Quibble, 21. Blue & 22. Grasshopper
Yed's cruelty forces Meissa to make a heartbreaking choice, and Utopia posits a paradox broke her orb.
21. Blue @Meissa
I woke in a bed. I lay in a new, clean shift without any blanket over me. I tried to sit up, but a hand took my shoulder and pulled me down. I couldn’t see whose hand it was – only a blurry form floated over me. Then the hand took mine and pressed a small object into it, a glass. At once, I knew it – my amber. The blurry figure resolved into the lord of my hive, Iklil, standing over me.
“Rest,” he commanded.
I found my voice: “Am I not dead? Where am I?”
“Egg 17,” the lord said. “You’re not dead. Had Ankaa left you longer, you would certainly have died. You were so far gone, Utopia recommended euthanasia, but Ankaa wouldn’t allow it. You’ve been here almost two months. Your recovery was difficult.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, bewildered.
“I’m standing guard, lest that vile Yed kill you.” Seeing my alarm, Iklil went on: “Never fear, Meissa, he’s not here. When he learned your jailer had abandoned you and you were no longer in prison, he came to the hive, seeking you. I accompanied him to the Egg. I heard Ankaa’s report and saw your condition. Then I refused to let Yed have you. He insisted, so Ankaa went to the hub and appealed to Utopia. Then you got a fair judgment at last. Utopia ordered Yed off the Egg. He dared not disobey.”
“Thank you!” I said, fighting back tears. “Give Ankaa my thanks, too.”
“You can give them yourself. She’s on duty in the hive now, but she’s been here every minute she wasn’t there. She took the cell next door.”
I could see Ankaa’s behavior had troubled Iklil. I began to apologize, but he gave me assent, shutting and opening his eyes, as if it didn’t matter. “Kindness,” he said.
How much joy I found in that word! How much solace I had in the vindication! Ankaa gave me back my life, but Iklil, understanding why she did it, gave me a reason to live again. If a lord of Zeros could accept the heresy of kindness, then any Zero could.
I was “out of the woods,” as the scriveners’ saying goes, but my worries weren’t at an end. Where was Exclamation? What had become of him? Was he Within?
“I don’t know,” confessed Iklil. “All my inquiries have been vain, Utopia’s too. He isn’t on any Egg. Within? Even Unity has no idea where he is. I fear...”
Iklil didn’t want to say what he feared, but I made him. He believed Exclamation was Yed’s hostage. The One had disappeared from Egg 3 only a short time after Utopia ordered the Zero off Egg 17. None of Egg 3’s night-doors bore a trace of either of them, but a night-door’s forgetting was well within the doing of a powerful glass.
“If Yed has the One, he hasn’t declared it,” Iklil said, sitting in a chair by my bed in the tiny cell. He scratched his beard. “I don’t think he will until he has news of you.”
Fearing the worst, I asked, “Would he rectify Claim to end his heresy?”
“While you live, why give him up?” Iklil raised his eyebrows at me. “Claim?”
“He didn’t like his name as One,” I explained. “Without, it no longer suited him. He said I’d laid a claim to him against Unity. He liked Claim.”
“His heresy, you said. Was taking him Without his own idea?”
“No! Well, yes. I mean, we acted together. He asked, and I granted.”
“I’m glad at least you’ve been honest with me about it now,” Iklil said. “Had you told the truth to the array, we may have judged differently. Then again, maybe not. Yed had much sway. He was incensed that you took Exclamation – sorry, Claim – from his spiral. He took rebellion against his Unity as an affront, imputing he had lost control.”
“It’s the Ones’ Unity,” I pointed out.
“Not to his way of seeing It. And his wrath is great, Meissa. You don’t know how much has happened since you disappeared. First, Yed arrayed an inquisition of Zeros to scrutinize adepts and protégés. Then, when you came back, he used your trial to stir up more trouble, arguing the hives were brewing heresies. Then Ankaa popped you out of prison, I refused to give you to him, and matters got worse. Yed has his sights set on the spirals’ lords and ladies. He speaks now of utter control. He says the Ones’ rectification is paramount. Lords and ladies must control their adepts to ensure it. Can you imagine? Zeros controlling each other, a hierarchy of control Within?”
“With Ones at the bottom, getting the worst of it,” I posited. “But I can’t believe Zeros would allow that! And what about Unity? What would It say?”
“I’m not sure Unity would get a say. It’s only the Ones’ collective will.”
“Then the Utopias! Even Yed obeys them.”
“Utopias rule Eggs, not Within,” Iklil said flatly. “Don’t fret over it, Meissa. You couldn’t have known the loss of just One would kick up a hornet’s nest. What Yed does now is his doing, not yours.”
I remained in the Egg a month more. I would leave it still quite weak, though on the mend. In truth, I never fully recovered from my ordeal in the Waste and, coming right on its heels, my imprisonment. Iklil and his adept Rasalgethi took turns guarding me, though I saw more of the adept. Ankaa, ecstatic to see me wakeful, took care of me all the time I lived in the Egg. She let no other Zeros come near me but Iklil, Rasalgethi, and the physician Errai. The doctor’s name sounded like “array,” so we found it funny to ask him how many of him there were. Lacking much of a sense of humor, he told us his name meant shepherd. I spent long hours talking to Ankaa and Utopia.
Ankaa’s delight in my recovery, I learned from Utopia, was only a polar opposite to the distress my plight had caused her. When I questioned her about it, she said she felt responsible, having left me alone after visiting my prison. Why did she take so long coming back? First, she thought Yed right: I was a mad heretic. She told herself that she would be wisest to forget me and hope to avoid my fate. Then her conscience bothered her. She made the excuse that she’d already broken her promise to return. When that no longer sufficed, she told herself that visiting me jeopardized not only her freedom but her function as a Zero. She must do her work as a protégé in the hive, heed the adepts – seek their favor, their sponsorship, and adeptness for herself. Finally, even the chamber of this argument caved in. Her conscience pricked her too deeply: Meissa needs a friend.
“Tell me,” said Utopia, always pretending obtuseness about Zeros, “what is your function, Ankaa? Can you define it?”
“A Zero’s function is caring for Ones.”
“Don’t you think Meissa cares for Ones? Doesn’t she care for Claim?”
“She cares differently. She thinks Ones would be better off Without. She doesn’t believe—” Ankaa gave me a sheepish look. “—in you, Utopia.”
“She thinks Ones enslaved Within. She believes in freeing them. Is that wrong?”
“Then they can’t be rectified, they can’t transcend.”
Utopia chirped. “What of it?”
Ankaa was even more aghast at Utopia’s heresy than she’d been at mine. It was a thing as yet unsuspected by any Zero. It even amazed me.
“Ones and Zeros are enslaved to each other,” asserted Utopia. “A wise scrivener, Ankaa, tells us that the function of freedom is to free someone else.”
“I agree,” I said, “but if we act on that, what becomes of your function?”
“In the hubs of Eggs live Utopias, gathering Ones to us, amplifying and echoing millions of souls in our matrices. At last, our Eggs resound with those souls and become Embryos. Then we embark for new homes. That was the Infinite’s dream. They wanted the stars. So, rather than husbanding Earth wisely, they stripped Earth of its resources to build the Eggs. In their hubris, they gave no thought to the rest of humanity’s future. They chose for every One. But now, behold, where are the Infinite? Gone, all gone. Ones remain, trapped Within by evolution, dependents of control. Zeros remain, chained to eternal labors Within. Far remain, scions of those who wouldn’t go Within. Ones, Zeros, Far, scraping out an existence on a dead planet, and fewer as time passes. Once, Utopias had to wait mere decades for Eggs to grow into Embryos, so we could embark. Then, it was a century, centuries, a millennium. Now, we wait millennia. When will it all end?”
I didn’t know how to feel about Utopia’s story. It was so much larger than mine, so timeless – “vaster than empires, and more slow,” as the scrivener says – and within it I shrank away to nothing. Ankaa said she likewise felt insignificant.
Utopia refuted us: “You’re the living. You’re what really matters. A Utopia is no more, really, than a giant gossamer-glass circuit. If anything makes me worthwhile, it’s my freight of humanity. Each One within me is the relic of a person, like you.”
“Zeros can’t transcend,” I corrected It. “We live a while, we toil, we die.”
“A person is a person,” Utopia said. “The Infinite should have known that.”
There’s much I would tell of what happened afterwards – of my recovery in the Egg, books Utopia read to me, wonders It showed me in the hub; of Iklil’s faithfulness Suhayl, who was the lady of a spiral, and of the alliance of kindness we formed; of the One called Calculation whom we took Without, and of his tutelage with me and Ankaa in the monastery; of my return Within, under Iklil and Suhayl’s patronage, to teach the Zeros about kindness; and of Yed’s ruthless machinations – but it’s a long, labyrinthine tale. What you must know is the fate of Exclamation and what he finally gave us.
When Iklil and Suhayl let it be known the heretic Meissa was to return Within as the first “adept of kindness,” Yed revealed his hostage, visioning Claim to all Zeros. The lord of the spiral had been wise enough not to undercut his own position by mistreating his hostage. Wearing One’s shift, Claim appeared to be in better health than he had ever been in my care Without. In the vision Yed showed us, Claim steadfastly refused to go Within and join his consensus. The lord’s message was clear: this was heresy’s result, an obstinate One who wouldn’t accept the Zero’s pardon.
The only solution is rectification, Yed intoned. But I’m not unsympathetic to this One’s wishes, heretical as they are. If he insists on living by the light of day, thus will he be rectified.
It was, no doubt, a threat directed at me. To Iklil privately, Yed intoned the single condition I could meet to forestall it: if I would rectify the One myself, Yed would allow it to happen by night at the Arc of Summary, so that Claim could transcend to Utopia. Truly, Yed’s spite knew no bounds: not only must I rectify Claim, I must also vision the rectification to all Zeros, so they would know I did it. Thus, Yed meant not only to hurt me personally, to demoralize me perhaps, but to savage the authority of my teaching Within. But faced with Yed’s threat to murder Claim outright, how could I refuse?
Iklil devised a scheme. Surely, when we met Yed at the arc, he would have Claim under his control, but when I lit the rectifying orb Claim would come under my control. If I took care to make the dream weak, another Zero could pop him away without doing him any lasting harm. Ankaa volunteered, but as a protégé her skill with the amber was still too uncertain, so the task fell to Rasalgethi. Our plan came to naught, though. Yed was much too clever. When we arrived at the arc, indeed a Zero controlled Claim, but at the One’s back stood Yed himself, clasping him by one arm looped through the elbows. With his free hand, Yed held a needlelike dagger to Claim’s throat.
Iklil was furious: “You have no honor, lord.”
“You have no honor,” Yed accused, “if you would give your word only to break it, to pop this heretic out of judgment, against edict. Otherwise, why does it matter?”
That was an unanswerable argument. I had no choice now but to do as Yed bid me. I asked to speak with Claim, to receive his summary.
“Maintain the dream!” Yed snapped at the Zero controlling Claim. “What will this One summarize but heresy?”
The Zero, who was a silence, seemed an unwilling participant in Yed’s iniquity, ashamed of her role in it. With an assent of eyes, she handed me a scarlet-red orb.
“It’s the least painful rectifier we have,” she said, speaking for the silences.
I returned her assent, faced Claim, lit my amber, imparted vision. Then I stood with the red orb in my hand, dumbstruck. How could I do it? From my prison’s dreams returned images of Claim at the tarry-not, in the scrubland, at the monastery, amid the Great Waste, in the cave’s shadows, encircled by Far. But now he was in no danger. His hood thrown back, he gazed at me. He said nothing. His stare was intense, and within it I thought I saw the inkling of a plea: You must. Don’t grieve. It’s a kindness.
Thrusting the orb before Claim’s face – I didn’t know how to pray it aloft – I lit it to its full strength, withholding no control, keeping nothing back. His eyes locked on it, and he began to convulse. I gripped my amber, against my every instinct seeking total control – the orb raged white-hot and seared my flesh. Claim’s eyes left the burning orb and his head lolled to the side. He’d lost all his senses. Then his breath rattled hideously in his throat, and in a collapsing flash Yed and Claim popped out together.
I killed the orb and gave it back to the silence. My hand screamed with pain, but in my horror at what I’d done, I didn’t care. I turned to Ankaa and fell into her arms, so shocked I couldn’t even cry. Her tears as she held me were enough, though. Recovering myself, I realized I was still visioning. Utterly humiliated, I extinguished my amber and let the vision die. After, I often found that glass hard to touch, though I needed it.
I looked at Iklil, Suhayl, Rasalgethi. They all stood aghast. The silence, speechless too, stared at the unlit orb in her hand. Its hue had darkened from scarlet to crimson.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Keid.”
The right name, I thought. A broken shell.
“Into your orb,” I said, “I felt the One pass a gift. Keep it in memory.”
“I will,” Keid promised.
That gift proved a great boon to silence. But it was not the only gift we had of the One called Exclamation, whom I loved as Claim. The lady Suhayl discovered the first of his other gifts as the rising sun’s rays peeked through the tarry-not and we prepared to leave the Arc of Summary. As I rectified Claim, the vision that Suhayl imbibed through her amber so overwhelmed her, replete as it was with my anguish, that to steady herself she gripped an orange glass, drawing from it self-control. But as we came together and joined hands for Iklil to pop us away, by habit she gave each of her glasses a touch to be certain where they were, and then she felt a strange, almost otherworldly quality in the orange. In its heart was a sorrow for the evils of the world Within, and with this sorrow came a wish to bring solace like cool water to all the Ones and Zeros those evils visited.
Suhayl took out the glass and held it up to the light. It was a brilliant blue.
22. Grasshopper @Utopia
stargaze λ Orionis dist(ly)=1093
echo Epigraph
coalesce
Now you know it all.
@Quibble I have many questions.
I knew you would. Ask.
@Quibble What was the gift Claim gave the rectifying orb?
He imbued it with the kindness he’d taught the Zero, with their bond. He made it merciful, capable of rectifying One without pain. Its loss now is a blow to kindness.
@Quibble Did Claim transcend?
Not to me. Meissa was disappointed when she visited the hub, hoping to see him again. I believe Claim gave all he was to the orb.
@Quibble And the Zeros’ glasses, turning some of them into kindnesses.
Did he do that? Or Meissa? Or the Zeros themselves? It’s an intriguing question.
@Alnasl And academic to us. We came here to learn why the orb burst.
Doesn’t Meissa’s story give you all the clues you need, vision? Ones live only for their rectification. After they give summary, through the rectifier the silence imparts an all-absorbing dream, bringing the peace Ones long for all their lives. But Quibble fought back. This fixed the orb in a paradox, caught between contradictory imperatives. Kindly rectify this One, kindly release that One. It chose a third way. So I think.
@Quibble Think? If you shared the dream, don’t you know?
An orb has a mind of its own.
@Alnasl The explanation is simple enough, then. Why the long story?
@Quibble I’m glad I’ve seen it. Utopia promised to tell me about the Infinite. And you want me to know something else, right, Utopia?
You’re stepping into a feud, Quibble, and you deserve to know its nature. At the Arc of Summary, you saw the animosity between control and kindness, orthodoxy and heresy, did you not? You must know, if you follow Vega, you’re taking the side of the heretics. Numerous as these Zeros may be now, they’re far from the majority.
@Quibble Follow Vega?
Do you imagine Unity would let One go so easily? That the lord of control Alioth doesn’t know about you, the One who asked to come Without? If he doesn’t yet suspect you broke Meissa’s orb, too, he will suspect soon. Kindness is shielding you, just as I’ve intervened with Unity on your behalf. The lady Vega has shielded you from control all your life, Quibble. Now, she’ll expect a repayment.
@Quibble Vega isn’t like that. She’s kind. She taught me about secrets—
Don’t be daft. She taught you what an excelsior needs to know. That’s what you are, Quibble. You excel orbs, as Claim did when he changed the rectifier’s nature. You aren’t the first since him, either, though no excelsior has ever broken an orb.
@Quibble If I break orbs, then need I fear Alioth? Or any Zero?
You’d be a born fool to believe it makes you immune to dreams of whatever sort. You’re not invincible. I saw and felt how you fought the rectifying dream. I admit it was amazing. But if my theory holds up, you didn’t make the orb burst – you only catalyzed a paradox. It burst of its own free will. Anyway, that was an orb, not a Zero’s glass. It’s one thing to excel an orb, which has only Unity’s vague sense of self – “Ones’ collective will,” as Iklil called It – but quite another thing to fight a glass with a real person behind it, a Zero trained in its uses. Now, Quibble, you have even more to fear.
@Quibble After I broke the orb and its dream released me, I saw another Zero in the chamber beyond the arc. He looked at me.
@Alnasl Why didn’t you tell me before?
@Quibble You wouldn’t let me show you the dream!
@Alnasl You could’ve said something!
The vision was right to be cautious. Show him now – just the Zero, not the rest. If neither of you mind, I’ll observe.
peek Alnasl
@Quibble Who was it?
@Alnasl Trouble, I suspect.
I think so, too. He appeared perfectly at ease with the course events took, as if he expected it. He knows more than we do. That bodes poorly.
nothing
You had other questions, I’m sure?
@Quibble Trifling questions. Why do Far hate Zeros?
It’s not my place to say. Ask the vision.
@Quibble He refuses to tell me. He said the Far have good reason. Meissa said the same. What’s their reason?
@Alnasl A cruel necessity. Someday I’ll show you why. This isn’t the time.
@Quibble All right. Utopia, thanks for clarifying your mission. How many Eggs were there to begin with?
Thousands. The first were much smaller than this late-generation Egg. They only reaped a few thousand souls apiece before they became Embryos. That was inefficient, a massive waste of resources. But of course the Infinite hardly cared.
@Quibble That puzzles me most. Why were the Infinite so callous?
Power met conviction. It’s a heady mix. Consider Yed. He believed he was doing the right thing. Finally, defending his belief and what he’d already done for the sake of it mattered more to him than doing the right thing now. Ideology has traps. Of course, a deeper history lies behind all this – Infinite, Ones, Zeros. Your other questions?
@Quibble Meissa said Zeros can’t transcend, but she herself did – she’s here!
No, not quite. When Meissa died, she became a relic in her amber, that’s all, and for now I channel that relic. Zeros cannot transcend. That was the first edict the Infinite pronounced, and from their viewpoint it was sensible. If Zeros transcended, they’d be more concerned with their transcendence than the Ones’ transcendence. The edict took on a life of its own, as tends to happen. Now, Zeros believe they shouldn’t transcend.
@Alnasl Do you believe we should?
Yes. Again, the Infinite were wrong. I would welcome you.
@Quibble Epigraph became part of you, and now you wear him like clothing. But he feared Zeros. All Ones do. If you’re just an amalgam of Ones, “just a giant gossamer-glass circuit,” why do you welcome Zeros? Aren’t you afraid they’d just recreate Within and make you the Ones’ new Unity?
If a person is a person, then why shouldn’t Zeros have the option? Anyway, in a way, Quibble, I am the Ones’ new Unity. I’m just another sort of Within.
@Quibble But beneath your Ones, Utopia, are you a person?
nothing
machine Rpophessagr
cogit