chisssssss
glurrrrrrr
SHHHHHHHHaaaaaa
Igra sat bolt upright in her bed, rubbed the sleep out of her duostalks, and threw the thin tunic folded on the nightstand over her thorax. Rising, she went to the room’s window. As she walked, her chitinous toes clicked on the scarwood floor, scuffing it slightly. It couldn't be helped; scarwood was a soft material, but widely available here in the Wastes. When she reached the window, she looked out onto the darkness of the Wasted nighttime, knowing what she would see. Sure enough, a group of cephalopods, each at least ninety cubits long, were breaching upwards from the sand as if it were water, then making long, slow arcs through the air and back down to the dunes. As they hovered momentarily in the air, the long splines of their tentacles lit up with a brilliant esparine-colored light, rippling the local space-time with strands of metachrome. And as they sunk back into the sands, they chuffed and larred louder than a Nikloid, the audions on their hind tentacles releasing a sound loud enough to make the Gods need earplugs.
Igra sighed, massaging the sensorium bead at her temple. “Frukking glow squids.”
It was the eighth night in the past two weeks Igra had been awoken by glow-squid activity. This time of the annum, the 'squids were in their hypertrans phase, returning from far dimensions to their spawning grounds here in the Wastes. As their reproductive glands became active, the 'squids became more and more attenuated to real-space, eventually resorting to crawling through the sand rather than shifting and apparating. Igra thanked the Gods that the mating fields were at least a hundred stadia from her house, over in the Whitebones. She had a half-cousin who had spent some time in Whitebones; the poor guy had nearly gone mad. As it was, Igra was already taking sedative supplements every other night. She knew that she had to be careful, though; Illiped physiology was not the best at metabolizing certain chemicals, and the brand she bought down in Sand City were not recommended for arthropods. Still, sometimes, like tonight, the incessant chuffing was just too much to handle.
Igra doubted whether he'd be able to get back to sleep. Probably not—she could feel the tension in her chitin that only time could relieve.
She turned away from the window and left her small, sparse bedroom and went out into
It was in the third left-angular declination (roughly corresponding to the Earth-time of ___, 2004) of the Red-2 Local Sub-brane that the Scarifex Convent occurred. An unpredictable buildup in the momentum of thought-based condensate caused a co-radial brane-axis to become unstuck, leading to a massive leakage of essential-substance-waveform packets into an unretrievable voidspace. As a secondary effect, the Red-2 Local Sub-brane became temporarily fused with its nearest neighbor in the branar overplane, a linear-physic matter-time Expanse with a 3-fold terminal designation. To the humans of planet Earth, this Expanse was thought of as the Universe in which they lived. With regards to the Expanse, the co-branar fusion had the effect of causing a tectonic shift in a certain region of the Earth-planet, referred to as the "Indian Ocean" by the corporeal-Earth-denizens. While the resultant tsunami was of course devastating, the leakage of essential-substance-waveform packets from the Red-2 Local Sub-brane caused untold chaos to its inhabitants. Entire Thought-Manifolds and Conscious-Avatar Sprites dissolved into their constituent indivisible components, and some of the largest time-memory conduits simply ceased to compile. Realizing that further leakage could lead to a complete destabilization of consciousness-matrices throughout the entire Sub-Brane, a conclave of higher-order Avatar Sprites convened to engage in instantaneous data transfer to formulate a comprehensive action plan for repairing the damage done to the Sub-brane. After much deliberation, it was determined that a sufficient quantity of level-2 indivisible rotating matter-packets (known to the inhabitants of Earth as Helium) would be able to repair the damage. The large nuclear-fusion compiling sphere around which the Earth orbited had Helium in plenty, but the branar fusion had created only one Transmat Gap through which corporeal-matter transfer between the two branes was possible.
The spot was in Lower Manhattan, right about 10th Avenue and 51st street.
Soon it was determined that a team of matter-proficient Avatar Sprites, no more than five, would go through the Transmat Gap, locate a third-esper of Helium (around ___ cubic __), and return through the Transmat Gap within a red arc-waning, or within about an hour. The most elite matter-proficient Avatar Sprites, 008, 05b, 077, and 06c, were briefed on the nature of their duty, provided with a matrix to attenuate them to the Earth-universe reality climate, and then channeled into the Transmat Gap.
The four arrived at around 10:45pm, materializing in a school's basketball court.
I remember the day some six-plus-three-months years ago when I, having proved worthy of advancing to a national academic competition of no real importance, stood on the 22nd-floor interior balcony of the Imperial Queen Hotel in our nation's Capital.
It was the day of the quarterfinals, and two days had passed since we (being my parents and I) had flown in from our blustery city in Upstate New York. Those past two days had essentially been and endless procession of tradition and guided events, galas and parties for the precocious youths whose academic skill had proven them to be the best in the country. I, as had become increasingly common, was totally disinterested in the structured events, the ceremonial artificiality that no one questioned or seemed able to express their disgust with. The only thing that provided me any real satisfaction was the free food, which was of exceeding quality. I felt some measure of shame that I was eating so much, and my parents said much of the same. They had not been as optimistic as I had thought they would be about making the trip, being in Washington, having their child be a national contestant. In fact, they seemed more worried that I had not studied enough in the months leading up to the competition.
I wanted to tell them to fuck off, frankly, but I've never been the type to disregard tact entirely.
The quarterfinals had been early in the morning, and had consisted of a computerized test to determine who would advance to the wondrous televised higher levels of the competition. I had tried my hardest, but my score had been two points shy of the requirement for advancement. When I had told my parents this, they had delivered a platitude about "doing your best", but I could tell they were disappointed with me. Extremely disappointed. When we had gotten back to the hotel room after lunch, they decided to lay on their bed watching television, delivering monosyllabic and emotionless responses to all the things I said.
Hence why I had gone out to the balcony; to be alone, to think, to contemplate.
It is worthy of mention that the Imperial Queen Hotel is a magnificent piece of architecture; a massive, thirty-story remnant of the heyday of Art Deco, it had a spacious interior, to the point where it seemed almost hollow. All the rooms in the hotel had exterior windows, and each floor ringed all the way around the interior of the hotel with a view of the interior, with large balconies at each of the cardinal directions. The ground floor was called the Plaza, and featured multiple restaurants, terraces, and shops. The ceiling of the hotel was a magnificent dome of glass, and was illuminated night and day. The most beautiful part of the hotel, though, was the Pond; a brilliant series of interconnected pools, each with its own set of fountains and waterfalls. The Pond dominated the majority of the Plaza, and was incredible to look at from above.
That was precisely why I, on the 22nd-floor northern balcon, had decided to lean against the railing and gaze down upon it, watching the spectacle of the many fountains and their choreography.
I wanted to jump, to free-fall and when my downward transit was complete, never have to deal with human beings again.
"You could do it, you know." I was startled by a voice behind me, but was reassured when I looked and saw my Spirit floating in the air there. Such Spirits were everywhere, tied to the mortal plane by numerous reasons, and only visible to a few. Some called them ghosts, others called them angels or demons. In truth, there were a variety of Spirits, of kinds and clades as numerous as the ones humanity possessed. This particular spirit was a Wanderer, a psychic manifestation of a human consciousness that had died with something unresolved. I had done it a favour some years ago, a thing I'm not proud of, but a thing that had to be done. In return, it had offered its services to me, a kind of benevolent thrall-ship. It preferred to be called Dorian, its best guess at what it had been called in life.
"Do what, Dorian?" I asked.
The Spirit shimmered a bit, an act I always likened to twiddling one's thumbs. "You could jump."
I laughed. "Right, and be killed on impact? You're supposed to give me helpful advice, not urge on suicidal tendencies."
Dorian floated through the air towards me, changing colours as it did. "But it's more than that. You…I'm not sure if you'd understand."
I was curious. As a non-corporeal entity who dwelled partially in the mortal world and partially in one of the many Astral planes that made up Creation, Dorian didn't always make sense. But it had never advocated doing something that would cause me harm.
"I know it's difficult," I said, "but try to explain it in terms a mortal like me would comprehend."
Dorian shimmered again, obviously collecting its thoughts. "Well," it said slowly, "there's water down there. And you know how powerful water can be."
I did. Water was the most inherently powerful of all the Elements, a universal conduit that amplified all psionic resonance. All living things are of course mostly water, and those living things in possession of a consciousness depended on it for their awareness and link to the Quintessence which made all life possible. I knew several people who could use water to scry, to divine fortunes, even to summon things from Astral realms. But I had none of those abilities; I had a tiny bit of Sight that allowed me to see some varieties of Spirits, and a low-level psionic Talent that occasionally allowed me to know things that I would otherwise have no ability to know.
"Of course I know how powerful water can be," I replied, "but that means fuck-all to me. I have no skill with Fluidics, or any other active Talent I can put to use. I just see you and your kind floating around."
Dorian changed colors rapidly, from a kind of dark esparine to a bright marlay ochre. I was surprised; obviously it felt very strongly about what it had to say.
"//It's not just that. It…