M-Imyrakat: It's impossible to verify without the ability to perform an external test, but I believe that Poriyalar and I have finally created a theory that explains the problem.
Y-Serdar: Well, don't keep us in the dark.
M-Imyrakat: I'm... afraid it's not good news.
M-Imyrakat: As you all know, we've been operating on the assumption that the properties of a brane are dictated by the relationship between objects at the 10-dinsional level. And of course, that hasn't changed.
M-Imyrakat: But we've also been assuming that constructing a brane - or rather, replicating its properties using the matter within the tower - is simply a matter of replicating chord oscillation.
M-Imyrakat: However, even though we can make individual particles behave according to archidean principles in our experints, and of course for the purposes of our computing, their oscillation is lost and they fail to create worldsheets in open space. And we've eliminated the possibility that anything is compromising the integrity of our cavity, or that there's any abnormal forces being exerted from the tower itself.
M-Imyrakat: That ans that the source of the issue must be sothing at the higher dinsional level, that's forcefully applying a sort of 'resetting' force which isn't present in the normal universe.
Y-Serdar: We've discussed this possibility already. If sothing about the conditions we've created were flawed, if we weren't emulating any force present in the Milky Way, we'd be able to discern it with our sensors.
M-Imyrakat: That's what we've been assuming, yes.
M-Imyrakat: But even though we never encountered evidence to contradict it prior to the vacuum decay event, this entire project has been rooted in the notion that all 10-dinsional objects exert predictable influence on chord oscillation under all circumstances.
M-Imyrakat: Or, to put it another way, that everything which creates physics is necessarily involved in physics.
M-Imyrakat: But what if that wasn't the case? What if there were 'phantom objects' that exerted no influence under ordinary circumstances, but under select conditions sprung to life to impose new tenets on reality?
Y-Serdar: Imyrakat, that's absurd.
R-Asandula: What exactly is absurd about what she's suggesting? You'll forgive if so of this is going over my head.
Y-Serdar: She's essentially saying there's so kind of higher dinsional agent - or 11-dinsional principle, I suppose - that it's impossible to detect the presence of in any way, but is now actively sabotaging our work.
Y-Serdar: It's no different to claiming the existence of a god or a demon. It's utterly unverifiable.
M-Imyrakat: Please don't be patronizing about sothing outside of your area of expertise, Serdar...
M-Imyrakat: The idea hardly requires a god. It's long been theorized that there could be entire dinsional paradigms within tiless space that have no impact on our reality. An unexpected intersection in a niche circumstance-- It's not out of the question.
M-Imyrakat: Or, perhaps alternatively... we know it's possible to exert influence on higher dinsions from within lower ones. Perhaps another civilization, one far more advanced than our own, might have created a 10-dinsional object devoted to performing this function at so point in the distant past.
(Y, I checked the records, and she's actually talking about the mbrane we were discussing earlier here. You're right that it's definitely not related directly to the entity, but interestingly, it seems as though its effects aren't just limited to string neutralization in pocket planes; it has a selective impact on vibrations in other spatial environnts as well, correlating with the progression of the entropic cycle. I'm probably getting overexcited, but combined with that gravity anomaly that's been bothering the Sibyl's astronors, I'm really starting to reconsider my original assumption that this was sothing unique. Could we be looking at sothing like an entire 'ecosystem' (pantheon? I jest) of simple organisms at the foundations of reality? I'll send along the data, so let know what you think. --Nef)
Y-Serdar: First gods, now aliens.
R-Asandula: No, the idea makes sense to , at least in principle.
R-Asandula: If you discount the circumstances that drove us to doing this, what we've created here, more or less, is the ultimate impenetrable fortress.
R-Asandula: We can send and receive information and make limited connections to higher dinsions on our own terms, but otherwise, we're completely and irrevocably cut off from the outside world.
R-Asandula: Even from what we've already accomplished, there are a lot of military applications for that. Obviously, one of the most foundational elents to logistical dominance is securing the command structure. If a small group of commanders decided to sacrifice themselves like this, it would create a stellar navy immune to decapitation strikes.
R-Asandula: And if they actually succeeded, well - they'd be able to wage war entirely one-sidedly with an autonomous fleet, with their entire population safely enclosed.
M-Imyrakat: What would be the point in that? If you can't conquer or be conquered, waging war would be absurd.
R-Asandula: I don't know. Spite? I'm only speaking hypothetically.
R-Asandula: My point is, there would be a big incentive for any power at a certain degree of developnt to make doing such a thing impossible.
R-Asandula: And what you're describing sounds like the perfect ans to accomplish that. To preemptively counter the threat.
Y-Serdar: This is nothing but guesswork. Complete stabs in the dark based on nothing but unexamined priors.
Y-Serdar: We're scientists. We're supposed to be better than this.
M-Imyrakat: I don't wish to offend you, Serdar, but again: This is not your area of expertise. I really don't think you're qualified to be speaking as to what is or is not likely.
M-Imyrakat: We've been investigating this issue for... no, I don't even want to know how long it's been now.
R-Asandula: One of my coterie celebrated her subjective 1000th birthday recently.
M-Imyrakat: Even though we've been making adjustnts to the brane support protocol for almost that entire ti, we still haven't seen a single result, not even a tangibly bad one. Just the sa total complete lack of responsiveness.
M-Imyrakat: Believe , this isn't a conclusion we've drawn lightly. But the fact remains that it's the only one left to draw. Poriyalar has been convinced of it for our last eight sessions.
Y-Serdar: That doesn't surprise . He's always been defeatist.
Y-Serdar: Where is he?
M-Imyrakat: He's... resting.
Y-Serdar: That sounds like a euphemism for having another nihilistic ltdown.
M-Imyrakat: The lion's share of this has fallen on the shoulders of him and his team. In light of that, I really don't think it's fair to be critical of his ntal state.
R-Asandula: You're always so diplomatic, Imyrakat.
M-Imyrakat: Thank you, Asandula.
R-Asandula: I'm not sure I ant that as a complint.
Y-Serdar: So what, then. Even if we accept this is the reason for the problem, where does that leave us? What is the actual solution to pursue.
Y-Serdar: How is it not tantamount to throwing our hands in the air and accepting our fate?
M-Imyrakat: Well... if the problem is sothing in the higher dinsions which we can't detect by conventional thods, then in order to address it, we need a ans of observing and correcting the problem directly.
M-Imyrakat: That would an constructing so sort of device that operated on that level ourselves.
Y-Serdar: But that's impossible. We're cut off from the physical, and even if we weren't, the outside world no longer exists in any aningful sense.
Y-Serdar: If the Hypogeans really had survived in so form, instead of just leaving behind a tiny data center to act as their collective tombstone, perhaps we could have made contact with them and enlisted their aid.
Y-Serdar: But there's nothing. Just dead void where solid matter cannot even form across the entire galaxy.
M-Imyrakat: Yes, that's true.
Y-Serdar: So, again: What's the solution?
M-Imyrakat: Well, the one thing we have in abundance is ti.
M-Imyrakat: Perhaps, before heat death, other forms of life might erge within the lower energy minimum. And perhaps eventually we might be able to communicate with them.
Y-Serdar: Are you seriously suggesting we wait for evolution to save us? In a cosmos still principally composed of subatomic particles?
M-Imyrakat: Obviously we'd be making liberal use of hibernation in this scenario. It's not as if any harm could co from trying.
M-Imyrakat: Alternatively, it's hypothetically possible that such a device - or at least, a phenonon that could be exploited for that purpose - already exists. If that's the case, all we'd need to develop would be the observational component. Theoretically, there may be ways to make inferences about this 'ghost object' by more closely studying the negating effect itself, or perhaps even about higher dinsional space more broadly in ways that haven't yet been discovered.
M-Imyrakat: We still have a deluge of data from before the collapse and Nakom's observations. There might be so detail hidden within them, if we spend enough ti reviewing their contents.
Y-Serdar: These are closer to prayers than solutions. Just a high-minded way of saying 'maybe if we wait long enough or try enough things randomly, a solution will fall right into our lap by magic'.
M-Imyrakat: I think you're being hyperbolic. At this stage, our ignorance of the task ahead is almost cause for optimism. We're effectively in the sa position as scholars were in the transition from classical physics to quantum chanics. There could be possibilities we don't even yet have the fra of reference to consider.
M-Imyrakat: Though, I will admit that it does feel unlikely to , in this mont.
M-Imyrakat: Of course, the other option is that, well... We do as you said. Accept that it cannot be done.
Y-Serdar: No.
M-Imyrakat: We're still alive, in a sense.
M-Imyrakat: We could focus on optimizing our simulated space... we might never get anywhere close to what the Princes achieved in terms of fidelity with how our hardware is specialized, but there's certainly room for improvent.
M-Imyrakat: If we stopped running our experints and most of the sensors, we'd probably have enough processing power to get taste and sll working to a degree, if only through mory reference.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringent.
M-Imyrakat: By far the most common complaint in my coterie is missing the taste of food... improvents in that regard may also stave off neural drift, for a ti.
M-Imyrakat: We could also pull so of the copies from the data ark and reconstruct so of their loved ones. Make as much of a life here as feasible.
Y-Serdar: 'Make a life'?You're talking about the few thousand of us persisting as little more than electric ghosts. That's a total betrayal of our mission.
M-Imyrakat: I'm not saying it has to be one or the other. Another possibility is that we could phase out so elents of our work. Focus on preserving our stamina for a much longer mission...
Y-Serdar: We're lucky that Kuberna and Chaski aren't here. They'd be outraged to even hear you make the suggestion.
Y-Serdar: Let alone so of my coterie.
R-Asandula: Have you spoken with them much recently, Serdar? Your coterie.
Y-Serdar: Of course I have.
R-Asandula: Because I feel like you're radically misjudging the general mood.
R-Asandula: You're talking about 'giving up', but the truth is that most people I speak to lost hope that we were going to fix this a long ti ago.
R-Asandula: You're not even listening to what Imyrakat is saying.
Y-Serdar: I am listening. I didn't get a chance to say so a mont ago, but if we do arrive at a consensus that we need a more foundational approach to this issue, then so be it.
Y-Serdar: But any abdication of our responsibilities is utterly unacceptable. End of.
R-Asandula: I wonder if the reason you're acting this way is because of what happened before we left the solar system. Since you made the decision to leave so many people behind, it must be impossible for you to accept that it was all for nothing.
R-Asandula: That, beyond protecting a tiny group in a technically more sustainable way than the Singularists and the Egressites, the project is a failure. That we betrayed our friends and families for no cause whatsoever.
Y-Serdar: Ridiculous.
Y-Serdar: You're obsessed.
R-Asandula: I for one think it's a perfectly reasonable idea to pivot to giving the people who have placed their faith in us sothing resembling a normal life, at least for a while.
R-Asandula: And even if they're not the sa people as their originals, using the copies to bring them so peace about what happened on Luna might go so way towards redeeming us in their eyes.
R-Asandula: If humanity is going to go extinct, what's the better ending for the species? For the final generation to toil in misery for thousands of years until we all beco closer to machines than people? Even closer than we already are, I an.
R-Asandula: Or for us to all to have a few good decades, or centuries, or however long people want to have - then... wind down.
Y-Serdar: 'Wind down'? aning what, exactly?
R-Asandula: Don't be obtuse. I an deactivate.
R-Asandula: Hibernate. Permanently.
M-Imyrakat: That's... not what I was trying to suggest, Asandula. I wouldn't have gone that far.
R-Asandula: Well, I'm going 'that far'. It's only rational to consider at this stage.
Y-Serdar: That's impossible.
R-Asandula: What makes you think you have the authority to say so? You've spent longer dormant than any of us.
R-Asandula: Do you think you can rest on your laurels in judgent, while your skill set has barely even been necessary?
Y-Serdar: No, I'm saying that it's literally impossible.
R-Asandula: ...what?
𒊹
7:39 PM | The Ninsirsir, Deck 3 | December 31st | 1608 COVENANT
After that, ti almost seed to stop for Lamu. Utsushiko appeared to cease speaking - she thought she could hear her slurping her soup behind her, but couldn't be sure - and even the others at her table grew quieter, focusing on eating for a few minutes. The woman in the jazz band switched to singing a faster and more upbeat tune that seed to be about soone losing everything at the stock market and shooting themselves, which caused Malko to go on a brief tangent about how the decline of modern culture could be traced back to an obscure pop music trend from 150 years earlier. (In response, Gudrun claid to have played guitar in a band, though this was instantly thrown into question by her misusing the term 'fret' and not seeming to fully understand chord progression. However, Malko appeared not to notice, also stating that he 'dabbled' in guitar.)
But in general, a strange quiet seed to fall, at least in her mind, during which she continued to sit very still. Almost like a statue. As if reality itself would forget she existed so long as she refused to interact with it in any way.
It was only once they seed to be finishing up that this hope was proven incorrect. Gudrun, rubbing crumbs off her lips with her napkin, looked towards her with raised eyebrows. "You good, Lamu? You've barely touched your bread." She glanced down at them, then spoke in a lower, almost conspiratorial tone. "If you're not feeling it, I could eat it. Just, y'know. Putting that option on the table."
Lamu heard these words, since if anything she was hyper-alert. However, she felt unable to respond, as if bound in place by a magic spell.
"Lamu? You with ?" Gudrun held a hand in front of her face, snapping her fingers.
Suddenly, without even having planned to do it, her hand flew into the air and snatched the other woman's sharply, pulling it down to the table with a thud. Theodoros looked up, spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth, raising an eyebrow.
"Ow! W-Watch it, the nerves in this thing are still sensitive."
"I need to use the lavatory," Lamu stated, slightly louder than she intended. "Gudrun and I. Need to use the lavatory. Is what I ant."
"I don't need to pee," Gudrun said confused. "I've barely drunk anything."
"Where is the lavatory?" Lamu managed to ask.
"Mm? Oh, there's a set just back there." Malko pointed towards the bottom right corner of the room as he sipped from his wine glass, where there was a small wooden door marked 'RESTROOMS' "Another advantage of sitting all the way here at the back. Or, well, it would be, but I can't bear to use public ones, personally. I'll have to stumble back to Theo and I's chambers when I'm inevitably rendered incapable half way through the night."
Theodoros frowned. "Mal, that's too much information."
Malko chuckled. "Better they learn about it now than when I beco a public spectacle on the approach to the new year, mm?"
"Thank you," Lamu said stiltedly, almost glancing nervously behind her but stopping herself. "We'll be back in a minute."
"But I don't need to pee," Gudrun repeated. "Lem go."
"Uhh." Theodoros looked puzzled. "Is sothing wrong?"
"No," Lamu replied. "We'll just-- We'll just be a minute."
She heard Theo question if everything was alright as she turned her back (and Malko attempting to dissuade him from getting involved with so remark about won going to bathrooms in groups) but paid this no heed, dragging Gudrun quickly several tables down towards the doorway. She looked back for the briefest of monts, catching another glimpse of her enemy; only the side of the woman's face was visible, seemingly expressionless, despite the strength of the words that had been leaving her mouth just a few monts earlier.
Suppressing an anxious shudder, she shoved the door open, then advanced into wons area on the left. As one might have expected for such a venue, it turned out to have a rather unusual and pretentious setup: a linear corridor full of private, lockable rooms without even a communal sink. Lamu saw that the fourth along was unoccupied.
"Lamu what are we doing," Gudrun complained.
"Not yet."
She opened the doorway. The chamber within - patterned walls, faux-marble floors, air freshened to the point of being vaguely disgusting - was small, though still oversized for a single-use public lavatory, with enough space for two people to stand relatively comfortably in front of the actual toilet.
Once she locked the door and made absolutely certain it was secure, she turned to Gudrun sharply. Oddly, there was a mirror both over the sink and the toilet itself, with the angle such that one could be seen in the corner of the other. This created a constant sense of there being sothing moving just out of sight, which did not help the mood of the mont.
"Okay," Lamu said, her words quick and hushed. "Now we can talk."
"What the hell, bro." Gudrun gave her an exasperated frown. "I was getting in with those guys. That Malko dude was spilling his whole-ass philosophy to ! Another fuckin' five minutes and we'd probably have been talking nepo jobs, bringing into his crew. Now he probably thinks he pissed you off, or that we're dykes!" Her eyes flickered, and her expression shifted towards the contemplative. "Wait, no, wouldn't that be good? Like, then we could play the solidarity angle. Tch, but he seems like old money, so he probably thinks that shit is passy or whatever. Too close to ho-- Fuck, man, I don't know how to work this! I should have eaten more cunt when I was in the army!"
As was ever the case when Gudrun was able to talk for more than a few seconds without any filters, this rant raised a litany of questions (what did she an by 'passy'? Was she trying to say passé? Had she never heard anyone say it out loud before...?), but Lamu had to suppress them and stay focused. She took a breath, leveling her gaze at the other woman.
"Gudrun," she spoke in a hopefully-calm tone. "Sothing is wrong here." No, that wasn't right: She needed to just say it bluntly, however absurd it sounded. "I think soone is planning to kill ."
This statent seed to throw Gudrun off almost as much herself. She blinked in confusion. "I-- Okay." She paused. "On what like. Basis though."
"You said you have good eyes."
"Well duh."
"Did you see that woman sitting on the table behind ?"
"What, the skinny Saoic one in the white dress? Yeah, I saw her."
"That's-- She's--" Lamu fumbled over her words as she tried to decide where to even begin. "A few minutes ago, she was openly saying that was her plan. That she intends to murder and several other people aboard this ship."
"O... kay," Gudrun sounded skeptical. "I was wondering why you were whispering to yourself back then. But, uh, are you sure? I didn't hear anything."
"She was talking very quietly. The only reason I could hear her was that she was right behind ."
Gudrun bit her lip. "Lamu, I'm really trying to think of a way to say this without seeming like an asshole, but like. Are you sure you're not having a schizo mont right now."
Lamu once again suppressed the urge to comnt on the obvious contradiction between saying she was 'trying not to seem like an asshole' and imdiate use of a slur. "No, Gudrun."
"'cause like. You can tell you seem kinda unhinged, right? 'I'm the only one who could hear her because reasons'?"
Lamu let out a long sigh, then spoke flatly. "I'm not hallucinating," she insisted. "That's not one of the problems I have. And it was definitely her speaking-- I could feel her breath in the air a few tis."
"Maybe you took it out of context?" she suggested. "Like, this lady was just having a ltdown about sothing personal, and it only seed like a serious threat 'cause you didn't know what was going on?" She glanced to the side, causing her gaze to flicker 90 degrees in both the mirrors as well. "Like, sotis when I'm sitting on my own, I'll mutter sothing like, 'I'm gonna kill all these fuckers' to myself. But that doesn't an I'm actually gonna kill anybody. I an. Not necessarily."
"The threat was extrely long, personal, and specific," Lamu assured her, her teeth gritting unintentionally as her jaw tightened with anxiety. "We had a conversation. It's not sothing that would have been possible to misinterpret."
Gudrun shifted uneasily. "Okay, but even so, this is just like. So bitch." She shrugged. "She's probably just crazy or on sothing. I an, this is a rich people party-- I bet every other asshole out there snorted a line or two after lunch just to get ward up for this dogshit. We'll just let the guys running things know she's being a freak, and if she tries anything the defenses they have set up will frag her faster than a Viraaki retreat. There's no reason to get this fucked up about it."
Lamu looked down at the floor for a mont. She'd brought Gudrun here under the assumption that she wouldn't have to go into the situation in any depth, but now that she had a mont to think about it, obviously that wouldn't be the case. Gudrun was extrely intelligent when it ca to matters of life and death, but that intelligence manifested as ruthless cunning, not strategic intuition; she was a soldier, not an assassin. She wouldn't do anything proactive unless the entire picture was painted for her.
"She's not just 'so bitch'," Lamu eventually corrected her. "I... know her."
Gudrun frowned. "From where?"
Lamu sighed, rubbing her eyes. "She's an old schoolmate of mine. Her na is Utsushiko of Fusai." She gathered her thoughts, working out exactly how much she wanted to say. It was regrettable, but at this point revealing her identity was probably impossible to avoid. "We were in this class together in the early 1400s, when we were both young-- It was called the Exemplary Acolyte's Program, based in Old Yru. It was supposed to collect so of the most promising talent in the world of arcane healing and have them work together and go on a bunch of special trips. It was a publicity thing, mostly."
"Wait, you were training to be a healer? I thought you always did data and military shit."
Lamu found her face flushing with embarrassnt for so reason. "I-- It's complicated. I was planning to specialize in dical scripting at the ti, for arcane logic engines."
"Arcane logic engines-- Wait, this class was for arcanists?" Realization struck Gudrun's face like a brick. "Are you an arcanist?"
Lamu hesitated for several monts, but then nodded stiffly, looking away from her for a mont.
"Fuck, that would have been good to know back when we were delving." She looked annoyed, but not furious. "Gods. I should have known, too. You were always going on about shit to do with the Power and enchantnts and all that kinda crap. Why did you never tell us?"
"Because it would have compromised my identity," she replied bluntly. "My specialization is already rare to begin with. Combine that with the fact that I have mixed-Party distinction therapy and was trained in the era where indexes were still grafted, and there's nowhere I'd be able to hide without a target on my head."
Gudrun pulled back a little bit, almost warily. "So you're like. Not just an arcanist, but a serious arcanist. A-league. World class."
Lamu shook her head sharply. "No. I was only on that level when I was a child."
"But like, you were still up there, right? Nobody goes from being one of the best to a nobody tweaking the guidance scripts for refractor cannons."
She hesitated. "My role was... significant, yes."
The other woman's eyes widened. "Oh my god, Lamu. What the fuck did you do? What kind of secrets did you leak? Were you developing superweapons or so shit?!"
Lamu was silent, biting her lip.
Gudrun ran a hand over her face, looking away for a mont "Fuuuuuck. I was kidding when I thought you were a spy, but sohow this is even nutsier than that!" She looked back-- Lamu's eyes flinched as she also turned in the mirror. "They have a team for people like you, dude. They don't even try to take you in-- You're too much of a risk. They won't even shoot you! Once they're sure they've got all your dead man's switches, they just send in a microgolem with a casting bridge and so asshole in the Locked Tower deletes your ass from the other side of the continent!"
"I wouldn't know," Lamu offered quietly.
"How are you still alive?"
"I'm very good with data. Including data pertaining to myself." She narrowed her eyes. "...though even then, you were right when you guessed that I'm in a... fortunate position, in so regards. That's why that didn't happen when they found , I suppose."
Gudrun was rendered speechless, shaking her head.
"Back to the point," Lamu digressed, seizing the chance to get away from her present-day personal affairs. "This class I was in. Sothing... happened, and it had to be broken up. Since then, I've barely interacted with any of them. Or-- No, that doesn't fully capture it. It might be more appropriate to say we've all avoided each other. But do the know the man who was giving the introductory address? Bardiya of Tuon?"
"The guy who was talking about turning all the poor people into compliant zombies, right?"
Lamu nodded, although she still couldn't quite believe it herself. "He was in our class too. And according to Utsushiko, everyone who was in it - or at least everyone who is still alive - is on this ship. To be frank, even the three of us is already too many to be a coincidence."
Gudrun stamred. "S-So like, what are you saying? That she set this whole thing up?"
"I don't know," Lamu said. "I don't know how that would even be possible. But what she said after that was that she was planning to murder every single one of us in one fell swoop."
"Why?"
Lamu hesitated. She considered saying that she didn't know-- Treat her like she was just so forr friend with an obsession of unknown or inscrutably misguided nature. (She was misguided, just not inscrutably.) And that would make the threat too easy to dismiss, or worse, misunderstand.
Her hands felt very still, almost chanical. These social calculations took a great deal out of her. She took a breath, and said:
"Revenge."
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