In Which Ira Refuses to Acknowledge Her Emotions
(which is a really broad category, but itâs fine.)
Foundation knows, intellectually, that sheâs not human. Itâs never bothered her to call herself an object in her file; âitâ feels as true to her as âherâ, and sheâs found it helps when she needs to be cold and detached the way Three Portlands mocks.
Three Portlands also likes to flaunt how little control she has over her, and that, like many other things, makes the undersides of her fingers crawl and twitch with the need to hold. When her gloves are fingerless, she can see the motion without her glasses on, and the revulsion she feels from her handlers is another reminder of her anomaly.
It doesnât bother her that sheâs not human. Sheâs Thaumiel, the first Thaumiel, and being anything more wouldnât be right. Everything she should want has been laid out in her catchphrases and O5 meeting agendas. And it would be fine, if she wasnât always aware of the movements of the others made of the same things as her.
America sits stiffly in a vaguely familiar, if not far more opulent, room. His two strongest cities are texting each other thousands of words of playscripts and insults and so caught up in ideas that they skip their half-sleep, while his two strongest states give synchronized statements to their strongest news outlets. Itâs an election year, and theyâre tired, and they want to go further into themselves and sing into their oceans and forget everything at their bars and, by the looks of Californiaâs search history, try making homemade boba.
Their oceans are free of hallucinations of bodies. The music at their bars is written by a human, and it wonât make them hemorrhage. The tapioca California will use wonât be sentient. All of that, and the holes in their memories from the times they were, is Foundationâs work. Sheâs proud, of course. Itâs one of the few emotions that has never fazed her.
But it also rips all of her hearts out, in her chest and stomach and limbs, and absence hurts more than torn tendons. Absence means something that is not there should be. Something that should not be in the world is. Itâs contagious, too. If she doesnât do anything, the absences will spread, and itâs harder to do her work when she can hear her own pain echoing through the gaps in her bones. The tiny muscles underneath her fingernails and in her palms donât twitch; they riot in thousands of tiny seizures that break open her stiff skin, and she doesnât have to hold them to her nose to smell the antiseptic of the liquid that subsumes itself into the pages, her equivalent of blood.
Thereâs an itch, too, scraping her hands raw and drawing burning lines through her absences.
The personifications are anomalies. Sheâs the only one who can see it, because no matter how long theyâve lived above the Veil and how crucial they are to human civilization, they were a mistake in creation and containing them is a job she canât finish-
No, of course sheâs not a mistake. Thereâs no difference between her and the Foundation, because sheâs accepted that sheâs not human.
The others are pretending. They hold a smaller version of the Masquerade sheâs maintained, and theyâve lied less often than she has, but at least she knows what she is. All the redactions are just in service of that.
She just needs to contain them.
She wonât. She knows theyâre Archon. Sheâs made from emotions but she lives for rationality. This is the least of all the things she should be worrying about.
Itâs scientific curiosity. Thatâs all her need is. Research is not in her motto, but her longing to cut things open and break them into their functioning parts, or to observe them from behind glass if she canât do that, is almost as fundamental to her as those three words.
Sheâs tried to study herself before, force Site-17 to stay corporeal and strap her down while she looks inside her, but the only thing sheâs found are concrete and steel and wires and the only thing sheâs felt is pain. Itâs not worth it. She knows what she isâshe canât use herself to find answers anymore because the only questions she has left are about the ones above. Maybe the twitching is just the frustration of unanswered questions, an extension of the reasons she exists, but it doesnât matter. The personifications donât matter. She can live without this particular knowledge; sheâll redact the questions from herself once she rereads her file again, another reminder. If she remembers.
Sheâs always got better things to do.
Sheâll never be thanked for the things she has to do.