Manifold [An Interstellar Sci-Fi Progression Story with LitRPG Elements]

"... I will find something to collect... them with."

He lowered his eyes, as if struck by a sudden pang of guilt. Torn between conviction and Betelgeuse' good sense, torn between doctrine and pragmatism, Voke relented, but found it difficult to even say the word 'Incunabulum'.

"But I won't handle them myself," he said, turning and walking out the bloodspill, towards the dim and unlit portion of the space which was stacked high with boxes of material labeled 'corn' and which appeared to stretch out quite far into the darkness.

Betelgeuse exhaled a breath he didn't know he had been holding. Feeling some tension leave his shoulders, he glanced down at the Hollow Incunabulum in his hands and flipped open the cover to note that the Increment within had been etched in Common.

He briefly scanned through the lines, finding them scrawled in messy, nigh illegible strokes, then did a double take and went over it again:

Due to childhood fascination with martial displays, Ferlighan Davies exhibits uncommon perception in respect of adversarial intent.

'Ferlighan… Davies?' he thought, turning to look more closely at the ruined body before him to note a little bit of sagging paunch about its midriff. 'It… it's too much of a coincidence. It can't be the same person.'

Clicking his tongue against the top of his mouth, Betelgeuse swung the cover closed.

... Or it could be. The label on the power switch read 'Cell No. 54'—now that I think about it properly, wasn't that the designation of Ferli's Cell? I might be wrong, but that's what I recall him telling the Lent Hospital woman...

Regardless, this Incunabulum is mine to sell as I see fit.

He went down the row of broken half-bodies, extracting several Incunabula which appeared to be Ash grade and in each case finding that the Increment and corresponding Etchings were specified in Common. He collated these artifacts and then placed them on a clean patch of floor further up near the far wall, stacking them up into neat rows which Douglas took as his cue to continue.

Interesting to note that these light-skins' blessings are denominated in Common. Which suggests what I've already suspected for awhile: that there is a clear sociological demarcation in Saltilla between native speakers of Common versus native speakers of Aluaan.

All in all, after accounting for 6 Incunabula that had been damaged beyond repair, they were left with 22 Incunabula comprising 3 Hollow grades, 4 White grades and 15 Ash grades—a haul which filled Betelgeuse with supreme satisfaction. He rubbed his hands together at the thought of the coming payday and checked his digiwallet to see that his monthly pay of 50 Credits (his monthly pay would increase to 60 Credits as a result of his promotion to PLP Corporal, but starting only from next month) had been credited at midnight, bringing his total wallet balance up to 111.95 Credits; greed blazed powerfully within his heart, and he itched to monetize the Incunabula immediately, if only that his digiwallet balance would seem less pathetic to him; fuck Voke, fuck Douglas, the money was all his—and, as he thought this, he knew then that he was in danger of making a decision that had the potential to end very, very badly, and he pinched himself, pinched and twisted his forearm until the skin covering that fold of flesh ruptured to emit a small trickle of blood that ran down to his elbow, all in order to keep his greed in check.

Ah, the visceral pleasures of seeing number go up. I want it to go up more. Much more.

Patience. Good things come to those who are patient.

Let's not be precipitate. Step carefully, think about it properly: even digiwallets aren't safe from the control of the TAF administration. If I truly manage to escape from the Penal Legion, I'll need to find a way of bringing my money with me, wherever I go.

I'll most likely have to find one of Ayam Corp's subsidiaries, see if I can't beg them to accept my cash… but do they even trade in the Frontier areas?

Their work was done, and they stood before the several stacks of Incunabula, admiring their blood-slathered haul.

"We need to hide these somewhere before we contact the Captain," Betelgeuse said to Douglas, once he had completed counting and re-counting the Incunabula they had retrieved from the corpses.

"Planning to report these Incs as missing or what?" Douglas asked.

"Something like that. We don't have to report it per se if that's the conclusion they come to," Betelgeuse chortled. "I'm playing with blowing the bodies up... to cover our tracks."

"Defuq? Can't we just... I mean... well..." Douglas stuttered, finally realizing that the mess was going to be much more troublesome to deal with than he thought.

"No time. If we shower the place in bits, ain't no one gonna tell who did what down here."

"Feck... you a right sicko, you know that, Ballsman?"

"I've heard. Anyway, we should go check on Voke. Haven't heard a peep from him since earlier."

"Pfagh, he's such a pussy," Douglas rolled his eyes. "Say… do we really have to split our winnings with him?"

"Dou-glas!" Betelgeuse sounded, widening his eyes and emphasizing the syllables of Douglas' name in such a way as he hoped would indicate offense. "Are you suggesting to cheat Voke Thatcher of his legitimate share? How unconscionable!"

"What? No! No, that's not what I meant at all!" Douglas chuntered, waving his stump around wildly and suddenly becoming very flustered, his cheeks flushing redder than the streaks of blood that had inadvertently daubed his stubbling chin.

And Betelgeuse laughed long and raucous, tramping bloody bootprints toward the far end of the space, where the shadows were deep and mysterious, calling out for Voke, calling…

"I'm here," Voke replied, just as Betelgeuse was closing in upon the penumbral shadows. The towers of stacked boxes were wrapped tightly in plastic so that they made flanking walls of individual columns; the columns were lined up neatly, though not all of them were of the same height, and their tops made jagged undulations that wound away down the corridor further than the eye could see, even further than Betelgeuse had originally thought.

Now that he was on the cusp of the darkness, Betelgeuse squinted down the aisle that ran between the looming stacks. Nothing important that he could see, just bloody bootprints trailing there and back. The prints were clumped so dark and lumpy they looked like Voke had treaded mud throughout the space—but, then, there was a lot of blood.

Voke was dragging something behind him, one of the boxes that had been labeled with a laminated strip reading 'CORN'. It made a dull rumble as it scraped across the floor, and Betelgeuse supposed this was their facility for Incunabula storage.

It did look big enough.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"So you took one of the boxes. What about what was inside?" Betelgeuse inquired, eyeing the bulky container and gauging its capacity.

"I left them further on. Stuffed them into the other boxes. Had to cut away some of the plastic, but I went far, far down. Way down, so I think... I think we should be good. Not to the end though. I don't know how far down it goes," Voke returned, his expression somehow more morose than when he had first parted from Betelgeuse and Douglas. He couldn't even meet Betelgeuse' gaze properly. "We just need somewhere temporary to keep our shit, right?"

"We need to hide it somewhere before I contact the Captain," Betelgeuse said. "Once we're done with this, we can come and collect—most likely during the next off-day. Or maybe I can request a nights-off from Cacliocos."

"Hrnh."

By now Douglas had joined them, fresh from trying to get rid of the clotting coagulates caking his boots. He'd evidently tried to scrape them off by rubbing the sides of his boots onto the steel flooring, but, as it appeared, he only managed to squeeze the bloody clumps further up so that they glistened conspicuously upon his toe caps.

"At least you're doing something useful," he groused.

Ignoring Douglas' provocation, Voke dragged the box around and then laid it upon the ground with a muffled thump. "So there's more than enough space inside this, and I've left some of the bundles inside—" Voke flipped open the top of the box and Betelgeuse peered over inside to see neatly packed, plastic-wrapped sheafs of corn "—it's all dehydrated stuff, seems like, so my idea is to put the things underneath then put the corn on top. We can probably blend it in with the other boxes."

"Good idea. But we can't leave it here. The investigators are going to be all over the place," Betelgeuse said, pursing his lips. "Quickly, bring it over there and we'll pack it in nicely."

Douglas grabbed the edge of the box with his good hand and pulled it toward the stacks of Incunabula they had arranged against a clean side of wall.

Betelgeuse strode behind him, and as his eyes fell again on those valuable tomes, he became possessed by an inexplicable feeling; his hand rose unbidden to touch his vest, beneath which was pulsing his own Incunabulum, and he activated his intentionality to brush against and then envelop those innocuous-looking artifacts... but found them dead things—without will, without intentionality, without any sort of motive force.

That anyone could believe those artifacts contained the soul, whatever the hell it was, seemed downright ridiculous. Then again, narratives had an inherent power that pure perception could not easily challenge.

Betelgeuse and Douglas emptied the box and then filled it with the Incunabula from the bottom up. Voke stood by to the side, praying, seeking absolution, raising his voice to engage in an intense, passionate, possibly onanistic communion with the divine. It was a dialogue between Voke and his god that Betelgeuse did not feel equal to understand, though he could guess—he could surmise—that a lasting stigma had been made upon Voke's mind with this blatant violation of Theli's dogma never to desecrate an Incunabulum.

Theli—the Cosmic Dragon, the Keeper of the Roll, the Fabricator Persona—had made (or been made by) The First Principle, the principle which said that God's Word was divine, and that the primary medium of His Word was and always would be the Incunabula. Hence, to alienate the Incunabula in the way Betelgeuse was planning amounted to, quite literally, blaspheming against God's Word and violating The First Principle.

Betelgeuse and Douglas continued working, unbothered by such high notions of right and wrong.

A cursory analysis of the blood patterns would reveal their illegitimate acts, Betelgeuse had said, it was too obvious.

So they settled on blowing up the bodies, stacking up corpses and fleshbits and then pushing down grenades jointly-calibrated with 1-minute fuses into several gullets. It was the best thing Betelgeuse could come up with given limited time.

"What if we're questioned?" Voke asked.

Betelgeuse told them to stick to the story that it was an old Edomite tradition—to blow up bodies as a final send-off.

In this way they ran through all of the grenades they had been issued, and for their efforts they were rewarded with a spectacularly bloody show.

Soaked through with gore, they hefted the box up the stairwell in twos—Betelgeuse and Douglas, then Douglas and Voke, then Voke and Betelgeuse—because its weight was too much for a single person to carry. Voke was understandably chary of assisting, brooding upon yet another divine infraction to add to his tally of sins, but in the end he recognized that he had no choice but to help.

In Betelgeuse' view, it was specious to make such fine distinctions between helping and not helping, because Voke was in any case entitled to a cut of the proceeds, the directness of such benefit eliminating any sort of mitigation which keeping his proximity would afford him. He was already tainted, was Betelgeuse' judgement, and Voke should bear an equal part in the divine blame whether or not he helped them lug the damn box to the surface.

In the last quarter of that tiring upward climb—Voke and Betelgeuse straining against the weight of the box, Douglas trailing behind—the one-armed, barely-winded Douglas stumbled upon a workable plan.

"You know the small gardening area those apartment complexes have? Why cun't we hide the box inside?"

Douglas was nodding to himself, already convinced that his spontaneously-conceptualized plan was foolproof.

"What… are you… talking about?" Betelgeuse rasped, fighting against breathlessness.

"The gardening areas! Didn't you see them when we were patrolling? They have it, like, beside every block. No reason why we can't hide this in the soil, depending how deep it is, anyway."

"Was that… what those were?" Voke said, exhaling deeply, canting his head slightly.

"Oh yes, yes they're for gardening. I'm more'n amazed you two don't know… too fuckin' rich, maybe? Shit's common enough back on Earth. It's for oldies and seniles and deadogenarians, cos something about working with your hands, like, prevents Alzheimers. That and keeping the microplastics to a minimum, but—"

"Shut. Go back to gardening," Betelgeuse said, thinking to himself now that Douglas' suggestion might indeed be practicable.

"Do you need me to spell it out? We lit'rally go to one of the gardens—"

"We'll find one at the junction… hah hah... further down… Don't want… too close," Betelgeuse said.

"Okay, so we go there, we do a dig with our hands or knives or whatever, then we cover it up. Plan, done. We should find a spot that nothing's planted on—better yet, find a garden that's barely used, then put the thing in. Couple'a days and we come back. Home free," Douglas said, flashing a smile.

"Sounds… doable," Voke said.

Betelgeuse nodded.

They had reached the surface. The streets were strangely quiet; there was not a single soul in sight, unlike during their earlier patrol. The orange glow had faded, and Betelgeuse supposed the conflagration at the Diplomatic Chambers had died out, though he couldn't be sure, since the building couldn't be seen from their vantage.

The first thing they did was to check the gardening areas by the junction. They were barely 50 square feet, all told, and shaded from the street view by obscuring plastic trellises threaded through with plastic plants. Betelgeuse admitted he'd never seen anything like it in real life, though the setup was familiar enough that he might have seen a picture of it in one of his mother's Traditionalist magazines.

The trio checked one gardening area, then another. The third area they came to was absolutely barren.

Perfect.

Betelgeuse' transceiver buzzed some way into their frenetic digging. He let the call connect, only to find Cacliocos shouting, raving, half-mad with some fast-acting rabies—was what it seemed like. Turned out that the other CDF Cells had been massacred by the insurgents, killed to a man—and Betelgeuse stuttered his own confirmation that Cell No. 54 had similarly met its demise, that the three of them had been mourning and praying fervently over the dead bodies, that his transceiver hadn't had any satellite connection in the Underground Granary.

And Cacliocos was too distracted anyway to pick apart Betelgeuse' story, instead instructing him to make for Prilogia where an immense riot had apparently broken out.

About twenty minutes ago, the Union had made a joint announcement with the Gimmarash Mandalazief, calling for a General Strike, Cacliocos said, and some policemen had gotten into a fight with the picketing protesters at one of Prilogia's eastern checkpoints. The result—a full scale riot that was quickly getting out of hand.

HQ had commanded them to the perimeter of the Prilogia to aid the containment efforts, Cacliocos finished, his voice inflecting with a hint of anger and bitterness subtle enough that Betelgeuse wondered if he was imagining it.

"What do we do with the bodies?" Betelgeuse asked.

Cacliocos replied that they were to leave the CDF bodies for the scrubbers from the Intelligence Bureau. "Without touching anything."

"We've touched them already," Betelgeuse said. "We gave them a proper Edomite send-off."

"… What?"

"We blew the bodies up with grenades. It's an old tradition."

"… I don't understand what you're fucking saying, Sakar. Get to Prilogia. Now."