Maria

Maria is proud of herself: she’s practiced the routine so well that she can get to her sub within eight minutes from anywhere in the Sphere. This time it only takes four, though she’s sprinted most of the way and is panting, completely out of breath, as she staggers into the sub. This doesn’t really matter: the state of her body does not affect the power of her pneuma.

Maria expects to leave dock and spend at least 60 seconds orienting herself before the heteropneum comes up on her sensor array. That’s the way it’s been with every other attack. For heteropneum defense, the Sphere contains a set of twelve concentric spheres of materials highly resistant to Pneuma Light; no ordinary heteropneum can be seen until she’s out in the open water.

But this time, to her complete surprise, the automated voice comes on right away after she flips the power switch:

Abnormal storm of Boltzmen detected within 1500 meters, amplitude 17.8 kCept. Storm statistics are non-Gaussian and heavy-tailed, p < 0.01. Mean Boltzman type is non-human, p < 0.001. Mean Boltzman ethical status on Metric S is Salim Hell Type 4. Heteropneum is aware of our location and is moving in our direction, time of arrival 16 seconds.

“Computer, I heard you say that the amplitude of this storm is 17.8 kCept. Could you confirm that number for me?”

“Yes, Maria N.,” says the imperturbable androgyne, all sinusoid and sangfroid. “The Boltzman storm generated by the latest heteropneum is 17.8 kCept, the largest on record by over a factor of three.”

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Maria thinks, and then to stop herself from repeating the name of a savior she doesn’t even believe in anyway, she starts repeating the name of the protagonist of Cruel Love By Fate. Nothing ever changes, she tells herself. You can’t kill off the main character if you want there to be a next episode.

Heteropneum attack is imminent. Are you ready to engage?

“Yes,” says Maria, because there is nothing else she can do.

The submarine is awash with blinding Pneuma Light. Maria has to cover her eyes. The heteropneum is in front of her, there, but she can’t see it, because its aura is too bright. Some of the alien Boltzmen have made their way into the sub itself; Maria feels a tingle of utterly indescribable sensation down her spine, the momentary thought of some inhuman creature projected crudely onto the human body.

Heteropneum at 500 m and closing. Pneumase stores are in position. Weapons systems are primed and ready for innervation. Do you, Maria N., agree to undergo eigensoul decomposition?

Maria is utterly convinced, against all reason, that she is not about to die. After all, “The lie is the I.” There is no her to die. She will live on, somehow, somewhere, written by some other writer, as a bit player in some spin-off series. There are more Marias than Ratio Tile and Hermes Cept know how to count; one of them will live on somewhere.

Of course, she says “yes.” It would be irreverent not to repeat the litany, which she does now with her eyes closed tight, radiant Pneuma Light on the viewscreen forcing her closed lids to a blaze of red:

The lie is the I.

I is the lie. I “am” not.

Nothing this self can achieve can satisfy this self as a self.

Do not cling to the aspirations of this self, whose very coherence has been proven a falsehood.

The cause is real. The pneuma is a fiction.

I will find my satisfaction on the other side, where there is no “I.”

I “am” not. “I” is a weapon.

Even the most far-fetched hope can be weaponized.

Weaponize the self.

And because Maria is after all willing to admit that she probably is going to die after all, she is willing to open a little crumpled part of her heart that has remained balled up and largely ignored for years. She says, probably out loud, as the pneumases begin to tear her mind apart:

“Martin, if you’re out there, I hope a part of me meets a part of you across the veil.”

She can still, for now, feel her physical heart thump for many reasons. The cries of the pneumases ring across her pneumascape like some brass instrument, a call to battle. A part of her believes in nothing that ended when the summer ended. The pneumases feel that part and buoy it up.

Weaponize the self. Don’t think about Martin or the Summer Diary because you want to. But do think about them because they are all you have against a 17.8 kCept heteropneum.

Many Marias, splayed across a world’s worth of bedrooms and bathrooms, watching a TV that melts into a mere patch of blackness and static.

The heteropneum is hungry. There are so, so many things in the world and so, so many things left unsaid and how to even begin to say—