[partim] Mori.

Apr 22

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The true panacea.

After finding I could walk again easily, I committed that page of the book to memory.  If the unknown alchemist had made any other impossible discoveries, we could figure them out later, when I had translator access—for now, the allcure would be enough.

“I suppose there’s an easy way out from here?” I asked Munk. “Possibly some kind of giant-sized exit?”

Munk started walking along the shelf.  I followed.

By one wall there was, in fact, a spiral staircase leading down—had the giant had normal-sized assistants?—leading down to another door like the one I’d come through, and then the golem was leading me through those infernal endless passages again.

This time, of course, there was no pain and no fatigue; I felt I could walk a good long time.  So it probably seemed a good deal less time than it should have before Munk led me out of the halls of illuminated stone and into a dark room in what turned out to be a basement of the university library.

And then there was Internet.

I forwarded the formula to the professor first, of course.

And then I posted it on the alchemy metanetwork.  I didn’t bother explaining—not yet—I needed to get this out as fast as possible.

People were dying, after all, and they didn’t have to be.

There were already confirmations being posted before I left the library.

“I think it’s gonna be a good day, Munk,” I said.

The triage started almost immediately—as fast as the doctors could be convinced. The alchemical principles, of course, were rock-solid, but without an understanding of them the panacea might as well be snake oil to them at best, or possibly harmful or fatal at worst.

But it happened, and we changed the world.

All worlds.

Since that day, though, I never saw another kelvin, not even in those undertunnels when we went back for the rest of the giant alchemist’s discoveries.

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[partim] Blake.

Apr 22

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Blake landed on the library roof, folding his wings and crouching down so I could slide off him more easily.

The big red gryphon rolled over on his back, and after various stretches of various limbs he had changed himself back into a big red kangaroo.

I sat next to him, resting a paw on his belly, and looked down into his eyes.

He looked back, and then through me, up at the stars behind the dome.  I rolled over on my back next to him, looking up likewise.

“I’m sure we don’t belong up here,” I said.

“Just because you’re not supposed to do something doesn’t mean you don’t do it,” Blake said.  “It means you think about whether doing it is worth the consequences.”

I laughed.  “You’re trying to corrupt me.”

“Not at all,” Blake said.  “Just reminding you that you have the power of choice.  Even if the consequences are dire, you can choose to risk them—a ‘Keep Out’ sign is not an impenetrable force field.  So what are the consequences of being caught up here that are so dire anyway?  What’s the scenario you imagine?”

“Well, for trespassing we might go to court…” I said. “Might be a fine, or even jailtime.  A blemish on my public record.”

“That’s a worst case,” Blake said.  “Isn’t it more likely that, say, someone might find us and say, ‘Hey kids, you don’t belong out here, come back inside,’ and we do?  Or that we don’t get found at all?”

“You are trying to corrupt me,” I said.

“Only a little.”  He turned to face me, resting one heavy arm on my chest.

And he moved his arm lower, his paw passing my stomach. “Maybe about… this much?”

He squeezed playfully.

“In a public place?” I said.

“Ah, but it isn’t public,” Blake said. “There’s a Keep Out sign.  This place is private for the many who allow a piece of cardboard to be stronger than their willpower, when it should take a good deal more.”

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[partim] Mitch.

Apr 10

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I went on a good long ways, still hearing Toby’s thoughts, till I reached the highway and figured I ought to turn back.  I haven’t found a limit to my range once I have a connection to someone.  The hard part is that I have no sense of distance or direction with it, really: if someone isn’t right by me it’s hard to make that first connection, as I discovered watching cars go by on the overpass, trying to listen.  I couldn’t see the drivers and when I tried to connect with them, all I heard was static.

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[partim] Shotrox.

Apr 10

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I got as close to the violated circle as I dared.  Could anyone make it out after all?  There was still a lot of magic there they hadn’t fed on yet, but it would take a lot to shake off one nightmare, let alone a swarm of them.  The late arrivals stood around the place of power, watching on in horror. Were they losing family, friends, as the light diminished?

A wave of helplessness came over me—I might have been too close to the circle indeed—but I remembered, then, that I wasn’t too late—I still had my extra time.

I ran.

The nearest circle was a good way off to the north of town, far enough that most people from around here didn’t go—mostly folk from the countryside.  It’d be most of an hour’s walk—but with my extra time, running fast as I could, I hoped to make it in ten minutes.

Hopefully there’d be at least someone who could hold on that long.

Now, our kind may be good runners, but I wasn’t in the best of shape, my trade not being a physically demanding one.  So while I managed to charge through the forest without flagging, when I reached the fields beyond I was already starting to overheat, and I was really starting to hurt by the time I jumped the hedge on the border of the northern woods.

I made it over, but lost my footing, falling flat in the mud.  I guess the rain had come to this end of town.

It felt good—the impact of falling over was nothing next to my aching muscles, but while it would have been nice to just rest there, the nightmares were devouring good maccans.

I pushed myself up against my body’s protests, and started running again, panting hard.

The light of the northern circle was already in view.

I ran into the place of power, yelling, “Sahamma, sahamma, sahai!” I collapsed again as I crossed the threshold. “Nightmares at the town circle.” I couldn’t say any more.

An older maccan got up and stood by me and started directing people.

Spent, I passed out.

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[partim] Mori.

Apr 10

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I held on to the kelvin tightly, even though its heat burned my paw.  I had the allcure, after all, and the poor gryphon, now in tears, seemed to need help.

I wouldn’t let him go.  “Here,” I said, offering him the panacea with my free paw.  “You’ll be all right.”

The gryphon looked up at me, still lost, still miserable.  Of course.

“The translation doesn’t work down here, does it…? You don’t understand me at all.”

Kelvins didn’t talk, but surely they listened… what did they understand? “Weĉjo ijen?” No reaction. “Samskrtam?” No reaction.

My paw was surely blistering from the kelvin’s heat, but on the bright side it didn’t have much feeling left.

“Munk,” I said, addressing the golem, “Is there anything nearby I can use to communicate with him?”

Munk came near and put on big clay hand on my head and another on the kelvin’s.

And there was a thought in my head—it wasn’t spoken, just the memory of words I understood, though not in any language I knew: “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

You’ve seen the city of jasper, I thought.

The kelvin did not appear to have heard the thought.

“But this was promised to us,” I said, and this time the kelvin noticed.  “Weren’t we told… ‘Never again will there be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years—he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth—he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed?’”

It pays to keep a local copy of some things.

“It’s not the promise of the city, where there’ll be no death, but it is a promise that we can fight it a good long time, barring the sudden accident…”

I was rambling. I was fairly sure the kelvin’s heat was travelling up my arm; I was getting sweaty.

“Please, let me help you.” I offered the panacea again.

The kelvin disappeared.

All right.

I took the bowl—awkwardly, as my burned paw wouldn’t cooperate with holding it—and drank the liquid light till I felt the pain fully dissolve.

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[scrap] Scratch.

Apr 10

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I passed through the crowd under the cover of invisibility.  I wasn’t sure yet, exactly, what I could do with this power—all the obvious options seemed to be nefarious ones.

Invisibility is a villain’s attribute, isn’t it…

If I don’t intend to eavesdrop—if I don’t intend to peep—if I don’t intend to steal… after a point it just gets to be… just about the experience of passing unseen, not the utility.

It was a powerful, lonely feeling.  No eye contact, no being spoken to—like not even sharing the same space with the crowd—we were ghosts in each other’s space.

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[partim] The day of the singularity.

Apr 10

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Ralph, of course, was absolutely fascinated by this, and probably for the same reason I was less so—it seemed like one of his formulaic TV series, Quantum Leap all over again, striving to bring to life what once passed on.  There was really no way a squadron of post-singularitarians couldn’t march on the past and repossess the dead in force? The eternal fate of every person that ever lived depended on a pig from Longview?

And then it started to hit me, and I started to feel miserable—of course it would be Ralph, we knew it was Ralph already.

But it wouldn’t be me.

There was no way I could follow him so long, into so much unknown—and if I didn’t follow—how far apart we’d grow—my porker exploring everything and meeting everyone and me sitting at home.

Over a hundred fifty years, my future self had said, and he wasn’t even thinking of Ralph anymore.

“What—” Ralph said.  “What’s wrong, sweet tiger?”  His voice was gentle in my ear.

“Nothing,” I said, on reflex.

Ralph grabbed me in his big arms and held me tightly against him. “Don’t,” he said, “don’t lie to me.” He pressed his snout to my nose and lifted my headfur from my eyes.  “See this,” he said, “there is fluid leaking from your organs of sight. Before I call in the mechanic I need to know what is causing the breakdown.  Maybe I can fix it myself.”

I shut my eyes.  “Ralph…”

His hold on me did not abate.  “It’s my duty to take care of you,” he said.  “All my heart.”

“But I’m going to lose you, Ralph… how can I do anything but lose you, with all this?”

His hold on me did not abate. “You will always be with me.”

“Through this? But I…”

“You will always be with me.  I’d rather carry you across hot coals than leave you behind.  We belong to each other.”

When I was typing “how can I do anything but lose you”, MS Word put a little blue underline under “lose”, suggesting “love” instead.

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[partim] Shine.

Apr 10

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The contest was declared a draw by forfeit, and they haven’t asked me to repeat my performance. But I think I did well enough; I’ve always been welcome there and they’ve never asked me for a dime.

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[partim] Ierak.

Apr 10

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The work has to go on.  I gathered the other officials and the chief priests and I let them know of the god’s mission and how long I expected he might be gone.  There would probably be extra services in support of the deity, and to focus the acolytes.

The closer the prospect loomed, the less interested I felt.

I left the temple and went out into the city.

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[partim] The day of the singularity.

Apr 9

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And just like that, we had a job.  Of course by “job”, I mean “colossal undertaking”. But of course there was no way Ralph would turn it down.

So we started training.

The scenario was pretty straightforward—we would get a name and a datetime from a master database, which was constantly being added to from historical and eyewitness records and archaeological finds.

We would arrive at the scene of the death a little beforehand and freeze time in a way that made sense, so that only the moriturus could see us—if he were in any position to do so—and so that we could interact with him.

Ralph would transfer their minds into an empty vessel.

We would bring the mind back to the Halkiadakis Institute, for the impressive part.  They had a chamber where the upgrades for immortality and such could be applied directly to the rescued mind.

At this point the rescued mind would start to regenerate its body, restoring itself back to its normal form, which was usually, but not always, something like the form they had in adulthood—but might also be of a different gender or phenotype—and of course free from any disease or disfigurement.

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