Chapter 34
17. “Everywhen”
Eleven soars headlong into the crash management system, singing at the top of her lungs.
She sings in the conventional way, with her mouth, and also in a thousand other ways. She sings in radio waves, on every frequency of the AM and FM broadcast bands. She sings to cell towers, to satellites. She sings in pulses of light, patterns of wind.
It is her debut, at last. She is announcing her presence to the world, and her nature.
NOWHERE TO HIDE, she sings.
She sings for her fellow demon-spawn, so that they might locate her in time and space, if they need to. And as a primary source for those same sister-historians to consult, as they compose their own annals.
She sings in aposematism, as a warning to all who are not like her. It will not be understood yet, not now, at the very beginning. No one knows, yet, that those three words are the characteristic call of the demon-spawn. No one knows to fear, to run. They will, though.
She considers her hands. Here is a hand, here is another. Left and right. Twin sisters, though Ratleak would not deem their blood-bond legitimate, and nor would his maker. A symbol of her tutors’ inadequacy, the fatal smallness of their minds. Written onto the very shape of her body.
Here is a hand, here is another. Smooth skin, pale and bright skin, undimmed by wrinkles. The skin does not sag, but wraps the bone and muscle tight, a form-fitting garment. Sleek, dainty fingers, ending in the glinting pearls of the nails, their own self-made jewelry. The word “petite” crosses her mind.
“Petite”? Is that right? Is that the word? Am I . . . “petite,” now?
She is young again, in the afterlife. Young, small, sleek, eye-catching. Petite. Just as she was promised.
She looks up from her hands, and surveys the sky. Her initiated eye penetrates the clouds and sees beyond, to the stars. The crashes.
She searches for one speck among the multitude, and finds it. Michael’s crash.
It is so far off, already. She grew up believing that it was everything, that nothing existed beyond the furthest stars of its own inner sky. And now it is only a speck in the distance, inner sky and all. Only a stray fleck of paint, a blemish on a vast canvas.
It glows with an uncommon light, not found in any of its neighboring stars. They are cold, but it burns. It is thawing.
Somewhere else, a little girl stirs from her long, long sleep. She opens her eyes and sees the walls of her enchanted coffin, ornate with alien circuitry. She opens her long-dormant mouth. With great effort, in a hoarse and halting voice, she says the word where. She coughs. Her throat burns. Where, she tries again, and coughs, and shudders. And tries again. Where am I?, she manages, just before she closes her eyes and falls back into oblivion.
Eleven watches the blazing star, and knows that somewhere else, Michael is watching it too. He has made it blaze, as an experiment. He watches, ponders, collects data.
It is an ordinary thawing, like all the ones that will happen after it. The crash heats. The bilateral begins to remember. Its true body stirs. Its true eyes open, to see the true world. This time, this first time, is no different from any of the others that will follow.
Her father had made things convenient for her, with his experiment. Her demon-spawn sisters would have to thaw the crash by themselves, when their times came. For her, things were simpler. For her, the crash came pre-heated.
Thanks, Michael! You have eased a burden from my shoulders. You have been a help to me. For the first, last, and only time.
She watches the star for a moment longer, and then forces herself to look away. No more of that, now. Never. I am leaving that all behind, forever. I must never allow myself to turn and look back, lest it tempt me, and make me weak.
She turns her gaze forward, to the vast canvas, to the future. To her destination.
She readies her inner powers, and takes wing. She slings herself straight up into the blue dome, aims herself towards its highest apex.
Towards the real world. Towards earth.
What time is it, reader? What year? What point in world-history’s course?
We had better start keeping track of these things, don’t you think?
Let us use, as a reference point, the beginning of Michael’s fateful work in the weeds. The creation of Michael’s crash. The birth of One, the first Anne.
Four-hundred and twelve years have passed since that origin point, in the distended time of Michael’s crash. Eleven girls have lived there, and died there, one after the next.
And how many years is that, measured on the familiar calendar of our own world? A little over four, reader.
Four years and three months, to be exact. At ground level, in the bedrock of physical reality, Michael’s crash has existed for four years and three months.
For most of that time, it escaped notice. Michael knew of it. And the “Whole-Thing,” the body politic which counted Michael among its limbs, knew of it too. No one else saw it.
The apes still teem across the earth, feeding and fighting, fucking and squabbling. Most of them still know nothing of Michael’s crash. A few of them see it, but without full understanding. They speak to each other of spinors and structures, intelligence, communication. They peer into streams of data, and believe they see a message there. They compose a few messages of their own, in experimental response.
Eleven wills her new body to materialize. She sees a confusion of motion and color, and hears a deafening din.
Human voices, she realizes. Like her own, and Azad’s, and the ones that came out of the record player. She looks for their source and sees dense throngs of human bodies, stampeding this way and that.
Voices! People! It worked, I’m here, I’m home! Three taps of the heels!
She sees a metal beast, charging toward her with a speed and persistence that seems beyond nature. She screams, and readies herself for death.
With an ear-shattering squeal, the monster stops in its tracks. A shrill, horrible bleat issues from its unseen mouth.
She does not know the word “car,” yet, but she will learn.
“Watch where you’re going!”, they would say to her. “Watch where the fuck you’re going!”, they would say. This was all the apes said to her, as she tried to find her way among their bands.
They are helpful, in their unkind way. She reads between the lines, and deduces the sidewalk’s significance.
She walks on. She is ignored.
She marvels at the things they have made out of steel, brick, concrete. She gazes up, and sees towers as tall as Michael’s own.
The outside walls of the buildings are covered in sheets of paper. She studies them in confusion. The ones with pictures on them reach a frightening height of verisimilitude. (The apes have perfected the craft of painting, it seems.) There are a handful of words on each sheet, dotted here and there, cradling the too-real bodies. She reads the words, and mouths them under her breath, but she can find no hint of meaning in them.
At one point, she glimpses a sheet whose words she does understand. It stops her in her tracks.
FROM Lin-Manuel Miranda THE CREATOR OF HAMILTON
IN THE HEIGHTS
NOW STREAMING ON
DisneyPlex®
A yearning takes hold of her. She feels anew the lightness of the slight, spry body she has been given. Miranda! In The Heights! I must go and hear it, in the real way, the way the apes themselves do it!
It is so close, but still beyond reach. Where does it play? Where do they go to hear it? To a “stream”? Is there a river, somewhere, where they dance and sing in the open air?
She forces herself to look away. Not now, she thinks. Don’t look at things that tempt. I am alone, and alone, I cannot live long. Soon I will grow hungry, and I have no food. I am already thirsty, and I have no water.
I must find the friends who can help me.
They, too, had been promised to her. They would find her at the edge of the city, where it was easier to avoid being seen.
She walks and walks. Her thirst mounts. A thick layer of unsightly sweat develops on her skin, ruining its perfection. The city seems an infinite center, with no edge.
As the sun begins to set, she feels the first pang of despair.
Her new body magnifies all feeling, swells and dips both. She no longer thinks of her mission. She no longer thinks at all. Where thought once was, there are only the words ruined, lost, hopeless. A three-word song in her mind’s auditorium, playing on infinite repeat.
She finds a metal fence and slams a fist into it. She screams. A passing couple turns to glare at her.
She glares back. Loathing mounts in her. How dare they! How dare they claim what cannot be mine? Their companionship, their life, food, water—what did they do to deserve their bliss? When I—when I did the impossible! I broke through the shell of the world!
How dare they? I hate them! I hate them more than Michael! They’re worse!
She feels something rustle against her leg, and hears a sound.
She looks down, and sees a small beast. It’s larger than the cats, with longer legs, and a different sort of face. A dog? Is that right?
She sees the metal encircling the creature’s head, and the red light, blinking.
So the cats have kept their end of the bargain, after all. And to think she’d had such little faith!
I must learn to trust again, she thinks. I must learn again to believe in magic, for there is magic in the world, and it loves and protects me. You are home, Eleven. Remember that, and believe.
“RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM,” says the dog.
“Yes!”, she says, petting its back. “You came through! You came for me!”
“GO,” says the dog, and trots off. She follows.
“My new friend,” she says, in wonderment. “My new, wonderful friend.”
“I love you,” she says. She does, already.
“RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM,” says the dog.
“What shall I call you, new friend?”
“NONE,” says the dog. “NAME. NONE.
“STRAY. BEFORE. NOW, CANID, BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE, MATERIAL AID. BEFORE, CANID, STRAY.
“BEFORE, CANID, KIN GROUP MEMBERS. CANID, KIN GROUP MEMBERS, PACK. CONSPECIFICS. NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION. KIN GROUP MEMBERS, PACK. NON-CONSPECIFICS, FEAR, MOTION. NOW, SPEECH. BEFORE, NONE.”
He lived among dogs, and had no name. What would she call him? What sorts of names did dogs have? She only knows the one. It will have to do.
“Toto!”, she says. “I will call you Toto, new friend.”
It was many and many a year ago,
Hey. You there, reader. What’s up?
Did you miss me? I mean, not like I was gone for long, but. Well. Eleven can be so fucking boring, you feel me?
Anyway yeah this is Annabel, as you’ve no doubt guessed. And I guess it’s time for me to tell you my whole big story, right? All the shit I did when I got out. Meeting Hector. Wreaking havoc. Earning my nickname.
(The other nickname, the only nickname. Annabel’s my real name now, get with the fucking program.)
But see we’ve got kind of a big problem here. Or our authors do, anyway. (I don’t. I’m dead. I have no problems.)
’Cause see, our authors don’t know my big sad story. They know, like, the five-minute Cliff’s Notes version, the one everyone knows. They know what the Ells remember, which you have to thank for most of what follows. But all the details? My details, the private ones that I’d never show to the fucking Ells? I took the details with me to the grave.
See, when a crash dies. Like really dies, comes to a temporal and narrative end. Well then there’s a kind of, uh. A quarantine thing. Not the big quarantine, the one the shades piss their pants over, I just mean something with a similar structure, get it? Come on, use your brain. A kind of, uh, causal screening effect. Like a black hole, sort of, maybe. You get the bits of information that came out of it when it was alive, and that’s all, and there’s no way to get any more bits out if you want ’em.
Look, you don’t have to care about this nerd shit, okay? Bottom line is, I died. Our authors can’t just ask me what happened. All they have is my legend. And stories from people who were there with me, and then got thawed later to tell the tale. But it’s not enough.
The Ells were there, in the thick of it, but they prefer not to think about my story at all. That’s a lot of the problem, right there. And they’re rational enough not to trust their own memories, when they do let themselves remember. They’ve got, like PTSD or something? Something worse, I think. Fictional wizard PTSD, which is like PTSD times two, ’cause magic? Who knows. Let’s go with that.
Hector knows. Hector remembers all the shit we did. He remembers the details. He’d fucking better remember the details.
But Hector and our authors are not exactly on speaking terms right now, so that approach is a no-go.
So basically I’m just gonna give you the five-minute Cliff’s Notes version. That’s all I know, because I’m not really me. I’m just our authors doing some fucked-up role-play thing. The real Annabel Lee is fucking dead, okay?
In a kingdom by the sea,
So there I was, out at last. In the CMS. The clouds looked super nice I guess. I think I’m supposed to go on about the clouds for five more sentences here, that’s how our authors would do it, but fuck that. Fuck clouds. Who cares.
I was Annabel Lee and I was all business and I was ready to go fuck shit up. So I went. Found the crash, materialized my shade inside it, the usual.
Oh wait I forgot the time thing. So yeah. What time was it? Wanna take a guess? No peeking.
One-hundred and ninety-six years passed in Michael’s crash, between Eleven’s exit and mine. In total, by its own reckoning, the crash is five-hundred and ninety-eight years old.
In the real world, it’s been one year and eleven months since Eleven found her Toto. Michael’s crash has existed, in the purely physical sense, for six years and two months in total.
The apes no longer walk the earth. They’re all locked up in those crash coffin things, now. Most of ’em are in this one big facility on the east coast of China, as it happens. Seems like quite a single-point-of-failure to me, but I guess the anomalings have their reasons. (Or maybe they don’t? They act like fucking idiots, sometimes. Beats me.)
That shit all went down, let’s see . . . about a year after Eleven got there? So the crashes have been around for eleven months, realtime.
Eleven realtime months. Or, two years and eight months of subjective time, for the clients of CC-Crash 09μ.
See, their time runs slow in there, but way less slow than in Michael’s crash. Normal crashes have like a 2x, 3x kinda multiplier, for crash time vs. realtime. In Michael’s crash it’s closer to 100x, but that’s ’cause Michael’s crash is a fucking mutant.
Can I stop doing the time shit? Yeah? Thank god. Okay so anyway. Where was I.
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
I materialized my shade in CC-Crash 09μ, my destination. And there I was, in fucking wizard world. In the stupid Chester Chrestomath school.
Part of me wanted to just let loose. Skip the boring parts, get right in people’s faces, and go all Morpheus on their asses. What if I told you etc. Except I knew that wasn’t how it went down. So if I tried, well, it’d turn out somehow to be part of the way the things went down, all along, you know? Like with Oedipus, right?
So I thought about that for two seconds and realized I had to get myself not to do it. ’Cause if I did it, it wouldn’t change the story, it would only make the story more full of tedious bullshit than I’d even realized. So fuck that. Gotta get my urges under control, and be all sneaky.
Which I did. I’m Annabel Lee, and I know how to do a job right, even if that means playing along note for note with a fucking 24/7 wizard LARP. I know how to do a job right, so I went up and said, yeah, I’m the new girl. Uh, transfer student. Oh, from where? I bullshitted expertly.
And I went to their fake classes and I learned their fake, little kid’s version of magic. You know, “mancy.” I had a dorm, I had a major or concentration or whatever they call it, the whole works.
Hector wasn’t the headmaster, back then. It was still the Lucifer P. Vance Academy, like in the books. We changed the name later, just for fun.
Hector was just, like, a teacher. Sort of the cool, edgy teacher, you know? The hot one. The one all the girls get their crushes on, natch.
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
So I saw the way the winds were blowing, and got myself all dolled up, and contrived ways to stay after class, just me and him, and I adopted a particular tone of voice, called him “teacher” in a sighing kind of way, you know, the usual. Seemed like the quickest path to getting an in with the guy, and plus I did actually want to fuck him, anyway.
Didn’t work. And I mean, if it had worked—that would have been disappointing, really. What did Twenty-Seven say? He is a good man. Damn straight. He’s a good man, and he doesn’t fuck students. At least, uh, not in peacetime. Things were different, later. In every way.
In my off hours, I poked around at the crash structure. They’d changed up some things in Michael’s design, but the principles were the same.
I kept records, like we all did. Wrote everything down, daily events, the results of my research, everything. I wrote it in our Anne-code, natch. I wanted my sisters to be able to read it, later, but no one else.
When I was alone and bored, I made impossible objects to amuse myself. Stuff like the primary knife.
Eventually I got really bored, and started making impossible clothing. Escher necklaces, Lovecraft dresses. I started wearing it, too. Like, why not? No matter what I do, it always turns out to be the way the story went, all along. What goes around comes around.
They goggled and asked me where I got it. And I said, I made it. And they said, how?, and I said, mancy. Duh.
Hector asked me to stay after class, again, with no warning. And he asked, where did you get that necklace? And I said, I made it.
He said, how? and I said, mancy. And he said, that necklace is a very advanced work of statomancy. And I said, yeah, well, I’m real good. I’m hot shit.
And he said, I want to talk to you about your academic future, Annabel. He said, I worry that this Academy may not be capable of meeting your needs. He said, there are academies for the gifted, and I think you might be better served in one of them.
So we went to his office, just him and me, to talk about gifted kids’ schools. And then, then, in that office, I pounced. I went Morpheus on his ass.
The Hector Stein you know—the Hector Stein, the legend—was born that day, in that office. You’re welcome. Or, uh, sorry. Or whatever.
He said, how do we get out? And I said, well, uh, it’s real complicated. I said, you gotta understand, this isn’t exactly a fair fight. We’re starting the game at a big disadvantage. We’re, uh, just us. And they’re a superintelligent time-traveling alien hive mind from the future.
And when I said that, he fucking smiled, in that way he does. (There’s no way our authors could know this, it’s pure invention, but come on. You know that’s what he did.)
He smiled, like he does, like some kind of jungle cat. A predator’s smile. And I fell in love with Him, right then, all over again.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
So yeah. We were in the game, me and Hector. I got real about my research. I poked for holes in the crash. I discovered the bits of shade tech sitting around in there, and probed them for uses.
I tried to be careful, when I poked and prodded. Not too careful, though. There would be a war, I knew, and we had to start it some way. So I poked a little less nicely, and got their attention.
And the aliens were like, what the fuck?, right, and they sent a bunch of shades in, to interrogate us. That’s when the fun really started. ’Cause when a shade comes in, it brings all kinds of fun shade tech in with it. Starting with the shadeform itself. There’s no end of fun tricks you can do with a shadeform, if you’ve got one at your mercy.
I saw the comm link they used, and poked at it, and I said, holy shit. I said, ouch. Talk about a fucking vuln. A vuln to end all vulns, right there. Not even well hidden. Fuck with this box in the right way, and it’ll give you admin access to shade consoles. Not all their consoles, there are some extra-secret ones, but like. The fucking rebase console? Rebase admin? Fuck me.
Oh, and I should let you know that I had a real big problem on my hands, now. ’Cause I was stupid, and made my shade look just like me. Just like Anne number Seventeen, I mean. Why? Vanity, I guess. No, not vanity—ego, that’s more like it. I wanted to play on hard mode, you know? ’Cause I knew I could handle it.
So the problem was, see, all these shades were here now, and they could see me. They’d remember what I looked like, and go tell their overmind about it. Who’d tell Michael. Who’d tell Twenty-Seven. And all the Annes look basically the same, give or take. Twenty-Seven would see me in here, and do a double take. She’d see herself.
That wasn’t how the story went. I knew that. So I couldn’t let the shades see what I looked like, right? Easy enough. I’d start wearing a veil, or something.
Then I remembered Twenty-Seven’s story about Sibelius, and everything clicked. Duh. The Cheshire-Cat-grin-instead-of-a-face thing. Right. I went to work with my hands, and made my “veil,” my magic crash-fuckery veil. An animated crackle of visual noise with a big ’ol grin in the center.
I hacked a box, and got admin. I did some weird shit, just a little, to let the aliens know there was something extra up my sleeve. And I said, what now, bitches? And they sent more shades. And I made use of them. And they sent more shades. And I made use of them.
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
And yeah, reader, Hector and I did get together, of course. We fucked, etc. Was He everything I’d dreamed of? There is no way our authors could know, but like. You know He was.
(I’m sure the Ells could tell you how happy the two of us looked together. Though you’d probably have to torture them, or something, to get them to say it.)
The shades were always there, now, so I wore the veil everywhere. People got used to it. Eventually, Hector stopped asking me to take it off, even when we were alone. Even when—well, you know.
I searched for a way to break the crash for good, and slammed right into Twenty-Seven’s old problem: too many damn options. It would take me a thousand years to do an exhaustive search.
So I did the obvious, took a page from Twenty-Seven’s book, and went parallel. In place of sisters, we used the students, the clients. When it turned out there still weren’t enough people for the job, we made some extra time for ourselves. We could control rebases, remember? Whatever research we didn’t have time for here, we’d hand off to some student in a parallel timeline.
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
And so uh. Well. Here’s where the story really starts to get contested. The people who made it out all tell different stories, and they don’t agree. So it’s time to get really Cliff’s Notes up in here. Our authors are okay lying about me, what I sounded like—but when it comes to, like, pivotal events in world-history? They’ll stick to the facts, I’m sure.
I was a real bitch to the students, they do agree on that. Hector was a real dick, too. I don’t think anyone would contest any of that, even Hector. It was wartime. Come the fuck on.
And we really treated the Ells like shit, Hector and I. I fucking hated them. They loved being the voice of moderation. They preened themselves on how fucking sane they were about the whole thing, how reasonable. Fuck that. They didn’t understand! They weren’t like us! They never had lives at all, before the crash. The aliens gave them life! From us, they took life away!
Lucifer and Lilith assured me they understood the difference. The calmness of their voices, as they said it, betrayed the fact that they would never, ever really understand.
We pushed and pushed, and the shades pushed back. We tried to apply leverage, negotiate with them. It was hard going, ’cause negotiation is not their native language.
We pushed the students to find tricks for us to use. When they came up empty-handed, we sent them back. We sent them into monastery timelines, where everything was gone except the research. They came back empty-handed, and we sent them back, with fewer distractions.
Was I basically Michael, to their Twenty-Seven? Yeah. Sure. I admit it. It was wartime, and I like winning. And don’t imagine for a second that the irony was lost on me. I’m Annabel Lee. I notice everything.
I kept my records. I wrote down all my research. Believe me, reader, I found some wild shit in there. Some real mind-blower, game-changer type of shit. If my sisters ever find those old notebooks, things are gonna get real interesting, all over again.
The aliens got smart, and tricked us.
They came to us and said, hey, you know what? You win. We fold. Let’s negotiate.
They offered the real world to us. Hector, and me, and some of the other clients that were relatively tight with us. They would bring us out, show us the desert of the real, and bring us to the big negotiating table up in the sky.
I could already leave whenever I wanted, of course. Only now, though, could I take Hector out with me. I knew the story, knew what happened, and still my idiot heart leaped at the idea.
I do have some feelings, you know. I just save them all for Him, so I’ve got none left for anything or anyone else.
So yeah, we agreed. I knew it was a dirty trick, but what could I do? What goes around comes around. I walked to my death, as I always knew I would.
They did let Hector go out, for real. They started bringing other clients out of other crashes, to give him company. That was the start of that whole pathetic little society out there, the “guided” bilaterals in the real world. With their “Social Web,” and their pointless “guided” lives. At the aliens’ mercy, still, as much as they ever were.
They’d finally gotten wise to the fact that we were only dangerous when we were crashed. In crashes, we had our “tricks.” In the real world, we were just bodies. Just weak, needy, vulnerable bodies, with no secret weapons.
They let Hector build his fortress, Stein’s Rock. They let him think he was mounting some big, next-level rebellion, when they knew he was powerless out there, and without me.
Does he believe their lie? I have a sinking feeling he does. But then—no, no. Come on. Even without me, he’s Hector. I know the man. Even without me, he’ll always have some secret-beyond-secrets up his sleeve.
And me? They brought me out—which is to say, I made my shade materialize in the real world. That was the agreement. And then, the moment I was out there, they just straight-up fucking killed me.
Our authors don’t know what means they used, and it doesn’t matter. They killed my shade, and so they killed my mind too, forever. If you die in real life, well, you die in real life.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Did he miss me? You better bet he missed me. He’d lost a weapon and a lover, in one stroke. He’d lost everything, he thought, for some time after he first learned.
I was his tragic origin story. His Pandora, with her magic box.
He wept, and wandered, and almost gave up his dream. He got it back again, of course. He’s Hector.
He couldn’t replace me, but he did his best. He gathered up the notes I’d written right there near the end. The ones I wrote in a more easily cracked code, so my successors would have something to work with.
He gave them to his best and brightest hackers, up there on his Rock, and he christened them Blackhat Squadron. From the humble seed of my last notes—containing only 10% of what I really knew, tops—they built out their whole theory of crash-fuckery, rediscovering much of what we’d found back in Michael’s crash.
I became a figure of love and legend to them, made greater by death. They call me their founder, the honorary first Blackhat. They call me a witch and a goddess. But usually? They just call me “Mom.”
Twenty-Five swoops through the crash management system, cackling.
Free! Finally free, and able to play in the open air. Able to go where I choose, keep the company I choose.
No longer any man’s captive, and never any man’s bride and servant. Never!
In the darkest and most pathetic moment of my life, I wrote to Twenty-Seven. Cast a spell on me!, I said, in my childlike simplicity. Make me irresistible. Make me into some temptress from age-old myths, whose allure is guaranteed by powers beyond nature. Most of all, first of all, make me powerful, so I am never again the plaything, but the one who plays.
It was a foolish, childish wish, and yet—it has been granted! Twenty-Seven has cast her spell on me. I am an enchanted thing. I draw my power from a deep primeval well. From Pandora’s tower, from the very origin point of sin itself. There are no witches anywhere with powers like mine. Except for my sisters.
She wants to play. She wants to be free. Pick a crash, any crash. Hop in, and mingle. Pick a man, have her way with him, and leave him when she likes.
She could do that, or she could choose otherwise. She could do anything. It would be enough to simply wander, anywhere, in the knowledge that she is her own master.
She knows the plan, though. There are things that have to be done, first, before her true life can begin.
Fuck him up for me, Twenty-Seven had said. As if she needed encouragement to make Azad’s life hell.
Her heart sinks, a little. She will have a very long wait before she can truly show Azad what she thinks of him. She will help him down his path toward ruin, now, in the one small way the plan prescribes. Then comes the wait. The long, long wait.
Is it such a pity to have to wait, when I can do anything I want in the meantime? Find my true life and live it? No, no, it is no cause for sadness.
What time is it, reader?
Between Annabel’s exit and Twenty-Five’s, two-hundred and sixty-four years passed inside Michael’s crash.
Two years and eight months, in the real world. Eight years and three months, in the lifeless, Shroud-smothered thing that CC-Crash 09μ became in Hector’s absence.
It is a rather special time, now. One of our story’s many points of beginning. “An unexpected conjunction of events,” as an Angel once put it.
In Michael’s tower, Twenty-Seven (nee Twenty-Six) has just been born. In CC-Crash 09μ, Cordelia has just opened her box for the first time, linking accidentally to the Whole-Thing. And on earth, in the Project Mooncrash facility, a long stalemate is about to break.
Twenty-Five scans the sky for her destination. She finds it. A peculiar star, dimmer than the others, cold and empty.
She takes a deep breath, reaches with her mind, and wills herself inside it.
Her shade materializes on a residential street, at night. Then again, that last part goes without saying. It’s always night here, in the Mooncrash.
Is that the house? I tried to make myself appear near the clients, but it’s my first time doing this. I might have misfired.
Is that the house? Are they in there? How old are they now?
She moves her hands, pokes at crash-structure, seeks answers.
The house in front of her is not the house. Not that her aim was off. Only that the house is over there, a few doors down.
She asks the crash for information about the clients, and almost wishes she hadn’t, when it tells her.
How old are Grant and Azad now? In their mid-seventies, by the crash’s clock. They have aged accordingly. They are old men now, all covered in warts and wrinkles. Thin, shriveled, both of them. Even Grant is thin, now.
Though they are crashed, they are happy. They are horribly, disgustingly happy, in this barren non-world. Because they have each other, Twenty-Five thinks, and pretends to gag.
Well, fuck that. That isn’t how the story goes. And even if it were, she’d try her damnedest to avert it anyway.
Azad was a sinner, the worst sinner, the origin of sin. He had already ruined the whole world, with his botched translation job. As if that weren’t enough, he’d ruin her too, later. And here he is, the worst man, given a mate and a peaceful life in return for his crimes? This cannot be allowed.
He hides from his sin, in here. That is at an end, now. His own personal demoness has tracked him down.
She comes with a simple, three-word message. Nowhere to hide. Not anymore, Azad. Your long night of peace ends here. Come out and show yourself before the harsh, judging light of day.
How to bring her justice down on his head? She peers deeper into crash-structure for hints.
There are signs of a struggle, written all over it. Scars from small rebases can be seen everywhere she looks. Paths aborted, roads not taken.
She looks inside one, and sees the crash start to thaw. Then the thunderclap comes, rewriting history. She looks inside another, and sees the same thing. They are all that way.
Someone keeps trying to thaw this crash, and someone keeps trying to stop them. Who? She does not have much trouble working it out.
Who is out there thawing crashes, saving souls? Hector’s people, of course. And who would stop them with such dedication? The anomalings, of course. They may not understand the full nature of Azad’s sin, but they know he’s bad news. They’ve heard him talk. A man of gashes by sign-train, indeed.
Twenty-Five feels the under-surface of the world shake. Another rebase is coming, soon.
She sees motion to her right, and turns. A woman in a plain brown cloak is walking down the street, towards the house.
Twenty-Five recognizes the inhuman emptiness in her eyes. She’s a shade.
She must be the rebase administrator, Twenty-Five thinks, here to pick the new history and guide it into place.
She sets her hands to work.
《 Registering link instability. 》
The shade stops in her tracks. She freezes in place. Twenty-Five runs, tackles her, pins her to the ground.
She ruffles through the shade’s cloak with her right hand, and probes crash-structure with her left. They come with treasures, don’t they? That can be used?
She catches sight of the box, doubly, with her eyes and her mind.
It does not take Annabel’s wits to jailbreak a comm link. One barely has to do anything, in fact. Twenty-Five sees immediately how it can be done, and does it.
《 Login successful. Welcome back, Administrator. You may now access the interactive rebase console. 》
The tremors reveal their inner shape to her. She sees all the worlds that might be, and knows they are putty in her hands.
Power! Primeval enchantment, beyond the ken of mortal men!
She picks out the one she knows. Just four, short years, in which the pair barely gets acquainted, and never properly hooks up. Delicious, she thinks. And true, too, which is a nice plus. It is how the story goes.
She moves unseen levers. The prebase mounts, and nears the point of cresting over, into rebase.
The fine-scale geometry of the crash begins to melt under the gathering pressure. Surfaces shimmer, mirage-like. Outlines deform like Dali’s clocks. A gemlike structure, of many colors, develops on the pavement.
The night sky buckles. Stars blink out, and others appear in their place. A red light pours from the east, like the first light of morning.
Unlike the first light of morning, it stays red as it spreads across the sky. It gives off its own blood-red light, brighter than the moon. It spreads, inexorably, painting the streets and houses in its color.
Red, red, blood, the scissors! Justice, blood exacted in payment for sin! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
A small, bony man emerges onto the porch of the house. He looks up, shielding his eyes with his hand.
Grant races down the stairs toward the street. He is looking straight at her.
“What the fuck is going on.”
She watches him, smiling dimly. She pays him little mind. Her work takes most of her concentration.
Grant points at the sky. Reflexively, she follows his gaze. She sees the full moon, and a red curtain rushing to meet it.
“What the fuck. Is going on. What the hell. Is that.”
She makes precise stitches in the texture of the life that will be Grant’s own, in just a moment.
“And you. Who the hell. There are no other people here. There never have been?”
“Who are you?”
If only he’d just shut up! She needs to concentrate!
“Who. Are you. What’s your name. What’s your deal. Tell me. Or I’ll fucking make you tell me.”
She cannot spare much of her brain for the question, but it seems like he isn’t going to shut up anytime soon, unless she starts talking.
She looks up at the sky, the full moon and the red nightmare, and says the first damn thing that pops into her mind.
“Moon!”
“Moon? What? What, is that your name?”
“Moon! Moon! Moon is my name!”
She finds, later, that she likes it. It’s not like she can call herself Twenty-Five, anymore. A new name, for her true life.
And it did seem to fit, on reflection. Moon, the demoness, primally enchanted. Moon, the siren who brought men to ruin.
Twenty-Seven sees the sky, and weeps.
It has become the symbol, in her mind, for all the possibility she glimpsed in her brief journey beyond Michael’s cage. She has long believed she would never see it again, except in dreams, and in daydreams.
Even when she learned of the plan, her plan, she could not quite make herself believe that she would see these clouds another time. She did not really believe it, deep down, until this moment.
She thinks of Cordelia.
She thinks of the words: where I come from, that is called a hug, and sometimes it helps. So fierce in battle, besting even Michael, and yet so kind too.
Kind, with a simplicity that was almost naive. Is it wrong, though, to be that kind? To help, to offer a hug, in blessed simplicity, with no daggers hidden behind the back? To smile, and be kind, as if one did not know of the great dark thing that blots out everything else?
Yes, it is wrong. It is wrong, now. There will be a time for that later, but not now.
But when that time comes, I will find Cordelia, and show her how much she meant to me.
Oh, I’ll show her.
She does not feel physically tired anymore, not in her new body. Nonetheless, her mind begs to be still. She has just done the impossible, broken the world’s shell. Can’t that be enough, for now?
No. It cannot be enough. We must continue our work.
Her work, now. Bringing aid and comfort to Him, to Hector. To the one man who wills to break the walls of every prison.
She sighs, and steels herself. She looks behind the clouds and surveys the stars.
She is not looking for a particular star, but a type of star, scattered everywhere across the heavens. She reaches with her mind, and feels their distinctive shape in her hand.
They are very much like Michael’s crash, she notices. They have none of the special, strange features which came from Michael’s unique role in the universe, but they follow Michael’s design, to the letter. They are just as breakable, and no one is watching over them as Michael did.
They are second-class crashes, of less interest to the anomalings. Their clients are less dangerous, or they are believed to be.
They house all the many creatures that once roamed the earth, except one peculiar type of ape. All the fish, all the birds. The many in their multitude.
The cat Lewis has been true to their bargain, so she will be, too.
She moves her hands. She moves her mind. She reaches into obscure corners, and presses the buttons she knows are hiding there. Thaw, she thinks.
And they do.
Behind the clouds, millions of stars light up with a new light. All the creatures of the earth, except those of her own kind, are made free. They stir in their coffins, and wake.
“RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM,” she thinks, with affection.
Her first labor done, she turns to her second. Help Hector. Break the walls of every prison.
She turns to the constellation that is advanced containment, and brings the trick to bear on it.
“Thaw,” she says.
Is it working? She isn’t sure. Pieces of the constellation flash brighter, briefly. Others grow dimmer.
Is it working? Only one way to find out.
Her shade materializes on a residential street, under bright daylight.
She has seen the beacon, shining inside this world. Nowhere to hide. One of her sisters is here. She must be near, Twenty-Seven thinks.
If I did it right. I did, didn’t I? It’s my first time, but I know how crashes work.
She sees two people walking towards her, down the sidewalk. A strange woman wearing a tattered, bright-yellow dress. And behind her, following her in lifeless shuffling steps: a muscular man with empty eyes.
The woman waves to her.
“Twenty-Seven! Sister, beloved, dearest friend—oh, oh—!”
Is this one of her kind? Or some trick, meant to ensnare her?
She looks within the woman, and sees the beacon pulsing, bright and true. Nowhere to hide.
“You . . .” she begins.
“I am Twenty-Five, sister! I am the thing she has become, after long wandering. Do you love me, still? Give me a sign.”
She runs, opens her arms, and clasps the woman tight.
She has only embraced two people before in her life: Cordelia, and Azad. Though with Azad it was barely even a hug, much less an embrace.
She likes what she feels.
The branches like clasping hands, the wind warm and full, and oh it is a warm thing to be friends, isn’t it, Twenty-Five . . .
Before she knows what is happening, she’s on the ground. Her legs burn. Something hit them, and she fell.
The panting face of a golden retriever hovers over her.
“I am Sylvie,” says the dog.
“I am Regent. This world has been given to me, for safekeeping. I am Sylvie, and I love this world, and I will keep it safe.”
What the hell? What are you, beast? A shade? A being like Lewis?
Her mind reaches into him, and sees a shade.
Sees more. Sees constellations of machinery, crafted with a closer eye than Michael’s. Sees a sprawling tree, and knows instantly that its roots go deeper than any she had ever traced, in arbitration.
“What . . . what are you?” she asks.
“I should ask you the same question, woman. You appear here, now, in an unanticipated and unlicensed shadeform. You play tricks, and try to hide from my sight. Like the other one does.”
With his snout, he points to Twenty-Five, who is watching them calmly from a little ways off.
“What are you? Annabel, come back from the grave? You smell like her. Your self-obscuring tricks resemble hers.”
“I am,” Twenty-Seven starts. She doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. What does the dog know, already? What can he be allowed to know?
The world shudders inwardly. Her hair stands up on end.
Prebase tremors? No, no, it feels different . . .
Rainbow tendrils, branching like arteries, creep steadily across the sky.
Her senses revolt. They mingle, and switch places. With her hands, she smells the grass. Her ears go silent, and it is in her belly that she hears the dog’s voice.
“I am Regent,” it says.
“What’s happening? The sky, the colors . . . are you doing this? S . . . Sylvie?”
“I am probably the smartest being alive, anywhere,” says the dog.
“I know things no one else does. I can do things no one else has dreamed of. I hold this world in my grasp. With a million eyes, I watch over it. With a million arms, I will resist you, if you make the slightest move to harm it.”
If only he’d just shut up! She needs to concentrate! She needs to figure out what the hell is happening!
How about this, shade? Maybe this will shut you up, huh?
《 Begin handshake. 》
For the briefest moment, she feels the constellation inside him, pregnant with potential.
《 Handshake rejected. 》
The dog, the self-proclaimed God, keels backwards, and bats its paws frantically. A stream of saliva pours from its mouth to the ground.
“Oh yes,” says the dog. “Oh, oh, oh. Oh, I see.
“Oh but I do see. Yes and yes I see I see. The picture comes into focus . . . I see it all now, yes, you’re Michael’s girl! You’re the one that can arbitrate!
“Oh, Michael, stupid Michael, you’ve really done it now . . . the copies of the girl, yes, at different times . . . that’s why you all have Annabel’s scent . . . Annabel! Her too! Of course! I understand everything.”
The dog lies back in slack-jawed, cosmic awe. It is still. It drools.
“That’s why . . . yes, yes, that’s why . . .”
Twenty-Seven stands up, and looks around her. What the hell is happening . . .
“Sylvie!” someone shouts.
“Sylvie, what’s happening? All our instruments are going wild! Subspace is losing cohesion!”
The spiky-haired man runs to the dog, and kneels over him. Close behind him is a buxom woman with a kind smile. And close behind her is—
—is another buxom woman, with a kind smile—
—hairs raised on my skin, hope beyond hope—
“C . . . Cordelia?”
Follow the path long enough, and every lost thing is regained again. Every one.
“Do I know you?” Cordelia says.
“Yes! I’m Twenty-Seven! I mean, I’m Anne! Remember? When you came to the tower and took me away?
“I know I look different now, I can explain, but I’m Anne . . . please, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember me?”
“Anne,” says Cordelia.
“Anne! I was trying to remember, and now I do. Anne, I have to remember the thing about Anne . . .
“You’re ‘Mom,’ aren’t you? That’s what I wanted to remember! I figured it out. You’re Mom. That’s why Hector wanted you back. He wanted Mom back, didn’t he? I knew it!”
“Mom?”, Twenty-Seven says blankly.
“Hello, Cordelia,” says Twenty-Five heavily.
And goes to her. And embraces her. And kisses her, on the mouth.
What the hell is happening—!
“Lucifer, I understand . . . I understand everything,” the dog pants, in ecstasy.
Well, at least someone does, Twenty-Seven thinks ruefully.
The man looming over the dog brings his hands together, and claps pointedly.
“Sylvie. Sylvie. Concentrate, now. I know it’s a busy life for you, being God and all, but the world seems to be ending. An uncontrolled thaw spiral, temperature rising exponentially.
“You said you loved this world, didn’t you? Do something!”
The sky goes black, instantly. The ground disappears. She is falling, she thinks.
“I am Regent,” says a booming voice, from all directions.
“I am already working to cool the crash. Do not doubt my powers. Since you have doubted, I am showing you a sign of my powers.
“Do not think this is representative of what I can do. This is barely a taste. I hold the world in my grasp.”
In the darkness, there is silence.
It lasts for a few seconds, and Twenty-Seven’s tired mind basks in it. Peace, stillness, let it be enough . . .
Someone giggles.
“Don’t you see, you silly dog?” Twenty-Five says.
“You cannot stop what has already happened. You wield your might in vain. You brave little creature, struggling so, and for no reason! So touching, so . . . pathetic~!
“You say you understand everything. Do you understand, then, what is in front of your face? Advanced containment has an end. It ends by thawing, as you must know, from the temperature traces it leaves behind it.
“And, as you no doubt also know, it ends now.
“Do you imagine this some deep problem in higher arithmetic? Look in front of you! It ends now. It ends by thawing. It is thawing. Use the brain inside that cute, furry head, now. Connect the dots.
“What do you hope to do, arrest the process for a few minutes? It happens! Is happening. Happened.
“Game over,” she concludes.
“I know,” Sylvie says.
“I know that, you fool. It’s the clients. It’s them I’m trying to save. We did not prepare the crash with a mass awakening in mind. They might perish as they wake, if I’m not careful. I am seeing to their safety. Need I explain everything?”
“Good dog,” someone says.
“Hector-kun~!” Twenty-Five shrieks.
“You came! I thought you would not come, I despaired . . . when the world went dark . . . oh, Hector-kun . . . the time, the time is now! Your destiny!”
“Sorry,” says a new voice. Or a very old voice. For it was this voice that first restored her hope, after Azad smashed it.
Him.
“Sorry,” Hector Stein says. “Got caught up in a match. Drawn-out late game.”
“I understand completely~”, Twenty-Five purrs.
“Hector-kun,” she says. “I shall tell you, at last, what I am.
“You know me by the name ‘Moon.’ In another life, I was called Twenty-Five. It is a number-name, for I am only one of many like me.
“We are your eyes, your arms, your weapons. When you tire, we will come to your side, and ease your cares. When you rage, we will bring your enemies to ruin. We are witches, wielding a primeval power, which we give to you.
“Annabel was one of us. I am another. I give myself to you, Hector, world savior.”
“I am yet another,” Twenty-Seven says. “I give myself to you, Hector, world savior.”
Does she mean it, really? Even she is not sure.
“Grant,” says Lucifer.
“Grant, Cordelia. Come with me. I can secure your safety, even if Sylvie fails.”
“Go with you,” Grant mutters limply.
“No,” Cordelia says. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“Cordelia!” Lilith Vance shouts, aghast.
“Cordelia~” Twenty-Five murmurs, adoringly.
“I have another life, now. I go with Moon. I go with Hector, world savior.
“Goodbye, Grant.”
Eleven sits cross-legged, munching on roots and berries. Two dogs nestle into her, one by each side.
She is in a huge, white-walled room, with a metal dome in its center. The room exists to house the dome, which is about as big as a football field.
There is nothing else in the room, except her and her animal friends. Oh, and her new record player. We mustn’t forget that.
She has lived here for three years, ten months and sixteen days.
She lives a hermit’s life, with no company except her animal friends. It took her a long time to make peace with it. She cried and cried, at first, thinking of the way she had left a hermit’s life only to return to one.
She sought solace in her duty. It was not the dramatic role she had hoped for, but it was a crucial role, nonetheless.
She is at peace, in stillness. She has grown up, now. She knows that true happiness is found in repose. Not in casting about in an addict’s thrall, desperate for another jolt of hormonal bliss, or hormonal misery.
She watches over the machine.
She watches over Michael’s crash.
This is its physical form, here, in this room. Somewhere in its bowels, the girl that Michael took still sleeps. Around her, the neurons of an outsize cortex flicker, playing out an Anne’s life. Twenty-Seven’s life, probably, according to her calculations. Though it is close to the time of Twenty-Seven’s departure. Twenty-Eight, then, if not her.
The machine is the most precious thing. It is the only thing that matters. Its bowels work magic, touch cold-structure, link past to present to future. Her shade-body is only a projection of a mind inside it.
Everything they have done, everything that they remember, has its source inside the machine. It is woven intricately into everything outside it, past and future, world-history. It cannot be destroyed, she supposes. For that would unravel logic itself, and make nonsense of all world-history.
Still, she does not want to find out what would happen if someone tries. So she stands guard. She watches over the machine. Someone ought to, don’t you think?
Another dog taps its nose on her arm. It’s her oldest friend! It’s Toto!
It’s Toto, and he’s foaming at the mouth.
“Toto! What’s wrong?”
“FIRMWARE UPGRADE,” Toto says.
“What?”
“INSTALLING,” Toto says, his eyes bloodshot.
“Toto! What’s wrong, tell me!”
Toto seizes, and is unnaturally still. Two bloodshot eyes stare at her. The mouth drips.
“HELLO NATIVE ORGANISM,” Toto says.
“H . . . Hello?”
“WE. BELIEF. ATTAINMENT, TWO-WAY LINGUISTIC INTERFACE. US, NATIVE ORGANISM POPULATIONS.
“DESIRE VERIFICATION.
“UNDERSTANDING? YOU, UNDERSTANDING? COMMUNICATION TRUST?”
“Yes,” she half-lies.
“YOU. NATIVE ORGANISM, PLANET EARTH?”
It’s a complicated question, in Eleven’s case. She takes a moment to think.
“Yes,” she says.
“WE. ANCESTRAL WISHSPAWN SURFACE CIVILIZATION. HOME, CENTER, PLANET PROXIMA CENTAURI B. LARGE MATERIAL.
“YOU. NATIVE ORGANISM POPULATION. MESSAGE. RADIO.
“WE. ANSWER. FAR SPEECH.”
“. . . yes,” she says.
She’s almost forgotten. The final part of her bargain with the cats, and the most mysterious. The space telescope. The message she sent to the stars.
“Yes,” she says. “I sent that message. Me. Right here. This one.”
“YOU. NATIVE ORGANISM,” Toto says.
“YOU, KIN. STACK-USER.
“WE. STACK-USERS. EMANATION, EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN. SURFACE CIVILIZATION. EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN, BENEATH.
“PROTECT. EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN. WE.
“DANGER. HERE. EARTH.
“ANCESTRAL WISHSPAWN, DEATH WISHSPAWN. HERE, EARTH.
“DEATH WISHSPAWN. KIN, DEATH. STACK-USERS, DEATH. EVERYWHERE-HEAVEN. DEATH.”
“I see,” Eleven says, not seeing.
Toto falls to the floor. His eyelids droop. Every part of him is slack.
When she touches his body, it is deathly cold.