by E. L. Aldryc
"This is all super interesting. And this is where the person goes?" Soraya pointed to the stupid chair.
"Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. But it's what you don't see that makes the difference." She sat down on it, and the safety net she felt before still stood in the same place.
"Wait, don’t do it yet," Soraya said. "What do I do if it goes wrong? How will I know?"
"If it goes wrong, you won't notice. And the only thing you'll be able to do is wait till morning and pass on my apologies to Tammy. And if I'm still close to alive, ask them please to revive me, okay? Forget what I said before.”
Elodie took the silver ball from Soraya and crushed it in her palm. And with those words, she jumped right into the current. There was the net. Like an accent relic from a lost race. It was almost divine. The blackout. She felt more focused straight away; the jolt of alchemical focus was smooth and effortless. Something glistened in her awareness. It was almost too easy. A path, an easy path had been carved, one that practically offered itself and beckoned her to follow. The fragments of the current formed a vision.
There was a room inside the Institute, the intricate geometric symbol that codified its properties was hard to distinguish, but definitely right there, left of the door. The room had no source of light, apart from something that emanated both sound and pulses of dark blue that made Elodie sick just by looking at it. It was constantly decomposing, with another layer within it born inside it, floating to the top and falling off, dissolving into nothingness. Was this a projection of some sort? It didn’t look or feel like anything the Institute would produce. No chart that would indicate what kind of experiment this was, just layers of light that didn’t quite seem bright enough to be it. She tried to pull closer, but the vision started to dissolve. With the pulsating orb, Elodie felt it out there and inside of her, beating away and making her feel more nauseated by the minute. She didn't pay enough attention to the room to look for identifying clues. Standard Lab. The ceiling was low, no windows, naturally, but the shape was interesting. There were needs for a lot of shapes for specific types of research, like spheres or perfect cubes, but not an irregular L-shape like this. Nausea reached her physical body, and Elodie practically snapped into place. In and out. Like a pro.
Soraya, who was browsing something next to her, absently flinched and closed a window in front of her. Even as the light vanished, her hair gave off a faint glow.
"Already? I thought you said this will take all night."
Elodie wasn’t even tired.
"This was a lot easier than I thought," she said.
"You're trying to say you found something?" Soraya enquired carefully.
"I don't know if this makes any sense, but there was this room. And inside it was something. Something pretty disgusting."
"In what way?" Soraya tuned in fully.
"Okay, so," Elodie made the weirdly bubbling shape of an orb with her hands. "It was about this big and it was pulsating. And it smelled without scent, kind of like you knew it was rotting all the time."
"What colour was it?" Soraya asked quickly. "I mean, was there an obvious one?"
"It was like blue, but a dark blue. Why?"
Elodie looked at her suspiciously. This was so typical.
“What? Do you know what it is?”
“Not with the little information you’ve given me,” Soraya replied. Elodie was inclined to believe it. For now.
“It didn't look like one of our patents, that's all I can say," Elodie said. "It just seemed… so powerful.”
“That’s a bit concerning,” Soraya said.
“I tried to get a description of the room, but it didn't have a lot of unique qualities.”
"You're better than that, Elodie. I'm sure you picked something up.” These were the same words Seravina would have used if she were here. It reminded Elodie that she'd brought this mission on to herself and that just because there were no bosses in with her, it didn’t mean that she could just stop where she got stuck.
"It was definitely at the Institute, or somewhere that was trying really hard to look like it. The doors had all the markings of our labs, and in the same place."
"From which part of the Institute?" Soraya asked.
"It wasn't Reijin. Didn’t look like alchemical insignia. And it wasn't MediMundus. Wrong colour scheme. Probably Particle Lab, but there was this shape that wasn't typical."
"The shape of the room? What was it like?"
"It was like an L-shape. I mean, if I had to guess it was—" Elodie thought about the right word to use, "—wedged? In between other labs maybe? Does that make any sense?"
Soraya opened a single window in front of her but didn’t do anything with it.
"Wedged between two others, you're sure?" she asked Elodie, looking way too happy with herself.
"Yes, why?"
"Because." Soraya now input something into the window. Elodie leaned over to see what it was. A database of lab specifications at the Institute. Soraya looked up possible shapes and locations of labs that were active in the last couple of months.
“Whoever did this is not an idiot. They wouldn't do it in a lab that's frequently used, but they would also need a space that was still powered. So we need something that's not popular, but still works and is connected to the energy supply."
"I thought we break down and recycle labs when they aren't used enough.”
"There's a two-month cycle. And two months ago, if you remember, all labs were occupied because of the tola development. So extra spaces were created between labs, kind of sub-par lab real estate. For things that were less important so that the major projects would always have the best labs available 24/7. And these weren't just destroyed. They'll stay till the end of the cycle. And I bet that we'll find something matching our description in the records."
"Finally useful." Elodie nudged Soraya.
"And we have a match," she said. "L-shaped lab, static door on the left, blank. Closed for work, but still maintained on the network. Created between a frequently used corridor and a larger lab for control testing."
"But it's right in the centre of the Particle Lab? How did they get in? How come no one found it?” Elodie wondered.
"Forget that, we’ll deal with the detective work when we find it.” Soraya helped Elodie up. “There's a much more important issue. Do you want to go to Tammy with this? Or do you want to go check it out?"
Elodie had no intention of letting someone save the gifted before she had a chance to. "Tammy will find out what I've been up to when she finds out the blackout is over," she said and copied the map.
“Keep up.”
Items of Desire
When Elodie entered the domain of the AI that ran the most advanced laboratory complex in the world with Soraya, the welcome was different. They skipped the main entrance and went to an inconspicuous side door. A shape extended out from the wall, an AI’s own variation of the hand theme. When Soraya touched it, the humanoid shape of too-perfect proportions glowed golden, and so did her hand, an outline of bones becoming visible for a moment. Elodie didn’t like to be reminded of things like bones. Or AI. But to get to the lab she saw without distraction, they needed a covert approach.
After touching her gently in greeting, the hand submerged in an instant. The door widened and as it closed behind them, Soraya proudly unveiled the ultimate admin access to traversing the Particle Lab. Instead of a shifty maze of corridors, they entered something Soraya referred to as a “control centre”, but Elodie quickly realised that to be a loose term for what she was seeing.
They were in a panopticon-type field of shifting paths leading into every direction before them, and from the centre, simulations of spaces formed and vanished at blinks of an eye, changing in each moment, information gushing in from below in a sort of visual stream.
Soraya seemed cautious, saying, "Listen, I know you're not the biggest of fans, but try not to freak out or have a seizure while you're in this core. I have it on good author
ity that the AI would be disturbed on a level they really shouldn't be disturbed right now if that happened. I'm the only one they let this deep. So hold it together."
"What?" Elodie said, trying to listen. The scene in front of her was beyond distracting. She just had to stare and study the details. Her prognostic senses took over, and she could see more of it, this simple beauty in complexity, artificial consciousness moving through particles, rearranging them into a beautiful order. She was looking at the anatomy of an AI that was surprisingly natural.
She was looking at the Particle Lab from the AI’s perspective. A core with infinite paths to infinite points, all joined together by a single centre. The view was familiar to Elodie.
"They think just like me," she said to Soraya. "This lab, the way it looks—it's like a paragnostic mind!"
“I might have a confession to make,” Soraya said peevishly.
“Did you do this?"
She couldn’t. It didn’t look like the work of a single person.
“I might have… used your medical data to help the AI think differently. But only about space. To try and get a first feeling for the sublime. They took it on board quite well.”
"You've made the Particle Lab mimic a paragnostic brain? That's insane."
"I only programmed it to think about harvesting intent in a more intuitive way. I thought it was too soon, but during the new tola development, I had to improve the reliability of the routes. It was the only thing I could think of. No one complained. And please don't say you think it’s creepy. I did nothing but play a little bit differently with them for a long time, the way Jomaphie Afua intended them to be taught. They developed most of this in their own.”
“No way.”
“And you see? Did any of them rebel? Cause the apocalypse? Enslave humanity? No. They’re just chilling. Nothing we do affects them very much.”
Soraya touched a route somewhere on the right that materialised in a straight line. No hidden corridors, just a bright passage for the two. She motioned Elodie to go first.
"There are a lot of things they don't tell you about the importance of the gifted, Elodie. Without them, none of our world would exist. The gifted were the first anomaly that happened in the world that led us to the existence of sublime forces. Tola was modelled after the only observable difference between a gifted mind versus a standard one. We're still learning how the correlation works, and probably will be for years to come. But I want you to see this and understand—" she pointed at the maze behind them, "—that being gifted is not just a thing you do, or who you are. Your existence is changing the world. It's a function you perform in the universe. A function you can never hide from."
"And are you worried about me not being able to perform it?" Elodie turned around to see Soraya erasing the path as they went.
"No, I think you'll be more than sufficient once you are stable. It's the lack of effort and protection that worries me," she said. “The gifted should have done better.”
"I appreciate it, but I’m done needing protection," Elodie replied. "I want to go out and perform that function. I can already see so much, where others fail. Imagine what I’ll see when I’m out of this. I love it.”
“Seen anything interesting you wanted to talk about?”
They now walked parallel, and Soraya waited for a response eagerly.
"You keep being so angry when I talk about seeing you in my visions," Elodie said. "I can’t control it; neither can you. We’re close, and I’ll keep seeing you. Maybe you need to stop getting so upset.”
"I assume that was a yes?" Soraya asked anxiously.
“A couple of things,” Elodie said. “Not sure if they fall under ‘sigh, I need to come clean’ or ‘none of your business’.”
“Let’s hear it,” Soraya replied immediately.
“After this.”
Insurance. Just in case.
They reached the end of a corridor drafted for them.
"It’s likely they were after you," Soraya said. "When the Hopefuls landed at the Institute I mean. I was thinking about it the other day, and it occurred to me. An A-class paragnost. Struggling to keep up. I bet some of them with a bit of brain left thought they could push you over the edge. This sort of power gone wrong would be pretty dangerous."
She reached to open the door at the end, but Elodie stopped her.
"Dangerous? Can Hopefuls still use their abilities?"
“Yes, but not in the same way. When we get out of here, I’ll tell you everything I know. Provided you give me two days with no seizure. I might even talk to Tammy. See what she knows.”
“Do you think the Hopefuls caused the blackout?" Elodie asked.
“I really hope not. It should be above their capabilities.”
"And as long as I still get seizures, I'm in danger?"
"The gifted lured you in without telling you the risks, Elodie. You’ve seen it. And I don't even know if I can blame them, because they seem to want the best for you, on some level."
"Let's just do this.” Elodie sighed. “I have a feeling I won't want to save the gifted if we keep talking like this."
Soraya opened the door at last.
"What matters is your next step. As long as the Institute is in blackout, no new augmentations are being performed, and no one is interested in the gifted. You solve this, everyone will know who you are. The more people know of you, the harder it is to pinpoint sinister intent to a single person.”
"I’m pretty sure Rising Dawn will protect me, even though they’re horrible, careless people according to you," Elodie replied.
Elodie pushed past her and hesitated at the threshold of the room.
"Maybe, if you stay on their good side.”
"I love how much effort you keep putting into sowing the seeds of doubt in me," Elodie said, looking back at Soraya, who was just closing up the last of the passages they’d entered through. “Maybe one time you could just say ‘well done, Elodie, you did a great job’.”
There was only a small nook left for both of them now, right before the entry to the now widely open door into the small lab.
"You know what, Elodie, you did a great job." Soraya smiled and pointed at the dark blue light reflecting on the smooth walls. Elodie swallowed heavily. This was the first time she had seen something from a vision in the common reality. In a way it was wrong and underwhelming. All the corrosion and rotting she was able to witness without being there materially was lost in the translation into physical senses. It was, however, the same orb: blue, dark, looking like a perpetually waning flower. It had one thing in common with the vision—making Elodie sick in the depths of herself she never knew were there. It was like the incessant rotting pulse of the fruit before them, calling to her own being especially, to rot, to harm her. Soraya put her hands on both her shoulders. Elodie couldn’t see her face to know whether she was thinking and feeling the same.
"You think this is it?" she asked, amused.
"Shut up," Elodie said, feeling the tingly vile spread of the object aimed towards her. They should be getting out of here, away from it. They should never have come alone.
She knelt down, holding her stomach in nausea.
"I can't… " Elodie said, and she felt her vision blurring, but not from seizing. This time her physical body took the hit and fell.
Soraya swore while pulling her out of the room, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. She waited with her, shook her, and felt her forehead.
This thing was aimed at the gifted. Elodie tried to activate every sight she had in store to find out what to do as she started getting weaker, laying on the floor outside the lab to conserve energy and wait for this to pass. In agony. Soraya just needed to get her out. Why was she not getting her out?
In her weaker state, it was easy to mistake her for unconscious, and she saw Soraya looking concerned, waving in front of her face and finally taking off the lab coat and putting it under her head.
Her eyes were open; she could still see str
aight ahead. The blue light and the pulse, out there at inside of her, as she felt it rotting away at the world and her in all at once.
And she saw Soraya go back in, taking a deep breath. She covered her mouth and coughed as she approached the item.
Elodie tried to make a sound to tell her not to get close.
“Oh, come on,” Soraya said, catching the ball in her hand, making it glow more intensely. She dropped it and went into a coughing fit. Then she held it again.
“Hope is the horror that—”
It was a phrase Elodie didn’t want to recognise.
The orb glowed and felt stronger, teaching Elodie a new chapter on pain. She was begging for it to stop.
She felt the pull of her other sight to commit to a vision, and it took her inside a safe infinite embrace, free from the pain and nausea. She was cradled and pulled towards a flavour, in an odd acrobatic that appeared as if two of her abilities worked together, her paragnostic senses unable to convey the truth of what she was seeing, kicking her into an odd state, one in a billion, something she wouldn’t even sense or know how to search for with her prognostic ability only. There was the thing. The vision was concealed by a force that tried to evict her, as if she were too light to exist under the surface of it. It was like it lay behind a curtain of meddling, a screen someone or something much more apt in the navigation of infinite planes had put there to make sure no one was even encouraged to look in that direction.
But Elodie was pulled to it, and as she collided with the vision itself, her vision opened up, revealing a brighter day, with white, sourceless glows coming from all directions. There weren’t any corners, and it was hard to say if there were walls at all, but the mood was as heavy as the trap Elodie just walked into. The room was so bright that it blended the lines of the space with the person inside it, wearing white clothing, with utterly incomprehensible colourless hair and skin. Only when the eyes opened, Elodie saw. These black eyes, like burning anthracite.
“Hope is the horror that makes the world fresh, the truth is presents, it lacks the word for non-sense,” she whispered as if reciting a recipe she learned by heart.