I nursed a growing headache, trying to keep my head down and ignore the fight that'd broken out in the noodle shop where I'd stopped for lunch on a whim. I'd put some good distance between myself and the Shrouded Mountain (although, should it be called "Shrouded" anymore?), but even here, it seemed one would still encounter the occasional beef between loose cultivators over some nonsense.
A spoon went flying towards me, and it took all my still-sluggish reflexes to dodge it. Once again, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't still carrying the worst wounds I'd received up on the mountaintop. If I'd still been suffering from… whatever that "Unshrouded Fist" attack was that hit Liao Fang so hard I'd ended up in her body… then that spoon would've dented my skull instead of the wall.
I grimaced, as I thought back to all that. Liao Fang had been starstruck by the Fulmination Squad – that's why she'd joined the Shrouded Mountain Sect to begin with – and so had lined up behind them when many of them supported the Patriarch's faction of the Sect over the rebelling Elders. Bad move. She was in the Fifth Stage of the Initiate's Realm, which was good enough for an Outer Disciple, but not good enough to stand up to anyone serious in the Sect. And now, outside the heat of the moment, even her perspective would grudgingly agree that it was the wrong side to pick.
That's why, as soon as I could at least limp away, I'd left. Written a resignation note couching the decision in Daoist terms (wouldn't you know it, "thunder on the mountain" in the Yijing was the hexagram that recommended excessive humility and returning to low altitudes), stumbled down the Shrouded Path, and found the first cave I could – no longer hidden by mist and illusions – to hide in and recover my wounds.
Thank Heaven for that cave. Thank Heaven for those medical herbs Bi De had been selling; spy or no spy, chicken or no chicken, they'd gotten me back on my feet in record time.
And thank Heaven for the cultivation manual I'd found there, next to the bleached bones of its previous owner. Giving up cultivation would've been a terrible idea in a world where it was the only way to defend yourself from a potentially endless parade of assholes… but if I'd kept my current lightning cultivation, everyone would've known I was a Shrouded Mountain renegade.
And to be honest? Even if it hadn't been a dead giveaway of my entanglement with the Shrouded Mountain... I just didn't like it. The part of me that was Liao Fang had looked up to the Fulmination Squad, but with that image tarnished forever, she now recoiled at the idea of following in their footsteps. And the part of me that was not of this world? It found the lightning qi of the Fulmination Arts too aggressive. Too "strength above all", as the Sect put it so often. Too… yang.
Whatever our dao was now, it wasn't suitable for qi like this.
…at last, those two idiots took their fight out of the noodle shop, and things returned to "normal". I sighed in relief, and began circulating my qi again, tasting the yin fire qi from the kitchen, and the yin metal qi from the commerce. Fire and metal in, fire and lightning out.
This "Sapphire Yin Alembic Method" had been just the thing, really. Its cultivation techniques were eerily reminiscent of Earth chemistry: gravity filtration when your qi is still loose, evaporative distillation when it's thick enough to precipitate into an elixir sea, and ultimately a Golden Core formed by crystallization. And because it was obsessively concerned with knowing what, precisely, was swirling around in your meridian system (or else you'd never nucleate when you finally got to forming your core), it'd hopefully be able to clear out all this domineering lightning qi that I couldn't use anymore.
I slurped up the last of my noodles, paid the shopkeep, and started the walk "home". I was still circulating – learning what qi was endemic to what environment. Familiarizing myself with how it felt, whether or not it wasn't suitable for my foundation, so that I'd be able to tell good cultivation spots from bad. I lingered in the merchant hall, but eventually made my way to the farm at the outskirts of the town, where I'd been trading my labor for a bedroll and permission to meditate in the field. I greeted Wang Lung – the head of the household – and sat down between the furrows to soak up its earth qi: the "yin earth" of fertile soil, which is not yang wood but gives birth to it regardless. Wood and earth in. Wood and lightning out.
I knew, even with my otherworldly knowledge aiding my comprehension of the Sapphire Yin Alembic, that it'd take months to get the lightning out of my system, and who knows how much longer after that to break through to the Profound Realm. But when I did… I'd be able to advance to the second phase of the Sapphire Yin Alembic, and in doing so, get out of the Howling Fangs entirely. I could go next door to the Azure Hills – a qi-starved region, and thus, in theory, an ideal environment for evaporative distillation by negative pressure – and cultivate in peace. I'd have no need to fear being attacked: neither by former sectmates stumbling upon me, nor by locals (who rarely make it out of the Initiate's Realm), nor by that old monster who'd torn off the Patriarch's face to settle a grudge.
Surely, nothing important happens in the Azure Hills, right?
Though the real wrinkle on the "you are given a Death Note to do good" problem is that I am not sure if this is a world that has the anime/manga Death Note in it. Because if it doesn't you can probably do a pretty good job becoming some mystical force inscrutably pursuing your ends, all fine.
But if it does you are going to have that scene where the President and the National Security Council bring in a Misa/L fanart Discord mod into a session after a wave of dictator deaths hit the wiretaps, where all the big generals are wearing puzzled frowns and haggling over whether its the Chinese or the Ruskies. And they sigh, take out their $100 dollar prop replica (complete with rules) that they bought at Anime North 2007, and say "Mr. President Sir, you don't understand - that bitch has a Death Note" with the most excited gleam you could possibly imagine in their eye. Their L Cosplay is coming out of the closet the moment they get their Top Secret Clearance badge to serve as a "Special Consultant" for the inevitable taskforce convened by the CIA.
And I will be accursed by god before I give this smug, LARPing fuck the satisfaction. I would burn the book out of spite.
You are given a Death Note by an actual wizard in order to enact political change and do good in the world, but it is not a week in and already some smug weeb in an L cosplay is gleefully crouching on chairs as the new head of Interpol. Do you:
Burn the book and give up in shame over the damage you've already done
Kill them, bitterly knowing that its 50% odds DYING WAS ALL ACCORDING TO KEIKA-
Just let them kill you, the world is no longer worth saving nor being a part of
Sleep with them. Obvi. Why does this poll exist again?
Gradually, I worked my way down from the volcanic eruption of frustration I was feeling, at realizing I'd already blown my cover enough for this clown comic to be calling out "Kira" on international TV and having people with real ass jobs take him seriously.
It had been the perfect plan. No mysterious deaths. No supernatural deaths. Instead, tell a story just believable enough for people to accept. "Jeff Bezos awakens in a cold sweat, the morning before Davos, suddenly on the other end of his own personal Ghosts of Christmas moment. Immediately rearranges his Revocable Trusts with the agenda of reorganizing Amazon into a worker cooperative on his death. Goes to Davos, gives impassioned speeches in private that flip half a dozen other billionaires. On the last day, they're all in a private vehicle together and die in 'what initially appears to be' an accident." (And whether the Death Note decided it'd be easier to make it a real accident, or an assassination disguised as one? Well, that'd be none of my business.)
How was I to know that one of the CEOs on my list was in the hospital getting his hips rotated, and meanwhile Lonnie Musc had landed in a drunk tank somehow, and so neither could feasibly make it to the event? One mysterious heart attack a couple days before the accident would've been suspicious enough, but two, minutes apart? Anyone who'd ever heard of Death Note could add two plus two and get four.
Now all my plans had been blown out the window. Every "tragic accident" after a sudden change of heart might be analyzed to death. Every amended will within the 23-day waiting period might be challenged as coerced.
But I knew one thing: I wasn't gonna let this smug ass Lawliet wannabee provoke me. He's nobody. There's a million people who've read Death Note; antagonizing or targeting him personally would only give people more evidence of the idea, and another, probably more competent guy would take his place.
No, there was nothing for it but to go to ground. Wait for the heat to die down and for the lack of follow-up deaths to make this guy, and everyone else espousing the Death Note Theory, look like a chuuni stooge for bringing it up. Study up on copycat crimes, so that later cover stories for deaths had fewer moving parts that depended on each other. Maybe switch it up and do guilt-maddened suicides at first.
People's memories were short, and the world had survived this long.
It could wait another few years.
I could wait another few years.
I rubbed the cover of that notebook, and ignored the sweat on my fidgeting fingers.
(as portrayed in Kinu Nishimura's "Sympathy for Chisa Inomiko")
──────────•~❉᯽❉~•──────────
It was getting harder and harder to take a morning jog without getting interrupted.
This time? It was a jackalope and one of those awful carnivorous thistle things, jumping out from behind an abandoned truck.
I grit my teeth, hopped out of the way of the jackalope's lunge, and flipped a switch in my pocket. In response, the laptop in my backpack spun up its fans, the YUUHI HUD on my Google Glass came to life, and a defensive script sprang into motion just in time to deflect a squirt of caustic sap off the surface of my infofield. I got to work right away on trying to get access to the jackalope's nervous system and deploy some attack scripts. Meanwhile, I mentally visualized touching my lips and then gesturing at the thistle, and a gout of psychokinetic purple fire splashed against it, singeing its leaves and provoking an enthusiastic shout of "Bullseye!" from the person who had fired it off.
Well. Sort of a "person", and sort of a "shout". We'll get to that later.
The jackalope pounced at me again, and this time I wasn't fast enough - it managed to bite into my good arm deep enough to draw blood. Wincing, I adjusted my script to target via DNA, and it finally got through, with the jackalope letting go and falling to the ground in a daze. The thistle had tried another sap attack, but was tied up dodging the potassium flames coming from an invisible assailant... only to be burnt to a crisp by a gout of red flame from behind me that managed to singe my backpack straight through my barrier.
Fuck. There was a dragon behind me, wasn't there? No time to look. Can't beat the things - not out here in the open. I bolted, shutting down the script augmenting my infofield's entropic mass in exchange for a boost to speed. My "companion", for her part, began to fire off chemical pops in my pursuer's face, in an attempt to harry it as much as possible.
A stray thought came to me, sprinting down the street with an unkillable, otherworldly monster right behind me: at least the apocalypse has gotten me "in shape". Somehow, five seconds from death, that was suddenly the funniest thing in the world. I managed to make it through my front door, with the dragon only 50 feet behind and with my peal of unhinged laughter echoing through the neighborhood. As soon as the door was closed, I flipped the front lightswitch... activating the house's defenses. Antennae in the attic triangulated the position of my pursuer's infofield, and triggered the YUUHI-enhanced mines underneath it on the lawn, dissolving it into that not-quite-matter that the dragons seemed to be made of.
I sighed with relief, ripped the N95 off my face, and braced myself on the door for a moment to catch my breath. This would be so much easier if it wasn't for those fucking flowers.
Once I'd calmed down, I stood back up and headed over to the garage to offload the spoils of my "shopping trip". My car would probably never drive again at this point - too many modifications - but that was okay. It was serving a more important purpose: to act as the generator and power storage for the house. I filled up the tank with siphoned gas, added preservative, plugged my laptop back into the wall, and turned back on the main breaker.
"What were you thinking back there? You should have tabbed me in as soon as that horrid thing bit you!"
I winced. A pink fairy, no bigger than a loaf of bread, was suddenly visible on my shoulder with a vexed expression on her face, fussing over my jackalope bite.
"Push off, Pax," a familiar voice replied from my other shoulder. "The boss needed me keeping the thistle under control." The fairy there, red and armored, rolled her eyes at the pink one, who merely "harrumph"'d and got back to work overclocking my healing.
That was about when a third fairy chimed in - yellow and brown, with an oversized wrench. "I still think we should make an expedition down to the south end of town to scavenge laptop parts. The monsters are getting worse; we won't last much longer with only one of us able to tag along at a time."
I let them bicker in the background, and in a rare moment of sanity wondered how I managed to talk myself into this arrangement. Using YUUHI to aftermarket install CPP in my own infofield in order to have combat backup that could emulate Akaneno Syndrome powers? Using holodisplays to make their thoughtforms physically visible and audible while docked to my home cluster instead of my laptop? Sure, the possibility of mad science nonsense like that was why I'd gotten into YUUHI and infophysics tech in the first place, but who actually does it, especially to themselves? If things ever went back to normal... if President Muller's weird bullshit superweapons were really able to drive away the Imperial Dragons and restore normality... I'd have a whole back catalogue of issues to work through before I could put myself back together again.
But... until then?
I mean. It was that or be alone, right? Who knows if there's even anyone else left in this town?
I flopped down on the couch and looked out the window. No sky. No sky ever since this nonsense began. Just an impossible mountain range that floated upside-down where the sky should be, a patchwork of snowy peaks, rocky crags, and volcanos, tinting the world a lurid red. Somewhere up there was the bastard that had turned my home inside-out. A dragon, according to the radio, like the kind I'd run from today but somehow much more powerful. Creatures that were smart enough to imagine, to come up with this whole nonsensical arrangement... and yet somehow with naive enough infofields to be susceptible to direct YUUHI attacks, the kind that are supposed to be trivial for a conscious mind to deflect. What was with that? How? Why?
I sighed. I wouldn't crack that mystery today.
Draped on the couch, trying to get my head screwed on straight, I watched, idly, as a military helicopter started circling above... and slowly came in for a landing in front of the house.
And as I walk down Main Street of Sunny View, Wyoming, I take a deep breath in and out, and think - as I often have, ever since the monsters came up from underneath Mount Ebott - about just how lucky we all got.
Not just that it didn't end in war, and not just that (now that there's plenty of outspoken supporters of monsterkind, some of whom would be willing organ donors if push came to shove) such a war seems permanently off the table.
Not even because of the rediscovery of magic - both the natural magic of monsters, and the situational heart-magics of humans.
No, it's because they're an existence proof that an urban society can be caring, and supportive, and still functional. That infrastructure can support everyone, even when they're vastly different physically. An example of another world, right here in our midst.
I duck into a bookshop, and at the sound of the little bell on the door, I hear a "good morning!" from the checkout counter, followed by a more eager "oh, welcome back!" This has been one of my favorite places to check since I started visiting Sunny View; the nonfiction in particular has been a fascinating look into Monster culture and the new physics of magic. I go up to the desk and start chatting with the fox-woman there, asking about the latest releases, and any examples of classics that I haven't had a chance to pick up yet. I finally decide on a few books: a magic textbook for teenagers, a cookbook, and a famous novel about a sea serpent befriending an alien creature - neither human nor monster - and what happend as a result.
Books in hand, I wave goodbye to the shopkeeper, and head over to the bakery to grab a bite of breakfast. The morning crowd seems to have died down, but there's still a bit of a line. I wait patiently for a will-o-wisp to finish his argument with the slime person he's orbiting, and then get myself a coffee and an egg’n’cheese croissant to eat on the patio. I briefly wonder... if I like it so much, maybe I should just move here? I'd have to find a new job, but I'm sure I could find one; monsters are still inexperienced with modern technology, so there's probably still opportunities for practical problems to be solved by a bit of computer code here and there.
...but no. As nice as it is to visit, I know it can't last.
If I was really 'me'... if I was here as myself, as just a human living in the world... then 'you' should be sleeping in the soil, in an unmarked grave covered in golden flowers.
You wouldn't be here with me, still entangled with my hand and eye and heart. I wouldn't remember our strange tag team effort to guide that child through the Underground and make all this possible.
This isn't real.
At best, it's just a temporary reprieve; a janky, buggy telecommute; a last-ditch chance for us to visit them again without spoiling their happy ending. Even if they won't recognize us. Even if it's not in the flesh.
That's when you shake me out of my reverie and make me look up, and I almost jump out of my skin at the skeleton who had sat down across from me at my table while I wasn't paying attention.
"hey buddy. i was just on my break and couldn't help but notice... that's the look of someone who got to see their best friend again, but couldn't admit who they were, ain't it?"
I can feel you starting to panic. He's wearing that shit-eating grin... how much does he know? Do I deny it and try to slip away quietly?
...no. He knows about the peculiar capabilities of especially determined humans, sure. But that's probably the end of it. He's probably just trying to blow off steam about being at the mercy of fate, by dunking on someone who he can tell has experienced the downsides of defying it.
So instead of running... I take a deep breath. I decide that, as long as I'm here, I might as well reach out my hand one more time.
I look Sans in the eyes, and answer him.
"...you got it in one. But as long as you're making it an open question, I'll do you one better... it just so happens, you're one of those friends, mister 'legendary fartmaster'."
He blinks, just for a moment. Maybe to keep me from noticing that the lights in his eyes had "blinked" out, too.
"It's hard to explain," I say, trying to continue before he can fire back a quip. "Like you probably guessed, it's the human thing, the 'determination' thing. But I wasn't doing it the normal way. I cheated, a little, around the time that you all broke the Barrier and went free. I cared a lot about you and the others, by the end of it all. But even back then, you never knew me. You knew... someone else, and I was sort of just there to help them along. And I could only get away with it in that particular time and place; I haven't been able to do it again since then. You don't have to confirm or deny, but I'm betting Frisk holds the keys these days, right?"
"who knows. but if they do, then i'm pretty sure they did back then, too. so you must have been cheating pretty hard."
"It's not my secret to tell, unfortunately. If Flowey is still hanging around, maybe he'll explain it to you; I think he figured it out eventually, or at least half of it."
At the mention of Flowey, Sans awkwardly looks away. "you know he hates my guts, right? which is pretty funny, since i don't have any." He winks at me, and there's a part of me that's relieved that he's at least winking with his left eye.
"Yeah. But you can tell him..." I sigh, and mentally take a step back. You finish my sentence.
* I suggest he tell Flowey that
"Kat is resting in peace."
"...and," I add, "that Kat's helper agreed with him about letting Frisk handle things. I think he'll want to know that, even if it's from you."
Sans's perpetual smile, during all of this, has gotten... a little strained. He groans, putting his head in his hands.
"y'know," he says after a moment to compose himself, "we were really busting our heads trying to figure out why asriel was talking to kat during that fight, even though he knew kat wasn't frisk. and now you show up outta nowhere just to tell me they were there all along?"
"Like I said, it's... hard to explain. Talk to Flowey, or get someone else to do it; if he wants to discuss it, he will. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry if I've piled too much new crap on you in this conversation. I just figured..."
"yeah, yeah." Sans waves it off, a little shakily. "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer."
"No no no," I interrupt him. "It was a good question. It woulda been real funny if I was just some random human who'd gotten booted out of the DT pecking order by a twelve year old and was pouting that they'd lost their progress. And now you get to take home a bonus: you don't need to dread it all starting over again anymore, right?" This time he doesn't even bother to hide that his eyes go out. "You already know Frisk won't do it. Maybe you suspected it wasn't Frisk - that it was Flowey, or that there was some third party. But now you know I won't do it either, even if it means I have to wear that look on my face sometimes."
I reach out my hand, trying to place it on his, as an offer of comfort. He could easily move it out of the way, but he doesn't.
And as I do, a loud, obnoxious fart noise goes off from the whoopie cushion I had palmed.
Despite myself, I giggle.
Despite himself, Sans chuckles too.
The tension defused, I stand up next to my chair. "Well, I'd better get going. Maybe I'll see you, and maybe I won't. But take care of them, all right?"
"no promises," he replies. But his grin seems, at least, somewhat sincere again.
"Heh, fair enough." And with a noise like a malfunctioning machine, or a cartoon slinky springing back, my role in the story ends.
(with thanks to @taliadoesrpgs & the rest of my source material’s authors)
──────────•~❉᯽❉~•──────────
In a world like this, where overwater is still king for long-distance commerce, it's a rare port town that can be called "small". But Carrova is certainly smaller than Viacruz, and that suits me just fine. I get to sit in a dinghy just outside the wharfs, like I'm doing now, and eat an empanadilla, and clear my head with the smell of salt and the motion of the waves. I get to duck some of the attention that the folks who never left the vicinity of the old hub cities are continuing to draw. I get more of a chance to... properly integrate into the local community, for what is proving to be much more than a short-term stay.
Not that it hasn't been a challenge anyway. By now, everyone with an ear to the ground has heard of the AWOL: the legion of confused mercenary foreigners who descended, en masse, upon the known world's major trading hubs half a year ago. Some have been preaching Gnomic esoterica as though it was a new revelation. A few (though not few enough) have been throwing around their gods-given supernatural might and making it everyone else's problem. Most - like myself - had simply been looking for work, as an interim plan to survive while trying to find a way back to "Earth", wherever that was.
Thankfully, Graeber's old playbook for situations where coin is not enough still applies to Mundus: be generous and kind, and soon that'll make its own counterargument against the natural distrust people have for a lethal-looking stranger. The Ubast family I'm staying with certainly seems to trust me by now - I’ve been careful to not make it transactional, but their weaving work has certainly benefited from the Dexterity potions, and I've certainly benefited from room and board, and from a cast of friendly faces who'll be understanding when I once again get mixed up about cultural norms in, uh, fantasy renaissance Roman Spain.
And that arrangement has bought me some time to focus on the bigger picture problem. The Mechanists have been finding dummied out substances in the Sargassos - leftovers of abandoned or half-implemented features, for the most part - which've needed analysis by someone who knows the theory of both this world’s alchemy and the logic that hosts it. And somehow I've gotten onto Aozora's short list for that kind of work. I've taken to doing my experimentation on an offshore rock, up the coast from town enough to be out of Sendjewel distance (and thus, apparently, out of whatever the Thirteen-plus-one are considering "local" these days); I've been lucky so far, but if AWO had a bug bad enough to kill Io, then it's only a matter of time before one of these bits of Sargasso flotsam has a busted alchemy script that executes data as code, and then it's off to the fucking races and all bets are off. And especially after everything they've done for me, I want to make sure my town—
Huh. I don't know when I started thinking of it like that. But... it's true. For better or worse, Carrova is my town, and whether it's from glitches or griefers, I'm gonna do what I can to keep these folks out of the blast radius.
...man this empanadilla is good. Who knew you could make a delicious lunch out of tuna? Screw trying to reverse-engineer the formula for a Bird-elemental philosopher's stone; the real recipes I need to get my hands on are for Esmeralda's cooking! 🤣
The player across from me smirks, tossing her bet onto the table, and I glance nervously at how many points she has behind. She's already in the lead, and it's the South Second Round, so a win here would probably make her a lock for first place. And yet, I can't really be mad about the situation. I still have my chances, and anyway after so many years away from the game, it's been a rush to get back into it with people who are actually good.
And no, I don't just mean, like, "know the numbers and the strategy" good. If I wanted that, I could just play online. But a proper, IRL mahjong parlor will always have a couple regulars who go beyond reasonable ABC gameplay and into something more mysterious. There's a reason nobody at a "promateur" or higher level follows the old warnings to keep the room brightly lit anymore; I think if you take the game seriously, you're either an anti-occult ideologue who wouldn't care either way, or you're the kind of person who prefers, on some level, a game where unknown forces lurk tableside, playing at the crossroads, gathering at bones.
Even if I probably don't have those forces kibitzing from my own seat.
Probably.
Okay. It's my turn, and the tile I draw gives me a few options for what to wait on. Now think. Line the symbols up. She's clearly got some amount of supernatural wind behind her, which means she has an idiom. What's she been winning off of all night? Come to think of it, she's gotten a large straight three or four times, right? That's hardly a common yaku to go for, so let's assume it's a pattern that often finds its way to her. And she called that triplet of west wind earlier, so she's almost certainly on a small flush too... bamboo, if her discards are any indication. So that means...
I suppress a grin of my own, trying to look tentative instead as I discard the 9-sou. It could be her winning tile, but if so, a large straight would require getting the last 9-sou in the deck; it'd be a risky wait to commit to by reaching. More importantly, discarding bamboo makes it look like I don't know what's going on, and will let me safely incorporate a couple of her winning tiles into my hand. And if the winning tile happens to be...
"Ron!" she calls, and speak of the devil, there it is. The guy to my left discards a red 5-sou - her winning tile - but unfortunately for her, it's also one of mine. "Head bump," I interrupt, allowing myself to grin a little this time. "Pair straight, red dragon, dora. 5200."
The point sticks change hands. She's looking at me with annoyance, but also more than a tinge of newfound respect. Now she knows I know, and that I can, in my own sideways way, play on her level... which means these last couple hands are going to get very interesting indeed.
I climb down from the attic, wiping the sweat off my forehead.
The work is slow going. I have to do most of it by hand. Getting the equipment out here without raising questions takes some serious detours. In short, it’s hard to build a radio dish this big in secret. Especially in “wartime”. More especially in a war of ideals, where unsanctioned transmissions are likely to be enemy action.
And most especially, if that’s exactly what the antenna in question is for.
I sigh, and look out the window at the overcast sky, the stars invisible. Born too late to go to space myself, born too early to know the outcome of this acrimonious divorce.
There’s a part of me that wants so, so badly to be up there. A body that’s myself exactly. Ideals turned actual.
But who’d take me there? Memorial Foundation, who wants Heaven emptied under the naive assumption that Earth Culture will learn its lessons and not just erase them? Gaia Firma, who wants Heaven destroyed?
Heh, or maybe I could sign up as a Troop Leader and go with the Scouts. I’ve certainly still got enough church contacts... but that would be the worst betrayal of all, wouldn’t it? To reach heaven by kowtowing to a predator-meme in a God suit.
So here I am, stuck on Earth, while my comrades far away in space try to carve out a Cultural reference frame where people like us can live.
From here, it seems almost impossible, doesn’t it?
But it stands to reason that it would feel that way. Gravitation is local. It exerts force most strongly in those spaces and times and Cultural contexts where the ones applying the force are near.
Hence the antenna. Radio may still obey the inverse square law, but - properly powered and attenuated - it’s also singularly good at establishing point-to-point communication over long distances. It’s been used that way since it was invented - as a way to get Culture across spaciotemporal blockades.
Isn’t that why Scouts use radios? To project their God into a place and a moment that has shut It out?
So that’s what I’d been working on, the better part of this last year. A satellite dish the size of my attic, and a rebroadcast antenna in the garage. A direct point-to-point link with a different Heaven than that of 109.8. A beachhead for the Celestial League to project their own Culture, their own tidal authority, into Earth’s reference frame.
If I can’t go to Heaven, then I can at least try my best to help bring it here to Earth.
A sampler of self-indulgent fourth wall polevaulting, in honor of the day.
We’ve made good progress today - halfway through Redcastle Forest, with only a few Potions used up. So after taking my bearings, I pitch a tent and lean back against a ruined wall to spend some quality time on my laptop. Classfault’s looking over my shoulder, as usual, but Maya’s just lurking in a shadow and laughing at me. She thinks it’s ridiculous that out here on the Routes I’m still doing nerd stuff. But hey, now that Matinino put in that radio tower, why not have the best of both worlds?
"A fraud?” I giggle, and put down my mug (coffee with milk and red honey, conspicuous at a table full of black tea). “Maybe. Grand unifying theories usually are; life’s complicated. But love’s complicated too. I think her theory has more merit than you’re giving it.”
The umeboshi drinker - the one sitting two chairs widdershins - just rolls her eyes. “A theory that fails when tested is useless at best.“
I shake my head. “One datapoint isn’t a test. One pixel isn’t a photo, no matter how much you zoom-enhance it. It’s all very well to claim victory is impossible if the game is already over; if you really think she was wrong on a theoretical level...” I grin. In another life, it probably wouldn’t look like much. But in this place, under the shade of my cap, my teeth are very white. “...then why not give her another chance?“
"You realize I don’t actually know what I meant to her either, right?”
I give a wry smile, nod a few times, and hold up my hand. “Of course. I totally get that. But number one, if you’re really a physical instrument representing the underlying asset, you’ve got to be equally precious.” I stab my Tupperware of macaroni a couple times for emphasis. “And number two, even if it wasn’t for that, you’re a person.”
I look out at the verdigris skyline of the North American District. PYQR shakes her head, and ends up looking out too.
“People forget that. They forget it in HFT, and they forget it here. They’re paying so much attention to credit and debit, to getting the black line above the red, that they only have a little time to stop to think about what it is they’re dealing in. I mean, I’m not blaming them. The system is kind of set up that way, on both sides of the gate.
”Speaking of which... Bernie?“
A jingle of coins, and like magic, that clown face motherfucker is right behind me. “You called?“
“How’s the discount rate today?“
“Still very bad, I’m afraid. At your current rate, you should reach your financial goals in..." He narrows his eyes, does that cat lookin’ thing. “Eighty-two years. But you know, there is a faster way...“
I nod. “And you know that I’m not doing it that way.“ I wish his “orders from above” would stop including a daily pitch for a product I don’t want.
“Suit yourself. Ah, you Entrepreneurs are all so... distinct!“
Another day, another half-dozen variable names and tentative comments. Over half of Google X on this project for the better part of a year, and we're still just barely beginning to understand it.
Stands to reason, though, I guess. Post-Singularity machine code? It’s a wonder we’ve even gotten this far. But it’s important. Everyone knows it. With Moebius gone, any help we can get understanding Labyrinth’s systems is going to be vital for both worlds - for keeping them going without him, and for giving us a hint at avoiding another Moebius here on Earth in another couple centuries.
I think back to the meeting where all this was launched. The same people who the whole world had seen on TV when they duked it out in a Tokyo suburb, standing there and discussing the work to be done. Cure Peach explaining the kind of world Labyrinth had become. Larry looking like he’d swallowed bleach. And then a recording of the miracle that brought it all crashing down.
Faith, hope, and love... it can’t possibly be a coincidence, can it? Although I can’t rule out the possibility that I’m reversing cause and effect. Either way, there’s something bigger at work here. And if the hand of Providence has put me here, working with mystical teenagers and people waking up from lifelong blinders, to unravel the mysteries of a dead paperclip maximizer... well, it’s a clearer sign than I’ve ever had before.
They can bring the AI. We can bring the ball pits. Win-win.
64 bytes from 8.8.4.4: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=429.9 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.4.4: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=415.3 ms
Destination host unreachable from 10.1.13.7.
Destination host unreachable from 10.1.13.7.
Destination host unreachable from 10.1.13.7.
Destination host unreachable from 10.1.13.7.
Aaaaand signal lost. Dang. That time I was almost sure I had it. I sigh, and power down my equipment. I’ve been up practically all night; as much as I miss my online friends, I’m realistically not making any more progress on this until I get some sleep into me.
But first...
I throw on some clothes and hop on my bike. People sometimes chuckle at how I take it on trips of only a dozen blocks - that American fellow, doesn’t he know he’s got plenty of time? - but old habits die hard. I stop at the bakery to grab a waffle and a napkin. Wave at Lalonde when I notice her running the roofs. Get to the docks just as the sun is beginning to crest the horizon of Big Lake.
The fishermen are at their work, preparing to cast off for the day.
The clouds are a million colors.
The sky is on fire.
I take a deep breath, smile eastwardly at the dawn, and murmur, without a hint of irony or alloy, “how beautiful”.
...
The moment passes, and I go home to sleep.
Viola sure had a couple tricks up her sleeve. Completely put a pie in my tag-teaming strategy with her Infestation technique.
Still, though, we pulled through. Best of all, it felt like teamwork. I wasn't just calling the shots; those potions saved Fletchling's bacon until she had a chance to tag out. And even Ahiru had a chance to help.
I'm still thinking over the question Loïc asked me - whether I'm battling just for the heck of it, or to go pro someday. I'm still not sure; I was always a little weirded out by how the League circuit was held up by some folks as the be-all end-all of our relationship with our Pokémon.
But man. Man. If a real, all-out battle isn't one of the strongest team experiences I've had since I left Vanillaville.
Think I'm done for the day. Time to rest and celebrate our victory!
