The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

“WHO ARE YOU?”

  With Thorn, I was “we.” Without him, I am just “I.”

  “WHO ARE YOU?”

  Who is I?

  Swept up in the kaleidoscopic whirlwind, Ophelia had turned into a spectator of thoughts. She was acutely aware of the crumbling stones under her back, of the space around her and within her. The more hollow she became, the more she sensed herself existing in a different way.

  They say that you’re nearly there.

  Understanding dawned. The inverts in the alternative program were made to suffer by the Observatory, but not to break down their family powers and split their shadows. Those were just the side effects of a much more profound separation. Mediana’s renunciation. Eulalia’s compensation.

  CRYSTALLIZATION.

  No, Ophelia wasn’t, in fact, really Artemis’s girl, or Mrs. Thorn, or Eulalia, or the Other, or even Ophelia. Because she was all that at once, and much more besides.

  Within each of us there exists a boundary, Blaise had warned her. They will try to make you cross that boundary. Whatever they say to you, the decision will be yours.

  My decision.

  Our decision.

  There are no more colors.

  They have all combined to make white, paper-white, the page of a book in which Ophelia now takes up just seven letters.

  Just a name fading away.

  A simple role.

  And the page tears.

  REDEMPTION.

  THE PLATFORM

  “WHO IS I? WHO IS I? WHO IS I?”

  Slowly, Ophelia moved her toes. She was so numb, she felt as if she were part of the floor. Had she lost consciousness? She eased open one eyelid. Up there, the kaleidoscope’s mechanical reflectors had stopped moving. She turned her eyes to the transfixed skeleton, lying to her right. The skull, instead of looking up at the cupola, now stared at Ophelia with its empty sockets.

  The sculpture had changed position. Right.

  “WHO IS I? WHO IS I? WHO IS I?”

  Ophelia hitched herself up onto her elbows. All around her, the chapel was transformed. From the flagstones, giant mineral petals had emerged, overlapping each other in a blossoming of amazing complexity, as if the kaleidoscope projections had replicated themselves down below.

  It took a moment for Ophelia to realize that it was she, and she alone, who was responsible for this. Her animism, which was barely able to make a vase shake, had just stopped a mechanism from a distance, remodeled an ancient statue, and molded several cubic meters of stone as if it were modeling clay.

  Ophelia’s eyes slid along the skeleton’s exposed ribs to locate the metal parrot, between the now wide-open hands.

  “WHO IS I? WHO IS I? WHO IS I?”

  This new echo, on the other hand, wasn’t down to animism.

  It was then that she noticed the shadow in the middle of the flowering flagging. The stranger in the fog, the intruder at the columbarium, was standing right in front of her. A shudder coursed through Ophelia. Although she looked for a face, she didn’t find one. He was made of black matter, as if the natural light from the oculus had no effect on him.

  The shadow was what it had always appeared to be: a shadow.

  Ophelia tried to get up, without success.

  “Are you the Other?”

  The Shadow shook its head—or what served as one. No, it replied, silently, I am not the Other. Stuck on the floor, Ophelia stared long and hard at it. She wasn’t inclined to believe the Shadow, not only because she had encountered it at every landslide, but also because it was such an obvious culprit. It’s exhausting, hating someone who is never in front of you. No, Ophelia really wasn’t inclined to believe the Shadow at all. And yet, she did believe it. Its familiarity to her had nothing to do with her distant, childhood memory, with that presence behind the mirror in her bedroom, with “Release me.”

  “Fine. Are you the echo of someone I know?”

  The Shadow hesitated, and then shrugged its shoulders in what was neither really a yes nor altogether a no.

  “But you, do you know the Other?”

  The Shadow pointed a shadowy finger, somewhat mischievously, at Ophelia.

  “Me, I know the Other?”

  The Shadow nodded.

  “Have I met him?”

  The Shadow nodded.

  “Since I released him from the mirror?”

  The Shadow nodded. Several times.

  “I saw the Other and didn’t recognize him?”

  The Shadow nodded. Ophelia was increasingly disconcerted.

  “What does the Other look like?”

  The Shadow again pointed at Ophelia. Someone that looked like her. Not a great help.

  “But you,” she insisted, “who are you? Another Other?”

  The Shadow shook its head. This time, its finger slid in the direction of the parrot.

  “WHO IS I? WHO IS I? WHO IS I?”

  Ophelia listened to the continuous echo more attentively. It was her voice, and yet it was no longer really hers. The dissociation she had experienced, that rupturing that had split her in two, the feeling of deliverance that had followed, all that had resulted in a deviation. The awakening of an unknown consciousness. An intelligent echo.

  Eulalia Gonde hadn’t met the Other; she had generated him, exactly as Ophelia had just done.

  “I’ve created another Other?” she muttered, flabbergasted.

  The Shadow put both thumbs up to indicate approval. The next instant, it had dissolved into the light from the stained-glass window.

  “Stay!”

  Ophelia rushed to where the Shadow had disappeared. Suddenly dizzy, she fell to her knees. She felt so weak and so vibrant at the same time! She would have felt no different if, after a lifetime with scoliosis, her bones had all been straightened in one go.

  Meanwhile, whoever it was, the Shadow had gone. Again.

  “WHO IS I? WHO IS I? WHO IS I?”

  Ophelia pulled a flagstone, broken between two stone flowerings, up from the floor. She lifted it above the parrot. She had come here to repair Eulalia’s mistakes, certainly not to repeat them. This little automaton, so like a child’s toy, had become a time bomb. It must be destroyed before the echo could further free itself.

  “WHO IS I? WHO IS I? WHO IS I?”

  Ophelia’s fingers started to shake around the slab of stone. It was too heavy for her, and yet she couldn’t let go of it. This echo was but a burble of consciousness, but a consciousness all the same, one born from her own consciousness, from which it had freed itself. The shaking now took over Ophelia’s whole body. An emotion, more imperative than any moral dilemma, was churning her insides.

  She couldn’t.

  Some leather gloves gently took the flagstone from her hands. Ophelia was in such turmoil, she hadn’t noticed that the chapel had been invaded by observers. They calmly moved her aside, gathered around the parrot, took notes, and deployed an array of instruments. Some even prostrated themselves on the floor.

  Ophelia was led out of the chapel, far away from the echo. From her echo. She put up a struggle, but had no strength; she felt like a rag doll. Unknown arms were restraining her as much as supporting her. She thought she saw, fleetingly, amid the yellow flurry of observers, the Knight’s braced smile. She found herself, somehow, going down a stairway, then another one, and then yet another one. She had been brought out of the nave. The men and women escorting her held her with half-pressing, half-protective hands. Each contact with their gloves triggered feelings in Ophelia that weren’t her own. Febrility, exaltation, hope: she was able to read objects again.

  After a dizzying number of stairs, she was brought to a crypt and forcibly plunged into an immersion font full of boiling-hot water. She was soaped, rinsed, dried, oiled, massaged, perfumed, and fed by an anonymous crowd, who then silently withdrew, leaving
her naked and dazed, surrounded by mosaics.

  A gate closed, with a clanging of iron. Ophelia had just been transferred from one prison to another.

  There was some clothing, carefully laid out on a cushion. It was her own, confiscated on the day she was admitted, along with a change of underwear. Ophelia saw, among it, the replacement glasses and gloves that Thorn had left in her file.

  Thorn. How many nights had he waited for her in the directors’ apartments? He could be putting himself in danger right now to find her.

  She got dressed as fast as her dizziness allowed. Fastening the gown and the sandals came surprisingly easy to her. Her left hand and right hand were no longer at war: despite shaking, one was completing the actions of the other in disconcerting harmony. In fact, as far back as she remembered, they had never been so nimble. Ophelia was, however, convinced that she was missing something very important. What had this observatory done to her?

  She got her answer when she caught her reflection in a splendid cheval mirror. It was her face, it was her body, but she felt as if she were looking at a stranger.

  She was no longer a mirror visitor.

  Ophelia knew it with every fiber of her being, before even touching the surface of the mirror and feeling all that resistance. She had already experienced a blockage, or a disruption, but what she was feeling right now bore no comparison. It was like noticing the sudden absence of an arm under a shirtsleeve.

  They had mutilated her.

  “Merci.”

  Ophelia had thought she was alone in the crypt. The beetle woman sat solemnly on a stone bench.

  “Let’s talk a little, mademoiselle.”

  She smoothed the yellow silk of her sari, and, in a way that was no longer officious, indicated to her to sit down beside her. To Ophelia, it felt as if the foundations of the entire observatory were swaying beneath her sandals, but she remained standing. The beetle woman didn’t seem offended. The little automaton shimmering on her shoulder gave the disturbing impression that, of the two of them, it was the real observer.

  “From our first meeting, I knew we would have this conversation, you and me. A real conversation, I mean, without constraint or pretense.”

  “After weeks of secrets,” snapped Ophelia.

  “We had to interfere as little as possible in your inner journey. That’s the procedure on the Alternative Program. You would have known that, had you read the agreement you signed more carefully, mademoiselle.”

  “And what you put me through in that chapel? That wasn’t interference? You have amputated my family power.”

  “Only a part of it. It could have been worse. It could have been a part of your life. And, without wishing to offend you, the final decision, to give up that part of yourself, was yours. We are très grateful to you.”

  Ophelia felt her pulse racing. Had the echo dissociated itself from her by taking part of her shadow with it? She might, then, still have a chance of getting her power back.

  “You should also be grateful,” the woman remarked. “You have never been so much yourself as right now! Thanks to us, you have finally realigned yourself. Any lingering discrepancies will gradually fade away. After all, you have lived with serious dissymmetry for years.”

  As she listened to these words, Ophelia stopped herself from instinctively clutching her stomach. Her first thought had only been for that particular malformation, although it was hardly a priority.

  “Desolée,” said the beetle woman. “You will never be able to give birth. Your body hasn’t changed, only your perception has. The Other marked you in your youth, didn’t he?” she continued, with intense curiosity. “He made you, as it were, a reflection of God, in your own right. Of Eulalia Gonde, if you prefer,” she corrected, seeing Ophelia frown. “It was a suitable starting point, but if you had come to us too soon, the experiment would have failed. It had to be your choice, your expiation, and your redemption. Aren’t you going to put them back on?”

  The woman indicated the glasses and gloves left on the cushion. Ophelia forced herself to put them on, even though these accessories were suitable neither for her sight nor for her hands. Thorn alone had the originals. The observers knew enough about them already; they didn’t need to know, too, that he and Ophelia had met up, secretly, to rifle through their drawers.

  “Have you kept your promise? You have caused him no harm?”

  “What are you referring to?”

  Sitting bolt upright on her bench, the woman was smiling. Was it her way of indicating that Sir Henry’s secret was safe, or was she unaware of the substance of the Knight’s threat? It was terribly frustrating, but Ophelia wasn’t going to risk compromising Thorn’s cover if it was still protecting him. She let it go.

  “What are you going to do with the echo?”

  “Come now, mademoiselle. You know that we know that you know.”

  Ophelia now felt her heart racing. Yes, she knew the observers would try to establish a dialogue with this echo, as Eulalia Gonde had once established with the Other. She knew they would study it until they understood it, inside out; learn the language of echoes from it; and, finally, achieve a viable conversion. She also knew, even if it pained her, that Thorn and she also needed a Horn of Plenty in perfect working order.

  She knew all that, but that wasn’t her question.

  “I’ll rephrase it. What are you going to do with the Horn of Plenty?”

  The beetle woman let out an indulgent sigh.

  “You have achieved a miracle, mademoiselle. No candidate before you had achieved crystallization. We will make sure that your miracle goes on to achieve new miracles.”

  “What new miracles?”

  “It’s not within our remit to decide.”

  “Who, then? Who really decides here? Who thinks for you?”

  “It’s not part of our remit to tell you.”

  Ophelia’s heart was no longer racing. It was pounding.

  “A God who dominates the world, and an Other who destroys it, wasn’t that enough for you?”

  The woman took off her pince-nez. Only then did Ophelia notice all the lines fanning out from her tired eyes. She was no longer an observer, but a simple Babelian, marked by the sun, and by life. Had she herself lost a loved one during the last two landslides?

  “Destroyed, or purified, mademoiselle, it all depends on one’s point of view. The old world was a hell blighted by war,” she murmured, lowering her voice for the last word, as if the Index held as much sway here as anywhere else. “Thanks to the Other, Eulalia Gonde created a new humanity, directed by outstanding guardians, and they all endeavor, together, to purge our souls of vice, generation after generation. In all honesty, I don’t know why the Other deviated from the original plan today. Perhaps he reckons the new world isn’t yet worthy of being saved? That’s why it’s our duty to push the quest for perfection further,” the woman continued, with increased fervor. “As for you, you have already fulfilled your duty.”

  There we are. It was precisely as Ophelia had feared. Whoever the brains behind the Deviations Observatory might be, they were following in Eulalia Gonde’s footsteps, treading deeper, even. Their intention wasn’t to release men and women from a subterranean dictatorship, but to bring the lost sheep back onto the straight and narrow. It was still all about imposing on them a way of seeing, a way of doing, a manual for life. A perpetual childhood, in short.

  Ophelia didn’t believe for a second that this was what the Other was waiting for from humanity, to end his apocalypse.

  “This world’s real problem,” continued the woman, sensing Ophelia’s misgivings, “is that it remains desperately incomplete. We are all incomplete, en fait, and some even more than others.”

  Ophelia wasn’t in the mood for more philosophical musings. She insisted on the concrete.

  “What are the shadows? What are the echoes? What are th
e Others? What are they, really?”

  The woman hesitated, and then her expression turned dreamy.

  “The air you breathe, mademoiselle, is not the only air there is. There’s another air mixed in with it, right here, all around you, at this very moment. Odorless. Undetectable. We call it aerargyrum, literally ‘air-silver.’ You imprint your whole body on it, along with your family power, if you have one. This air is sufficiently dense in places for you to glimpse it, armed with the right instruments. You propagate your every action in it, your every word, and sometimes, when this air is disturbed by certain, particular circumstances—a major landslide, a minor discrepancy—it sends them back to you in a return wave.”

  Ophelia instinctively blocked her lungs. When she had seen the laboratories through the prism of the lens, she had thought that only shadows and echoes were composed of aerargyrum. She now realized her misapprehension. The aerargyrum was everywhere. What she had visualized represented merely the spume of an invisible ocean.

  “Imagine now,” the woman continued, her tone cloying, “that one of these return waves starts to reflect for itself. To reflect . . . A verb that, in this case, is parfaitement appropriate. Imagine it, then: this double of yourself, entirely made of aerargyrum, that suddenly becomes conscious of itself, that crystallizes itself around that thought, that appropriates your language, and just wants to speak to you about all that clouds your perception. That’s what an Other is.”

  Ophelia thought of the Shadow, that had visited her in the chapel without the observatory knowing, and had gone to great lengths to make itself understood by her. A condensation of aerargyrum without a body, but with a will, but which, nevertheless, claimed not to be the Other.

  No, quite clearly, the essential was still slipping through her fingers.

  “Your aerargyrum,” said Ophelia, “where does it come from?”

  With her pince-nez, the beetle woman indicated a stone archway, right at the back of the crypt. The flickering light from the bulbs did nothing to dispel the shadows lurking there.