The Unraveling

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  “Um,” Fift told Predoria, “enjoy . . . your megalomaniac fantasies . . . while you can.”

  Predoria looked up sharply.

  “With Shria?” Dobroc frowned. Now Vvonda and Stogma were struggling with the Vails who held Shria. A tangle of hands, legs—and Hrotrun slithered out between them, rolled to vir feet. “Ve’s trying to stop Hrotrun. Before Hrotrun gets them in even more trouble.”

  The fabricators had fallen almost silent in the reactants’ hall. A few desultory pings echoed from far away.

  “You can continue to live”—Fift said, zir eyes shifting away from Predoria’s—”in a lonely bubble of”—ze felt the sweat springing from zir flushed scalp—“denial of the truth”—zir throat was dry, clutched; this wasn’t going well—“a smaller and smaller social world . . .”

  Hrotrun danced away from Stogma as the Peaceable wiped blood from zir forehead (red smears garish on zir white sleeve) and staggered towards zir bopperstaff . . .

  “Fift,” Dobroc said, “about Predoria . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, forty percent of the reactants in that hall,” Dobroc said, “had their cohorts forcibly broken up; many of those had children confiscated by Midwives. Most of the rest never qualified for cohorts. Seventy percent tried some other profession but lacked sufficient supporting votes. Five percent are known to be indefinitely postponed regendering applicants . . .”

  Predoria leaned forward. “You don’t seem—” ve said.

  Hrotrun broke into a sprint.

  “—to be paying—”

  In the tangle of bodies, Shria took a fist in the stomach. Vir other face—lips curled, eyes bulging—showed an ecstasy of rage.

  “—attention.”

  “. . . it’s a dumping ground,” Dobroc said.

  “Okay, but . . .” Fift said. “How does that . . . if they all have so little emotional capital, doesn’t it make this . . . defiance . . . even more odd?”

  “It would have, I think,” Dobroc said. “But things are . . . changing.”

  Fift cleared zir throat. Ze felt Mother Pip standing rigid behind zir. “Until there is nothing left,” Fift said, “not even the honor of—”

  The Peaceable reached for zir bopperstaff, but Hrotrun reached it first and kicked it aside.

  “—of, of a sanctioned—”

  Five hundred thousand viewers in the reactants’ hall.

  There was a thunderous wave of pings: every fabricator in the hall, finishing at more or less the same moment.

  Dobroc’s body leaned into Fift’s, shoulder against shoulder, hip against hip, and yes, that new-wood, spice-sap smell was zirs, and the calligraphic badlands of zir engraved palm pressed into Fift’s as if revealing something written in a secret language, and if Fift were to turn, ze could hold Dobroc entirely, encircle zir in zir arms, press zir face into Dobroc’s neck—

  Predoria reached into vir fabricator and began to pull out a quantity of fabric: velvety, luxurious, soft. Ve wound it and wound it around vir hands.

  “—a, a sanctioned—”

  “Fift,” Dobroc gasped. (What was Fift thinking, why did zir hearts leap, why did ze want to touch Dobroc’s lips, to touch them with zir own, to taste Dobroc’s speech, to drink zir up, wasn’t ze in enough trouble; hadn’t ze already screwed things up forever with Shria, Shria who was bleeding in Wallacomp, Shria who smelled like a wild surface forest; what was this strange toadclownish hunger in Fift, it was Shria’s fault, show me your fucking genitals indeed—) “Look at the whole reactants’ hall—!”

  (How could ze ever be the same after having seen Shria gasp like that, and shudder, vir soft skin gleaming with sweat, vir face transformed, transfixed, and Fift the still center holding all that wild storm in one small hand—)

  In the long, curving hall, maybe eight thousand Staids and Vails in all styles of dress pulled the same rich, luxurious fabric from their fabricators. Most of the remaining seats were now empty.

  It was the soft, rich fabric Panaximandra had thrown.

  (—and what would Dobroc say if ze knew? It’s not safe for me with you: if Dobroc could guess at the secret behind Shria’s words. Ze admired Fift’s honesty; ze imagined zir as Minth before zir hour of destiny. But did Minth ever have such secrets? Father Squell was right. Fift had lost the balance; ze was ruined, muddled up, not one thing anymore, infected with vailish hungers. Pressed against zir hip and shoulder, Fift could feel how Dobroc’s body was lithe and supple under zir shift; ze could feel the complex patterns of zir skin, could tell that Dobroc’s labyrinth extended beneath zir clothes, that you could travel its paths and furrows into Dobroc’s sleeves, along zir arms and down zir flanks and across zir belly, never leaving the maze. Dobroc was the same size as Fift, not bigger like Shria—if they lay nose to nose, embracing, their toes would touch; squeezed skin to skin, without their clothes, they could inscribe the inverse image of Dobroc’s map onto Fift, while Dobroc’s voice flowed over and through zir, and Fift’s hands

  (—stop thinking this stop stop stop—)

  In the goopfields of Tentative Scoop, the Peaceable straightened up. Ze stood next to Hrotrun, who drew vemself together to lunge. The Peaceable frowned, a small furrow appearing between zir brows. Ze shook zir head briskly, as if disagreeing with someone . . . and then, stiffening, seemed to resign zirself, as if preparing for a blow. A minute tinge of dread could be seen in zir eyes, in zir clenched jaw, in zir live-published emotional state. Ze closed zir eyes and drew in a deep breath.

  Predoria grinned a wide, lecherous grin. Around vem, the industrial reactants—Vails and Staids, all wide-eyed, some trembling, all clutching the luxurious cloth—rose to their feet.

  “Trickster’s feet!” Dobroc swore. “Get out of there, Fift. Get out of there now!”

  Fift turned from Predoria and snatched Pip’s sleeve. {Mother Pip, we’ve got to go.} ze sent. {It’s going to be another riot . . . or . . .}

  {We are going nowhere.} Pip sent, glaring. Ze stood rigid and upright and still in the hall’s center. {Do not imagine that these reprobates frighten me . . .}

  Hrotrun tensed to spring, but ve never sprang at the Peaceable. Instead ve screamed—a cry of terror and agony and loss like nothing Fift had ever heard before—and grabbed at vemself, clutching vir arms, vir legs, as if trying to hold vemself together.

  The Peaceable was screaming too. Ze balled zir fists at the side of zir head, fell to zir knees, and shook so violently it seemed that ze would fly apart.

  They were all screaming. Stogma. Bluey. The willowy Vail in Hrotrun’s cohort with the bone-white skin. The blue-skinned Vail in the frilly, puffy red gown and the leathery brown one dressed only in tool-straps bedecked with trowels and soft-nosed flangiers—their struggle had become a desperate, violent embrace, as if they were trying to burrow into each other’s bodies, like mindless surface animals tearing through the dirt.

  Vvonda, curled in on vemself, hands covering vir head, shaking, sobbing.

  Shria—

  “What’s happening to them?” Fift said in the silence of the noise-canceling couch, smelling spice-sap, fresh-cut wood, acrid muscle-engine sweat, and dust.

  —Shria was screaming too, and worse: vir two bodies at the goopfield were locked in combat, one pair of hands around the other’s throat, strangling vemself—

  {What’s happening to Shria?} Fift sent zir context advisory agent. {Ve didn’t do anything wrong! Ve was trying to protect the Peaceable, to stop Hrotrun—what are they doing to vem?}

  {In the absence of ontology}, zir context advisory agent sent, {normative expectations lose their purchase, and the flow of possible meanings becomes a flood.}

  And in the reactants’ hall the fabricators’ doors burst open, spilling clouds of thick red smoke. The reactants stumbled back, coughing. Fift caught a whiff of the smoke and it stung zir throat, and suddenly the place was full of running bodies, Vails and Staids on their feet.

  “Fift, you’ve got to go,” Dobroc said.


  Predoria leapt from vir bench—ve towered over them. Ve looked back over vir shoulder, grinning at Fift, and then, head down, luxurious fabric clamped to vir mouth, ve charged into the smoke.

  It burned, scraping its way into Fift’s throat; zir lungs fought back, coughing—

  Ze grabbed Pip’s shoulder.

  Flashes of light in the red mist and the outlines of Peaceables entering through the doors, and the reactants diving through windows, pushing past Peaceables, falling before them.

  “Get out of there, Fift!” Dobroc said. “The Peaceables are raiding—”

  “Never mind that!” Fift said, jumping up from the couch. “Stop talking about that! I can see that for myself! What’s wrong with Shria? You’ve driven my agents to a collapse, I can’t ask them—!”

  {Return to your stations}, someone broadcast to the reactants’ hall in a blistering override, {and restore them to the approved fabrication sequence. Deviations are not authorized by consensus. Return to your stations.}

  Dobroc looked up at Fift, brown-brown-brown eyes wide. “I think it’s the polysomatic network. They’ve overridden it, cut . . . cut it off for that whole goopfield. Cut . . . everyone’s bodies . . . apart.”

  “What?” Fift gathered zir robes, gripped them in zir hands, staring at Dobroc. “How can they do that? How could they get consensus to do that?”

  Fift clutched zir robes over zir mouth and nose. The coughing came so hard and fast ze could barely stand. Ze felt Pip’s shoulder under zir arm, Pip’s arm around zir chest, pulling zir along; ze let Pip half-carry zir towards the exit.

  Dobroc held zir gaze. “People are frightened, Fift. Since the global feed outage, there’s been a huge wave of cohort defaults . . . abandoned children, logistics breakdowns, evictions, closed routes. The Idylls are full, and the authorized temporary behavioral-variance emporia are overflowing . . .”

  {It appears}, Pip sent, {that we must postpone the remainder of our interview.} Zir face was close to Fift’s in the swirling red smoke, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched.

  Fift coughed, throat raw, eyes full of tears.

  “. . . people might authorize . . . a lot of things.”

  In the goopfield, the Vails and the Peaceable screamed again, a sharper, higher, wrenching scream torn from all their throats at once, and then collapsed as one and lay still, panting.

  Dobroc exhaled. “May Trickster ignore us. They turned it back on. Shria’s going to be okay, Fift. The interruption only lasted a few hundred heartbeats. Ve’ll reintegrate fine—”

  Orange stoppergoo billowed up from the goopfield all around the Peaceable. It caught the Vails’ bodies, lifting them, swamping them, and they disappeared in its thick, immobilizing flow.

  “They could have used goo in the beginning!” Fift said. “They didn’t have to tear anyone apart!”

  “Maybe they had to get it ready,” Dobroc said. “Or maybe . . . maybe they wanted to show what they can do. To make a point.”

  Fift’s audience at the industrial hall, when ze and Pip burst through the door among the fleeing reactants, was five million.

  Interlude

  THE WORLD-OF-IDEAS

  > SEMIPERMEABLE WEAVE

  >> STOCHASTIC CRYSTALLIZATION PREPARED BY ATTENTION AGENTS

  REACTANCY SYNTHESIS ARTICULATION: “The Current Crisis, a Near Historical Perspective”

  Burum Apatox Merix, synthesist-articulator: The issue is not a few wayward Vails engaged in an unlicensed tussle . . . a few chastened Vail heads poking up through orange stoppergoo. We’ve seen that before. The issue is the Peaceables’ use of paralytic somatic interference! Not since the Age of War have . . .

  Moom Parandime Ihu, textilist: If the esteemed articulator expects us to sympathize with the sort of perverted scum who would spill blood on a white shift . . . !

  Burum Apatox: The specific provocation is beside the point. The point is that a line has been crossed. We are all—all of us with more than one body, anyway—tied to the polysomatic network. For it to be weaponized, however extreme the circumstances . . .

  Tusha Ivetris Fnax, child: Don’t you understand that my sibling was defending the Peaceable? And these matter-sucking peacebreakers . . .

  Burum Apatox: Of the many comments on this skein, I have accentuated—with some ironic satisfaction—this one, left by the eldersibling of one Shria Qualia Fnax of name registry Digger Chameleon 2. For the edification of children and the uninformed, allow me to clarify: the difference between brutalizing a Peaceable while physically rioting in full view of the world, and just . . . physically rioting in full view of the world, while a Peaceable gets brutalized nearby, is . . . well, I won’t say it’s nonexistent, but . . .

  Moom Parandime: the unbridled gall, to show up among respectable interlocutors and defend vir sibling’s brigandry! As if the maintenance of harmony requires such obscene displays . . .

  Pedux Mirandum Garabo, familial topology reactant: I don’t know why this Fnax cohort was allowed to raise these two in the first place after their earlier failures and arrogances, which are visible to anyone who bothers to ask their agents. This kind of softness and leniency and drift—this sort of abdication of duty by our Midwives—is precisely why we have ended up in this chaotic . . .

  Tusha: Don’t you understand, they were trying to issue a challenge. They did everything right! They did everything they were supposed . . .

  17

  {Shria . . .}

  No response.

  {Shria!}

  Standing at the edge of the couch, Fift could hear a whisper of white noise seeping, probing, through the noise-canceling field.

  Dobroc watched Fift, the whorls of zir intricate skin deepening, tensing, around zir eyes.

  “Ve’s not answering,” Fift said. “What in Kumru’s name did they do to vem?”

  “Give vem a little time,” Dobroc said. “It’s going to be—”

  “No,” Fift said. “No, ve’s not all right. I have to go to vem. I have to go there!”

  Pip stared out the porthole of a skywhale, expressionless beside Fift. Pip was deep in the feed, enmeshed with zir automated agents, searching for explanations, precedents, adjudication strategies.

  {Are you . . . finding anything?} Fift asked.

  {The noose is tightening around us.} Pip sent, not turning from the porthole. Ze sat like a chalk statue, like a box that has sheltered something in transport, after the thing has been delivered.

  Fift almost wished Pip would blame zir for what happened with Predoria; that would have been safe ground.

  {Are we . . . going to find the third assailant?} Fift asked.

  Pip turned for a moment to look at zir. There was a flicker of irritation in Pip’s expression, which was almost a relief. But immediately a cold and empty hopelessness swallowed it up, and Pip turned back to the window without reply.

  In Tentative Scoop, the orange surface of the stoppergoo roiled like an uncalm sea, and Vail heads—one, two, three; there was Stogma—emerged, gasping.

  “I’ve got to go to vem!” Fift said.

  “Go to vem where?” Dobroc raised zir hands from zir lap, half-reached towards Fift. “In Tentative Scoop? They’ll never let you near vem. More riots are breaking out in Wallacomp, and cordons of Peaceables are converging . . .”

  Fift felt it on zir skin, in zir throats, a tightness, as if it were zir entombed in stoppergoo. “Dobroc, I have to do something. I can’t just . . .”

  Ze heard zir voice trail into silence, into the silenced roar from beyond the couch.

  In bed, at home, zir head throbbed, an ache like someone was squeezing it.

  The skywhale was jammed with people—crowding the harnesses, pressed against the walls, sitting in their own laps. Many of them, like Pip, were vacant, feed-bound; others huddled in silent, private conversation, occasionally breaking into a harsh laugh or a hissed whisper. Most of them had lookup locked down to the barest minimum of public information. Fift saw an old Staid four seats over stiffen as z
ir lookup shifted from “proto-cohort of five” to “no cohort.” Ze sat, rigid, staring at zir hands.

  The textile of the world was fraying apart between their fingers. In Tearless, people driven to collapse were commandeering entire habitations by force. Adjudications were failing en masse, adjudicators and reactants sucked in as disputants themselves in snowballing mega-disputes. Below the porthole, a byway teemed with desperate new orphans.

  There were still twenty thousand viewers watching Fift in the skywhale.

  {Please, Shria, send something. Are you . . . are you all right?}

  Nothing.

  “I’ll go to vem at work—that’s where vir third body must be. I’ve just got to talk to vem, I’ve got to know ve’s—”

  “Fift, I—” Dobroc frowned. “Listen, that clip-opera I showed you? It’s been up for five thousand heartbeats now, and it’s received . . . quite a bit of viewership. And after this last encounter of yours with Predoria . . . well, Cirque-watchers are even more confident that you’re a thematic nexus.”

  “Dobroc, I don’t care about any of that now!”

  “What I’m trying to say is . . . there’s going to be a storm of audience out there, Fift.” Ze swallowed, looked down. Ze ran zir fingertips over the back of zir other hand, tracing the labyrinthine hills and ridges. “Look—do you—do you want me to come with you?”

  Fift did. But the idea was nonsensical: dragging this gentle staidkid, this Long Conversation prodigy and secret clip-op artist, this Thavé-watcher with dramatic dreams, out with zir into the barren periphery, where ruin awaited. “Yeah, your parents would love that.”

  Dobroc stood. “But Fift—” There was more, but it was swallowed by the roar, because Fift was now moving through the deafening churn of the muscle-engines and their acrid sweat-stink, through the scuttling trashrats and amber light of the murky, feed-opaque tunnels.

  Away from the gentle couch, the spice-sap smell, the soft leathery labyrinth of Dobroc’s hands.