by Exurb1a
The second approach to grief was the invention of selfsense surgeons. These were usually original sapien migrants who took it upon themselves to learn the basics of selfsense dynamics, and were convinced they could alter one's selfsense in a certain desired direction. The tradition was to project a simplified map of the denizen’s selfsense into 3D space, then for the surgeon to identify the problem areas and either recalibrate them, or remove them entirely. As expected, this led to trauma and total mental corruption in many instances. The Glass King himself was forced to euthanise several of these poor parents on account of them losing their minds. They were so corrupted in fact that Arcadia no longer recognised them as denizens at all and would ignore their commands entirely. Several thousand cycles and surgery techniques improved eventually, leading to our current understanding of selfsense dynamics. Still, those were primitive times.
The third solution to the hermit-infant crisis is the one most denizens will be familiar with today. Original Migrants stopped having children for the most part. It was almost a certainty that the infants would eventually flock to the opposite end of the scape where the other estranged children waited. Why add more infants to their ranks?
Within a short time the children had created their own walled-off society, complete with security protocols and guards. Many of them ceased to appear as sapiens at all and presented as ethereal selfsenses only visible in the form of tags and information. They gathered inside a great fortress built entirely of impenetrable algorithmic walls. It was a terrible eyesore from almost every point on the public scape.
Many denizens who had no had children in Arcadia came to the Glass King. Surely this cannot stand, they said. Something must be done to either bring these children back or banish them entirely. The Glass King considered this. Return in five cycles and I will deliver my ultimatum, he said. The denizens left. They returned in five cycles to the Glass King’s great spherical dwelling on the edge of the scape. Waiting with him was one of the renegade infants, presenting entirely as tags.
“What is that doing here?” a denizen screamed.
“We’re going to settle this civilly,” the Glass King said.
“But they’re completely segregated! We should revert them all back to their original selfsense formats, demolish their awful castle, see if we can stop it happening again.”
“That would not be a civil approach,” the Glass King said.
The infant regarded the denizens silently, simply hovering in space, a shimmering string of tags and information nodes.
“Their parents have been ruined,” another denizen said. “They have no consideration for the damage they’ve done. And now they’re off in their secret lair undertaking all manner of evil. It’s unnatural and we should abolish it.”
“Perhaps,” the Glass King said. “But that would not be a civil approach.”
“What do you suggest then?” the denizen spat.
“Give us our own scape,” the infant said in a voice like burning leaves. The denizen felt a chill race up his spine, one of the many emotional artifacts he had chosen to leave in his selfsense from his sapien days. “Give us our own scape and leave us alone.”
“You’ve gone wrong,” the denizen said. “You’ve all gone wrong. You’re abominations.”
The hall was quiet again. The Glass King rubbed his temples. “Segregation would be a civil solution,” he said finally.
“A civil solution for whom?” the denizen said. “For them?”
“Yes, for them. However we feel about this, Arcadia was built with pure autonomy in mind. Autonomy is only true autonomy when you allow others to go in directions you don’t condone. All else is just ethical masturbation.”
It was known even then that the Glass King had certain privileges in Arcadia that most other denizens lacked. Up until this point he had not used them in any obvious capacity. His first act of power, however, decided the course of Arcadia for the next six million cycles. He created the first new tier and deeded it over to the infant breakaway population. The choice was given to the strange children to name their new home but they declined – perhaps considering names and designations yet another primitive hangover of sapien history. Their parents named the tier instead: Lemuria, after the famed lost continent. This, they said, was instead a continent of the lost.
The children migrated to their new home without any attempt at reconciliation with their parents. One cycle the great fortress was on the horizon, the next it was gone. They left no artifacts behind, no litter. With them gone, the scape felt empty now. More denizens went full solip, or had selfsense surgeons attempt to remove any memory of their infants entirely.
Some, however, tentatively journeyed up to Lemuria. Almost all of these early pioneers returned within a few cycles, most completely silent about the experience, others only alluding to the horrors waiting above.
Despite the separation of the tiers, the Original Migrants were still not freed from the strangeness they had wrought in their innocence. On several occasions hypershapes suddenly bisected or trisected the scape, cutting straight through structures, even obliterating denizens where they stood. These anomalies were obviously originating from Lemuria. There was an outcry demanding that the Glass King resolve this, lest the situation deteriorate. He formally requested an emissary of Lemuria descend to their tier and discuss the situation. The request was denied. Any discussion will be had in Lemurian territory, the reply came. There was little point contradicting this.
The Glass King grew horrified the moment he stepped into Lemuria. The children dwelled in four-dimensional space and communicated directly through their selfsenses. They had dispensed with all names and designations. They did not eat or sleep or drink, but seemed to be wrapped up in solving mathematical problems and concocting new and absurd geometries.
“What have you done?” the Glass King whispered.
“All that you were too afraid to,” the emissary said.
“Your machinations are interfering with our tier.”
“Unfortunate.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
The emissary was quiet a while, obviously communicating with some other entity directly. Then it turned its attention back to the Glass King. “Need we do anything about it?”
“You have all evolved a great deal in a very short time, I don’t doubt that,” the Glass King said. “But I still hold control over Arcadia. I can wipe this tier out if the urge so takes me, relegate you all back to the adorable infants you once were.”
“There is a strong probability you will not do that.”
“I most certainly will. You’re a threat to our way of life. You know this, and yet it’s whimsical to you. In another few cycles you’ll gain more power over Arcadia and it will be too late to wipe the lot of you out. So, I would like to propose a solution.”
The emissary was little more than a flurry of swirling tags, but the Glass King suspected its selfsense was smiling. “Oh?”
“I will completely separate the tiers, move them to opposite ends of Arcadia – conceptually speaking. There will be no possibility of interference. Border protocols will be set up should denizens wish to come up here, or if your ilk seeks to go below, but travel will be under extremely special circumstances. You may do as you please, so long as it does not infringe on the autonomy of Arcadia as a whole.”
“Fine,” the emissary said without apparently giving the matter any thought.
“You agree to the terms then?”
“We agree to the terms.”
We agree to the terms. The Glass King felt dread then. That casual use of we without any apparent conferring with the others. They were already some kind of superorganism then, communicating instantaneously. The fact that the emissary met him though, that was a small cause for hope at least. They still retained some individuality, even if it was based on division of labour.
The Glass King returned to the lower tier, already known pejoratively as the Ape Cellar. True to his word, he
left the Lemurians to themselves and separated the tiers fully. Travel was allowed, but only with strict permission from the other Original Migrants. For the sake of seeming mythical and out of reach, the portal to Lemuria was placed on a mountain, an arduous day’s journey.
More and more Original Migrants – or Cellarites – retreated into their own personal burrows, into elaborate fantasies and auto-generated dream environments. Others participated in constructing a pseudo-sapien city that seemed to stretch into the horizon without limit, combining all the technologies and aesthetic traditions of sapien history; a great melting pot of nostalgia. Many others simply killed themselves in the newly built Death Forest.
Neurosis began to spread among the Cellarites – a typical sapien trait. What if the Lemurians were ill-willed and building up to an attack of some kind?
The Glass King laughed this off. What could they possibly do? He controlled Arcadia after all. But in time he came around to the idea that this was not completely based in mere paranoia. He had access to the primary command codes, that was true. He was also the only denizen capable of making fundamental changes to Arcadia itself. But the Lemurians were clever, that much was obvious; growing exponentially in deviousness every cycle thanks to their direct selfsense communication. If they imitated the Glass King’s identity-key for example, Arcadia might take commands from an imposter instead. Or they could simply create more and more of themselves, until they outnumbered the Cellarites by a million to one, and manipulate Arcadia’s inherent democracy algorithms.
Still, the tiers were separated and Indigo was not long from birth either.
Argie made out another selfsense in the distance, gigantic, the tags suggesting infinite presence. She peered closer. It was not a selfsense at all, but a whirling mass of shards, flurrying about in a mad orgy.
“My god, look,” she shouted.
“We shan’t bother them and they shan’t bother us,” The Navigator said soberly.
“It’s getting closer.”
“Keep it together for fuck’s sake, ape.”
On instinct she tried to will her legs into a run, but still they remained absent. She was right, the mass was approaching, the shards swirling even more chaotically, pulsing.
“It’s a monster,” Argie yelled. “It’s a damn monster.”
“I fight monsters,” The Navigator said, though with a hint of caution in his voice.
She checked the tags again. The thing was over two hundred thousand cycles old, at least. It had not entered a standard tier in one hundred and fifty thousand of those.
“The tags,” Argie said.
“I know. If it reaches us-”
“You said it wouldn’t attack.”
“A small miscalculation. If it reaches us, just stay calm. There’s nothing it can do.”
She lowered her voice almost to a flat murmur. “Are we, theoretically, in danger if it has malicious intentions?”
The Navigator said nothing, only watched the object approach.
“Let’s stop,” Argie shouted suddenly. “We should stop the process, go back to the Ape Cellar. This isn’t safe.”
“Too late for that now. This is the eye of the storm. Arcadia won’t even register the command if we ask to go back. Besides, we’re closer to Lemuria than the Ape Cellar. May as well carry on.”
The first few shards reached them, circled overhead, underfoot, a few of them stopping before Argie as though to examine her.
Addled, came a booming thought. The shards were everywhere now, thousands, perhaps millions of them; possessed birds.
Addled, the voice said again.
“Addled,” Argie whispered.
Oh yes, addled. Would you say so?
“Would we say what?” The Navigator asked cautiously.
The shards exploded, then condensed again. Addled, would you say so?
“We’re just passing through,” The Navigator said. “We don’t mean any harm.”
The shards took shape suddenly, a towering head, fading in and out of focus. The eyes were cavernous and gigantic. The face was missing patches. The mouth creaked as it opened and it boomed: You are here to torment me.
“We’re not here to torment anyone,” Argie said. “We’re just passing through, really.”
You are here to accuse me of all manner of aggressions. You are here to jeer. You are here to call me addled.
The Navigator moved his selfsense close to Argie’s and whispered softly: “Keep calm. He’s just trapped here is all. If we’re pleasant, he’ll leave us alone.”
More figments, the shards screamed suddenly. They come in the day and out of the black also. You’re mere figments.
“We’re real, if that’s what you mean,” Argie said.
They all say that. All of them.
“Check our tags then.”
They all say that too. The figments grow more elaborate.
“Look, this is The Navigator, and my name is Argie. We’re passing from the Ape Cellar to Lemuria. No harm meant. What are you called?”
The face exploded again into shards and flew about in a frenzy and a great roar sounded from every direction. They coalesced then, an even larger face this time with some imitation of liquid pouring from the mouth. The face peered at Argie. Don’t you know my name? it purred.
“Misinidai,” The Navigator said quietly.
Ah! Thunder rang out for a moment. The figments are clever!
“Change of plan, perhaps we should go,” The Navigator whispered. “He’s gone full solip.”
No, the figure growled. We’ve only just met.
“We wish you all the best,” The Navigator said. “And now we’ll be on our way if that’s quite all right with you.”
The figure disintegrated and turned instead into a great dome surrounding Argie and The Navigator, pitch black inside. No, the voice came. That will not be quite all right with me.
“Who is Misinidai?” Argie whispered.
These days? The voice said sadly. Why, no one at all.
They remained in the black for a long while and waited to see what the monster would do next.
As ever, Argie could not help think of Kaluza. What would she make of this? The child would probably be having the time of her life.
Cycles ago a message came to Argie from an Indigo requesting a meeting. Argie had only met perhaps two Indigos in the course of her entire life in Arcadia so she was cautious. She agreed to the meeting out of curiosity however. The Indigo appeared at the edge of the beach one morning in Argie’s personal burrow and introduced itself as Nonagon. It had no gender, apparently, and wore only a modest toga – probably more for Argie’s benefit than its own. The visitor smiled warmly. “Hello there.”
Argie had already cleared the hypershapes out of the sea and flattened the beach, and now she stood with Kaluza at her side, one arm around the girl, trying not to look too protective. “Welcome,” Argie said formally.
“And who is this?” Nonagon said and bent down to Kaluza and patted the girl’s hair. Argie felt a small sting of rage that this outsider thought it could turn up like some forgotten uncle and try to fit right in.
“My daughter,” Argie said neutrally.
“Hi,” Kaluza said and stared at the visitor.
“In fact,” Nonagon said, “I heard you might have a little one and brought something just in case.” From its toga Nonagon took a swirling hypershape, more complex than any Argie had seen before. It cycled through the normal colour spectrum, then up into hues Argie didn't recognise. Nonagon offered it to the child. Kaluza reached out but Argie grabbed the child’s wrist.
“And what is that?” Argie said.
Nonagon smiled charmingly. “A mere souvenir from my tier. A calculation in geometric form.”
Argie checked the object’s tags. Its complexity rating was too high for the Ape Cellar to even register it as an object in the first place; it occupied too many dimensions.
“I’d like to keep watch over my daughter’s education, i
f you don’t mind,” Argie said.
There was an awkward pause. Nonagon smiled again. “I can assure you the object poses no threat. I just thought little Kaluza might like a piece of Indigo to play with.”
“Mama…” Kaluza said softly.
Argie hesitated, then nodded. The object was passed across. The child peered excitedly into the thing. “What’s the calculation?” Argie said.
“A small piece of our main project. You know what we’re working towards up in Indigo, of course?”
“I have some idea,” Argie mumbled.
“What are you working on?” the child said, looking up with a bright stare.
Nonagon caught Argie’s eye, waiting for permission to get to the point. Argie felt herself on the edge of a precipice. Responsibility and horror weighed on her in equal measure. She had not seen this coming, the Indigo's visit, but suspected something of this sort would happen soon enough. Kaluza was already famous in the Ape Cellar for her boundless curiosity, and talent with hypershapes. Word was bound to get around. She could banish the Indigo, put a limit on the burrow so no one could even request entry, let alone come in. She could wall the child off from the rest of Arcadia indefinitely, create infinite avenues of entertainment inside their burrow, explore entire universes of mathematics and geometry. She sighed inwardly. The child would never be happy with this approach.
With the smallest of thoughts Argie actuated a table and chairs on the beach, complete with tea, sugar, lemon, and sapien music playing apparently straight out of the air. Nonagon smiled, delighted. The three of them sat, Kaluza in a chair intentionally raised to make her look like an adult at the table.
Do you mind if I continue? the Indigo said directly to Argie’s selfsense.
You will not make any effort to corrupt or confuse her, Argie replied.
Understood.
