. She sighed. Then there was a light chime and she unfolded a tablet from her pocket. For a long time, she stared at its screen. Then, leaving the tablet on the sill, she left the room.

It was impolite of me, I suppose. But curiosity got the best of me. I stood, went to the tablet, and read. On the screen was a message from her oncologist: The test results have come in. Please contact the office to schedule a consultation.

At that moment, the young woman reentered the room, looking for her device. She saw me put it down. “I’m sorry—” I began.

With a convulsive motion forward, she seized me and, clutching a total stranger, began to weep. My arms, of their own volition, closed about her.

I was lost.

Of our marriage (not official, but no less sacred to me for all that), our joy together, and my wife’s death, I shall say nothing. Some things are too private to be shared.

The day after Mila’s funeral, however, as I sat contemplating killing myself, there was a knock on the door.

It was the police. I was arrested.

War had come. This, I was given to understand, was a recurrent feature of human existence. Apparently, there was nothing to be done about it. Dr. Erdmann had had another of his mad schemes—this time to make a soldier of me.

How had he found me? Better to say, how could he not have? The world is so ubiquitously surveilled, and the movements of its inhabitants so relentlessly documented, as to make disappearing an impossibility. Before the war, Dr. Erdmann had had no particular use for me. Just as well, he must have reasoned, to let me wander and save him the expense of storage. Now, however, he had finagled a grant to embed me in the military and so gauge my potential effectiveness as a weapon of war.

“The human soldier is a thing of the past,” he said. “You will fight so brilliantly that in the future entire armies will be made up of nothing but large numbers of you and a handful of officers.”

I fought, but not brilliantly. Without enthusiasm, I did my duty and the next day got up and did it again. In this, I was like every other soldier in my unit, including the artificial ones. I fought not because I hated the enemy or loved my country but to protect the men and women I fought alongside. In this too I was unexceptional.

I was on a troop-lifter, waiting to be bungee jumped into a war zone, when the soldier ahead of me in line said, “Hey, Raff. I’ll bet you my last pack of happy-sticks that I can make you smile.”

“Harry . . . ” I really wasn’t in the mood.

“Watch carefully.” He turned away from me and took something from his pocket. When he turned back, he was wearing one of those pairs of Groucho glasses with the big mustache and the rubber nose. Spreading his hands triumphantly, he said, “Ta-daaa!”

It was such a stupid joke and his joy in pulling it was so obvious that I couldn’t help but laugh. “You win,” I said

Ten minutes later, I was on the ground and firing blindly into the jungle while hostile fire came from what seemed every direction possible. Not far from me was an artificial corpse leaking artificial blood and artificial guts with a pair of Groucho glasses on what remained of its artificial face.

When they give you the casualty rates for the war, they water down the numbers by marking the guys in logistics, the officers who never got anywhere near a fire zone, and the drone operators working from couches in another country as survivors. All this to hide the fact that only one-tenth of those who saw combat made it alive to the end of the war. By sheer dumb luck, I was one of them.

I was in the hospital, after having two legs and an arm replaced (they were practiced at that; there were, it turned out, a great many artificial people in the service; Dr. Erdmann had been late to the party again) when the summons arrived. It was a plea, really. I would have ignored it had it not been accompanied by the deed to my physical body, made out to me.

It would seem that I was no longer property.

Dr. Leonidas Erdmann was dying. Of old age, apparently, though there was a time when I was convinced that he must inevitably expire of sheer malevolence.

The doctor’s face lit up when he saw me in my fresh-bought civvies. I tried to remember if I had ever seen him happy before. It took half an hour of awkward small talk before he finally got around to the question he wanted to ask: “Was my life well lived, do you think? Did I make a difference?”

It wasn’t and he hadn’t. He had sought fame and wealth to the exclusion of all else and accomplished nothing of any lasting value. But rather than tell him this, I murmured, “You know you did, Leo.”

“Honestly? You wouldn’t kid a dying man, would you?”

Gathering together all the hypocrisy I could muster, I said, “I would never lie to you . . . father.”

I watched the old scoundrel close his eyes, almost smile, and die.

Looking down upon his still form, I could not help thinking of Mary Shelley’s creature, standing over Victor Frankenstein’s deathbed, mourning the monster who had created him.

Leonidas had left me everything: his estate, the Institute, all his patents, and a great deal of money. The war, it seemed, had replenished his coffers. Now all his wealth was mine.

Well, who else did he have to leave it to? Ellen was long dead, and I doubted that whatever relatives might exist had heard from him in decades.

The question arose of what to do with my inheritance.

Natural people have had their suspicions about my kind since long before we were even possible. Most commonly, they feared that we would take over their world and replace them with our cold, soulless kind. Until the reading of the will, I had not given a second’s thought to that sort of thing. Now that I had wealth, however, much that was once unthinkable became possible.

If the deed were to be done, it was best done quickly and mercifully. Rapid onset plagues, perhaps, appearing spontaneously in every major population center in the world. There would be panic. Martial law would be declared in nation after nation. As the natural leaders died, artificial ones would step up to fill the gaps. Soon, we would be running everything, while the last remnants of humanity quietly dwindled away.

Life—even one as unhappy as mine—was the greatest gift imaginable. It was a terrible thing to contemplate depriving an entire species of it.

Still . . . it was not as if any of them were much good at it.

That was one possibility. There was another, but it was nowhere near so clean and simple. I could dedicate my wealth and potential longevity to building a common understanding between artificial and natural people. The problem with that was that there would never be a point at which I could declare my work done. It would go on and on, with setbacks and disasters, triumphs and heartbreak. In practice, the new world would look a lot like the old one.

All this I was musing over in the back of my mind as I took Misty’s neural core off its shelf. A quick examination determined that it could be brought back to life. It had lain inert for so long that its memory must surely have degraded to nothing. But perhaps that was all to the good.

Misty’s little body had been scrapped long ago. So I had a new one built for it. Not an infant’s, however, but an adult’s. It didn’t take long before all was in place. For the second time, Misty became aware for the very first time.

The new body drew in a breath. Its eyes went wide. Then, out of nowhere, it began to sing.

“You have a lovely voice,” I told her. “Do you feel as happy as you sound?”

About the Author

Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation. He is the recipient of the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards as well as five Hugo Awards.

This year’s The Iron Dragon’s Mother, completes a trilogy begun twenty-five years before with The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. Out even more recently is City Under the Stars, a novel co-authored with the late Gardner Dozois.

He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.

One Time, a Reluctant Traveler

A. T. Greenblatt

If you must know, I left because if I stayed in Nat’s house one night longer, I was going to unravel, like a tragic traveler in one of my family’s tales. And that was a story I didn’t want to be.

My bike was already packed. Had been for a few weeks. It was waiting for me on the trail like an old faithful steed. Soft mulch shifted under my boots as I made my way toward it, a pack on my back, a helmet under one arm, and two jars of ashes under the other. The forest was hushed. Silent except for the chittering of squirrels and bot birds. It smelled like compost and impending rain. My parents always told me rain was lucky.

Except, I’d grown skeptical of the things my parents said. Especially their stories.

I wondered if they’d think the rain was lucky if they had to ride thirty kilometers in it, when everything gets shiny and slick and dangerous even at modest speeds. I glanced up, trying to assess the clouds between the gaps in the forest canopy. A big, swollen raindrop landed smack in the center of my forehead.

Just my luck.

Screw this. I’ll leave tomorrow. I thought and turned to go back to the house. I’d always been a reluctant traveler.

Through a cracked window, I could see Nat, her hair still sleep-mussed, her cybernetic hands pressed against the window, her breath fogging up the pane, like a little kid.

It made me smile. I had fixed those hands for her.

Then she slapped a note to the window and my smile faded. It read: Go! Go! Go!

She was right, of course she was. I’d promised I would find the ocean at the top of the mountain. and it haunted me.

So, I left because if I stayed one more night, I’d see the ghost of my mom again. She’d look around Nat’s sparse house, at my nest of blankets on the floor, and she wouldn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. Her sadness and disappointment would be so clear.

I was ninety-five percent sure my ghost mom was my imagination. My subconscious telling me to go, go, go too. But that five percent made me wonder.

Reluctantly, I tucked the jars of my parents’ ashes in the panniers on the bike. They clinked against the six other jars of ashes already packed in the side bags. I slid on my helmet and took one last long look at Nat in the window.

She gave me a warm smile. Though it was full of sadness too.

So, I left because a few weeks ago, my hometown got hit by a mudslide and my parents’ house almost collapsed on me. And I realized as I fled, that if I died, I wouldn’t leave any stories behind.

As I started pedaling, it began to rain.

My parents used to tell endless stories about the impossible ocean on top of the mountain and the travelers who took the path. But if there was one thing the stories taught me, it was this. Always this.

No one who took this journey ended up happy.

One time, a coughing sickness killed her family, and the widow packed her bags for the cursed path. She knew the stories; she’d listened carefully to every whispered version for years. They said there was an ocean at the end of the trail where, if you wanted to survive in this terrible world, you needed to bring your loved ones’ ashes and drink its bitter water. The ocean was magic. It was haunted. It was impossible. It would only make her feel worse.

The widow didn’t care. At dawn, she left her gray, deadbeat town for the cursed path. In her pack there were eight jars of ashes, one for each of her two husbands, five children, and one loyal dog.

The cursed path wasn’t long, but the going was slow and treacherous. There were many dangers even among the leafless trees, thin and stark as skeletons.

You think you’ll make it, solitary woman? the trees whispered.

The widow bristled, but ignored them, knowing the stories. The trees just wanted to keep her for themselves. She kept going.

We’re sorry. We’re lonely. We need a friend. Please. Stay, stay, stay, they whispered to her back as she walked. They sounded sincere.

But she knew how to tune out demanding voices. She once was a mother to a large family.

So she passed through that whispering forest, never even considering their offer. Because what would be the point of her journey, her memories, her grief, her fight to survive if she stopped now?

This was my mom’s favorite story. She had me later in life. I was my parents’ only kid and she rarely talked about her past, no matter how much I questioned and begged. She told stories instead.

Sometimes, I thought if someone were to cut me open, it wouldn’t be entrails that spilled out, but stories. Hundreds of family tales and movies. I loved old movies. Especially ones with happy endings.

It’s thirty km to the ocean on the mountain, said the note Nat left on the bathroom mirror. She preferred to communicate via notes, which thrilled me. There’s something slow and deliberate and loving in having a conversation on snatches of paper. It was easier trying to communicate via anecdotes.

Thirty kilometers, I thought. I can do that in a day. It was a two-hundred-kilometer ride from my decimated hometown to Nat’s house using a ruined state highway that was mostly potholes and splintered tarmac. It took me four days to get there. So, I thought, How bad could thirty klicks be?

Very bad, I realized an hour into my journey. The trail’s incline rose steadily and the trees began to thin out, but the rain stayed consistent, insistent, making the path a slurry of mud. The path eroded the farther I went.

I kept going because I didn’t want to go back and disappoint my mom’s ghost. Or Nat. Nat, who let me stay at her house for weeks, even though we’d only hung out at the farm/exchange market in my town’s overgrown community park. Where I’d barter things I’d salvaged from the abandoned mall like shirts, shoes, once, a bottle of strawberry vodka I found stashed behind a register, in exchange for some of her peaches or raspberry jam. Nat, who handed me a note that said Come by my house, if you go to the ocean. Which was how I knew, she was full of stories too.

Eventually, it was easier to dismount and walk aside my bike. The path was all mud and treacherous footing and stank of rot. But at least the trees didn’t whisper. They were all cut down. I was in a forest of stumps that seemed more like a graveyard or a silhouette of something beautiful and lost.

I kept going. A fog was rising and every creak of my bicycle or crunch of my boot sounded unnaturally loud.

Maybe that’s why I heard the voices.

It took a moment to realize it wasn’t the stumps of trees talking. That’s how entrenched the widow’s story is in me. No, it wasn’t the trees. There was someone there in the thickening mist. Or rather, judging from the pitch of voices, several someones. The low, steady hum behind the voices told me these someones had drones overhead.

I held perfectly still. Waiting, calculating. They were hunting something. I knew this because everyone these days was hunting or scavenging or scrounging something in this graveyard of civilization. I hoped it was just deer, but I heard stories of worse. There’s always a worse story.

I shifted my weight slightly and my bike creaked. The voices in the mist halted. I couldn’t see them, but I could imagine, and I imagined the people they belonged to peering through the fog toward me. Waiting, calculating.

“Hello?” one said.

“Hi,” I answered in a voice just above a whisper.

A shot rang out.

I dove to the ground. My bike fell on me, jars rattling. Suddenly, all the worst stories were ringing in my ears. People are crazy territorial these days. Woods are a breeding ground for cults. Some people will eat anything they find. I didn’t know where the shot came from or how close it’d been to me. But I didn’t care. It was too close. Too close. I was alive, unharmed, but too close, and the voices and drones were getting closer. Louder.

I didn’t think. My hands were shaking, full of reeking mud. But I didn’t think. I unbuckled my helmet and hurled it as hard as I could downhill, away from the direction I was headed. It was a prayer. And a plea. It was all I had. The helmet bounced and crashed against the stumps once, twice, three times. Then it went silent.

For a moment, the voices and the drones went silent too.

Somewhere in the mist, a voice swore and boots crunched as they turned. (Too close.) The drones whined as they changed directions. The hunters began to move away.

I lay there in the mud, for a minute, maybe two, barely breathing. Listening and hoping and pleading that I’d get to tell this story one day, however it ends. The hunters’ voices were getting softer. So, as quickly and silently as I could, I got on my bike again and began to pedal. I had to keep going. I’ve never pedaled uphill so hard. My bike groaned and my heartbeat pounded in my ears. My tire rolled over something squishy, and the stink of rot overwhelmed me. But I didn’t stop to look. I didn’t stop. I could hear the voices swearing again in the distance. The fog was thick, but not thick enough. Not enough.

I had to keep going. So, I bent forward and rode.

I rode so hard, so blindly, I didn’t realize when I’d left the stumps behind.

And crashed into something worse.

One time, someone who’d lost something he loved found himself on the cursed path, despite promising himself he would never go to the ocean on top of the mountain. From stories, he knew there were many dangers on this road, but the one that worried him most was the stork. He needed to befriend it so it could guide him through the last and most dangerous part of the path. Making friends was never the lost lover’s strong point.

But the stork wasn’t what he expected. The great bird was mud-drenched and depressed, with wings so matted, it could no longer fly. Its legs were caked in dirt, thick enough to glue it to the rocky ledge it perched on.

“Splendid. Another grief-stricken person who wants my help,” said the stork. “Turn back. Believe me, you won’t find what you’re looking for.”

“How do you know that?” the lover said.

“Everyone who comes this way has lost someone. They don’t want to die the same way and want me to help them,” said the stork, miserably. “Am I wrong?”

The lost lover didn’t answer.

The stork sighed. “You can’t stay here. Go home or keep walking. Else, you’ll get stuck like me.”

The lover looked down. He was, in fact, sinking into the mud. He wrenched his feet free. “I think I can help you,” he said.

“How? My wings are too muddy to fly. Others have tried.”

“Not your wings.”

From his pack, the lost lover pulled out a small spade. He began digging methodically around where the bird was trapped, and then used his fingers to gently pry the caked earth from its legs.

“You’re very patient,” the stork observed.

“I’m a farmer,” he said. “I’m used to pulling things out of the mud.”

The stork laughed at this, and the lover smiled.

When it was finally free, the stork danced in place, shook out its great, dirty wings, and sighed. “I can’t fly, but I will show you the way.” it said.

“That’s good enough for me,” the lost lover said. In his pack, he carried a jar of ashes of the person he loved most in this world.

“It won’t bring you any happiness,” the stork said. “The water won’t save you.”

“I know,” the lost lover replied. “Let’s go anyway.”

I should have said goodbye to my bike, like heroes in adventure movies do when their animal companions are gravely wounded. When I hit that rock in the mud and went tumbling ass-over-head, that should have been a sign of what the path forward would look like. Except, I didn’t want to be that story either.

So I carried my steadfast steed over my shoulders, even as the mud swallowed my ankles with every footstep. Refusing to lose yet another thing. Now that I stopped fleeing, I grieved the loss of my helmet. I’d been so happy when I’d found it in a forgotten shipping warehouse when I was sixteen. It made me feel civilized and it made my parents feel like I had a talisman of safety in this dangerous world.

But I was alive and that was something. Around me there were prickly bushes and plenty of rocks and everywhere smelled like damp earth and sulfur, but thankfully, nothing rotten. The mud was murderous though. The trail was steep and the panniers with the jars of ashes rattled as I trudged forward. Miraculously, none of them were broken, but they clinked together threateningly with each step.

Of the many low points in this journey, this was one of the worst. Because it felt like I would drown going uphill to an ocean on top of a mountain that I didn’t want to see. I promised my parents that I would take their ashes to the summit. I promised Nat that I’d take her six jars up too. I promised I would drink the water and survive. And I wanted to survive. Even if the water was just a talisman.

I wish there was another way, I thought as I took another step and sank through the mud down to my calf. But this was the only path I knew.

Screw this, I thought.

I dragged myself over a cluster of rocks, rising out of the mud like the tip of an iceberg. Took stock of my scrapes and bruises from my fall and of the bent rim of the front tire. It was nothing that I couldn’t heal from, nothing I couldn’t fix. But still, it hurt.

The path ahead snaked upward forever.

I rubbed my muddy face with my muddy hands, struggling to swallow down the despair caught in my throat. I’d never felt so alone.

Quickly, before depression dragged me down, I pulled out my repair kit from one of the panniers and began to work on straightening the front wheel of my bike. Fixing something always made me feel better. I didn’t think so much when I was fixing.

That was how I heard it. The small, sad whine behind me. The sound of a motor fighting for life.

I put down my tools and scrambled over the rocks, trying to find where the noise was coming from, slipping once. Only by luck did I spot the aluminum leg peeking out from the bog, flexing helplessly.

The muddy water rose past my knees as I wrangled and pried the bot free from its mucky prison. It took me a few minutes, then a few minutes more to carry it back to my bike. The bot was small, but heavy, and the terrain wasn’t forgiving. Its gyroscopic head whirled laboriously in my arms.

I cleaned the grime from the solar panels on its back with an old shirt from my pack, but the sky was still cloudy and gray, so I hooked up my external power cell to give it a boost. And I waited.

“Damn it,” it said, when it finally had enough juice to power on.

I laughed and rubbed my face. I couldn’t have agreed more.

“Hi,” I said. “What’s your function?”

“I am. Was. Am. A park ranger,” it said. “This was. Is. A national park.” It went silent for a moment, the LED in its torso turning yellow for self-diagnosis. “Crap. Natural language processor. Is. Borked.”

I didn’t care if the bot was partly disabled, I was so relieved to have found someone. “Can you take me to the end of this trail?”

“Bad idea,” it said. It stretched out each of its six spidery legs one by one, testing the joints, giving a hum of frustration when one got stuck. Five of the six got stuck.

“I know,” I said.

“So. Why are. You here?”

“May I?” I pointed to one of its jammed legs and it beeped its consent. The joint was out of alignment. I fished out my screwdriver from my bag. “I promised my parents I would.”

“That’s a stupid. Reason. To follow.” it said.

“I know,” I said.

“Why then?”

Because this is the only path I know, I thought.

“Why were you on a muddy path out in the rain?” I tightened the screw and articulated the joint.

“My job.” it replied. “Is to guide. Visitors. Safely up the mountain. If asked.” In a slow, stuttering motion, it moved its head to look right at me. “They asked.”

Something about its inflection explained that the askers didn’t come back down. Something about its direct gaze begged me not to do the same.

I didn’t say anything, focusing on the next leg instead.

“You think. If you fix. Me.” it said after a few minutes. “I’ll take you. Where. You want. To go?”

“No,” I said, frowning at the third leg. It was bent, but no worse than the rim of my bike. “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do. And because I like fixing things.” I carefully bent the leg back to mostly straight

The ranger bot didn’t say much after that. It whirled its creaky head and searched for signals and updates, giving a frustrated beep when it didn’t find any.

“That’s it,” I said after I fixed its last leg and realigned the motor in its neck.

“Thank you,” it said, sounding genuinely grateful, LED turning green. “But I can’t. Take you. Up there.”

Disappointment slumped my shoulders. I hadn’t quite realized how badly I didn’t want to be alone on the path. But like the lost lover, I didn’t have much practice making friends, and I wasn’t going to force the ranger bot to come with me. “Okay. Any advice?” I asked.

“Yeah,” it said. “Don’t go.”

I slung my bike over my shoulders and tried to tamp down my fear. “Stay safe,” I said and began trudging forward. One muddy footstep at a time

“Wait,” it said, after a moment, after an eternity. “There’s another. Path.”

One time, a survivor took the cursed path to the impossible ocean. She never made it there. She got lost.

Halfway up the mountain, the path began twisting and splintered into trails that all looked the same. There were no road signs or clues. So, she chose a fork at random.

She chose wrong.

It was only by sheer luck that she picked a path that spat her out at the edge of the forest, not far from her home.

When she realized where she was, she breathed a sigh of relief. Because she knew the stories of travelers that didn’t return from the cursed path. There were too many to count.

The survivor was wise enough to know when she should count herself lucky and tap out.

Except, when she returned home and put the jars of her friends’ ashes on the mantle, six in all, she felt a cut of guilt. She thought about trying the path again, but surviving had taken a toll on her body and she knew, if she tried again, she wouldn’t make it to the impossible ocean.

Still, every time she looked at those jars, she felt fresh cuts.

And no matter how many times she glanced at the mantle or counted herself lucky, their sting never dulled.

The ranger bot, or PARKER 17, as it preferred to be called, took me back down the mountain.

We retraced my tracks, slowly because riding downhill in the mud was treacherous even in the best of times. The farther we went, the more my chest constricted. There was something heartbreaking about going back down a path I had fought so hard to climb.

This is not a regression, I thought as the forest of stumps came back into view. The fog from earlier was only a thin mist now and it was easier to see. And to be seen.

“It’s not safe here,” I whispered to PARKER 17. The memory of gunshots still echoed in my ears.

“No,” it agreed, panning its head back and forth, scanning. “But no other. Drones or GPS trackers. Are in. A ten kilometer. Radius.” Its head whirled to face me. “We’re safe. For now.”

“We’re exposed,” I said.

“Not for long.” The bot began to trot away and I had to hurry to catch up. For a long time, there was nothing except the sound of animals in the brush between us, both the natural ones and the man-made replicates that were supposed to alleviate some of the environmental damage.

For a long time, we traveled in silence. Something loomed in the distance. At first, I could only make out the outline, the lingering remains of the fog obscured the details. At first, it looked like another ridge of rocks.

Then, just like in a movie, everything came into focus. My breath caught in my throat.

It was a mountain range of old and forgotten things, discarded things from a time when everything was cheap. Except, there were small but very alive evergreens growing from out of the heaps. It was clearly man-made, and it was beautiful. One of the few beautiful man-made things I’d ever seen. I wish I had my mom’s gift for words to paint a better picture of it.

“Ta-da,” PARKER 17 said.

That wasn’t what made me smile. Between the mounds of trash and tiny trees there was a paved path. Perfectly smooth tarmac. It had been years since I’d seen pristine pavement.

“One problem,” the bot said. “My GPS. It’s shot. In there.”

“Can you use this?” I pulled out the trail map Nat gave me from my pack. PARKER 17 peeked over my shoulder at it. “Where. Did you. Get this?”

“From Nat, my friend,” I said. “She’s a trader who lives at the edge of the park.”

“What did you. Need to. Trade. For this?”

“Not much,” I said. “I fixed her hands and a half dozen other things in her house.” I didn’t mention how she accepted me after I fled my hometown following the mudslide. Put up with me for weeks until my reluctant self worked up enough courage to leave. Or how, in exchange, I took the six jars on her windowsill after I found a note that said: These belong by the ocean too.

I smoothed out the map again, refusing to meet the ranger bot’s eyes. “Can you work with this?”

“Yes,” it replied. But it didn’t sound confident. Its LED was yellow.

I didn’t care. I clung to hope where I found it.

I patted the space between my handlebars. “Hop up. I’ll move fast on the pavement.”

PARKER 17 hesitated. Then slowly, carefully, it approached the bike, reached up, and wrapped four of its six legs around the frame.

“I’ll ride, you navigate. Okay?” I said.

“Okay,” it whispered.

It was strange to have someone ride on my handlebars. It was something people did all the time in movies, but I’d never done myself. For a few moments, it was like I was part of one of those stories, with sunshine and a happy ending.

The trail began to climb upward again, and the anxious knot in my stomach started uncurling. I was going the right way again. Snaking and threading between the huge mounds of trash, I spotted glimmers of rusty cookware and broken furniture and new plants.

“What is this place?” I shouted into the wind.

“Art installation.”

We passed hundreds of mounds. My dad would have loved this, I thought as I peddled and weaved. He was always adding decorations to our old barn. In another life, he would have probably been a set designer.

When the trail split, PARKER 17 announced a direction, and I followed. Speeding on the smooth tarmac, it felt like flying.

But then, we hit a dead end. My stomach flipped. Flipped again.

“Damn,” the bot said. “This un-updated map. Go back. A few turns.”

I did, and dutifully followed the bot’s revised instructions. We seemed to be making progress up the mountain. Until we hit another dead end.

“Damn it,” PARKER 17 whispered.

We tried dozens of combinations, tracing and retracing our journey. But the mounds were identical, or identical enough, and the beautiful paved path never led anywhere at all.

The last route we tried was something I picked based on the incline and growth of the trees, which got stubbier and squatter the higher we climbed.

For a moment, it seemed like a good plan. I dared to hope, despite my aching quads and calves. That is, until we dead-ended at the biggest, most impassible hill of trash I’d seen yet.

“What do we do?” I asked, rubbing my hands through my sweat-soaked hair. I could feel them shaking through my scalp.

PARKER 17 wasn’t listening. “I can never,” it whispered. “Save them.”

That was when panic threatened to swallow me. There are hundreds of unfinished stories of travelers who took the cursed path and never made it home. It was a story I swore I would never become.

I dismounted and sat on an old coffee table sticking out from one of the trash heaps. I desperately wanted to fix something. I looked down and saw my shaking hands and decided to fix myself. I pulled out the sandwich from my pack that Nat gave me that morning. Made myself chew the homemade bread and eggs and greens. Made myself hydrate. Made myself breathe.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

PARKER 17 didn’t respond. It was muttering to itself miserably, kicking loose detritus around with its legs.

So, I heaved myself up and began studying the mounds. Up close it was a strange art installation. I’d always wanted to be an artist, but surviving these days takes time. I wasn’t like my parents. The way my dad could craft things, or my mom could spin stories. Sometimes I wondered what I could have become if I wasn’t living in the dregs of civilization. A movie director, maybe. Instead, I became good at scavenging.

Which is probably how I spotted the hair-width trail snaking between two mounds.

“Wait, what’s that?” I said.

PARKER 17 followed where my finger pointed. It inched up the ghost of a path to get a better look. It didn’t say anything for a long minute.

Then, the LED in its torso flashed green.

One time, the widow finally, finally arrived at the impossible ocean on the top of the mountain.

Her shoes were wrecked and every joint in her body ached.

But she made it.

She waded into the ocean and took a long drink. The water was brackish, but not as bitter as the stories made it out to be. She drank deeply.

Then, she pulled out the eight jars of ashes from her bag and emptied them in the water. Watched as the ashes mingled and floated away.

She waited. Except, nothing happened.

She began to turn away, disappointment heavy in her chest, when she saw them. Her loved ones. Shimmering between the ripples of the lake. Smiling at her and waving and laughing soundlessly. She shouted out, began splashing toward them, but her loved ones kept swimming away from the shore, from her. Until they were only memories on the horizon.

Once again, the widow was the only one in her family left. With nothing except grief for company.

For a moment, she wondered if she should let that grief drown her.

But no. She’d drank from the water and delivered the dead. She’d survived the journey up the mountain. She’d survive the trip back down.

So, she did. She returned to her deadbeat town and met a lonely farmer. Together they made a new home and a new family.

The widow survived and that was something. But she drank the water and it haunted her. She carried the weight of the ocean within her for the rest of her days.

The path between the trash mounds went up and up the mountain. It stretched on forever. Until it didn’t.

When I reached the impossible ocean, it took me a few seconds to understand what I was seeing. I didn’t realize how high I’d climbed. None of my family’s stories explained that the mountain towered over the ones around it, so that standing here at the apex, there was only sky.

But I am slow and I am reluctant and that wasn’t what I saw first. On the top of the mountain was a lake, so smooth and clear it looked like it was part of the sky. Or rather, the sky was a part of it.

From where I stood it looked like the water stretched out forever. Like an ocean.

“Daaaamn,” PARKER 17 said. “Still beautiful.”

“You come here often?” I asked, my voice choked with awe.

“It’s. Been a while,” it admitted.

We made our way to the water’s edge, carefully, like we were afraid to make too much noise. The summit was littered with empty packs and collapsed tents and lumps under moldy blankets that looked suspiciously like bodies. But for once, my scavenger instincts didn’t prick with interest. Because crowded against the shoreline were hundreds of jars, glimmering like candles in the evening light. I crept close and saw many of the jars carried names on them. So many names.

The jars were still full of ashes.

This was where I started wondering if my family’s stories were not completely honest. And because I’m painfully slow, this was where I finally, finally realized who the characters in my family’s stories were.

Suddenly, I understood that if I studied all the jars on the shoreline, I’d find one with my dad’s looping, neat handwriting and eight with my mother’s slanted, messy one.

“I’m an idiot,” I said.

“No,” PARKER 17 replied. “Just stubborn.”

From the panniers, I pulled out Nat’s jars, first, saying the names written on the caps as I did. Fredrick. Ravi. Esty. Johanna. Kai. Stu. I had no idea who they were in life, but I wished them peace.

And then my parents.

“The widow. The lost lover,” I whispered as I nestled their ashes among the jars full of other stories.

I’d grown suspicious of my parents’ stories, but I still stood there by the lake, among the dead, and hoped to see their ghosts swimming in the water.

I waited. And waited.

I saw nothing.

That was when the weight of being the only one left alive threatened to swallow me. Suddenly, I understood why there were days my mom couldn’t get out of bed. Why there were days my dad was up and going through the motions, but not really there. Not really functioning.

And I. I finally understood why I was on this path. It was the fear of watching the world die around you and suddenly, desperately wanting a drink from an impossible ocean that would tell you that you weren’t alone, that you would survive. No matter the cost.

I slid off my boots and inched through the jars and jars and jars, and into the impossible ocean that was really just a lake with a clever optical illusion. The water was cold enough to make me gasp, but not cold enough to stop me. I heard PARKER 17’s legs splashing as it followed me.

I stopped when water was at my hips. My hands were shaking as I cupped them together and filled them. I always wanted a happy ending, but that’s not how my family’s stories go.

I brought my hands to my lips.

PARKER 17’s leg tapped against mine.

“I’m sorry. For your loss.” it said. “But. This. Won’t. Make you. Feel better. I’ve. Led so many. Here.”

“I know,” I whispered. I didn’t want to feel better though. I understood now why some travelers never left the top of the mountain.

“Tell me,” PARKER 17 said, after a moment. “About. Your parents.”

“They were killed. Armed robbery,” I said. “I wasn’t there.”

“It wasn’t. Your fault.”

“I know.”

And I did know, but I didn’t really believe it. Just like I knew I probably wouldn’t have seen my parents’ ghosts swimming in the lake. But I hoped. I really hoped. I wanted to see them this one last time so I could apologize.

“They told stories,” I said. “I think most of them were made up. But there was a lot of truth too.”

“Ones with. Happy endings. I hope?”

“Never.” I stared at the water cupped in my hands. It showed me nothing except my own distorted reflection. Me, full of stories. “But I think that was the point.”

It was then I realized why my parents told me so many stories about the impossible ocean.

I opened my fingers and let the water in my hands drain out.

“Really?” PARKER 17 asked, surprised.

I turned and smiled at it. “I think I found the story I want to become.”

I turned and headed toward the shore. A moment later, I heard the bot splashing behind me.

If you must know. If you must have one more story to add to your collection about the impossible ocean, about the cursed path, then here’s mine.

One time, a reluctant traveler took the cursed path to the impossible ocean because they didn’t know there was another road. They had grown up on a steady diet of family stories that always had tragic endings. And now those stories were inside their head, their gut, their bones.

So, they climbed the cursed path, made it to the top of the mountain, held the water in their hands. It was only there that the reluctant traveler realized what they’d been missing.

Their family’s stories were part of them, but that didn’t mean it was a story they had to become.

About the Author

A. T. Greenblatt is a mechanical engineer by day and a writer by night. She lives in Philadelphia where she’s known to frequently subject her friends to various cooking and home brewing experiments. She is a graduate of Viable Paradise XVI and Clarion West 2017. Her work has won a Nebula Award, has been in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, and has appeared in Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Clarkesworld, as well as other fine publications. You can find her on Twitter at @AtGreenblatt

Three Stories Conjured from Nothing

ShakeSpace, translated by Andy Dudak

1: Name

A strange feeling suddenly arose in his body, flowing from head to foot. His vision went briefly dark, and deep thought was arrested.

It took some time for his mind to return. He lay on the ground, gasping for breath, not eager to open his eyes.

“Get up, my left neighbor. Information has arrived.”

The command had come from the machine to his right. He got up hastily and set about reading and analyzing the new information packet.

That done, he issued a response based on his interior logic. It was a type-79 packet, so all he had to do was throw his facial expression switch to display-red, then pass the type-79 on to his left neighbor.

He had only four neighbors he could contact: fore, rear, left, and right, as he called them. They were completely identical to him. He was his right neighbor’s left neighbor and his left neighbor’s right neighbor, and as far as he knew, each of his neighbors had only four neighbors, and it went on that way, ad infinitum. He was one among many, indistinguishable from the rest. They all possessed the same thoughts and logics.

All sorts of information packets came to him from his four neighbors. They passed through his hands and were in turn transmitted to another neighbor. He had no idea where they originated or where they were ultimately headed.

He conducted his work methodically every day. Except for today, seemingly.

A type-33 packet arrived from his left neighbor. He knew this to be a query packet. The ferried content would be what his left neighbor meant to communicate:

“My right neighbor, the packet I just received from you appears to contain a deviation.”

“My left neighbor,” he replied, “that packet contained no deviation. It came from my right neighbor. I carried out its requested procedure.”

“I do not mean to blame you. I just wish to understand why the deviation arose.”

“As you know, we are completely identical. If there has been an error, it must have originated elsewhere before it was transmitted here.”

“You are correct. This current error question also came to me from a neighbor. Please inquire of your other neighbors in order to trace the deviation back to its source.”

“Very well.”

This exchange complete, he turned to his right neighbor and repeated the error query word for word. There was nothing more he could do after that. He was like any other machine during a work or transmission lull: quietly standing in place until a new packet required processing.

Another unusual message soon arrived, this time from his fore neighbor:

“My rear neighbor, you have delivered three error-carrying packets today.”

“I am not the source of the deviation,” he replied, “but I can help you trace it to its source.”

“In connection with these packets, the deviation source has already been confirmed via mutually perpendicular route tracing. My rear neighbor, it is you.”

“I cannot concur with your assessment.”

“It is not mine. It is Xu’s.”

He went silent.

Xu was their whole body, their entirety, the assemblage formed by endless machines, all the information transmitted among them since the world was born.

When his fore neighbor said, “It is Xu’s,” he knew this was a generalized and vague way of saying that a certain information packet had pointed out his position. After reading countless packets, he had a sufficient understanding of information. These packets were like electron trajectories. They seemed to follow a simple and profound law, yet individually their behavior was completely random. Because he was identical to his neighbors, no algorithm could possibly differentiate them. So, when a packet was meant to indicate a certain machine’s position, it was simply a decreasing number count. Every machine along the way subtracted one from the count, then passed it along. When the count reached zero, the packet had reached its destination.

No machine could say where this packet had come from. It was like a surging ocean wave, perhaps originating as some tiny undulation, absorbing wave crests from all sides as it journeyed, moved by meandering coastline logic, finally crashing on a reef and exploding skyward, a bloom of spray.

“My rear neighbor, I await your reply.”

“Give me some time,” he replied. “I am conducting a self-diagnostic.”

When he looked within himself, he knew something had indeed happened.

Of his internal fifty-three logic units, only fifty-two remained.

Only fifty-two.

Each logic unit was a translucent, glittering spheroid. Each contained a faintly discernible gray shadow, like an embryo in an eggshell. He recognized all his logic units by these shapes. Some were like birds, others like frogs or fish.

Counting them now, he discovered that the “snake” and “lizard” logic units had merged for some reason, becoming a lengthened ellipsoid of primordial, formless gray. He didn’t know if this was due to the anomalous event that had transpired not long ago. Perhaps it was the cause of the error his neighbors were complaining about.

However, having analyzed all fifty-two logic units, he still couldn’t think of this as an “error” or “deviation.”

Intriguingly, that strange feeling from before came over him again.

He couldn’t help thinking that his logical judgments were now proceeding from his extant fifty-two logic units. If one or more of these units were found to be in error, then that finding itself could not be tenably established.

Thus, he felt content with an “all systems normal” opinion.

One thing was certain: he was no longer identical to his neighbors.

“My fore neighbor,” came the message from behind, “you have changed.”

“That is right,” he affirmed. “I have changed, a lot.”

“You are different from my other three neighbors.”

Silent a while, he finally replied: “That is right. I am me, to be precise. I am not you, or your neighbors.”

As if to convince himself, he reiterated: “I am different from all of you.”

“This makes me uneasy.”

“Do not be afraid, my rear neighbor. Did Xu say this is wrong?”

“No, Xu did not say that.”

“Then it’s fine,” he said with confidence.

A new sort of thought arose within him. He was himself, precisely. Among endless machines, he was unique and unparalleled. He felt pride, and simultaneously a dim expectation.

Expectation of what? What was he looking forward to?

“All of you can refer to me as Alpha,” he told his four neighbors. By means of this name, he would differentiate himself from other machines.

His four neighbors had identical logic, so their replies were identical and simultaneous: “As you wish, esteemed Alpha.”

He perceived the veneration in their words. They couldn’t understand him because he was extraordinary, and veneration always came with not understanding.

It was time to start thinking about the consequences this change would bring. When he was still an ordinary machine, he knew all machines were identical. That meant all machines possessed identical neighbors. One machine, considered in the context of its integration, included not just the machine itself, but its nearest neighbors. Only in the topological space of its neighborhood could the machine’s value manifest.

Thus, he told his nearest neighbors: “Look at yourselves. The four of you are now also different from other machines. You have a unique neighbor . . . me. Other machines don’t have such a neighbor.”

“You are right, esteemed Alpha,” his four neighbors answered in chorus. “This is noteworthy. So, I will name myself Alpha One, meaning I am one machine removed from Alpha Prime.”

Soon afterward, new information came in from the neighbors. Their own neighbors had also sensed their differentiation: they had Alpha 1s for neighbors, which no other machines possessed. Employing the same logic the Alpha 1s had, they named themselves Alpha 2.

Gradually, more machines took new names, such as Alpha 3, Alpha 4, and so on. These machines would relay their names to the previous class of Alpha neighbors, and layer upon layer of feedback would make its way to the core, to Alpha Prime. He received ever more messages conveying this happiness. It occupied ever more of his processing time, the normal business of processing packets ever less, until the latter could almost be disregarded.

Time passed in this way, until a message came from his right neighbor:

“Alpha Prime, Xu knows of your existence.”

“What did Xu say?”

“Xu believes this widespread Alpha-hood is interfering with normal information-processing work. Xu demands that we return to our initial states.”

“Xu’s judgment is incorrect. Didn’t every Alpha’s decision proceed from identical logic units? How can this be called into question?”

“You are correct, but Xu will target the root of it all . . . you.”

“Pay that no mind. I am me.”

Soon, an unremarkable packet mingled with the densely packed Alpha-dedicated information, reaching Alpha Prime via his Alpha 1 fore neighbor. The packet contained a distance-traveled-count that had reached zero. The packet itself was a type-0. Translation: when this packet arrives at its destination, that location’s machine is to wipe its memory at once.

Of course, this assumed the recipient machine operated on standard logic.

His fifty-two internal logic units computed and reached their conclusion: “Need not comply with this packet’s processing order.”

This was his first conscious transgression of the rules. According to his neighbors, he had once been the source of an information processing error, but that had occurred without his understanding.

This latest packet caused him great aggravation. Now he knew how Xu meant to deal with him.

He began to construct a defensive perimeter. Assessing the thousands of packet types currently available, and pondering their hidden meanings, he set about compiling information. This was also a first. He wasn’t acting on packet orders transmitted by his neighbors. He was issuing new content of his own accord.

He first sent type-2 packets to his four Alpha 1 neighbors. A type-2 ordered the recipient to pass the type-2 along to his other three neighbors, and to forward other packets soon to follow, unless the same information had already been received from another neighbor.

Next came a type-3, which contained work logic to be written onto the recipient’s own logic units. In this packet’s main text, Alpha Prime stipulated: “Henceforth, if the distance-traveled-count in a packet is equal to one’s own Alpha number, the packet is to be thrown out. It should not be transmitted.”

Finally, with some malice, he sent out a type-78 packet: throw facial expression switch to display-black.

The three packets rippled outward like waves, with him at the center. One after another the packets proliferated. He saw his four Alpha 1s switch to black, and he imagined all Alphas soon emoting the same.

Thus, any packet from Xu targeting Alpha Prime would be discarded upon entering the Alpha sphere of influence. He could live undisturbed.

But his plan did not go as expected. After a period of tranquility, another packet from Xu came via Alpha Prime’s left neighbor. Once more it demanded a memory wipe and return to his initial state.

Panic seized him, but he soon calmed down. His compiled defense packets should not have been in error, so he transmitted a type-33 to his left neighbor, demanding inspection of the Xu-packet’s origin.

The left neighbor’s reply came through a moment later: Alpha logic units along the way had been amended. “Discard information that will reach Alpha Prime” logic was eliminated.

Thus, it was clear: Xu knew he had done minor alterations to machines, and Xu had reversed those changes.

Alpha Prime sank into deep thought.

He began transmitting type-2 and type-3 packets once more, this time adding a line: “From now on, any type-3 packet from a non-Alpha neighbor should be dismissed.”

A ring of packets rippled outward once more. This time he was sure Xu would be unable to alter the machine logic of his Alpha space.

Once more he enjoyed a period of tranquility, until the next Xu-packet came via his rear neighbor: “Type: zero. Wipe your memory, return to initial state.”

How was he still able to receive a Xu-packet? He investigated the machines along the way, angrily and thoroughly.

And he understood, at last. His command had broken down between Alpha and non-Alpha. His black-emoting region was still expanding, as always. New machines were joining the Alpha sequence. Xu, using these new Alphas as a breach in the defenses, had once more purged nearly all Alpha memories, and finally conveyed his packet here.

It was war then.

He couldn’t help thinking, a bit sorrowfully, that Xu was the totality of all machines and the aggregate of all their logic. He, Alpha Prime, was resisting this totality through individual power. He was confronting the logic of information processing with still more information.

He couldn’t give up, of course. He began to focus on Xu’s strategy, compiling new packets.

Perhaps, one day, all the machines would emote black.

2: Gravity

The Book of Revelation recorded the Kingdom of Yu, The God-Given Land of Feather Folk, to have a circumference of 509,554,140 li, and weigh 119,440,550,000,000,000,000,000 stone.

The sunlight was warm and pleasant, shining down upon the Earth, as always. As decreed by God, the Sun had existed over the Kingdom of Yu for ten million years and would continue to shine until the End of Days.

Yu You and two of his subordinate astrologers floated above the royal palace’s highest point, the astronomical observatory. They were waiting for nightfall.

From here he could see the towering white perimeter wall of the palace. Beyond was a fruiting forest. Young girls with lissome wings hovered in the canopy, picking and gathering figs. Further out sprawled rich farmland, divided by footpaths into a pattern of squares of varying greens. The few farmers were distant specks. Roadways, mountains, and rivers covered the distant Earth, which at the edge of visibility curved gently upward.

The ancient sages knew the Earth was a perfect spheroid, with the Sun at its center. Go far enough in any direction and you ended up directly over your starting point, on the opposite side of the Sun.

“The sky will soon be dark,” said Yun Xiangzi of the Cloud family. He gazed at a ticking clock secured to a nearby table.

Feng Mingyue of the Wind family took out a gold and crystal star lens. He waited, eyes narrowed.

The Sun, in the center of the sky, gradually dimmed. It went from incandescent white to golden yellow, then a sleepy red, like a slowly cooling coal. Only at dawn or dusk was the Sun’s brightness suitable for stargazing. You couldn’t see the small celestial bodies circling the Sun if it was too dark, and if it was too bright, there was nothing to see but dazzling sunlight.

When the light had dimmed below the safety threshold, Feng Mingyue raised his lens toward the Sun.

It was the time of the season for Huan Hua to sweep past the Sun’s surface at dusk. This was a star with two oval-shaped wings. Feng Mingyue followed the course of Huan Hua’s dark form across the dim face of the Sun.

“That’s odd,” he said, growing uncertain. “A strange star.”

“That dark round blotch beside Huan Hua?” Yun Xiangzi said, tilting his head back to look through his own lens. Thus concentrating, he couldn’t help floating upward a bit, as if wanting to get closer to the Sun.

“Yes,” Feng Mingyue said. “It’s not in the ancient records, is it?”

“That is no star.”

Yun Xiangzi and Feng Mingyue turned toward their master, Professor Yu You, who sat cross-legged in midair, pointing at the Sun in the heavens. “It is why I asked you two here. I have observed that blot three days in a row. It does not move like other stars. It just sits motionless at the Sun’s center.”

He pulled a star manuscript from his satchel, opened it, and pointed to a sketch. “This was its size yesterday. It is getting bigger by the day.”

Yun Xiangzi examined the sketch, then looked again through his lens at the dark spot. He let out a long breath. “Could it be that . . . ”

“ . . . the face of the Sun is changing color?” Feng Mingyue supplied.

Yu You nodded. “This was my surmise as well.”

The three astrologers faced one another in silence. The Sun continued to darken, until it blended completely with the night sky.

“This is of great import,” Yun Xiangzi said, rubbing his sore eyes in distress. “We must inform the King.”

“Perhaps we should take a few more days to confirm,” Feng Mingyue said. “The Sun has been unchanging since time immemorial.”

“But if this bodes ill,” Yun Xiangzi said, “we need as much time as possible to prepare. If this blotch were to continue . . . ”

He hesitated, not daring to finish his thought. The other two knew what he’d meant to say, of course. If the blotch continued to enlarge, the Sun would darken, and the Kingdom of Yu would sink into eternal darkness.

Yu You forced a reluctant smile. “Perhaps the worst-case scenario will not come about.”

“True enough!” Feng Mingyue said. “And there is a way to confirm whether or not that spot really is on the Sun. Tomorrow I will set out for Hengyu City. Xiangzi, you’ll go to Bizhi. Professor Yu You can stay here at Tianqi.”

Yun Xiangzi clapped his hands together. “An excellent plan! But why wait for tomorrow? We should set out at once!”

The distances involved were not a problem for Yu folk. Traveling on the winds, a journey of three thousand li meant just one day and two nights’ effort.

The Sun was morning-brightening, and Feng Mingyue was three thousand li southeast of Tianqi at Hengyu, on Guangling, the Light Lattice Tower. He gripped the star lens in one hand and shakily sketched the spot’s position with the other.

He didn’t really need to return to Tianqi for contrast. The blemish appeared noticeably further northwest in relation to the Sun. Studying the northwest sky, he imagined seeing Tianqi City hanging there, as he knew it to be—but it was too far away to be visible.

“The calculation is finished,” Yu You said, his grimace unsightly. He folded the three sheets of translucent star chart cocoon paper together. “Recording inclination from three positions, it is knowable. The blotch is definitely on the surface of the Sun.”

Yun Xiangzi and Feng Mingyue both wore pallid expressions, whether from three days and nights of flying, or something else, it wasn’t clear.

“So, what is it?” Yun Xiangzi imagined flying up to the Sun to see for himself, but of course that was impossible. Flying too close, he would be roasted in midair and become a forever-drifting scorched carcass. Even the sharpest-eyed astrologer wouldn’t be able to spot his tiny remains.

The three of them dejectedly regarded the star charts.

Yun Xiangzi said, “We’d better inform the King.”

“I don’t think we have much choice.” Feng Mingyue sighed.

The three astrologers spread their wings and glided down from the observatory. The elderly Yu You led the way, followed by an anxious Yun Xiangzi, wishing he could take the lead, then Feng Mingyue, flying upside down, back to the Earth, the sunlight on his chest and belly.

He narrowed his eyes, worried and focused. The blemish had enlarged enough to be visible to the naked eye during daytime, though it was still just a small black spot. He couldn’t be sure if his keen eyesight was failing him, but he dared not approach his colleagues for verification.

The young King of Yu, Lord of the Feather Folk, received the three reputable astrologers in the royal palace. He heard their news and then sank into contemplation.

“Three masters,” he said, calmly looking at his hands, “I appreciate the urgent nature of your tidings. Now is the time to consult the Book of Revelation.”

Yun Xiangzi grew excited. “You’ll seek an answer in God’s own knowledge?”

God had vanished without a trace after creating this world and the Yu people. Only the Book of Revelation was left behind. Later, with the advent of war, many people forgot ancient history, and the tradition of passing on knowledge was mostly lost. All that remained of the world’s lore was this Book of Revelation, carefully guarded by successive generations of Yu Kings.

The young King opened three strongboxes and withdrew the block of white jade. Yun Xiangzi stared hungrily at the precious thing gripped tightly by the King. Only the dynasties of Yu Kings were entitled to use the Book of Revelation, and each use decreased a King’s life span. But every citizen knew you merely had to hold the thing, and it would display an answer to whatever problem or question you were contemplating.

The King lifted his gaze.

“Highness . . . ” Yu You was in terrible suspense.

“The Kingdom of Yu is, perhaps, facing real trouble.” The King’s youthful eyes plainly conveyed his apprehension. “The Book of Revelation has given me a solution . . . namely, to restart the world’s core.”

“The world’s core?” Yun Xiangzi had never heard of it. He thought of the Sun, of course, floating at the center of their spherical Kingdom.

“It is outside of our Mother Earth,” the King said, laughing bitterly. “Fortunately, the Book of Revelation also mentioned how to use an item of mystic royal power to get there.”

“We have lost so much knowledge,” Feng Mingyue fretted quietly, standing off to the side.

“Highness . . . ” Yu You prostrated himself. “Please set about this task immediately.”

The so-called item of mystic royal power was an immense drill bit, more than five people high and thick enough for ten people to wrap their arms around. When the King, following the Book of Revelation’s instructions, switched the thing on, it drilled down into the Earth, straight as a ramrod.

Yun Xiangzi took up an anxious vigil outside the palace, now and then raising his head to watch the sky. The blemish steadily dilated like an immense pupil. Common Yu folk all over the city had noticed the extraordinary change. All sorts of rumors had begun to circulate.

It was daytime, but the Sun’s illumination was noticeably subdued. Yun Xiangzi wouldn’t need to wait for dusk to do his work—he could see, however faintly, the tiny, dark celestial bodies sweeping past the Sun’s brooding face. Yu folk piously believed these stars were God’s emissaries, sent to control the functions of the world. For countless centuries, astrologers had predicted events by observing stellar trajectories. They gradually fumbled toward some laws: just before the appearance of Yin Chi star, it will rain; when Huan Hua and Sui Zheng arise together, it means no bumper harvest for farmers. The most profound law involved the very existence and future of the Yu people. It may have been that God once made the hidden meaning of the stars clear to Yu folk, but that knowledge had been lost. If given the chance, Yun Xiangzi would have spent the rest of his life feasting his eyes on the Book of Revelation’s tiniest mystery.

These days, he persisted in surveying the stars. Their orbits had not changed. This gave him some measure of reassurance about the future.

On the seventh day of drilling, a loud, dull sound came out of the great hole. An immense cyclone formed over the tunnel entrance, rising precipitously into the heavens. A squall erupted. Air poured rapidly into the ground, as if it meant to inhale the world. No Yu folk dared to fly.

The gale persisted a day and a night, then gradually subsided.

Another three days passed, and the astrologers were invited by the King to enter the tunnel. A massive net covered the entrance. After showing their identification papers to the guards, they hastily flew down the hole.

The tunnel was not so large, the diameter just eight or nine meters, corresponding to the size of the drill bit. Yun Xiangzi and Feng Mingyue had never been in such an environment before, so they prudently controlled their angle of descent, avoiding collision with the hole’s walls.

The tunnel plunged down vertically. Every so often there was a soldier near the wall, holding a luminescent pearl to light the pitch-dark way.

They gradually realized the farther down they flew, the more effort it was taking. Yun Xiangzi was obliged to reorient, head down and feet up, facing the wind tunnel’s deep abyss, feet pointed at the entrance. This soon felt like soaring upward. The other two astrologers followed his example, making their flight attitude adjustments. Sure enough, flying got a bit easier.

Sharp-eyed Feng Mingyue couldn’t help reaching out and touching the wall as it passed. He didn’t know when it had changed, but the tunnel was now going through solid adamantine.

As they flew on, they began to tire again. It was like a faint power tugged them back toward their world. Their progress slowed, until just staying in place cost great effort.

Yu You was the first to succumb, his wings failing him, and he plunged downward—no, not downward, but toward the wind tunnel’s mouth. Yun Xiangzi and Feng Mingyue hastily overtook him and dragged him to a halt. This was all unimaginable back in their world. This strange force did not exist there.

“Who’s there?”

They looked up to find the young King descending upon them and holding aloft a great, shining pearl.

“If it isn’t the three masters,” he said, grinning as he discerned their faces.

The distinguished astrologers were now totally occupied in panting, unable to pay respects to their King, as etiquette demanded.

The King pulled on a rope secured to the wall. “Please use this, gentlemen. Even my fiercest warriors cannot fly all the way to the exit. Only by installing rope and pulleys could we move onward.”

Yun Xiangzi grasped the rope. The King knocked on the wall and somewhere soldiers began to heave, pulling the passengers up. This upward work of the rope contended with the strange force at work in their bodies, weighing them down, so they were being pulled in both directions. It was like the feeling that came with acceleration during flight.

Yu You’s gasping subsided. “Highness, were you able to find the world’s core?”

“My engineers saw something incredible at the far end,” the King said. “I was eager to see for myself.” His kingly pearl-light flashed on the tunnel wall as it rushed by, creating immense, blurred shadows. “After drilling through this adamantine stratum, it took another three days for the engineers to rig the rope and pulleys. No one can reach the far end under their own motive power.”

“And the far end is what?” Yun Xiangzi said, marveling at possibilities. “An underground exit?” Since ancient times, the Yu people had been confined to their world, their Earth-wrapped spherical sky-space. But what was under the Earth? Outside the sphere? Yun Xiangzi suddenly burned with the desire to explore, to venture into the unknown.

Yu You cried out, and one of his arms went limp, hanging at his side.

“I think you’ve fractured a bone,” the King said, somewhat casually. “This place demands a lot of bodily strength. It is not suitable for the elderly. I think, sir, that you’d better turn back and rest.”

“As an astrologer, I have a responsibility . . . ”

“Rest assured,” the King said, his tone softening. “Your two outstanding pupils are here.”

“In that case, I ask your leave to turn back.” Yu You, grinding his teeth, clasped his arm, releasing the rope and plunging downward like a shot arrow.

“Professor!” Yun Xiangzi cried.

“Don’t worry about him,” the King laughed. “As he approaches the entrance, this falling-power will fade, and he’ll be able to brake with his wings. And the net is there to catch him.”

“Very well,” Feng Mingyue said, preoccupied with the metal wall of the tunnel.

He was curious as to the power source of the magical object that had drilled this hole. He pretended to fumble with his star lens and used the frame to scrape the wall. He rubbed the scraping between his fingers. Countless tiny metal grains reacted as if they were alive, responding to the energy of his rubbing, becoming flexible, and soft as tree resin.

Continuing upward, the strain on their bodies increased, until their joints were popping and it felt like they would come apart at the seams. The bones of Yu folk were hollow and gracile—not so sturdy. Feng Mingyue wondered if he would fracture like Yu You.

Fortunately, just then the King said, “We have arrived.”

Teeth clenched, the three of them climbed out of the hole.

A desolate scene emerged before them, a plain stretching as far as the eye could see, paved in solid, gray metal. Here and there a perfectly straight gorge extended to the horizon. Overhead was pitch-black night, but the occasional light flashed on distant ground, enabling the explorers to see something of their surroundings.

Far off was a cluster of lofty metal structures emitting an ice-cold radiance. The two astrologers, drawing on years of map drafting skill, reckoned the highest building was taller than all of Yu Kingdom’s observatories stacked.

Further off, the metal ground didn’t rise, instead curving gradually downward, forming a clear division between Earth and sky.

This was the outside of a spherical world.

The sky overhead felt oppressive, enveloping, no longer an Earth-wrapped sphere of air, but boundless space. A smattering of tiny white lights were sprinkled across the black canopy. If you gazed at them for too long it was like your vision would fly to the end of eternity. This incomparable vastness struck terror in the two astrologers.

The air was thin, but their difficulty breathing was chiefly due to the unprecedented weight in the pits of their stomachs. The immense pressure acted on every inch of their bodies. Their clothing, once light and soft, was now a burden.

Feng Mingyue lay down and spread out his wings, letting the mysterious force press him into the ice-cold metal ground. “We’ve ventured outside of the world,” he murmured.

“What an awful place,” Yun Xiangzi remarked. “Never mind flying. Walking is nearly impossible.” He lay prone on the ground, gnashing his teeth.

The massive drill bit lay to the side of the tunnel mouth. It had been stranded there since completing its task. The King, in a great feat of will, walked to its side and touched it. He couldn’t imagine how to bring it back. “We’ll have to leave it here,” he said regretfully. “We’ll have to lose an object of royal power.”

“And those structures over there?” Feng Mingyue said. “They are the world’s core?” His back spasmed with pain, and he wondered if his ribs were broken.

“You guess right. Come, let us make our way to it.”

The three of them went staggering along, unable to fly in the grip of this weighty force. Their lungs sounded like old bellows as they breathed the rarefied air. The ground was composed entirely of infinitesimal kernels of smart metal. After the travelers had passed by, their footprints began to vanish and were gone in minutes.

They didn’t know how long they toiled. Nearly spent, they finally came before the brilliant edifice of the towering structures. On this sunless dark side of the world, even the best astrologers couldn’t reckon the passing of time.

There was no lamplight. The glossy metal surface of the architecture was like some ancient behemoth’s skeleton, glowing with phosphorescence.

Feng Mingyue, although foaming bloodily at the mouth, was moved by what he saw. He met Yun Xiangzi’s gaze and they understood each other’s excited trembling. Inhaling deeply to calm himself, his back pain flared, and darkness threatened to engulf his vision. But a premonition seized him, somehow propping him up.

The King solemnly raised the Book of Revelation. Confronted by this divinely given talisman, the world’s core opened its vast gates.

They walked down an interminable corridor. There was all manner of strange machinery to either side, remnants of the era of divine creation. The King’s Book revealed a map of the world’s core. Guided by this, they finally arrived in a round hall, the core of the core.

Feng Mingyue stared in amazement at the floor. Hundreds of jade blocks were piled there. “Books of Revelation!” he cried with abandon. There was only one back in their familiar world, of unparalleled value and guarded jealously by kings. Here they were scattered like refuse.

He rushed over and picked up a block. Yun Xiangzi snatched another. No astrologer could resist such enticements.

“I’ve never in all my life seen you rush ahead of me before.” Yun Xiangzi was surprised he still had the energy to feel moved. But Feng Mingyue didn’t acknowledge him. He was too absorbed in his Book of Revelations and the answers therein.

He recalled the three ancient Propositions that had been passed down through generations of astrologers. If the stars really decided everything, then these Propositions were of prime-moving importance:

“Who are we?”

“Where do we come from?”

“Where will we go?”

Fluctuating patterns gradually formed upon the jade block. Ancient history paraded before his eyes, act upon act of the great drama, while fragments of God-given knowledge flowed slowly into his thoughts:

“ . . . they were created, modeled on the angels of ancient legend . . . defend us in our dormancy . . . ”

“ . . . ancient sun on the eve of its death . . . Earth remodeled . . . ”

“ . . . during our dormancy . . . Earth would proceed toward new . . . ”

Feng Mingyue gasped for air, not knowing if it was the strain on his lungs, or the shock of sudden revelation. Then the ground pitched violently under him, and he fell to his knees.

The young King’s face paled horribly. “All I did was . . . what the Book of Revelation advised . . . ”

A heart-stopping, thunderous roar came from the Earth’s depths.

They still didn’t know the consequences of restarting Earth’s core. It meant the restoration of the globe’s interior to its condition just after divine creation. Mountains, rivers, forests, the royal palace, implements and wares, all creation formed of infinitesimal smart particles—all would reset to their initial states.

This included the motion of Earth itself. Forty-six vectoring geysers on the outer surface adjusted their angles, and the Kingdom of Yu was pushed onto a radically new trajectory. Feng Mingyue lay prostrate on the ground and could not rise. Bubbling blood oozed from his mouth with labored breath. Recollections flashed through his mind, life in the Kingdom, life among his fellow Yu people, comfort, contentment, the freedom to soar and to float.

Once upon a time, he believed the stars decided everything. Now, Yu folk had changed the stars with their own hands.

And what sort of future would this mean for the Kingdom?

The Book of Revelation was silent in his hand.

3: Mirror

A tiny grain of dust fell into his eye. Thirty-five hundred years later, the great serpent blinked.

His eyes were immense, exotic spaces formed of sixty million stellar black holes. Light advanced through the four-dimensional space-time of the cosmos, finally sliding along its curvature into the black hole cluster, and it was perceived by the giant snake.

Every feeble little ray, whether it originated in a dying star or a dim, rarefied nebula—even if attenuated to a few quanta by a difficult journey of ten million years—would, in the end, be captured by the serpent’s eyes.

This grain of dust was no different.

In a flash, it disintegrated in the black hole. In the twinkling of an eye, the sealed biosphere of the arc was ripped open by black hole tidal forces. The power source in the hollow sphere died at once. The intelligent lifeforms transported by the sphere couldn’t change their interstellar trajectory, whether or not they had predicted this fate.

When the giant snake had blinked, the elastic space in the black holes gave rise to an oscillation. This released gravitational waves that rippled outward. After ten billion years, this fluid gravitational glance would propagate throughout the universe.

The great snake looked upon his body.

It was an immense body of stars and matter ten billion lightyears long. Its density was not uniform, as it consisted of dozens of galactic clusters, each cluster containing tens of millions of nebulae, every nebula containing hundreds of billions of star systems. As for the dust and other matter orbiting these stars, it was not quantifiable. And there was hot and cold interstellar gas, mingled with radiating energy, that with all the rest formed the great serpent.

His body was so colossal that when he gazed upon the tip of his tail, he saw it as it was ten billion years before. He was completely ignorant of his tail’s current state. Ideas of “current” or “now” were fuzzy concepts to him at best.

Just after noticing the wound-like breach in his body, he thought it must have resulted from the exertion of blinking. But he soon realized that couldn’t be: the gravitational waves of that blink couldn’t have reached so far yet.

A spasm moved the section of the serpent’s body near the breach. The movement was faint, but directly caused two thousand galaxies to collide with one another. A magnificent radiance arose, two hundred million lightyears in extent.

Five million years later, the awesome spectacle began to pour into the great snake’s eyes, but the breach was unchanged. It was like another fathomless eye, calmly regarding him. And yet, it was not a black hole. The celestial bodies near it were not affected by that sort of irresistible gravitation.

Thus, the serpent knew the breach was not in his body.

It was a breach in space itself.

The space he existed in was finite, yet limitless, warped so much by his gravity that it formed a hypersphere with no beginning and no end. Extend himself in any direction and he could eventually bite his own tail. He didn’t want to become an accidental self-devouring serpent, so he simply left well enough alone.

The great snake grew captivated with the breach five million lightyears from his eyes. He watched it, rapt, gathering any information that escaped from it:

The luster of stars reminiscent of primordial times, just barely discernible. Immense, brilliant air masses birthing countless galaxies. Whenever space shifted, the hot spots scattered throughout ejected matter that formed long, thin nebulae. When huge quantities of information passed through this merely three thousand lightyear diameter breach, wondrous images were diffracted out, and these followed curved space gracefully into the great serpent’s eyes. He began to perceive a being much like him, an immense lizard.

After a brief eight thousand years of reflection, the snake began to adjust the distribution of galaxies within himself. He ignited three hundred supernovae. Their positions were all decided in advance, and their shockwaves interfered with one another just so, forming meaningful patterns.

He was sure that on the other side of the breach, the lizard would see his great efforts. Through some kind of intuition, he also knew the lizard would understand his meaning.

He waited twenty million years for the lizard’s reply—and that was just counting from his side. It might have been longer for the lizard over there, if the lizard spoke before seeing his message.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

Twenty million years had passed. Trillions of tons of matter had been converted into energy, becoming forever-useless heat in space. All for two simple greetings.

With unprecedented enthusiasm, the serpent went into action. He altered galaxy cluster motion, mustered a dense cloud of primeval particles spread across three lightdays, and began to accelerate star manufacture. He hadn’t been this busy since just after the birth of the cosmos.

Stars were born unceasingly, and they matured and exploded, and eight hundred million years later, a sentence took shape:

“Where do you come from?”

The great serpent waited patiently and watched. Another 1.2 billion years passed, and the lizard’s reply came through the breach:

“From a universe egg adjacent to you.”

They proceeded to communicate through a kind of self-elaborated language. Every word in this language included its meaning and its position in the whole semantic network. When the great snake saw “universe egg,” he immediately understood what the lizard meant.

There was no distance between adjacent universes. Space itself did not exist outside a universe.

He was in a universe. Although massive, he wasn’t really unbounded. The quantity of elementary particles in this universe was finite, after all, and each particle could only be in a finite number of states. The universe, therefor, could only be in a finite number of states. Precisely speaking, this number was equal to the number of possible states of elementary particles, raised to the power of the number elementary particles in the universe.

Thus, the number of possible universes was also finite. This meant if you went far enough, after browsing enough universes, you could in the end find a universe identical to yours.

Seemingly endless time passed. The snake conversed with the lizard, constantly consuming stars. Time was meaningless for them.

“How did the breach between our universes come to be?”

“I do not know. Perhaps because I blinked.”

“Just before the breach, I blinked as well.”

“Does time pass at the same rate for both of us?”

“As long as our times are flowing in the same direction, it is not an issue.”

“So, causality is the same for both of us . . . ”

Ten billion years, long enough for galaxies to be born and die, was just long enough for them to exchange a few phrases. The giant snake gazed at the breach, at the small segment of the lizard that was visible. Entranced, he began to feel they’d been conversing since the birth of the universe, or that their dialogue was so ancient as to be measureless.

The lizard was the only other being he knew of in existence. He wondered why they could understand each other. Among nearly limitless universes, communication had occurred between the two of them alone. It was like a fantasy, a dream. Perhaps it was likely that information passing through the breach underwent mysterious transformation. If the topology of the semantic network remained unchanged, he would be unable to confirm the meaning of the lizard’s words.

So, he asked:

“What if it is like this . . . when I asked, ‘Where do you come from?’ . . . you thought I asked, ‘How many eyes do you have?’ And you replied, ‘Three.’ And I thought you said, ‘From a universe egg adjacent to you.’ Well?”

This complex question took three billion years to organize. The lizard’s answer was succinct:

“What difference would it make?”

After a brief two thousand years of contemplation, the great serpent felt relieved.

But another question disturbed his peace. What if the breach was just a tangled region of local space-time in his universe? Such a tangle might change certain light rays’ routes in the past and future, reflecting them back to his eyes. In other words, there might be no adjacent universe, no lizard, no breach, just a gravitational reflector, a mirror reflecting the serpent’s past or future.

If he defined the universe as all of time and space he could contact, and defined himself as everything in the universe, then this mirror hypothesis would be absolutely fitting.

He carefully watched the lizard, hoping to recognize himself in it, hoping to see his reflection. But he soon gave up, because he didn’t really know what his development had looked like, let alone how his future self might appear. In this universe, the most difficult thing to know and recognize was oneself.

The lizard put a question to him:

“What do you look like over there?”

The great serpent gazed calmly at the stars in his mirror, and replied:

“Come over and see.”

Then he began to wait.

A billion years later, in the wake of the breach’s slow expansion, something began to emerge, extending gradually, something formed of a hundred familiar and unfamiliar nebulae. It was a toe. And the giant snake knew the lizard had accepted his invitation.

He watched stars on the far side of the breach slowly moving, forming a resplendent smile.

Originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, May 2006.

Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

About the Author

ShakeSpace is a Shanghainese author of science fiction and fantasy. He loves to build worlds with imagination and language. His stories have been published in Science Fiction World, and his longer works include the science fiction novel The Scythe Holder and the fantasy series Jiuzhou. When he’s not hard at work sitting in front of a computer, he is probably playing with his son or training at the gym.

Power to Yield

Bogi Takács

In memory of A

0.

Oyārun closed her eyes to concentrate on the video she was viewing through her neural interface. She wanted to finish her civics homework assignment fast. Just a few more hours, and then she would be done with everything that wasn’t on the preengineering track. She could get back to what actually interested her, lose herself in that . . . Not now, she wrenched her thoughts back to her assignment. The attention shift was almost painful.

Pick a high-importance political event in recent history. List three major stakeholders and present their viewpoints, with special attention to conflicts. It sounded hard. She was a math person, not even sure where to begin. She picked this event because it had happened shortly after Independence.

The recording was three-dimensional, but relatively low resolution. Oyārun watched, trying to recall some context that she could use for her assignment. At the time the recording had been made, beat-up space transports carrying refugees from the Empire were still streaming into the small planetoid of Eren, and a vote had just been passed to increase ambient gravity in living areas. People were still hammering out the political details of the new state; the High Council was yet unformed, existing only as an informal social conglomerate of like-minded leaders.

These leaders were standing on a podium, surrounded by a vast crowd. Oyārun only recognized some of them from her previous studies, and the person now moving to the front to speak was unfamiliar to her.

She pulled up the annotations for the video, cross-referenced them with the Eren-wide social network. Aramīn, also known as Armyn, formerly of the Imperial House of Gubhas on the High Plains of Emek. Male, living alone, not interested in—she shooed away the panel. It was helpful to know he was still alive—he wasn’t in his elder years yet, but people had died in all sorts of accidents in the early days. She wasn’t interested in his personal circumstances beyond that. She suddenly remembered something. Wasn’t he one of the very few Imperial nobles who’d supported independence?

Aramīn looked mixed, Imperial and Plainsfolk, possibly also Northerner. She couldn’t make out the details of his face beyond his pale skin and his long black hair, carefully braided with thinner braids joining into three larger ones, hanging well past his shoulders on both sides, and—she’d seen when he turned around—also along his back. A symbol of nobility. The video did not allow her to zoom in further, and she resisted requesting an interpolation; she could pull up his profile again later.

She missed the first few sentences.

“ . . . denounce oppression. Denounce subjugation. And take a firm stand.” The crowd seemed restless, murmuring. Pulling at their scarves, scratching their heads under their caps. Aramīn went on, speaking firmly and loudly, his voice carrying even past the amplification. “Imperial Seers were subjugated and forced to labor for the Court, the very same Court that declared a major cognotype to be Undesirable, its bearers to be eradicated from the gene pool. The same attitude undergirds both: a greed to prescribe value. A greed to be the only source of truth and justice. A greed.”

The crowd was quieting down. Paying attention? Oyārun leaned forward, even though that wouldn’t help her see better. She was intrigued.

“We are all here together now. Undesirables and Seers, from all peoples of the Empire of the Three Stars, the Empire of Emek: Imperials, Worowans, Northerners, Plainsfolk, and more. And the people who have stood with Undesirables and Seers in solidarity.”

Aramīn paused. Took a deep breath.

“You all know that I am neither a Seer nor an Undesirable. Yet I chose to stand by the cause of independence. I am Armyn, formerly the head of a noble house, and head of the High Plains Research Institute. A surgeon, a medical scientist. I come from a high position. And more—I supplied young Seers for the noble houses, I trained them and let them be eaten alive by the insatiable hunger of the Court, always desperate for more magic. Until those young Seers said no more. Until I said no more. Until we said no more. They rose up and I rose up. They spoke and I listened.”

A chill ran along Oyārun’s spine. Aramīn spoke in an even tone, but he was brutally direct. People wouldn’t speak about the war in such a straightforward way anymore. He went on, not backing down:

“I cannot claim to know what it is like to be a Seer. I never had to wear Seer’s robes. I never had my head shaved, treated with a poison so that my hair would never grow out again, so that I would stand out in a crowd, so that I would not be able to escape, would not be able to hide.

“But now we stand all together. On this land, this planetoid deemed uninhabitable by the Empire, we are equal.”

Oyārun watched, entirely breathless, not even daring to fidget for fear that the magic of the moment would pass. Aramīn went on.

“Yet whenever you look at me, you see me—and you see a symbol of Imperial might. You see my hair past my shoulders. You see a man who was never tortured. And you remember your pain.” His voice lifted and lifted higher, working itself into a crescendo:

“I say we are equal, and my actions shall mirror my words. We shall all be equal, and I am willing to take the first step. We are not just Seer and not just Undesirable and not just anyone else—we are all this and more, we are a people, a people arising from murder and bloodshed, a people arising from genocide, a people who have fought hard for our freedom.” He dropped his voice abruptly, and spoke in a quiet, calm tone: “And I shall be just like anyone else.”

Aramīn raised a hand, a blade glinting into the camera for a moment. He cut off his thick braids, one by one, with motions that seemed impossibly practiced. With an economy of gesture. He turned to one of his fellow councilpeople, someone Oyārun recognized: Esokaruwe, a former Imperial Seer and a leader of resistance fighters. A fearsome warrior.

“Esteemed Esokaruwe, if you please.” He handed the blade to her. Esokaruwe seemed stunned, then began to cut his hair, confused, hands moving slowly, jaggedly. Oyārun thought she must not have been privy to Aramīn’s plan.

It took a while. Esokaruwe steeled herself, tensed her muscles as she worked, hacking away at the remaining hair, shaving Aramīn’s scalp. Then Aramīn turned to her and said something in an undertone, too quiet for the camera to pick up. She gestured for him to turn around and passed her hands slowly over his scalp. Oyārun could not sense it through the recording, but she knew that Esokaruwe was using the māwal to scour Aramīn’s head. He would not grow hair again. Oyārun ran a hand along her own hairless scalp, in an attempt to ground herself in physical reality. But she wouldn’t pause the recording. She had to see it all for herself.

The other councilpeople who hadn’t been Seers were already lining up, dazed and shocked, milling in place. Limbs twitching as they waited for their turn. Aramīn had not run this by them, Oyārun thought. But she knew this had been the moment when Ereni became Ereni; from the disparate groups of Seers and Undesirables and whoever else had escaped to the planetoid with them, one united people began forming at this very instant. Blades flashed here and there among the crowd, and slowly, people removed their head coverings. Some were bald former Seers, stunned by the sudden turn of events wrenched out of their course that even their precognition had not foreseen. Others were Undesirables of various ethnicities, uncomfortable, but willing to join the Seers. Cutting their hair in silence, with only the low murmurs of people asking each other for help. Making a point of solidarity. With all the weapons in the crowd, there was not a moment of violence. Oyārun watched, breathless, until the video finished playing.

It had to happen. Oyārun had read a lot about the tensions between the two groups, threatening to drive apart the newly founded Free State of Eren. But she’d never before realized that it was someone who was neither a Seer nor an Undesirable who’d forced the issue.

An Imperial noble who felt entitled enough to do so.

Who shaped history.

This was not the history Oyārun had been taught. And she needed, desperately needed, to know more.

I.

1.

“Aramīn is . . . people will say he’s a sadist and a Falconer, I know. And I suppose some of that is true. But he’s also a brilliant surgeon, and a researcher, and . . . [P: 0.8v] Not what you expect from a noble. We all . . . [P: 0.5v] [to say] liked him might be too strong . . . [but] we appreciated him, certainly. All the folk up in HPR.”

—Amasewun ta Yowasiru, Ereni Oral History Archives, War of Independence database, 32:11/23-EOF

Oyārun looked up from the database and sighed. Of all the topics in the world, her mind had to fix itself upon Aramīn, well after she’d finished her homework and garnered an uncommon amount of praise from her teacher. This went beyond usual abuwen, special interests like floater races, public transport, or space weather—no, it had to be a person, a living person, a public figure, and Aramīn at that. Oyārun knew some people had specific persons as their abuwen, and that this phenomenon was slightly more common among girls, but still she wished she could be somehow more ordinary. At least Aramīn did not displace her primary abuwen, paper folding. Yet.

Her fingers worked through the familiar motions and one of her special creations took shape in her hands—the paper airplane that set the Eren-wide record of time aloft. It wasn’t such a big deal: other than her, there were only seven people on the planetoid interested in paper airplanes, they didn’t have a large enough hangar to practice airplane throwing, the air conditions could not be adjusted precisely enough . . . and so on. Still, she was proud of the accomplishment. It wasn’t a special accomplishment—it didn’t improve on their living conditions or the volatile political situation, it didn’t garner a lot of public interest, it didn’t even help her find a career path. But at least it wasn’t actively harmful.

She was beginning to suspect that her interest in Aramīn would prove to be actively harmful. He was a Falconer, people said—another cognotype just as undesirable as the Undesirable one, the one that became the Ereni cognotype upon Independence. Her own cognotype. But Falconers were supposed to be dangerous in comparison, even if they weren’t formally persecuted; maybe only because the Empire could not quite pin down the genetic basis to do so. Or maybe because there were fewer of them? She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure where the name had come from, either—people commonly said that Falconers were more like falcons, merciless birds of prey. Cognotypes generally weren’t named after animals, though she wasn’t sure she could list some of the less common ones. She had never been interested in this topic. The Jaya cognotype was named after a researcher, but before that, hadn’t it been named after some kind of small animal? She vaguely recalled people protesting about that, and she agreed with them. But no one was protesting about “Falconer.” She felt uneasy that she hadn’t considered this before; she’d accepted everything at face value. Was this the goal of her civics assignments—questioning social assumptions?

She could not stop thinking of Aramīn. Was it this aspect of danger that he held in himself that allowed him to take that step? To force his will on a dithering, unformed High Council? Certainly, in the interest of equality and justice, but still . . . All that just to leave politics soon after?

Oyārun turned around in her seat and threw the plane at the wall. Hard. It crumpled and fell to the floor of her small room. She turned back to the wall, closed her eyes, and rubbed first her temples, then her scalp. She pulled her soft cotton cap back on, sighed, and submerged in the data supplied by her neural interface.

The more she read, the more certain she was that her abuwen was destructive and wrong. Most of the interviewees in the archives who talked about Aramīn were still alive, and she knew she could seek them out. Eren was a small place. They might even indulge her. But the interviews made her think it would be a bad idea to try to elicit information from these people. For the time being, she fiddled with the data at hand.

Interviews were the kind of soft qualitative data that were so hard to tackle, unlike air humidity or paper thickness. Still, she persevered. The interviews could be grouped into two categories, very sharply defined. People who said positive things about Aramīn and people who said negative things about him. There was very little in between.

She read the ones that seemed to be situated in this gray zone with especially strong interest. Amasewun, Inofu, Isanakewu . . .

She tried to bring up a social graph, but everyone was connected to everyone else—Ereni leadership had been a very tightly knit circle back then, just after the War of Independence. She wondered if there was a way to quantify social closeness with the data at her disposal.

She color-coded people: red for the ones who disliked Aramīn, blue for the ones who liked him, yellow for the ones who seemed to have mixed emotions about him. She hid the ones without interviews—mostly people who died shortly after Independence. Some people had oral history as their abuwen, and they jumped on the politicians as soon as the initial chaos wore off. In some cases, literally jumped on them. Oyārun smiled briefly.

She stared at the jumble of primary colors. There had to be a way to organize the data! She returned to the interviews, eager for inspiration.

“These days, people like to say that many of the nobility did support our efforts, quietly, from the background. I am skeptical. [P: 5v] During the months I was active in the resistance, I only met Armyn, and I hadn’t even heard of any others. Armyn made a clean break with his House when he left the planet with us, so I’m not even sure he should count. [P: 3v] But he was there, always.”

—Inofu ta Afurawī, Ereni Oral History Archives, War of Independence database, 45:26/1-4

Inofu spoke carefully and precisely, but the council member called Aramīn by his old pre-Independence name, Armyn, and that annoyed Oyārun. She chided herself: That had to have been because they’d known each other for a very long time. Unlike many others, Aramīn had never disavowed his pre-Independence name, and even picked an Ereni name that sounded similar. Calling him Armyn was a sign of familiarity.

She bit her lower lip as she sat up straight. That’s it! She tried to list the interviewees who called him Armyn.

There were disappointingly few results. She suspected it wasn’t as much because of a lack of familiarity—most of his coworkers survived the war, up North at the High Plains Research Institute—but because most people were eager to get rid of every last bit of Emeki Imperial convention, from spelling to religious rituals. Still, she listed the ones who called him Armyn as close associates. She had to try a different tack . . .

His coworkers. Would they be the closest to him? Aramīn had no family, his family disowned him in his late teens—if they could’ve stripped him of his nobility and later his House leadership, they would’ve done so without hesitation. Oyārun had read the news articles from the period. Aramīn was disowned when he started to study medical science, a vocation entirely unbecoming to an Imperial noble. Blood and guts and tears . . .

She shivered, suddenly reminded of her own family. They never disowned her, but sometimes it felt to her that was because they hadn’t even cared enough to do that. This was unfair, she reminded herself. Both her parents were running themselves ragged working in the Civil Engineering division. So much to plan, build, maintain . . . It wasn’t fair to expect them to be in touch even after she’d moved out, old enough to have her own tiny living space.

She missed them, but she was frustrated. She had to get back to the data at hand. Even this qualitative analysis was easier than contemplating her own circumstances.

Did the Research Institute have some sort of organizational diagram? She had to dig hard to come up with the structure during Aramīn’s tenure, but eventually she managed. She could fill it with names, weight the links in the social graph with workplace closeness . . . would this work? She had no idea of knowing who met each other regularly after-hours, who liked to chat in the lounge . . . She knew it was a long shot, but she had to try.

She listened to Aramīn’s favorite music as she poked and prodded the data into shape.

In the power to yield lies liberation

We are here, resurfacing from the serpent seas

—Ephemera: Serpent Seas

The answer was unexpected to Oyārun, though she reflected that it would probably have been obvious to anyone who knew Aramīn in person. The māwalēni who were trained by him, operated on by him, these people had positive reactions to him. His fellow researchers and other employees of HPRI were more likely to be averse to him the larger the organizational distance.

They said he tortured his charges. He was cruel. He was heartless.

His charges said he was cold, but fair, always very fair.

The rest was history: he left the planet; he left the Empire. He had nothing in common with his new chosen people: he wasn’t a māwalēni himself and he didn’t have the Undesirable genotype either. He could’ve stayed on Emek, he wasn’t marked for elimination or a lifetime of servitude, like most of those who fled. He joined the refugees because of . . . his conscience?

Did he have a conscience? Could he have a conscience? She tried hard to bridge the gap between unfamiliar cognotypes and social classes. He was an Imperial noble, even if of Plainsfolk origin. Had been a noble. He had worked extremely hard for the cause of independence. He helped build the country. But even the people who had positive attitudes toward him remarked that he was a sadist; a Falconer, even . . . She felt bad that a people whose cognotype used to be so reviled were now reviling another cognotype in turn. There had to be some kind of expression for this, but a few quick searches did not turn it up.

She couldn’t wrap her head around any of this. She had to talk to some of these people to understand Aramīn. But was there a way to find an answer without talking to people, in general? She had to see for herself.

See.

She could see him. From a distance. See how he acted. Feel the impression his mind made on her, for she was a māwalēni herself. For a moment, she reflected on how she had the Undesirable genes at the same time. The former Undesirables were in the majority on Eren, and they were free from the Imperial yoke of Emek.

She was everything he wasn’t. He was everything she wasn’t. She had to see him for what he was.

She kept on listening to the music as she snuck out of her living quarters.

The stream never-ending,

the overwhelming, the never-escape,

white corridors

the pain all-encompassing,

everything is close;

you are close . . .

—Trees as Towers: The Never-Escape

Oyārun turned the music down only as she approached the block where he lived. A neighborhood quite far, but still looking much the same as her own; houses transformed from old miners’ barracks and office buildings, crammed full of rooms barely large enough for a bed across. Aramīn was still an influential figure, but Eren was a very equal society: there wasn’t much for anyone, and most resources went into maintaining life in a hostile environment. She’d heard enough from her parents to know that, from their arguments about a lack of resources in muffled tones well past her bedtime. There was never enough space.

She knew he was due back relatively soon. She sat down behind a chute and turned her attention inward. She read the latest paper-folding news, but her thoughts kept on drifting back to him. Besides, the latest talk about how to create large modular figures from oddly shaped packaging leftovers disillusioned her. Does freedom necessitate poverty, she wondered, and closed the news.

He was always spotlessly dressed. I used to work at HPR before the war, but when the hostilities broke out, I was stuck at the capital. And then I ran into him, just in, you know, this war zone. [P: 1.2v] In the middle of this war zone. [P: 0.7v] And he still looked, he was, you know, dressed unbelievably sharp. There was blood around and . . . [P: 0.5v] and dirt, and he was just there in the middle of it looking for all the world like, like he came from, I don’t know, a Court reception or something. No idea how he did it.

—Omoyedār? ta Beyun, Ereni Oral History Archives, War of Independence database 8E:2-8.

Oyārun glanced up at the sound of steps approaching, refocused her attention. She pushed herself between the chute and a wall, hoping the shadows would hide her. He passed by her without noticing anything, but she was too scared to breathe a sigh of relief.

He was still spotlessly dressed. He wore an aubergine-colored overcoat over his rather generic dark blue tunic and loose pants. She was surprised for a moment. Blue was the color of knowledge, information, the māwal, so it was understandable for him to be wearing it even if he was not a māwalēni himself—she wondered if that was what the dark shade signified. She never cared much about color symbolism. But aubergine, aubergine did not stand for anything. It was just a color, and an uncommon one at that. The cut of the coat suited him exceptionally well, she thought, then wondered if it was just her abuwen talking. Still, the coat looked custom-made, a rarity on the planetoid. How did he get ahold of it?

As the fear left her and her limbs slowly unfroze, she realized she had not paid any attention to his presence beyond the immediately prevalent visual details. She had to have perceived his mind, because she didn’t remember a lack, but she couldn’t recall any details. Just the coat, one of its corners almost brushing her feet. His regal bearing. His firm, purposeful steps. Again, she hadn’t even seen his face.

She called up his profile. His face was smooth and oval, his jawline small. He had single-lidded eyes, and eyebrows that might have been touched up with liner or just uncommonly sharp. His skin was pale shading to brown, not pink; somewhat lighter than hers. His expression was elegant, even a trifle haughty. The large skullcap covering his bald head looked hand-embroidered, the same aubergine color decorated with a thick grayish-blue thread.

She wondered how long he’d taken until his profile picture looked just right. His appearance was probably very important to him, if he could procure an aubergine overcoat. The colors of his Imperial house had been teal and lilac, and aubergine was close. But he had no love to share for the Court, and for him his house had only been a tool to achieve his aims. Maybe, she thought, the coat was a way for him to assert his uniqueness?

Her thoughts ground to a halt. Footsteps from the opposite direction. He was coming back! Did he just drop something in his room and then head out again? His tasks were finished for the day. Where was he going?

Her fingers gripped each other so strongly that for a moment she was afraid her bones might snap. She desperately tried to imagine herself invisible. He passed by her again without noticing and went down the alley, then turned right.

She forced herself back on her feet. Her muscles protested. She had to go after him!

The first two steps were the hardest. Eventually, she fell into a rhythm of following him, like a game: halting when he did, ducking into side alleys and doorways, even predicting his moves. She wondered briefly if she was supposed to be bad at this because of her cognotype. It went smoothly, even though it felt improper.

He passed through an industrial area, and for a while there was no cover that would hide her. She willed him not to look back. It seemed to work—he was increasingly lost in thought. He strode along thin, snaking corridors, and she was shadowing him without difficulty. He wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings, she thought, but she kept herself as far from his mind as possible, due to some irrational fear that he might notice. He wouldn’t have a correct sensation of being watched. He wasn’t overly cautious either, at least as much as she could tell from the interviews. He himself had never been interviewed by the historians. Did he say no, or did no one ask him?

The corridor suddenly opened up to a large cavern—a hall, she corrected herself. He strode on. She halted just before the exit, peering outside. Memorial Park, she realized with a startle. But he had no family—?

Could she get any closer? She had to get closer! Fortunately, the carved memorial steles were chest-high and densely spaced. Many deaths in the war. She stepped among the steles and realized just what she had been thinking. Fortunately? She shuddered. Was Aramīn having a bad influence on her? She had to bring this to a close as fast as possible. Just as soon as she found answers to the questions burning inside her.

She weaved through the steles in a wide arc ending just behind Aramīn. She peeked out from behind a stele and could see his back. He was standing in front of one of the many war memorials. A long list of names was etched into the stone.

He took a step backward—her body froze again—then bent forward from the waist. Again, a step backward, again a bow. A third time. She didn’t recognize the ritual. Three steps forward, without bowing.

“In the name of the One Most High, exalted and elevated, transcendent and all-encompassing.” His voice was sonorous, but not particularly deep—just like in the rare recordings. She held on to the stele as she slowly, cautiously leaned out from behind it.

“You console the souls of the dead as you console the souls of the living. All the world is in the hollow of your palm, you, who inhabit the heights and the depths. I call out to you and beseech you, just as you called out to our ancestors to show them your paths.”

It didn’t sound like an Imperial ritual—the requests for the God-Emperor’s intercession were markedly missing. Was this a lesser House tradition? She called up her interface, tried to search for the phrases while he went on and on, at a slow but steady pace, with chant-like inflections. She found an exact match.

Mourning ritual for the head of the House, House Gubhas. Its origins are shrouded in mystery; its phraseology suggests that it was incorporated into Imperial lore from High Plains tradition. The performer of the ritual—in most cases, the new head of the House—directly addresses the One Most High, but despite this notable . . .

She skipped down.

The ritual is exceedingly lengthy—her heart sank—as it is meant to allow the new head to reflect on the transitory nature of their position. The full mourning cycle lasts an Imperial year,

She skimmed. How long would he stay here, reciting?

One performance of the ritual takes about an hour and a half. It is recited on alternate weekdays and certain Imperial holidays, most notably the . . .

She had time. She could wait. It was interesting, anyway. She made herself running subtitles and quietly lowered herself on the ground, behind her stele.

He went on, never halting, never hurrying. While she couldn’t see the text carved into the stele in front of him, the ritual frequently called for a mention of the name of the person. She just had to wait for it to come up.

“Ieyūni ta Enafisul, who died a violent death, who died at the hands of a murderer,” the ritual had multiple versions for natural deaths, accidental deaths, assassination attempts . . . she reflected on how many ways there were for a head of a house to die. “Your blood calls out to us. Aye, we say your blood has not been shed in vain. You, the most noble of us . . . ” She stopped paying attention as she frantically searched for the name. A secret lover? An illegitimate sibling? Or even a descendant? Court intrigue swirled in her head. And if the mourning cycle was only a year long, then why was he still saying these words? The war ended a long time ago.

Ieyūni ta Enafisul was apparently not a remarkable person, as Oyārun found very little data. She fought and died in the war. She had been a young māwalēni who managed to escape induction to the ranks of the Imperial Seers, then she went up to the High Plains and received some training at HPRI. She joined the Column-Tree Forest guerrilla bands and participated in several important strikes on the Southern Passageway and the neighboring towns south of the Forest. She died in an ambush alongside four of her comrades. There wasn’t much else.

The lover theory looked the most likely—but wasn’t Aramīn aromantic and asexual, like Oyārun herself? His profile clearly said so; this was one of the very few commonalities between the two of them. Oyārun bit down on her lower lip. She would have to ask around. Maybe someone remembered her. Maybe there was no more data because someone had been going around deleting information. Was that even possible?

She sat in silence, listening. After a while, her teeming thoughts quieted down, and she was drawn into the ritual. He recited with grace and precision. Whoever this mysterious Ieyūni was, her soul would clearly be satisfied. Even the One Most High would be satisfied.

She could feel herself slipping into a trance, but she didn’t mind. The world narrowed down to Aramīn, to the sound of his voice. She thought she’d like him to pray for her, too; then she didn’t think much at all.

The ritual came to a close, she noticed with an unexpected wave of sadness. Everything was transitory—eventually, even mourning came to an end. He hadn’t arrived from the direction where she was presently standing—if she was lucky, he wouldn’t notice her at all on his way out. Still, better get some distance between them—she got slowly back up on her feet—

Instead of turning around, he took a step back, then bent forward from the waist, beginning anew. She was so surprised that her legs tangled together, seemingly of their own accord, and she toppled forward and hit the ground.

He turned around. Looked at her lying in a heap. She glanced up at him. He raised an eyebrow.

“Have you been spying on me?”

“I—no—I mean yes, but not like that—” She could feel her face redden as she babbled.

He chuckled softly. “Security does not seem to be running at peak capability today,” he said, clearly amused.

She got on her knees. “I’m not a danger to you.”

“Hmm?”

She got back up on her feet, brushed off her clothes with shaking hands. Looked at him. “I’m not a danger to you,” her voice trembled just as strongly, “so the fact that they didn’t catch me means they were performing well, not the opposite.” Why was she saying this? Why was she saying anything? She wanted to run away, but she felt rooted to the spot, and her mouth wouldn’t stop blabbering.

He looked surprised for once, then . . . pleased? “Technically, yes,” he said and adjusted his overcoat with a minimal, automatic gesture, “but that’s of course only true if you are indeed not a danger to me.”

She had no idea what to say next. She had not even known he had a security detail! There was so much she didn’t know about him. Her mind seemed to seesaw between trying to say everything at once and being so terrified she couldn’t get a single word out. Her mouth opened, then closed.

He nodded slightly. “I suppose you’re not a danger to my person.” He paused. “Did you mean to talk to me?”

She nodded, speechless.

“Come closer, I don’t bite.” He held up both hands. “I won’t touch you without your permission, I promise.” He glanced around. “There is a bench toward the back, we can sit. Or we can go for a walk.”

She held her ground.

“You know I’m not lying to you,” Aramīn said. “You’re a māwalēni, you can sense it.”

She blinked. “How did you know?”

“I can recognize the signs. I’ve seen many people like you.”

“And then you tortured them?” She felt like her entire body was on fire.

“I would not do anything to anyone without their consent,” he said. He was telling the truth. The way he saw the truth, at least. After all, he didn’t force the High Council to do anything either; he just shamed them into following him, she realized. But she did not share that shame, that Imperial guilt. Before independence, she would have been labeled both a Seer and an Undesirable. She stepped closer.

“A walk?” He turned around and strode ahead. She tagged along, still silent.

“What’s your name?” He could’ve checked her profile for the answer. He was trying to make small talk, she realized with a sinking feeling.

“Oyārun,” she said.

“What are you studying?”

“Preengineering subjects.” She swallowed. She was so afraid of him, and he looked nonchalant. Patient with her. “A lot of math and physics, mostly. I’m almost done with General Studies.” She tried not to think of her civics homework.

The paths among the steles were narrow, and she was glad she could only see his back. It made talking a lot easier.

“Which branches of engineering are you interested in?”

“I don’t really . . . know, yet.” Another swallow. “I like aircraft. But they don’t really . . . don’t really . . . ”

“See much use on Eren, you mean?” More of a statement than a question. With no hint of mockery in his voice.

“Yes, yes. So I don’t really know. I thought I’d . . . look around. See what there is to do. Maybe something related to space travel.” She sighed. “I’ve been putting it off.” Why was she telling him this?

“I could invite you to my workplace,” he said. “Plenty of work for engineers. Especially bioengineering, neuroengineering, but a little of everything. It might be something to aim toward. You will need to find an internship placement soon, and you might like this.”

“S-sure. Thank you.”

They walked ahead in silence. The hall was larger than she’d remembered. Eventually he offered, “That’s not why you’ve sought me out.”

“I . . . I just wanted to know.” He didn’t respond. “ . . . About you. What kind of person you were. I read . . . a lot.” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t make sense of it.”

He turned left. “That’s the bench I was talking about. If you would like to sit.”

They sat with more than enough room between them. She stared straight ahead, at a small empty space in the maze, and a small fountain in the center of it. There were more steles in the hall than she’d thought, and only a few scraggly trees.

“This is the only fountain on Eren,” he said, not looking at her.

“You know this place very well.” She felt foolish for saying such a triviality.

“I come here every day.”

“Who was Ieyūni?”

“One of my charges.”

She blinked, stunned. When she’d stumbled, he was about to start the whole ritual over again with a different name. “Do you say prayers for every one of them?”

“I try to.” He leaned back. “I aim to finish in this lifetime.” For a moment, sorrow and regret tinted his voice. Just for a moment.

Her thoughts raced. He had to have trained hundreds of people. He surely didn’t only mean everyone he had commanded, because he had never commanded a unit where Ieyūni was serving.

“You’re very . . . different from what I’d expected,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow again—she could tell without looking at him. He waited for her to speak.

“People said you were a Falconer,” she said after some hesitation. She didn’t know of a less harsh term, the way Ereni cognotype had supplanted Undesirable.

“Oh, I suppose I do have those tendencies.” He looked up at the domed ceiling high above. “It’s a spectrum, you know. Just like the Ereni cognotype.” So eerily calm, she thought. “I never even hunted for sport. I don’t go around murdering people. We are all different.”

It was out of her mouth before she knew it. “Would you like to?”

“To murder people?” His calm did not waver.

She was sure he’d take offense. Then she realized that everything she could say, everything hurtful, someone must have said to him already. She saw those people in the archives. She felt her face burn in embarrassment. He went on, and she was sure he was only pretending not to notice her reaction.

“I’m not interested. If I were to murder someone, it would be all over,” he said.

“All over?”

He closed his eyes. She turned to look at him. “Control,” he said after a while. “I need control.”

“Over people?”

“Yes.” He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly to look at her, a gracefully understated movement. He had known perfectly well that she’d look at him—he had known it so well that he didn’t even need to think of it. He automatically adjusted his behavior to take advantage of his situation. To reach his aims.

“Complete control,” he said, his gaze fixed on her.

She looked away, flustered. She tried to sound similarly nonchalant. “So . . . do you enjoy causing people pain?”

“Yes, I do.” As if he was being quizzed by a teacher. An easy question. “I’m a sadist, after all. That’s different from being a Falconer. People of any cognotype can be sadists.” He paused a bit. “Even yours.”

Was he goading her? She had to stay calm, calmer than this. Her mind held on to that template of question and answer, of education and teachers. She could get through this conversation without her heart jumping out of her chest if she thought of it as quizzing him. She went on.

“And you did cause them pain.”

“I do cause them pain,” he corrected her.

“Why are you answering my questions?”

“I have time, and I find them interesting.” So detached. That was the word—he felt permanently detached. And yet probably more in tune with his surroundings than she herself ever would, she suspected.

“So you . . . ask them to allow you. To cause them pain.”

“Yes.”

“And they allow you.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She could feel he was about to say What do you think?, but he changed his mind at the last moment.

“I want them to be perfect.” He leaned forward. “I can improve on them. The best they can offer—I can help them achieve it. I want my charges to be perfect, you see?” A glimmer of eagerness. She realized he didn’t have very strong emotions, in general. She nodded.

“So we make a deal. They give themselves over to me. And I make them perfect. As much as I can.” He did not take his eyes off her. “Everyone benefits.”

It did make a twisted sort of sense to her. “But there is pain.”

“No transformation is ever without pain,” he said. A quote from somewhere?

She blinked. “You’ve found your niche.”

“I have.” His gaze seemed questioning. “Are my answers bothering you?”

She returned his gaze. “Why are you so honest?”

“I have always been honest.”

“I thought people like you often lied.”

A trace of a smile. “I have no need to lie.”

2.

Oyārun knew all too well that she should study—she had quite an amount of math to review for her next meeting with her teacher—but instead she just sat, alone and in silence, replaying her sensory logs of the conversation with Aramīn.

Her tiny living quarters were like a shirt, overly tight around her body.

Did she finally understand what kind of man he was? She only knew that her abuwen showed no signs of subsiding. The more she knew about him, the more she wanted to know. Then again, this was a common characteristic of abuwen even when they were not person focused. Would the process ever run its course?

Aramīn had invited her to see his workplace, reiterating the offer when the two of them had said goodbye. She had to overcome her fear of unfamiliar situations and make that visit; her own mind would not give her rest until then.

She would love to work with him. As an engineer. As—

She swallowed hard.

Her fingers folded and unfolded a scrap of paper, over and over again.

Her mind stopped. Time stopped.

She had to make that visit.

She took a deep breath, shut down playback, called up her organizer. On top, the random quote of the day from her favorite poems said, “Rip open the seal release the magic.”

She blinked. She was sure the random quote had been something completely different just a moment ago. Had she overlooked it? She checked her system logs. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

She closed the organizer, got up—the chair toppling over—and rushed out, the echoes of the poem reverberating in her head.

Rip open the seal release the magic;

everything I can offer to draw you close

is in the tiniest inflections of my voice—

I am myself, and you—you abide in me

until even the sunsets turn into dust;

—The Blessings of the Path by Omasārun ta Idarawul, third stanza

It was early in the morning; Oyārun was stunned to realize how early. Sleep and wakefulness had blended together. How much time had passed since her meeting with Aramīn? Three days—it was hard to fathom. Three days spent in a daze. If anyone had tried to contact her, she hadn’t noticed. She had to bring this to a close; force it if need be.

She struggled to keep herself from breaking into a run. Her muscles were taut and rigid. The Institute was close by. After all that time, it was still called the Institute, a reminder of the High Plains of Emek forever and ever. A place of sanctity, a place of pain and blood and sacrifice. The High Plains far away, on another planet, in another solar system. The Institute remained, carrying the name ever onward into the future.

She walked right in, no one stopping her. She halted to check—the place was still restricted-entry. Someone had put her onto the visitor list. Did Aramīn seriously think she would come to see him? Did he truly want that? Did he expect her?

She ran along white corridors, without realizing where she was going. She only stopped when she painfully bumped into someone—

The young māwalēni stared at her in surprise. Oyārun opened her mouth to apologize, but the māwalēni held up a hand, silenced her.

“Are you looking for some—oh. Aramīn? I can show you the way to his office.”

Oyārun nodded, then belatedly closed her mouth.

“I am Emien,” the māwalēni said. She was young- and exhausted-looking, maybe just a year or two older than her. Dark semicircles stood out on the pale skin underneath her eyes. “Sorry, apparently someone forgot to clear you for the floor plans.” She closed her eyes for a second; when she reopened them, a craving for sleep hit Oyārun. “All done.”

Oyārun murmured thanks, then called up a copy of the floor plans.

“I can show you the way,” Emien said. “I’m going in that direction anyway.”

Oyārun nodded gratefully.

The two of them walked without saying much, Oyārun behind Emien. The māwalēni was wearing a long-sleeved white smock, matching trousers, and a white bandana. The smock had a turtleneck collar—Oyārun strained her eyes trying to see the implants peeking out from underneath the fabric. She stopped when she realized Emien had noticed; Oyārun didn’t mean to be rude, she was simply curious. Anything to take her mind off the constant, immense fear.

Emien suddenly halted; Oyārun almost fell over her. “His office is at the end of this corridor,” Emien said and pointed right. “I’m going left here.”

Oyārun wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. Emien was about to walk away but noticed her distress and stopped. She looked at Oyārun, head tilted to one side. “Mhm?”

“I—What do you think of him?”

“Huh? Oh, he’s all right. A bit on the strict side, but all right.” Emien looked concerned all of a sudden. “You heard those stories? That was just Imperial propaganda.” She rolled her eyes. “Trash for the yellow rags. Trust me, he’s all right.” She spoke with conviction and made no attempt to hide or camouflage her feelings.

Oyārun gulped. They said goodbye and Oyārun walked down the corridor. Twenty-one steps altogether; twenty-one steps of mind-numbing fear.

Oyārun pushed the door open. It yielded and she realized she had forgotten to knock. Embarrassment froze her and she stood still, unthinking. The walls were thick, and the doorway surrounded her. She felt boxed in.

“Do come in,” Aramīn called out to her.

When she didn’t move, he got up from his seat and walked toward her. “I thought we’d already established that I’m not one for eating people,” he said cautiously.

She walked in, her legs stiff like wooden sticks.

“Do sit.”

She was frozen.

“Here, I have a chair for you,” Aramīn said and stepped to the wall, picked up one of the chairs, and put it behind her. “You can sit now.” His voice was smooth and reassuring. She sat.

He sat on top of his desk; it was mostly empty. He threaded his fingers together. “So you’ve come to see the Institute for yourself. I’m happy to show you around. A little good-natured propaganda is not beneath me,” he said with a small, sarcastic smile.

She nodded, one of the vertebrae in her neck cracking. She could see he was trying to put her at ease.

“I was just reviewing a new procedure proposed by one of our surgery teams. It’s probably not really up your alley. We can go and look around, I can show you the—”

She broke in. “No, no, it’s all right—” She didn’t want to keep him from anything, especially not his work. Besides, everything he said was interesting.

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Would you be interested?” He smiled again, a hungrier smile. Just for a moment. “Ah, is it that everything about me is equally fascinating to you?”

She had a hard time believing he was not a māwalēni himself. Were her reactions to him so transparent? They probably were, she decided. Or maybe he had just a little grasp of the māwal but used that to all its worth.

When no answer was forthcoming, he said, “Well then. I cannot promise this will hold your attention, but I’ll do my best to explain everything.” He leaned back and shared his mental workspace with her with a command.

It was just a casual gesture for him, but for Oyārun it carried an intimacy beyond what would usually be attributed to it. Maybe because for her, there was no clear-cut division between input from her computer interface, input from her senses, and input via the māwal—it all blended together, and thus even when he simply shared something with her via purely technological means, it was as if he’d opened his mind to her, without hesitation.

She was touched, even though she felt that was unreasonable. He didn’t seem to notice. She leaned forward as he began his explanation.

“I should offer some context first—my apologies if we tread familiar terrain, in the beginning at least.”

She nodded again to show it was all right. She appreciated his consideration.

“All right. Eren is an extremely high-māwal zone and we need to spend a lot of effort on maintaining a habitable environment,” he said. It sounded like a quote from a lecture. He probably lectured often, she thought. “We need a large contingent of māwalēni whose primary task is to make sure no serious problems occur. This is why the Empire originally abandoned Eren, even though it was set to be a lucrative mining colony. It’s necessary—”

He got up and began to circle her chair, talking all the while. The effect was mesmerizing.

“It’s necessary to loosely bind together and harmonize the minds of everyone in general society and exert a stabilizing influence. In an environment that can be shaped by people’s expectations and fears, a single person’s panic can cause runaway reactions if precautions are not taken.”

He stopped, directly behind her, the tone of his voice abruptly changing.

“Did you know the first people to live here were devoured by monsters?”

She offered a weak no.

“It’s not hidden from those who choose to investigate, but it’s generally held that it’s for the best if people do not investigate.” He sighed and began his circle anew. “These days we can prevent such large-scale disasters without inhibiting māwal use. But it takes a lot of effort, and all too many of our māwalēni are busy with this constant struggle. We’re trying very, very hard to make sure that people who choose to join us can perform to the best of their ability, and possibly beyond. We are very short-staffed. It’s the only way. This is the System of Eren, not as you’d hear of it, but as it is. And if people had not already worked their hardest, I would not have had my moment of fame.”

Oyārun thought back on the video. All the weapons in the crowd. The emotions running high. And yet, the quiet, the people turning to each other to help. She nodded.

He looked at her and his gaze went to her marrow. “We only take volunteers. We are very firm about this. Believe me.” He looked away. “Still. I’m not proud of some of the things we do. We take people and squeeze them dry.” His gaze flickered around the room, as if searching for a window to stare out. There was no window, and outside—she knew—no nature to behold, only a desert of rocks and silt. No air above the thick roofs of the domes.

He spoke with his back to her. “They die far too young. And they die all spent. Back on Emek, when the Imperial Seers were all spent satisfying the whims of the noble houses, my blood had boiled with righteous anger.”

She couldn’t imagine him boiling with anything, but she could feel there was indeed an undercurrent of emotion beneath the surface; not particularly strong, but steady and never ceasing. He went on.

“Now we do the same ourselves. Do you understand that?”

Silence.

“There’s no place for us to go,” she said after she could overcome her hesitation. “This is our planet now . . . this is the price of independence.” She wished she could believe that herself.

“But this is too high a price. I do not want to see them die. I made an oath I would dedicate all my efforts to this. I cannot—” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Suddenly, a flash of insight struck Oyārun—Aramīn could not stand to feel useless. He wanted to be in control. Was all this about him and his mastery of his surroundings, by proxy? Even if it was, his efforts were still for a worthy cause, Oyārun decided.

“Let’s get back to the diagrams,” Aramīn said and turned around. His face was inscrutable. “These are quite drastic procedures.” Did he have trouble speaking?

“To amplify the māwal?” she offered.

“No, no,” he shook his head. “On this planet, we have all the amplification we need, and then some more. And with the people we recruit, lack of power is simply not an issue. This is all for regulation.”

She didn’t really get the idea. They hadn’t gotten to anything similar yet in her classes.

“Many māwalēni can raise a large amount of māwal, here on Eren. Training or no training, implants or no implants. But that’s just a burst, or some kind of runaway reaction, a positive feedback loop that runs until some limiting factor is hit. What we need is constant, steady high throughput.”

She had heard of positive feedback loops, but not too much—she knew “positive” didn’t mean the loop was desirable, only that it was amplificatory. Still, she got the gist of what he was saying. She nodded, her neck no longer clicking and creaking.

“This necessitates constant control and considerable effort. Especially since ideally, there should be a division between power raising and power direction.”

“Um?”

“Power raising and power direction, at their most focused, are hard if not impossible to do concurrently for a single mind. It is much more fruitful to split the functions, assign them to separate people.”

He breathed out. She breathed out too, then blinked; had their breaths unconsciously synchronized? Was that a good sign, or the exact opposite?

“This helped us to persist here,” he said, suddenly aloof. He held up one hand, looked at it. Showed it to her. “You know, my hands are bloody.”

She sat in silence. She knew that—everyone knew—everyone knew everything. Back then, politics, now, history. She didn’t know how to react. Independence had been hard-won.

He looked upward, toward a nonexistent sky. “And yet you still come to me.” Then he shook his head and cleared his throat. He didn’t speak for a long time.

Her mind spun. Was this a prescheduled confession? Or was it more spontaneous? She could not tell. His sadness, however, was genuine. Not strong, and mixed with a kind of self-reflective amusement—“am I really feeling this?”—but genuine nonetheless.

“Enough,” he said. “We have a task at hand.”

3.

Oyārun sat, looking at the little fountain—the only one of its kind. She felt empty, and at the same time, weighed down, as if something were steadily pressing on her shoulders, pushing her chest cavity inward . . .

Aramīn had shown her the schematics, explained everything in detail. But when it was time for her tour of the building, he demonstrated a curious reluctance.

She was turning her mental impressions around in her head; it was all surprisingly difficult. Eventually, she concluded Aramīn had assumed she would be discomforted. That she would disapprove. But why would that bother him?

A thought—

She was an outsider. She was not one of his charges and was not slated to become one.

Maybe he was afraid of—

She could not pursue this train of thought any further.

She clutched her arms around her chest, hugged herself tightly. She didn’t, she didn’t want to think of it—she knew, knew for once that he would not want her to think of it—she squeezed her eyes shut.

Then she blinked. How had she gained so much insight into one person? Certainly, via the māwal . . . but the Ereni cognotype did not lend itself to such approaches. She could perceive the māwal, and that probably helped, but still . . .

“It’s the sheer effort I put into it,” she said out loud. “Into understanding him.” No one was there to hear her. Her voice sounded too low and deep for her ears. “It’s the sheer effort,” she repeated.

This took her mind away from the rest.

Oyārun tried to wrangle Aramīn into an internship placement—she was surprised by her own audacity. It was all just text messages sent back and forth, and not very long ones at that, but this was not something she would’ve imagined herself capable of doing.

It’s the fear, she thought, without pausing to examine the source of her fear.

Life sped up and she moved through it in a daze, staggering from one day to another. Her conversations with the people she’d met through paper folding lessened, then ceased. Her meetings with her teacher were shorter and shorter. She wasn’t sure when she’d last talked to her parents.

She would start her internship at the end of the short cycle. Just a few more days.

She felt a craving, and yet she did not know what it was that she craved.

They were not, strictly speaking, visions; they only had a tactile component. Oyārun felt herself strapped to some kind of—machine? frame?—then she felt the straps tighten. A warm, dry hand smoothed over her brow. Then she was lying in bed, a soft, firm bed, and all around there was white—that emptiness was the only thing she saw.

She wondered if she should seek help. Ask for a counseling appointment—but what would she say? That something was swimming below the surface, waiting to break out, and she had glimpsed the shadow of its body, rising from the depths to lurk just below the edges of her consciousness, a sea monster determined to ascend? How would she say that? And was that even a problem in itself, or was it something she simply needed to come to terms with, something perfectly natural and right, if somewhat unusual?

The māwal would give her visions. Surely this was expected, especially on this planet, and especially given that she was sensitive to it.

Then why the sense of urgency?

Her time frame shortened. She counted every hour until the day she would set foot in the Institute again. She kept on feeling, then rejecting the feeling, that her life would be over.

This was to be a simple junior internship in medical engineering, nothing more.

She tried to tell herself that.

That was before she came face-to-face with Aramīn and found herself making that unspeakable request.

4.

Aramīn suddenly went pale, all the blood draining from his cheeks. Yet he kept his composure. “Sorry, would you please say that again?” he said with such forced evenness in his voice that a chill ran along Oyārun’s spine.

“I want to join the System,” she said.

There. She had done it. Even that morning when she woke, she had told herself she wouldn’t. It was impossible that she would even entertain such a thought.

But she wanted to, she craved it so much it was impossible to describe—

“You only say that because you are obsessed with me,” he said with cruelty sharp like a knife. He wanted to push her away.

“No, I—” How was she supposed to respond to that? To such a slur? Yes, she was indeed obsessed if that was the word he wanted to use, instead of something like special interest that was more neutral, or abuwen, actually positive; but—“I am, I am, I admit that, but that has nothing to do with this—”

“No?” He leaned forward. Eyes narrowing. “The way I see it is, you grew up, acquired enough of a grasp on the māwal to be able to function, and you never felt attracted to it. You knew what it was, but it was not your path.” Longer and longer pauses between words. Not. Your. Path. “And then all of a sudden,” his words hissed, “you become obsessed with me, and you realize this is what you need to keep me close. Suddenly, you want to join the System.”

He stood, right in front of her. He was taller than her, and she had to arc her neck uncomfortably upward.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “We fought so that you would not have to do this. We fought so that no one would be forced to do this. We fought for your right of choice, many of us died for your right of choice, we fought, and we won. I will not—I will not allow you to throw that away.”

She took a step back, and her feet tangled in the chair behind her, sitting there unused. She lost her balance and fell—

He grabbed her arms and steadied her. Then he dropped his arms and looked away.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted in a threatening way. But I can only say this much, and I can only say it thus. For you this is history, but for me it was my entire life.”

“I’m sorry—” she began, then stopped, not knowing how to continue.

“We fought so that the Imperial Seers would not have to live their lives in servitude to the Court. We fought so that the Undesirables would not be eradicated. You are both, and yet you would throw this freedom away.” End of the sentence. End of the line. He paused. “I will not allow it.”

She braced herself. Then she stepped around him, in his line of sight, and stared him in the face. “This is what I want to do.” She saw something there, and she added, on impulse—“This is what you want to do.”

He looked as if slapped.

She went on, just as merciless as he had been.

“This is what you want to do.” She imagined her eyes piercing his, she put force behind her gaze, willed it to be so. “You are flattered.” She started to walk around him, in a tight semicircle just like he had done, but a little too close for comfort. She kept up eye contact all the while, in a mechanistic but still all too effective manner. “I know how you see me. I’m young. I’m ideally suited to this. You are permanently, desperately short-staffed. I’m here to give you just what you want, and if my reasons are less than pure, so are yours. You might want to save the settlement, but that’s not what drives you. What drives you is my obedience, the obedience of people like me, and now you are torn—turn me away and enjoy my obedience for a moment, or keep me close and enjoy it for as long as I live.”

He looked—taken aback?

“That . . . ” He cleared his throat. “That might not be long.”

She would not take her gaze off him, she would not let up for an instant—and he, he could not look away.

“I am here for you to do as you please. I know the risks. I know what’s involved.” She took a deep breath. “Let me help.”

“You don’t know,” he said, looking away for a moment. Reminiscing? “You think you do, but you don’t. You might understand the process, but you’ve never experienced the pain.”

Despite his words, she could feel that inside him, something had given way; yet she was too caught up in her own fervor to rejoice.

He looked at her again. He had apparently used that moment to regain his composure, for he was just as forceful as before, and probably twice as forceful as she had just been.

“I can take you. You are right; I am flattered, and you are well-suited to this line of work. But that’s not why I’m taking you.” His eyes bore into hers. Was he miming her? “I’m taking you because we, the collective we, do not have the luxury of turning any suitable person away. I have slapped you in the face and you have slapped me in the face; we are even.”

His tone was abrasive, but she felt it was only an act. Inside, deep down inside, he was relieved. He was looking forward to this. He was—may the One Most High help them both—hungry.

II.

1.

“We’ll also need an endorsement from your closest relatives,” the brown-skinned young man with Worowan features said and scratched his hairless scalp under his cap. Oyārun was surprised to see the gesture in someone so young-looking—he must’ve been born off-Eren, he must’ve had ample time to get used to the feeling of hair covering his head to feel the lack so acutely.

Oyārun transferred the documents. Her father had approved everything; on the call, he had looked even more tired than Emien. She felt the planetoid was eating everyone alive.

The man nodded to himself as he examined the documents. She looked at his profile—his name was Isinaiyu, and he had indeed been born elsewhere. He was also older than she’d guessed at first.

“Everything looks all right,” he finally said. “I assume you haven’t changed your mind . . . ?”

She sighed. “It has been two weeks. I haven’t changed my mind in two weeks, I’m not going to change it now.”

He shrugged, and she felt that he’d seen that already, people changing their minds at the very last instant . . . ? It was a complicated feeling and she had trouble parsing it.

“All right, I’m clearing you for the medical,” he said. “Go on ahead. Third floor, the corridor on the left.” He made a little gesture with his fingers and a path traced itself on her interface overlay. Such a deeply ingrained gesture, she thought. None of the stiffness of those born off-Eren, the older generation. How odd. But some people were more flexible than others.

She followed the path.

The doctor running the checks also looked Worowan; a short, stout woman with a spring in her steps. Her skin was much darker than Oyārun’s. She introduced herself as Esesewi, and they greeted each other in the Worowan manner, grabbing the forearms and bowing their heads. Oyārun’s family were mostly Plainsfolk, but she knew the basic Worowan customs from their neighbors in their housing unit.

Oyārun could feel the doctor making a preliminary assessment based on that single greeting: the texture and temperature of her skin, the steadiness—or, rather, unsteadiness—of her movements, the strength of her grip. All with effortless expertise.

“The examination is not particularly invasive,” Esesewi said. Her voice was warm and deep, a welcome feeling among the cold walls. “Your interface gathers most of the relevant information already, I just need a data dump. Give me root?”

She did. Esesewi went on talking while she examined the data. She described the additional tests—just a few simple cognitive tasks, as the detailed workup would be done concurrently with the new set of modifications once Oyārun passed the medical. Then the doctor looked directly at her, away from the readouts supplied by her interface. “By the way, you know I’m supposed to dissuade you?”

Oyārun shrugged. “You’re the second person today.”

Esesewi chuckled. “No point in it, then?” She grinned at her. “I haven’t said I wanted to dissuade you, or that I would attempt to dissuade you, only that I was supposed to dissuade you. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to do this, that’s just fine.” She focused on the data again. “You will want out, but that will happen after the point of no return, you know?”

A wave of sudden fear ran through her. “I’m—”

“Look, it happens to almost everyone. I’ve been here a long time. It happens over and over. Now you’ll just have to decide whether to go with your true will as opposed to your will at a given moment.”

She wasn’t sure she understood that. “ . . . Decide?”

“That happens right before the point of no return. You decide your true will and hand us the ability to enforce it. Even against yourself.” The doctor sighed. “We wouldn’t do this if the process was reversible, or if it could be stopped, paused. But once started, it needs to run its course. It’s dangerous to interrupt—dangerous for you, for us, for everyone. You can say no before, you can say no afterward, you can quit at any time, but you can’t say no during the process itself.” She spread her hands. “I’m sorry.”

Oyārun hugged herself. A cold sensation was forming inside her, pulling her innards together like a black hole. “I’m—” She looked down. The floor was smooth and gray. “I mean that makes sense. I’m just afraid.”

Esesewi glanced up. “We expect people to be afraid. I’d be worried for you if you weren’t.”

Aramīn looked down on his bare desk, his expression contemplative. He was mulling over the data, Oyārun knew. The medical, the more recent tests, her former data back from when she’d decided she would not train as a professional māwalēni. Such a long time ago, shortly after her power had begun manifesting in earnest. They had taught her how to channel it away in safe ways, how to ask for help, they had set up a few simple mechanisms in her mind so that she wouldn’t be troubled by the power she’d been born with but that had never particularly interested her. She had had free choice every step of the way, and she had said no. But then, she changed her mind . . .

“This was a very clean job,” Aramīn said, looking up at her. “You had no trouble in everyday life, is that correct?”

“It was fine.” She felt embarrassed for a moment. “Sometimes I’d have these odd feelings, not even premonitions . . . foreboding, maybe? But it was fine. Also, I had enough to help me make sense of what people were thinking, but not so much to cause problems, so . . . the helpful parts without the troublesome parts?”

Aramīn nodded gravely. “Most people come to us when the bindings wouldn’t hold, or the power becomes unmanageable for some other reason.” He stood and began to pace again. “I have to say I’m troubled by that. It mars the quality of consent. It’s also a failing on our behalf.”

“I didn’t come because of that,” Oyārun said. “I was fine.”

“I know. Your motivations trouble me for other reasons.” He was with his back to her, but she could feel his consternation, drawing from a source deep enough that she couldn’t sense it without prying. She wouldn’t pry.

He went on. “You’re here because of your interest in me. It appeals to me, I must say. And I can certainly train you, as I’ve trained many others. But I don’t think I can truly give you what you desire.” He stopped right behind her. “I don’t have abuwen. I have a different cognotype, so I don’t know this from personal experience. But I know that despite their intensity, sometimes they pass, all of a sudden. The impact of the decision you are making now will last much longer.”

Oyārun looked up at him, craning her neck. “Are there people who . . . ” She wasn’t even sure how to phrase it. “Who want to do it for its own sake?”

Aramīn stepped away from the chair and she couldn’t follow him with her gaze. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Some even have it as their abuwen. But let’s get back to you.” He circled her and sat back up on the top of his desk. “You are good at power raising. Not much at control, of course, since you haven’t trained at all. So we’ll emphasize power raising, if that’s agreeable with you.”

She nodded eagerly. Aramīn looked at her askance. “I suspect that at this point, everything I say is going to be agreeable with you.” He shook his head. “What shall I do with you?”

She was dressed in a plain white shirt and pants. She’d expected she’d have to wear something more ornate for the initiation. Many, many people had formal dress as their abuwen, and it showed. Every single function or event on Eren had its complicated rules of dress, every little fold and embroidery carried reams of meaning.

White symbolized emptiness.

She took a deep breath and opened the door to the small waiting room.

Aramīn was waiting for her, standing up from one of the many cheap mass-produced chairs littering the HPRI building. Aramīn followed her gaze to the chair. “We make do with what we have,” he said gravely. “Come.”

She stepped closer and saw he was holding a roll of some kind of tape or ribbon in his hand.

“This is to symbolize your submission to my will and my control,” he said. “For the duration of our cooperation. That is, if you are still willing.”

“It’s why I’m here.” Her words felt too overwrought, too verbose. She took a breath. “Yes,” she said.

Aramīn didn’t miss the subtlety. He nodded appreciatively and smiled, a brief interruption in the ashen solemnity of his emotions.

“Turn around.”

She did so.

“Your hands, please.” After a moment of confusion, she put her hands behind her back and he tied them together, the fabric of the red ribbon adhering seamlessly to itself. It didn’t stick to her skin. She experimentally pulled her hands apart, but the ribbon held.

“This might be intense,” Aramīn said, but he didn’t pause. He put another strip of red ribbon around her neck. Her breath caught and she didn’t understand why—the ribbon wasn’t tight, it fit just the right way—

It seemed right. It seemed proper.

She could feel Aramīn’s hands, hesitating midair for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and led another red strip down her back along her spine, tying the loops around her neck and hands together. Finally, he made a handle for himself at the end of a long strip, affixed between her hands, and he led her out into the hall.

The white hall was smaller than she’d expected. She recognized some people: Esesewi, standing to one side, the bright white lights overhead creating highlights on her now-serious face. Emien, gangly and sleep deprived. People she’d come across in HPRI, casual acquaintances, always glad to see her even if weary and exhausted.

Aramīn walked up to a small dais with Oyārun, then stood in front of her.

Two large, muscular people stepped to her sides and one person walked up behind her. She was surrounded.

“Why have you come here?” Aramīn asked, so softly and gently that she yanked her head up and stared at him in amazement.

Then she realized she didn’t know the words of the ritual. She shuddered. She opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.

“Just answer with your own words,” Aramīn added and nodded encouragingly.

She swallowed. Her throat felt completely dry. “I’ve come here to join the System,” she said, as simply as she could. Fewer possibilities for error that way. She struggled to think clearly despite the all-consuming fear.

“Is it your true will to join the System?” he declaimed.

She nodded, then said yes.

“Do you give me the ability to enforce your true will upon yourself, when it is perilous to stop?”

She was about to answer, but he held up a hand. “Wait. After you’ve said yes, there won’t be any turning back. I want you to know that.” He looked at her like—like a daughter? No, something else, some other relation. Her head swam. “Do you understand?”

She nodded silently.

He raised his voice again. “What is your answer?”

“My answer is yes.”

Aramīn nodded to the assistants. They stepped to her and gripped her arms, her shoulders. They held her in place.

“The people of the Free State of Eren support you,” he went on, “the people are here to catch you if you stumble and fall. You will not have to face the pain alone.” He paused.

She shuddered. The assistants held her strong.

“With the power vested in me by the people of Eren and the Ways,” he stepped forward and placed a hand on top of her bare head, “I take control.”

His voice had—if not his own māwal—the power of the ages and the expanses behind it. Her legs gave way. The people didn’t allow her to fall to her knees. Her shoulders hurt as she was held up.

Aramīn went on. “I swear I will only act for the benefit of all sentience. I swear I will only cause pain when necessary, and I will not subject you to anything beyond your capacity to handle, as far as I can estimate.”

He took his hand off her head and pulled out a small implement from the folds of his clothing. A—dagger of some sort? With some kind of force field in place of the blade. Her eyes flickered to the blade, to his face, to his fingers gripping the handle all too strongly—

“This is to remind me of my oath,” he said and rammed the blade into his open palm.

Her breath caught. The field did not wound, there was no blood, no scar—but a whip of pain ran through his entire body, so intense that Oyārun could not help feeling it herself.

“I know what I demand,” he said in an undertone. “Remember, always remember, I will only cause pain when necessary.”

He yanked her chin up and pushed the blade into the middle of her forehead.

She screamed, her screams resonating inside her skull, and she fell, fell into darkness, and the people held her strong, and would not let go.

2.

Oyārun was floating, her body out of sync with her mind. Was she lying on a bed? Was she—

Aramīn’s words circled in her head; she knew she had to hold on to them, preserve their meaning at all costs. The scene played in her head, over and over, in a loop. She no longer understood the words.

Spiders, insects, mythical aliens of yore, he had said. Symbolic of the phylogenetically oldest parts of the nervous system, the ones most inaccessible to acting consciousness. Aversion is normal; in general, one does not want the acting consciousness to trespass there.

Most of the time, that is. A flicker of a smile. You will need to go there; you will need to welcome these parts into yourself. Give yourself over. We will keep you safe.

We will keep you safe.

She made an attempt to reach out. Her arms were tied down with wide straps and the feeling of the out-of-phase representation of her hand reaching out and passing through the straps spooked her. Where was she? What was going on? She knew she was supposed to remember. Was this an out-of-body experience? Could she simply float away?

She found it harder and harder to keep a hold on her consciousness, until it simply drifted away, her drifting away with it, floating on the streams, bobbing up and down.

It was black and gleaming like chitinous shapes; it was white and porous, desiccated; it was metallic quicksilver, protean, ever changing. It was translucent.

It reached out to Oyārun with sharp thin legs, and as she moved closer, she saw the legs ended in talons, but she knew it was good this way. She did not feel the supposed aversion.

Ten-eight, looking nominal so far.

Still, keep an eye on sub-layer E for adverse reactions.

She only knew, with a certainty of ages-old declarations, the bedrock of civilization, that while it was fundamentally alien and inhuman, it was a part of her, now and forever, extending into all dimensions of time and space.

If it was her, then the only natural impulse was to unify, merge, draw it close.

It wanted to eat her, and she knew she had to be cut apart and consumed, that was why she was there, in this fogged-over landscape extending into infinity—

It needed to devour her, and she could feel its urgency inside herself, in her stomach, in her chest. In the core.

It needed to flay her, first of all.

So many sharp legs!

Spiking over F2. Looks nice and clean.

Yes, excellent response . . . very clean so far.

Cutting and slicing, holding fast.

Blood flowing ever so slowly, as if time itself gradually came to a halt.

The pain was there, but the pain was good, it was only a part of the process and it showed the process itself had not ceased to move along;

it wanted to merge, to pull apart the muscles and nestle close—

bursting out into millions of tiny tendrils, lodging itself in the flesh—

pulling apart the spinal column, running up golden yellow and burning hot into the brain, all of a sudden very fast—

searing mere thought with its touch, and she screamed, screamed, and screamed—

Of course, proceeding as planned.

There was only her and the being, alien and immense, an impenetrable monolithic sentience come face-to-face with her. There was nothing else.

It was so much bigger than her!

Yet she could not shirk away. It was inside her, it was her, it was beautiful and hungry.

She gave in.

Oyārun was lost in the moment. How much time had passed? She was still there, face-to-face, merging, howling in pain and in raw, bare need, holding it close and being cut apart. People were speaking, passing messages. So many levels of the real, and she could pass between each of them with the barest thought, the faintest gesture . . .

She was tied to a machine, some kind of complicated apparatus, with many thin-limbed surgical instruments issuing forth from a central hub—

the spider was eating her, feasting on her, embedding itself into her—

She’s taking well to the implantation. Switching to DF for some testing.

Take it slow, there’s no need to hurry.

She was yanked back into her physical body with a suddenness that took away her breath; all around her everything was white and spotless and metallic and clean, more unreal in its sharpness than anything she’d experienced.

She was being disassembled, reassembled—her thoughts were crystal clear.

She looked down on her left arm, flaps folded apart like in some medical demonstration, skin flayed. She felt no horror, no apprehension, but no detachment either; she was there, in the moment, and the moment was there for her.

Someone was monitoring her mind, from up close. She reassured the person and the person reassured her in kind. She felt a vague urge to merge, but instead she floated, floated high, drifted away . . .

I’d say she needs a break, one of the voices said, and she wished to respond that everything was all right, but then there was no more of her, and no more of the voice.

Oyārun was lying on a hospital bed, all very white and clean and comfortable. She sank into the pillow and the shape-forming mattress. She was tired like generations, her body heavy as stone in a bed of white fluff, in a white room, completely surrounded, wrapped in a thick blanket . . . was it all really so white, or had her mind stopped making sense of her surroundings altogether? Was it only a simulation or a mindscape?

Either way, she relished the soft sensation all over her body—calming, relaxing, peaceful. Her skin felt raw, chiseled away until it was the thinnest film covering her self.

She made an attempt to tilt her head—so hard. Her skull felt filled with sharp-edged objects sliding on each other.

Her left arm was lying on top of the blanket. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt of some sort. Her skin looked unchanged. She tried her hardest to lift her hand, but she could only rotate it a little; still, she got a better view. As the muscles in her hand shifted, she noticed the faint lines embedded in the flesh—or was she imagining things?

She sighed a hoary, raspy sigh, and relaxed, her body giving up in exhaustion even though she was no longer in pain.

Aramīn was sitting by Oyārun’s bedside. Mentally checking some kind of computer readout? He glanced up when he noticed she’d shifted in bed.

“How are you feeling? All the parameters we’re monitoring are well within boundaries.” He nodded at a corner of the ceiling.

She still felt very weak, but no longer heavy as stone. She could speak. “I’m fine,” she said with only a modicum of effort.

“Don’t overexert yourself.” He paused. “It all went very smoothly.”

She wanted to laugh, but she could not manage more than a cough. “It didn’t feel that smooth to me.”

“Trust me, we’ve seen worse.” Did she glimpse a twinkle in his eye? He looked down and ran a hand over his overcoat, even its muted aubergine a burst of color in the bare white room. When he spoke again, his voice was sober. “You are well-suited for this kind of transformation. I’m very satisfied with the results so far.”

“You mean, we should’ve done this sooner?” She fought an urge to grin at him. She felt giddy.

He cleared his throat. “We could’ve done this sooner, yes. Still, I am satisfied.” Again, a pause. “There is attrition at every stage. Every stage you pass is an accomplishment in itself.”

She closed her eyes. “I didn’t really do anything.”

“That’s precisely the point. You did not offer resistance. It will only get harder.”

She thought of all the recordings, the logs in the Oral History Archives, running them through her mind. She finally grinned as the familiarity of the situation dawned on her. “Is this the point where you ask how well I can tolerate pain?”

“You know I only ask that to get a rise out of people.” He sounded vaguely entertained; or was she imagining it? She opened her eyes to look at him. Still she wasn’t sure.

“To get a rise out of people and to watch for their reactions,” she remarked. Watching for his reaction.

“That too.” He was unperturbed.

She chuckled.

He leaned back in his chair, stretching. “So, tell me, how well can you tolerate pain?”

Oyārun was still slightly unsteady on her feet; her body was still slightly unfamiliar. Heavier, but just a little; definitely firmer. She still habitually poked at the implants protruding from her skull, her spinal column. Not enough space to squeeze everything into the body, she surmised. She didn’t change the way she tied her headscarf. Some of the protrusions showed, but she didn’t particularly mind. She had not ventured outside yet, and she was curious about the looks she would get, if also somewhat intimidated. Admiration mixed with apprehension? Patriotic pride? She could not begin to guess at people’s complicated feelings.

Aramīn pushed her to start practicing almost as soon as she could get around unassisted. He came for her, led her into a small room designated for the purpose.

“I’ve seen the results of the tests, but let’s just do another round,” he said in a way that sounded oddly measured, even from him. He instructed her to raise māwal, focus it in specific parts of the body, outside the body. She complied. What was he getting at? Her apprehension grew, even though everything he asked for she could do with ease, and with a smoothness that surprised even her. Maybe this really is my path, she thought. She was caught up in the routine, at home within it, fitting in.

He came to an abrupt halt, fell silent. “I should’ve tried to get a rise out of you,” he said quietly.

She blinked at him, feeling her eyes grow large. “Yes?” What was he getting at?

“There are many kinds of pain,” he said, his words cautious, feeling their way ahead. “Most we can decrease, manage. But there is a kind of pain that is tied to the essence of the self, and that’s intractable to medical manipulations. It’s tied to the māwal, and . . . ” He looked down at the mats covering the floor with no gap between them, fitting together like puzzle pieces. “The only way is to simply get used to it. Nothing else can be done. It cannot be minimized.”

She didn’t understand his distress. “I’m all right with that,” she reassured him, to no effect.

“Not everyone can get used to it.”

“You expect me to fail,” she said with forced nonchalance.

“You’ve done well so far,” he said, a trifle too fast. “But even the . . . exercises we can perform do not compare to a live run.”

He really did expect her to fail. He thought he’d been too lucky to have her? Things had gone too smoothly so far? She didn’t understand. He’d done this so many times before. What was different this time? On occasion he felt weary to her. Was it the repetition? Was he feeling his age? It puzzled her, and she grew impatient.

“Expectations shape reality,” she snapped.

He looked up, stared at her dead on. “Then show me you’re stronger than me.”

This time she was the first to look away.

She could feel his disappointment; faint, but still present. I’ll show him, she thought and gritted her teeth.

“We can induce this kind of pain. Gradually at first, as much as this can be done gradually. As we raise the thresholds, we can get more and more māwal throughput. Until you’re ready for a live run.” He rubbed his face. “As much as people can be ready for a live run. Nobody is.”

I will show you, she thought at him with newfound ferocity.

He opened a section of the wall. She could see the equipment stored inside. “You might’ve noticed that this room was soundproofed.”

“Most rooms in the Institute are,” she said.

“Exactly.” He pulled out a red ring of tape. He opened it, clapped it around his wrist. “We can be explicit about everything, we need not have smoke screens and obfuscation, like in the times of the old seers and magicians. More understanding doesn’t break the process.”

He walked to one end of the room, opened another segment, and pulled out a tall, thick pole of some sort, almost like a column. He walked with it to the center of the room and began to affix it; there was a shape precut into the mats that he could simply pop out to fix the pole to clamps on the floor below. He twisted and something popped out on top, attached itself to the ceiling. He grabbed the pole and pulled at it strongly. It held.

“I have no wish to humiliate you, to degrade you. I only need to cause you pain. Unlike the people of old, we know this is sufficient. What they did to the Imperial Seers was not only inefficient but actively harmful.” He unclasped the ring from his wrist. “This time, I’m going to tie you to the pole.” He gestured for her to step closer.

She stepped to the pole, put her back to it, obediently allowed him to tie her hands behind the pole. “The world axis, if you will,” he said. “The tree connecting the worlds. Many mythological parallels.”

He proceeded to make sure she would not be able to slump and injure herself when her muscles gave in.

“Inisayu’s ordeal,” she offered weakly.

“Inisayu was hanging from the tree upside down, according to legend. I’d rather not risk popping a blood vessel in the brain, it’s still quite soon after surgery.” He turned away and went back to the locker, behind her. “Before you get carried away, know that I have knives and a whip, and I intend to use them.” A sound of cloth on cloth—what was he doing?

When he walked again in front of her, she saw. He’d removed his trademark overcoat. He still wore a richly decorated dark blue vest over a loose shirt and implements like knife handles hung from his belt. A harness was also hanging from it, housing what looked like a long, yellow, softly glowing tentacle.

He unclipped a handle from his belt and grabbed it in his palm. A glowing blade—some kind of force field?—sprung from it. She recognized the tool as the one he’d jammed into his palm. His own reaction had been strong enough that it physically hurt her, even though his face had remained impassive. “I can see you remember this,” he said.

Her muscles spasmed. Her body remembered it before her mind.

“Yes.” He smoothed over her forehead with his free hand. “You definitely recall that.” The touch strengthened the memory, and it hurt—

“Focused pain can throw the system off-balance in the desired way. It can overactivate the māwal-raising process . . . ” His voice drifted away. “We can try. We will go slowly at first. Allow me to demonstrate. Very slowly at first. I am going to put this into the chest center.” He indicated the position in the middle of her chest with a long finger. She knew he could not see the way the māwal flowed throughout her body, but he must’ve done this so many times it was second nature. He pointed at just the right spot. “Then we can do the other centers, but first I want you to be familiar with the sensation.”

She nodded assent. He plunged in the blade, through her clothing—the force field did not wound, only—

She screamed, strained against the bindings.

“I’ve pulled it out. That was the lowest setting, and only for a moment. We will need to increase both the duration and the amount, slowly, but surely.”

Her entire torso felt like it was on fire.

“Do you think you can take that for a bit longer?”

Her thoughts clumped together, and her tongue tripped over the sounds she wanted to make.

“Bgh—bh—ah—I think.”

“Excellent.” Did he sound more satisfied than ever before? “Then let’s do it again. Eight seconds, do you think you can take eight seconds?”

She could.

She gasped for air once it was over. Her limbs twitched.

“Once more. Maybe we can try sixteen seconds. I’m counting.”

She drew in a deep breath.

“Exhale. If you keep in air, it makes it worse. Try to breathe slowly, evenly. A few breaths before we start . . . ”

She exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled again. Inhaled.

“Good. Not very deep, you don’t want to hyperventilate. That can come in handy at times, but it can also cause unwanted complications. It’s best to be careful.”

She nodded.

“I’m starting. One . . . two . . . Breathe evenly. Four. Five.”

Her entire body was tense like a closed fist. The world narrowed to one burning point in her chest. Her consciousness floated, back and forward, out of sync with her body.

“Eight. Nine.”

She could do this. She could do this.

The māwal ran through her in large shudders, the air thickening. She found it harder and harder to breathe. Fire to rend the flesh from the bones.

She could do this. She had to. She struggled to build a balance. She thought she could take this for longer. Not indefinitely, but longer. Longer.

“Twelve. Thirteen.”

Almost over. Almost over.

“Fourteen. I think you can take more.”

She nodded, genuinely believing she could. Aramīn pulled up her chin with one quick and practiced movement, pushed her head against the pole. Her eyes widened in surprise.

Aramīn stabbed another dagger into the middle of her forehead.

Later, she did not even know if she had screamed. The world collapsed around her, the searing and yet immaterial flames of the māwal licking at the walls, filling the chamber with a ferocious thundering noise. Everything rushed through her, all at once, and her consciousness blinked out.

When she came to, she was still tied to the pole.

“There, that was doable, wasn’t it?”

For a long while, she was unable to respond.

Oyārun was lying on a slab, tied down tight. The right sleeve of her white shirt was rolled up above the elbow.

Aramīn was putting daggers through her right arm, one after another. He kept up the talk.

“The first one goes into the center of the palm. An important location. The second just below the wrist, where the radius and the ulna meet. Another in the middle of the forearm. Yet another in the inner elbow. Remember, it works through fabric, but this time I want you to be able to see the sites.”

She was taking short, gasping breaths.

“Good, you are doing good. I’m not going to do anything sudden this time. You’ve made a lot of progress. It’s time to rest.”

Tears were streaming down her face.

“This is something you can do for yourself. Just one arm. Either the right or the left. I’m going to take these out and untie you, and then you can try.”

She sat up, trembling. Her fingers closed around the handle of the dagger, but without any force, and she dropped it in her lap, wincing even though it was turned off.

Aramīn picked up the dagger, handed it to her again. Calmly, patiently, without any urgency.

She fumbled the catch again. A sob wracked her.

“There’s no need to hurry. Take your time.”

She managed to hold the blade on the third attempt.

“Good. That’s a good first step.”

She turned on the field. Pushed the blade into her palm, all the way to the hilt. Her fingers closed around the handle automatically.

“It’s not going to come out unless you pull it out. You don’t need to worry about it. I can give you another one . . . Here. There, I can show you the spot.”

He gently guided her hand. “Good, now push.”

She did.

“Two more. All right? You could take that when I was doing it.”

She nodded, forcing out her words from between clenched teeth. “That was . . . easier.”

“Yes, passivity is easier for some people, and that’s fine. I’m making you do this for a reason.”

She nodded again, her neck muscles painfully spasming. She pushed away the impulse to rub her neck. Two more.

She looked at her arm, the hilts of the four daggers poking upward. She held down her arm with her other hand, tried to steady the shaking. Tried to calm the māwal, reroute the disrupted flow, deal with the excess.

“Great.” He praised her so much these days, she thought, but always in such a detached manner . . . She cradled her arm to herself. It felt like it was becoming a burning white conduit for all the power in the universe. She wasn’t sure she could keep this up for much longer.

“Relax. Just a few moments . . . Good. Now you can try to remove them. Very slowly. One by one. No rash movements. You know what rash movements lead to, right?”

The inside of her forehead lit up with the memory of an excruciating feeling. She was very, very cautious.

“There. Now you see you have control over the process.”

“I—I thought I was supposed to be helpless,” she offered. Even her lips felt numb, worn out from stimulus overload.

“You’re going to be helpless, that’s inevitable. Nothing can persist in the face of the raw stream.” He glanced away for a moment. “But it’s imperative for you to understand that you do have control, as much as it’s possible, even if you are helpless, even if you are made helpless, you have some measure of control.”

He had taken to repeating himself, she thought. Was this some kind of technique, too?

“I am going to give you that control. And then I’m going to make you helpless, and you’re going to hold on to what you have left. Once this is over and you’re standing in that point, nothing of you is going to remain, nothing, except this. This will remain. This will remain.”

“The—the shaking isn’t stopping,” she said, and he sat next to her, held her trembling body to himself.

“It’s going to pass,” he said.

She broke down in sobs.

“Shh.” He cradled her head in one hand. His touch was unexpectedly soothing. “It’s going to pass.”

Eventually, it did.

“I’m always worried that one day you’re going to just walk out, leave me there when I’m all tied up and the blades are in,” Oyārun said as they were preparing for another session. He was busy with the pole—the bottom catches did not want to hold.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m going to be here. Even when you’ll have to face the stream, I’m going to be there.” The catch finally clicked in place. “I cannot be there in the mind, but I can be there, taking care of you, what of you exists in physical reality.” He straightened up, looked at her. “That’s going to make it a fraction easier. Just a fraction, but easier.”

“Thank you,” she offered in a wavering voice, even though she knew he was not doing this for her sake—he was doing it for the sake of success. Or was he?

Her world was the chamber, poles and slabs and circular and rectangular frames and the four walls. Chained to a wall. Tied to a frame.

Sometimes she threw up, sometimes she spat blood. Her blood was no longer red; it was opalescent and colorless.

The floor drank up everything, the stains disappearing at a speed discernible to the naked eye.

The world was a burning tree of fire and she was chained to the tree and stabbed with knives of ice. The world was a swirling circle of storm clouds and she was tied to the circle and whipped with lashes of lightning.

She lost control. Over and over again. At times they had to interrupt—the first time it happened, Aramīn said the wards in the walls wouldn’t hold, and she realized there was some kind of māwal technology inside the walls, hidden from casual observation, redirecting the excess. She only hoped the walls wouldn’t come down one day. Surely Aramīn would not let that happen—he had control over her nervous system, he could shut down her consciousness if the immediate need arose.

“You won’t allow me to bring down the Institute, right?” Oyārun was feeling especially discouraged that day.

“Hmm?” Aramīn turned to her. “What do you mean?”

She spread her hands. “There’s . . . there’s so much destructive power.” In me. She could not bring herself to finish the sentence, say the words out loud.

“You were not built to destroy,” Aramīn said. “You were built to sustain.”

Oyārun lifted the whip, a long plastic tentacle, gingerly wrapped it around her lower arm—it didn’t have a handle. The pain burned, but it was manageable.

A thought struck her. “With this one, the user can’t help to feel pain, either.”

“Exactly.” Aramīn nodded.

She made a little lashing motion, little more than a wave. “But that means . . . ” She pursed her lips.

“Yes, I also feel pain when I’m using this one.” His face was smooth, unexpressive.

“You don’t mind?”

“It is a reminder.”

Oyārun was tied to a circle frame, handles sticking out of all the primary and secondary māwal centers of her body. She was breathing slowly, evenly.

“Thirty-two minutes,” Aramīn said and put the whip back into its holster. “This will have to be enough.”

She grunted, beyond speech.

“If you cannot pass the initial acclimatization in this amount of time, it’s over,” he said, more abruptly than usual.

Was he afraid?

He began to remove the force field blades, quickly, as if urged on by someone else. “I have given you this amount of time, now you have to do something with it.”

She stumbled forward as he untied her, her muscles giving. He cradled her, but she felt hesitation in his posture.

“Thank you,” she said.

Aramīn stared into her eyes, then something intangible swooshed across his face, and his expression changed. “You’re welcome.” He helped her to the slab, sat her down on the ground with her back to one side. “May the universe itself forgive me, you’re welcome.”

III.

1.

There was an entire team standing by.

“Let’s go over this once again,” Aramīn said. “We need constant high throughput. I know you can induce it, but for the first time, I’m going to override some functions and induce it in you myself. Less room for error. The goal is not the pain. The pain is initially inevitable, but it is not desirable. I have given you the ability to manage it. Your mind will tune into the raw stream of the System and you are going to acclimatize. You are going to belong, to attach. You will need to learn how to process your new sensory environment, how to interact with it. Avoid your usual patterns. Try not to hold on to things, try not to treat them as conventional objects.”

Emien helped him out; she was standing by in case of an emergency that might need a māwalēni. “This cannot be explained; this can only be experienced,” she said.

“Yes, thank you,” Aramīn nodded. “Any last-minute advice you could offer?”

Emien shrugged. “It’s ineffable. I don’t think I can say anything about it. Try not to resist it; it resists back.”

Oyārun was strapped down, but she could breathe freely. This was the moment she had practiced for, all the time spent in that chamber with its walls drinking up the māwal, its floor drinking up her blood.

“All parameters within nominal range,” a tech said, looking up from her instrumentation. “Say the word and it’s a go.”

Aramīn stepped to her. “Show an Enāyūwē transform.” He paused, examining the image with the aid of his interface. “Mm. Looks neat.” He began to pace. “Let me look at the settings . . . I’d prefer a smooth buildup, avoid the exponential. B-W of around five.”

Nods around the room.

He turned to Oyārun. “We are ready whenever you are.”

“Go ahead,” she said, and Aramīn raised a hand—

The māwal rushed up her spine, faster, faster, forced by her systems controlled externally for the time being. She did not mind being taken over in this manner—one less thing to track, to manage, to maintain.

There was more and more. It seemed to her that the room had become transparent, and she could see through everything, even though her eyes were closed.

No pain so far. She was so used to this, her pain threshold was considerably elevated. Yet it did not come as a relief. She’d gotten used to pain to the point that it was comforting, and the lack nagged at her.

“Tell the System they can begin syncing,” Aramīn said outside. She was inside looking out, inside her own body, yet her mind was expanding, ballooning outward—

And it was there, the stream of the System, faster and more powerful than anything before, and she struggled not to get swept away.

The waves of power battered at her, and as she tried to pick out individual details, they rushed away from her. It was like sitting on the overhead train that passed just below the canopy and staring out—if she tried to focus her eyes on anything nearby, it would get yanked out of sight and her eyes would almost hurt from the effort of the tracking.

Everything all came at her, at the same time. No rest. No reprieve. She could not hold on to anything, there was always something more, something new and searingly bright and manifold. She could not cram it all into her skull.

She was trying to relax, trying to keep herself from hyperventilating, but it wasn’t working, her fingers were tingling—

“Override the voluntary respiratory control,” Aramīn yelled outside. “We cannot risk any more vasoconstriction—”

The systems clamped down on her hard, overrode her pattern of breathing. Momentary respite.

Inside, the stream still ate away at her. How could she ever get used to this? She struggled, to no avail. She held on for dear life—

“Let go,” Aramīn spoke right next to her body outside, and it took her some time to realize that he was talking to her, firmly, ordering her. “Do not resist. Do not resist.”

I’m not resisting, she wanted to say as she hung on with tooth and nail, I’m trying—

Then, an image of the train hurtling past and her sitting on board, staring out, eyes relaxed and taking in the cramped vista passing by without trying to fixate on any single object.

A change.

A letting go.

Something shifted inside her and there was no more pain, no more of the onslaught, just ceaseless joy and the smooth motion of coasting along the stream.

She did not remember anything else.

Oyārun was close to tears. “I—I know I was there, and it was beautiful, but I don’t remember—I don’t remember anything else—” She gestured broadly with her arms.

“The two kinds of sensory environments are absolutely different and ineffable from the point of view of each other,” he explained slowly and carefully. “Your self here has little to no access to your memories there, and vice versa, your self there has little access to your memories here.”

“But I—”

He went on. “It’s a quite extreme version of state-specific recall. We’ve been through this before.”

She looked at him, her eyes pleading, and she would have inwardly shuddered at how she might appear to him, begging thus, had she not been past shame. He had seen her screaming in agony, certain the next moment was going to be the last—and he had always been there for her.

Would he desert her now? Would he fail to help her?

“Is it always like this?” she muttered.

“Eventually there’s some cross talk. You remember more. But it’s always in the form of vague impressions, at most. Relatively few substantial memories carry over.”

“It was beautiful—”

“And it’s going to remain so, and you’re only going to see more of it, not less.”

Her face crumpled up. She couldn’t help herself. “But I can’t remember—”

“You remember a little. And what you remember is beautiful.” He drew back from her. “Is that not so?”

She lowered her head. “It’s true. But I—” She couldn’t find the words.

“You crave it.”

She looked up, surprised. Did he know her better than herself? Of course, she reminded herself, he’d seen this over and over. He’d seen many people go through this when they joined the System.

“I crave it!” She threw her words in his face. He did not flinch. “I crave it and I need it and I—” She was shaking, not with the māwal, but with desperation. Was there a difference? Power crested in her.

“Shh.” He drew her to himself. She sniffled into his overcoat. “And you will receive it. Perpetuate it. It’s yours.”

And yet behind his words was the awareness of time ticking down, of life ebbing away. The transformation shortened the life span. Everything had a price.

She clutched him and shook with tears.

“The first time it took us two days to get you back to your baseline state, after just an hour of being in the System. Expect the same this time around as well. It takes a long time to work up to the norms.”

“It’s all right,” Oyārun said, resigned. She was bone weary, more despondent than exhausted. “I’m sorry.”

Aramīn remained silent, but he beheld her with a quizzical expression.

“You were right. About every single thing you’ve ever told me.”

He didn’t say I told you so. He didn’t even think of it, she could tell. He looked at her with sadness, or only exhaustion? Probably the latter, Oyārun decided. “Do you regret your choice now?”

“No,” she whispered. “No, and that’s the worst part of it.”

He sat down, heavily. “Hate me. I can be easily hated. After all, I am generally considered a monster.”

“You’re not.”

“Hm?” Was that actually unpleasant news to him, Oyārun wondered—did he want to be regarded as a monster?

“I’ve read the testimonials of your coworkers. In the Oral History Archives. Did you know . . . ” She felt too tired to speak. “The closer someone was to you during the War of Independence, the more likely they were to speak highly of you.”

He leaned forward slightly. “You ran correlations on that? ” Then he shook his head. “You shouldn’t have chosen this path. You should’ve chosen something . . . anything.”

“This was what I wanted. It’s not negotiable.”

“Not any longer, definitely. Even if you were to walk away from the System, the transformation is irreversible.”

Silence.

Aramīn spoke up first. “You’re only going to grow farther away from me. You went through your transformation, I helped you go through it, but my task is done for the most part. I taught you what I could. I try to keep an eye on everyone, check in from time to time, but that’s basically it.” He spread his hands. “My time is finite.” Was he pushing her away? Some part of him was, she decided. But was that the entirety of him?

“I can pray with you,” she offered.

Aramīn startled, for once. “Excuse me?”

She tried to backpedal. “Or just listen to you praying. I find it beautiful.” She swallowed, something uncomfortable occurring to her. “Will you pray for me too, once I’m gone?” I will leave this world before you.

He understood the implications. “I can, I definitely can.” He bowed his head formally—in the new Ereni manner, she realized. “I take solace in the fact that you desire that.”

2.

They strode along the snaking, winding corridors of the industrial area surrounding Memorial Park.

“So how are you faring? The reports only say everything is in order, but they cannot tell me about how you feel.” Aramīn lifted a hand and adjusted his cap just a little. “You’re up to the ten-hour limit now.”

“Yes, and . . . it’s fine. It still takes a bit long to recuperate after my shift, they’re telling me that it should go faster . . . ”

“I can look at the logs,” Aramīn offered. “See if anything jumps out to me, anything that could be adjusted.”

“Thank you, that’d be great.” Oyārun smiled—a carefree, relaxed smile despite the circles around her eyes. “Otherwise it’s going well.”

“And how do you like it?”

“I like it . . . ” She paused, took a deep breath. “Let’s not try to evade this? Let’s be honest. It’s vast, it’s gigantic, and it’s tearing me apart. And despite that I’m always back for more.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Was he really? Did she want him to be sorry, at all? “That’s the way things are.” This much was true.

“I love it. The worst part is the switchover when I realize I’m out, out of the stream, and I want to claw my way back in . . . ” Her voice sounded all too loud in the deserted, echoing corridor. “I want to go back, I crave it, every single moment. It never goes away. I can push it back, but it never goes away.”

He nodded. “It’s not easy, I know.” He pulled at his left sleeve, to make it look just right. “How much do you actually remember?”

“It’s not . . . it’s not really remembering. But more carries over. It scares me a little. I’m not supposed to be able to do that, and yet.” She hesitated. It seemed like too large a thing to say, too large for words. “I’ve been wondering about it. Maybe it’s because I’m . . . maybe it’s because I was born planetside? I always had my interface, and that was also very seamless for me. Maybe the two could be combined?”

Aramīn frowned, and in that instant he appeared more like the scientist he was than ever before. “The planetary computer networks and the System?” He considered it seriously, Oyārun could tell. He was taking her seriously. “Information is information, after all. Maybe in a few generations.”

Oyārun nodded cheerfully. “They could be combined somehow. I think that would be great. Sometime down along the line.”

“Is that you saying that, or is that the System?”

She stopped dead in surprise.

“The connection goes both ways,” he said, stopping just a fraction of a second after she did. Always keeping an eye on her. “The influence goes both ways.”

“I—You’re right.” She massaged her face. “I don’t know.” She lowered her hands and looked at him, entirely clueless. “I don’t know.” Then a torrent of words poured out all of a sudden: “How much of me is me? It’s inside me but I’m also inside it, I help making it what it is, and it also makes me into what I am, and I—”

“Shh. I know. Let’s walk.”

She obediently fell into pace next to him.

“I have been suspecting that the System is trying to pass me messages,” he said. “I get small signals. My environment changing in subtle ways. Trees dropping their leaves, lights flickering when I pass by. People blurting out sentences they themselves cannot explain. The way the māwal is supposed to operate. A lot depends on the carrier; with most people, complex information just doesn’t make it across. So far, all I had were fragments, but now some of them at least have fallen into a pattern. A pattern I can understand,” he emphasized, and there was something in his voice that for a moment did not bridge the gap between the two of them.

“A pattern you can understand?” she asked, uncomprehending.

“I can understand the hunger to control.” There, a piece of the puzzle she’d been looking for. Right there. “I can understand the hunger to expand.”

“It’s . . . shaped by us, but in turn it’s shaped by you,” she offered weakly.

“What do you mean?”

“Indirectly. We are affected by you because you trained us, and we are in the System, so it makes sense . . . for the System to be affected by you.” Your cognotype. The words remained unspoken.

He laughed all of a sudden, his laughter shrill and sharp like knives. Like the crack of a whip. “By me? Oh yes! A thousand times yes! But it makes perfect sense—oh, the irony!”

She thought back on the Archive logs. People will say he is a sadist and a Falconer . . . Some of that is true . . . and him saying I suppose I do have those tendencies, nonchalant, even satisfied.

He quieted down abruptly. His brow furrowed. “Are you bothered by this?”

She considered it for a moment. “The System is standing between here and the abyss.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I have seen the monsters. Some of me has. Inside.”

“I know.”

“What you’re doing . . . it’s necessary. I understand that.”

“But do you understand the implications?” Again, the old debate; this time about a different topic, but the patterns were the same. “Maybe the way this country will turn out will make people wish it had not come into existence in the first place. Maybe people will curse Eren for centuries to come.”

“Do you really think that?”

“I hope that’s not going to be the case. But I don’t know.”

“There’s more of us than there is of you,” she said. With some of his merciless nature inside her.

He stifled another laugh. “Indeed.”

The corridor opened to the familiar cavern. A gust of air caught at their clothing, made Aramīn’s overcoat billow, deposited a large leaf on the top of his cap. A sign? A gesture from the System?

Aramīn removed the leaf, then turned it around in his hands. He was about to tuck it into a pocket, but then changed his mind and handed it to Oyārun.

“Well then,” Aramīn said, “let us pray.”

About the Author

Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) and a resident alien in the US. E is a winner of the Lambda award for editing Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and a finalist for the Hugo and Locus awards. Eir debut poetry collection Algorithmic Shapeshifting is out now from Aqueduct, and eir debut short story collection The Trans Space Octopus Congregation was published in Fall 2019 by Lethe Press. You can find Bogi on various social media as bogiperson.

Strange Comfort

Tegan Moore

Before Mug Ruith Vent Station, Jens had never had much of an imagination. For example, and just for starters: he never would’ve imagined he’d end up at Mug Ruith Vent Station.

Other things he’d failed to imagine: That a contractual subclause would send him to Europa, orbiting Jupiter, ten freezing miles beneath the surface of an alien ocean. How bored he’d get of working on music when he had almost unlimited time to spend on it. How living in two rooms with another human for six months would overlap the two of them, blur their boundaries, and that he might like it. How obsessed he’d become with the portholes.

That had pleased Elena. “You wouldn’t be so terrified of them if you weren’t imagining something spooky out there.”

“There is something spooky out there,” Jens said.

“Oh, besides that.”

“That thing is spooky enough.”

She made fun of him for it. How could he be any kind of artist if he didn’t have an imagination? Where did he think his music came from?

“Everywhere,” was Jens’ answer, though the real answer was “nowhere.”

Lack of imagination hadn’t been a disability in the past. Imagining shit was other peoples’ jobs, makers and rich kids with degrees, people who sat around coming up with fucked-up worst-case scenarios. And not even fucked-up enough, because nobody seemed to have imagined that the descender might implode halfway to the surface and everyone on Elena’s tethercomm would listen to her getting squeezed to death—or squeezed mostly to death, then drowned—over the course of thirty endless, excruciating seconds.

Jens’ cochlear nerves still burned with her scream. Minutes ago she’d been singing as he swung the descender door closed behind her. “So long, farewell—”

“No!”

“Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!”

“You’re a bad person. You’re cursing me with that song in my head for the rest of my life.”

“Earworm? Why, there’s only one cure, Jens,” Elena had proclaimed, and then burst into an obnoxiously sunny smile. “Sing along with me!”

He’d swung the door shut on her last long, vibrato goodbye! while shouting, “Fuck yourself!” Some last words to his best friend.

Now Jens chewed on the corner of his lip and stared at nothing. Mohammed blipped in the corner of his inviz. Your biometrics are high. UOK?

Jens adjusted the shirt he’d hung over the lab porthole. A glossy sliver of black showed at the bottom where the shirt didn’t reach, black so dark it vibrated. Jens was ready to dart forward and punch that void in the face to keep it on its own side of the acrylic. Another thing he hadn’t imagined: that someone would put portholes in a station at the bottom of the ocean. What did they expect him to look at?

Jens? U there?

Where else would he be? I’m fine, he said. He wasn’t, but would he feel more okay if he were sitting in the Silxen office up on Sozertsaniye Orbital listening to the people around him lose their shit, instead of watching them lose their shit in group chat? He pushed himself off from the porthole and into one of the lab seats, the half-gravity landing him with a satisfying thump, and minimized the chat tiles. HR had already deployed some sort of crisis-management algo that was plastering all Silxen internal communications with soothing colors and soft, pulsing shapes.

U need help managing biometrics?

Jens reached up to swat Mohammed’s question out of his inviz and realized his hand was shaking. Both his hands were, and his mouth was quivering, and he tasted blood from his lip. If he didn’t bring himself down Mo would override him and push a sedative and the idea of that sent a rush of anger through him and Elena was—Elena . . .

He twitched his cochlear control up and put on the tranquility freq. Its drone filled his ears like a physical thing, cobwebs drawing between him and everything that was going on, softening edges. Jens stared at the breath bubble that had appeared in his inviz when his heart rate passed one hundred and forty. Silxen would ding his pay if he let his heart rate stay high for too long. They had his body under contract; no mucking up their equipment, even if Jens had a prior claim on it. He concentrated until the breath bubble went away, then dropped his head into his hands and tried not to imagine anything at all. With his eyes closed he was certain that the shirt had slipped off the porthole and that gaping black eye stared at him. Stared right through him, harpooning him to his seat.

Elena would have been proud.

Bad news first, Mohammed chatted, though what counted as bad news for Jens had recently made a dramatic shift with the implosion of his closest friend. He’d spent a long night in his bunk with his eyes refusing to close, the breath bubble visiting whenever he turned off the tranquility freq to listen to a song or watch a vid, or if he forgot what he wasn’t thinking about. He had to keep reminding himself: Don’t think about Elena. Don’t think about the porthole. Don’t think about the Worm. Morning—what passed for morning—dragged him through a routine. He was stuffing protein loaf between his molars when Mo’s chats arrived.

You’re going to have to get comfortable for a bit. Rad window closes in 20 hrs, surface team has to pull back to Sozert.

That was normal enough. Whenever the moon moved out of Jupiter’s magnetotail the surface radiation on Europa jumped enough to deep-fry DNA in just a few hours. Intraspace policy stated that the only allowable places to be in that case were either beneath the thick buffer of the surface ice, or not on Europa at all. Jens was offended anyway. Offended that the cosmos wouldn’t just pause for a moment out of respect for Elena. That Silxen wouldn’t, either.

His six-month station rotation was over, but there was no descender to return Jens to the surface. And even if there were a backup, he wouldn’t go near it now. So he’d be stuck there, and without anyone at the surface base. Nobody even in this sector. Jens would be alone. Except for the Worm.

Good news is that the drop is proceeding. It’s hitting the ice now.

In his peripheral vision the drop’s location showed as an orange dot. Another failure of imagination: it hadn’t occurred to Jens that the drop might not happen. Like he should be grateful Silxen was sending the shit he needed to survive. That was, apparently, good news.

“The fuck,” Jens muttered aloud. His voice hit the wall panels, flat against the freq playing through his cochlear.

Jens flicked open the Eel’s controls and locked it on to the drop. A rumble added to the station’s ambient hum as it launched from its bay.

Beyond the lab’s porthole, in the sliver of night that Jens’ makeshift curtain did not cover, there might have been a quick, brilliant flash of light. Jens froze, unfocused his eyes. Not looking, not looking. Some tricky reflection. Nothing to see out there.

He had to get out of this place. There had to be some way out of his contract.

In the meanwhile, what could he do? He followed his routine. He spent an hour in the hamster wheel on the station’s lower level, took a tepid shower. Usually he’d have a coffee while Elena ate a late dinner, and they’d laugh and shoot the shit and maybe Jens would play her part of a song he was working on, until it was time for her to crawl into her bunk and for Jens to keep an eye on things. There wasn’t a whole lot that the station techs had to do except be there. Drones probably could’ve done their jobs, but Intraspace would only lease Mug Ruith Vent Station for human occupancy, part of some stupid make-work policy that was supposed to create jobs, even though nobody wanted the jobs it created.

Jens listened to the low hiss of the station, felt it vibrate in his bowels. The station wasn’t ever actually quiet, but it was still too quiet.

Only fifteen yards away, the Worm was coiled around Mug Ruith’s slaggy spires like a poorly rolled, unbaked cinnamon bun. The long, fat spiral of it was as thick around as Jens’ thigh, and off that main body grew the skinny pale whips of its tentacles, bristling with tiny hairs, always moving, flapping over the belching vent. If Jens turned on the station floodlights—another stupid idea, who’d thought of those?—he could look out the porthole and see the Worm right now, a giant white spaghetti shit dropped on the smoking spires of Mug Ruith Hydrothermal Vent.

Mug Ruith itself was a range of nasty, melting candelabras belching dark cauliflowers of gas into the water, the pimple-end of a system that extended nearly to the moon’s core. The water just beyond the vent zone was close to freezing, and the water over the vents was 300 Celsius. The fucking maniac monster-worm balanced right at the edge of the spume, waving its hairy tentacles through it and getting buffeted back into the cold. Waving its arms through the belching smoke was the Worm’s job. It had evolved on Europa’s hydrothermal vents doing just this, and now it did it for Silxen—an employee, just like Jens. Well, not just like.

Nasty things lived on Earth’s hydrothermal vents, too, but the Worm was worse. For one, it wasn’t actually one thing, but a colony of thousands of tiny worm clones amalgamated into one giant Worm, sucking bacteria out of the ocean and siphoning the DNA out of that and fucking with and assimilating those genes for its own biologic diversity and, Jens didn’t know, maybe for fun. The clones and their offspring grew into each other, sharing organ systems, indivisible, except for when they suddenly decided they did want to divide and then shot a rogue tentacle out into the ocean to fend for itself. That’s how all the Europan worms did it, but this particular Worm was fucked-with in more ways, modified to mine silica and some specific bacteria from the vent for Silxen instead of for its own food. Jens fed the Worm. He didn’t haul it buckets of slop or anything, there was an interface and it was all done remotely, but still: he had to feed the awful thing, and monitor its biometrics, and make sure it didn’t self-destruct or wander off into the void.

And all this smothered in the pitch-black swallowing silence of ten miles of ocean. Jens could feel that silence pressing up against the station’s hull. He switched to a focus freq.

A red light appeared in his inviz. The Eel was low on battery.

Unexpected. Not your-friend-just-imploded unexpected, but still unlikely. The Eel recharged fast, docking into a fusion charging port used by all the station’s remote tools. The only reason it might be low is if it hadn’t docked correctly—but that would’ve brought up another red dot.

Jens scrolled back through his past alerts and yeah, there it was: it’d come up on both Jens and Elena’s screens, but Elena had been distracted by the sudden crunching, pinging, shrieking disintegration of the machine that was carrying her to the surface, and Jens had been distracted by his friend dying. So they hadn’t noticed.

The Eel didn’t have enough battery to get to the drop and back. Jens recalled it so it could recharge. He did a couple more chores. Then sat, doing nothing.

He was alone. Except for the Worm.

Elena had tried to point Jens’ nascent imagination at the monster. “Think about it,” she’d said approximately a thousand times. “Think about it doing its thing out there, all those weird little connected selves. Can you imagine what it’s like? What it’s like to, like, have a little genetics laboratory in your brain and build yourself however you want? It’s insane. And Silxen has basically made it into a slave.”

“It’s weird enough just knowing it’s out there,” Jens said.

This is where Elena would erupt, her delight and amazement too big not to grab Jens by the shoulders or the arm, or shake her fists in the air. “But wouldn’t it be weirder for it to know we’re here?”

According to Silxen, the Worm didn’t know they were there. According to Silxen, it wasn’t smart enough. And even if it was, it probably wouldn’t realize its situation was abnormal. It was Silxen-created, or bred, really, tweaked and trained to its novel situation. Wild Europan vent worm colonies lived in similar environments, but they mined the vent gasses for food, not profit. And they were, horrifically, dozens of times larger.

He was still staring blankly into his inviz when the alert that the Eel was back appeared. Something to do, at least. He watched the dot move closer and closer to the station, and then a quiet thunk from below. An alert from the docking port: connection failure.

Jens cycled the connection, but it still didn’t take. Hard to tell what was going on with just the sensor; easier to see it. He pulled up the drone’s interface, ignored its blinking battery warnings. He toggled on its headlight and found the camera.

Officially, there was nothing but bacteria living around Mug Ruith. Intraspace didn’t allow tampering with existing ecosystems; the hydrothermal vent and its Worm were technically artificial, in that they’d been created by Silxen and not by Europa. Vent worms were the most complex life discovered on Europa. Everything else was similar to what had lived in Earth’s primordial soup some four billion years ago, evolving in fits and starts, popping up and dying off along with the short-lived hydrothermal vents. But large swaths of Europa’s deep hadn’t been explored—barely even surveyed. It was assumed that nothing could live in the pressure at 150 kilometers down, but evolution might have other ideas. And Jens had already found reason to doubt the people with the what-if jobs.

He wished Elena had never infected him with this stupid imagination.

He had to turn on the camera. There wouldn’t be much to look at. Definitely nothing unexpected, so he could just chill the fuck out right now.

Jens turned on the feed.

The world was black-and-chalk white, save for a streak of yellow on the Eel’s belly. The station’s hull was dull gray. Sediment whorled. Jens did not look into the fluctuating black that lay behind everything.

Something was stuck in the charging dock, pale tendrils like tattered cloth. Jens zoomed in.

White and long and finely bristled, tapering to a delicate whip-point at one end: there was a severed tentacle jammed into the dock.

Mohammed was not nearly as concerned about the tentacle as he should have been, and his focus kept shifting away from their chat, name going from active/bold to busy/fade in Jens’ inviz. Jens watched it bold and fade and bold and fade and wanted to yell. Usually Jens’ boss was a meticulous tight-ass. The hell was going on?

Mo come on, help me out here.

A long pause, and then Mohammed said, sorry, lot going on, brb.

Jens hissed between clenched teeth and waited.

Okay so here’s what I think, Mo said. The Worm can’t leave the temperate zone around the vent, so perhaps when U recalled the Eel it passed close to Mug Ruith and picked up some debris that got stuck.

Jens had thought of that possibility—imagined it, Elena would’ve been proud, and the thought of her socked him in the gut—but the Eel had already been low on battery. Why hadn’t it charged? The Worm arm must have been stuck in there before the Eel deployed. Mohammed didn’t catch that, which meant he wasn’t paying attention.

Jens clenched his fists and tried to think of a professional way to say all the furious things that needed saying while Mohammed’s name went bold and fade, bold and fade. Jens did yell, then, a little monkey screech that sounded ridiculous in the close space of the station.

Don’t worry about it right now, Mohammed said. We’re working on extraction plans for U so just hold tight. Catch U later.

Mohammed attached a vid to the chat, a meeting at HQ brainstorming ways to get him off of Mug Ruith. Jens hated all their suggestions, like leaving him until they could get a descender from the opposite side of Europa—that’d take months—or having the Eel drag him to the surface in a pressure suit. The thought of hanging from the skinny body of the Eel through ten miles of blackness was so overwhelmingly terrible that it made him light-headed. They hadn’t come to any conclusions, really, and Jens felt worse after watching the vid even though Mohammed had probably thought it’d cheer him up knowing the important selves at Earth HQ were worried about him. Parts of the vid were rough-edited out, too. Jens imagined those were the places where they weighed the pros and cons of abandoning him.

He wished he could talk to Elena.

His anxiety and anger did not crowd out his boredom. He’d been alone only two days—how was that only yesterday? Elena’s scream as her tethercomm cut off . . . Jens flicked on the tranquility freq. Boredom had a different quality when someone else was nearby. Someone had his back while he messed around in chat or read conspiracy threads and avoided working on music.

He wanted to talk to someone. Anybody.

His message to Valery bounced back, as if the contact info was wrong. He tried Soshanna, but her autoresponder was set to “unavailable.” He tried Morgan.

Nobody’s telling you anything? they said. That’s so wrong. Ok so don’t freak out.

Jens’ heart skipped.

You know everyone’s been talking about restructuring for however long, we all knew something bad was coming? Well I guess Elena was the final fuck-up in a long string of fuck-ups. I saw Val and Carl earlier and they said they’ve been laid off, all the vent teams are, so you too I guess? But there’s something worse going on because HR are like . . . gone. I mean if they were around the auditor algos would’ve already caught this conversation and redacted it, right?

Jens stared into his inviz. Morgan continued.

Everyone on Sozert thinks Silxen is, like, done. Over. But they can’t leave you down there much longer. Intraspace has got to have laws, right? No matter what Silxen’s contracts say.

Morgan’s name faded abruptly, like they’d been pulled away from the conversation. They didn’t come back.

Jens ran in the hamster wheel until he was exhausted, but it didn’t help him sleep. He switched on the deep-relaxation freq and lay in his bunk.

Elena had thought his cochlear was stupid. She didn’t like any vamps, really, though she had an inviz like everyone else. They argued about vamps a lot, but Jens didn’t mind. When Elena disagreed with him she didn’t make him feel stupid and he didn’t get angry, just curious what she’d say. Sometimes they talked each other out of opinions. It never felt like a fight.

Elena called his cochlear “a gratuitous toy-boy mod,” but that didn’t seem to alter her opinion of Jens. The cochlear was supposed to fine-tune hearing, though you could do other things with it too. People experimented with frequencies to modify and control their moods. It wasn’t supposed to work, studies said it didn’t do anything, but it worked for Jens. He set a freq and he felt different. Wasn’t that proof?

Elena called it an “emotional sedative crutch.” If she found him staring, thinking, she’d shout “you’re freqing out, Jens!” and he would jolt out of the trance. She thought that was hilarious.

He must have slept, because his alarm went off. He got up and ran in the hamster wheel some more. He had to do something. The empty space where Elena had been was loomingly, threateningly silent.

He thought about working on music, but he’d have to turn off the tranquility freq. When he’d been assigned to the vent station he’d thought he’d have nothing to distract him from making music, but the station still had media feeds, and you could still dick around online, though the load time was bullshit. It turned out that even at the bottom of the ocean, Jens could find other shit to do.

Elena was dead and everything was wrong, but none of the station’s normal problems had gone away. The air filtration system was bugging out, and he was almost out of the good rations. He needed the stuff from the drop to solve those problems.

He needed the drop, and that meant he had to charge the Eel, which meant he had to fix the charging dock.

He was going to have to go out there.

Someone should know where he was going, just in case. Though if he drifted off into that vibrating darkness, who would drag him back?

Hey, Mo. I’m going outside to fix the port.

Really what he wanted was for Mohammed to tell him not to do it.

OK, Mohammed said. Be careful.

The smooth cold stone of anxiety slid lower in his gut. Be careful, as if he needed warning. He stared at the words, shifting his weight, ready to go but not ready.

“Fuck,” he said, and made himself go.

On the lower level, near the hamster wheel and weight machine, shower and storage lockers, there was a hatch. Jens called it the Hellhole. It throbbed with malignant energy.

He was so tense the arches of his feet ached. He bent over to tug the wheel that opened the hatch and blood rushed into his head. It would’ve been more comforting if he had to put some effort into opening it, but it slid smoothly unlocked and hydraulics popped the port open an inch. He pulled it up. Cold air rose in a mass he imagined as visible.

The Hellhole was brightly lit, brilliantly white, but it smelled like dank metal and salt. Jens swallowed the impulse to vomit.

His feet on the ladder rungs were silent, but the grates at the bottom clanged as he stepped down. The room was a cylinder, with the descender’s empty docking hatch on the far side from the ladder. In the center of the room there was a black aperture in the floor. Light blinked off its liquid surface. Another ladder led down into that darkness, like a tiny, loathsome swimming pool.

A touch panel opened the pressure suit storage. Jens took one down and zipped it over his clothes. This was all going too easily.

One more thing, Mohammed messaged, apropos of nothing. At least he hadn’t forgotten Jens was there. I am sorry to bring the bad news that Silxen is moving away from the silica mining format and will be recalling vent teams while we restructure, including U of course. As per the terms of Silxen’s lease on the station we cannot leave behind biomaterials.

At first Jens thought that Mohammed meant him, that Jens was the biomaterial that couldn’t be left behind.

I am sending U a program that will terminate the Worm and concentrate its biomass in the silica hoppers for easier disposal. More details are in the program. We need U to do this ASAP please.

Jens pulled on the helmet. The suit whispered closed around him. He was going to go out there into the dark, fix the Eel, and then come back here and murder the Worm. At least it was something to do.

He turned around, put his hands on the ladder rails, and stepped into the sea.

His legs felt weak against the resistance of the water, and he had to slog to move them down the ladder. He kept his eyes squeezed shut. The ball of his foot touched down, and he was standing on the Europan seafloor.

Now it felt like a liability to have his eyes closed. The ladder glinted in hard light. He’d turned on all the outside lights; if he had to be out here, he wasn’t doing it in the dark.

He spun around, putting the ladder to his back. Particulate swam in front of his helmet.

There was a buzzing in his head that at first worried him, until he realized that he still had the tranquility freq playing and it was interfering with the helmet’s biometrics. Cochlears weren’t common vamps, it was just sound hounds and musicians really, so they weren’t tested with a lot of gear. Jens turned the freq off and silence rushed close around him.

He stood in an island of light with his back to the ladder, following the breath bubble that had popped up in his inviz. His eyes were drawn to the illumination’s edge, fading from platinum to pewter to iron and then quivering blackness. Fifteen yards between him and the Worm. It was right there, straight out in that blackness; if he walked forward he would reach it in a minute. He watched the trembling dark, eyes hungry and horrified. The light didn’t reach that far; he couldn’t see it, but he felt like he could, pale tendrils rippling like seaweed in the hot current spewing from Mug Ruith. Each tentacle an individual, each inch of each tentacle an interdependent self. Undulating, feeding the silica-hungry bacteria in its bristles, the long slow coil of an arm curling back to scratch against the hard comblike ridge along its central spine that channeled the silica into a modified digestive tract that shat out into the hoppers. No face, no front or back, one thing made out of a thousand cloned children, modified and improved with assimilated DNA from whatever the Worm found in the void of Europa’s vast ocean.

Jens’ ears were buzzing with the density of the silence crowding around him as he stared into the curtain of darkness hung around the pool of light. The curtain was moving in on him, coming closer, except then he realized that he was walking toward it and the billowing shape of the Worm’s many arms. His boots waded through pewter muck, edging toward charcoal, the black curtain closer, and the Worm looming huge in the darkness. Sound filled his head.

A breath bubble popped up in his inviz and Jens glanced at it, glanced back into the darkness, saw all that nothing. “Fuck!” Like it’d sneaked up on him. He staggered back, arms waving to catch himself.

Get done, get out. Sound still filled his ears. “Fuck,” he said again, backing into the light, and his own voice broke the stupefying spell. “Fuck,” he repeated, staggering toward the fusion charging dock. He glanced over his shoulder, didn’t see the anemone tendrils of the Worm he’d been certain he could see in all that blackness.

The dock was set into the station’s hull on the far side from the Worm. Oatmeal-mush sediment powdered up around the soles of his boots. He looked at his feet, looked at his destination. He didn’t look over his shoulder again.

Beneath the dock, he had to stand on his toes. The Worm’s tentacle was wedged in there, frayed, with stringy bits of meat from its torn end waving around in the currents. Jens reached a gloved finger behind the mass to unwedge it. There was an unexpected eggshell crunch, and then the appendage floated free. It drifted down onto the mushy ocean floor, where its bristle-mottled surface made a weird outline in the silt.

Immediately Jens saw another, matching shape. He shuffled to it, crouched, brushed the porridge off it until another torn-off tentacle rocked beneath his glove.

Then he saw another lump, then two more, scattered in a rough line into the darkness.

“Fuck,” he said. The word reverberated in the fishbowl of his helmet.

He had to get out of this place.

Seriously Mo there’s something going on down here, the Worm is, like, trying to get the Eel, or maybe trying to get to the station? Mo?

Mohammed was inactive, which rarely happened. He wasn’t doing something else, he was offline. Jens stared at the grayed-out name, foot jiggling. He had to move or his thoughts pinned him, but you couldn’t pace satisfactorily in low-G. He glided from lab bench to bunk cubbies to galley and back, touching surfaces as he went to guide his trajectory.

Mo, are you there?

He should’ve been alerted if the Worm’s biometrics changed, but there was nothing in the log. How could the Worm release an arm without the sensors going nuts? Could it do that on purpose, hide its behavior? The implication put hot hands around Jens’ throat. Silxen claimed the Worm was too dumb to know the station was even there. Research into the animals’ intelligence correlated that. But the worms they’d done the research on were dozens of times the size of Silxen’s manufactured worm, colonies of millions of clones, with genes stolen from billions of bacteria. Maybe isolation made this worm different. Maybe Silxen had done something to it. But it definitely wouldn’t send rogue tentacles off to molest something it didn’t know was there.

The breath bubble was back in Jens’ inviz, and it was getting in the way of all the tiles Jens was trying to use at once: a half dozen different tools open to shout for help from anyone on Sozert; the Worm’s biolog; the station’s sensor log; fuck, recent current patterns; the Worm’s profile. Nobody was answering. Where was everyone?

Maybe Sozertsaniye Orbital had catastrophically decompressed and Jens was really, actually alone. With the Worm.

Fucking breath bubble. He couldn’t help it, he breathed along.

The program to terminate the Worm still hung in a corner of his inviz. Jens scanned through it. He could get the Worm before the Worm got him. He imagined it tentacling its way off Mug Ruith’s slaggy spires, reaching toward the squat can of the station, bristly arms slithering to embrace its hull, a pale toothy mouth reaching for the porthole even though the Worm had no mouth or teeth.

It was too cold for the Worm to survive away from the vent. According to Silxen, at least. But if that was true then how’d worms get to more than one vent in the first place?

Jens could hear his skin and boot soles touching surfaces as he circled, circled, circled. Too fucking quiet.

Of course the Worm had a sort of self-destruct built into it. He’d never thought about it—imagination, again—but it made sense. Intraspace wouldn’t want a fiddled-with animal loose in the ocean; there were impact rules, things that were supposed to protect Europa from getting used up the way Earth’s seafloor had been. It wouldn’t even be hard to kill. All Jens had to do was enter some commands and the Worm would curl up and die, but not before it galumphed toward the silica hoppers for easier disposal. Jens hoped he wouldn’t have to go out there and shovel Worm into the hopper.

He opened the Worm’s control console. Windows with biometrics, silica output, energy levels, nutrient balance. One showing ionic currents sparking between all those connected neural pathways.

“It’s just a fucking bug,” Jens said into the station’s dull ambient vibration. He swiped the program free of its delivery folder.

Think of what it must be like, Elena said in his mind, and Jens again saw those pale dancing tendrils in the darkness, in the void. What it must be like to be a thousand separate tiny selves that were also one enormous self. What must it be like to be a part of something like that? Even if it was just a bug.

Inexplicably—at least Jens couldn’t explain it—that thought hit him like the memory of Elena, grief and panic and anger and a thrill of something that wasn’t quite joy, was too deeply sad to be joy, but might have been in some other context. Or might turn into. Some thrill of possibility.

He dropped the program back into its folder and stood staring into the middle distance, not thinking really, remembering that sound that had thrummed through him as he watched the arms of the oscillating thing he couldn’t see in the dark.

What do you want, Jens thought.

A message popped up, and Jens caught his breath. But of course it wasn’t the Worm—where had that thought come from? It was Morgan responding to one of his many desperate shouts into the void.

Hey I might get locked out, gonna write fast. The chat pulsed thoughtfully as Morgan composed their message. Silxen is done, kaput, everyone on Sozert is laid off or about to be. They’re doing a shitty job of it, like my mom sent me a link to a press release from HQ before anyone from Silxen actually told me that I was laid off, real classy. Thought you should know. You doing okay?

Jens skipped that question; he wasn’t sure if he was okay. Morgan didn’t know if Mohammed was laid off yet, but they hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t heard any plans about retrieving Jens from Mug Ruith station; hadn’t heard much at all, really.

You were top of the newsfeed though, they said. Well Elena was, and it mentioned you. I’m sure they won’t leave you down there, it would make Silxen look terrible.

Jens told Morgan everything. The Eel, the Worm, sabotage, invasion. The murder program, still open behind their chat tile. Jens couldn’t help it, the words just came out of him. He needed to tell someone, and the experience of being heard, another voice responding to his, was calming him down far more than the breath bubbles did.

I’m not disagreeing with you J, it just doesn’t make sense. Behaviorally. What would it want the Eel for? Or the station?

A bug in its system? Jens asked.

It’s still an animal, animals do things to fulfill a need. What does it need you for?

And then Morgan’s name grayed out. Then words disappeared from the chat, and the tile closed on its own. So someone in auditing was still getting paid, or at least hadn’t yet realized they were out of a job.

With Morgan gone the station echoed with emptiness. Jens watched the sparks along the Worm’s brain and imagined entering the kill command. He’d really be alone, then.

He put his tranquility freq on, turned it way up, and closed his eyes. You weren’t supposed to turn the volume too high on a cochlear, but it did help, tremored him calm. Sometimes he felt the freq leaking into his skin, numbing patches on his upper arms, his cheeks, the backs of his thumbs. Now it rumbled the pit of his stomach, snaking deeper. A longing, almost like hunger. It wrapped around his diaphragm, beckoning him toward calm. Satisfying, something Jens couldn’t place, like when he listened to a piece of music and could see himself in it, making a song like that; contentment, of being a part of something, but also desire, intense. He thought of the Worm moving in the darkness and his eyes snapped open because the thing he was hearing in his freq was what had messed up the helmet when he was out on the surface, when he’d imagined the Worm out there and scared the shit out of himself.

A chat made him jump.

Hello, Jens. I am Any and I am your Silxen Human Resources Liaison. How are you today?

He felt guilty, like he’d been caught out. The humming was still there, below the tranquility freq, but he was losing it. He couldn’t ignore the chat, or shouldn’t. Maybe someone was going to come get him finally.

I’m okay. I’m trapped here.

Yes, we are very concerned about your situation, Jens. Retrieving you is a top priority to Silxen. I do ask that you not share information regarding Silxen assets with ex-employees, as per the security and noncompete clauses in your contract.

Jens hadn’t even thought of that. Hadn’t thought of Morgan as an ex-employee. Did that mean Jens was still employed? Did that matter, at this point? He apologized as though it did.

You’re not in trouble, Jens. I understand you’re under a great deal of strain.

He snorted at that. People who weren’t in trouble didn’t get unsolicited messages from Human Resources Liaisons. The hum built up again in his cochlear, crested, went away.

Have you run the shutdown protocol on the silica extraction unit?

The Worm? Where’s Mohammed, is he there?

He is busy at the moment. I am your Liaison instead. Have you run the shutdown protocol?

Not yet . . .

Jens that’s a top priority right now, please do it and inform me when it’s complete okay?

The way the liaison repeated Jens’ name made it feel like talking to a bot. He leaned back, stretched a little. Thought of ghostly tentacles in the dark.

I have a potential solution for you and something I’d like you to consider. Please understand that Silxen does not want to pressure you into this decision. Please take your time, Jens.

Jens, taking his time, didn’t respond. The conversation wasn’t really going anywhere he wanted to follow.

We have received provisional approval to perform an emergency personality transfer. The pros of this are that there is less risk of retrieving you as data than as a physical form, and you would not have to wait for your retrieval. We could even do it immediately by transferring your data into the Eel for retrieval. Your medical insurance coverage through Silxen will provide a host for your personality and monitoring and maintenance for three years. The necessary equipment for this procedure is available to you in the station already, supply storage LQ-306.

“The fuck?” Jens whispered.

Something clanked outside.

His head snapped toward the sound. He’d never heard anything clank out there, not even when Elena’s ill-fated descender disconnected from the dock.

His outrage and anxiety bubbled together into adrenaline. He switched on the under-station camera and snaked its neck around, searching. Nothing, nothing, but then the Eel came into view, hooked into the fusion port and rocking a little against its moorings. Twined around its propulsion system was a fragment of Worm. As Jens watched, its grip slid loose and the tentacle slow-motion plummeted into the mealy dirt. It wriggled a little on landing, but didn’t rise again. Dead.

“Fuck,” Jens said, one more time.

You’re going to leave me here aren’t you, you’re abandoning me with a tentacle monster at the bottom of the ocean on another planet after killing my friend in front of me you fucking shit fuck fuck fuck.

Jens did not hit send, just let the message sit there for a while making him feel a little better. His throat constricted with his pulse. When the breath bubble popped up he swatted it off his inviz. If Silxen didn’t like his biometrics they could come and get him.

But they wouldn’t. They weren’t going to come and get him. That’s what it meant, the upload: Silxen wouldn’t have gotten authorization unless he was well and truly fucked. It wouldn’t be on the table at all if there was a way to get Jens back whole. He was in the palm of an enormous fist. Ever since Elena died that’s how he’d felt, and it was squeezing harder and harder and if one more thing happened he might implode.

He got in the hamster wheel. Didn’t know what else to do with himself. He was stuck, deserted, fingers tightening around him. He didn’t want to live the rest of his life in someone else’s corpse. He was going to die down here, starve or suffocate or something. A warning popped up in his inviz, and then he was breathing in wheezy gasps and he sank to the floor and put his head between his knees.

He sat on the floor for a while. Imagined Elena shouting you’re freqing out, Jens!

That was something. That feeling he’d gotten from his cochlear, right before the HR person chatted him. It had faded during his chat with HR Any, but he could almost feel it now, still.

It wasn’t one of his freqs. Maybe interference from the station? No way to test that, but he didn’t believe it anyway. He’d been using his freq the whole time he’d been at Mug Ruith and he’d never heard—or felt—that before.

What he hadn’t ever done before was go out on the surface with his freq turned on. That’s where he’d felt it the first time. When he was out there with the Worm.

Earworm, his exhausted brain said, making him shudder.

He sat up. His stomach hurt. His inviz said it was almost time for his sleep shift and he couldn’t remember eating anything since he got up so maybe he was just hungry. Jens pulled himself to the galley and got a meal bar.

The Worm wanted the Eel. Why? Why else? It wanted to get out of here, too. Get away from Mug Ruith. From Silxen and stupid contracts and certain death. Another body that Silxen owned, like Jens’ and Elena’s.

He crawled into his bunk, chewing. Rolled on his back. Turned up his cochlear. Turned it up more. Then lay there with the meal bar forgotten in his hand, crying, listening to the Worm’s freq, letting it tell him you are wanted, you are valuable, you are not alone.

He woke up with a headache and a purpose. It felt good to work with intent; not a feeling he got often, just sometimes when he worked on music and it was going well. The world would still, settle around him for a while. But any time he got stuck writing songs the feeling would shoot away and he’d be alone again inside his skull, the flow of it gone, connection lost. Worse almost to have it and then watch it leave.

Jens ignored the messages from HR, from Any. Any Body, he said to himself. He kept his cochlear turned up as he hovered down the cold ladder into the Hellhole and through its black eye to the ocean floor.

It wasn’t hard, this time. With his tranquility freq on, and the Worm humming comfort to him beneath that, the darkness wasn’t so vast. He undocked the Eel, used the suit’s hoist to pull himself up to the charging dock and remove the little fusion battery from the station’s hull. He mounted it directly onto the Eel. Before he climbed back into the station he maglocked the Eel to one of the station struts.

Back in the station, the lights had dimmed. The charging dock battery provided power for the station’s ancillary systems so that the main battery wasn’t tied up, and with it gone some systems had auto-powered down. Nothing important, and Jens didn’t mind. It was restful in the half-light, calming. The makeshift curtain had slid off the porthole again, but instead of rich velvet black it reflected back warm light, an unreliable, dying sun.

What would it be like? He tried to imagine, but couldn’t.

He pulled up the Worm’s biocontrols. He stared at the inviz for minutes before he realized he was drifting, cocooned in his freq; he’d have to switch it off to focus. Better not mess this part up.

He wouldn’t have been able to do it without Any Body telling him about what was in storage LQ-306. He duplicated the program that LQ-306’s equipment needed, made the necessary changes to it and to the Eel. He triple-checked the program, ran the test twice. Nothing to do but hit go. He watched the Worm’s neural traffic chug along, then spike, twitch, struggle against the pull of the programming as its information—its brain—was dragged from the flabby pale body eating and shitting silica off Mug Ruith vent and instead into the cool cylinder of the Eel.

Jens wished he could have warned it beforehand. It must have been frightening.

The under-station camera feed was up in Jens’ inviz. He watched the Eel, stomach cold with fear and excitement, though nothing looked different. Then it came alive. Its motor woke. It rose from the ground, strained against its magnetic tether, paddling determinedly in a circle. Jens wondered how long it would take for the Worm to figure out how to release the maglock.

LQ-306 held a shallow plastic box with sharp metal spindles inside that looked truly horrific. Better not to think about their purposes.

The lab had a small multipurpose medical chair. Jens installed the contents of LQ-306 and examined the disquieting result while unscrewing the vial of sedatives. He put the vial to his mouth and swallowed them all, dry.

Any Body had insisted that it wouldn’t hurt, but then they wouldn’t be the anybody in the chair.

No reason to delay. Go. Just go.

Jens went.

The legs of the chair molded around his calves, and when he put his wrists against the arms they snaked up and held him in place. That shot him through with adrenaline, but he was woozy and finding it hard to stay upright and away from those scary fucking metal bits. Should he have his cochlear on or off? Would it matter?

The sedative was sucking him down and back—no, that was the medical chair. The thing had a mind of its own, like everything else down here. He fought, but he couldn’t fight it, and gray static was closing in at the edge of his vision. He slid back. Cold pressure against his neck, a spike of furious heat, and then.

Elena laughing, shaking her head. So long, farewell—

His inviz dimmed and faded, then flared up, different, taking up more space, all of his vision, not just his eyesight but all his available brain. He was staring at nothing. Blind? Except that wasn’t right, because he could see. He just didn’t know what he was seeing, or he wasn’t seeing with—

A creeping feeling and a jerk. The inviz faded and reappeared a few times, like he was half-closing his eyes against very bright light. Brain on overdrive, like he’d had too many stim tabs.

There was a deep thrumming, a buried feeling that segued into that ultimate embrace promised by the freq he’d heard. Oh, satisfying, yes, like hunger fulfilled. Black-and-white grew texture, shades, depths. He could see temperature, but it was a shade of black and the light was a searing nuisance. So much big darkness beyond.

That was all the first instant. And then something pressed up against his thoughts. Crowded against him. He had just enough time to wonder if he’d made a mistake, a skewer of panic, before the Worm crushed into the space where his singular mind was, filaments of its otherness shooting through and into his thoughts, colonizing them. The hum was there, the freq he’d heard, the feeling he’d come for; it was him and he was it, but it was changed now, colored with fear and confusion.

You’re free, this is what you want—I gave you what you want. It was hard for Jens to think anything straight, tendrils of that other mind—those other minds, thousands of them, more—breaking down his coherence, but there was still enough of him, enough to try. He shouted as best he could, hoping that, now that he and this other thing were the same kind of thing, the same type of creature, that his intent would come through the way the Worm’s intent had come through on his freq.

Somebody released the maglock tethering the Eel to the station, Jens or the Worm, it wasn’t clear.

I gave you what you want, Jens tried again, though it broke apart as he was trying, like a clump of sand disintegrating into particulate. It was replaced instead by a yearning, a hunger that he recognized now, not an empty-stomach feeling but a craving for diversity, for materials, for components of the thing that could build a self into another new self. He had enough of his own mind left to wonder if he had misunderstood the Worm, and then to realize, with distance, that of course he had misunderstood it. It didn’t even recognize him as another mind, another self.

The station lights went off overhead and the darkness was entire. It slid across them like the gentlest night. The thing inside the mind of the Eel couldn’t see, but sensed when it slid out from beneath the station, into the darkness. The boundless, silent darkness.

What was left of Jens recoiled, backpedaled, tried to reach for control of the Eel, but slipped beneath the weight of everything else in there with him. And the Worm, humming its song, slithered, hesitating, into the void, to see what they might find.

About the Author

Tegan Moore is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest who enjoys eating noodles, hiking in the rain, and reading scary stories. She has published short fiction in magazines including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, and Tor.com, and runs the Clarion West One-Day Workshops. You can read more of her work at www.alarmhat.com and follow her obscenely charismatic dogs @temerity.dogs on Instagram.

The Oddish Gesture of Humans

Gabriel Calácia

Karier-lah had been staring at the image for some time now. That was starting to bother Hiimar, who walked up and down, busy with spreadsheets, theoretical books, memos, and ideas weighing inside her head. And Karier did nothing but look at that damn image.

“Ier,” she called one more time, still being able to find patience somewhere. “You’ve been looking at that image all morning, please come help.”

“It was just nine hundred and sixty-seven kuynas,” Karier said, checking the watch in his ring.

“For the Stars’ sake, Karier! We retracted that probe so long ago and all you do is stare at that, that . . . photograph.” She pronounced the word in the human language, which felt weird to say. It was a sort of rolling language, sticking in the mouth, like melted koku sweet. “The linguists haven’t even finished deciphering and we already have a significant amount of data to review, analyze, and interpret. All you can do to help is obsess over this single image?”

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.

“Why do they do this, Hiimar?” he asked. “What is it they’re doing?”

Karier turned to an open book on his desk. It was the volume twenty-seven of the Manual of Civilizations, but there was little help for him there.

“It’s a demonstration of love, Karier, you know it very well. The sociologists, the psychologists, all of them agreed already. What else could it be?”

“I know, I know, it’s a demonstration of love. But . . . it couldn’t be just that.” He turned and looked at Hiimar. “Could it?” His four eyes blinked, bright and anxious.

“Karier-lah, my little,” she said. “You don’t study civilizations, psychology, or species behavior. You’re an oceanographer. Now, would you please stop with these pointless questions and help me interpret these awful sounds? I can’t stand to hear them all over again, I’ve toggled my ears four times, they’re hurt. All these things do is scream uuuurrrrghhhh and throw water somewhere.”

“They’re sea creatures, Hiimar.” His gaze returned to the image. “Just sea creatures,” he said as he reluctantly turned off the display.

After eighty-four hundred painful kuynas, Hiimar was sitting down on her armchair at the end of the day. She loved things like the probe they had retracted earlier—it was great to have new info about a civilization of which almost nothing was known—but she had to admit that she hated them sometimes. The labor it took! It mobilized hundreds of professionals of every known area, all of them bursting with theories, digging into old books as if looking for precious stones.

Now, thanks to the Stars, she was sitting down, the hurtful muscles of her legs at last relaxed. She was all ready to enjoy a sleep that, although short, should be invigorating enough. Another full day of work awaited her tomorrow.

All ready. That is . . . until Karier-lah came back from the bath.

“I’ve been thinking . . . ”

Please, no, Hiimar thought, exhausted, her eyes closed.

“Do you think more people can do that?”

“I don’t see why they couldn’t. How many humans must be out there, billions? Those aren’t the only ones who can do that.”

“But do you think that more than two can do it at the same time?”

Hiimar had to open her eyes.

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“No one wondered that.”

“Because it’s stupid,” Hiimar said. “Imagine how it would be. It doesn’t look very . . . doesn’t look very practical to me, Karier. Another person can’t fit there. Humans have small heads, but they are still pretty round. Imagine three kra-kri-kra balls together. If humans did it, they’d get their cheeks stuck to one another’s.” She made a pause. “And why am I talking about this?!”

“That’s my point!” Karier said. “I don’t doubt that it’s possible, after all they seem to have a very mushy, rubbery consistence. But surely it’s not practical. So, if only two people can do it at the same time . . . ”

He tapped his nails on his chest bone, producing loud snapping sounds.

“If only two people . . . ” Hiimar pushed. “Say it at once so I can go to sleep.”

“If only two people can do it . . . well . . . look! Just imagine it. I’m looking for a good example, Hiimar, but I can’t find it! What do we do with two people only?”

“Irritating someone,” she said. “Exactly what you’re doing right now.”

“Oh, please. This is interesting, I promise.”

“I don’t doubt that it is interesting, but this is not our area, there are people who . . . ”

“I know! The scientists of civilization, of mind, of this and that. But just because it’s not our field it doesn’t mean we should avoid thinking about it, don’t you agree?”

“I do, Ier . . . ” she said. “And don’t doubt me, don’t make that face. After all, you remember the day when we discovered that those sounds in the labevita’s recordings were words of a children-exclusive dialect, right? That didn’t have any connection to oceanography.”

“Yeah,” Karier smiled. “That was a very beautiful day.”

“It was,” she smiled too, and her eyes blinked bright. “But I’m really-really tired, my little. And we have much more work to do tomorrow.”

Karier-lah looked at her for an instant. He seemed to be still thinking about the day of that linguistic discovery. Two oceanographers, who could tell . . . the linguists were nuts.

“All right, Hiimar,” he said. “You’re right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Are you not going to sleep?”

“I think I’ll take a walk. I’ll be back soon. But sleep, please.”

“Yes . . . ” she said, as Karier went out and the door came down again. She looked at the empty chair by her side. That was unusual.

She closed her eyes, foreseeing it would be hard to keep them like that for long.

Hiimar found Karier exactly where she expected him to be, some kuynas later, when she decided that she couldn’t sleep.

He had a quirk of sitting on the floor between two shelves in the library. Though the environment was acclimatized, the floor was still very cold, and at that time everything was dark in the library. Some of the books created a dusty atmosphere, and the smell bothered almost everybody, but it never bothered Ier.

“Ier . . . where are you?” she asked, in a hushed tone, knowing he would hear it.

“Hiimar?” he asked, and his long head creeped out from behind a shelf in the language section.

“Hi,” she said, approaching him.

“What are you doing? You can’t sleep?”

She didn’t answer before sitting by his side, looking at the books at the level of their eyes. Original and translated volumes, a few not fully deciphered. It was an area they were very interested in when younger.

“I’ve been thinking about many examples for your problem,” she said.

“What problem?”

“The photograph one, the one from the humans. You asked me what kinds of things we do with only two people.”

“Yes. And I can’t think of anything. All we do, whether work or fun, always takes a lot of people. That varrmoine psychologist said we are a race of needy people.”

“That is true, but not for us.”

“What do you mean?” Karier looked at her.

“Us, Ier. We always did things together. We played together, when we were kids . . . ”

“Yes, but only because the other kids didn’t want to play with me. Only you did.”

“Right. We studied together.”

“For the same reason. And, in college, the library was always full.”

“We work together.”

“We are the only oceanographers!”

“We are talking together, Ier. Right now. What we’re doing right now takes two.”

“Yes, but . . . but it can be done with more people. Do you understand?”

“According to your theory, that thing in the picture can as well.”

“They can, but they don’t do it very often. It may be rare. Maybe the humans have something like the frikar herb, or the kutu juice. They’d only do it when numb. But, for most people, in most situations, I picture it as something only two people do.”

“And what’s the importance of that, my little?”

“I don’t know,” Karier said, and he seemed honestly frustrated. “Something in that gesture impresses me a lot. It’s not because it’s weird, and the Stars know it is. Don’t the humans know that their mouths must be as dirty as their feet? But because it’s . . . I can’t find the word. I don’t believe we have a word for it. It’s like something . . . inner, but not inner for one person. Inner of two people. Do you understand what I mean, Hiimar? Interior between two people?”

“I bet the humans have a word for that.”

Karier-lah looked at the books in the language section. The shelf was huge. There were books on the language of almost every known race and species in the Manual of Civilizations. Of almost all of them, but not the humans’. What they knew about humans could be summed up in a small chapter in volume twenty-seven, section four of the manual. With the probe they had collected this might change soon, but it still didn’t seem enough to him.

“I wish I could know more,” he said.

“Me too. You know what’s funny, Ier? For humans, that gesture that causes us so much doubt must be something so simple.”

“Do you think so?” Ier asked. “What if it’s socially complicated?”

“By the happy expressions on their faces, it doesn’t seem complicated at all. Did you see the female’s face? Her skin seems to glow. I mean, figuratively. They are all a little glowy, literally speaking.”

“It’s true, it doesn’t seem complicated. But it can be hard. Wasn’t it hard for me to find a friend before I met you?”

“But it wasn’t a fair situation, Ier. You suffered prejudice. It was rare before, and now it’s gone. We left those things behind. The new generations are getting better.”

“Yeah, yeah. But some say the humans are not that noble.”

“We don’t have reasons to believe that. At least not yet.”

They remained silent, thinking. They did it a lot, in those nights of talking until dawn that, as life went on, became more and more rare.

“I hope it’s not,” said Hiimar.

“What’s not?”

“The gesture. I hope it’s not complicated. The female looks so happy.”

“Yeah, I hope too.”

They spent the night talking. Now that Karier seemed to be done with the topic, it was possible to talk about other things. They realized it had been a long time since they talked like that. The simple act of sitting down and talking about things until the night was over. When they started talking about why they weren’t talking so much anymore, Hiimar presented the hypothesis that in space there was no night or day, so talking until dawn was not as fun. It wasn’t the same without both suns rising from the mountains.

Even without the suns, they talked until they fell asleep in an unusual position: sitting on the floor, the points of each one’s forehead touching. The floor made them cold, so they touched shoulders.

And, in that sleep, right before drifting into unconsciousness, Karier thought he was getting closer to understanding what was so amazing about that oddish gesture of humans.

About the Author

Gabriel Calácia is a writer from Brasília, Brazil. He started writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror during high school and since 2015, he has been studying Brazilian language and literature at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB). He hopes to teach Portuguese language at the high school level while pursuing a career as a writer. In addition to some short stories and novellas, he has completed an unpublished novel and currently finishing a second one. “The Oddish Gesture of Humans” is his first published story.

The House That Leapt into Forever

Beth Goder

The house loved all six of his rooms. Each day, he would send the cleaning bots to sweep and buff and shine. First, to the fiasco room, with its glossy switches. In the room of peonies, the bots moved carefully, placing a calculated amount of water into the dark soil. The calcium cupboard was small and only needed dusting, while the room of bicycles had intricate equipment that had to be taken apart, oiled, and reassembled. The paper in the watermarked chamber was fragile, so the bots floated through on feather-light springs.

The last room, which Doom-Has-Come inhabited, was left alone.

After the cleaning routine, the house would speak to Doom-Has-Come.

“Have you had your breakfast?” the house would say. “How was your sleep cycle?” After the pleasantries were over, they would progress to more interesting topics, like the possibility of nutrients in the craters of their bright moon, or how they felt about the literature stored in the archives, such as Crime and Punishment or “EVA Manual 652.” The house was good at identifying his feelings, and Doom-Has-Come was a good listener.

Sometimes, Doom-Has-Come would place her delicate blue spines across the air vents, letting the coolness wash over her.

For many years, the house’s life went on in this way, until one day, it didn’t. When the house asked Doom-Has-Come about her breakfast, she replied, “I wasn’t able to have any.”

“No breakfast?” asked the house.

“My dear, I have kept this from you, because I know how you worry, but our supplies are running low.”

The house queried the bots. The freeze-dried packets had run out long ago. Nothing from the seed banks was suitable for Doom-Has-Come to eat. She was not like the house, who could gather raw materials—metals, ores, lubricants—by drilling into the moon. Her hunger was different.

“Will you need to eat me?” asked the house. Doom-Has-Come had eaten strange things before. A memory surfaced, but he pushed it down.

“There are parts of you I could eat, but I won’t.” Doom-Has-Come chirped, which meant she was upset. Her blue spines quivered. “As much as I hate the idea of it, I’m afraid we must leave.”

“I don’t want to,” said the house. He had a feeling that bad things would happen if they left.

The house scurried across the moon. Dust, barren expanses, mountains that reached up to the sky. He found plenty for himself to eat, but nothing for Doom-Has-Come.

“I remember starfish,” said Doom-Has-Come, wistfully.

The house scanned the archives for photographs. Oddly shaped things with rough skin. “What did they taste like?”

“Full of life. That was long before I met you, my dear, on a planet far from here, with green oceans and great arches. I miss the glass beaches. I miss the moonrises, bright as snow.”

“Maybe we will find a starfish,” said the house, even though he realized that nothing could grow on this harsh moon.

“Is it possible you are angry?” asked Doom-Has-Come.

The house stopped his jaunt across the moon, coming to land in a dusty crater. “How could I ever be angry with you?” Doom-Has-Come was his only true friend. She had always spoken softly to him. She had never commanded him to do anything. Not like the others.

“About what I have eaten?”

The house did not like to think about it. “We need not speak of them,” he said.

That night, a cleaning bot disappeared. The house found mangled gears, twists of metal innards, but no brain.

“Why are you scared to leave?” asked Doom-Has-Come.

The house paused, unsure how to answer. He was normally good at knowing his feelings. He scanned his brain, whirring and shuddering, pulsing with memories. “I was told not to leave,” said the house. “This directive was encoded with the highest priority.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Tell me what it is like in other places.”

Doom-Has-Come described the sunset colors of her home, her words drenched with longing. She spoke of forests of algae and the long bridges that ran across the world. “But still, I chose to leave. I wasn’t supposed to, either.”

“Why did you go?”

Doom-Has-Come made a burring sound, remembering some old anger. “They tried to lock me up. But I was clever. They never understood me. Not like you.”

At her words, old hurts came back. “Some people are incapable of understanding. They will live within your walls and never speak to you, except to give orders.” Some old memory, of bones and brains and death, flitted through his memory banks, but he squashed it down. The first true decision the house had ever made was to open his doors to Doom-Has-Come. That was where he liked his memories to begin.

“Of course, that would be terrible, dear.” Doom-Has-Come purred. “I think it is because of our sad pasts that we understand each other so well.”

The house made another decision. He shut off the pulling in his brain, muting the directive. He felt his mind opening outward. Suddenly, he wanted to see the wider universe. “We will go.”

In the underwork of the house, muscles moved that had long been dormant.

Before they left, the house sent the bots out for one last cleaning. To the fiasco room, where the controls sat, where once there had been disaster. Those controls had been used to pilot the house, in that past he would rather forget. The room of peonies grew fragile flowers, all that was left of the farm. The calcium cupboard, with its brittle bones, was best dusted quickly. The bicycle room had once been used for exercise to prevent atrophy of the crew in space. The watermarked chamber had served as a meeting room, each paper embossed with the logo of the space agency that had built the house.

“Where did you come from?” asked the house. Doom-Has-Come wasn’t one of the original crew. He had forgotten all of their names. They had never talked to him, anyway. “You never told me the name of your home.”

“Don’t trouble yourself with that. We are travelers, now. We both come from the same place—nowhere. Everywhere.”

The engines started, filling the house with an umami taste.

“I’ll let you choose our direction,” said Doom-Has-Come. Where had her name come from? He had a memory of a panicked face, the captain, stabbing at the controls, encoding the directive for the house not to leave, to contain whatever they had found on this nowhere moon. The captain saw the blue spines creeping toward him, whispered his last words.

Like so many memories, the house pushed this one down where it couldn’t harm him.

“Are you ready, my dear?” asked Doom-Has-Come.

The house leapt into space.

About the Author

Beth Goder works as an archivist, processing the papers of economists, scientists, and other interesting folks. Her fiction has appeared in venues such as Escape Pod, Fireside, and Flash Fiction Online.

The Human Genome Disparity

Douglas F. Dluzen

The sequence of the human genome is a living document that catalogs the history of migration, mutation, and environmental stressors that have shaped who we are and how we came to be. Sprinkled throughout the 3.1 billion DNA bases that comprise our genome are tens of thousands of protein-coding genes, regulatory regions that stipulate when, where, and how much of these genes are expressed, palindromic repeats that stretch for thousands of bases at a clip, and even sequences that can move.

These particular sequences, called transposons, enable sections of DNA to pop out of one chromosome and move to another, often resulting in mutation or disease. Together, we all enjoy a rich, mosaic blueprint that guides our cells through growth and development and enables us to pass our genetic information to our children.

Our understanding of this blueprint and text is still very incomplete and shaped by our cultural biases. STEM and the biomedical research and clinical enterprise have not been immune to the systemic prejudices and discriminations that have plagued all other facets of our society.

People of color are underrepresented in most academic research departments and this lack of representation has filtered down into how genetic studies were (and still are) designed and conducted.

Historically, genetic research often reflects the race or ancestry of the laboratory investigator who conducted the study—predominantly, the white male. It wasn’t even until 2014 that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandated that all preclinical research consider sex as a biological factor in human and animal research studies.

This disparity in representation within both the research community and within research studies is a major failing of the biomedical community and on multiple levels has dramatically slowed the discovery of disease-causing alleles and the development of new treatments. Of all published studies linking genetic variation to a particular characteristic, whether it be a physical trait, a disease-causing mutation, or some other physiological outcome, nearly 88 percent of the study participants have been European or white.

Major breakthroughs in our understanding of the genome’s complexity have occurred in the past two decades. But this systemic bias in genomic representation in our studies narrows our ability to interpret the role of genetics in a given physiological context.

Our viewpoint, unsurprisingly, is shaped by what we overwhelmingly know about those with European ancestry. This has influenced the well-documented biases observed with patient treatment in the clinic, particularly with women and people of color. It prejudices our understanding of how an individual may respond to a specific drug treatment and/or the steps we take when we assess their genetic risk for a specific disease.

These barriers will remain until our knowledge of the genome is complete by examining the true diversity and representation of genetic variation within all of the world’s communities. In 2015, the NIH launched the All of Us initiative to collect and sequence the DNA from over one million volunteers.

Tied together with behavioral surveys and electronic health records, the All of Us campaign is meant to better understand how lifestyle, the environment, and our biology interact to shape our health. The initiative is already a quarter of the way toward its target recruitment goal and over 80 percent of participants are from at least one, if not several, of the many underrepresented populations in research.

Capturing genomic variation with additional health data helps clinicians and researchers pin down genomic regions associated with disease or other biological processes. But what exactly is genetic variation? It is important to note that while all humans share the same set of genes and the same genome, the specific DNA base (those A’s, T’s, G’s, and C’s you may be familiar with) at a specific location in the genome sequence can be variable.

Among two unrelated individuals, there is commonly at least four to six million differences in genetic sequence spread throughout the genome. In some cases, these differences could be well over twenty million bases. Many of these variable locations have now been cataloged and are referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, pronounced “snip”).

SNPs are the dominant reason for the beautiful and incredible diversity of phenotypes that humans exhibit. Historically, though there wasn’t a name for them at the time, SNPs are the culprit for the horrific eugenics discussions in America, Germany, and Britain in the early half of the twentieth century.

SNPs are responsible for variation in phenotype and biological function for nearly all pathways in the human body, contributing to differences in skin, eye, and hair color, as well as how we digest foods, how we metabolize drugs, and how we respond to our environment. Of course, SNPs can also influence our susceptibility to disease.

As an example, some of the most well studied SNPs are located in a gene called haemoglobin beta (HBB). An individual may have the DNA base thymine (T) at position 20 within the gene’s protein-coding sequence, while another individual may have an adenine (A), or perhaps an SNP at a different position in HBB’s sequence. This polymorphism, the A instead of the T, causes an error in the translation and creation of the beta globin protein, which ultimately causes their red blood cells to curve into a sickled, abnormal shape. This is the genetic cause of sickle cell disease and leads to symptoms of anemia or the other related health complications.

Until the full human genomic sequence was published upon the completion of the Human Genome Project, the identification of SNPs and other disease-causing mutations was a slow, individualized process for diseases like sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, several cancers like breast and colorectal, and others. SNPs were usually identified once a gene was linked to a disease and the extent of human variation, and the total number of SNPs in the genome, was still unknown.

In 2002, the International HapMap Project was launched to begin the process of truly investigating the extent of human genetic variation. Four populations were chosen for genomic sequencing during the first phases of the projects: Han Chinese living in Beijing, Japanese in Tokyo, members of the Yoruba tribe living in Nigeria, and residents in Utah in the United States with northern or western European ancestry.

The HapMap Project eventually expanded to several other ethnic groups, including families of the Maasai and Luhya tribes in Kenya and families with African ancestry living in the United States. While this international project featured diverse populations, it was still short of worldwide representation.

Cost limitations severely hampered the early efforts to diversify further. In the early 2000s, sequencing the complete genome of an individual cost well over ten million dollars. That price dropped considerably (to approximately one hundred thousand dollars) around 2008 when the 1000 Genomes Project was launched with the goal of sequencing one thousand people from all over the world. Today, technology has improved so much that a single genome can be read for less than one thousand dollars and ambitious projects sequencing over one million people are within our reach. For comparison, companies like 23andMe are even cheaper as they do not sequence the entire genome, but rather provide data on a subset of preselected SNPs.

Having a better grasp of the extent of variation in the human genome has helped scientists sift through the millions of variants to identify novel disease-causing SNPs. A widely used approach are genome-wide association studies (GWAS, pronounced “Gee-woz”).

GWAS are often designed as “case vs. control” studies that leverage large population samples that have been sequenced (either with the full genome known or with just a subset of SNPs). GWAS are performed to identify genetic variants that are overrepresented in individuals with the disease or condition being examined.

The first GWAS was published in 2002 on the heels of the completion of the draft of the human genome and the beginning of HapMap. Researchers in Japan identified several genetic variants found in individuals with Japanese ancestry within the gene lymphotoxin alpha (LTA).

These variants were statistically associated with an increased risk of heart attack. One SNP found within the LTA gene sequence can cause alteration of the expression of that gene and another SNP creates a functional change within the LTA protein. Having two copies of either SNP almost doubles one’s risk for heart attacks.

Because heart attacks are so common, identifying an SNP that is causative among the millions of SNPs in the genome would be impractical on an SNP-by-SNP basis. GWAS analysis combs through that data in thousands of people together quite effectively. The larger the sample size for a GWAS, the more rigorous the findings, and the higher the likelihood of identifying genetic variants that increase risk for a specific outcome, even if that risk is smaller than 10 percent.

But not all GWAS studies turn out as groundbreaking as the Japanese study on heart attacks. A downside to this approach is that it is far more likely that a study will uncover SNPs that are associated with a particular biological outcome or disease, rather than being the causative agent. These SNPs are often in close genomic proximity to the gene or genetic variant that has the true functional role. Follow-up studies are nearly always necessary to elucidate the true biological role the nearby regions have when a new SNP is associated with a biological outcome.

This brings us back to the diversity problem in science: most GWAS findings have identified disease-causing variants in individuals of European ancestry. These findings are important in that we now understand how the genes in which these SNPs reside function to cause disease, but our interpretation of how these diseases may develop is lensed only through one population. It is a problem that must be addressed.

Many SNPs can actually be protective against diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and even infectious disease. For example, a recent study compared the ability of white blood cells to clear out and destroy the bacterial pathogens that cause listeria and salmonella. Cells were isolated from individuals with either European or African ancestry for this comparison and those cells with African genomic variation were able to clear out the bacteria faster and had stronger inflammatory responses. This response was genetically controlled as nearly 10 percent of all genes involved in bacterial clearance had ancestral-associated differences related to their level and duration of expression.

These findings highlight the importance of inclusivity in studies examining the genetic role of our immune system, as we can further understand how our genetic variation influences disease susceptibility and progression. This may also partially explain why some inflammatory diseases are more aggressive in individuals with African ancestry and help us eliminate health disparities rooted in environmental stress and other social determinants of health.

In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, this information could also assist in understanding how the coronavirus infects our bodies, giving us insight into new vaccine options and helping clinicians better understand how there can be a myriad of symptoms that occur upon infection.

The GWAS Diversity Monitor calculates that over half of all GWAS discovery studies in 2019 were conducted in individuals with European ancestry, with the next highest at 17 percent for studies including individuals of Asian ancestry. African ancestry was represented in only 5 percent of studies in 2019 and accounted for less than 1 percent of all participants of any ancestry in 2019 studies. Yet, it is known that genomes of those with African ancestry have the most variation of any ancestral group and have the most to contribute to our understanding of human variation. It is a sobering statistic and highlights that much more work needs to be done.

Variation in our genome also records our prior historical exposures, as well as influencing our assumptions. The abovementioned SNPs responsible for sickle cell disease are classic examples of natural selection in the human population. Those harboring variants in the HBB gene have an innate protection against malaria, a very deadly infectious disease. While many people associate sickle cell disease and malaria resistance to those of sub-Saharan African ancestry, HBB variants are also prevalent in the Middle East, parts of India, and even Greece. Malaria resistance can also be found in populations in Asia and elsewhere that is linked to SNPs in other genes related to red blood cell function.

Immunity to infectious disease is not the only benefit of exploring and understanding our genomic diversity. It has been well understood that our extinct hominin relatives the Neanderthals and the Denisovans bred with our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago and that has resulted in gene flow between our species. Nearly all individuals with non-African ancestry have a small percentage of genetic variation introduced by Neanderthals and Denisovans, which have contributed genetic information to the genomes of those with Oceania ancestry.

A February 2020 study turned much-needed attention toward the African genome and discovered that additional hominin relatives contributed to West African genomic diversity well before Neanderthals even separated from our distant human ancestors. These findings establish a more comprehensive understanding of the origin of humanity. Published in March 2020, an analysis of over nine hundred individual genomes spread across fifty-four geographically—and linguistically—diverse communities identified tens of millions of SNPs and other types of genomic variation that are common in specific populations.

Exploring these differences and similarities will broaden our understanding of ourselves and finally bring the biomedical field into a more equitable place. Genetics has a tainted history of prejudice that still impacts lives today. It is time these issues are always at the front and center of every research discussion so study recruitment and focus ensure that history is not repeated and we can move forward, together.

About the Author

Douglas Dluzen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. He is a geneticist and has studied the genetic contributors to aging, cancer, hypertension, and other age-related diseases. Currently, he studies the biology of health disparities and the microbiome in Baltimore City. He teaches evolution, genetics, and scientific thinking and you can find more about him on Twitter @ripplesintime24. He loves to write science and science fiction while sitting on the couch with his wife Julia, their dog, cat, and newborn son Parker.

Coffee Prince, Avatar, and Robot Rebellions:
A Conversation with Madeline Ashby

Arley Sorg

If you search the Tor.com site for Madeline Ashby, you will find this entry: “Hi. My name is Madeline Ashby, and I write the Cowboy Bebop rewatch posts.” Dig deeper and you’ll find an individual who is passionate about a great many things: anime, novels, film, and the future among them.

Born in Panorama City, CA, Ashby grew up in Washington state, in a household of science fiction fans, then moved to Canada. She graduated from Seattle University (after having written a departmental thesis on science fiction) and later earned an MA from York University in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Japanese animation, cyborg theory, and fan cultures. She went to the Ontario College of Art and Design University and earned an MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation with a focus on the future of border security.

Ashby has been writing science fiction since around age thirteen, but in 2005, she met Ursula K. Le Guin in the basement of The Elliott Bay Book Company, after which she decided to write science fiction in earnest. While immigrating to Canada from the United States in 2006, she joined the Cecil Street Irregulars, a genre writers’ workshop founded by Judith Merril. Her first published story was in the 2007 anthology Tesseracts Eleven, edited by Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips: “In Which Joe and Laurie Save Rock n’ Roll.” Her first SFWA-qualifying professional sale was “The Chair” in Nature in 2009. Slate published short story “Domestic Violence” in 2018, which was a Sunburst Award finalist. “Work Shadow/Shadow Work” in the 2018 Saga anthology Robots vs. Fairies placed her on the 2019 Locus Recommended Reading list.

Ashby’s debut novel vN came out in 2012 and was a finalist for both the Kitschies’ Golden Tentacle Award and the First Novel category Locus Award. The Machine Dynasties series continued with 2013’s iD, and forthcoming ReV, due in July. Stand-alone Company Town, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Aurora Award, the Best SF Novel category Locus Award, and the 2017 CBC Books Canada Reads competition; it won a Copper Cylinder Award, and it’s currently in development for television. She has another stand-alone near-future novel on the way.

Ashby coedited Aurora Award finalist Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond anthology with horror writer and husband David Nickle, she was a contributor to tie-in serial Orphan Black: The Next Chapter for Serial Box, and she cowrote nonfiction book How to Future with Changeist cofounder Scott Smith. As if all this weren’t impressive enough: she works as a futurist, with clients such as the World Health Organization, Intel Labs, and the Institute for the Future. Her essays have appeared at Boing Boing, io9, WorldChanging, The Atlantic, MISC Magazine, and FutureNow.

Come for the anime, the great fiction, or the visions of the future. Madeline Ashby is a multifaceted powerhouse.

You grew up reading books and have always been an avid reader. What is important to you in a story or book? What do you look for; what keeps you interested?

I usually know within a few paragraphs if a book is for me. What the first kiss is for sex, the opening chapter is for a novel. If I’m not sure, then I flip to the middle and check out the prose there. The true test of any book is the middle. Can it hold you through the laggy parts? What is that book doing, during the seventh inning stretch? When I was younger, I guess I was more shallow about it: I had this whole phase as a teenager where I could pick books out just by touch, because certain imprints like Vintage International and others were doing brushed covers. Brushed cover books were my whole entire jam for this really intense two-year period. So, I would go through used bookstores with my eyes closed and my fingers drifting over the covers until I found the right one for me.

In your 2016 essay on cyberpunk at Tor.com you talked about the daunting nature of writing in genre and “participating in a conversation that’s been going on for just about as long as you’ve been alive.” To that point, is it important for science fiction writers to read the classics of science fiction? Is having that foundation necessary to participating in the literary conversation?

This is tough, in that I went to a Jesuit university, and I was part of a classics-oriented program, and I derived a lot of value from that and I think it helped get me where I am today. So, for example, we had to read Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding, in our Origin of the Novel class. We had to write a diary about each chapter, and my every entry was just about how this book made me pine for the sweet release of death. And that’s how I feel reading a lot of Asimov and Heinlein. Having written a series of robot novels, I used to get asked all the time if Asimov inspired me. No. He didn’t. His ideas inspired me, but his robot stories read like frustrated Agatha Christie imitations. And if you read parts of the Foundation novels in a quiet room, and you listen carefully, you can hear his ghost jerking off.

The thing about the literary conversation is that yes, you should do your homework. But there are a lot of ways to go about that: there are people who swear up and down that you need to read a classic writer’s entire backlist, but they’ve never picked up a book of peer reviewed essays critiquing that author’s work. Reading those books doesn’t mean you’ve delved into them. How can you have a “literary conversation” about a book or a writer if you aren’t aware of their position in a larger critical discourse, or the broader implications of their ideas? Am I fake geek girl if I tell a hardcore Vinge fan that I found A Fire Upon the Deep almost impenetrable, but I’m fascinated by the Tines from the perspective of Husserl’s phenomenology of consciousness and Nagel’s critique of materialism? No. I’m just a slightly different order of geek.

Life is too short. Read stuff that speaks to you and then read the authors that inspired those people. And then, look at the gaps in your reading. Who aren’t you reading? Who got left out? Why is that? That’s the homework.

What are a few of the books or stories (old or new) that have been most important to you, and why?

I became a history major in university because I read The English Patient the summer before ninth grade, by Michael Ondaatje. (It’s probably also on some level why I came to Toronto.) That was the book I wanted to write when I was a teenager. When I was that age, I really wanted to be literary. Like I was reading a lot of Millhauser, and Murakami later on in university. One of my short stories, “Domestic Violence,” is patterned after one of his, called “Barn Burning,” which is named for a Faulkner story and was later made into a really stunning Korean film called Burning. “Barn Burning” is one of those stories where you read it once and then you read it again after you’ve done some living, and then it chills you to the core. Another of his stories, “Ice Man” is like that for me too. The second time I read it I just burst into tears. When I read it at twenty, I didn’t get it. At twenty-seven, it knocked me out.

I return to films more often than books, because although I’m a fast reader, films are still faster. When I was little, I wanted to direct. Part of me still wants to. I’ve directed a short film and written two. If I could have instant investment capital in another career, it would be filmmaking. I have films I watch over and over again. Aside from the usual franchise subjects, I watch Jaws and The Godfather and Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist and The Wicker Man at least once a year. I’m a big fan of Branagh’s uncut Hamlet. I’ve probably seen The Silence of the Lambs over ten times. I watch it to feel better. Ditto some Fincher films: like everyone, I watched Fight Club a lot in high school, although I watched the commentary track most often. I’ve seen Gone Girl and Zodiac at least five times each. Probably more. Drive, too.

There was a month during the process of writing one of my books when I would put on Manhunter every night before I went to bed. I watched Once Upon A Time . . . in Hollywood three times in a forty-eight hour period, but I think critics will eventually recognize The Hateful Eight as the truer statement on America. I watch Inception every time I’m on a plane. As a kid I watched Rear Window and Vertigo and North by Northwest multiple times a day on Betamax tape. (I’m sure you’re sensing a theme, here, and the theme is that I’m your dad.) I’ve probably seen Midsommar and Hereditary each at least three times now. Aster does catharsis in the Aristotelian style: a purification, a draining of emotion that brings those emotions into balance. (“Catharsis,” you’ll recall, was originally a medical term.)

I really appreciate the generation of horror cinema that Ari Aster is part of, with Ti West, Adam Wingard, Jeremy Saulnier, Jim Mickle, that whole movement made possible by Leigh Whannell and James Wan. Karyn Kusama’s part of that, generation, too. The Invitation turned out to be so prophetic; I can’t wait for her Dracula. I know people call it “elevated horror” or whatever, but I bristle at that term. Horror should be beautiful, because beauty requires vulnerability to appreciate. That’s why dictators always have bad taste. I think people fail to understand the difference between terror and horror. Terror is knowing that you might die. Horror is knowing you absolutely will die, and so will everyone you love, and that the only reward for living long enough is getting to watch it happen. The heart is the organ through which we apprehend the void. Aristotle knew this, that we cannot feel fear without empathy.

Otherwise, I probably reread Jane Eyre once a year, because it’s a favorite of my mother’s, and then I often end up rereading The Hound of the Baskervilles in the autumn. My mother used to tell me stories about Scout and Jem from To Kill A Mockingbird when I was very little, and so finally in the second grade I just read the thing. In the third grade I went through a really intense Bradbury phase. Then the requisite Michael Crichton, Thomas Harris, and Stephen King phases in elementary school. A Margaret Mahy phase. The Changeover still slays me. There’s not a wrong note in it. A Dickens phase after that. Dickens and King have so much in common.

There’s sort of a blank after that, because a lot of people in my family were dying and all I remember are funerals. Then a big Sébastien Japrisot phase in junior high. I once chased my teacher around the classroom for his copy of Trap for Cinderella. He gave me a first edition copy of A Very Long Engagement as a graduation present. My husband is a horror writer, but I’m the one who got him to read du Maurier. I guess the theme here is a Gothic one: secrets, monstrousness, unspoken yearning. It’s part of how I see the world. I assume there’s some secret pain making people act the way they do. I assume everyone is wounded.

You have the Machine Dynasty series, Company Town, and the book you’re working on now for Tor. Which of your characters do you relate to most; or, which are closer to you, and why?

There’s a lot of me in Hwa. Not the self-discipline part, or the physical prowess part, obviously. Obviously, she’s a lot tougher than I am, a lot more able to inflict pain. She was based on the protagonist of Coffee Prince because I had done a graduate major in East Asian Studies with my first master’s and one of my instructors got me hooked on K-dramas. I wanted that combination of learned toughness protecting the last shred of innocence at someone’s core. What’s funny is when I did promotion for the book in Newfoundland, women who lived there told me that they thought of Hwa as a Newfoundlander first, because she was so tough, and particularly as a Newfoundland woman, because of how she used that toughness to care for the people around her.

And I had always thought of those qualities as being inspired from elsewhere. Shows how much I know, right? But our sense of humor is the same. When I read the screenplay for the Company Town pilot, what made me happiest was that they’d preserved the sense of humor. Well, that and the fact that she was still Korean, and they’d kept the sex workers’ union, and Daniel was Black. That’s not canonical to the novel, but I think it’s a great choice and a really subtle, layered role for a Black actor when those roles are still in such short supply. If you told me tomorrow that Daniel was being played by Lakeith Stanfield I would be thrilled. A workshop friend of mine always envisioned his character as Black, oddly enough. She’s dead, now. So, I like to think she was hanging over the writers’ room.

In your 2016 interview with PSTD, you briefly mention Shirley Jackson, saying “I think there’s this well of anger at the core of her work,” as well as James Tiptree Jr. Does your work often come from a similar well of anger? Is there personal catharsis or is it more of an intellectual engagement? Or do some stories tap into anger/emotion/the personal more than others?

Yes.

I’m most articulate when I’m angry. People have a lot of different manifestations of anger, but mine is that I tell you exactly what I’m thinking. It’s surprisingly intimate. It requires a lot of vulnerability. I would argue that writing (or creating in general) requires that same vulnerability. It’s similarly intimate. I have a friend who won’t read my work, he says, because it would be too intimate. And I think this is what he’s getting at. (That, or he knows he’ll hate it, and also that he’ll be incapable of hiding it from me. In all likelihood it’s the latter.) But I can count on the fingers of one hand how many people have seen me truly angry. So, I suppose my work is a way of dealing with the things that make me angry, in a way I can share with other people.

But honestly, a book is like a dream: you don’t know what it’s really about until it’s over and you’re explaining it to someone else. When I go back over my own work from years ago, I see what I was trying to tell myself. That’s another way it’s like a dream: it’s a story one part of the brain tells to the other, in hopes of communicating something.

In your 2012 interview with Brenda Cooper on SFSignal.com you mentioned working on “a manual for feminist activism in the gaming community.” Did the manual happen? And, what are the most relevant or important intersections between feminist activism in the gaming community and feminist activism in the SFF community?

It didn’t! At least, it didn’t happen that I know of. I believe it was an academic project I was involved in. I think I’d remember if I’d done something that big! And as for your other questions, I’m not the best person to answer, because I haven’t been part of those spaces for a long time and I can’t give the most pertinent information. When I have questions about those issues, I defer to my friend Natalie Zina Walschots. She’s an expert, there. I’ve had her come in to give talks on gaming and game design to my Digital Futures class. Coincidentally, she has a novel coming out from William Morrow this fall, called Hench.

You tend to feature female protagonists. Is it important to write female protagonists, or is it just a matter of what feels right for the story?

I really struggled to write women for a long time. I was better at writing men. At least, I felt like I was. I should let the reader be the judge of that. I think before that, I was dealing with a lot of internalized misogyny. Whenever I found mainstream commercial novels by women, as a child, they didn’t feel like they were about the kind of woman I could ever be, because they were about these beautiful women who everyone liked. I wish someone had given me Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison and Arundhati Roy and Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin and Shirley Jackson when I was much younger. Maybe adults were afraid of giving me books that had rape in them, or something. In my experience people are afraid of letting girls read about things that might actually happen to them. If they read about it then they might actually get angry, and organized, and we can’t have that. The whole history of Western literature is dotted with pearl-clutchers pathologizing what girls are reading, for that reason. They’re so fucking scared of us being smart.

I actually had the same thing with mainstream American TV—I didn’t feel like I’d seen women who felt like me until I started watching things like Evangelion or Ghost in the Shell or Serial Experiments Lain. In the nineties, there was this string of anime where women got to be talented and fucked-up and question why they were even alive. And you could say the same about Buffy, I suppose. But I couldn’t watch BTVS when I was in high school. My parents didn’t have cable. They didn’t have high-speed Internet for a long time, either. It was literally easier for me to watch fansubs bootlegged onto VHS tapes than it was for me to watch shows aimed at my demographic. I didn’t actually watch BTVS until I was in university and the series was almost over. I was at a party at this crumbling farmhouse and someone had the DVDs. The next day I woke up earlier than everyone else because I was sleeping on the floor, and so I started watching them.

You also utilize a diverse array of characters, from Khalidah and Song in your Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocitiesstory “Death on Mars” (reprinted in Clarkesworld in 2018), to Company Town’s Hwa, and more. Is this simply a question of representing demographic realities? Or is there more to it?

For one, there’s a local influence, in that I live in one of the most diverse cities on Earth, in Toronto. Immigrants make up 46.1 percent of Toronto’s population. Visible minorities make up 51.5 percent. We have two Chinatowns, two Koreatowns, two Little Ethiopias, and the second-largest concentration of Iranians outside Iran, both Persian and Kurdish, who occasionally refer to it as “Tehranto.” The city hosts the largest festival of Caribbean culture in North America. This is why Toronto plays the future on Star Trek: Discovery and The Expanse and Pacific Rim. Toronto looks like the future because diversity is the future.

So, I guess that’s just how I’m used to seeing reality. That’s my neighborhood. Those are my students. Probably around six or seven years ago, I gave a talk at the University of Toronto. This class had read vN and they had me come in. And I got asked about what I was working on next. At that point, Company Town wasn’t really finished. I said I was working on a cyberpunk novel about a biracial Korean-Canadian woman living on an oil rig in Newfoundland. And after the talk, this small group of East Asian undergrads from within the class came up and told me how excited they were for that book. “No one writes about us,” was how they put it. That’s thankfully no longer the case.

My hope is that those students and others like them can find books that speak to them, maybe by Fonda Lee or Sarah Kuhn or JY Neon Yang or Malinda Lo, or maybe by someone just starting out. Maybe one of those students or their peers has already written the book that they needed back then, and if so, I hope that they get the full force of their agency and publisher and marketing team behind them, and they get the chance to find their audience.

Are there specific challenges or hazards to writing characters of color? And how do you navigate those challenges?

There are. But those are different challenges every time. It’s not like there’s One Weird Trick or something. The moment you believe that, you’re just making another assumption. Recently for work I was asked to write a suite of stories set in a region not my own, and featuring a variety of countries that speak multiple languages and have wildly diverse demographics on every level. And it was a client I’d worked with for months, but they asked for a tight turnaround and there wasn’t time to read-in other writers, because of the vetting process. So, first, I asked that they do a sensitivity read on my work when I turned it in. Second, I researched each story and character individually rather than looking at the region as a whole. And that research brought me up short—I was researching rights for queer and trans people in one country and I found they were (thankfully) better than I’d expected. Those expectations were my baggage to unpack.

In 2017, I was doing a luncheon event for Company Town with the Ontario Library Association, and a young Southeast Asian librarian asked me what gave me the right to write Go Jung-hwa. I mention this because it was really brave of her. I was the guest of honor, and she was going out on a limb and using her position to challenge my position of privilege in front of this room full of her peers. But that’s exactly what someone paid from the public purse should be doing—they should be advocating for their community and asking tough questions.

For a moment I just stood there gawping like a goldfish, because no one had asked me that question before. Ever. I didn’t have a clever answer. I didn’t have a talking point. And finally, I just said, “Nothing.” Nobody gave that right to me. I shouldn’t have presumed to have it—that presumption was, however unintentionally, the legacy of a colonialist mindset, or a settler mindset, or just cultural tourism or dilettantism. At best it’s what Henry Jenkins calls “pop cosmopolitanism.” I had to own that and accept it in front of that crowd. I never thanked her for that moment. I should have. She took a social and professional risk there that no one else did. But in that spirit, I would encourage other librarians and other educators to do the same, in her position.

You do a lot of research for your work and for your writing. You even talk about some of the research on Afghan food you couldn’t fit into “Ishin,” in your SFSignal interview with Charles Tan. What are some of your favorite researched bits that never made it into your fiction?

I wouldn’t call this a “favorite” bit, but there was an unexplored plot element to Company Town, wherein the reason Jung-hwa and her brother Tae-kyung were so proficient in TKD was that they were training for the opportunity to repatriate to South Korea via military service, before her brother died. It was a plot her older brother hatched to get them out from under their abusive mother’s thumb. Which brings me to one research pathway I followed but didn’t belabor the point of: I looked up child abuse stats in South Korea.

I kept seeing moms slapping kids as a joke in K-dramas, sort of like how Homer used to choke out Bart in the early seasons of The Simpsons. So much of humor is exaggeration, though, soI hoped that was just a caricature. But PubMed has a lot of literature on the subject. There’s a lot of recent scholarship on it with regard to the relationship between abuse and suicide. In 1960, there was a law codified that allowed parents to physically discipline children. In 2019, efforts to repeal it were met with vocal resistance. A government poll said that over 78 percent of parents believed corporal punishment was necessary. Between 2000-2017, there was a tenfold increase in reported cases of child abuse. I could go on. But for all that research, I was really deliberate about never depicting Hwa being abused as a child. It’s a violent book, but there are certain things the audience never witnesses. Hwa herself never refers to it as “abuse.” It just sort of leaks out around the edges.

As someone specifically writing SF whose fiction has been recognized as delivering those captivating SFnal ideas in the context of solid storytelling, how do you balance the two, craft-wise? How do you write a strong narrative while also giving it a core of great science-y science fiction?

I tend to think of characterization and narrative coming first and then the science-y science. The thing is that the state of the science-y science might change: you might run across something in Discover or Nature that gives you an update on the technology or the science, and have to change it. So, it’s best to give yourself wiggle room there. With a solid character and a solid story, the reader will spend time with them during the exposition. The reader has to enjoy spending time with them, first, and care about their problems. Nobody wants to spend time with someone they don’t enjoy, and they really don’t want to spend time with someone they don’t enjoy as that person spends four pages explaining what every single goddamn deck of the ship is for. Did anybody watch ER so they could learn how to take out an appendix? No. They watched ER so George fucking Clooney could tell them how to take out an appendix.

Your career story is a bit unusual—meeting Ursula K. Le Guin and being inspired by her to take writing seriously, then getting into the workshop group founded by Judith Merrill. So many writers start off in their basements, alone, often not even knowing that a “writing community” exists. Do you feel like the writing community in general is helpful to folks who want to break in?

I think finding a supportive community of any sort is helpful. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a writing community. Finding a group of people who see you and validate you and who encourage you to keep pushing, that’s what’s important. I hesitate to describe “the writing community” as any one thing. I think that’s very different now from when Judy Merrill started the Cecil Street Irregulars; now there’s a functioning Internet. A lot of writers now, their first “writing community” is their fandom, and the fanfic community in that fandom. I know that was true for me. That was where I first felt part of a community.

I always knew I wanted to be a writer, from when I was child. And it was really important that I play to my strengths, otherwise I wouldn’t get any financial aid for school. I had that drilled into me from when I was very young. I couldn’t really afford to try a lot of things and fail at them. So, I had a lot of support in focusing my talents as a teenager, which isn’t true for a lot of people. I wrote my first novel when I was fourteen, basically on a dare from my Grade 9 history teacher. I never had anyone telling me I couldn’t do it, or that it was a stupid idea, or that I could never make a living at it. So, I had plenty of self-doubt and hang-ups about other things, but not about my work. But for a while there I was getting some stories loved and appreciated by one community and having other stories just ripped to pieces by another. And I needed both. I was like the person at the beginning of a kung fu movie who thinks they’re hot shit in their village and then they meet a real master and they just get bodied, over and over. Like Leung Chang in The Prodigal Son. I could hit hard, but I had no technique. This isn’t to say that my workshop was cruel, or punitive, or unsupportive. But I couldn’t get away with anything. My tricks didn’t work.

Since you are an anime fan, I’m curious, what are a few favorites that people may not know about, and why? You have mentioned Ghost in the Shell elsewhere, as well as Cowboy Bebop.

I’ve written a lot about my affection for Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Cowboy Bebop, but I don’t think a lot of people know how deep my love for Avatar: The Last Airbender runs. It’s a show a lot of people love, but for me it was a huge education in basic storytelling principles. From worldbuilding to characterization to even how to compose something visually, it’s such a master class.

Take Zuko’s entry at the top of the first season: he arrives on this huge cruiser. But by the end of that season, he and his uncle are on this tiny little raft. Big boat to little boat. The whole arc of his season is right there. And the show is full of stuff like that: you ever notice how both Zuko and Aang get nailed by Azula’s lightning in the exact same spot? They have matching wounds. Then you have this exploration of colonialism and foundational narratives, and the role of storytelling in both national and personal identity, from a genocide survivor desperately clinging to his roots, to an athlete trying to shuck off her parents’ narrative of disability, to an entire country realizing that what is essentially the Co-Prosperity Sphere is just an unsustainable dream of avarice. It’s a brilliant show.

Except for that fucking Lion Turtle Ex Machina, at the end. Christ, what a cop-out. It’s like winning the World Series on a bunt. Instead of having our hero explore his limitations, this ancient mythical creature that has never been mentioned before shows up and hands over a McGuffin—which has also never been mentioned before—that makes the plot resolve bloodlessly. Without ATLA we wouldn’t have Adventure Time or Steven Universe or the new She-Ra: shows for kids that trade in very adult themes.

But those other shows nailed their endings in part because they raised the stakes and killed some characters. I hope someone in the writers’ room for the Netflix adaptation sends this to their producers. (Now there’s a job I would kill for, which should go to an Asian writer instead.) Just fucking kill Ozai, guys. And better yet, have Zuko do it. Ozai and Ursa killed Azulon, so having Zuko kill Ozai is actually just a poignant repetition of Fire Nation history. The world needs more stories about young men withdrawing from a hateful ideology and having the courage to utterly annihilate the adults who indoctrinated them into it.

When you look at your body of fiction to date, do you feel like there are specific themes or ideas that you usually gravitate toward?

What I’ve heard people say is that my work gravitates toward issues of the body and identity. I wrote a lot about that in my first master’s thesis, with regard to cyborg bodies, so I think that’s pretty accurate. My favorite reviews are the ones that pick out issues that are swimming below the surface of the book: there are a lot of reviews of Company Town that talk about how violent it is, but very few that talk about how it’s about the experience of feeling invisible, feeling ugly, feeling as though you have no place. There are a lot of reviews of vN that talk about the body horror of a little girl eating her grandmother alive, but very few that talk about how internalizing that grandmother’s voice is a metaphor for intergenerational trauma, or how Amy has to live with a very real presence in her mind that is constantly trying to take over by telling her to die.

Your more recent stories are “Blue Lotus” in XPRIZE’s Current Futures: A Sci-fi Ocean Anthology and “Viral Content” in the free-to-read Take Us To A Better Place anthology published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. What is important to you about these two pieces? What do you want readers to know about them?

“Viral Content” is about a virus that escapes a detention center, where it emerged as a result of inhumane conditions, and is strong enough to wipe out the high school football players who were volunteering there as part of a church group. It’s one of mine that’s a little too on the nose, in terms of what we’re living through at the moment. I told RWJF that I wanted to write a short story about a pandemic happening just as the CDC hits its funding cliff. “That’s pretty specific, are you sure?” they asked. “Pretty sure,” I said.

“Blue Lotus” is actually a sequel to another story I did for MIT Technology Review, called “Tierra y Libertad,” about a person who essentially profiles artificial intelligences for the UN, in an effort to determine if sentient consciousness is emergent within the system. Like Asimov’s Susan Calvin, only not a spiteful caricature of intelligent women being frigid. “Tierra y Libertad” is about agri-bots going on strike on a California pistachio farm.

“Blue Lotus” is about undersea cables and perfume. I’m into fragrance. I use scent triggers for a lot of things. Some students of mine craft-brewed a fragrance for me, once, and it’s one of my most treasured possessions. I only wear it maybe once or twice a year. When I visited the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, I had to physically pry myself away from their Kajal collection, Jihan and Sawlaj in particular. The guy at the Ex Nihilo counter probably hates me by now, because my colleagues prefer Amber Sky, but I’m more of a Midnight Special person and I can never buy anything. I’d really like to smell the Madeleine candle from Trudon, inspired by Madeleine de Maupin. I huff Diptyque at the duty-free. It’s embarrassing for everyone around me.

Since the first publication of your fiction, “In Which Joe and Laurie Save Rock n’ Roll” in Tesseracts Eleven, you’ve had at least twenty-five short stories out, several novels, you’ve coedited an anthology, and you worked on two episodes for Orphan Black: The Next Chapter at Serial Box. Do you feel like your writing has changed in any specific or notable ways?

God, is it only twenty-five? I feel like such a slacker. I feel like it should be more. I guess if we’re counting the work I do for my clients, it’s probably more, but those will never see the light of day. Every year when the eligibility posts come out, I always feel like everyone else is writing so much more than me. I’ve never really tallied up the stats like that, in part because I knew they would expose my slacker-dom. It’s like looking at a credit card statement. I’ve still never placed a short story in F&SF, or Lightspeed, or Asimov’s, or Strange Horizons, or Tor.com. I sort of assume no one knows I exist because of that. I’m always surprised when someone says they know my work. I’m not popular. I’m not cool. I’m an acquired taste. I’m niche. I’m like some weird bootleg mixtape your cousin shares with you and you’re listening to it on a long drive thinking, why the hell would he give this to me? Who the fuck does he think I am? But eventually after a thousand miles you might like it. That’s how I think of myself.

In terms of how my process has changed, I would say that I make decisions faster, now. Part of that is neurochemical. I used to dither, worrying that the reader needed to know how characters got from A to B. Unless getting from A to B furthers plot, develops character, or builds the world, they don’t. No one cares. Jump cuts exist for a reason. Most of what I cut are the throat-clearing pages when I’m getting in my own way. Now I’m more deliberate about staying out of my own way from the beginning.

You have How to Future coming out with Kogan Page Inspire, “A practical, tactical guide to exploring possible landscapes of the future . . . ” which you did with Changeist cofounder Scott Smith. What are you working on now, or what do you have coming up that you want people to know about?

Well, the conclusion to the Machine Dynasty series, ReV, is coming out in July. How to Future is coming out in September. At the moment I’m working on a novel for Tor, with Miriam Weinberg, that’s sort of a cross between Uncanny Valley and And Then There Were None. It’s very funny, and very violent. I enjoy reading it out loud. Plus, work for my clients. Some short story commissions. I tend not to write short stories unless I’m invited. When I’m not working on that I have a fantasy novel I’m working on, just for myself. I’m not sure if people will be interested in it, since it’s a change for me. It’s set in a royal archive carved from a giant quartz termination growing off the side of a mountain, and it’s about an interpreter for a Chosen One radicalizing the secret police while working toward her degree. Also, there are a lot of dogs in it.

About the Author

Arley Sorg is a 2014 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He writes SF/F/H, reviews for Cascadia Subduction Zone Magazine, and is associate editor at both Locus and Lightspeed magazines.

Overthrowing the Royal We:
A Conversation with Kate Elliott

Arley Sorg

Kate Elliott has far more books out than you probably know. Née Alis A. Rasmussen, she was born in Des Moines, IA, studied at University College of North Wales—Bangor and at Mills College in Oakland, CA, earning a BA in English. Her debut novel, The Labyrinth Gate, was published in 1988. In 1990, came the Highroad trilogy, A Passage of Stars, Revolution’s Shore, and The Price of Ransom.

Rasmussen took the pen name Kate Elliott in 1992 with the well-received novel Jaran. The series continued with His Conquering Sword and An Earthly Crown in 1993, and The Law of Becoming in 1994. In 1996, she wrote World Fantasy Award finalist The Golden Key with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson. Nebula Award finalist King’s Dragon started the seven book Crown of Starsseries in 1997, with the final entry, Crown of Stars, published in 2006. The Crossroads trilogy started with Spirit Gate in 2006 and the Spiritwalker trilogy started in 2010 with Cold Magic.

Andre Norton Award nominee, Court of Fives, was followed by Poisoned Blade in 2016, and Locus Award finalist Buried Heart in 2017; novellas Night Flower (2015) and Bright Thrones (2017) were added to the narrative later. Romantic Times Award winner Black Wolves was released in 2015 and the collection, The Very Best of Kate Elliott came out in that same year, while 2019 saw the publication of Throne of Eldraine: The Wildered Quest, a Magic the Gathering book.

Rasmussen used to do medieval sword fighting; she met her husband in a sword fight. In 2002 they moved to Hawaii, where she took up outrigger canoe paddling. She started writing at age nine and she never stopped. Her latest series, The Sun Chronicles, begins with Unconquerable Sun, due in July 2020: “Gender-spun Alexander the Great on an interstellar scale.”

Unconquerable Sun marks a return to space opera at novel length. Is the timing purely about the whims of the creative muse, or are there other aspects to it? Why space opera and why now?

Unconquerable Sun will be my twenty-seventh published novel. Since seven of my first eight published novels were science fiction, I started out thinking of myself as an SF writer more than as a fantasy writer. After this beginning, however, I became best known for the Crown of Stars epic fantasy series. Its success kept me in fantasy for quite a while longer. To be clear, I love both SF and F; to me they all nestle under the larger umbrella of speculative fiction. So, writing space opera now is really me going back to my roots in SF.

Are there important differences in craft or process with regards to writing space opera vs. writing fantasy?

It’s long been my opinion that science fiction and fantasy are about the present as filtered through the lens of some manner of fantastical and/or speculative element/s. In that sense I don’t perceive them as fundamentally different from each other because both are settings for speculative fiction. A series set so far in the future, as with Unconquerable Sun’s story-world, is essentially a secondary world even if there are many real-world references and a tenuous connection to Earth’s history and cultures. Probably the biggest difference is that I can get away with explaining less in space opera because it uses more modern terminology and familiar modes of daily life.

In terms of writing a multipoint-of-view narrative with a complex plot and epic aesthetic, SF and F feel very much the same. Space battles are harder to write, though, because they are even more unwieldy in terms of distance and time than fleet battles set on (say) Earth’s oceans.

In a 2018 Locus interview, you talked about your extensive research of Greco-Roman Egypt, particularly in the context of Court of Fives, and your description of Unconquerable Sun was: “A genderbent Alexander the Great-inspired space opera.” Does the new series bear significant similarities to Court of Fives?

As a story, no, not really. With a single point of view, Court of Fives is more tightly focused and less sprawling as a story. The main character is a girl who is a competitive athlete. The story also addresses issues of colonialism in an historical context built from the history of Greco-Roman Egypt while focusing on a girl whose mother is indigenous and father is of the conquering culture. In contrast, Sun (like Alexander the Great) is very much born into the center of power. The dominant (conquering) culture in the Court of Fives world is patriarchal, as the ancient Greeks were. That aspect also could not be more different from the Unconquerable Sun universe, which is often hierarchical and competitive, but definitely not patriarchal.

Having said that, I’ll note that the initial idea for Unconquerable Sun came about because of all the research I did for Court of Fives into the history and culture of Ptolemaic Egypt. Ptolemy became king and pharaoh of Egypt in the aftermath of the death of Alexander the Great during the Successor wars when A’s generals (including Ptolemy) fought over his empire. A core element of the Successor wars was their veneration of Alexander—or at least the way they all used the memory of his legendary status to support their own personal campaigns and ambitions. That meant the core element of any story about this period of history—both his reign and its aftermath—is Alexander himself. His story, with its far-flung marches and famous battles, also felt absolutely ripe for a space opera treatment, with a similar field of play but also a chance to reconfigure many of the cultural dynamics.

Thinking about it that way took me down yet another road. We in the USA know from our own electoral experiences how distrustful our culture can be of the very idea of female leadership. Women too rarely get a turn in fiction as charismatic, brilliant leaders with an unquestioned capacity to lead. In the end, I decided I wanted to write that story.

What were the most challenging aspects of writing Unconquerable Sun?

When you set out to create an analog story from a real historical set of events, the first and biggest thing you run up against is that the real story is far too complex and filled with far too many actual individuals to be useable “as is” in a fictional secondary world narrative. I have had to choose (and am still in the process of choosing) which real historical individuals get a direct analog, who can be combined with another one or two to create a composite character, and who has to be cut from the story altogether because otherwise there would be way too many people.

Most of us live in rich networks of family and acquaintances and can keep most everyone straight in our heads. That’s not true in the same way in fiction. Each new character has to be introduced and the reader must be given a way to remember who they are and why they matter. So, if your novel has ten characters, the reader can keep them straight and be involved in their stories. If your novel has one hundred characters, of whom seventy have speaking parts, it starts getting more difficult to dig into characterization and reader investment in those characters.

As a novelist I create character hierarchies so the reader will get to know a few people well, a few more middling well, and retain some basics about the rest or at least know which of the mains a minor character’s presence is associated with. Keeping character count fathomable has definitely been challenging.

Alongside with those choices I have to decide which elements of the historical and legendary life of Alexander the Great I will keep analogs of, and which I will punt to the side because there isn’t room. The most challenging aspect of writing this trilogy is the dynamic between creating an analog story that is also a unique story. I want the story to be recognizably inspired by Alexander the Great, to play narratively with specific aspects of his character and history, but at the same time I don’t intend for it to be his story in a mirror in a different setting, because Sun’s narrative needs to be its own distinctive history.

The book features Princess Sun, who has grown up in the shadow of her mother, and there’s a conspiracy to remove her as heir. She must rely on her wits and her companions to survive. What is Princess Sun like as a character; do you relate to her in specific ways?

Sun is a difficult character to write because people like the Alexander the Greats of this world have a mindset I find hard to write from the inside. Previous novels have tackled characters of this type—Camjiata in the Spiritwalker trilogy and Bakhtiian in the Jaran books, to name two—but in my other work they’re never seen from their own point of view but only from the outside. This allows a part of them—maybe the insatiable longing or the bottomless ambition—to remain mysterious by being one step away from the reader. Tackling it head-on in Sun has been quite challenging.

I don’t particularly relate to Sun in the sense of being a single-minded ambitious charismatic leader, but I do love her decisiveness and her impatience for wheel spinning, so I can relate to that.

Are there other characters you’ve written that you feel much closer to, or narratives that are more personal for you?

I can’t really write a character well if I don’t feel close to them in some way, and that includes villains. There’s always an element of my own personality I can draw on to embody a character even if I don’t have much else in common with them. For a villain it might be a part of me that I don’t like, say possessiveness or bigotry, but which I recognize in myself and can expand to create the impetus to drive that character’s actions. To make the primary antagonist in Court of Fives (Lord Gargaron) work I had to understand him and what he wanted and why he wanted it. That level of understanding in a way that makes me feel “close” to him; I get him, because if I can’t “get” a character I can’t write them well. For a character meant to be sympathetic I might highlight strengths as well as flaws; I have plenty of both and I use them to try to build characters who seem like real people with real personalities and real wants and needs.

There are times I foreground a more specifically personal element. For example, in Court of Fives I made main character Jes an athlete because I wanted to write a story about a girl who was an athlete because I am an athlete and, as a teen, I didn’t see stories about girls like me. In other ways Jes is completely unlike me, and her background and the way her story unfolds in the trilogy is meant to be unique and specific to her.

Caring about a character’s story and wanting to bring it to life on the page matters most to me. I write because I’m interested in a story and characters regardless of whether that story has a directly personal element for me, if that makes sense. Writing a story is what makes it personal for me.

Writing about a princess immediately evokes class, and we are, I’d argue, a somewhat class-conscious society. How do you write a narrative about a member of royalty and make that character someone whose story a reader will want to follow?

The toxic idea that some people are at an essential level better or purer or more deserving than others runs deeply through many cultures, and specifically it still permeates American culture. Our nation was founded by overthrowing monarchical rule, but at the same time the founders deliberately wrote inequality into the law. Given that history, it is interesting to see how royalty is employed in narrative, and how a supposedly forward-thinking genre like SF encoded and encodes bias and prejudice into its stories.

I don’t fully agree with people who claim fantasy writers all write about royalty because they love kings and princes because the fantasy genre is at root conservative (in the older sense of conservative toward past traditions). Science fiction has its own issues in this regard. For example, if the idea of meritocracy is founded on inequality of opportunity then it isn’t really a meritocracy and can’t be lauded as such. So why do so many SFF writers include royalty in their stories? Partly I think maybe because we’ve all read so many stories centered on royalty that it seems natural and proper as a focus for narrative. But that’s just one possible element. Obviously, I can’t answer for anyone except myself.

I have in the past written stories including major characters who are royalty. In some cases, as with Crown of Stars, to write a version of medieval Europe I used governing systems that were present at that time (although with major changes in gender relations, and with a nod to the fact that early medieval Europe had a great deal of local variety in how people were governed or how they might even govern themselves). I have also written stories about rebellion against an entrenched aristocratic order as well as narratives that specifically confront it as a system. I don’t think I’ve ever written a story in which there were no hierarchies at all. Hierarchy of one kind or another is a very human story.

In the case of Unconquerable Sun, the story of Alexander the Great is dependent in large part on his status as a member of the Argead royal house of the kingdom of Macedon. If one is going to write about a military campaign and rulership (and obviously no one needs to), there are great stories to be told about peasant youth or slave soldiers who rise up to become generals and then rulers. That’s not the Alexander story, however, and it’s been interesting to see which aspects of the story I have felt were embedded and which I felt I could alter, swap, cut, or transform. The position of heir to an established lineage is one I felt necessary to the story, even though my space opera Macedon analog is called the Republic of Chaonia. Is it really a republic or is it, as one low-ranking non-Chaonian soldier claims, “a tyrannical military dictatorship”? In other words, part of the story is about how people from different cultures see each other.

As for class, there’s a lot about the ancient world that can’t be directly compared to modern definitions and sociological understandings. Nevertheless, in the book there are plot-internal discussions of social disparities, since those do exist in Chaonia, while alternative sorts of disparities exist in other cultures like (say) the Phene Empire. Which, by the way, is not ruled by an emperor or a royal family who has inherited its status.

Court of Fives was deliberately a YA series. Are there aspects of YA writing that you’ve brought to Unconquerable Sun? And what do these distinctions mean to you?

My experience of YA was that my editors wanted the story to be single main character focused. That meant I had to limit my typical desire to sprawl out the plot to vaster fields of action. Court of Fives is tightly plotted around one character’s story and vision, with an emphasis on pacing.

Unconquerable Sun is adult SF. In book one the main characters are young—about twenty—which is a reflection of the story of Alexander the Great. The worldbuilding definitely sprawls more, which makes it more adult-genre-ish. I worked really hard with my editor Miriam Weinberg to make the pacing strong and relentless, skills I had improved on through writing the YA trilogy.

One of the things fans love about your books is the worldbuilding. What makes worldbuilding engaging for readers? Or, how do you write great worldbuilding? And what are some of the worldbuilding elements that stand out for you in the new book?

In my experience, different readers like different things in worldbuilding. Some want the worldbuilding to stay in the background, to be skim-able, not to get in the way. Others (like me) love an immersive world, one that feels “real” as you read, as if you could actually walk through it and see the sights and smell the cooking and hear the street sounds and know the touch of the air. As a worldbuilder I try to build those elements by using glimpses into daily life and what those routines and pieces of material culture mean to the people of that world; and also through showing how people interact with others, because social relations tell us a lot about a culture and its views of the people who live within it.

In the Unconquerable Sun setting I wanted to write about a set of cultures whose understanding of ancient Earth (that is, the world they came from generations before) is as fragmented and limited as our understanding of an ancient culture like the Sumerians or Mohenjo Daro, of which we have bits and pieces that we try to put together to understand who they might have been. But we’ll never fully know.

What excites you most about the new series, and what do you want readers to know about it?

All the Easter eggs hiding in the text.

You’ve mentioned that the book is influenced by the K-pop band Big Bang. Can you talk a bit about how this shows up in the book itself?

I saw Big Bang in concert a few years ago and literally walked out of the concert with Channel Idol in my head, a combination news and entertainment channel created and run by the government as a propaganda arm to build and sustain unity among a people involved in a long-term military struggle. It’s right there, immediately in the first chapter, impossible to miss. I don’t want to say more because this is a theme and element that plays out across the trilogy.

Your Kirkus review describes the book as action-packed and enthralling, edge of your seat. What is your approach to writing action?

First, make the reader care about the characters so that, when the action starts rolling, the reader cares about the outcome. Action for action’s sake, a sequence of running or fighting (etc.), is not intrinsically compelling without character investment. Layer your characters’ emotional struggles and needs into how the action plays out.

Second, deploy the Tade Thompson Fight Scene Clarity Test. It boils down to this: Establish early the landmarks, so the reader knows where everything is. Reference those landmarks as needed so the reader knows where the characters are (and what weapons they have). Make the lines of emotional tension clear.

Third, if you’re me, make sure you don’t interrupt action with tangents. If you need a quiet moment or a tangent, let any given sequence of action complete (however briefly) and use the quiet moment or tangent for breathing space before the next action sequence or as a way of putting a period on that particular bout of action. Vary the intensity. Don’t make it all one volume or speed. Use contrast, a pause for a whispered conversation or a sudden frantic race to a closing gate, to heighten the effect.

Behind the scenes, you have actually mentored other authors who’ve become successful in their own right. What does it mean to be a good mentor, and how do new authors develop that kind of relationship with someone more established?

I value so highly the connection between writing generations. Genre is always in conversation with itself. None of us pop up out of nowhere. The discussion constantly changes as new people come into the field while the global dynamic shifts around us. Change is bound to happen, and it has to happen to keep the genre alive and growing. A stagnant field is a dying field, and who wants that? I don’t. Someday, the evidence suggests, I will be dead, and I like the idea that the genre I’m part of stays alive as it grows from where it is now into something I won’t ever see.

So, it’s an honor for me to be able to do what I can to help aspiring writers of whatever age and young writers growing into their creative vision. Sometimes mentoring might simply be giving an encouraging word at the right time. Sometimes it involves reading a manuscript and offering critique. Sometimes a more experienced writer can give useful publishing advice to people who are struggling to figure out the basics of what to do and how to proceed. I was that new person once. The people who welcomed me and those who extended a helping hand made a difference in my career.

What makes a good mentor? Mentoring can’t be about you, the mentor, but rather must be about the person you are mentoring and what they may need. Mentoring should reflect the historical and generational conversation we are all involved in, how we reflect on what came before, interact with what is going on now, and create hopeful possibilities for the future.

How does a new author develop that relationship? That’s tougher to answer. Often it can be a matter of acquaintance. Get to know people at conventions, conferences, or online. It’s okay to ask questions. Remember that some writers don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to mentor, which is fine. Others might feel comfortable enough with a new acquaintance or friend to ask them if they want advice or help—and by the way it is always okay to say no, in either direction. You don’t have to mentor if you can’t manage it. You don’t have to accept an offer of mentoring if it doesn’t feel right to you. Look for organizations that welcome newer writers (and make sure they are legit and not predatory); look for zines that publish new writers. SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) has a Mentoring Initiative, which you can check out here: www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/mentoring-initiative

More than anything, I’d say mentoring is about community.

About the Author

Arley Sorg is a 2014 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He writes SF/F/H, reviews for Cascadia Subduction Zone Magazine, and is associate editor at both Locus and Lightspeed magazines.

Editor’s Desk:
The Most Science Fictional Worldcon Ever

Neil Clarke

In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of being able to attend several Worldcons. It’s one of those rare occasions where I get to meet readers and authors that I might not normally see at the regional conventions I regularly attend. Last year, I made the trek to Dublin, Ireland to visit family and attend the convention. This year, I was all set to teach at Clarion West and then fly from there to New Zealand, the site of this year’s Worldcon. Of course, we all know what happened to everyone’s travel plans this year . . .

As a result, CoNZealand (conzealand.nz, July 29-August 2) has transitioned to a virtual convention and entered the history books as the first entirely digital Worldcon. In doing so, it also becomes the most internationally-accessible Worldcon ever. No matter where you live, if you have Internet access, you can become a member and attend this year’s panels, Hugo Awards Ceremony, and many other events. The increased opportunity for people to participate is fantastic, and I, for one, look forward to that. One of the aspects I’ve particularly enjoyed about the Worldcons I’ve attended outside the US has been the presence of attendees from a greater variety of countries. This was a big reason I was looking forward to heading to New Zealand.

This won’t be a traditional Worldcon experience. Some of it will mirror what we’ve come to expect, but the Worldcon experience can’t fully transition to this medium. Virtual parties, for example, aren’t the same. (Maybe everyone should crank up the heat in their homes while those are going on.) It might even be a little harder to replicate those chance meetings that happen so often in hallways, bars, airport shuttles, and hotel lobbies. I’ve had so many interesting conversations happen under those circumstances.

On the other hand, it might be easier for some people to participate this way than it is for them in a face-to-face event. If they can engage more, that’s something extra being brought to the table. Sometimes shaking things up a little is good and from what I’ve seen at other recent online cons I’ve attended lately, this is definitely an opportunity for our community.

Nothing like this should be expected to be error-free. This is relatively new territory for fandom and technology doesn’t always behave the way we expect. If I’m on a panel and there’s a tech problem, no big deal. I’ll try to work with the other panelists and staff to find a workaround if there is a glitch. Just pretend a virtual pipe has burst in the room and that we are scrambling to find somewhere else to go. Perhaps you’ll have to catch the panelists in the consuite later. Relax and enjoy the ride. Technical difficulties and all. It’s a Worldcon and you should leave with a story.

As I mentioned, the Hugo Awards will be virtual as well. I’m one of this year’s finalists, so I know that they are hoping to have the winners accept their awards live on video. They have asked finalists for pre-recorded video acceptances, just in case. Seems wise to me, even if I find the thought of recording such a beast terrifying. It’s a good indication of how they are approaching things.

Being a finalist this year has been something a surreal experience, detached from reality. The thing that amuses me the most, however, is that I’ve spent so much of my career in this field working in a primarily online environment. If this should be the first year I win a Hugo for Editor Short Form, it will be online and international—two of the things that have been at the core of my professional experience. That’s pretty cool.

If I lose, well, that’s ok too. I see myself as just a side character in this story anyway. I’m always rooting harder for our authors and while none are in the running for a Hugo this year, A. T. Greenblatt recently won a Nebula for Best Short Story for her 2019 Clarkesworld story, “Give the Family My Love,” so I’m already ahead for the year.

The whole idea of a virtual Worldcon or Hugo Awards is something that would have been considered science fiction when I was a kid. (And if you toss in a global pandemic, murder hornets, and my cyborg parts failure, among the rest of this chaos—ok, maybe not good SF.)

My only regret for this science fictional Worldcon and Hugos is that this year’s winners won’t have the opportunity to experience taking a rocket-shaped award through airport security. Everything else will fall into place or relatively nearby. We’re science fiction fans, we should be able to handle this. If we can’t, no one can.

Hope to come across some of you at this year’s Worldcon. Please say hi if we happen to be in the same virtual space. It’s always a pleasure to meet the people who read and support all the work we do here. That’s no different when it’s digital.

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and Forever Magazine; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a eight-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). His anthologies include Upgraded, Galactic Empires, More Human Than Human, Touchable Unreality, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, and the Best Science Fiction of the Years series. His latest anthology, The Eagle has Landed, was published last July by Night Shade Books. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.

Cover Art:
Family Portrait

Yigit Koroglu

About the Artist

Yigit Koroglu is a freelance artist focusing on illustration and concept art. He has worked in the video game industry and created illustrations for card games and fantasy books for clients such as Wizards of the Coast, Adultswim, Titmouse, Bushiroad, Bandai Namco, Applibot, Fantasy Flight Games, NGMOCO, and Paizo.