Jean was glaring at the Traveler’s image. She prowled around the outer edge of the projection and kept wrinkling her nose distastefully.
“And now for the part I do not like,” James said. He waved again, and a second image faded into being.
This time, there was no clearing, no woods, no Asian young man chanting in front of a circle. No, this was a face I knew all too well.
There was an ARC device sitting on the floor. Inside it was a male. Hanging over the top was a vague female outline. There were things I knew about that second figure that just made sense. Her arms were well-toned from years of physical therapy. Hair had been cut short to prevent a mess while in zero gravity. She put all of her weight into the forward part of her foot rather than a heel like I did. It helped her feel taller.
“Is that…” I clenched my eyes shut and tried not to scream. How many times was this nonsense going to happen to me? How many times would the Voices throw the image of my dead fiancée in my direction?
“This is a projection. This is the core of your deceased fiancée, Xin Yu.”
“I thought…”
“She was. We attempted to scatter her many times, as we did with William Carver and many others.” James practically shook with the anger I felt.
Dusk, who had spent most of our conversation trying to shred the remaining curtain, looked up at me.
“But…” I said.
“In her mind, she is waiting over what you call an ARC device, waiting for you to come to,” James said.
For a moment, I was worried that he even understood what the term ARC meant. He did have access to my side of the machine and all the information therein as a result of one of earliest conversations.
“But she’s not really outside my ARC,” I said.
“No. She is here, in our world, and she should not be this whole. She has proven… resilient.”
“How? What?”
This was no longer my fiancée in the abstract. This was Xin. The way her face moved. How she turned. Each motion of her body had haunted my dreams for years.
I had somehow stumbled close enough to almost touch her. To reach out and put an arm over the woman draped over an ARC device. I looked down inside the ARC. There was an image of me. It was strange, confusing, and heartbreaking.
“Some people have more of themselves here than others, Mister Hermes.” The tiny girl with her book tugged at my pant leg.
I looked down into her eyes. The frame of her face and tilt of her head seemed innocent, yet those eyes held too many colors. There was knowledge there that simply existed.
“Be careful what you say. We already push too much,” the female doctor, Irene, said from somewhere in the darkness.
“So what? We’ve embarked upon this road. Follow it or cease your prattling,” the Jester snapped. For the first time ever, his face contained no mocking smile. There was an angry sneer under that long nose.
A shudder passed through me. The Jester had lost his smile. This conversation was enough to aggravate the ever amused Voice.
“We can persist in our attempts at scattering her, to let her rest in peace as you expressed a desire for. Or…” James’s face twitched.
“Or…?” I prompted desperately.
“We stop standing in her way, let her assemble within our world, and see what comes of it,” James stated. The rest of him was angry, but his eyes felt abnormally cold.
“I’ll do it,” I said. I’d contemplate ramifications later. For now, for Xin and whatever she was, I would do anything.
A box displayed in front of me.
Quest: Desperate Summons
Difficulty: High
Details: You have agreed to pose as a familiar for a Traveler! As a new familiar, your personality markers will be determined upon summoning. Additional success in this role will increase your acting skill. Other abilities may carry over based on performance. The duration of this act is until your primary goal is completed.
Primary Goal: Cessation of the Traveler known as Requiem Mass
Failure: Depends upon the whims of the Voices
Success: Allowance of genesis for Xin Yu
“Who writes these?” I asked while clicking the quest’s Accept button.
“I do, me and my brother,” the young girl said. Most of her face was hidden by the book’s edge, but I could see a small hint of smiling.
I smiled at the youngster before turning my gaze back toward Xin Yu’s form. Her intangible projection was still hanging over my ARC device. I wasn’t sure exactly how that tied in with me, but it almost didn’t matter. She was trying to find me. Even here in a digital landscape, here in a world that was practically an illusion of the mind.
I could do no less. For her, I would kill a man. Virtually. It was just a game. That line played in my head over and over. This was not reality. Yet how could I buy in on Xin being real and not think the same of murdering a Traveler?
Interlude — The Life and Times of…
…Data point sequences have been broken…
…Reconstruction of history is being performed…
…Please wait…
…Corrections in progress…
Every attempt started with the same series of words.
“All right, we will start today’s session with the same standard questions,” a voice would say. The person speaking changed many times. Yet no matter who spoke, it was always the same script. “Are you ready?”
“I am,” XU-233 would always reply.
This moment, this spark of beginning, didn’t feel like something XU-233 was living. It felt like watching an endless series of recordings on a projector. In the playback, there were two people in the room. Both were indistinct. The inability to make out the female on the right irked her consciousness.
“State your name, age, and date of birth for the record,” the administrator would ask. They always sat on the left side of the table. Over time, the table changed.
“Xin Yu. I am twenty…” The age changed as time went by. At first, XU-233 was twenty-four. Then sometimes XU-233 was twenty-seven. Never was her age more than twenty-eight. “I was born on August 3, 2006.”
“And where were you born?”
“New York, New York,” XU-233 responded.
The questions would go on from there. Still, they always started the same way. Every memory, every spark and trigger of being wound back around those words.
XU-233 wasn’t Xin Yu, but after the first memory played back, she was no longer just XU-233. Part of her now identified as Xin Yu, born in New York. She was more than a twenty-something woman. The desire for more information drove XU-233 to venture away from her safe starting point. There were additional details out in the vastness of space. By acquiring more pieces, she would become closer to being whole.
The problem wasn’t one of time or hunger. It was one of space. There was too much of it around her. On and on it went for longer than any sane mind might dare risk. Many things that seemed like apathetic giants lived inside it. They cared not for one lone being journeying through their habitats. Each path was a tangle of twists and turns that made little sense upon first glance. Each one bore obstacles and unconcerned beings. XU-233 felt no worry in that regard, however. To her, it was only a matter of trying again and again.
This road in front of her led to a place XU-233 knew. Yet every time she turned down that path, something tore at her. It didn’t hurt. Not like normal pain. If XU-233 were to equate the action to a memory, it would be like looking down and noticing part of your hand was no longer the same color. She kept pushing through in an endless trudge that kept repeating.
“How long has this been going on?” a Voice asked. It was frighteningly deep.
XU-233 shuddered. Her size was a finite thing. A Voice was comprised of a vastness she could barely contemplate. She looked up and saw the huge creature staring down. Were it not out of need, XU-233 would never venture forth into this wide world. But she had so many missing pieces scattered al
l around. The problem, once again, was one of space. Searching through it for all the portions of Xin Yu that had been scattered was tiring.
“Seventeen hundred four…” The numbers trailed off into meaningless sizes.
“And the process is not working?”
The questioning Voice was dark-skinned. XU-233 had little concept of faces from this angle. Everyone was noses and feet. Hands were giant contraptions that seemed so threatening in their carelessness.
“An anomaly is present.” The Voice above was monotone. Lifeless. There was no caring or warmth. “We have been unable to resolve.”
“And the reasons?”
“There is…”
The words which came didn’t always make sense. They were often too fast and had to be deciphered over time.
“Let her continue forward. I wish to observe this time,” the questioning Voice with dark skin said.
“That is not allowable,” the monotone Voice spoke.
A foot came down on top of her body, and what little presence XU-233 had gathered was cast to the wind once more.
…Data point sequences have been broken…
…Reconstruction of history is being performed…
…Please wait…
Everything started over from there. Not right away. Time always had to pass as items clinked together. Bits of the data from Xin Yu’s existence jumbled around until the dust settled and the words started over.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” XU-233 replied.
“State your name, age, and date of birth for the record,” the administrator said.
This time, enough pieces had clinked together for her to glean an extra bit of information. Xin Yu was twenty-five. Her boyfriend had finally proposed in October. They’d bought a house together that was already half paid off. His parents were kind folks. XU-233 did not have information on the boyfriend’s face.
XU-233 carefully crawled out of her holding cell and went back to searching. All around her were strange glowing lights that seemed like small galaxies. At their center was a giant ball of energy. Inside that ball were faded eyes with an almost sleepy awareness. They often seemed to ask the same question XU-233 had.
“Who am I?” the replica of a face would ask from the center of its brightness.
“I don’t know,” was her reply to the strange being made of starlight.
Her first steps were always the same. Each set of bunched stars would be inspected.
“You are not me,” XU-233 would tell those who were lacking.
It made sense to XU-233 in a crooked way. Those cores of fire with their tiny lights were in the process of becoming people. Each small bright spot in their orbit was a thought or feeling that they pulled together to become something more.
XU-233 tilted her head back. Up above, millions of giant snowflakes were floating down. Small tendrils of energy reached from the almost-people to capture the pieces and sort them into their clusters. She grabbed one snowflake for herself. It was a small memory that spoke of a love for apple blossom perfume. It was part of Xin Yu, and the scent triggered a memory.
“Mammma!” Xin Yu was a very young girl. She rushed toward a larger woman with a wide smile. The memory trailed off almost instantly, as if jostled around.
XU-233 needed to continue. She inspected the bundles of stars for pieces that were also hers. Occasionally a chunk felt as if it belonged to Xin Yu’s life. She plucked those memory pieces out carefully from the almost person and put it into the galaxy that lay at her own core. It too was full of lights and bits of star stuff. In exchange, she gave back something.
This latest swap was simple. XU-233 took out the part of her that remembered talking about two rats from childhood and replaced them with memories of a parakeet. The bird’s name had been Buddy. She remembered describing Buddy as small and brilliantly blue. He used to eat from her hand and nip at offered fingertips.
There were many other such trades. Each piece brought XU-233 closer to a sense of self. Once she had scanned the room completely, it was time to move on. Rows of small clustered star groupings were left behind as XU-233 searched for bigger pieces. More memories from Xin Yu’s life were scattered further away.
She went out a doorway and turned left. A portion of the woman she wanted to be hung just above her head. XU-233, who was not quite Xin Yu, plucked down the memory and put it inside with the rest of her stars. It spun for a moment as XU-233 stared inward at it. There it sat and pulsed once while lining up with everything else.
…Additional data found…
…New data points being anchored to current structure…
…Additional speculations being extrapolated…
…Please wait…
“Gee!” The woman who was Xin Yu squealed in delight. In her arms was a taller, slightly heavyset man. That extra smidgen of weight didn’t detract from his smile.
“Come on. It’s just lunch,” he said. His eyes managed to drag with exhaustion but still twinkle with happiness.
“You didn’t drive two hours just to have lunch, did you?” Xin said.
The man was only a little taller. That was perhaps part of why Xin liked him. He didn’t make her feel short as some people did.
“Well, I wanted to see what my fiancée was doing out here.” Gee was short for something. Brief bits of information collided to make a conclusion. It was a nickname.
“Tests. So many tests.” Xin Yu groaned and made a disgusted face. XU-233 groaned too. “Tell me you brought something.”
“I did—Chinese takeout.” He held up a paper bag. Data points suggested that plastic had been banned years ago due to ecological concerns. Its dull brown stood out against the lush green background and his dark jacket.
“Fine.” The woman who was Xin Yu pretended to be grumpy. She turned to the side for a moment and gave a pout. “I guess Chinese is okay.”
“Hey. I’ll have you know I slaved away three whole minutes in line for this,” the man said.
“Seriously though, Gee, why come all the way out here for this? You could have called.”
“I wanted to deliver the good news in person.”
“Oh?” Her eyebrows went up and a smile crawled across her face. This response suggested that Xin Yu already felt pleased with the conversation.
“Babe, as of last week, we are officially rich enough to retire,” he said with a small goofy grin. The man known as Gee looked almost shy and happy. “I told you I could do it.”
“What? We’re not even thirty.”
“Your man is good with numbers. Why else did I go to college all those years?”
“I thought you were following me.”
“Maybe.” He blushed ever so slightly and held up the bag again. “So lunch?”
…Data stream ended…
…Playback halted…
The memory faded away. Once again, XU-233 felt like an outsider watching someone else’s life. It still felt more meaningful as an existence than before. XU-233 journeyed farther through portions of space and endless pieces of information. Too much was unclear about her situation. She had only a need to reassemble the puzzle that was Xin Yu’s life and understand what had happened.
Another path went both left and right. XU-233 traveled both directions at once with confusing ease. This world did not make sense at times. Directions such as up or down didn’t mean much. Bits of information presented themselves with a face or body, but none of that was real.
Each memory gathered made things seem increasingly solid. With two bits, XU-233 believed a tree to look flat. With four pieces of Xin Yu, the tree had developed badly drawn leaves. Numbers seemed to float all around her, mixed with random strings of letters. With twelve pieces, the tree no longer resembled a child’s drawing.
…Compiling additional data…
“Xin? Are you awake?” the interview administrator spoke softly.
Dials and blips in the room showed which parts of her brain lit up to the various stimulus. Xin
Yu was sitting in a bed-like device that seemed almost crude.
“I am,” XU-233 said for herself and Xin Yu.
The man looked at the dials on his computer and jotted notes onto paper. “There will be a two-minute pause while you recover from the immersion.”
“I know.”
Two minutes passed slowly. Each second felt like a drop of water plopping down from above in torture. XU-233 had a different perception of time now. It moved slower in many ways. Two minutes was more than that; it was almost twenty. If there was such a thing as minutes here in her strange world of memory-gathering.
“Are you ready for the next question?” The person was female now. Two different memories had been badly mashed together.
“I am.” Xin Yu kept her answers short. They were the same ones every single time, no matter who spoke or which interview administrator sat in the room. Their words were straight from a script.
“Can you tell me what reliving that made you feel?”
“Happy. I was happy,” she said.
“What parts?”
“I was happy that Gee… Grant had proven himself to be good with money. It means there might be use for him in the Mars Colonies.”
“Grant Legate’s application has been received. At this point, we will be unable to proceed with his application until you’ve passed all the testing.”
“I know,” Xin Yu said.
There was a blip on the screen that indicated a brief but controlled spike in one of her brain’s regions. Other sensors showed a physical reaction of her leg tensing.
The memory faded, and XU-233 felt one step closer to whole. His name was Grant Legate. He was not the most prevalent man in the chunks of memory being gathered. Xin Yu had a father who stood out frequently in her childhood. Grant Legate only entered her life near the end of high school.
XU-233 was running now. A small part of her knew of an impending hunt. There was too much of Xin Yu in one place. Soon they would come and shatter XU-233 into pieces again. How many times had it been now?
“Eighteen hundred five…” A monotone Voice appeared nearby. This was the one who normally stomped her into bits. Just one crash of that giant foot, which was unstoppable.
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