Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 166

by Neil Clarke

  He shrugged, and she felt that he’d seen that already, people changing their minds at the very last instant . . . ? It was a complicated feeling and she had trouble parsing it.

  “All right, I’m clearing you for the medical,” he said. “Go on ahead. Third floor, the corridor on the left.” He made a little gesture with his fingers and a path traced itself on her interface overlay. Such a deeply ingrained gesture, she thought. None of the stiffness of those born off-Eren, the older generation. How odd. But some people were more flexible than others.

  She followed the path.

  The doctor running the checks also looked Worowan; a short, stout woman with a spring in her steps. Her skin was much darker than Oyārun’s. She introduced herself as Esesewi, and they greeted each other in the Worowan manner, grabbing the forearms and bowing their heads. Oyārun’s family were mostly Plainsfolk, but she knew the basic Worowan customs from their neighbors in their housing unit.

  Oyārun could feel the doctor making a preliminary assessment based on that single greeting: the texture and temperature of her skin, the steadiness—or, rather, unsteadiness—of her movements, the strength of her grip. All with effortless expertise.

  “The examination is not particularly invasive,” Esesewi said. Her voice was warm and deep, a welcome feeling among the cold walls. “Your interface gathers most of the relevant information already, I just need a data dump. Give me root?”

  She did. Esesewi went on talking while she examined the data. She described the additional tests—just a few simple cognitive tasks, as the detailed workup would be done concurrently with the new set of modifications once Oyārun passed the medical. Then the doctor looked directly at her, away from the readouts supplied by her interface. “By the way, you know I’m supposed to dissuade you?”

  Oyārun shrugged. “You’re the second person today.”

  Esesewi chuckled. “No point in it, then?” She grinned at her. “I haven’t said I wanted to dissuade you, or that I would attempt to dissuade you, only that I was supposed to dissuade you. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to do this, that’s just fine.” She focused on the data again. “You will want out, but that will happen after the point of no return, you know?”

  A wave of sudden fear ran through her. “I’m—”

  “Look, it happens to almost everyone. I’ve been here a long time. It happens over and over. Now you’ll just have to decide whether to go with your true will as opposed to your will at a given moment.”

  She wasn’t sure she understood that. “ . . . Decide?”

  “That happens right before the point of no return. You decide your true will and hand us the ability to enforce it. Even against yourself.” The doctor sighed. “We wouldn’t do this if the process was reversible, or if it could be stopped, paused. But once started, it needs to run its course. It’s dangerous to interrupt—dangerous for you, for us, for everyone. You can say no before, you can say no afterward, you can quit at any time, but you can’t say no during the process itself.” She spread her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  Oyārun hugged herself. A cold sensation was forming inside her, pulling her innards together like a black hole. “I’m—” She looked down. The floor was smooth and gray. “I mean that makes sense. I’m just afraid.”

  Esesewi glanced up. “We expect people to be afraid. I’d be worried for you if you weren’t.”

  Aramīn looked down on his bare desk, his expression contemplative. He was mulling over the data, Oyārun knew. The medical, the more recent tests, her former data back from when she’d decided she would not train as a professional māwalēni. Such a long time ago, shortly after her power had begun manifesting in earnest. They had taught her how to channel it away in safe ways, how to ask for help, they had set up a few simple mechanisms in her mind so that she wouldn’t be troubled by the power she’d been born with but that had never particularly interested her. She had had free choice every step of the way, and she had said no. But then, she changed her mind . . .

  “This was a very clean job,” Aramīn said, looking up at her. “You had no trouble in everyday life, is that correct?”

  “It was fine.” She felt embarrassed for a moment. “Sometimes I’d have these odd feelings, not even premonitions . . . foreboding, maybe? But it was fine. Also, I had enough to help me make sense of what people were thinking, but not so much to cause problems, so . . . the helpful parts without the troublesome parts?”

  Aramīn nodded gravely. “Most people come to us when the bindings wouldn’t hold, or the power becomes unmanageable for some other reason.” He stood and began to pace again. “I have to say I’m troubled by that. It mars the quality of consent. It’s also a failing on our behalf.”

  “I didn’t come because of that,” Oyārun said. “I was fine.”

  “I know. Your motivations trouble me for other reasons.” He was with his back to her, but she could feel his consternation, drawing from a source deep enough that she couldn’t sense it without prying. She wouldn’t pry.

  He went on. “You’re here because of your interest in me. It appeals to me, I must say. And I can certainly train you, as I’ve trained many others. But I don’t think I can truly give you what you desire.” He stopped right behind her. “I don’t have abuwen. I have a different cognotype, so I don’t know this from personal experience. But I know that despite their intensity, sometimes they pass, all of a sudden. The impact of the decision you are making now will last much longer.”

  Oyārun looked up at him, craning her neck. “Are there people who . . . ” She wasn’t even sure how to phrase it. “Who want to do it for its own sake?”

  Aramīn stepped away from the chair and she couldn’t follow him with her gaze. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Some even have it as their abuwen. But let’s get back to you.” He circled her and sat back up on the top of his desk. “You are good at power raising. Not much at control, of course, since you haven’t trained at all. So we’ll emphasize power raising, if that’s agreeable with you.”

  She nodded eagerly. Aramīn looked at her askance. “I suspect that at this point, everything I say is going to be agreeable with you.” He shook his head. “What shall I do with you?”

  She was dressed in a plain white shirt and pants. She’d expected she’d have to wear something more ornate for the initiation. Many, many people had formal dress as their abuwen, and it showed. Every single function or event on Eren had its complicated rules of dress, every little fold and embroidery carried reams of meaning.

  White symbolized emptiness.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door to the small waiting room.

  Aramīn was waiting for her, standing up from one of the many cheap mass-produced chairs littering the HPRI building. Aramīn followed her gaze to the chair. “We make do with what we have,” he said gravely. “Come.”

  She stepped closer and saw he was holding a roll of some kind of tape or ribbon in his hand.

  “This is to symbolize your submission to my will and my control,” he said. “For the duration of our cooperation. That is, if you are still willing.”

  “It’s why I’m here.” Her words felt too overwrought, too verbose. She took a breath. “Yes,” she said.

  Aramīn didn’t miss the subtlety. He nodded appreciatively and smiled, a brief interruption in the ashen solemnity of his emotions.

  “Turn around.”

  She did so.

  “Your hands, please.” After a moment of confusion, she put her hands behind her back and he tied them together, the fabric of the red ribbon adhering seamlessly to itself. It didn’t stick to her skin. She experimentally pulled her hands apart, but the ribbon held.

  “This might be intense,” Aramīn said, but he didn’t pause. He put another strip of red ribbon around her neck. Her breath caught and she didn’t understand why—the ribbon wasn’t tight, it fit just the right way—

  It seemed right. It seemed proper.

  She could feel Aramīn’s hands, hesitating mid
air for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and led another red strip down her back along her spine, tying the loops around her neck and hands together. Finally, he made a handle for himself at the end of a long strip, affixed between her hands, and he led her out into the hall.

  The white hall was smaller than she’d expected. She recognized some people: Esesewi, standing to one side, the bright white lights overhead creating highlights on her now-serious face. Emien, gangly and sleep deprived. People she’d come across in HPRI, casual acquaintances, always glad to see her even if weary and exhausted.

  Aramīn walked up to a small dais with Oyārun, then stood in front of her.

  Two large, muscular people stepped to her sides and one person walked up behind her. She was surrounded.

  “Why have you come here?” Aramīn asked, so softly and gently that she yanked her head up and stared at him in amazement.

  Then she realized she didn’t know the words of the ritual. She shuddered. She opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.

  “Just answer with your own words,” Aramīn added and nodded encouragingly.

  She swallowed. Her throat felt completely dry. “I’ve come here to join the System,” she said, as simply as she could. Fewer possibilities for error that way. She struggled to think clearly despite the all-consuming fear.

  “Is it your true will to join the System?” he declaimed.

  She nodded, then said yes.

  “Do you give me the ability to enforce your true will upon yourself, when it is perilous to stop?”

  She was about to answer, but he held up a hand. “Wait. After you’ve said yes, there won’t be any turning back. I want you to know that.” He looked at her like—like a daughter? No, something else, some other relation. Her head swam. “Do you understand?”

  She nodded silently.

  He raised his voice again. “What is your answer?”

  “My answer is yes.”

  Aramīn nodded to the assistants. They stepped to her and gripped her arms, her shoulders. They held her in place.

  “The people of the Free State of Eren support you,” he went on, “the people are here to catch you if you stumble and fall. You will not have to face the pain alone.” He paused.

  She shuddered. The assistants held her strong.

  “With the power vested in me by the people of Eren and the Ways,” he stepped forward and placed a hand on top of her bare head, “I take control.”

  His voice had—if not his own māwal—the power of the ages and the expanses behind it. Her legs gave way. The people didn’t allow her to fall to her knees. Her shoulders hurt as she was held up.

  Aramīn went on. “I swear I will only act for the benefit of all sentience. I swear I will only cause pain when necessary, and I will not subject you to anything beyond your capacity to handle, as far as I can estimate.”

  He took his hand off her head and pulled out a small implement from the folds of his clothing. A—dagger of some sort? With some kind of force field in place of the blade. Her eyes flickered to the blade, to his face, to his fingers gripping the handle all too strongly—

  “This is to remind me of my oath,” he said and rammed the blade into his open palm.

  Her breath caught. The field did not wound, there was no blood, no scar—but a whip of pain ran through his entire body, so intense that Oyārun could not help feeling it herself.

  “I know what I demand,” he said in an undertone. “Remember, always remember, I will only cause pain when necessary.”

  He yanked her chin up and pushed the blade into the middle of her forehead.

  She screamed, her screams resonating inside her skull, and she fell, fell into darkness, and the people held her strong, and would not let go.

  2.

  Oyārun was floating, her body out of sync with her mind. Was she lying on a bed? Was she—

  Aramīn’s words circled in her head; she knew she had to hold on to them, preserve their meaning at all costs. The scene played in her head, over and over, in a loop. She no longer understood the words.

  Spiders, insects, mythical aliens of yore, he had said. Symbolic of the phylogenetically oldest parts of the nervous system, the ones most inaccessible to acting consciousness. Aversion is normal; in general, one does not want the acting consciousness to trespass there.

  Most of the time, that is. A flicker of a smile. You will need to go there; you will need to welcome these parts into yourself. Give yourself over. We will keep you safe.

  We will keep you safe.

  She made an attempt to reach out. Her arms were tied down with wide straps and the feeling of the out-of-phase representation of her hand reaching out and passing through the straps spooked her. Where was she? What was going on? She knew she was supposed to remember. Was this an out-of-body experience? Could she simply float away?

  She found it harder and harder to keep a hold on her consciousness, until it simply drifted away, her drifting away with it, floating on the streams, bobbing up and down.

  It was black and gleaming like chitinous shapes; it was white and porous, desiccated; it was metallic quicksilver, protean, ever changing. It was translucent.

  It reached out to Oyārun with sharp thin legs, and as she moved closer, she saw the legs ended in talons, but she knew it was good this way. She did not feel the supposed aversion.

  Ten-eight, looking nominal so far.

  Still, keep an eye on sub-layer E for adverse reactions.

  She only knew, with a certainty of ages-old declarations, the bedrock of civilization, that while it was fundamentally alien and inhuman, it was a part of her, now and forever, extending into all dimensions of time and space.

  If it was her, then the only natural impulse was to unify, merge, draw it close.

  It wanted to eat her, and she knew she had to be cut apart and consumed, that was why she was there, in this fogged-over landscape extending into infinity—

  It needed to devour her, and she could feel its urgency inside herself, in her stomach, in her chest. In the core.

  It needed to flay her, first of all.

  So many sharp legs!

  Spiking over F2. Looks nice and clean.

  Yes, excellent response . . . very clean so far.

  Cutting and slicing, holding fast.

  Blood flowing ever so slowly, as if time itself gradually came to a halt.

  The pain was there, but the pain was good, it was only a part of the process and it showed the process itself had not ceased to move along;

  it wanted to merge, to pull apart the muscles and nestle close—

  bursting out into millions of tiny tendrils, lodging itself in the flesh—

  pulling apart the spinal column, running up golden yellow and burning hot into the brain, all of a sudden very fast—

  searing mere thought with its touch, and she screamed, screamed, and screamed—

  Of course, proceeding as planned.

  There was only her and the being, alien and immense, an impenetrable monolithic sentience come face-to-face with her. There was nothing else.

  It was so much bigger than her!

  Yet she could not shirk away. It was inside her, it was her, it was beautiful and hungry.

  She gave in.

  Oyārun was lost in the moment. How much time had passed? She was still there, face-to-face, merging, howling in pain and in raw, bare need, holding it close and being cut apart. People were speaking, passing messages. So many levels of the real, and she could pass between each of them with the barest thought, the faintest gesture . . .

  She was tied to a machine, some kind of complicated apparatus, with many thin-limbed surgical instruments issuing forth from a central hub—

  the spider was eating her, feasting on her, embedding itself into her—

  She’s taking well to the implantation. Switching to DF for some testing.

  Take it slow, there’s no need to hurry.

  She was yanked back into her physical body with a sudde
nness that took away her breath; all around her everything was white and spotless and metallic and clean, more unreal in its sharpness than anything she’d experienced.

  She was being disassembled, reassembled—her thoughts were crystal clear.

  She looked down on her left arm, flaps folded apart like in some medical demonstration, skin flayed. She felt no horror, no apprehension, but no detachment either; she was there, in the moment, and the moment was there for her.

  Someone was monitoring her mind, from up close. She reassured the person and the person reassured her in kind. She felt a vague urge to merge, but instead she floated, floated high, drifted away . . .

  I’d say she needs a break, one of the voices said, and she wished to respond that everything was all right, but then there was no more of her, and no more of the voice.

  Oyārun was lying on a hospital bed, all very white and clean and comfortable. She sank into the pillow and the shape-forming mattress. She was tired like generations, her body heavy as stone in a bed of white fluff, in a white room, completely surrounded, wrapped in a thick blanket . . . was it all really so white, or had her mind stopped making sense of her surroundings altogether? Was it only a simulation or a mindscape?

  Either way, she relished the soft sensation all over her body—calming, relaxing, peaceful. Her skin felt raw, chiseled away until it was the thinnest film covering her self.

  She made an attempt to tilt her head—so hard. Her skull felt filled with sharp-edged objects sliding on each other.

  Her left arm was lying on top of the blanket. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt of some sort. Her skin looked unchanged. She tried her hardest to lift her hand, but she could only rotate it a little; still, she got a better view. As the muscles in her hand shifted, she noticed the faint lines embedded in the flesh—or was she imagining things?

  She sighed a hoary, raspy sigh, and relaxed, her body giving up in exhaustion even though she was no longer in pain.

  Aramīn was sitting by Oyārun’s bedside. Mentally checking some kind of computer readout? He glanced up when he noticed she’d shifted in bed.

  “How are you feeling? All the parameters we’re monitoring are well within boundaries.” He nodded at a corner of the ceiling.