Kyle

Kyle is sitting in a very white room. The walls are white, and the chairs are white, and the lab benches on the sides of the room are white. They are covered in complicated-looking equipment that is itself, when not white, either grey or transparent. It is a room without color. Kyle wonders who thought this was necessary. Who decided that some already creepy procedure—something James and Miranda spoke of in tones full of hesitation—had to take place in a room whose creepiness seemed like it could not have been unintentional.

The door opens and a woman walks in. She’s almost certainly older than him, but not old enough to be in the space Kyle firmly thinks of as adulthood; if he had to guess Kyle would probably say she was 20. The woman walks over to the chair opposite his and sits down in it. Her short black hair and mid-brown skin stand out vividly against the white background, which in itself provides Kyle with a kind of relief.

“Hello,” she says, a bit coldly. “My name is Maria.” She shakes his hand.

“I’m Kyle,” Kyle says, though he imagines she already knows. She nods.

“My job today,” Maria says, “is to perform a pneuma bond test on you. But before we get to that, I’ll need to explain a little bit about what that means.”

Kyle, who’s already reeling from James’ account of “pneuma,” isn’t sure he’s ready to hear even more about the nature of his soul, but he supposes he doesn’t have a choice. “Okay,” he says.

The woman named Maria leans back in her chair and makes a small tired gesture, as if preparing for something she’s done before and doesn’t especially relish doing again.

“When I say the word ‘pneuma,’ does that mean anything to you?” Maria asks.

“Yeah, James told me about it this morning,” says Kyle.

“Okay, good. I can jump ahead a bit, then.” Maria pauses for a moment.

“I’m an anti-heteropneum pilot here at the Sphere,” she says. “That means my job is to get in a submarine, patrol the ocean floor, scout out heteropneums, and if necessary, kill them.

“There are other pilots here, but I’m by far the most successful. I guess part of this might have to do with some sort of skill, or with experience. I’ve been doing this for years, after all. But the most important thing is that my pneuma is especially good at powering the submarine’s anti-heteropneum weapons.

““Kyle, do you know about pneuma branching?”

Kyle shakes his head. Maria sighs and hunches down in her chair a bit.

“Look, this is going to seem bizarre. Possibly disturbing. All I can tell you is that you will get used to it eventually.” Maria doesn’t entirely seem convinced of that herself, if Kyle is judging her tone properly.

There is a pause. Maria seems to be weighing two different possibilities.

“Look, it’s going to be easier if I just show you. I don’t always do this, but . . .” she trails off. Kyle wonders if she is entirely well.

Maria walks over to one of the eerily white lab tables and picks up some kind of computer tablet. She taps it a few times.

Kyle hears a voice in his head, piercingly distinct, speaking in a language he doesn’t understand. Many voices. Laughter. Crying. Shouting. Many, many voices—

OUT OF THE DREAM

The robotic arms remove the electrodes a minute after Kyle wakes up, but leave the chilly paste in his hair. It takes Kyle a few minutes, in the shower, to get it all scrubbed out.

When Kyle gets out of the shower, he goes into James’ portion of the split quarters, but James is nowhere to be found. Kyle is not sure what he’s supposed to do, here. He finds that James has left some coffee in a pot on the counter. He pours himself a cup and sits back in the plush recliner in James’ room, drinking it slowly, feeling vaguely and unjustifiably naughty.

There is some cereal in James’ cupboard and he pours himself a bowl. It’s at this point that he notices a note from James, affixed to the far end of the counter, blending in with its natural color.

“Kyle,

“Had to run. Job. Help yourself to stuff in kitchen. Miranda will come for you.

“James”

After this discovery, Kyle feels a lot more relaxed, although he’s not sure what he thinks of Miranda. Or of any of this, really—but Kyle is pretty good at compartmentalization, and he’s told himself to avoid thinking, as much as he can, about the fact that he is literally at the bottom of the ocean right now.

And the doorbell rings and Miranda is there and she smiles parentally when she sees him, which is more than can be said for her conduct toward him yesterday, and she leads him to a different wing of the building where everything is whiter and cleaner and less lived-in, and points to a door labelled “5,” and tells him that “Maria” will be meeting him shortly.

And he meets Maria who is a woman with short hair and mid-brown skin that stands out against the creepily white room and she asks him if he knows what the word “pneuma” means and he says no and so she tells him all about how the soul is real.

And she begins to tell him about something called “pneuma branching” but she says it’ll be easier just to show him, and she walks over to one of the eerily white lab tables and picks up some kind of computer tablet, and taps it a few times, and Kyle hears a voice in his head, piercingly distinct, speaking in a language he doesn’t understand, many voices, laughter, crying, shouting, many, many voices—

And now Kyle is staring at Maria and he remembers getting here and Maria telling him all about pneuma, and he also remembers James being there when he woke up and James telling him all about pneuma.

“W . . . what just happened?”

“Do you know how this station generates its power?” Maria asks. There is a hint of a smile on her face, as if she knows that this is not a question he was expecting, and relishes his confusion. Kyle shakes his head.

“By splitting souls.” She pauses. “Your soul is always radiating Pneuma Light, and there are receptors on every wall around us”—she gestures broadly with her hands—“that receive that light and produce energy from it. But we can get much, much more energy than that by splitting a soul in two. Like nuclear fission.

“And when a soul splits, it makes two histories along with it. When the two histories recombine, even more energy is released. But although the two souls merge into one, with mixed memories, only one history is chosen as the truth. You remember two versions of this morning, don’t you?”

Kyle nods.

“One of those versions is real, and one is false. Because the computer system that runs this station chose to split your soul in your sleep to generate power. I have just forced it to reintegrate.”

Maria seems to have nothing else to say for the moment, and Kyle is not really ready to say anything at all. After a long while, he mumbles:

“But I remember James telling me all about pneuma. And I remember you telling me all about pneuma. One of those happened, and the other didn’t.”

Maria smiles the smile of the initiate introducing the novice to something impossibly basic.

“Kyle, when you walked into this room, you had no idea what pneuma were. I told you all about them.”

“Which means,” Kyle deduces, “that I never talked to James this morning.”

Maria’s smile widens indulgently. “I suppose so.” She pauses. “You’re going to have to get used to losing a lot of things that way.”

Maria walks over to the lab counter again. “This energy source is the only means we have for fighting the heteropneums. Splitting the soul in two produces a lot of energy. Splitting it in three or four makes that much more. And Hermes Cept taught us how to split the soul into as many pieces as it can possibly, theoretically be split. It’s only with that vast amount of energy that we can fight the heteropneums.

“The reason that I am such an effective pilot is that I have a soul very amenable to this process—the ‘eigensoul decomposition.’ If we were to ever find more people with this capability, we would have more assets in the fight. Which is why we test the souls of anyone who comes down here.”

“Okay,” Kyle says. “What’s the test?”

“It’s called a pneuma bond,” Maria says. “It’s very simple. I’m going to press a button on this console”—she gestures to the tablet she’s holding—“and it’ll establish a link between my pneuma and yours. By comparing the two, we can see if your soul is anywhere near as good at being split as mine is. Are you ready?”

Kyle nods, because really, what else is he going to do at this point?

Maria picks up the tablet and sits back down in her chair. She seems to be pressing a button.

Another flurry of unintelligible words in Kyle’s head, and then everything is dark.