by Greg Laurel
It took a little under a week to finish the moving process. The house wasn’t huge, but Miles had no need of a huge house. Certainly could be a party house, though, complete with a basement for lair purposes. As days passed, and soon weeks, Miles began to feel uneasy at how nothing else had happened that needed his attention, even with his faith that the universe and its peoples could handle themselves and their own matters. Even so…
The device he carried like his phone was basically all in one, with energy scanner as well as communications, and a few other bells and whistles, but it pinged all the same.
“Go on?”
“Interesting greeting, but I get it,” Jaden’s voice said as her image appeared in video. “You should come to Laksor, I’ve discovered something that might interest you.”
Miles took his ship this time, The Aura Runner. He had learned recently that personal energy-based teleports aren’t difficult to track, and some planets were less than fond of random individuals appearing out of nowhere. A social faux pas, as it were. It was generally rude to just warp from planet to planet like he had been for the past while. While in warp, Miles found himself humming to himself, but it was not hums that made the random notes of general musical sense.
“Borf borf borf… borf borf Borf, Borf borf Borf, borfa-borf borf Borf… Borf borf Borf… BORF BORF! BORF BORF BOOOOOOORF!”
This continued for some time, Miles simply ‘borfing’ in song, when he faintly heard Jaden’s voice on his comm-link.
“I mean, that’s actually pretty good, not sure how he figured it.”
“Fuck.” Miles realized that he never actually hung up.
“I swear, if I didn’t know that you were human, I’d swear you sound exactly like a Death Worlder, ridiculousness when alone and all.” She was referring to Raon-Arashal’s Death World Vulpians, of course.
The rest of the trip was in silence, even after Miles ended the transmission. Upon arriving on Laksor, someone was on the platform, but they seemed... off. Miles took another look at the Laksorian, and focused. His eyes turned a golden glow, and he saw a new sheen over reality, and the unmistakable dark red energy that emanated from the Demon, despite the admittedly very well-done disguise.
“Not this time,” Miles muttered to himself as he reached for the cutlass on his hip.
“Hold, Radien!” Jaden approached from behind. “That isn’t what you believe!”
“I know, that’s why I’m gonna end the son of a—”
“No, Radien! Take another look!”
Miles focused again at the Demon, who somehow hadn’t noticed them yet. A further look into its power, as it were, and he saw that it had no connection to Hell, as if it had been either released from servitude to the Dark Six, or escaped. “What in all the realms…”
“I needed a test subject for the GAMA. And I found one. I figured out how not just to change his form, but who he was as a creature. It’s not just that he doesn’t remember being a Demon, but more that those very parts of his life have been deleted from his consciousness. They’ve ceased to have ever existed.”
“The GAMA device was for rewriting genomes, not entire minds!”
“Correction: I told you to get parts for the genomic part of the puzzle. I procured the rest that this needed.”
Miles looked to Jaden, and the new Laksorian, who finally figured out that there were some people here. “Oh, hey Jaden!” He waved casually. Miles was not convinced, even if it wasn’t obvious in his expression.
“Hi, Erik!” Jaden waved back. “Whatever Demon he used to be, he’s not anymore. Most Demons don’t actually even have names, only the ones who do something impressive,” she whispered.
Jaden walked over to Erik, handing him a small data chip. Currency drive of some kind, then instructing him to get himself something nice to eat. She then took Miles to her laboratory.
“I’ve no doubt you want every proof in all the universe that this worked,” she explained, pulling up audio logs and video tests, as well as written reports on her computer setup. “I captured him on the outskirts of Nagatzul City, Redaria Omega. Take a look at his own testimony.”
The video played of a Demon scout restrained to a table, but not nearly as much as was likely needed. “Context: According to this scout’s testimony on capture, he dissents the Dark Six, as well as their mission to conquer all reality,” Jaden said to the camera, and the Demon nodded.
“I’m not the only one, either. In fact, there are many Rogue Demons scattered across Hell, some even in this universe. The problem with us is that we very much go all or nothing on our cause. Either a Demon loves nothing more than to kill in their master’s name, or they denounce it all and call their ‘masters’ ridiculous.”
“And why don’t the Dark Six simply crush those kinds of Demons?” Jaden asked.
“Normally they do. Very few of us get away for any amount of time, let alone escape to your universe. But much like how my kin batter at the walls of your worlds so much that someone eventually breaks through, the same can be said of Rogue Demons. Many rise and quickly fall, almost all of them do. But every now and again, one of them succeeds in running away, just wanting to live beyond this ridiculous forever war the Dark Six rage.”
Jaden scribbled some notes in the video feed as the Demon continued.
“The problem is that I can still be tracked by my brethren. I still have a trace to the Dark Six, a trace that can be followed. If my former comrades find me, they’d honestly be more interested in killing me as painfully as possible than killing you and anyone else in their way. But they’d still do it.”
“Undoubtedly. So why did you seek me out, and get captured as a result?”
“I heard rumors of your work. Genome Hacking. The ability to change a creature at the most primordial level, and I saw a chance to leave that life behind, truly.”
“It can’t remove that trace you were talking about though, nor can it change that you would have been a Demon at some point.”
“Not yet,” the Demon responded, breaking the restraints that bound him to his chair. Jaden jumped up and grabbed an Ion pistol from nearby, pointing it at him with no falter. The Demon seemed to grab something from the air, like it was hidden just outside of visibility, and soon a strange apparatus formed itself in his claws, which he then set down upon the table.
“This can rewrite the consciousness of the willing,” he explained. “Operating on consent, it can delete parts of one’s own mind, and replace them. I give you my permission to remove all my memories and associations with my time as… this. To make me a new being, a better being.”
The video ended, and Miles looked at Jaden again.
“I tested the device, scanned it, everything. It was exactly what he said it was. I was able to program it to make him a Laksorian in body, mind, and spirit after I put it on the GAMA. And though he still had Demonic energy about him… there was no trace to the Dark Six. That chain that meant he could be tracked and bound to their will was gone.”
Miles stood, rubbing his chin, trying to figure out just how this was too good to be true. It certainly sounded like it was. “It sounds too good to be true, and I hope you’ve thought that as well at some point.” Jaden nodded when he finally spoke. “I don’t think this can be used on the Demons as a whole. Like you said, a subject needs to be willing, borderline wanting for this to work. But I suppose… if more Rogue Demons show up, seeking their flight from the Dark Six, this could very well be used. Get all the information they have, then hit ‘em with this.”
“My plan exactly,” Jaden affirmed. “I’ll keep tweaking it, refining the process. Perhaps something more can come of this.”
“Admirable ambition, but we might just need to take this miracle at face value.”
A few moments passed in silence, and Miles flicked at a few holographic screens, slightly bored now that the conversation was finished. “Was there anything else you needed?”
“I should honestly be asking you that, seeing as I’ve
yet to repay you for getting me the parts I needed for this thing,” Jaden replied. “The Bloodstream Accelerant Module trick was a stroke of genius. Almost on my level, but I probably shouldn’t brag.”
“I tend to avoid tooting my own horn altogether,” Miles said with a slight nod. “But I will not forget the next time I need a quick favor.”
“What do you need now?” Jaden asked, sitting up on a nearby table. “What could you use at this moment?”
“I’m not sure,” Miles answered. “Give someone all the options in the world, and they’ll never be able to decide, I suppose.” He looked towards the middle distance, like he was trying to piece together a puzzle in his head of his own making. “I… I genuinely don’t know. That’s so odd. I mean, I know often that I don’t know the answer to a question, but that feeling, that understanding that I truly don’t know… It’s almost harrowing.”
“Well, make sure I’m the second to know when you learn it, given that you’ll be the first.”
Miles nodded, and took his leave, heading back to Cynofrax, and his home outside Alindros. Well, it was actually a pretty good distance from the capital, the closest settlement in fact was a city called Independence. It was mostly inhabited by a mechanical people known as the Ascendant, called such from having ascended to sentience as a species long ago. In fact, Ascendant referred to any mechanical creature who learned how to be sentient. Like other species, they tended to come in all shapes and sizes.
One of Miles’s friends he made in the city was called Bringer, who worked at one of the taverns as a bartender. Some Ascendant circles tended to name themselves by pointing at a word at random from a dictionary, which was how the first ones got about it.
“It would be odd for someone like you, I suppose,” Bringer finished his point. He and Miles were discussing the outing on Laksor, but Miles omitted the Demon part. “Your story is one that would give yourself great conflict. Stuck as you were, suddenly now it all opens up like you just finished the tutorial of an open-world game? That would confuse anyone of any species on a rather base level.”
“It also seems really odd, that… everyone seems to talk like me, right? Not just speaking my language, but talking like me. The way I speak and order my words and such, there’s no way every person has that idiolect as well!”
“Well, that would actually be The Aura for you. The universal understanding and such, it doesn’t just tell you the words someone’s saying. The power is intuitive. It knows what you need to hear to understand the message, and ensures you do. The way you’re talking sounds much like mine. It’s why we seem to have become friends this quickly. Our words are almost the same, and the only rift would be made by differences and disagreements in morals.”
“And what do you hear when you speak and listen?”
Bringer was quick to answer. “Words I understand, in the way I need in order to understand them. What does it matter exactly how I speak to myself, or how exactly I hear you speak to me? You say something, and I hear exactly what you mean. I say something, and you get the same.”
“Well, that’s real fuckin’ helpful.”
Bringer laughed, pouring Miles a new pint. “I know.”
A moment passed, and Bringer leaned himself against his side of the counter a bit. “I once tried to figure it all out, like you’re doing right now. What really are the words he’s saying? What is really the message she’s trying to tell me? But I’ve also learned that languages are gods-damned unbelievable messes. Yeah, I could take those actual words and figure out what they were defined as, but that’s exactly how misinterpretation happens. That’s the literal process to incite it. You use The Aura, I use algorithms embedded in my programming. It gets the job done. Yours probably better than mine, but does that really matter? It works.”
Miles took a decent drink from his glass.
“There’s plenty of mysteries around that need solving. Enough matters that demand attention to occupy any of us for a thousand of our lifetimes before we’d get anywhere near to where this sits on the priorities. Hell, by the time we were ready to get to it, a whole new list of better shit to do would create itself. I’d rather repair a bridge when it falters than see if I can tack on extra planks for no real reason. I might be able to build a whole new bridge with all the wood I use to absolutely secure a natural one that has lasted for centuries, and will for millenia more,” Bringer continued, almost solemnly.
“Gods, imagine spending that kind of time to preemptively fix what isn’t broken by any means,” Miles retorted.
“Preemptive is just a polite word for unprovoked.”
Chapter the Thirteenth
Miles fiddled about with his guitar at the home the Alindros Parliament gave him. Veralis had expressed interest in moving in, as it was a slightly larger home than hers, and Miles saw nothing wrong with the idea, so he had told her she would be welcome.
On his guitar, a riff that made sense musically would be broken up by just plucking at the same string a few times, almost like his mind was wandering as he played, and that wandering would catch up to the rest of him. He soon put the guitar away, and just sat there. The harmonic silence from when he’d sit in those woods on Earth followed. His mind not blank as much as just… unoccupied.
“I still don’t believe it all” He finally said to himself and realized. “I still can’t seem to convince myself that indeed, I’m here. I’m still ready to wake up from the nice, comforting dream, serving only to taunt me with visions of what could have been, what should have been…”
Miles sat down at the table, and closed his eyes, soon the harmonic hum of silence filled the air again, and in his mind’s eye, he summoned the Effigy. The silent aspect of who Miles would be if he were better.
“Well, I don’t have that shop anymore. It was fun while it lasted, though,” Miles said aloud, to no response. He just sat there, understanding. More than listening, which is what Miles needed in the Effigy. “I don’t actually remember if it was like, a lifelong dream or something neat to have, but I’m leaning more towards the latter these days. But I’ve finally left Earth for good, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Grabbing a bottle of light drink, Miles poured two glasses. One for him, and the other for what would be him, but better. The effigy of wisdom would hold whatever Miles poured him, but never actually drank it, given that he was just a projection of Miles’s mind, an image of a better kind of person.
Miles sipped from his glass and sighed. “But I still find it hard to believe it’s not some cruel dream. Cruel in that it’s so nice, and that I’ll wake up and have to be back on Earth, with a shitty and stagnant life. Trudging through the roads paved with the same dull grey that is such an infuriatingly capitalistic lockdown on the perception of time and reality itself.”
His stronger image listened.
“And as this, this all continues, and I forge such great memories and alliances, I see more and more that I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving it all. I’d kill, I’d die if it meant I could go back to this if I learned it was all just conjured. Another nice, comfortable fantasy to pass the time between one maddening trench of stagnation and the next.”
His stronger image listened.
“The universe I’m seeing, with so much good to offer, and not even offer, just present, like that’s how it’s supposed to be… it’s just so too good to be true to me. I can’t comprehend the idea that the universe is… kind. I can’t bring myself to think that the worlds are kind.”
His stronger image continued to listen.
“And even now, as I rant of how it can’t be real because it’s just too nice, I wonder how much it irritates you and the people around me to hear how I, so petty and closed-minded, continue to think like this when it does nothing but disservice to me. How annoyed must everyone be, that despite all they do, I still put walls up for myself because I can’t find them naturally?”
His stronger image remained listening.
Miles sighed again, k
nocking back the drink he had poured. “Wounds that I seem to inflict myself because no one else will. What kind of petty entitlement must I have that even begins to think that’s justified?”
His stronger image still listened.
Miles’s head hit the table with a thud, before looking back up at his shadow of light, as it were.
“If nothing else, I’m very incurably me,” Miles said to himself. “I’m sure I’ll figure this out eventually, however it ends up happening. I can’t seek it, because it’s one of those things that if you actively look for it, it drives the answer further away. As long as the universe continues to let me participate in it, I’ll bet that one day, I’ll stop worrying about waking up.”
Radien poured himself another glass, even though he was going to drink what he had given his effigy as well once this was over.
“One day, I’ll figure that this was my waking up.”
Miles nodded to his effigy, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the being was gone. The image of who he’d be proud to be had vanished, returning to the realm of imagination. He then finished the drinks on the table.
After collecting himself and waiting for the fog in his head and motor functions to clear, Miles took his ship to a planet called Caren’Das, having received a request for investigatory aid from a one Kendro-Dalinor, who identified himself by the rank of Exemplar.
After some research, Miles learned that the Exemplar is an elected position within the Hajivakk people, and every planet with a significant Hajivakk population has an Exemplar, who acts as a beacon of morality for the Haji-Son, setting the example of what it means to live and do well.
