Dysphoria- Permanence

by Terra Whiteman

  The aperture held only Adon and myself. There was no council. There was no briefing. There wasn’t even a theme; only white space. Curiosity switched to alarm.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him. “Adon, is everything alright?”

  Adon held my apprehensive gaze, his own bled with caution. “Sarine, I was invited to Teleram earlier today to speak to Inspection.” When he paused, looking down toward the floor in conflict, I tilted my head.

  “And?” I pressed.

  “They asked if I would like an Inspector assigned to the Breach investigation.”

  A beat. “But we already have an Inspector assigned to the Breach.”

  “And yet they don’t know that,” said Adon. “The Inspector who offered a member of his team was the lead Inspector of that branch. They are a meticulous, well-informed group. I can’t see how they wouldn’t have already known about Inspector Dracian.”

  I couldn’t either. Overwhelmed, I took a step back and turned to look at the blank aperture wall, wishing something had been there to calm me. A galaxy panoramic, maybe. A stellar nursery, even. “What did you tell Inspection?”

  “Nothing yet,” he said. “Other than I’d speak to the Regal heading the investigation, and so here we are.”

  “But… why didn’t you tell them about Dracian?”

  Adon smiled curtly. “Sarine, sometimes it’s best to take a step back and analyze things before acting. There has to be a reason why Dracian is with us yet Inspection doesn’t know it. Didn’t you visit Halcyon with a team of his?”

  “Yes, two Feelers.” And Feelers were assigned, not something we could grab at whim.

  “That means he isn’t acting alone. Perhaps there is a conflict of interest between Inspection branches. We should tread carefully.”

  “How do we tread carefully inside the crossfire?” I asked. Before he could respond, I added, “Does Authority know about the branch recommendation?”

  “No. Not yet. They will have to be made aware eventually, but…” Adon paused, again, calculating his next command. He’d been given charge of Authority while the Breach investigation was pending. I had to follow his orders now, even if Teleram Inspection outranked us all. “I would like you to find out everything you can on Inspector Dracian.”

  “Me? I have neither the rank nor connections for something like this.” We shouldn’t have been getting involved at all. But then I thought of Dracian and his re-training, his lessons, our excursions…

  The Story of the Twelve.

  What was his motive if Inspection hadn’t assigned him to me? We did what we were told to do, nothing more.

  “Sarine—” began Adon, about to try to convince me. But I’d already convinced myself.

  “Very well,” I interjected. “There might be a few places I can search. Timeframe?”

  “Four days,” said Adon. “After that I have to inform Authority, and they will certainly inform Inspection.”

  I looked away with a submissive nod. It was better me than anyone else in Authority. How I was supposed to investigate Dracian without him knowing was going to be a hurdle.

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Adon, disappearing from the aperture thereafter. He had been the aperture host and so I was defaulted to a public vector of Authority with his departure.

  At least this one had a beautiful panoramic theme to stare at.

  VIII

  MIASMATIC

  Qaira Eltruan—;

  “I DON’T KNOW,” I said, trying to hide my building irritation. Given who I was, that probably wasn’t possible.

  Adrial sighed resignedly, writing something into his notepad. I watched the pen scribble away, fantasizing about shoving it through his neck. An immediate thought followed, one of Adrial beating my face into a pulp, and so I abandoned that daydream and looked away. “Qaira, a large part of cognitive therapy relies on your willingness to participate.”

  “I don’t need cognitive therapy. I’ve been fine for a week. Yahweh’s meds are working, and now all we’re doing is wasting time while the Framers prepare.”

  Adrial stopped writing and looked up from his pad. “You want to be on medication for the rest of your life? All that would do is swap one substance for another.”

  I said nothing, crossing my arms.

  “Are you okay with being the only one of us completely reliant on substances to function? From what I’ve gathered so far from our sessions, you aren’t fond of weaknesses.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Adrial smirked. “No, fuck your damaged mind. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

  I had to hand it to him; he was very good at this. But the idea of having to open up to one of my closest friends about every shitty thing I’ve done or felt didn’t settle well with me. Where I was from, it was against regulation for any therapists to have a non-professional relationship with their ‘clientele’. Not that I would have ever sought counseling back then, since someone of my rank needing any form of mental help was practically a PR death sentence.

  But this was now, and past circumstances didn’t apply to me anymore. As far as I could tell, Adrial had done well to keep our sessions confidential from everyone except Yahweh, whenever he felt my dosages needed adjusting.

  Adrial took my silence as agreement, and carried on. “So, I’ll ask you again. We’ve already established that you don’t like yourself. What don’t you like about yourself?”

  “I answered honestly when I said that I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  “Alright, let’s take a different route. What are some of the things you’ve done that made you feel any form of guilt?”

  I scoffed. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

  “Sure we do, but I only need a few examples.”

  So, I chose four. There were more than a few things that tended to haunt me whenever I closed my eyes, but the top of that list was occupied by punching my ailing father in the face the day before he’d died, making my mother’s head explode when she’d grounded me for damaging our garden, choking a junkie prostitute to death after she’d tried to extort me, and (although this wasn’t exactly me) slaughtering just about every Sheken in Collea during our excursion to Atlas Arcantia. I remembered the little girl’s name, Corinth, and her fearful eyes while she shielded her mother from my scythe raised over them.

  I didn’t bother talking about blowing up Yema Theater or failing to save (or even avenge) Tae, as those were obvious. Assumedly Adrial was looking for other events.

  Despite the horrific retellings Adrial didn’t flinch, which I found surprising. All he did was take notes. “You’ve boasted before that you’re a moral nihilist. Do you really think that’s true?”

  “What I think isn’t relevant,” I said. “The decisions I make in the moment are what’s relevant. No matter what I feel afterward, I do what’s necessary at the time.”

  Adrial raised his brows. “That just means you have terrible judgment. If you were an actual moral nihilist, none of what you’ve done would make you feel anything. You would hold the opinion that your actions were justified.”

  “And they were, at the time.”

  “You know what I think?” He began. “I think you’ve disassociated from your true self. You’ve created this tough, apathetic persona that smothers the true you. You’ve spent an entire lifetime raised to believe that feelings and emotions are weak—part of that is not your fault—but you know…” He paused in reflection, setting the pen down on the sill. “You can only cram so much into a bottle before it shatters.”

  He was probably right so I didn’t respond, staring out the window instead.

  “Starting today, whenever you receive a guilt-generated thought, I want you to write it down.”

  Ugh. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I am not. The goal here is to keep from bottling your emotions any more. I figure you wouldn’t want to share them with anyone, so the other option is writing them down.”

  I massaged my head, providing an outwardly
display of how fucking painful I thought this idea was.

  “And I will be checking your homework,” said Adrial with a sly grin. “I won’t read it in-depth, but if we reconvene in a few days, there better be at least a few entries. Session adjourned.”

  ***

  Yahweh Telei—;

  The data didn’t make any sense. Pariah and I had gone over it countless times today on the assumption that either the TEM instrument or our method was faulty. Fortunately each subsequent run garnered the same results so the instrument and method were fine; unfortunately we were left scratching our heads during the interpretation process.

  The most confusing bit was that the amount of light/photons hitting Lelain’s corpse shard did not equal the amount of light refracted. There was less of it coming off than going in. Sure, some forms of matter could absorb high energy particles, but there was no change in temperature.

  What in Heaven? Matter didn’t just disappear. And it wasn’t like our own eyes couldn’t see a rogue group of particles zagging off. I planned to consult Qaira later, whenever he wasn’t busy, because I was running out of ideas and staring at this data was giving me a headache.

  The good news was that we were able to construct the shape and lattice configuration of the Framer shards, although the material itself was… foreign to anything we’d seen in the Multiverse so far. It was too soon to say, but this may have been the prime factor that distinguished the Framer universe from the rest.

  “Are you almost done?” asked Zira, leant against the wall on my cot, watching as I scripted reports of our findings in attica. He had a knee propped and a hand rested on it, a malay cigarette smoking between his fingers. Zira had never indulged in Celestial substances prior, but the shortage of everything else had made him reconsider. He appeared mildly annoyed. Probably because I’d said I would be done more than an hour ago.

  “Almost,” I murmured. “Although this is a bit more important than whatever you have planned for me.”

  Zira smirked. “You know what I have planned for you, and anything you’re doing can wait until the morning. I thought Qaira was supposed to review it anyway.”

  “If he can fit me into his schedule.” And then more quietly to myself, I added, “I can’t believe I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what?” Zira asked between drags.

  “About his… condition. The severity of it. It was the reason why he destroyed his city. He thought his sister wanted that.” I faced Zira, shaking my head in bewilderment. “How did I not know any of this?”

  “Because he didn’t want you to,” said Zira with a shrug. “There’s plenty of things we don’t know about each other. People have a right to their privacy.”

  “Yes, but,” I said, wincing. “If I’d known, then—”

  “Then what?” he interjected with a raised brow. “You would have been able to stop Sanctum’s collapse all on your own? You’re really going to shoulder that burden because Qaira didn’t tell you he was insane? Maybe that’s the reason why he didn’t tell you.”

  I said nothing at first, only looked at my lap. “Qaira didn’t tell anyone because of pride, not consideration.”

  “What would have happened if you managed to stop it? Where would you and everyone else be now?” ventured Zira, which took me by surprise since he typically he wasn’t a philosophical thinker. “Not here, probably. Not anywhere, since without the incitation of the past, the Scarlet Queen may have come out on top.”

  “Ixiah would be alive,” I said, although that was barely a point against Zira’s.

  Zira grunted, finishing his cigarette and absorbing the waste. “Maybe. Again, probably not. If I was anything like you, I would blame myself for his death.”

  I tilted my head. “And why is that?”

  “Because I let him go to you. I didn’t fight as hard as I should have, and I didn’t tell Calenus right away. Not until I felt him die.” Zira’s eyes averted mine as he said this. “But Ixiah was Ixiah, and none of us are responsible for any else’s choices.”

  “Did you love him?” I asked.

  Zira looked at me, shocked. “Love? As in—?”

  “As in, us.” Was that why Zira had pursued me?

  The shock bled out of his expression and refilled with amusement. “Ixiah? No. He was more like an older sibling to me, much like how he was to you. He belonged to Calenus, anyhow.” Amusement switched to cognizance. “You think that’s why I wanted you?”

  “Well, why do you want me?” I said.

  “Does there have to be a reason?” asked Zira. “I saw you and felt attracted to you. That’s about it. Aside from looks, you and Ixiah are nothing alike.” There was a moment of silence as I sat uncomfortably at my makeshift desk. “Tell me,” he said, “am I your first?”

  “Yes. Am I yours?”

  “No.”

  “Other guardians?” I asked, crestfallen.

  “Off-world, during contracts. No feelings, though. Just physical, and never the contract holder.” Zira grinned.

  I frowned at his stab at Leid. “Are you like Ixiah? Only attracted to one gender?”

  “I’ve been a scholar too long to be bound by any gender. You?”

  I didn’t know for certain, but I’d felt attracted to women more than once so, “Probably not.” None of that mattered anyway. Not anymore.

  “Yahweh, are we done talking?” sighed Zira. “Because talking isn’t why I’m here.”

  ***

  Pariah Andosyni—;

  Yahweh may have given up for the night, but I wasn’t down for the count just yet. I’d reviewed the data several dozen times and compared them against separate runs. Each failed attempt at gleaning an answer for the missing energy only fed my tenacity to understand. There was something to this—by now we were certain it wasn’t a method or mechanical flaw—and each dead end oddly felt like it’d brought me closer.

  But closer to what?

  I rubbed my eyes, tired and sore from staring at numbers and sitting in the same position at the workstation for hours on end. When I’d entered the lab in the early afternoon, there’d been a strange hum in the air. At first it was only heady background noise that I was quickly able to dismiss once our work started. But over time it had intensified, and now the hum was like a gnashing of metal-on-metal, throttling the back of my skull.

  Yahweh couldn’t feel it. I’d mentioned the sensation several times and he’d only given me a puzzled look, then proceeded to ask how much sleep I was getting. I eventually stopped bringing it up and suffered in silence.

  I left my bench and grabbed another stack of data, one that came from the structural analysis. Yahweh was updating our research thread and I decided to follow along to give my mind a break. However the moment I moved across the room, the pain in my head decreased.

  I froze, processing this. Then I took several steps back toward the bench and the pain returned to a dull throb. Two more steps and it was back in full force. Moving to the door, I found the pain gone once again.

  Confused, I glanced around the bench, trying to find a logical reason as to what could cause such a migraine on steroids, specific only to me. It wasn’t radiation from the instruments, as Yahweh would have felt that as well.

  My eyes settled on the desk beside the workbench. Lelain’s noseless head screamed at me from the top shelf.

  I approached it, biting through the pain. Past the workbench, the pain transformed into something else; a ringing, like tinnitus, and I swallowed hard as radio static followed suit. Lelain’s corpse-material was emitting some kind of transmission. Yahweh hadn’t felt anything because that framer head was giving off the type of energy only I could hear. Prior to today the head was stashed across the room at the cutting gurney, far enough that I couldn’t detect it.

  The frequency was making me sick, but curiosity egged me on and I reached to touch it, throwing any and all caution to the wind.

  ***

  Qaira Eltruan—;

  The medicine was making me
dizzy. I’d taken it after dinner and now the room spun and there was a lump in my throat the size of a satellite. I was out of commission for a good hour after each dose, so I resigned myself to doing Adrial’s stupid homework.

  Half an entry later, Leid entered our room with a healing hand. She’d been chopping firewood, judging by the layer of woodchips decorating her shawl. No axes were needed for us.

  She removed the shawl, cursing under her breath at the state of it before shaking it out, much to my dismay.

  “Couldn’t you do that outside?” I asked, glaring at the pieces around her feet.

  Leid cast an irritated look at the floor. “Because it was so clean up until now. The nerve of me.”

  “Well you don’t have to add to the mess.”

  “We live in a crumbling fortress in the middle of a dead world. Some woodchips amid the dust and dirt and pebbles are the least of anyone’s worries. You can chop the wood next time.”

  “I’d be happy to, if only I wasn’t halfway a vegetable,” I muttered.

  Leid shook the last of the woodchips from her braid and knelt on the cot next to me. She eyed the notebook on my lap. “What are you doing?”

  “Adrial ordered me to keep a diary. He says I need to express myself.”

  “Does it help?” she asked.

  “Not sure yet. I doubt it, though.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Such a pessimist. Adrial’s very good at what he does.”

  Unfortunately, I had to agree. And then, again to my dismay, Leid lit up a malay cigarette right in front of me. I grimaced, evading the smoke. “Really?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Since when do you consume malay?”

  “Since there’s nothing else.”

  Ugh. Everyone was doing it now. Everyone except me. “Well can you smoke somewhere else? Doing drugs in front of a recovering addict is bad form.”