Drayton Phil ips hunched over the pub’s slick wooden counter tipping the mug ever so slightly as to encourage the surface tension to loosen its grip. Just as such, a round of loose belly fat loitered in repose atop his belt buckle. Stories ambled across the room, as each one of the bar-men threw his lyrics into the tandem mess. A few feet away someone had elbowed a glass, causing a hunk of semi-soft vanilla ice cream from a rootbeer float to slide down the length of the bar. It was half tainted with the brown of the root beer – but only on one side. He turned away from it. Holograms of sexualized patrons in maid costumes toured about the pub with colanders of fresh broccoli, spritzing them with water then collecting it with an eyedropper into vials that the locals downed with one gulp. Every so often the pieces were dipped in liquid glass then returned to the colanders, the bath being by the chef’s station. Drayton felt lost for words.
He still harbored a grain of shame. Most would simply let it go, for what was it simply to be embarrassed in the pursuit of one’s work, to be demeaned with the snap of a finger in a crowd of people. By a chastity belt unlocked, to be exact. Fortunately, neither the restaurant nor the pancakes themselves were discredited. “Don’t get me wrong” Phil ips mouthed to no one in particular, having the patrons come to the Emporium was good for business. Not only that, Phantomess herself freed him from the shackle. She was just doing good, even if it was at the expense of vanity. A passing hologram maid winked at him, and offered a vial of broccoli
spritzer that he declined. A woman made out with another maid. “Every time I take a drink, I trade it for a bit of me. That’s how it works” Phil ips thought, quaffing a level of beer. Society, after all was built on transactions. Laughter in uniform consistency filed the volume, turning abrasive against his skin, brushing away minute particles like sandpaper. Glimpses of the Emporium on that pitiful day interrupted the sentence welling in his mouth, making it discontinuous. Could it have been done with more tact, more discretion? The way she snapped her fingers … and the ring of the belt as its mechanism unlocked chiming out to the waiting ears of the room. People understood at once, locking him into a moment in time. Feeling the dollop of ice cream tap the base of his hand near the wrist, he regained his composure. It was bathed in root beer. Over the neighboring booth a quartet of fellows in white collar habiliments used a leader-mimic spell that cast an oval of energy. As the conversation grew more intricate, it too reacted changing shape, and by its glow caused the wood to take in its symptom of complexity below. A regular passed by, an old timer who preferred to encase half his body in a bar of soap, awaiting a family of purple dotted lady bugs to chew through the substance, freeing chunks. He dangled a ring of keys with one free arm, much as a janitor does to amuse the little bugs with the happy jingle. Yet further on a table grew loud with excitement as one of a trio of sisters huddled in a makeshift birdhouse without a front smashed a toaster oven sat in the middle of their table, as it was of inferior design. It would not produce circular slices that could spin as fast as coins. Unlike the other two, she was fond of spending time atop the roof of their home, where a chimney met with another from a building that was built above it. About ten feet divided them.
Both expelled clouds out from the end where, instead of continuing, formed a mass between the chimneys. “What a fetching clump of cloud” she had told Phil ips a hundred times, then turned it into an egg by Zenith and let the albumen slide down the chimney, extinguishing the fire. Her house over the course of months embraced a shrunken state. Vines growing on the underside bullied their way betwixt the spaces of the floorboards, and vines that had years ago lost its fierce defense scurried throughout. During the first week they found a way to place feathers from a robin into amber of the vine sap, selling them at the corner store. Drayton waved at her, and she waved back ironically, acknowledging his bad temper. Ignoring the destruction, the bartender removed one of the paintings from the wall and arrived at the table where they procured a second toaster with a slot long enough the place the artwork in. Recalling a moment ago how their amusement had weighed heavy on him, he wished in his heart that it would come out crisp and burnt. Drayton sighed into his mug, letting go of that endeavor. “Move on already, there’s a whole staff that looks up to you” he murmured, eyes tired from so much perpetual normality. Then something caught his ear. “She gave me one hard week with a good chase, but I got her eventually. The belt was amazing, perfect caliber and fit. Remind me next time never to go after the fast ones” a vaguely familiar voice said on the other side of the bar. Locals formed a loose partition between him and the speaker. Drayton pushed past a woman with interesting shoulder pads and her friend a robot shaving his chest with shaving cream and a razor to the group tucked into the back corner of the bar. More than ten people around a big round table ate up his words like they were cherry caviar. Drayton felt his throat burn for just a split second as his judgement resuscitated. He seemed to be more than popular. How had he never noticed?
Ticking in the chambers of his body quieted their rhythm, shifting the sounds of the room back into context, returning words to faces. With a complete swig, the popular guy bashed the pitcher of mead down on the table, catching sight of the man staring at him as he swiveled his head.
“Park Man!” he exclaimed, recognizing the chubby quarry that he had triumphed upon one night by the Emporium. Or more accurately, by the road that leads to the portion city. “Wolf, do you know me?” Drayton demanded, standing firm against them. “How can I forget a catch as good as you? That was the best night of the year” he smiled pridefully cocky at the thought of his bold adventure. “It was you then that put a chastity belt on me. Took me a while to get that off. A month exactly” Phil ips answered, matching his tone to the graveness of the action. The table that he helmed burst into another round of fresh laughter. But the Wolf did not. He was of
muscular stock, a full foot over his compatriots. Curious that it was him all along that belted half the city. “You took it off? What, do you want another run? I’l give you three and beat you every one” Wolf boasted with a gaming gleam in his smile. Phil ips stood immobile, “Do you mind if I have a word with you in private?”. Taking the clue, they both departed from the crowded quarter, finding an empty length of bar. Wolf could understand why a fan would want to discuss a favor in a quieter place. “My friend, can I buy you a beer?” Wolf offered. The man strangely declined. Did he just want an autograph? What exactly was he so nervous about? “First of all, do you remember the night that you got me? You came out of nowhere, but you must have seen the expression on my face. The belt went on so fast it was like being mugged. I know you heard me call for help” Drayton reminisced calmly and composedly. “Absolutely, I felt you howl at the moon. If it’s an autograph you want, I can make a good offer” Wolf courteously added – man to man. Even so, the buddy continued unabated, “Secondly, I am not your friend. This death trap wouldn’t budge for an entire month. Normal spel s are worthless. At the Emporium a patron final y got it off. Do you know what it’s like to be laughed at by an entire room, mocked like a child?”. “Woah there fellow, are you getting angry at the chastity belt? That was a crowning achievement. It’s a marvel of engineering. For a second in the park, at midnight when it locked, we were truth brothers. But you must not get it at all” Wolf clarified as he tried to drape a big furry arm over the other’s shoulders. His canine jaw dropped as Phil ips backed away. Now they stood facing each other at the bar. Wolf felt sober, and not in a decent way. To accent his point, Drayton unfastened his buckle and slapped the belt right on the counter, “Lastly, that belt destroyed everything. I want you to know that I hate you!”. Frantically, the world began to cave in. This is the first time anyone had confronted him in such a way. They all seemed to have positive reactions, smiling ever so friendly every time he came near. “Fel ow, did you need me to apologize? I don’t real y understand it, my work is great, but I’m sorry” the canine gave, chuckling to relay the man’s nervousness. Around the pub everyone began swaying to a famous track. Couples danced beneath dripping colanders, blending sweat with ecstatic nutrients. The holographs hearts lit up, pumping orange light through the room, saturating even the quilt woven from old American flags spread across the dancefloor. Wolf reached his hands out to the guy that he knew just needed a drink to get better. “No man … that wasn’t cool” Drayton admit, eyes alight with loathing. Turning, the fellow walked right out of the room, leaving him alone. “What happened?” Wolf thought. Nothing seemed as it should. Dancers beat exhausted limbs behind him, but he could not focus on the song. Its presence was gone. He only stared at the frame of the door through which the man had made his egress. The moon would not visit tonight, so in its place gray twilight beckoned. “Are those storm clouds?” Wolf identified. He walked outside.
Across the sidewalk people were quite ready with implements to hush the rain. Umbrellas blossomed around him as the first drop came down, accepted as he closed his eyes, matting thick brown fur. More of it descended. “I was wild and free … so all this time I was putting the belts on people … I thought I was giving them that freedom too … but it was just the opposite”.
Trudging back to the not so lonesome den, he saw along the wall a couple seated at a table.
Everything in his bel y felt like bad leftovers. “He’s another” the canine whispered. He had a lovely, dalmatian skinned fiancé seated across, listening attentively to the minutia of a story.
Both started as the giant lingered over them. Wolf’s shadow was enough the swallow them in one munch. HIs fur musky and damp. Clearly, they had done everything to persist despite their drawback. “Mr. Noodles, I’m the one that gave you all that pain. I think you need this” and slapped a key down on the table between them. Indescribable surprise cascaded across his profile. Noodles got up out of his chair, facing the wet beast, and wrapped his arms around him.
“Thank you, brother,” he groaned. Against the cushion of her chair Xylophage pressed, cupping her mouth with one hand, wiping a tear with another, “Wolf!”. He nodded back at the fiancé, “By the way, my real name is George Halk”.
CHAPTER 44 - PHANTOMESS ON CEREAL PLANET
Current Time
Even the best adventurers know there is a fine line between searching and finding that one is suddenly lost. And yet a fine line is by definition a line that can be followed. As the patron stepped through the forest, she is careful in measurement of her surroundings, believing in directions, heeding the zephyrs of the wood, and studying trails of fineness that were once lines.
Then, with keen sight she peeked through a screen of dulcet leaves, “My word, is that the creek that I skipped across as a child? How did I find myself back here?” she asked. Phantomess went over to the boundary. Lapping over water, the sound of glossy waterfalls, made as small as dolls over myriad stones no longer teased her ears. Where did they go? In each direction the creek harbored only a solitary element, flowing towards silence. Odd, that nature would be made to put away its toys. “Al the stones are gone! The entire trail is nothing but water” she griped, shielding her eyes from the light and looking both ways. Phantomess searched the prospects of the aquatic horizon, “Wel , then, I guess I never found out what was on the other side. The distance is nothing, so I can easily swim across for old time’s sake”. Tensing, her legs embraced the pull of strain. Muscles drafted into service bounded her into the prolonged substrate. “Ah, this is good practice” the patron considered, with successive breaths at the finale of each stroke. Its momentum bent by the palms of her hands. Raising her face each time provoked the other side much closer. Phantomess could hear the water vibrating with the squeal of scallops in the depths below, their bubbles surrendered to the tide like balloons on New Year’s Eve. Now she was crossing the midpoint of the creek, past where she had never dared before. Farther on, as she raised another face for a drink of air, she knew around, felt with her body that there was more than absence. Dummy impressions cast by her memory onto the level sheathe. Stones weak like ghosts with a girl leaping over. Phantomess swan between two such objects before the record faded, cooled by her own shadow. Because of course there is a child who can’t balance on a stone across a creek, since everything in nature is in balance. “Not bad at all, it’s going to be a proper river one day” the swimmer predicted as she evicted the rest of herself, bending clumps of grass with elbows for leverage. In the general area, which was quite clear now, a building stood with wheelchairs left in the yard, overgrown with greenery, coiling through the individual spaces in the wheels. “This place must be from early echo” she gauged. Through the doors a bookstore with circulating nurses collected bushels of literature.
They led her further to a common area, pointing out the banner for her attention. “Skipping Stones Retirement Home” the patron read aloud, then looked down. Bombs of awe fired up her eyes. All the stones that she had skipped on as a child where retired, old and hoary, leaned on couches, their faces drawn by colored pencil. Nurses filled up blenders with paperbacks from the bookstore and fresh apples, until the result was soft enough for them to spoon feed the stones. For some reason, the pulp from the apples blended nicely with that of the books. The nurses did so, removing any bookmarks before using the mixer, as they were quite unnecessary. Phantomess waited as another folded blankets on a table that would be used to bundle them up after supper. Led by another to the south side of the common, they found a withered stone swaying on a rocking chair in the midst of a passage to the following room, occupying it. Disks of lichen patched his torso, and small fissures near the top where the ears would reside housed individual sprouts of grass and a single buttercup dipping precariously over the right side. Bending over, the nurse stuffed his mouth with a spoonful to sate his old tummy.
Upon seeing her, he raised a crayon eyebrow, distorting the remainder of his features, “Is that you little girl? I remember when you skipped on my back every morning”. “Honestly, yes”
Phantomess blushed, as to the turn of fate dressed up as coincidence. It was a bit on the nose
for her. “Do you remember how you used to land on my head convincingly with your left shoe?
Always with your left shoe? I was three stones down from Dryfus over there on the couch. My how you’ve grown. Bigger than a cloud” the fellow remarked, tilting a bit to discern her height.
“Of course, then you must be the one with the dome I used to balance on. We had a lot of good times together, but I didn’t think I would ever see the trail all here. I never heard a complaint, so I didn’t even know the stones were alive” the patron added reluctantly. Phantomess laid a hand on his side, feeling that it was softer than dough. He sighed, as a lazy crayon oval straightened into a simple grin, “We were the lucky ones”. “I would think so …” she assented, watching with the corner of one eye the bob of the lone buttercup. “By the way, I’m Wagner. Lovely lady, your skin is so young and stone-like. If I could be like that again … oh my, it has been a while since I last had the creek’s water curl around me … hear it is more like a river now” the old chap pined as he swayed benignly in the rocking-chair. “Actually, I think it looks much better on me” the patron joked, leaning over to poke his nose. “Hoo hoo … good. you are a nice one. To tell you the truth, I do like to think about it, and sometimes I think the rocking chair is the water, since it goes back and forth” Wagner dawdled verbally, losing cohesion. She too heard the pang of emotion, the quiet, voiceless heart-beat that comes with letting go of the past. “If it’s that you’re after, my patron’s abilities can make you remember much clearer, just let me formulate the spel
…” she articulated, preparing the quirky tremor of magic between her fingers. “Don’t bother lady, I’ve got too many nice memories, but what I could use right now,” the fellow bargained, sharing a goofy, hopeful crayon smile in the midst of a timeworn rockface, “is some beautiful hair like yours”. At that the nurse leaned over, whispering in her ear, “looks like you have this handled, give him a wig and he’l be happy. I’l be out back on the patio with the others if you need me”.
Phantomess grunted at being left at such a disadvantage, then looked about for easy resources to complete the request. Looking over her shoulder, she saw through the bookshelves at one of the orderlies munching up fruit and books into a blender. “Ah ha!” she declared, procuring one of them for immediate use. By the buttons it specifically explained which varieties blended well together to make a rich medium. Honeycrisp went well with non-fiction, and Golden Delicious of course married only with volumes relating to art history. Deciding on the second route, Phantomess took a wicker basket, collecting the necessary articles, then tore them down into pulp in the chamber of the mixer. “Wagner, here” she prompted, holding a bowl of the stuff with her return, “do you want blonde?”. His soft, doughy stone body wobbled in anticipation. Nodding once, the chair rocked forward, just at the right angle for her to go about applying the mushy slosh over the dome of the old chap’s head. After sculpting it evenly on both sides, and carefully rubbing it into supple scalp, the newcomer took a step back to watch it set, casting a hand mirror for the customer’s review. “Golden Wig!” Wagner clamored with elation. The features of his crayon face straightened, erasing the cruel mockery of years. “Lovely lady, this makes me so beautiful! Everyone, take a gander at my flowing locks!” the fellow called, eliciting gasps of awe from the room in a buzz of more than typical elderly commotion. The patron knelt down to his level, and could not take her eyes away from the moment as he was confounded in joy.
Emotion washed over her face, replaced by tears, “can this be it? After all these long eons, can this be what I’ve been searching for?”. From the past, the phantom memory returned, and the pressure from skipping the stone radiated from her left foot up through her entire body, “and your name wasn’t Wagner. That must be something the nurses imagined. I named you Rigel Ricky”. “Now I remember that” he replied, as the bulwark of thought collapsed, like a paltry building frame harassed by the wind. How could one person be so enamored. “Everything is beyond good. Ricky, I want to seal this moment forever, I feel transfixed, my body is becoming
… a solid” the patron uttered, feeling her hands slowly petrify in blissful rigor mortis. Pil ows of time cradled her body. The fellow’s brow relaxed in swift acknowledgment of her plight. “No, skipping girl, you can’t stay here … don’t stare like that ... look past me” he instructed, the words begging time to restore its course. Keen human sensations chiseled at the dense singularity of her being, pain at first. Threads of nerves pulled in sequence, forcing half-second diversions of
Idea and Catcher. Fireflies landing on him, denoting his presence as he slept in the grass of the park at night. Then Echo and her father Claudius who was the human variation of Sam during that age, simple as a pole of mirror light. Phantomess could budge her fingers. Nature continued, breaking her apart as more thoughts bullied down the incline of her soul, harder than a landslide. Then came all the others, and Kinetic Filigree and the Metacoma and the portioners and the Reflectants and all the curious things she had witnessed forcing their way back into locations of mind, the storehouses of conception as ecstasy chapped her lips dry. Even the lady she had slapped in the face one time out of spite. In her whole field of view the goofy smile continued, until she could see at the edges of his soft body blurs of unfocused substance. With effort she rose from the kneeling position, the substance resolving itself into the geometry of the room. Pain multiplied back into an ordinary collection of physical senses. It chilled the stone inside, crushing it to dust. After a moment of rest, she looked over the breadth of the other room across from the elder’s commons where … a ribbon undulated. Phantomess moved her body, around the rocking-chair to the other side. Closing the distance, she diverted her attention to the photo-reel, midway between the bottom of the floor and the ceiling. “Not bad, our connection must have produced this shard of nostalgia. It should weaken and fade in just a minute” the patron calculated, seeing the image of the river printed on the flowing surface. First, the picture of her following a certain trail of stones across the creek appeared on one side. Then, imitating it, the reflection bulged from below. Patiently waiting for it to subside, her eyes rested on a particular stone, watching as her younger self and her doppelganger hit it with a shoe at the same moment from both sides. “What?” she emitted quietly as the object switched on like a lightbulb. Soon the path that the girls took intensified the trail, each sphere deepening with proto-celestial light. Lines followed suit, connecting them. Adjusting, the Ribbon turned on its side, bringing the familiar outline into the remote context of the retirement home and its room beside the commons. “Don’t tell me, is that the Big Dipper! Dad taught me them as a kid but I never thought …” the newcomer began, crafting meaning from the guile of nature’s unknowable limits. Gaping wider than a hungry maw, the rectangle dragged her in. Thrown, a grain … a tiny grain hidden in darkness in the center pul ed the hapless girl past strange gulfs. “I’m losing”
Phantomess thought, blacking out.
Life took an interlude. Then … dumb crunching sounds accompanied the sleeper from changing position in the gentle grass. Turning, depressions could be felt faintly against the upper back.
Phantomess wiggled in the bed of crumbs, finally shaking off enough grogginess to notice the broad uninterrupted landforms of the planet that lay before her. It was mostly … cereal themed.
Arches of milk marked the places where the ground was more replete with the dust of oats, where empty boxes came to accept an entire volume, forming a hardened brick which they would lay elsewhere in half-completed monoliths. Raisins hopped out of their bowls, flocking to the shadows of trees, where they congregated, reversing the process by which they desiccated out in the sun, becoming grapes that the boughs accepted once more by the action of certain birds, individually picking them as they fattened. Near them, a basil tree slowly shed its leaves.
Drifting down, they came to open bowls encircled around the base of the trunk, drying into flakes of cereal. Phantomess, after coming to went towards one of the arches. In the sky, bowls of cereal flattened into plates. Suddenly shifting in expectation of a spill, the patron instead experienced only a brief start as the liquid and contents did not escape from the edges, pouring over her, but continued on a direct trajectory to an adjacent locale. “Come on now, this place belongs on the face of a cereal box” the patron contended. Filaments of dust, woven so tight as to be nearly imperceptible to the eye held up a box of great proportions. Directly below it, a white ceramic bowl awaited the tipping that would allow a cascade of pieces to come tumbling down. “Catcher my dear … Ah, this is so much … do you remember that beautiful geode I would pour your cereal into every morning … do you stil like it that way… maybe it wasn’t so healthy, but you used to love that sort of thing … wait, he is a patron now … and this bowl … my life is
larger than a bowl, even if it has all the best memories drowned in milk and sheltered in a layer of breakfast. I’ve been afraid of this for so long, of being … obsolete. Everyone becomes that.
No one can get older without that” the goddess determined, tallying the years. As she did her arm became lighter, then her torso. Transparent-ness crept over her body, as the light etched the silhouette of the Phantom, delineating it with elegant rigor. Now the filaments, although thin were clearly noticeable, their every movement adjusting the position of the rectangular box, pulling back the lid with the snapping of certain threads. Fear evaporated, and as it did, she glided to the midpoint between the two as the waterfall of material commenced. Pieces crossed through the insubstantial body, creating trails of bold solid light. Slowly the box tipped, letting out the pieces in measured modesty at first. Trail by trail the hollow became filled. Phantomess was face up watching the waterfall. Peeking over her outline, she saw trajectories of the pieces transverse, drawing lines of natural radiance. They wouldn’t stop, layering into her volume. “It’s tipping” the patron spoke, heralding the stronger cascade. As the operation came to an inevitable crest, the element became organic, freeing her from the phase. Descending, Phantomess came to the margin of the bowl, resting while the filaments quivered. Eventually, scanning the location above the box, she perceived how they tied themselves around an end of a cloud, pinching off a spheroid that floated down as a bubble of milk for the bowl. Now it was raised to the right level. Following the last few remaining contents came a blur, then an unexpected thump splashing down onto the bowl. Phantomess was busy consolidating her energy, and hardly acknowledged it. A chunk of something, hidden at the bottom perhaps.
Unconcerned, she considered the rush bearing through her veins, making even the sight of greenish fields addictive, even the farthest parts, those of sage and lackluster gray. Lashing, it’s impulse waned, and the force of it fastened itself to the muscle of her chest as reason prevailed over chemistry. Exploration! Then, an irregularity met her ear, heralded by the crunching of stray pieces near the base of the bowl, modest footsteps quietly approaching in the grass. “If you think that there isn’t blood on your hands, then you are sorely mistaken. It was your offense against us that caused this war. Although Chalk-Dust now presides in the envelope of the SOTA, we wil find a way” said a voice. Phantomess turned around to see. Before the cereal bowl, an ebony solider stood, draped in typewriter armor. Quite cunning that the trail had managed to salvage a dream avatar of Decker, pouring her from the box. “Real y, we should have known you would be frightened. Having come from the realm so early, to witness how your own dream had changed nature. That is a thing that is difficult to accept. I would not have, if I had listened to my counterpart life. Spells for most were useless back then, merely wishful thinking. I would have been fearful also, to find everything different. But you denied what was right in front of your face. Chalk-Dust paid a heavily for that contempt. More than three fifths of your fleet of Arcadian Cruisers. I saw them gutted and boiling with flame, slashed by the Mausoleum’s spell-lasers, beaten to dust by patrons and fighters and infantry. Don’t you think I know what it means to admit you are wrong?” Phantomess rendered, sharing the motion of her words with that of her body as she drew nearer. “No, you don’t even know the difference. Even after all that has happened. We believed you were ambassadors! You came to me, giving us words of encouragement until I trusted you to fire that bow and arrow at me as I closed my eyes. During it all, you knew I was your Reflectant. Then what we had … was just a lie!” Decker advanced rhetorically, and as she did the cogency in the rigid voice brushed a metamorphosis of pixels across the landscape, quick as ripples that subsided without conscious transition back to their rudiments of physicality. “Laurash, not even you could change that story. I remember holding it, and firing just as you instructed me. Right at the apple. It wasn’t my instinct to leave you there alone. But after walking into the new territory, you must have sensed that you had more responsibility then the realm itself. Instead the alliance fought against that burden. To be exact, Hogarth was the one that started this, at the Decagon. You followed his words to the letter. Although I will leave that up to historians to sort out in retrospect” she answered, putting into service the Scilysts’s first name. “This is why I left in the first place! My parents beat me,
they were abusive. I ran away to the city and found the arcade where I found a new family where I belonged. All the time I thought I was making the choices! Of course, these humble ambassadors could not ever cause us any grief. Everyone thought that, even me. Hogarth’s speeches sounded foolish to begin with, but we followed his whispers to their source. To the shore at the bottom of the old well. Then I find, ambassador, that you were hiding something.
Did you do it thinking, if we didn’t know … that we would listen, that you could shape us fully?
Mother, that was the worst blow of all” Decker protested, hot with barren anguish, the keys upon her armor chattering away. The Scilyst struck a fist in her palm to mark that moment with the memory’s echo, the sincerest form of incredulity. As her daughter brought that image into clarity, with fuzzy pixels becoming the walls of a house, character came into view, made brutish by swift, prevailing repeats on a smaller form. Phantomess closed her eyes. … evading the scene ... going back to the days of the trail. Creaking open the door after a full day of routine, there stood Sam, in his prototype of Claudius, and Echo. Skipping had been faster through the afternoon approaching supper, as she was distracted by the morsels of yellow clay that had accumulated by the banks of the creek, while appendages of sapphire chewed through from below like corkscrews. Drooping pancakes of translucent gelatin overlaid the branches of the willow trees about the circumference of the house that day. Later on, they would be picked by the feeble tendrils of an anemone hiding in the doghouse. Peering through the door, the two were at it again, fighting over what, “she would become”. Later on, her mother had admitted that Claudius never wanted to see her as a patron. He wanted her to live outside of the foray of politics. Perhaps that is why they never instructed her on the matter, until the day she dreamt of skipping across the trail, and saw that it had aged into the trail of realms, stretching across space. Phantomess opened her eyes. Prime Arcadians arose from the milk-bowl and hovered on either side of Decker, reinforcing their alpha. “There was never a right time to tell you” the patron conceded as her daughter’s sight bore down with the weight of silent grief. “For the time being, Chalk-Dust has been welcomed in the interior of the SOTA, and they will be restful. The locals need not understand the true magnitude of the Couple’s omission, and your selfish crimes, but I will be quiet, and wait, until the moment comes, and we can carve a way to freedom. The game never ends” she promised, letting the Arcadians second her word with angry, vociferous displays of pixels across their screens. By exposure to the Scilyst, the bowl itself had turned to marble. Finished with the display, and hot with disappointment, she turned about towards the milk, to where there would be passage by dissolution back to the starting point. Phantomess watched her daughter turn and go. Although she had said everything in the interest of the present circumstance, something about it didn’t sit well. Emptiness melted through her chest, displacing the sensation of organs, making the fear that they had amassed for so many years subside in single action. From the impulse came tremors of electricity, finding a route through her arm, and she lifted it, calling out to Decker to slow her leave, “you have to grow up, not everything is a game”. Phantomess waited, the Scilyst’s back to her. Unspoken detachment condensed the air, and hustled the field between them. Gusts of cereal dust lapped over the verdant green intermittently. Fingers of light extended from the contours of the arches in the distance, tethering the architecture to the ground. Decker glanced back, acknowledging her for a second. The patron felt it, then watched as she retreated back into the milk with the prime arcadians, all except one, who was too weary and laid to rest besides the bowl. Idle, and saturated in pixels, the machine’s square diminished until receding to black. Then came an involuntary sputter, a cone of essence. Phantomess shielded her sight from the pixel sparks.
Firstly, she noticed a leg stepping out of the fray. Then its accompaniment, a body, as is typical of that subject. Examining the man, the patron considered the novel build, a mannequin of ice, and labored to evoke the origin of his face. Behind the thin mask a wine-glass sat frozen at the center of the cranium. Information that they had archived on the game, each of Decker’s feared combatants, and all the memories seemed at once to leak from an aperture in her thoughts. The patron felt like one caught without blood on her hands, when it is sorely expected. “Tall stranger,
where am I?” he asked, unaware of history that may sweep by while in slumber. Behind him, the machine became bloated, spreading the planes of metal. “Many years after the battles of Anota Geomanda, as well as those with my people, the Echoians. Cynthia fled in defeat, her ambition was not enough to alter the course of the game. Tell me, sir elemental, why were you hiding in there?” she wondered. “Ennie, and don’t be so fast to convict me. I had to get away. For a time, I was a companion of the gamer. Eventual y I fell under the enemy’s control, and found a way to separate myself by crawling into this arcadian” he confessed, sheltering his reputation from the progress of their dawning conversation. “How did you get to be so cold? You must have a close bond to her” she pressed, expecting the mellow air to whet his limbs with sleek perspiration.
They were however, secure in their solid state. “For many years I lived on an iceberg so that I could feast on the ice, one morsel at a time. Being tied to one sensation was the only thing I felt was right. Perhaps you think it’s absurd. There are people with different habits, you know, even those in plain sight. A friend, coworker. Family, even. Using saws of magic, I cut perfect pieces for chewing. They were so pure and delicious. But one day I fell into the water, and was rescued by those who would become my friends. They never mocked my appearance, or spoke much of when they knew me last. except the Albino Maiden” he briskly imparted. "Did you know her?"
Phantomess posed, wanting more on the Scilyst's second after Gerald's downfall. "They used to make so much fun of her when we were in middle grade. Just because she couldn't see trees.
Everything else was fine, but they were invisible to her. How simple is it, even as an adult, to laugh at another's blunders? The other kids thought so, and they would call her out every time she walked by coincidence into one. Little did I know that I of all people was a focus of her attention. During one afternoon I saw they had carved our initials on one of the trunks. She couldn't take it, and made them deal that if she was brave enough to climb the thing, they would leave everything to rest. It was supposed to be quite a simple task. But they goaded her on, seeing she was getting to the thin part of the branch. I made out the blur just as it fell, and hurdled towards the spot in front of me. Cynthia, who had written the carving was ruffled by the failure. Albino Maiden was in my arms for a second. Cynthia had only sought to make use of it all for sport. But we were just kids, and went separate ways. I developed an addiction to ice, Cynthia became addicted to sensation, and the Maiden to the ceaseless flow of the game. “Did they mean that much to you?” she pursued, seeing how the rousing had made him candid for a period. “Everyone drifted on their own course. So, nervously, I started eating more ice, to take the cold away. I loved how brittle they were, each cube, after they began so faultlessly and smooth. Although, in hindsight, I guess I was addicted only to the past” he sighed, encapsulating the dullness of it all, the apprehension that cuts through everything by the quality of its stubbornness. Ennie lifted his head, taking in the swaths of individuality in the guise of nature, looking past her to where there were good things afoot. Boxes and Bowls communicating their geometry through the language of cereal. Schools of sky-fish singing with the “glug” that comes when milk pours from the gallon. Below, forests sullied with cereal dust wolfing the impurities into their eager canopies. Yet in the distance, long, wide plains of openness. So blatant as to force the mind to place in weakness a lonely model of some feature.
Coveted by the orange glimmer of Dubhe migrating from beyond the clouds. “Don’t concern yourself. What you know has already became part of you” Phantomess bid, seeing by the way he turned the chalice in the background of his right eye, the other without. Righting his posture, a symmetry asserted itself. Like the newcomer the patron felt herself in the direction of his gaze, turning to transparency by the compulsion of it. “Wait a second, is this just a breakfast planet?”
Ennie pouted, being dislocated in thought by the daftness of what was now quite obvious. All of their coordinates were uncertain. Phantomess felt barbed by the easy question. Awkward reasons lumbered away, bits of petrified and rotten wood, planks of distortion, revealing at the cusp of mind a gap in understanding. Doubt shook her, making her tall frame tremble. Mild electricity seized the patron, until she snapped back, bracing to counter it, “Is there a … future breakfast?”. “Yes, it’s called lunch” Ennie answered. He took the chalice from of his head and
poured it in the milk bowl, waiting for the liquid to bubble and frisk with young, sprightly redness, allowing the medium to be repaired of its tabula rasa. Making herself useful, the patron went about the nearby trees to retrieve sticks, then whittled them with a spell to chopsticks for the two of them as the newcomer made a circle to summon ingredients. “Let me show you a lunch tactic I learned from my grandfather. keep it in confidence” he enjoined, submerging articles of sushi that he prepared into the cauldron. For a minute they let them bob about, soaking in ruddy wine.
“Here, use the chopsticks” she urged, leaning over the side. Phantomess tasted the moist sushi, the rice grains ripe with fermentation. “Newcomer, what you say is just a tactic is really a maneuver” she noted, taking another. Below their feet the metallic receptacle hummed with depleted stamina. Normally alive with peppy color, it’s monitor assumed a monotone gray, made fouler by stray threads of pixels that dashed across, “Before I go, Echoian, pass on a word for me. Beware of the Beta Arcadians. They are our offspring, but they are drawn to ethics of darkness”. Phantomess nodded her head in gratitude while the old console unraveled, its metal plates slipping apart. Such a report would require both of them to forge contingency plans.
“Excuse me Ennie, please be kind to this new planet” she asked, bidding adieu repentantly as a gust of happy dust wove its way through her hair. A ghostly charisma overtook her body, easily, like a reflex, and she jumped into the air to follow the path of the Prime Arcadian spirit as it disunited from the game. “Here we go, back through the cereal bowl” she thought, trailing behind. Although … it had different plans, quickly diving in another direction, straight towards the ground. Transitioning through spatial membranes, the patron found herself alighting on a hill of murky glass. Flight seemed impossible, given the conditions of the area, so she trekked onwards. Banter in the distance led her to a trio of wanderers, who explained the true aspect of the hil . “Tiny lady, we are actual y in my parent’s attic, and this hil is just a lightbulb of a lamp”
Crilli explained, as Delk and Mell waved cheerfully. Delk went on to explain how the room was full of them, connected by threads of dust. Then Mell Lonestar interrupted, illustrating how they had walked across them many times. Coming upon the edge of the hill, blatant fear halted her motion. The filament across was thinner than a simple bridge. Phantomess walked back a meter, breathing hard with the fact of the matter, that they would be traversing a filament and its hypothetical counterpart, the lines that connect constellations. Delk and Mell came to cool her down. Without noticing her reluctance, Crilli began across the rope. So lithe, courageous. The patron’s chest settled, seeing the unerring balance that drew her closer to the other side. “Keep going, your descendants may find that they are personifications of the thread, and learn a way to fight the Beta Arcadians” the patron mouthed, whispering voicelessly. When that was done, the four of them jumped off the lightbulb back onto the attic. Delk brought them back to her place, where they dyed their hair blonde with book apple sauce. In the corridor, her brother fell for the Brussel Sprouts in the closet trick again, making them laugh harder than what was necessary. Returning outside, the patron bid adieu and noticed that as she walked a silhouette of herself was left behind. A bay leaf from a bay leaf tree broke off and entered it, the cavity where the heart would be, and melted, pumping bay leaf blood throughout. She went to the shade of the tree and sat down, eating a bowl of dried bay leaf cereal. After slurping down the last dregs of green milk she looked up at the tall lady standing over her. “That color makes you look much younger” it observed, tossing the bowl.
CHAPTER 45 - VELES AND ORCHIDIA EVERGLOW
Current Time
With the language of the telegram, there was little wiggle room for refusal. In similar fashion the corridors granted only meager indulgence to one’s personal space. Anderson had sent a rather staunch memo, “Miss, this is by no means an effort to bring you by force. However, you should know that the university’s interest relies on your participation. In this case, there is one interest that applies to you alone”. “What on Earth is he talking about? I’m not even on the budget committee for the university. I barely visit once a year” Veles grumbled. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about. The corridors continued. They were much busier than she remembered, so walking through them required frequent stops. Buzzing students huddled at just the places where an ordinary path ought to go, forcing the patron to curve around nodes of them.
Headmaster’s office transpired up ahead. The entrance was dwarfed in visual weight by the statue of an atom beside it, and a fern on the other, it’s droopy foliage touching down to the welcome mat below. A mahogany door stands between her and the remainder of the day, however extraneous. Anderson was seated behind his desk, attending to a matter with two students, a boy and a girl. “ … enough to add another three days to detention, unless you have a better excuse “ the headmaster quibbled in businesslike tone. Veles sort of stood still as it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. “Oh, there you are. If you can, pul the chair over there so we can start” he urged, indicating the third piece leaning against the wall where the other instruments of persuasion where mounted. “I’d much rather stand. In fact, headmaster, I do have a substantially full schedule today, so If you could make it brief …” she floundered arrogantly. “Certainly mam. As a matter of fact, this all came about because of an article. This edition is a few weeks old – the university newspaper you see - but I hadn’t finished reading it until this morning due to my negligence. It was simply stacked here on the edge of my desk”
Anderson noted, fetched a pair of reading glasses and unfolded the paper with flourish. Veles sought to redress the worn atmosphere with a hearty sigh. “You must love gossip more than anything”. “Don’t be so callous patron. This did pique my interest a bit” he promised, flattening the page against the table as he leaned in. Joining the divide, the students clasped hands as if it was their last minutes of life. The patron forcefully tried to inject her mind with other concerns, dandy enough to leave impressions of the outside world. “For your consideration, the front-page article on the fifteenth edition has been retracted. Editors have concluded an investigation, finding the article to be unsupportable. We have reined in our own emotion on the matter.
Please continue to enjoy next week’s prudent edition, and as always, favored readers, it’s a treat to be discreet” he read, indicating each word with mechanical emphasis. “Wow sir, bringing me here to read a chapter of the dictionary. This has outdone even these two” Veles commented, branding the moment with sporty ridicule. Progressions of the clock on the wall, misplaced in the present, made her sentiment discontinuous, with little snaps of a thin metal hand, so that it could not reach it’s intended threshold. “Not quite. Here is the fifteenth edition, the original copy procured from the club’s department and stored in my desk. Take a look at the portrait” he offered, tossing it across the table. Deigning to play along, she plucked the weary thing off the surface, glancing at the cover until the sum of it came into focus. “Flan Ship Destroys University!!!” sprawled across the header, flashing three bold exclamation points.
Veles skimmed the text, rekindling with fierce detail the events of the lemon slug attack on the SOTA and their aftermath. Surely there had been aerial bombardments from the flan ships, strafing portion cities with energy beams. But the conversion of the university building into rubble, its ample pre-modern architecture draped across the manicured grounds as the portrait so clearly indicated, was ineffable. As she read the words, she recalled walking towards the library, brushing off with ease the sumptuous display of nature embedded into the multiplicity of academic life. At the back it was fastened to the main administrative building. “Everything is trashed. But we’re standing in it. Does this mean we are …?” the patron reckoned, scrambling for description of the anomaly. Held in her hands, it was more than tangible. “Headed forward in the wrong history. Obviously so, according to my conclusion. Be that as it may, the culprits are seated and wil have to answer for themselves” the headmaster acknowledged, righting his
posture to that amenable to both listening and silence. First the girl stood up, exploring his stoic countenance with a hard glare. Veles saw how it weighed against his immobility. But then, to the patron’s surprise, the student turned right around, facing her. “Asking for my help won’t get you out of trouble, young lady” she averred, censoring the request. Instead, the youth procured a case of makeup, and took a lemon slice from the inside. Anderson looked on, budging only imperceptibly. Aware of what to do, the girl squeezed the juice onto one palm, letting it settle.
Veles didn’t know what to say. The mask of a human envelope faded from the hand to the wrist, then up the arm. It all happened in a jiffy, yellow flesh taking the place, melting the paint of the other. Plain resemblance glowed from her eyes. “I didn’t want it to be like this, believe me. Yes, you look exactly like me because we are clones. Some of your magic was released during the fight between the patron Idea and the lemon slugs. When he encountered the Father, they fought as well, and we were born from lemon seeds. My name is Vemon Leles, and he is a clone of Connect, Cemon Leles. We found a way here to escape the fighting, and the university took us in after the revision” the pretty yellow Veles propounded spokesman like, raising a brow to elicit the purest form of leniency. He too took a few drops of the slice onto his hand, wiping the veil off. Snail Man’s expression hung there, ostensibly shipped through time and space.
Automatically she clasped the girl in a warm embrace, followed by the boy, then looked over the length of the desk. “Anderson, did the Couple know of this?” she enquired, gating the tide of emotion. He coughed once and nodded in the affirmative, “Mam, they entrusted me with their safety in the original timeline”. The patron returned the look as if to say, “Oh brother”. Anderson smirked, the burden departing from his shoulders. “Headmaster, what are you going to do with the newspaper with the revision. Are you going to keep the fabrication?” Veles urged hopefully.
“This is all up to you, and I will defer the result. Do you think these students should be disciplined for spreading nonsense, and not reporting the truth? Rather than a simple week of detention, do you have something else to offer?” he asked callously. Veles felt unease as the spotlight captured her, laying its heat onto her judgement. Palpable dread filled the students.
They seemed to be stuffed with it, like scarecrows. A bead of sweat rambled down the side of one temple, then clung to a thread of hair, dropping down expertly to the tip in hurried escape from burning thoughts. Looking down to her feet she assessed the choice at hand. The patron felt envious of Anderson, with all his sound, unadorned conviction. Veles divided the question by a line of symmetry. Focused on her left foot, she heard their cheer, and sighs of relief. Chasing each other through the hallways, back to the ordinary world of the alteration. But later on, there would be days that chip away at their personas, rendering them less, making what is distinct fall into disrepair. Each day becoming passages through trenches, more like them. Then the other foot, the right one. Focusing on it made her wince, as the motion of time receded in abstraction.
Feathered remains of the school lay across the campus, bothersome rawness. Below it, the green’s color attenuated. The patron could almost inhale the dust through the barrier of her mind, a second only, as the expeditious flash died away. Which was better … heavier? Glancing back to Anderson, the line of symmetry broke, even though it was just a fancy, “do you think these students should be disciplined for not telling the truth?”. “Wait! that would bring back history!” Cemon interjected. “Don’t equivocate young man … this is” he parried involuntarily, the force of tone growing in high disparity to the youngster’s effort, well intentioned as it was.
“Enough, Anderson. I agree with you, of course. Do what you have to” Veles yielded, shielding the two of them from lavish anger. Following up on her word, he took the revised edition of the newspaper and fed it to the paper shredder. Anderson swiveled back to face them in his chair, then languidly stood. Directly ahead, pristine towers loomed over a sparse row of trees ringing the outline of the turf.
At their feet, the impact crater of the barrage rested. They restrained themselves, heeding the comical, razor-sharp difference. Loitering nearby, a group of vacuum cleaners appeared to be more involved in exchanging metal tubular components amongst each other than actually
cleaning up the mess. “Everything’s back to normal. Aren’t you supposed to be watching out for us? This is dumbest thing you’ve ever done!” Leles rebelled. Veles too was fazed by the unforgiving educational caper. She ceded a harmless cough as her lungs breathed in the actual dust. “Bear with me for the time being” he prayed, meeting their eyes with reciprocal sadness.
The patron tried to grasp onto the image of the office, a subtle copy in her thoughts. It twisted from hold. “Fol ow me, there is something I need for you to take a look at” the headmaster pressed. Down by the holo-pier a guy was selling bowling balls filled with salad dressing, but only if you could score a perfect strike. Since they were glass it was easier to gauge what type they contained. They crossed a café where people were eating salad while putting the dressing to good use. Imperceptibly it became quieter, more lonesome. People rarely appeared down the sidewalk, except those that would disregard them as they crept by, continuing their hunt through bleak channels. Leles stopped a second to look at a bookcase laying atop refrigerator, the former sinking into the latter, creating one rectangular shape. Down an alley by a dumpster there was some sort of four-legged animal whose underside was covering with dangling microphones. But really, the only meddling the academics confronted was from a gang of adolescents, delaying their games to slander them as they passed. Plotting in broad daylight, those kids had collected enough, ostensibly to afford a good unfixed box, one of the provision boxes for storing a hash of ugly, bothersome spells. Veles shooed them away with a ghostly vortex. Further on, a few lampshades rolled along the ground as if tumbleweeds. Some of them were more elaborate, having shaped the fabric and framework to modulate the wind. “Please let this turn out to be nothing” the patron wished cautiously, following beside the well-featured lecturer. If publicized, the fabrication would effortlessly worm its way through the public consciousness, begging for a fiasco of more such instances. She noticed how the sidewalk gave way to planks of soft brick. Benignly the holo-pier reached forward towards a wash of dull ocean. In that patch, the surroundings almost felt deprived of the veneer of deep spaces and their cryptic organization. Just a tad uncouth at first glance. “Here it is friends. Keep going down the pier until we cross the concealment barrier” the headmaster informed them, as if asking his acquaintances to walk the plank was the normal course of events. “Let me guess, you built a backup university?” Veles earnestly forecast as they neared the midway line. Her every step lay in accord to the tune of boards creaking under their toes. Leles chittered in complicity with her graveness. “How did I inspire such confidence, patron? No matter. Take a look at this warehouse” Anderson pointed, reorienting their hopes towards the bland rectangle. Liberating the door, the four tourists touched in unison onto the welcome mat, a spell-switch forcing the recess to brighten. Veles took note of the dominant form greeting them, its contours clarifying as the darkness was superseded. “After the incursion the flan ship tried to escape the atmosphere, but was captured by one of our mausoleums. It was relocated here after study. I’m the only one without rank to have clearance” he rehearsed. Like a captive audience, the patron and the students engrossed themselves with the pliant hull, its cream hued durations … nebulously yellow. At the front, a disk coated in what looked like resin seemed treacherous, lying in wait for someone to help it become a carnivore. Anderson manhandled a mechanical switch of one of the devices with wires stretching across the floor, probing the underbelly of the ship. It made the hull more porous, giving them access. Once inside, he showed them a recording of a feed,
“Valco’s team was fast to disregard the find after the attack concluded. I have had more time to be meticulous”. Brushed aside, a cloth of static gave way to Father Lemon Slug, who seemed anxious, “We wil need the whole crew to form a landing party to locate the room. It will be beneath the university, once that is …”. Injury to the recording resulted in the image being cut short. Headmaster turned about unconsciously to ensure no one besides them had heard.
“Don’t even think about it, we’re going back to the portion …” Cemon bickered as he read the tacit agreement on the faces of his elders. He tried, lunging verbally into an argument that had already been won. From the armory they salvaged flan rifles for each of them, continuing on through the rundown quarter back to the tarnished basin. Wielding a spell to clear a way through
the odds and ends, the patron brought them to an awkward, slanting entrance. “Keep behind us students, and if things get bad, give us cover” she said, glancing down to Leles in particular.
Tenaciously they aimed the brown disk of their firearms upwards, then discharged, letting fly twin bolts of thick, gummy auburn tinted light. Since the first chain of rooms appeared empty, a watered-down version of nothing, they delving further into the structure by use of a circular ramp. More sanitized areas had doorways to damp subterranean chambers, yet they finished shortly in cul-de-sacs, leading them back to the network. “Check out how clean these areas are patron. There must have been a turncoat performing experiments down here with the university’s resources” he estimated. The room ahead grew larger than the one previous, although it had part of its right exposed to the cavern’s browsing roots. “They must have been in a hurry. Look at this MRI machine in the corner” Veles spotted. Those pre-realm devices had never become obsolete, only scaled up with more spell-technology. However, whoever had the gall to do so much tinkering also must have left this one behind, or so they thought. “Eeeehhhh”
sounded, a tangible moan from the bed of the MRI, coarse and pathetic. Flat on its back, a bandaged mummy slowly jerked its arms. The device scanned the patient once more, cavalier to the noise of protest. Veles held out her arm to obstruct the others as the bed retracted. “Too easy pal” she shouted as the ugliness hobbled towards them. Taking aim with the flan rifle, it was downed with one shot. “Do you think that could have been a student?” Leles gasped as the medical distortion fell back against the side. Fearlessly Veles tore the garments from his face. “It isn’t one anymore” Anderson observed, wincing at the reanimated face. A simple thing gave them license to lean nearer. It was ...clean ... without smell, its body injected with artificial odorants. “He couldn’t have been less than forty when bandaged. This is no student, headmaster” Veles confirmed. Letting go of the dressings, the patron made way to another room, that became an elevator to bring them lower in the network. Here the rooms were furnished with more MRI machines whose occupants mindlessly rallied towards the intruders.
Anderson and the students had ample work covering her flanks as they pressed forward.
Lowering into the floor, the beds of the machines retrieved replacements who must have been stacked up in storage units below. Answering the frenzy, more roots broke through the walls of the sanitized room, blossoming with plump lemons. By that time just one of the oddities remained. Veles raised an eyebrow when he stopped short in the direct path towards her. Easily the bandages unraveled, lengthy enough to not undress the figure, but coiled around in the air, until the ends of them became yellow, then lemon peel, fashioning whole fruit. Down the length of the strips the coloring continued, transforming the body of the mummy into peel, all except one evil eye that stared out towards them. “Hopscotch! What is going on!” Leles cried, defensively firing a bolt through its chest. “Anderson, this is the best parent teacher conference ever!” Veles exclaimed. Adrenaline began to pick up in her veins. Pursuing the bonny scent of citrus, a door appeared with a plaque reading “Please do not disturb”. The patron tiptoed over to the brass knob, “It doesn’t seem locked”, she noticed, looking back for peer approval. With three nods, she twisted it, and the four passed into a place more generous than the other subterranean cul-de-sacs, with natural features honed to aesthetic softness. “This is the least cavey cave I’ve ever seen” Anderson, with childlike keen-ness gathered. By the layout it was plain that the place was set with a style more akin to a refuge. A place common to those who need to be alone to think. To their easy surveillance, it was less like the rest of the labs in arid uniformity, packed with florescent numbness to make the subjects, their scandalous alterations more agreeable. “Whoever was in here didn’t leave anything behind. I don’t see any clues”
Cemon added as he glanced over the quality grain of the cavern walls. Occasionally arching from the face of the stone, even the roots had a nice fluency of form. The team bunched close.
Veles felt a tap on her shoulder, from the young lady, “I see a clue”. How did she not see the MRI sitting right ahead of them? It looked lonely by itself, she considered. A clear snapping sound came as the scanner ring unlatched itself from the holder, drifting to the center of the room. Plates of metal separated off and clattered onto the chiseled floor. “Woah!” Veles
croaked, her beating heart happy as a frog. Freed from the disguise, the object grew five times in size. “It hurts my eyes” Leles said, turning away to rub them. Stil ness overtook the patron’s mind. Up till then, she did not reflect on the divide between them in hierarchy, as when in mixed society. Not consciously at least. Yet she knew that only she could feel the subtle shadow of a field encompassing them, a phenomenological one. “Astounding” Anderson whispered. Across the surface of the ring different shades of paint flowed. The patron silently watched the glitches of time as the cycle renewed, the others protesting for the paint to “keep stil ”. The medium glided along, a frisky river, with one luminous tone overlapping the other. Looping round, the force prevented any division of the whole to coagulate, as it would under ordinary circumstances. “Headmaster, what do you think we should call this?” Veles asked with good courtesy. He adjusted his glasses back onto the arch of his nose, then regarded again the ring.
He began, then … immobilizing their conversation, a person was expelled from the lower bend.
Thick paint drained off the woman’s shoulders as she raised up off the ground. At first it was hard to classify her body from long blonde hair. To the others the difference was negligible.
Veles took a step back as the form, tall, like her elder sister came to face her, “It is called the paint-cycle”. By their feet, in the cusp of a metal plate that fell from the scanner, orchids grew in a dollop of paint. Engaging magic, the greasy medium dissolved, leaving simple muted attire in lilac. “I know you! the day Linden … “ Veles stuttered. “Is this the savage thing that came from Echo? students, get behind us” he warned. The outsider drew near to the patron, taking up the whole field of vision blamelessly. Although her movements were eager, the expression was composed, placid, “Veles, do you remember my face? You should”. “I see now ... you are a replica of that woman. Why are you here? If you are a defector, I will have to take you into fiefdom custody” the patron resolved as anonymous feelings reached their way from the very center of her thought. Direct, untraceable lines of force. “People always want the truth. If you want me to confess, I wil ” Orchidia Everglow offered with a knowing smile. “We wil be ready for the Metacoma, our brothers and sisters, even if you send them to destroy us, even tomorrow. Is that a gate to them?” she questioned, staring bitterly towards the familiar face with vortexes evolving from her irises. “No doubt. It is more than a doorway. The paint cycle is my home realm. A curious place, where time moves forward but events recur in a single sequence.
Besides that, the country of Everglow was typical in its youth, enjoying medieval technology and the sweat and toil of good magic. In temples the monks gave joy to the icons of a goddess. She lived atop a mountain throne. The stone was separate from the land, high in the clouds. I was happy, watching over them, my every glance replenishing the farmer’s fields with orchids for the harvest. I was their guardian”. “The world is crowded with realms. Did you think that just because you ruled in there, it gave you the right to do what you did? We know you designed the war for your own purpose” Veles gibed, standing fast. By the circular logic of the paint-cycle, lone plates of metal scattered on the ground where swept up in time, some of them appearing as disparate parts of the shell. At that moment the patron breathed away the trance of the wheel, but for just a second, enough to know why the tides of time and space, their motions were so hospitable. “Briefly you will sense how we know each other as the seal I placed on your memory wanes. I can feel it weakening” Orchidia admitted, as if it was in the other’s nature to forgive such tampering. “Keep talking. I didn’t say you could stop. Tell me how you planned this and how we can halt the rest. After we finish, I’m bringing you back” the patron countered, whitewashing any threat from the other. Reaching into her mind Veles located the seal, its frail inscription loosening as the pressure of the tides asserted themselves. “Everything was simple.
Then, one morning as I woke up the world around me washed past. I fell through the canvas and onto the ground of the temple. For a time, the monks harbored me, and were kind. A girl of paint that spilled from the icon. Despite having the same appearance, they treated me as an equal. Some of them cleaned up when I dripped, when I passed through the rooms filled with candles. Although, in my heart I knew what I had to do, so late one night I departed from them.
Years passed by, and I quietly gathered strength. I did dark things to solidify my existence. I knew I had to face her. When arrangements were made, I spread a rumor across Everglow that I was the true goddess. Battles helped me claim the temples. My gathering was ceaseless.
They did what was needed, distracting them until I had enough resolve to climb her mountain. ‘I am not an image’ I whispered as I forged higher to the summit. There, Orchidia rose from her throne and faced me. She was tireless, but I was quick enough with one slash to down the guardian. Let me tell you patron, life can be funny sometimes. Like when I looked down at my feet and saw not blood but paint swell out across the platform. In her dying breathe she told me of the endless cycle, the paint-cycle, of one guardian watching over the land, until an image escaped from an icon, a woman of paint, waging rebellion. She too had been a rebel. ‘It is yours now’ she told me. ‘Wait for another?’ I thought as her eyes closed. A strange idea sparked in me. What if the cycle was all there was? Then what is freedom, really? In my right arm I held the sword. Then, with a single strike I cracked the throne into pieces. Flames of the horizon became bright … bright as paint, and I understood. Orchidia Everglow was one person, contained by the paint-cycle, a singular stretched into many. Just as you saw me escape, I did so from my realm.
Later I discovered I was the first human strain composed by the celestial trees. With the first attempt, I had not reached the genetic potential to perform the phenomenon. Those trees retrieved the energy, reducing it to the size of this artifact. They were so persistent, creating one generation after another. Trial and error. All I had to do, was follow the path of their experiments” the woman recounted as threads of blonde intervened aesthetical y the picture of her face. “Doesn’t impress me. I’ve heard a lot of stories like that, and we all come from somewhere” Veles settled, aiming to dash her hopes of carrying them to dark abstraction. In the way her words ignored them, the listener could feel the depth of eons. Tatters of magic in the patron’s thoughts deteriorated as the seal thinned its essence. Slowly, the harrowing composure of her face grew precise, giving way to detail. It was more, the patron thought, like that of an acquaintance. “It led me to a party,” the woman added, “indeed, a party hiding in a cloud. The highland cloud. Yes, Veles, I can see by your expression that you know the glass manor, the Couple’s place. You must have spent a thousand rousing parties there. I found myself there as well, sheltering in the folds of cloud. By my nature I would do so to catch the darts of gossip. For countless years I hid in plain sight, numb to the touch of language, devouring only information.
By the time I watched a few late arrivals meander through the fog, and enter through the front door, there came a strange sensation. I wanted to follow in their footsteps. Of course, that is only natural. To find a place, behind walls of glass, where we can belong. Fierce burdens of desire welled in my chest. Giving in to them, I circulated about the manor, to the opposite side.
My curiosity could not be abated, even by the ruffles of that extravagant veil, milk with the grease of colors sown from windows.I felt reckless. At the eastern flank the material of the building was dark, save for a single wide balcony and it’s viewing screen. Peering through ...
Priya was there, as Echo. Like a waterfall, the truth came hurtling down from the bliss of outer space. Although I had never seen her before, I knew. Funny that I had found the scientists and their dream … hid inside ... then came to find within a girl whose smile was like that of the paint-cycle. My talent always was being able to tell the difference. She was crying, then wiped her tears with the length of her left arm. Gaining courage, I moved closer to see. She flashed a little smile as an idea popped into her head. Using dexterous magic, she made palpable a form. It was … symmetrical. Another Echo. Immune to the gaze of the balcony, through which any curious galaxy can spy their deeds, they embraced as lovers do. From my remoteness I could discern them sharing lip gloss prepared with mirror light, smearing it against their mouths.
Shaded by dumb wordless clouds, I could not be seen. But I looked back through the narrow spaces of my swift white curtain, unable to move. Like being stiff during a lecture as the teacher’s language wades into you, absorbed” Orchidia went, fetching more words to depict the one experience Veles could never forget. “Please stop! This is not how I want to remember my birth. I know the truth already” the patron begged. Realizing too late, the daughter felt she was
outweighed by the momentum of the remembrance, and lifted up her arms to shield her face for a passing instant. “Don’t fight this patron. The walls of painted memory are all around us now.
Our ordinary world is hushed. Even you can discern the atoms of my thought vibrate through the texture of history. Then you should know what I saw next. Echo drinking from a chalice of rainwater, from both angles. I flinched as another couple entered the room by accident, disrupting her errand. Being caught off-guard, she de-manifested the avatar, and spit the remainder of the liquid out through the window” the woman imparted, sustained in the path of brave eloquence. “Yes, of course. The rainwater formed the vortex, the well of souls. After I surfaced, I climbed onto the balcony where they found me. Every detail is …”. “Obvious?” the taller one stressed with clenched teeth, “Because you were drowning in that whirlpool”. Hanging by threads of neural bioluminescence, the seal’s fabric shivered apart. They danced through the unlit nothing of a chamber, carrying the wave of that fracture through all the bordering areas.
Like bleeding music. Veles felt it as she stared at the other’s face, breaking tone from harsh control, “What do you mean? I sensed the manor’s light, and swam. After getting out I went to the balcony”. Orchidia Everglow smiled. Through the dialogue’s link, walls of paint reenacted the water’s turbulence, the balcony, the opaqueness of glass laboring to overcome the manor’s glow. Some shape of knowledge soared through time back into the frame of her body. Like opening your eyes in the morning, she thought. The pace of the rendering stil ed. “I dived in to save you” Everglow claimed. “That’s a joke!” Veles quarreled, striking against the momentum.
Everglow lifted her hand, focused. Moving forward the patron waited, her skin dead to the touch of the woman’s palm against her cheek, “No, that’s why I came back”. Health answered, burning away a mask that covered what had been whispered into forgetfulness. Dripping wet, the patron stood at the shore of the whirlpool. At first there were only blurs. Guiding younger eyes, she could see Everglow, who looked back, breathing hard. A peaceful stare gave way to worry, concern. Veles hug the person that came to her aid, holding tightly a fleece of gold, until the atmosphere of the highland abated, drying a share of the moisture still clinging to her from the vortex. “Of course, you were there. I thank you … greatly … but even if you crossed paths with us once, in the long run … it doesn’t mean anything! Look at what has real y happened” the patron answered, fighting to brush away the corruption. Ripples sped through blonde threads as they tasted the heated words. “Veles, look. For so long, I searched for a way to escape this realm. Then I saw the doorway, standing on the balcony. Echo … her plight was so ... normal.
All she had to do was go back to the party. A pensive wallflower. But then, she did something indescribable. I couldn’t fathom. Was it just optimism and clever magic? As though there was a different way. It was so conspicuous. Veles, my vision is good. I could see you going down. If you think it is just a well of souls, then you are sorely mistaken. For a time, I watched the water’s momentum, cycling ceaselessly. Just like the place that I thought was behind me. With every atom of my being I could hear the revolutions of the paint cycle from far away. It was just like the water. The truth is funny, isn’t it? Veles, what do you real y think the world is? We are swimmers in an ocean of choices, spinning around us all the time. It is exactly like the whirlpool. But there is a way. Don’t think that I didn’t want to stay, to be your sister. In my thoughts I played out that possibility, because it would have been a better life. The lady on the balcony showed me I could
… and I saw a fragment of our timeline, with imagination. Do you know what it’s like to be truly conflicted? So, then I thought back to my old home, to the farmer’s fields, where orchids gather.
There is a rare kind that grows where it wishes. In the ground, in structures, in the flesh of plants and animals. Through the skin of its host, the flower blooms. Although I had to leave, a spy stealing back into the cloud’s absurdity, away from the knowing eyes of the Couple, I knew what I could do. Know this, because every choice is like a host. The universe is filled with them.
Multiplying, I will be a happy parasite, devouring each one by one. We can be sisters and one of us will never have to leave the other” Orchidia divulged, swelling with pride, raw madness.
Buried in the remoteness of her voice Veles heard something almost soundless, fundamental. A belonging, and like the rest of history, it was hanging by a thread. Grappled by a vice-grip, the
patron registered the reasons for what had happened, the literal reason, and saw the char overspreading all those worlds, and swallowed hard. Raspy, like after the common cold,
“Everyone has the same instincts, but we don’t disregard the rest. Things aren’t that simple”.
“Maybe so, but I was forced to make a choice. Afterwards, I couldn’t just forget, and filter you out of my thoughts. Different people are sometimes caught in the same place by coincidence.
Then to find someone that is so much like myself. It was impossible. So ... when I was done with my errands, I sent him. He was a local I had taken from the line of Dimeve. My experiments were done. Forming the lemon slugs had taken years of trial and error, manipulation of the thriving construct. He was a decent test subject. I sent him into the spiral to be with you. Nothing about that was by chance … because I didn’t want you to be alone” Orchidia ransomed, her words honed sharp, her eyes spiced with anger. Flashes of her mother’s teasing flooded her mind. “You were just like Melina, drowning in the sea of tears, her bubbles escaping from her throat, becoming realms”. Veles pushed back the memory as Orchidia perceived its dissolution, speaking only in the unlit chamber, “I was Linden who came to find you”. “You are nothing like any of us! Al of this was just to push us aside” Veles belted, throwing the woman’s hands from their station against the warmth of her cheek. “Veles, I’m not a bad person. That’s just another perspective. I came back for …” she began again, in repetition. The patron finger’s glimmered with their sheen of gold. It overspread her palms like a glove, then melted. Veles looked down, bowling her hands, watching the substance slip between the spaces, “No we don’t … belong.
This is dreadful! Everything was ruined because of your ambitions, and so many killed! The fiefdom wil stand against it all. We won’t let you do this again!”. She stepped back to clear a space as a metallic puddle formed on the ground. “Why are you so worried? Just watch me”
Everglow scorned with a passive grin. Streaming, lines of force glided across the polished surface of the cavern. “Patron, get away from there!” Anderson hol ered, casting the students back further. Relishing precise breathing, emanations flowed. Expertly she arranged them into inscriptions as the paint cycle exaggerated its appearance, becoming a flushed lantern. The woman straightened her back as the circle unlatched itself from the top, “Feed me!”. Wiggling the elongated streak turned as quick as a compass needle. It knew exactly where to go. Straight into the back of Orchidia Everglow. “Awwww! Gross!” Leles screamed from the rear of the cave, relinquishing the flan rifle as it slipped from her hand. Breaking from the skin of the woman’s shoulder’s and upper chest, individual paint brushes bore through. At their tips lumps of paint ignored gravity, their streaks rising and pinching off, multiplying into young paint cycles. Soon the area above their heads was filled with rings. Veles looked over the different colors of the chainmail. A strange, undeniable peace went through her as if the waters of the vortex had never been. Their presence was gone. “If you have any questions, let them die. They are hosts as well” the woman hinted. “Orchidia, you did have the courage to save me, but not enough to see yourself for who you are. Leffel never asked for this war. He didn’t run. When my mother asked for his help he obliged. Even all your hopes are not worth what we have shed in tears for him!” the patron threw back, with the last atom of wil . Emotion vaporized from the spel caster’s face. A look that all was too normal. She regarded the echoians. Then, a brutal whisper, “I came back for the paint-cycle”. The patron crossed the ground to where the other stood, below the clinking sounds, a canopy of chainmail. Their colors were a distraction. “Trust me, it’s just a bad dream. Let me pinch you” she said, gripping the arm. Anderson blinked as the patron applied the force. Orchidia Everlgow was gone, engulfed into time and space with her paraphernalia.
Through the halls of a chocolate chip cookie UFO, she walked, until a set of automatic doors gave way to the deck. Visioness quietly noted the absence of any recruits, “How did it go?”.
Following the ordeal, Anderson embraced the students tight. Veles joined them, ruffling their hair, “Let’s not be so brave next time, kids”. Traveling through a vortex, they returned back to the warehouse. Anderson took the controls after boarding. Brandishing a remote the shredder in
the other timeline popped open, flecking scraps of paper. Before the office could become overripe with the cloud, it moved about, settling on the desk, depositing themselves into the square of the edition like patchwork. Veles looked through the window as time lapsed, the column of the beam rising back up to the sky where the flan ship awaited, sucking it in. She once coughed as a puff of dust emigrated from her mouth. “Excuse me for a second” she imparted, passing through a vortex to the ceiling of the ship. Charming university buildings huddled below. To her it may have been like toy models dotted with curious moving points.
Students walking to their classes, through the fluff of green, in a context of warm and bright, not caring about the weather. A film of wetness dried from her eyes, in the last moment, wiggling with a circular ripple. “Leffel, to keep going is not so easy, but I want to for your sake” the patron thought. Palms extended, invisible magic rained down, crafting a logic seal over the body of the architecture with the power of the one twelfth month. Pangs of emotion coursed through her heart, beautiful electricity, but now … she was strong enough. “Land it over there!” Cemon pointed, directing them to the university parking lot. Some of the cool kids gathered and kicked the sides for fun before the four of them disembarked. Principal Anderson was not amused.
Veles laughed with Leles at the smug frown. When the long week was done, she took a flight to Rabidarth to talk to Hogarth and make amends. The warehouse sort of remained the same.
Lackluster and dry. Near the holo-pier a rat lapped up some salad dressing from the finger hole of a glass bowling ball. Vinaigrette.
CHAPTER 46 - ETHERIA AND THE SPECTRUM MIND WAVE
Current Time
Across the breadth of a spacious factory an agar plate flew, passing autonomous units that labored on in idiosyncrasy. Trees of robotic arms extended out from the wall. Claws daintily bent the ribbons of protein molecules. To evade them, four hover disks at the base of the platform altered their intensity. Etheria bent over the side, just shy of a geyser of sparks from the lower levels, searching for any sign of an entrance. Undoubtedly such an exploit garnered risk. None but the chosen few knew the way to the locality of the spectrum mind wave, even among the Vecktan elite. Tom Belltower had hidden away the survivors. She was sure they were here somewhere. Communities birthed by diaspora littered the SOTA. Perhaps by making contacts on the inside links could be formed ... gentle ones beneath the notice of the Scilyst. A lofty hope, given the prospect of speciation in such an option-dense atmosphere. Wearied from the brisk run, the platform docked with a much larger agar plate. The medium was soft as padding. As a result, her feet were quite clumsy, due in part to the pace of the stride. Humdrum orderlies used flashlights of different colors to produce new growth patterns. Lumps of fractal elegance. They paid her no heed, as it was late in the shift. Drifting robots dipped objects in the growth, some geometrical, allowing the surface area to be subsumed and carrying them off to who knows where. Etheria wore a black cloak over much of her body. To her amusement, a group of napping men snored in their gas masks by a tool station. Leather suits pretzel twisted around each other by arms and legs, wholesome as rabbits dozing in a prairie. “I can’t be a quarter of the way” the pedestrian measured. Looking back, one of the orderlies had made use of her agar plate. “Not so fast!” boomed a voice from above. A plate cruised by, and from it jumped off an enforcer. “This is a shortcut to home. I don’t normally do this” the sleuth fibbed, hoping to throw her off scent. Black gloves were the main visual point of reference, given a body brimming with the life and death of every species, genus, family, order, class and phylum through moving
scenes. Lifecycle came closer, doubtful of the lone traveler, “Let me see your full face, mam.
The doors for this level were closed hours ago”. Etheria was pinned, and there was no way acting could save her. To be civil, the patron lowered the hood. Making the air blur, the enforcer rushed. “Echoian! Do not move” she barked, outstretching the grisly black gloves. Fast in reply, each hand clenched against the other, locking. Sparks flourished from between the spaces of their fingers, rich as a saw grinding against pure steel. “Aah!” Etheria bayed. Dynamic pain shot through every circuit in her hand. The Vecktan eyed the loner, fear slowly welling up as the grip tipped in balance. Lifecycle couldn’t accept it, until by force she was pushed away, back to the distance of their encounter. “Tom Belltower. I know you work with him, Lifecycle. If he thinks he can keep the refugees here forever, than he is sorely mistaken. Just tell me where the portal is, and I will make this easy for you” Etheria offered as the orderlies fled in panic. “Don’t be sil y.
Ambassador, I have to take you into custody” the guard promised as tails of mist unwove from her palms. “You and I both know that’s not happening. The battle of dumb groceries was child’s play compared to me” she countered brusquely. “Come back to the boundary. This doesn’t have to be a problem. I can pay the orderlies to keep quiet” Lifecycle bargained, changing her stance to defend from forward magic. “Nah … don’t think so. If you be so kind as to turn around now, I can be very quiet” Etheria replied, fusing a bit of raw humor into audacity. The patron reined in any but calm, skillful breathes. It was not lost to her that she was alone in the deep heart of Veckta. Circumventing the boundaries had been a hassle. Soon the entire defense mechanism would be weighing down upon her. A bluffing smirk ratted the enforcer. “Giving you one chance”
she called. Beneath their feet the culture fanned out. To the untrained eye a garden variety colony of light blue and white blotches. Etheria thought it a tad kawaii. But then she noticed something else. The way the enforcer’s eyes were drawn to the proliferation, a silent tell. In the distance, teams of robots tended to plain cylinders, the form belying what echelon of tech rested within. Each seemed to correspond to the sizes of the agar plates. “Lifecycle, your eyes are wandering. The plate looks fine from here. Maybe you want to scrape me off. Sorry, I don’t play nice” she jested. Releasing magic, her body surged wild as a tesla coil, electricity dancing from her hands down to the colonies at her feet. Remarkable changes in pattern supervened.
Feeding on the charge, the life frolicked beyond reason, transforming in endless cycles. Actual, tangible, bioluminescent. Etheria fell across the film between the realities, headlong into the gulf. Fresh whiteness overcame the landscape. Etheria managed to regain her balance in flight.
By much roaming, she encountered feathery dil budding at exact intervals. “Perfect, this has to be the right way” the patron registered, with arms to her side like a torpedo. A viridescent lattice soon encompassed the traveler. Instead of stems ending in a jumble of roots, they extending out, becoming the axon of green neurons. Their hybrid nature was not obvious a moment ago.
Following their path of signals, she found, up ahead, a square patch of garden. Breaking from a willowy bed of soft dill, the length of a river became visible, tracing directly to the hub of the city.
“Oh, there it is. Am I on the outskirts? That’s fine, I’l just levitate” Etheria thought. With attempts at walking and flying, she learned space could only be moved through in certain inflexible ways.
“Ha! It’s only a few miles away, but I would need a machete to get there” she whined. Poking closer to the bank, a haze of uncertainty lifted. Then it dawned on the patron. It was less like a river and more like a highway. “First time guest? Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me your business. I have room enough for two” an umbrella mermaid proposed, skootching to the other side of the canopy. Etheria noted the funny way in which the woman studied her face, then ignored it, for etiquette sake. “Actual y, I didn’t expect such a beautiful city in a place like this. Do you have the time show me around?” the sleuth asked in such a coy way as to be emphatically indisputable. Trying to blend in was the first step. Crytania’s security forces couldn’t be far behind. Her host aligned her arms so the guest wouldn’t fall as she pressed into the tight space, then slid the folded newspaper away for more space, “No problem. My name’s Von. If we’re lucky we can get there before the afternoon shower”. Beforehand, on diplomatic tours she had observed these folks among the locals, people with a fishy lower half, in a fabric dish, holding
the pole sometimes with one hand. Veckta has broad fountains built into the larger districts where the umbrella mermaids have their offices and markets. “Being in the spectrum must come with a lot of hassle. Did it take long to get used to the environment?” the patron wondered while getting comfortable. More umbrella ships steered by, following the current. The vast majority of which were tropically colored, but Von’s was common black. “At times different forms of energy want to become thought … like if you’re moving a chair, the motion wants to become a thought.
It can get really loud and noisy, so we needed people to organize them. By then we had them do al the work and we got real y lazy. After they went on strike, we had to learn ourselves” Von gossiped, every so often eyeing the patron once more. “Fine by me, as long as I can tell the difference. The rest of the station is still rebuilding. Do you ever miss any of it?” the loner asked, as if the conservation of energy was a sil y, trifling matter. “A long time ago I was Vona Larp, but now I’m just Von. Life is actually easier here … for the time being. We are cut off you know, except for the newspapers. If you’re immigrating, this isn’t as annoying. Most people get tired of all the game after a while. I’m one of them” the indigene shared, offering a bit of cheese and buttery cracker. Browsing through the paper, the patron saw it was so minimal, it couldn’t possibly describe the entanglements of the outside world. Not surprising that the little backwater was given such scraps. It wasn’t ready. Maybe it never would be. Etheria laughed as umbrellas passed by, waving at them. Von smiled back. A beautiful one, like the death of Mars. Etheria’s stomached the pain, filtering it through the lens of history, through endless escapades and wars.
Later, after the current case, she had visited the other immigrant communities, and Hio Bissile.
A few musty pirates in uniform brought her to Friedrich’s grave. Plain stone, encircled by red in the shape of roses … like the planet that died in one dazzling blow. Who else could have thought up a red planet? Funny that it had just been a figment of a dream. Echo’s imagination at work. The guest evaded by asking more questions. Ultimately, they came to the canal and disembarked. Von led the way across the bridge of a quaint canal. With a right turn around a corner they stood as a group walked out of a Mom and Pop store with bags of goodies. Etheria noted the Martian shoppers with a sigh of relief. The scientist’s desire for knowledge knew no bounds, and she had been insufferable in battle. At least here, reason prevailed over fury.
Ahead, in the little city people were eager to bustle about for samples of merchandise. A few seniors wore uniforms dirtied with home-made yellow dust as a badge of honor. Buyers in front of a market booth wedged a flash drive into a holographic spell, while someone behind the counter dismantled computer mice for their trackballs, placing each carefully in a cubic lattice where they collapsed, became points of energy. Thought-ripples occasionally quivered through the anatomy of the city, ushering in sights from far away. Etheria followed her guide but was mostly just giddy to see everyone in such sound condition. Passing by a café they watched a waiter cut a long log of celery with peanut butter smeared through into equal portions. Sprinkling them with regular and golden raisins, he passed them through the glass, into the realm where ice skaters swept by and grabbed the easy snacks, circulating about a rink. “Those are a few of my students” Von admitted as the patron chuckled at how they had not been recognized in the least. Garment stores abreast of the park drew most of the traffic. To the left, earthy flora masked a brick wall. Dainty flies whizzed about a grapevine, slowly teasing away the vestments of the purple grape to get the pure morsels. For some reason the patron began to have a funny sense of déjà vu. Murmurs separated the droves as Von elbowed Etheria to get her to look where a pint-sized cloud floated from the gates of the park. Hopping onto a table that it passed by, a couple frogs shot out their tongues to catch the individual droplets of rain. “Told you it was coming. Let’s find shelter before the real stuff comes” the guide obliged. Ripples of thought belted through the ether. At its heels, the storm arrived. “It feels like I’ve seen a city like this before” the patron wondered as potent rain touched down on both shoulders. The character of everything. Peerless, captivating. “Maybe it’s dul ing my senses”, she thought. Souvenirs from youth poured back in … weak memories. Etheria felt the eclipse of the mind wave rendering the plain, low towers into true focus. It came upon her at once, the realization that the moment of
capture was fast approaching. Time stopped the rain. “I know which one it wil be” Etheria whispered as a single drop burgeoned into the seed of a sphere of time. In the flesh of her eyes the patron felt the anomaly, glimmering bright. Varieties of all the people and places in long eons returned, flashes of familiar faces, making cold ice within her chest, like mint flooding her lungs in humble cycles. The patron turned to Von, who sat upright on her scaly fishtail, “my parents raised me to do one thing, but I failed. Ever since I’ve tried to be perfect”. Von looked back stoically through the curtain, “Don’t be so hard on yourself”. Folded up neatly, she carried the umbrella in her right hand. “May I borrow that for a second?” Etheria asked the mermaid.
She was passed the implement as the seed revolved about its axis, relinquishing fair light in continuation. Atmospheric time kept to a standstill. Then with one easy motion she let the canopy burst. Unfolding, the fabric seemed to whistle. As she raised it overhead the water’s multiplicity became motion once again, and the orb lessened … smaller and smaller … until it too was one of its peers. Etheria smiled as she heard the pitter-pat on canopy. Von slithered beside and didn’t budge while it ran its course. Apathetically the city struggled to become dry.
Warmth lit the thoroughfare and the bridges over the canals. “Priya, I was your friend and taught you how to ice-skate, but you probably don’t remember me” the guide mentioned soberly.
Etheria was in such a state that she mostly just took in the words, “What … are you talking about”. “Honey, everyone’s got a story” the local finalized as the patron lost grip, dropping the implement. Footsteps approached. With a twist in the right direction, she knew she was in trouble. “There they are!” Lifecycle shouted, marching forth with the security regiment. At their helm, Frederica Utoya looked dead ahead at the intruder. After a brief diplomatic rampage, the newcomer’s eyes looked amiss, as she turned from the intruder. Something had caught her eye.
“Patron … the thing about an umbrella … is the fabric is water resistant” the high enforcer noted while bending over. Since the metallic contraptions in the umbrella had fused to become a baby, they gave it to Von to bring to the foster home. Etheria was escorted back to the boundary where Vecktan security boarded a hexadome destroyer along with Utoya’s personal ship.
Apparently, there would be a lot of explaining to do.
CHAPTER 47 - RECLUSIVE WATERCOLORS AND DRAMATIC!
Current Time
Mr. Cunningham coughed once as lucidness arrived like a spontaneous combustion. A dribble of light on his cheek gave hint of the door, slightly ajar. He rested against the wall’s dumb comfort. Personal space was never meant to be this soft and … padded. Humble footsteps echoed through the halls, but they were too far away to share any concern. Nurses drudging about. “Is it real y …” he thought as the divide opened a touch more. His heart was swimming in its promise. Through the opening a jumbo-sized light switch appeared and slid to the middle of the room. It happened all of a sudden, giving little room for consideration as to its true motives.
“Light-switch, do you want me?” Cunningham enquired as the toggle flipped back and forth fretfully. By all measures it was like a Labrador retriever begging to have its human follow and see the curious marvels. Elicited to reply, he reached out with his hand, then withdrew. All the latticework of nerves shivered to the tips of his fingers as deep panic set in. Perhaps this was how it started. Impressions of the years flew by in frail particles of thought. Across the clinic on a roundabout path he would chase after the shadow of another light switch, once every so many days. Beguiled, lured by its gracious charm. Each time he tried to touch, they slumped into dainty powders of memory. Why did this one seem so familiar? The man leaned forward, depriving himself of the wal ’s empathy. It hummed with a sound beautiful like philosophy. “This is different today ...” he thought, first taking the time to consider the past. Al the times he had acquiesced, and given a parcel of mind away. Letting it dwindle into the tides of ether swaying through the windows and down the halls of the clinic, filling its every volume. Bit by bit. Halting
his reach at the level he took a moment for his last doubts, and wolfed them down. “… I can feel it” Cunningham said as he flipped the switch. From the guest came colors suspended in air like pigments in water. Rich photons of yellow clotting the others. Below, the plastic element displaced its bulk. More of the base flowed into the length of the switch, broadening it. He watched the sprouting of arms and curly hair. Soon, a visage met him at eye level. The man checked the industry of his mind. Recently it had been an exotic garden melting with rumors, but now, it was clean, his senses cogent. The girl was bewildered. “Lusi, is that you?” the patient implored, scooting closer along a floor that, with respect to style, was not incompatible from the remainder of the room. “Thank you for flipping me, friend. I thought I would be like that forever.
How many days has it been?” Reclusive Watercolors pondered as the cushioning all about came into focus. “Did you think you could just run off like that child? It’s been … don’t real y know the day, but … more than a few months since the uproar” he shot quick, rife with the anger of long worry. “Mr. Cunningham! Wait a minute. So, this means we’re back home at the foothil s of the portion, at the clinic, aren’t we? You’re stil here?” Lusi said, unfettering her bafflement. About her head the pigments died down, slowly dehydrating into hollow shapes.
Years past, he was her shift leader at Stratagem And Porous Opal Industries. Repurposing bland spells, editing them from the ground up according to the axioms of magic. She moved on, but they had always stayed friends. A regular after the fact. “Getting treatments my dear, yes.
Kalia misses you” he returned. Apart by a mere foot, they came to equal terms. Ideas and information shuffled. Lusi looked at their surroundings, her eagerness foiled by the pillow-lined wal s, “Let’s get out of here, know a diner nearby”. Departing through a square mile of precious land the clinic had managed to cling to, they came to Featureless Run, the street to the urban life of the foothills, and took public transport. Even after the second move, certain notions had remained the same. One of them was the greasy spoon. Little more than a singular, drawn-out room with booths packed besides the glass, crosswise from a bar. Even so, the place held rumblings of talk. More or less informative of actual speech than their bellies. Gloating from behind the workstation, unwashed plates sat in stacks. Ugly enough to ease the mind to rest, and the chuckle of the company on the stools, face first into mounds of lunch higher than a house of cards. “Hmmm … I think I’l have the ordinary garden salad” Lusi said, poking the menu decisively. “Are you sure love? Flip a few pages over and I’l show you the daily specials”
the waitress insisted. “It’s fine, but can you tell me what dressings there are?” the girl added as she snooped through the back page. “By the way, I’l just have the chicken sandwich” her friend nominated following a cursory rub of his beard. The waitress fetched a key and turned it on the page to unlock the hidden menu of dressings. Lusi skimmed through, raising her head back to the woman, “do you have ranch dressing for the garden salad?”. The question was answered promptly with an eye roll, “It’s a little bland, don’t you think love? There are so many choices”.
“Today I can manage” the girl concluded with a smile. Hopes dashed, the waitress left with a sigh. Between mouthfuls she tallied what she had seen on the front and its everlasting dangers.
Cunningham looked at her eyes breaking with raw wonder. Listening for thirty minutes trounced his disbelief. The man got ketchup for his French fries then sat back down, “Ever since you ran off he’s been looking around for you, came to see me a month ago”. Lusi gave enough impulse to push the bowl to the end. It barely missed, ringing as it did. “Wait, wait, who do you mean?”
she blinked. The old friend regarded the young adult, leagues past her peers in terms of merit.
Different from before. Cunningham leaned over the empty plate destined to be at the top of the stack, whispering what she already knew.
At the table they penned a telegram. It was short and simple. Reclusive waited anxiously, and upon receipt was directed to meet nearby. Founded for the great purpose of an afternoon walk, Em-Box Park sits atop the local anechoic plateau, sparse with people craving a moment’s relief from the city. Just a few private neighborhoods occupy the very angles. Within such a place, quiet groves formed the boundary of picnic areas. At night, dreamlike green weakly appropriates
the twilight. That was long since gone. Now, bristles of jaunty wind glanced their cheeks. Trees at equivalent distance made the place, although sequestered by the rebirth of nature, seem emptier than it actually was. “Please, wait here” Lusi bid as she spied the warden standing in humble privacy. He looked back, ready to hear the voice of his student. Below their feet, the chamber hummed as they drew closer. “Child, don’t ever do that again” Graham wil ed as he embraced her. Lusi laughed into his beard. Looking over his shoulder, she could see Petty Officer Parfait Plurality and Lance Corporal Synchronized Strudel hanging by a bench.
“Everything happened really fast, so don’t be mad. I was minding my own business when this energy came to me. It lit me up like a lightbulb. I was having so much fun and mischief that I decided to follow my instincts, and left Sol. There were times where I was normal again, but they didn’t last forever. They needed help at the front, a person like me” the girl recounted, pride wel ing in her lungs. “Lusi, as your teacher I knew you always had to find your own way. The others didn’t understand why, but I never expected you to run. A handful of men I knew are imprints now. They didn’t last the war. Believe me Lusi, I would have not have stood in your way if you had told me. It’s only because I pushed you too hard. Maybe that’s why. As a teacher I thought it would make you stronger, but I was wrong” Graham chanted in a somber procession of words. The adventurer thought to herself how she had expected another Graham, any-one else. Hadn’t she been on the front, fighting for what was right? Lusi felt the il ustration, how it turned the moving picture of her life into a display. Her heart felt like an insect pinned with mixed emotion. Riled by the instant, she stepped back, “Yes, a lot of things went south, but the world is so much bigger than Sol. We had to fight to protect it”. “Lusi, at a certain point you have to wake up. The lightbulb of quintessence is too much force for you to handle. It led you into danger. I can’t have that again. Hand it to me so I can figure this out” Graham demanded. Led by the tide of the conversation, the girl cupped a hand over her chest, drawing out a glass bulb. From her palm and through her fingers it bled with sumptuous light. Linear streaks parodying the crumpled curvature of skin. Graham took it and placed one hand on her shoulder, “Since even before you came to the Institute, I have been looking for someone who can truly understand my work. Asymmetry is a lifelong disability for most. So many children have been turned into outcasts, forced to live beyond the view of society. Their stories all came to me. There was a time when we didn’t even know what to call it. People said things that you probably wouldn’t like to know about. It was a darker time. Through long study we eventually began to discern its cause. Lusi, I am a lot older than you probably think I am. As a lantern I’ve seen many lives, and I’m getting tired. As an example, to the public, I’ve always wanted a student to succeed me as the warden of the Asymmetrical Institute. Take the lightbulb and throw it down. It’s dangerous.
Shatter it now so we can be done with it”. Lusi focused away from his face to the trees. Discrete periods of silence came as every so often the anechoic plateau muffled the wind as it blew through. Leaves rustled but gave no sound, but in exchange, waves of hyper-sense arrived, ingrained into their welcome frames. She felt a sweet tinge of reality, then fatigue as it crept through her muscles, a dense potency, “Because of what you taught me I was able to help someone else … out there, in the world. Do you know what it was like to be put aside? My classmates were very nice, but it didn’t matter. If I was going to go there, I had to change. The only difference was I was smart enough to know that, and all I ever wanted was to be accepted.
Ramshackle … I’m not the person who can do this. I can’t go back”. Warden was astonished, “I thought I could rely on you”. “I’m sorry” Lusi breathed. A fresh tide of noise returned, soft and cool from somewhere past the grove. Every plan can come undone. He furrowed his brows to take the hit. Ramshackle dug deeper into her shoulder. It had been so long since he had seen her so dewy-eyed. “That’s the last thing you should be worried about. The portion knows your name. I’l be here with the rest if you want to visit. You have pure acceptance” he promised.
“Warden, your hand feels funny” the girl noticed. Fine oscil ations radiated into the pulp of anatomy. “Real y? They’re left-overs from doing some morning exercises” he recal ed. In his palm the lightbulb fluctuated briefly, catching both of their attentions. “Didn’t you say to me once
that I had more parts? Sarah Daniels-Rule was a colonist before she was my other half, this rampant energy. It took me a while to learn about her. I need to know what you meant” she demanded. Given what was said, he had to assent. His aspect grew in earnestness. Graham rooted about in a leather satchel with one hand, “Early in the days of Institute, it was a general practice. My men would bring me rare conditions that I would puzzle on and cure. Then one day they brought me something I had never seen before. Local cultic officers heard about a creature living in the sewers, coming up by day to frighten people. When they caught the poor thing, I could see how they would think of it as a monster. He was an ugly thing, a deformed mutant with three faces. Legs that could bend like a spider and arms around the circumference. Lusi, I brought this here for you to see. Do you remember our lessons with this volume? As a collector I hoarded illuminated manuscripts for their latent magic. In those days the disorder was a mystery. We needed an isolated system that we could analyze. For that reason, I employed the book in the spel , segregating the mutant into three souls. The only thing I didn’t expect was for them to shift into little girls. By sealing one of them in the manuscript and the other in foster care, I chose you as the test subject. From my perspective, you were just a normal girl, but advances in medicine require this sort of forward thinking. It serves as a good failsafe. Since you’re in these pages, no matter where you run to, you’l always come back”. What she assumed was real life suddenly ricocheted off a hard surface. Reclusive Watercolors flinched with the genuine dread of losing such a buffer. Then it faded, replaced by an eccentric solution of anger and laughter, “Are you kidding me! I am a test subject?”. Sentimental, Ramshackle listened, then half-smiled in unwieldiness of the awkward truth, “Always late to class, I see. Of course, Lusi, I could have freed the aspect from the manuscript at any time. Please don’t look at me like that”. Lines of force from the lightbulb of quintessence bent back to their origin. With a minor glance to his hand she pulled it back into her chest. Swiping the book, she ignited it into motely flames, more lustrous than a butterfly’s wing, more intriguing, “It doesn’t matter who I was in a former life. That’s the past. Did you really think I needed this part to be myself? That is so stupid!” she cried as ash fell from her fingertips. “My research!” the warden gasped. Their voices together expanded out to the boundaries, through air, where the groves pulled them to earth for their consumption. “Graham, thank you for everything, but I’m fine now. I’m not coming back to the Institute. I found a way out by myself, so I can find a better way for everyone. Maybe it doesn’t even matter if we’re symmetrical or asymmetrical. You showed me how to help people, but now I have to go. Don’t send me any letters” Lusi bid, holding back the rest of humanity behind eyes that wanted nothing more than to throw away their sorrow. He stood his ground as the student turned and walked away, back to the trail that led to the north entrance of the plateau. Mouthing the words, “Child … Watercolors”, it was more than he could fathom.
Cunningham chased after but didn’t seem to be able keep up. Embroiled, the warden did not notice movement among the grass, until she had disappeared, and the weight of the argument lifted. Before the park, a stockpile of old manuscripts was left as refuse, and forgotten. As the anechoic plateau arose, they nourished the soil. Looking down, he could see their decoration appearing haphazardly throughout the park. Isolated, a shower of sparks dived through the atmosphere, fashioned from the corona. Pages bellowed with manifold gas as they touched down. “Wait, what is going on?” Graham hol ered, trapped in the flurry. Guided by telepathic grace the flames decayed into color and wrapped around him. Despite that, the beard remained gray. The circular spectacles did not crack. Through them he could see across the park, to a path leading up a hill. Along either side a row was set into place, utility poles rising like roman columns. The girl looked only towards the space between the furthest ones. Intrepid, letting go of all the fear in tears of joy. “Priya, do you remember that day? I shadowed you and saw you look towards the sun. Your home was gone, and you were still wondering how to make it better.
I knew you could do it. Now look at her, there is only space between the telephone poles in the distance. She doesn’t see the emptiness. It’s just the world but so much more. Lusi, I promise to make this up to you” he observed. For a moment he considered the real girl, and of Pelfe’s
beautiful paradox, and the lone survivor of that golden land, soaked in the vibrant science of the Voices of Reason. Priya decided to make herself a test subject. After all, it was just a simple chamber. How could it be that dangerous? Maybe he should have stopped her, but he was glad he only shared everything once she had made up her mind. Dramatic sighed, “Very well, let’s prepare for the second part of my conspiracy. This body is damaged. I will have to move quickly”.