by E. L. Aldryc
Elodie frowned, looking at the Madilune panorama. Soraya took them over Shinju Bei, where the first morning raves were in full swing. The sea had large neon shapes touching the surface and diving back into its depths on repeat, following the dominating beats.
Elodie reflected. Soraya had a familiarity in her opinions, something that came only from listening, remembering, and thinking about what people said. Maybe she should have rebelled harder against Tammy. Or maybe she should have rebelled harder against the current.
Soraya dropped her off at the front of Rising Dawn, which was still inappropriately decorated as the daily quality assurance manager hadn't walked past yet. The event horizon and her schedule for the day were both uneventful. But something at the back of her head was nagging her. The itch would have to wait until night-time.
Friday, 7 June 2363
Soraya came home late again, and Elodie couldn’t sleep. She was staring at the ceiling in her bed restlessly. When she heard her moving in the kitchen, Elodie got up and went to see her.
Soraya was sitting by the breakfast bar. Heavy silence. There was liquor, but that wasn't the issue. It was her.
"Are you okay?" Elodie asked.
Soraya shook her head.
This wasn't Soraya who'd had a bad day at work. That one would be starting bar fights in downtown Madilune. The mood was sombre. Elodie abandoned her plans to retreat quickly.
"You wanna talk about it?" Elodie asked and sat opposite her. At first, Soraya said nothing, and Elodie took her hand.
Soraya sighed.
"You'll find out about it anyway, sooner or later," she said.
"What?"
She had a bad feeling about this. On every level.
“There’s been an accident."
The one phrase you don’t want to hear. It seemed forever before Soraya continued. Elodie felt a rush of adrenaline.
“What kind of accident?” she asked.
“We were trying to test the new tola in a controlled environment,” Soraya said. She rolled a tiny piece of ice on her glass until it dissolved. “We sent the team home early. They needed a break. I was the only one left with her. We were waiting for an urgent delivery from Byeolpyo.”
She fiddled with the glass.
“I went out to take it. I was gone for maybe ten minutes. I inspected the goods, signed it off, got Norbi to put them in storage. When I came back, I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. She’d changed the settings. I don’t know, it looked like some kind of stress test.”
“Who was with you?” Elodie asked, suspecting the answer.
“Seravina,” she replied. The name stalled them both. It couldn’t be. Seravina didn’t feel like the kind of person who could ever be in an accident. The universe blessed her with the best of luck. She used to say it all the time.
“I checked her vitals, I did the first aid, I called the emergency services. I did everything right, you know? They kept asking, but I did everything right. As soon as I came back. Ten minutes.”
This couldn’t be happening.
“They’ve been at it for hours, working on her in MediMundus. Nothing worked. It’s like there's no more potential for life in her.” Soraya took a sip again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re in shock,” Elodie said. They both were. Seravina was more than a boss. As complicated as that was. Elodie felt out of place, pulled in all directions at once. So many questions raced through her. She was in danger of collapsing under the sheer weight of them. Seravina Giovanotti. Dead? What did that even mean? Since when did people just die like this, during a stress test of a new technology? What could you even say to that?
“We’ll get through this,” she tried.
“Why? Did you see something?” Soraya tensed again, like every time she thought Elodie was reading into her. At least that was still intact.
“And what if I did? What if I said it was all gonna be fine?”
“You’d lie,” Soraya replied and reached for the bottle. She didn’t sound like herself. Elodie was worried.
“Tell me something. Tell me how you feel.”
Elodie was afraid that she would shut down completely. The past few months were hard on her too. And now this.
“Everything is going to shit,” Soraya replied.
“Elaborate,” Elodie insisted.
“It’s complicated.”
“I’ve sat through enough of your speeches, Soraya. I can handle another one.”
“This won’t go well,” she said. “Seravina wasn’t perfect. But she was a great inhibitor. She kept everyone down and in their place. If she’s really gone, then… things will get crazy. I shouldn’t have left her alone. I was the last person to see her alive. The telepath was all over me. They asked me things like ‘do you have hidden codes that can bypass security’ or if I’m involved in off-the-books projects. They’re afraid that there’s a plan to put me in charge in case something happened to her. Well, there isn’t. There’s no plan.”
Elodie knew what she was implying. Seravina had no number two. She had a dictatorship. If she was really gone, who would take over?
“How come no one—”
“Knew about it? That’s easy,” Soraya said. “The other gifted aren’t as good as you. They have limitations, and I’m sure even you’ll have trouble looking into futures connected to knowledge where you don't know how much you don't know. Like alchemy. It’s hard to read into things that are completely foreign to you. The more you know about a person, the easier it is to see their future. Same for knowledge. Rising Dawn didn't get the specs yet, didn't know the technology well enough to know it would malfunction. Especially if it happened completely coincidentally. That, plus the ability-skewing qualities of the Particle Lab. It’s twice as hard to see inside it. The present, past or future. The gifted aren’t omnipotent. And I’m grateful for that.”
She raised her glass.
Elodie wasn’t grateful. If there was ever a time she needed answers, it was now. “What will happen?” she asked.
Soraya took another sip of her drink.
“The gifted will take over temporarily. That will eventually become permanent. No one will complain because on the outside, you won’t be able to tell the difference. I can’t believe she did this.”
She said it like the dying part was Seravina’s fault. Maybe that was healthy. Maybe not. Elodie was far from equipped for dealing with this.
“Turns out, you were right all along. You were gifted far before Rising Dawn ever scouted you. You moved in just before the start of the golden age of the gifted. Hats off. Enjoy the ride.”
It started again. The itching. Elodie asked all these questions, and the current was trying to give her answers. For once it was playing nice. She couldn’t just lose it. And she couldn’t just leave Soraya in this state. But whenever she shut her eyes, it tried to take her inside the current.
“Go to sleep, Elodie. I need to think. Don’t worry, I’ll go to bed in a bit. The telepathic interrogation wore me out,” Soraya said, and Elodie didn’t have it in her to fight it.
“Good night. Wake me up anytime if you need me,” she said with as much empathy as she could muster and went into the current as soon as she sat down on her usual spot next to the bed.
The itch was like a flavour at the tip of her tongue, just strong enough that she could follow. The current still hurt her; she wasn’t strong enough to reject all the images that were crashing through her. She had to move inside tighter and tighter spots to follow when she sensed something that felt ripe, close. And for a while, she travelled with the current to reach it, even faster, knowing that she was strong enough to grasp for the piece she wanted. She expected an image, a set of scenes that would show her a story or something. But when she got it, it was only a word. One word of anger and desperation that resonated through her whole being.
Jiddispjaċini.
Aftermathematics
Monday, 10 June 2363, 7 a.m.
Elodie was sitti
ng in the posh conference room, right next to where Seravina’s office was. Had been. The gravity impacted everyone at the table. It was both a repetez and a continuation of the weekend, draped in uncomfortable silence and attempts to understand the news of death that hung heavily above her and Soraya. They felt weird laughing when they watched something funny. Elodie felt guilty when she appreciated a warm meal and thought about how happy she was to still be able to enjoy it. Seravina’s death should have meant more than a stale reminder of living for the moment. She just wasn’t sure what.
The gifted knew she was up to speed. Tammy added a small condolence note to the invitation for a Monday morning emergency meeting. The Institute was shut down for the weekend as a gesture of respect. The news had time to travel. Everything online was bursting with homages. She blocked it all.
The invitation was odd on its own. Elodie was invited as a participant, not a cheeky plus one. Soraya was not. Neither of them addressed it, but she must have known that she was excluded from the list of Institute leaders. There were no junior researchers or apprentices on that list. But Elodie was.
She was sitting right there next to Tammy, who waited for everyone to turn up, even Dr Birkelund, who reputedly hated early meetings. There was a disproportionate number of gifted in the room. Three. Four, if you included Elodie. Dr Rusu and Augustina sat at the far end of the egg-shaped table, making it look like the gifted were a type of bracket that herded everyone else. Elodie was imagining that one of them, or maybe both, could drill into a person’s mind so deeply that they destroyed it from within. It felt unfair. They were some of the loveliest people she'd ever met.
She tried to focus on anything else. Nothing good would come out of the telepaths knowing she thought they were capable of mental murder.
The scene was set to send a clear message. They were in charge now. And Elodie was a part of them.
No one chatted like they normally did before meetings. Every corner of the room was a reminder and a memory. She was dead.
Tammy wore a perfect expression of sympathy and determination. She cleared her throat.
“Thank you for coming in so early.”
She stood up, the same way Seravina liked to conduct group meetings.
“We’re all devastated. Losing Seravina is, for a lot of us, much more than losing a boss. We’re friends, we’re colleagues. We fight together, and we give it our all. Seravina was a key piece who helped us see past our own prejudice. In that aspect, she’s irreplaceable. But we’ve also been left without her in a time where our future depends on how we carry ourselves. We’re aware that even taking the weekend off in this period has caused a delay in our launch strategy. This is not what you want to hear. You want to hear that the world has stopped and is mourning. As the president of Rising Dawn, and the one responsible for our future, I feel obliged to tell you that we must go on. A significant delay in delivering the new generation of tola will have devastating consequences to our reputation in the long run.”
This was Tammy speaking, but the words sounded a lot like Seravina’s. She wouldn’t have cared about any of their dead bodies. She’d care about the Institute. And the new generation of tola.
“With your permission, Rising Dawn will focus all of its resources on delivering the product, and once we’re out of the woods, we’ll organise a proper process to appoint a new leader. Those in favour?”
A muted series of “ayes” resonated, and just like that, it was done. So far things went just as Soraya had predicted. And just like that, she was off the table, all of her privilege gone. Elodie thought about what she wanted to say to her later. “Things will get better.” They certainly didn’t work on her when she was in that situation.
“We’ve established that aside from a few bugs, the new tola is looking healthy. It’s more about polishing than finding solutions. Do you agree, Dr Lian?”
When addressed so suddenly, Dr Lian shrunk as if he wanted to hide. He didn’t like to be put on the spot, always using others to present his work. Even Elodie knew that.
“Tola is an extremely complex product. Success is only achieved by trial and error, because it’s limited by our understanding of the sublime. I’m not sure I understand your question,” he replied.
“I’m trying to ask if the key elements of the update are ready,” Tammy repeated. The leadership suited her. She didn’t backpedal.
“I can’t answer that question. I didn’t develop this product.”
The first time might have been the confusion. This time he was rude on purpose.
“You’re the head of the AI operations. If you didn’t develop the new tola generation, who did?”
Tammy asked, and as soon as she said it, both she and Elodie knew it was coming.
“Soraya did. You need to talk to her.”
You could almost hear the sound of animosity from the gifted.
Monday, 10 June 2363, 9 a.m.
Elodie never thought she’d see the day when Tammy and Soraya were forced to sit in a room and come to an agreement. It was hard to tell which one was more averse.
The first thing Soraya did when she entered the office was point at Elodie.
“Do we need witnesses?”
She looked suspiciously at all four corners in the office. It was inside Rising Dawn after all.
“I thought she would make you more comfortable,” Tammy replied.
Elodie was referred to in the third person. Brilliant. She didn't remember signing on to be the mediator. There were a few chairs around, and she settled to sit down next to an empty one opposite Tammy. She was hoping Soraya would follow before this escalated into a physical situation.
“It’s fine. I’m just here for a friendly chat, right? It’s not often I get called out here. Would have been nice to be invited to your earlier meeting too,” Soraya said.
She looked at the heavy bookshelf that took over the whole left side of Tammy’s office and turned away from it, disappointed. What did she expect? Non-gifted books? When she finally sat down, Elodie sent her a message.
[Can you please try? I’ll help in any way I can.]
“This whole junior researcher obsession Seravina had,” Tammy replied. “I don’t support it. She gave too many privileges to people who were far from ready for it. Which is why I’m sitting here, discussing the most important product launch of the decade with you. A junior researcher. I don’t want this to continue.”
[I don’t need your help.]
“That’s very progressive. You’ll remove the one perk we get for putting in most of the work. How do the futures fare on that one?”
Elodie kicked her from the side. It didn’t help.
“By the way, have you established the cause of death yet?” Soraya asked.
“How is that relevant?” Tammy snapped. Soraya brought out the worst in her too.
“They said the log was wiped for the whole hour before the accident,” Soraya went on. “And the AI wasn’t able to tell me why. If the tola malfunctioned, I need to know as much as possible about the conditions, so I can fix a mistake. Then I launch the new tola in peace and get out of your way.”
Did she just say the log was deleted? Wasn’t that the kind of detail that should have come up earlier? Was Soraya implying that Seravina’s death wasn’t an accident?
The shrieking high-pitched tone of the current returned. Not again. Elodie shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. But the current invited her, and at the risk of a seizure, she took the plunge. The feedback was instantaneous. She heard a voice, but this time the anger had more character. It was dark, and there was only a silhouette, whispering in an ear.
Jiddispjaċini.
Elodie pulled herself through the current on a high and twitched in her chair.
“... nothing that you’re implying. If anyone had the motive to hurt her, it was you. I know she had you chained to her side. I’ve been here for the whole decade. I know she was holding you back.”
Were these words really coming out of Tamm
y’s mouth? Elodie looked at her and realised she’d been caught. Tammy noticed and glanced over curiously. But judging by how well this went, she might not be in trouble. In and out. Elodie was on a roll. And she wanted to get involved.
“Can you both just back up a second,” Elodie said. “I can’t believe I have to say this, but neither of you killed Seravina. Can we establish the ‘you’re not a murderer’ level of respect and work our way up from it?”
But what did the vision mean? She couldn’t tell if it was a fragment of the future or the past. Was she imagining things because she wanted to see something so badly?
Tammy took a deep breath and sat back. An adult presence was desperately needed.
“I understand your loss. And I’m sorry. I know you’re not comfortable with the changes that might happen as a result.”
She restarted the diplomatic route.
“Just tell me what you need, Tammy,” Soraya said wearily. “I will do the work. I always do the work. That’s my job. And take a look at my hours, and my results, just in case you thought my privileges were unjustified. Then think again. I’m sure you’re keen to prove your own augmentation didn’t leave your cognitive functions neglected.”
“You’re right,” Tammy said, ignoring the swipe again like the absolute saint. “I know you deliver, and I know that if I tell you that we only have two weeks to get it ready, you’ll make it work. Am I right?”
“Why two weeks?” she asked.
“The tola launch is a priority,” Tammy said. “But the Universe of Infinite Wonder is a bigger one. The probability of reaching it is higher the sooner we launch. Two weeks is the most I can give you.”
[Your people better not screw me over.]
“It’s my project too. If you’re thinking of sabotage with a convenient scapegoat, I suggest you think again. None of you are ready for the suffering I can inflict, is that clear?”
They’d never be friends; that was a given.
“Yes, sure,” Tammy said kindly.