Hippocrates,
I have heard about your research into the composition of man. Your methods are impeccable, and I commend you on not focusing on the realm of gods, but on nature itself to determine the course of the disease.
I have been told your method of taking a draught of blood and allowing it to settle without clotting, to cause the four humors to form. Having a surfeit of blood myself, I performed the experiment, and in fact did witness the split into the red blood, white phlegm, and yellow and black bile. The fact that it is then connected back to the elements of the world: air, water, fire, and earth, demonstrate how man is a world unto itself.
But here is where I found something further in my own fluids. Perhaps you have not found this humor? I say this because there are not four elements, but five, as seen in the mysteries of Pythagoras' pentagram. Asclepius himself had five daughters, and so, there must indeed be a fifth humor. I know not what this fifth fluid I found is, but know that the fifth element is the Void, the space between stars and the element that conveys light. You will find the fifth humor when you see the space between the stars.
Empedocles

Socrates,
We have not had opportunity before to speak, but I must commend you and speak with you, demigod to demigod. You might claim you are no demigod, but I have been speaking with a close traveling companion who assures me it is the case. You are one of five great men to walk this earth, proclaiming to make sense of what we perceive and conceive. The other four, in far-off lands, are here to chase out gods and bring wisdom. My companion has shown me the joyous flow of life of the Twenty-Fourth, the storm's calm center of an Enlightened Prince, the bright embrace of action and inaction by Li Er, and the solid statesmanship of the Great Kong, and has proven that your influence will be more diaphanous still, floating weightlessly like starlight through the hearts and minds of all men.
It must be this way, for when the time for an idea comes, the idea comes. Time is relentless, at once both epochal, marking history by stelae, and interval, changing moment to moment. May we embrace the changes necessary to prevent stasis from gaining hold. Embrace the teachings of the four you will never meet and know you are yet that fifth.
Empedocles

Euripides,
It warms my heart to see your tetralogy do so well. Weep not for the play you lost in creating them. Philoctetes and Dictys were moving to the core, and we can all laugh raucously with Theristai, but it is Medea that stands out the most. Fear not that her killing of her sons caused everyone to recoil in horror; it will play far after any of us have passed. I am fortunate that my traveling companion brought my eyes and ears to Athens to feast upon the spectacle.
One thing I must offer: fear not your belief in passion. Far too often the people turn to the gods to explain themselves, but as a strict physician and naturalist, I am well aware that gods die in threes, but stars rise in fives. That Medea kills her brood is only the natural way; if we ever fully embrace love, or embrace strife, we will see the world end. End it will by an order as everything crystallizes into a single moment, or by a chaos as all falls apart, all decays to nothingness. Life exists only in the balance, and sometimes the drastic must be done.
Empedocles

Anaxagoras,
Your views on atomism, aggregation, and disruption have been crucial in my development of the balance between love and strife that our universe depends on. For that, I thank you.
And yet, I feel I must inform you of the greatest of Pythagorean secrets. Yes, with the pentagram, there is necessary reverence in the number five. However, the secret is this: just as there is another sense behind our ears in addition to our five we cannot perceive, just as there is another digit, invisible and intangible, on each of our hands, there is another number between one and five. It is not a sixth number, as that would be six, but a hidden number, impossible to count. What this means is that the five elements of the universe are insufficient to explain it, but there is another, one without substance.
It is only now, as the world pushes away from superstition from gods, and finds solace in the thoughts of man, that this new element, this element of the uncountable number, can be found. My traveling companion tells me that this is Time, the only item that even allows for the possibility of change. It is through time that aggregation and disruption have any meaning, that holds the universe between freezing in stasis, and blown like scattered dust to irrelevance.
The world is thinking in unison. Aggregation is dominant. I fear the state of love and the end of all Time comes soon.
Empedocles

Pausanias,
My great love, it pains me to write to you. You have always studied so willingly at my feet, taken care of me as I age, and know that you will continue my work when I am no longer here. I love you more than anything.
The world approaches consensus, is killing gods with abandon and replacing them with thoughts. Pythagorean tuning theory has grown, and the world beneath our feet hums in harmonics as the song reaches a crescendo.
Far to the north, past the sea and impassable mountains, far into barbarian lands, stands a temple to this harmony, this love. It is as magnificent as any temple, even moreso, and timeless in its nature, a tribute to Alagadda. You must never go there. It is there I must travel with my companion, instill strife upon the world, ensure that all time does not freeze as one moment. Not now. Not yet.
Weep for me, Pausanias. Your tears and cries will help feed the starving maw of disruption the world so desperately craves.
Empedocles

These letters have been dated back to approximately 430 BC and are held in the Foundation's non-anomalous records archive. Note that despite their non-anomalous nature, they have been classified as top secret at Level 4 access. Research into what they refer to is ongoing.
Of note is that Empedocles is believed to have ended his life by throwing himself into Mt. Etna in 430 BC. Pausanias, his eromenos, reported finding a single bronze sandal of Empedocles, tossed from Mt. Etna. He also mentioned that the volcano smoked heavily for days afterward.


Laurie looked behind her, making sure that Speaker was still nearby. In a festival of arthropods, a human was prone to stand out immensely. Speaker could pick their form, and had decided to change their form to that of a startlingly violet tick-kin with empty eyesockets. The color made it easier for her to find them, and they claimed that they liked this form, but the lack of eyes probably meant that being human wasn't enough for them to find her. It would have been too insulting to tie them to her, though. Besides, they had decided to carry her bag for her. Making sure that they hadn't lost it was reason enough for her to look over every few minutes.
Despite the chatter and excitement, Laurie could still hear the faint squeaking and grinding of her brand-new prosthetic leg as she walked and the click of the metal against the stone. Speaker was fortunate to be deaf, if ticks were indeed deaf. It had only been fifteen minutes and she already had a headache.
Normally, she never went here at all. It was so far out of the way of her regular shopping trips that any visit would be inconvenient at best. But, when it came to finding clothes for non-human forms, this was the best place she knew of. Speaker had been no help, just like they had been no help when finding places to shop for human clothes despite the wardrobe they had amassed already. Speaker had plenty of human clothes for all sorts of sizes and shapes, but they only had human clothes.
Laurie paused mid-step. "Speaker?"
Yes? They signed back at her.
"Shouldn't you be wearing clothes in that form?"
There was a long pause. Probably?
"For fuck's sake, Speaker!" Ignoring the possibility of insulting them, she grabbed them by a hand (or foot, or paw, or pedipalp, or whatever the thing she was holding was called) and dragged them to the nearest place that looked like it had clothes. "You have to think about these things!"
No, because you think about them for me. Clearly. Laurie wasn't proficient at reading human expressions, much less weird arachnid expressions, but she knew that stupid, smug grin no matter what it looked like.
"Next time I'll shove you into a pond and let the fish deal with you instead, you ass."
No! Don't do that to me!
She laughed. "Neither carp nor dragons have mercy, so why should I?" Even after reaching the stall she didn't dare to release Speaker, despite the fact that their setae were stabbing her hand and arm. "Yeah, uh, this person here decided to forget to tell me that they needed clothes, I don't suppose you have anything I can get them?"
The beetle-kin seller goggled for a moment, looking between her and Speaker in shock. Laurie couldn't tell what sort of beetle-kin the seller actually was, but she had a pretty good idea of what they were thinking. Her shoulders twitched and she drew her lips back in an attempt at an apologetic smile. Normally she spent her time dealing with fish, not people, and she had a definite opinion on which one of the two was easier and more fun to socialize with.
I just kind of forgot, you know? It could happen to-
Laurie tightly grabbed both of Speaker's hands, refusing to wince even when the setae stabbed her again. "Nothing from you until you're decent, especially not commentary on the situation."
Once again, there was no way for her to read or comprehend Speaker's expression, and yet somehow she knew they were making that idiotic grin again. She turned to the beetlekin seller and ducked her head, fully aware that as soon as she let her grip slacken for a moment Speaker would free their hands. Not for the first nor the last time in her life, she wished that there was some way to keep a koi with her at all times.
"Clothes. Please. Before they keep running their, uh, hands? Mouth? Mouth-hands?" Laurie made a disgusted noise, sighed, and shook her head. "Okay, let me try to make sense this time. Please just get them clothes. Quickly, please."
She watched the beetle-kin scuttle off hurriedly, looking back at her and studiously not looking at Speaker. Speaker, somehow, looked relaxed. Once again, she recognized that stupid grin. She turned the full intensity of her glare upon them. Speaker began to squirm, turning their head away as if they were looking at one of the other stalls. It was much easier to see that they were feigning obliviousness when they didn't have the proper body parts for their body language. That was good. They could be a damnable mixture of whimsical and aloof that glares often couldn't reach.
"If you get me banned from here- a bazaar I only went to for your sorry hide, by the way -you could at least do me the favor of hosing down the filter media in the koi pond. For the next month. At least. Every day." She released their hands.
Fine. Speaker stretched, purposefully avoiding her gaze, even with their lack of eyes. But if that finger-nibbler attacks me, I have every right to start screaming.
"She's a koi! Koi don't have teeth!" Laurie rolled her eyes. "Well, they do, but they can't hurt you with them." That was muttered under her breath.
The beetle-kin was returning, holding a pile of clothes with all of their arms. Speaker turned their head, considering the clothes somehow. Laurie decided to save the rest of her lecture for a time that everyone else would better appreciate. She couldn't tell what Speaker was doing with their body now, but it probably wasn't worth her time to ask.

Speaker tried on the clothes the seller had brought them, lost in thought. Laurie had promised that these were purple enough for their standards, and they trusted her enough to assume that she was being truthful. That was part of the problem, really. They trusted her with that sort of information. They roughly brushed a sleeve out of the way, hands grasping the tie that their setae told them was there.
She'd just been the oddest of all the humans in the Library at the time, hadn't she? Still a potential meal, nothing more. Just the curiosity of hearing talk of fish magic had spurred them on to follow her. Otherwise she was supposed to be nothing. Back home, that would have been the proper way of things. They would have fed on her essence and cared nothing about it. Mindlessly they went through the process of trying and buying clothes, saying little and offering few opinions. Laurie threw a few barbs their way about sulking. Beyond the expected rebuttal they ignored the jabs.
They weren't really supposed to be here, in this universe. Not that it mattered. They'd have died if they'd stayed, and flinging themselves headlong into another universe had seemed like a much better idea at the time. But this universe didn't much care for them. They could feel it in the way reality rippled around them. These uncomfortable forms they took kept that rippling from growing to powerful. Limiting what they did with their abilities was a further way of ensuring that things didn't get too out of hand. If they were unlucky, the spasms that their full being would inflict on this reality wouldn't kill them at all. But at the least it would shatter some very important natural laws within a large area. That should have just bothered them because it would mean that they would be dead or worse. But they were beginning to worry about the collateral damage as well. That was troubling.
Having to think about other people was just so frustrating. Speaker spent the trip back in silence, not even contemplating the Way as they usually did. This wasn't the way of things! They were no predator, sure, but hunger was hunger and that human next to them would suffice as well as any other. Not as well as the great void-creatures that they had once lived among, of course. But those which had survived had not cared for a little parasite in their midsts. That was why they were here.
But they were a little more clever than most parasites. They had evaded the deaths which countless others had fallen to. They had evaded the imprisonment which had locked away even the Two Serpents. They had even been one of a few to creep amongst the stars while the Fallen One had raged and writhed in the cold of the void. Being unobtrusive had served them well.
Speaker had made their decision by the time they left the Way. The creatures they would destroy in their return had thought them nothing more than a nuisance. That was not a mistake Speaker would make in turn. Perhaps even a little fish-mage could teach them something of use. Cleaning the ponds of such dangerous creatures was an insult at best. But it would simply have to be tolerated.
They would grow, and they would persevere. There was no other option. And if the fish-mage wasn't useful, well…


It was a soundless stellar morning when I held my audience with my creator. I'd come looking for a resolution, but I'd left my resolve behind, which was why I was smoking in my cabin, half-hearted dregs of nicotine filling the room with wispy doubts burning in the oxygen for a crew long-since gone, along with almost everything else here.
A queasy feeling knotted and curled in my gut at the thought of confronting her — I told myself it wouldn't get better if I didn't do anything, forced myself to eat my words and swallow my lies. Besides, a quieter voice spoke in my head, she knows you're here already. Chances are she knows why you're here. Who knows how long she's been watching?
(I could give a definite answer to that last question, which was how I knew it was wrong.)
After a half-hour that stretched out into an endless back and forth with myself, I decided to do something. Shoving myself out of bed, I let my inertia carry me through the door and into the facility at large. Here I felt like a pawn of my momentum, all agency stripped away by Newton's first, which was just how I preferred it.
Eventually, I came to the entrance for the observation post at the center of the station and it opened, seemingly expectantly. I swallowed. I didn't need to be reminded of her omniscience — I already had enough problems with my existence without wondering if or how she'd pushed and pulled me throughout my time here.
If I didn't know why I was here, I could've lost myself in the soft twinkle of the stars against the steel and Plexiglass manacle around what I assumed was her waist. But I had a goal I knew I'd come up with for the first time in fifteen years, and I was looking for my fellow aberration, not the reassuring fusion glow of normalcy.
The radio equipment clicked on with a muted thud of static. She was definitely here, but she was expecting me to make the first move: the board had been set and I was playing white.
I took a deep breath to steady myself. Adrenaline tends to start pumping when you're confronted with the reason for your existence. After letting it out in a long, protracted sigh, I softly laid my hand against the glass.
Contact.
The radio slowly crackled with life, first with static, then trembling versions of words I'd heard spoken by a voice that was literally a lifetime ago: "We cast. We cast. We cast." Her words were cut off by sharp howls of static that sounded like keening, electronic sobbing through the speakers. "Foundation? You're there." Then after a moment of silence: "Kari?"
My throat tightened with tears and post-mortem reunion fugue. "I-I'm here again. I'm sorry I left you."
"I missed you too. You're… different." She sounded disappointed. I couldn't blame her. "You're not as many as you were, last time we met."
"A lot of things changed while I was gone. I'm sorry."
As if to prop up my rapidly-crumbling composure: "It doesn't matter. You're back."
I took a deep, hiccupping breath. "You didn't forget me?"
"No. I can wait. I can always wait." I could hear her smile through the speakers, eyes twinkling with high-frequency EM beaming down at me — what I could also hear were the unspoken words, I can always wait — but for how much longer?
"Okay." I wiped tears away from my face, watched them glimmer off into the harsh whiteness of the station around me. "I missed you too." And then I feel my lungs — artificial and entirely unnecessary reminders of a life since-incinerated — have the oxygen pulled out of them, absorbed into a giant hand of void which caresses my cheek.
It hurts the most that I can recognise the brush of fingers long-gone in her alien non-warmth, feel visceral tenderness in the negative space, and I can put a name to that person who lies just underneath the cloak of nothingness. But then we've both changed: one after the other, and no matter how much I hate her for doing so, I can't hold that anger when she can't feel anything for me.

"They want me to be part of the crew up there." Alexandra Poole pointed up at the sky, her finger's target obscured by the shadow of the Portland Observatory: somewhere a tiny fraction of a lightyear away stood a brilliant citadel floating in space, a childhood fantasy of spacemen going to faroff planets reified in the brutal construction of a Foundation observation post.
It was cold enough that night that the shock felt like an icy sting to Kari. Even if she hadn't known about it she'd subconsciously picked up something, the uneasy silences over their usual coffee, cracks in the conversation when Alex's tells became just obvious enough to dent her usual direct rapport — still, it hadn't lessened the blow any.
For what it was worth, Kari did her best to smile at her: "I'm so proud." The embrace was held just a little too long, arms too tight, as if clutching the broken pieces of something fragile and irreparable.
Alex swallowed audibly, and with Kari's ear at her neck she could hear the discomfort in that motion, subtle cues amplified into an overwhelming burst of something that left her unable to speak. "They wouldn't let me tell you earlier, I— they geased me, dammit, it was just there at the tip of my tongue…"
"It's fine." When Kari finally released her, her eyes looked just the tiniest shade darker even under the soft lights of the Portland starscape. "C'mon, I'm not gonna hold this against you. Your dream, isn't it?"
Mist filled the air as Alex let out an unconscious breath. "I didn't want to have to live it alone. I'm just— sorry. Sorry it turned out this way, sorry I didn't fight harder—"
"Don't be. I'll still miss you too while you're out there, spacegirl."
"Yeah. I'll… miss you too."
Later, Kari would look back on those words and realise how fucking stupid they were: emotional duct-tape designed to smooth over the sharp edge of something neither of them could control, candy coating on the bitter pill.
But by that time it was too late for retrospection.

When I woke up the next day, there was the heavy warmth of something filling the absence next to me. The smell of hazelnuts and floral shampoo with the tinge of sweat after a night's work fending off the dreams, each sleep bringing crushing existential cramps about a star coming to bear down on the human race in a vision of fiery chariots and Russian Morse that she wouldn't see realised in her lifetime.
For a moment there, I wondered if I was dreaming. The next moment, I was wondering if it mattered, and then I was holding her, desperate sobbing breaths into her shoulder, murmured babbling that eventually resolved into "You're not real, you're not real," furious denials spoken to reverse-psychology reality into making it real.
She yawned muzzily and rolled over. "Later… bug me about it later…"
It was real — it was real in my mind, and that was the only real that existed for me, and that was enough. More than enough. My fingers traced tentative lines down her arm, felt the ragged hole of the bullet wound she'd always hated. It was an exacting copy that fit my mental photonegative of her all too well, I realised: calculated in its familiarity, an artificial clone ripped straight out of my mind…
And then the light hit her scar, revealing the sharp gleam of steel and the same falcon brand that lay under my skin, too.
Suddenly my stomach flipped from knowing warmth to chilling uncertainty. This was either a benevolent act of providence or a cruel piece of bait designed to keep me here for as long as possible — in either case, I knew it was her doing.
"Someone's excited to get up and go." Alex rubbed her eyes, cat-like, and fumbled for glasses on the bedside table — bedside table? I realised I hadn't seen anything of the sort when I'd first gone to sleep here and the realisation only made the room feel smaller around me. "You have a bad night too?"
"Yeah."
"Aw." Before I could get up, she dragged me back down onto the hard mattress. "What happened?"
"I'll… tell you later. Still not quite over it."
"Alright." Our subconsciouses used to take it upon themselves to see which one could perturb their owners more: Alex had a fair approximation of what this usually meant for me, so she backed off. Useful to get her doppelganger to also leave me alone for a few minutes.
As soon as I was out of sight of her, I threw myself down the corridors with renewed force, burning curiosity as my fuel down the labyrinth of the station. I didn't remember it being this big and yet that only served to make me even more claustrophobic, remembering Alex's tales of what had happened to the last probe they'd sent. I needed something I could trust, even if it was from the thing that was doing all this in the first place.
So I pushed my way through the still-open doors and snatched the intercom from its resting place on the desk.
"Why are you doing this?"
The radio crackles back. "Are you unhappy about this?"
"I—" I pause for a sudden bout of hysterical laughter that's gripped me. "I would think that I had a fucking good reason to be a little angry at you right about now! You can't just do that like this…" A sudden thought strikes me, that both me and the woman lying there are zombies alike, bought from the dead on the whim of their creator. "Why? Why did you have to bring her back?"
"I thought that was what you wanted, no? To open closed books and to read them to someone like you, in you. Part of us both, yes?"
My hand starts to shake as it grips the microphone and I hate the rogue servo that's making me act like this. "This— I was doing fine. I just wanted to— I just wanted to know. I just wanted to know what happened to you, how I got here… how all of this happened. Why'd you let me go?"
She seemed taken aback by the question, and I knew all the scientists had. "They talked with me. I'd waited for them for so long, and then they talked again. They hadn't spoken experience in so long. The message was the medium: I listened. And part of that message was you."
Spoken experience. I swallowed and parsed that slowly. "You. Alex. You absorbed Alex."
"Listened, yes!"
"And you… let me out. Why?"
"They wanted me to sing to them, so I spoke your verse, improvised around what she'd given me when she spoke to me."
Improvised.
I was a variation on a half-remembered theme, a poor photocopy of someone who'd died in an apocalypse she'd tried to prevent: yet all she'd achieved was ensuring I was around to know she'd failed.

She'd been a test subject in the first rounds of testing for the Anderson equipment: leftover BCIs collecting neural images of the men and women they wouldn't been able to save from the star, now blistering towards Earth at superluminal velocities.
Kari was the first image broadcast to the Neptune station, a test of whether or not they could dump minds into Saker bodies fast enough over long enough distances to ensure they at least got evacuated in spirit. Unfortunately, the station didn't remember they had a radio receiver located smack bang in the middle of the station, and when the vacuum began to sing it began to seek out more melodies.
After half the site had been disintegrated in a five minute rush of chaos, the Foundation immediately began prepping the total evacuation of the remaining inhabitants of the site — and the barely-functional image of Kari received through the distortion of the Vacuum. They'd later dump it into the Saker body of just another man five years after the incineration of Earth.
She was hailed as a hero for a month, a proof of concept for a year, and then abandoned at a Site somewhere out on Proxima once all the other, proper Foundationites had their bodies back (or at least got made available as neatly formatted Nankeen substitutes). Then she was told what happened to Alex, and after they'd made sure to emphasise her fault in the matter she cut ties with them right then and there.
It took another decade after that: exchanging information with the spallated remains of the GOC, a tipoff to Prometheus' grandchildren here and there, but eventually she found her way back to the base where she was born. To mourn and to find answers.

"I overheard you."
I'd frozen, I'd begged for her to ignore it, but she was inconsolable — she reminded me of myself not two weeks after my birth on that satellite and I hated myself for it, for dragging anyone through that, by accident or not. "I overheard you" — I'd betrayed her, plain and simple, and that was that.
"I can make it better."
The inside was shifting violently now, rooms growing and shrinking in sharp bouts of topological birthing pains, furniture and drinks and post-its teasing and flirting and reminding, forming themselves out of nothingness as they slid into position. The windows, the little there were, shuddered and flickered with the light of a million different sunsets as they heaved to show a present pregnant with possibilities.
"Shut up."
I was heading to the airlock. I knew my ship wouldn't be there.
"I'm sorry."
Sparse white benches and plumbing extruded themselves out of the air around me, a laboratory sealing my path off. I screamed unconsciously and threw myself at the door to burst through into the other side.
"I can make you happy again."
Sheisn'tmesheisn'thersheisn'tmesheisn'thersheisn'tmesheisn'ther—
A lanky blonde man with a sample tube full of something glistening and black walked out from a corridor to nowhere, neck slit to expose the titanium framework underneath. He cocked his head at me and I watched something in his eyeball flicker.
"We can fix this."
A few more meters to the airlock, straight shot down a hallway that screamed as it burst into a million different antichambers and sublevels. And then I was there, clutching onto the door's handles and tugging and screaming, "Stop it—"
Then hands, pulling me gently away from the airlock — am I so incompetent as to fail even in this? — and then I'm floating, staring wide-eyed at the cast of some sick play starring Site-64: Merlo, with her arm juddering uncontrollably, Holman, legs torn open at the calves to reveal serial numbers, and Shaw, face frozen to stare at me with wild, trembling eyes.
Alex leads the troupe. She's crying. In unison, they declare:
"Go back to bed and I promise I can make it better."
I sob, muffled, into Alex's shoulder as she holds me and begins leading me down the corridors of the Site — this isn't a station anymore, there's too much gravity, too much carpet and mundanity to be the station I left — towards my apartment. Towards something right.
"I can keep singing for you if you'd just let me," Alex stammers in that two-voice that is and isn't hers. "I know the day and I can play it. Just go back to bed."
I see a man taking up his station at his desk, a woman burying her head in paperwork, a man who'd lost his friends and his family at the demand of a greater good, all staring at me as they take their roles for the show. The last performance of a million damned homunculi.
Finally I reach my home and with a small prompting from Alex I obtain the keys from my pocket and unlock the apartment. I stumble numbly through the living room as the coffee and the apple and the television reassert their place as props on the stage, and then I reach the bedroom.
"It's over now. You can sleep. You don't have to live if you don't want to."
I fall onto the bed with her.
Someone else holds her tight.


The elder god set in his garden and waited.
Perhaps "garden" was a bit too generous a word for it. It was a sorry piece of earth, more mud than soil, much trodden and little tilled. Really, thought the god as leaned back on his creaky red-striped lawn chair, there was very little to recommend about most of it.
The trees, those few which still stood, were crooked, stunted things, their bark moist only due to the sudden rainfall brought by the afternoon. They leaned on a fence not much sturdier, its white long since faded to sickly shades of mustard, the points of its posts as dull as the elder god's rake. Really, when was the last time he used that rake? The muddy ground was covered in rotting leaves, though the elder god could not really say why. When was the last time the trees even grew any leaves? How could there be so many of the blasted things in the mud anyway?
The suns were setting, and the elder god's mood was getting ever more sour. He leaned forward to rise from his chair but sat swiftly back as the muscles in his back protested his sudden movement. It didn't use to be so difficult to get up, that much he knew. Didn't have that much weight to lift anytime he did either, especially round the gut area. His garden might not be growing, but he sure was. Oh, to be lean once more, to rise in the mornings with a spring in your step and a thumb as green as sweetest absinthe…
A sudden sound shock him from his reverie. At the periphery of his garden, something moved. Rising much more carefully now, the elder god shuffled through the slimy humus of his garden towards the fence and the tall wooden gate installed therein. The noise was certainly coming from outside, but the sorry state of both fence and gate (not to mention the god's eyes) made it difficult for him to see much. Something colorful was moving about outside, something cheerful and loud. Even without seeing it, the elder god hated it immediately.
Grunting and sweating even in the cool evening air, the elder god struggled with his gate. He couldn't remember when he last opened the thing, as he had few reasons to leave his boggy demesne for quite some time, or at least few reasons he saw. With enough shaking and threats of divine retribution however, the gate finally succumbed to his godly might and creaked open, to reveal…
A carnival.
Gone was the evening, gone the garden with its dead trees and its crumbling fences. Here all was song and sound, light and liberty, merriment and marvel. Gods in their dozens, in their hundreds, attired in the brightest hues of the cosmos, surrounded him in a dazzling and terrifying cacophony.
He saw a young looking thing covered head to toe in iridescent seaweed, each strand moving independently to the rhythm of some unseen underwater stream. She flowed through the crowd blissfully, each strand intertwining with the others and itself to create… something. Something the elder god could no longer see.
Another was like a bird, plumed in gold its feathers each a diminutive field of wheat, its beak an ever-flowing azure stream. At first it seemed bashful, hiding itself from the surrounding havoc, but a closer inspection of its movement revealed a different tale. It simply waited, waited for the perfect movement when the light would shine on its feathers brightest, when the attention of the other gods would be drawn to them most fully, and then it opened them, like a fan of fields, and the others would "ooh" and "ahhh" at their magnificence. The elder god could not tell if he was proud or ashamed to find himself so unimpressed by the beautiful things.
A god third was wild and hairy, horned with oak, shoving himself about the crowd, asking for all to inspect his horns, apprise his horns, please, admire his horns! Some did, and he brayed with glee and stomped his argent hooves. Others scoffed and he growled with rage and he shoved much harder with the sounds of "see it, you didn't see, see it well this time!". He was approaching the elder god and brandishing his horns once more when he saw the expression on the elder's face and thought better of it.
This and more, so much more, infinitely more and suddenly the elder god remembered the days when his garden was much that way. Back then he was not the creaky old thing he was now, more gut than god. No, back then he shone brightly, and his garden… his garden shone brightest. He remembered how the trees would shape themselves to his touch, how aromatic their fruits were when they fell ripe into his hands.
The windy pear, filled with the taste of mystery and magic, ever so slightly unsatisfying but always calling for more.
The horned apple, tart and crunchy, an acquired taste but one that left a memory on those who tasted it.
The triple berry, sweet and bright and sour, which always seem to taste better when prepared by another.
The other gods liked his garden, once. They tasted his fruits, and they cheered. Where were all of them now? He thought he recognized some of his old cohorts in the crowd but they wore different colors and different cuts, and though a few nodded to him in faint acknowledgment, none seem to care all that much that he was there. The rest he never knew at all- young gods, faces fresh and pockets filled with wonder. With so much to give to the world.
What did he have left to give?
Gone was the carnival, gone were the gods and their colors. He was back at his garden again. The suns have all set and a chill was sneaking into the air, as insidious as plague. The elder god sat back at his lawn chair and stared into the distance, into the endless expanse which surrounded his garden from every side. All around was quite. Empty. He had nothing left to give, because he was empty. All gut and no god at all. Elder. He buried his head in his hands. When did they become so blunt? When did his hair gone so thin?
Enough. Time to sleep and think of this no longer. The garden's time was past. He would not return here again, he promised to himself for the thousandth time. Never again. Rising for the last time, he strode for home, an indistinct shape in the distance. The mud sucked at his boots as he walked.
In one of his footprints, a sprout began to grow.


The wall-shaking cacophony from the room upstairs ceased. A few seconds later, Daniel, Rene's calico, came barreling down the stairs and settled quickly at Riven's feet with a purr. Which meant that she wasn't too far behind, since she never let Dan out of her room while she was practicing - she even brought the litterbox in from the bathroom. However, it took a couple of minutes for her to finally appear at the top of the stairs, and Riven had picked his book back up in the meantime. When she finally did appear, her descent was slow; she averted eye contact, and Riven didn't push it. Her hands buried deep in the pockets of a grey hoodie, she walked into the kitchen. Riven could hear a cup being filled with water from the refrigerator, and Daniel got up and after a moment and followed the sound. After she returned, Daniel at her feet, she walked over and sat on the couch across the living room from Riven. After a minute of sitting silently, she watching the coffee table with her left foot on her right knee, sipping cool water, he pretending to continue reading but in truth worrying what could be wrong, she lowered her left to the floor, pulled a coaster off of the side table and set her glass upon it, sat up straight and spoke.
"I'm feeling really badly about my music." Riven placed his book to his side on the couch and looked at Rene.
"Really? Well, I've told you before, and I stand by it now, that your music is really something special, Ren. I haven't heard anything like it." A pause, but Riven knew not to continue - that she took her time while formulating her thoughts.
"Thanks, and I know that…Mm, that I should just do what I feel, and that that's what makes art move forward, you know? And that a lot of amazing artists aren't appreciated in their time…so, I shouldn't expect immediate reception to reflect how my art will be seen in the long run."
"Mhm. Absolutely."
"But I guess it's…Well, I know it is…hard sometimes. Like, today, we had some time in Music Appreciation, and I had asked Mrs. Sands if I could play the class a recording of one of my songs that I'm putting on my album. And, you know, I figured it would be safe since it's Music Appreciation! So I played it, and, well, you know, it was ‘Cassie's Song,' and you know how much work, how many hours I put into even mixing it, and I thought I had gotten it just right to, you know, like, show off the really basic instrumental makeup that I used, and how it had been subverted to allow for a lighter atmosphere, and more of, like, a cerebral and introspective feel that's really hard to achieve with those instruments. And, like, I even explained that a little bit to the class, but no one liked it. I mean, of course Jon and Philly liked it, but you know that both of them have made stuff with me before, and that we all share music between the three of us, with Phis and Adsen. The thing that made me feel the worst though was the look that Mrs. Sands gave me. I mean, she's teaching Music Appreciation, and she gave me this look while the song was playing like 'You really wanted to share this?' It really makes me feel like I'm never going to find people that appreciate what I make." Rene used her fourth and pinky fingers to brush aside her auburn hair and scratch her right temple. She had begun tapping her foot unconsciously while she was talking, and, looking down, stopped. After a while, Riven looked up to her and spoke:
"I've got a story from back when I worked with your dad and Oliver at the Foundation. I know that you don't like hearing those stories sometimes, but would you mind hearing this one? It's one I haven't told before, and I think it might help."
"Sure, of course, if you think it'll help. Usually the reason that I don't like those stories is because the Foundation gives me a bad feeling…it just seems like worse times, ya know? Can I turn the lights off though? They're giving me a headache." Rene sat up, walked over, switched the overhead lights off, and took a seat next to Riven, leaning her head on his right shoulder. Riven consciously cleared his throat like he always did when he was about to share a story - it just felt right.
"Well, it was the second year that I had worked in my own labs, which was about seven years before my job kind of became, uh, null, you know, and so I was scrambling around as usual, trying to keep people safe, early, early in the morning. Probably about 5:30. I remember it was a Monday because I was quite excited about one of the items that was in our cache for the week. If I remember correctly it had some element of instantaneous transportation, and those were always some of my favorites.
"So I'm doing the routine scramble, and I'm breathlessly approaching our office, and I notice that the door is ajar, which is worrying because the only other person that works in there is Researcher Milen, and he's terribly punctual: 7 AM, every day, no exceptions. So, even though I know I may have just left it ajar from the night before, ‘cause in those days almost every night was a late night, I approach cautiously - no, it wasn't silly of me. You need to remember this is pre-CC, and where I was working. We needed to stay alert. So I move very slowly along the wall, and I get right outside the door to peek in, and there's a woman standing in there.
"She's all bloodied up, clothes all torn, panting all breathless, and she's looking all over the place really panicked. She turns, and it seems like she's planning on running out of the room, but she sees me, and I'm deer-in-the-headlights at this point, and she starts rambling about cars. An endless stream of strange comments and negations on the features of cars! 'Cars cannot travel through time!' 'Cars serve people!' 'Cars don't want to find me!' 'Cars are made by people!' And as she keeps talking she starts to calm down, and she gets this ethereal look on her face, of just…pure joy. I've never seen such pure joy, - well, when your father and I saw you for the first time I'm sure it was the same. Well, soon enough her panting is sounding a lot more like sighs of relief. By this time, though, I've hit the button on the inside of my coat that summons security, and I'm sure they were on their way anyways, thinking back - cameras on every corner. She got sedated right off the bat, taken, questioned, and then - I later learned - given some strong amnestics and turned away. I asked for a transcript of the interview, and shared it with Mark and Oliver, and Aunt Zyn too, and they didn't believe it at all, and apparently neither did the higher-ups, or I'm sure we wouldn't have just given her amnestics and thrown her away…Or maybe we would have. Those were strange days…
"She claimed she was from another time. That in whatever world she came from, which she swore was ours, there was an extra-dimensional threat to humankind called cars. That they pervaded the conscious space of all people, that they tormented them, drove them mad. I mean, really incredible, scary stuff. I think I've still got a copy of the transcript in the attic if you'd like to read it. I don't do the story justice. Well, anywho, she told us that she was a mercenary who wielded the power to change the cars with statements on their nature, as long as such statements had a listening ear, but that there was no one left to hear her. She spent many years digging through the ancient, abandoned archives of a group she called 'The Candlebearers.' How she managed to survive that long is left to our imagination. The interviewer never asked. Finally, she finds something, she finds some object that she thinks may help, one of many I'm sure, but this one truly is the one, and, through some interaction, she winds up in Oliver's and my office.
"So…even now, no one believes that this woman was anything but mad. She got her mind wiped. She got kicked out on the streets of a nearby town. And that's how it was. But you know what I think?" A smile made its way across Rene's face in the dim light that came through the door to the kitchen.
"I think so, but I want to hear you say it." Riven smiled too.
"I believe that she saved the world. Existence. I believe that without her, we wouldn't be here.
"So, what I'm trying to say is that” Riven ran his fingers through his hair, contemplating how to go on “no matter…what some people think, know that you'll find someone to listen to you, to hear your voice, to hear your message. To hear you. You're saving the world, Ren."
Rene took a deep breath and kicked up from her spot on the couch. A smile once again spread across her face. She looked down on Riven.
"Hm." Walking towards the stairs, Rene flipped on the lights. "Do you know when Dad's gonna be home?"
"Pretty soon, I'd say."
"Alright. Thanks, Dad." And with that, Rene ran up the stairs, Daniel in hot pursuit. Riven returned to his book. Shortly thereafter, the cacophony started up once more, and the walls shook a little harder.

P.S.

hide

Later that night, Riven dug through a box of his old paperwork; the light from the avenue filtered through the attic window and a brass lamp that he had plugged in near the entrance lent him the light he needed. There it was. "Interview AxC-5466-M: Interview with PoI 'Rene Guilder' Regarding Infiltration of Restricted Area K-2"


Rome, 1955
Giraldo Moretti ran as the fanged walls of the alleyway closed in behind him. The droning sound that followed him grew into a roar. Crumpled paper drifted through the air, despite the lack of any breeze. In front of him, miles ahead, he could see a dim glow that promised salvation.
How had he come here? He tried to remember.
There had been a dinner on the train. A night outside no light could penetrate. A party. A knowledge of creatures and blackness on the other side of the wall. A surreptitious nod from one of the men. He could see the sequence playing out on the trash that filled the air. Moretti ran faster.
As he neared the light, all electric blue and red, he could feel the alleyway hungrily snapping at his feet. People now filed into the narrow passage, emerging from the brick walls on each side. Their faces, when they had them, were all wrong. Mistaken.
Moretti tried to move past them, but a man with five eyes and no mouth grabbed at him, smearing his clothes all over his arm. The other men began to grab at him, smearing the cloth into his body. They came over him in waves, their skin clammy and burning hot.
As the men washed over him, he could feel himself growing weaker. Slower and slower he moved as his skin turned grey. Finally, his weight was too much for his legs to bear and he collapsed.
The men with the mistaken faces descended, tearing his flesh in chunks. Looking up, Moretti saw was the neon lights at the head of the alley blinking off one by one. The alleyway roared in triumph as its teeth overtook him. The inky blackness inside of it began to squeeze at him and -
Giraldo Moretti opened his eyes. He was standing in the gallery again. In front of him was the painting with the drips of paint and God knew what else that led him to the dream.
He tried to stop the shaking of his hands, failed, and tried to focus on other things. The review he had to write tomorrow for this exhibition. Rome, with its ancient and endlessly solid buildings. The dry conversations of materialism and the thrust of history he and Maria shared over long nights and many cigarettes. Everything seemed poisonous to him.
The dream had been so real. This Lawrence Greer- his work - was like nothing Moretti had ever experienced. He had tasted the fear. He had felt his skin ripping apart.
He made his way to the exit. Looking around the gallery, he saw other patrons staring at the dozen or so other works. Some seemed to be in a trance, perhaps like the one he had just been in. Others simply looked awestruck. He was still shaking.
Standing in the basement entrance to the gallery in the dark night, Moretti checked to make sure no one was coming. Then, for the first time since the war ended, he began to cry.

Rio de Janeiro, 1958
The stuttering light of the screen illuminated Carla Carvalho's face. She could almost feel it as it moved over and around her in the dark basement. It seemed to mingle with the heat that filled every centimeter of air in the theater.
Before her, a dark boy and a light girl walked hand in hand, oblivious to the garbage surrounding them.
The room was silent except for the whir of the projector and the occasional cough. Then, all at once, she sensed music. It seemed to well up within her, filling every centimeter of her. Great expansive notes, ones so small and subtle that she could scarcely notice them, others she couldn't even imagine hearing. Indeed, she realized, there still wasn't any sound other than the projector.
For a moment, she was taken back to the time she had first danced with a boy, all those years back in São Paulo during Carnival. After a moment of remembering, what his hands had felt like on her arms, she returned to the movie. The couple were now looking into one another's eyes. The music within her swelled with saccharine strings.
So, she thought, it's some gag where the soundtrack is produced internally. Ho hum. Nothing more than a cheap novelty. So much for American anomalous cinema. Rita had promised her that Greensboro Yellow was worth seeing, but if "sound-without-sound" was all that the creator could think of, Carla would need to reevaluate the list of people she went to for advice.
Someone in the audience gasped, stirring Carla from her reflection. Her eyes darted around the screen, looking for something that would have drawn a gasp. Nothing. Just the couple dancing again, but now a dog had wandered into the frame, limping slightly.
Carla wanted to groan. She could be at home, practicing her sigils, or at the university, or at the graveyard again, or… anywhere, really, that wasn't dark and filled with easily-impressed morons.
The scene had shifted, now to the narrow street of a favela. Odd, but not particularly interesting. The shift drew another gasp, this time from a different viewer. Morons.
She was gathering her things to go when she saw the couple dancing across the screen again in black and white. Their skin colors were now switched, with a dark girl and a light boy. Just like the boy at the Carnival all those years ago.
Carla squinted. Wait, no, that wasn't just like the boy at the Carnival, it was the boy from the Carnival. She gasped, despite herself, seeing her younger self mimic the moves she had danced with the light-skinned boy half a lifetime ago. She felt the music of that day, a dozen melodies rising and falling against one another.
The couple danced and the boy whispered something in the girl's ear. Carla had never made out what the boy had said in his rough Maranhão accent; only his ã's and ch's rose above the noise of the Carnival. The music overwhelmed her as the couple danced and danced and danced and danced.
Finally, the music died down, as the couple's rhythm slowed, then stopped. The boy gave a friendly smile, as he had done those twenty years ago and kissed the young Carla on the cheek. The Carla in the theater cried out, wanting to ask a million questions of the light boy on the screen. The other viewers looked at her, startled. She had never seen him again after that day. Where did you go? What was your life like? Did you dance with another girl that night?
The light boy on the screen waved to the young Carla, then he walked out of her life, forever. The music was almost impreceptible. Carla clenched her fists so hard she could feel the pain in her wrists. She wanted to yell and stomp her feet and curse the director and the boy and the idiots gawking at one of her most cherished memories.
The Carla on the screen stood, dazed and smiling, on the sidewalk. Then, she began to skip. As she did, the young girl began to change. She grew taller and her hair grew straighter. The music around her grew flightier. When she finished skipping, arriving at a plain grey building with a palm tree in front, the girl was no longer Carla. She looked almost identical to one of the women in the audience, now. There was a gasp. Carla turned, just in time to see the woman's jaw drop as she saw her doppelganger onscreen.
Carla sat through the rest of the film, watching the half-digested memories of the audience stitch themselves into a narrative. She sat as marriages and broken wrists and spilled rice played out onscreen, as the music played within her. But she never saw the boy again.

Cotonou, 1962
The air of the exhibition seemed to wrap itself around Ewansiha Soglo, strangling him. The small elite of Cotonou had gathered here at this small, non-descript building near the heart of the city, to be seen. A half-dozen conversations, all in French, wove their way between the well-dressed patrons.
Ewansiha avoided the conversations. Not because he couldn't partake, he reminded himself, but because he was too profound a thinker to be caught up in their gossip. Ever since that day when his professor had introduced him to the book of Marx in the brown paper wrapper, he had seen the world as it truly was. Everything, from religion to the anomalous art, was superstructure. So let the well-dressed idiots prattle on about their petty feuds. Ewansiha could see where the world was heading, and knew he was on the right side of history.
He moved from exhibit to exhibit, having decided to stay just long enough to be seen. A series of photographs that caused him to hear taste the color blue. A guitar that gave off the sound of a dozen songs played simultaneously. Ho hum.
Ewansiha came to a grotesque statue in the corner of the room. All twisted metal stretching upwards towards the ceiling, it was by far the ugliest object in the gallery. Ewansiha could make out dozens of faces contorted in grimaces - whether from pain or amusement, he couldn't tell.
Typical decadent American garbage, Ewansiha thought. As he turned to leave, he blinked.
And the world fell apart.
The elegant conversations in studiously accented French morphed into the yapping of dogs. He looked around at the other patrons and saw that they no longer had mouths or eyes. He tried to remember where he was. The Most Holy Dahomey Empire, he remembered, under the enlightened rule of Emperor Maurice XIV. These vile creatures were nothing but half-made beings, cobbled together from the unmade portions of humans. There was nothing to fear from them. He turned to the grotesque statue, a monument to one of Maurice's predecessors. He blinked again.
The air ran thick with ropes of words. Ewansiha could see the contours of the conversations flowing from the patrons' mouths. The words skittered through the gallery, pulling the sentences into a pile in the center of the room. He couldn't remember where he was anymore, just the contours of the country, the city, the neighborhood he was in. Only the statue was solid.
Ewansiha blinked again and the world was remade. And again and again and again. Finally, he stepped away from the statue and the world was as it had been. He was Ewansiha Soglo once again. He was in Benin, Cotonou, specifically. These patrons were nothing but fatuous gits. History had a direction, one that he was helping to guide in his small way.
He moved away from the statue that had remade the world again and again. He wasn't scared, he reminded himself, just wanted to experience the other so-called art here. Even as he looked at paintings that moved and sculptures that sang, he couldn't stop thinking about the ugly statue.
Two months ago, he had been to an exhibition from the Soviet Union. The anomalies, such as they were, merely filled him with proletarian pride and made him feel as though he was riding the first tractor at a proud kolkhoz. Committed communist though he may have been, Ewansiha had to admit that he would not remember the Soviet work in a year's time.
But this? This decadent American piece? He would be puzzling over it for years to come.

TOP SECRET

ACCESS TO THIS DOCUMENT IS LIMITED TO THOSE PERSONS CLEARED FOR THIS SPECIFIC PROJECT:

BG. Marcus Lyle COL. Jasper A. Hunt COL. Thomas Callahan
LTC. Anthony Endrizzi MAJ. Aaron H. Sutton

MEMORANDUM TO THE OVERSEERS OF PROJECT 'CLEON,' 388th INDEPENDENT SPECIAL COMPANY
Subject: The Efficacy of Parascientific Arts Funding
From: MAJ. Stephen M. Jacoby

Since its inception in 1953, the work of Project 'Cleon' has been first, to identify American citizens engaged in the use of parascientific materials and methods to produce works of art, and second, to covertly fund and foster the work of these individuals, particularly with regards to international exhibition. By fostering such works of art, the goal of the project has been to effect a greater respect for American culture and society among members of the parascientific community, giving the 388th Independent Special Company a deeper pool from which to draw potential talent in the struggle against international Communism.

Ten years on, Project 'Cleon' has been highly successful in this regard. 157 exhibitions of American parascientific artwork have been funded, traveling to nearly every country not under direct Communist control. Favorable write-ups of these exhibitions have been written in a variety of widely-read parascientific periodicals, such as "Planasthai," and numerous intelligence sources indicate that American art is held in high regard for its creativity and "vitality." In the first year of the project alone, the 388th Independent Special Company was able to recruit over eighty new intelligence assets from the parascientific community worldwide, more than the past five years put together.

In addition to the improved perception of America in areas of potential future conflict, Project 'Cleon' has yielded more tangible benefits. The work of many parascientific artists either utilizes techniques that may be useful for future weapons research, or may itself be used as a weapon. Most notably, the sculpture "Untitled 17" by Gerald Saito, has, when properly handled, repeatedly yielded detonations in excess of 2.3 kilotons. While some experimentation have yielded sub-optimal results (see Incident 'Critias'), the overall research into the weaponization of these phenomenon remains promising.

Project 'Cleon' has proven to be extremely effective in achieving its stated goals, and has provided the 388th Independent Special Company with additional, unforeseen benefits. Therefore, I strongly recommend the indefinite continuation of the project.

« | Matryoshka | Hub | Misnomer | »


December 6, 2023
The plaza was awash with all sorts of activity — odd for this time of night, but not odd for this town. A group of ambient soviet factorypunk enthusiasts known as "hhh"1 chose tonight to astrally project thaumic facsimiles of their music into the dreams of every sleeping Three Portlands resident who has an "R" in their name.
The point was less to appeal to the Roberts and Rebeccas of the world, more to signal a certain aptitude to those who weren't called. Publicity stunts like these attracted anartists like moths to a fucking flame, and that's just what Adam Rowe was counting on.
His hand slipped into his trouser pocket and fished out a worn, crinkled business card.

NO PULSE? No Problem!

With our Factory-certified ██████ ████, you'll be feeling GOOD as ██████ in less than threes!

For information and pricing, contact Jam█th ███to█ at 5█3█ ██████ Drive, Three ████lands!

God knows how long that card has been in Adam's possession. Long enough to bear signs of the skipper info-blockers' attempts to remotely declare half of it unreadable. This incompleteness had been a thorn in Adam's side for the past few days, as he was forced instead to trace the lines of contagion between the card and the person who created the garish design.
This had been hard going — apparently, this intrepid individual doesn't spend much time in Three Portlands, so the lines just go nowhere most of the time. And when the creator is in Three Portlands, they aren't there long enough for Adam to triangulate their location and get there in time.
But tonight was different. Right when hhh's signal went out (which woke Adam Rowe right up) the card started to ping all over the place. They were coming to check out the music, and Adam was going to be there to greet them.
The crowd had been amassing for forty-five minutes now, clamoring around a big, round stage in the center of the town square. Countless other spectators sat on roofs or belayed on walls, specks of light on commercial brownstones and sleek glass edifices. In the air, buzzing drones circled the stage in slow, rhythmic cycles.
Adam stood back, away from the crowd, tacky business card held high. From here he could feel the card's tonal links. The dealer was in the crowd. He approached the back of the spectators, pressing between them and squirming onwards.
It was difficult to see what was going on — Adam's view was obstructed by damp denim and vinyl jackets, moving elbows dangerously close to his face as the crowd started to pump up. He was almost to the stage when he felt the link in the card terminate. Looks like this is it.
A bald woman was standing in front of him, marveling up at the stage. He tapped her on the shoulder. She turned her head, smiling warmly. She had pointed horns grown from her temples.
Adam cleared his throat. The yells of the crowd were thundering in his ears. "Are you Jamoth?"
She nodded. "Jameth. You have my card!"
Adam smiled back, nodding. "Séance dust. Do you have it?"
Jameth cocked her head. "Sure, friend. Gimme your card."
Adam grimaced, snapping his fingers. A white index card appeared between his fingertips. He passed it over.
"Thank you, friend." She raised her right index finger to the sky, and with a dull pop a small baggie of lime dust dropped, right out of nowhere, straight into her palm. "I'll be in touch. Try not to have too much fun!"
Adam took the baggie gingerly. He nodded. "Don't think that'll be a problem." With a cordial wave, he began backing slowly out of the crowd. As he departed the plaza, a clanking rendition of L'Internationale had begun to play.
When he got back to his room at the roach motel, he set the bag on top of the dresser and breathed to himself. "One down, two to go."

One week earlier…
November 29th, 2023
The two of them had approached him at midday, cornering him as he walked down the street and politely asking him to come in to a nearby coffee shop for some words. He obliged.
They led him in, past the counter (with menu scrawled in barely-legible Latin) and a mass of tangled pipes that continually seeped espresso.
The first of the two, an imposing figure in nigh-opaque black sunglasses and a tracksuit, pulled out a chair and beckoned for Adam to sit. The other, a tall, pantsuited woman with straight brown hair and black-rimmed glasses, sat across from him at the tiny table. She smiled blankly.
He ventured. "So, how's it going?"
"We're representatives from a subsidiary of Redzone Security. We'd like you to sign on as a temporary consultant."
Adam narrowed his gaze. "Oh, I'm not really looking for freelance-"
She raised her hand. "Allow me to rephrase. We believe that this contract would be beneficial for both parties, should you accept. Otherwise, well, we can't ensure that information about you won't fall into the wrong hands."
Adam turned to his right — the big one was blocking his exit. They tapped their sunglasses, producing a red flash. He was being recorded.
He swallowed and turned back to the woman. "What do you even- what do you need consultation for?"
"Redzone's proprietary data protection method utilizes a necro-thaumic pocket dimension of geas-bound indentured consciousnesses which provide the raw thaumic power necessary to render data fully inaccessible within the infosphere until decryption is required."
Adam blinked. "Uh, go on?"
"Recently, the data-locking procedure has been deadlocked with no apparent external causes. We're fearing a union. What we require is an effective way to necromantically access the souls and make any necessary actions to bring the process back into working order."
He waited for an extra moment to make sure she was done. When she didn't speak, he opened his mouth. "You need a necromancy consultant?"
"That's right."
"You must have gone to my father first, right? I mean, you must know about what he was involved with. Right?"
"Your father was considered for the project, but ultimately decided against. Too difficult to incentivise."
Adam certainly felt incentivized.
"We're not here to talk about your father. We're well aware that you possess your own talents. You're simply more flexible than he is, right? I mean, between you and me, he doesn't really do much for you, does he?"
Adam squinted. "Stop that."
"Stop what?"
"That thing where you imply that you've been following me."
Her eyes flashed down at the table, and then back up. "Sure. We haven't been following you."
"Thanks."
"Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I'm Samantha. Were you to accept, I would be your primary line to Redzone. In return for some very, very minor help, we can offer an increased foothold in the town. You know how much an endorsement matters around here. Perhaps we can help you."
There was a moment of silence. The big one was unmoving, like a big stone totem. "I guess I'll bite. Do I sign something?"
She smiled wider. "You do." From behind her chair, she pulled a single sheet of paper, which she set down in front of him. "Sign on the line, and then flip the page over."
His brow furrowed as he skimmed the dense document. Seemed like a fairly standard non-disclosure agreement.

He signed on the line and flipped it over—

He signed on the line and flipped it over—

"F- argh." Adam felt a sharpness through his mind, like his neurons had been tied end to end and twanged like piano wire.
"Standard company geas. This will inhibit your ability to disclose information about your assignment, or take action against Redzone assets or interests. We can't take chances, unfortunately. It will expire in ten days, on the 9th of December. As far as you're concerned, it won't even be there. Not like you'd want to do any of those things anyways, right?" She smiled warmly. The pain began to subside.
"Yeah, right."
"Keep the contract. We'll be in touch."
Samantha stood up to take off, just as a floating platter brought over two glowing coffees. The silent one turned away, and the two left together.

December 7th, 2023
The day after the concert was bright and sunny, by extremely relative Three Portlands standards. Adam was walking down the street to his favorite establishment: the Symposium, which sought to combine two of mankind's greatest pleasures, alcohol and literature. For today's visit, Adam was just passing through the bar-ookstore, on his way to a different library.
He passed through to the fiction section. Here, they had artfully selected companion beverages for each novel. With Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, they paired a tasteful Chivas Regal. With Borges' Labyrinths, a bitter fernet. With Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, a big 'ol jug of bleach.
Unfortunately, bleach would have to wait for another day. He proceeded to a shaded area of the shop floor, the shelves labeled "Dark Fiction", and then to their neighbor, "Darker Fiction". Trailing down the aisle, he thumbed along the spines until he found the tome he was looking for: Bodart's Radical Reads 2: Working with the Newest Edgy Titles for Teens.
He flipped it open. The pages were hollowed out to contain another, smaller book, bound in featureless black leather. Adam pried it open, started at the top of the first page, and read aloud.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit…" As he began, a shimmering halo started to envelop him from the head down. He could feel himself become less real, less anchored. As he continued to read, warmth propagated within him, agitated air particles displaced by his coming into being someplace else.
"…id est librarum." As he finished, the book vanished from his hands. He was now among the warm, orange corridors of the Wanderer's Library. He could swear that the Ways get more complicated each time he has to use them.
A cursory glance revealed that he was in the portion of the Library dedicated to cataloguing alternate-universe publications of Spy vs. Spy. Luckily, there was a kiosk nearby, and Adam began to approach it.
At the center of the circular desk was a radially symmetrical, many-armed, many-eyed Librarian. Adam thought the Librarian was looking the other way, but when it cleared its throat(s) he realized it was waiting for him to speak. "Oh, uh. Intersection of Canadian legal documents pertaining to the navy and rituals and artifacts pertaining to sovereign states, please."
Silence rang for a moment, before an intense ringing noise took over as the entire geography of the library began to rotate around the circular kiosk, and a portion of the floor around it, quickly becoming an unrecognizeable blur. Adam was just getting dizzy when it stopped.
The Librarian raised a finger(s), pointing to Adam's left. As he turned to enter the shelves, Adam waved. "Thanks. Have a nice day." He couldn't tell if it responded.

Adam rematerialized on the wet sidewalk outside the roach motel, clutching a marriage certificate and a crude crayon drawing of a sea fort.
The skybox sun had already set for today, but the bike rack was still mostly empty. Probably for the best. Adam wouldn't want any of the other residents disturbing him while he worked tonight.
The nice lady who runs the motel let Adam stay for free, so long as his minor golems helped keep ecto-emanations from gumming up the washing machines. It saved her the trouble of subscribing to Golemancy United's service, and he got a decent place to stay. All in all, it was a pretty good deal.
His room left a bit to be desired, though. Discarded papers, soda cans, and plastic bags cluttered up the desk space next to his thaumic typewriter, and the room's lights were perpetually disabled, replaced by an ambient red glow that emitted from the air itself, a personal touch that assisted in minor castings but wasn't optimal for actually living in the room.
Adam smoothed out the sheets on the twin bed a bit, making room to set his papers on the surface.
First, the crayon drawing, perhaps fit for a fridge somewhere. He had sensed the latent power in it as soon as he passed it in the library. With some minor effort, it could be used as a focus to raise an Aeircan Energy Field, centered on his room.
Adam placed his hand on the paper.

Wax and paper, but they hold something more. A connection to a time only half-remembered, if it had ever existed in the first place. Don't you know what that feels like?

The drawing was open to him.

A memory. Some young bixby draws with crayon.

His magic, sharpened by a life of practice, tentacle of occult sharp like a knife, probing into it, finding what was there.

A creation. Nothing else touches that impenetrable moment.

The energy traveled up his hand. It began to fill the room.

An acquiescence. The moment can live again. Take the power.

He breathed in, then out. And the ritual was complete.
The drawing sat there, apparently unchanged, but the energy of its past had been unfurled. For the next hour, this motel room was, in thaumic terms, a sovereign country. Hopefully, that'll be satisfactory.
He turned his attention to the second piece of paper. A marriage certificate, celebrating the lawful union of Jeannine P. McCormick and AAAAFALSE QR DENIED back in 2013.
Hopefully still valid, because Adam was about to file for divorce.
He typed idly on his typewriter, and the characters appeared on a nearby sheet of paper. The attempt didn't need to be fully accurate. Hopefully it would be convincing.
Adam pulled the page up, setting it on his desk. An official filing.
It took fifteen minutes of waiting on the bed, reading and rereading the paperwork to ensure he hadn't mucked it up, before a soft rustling outside his room predicated a paper slipped beneath the door. Adam snapped it up.

CEASE AND DESIST ORDER

The witness holds that, in the course of lawful or unlawful actions in the affidavit has no path by which a SOLUTION may be settled. In witness of overwhelming cruelty of the accused party and NO MISUNDERSTANDING as to intentions lawful or unlawful…

Well, now he had its attention. Adam rushed back to his typewriter. An official document, doesn't matter what, granting rights of amendment to legal entities which pursue due litigation against the Person's Republic of Adam.
Ten minutes after that, the first amendment appeared.

HERETO WHEREFORE does the undersigned party seek UNAUTHORIZED PREDATION against sovereign actions partaken by a THIRD PARTY of which there is no LAWFUL RECOURSE in path of…

Adam's fingers clicked rapidly, typing a response.

Hi, I'm Adam. I read about you in the Prometheus Intranet. I need your help.

Stay vague, stay convincing. The geas still ached through Adam's brain.

HEREBY the QUESTIONING PARTY has been DENIED in the process of amelioration which has been concluded in SOLITUDE…

His eyes narrowed.

I am a necromancer. If you tell me how, I might be able to summon you to me. Give you increased influence in this city. Wouldn't you like that?

And the ball was in their court now.
For fifteen minutes, there was nothing. The Aerican field was weakening. If Adam failed to catch their attention with this, his plan could be dead in the water.
And then a rustling under the door. A packet of papers passed under.
A patent, filed for a process by which an informational entity is given increased ambulatory ability within a pocket dimension, in exchange for unspecified assistance.
Adam smiled. Two down, one to go.

One week earlier…
December 1st, 2023
Two days after he signed the contract, he received a message on his phone.
"Consultant Adam Rowe, please report to your local Redzone office for work."
When he arrived at the office, a large, glass building made of right angles and rectangles, a receptionist had welcomed him in and pointed him to a concrete staircase leading into the earth. A basement. How odd.
When he made it down the stairs, Samantha was waiting for him.
"So nice to see you again, Mr. Rowe."
"You say that like you didn't call me here." The basement was small, smooth concrete walls enclosing several cheap plastic folding tables set up in the center. "A basement in Three Portlands?"
"It was custom-built. Closer to the core, makes it easier to access other Spaces. Or so I'm told."
Adam folded his jacket, setting it on a table surface. "So, what do I- uh."
She was holding out a vial of something, covered with a plastic screw-lid. The liquid inside shone blue. "You'll need to drink this."
He took the vial. It was about the size of his thumb. "Focusing solution?"
She nodded. "Of a very particular sort, yes. Should bring you close enough to observe the pocket dimension, without putting you inside it. A form of protection, as it were."
"Right. Can't just dive in." Adam paced a lap around the ring of tables, vial in his palm. "No sigil machines. Is that why you need me?"
She smiled. "Observant. Our sigil machines were overloaded in our last attempt to breach the dimension. A natural talent like you won't need machines like that, will you?"
"For most things, yeah." Adam shook his head, getting out the last of his reservations.
He unscrewed the lid on the vial and turned it over his mouth. The blue slime slid down his throat, and he could feel the pulse of a beating world wash over him.
His knees grew weak. He collapsed, into a plastic chair that must have been moved beneath him.
He was travelling, but he was staying in the same place. He skimmed the surface of another world, his hands creating ripples in the water- no, the fabric of the boundary. Adam was in two places at once.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Samantha, speaking. "What do you see?"
Adam opened his mouth and felt the blue mist seep out. "There's an egg-shaped envelope, full of souls. It's pressurized. So dense. Who are these people?"
The hand moved off his shoulder. "Oath-breakers. Dead employees. People who don't read the fine print."
He was gliding between worlds, limbs flat like blades. Void burned his skin but he accelerated more. "You just take people? Who disobey?"
A sigh from behind him. "Adam, this is the security business. Without the trust of others, Redzone has nothing. You can't begin to understand."
Adam inhaled the skin of worlds, lungs filling with blue dust. "I think I could." He started to cough, and the vision left him.
Samantha was opposite him, across a table. She pushed a plastic cup of water at him. Cautious, he took a sip, to calm his throat. "Thanks."
She folded her arms. "What do you think?"
He put the cup down. "I think, well, a union is possible. The pocket dimension is close to overload, it could burst. In days, even."
Samantha's face twisted. "We don't have the resources to remake such a thing. We'll need specialists." She was making a list to herself.
"So, what happens if you can't fix it?"
She nodded. "If we can't fix it before it's too far gone, we won't have a choice. We'll starve it of energy, shut it down, cut it off from Portlands. Wait a few years for the souls to forget. And then we'll start it up again."
"Oh," Adam said. "Okay."
An egg full of tortured souls. A few days before the chance is gone.
"Well, let me know if you need me before my geas runs out."
Adam quickly and quietly made his way out.

December 8th, 2023
Adam stood at the base of the marble steps built up to the looming facade. On either side of him, thick pillars rose up to meet the sloped roof, a singular courthouse looking over Three Portlands.
It looked entirely different from the last time Adam visited, save for a single static detail: the bronze nameplate hung over the door, upon which "E. Rowe" was inscribed.
He knocked on the door. It opened on its own a moment later, revealing a dimly-lit hallway. In the center of the hallway, a man with sunken eyes and a grizzled beard stood.
Adam waved. "Hey, dad."
Eustace Rowe squinted. "Come in."
The old man led him down the hall, straight to a circular chamber that must have been the kitchen. Eustace had been cutting up some blood avocados, and the stained knife was still on the cutting board.
Adam swiveled, examining the building's smooth construction. "You, uh, changed it a lot since I was last here."
The man leaned against a granite counter. "These changes will stick, this time. What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I'm just, uh, well, I wanted to talk, and-"
His father cut him off. "Is this about your boyfriend? Something happen to him?"
Adam's brow furrowed for a moment. "No, he's in Europe, actually. We're thinking of, uh, moving here. To Three Portlands."
"Europe. Typical." He rolled his eyes. Adam ignored it.
"But I actually came to ask if you had an electronic exorcism device."
His breath rasped when he laughed, satisfied in his assumption's approximate accuracy. "And why is that?"
The gears of geas locked up in Adam's mind. "I'm staying in a roach motel, and the room's full of bed-demons. I only need it for a day." He didn't even need to lie, the words just gushed as if they had been the truth all along.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I figured you might have one lying around. From the old days. Right?"
"I just might." He shifted his weight against the counter turning to face Adam more fully. "Tell me, though. What do you know about Redzone Security?"
His blood chilled. His face couldn't betray anything. "Not much, really." Adam couldn't control himself. The non-disclosure geas ruled him.
"Really? And how about that job they offered you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Adam was frozen in place. His body wasn't his. The probability field of the geas had collapsed solely to the possibility of denial, and Adam could not act other than to deny.
"Think I can't tell when you're in Portlands, Adam? Think I couldn't smell that geas on you when you walked in the door?" He was smiling. It was a game. "Fucking pathetic. You should know better."
Adam's body was silent. His mind was locked.
From behind Eustace, an object not unlike an oversized tape recorder came from the door, propelled by some unseen force. It landed in the old mage's outstretched hand, and he then held it out to Adam's front.
"Take it, get out of my house. Come back when you're not under control."
Adam's hand grasped the edge of the device. He managed to nod, and he felt himself turn, and begin walking out the door.
"And Adam," Eustace called after him, just before the door shut. "Give 'em hell for me."
Once he was out of sight, Adam felt the geas relinquish control. He breathed heavy.
Three down. Only one thing left to do.

It was late at night when Adam finished constructing the summoning square as dictated by the patent.
A cube, constructed of paper, decorated with symbols of power. A simple way to bridge a notional gate between the overworld and Three Portlands. That should be enough.
On his desk, he had set up his thaumic typewriter to transcribe voice commands, a line of communication to the legal entity he was inviting to his room.
Now, he lay down on his bed.
At this point, it was only a matter of time before Redzone shuffled their pocket dimension into storage, and Adam lost any hope of connecting to it, of committing metastatic jailbreak of a thousand lost consciousnesses.
There was no more time. He had to act now.
He felt the presence in the room, the force of a mind alien to his own. He clutched a bag of green séance dust in one hand, and in the other he cradled the oversized tape recorder.
He switched the exorcism device on. A disk on its front began to spin, slow, like a record player.
He brought the bag of dust to his lips and inhaled sharply. The powder filled his mouth and lungs, filtering him down a few levels of consciousness.
"I know you can hear me. The contract is on my desk. Just, just, be careful. It's connected to my head."
A sudden draft washed over him. He was fading out.
The entity latched on to the piece of paper that defined Adam's obligations to Redzone and began to modify.
Contradictions began to form. The geas was garbled.
Adam's head stung, his extremities lost feeling.
His mind was sinking, the dust leading it deep into the ground. His brain had a hotline straight to the ideological center of Redzone Security.
Adam lost consciousness to the refrain, NOTWITHSTANDING FALSE, ABSTAIN, ABSTAIN, ABSTAIN

Adam's mind came to in a blank white void. He was standing. Somewhere in a motel room, his physical body was experiencing the throes of Cuchulainn syndrome. Temporarily, his mind was no longer obligated to follow the geas.
In front of him was a stairway, leading further down than he could gauge. From it came a red glow.
Adam began to descend. Katabasis. He must commune with the dead.
The glow filled his vision. It was only a few steps before he was unable to ascertain what was in front of him. He continued.
The light faded, giving way to a pulsing violet. There was a door in front of him. He pushed it open.
He no longer skimmed the surface of another world, but was entirely immersed.
There was no air here, for it was too dense with the vacuous bodies of the dead. Anything else would be pushed out, into the nothing between somethings.
Some faces he saw contorted in frozen moments of great emotion. A laugh, a scream. Others followed him with empty, suspicious eyes as he waded among them.
Their arms gripped around him, weak at first, but it soon became that he could not see, and he could not move. Death all the way up. Death all the way down.
Direction lost meaning in the sea of corpses. People burned of faces and histories and choice, filled with information and trusted to tell no tales.
And Adam was in the thick of things, wedged in the center of knowledge mortals could not know, tidbits shoved in by Redzone personnel.
Do they even know what they're doing? Do they know what this is like?
The grip on Adam's body cements further. He has not gone unnoticed, and the friction against his body is drawing heat.
No, no, it's not drawing heat. The heat has always been here. The souls are just getting Adam acquainted with the broiling.
There was no sight or sound, no smell, or taste. There was just the pressure and heat of a thousand souls on every square inch of Adam's body. The mass had become conscious, perceptive of the mortal among them.
The temperature increased, and Adam's body was filled with fire. He felt tension at his arms and legs; they were being pulled away from his torso. He was being assimilated.
He clutched his limbs close to his body, away from the grabbing arms.
He is Adam Rowe. Not one of a mass.
In his left hand there was a rectangular device with a disc on the front, like a record player, a symbol of the forces that drive away a consciousness.
On Earth, it was a tool. In here, it was an idea. And ideas are indivisible.
He pressed the button beneath his thumb, and the dimension was filled with ceaseless noise, a vibration that began in his body and spread to fill the entire space.
The bodies were pushed away, a sphere of cavitation forming around him. Each soul exited the dimension like air escaping a balloon, flowing to wherever they belonged, like a ripple across the multiverse.
The redness slowed. The fire dissipated. The pocket dimension was empty save for Adam, Redzone's information lost forever.
Adam released his grip on the exorcism device. It stayed where it was, floating in space, a ward. This place was now closed. Redzone couldn't send any more souls here.
The dust was wearing off, and Adam found himself drifting upwards again. The last thing he saw was a suffusion of blue.

December 9th, 2023
His eyes were crusted over and he felt the sting of sunlight. When he forced them open, he found himself back in his motel room. It was morning.
He checked his desk, where his contract lay, changed back to its original form. Like nothing ever happened. Untraceable.
He inhaled deeply, but his breath was cut short by a slamming on the door. Someone was beating it in.
He glanced around for something to defend himself with, but there wasn't enough time. Each knock on the door shook free splinters as a gash formed in the cheap wood.
Moments later, the door fell inwards with a mighty crack.
Standing in the doorway was the imposing Redzone agent he had seen at the coffee shop, still wearing sunglasses. Peeking out behind them was Samantha, eyes orbs of fire as she pushed her way to the front.
"Adam. What did you do?" she spat.
Instinctively, he raised his hands in the air. "Nothing. I couldn't- I was incapable of doing anything."
"We know you did, you must have. You must have done something." She nodded to herself. "You really fucked things up, Adam."
"I don't know what you're talking about." The geas still had a few hours left, and it led his tongue.
Her mouth formed a thin line as she curled her fingers towards him, beckoning the larger agent, who stepped forward. They removed their sunglasses to reveal two scarred craters where their eyes would be.
They approached him and reached out their hands for his neck but-
"Stop, stop!" Adam yelled. "Stop." And the hands paused.
He took a breath. "You think, if you take me, if you kill me, my father won't know? He won't tell people it was you?"
Adam started to lower his hands. "He knows a lot of people. They trust him. How would your reputation fare if people knew you murdered employees who were under geas? Unable to do what you accuse them of? You said that trust was everything. You know you can't risk that."
Samantha cocked her head at him. After a moment her flat expression twisted into a wicked smile.
"You know, you should really watch your back, Adam. Not everyone in this town is as lax as we are." She turned about, and strode down the hallway, the large agent trailing.
Adam took a deep breath, smoothing his clothes with his hands. His door was still broken. He couldn't stay in this motel for much longer. He sat back on his bed, head resting in his hands.
A moment later, he felt a warm hand on his back. His head turned to the left and he could see, sitting on the edge of his bed, the transparent, blue form of a woman.
He watched her, and she wordlessly stared back. Her hand patted gently on his shoulder, and she gave a silent nod. Then she was gone, vanished into the hanging clouds of Three Portlands.
The air was quiet, and full of dust. His room was a mess, splinters of wood scattered across the floor.
But he would make it to tomorrow. And for now, that would have to be enough.

Footnotes
1. Pronounced as a sudden inhalation of air through closed teeth, a vague approximation of the sound most people make when they hear the words "ambient soviet factorypunk"