by A. I. Zlato
What could she infer from those answers? Which parent would not be angry at the whole world? Who would say his or her child was a troubled kid? And yet … something was wrong. As the day went on, she had the strange feeling that the families all knew the questions she had asked before, as if they knew about each other. She knew it was foolish to think so, because these people had nothing in common; she was sure. She reviewed the schools they attended, their jobs, their hobbies … and there was no indication they had ever met.
Why then would someone notify complete strangers about the questions she was going to ask? Her imagination must be playing tricks on her … but on this point only. On everything else, it was obvious that such similarity in the answers could not be a coincidence. She needed answers.
Baley did not want to wait for the next morning, at her personal appointment with the Machine. It was not too late to get to the Tower, even if she would not have the authorisation to access the first floor.
Didn’t matter. A single terminal, directly connected to the Machine, would be enough. She headed to the Tower, at a time when the last people were leaving. Instead of logging into a terminal on the ground floor, she decided, for once, to use her privileges and go to Level -1. This mezzanine was reserved for residents of the First Circle and had connections to the Machine that were different from those one could get from standard terminals. Deep armchairs filled the available space, and a thin thread emerged by the armrests. One had to only connect this thread to the chip in order to access the flow of data. Obviously, this was slightly worse than with the direct contact offered by the membrane on the first floor, but it was better than the standard terminals located in the lobby.
Baley sat comfortably, and signed in. She fed into the Machine new information she had gathered and sought a common denominator among all these families, something she may have missed. Until now, she had simply sought a link between the children, without focusing on their parents. Yet the questioning she just did, with answers so similar, led her to believe that the common denominator was perhaps to be found among the families.
“Conversation mode requested.”
“Conversation mode granted.”
“Schools attended by parents and grandparents.”
“Answer: No correlation.”
“Distant family?”
“Answer: No correlation before the 17th degree.”
“Prior relationships, ex-fiancé(e)?”
“Answer: No correlation.”
“Possible encounter during Graduation?”
“Answer: No correlation.”
“Possible encounter at a park, in a public area.”
“Answer: No correlation with probability greater than 10%.”
Yet, there had to be a common denominator … To find the answer, she needed to ask the proper questions. Something broader, perhaps …
“Correlation?”
“Answer: Correlation: Real or alleged members of the Chrijulam group.”
“Information requested on Chrijulam.”
“Answer: Homogeneous group of humans.”
“Homogeneity criteria?”
“Answer: Same beliefs.”
“Additional information requested on Chrijulam.”
“Answer: Clandestine group.”
“Why did they live their beliefs in secret?”
“Answer: Not enough data.”
Baley leaned forward. The beginning of a lead! The common denominator was with the parents, not the children, as she had initially thought. She had never heard of Chrijulam, which made sense for a clandestine belief system, but it was a good start. If the parents of the children who had committed suicide shared the same belief, there was a high probability that they had already met each other at their place of worship. This could explain their identical wording, their fury against the Machine … Baley could not yet draw conclusions about the reasons for suicide, but she could finally reach a commonality among all these families. Chrijulam … maybe the root cause of all this …
She went home, determined to explore this promising lead as quickly as possible.
What is Equilibrium? Any situation, in itself, is a point of equilibrium.
Only the duration varies.
Lessons from Chaacetime
Chapter 16
: Inter-Space (Level 2)
A quake of unprecedented violence swept the node, causing a shock wave of space-time. Chaotic currents overwhelmed Aenea. Unable to react, she was tossed like a straw. Pulled in opposite tides, torn by this turmoil, she was scared. She could no longer move. Up, down, left, right; there was nothing.
All this lasted only a few seconds, which seemed like eternity. The shock wave faded, losing its momentum. She tried to regain composure. She curled up, wrapping her limbs and hair vines around her body. This contact had a soothing effect. What had happened? She gradually resumed her initial posture within her habitat. She reached her fingers, which were long threads extending her limbs, towards the invisible barriers that demarcated the node. She flinched at the contact, and anchored her fingers.
Thus stretched, she rooted herself again within Deo, Beor and Cae. Deo, the Phalomera, transmitted to Aenea the Unique Forest’s fresh and quick energy, unchangeable despite all the disturbances. Beor, the Mempheragog, gave it the freshness of the Ocean, the dark force of water. Both Spaces were still there, despite everything. Aenea still had her raison d’être, and she made sure time barriers were still in force, and that Spaces were properly delimited. The separation of Spaces … Cae. After restoring a serene connection to Deo and Beor, she focused on the Calorn.
Neither real nor imaginary, Cae was the very existence of the node. Without it, there could be no possible Inter-Space link; without it, Aenea could not exist. The Calorn was diluted and struggled and regain its stability, a critical criterion. The shock … Aenea had to find out what had happened. She opened her mind and listened. She wanted to know the origin of the cataclysm that had shaken her universe. She then saw … a temporary node! The later self-created and maintained itself during a few seconds, which triggered all the disturbances.
This phenomenon had already occurred, but until now, it always had disappeared immediately. Here was a different scenario. A few seconds of existence had been enough to permanently affect Cae, and the node also.
Aenea wanted to help the Calorn, and stretched her mind and fingers towards Cae, to try to absorb some of the distress. Cae had materialised itself in order to be visible, and the topaz octagon oscillated under the vibrations of the Calorn’s violent emotions. When Aenea’s fingers brushed the pale light, this emotional turmoil spilled into Cae’s consciousness, purely speaking. Her spirit was submerged, then locked itself for protection, but distress was everywhere, pervading every area, infiltrating each atom. A temporary node … Cae’s biggest fear … Aenea’s … space-time streams vibrated under the strength of both Cae’s and Aenea’s feelings.
Aenea’s sight was completely blurred. She could no longer distinguish anything, affected as she was by Cae’s anguish, which became heightened thanks to their connection. The Gateway was steeped in the Calorn, to help the latter.
Rather, their connection increased the waves of emotions, which then proliferated, almost as strongly as those generated by the temporary node did. Submerged, blind, Aenea felt drifting again. She had cut off contact with Space O. to reach Cae, and now her fingers had lost contact with Space H. She was used to not having physical contact with time barriers. Yet, that was not the normal movement to which she was accustomed.
Aenea felt tossed, moving jerkily, unable to control anything. Carried away by the space-time, the Gateway was lost in Cae’s emotions. The node vibrated owing to their joint fear, threatening to disappear. Barriers came closer and became increasingly thin. Aenea had to do something. She stretched her fingers again towards the barriers, and grabbed them. She then gathered the energy of Beor and Deo as well as her own, and then channelled the aggregate towards Cae.
&nb
sp; Aenea transmitted to the latter the combined energy of both Spaces and her own, in order to dial Cae’s anguish back and save their lives. Without Cae, there could be no node, and without a node … Aenea had to succeed. Her fingers felt the limits of the Spaces getting thinner, ready to break up. The energy provided by Deo and Beor increased the destruction process for barriers. The Unique Forest’s branches squeaked, the Ocean’s waves raged, but Aenea held on. She synchronized her consciousness with Cae’s, while continuing to convey the energy. Gradually, they succeeded, together, in calming themselves down, by locking the recollection of the disaster, by isolating it from the rest of their memories. Like the memories of Aenea’s human life, there remained in the node only an echo, a recollection of a recollection, confined and controlled.
Cae recovered its serenity, and so did the Inter-Space. Currents became soft waves again, barriers gained consistency, but without returning to their initial state. They remained fragile, and Aenea knew they would take long to strengthen. The worst had been avoided. Her hair relaxed and let itself passively wander in the flows. The Gateway let go of the limits of her universe, and took advantage of the newfound peace.
Beor’s Ocean found its peace again; Deo’s Forest stopped creaking. Both had felt the disaster, through Aenea, and had used their resources to provide energy. Without sharing too deeply the Calorn’s fear, they also had been felt the consequences of what had happened. A temporary node … How?
Aenea had to understand what had happened. Despite fatigue, she decided to probe the memory of the bubble that just emerged. The Gateway felt the Unique Forest and the Unique Ocean shudder at her thoughts. She, too, did not want to dive back so fast into this nightmare, and yet she had to. Aenea wanted to find out what had almost annihilated them all.
The Gateway isolated Beor and Deo, mitigating the possible link she had with them, to spare them the pangs of fear. They protest but withdrew each in its Space. Beor’s marine bubble became smaller, and Deo took refuge in the roots of the Forest. Aenea felt a pinch by losing their touch, but she knew it was necessary. She swelled her chest, as if she wanted to take a deep breath, although her lungs had atrophied long ago. She, however, had kept this typically human reflex, as her body remembered this past the Gateway herself had forgotten.
Like two parts of the same entity, Cae and Aenea melted into the memory. Aenea immersed herself into the Calorn’s consciousness, into this memory capsule they had created together. The bubble closed on them, isolating the rest of the node from this past. Aenea vibrated again. Part of her knew that it was only a recollection of the past, and that the anxiety was gone. She then isolated emotion, to better focus on Cae had seen.
Freed from fear, they both looked. The temporary node … Cae had been drawn by an anomaly in the frame of the Inter-Space, something that should not have been there. Except for the creation of Spaces, additional nodes were not necessary … Only a Gateway could create a node, and if it were to do so, it would have needed to convey the information into the time-space streams. Each Calorn learned of the new node, which fit naturally into the frame. Here … was something totally different. It was … a link among different places in identical times … impossible! Which Spaces was the node connecting? Aenea continued her exploration of memories to find the answer.
She then saw another Space, other than the two to which she had access, and that she also saw in this recollection. That made no sense. The Gateway existed in an Inter-Space of Level 2 … it was not possible to see a third Space. Not here, not the Gateway. Cae showed Aenea the pictures, this other place, the strangeness that emanated from there.
Was there a link between this Space and the temporary nodes? A causal link … which was the result of the other? Perhaps there was no link …
The Gateway pondered the implications … provisional … out of the frame of space-time … a Level 2 that opened into a third … the disturbance coming to her … was that all real?
She wanted to keep exploring the Calorn’s memory, but the rest of the experience was incomprehensible. Aenea visualised a type of window into nothingness. This black hole was becoming bigger and bigger, threatening to swallow the temporary node and their world … no that was beyond comprehension. She decided to get out of the memory bubble, saving Cae, which started sinking again in stress. The node could not withstand another shock. If Cae became lost in its own memories, the Inter-Space could disappear. Aenea then gently pulled Cae’s consciousness, and they both closed the whole capsule.
Cae gathered in its regular point, without surface, without volume, and regained its normal state, as if the immersion into its memories had reassured the node. Aenea, however, was anxious. She had to find out what had happened and determine a way to prevent further occurrence of this phenomenon; Cae’s survival depended on that … and so did the Gateway’s own continued existence. Both could not survive after several identical events. A temporary node … a third Space … this should not happen again.
It pondered many things. Who could help? To whom should she turn for answers? She was able to define the problem, but that provided no possible solutions. Beor and Deo, set in their respective Spaces, could only perceive the consequences of the phenomenon. She nonetheless sought their opinion. The Forest trembled; the Ocean became agitated, but no conclusive idea emerged. So who could help? A Machine? The latter was nothing but a sophisticated tool, the role of which was only the provision of energy in the creation of Spaces and therefore Inter-Spaces.
Ask another Gateway? Those others, which she perceived indirectly? Was it possible that one had also perceived the same thing? No, that would serve no purpose. Like her, those Gateways had, in principle, no access to this third Space she had seen in the node. They also would be helpless and would provide no solution. Aenea nevertheless queried the flow of space-time by following the current with her fingers. She transmitted her message, and waited. There was no response, as she expected … What to do?
It then wondered if it should ask a Gateway of a higher level. The upper-level Gateways saw Level 2 nodes as mere Spaces, and lived in a kind of super-Inter-Space, which connected nodes to one another. The Level 2 Gateways ensured that each of the Spaces remained perfectly delimitated, while the higher-level Gateways were doing the same work for Inter-Spaces. The frame of Gateways was multidimensional and served the Scheme … Was one of them feeling the assault of these temporary nodes? What was the impact on the overall plan, the whole? Could one or the other help?
Aenea dared not. To bother a superior Gateway, to force it to shrink its consciousness to get in touch with a lower-level element, as Aenea had to do to get in touch with a Machine … no, she would not do that. If that phenomenon had reached the super-Inter-Spaces, those superior Gateways would have reacted …
Probably. Certainly. Perhaps. So?
Deo decided to get into Aenea’s thoughts. Thanks to its newfound connection with the Gateway, it was able to murmur a melancholic melody, chronicling the concerns the Forest had, the shadow that lay within its Space. Yes...She remembered its anxieties, which she had temporarily hidden … She remembered. Something was at work there … Deo could define its feelings … Space H … an ephemeral connection … Aenea started thinking about the Kandrons. That was certainly the reason why Deo got involved in the thinking process.
It wanted Aenea to contact them. That was the Forest’s response, the help she was awaiting. She formulated a request, via its intermediary, and waited. Deo transmitted the message, hissing wind in its branches in a particular manner. Kandrons straightened up after hearing the Forest’s sound. Through the time barrier, Aenea saw them stopping what they were doing, stretching their neck to listen. Deo kept transmitting the message until a Kandron answered the call, which did not take long. A light tingling in her fingers provided notification about the Kandron’s interest.
“The Unique Forest had broadcast your call, and here I am. I am today the 5th element of the Hexagon. And you? What is your quintessence?”
/> “I am the product of a Level 2 Inter-Space, between Space H., in which you live, and Space O.”, Aenea replied.
“When?”
“It does not matter.”
“Is Space O. far away?”
“Yes.”
The 5th element of the Hexagon focused on these responses. Although it could not grasp the whole meaning, the understandable part was enough for it to continue the conversation.
“Why do you need the Spirit of the Multitude?”
“My existence had come under threat, and maybe that of the other Gateways. Without us, there would be no possible demarcation between Spaces. Without us, everything would disappear.”
“The disappearance of all things could have several causes.”
“Exact. The threat is multiple.”
“Why do you need the Spirit of the Multitude?”
“Are you aware of temporary nodes?”
“I see disruptions.”
“What do you know about temporary nodes?”
“I don’t see the cause, only the consequences in my Space.”
The consequences … disturbances went beyond nodes and spread within the H. Aenea became aware that the problem was more spread than she had thought. Deo was perhaps feeling the consequence of temporary nodes, and not a different problem. So, the dark thing it had seen in this Space …
“What are the consequences of these nodes, for you?”
“Our linearity is reverse to humans’; we saw what has not yet happened. Today’s consequences are nothing but yesterday’s causes. We saw these nodes become permanent.”
