The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

I stared at her for a few moments.

"...no, that's not possible." I finally said, though it took another several moments still to arrive at a justification for why this was, in fact, so. "I told you. She remembered all the loops. She knew how everything worked and who the culprit was. I don't know any of that stuff."

Ptolema stared back. I could see the pity in her eyes, which was not in any regard a good sign.

"I mean, it's like I was trying to explain," she countered. "Other than the stuff that Primaries remember, you can only hold on to so much memory at once, right? And all I remember of the whole thing is that one little bit I talked about." She looked uncertain, like she wasn't sure any of this was getting through to me. "So... that would just mean we're in basically the same situation, y'know?"

"But all I remember, aside from that one weekend, is my ordinary life," I spoke insistently. I tried to focus my mind on the details of the last 10 minutes of conversation for my rebuttal, even if they'd seemed so psychotic that part of me had been dismissing them as soon I'd heard them. "Y-You said you remembered being here for thousands of years, didn't you? If... If I'd really been here all that time, I would remember some of it!"

Ptolema paused for a moment, again scratching her cheek as she attempted to contrive a way to navigate the conversation. "When I said that what the guy had told you was basically true, what I meant was mostly about the stuff he called 'dreaming'. Like, it doesn't work for other random people, but if you find yourself when you're lookin' into the outside world, you really can sorta just-- Well, slip into their brain, I guess? It's kinda freaky." She frowned. "But there are other kinds of weird stuff that you can do with that power, too. You can go out to the same in-betweeny space the Stage is in, and just kinda... stare at nothing. Be nowhere, until you forget you even exist."

I myself stared at nothing in real time, a breeze through the trees lifting the edge of my skirt slightly. Ptolema once again pursed her lips in concern.

"What I mean is," she elaborated, "is that if I had to guess, I'd say you were doing something like that. Like, I already told you I don't remember seeing you since the one loop I remember. But it's not just that-- I don't even have anything lyin' around to suggest you I've ever seen you, like photographs or recordings or my old journals or anything. That's why I was so shocked when you turned up, y'know? You've gotta have been somewhere really obscure for... I don't even know how long." She glanced to the side, her face flushing slightly - probably put off by whatever dumbfounded expression I was making. "Whenever you're looking at the outside world here, dreaming or not, your body basically just ends up just lyin' in a sorta stasis wherever you left it, stuck in its default mode. Somebody probably just left you in that coffin forever ago and forgot about it."

"Wouldn't I... remember?" I tentatively asked, picking up on what she seemed to be suggesting. "Even if I'd been floating around in nothingness, wouldn't I at least recall that much, if it were enough to occupy space in my mind?"

"I dunno," she said. "You usually don't remember dreams, but I'm pretty sure those still make some kinda mark on your brain." She shrugged. "But that's just a theory. There's also a sorta tool people use for suppressing their own memories here, sometimes-- Well, not here, but in other Domains where they're into that sort of thing."

"You mean the Gilgamesh book," I said. "I saw they had a copy in the Magilum."

She blinked, seeming confused. "Is there Epic of Gilgamesh stuff in it? I guess I've never seen it myself. At least not that I can remember." She looked back towards me. "Anyway, one way or the other, you'd probably... lost your sense of self, somehow. You do hear about that kinda thing happening. Primaries turning up who don't remember anything 'cept their lives in the Reflection, and Secondaries who don't remember anything at all." She looked a little uncomfortable. "You were probably in a state like that, and somehow drifted to watching your own life play out. Maybe it felt like that was where you were supposed to be, since you already remembered up until the conclave. And then somehow you got knocked out of it, and..."

I shook my head. I hated that I was even partially accepting this madness. "Why would I lose my sense of self on purpose, let alone let it happen?"

She gave another shrug. "I mean, I'm not you, Su." She sighed a little. "Some people do that sorta thing because it's the closest thing you can get to dying here, I guess. If they've gone through somethin' awful and feel like they can't go on as they are anymore, or just because they've run out of things they find fun. Or sometimes it just happens by mistake."

"By mistake?"

"Yeah," she said. "Like, just getting so into observing stuff they forget everything else. I dunno if you're enough of a loner for that, though."

I opened my mouth, trying to produce another inquiry or line of objection, but nothing came to mind. If - and I stress if - one accepted the parameters of the situation as it was being presented to me as valid, then what Ptolema was saying was starting to seem pretty coherent.

"I need to sit down," I said weakly.

"Okay," Ptolema said. "Do you want me to make you a chair? I could..."

But I'd already slumped down, my back against the side of a nearby tree. I felt like I couldn't devote any mental resources to operating my muscles right now. Ptolema squatted cautiously beside me, still looking into my eyes.

I don't know how long passed as I tried to gather my thoughts, but eventually I thought back to what Balthazar had said, just before he'd been shot in the chest. He'd told me that, once the loop had ended, our 'other selves' would be living on in the final version of the weekend of April the 29th, but he and I - and presumably everyone else - would instead be going somewhere else altogether. And when I'd asked him where that somewhere was, he'd said:

"That woman seemed to hope it would be like paradise. But it could also be hell."

The other me... or, uh, not, as seemed increasingly plausible... had reiterated this, albeit more ambiguously. That we were going to different places, and that it was possible she'd disappear altogether, but that there was also the possibility of a 'future'. A future that wasn't in the normal world necessarily implied an alternative. And this place certainly met the qualifications for 'paradise', from what little I'd seen so far.

So, in a sense, I shouldn't have been that surprised. The idea of this place, now that I knew what it was, had already been in my head for the greater part of my life.

Still, though, I found it difficult to accept the idea that I was just, well, not me. I felt so normal.The thoughts and feelings I'd had as I'd ventured to the bastion were so fresh in my mind they might as well have happened a moment ago. My mind kept trying to remind me that I was keeping that doofus of a pilot waiting at the dock, despite the fact that he supposedly existed in an entirely different dimension.

"...this is a dream," I eventually declared. "I'm probably still in the transposition chamber after all. This is my brain spasming as it dies of oxygen deprivation."

Ptolema, who had been picking at some leaves in the dirt while waiting for me to collect my thoughts, looked up with a bit of a bemused expression, then nodded absently. "Yeah," she admitted, "I'd probably think it was pretty bonkers, too."

"How did this even happen?"

She squinted. "Can you narrow that down a bit?"

"This world. Us." I patted my own chest. "If what you're saying is true, then... how?"

"Ohh." She seemed a little relieved at my partial acceptance of the situation, a bit of her smile returning, though her eyes were still troubled. "Well, again, I only have theories, but..." She looked up towards the sky. "I'm pretty sure that, when the loop happened - however it happened - we got split in two, somehow. Sorta like an alternative timeline, even though I know those aren't a real thing. My guess would be that the Order was running some kinda freaky experiment with that machine underground, since Neferuaten and Zeno did say it could mess with time and space and stuff."

I nodded hesitantly. It didn't seem like she'd developed the idea very far, but that was - both back then, and now - roughly my theory, too. "Do you think they did it on purpose? You said it was Neferuaten's fault."

Yet again, she shrugged. "Dunno. I wouldn't put it past 'em, and I probably found out at some point, but all I remember nowadays was that she screwed up somehow. But I'm not sure if it was the kind of screwup where you actually screw up, or the kind of screwup where you do it on purpose to give other people a hard time. Y'know, uh, what's the term I'm looking for... Where you do something you're meant to do, but bad."

"Malicious compliance?" I suggested.

"Yeah!" she said, pointing at me. "That." She wrinkled her nose. "Anyway, whatever they were trying to do, it led to that message I mentioned. To them getting their 'requested desire'. Immortality. Which I guess meant this place." She gestured outwardly.

"What is this place, though?" I asked. "How could we have got here from wherever the loops were happening?"

Ptolema seemed to think about something for a moment. Then, she rose back properly to her feet. "Lemme show you something."

I looked up at her, confused. "Show me something?"

"Yeah," she said, with a nod. "We were nearly there, anyway, so it should only take a minute. And it'll be a little comfier to sit in, too."

Reluctantly, feeling like my existential meltdown was being unjustly disrupted, I rose to my feet, dusting dirt and moisture off my butt. "I didn't realize we were going somewhere."

Ptolema didn't say anything, just gesturing for me to follow.

She was right-- We didn't walk much further at all. After only about two minutes, we arrived at an area of the wood that was surrounded by a delicate brass chain-link fence - the kind you might see at a park at a duck pond or something, less intended to actually keep people out and more to designate a specific area as conditionally off-limits. I could see over to the left that there was a proper path leading through it, so this was evidently a notable location of some sort, despite being deep in these woods. A nearby sign identified it as 'LANDMARK SITE C'.

Wait, I thought. Landmark? Then...

Ptolema hopped right over the barricade, and I followed. At first it seemed like just another stretch of woodland, but then I saw there was a hole in the center, square in a way that clearly designated it as man-made. It was relatively free of dirt and fallen leaves, someone presumably having been keeping it clean, and led to a short set of steps which terminated in a small chamber. It looked like a military holdout of some kind, filled with racks for equipment and indents in the walls for bunks. A passage off the left wall led into darkness.

Even if the sign hadn't tipped me off, I feel like I would have recognized it pretty quickly. It was the underground segment of the Order's security center, the place it felt like we'd spent the lion's share of that awful day held up in. I could see the spot where not-Anna had cut into the wall to ostensibly adjust the runework, where Mehit had been lying grievously wounded, and where we'd all haphazardly sat as Ran had navigated her camera around the sanctuary.

I shouldn't have been that thrown off to see it, after waking up in the Abbey to begin with, but it had been preserved quite a lot better, which - combined that it was a specific interior location rather than a discrete building - made suddenly arriving in it from an entirely unrelated location profoundly surreal. Ptolema conjured some sort of light about the ceiling, then pointed to one of the bunks.

"See?" she said, trying to sound mirthful. "Comfier place to sit." She sat down herself, looking up at me warmly. "I was actually starting to think I could time us gettin' here right as you were gonna ask how we got from the sanctuary to this world. You'd have been like, 'but Ema, back then, we were trapped in the sanctuary! How did we get here?' And I would have been like, 'but we are in the sanctuary! Bam!'" She laughed a little, looking pleased with herself, before her face flushed somewhat. "Actually, now that I say it out loud, it's kinda lame, huh."

"...I mean, I did already know about the Abbey," I said, sitting down myself. "So it doesn't quite work, I guess." I glanced around. "This is pretty surreal, though. It really does feel like I'm back in Apsu."

"I know, right?" She rubbed her arms together. "Honestly, bein' here kinda creeps me out. This was one of the last places I saw before I died on my version of that weekend."

"Where did it happen?" I asked, grimly curious.

"Few halls down, near the room with all the boxes with spooky stuff in 'em," she said, pointing. "Well, not that you can actually get there from here. The whole underground's cut up into weird pieces and scattered around the Valley and the City. It's the only Landmark that you can do that with-- Cut it into pieces." She looked at me. "But yeah, that's the point I was tryin' to make. You're not 'back' in Apsu, you never left. We never left, even when all the time loop stuff ended."

I blinked. "I-- I don't follow."

"I mean we're still in the sanctuary," she attempted to clarify. "This isn't some copy or something. This is literally the underground of the security center."

I stared at her for a moment, trying to fill in the gaps in what she seemed to be claiming. "I don't..." I hesitated, adjusting my glasses. "Ptolema, we just walked through miles of countryside to get here."

"Yep." She nodded slowly, like I was the one being obtuse. "What's your point?"

"My point is that that obviously wasn't in Apsu," I explained. "It was just three-- Four small bubbles of faux-outdoor landscapes, a ten-story building, and maybe a square kilometer of underground passages and rooms. So this obviously isn't just the sanctuary. And that's not even getting into all this weird metaphysics about different 'Domains'."

"Ohh, I see where we're gettin' mixed up." She wrinkled her brow, once again assuming the furtive expression I was quickly coming to view as a prelude to her explaining something utterly deranged. "No, it really is just the sanctuary."

I frowned. "Ptolema--"

"Lemme explain," she interjected. "So, you mentioned you saw people from the Waywatch using little cubes of matter to make stuff, right?" She reached into pocket, fishing one out herself and displaying it to me. "Like this."

"Uh-huh," I said, looking at the thing.

"Well, you were probably wondering somethin' like, 'why bother? If they can use the Power as much as they want, why not just make whatever they want pop into existence,' right?"

I gave her a flat look. "I mean, I've kind of been too preoccupied with broader questions of this place's physical reality to wonder about something so specific, but yeah, I suppose it crossed my mind."

"It's 'cause the way matter works here is different, too, not just energy," she explained. "Like, this is a 10-dimensional space, right? But it's also a closed 10 dimensional space. A pocket closed off from the rest of the universe where nothing can get in or out. So though we do whatever we want with 'em, we only have so many, uh, particles floating around." She played with the cube, tossing it from hand to hand. "Now, if everybody could do whatever they wanted with all of those, it would be anarchy, right? Groups of jerks would fight over monopolizing the stuff, and just one asshole could blow up everything just 'cause he felt like it, if he was good enough at casting. So the rules of this world divvy up the matter between everyone, then give people precedent on using the Power on their own stuff. That's what the assembler meant by 'prop' earlier."

"I... suppose that makes sense," I said.

"Try casting something on this," she said, gesturing the cube at me. "See for yourself."

I didn't really see the need, but I did as she bid, pointing at it and incanting the Object-Manipulating Arcana. Sure enough, despite there being no negative feedback, the cube resolutely failed to budge. Deciding to take the test slightly further, I repeated it while targeting the sleeve of my robe, which did move.

"When you used the assembler, it would have drawn on your own prop," she went on. "Though if you didn't give it any directly, it would have just grabbed whichever unpledged stuff you used the least recently from wherever you left it lyin' around. You have to be careful about that sort of stuff-- If you're not careful, it can end up trashing your personal belongings. It's why most people just carry some spare around."

I hesitated. "So, I could only have used it if I already had some 'prop' allocated to me somewhere, then? The assembler, I mean."

"Yeah," she said. "That's right.

I scratched the side of my head.

"You look confused," Ptolema said worriedly. "Did I explain that in a dumb way again?"

"No, I-- I mean, I appreciate the clarification," I said, omitting the fact that this explanation, itself, raised what felt like hundreds of further questions. "I was sort of wondering about that back at the guardhouse. But I don't see what all this has to do with us still being in the sanctuary."

"Oh! Sorry, I guess I lost the thread a bit there." She laughed awkwardly. "So, all Domains are just made up from that same pool of prop. They're all artificial - stuff people came together to make, not anything that was there to begin with." She hesitated. "Well, uh, not completely artificial, obviously. Like, all the plants and stuff up there grew on their own like normal, but the raw material is all stuff entrusted to the assembly in the City, who... ugh, sorry, I'm getting derailed. There's just so much to explain, y'know?"

"Apparently," I said distantly, trying to process everything she was saying.

"Anyway," she went on, "the point is that the matter used for prop is actually just repurposed from the sanctuary."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean it's it's the same stuff, but broken down into parts. Like somebody ground a big animal down into mince, then had everybody make meatballs outta it." She pointed upwards, towards a specific willow visible through the hole in the ceiling. "Like, that tree up there probably started out as a bunch of rock and metal. But 'cause we can break stuff down to elementary particles, we can make anything into anything."

"That-- That's still ridiculous, though," I protested. "Like, even if you count the ground beneath it, the sanctuary can't have been more than a few million ton's worth of mass, and there's like an entire country up there." I gestured upwards accordingly, then looked back at her with a consternated expression. "And even if that weren't true, parts of the sanctuary are clearly just lying around completely whole, because we're in one right now."

"Well, I'm not really talkin' about the buildings. There's kinda another whole cultural thing around it, but the gist is that they're marked with some kinda special status and don't really belong to anybody, just kinda drifting between Domains as they come and go." She looked at me. "But think about how much stuff there was beneath Apsu. The elevator ride down to the Apega lasted nearly five minutes, remember? And then that room at the bottom was so big it was stupid."

My eyes widened a little as I thought back to it. Saying the size of the Apega chamber was 'stupid' somehow still felt like an understatement. I remembered the stone walls that seemed to stretch out for miles, and the chasm below that was so deep I couldn't see the bottom. Ptolema was right; I'd been thinking of the sanctuary as just the stuff the Order had built, but if one considered that...

Well, it would surely come to pretty spectacular quantity. Even a small amount of densely-packed rock contained more mass than one would likely assume at a glance, and I had to assume the Ironworkers, having access to a nigh-infinite amount of mass, wouldn't have skimped on building materials.

"So, it's not just the sanctuary," I said, "but the facility it was built on top of, too?"

"I guess if you wanna be picky, yeah," she conceded. "'course, there are a lot of tricks people use to stretch things out further, too, since you can throw energy around willy-nilly-- Hollow stuff, thin stuff that behaves like dense stuff, that kinda thing. The Valley is kinda rare in that it doesn't use most of them, though even then the ground only goes down about three meters. Enough for plants, y'know?" She exhaled slightly. "But yeah, I guess that's about all the basics. Somehow, both us and the sanctuary ended up bein' propelled to this space, along with a bunch of other people, and... well, here we are." She slapped her hands against the bunk.

I was quiet for a while, once again staring at nothing but the dark corners of the security center. Despite only being a few feet away, the security center underground was insulated enough that I couldn't hear much from outdoors other than the faint chirping of birds. The room was silent save for Ptolema's and my own breathing.

"You... okay, Su?" she asked, after a few moments.

"Y-Yeah," I said. "Just thinking." I looked back over at her. "Can we go back outside? It's, uh, kind of stuffy in here."

She gave a tentative smile. "Yeah, sure. Let's head back to my house."

I glanced dazedly around the chamber one last time, my thoughts sputtering strangely, as we rose from our seats and went back up the stairway. The sun--

"What is that, anyway?" I asked, pointing at the light in the sky as we stepped back outdoors. "If this is all an artificial space, I mean. Is it a lamp?"

"Oh, uhh." She scratched the back of her neck. "I think the whole sky is just straight-up Radiomancy."

--the illusory sun had risen pretty high in the sky at this point, and it was starting to get surprisingly warm, considering how wet it had been overnight. Most of the cloud cover was gone. I looked at the skyscape mutedly. If it was an illusion, it was a very convincing one.

Ptolema took the lead in heading back, this time embarking on a different and more direct straight to the southwest. The trees quickly thinned significantly in this direction, broken up by intermittent small fields.

"So," Ptolema asked, after a couple minutes. "Do you believe me? About all this?"

I continued walking, my eyes still largely affixed upwards. I reviewed the facts as I now understood them in my head: That the time loop, which I'd spent the past 200 years trying not to think about and occasionally denying had happened, had happened. That it had continued into this new, apparently-perpetual reality. That 'I' was the splinter of Utsushikome of Fusai who had been trapped in it. And that I'd brainwashed myself into thinking I wasn't through watching my other life play out.

I turned it all over in my head. And then again, a couple more times.

"I don't... think I can believe you," I said quietly.

"Oh." She looked at me sadly. "Su, uh... I know this is probably all really crazy to hear, but it really is the truth." She curled her lip nervously. "Maybe we can find somebody else who'd be better at explaining all this stuff, since I feel like I did kind of a bad job... but then, they wouldn't have been there on that weekend, so--"

"No, I don't mean that I think you're lying or wrong," I cut her off. My voice had become strangely airy and monotone, almost like I'd been hypnotized. "I just-- My brain can't accept it." I swallowed. "It can't accept that my life is over."

"Your life's not over, Su."

"You know what I mean," I said weakly. "That that life is over. And that this weird place is reality." I squinted. "It's like I've stepped into a dream that I'm not gonna wake up from. It feels like I've died, even if I haven't."

"I-- I'm sorry," she said stiffly. "I mean... I'm here for you, I guess. Like I said, I can't imagine how weird it is."

"I don't even know if I feel bad," I said. "I don't know what I feel. Mystified, I guess. Stupefied."

We continued walking for another couple minutes. The trees transitioned back to being mostly green, the grass once again clear of fallen leaves. I felt kind of thirsty; I hadn't had anything to drink since eating that sausage roll.

Honestly, in an abstract sense, the situation felt almost a little hilarious. Just a few days ago I'd been lamenting how I'd wasted my life, and no more miracles would be coming to grant me a miraculous second (third? fourth?) chance. But in fact, if I accepted all this as it appeared, that was precisely what happened. Together with what had happened in my childhood, I was two-for-two in terms of absolutely impossible things happening to meet my stated needs. It was like I had some stupid blessing from the gods.

I'd wanted not to die. And now - at least if I took what Ptolema was saying as true, and not a strange hunch about a random object I'd found in my pocket - that would never happen.

Problem solved, right?

I let out a few strange laughs.

Ptolema looked at me uneasily. "What's so funny?"

"I dunno," I said weakly. "Just thinking about things."

She nodded. A moment passed.

"You know," I continued, "one of the things the other me said... or that I said, I guess... was that she wanted me to live for the both of us." I laughed, sounding almost drunk. "She wanted me to try and find meaning, even if I couldn't be happy. To try lots of different things and grow into someone new and unexpected." I looked downwards. "But even though I tried to listen to her, in the end, I didn't really end up changing at all. All I did was go through the motions."

Ptolema didn't say anything, an uncomfortable smile on her face. It was probably super weird to rant at her like this with scarcely any context.

"Except none of that was me, apparently." I snorted, looking at my hands. "If this is all true, I've basically ended up taking over her life."

I almost said 'taking over her life too', but managed to avoid that slip of the tongue at the last moment.

"That's dumb, Su," Ptolema said, though in a gentle fashion that was obviously intended to be soothing. "Just 'cause you don't remember what happened to you doesn't meant you're a different person, or something. And you would have been the one who decided to do this anyway."

Obviously Ptolema didn't understand how I felt, which, well, was only to be expected. I shook my head. I didn't feel up to fully wrangling with this right now. I needed more grounding.

"There's a lot more stuff I want to ask," I told her.

"Sure!" she said, seemingly glad at the digression. "Go ahead."

"I--" A question came to mind instantly, but I felt a spike of anxiety hit me as I was about to voice it. This doesn't feel real enough yet. I'll save that for later. "...I understand how our class got here, but who are all these other people? What exactly is a 'Primary' and a 'Secondary', anyway?" I frowned quizzically. "I mean, I've picked up that Primaries are people that remember living in the outside world, but I feel like I'm not really grasping the bigger picture, I guess. I thought the fact everyone here can use the Power meant they were all arcanists, but that was before I found out, uh... all this other stuff."

"I mean, that's still kinda right," she said, glancing upwards briefly as someone flew over us to the north. "By and large, Primaries are people like us. Arcanists from the Remaining World, whose memories of it go up until April the 28th, then suddenly stop. The only difference is that they don't remember anything to do with the time loop."

"Do people have any idea why they specifically ended up here, when they had nothing to do with it?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Well, I mean, it must have something to do with being an arcanist. But other than that, there's not really an obvious pattern."

I frowned, considering asking for elaboration on this point, but decided to move on for now. "What did you mean by 'by and large'?"

"Eh, it's kinda messy," she said, holding up a flat hand and shifting it from side to side. "A decent minority - I wanna say 10%? - claim to be from different periods of time, some even from the old world. But... it's sort of hard to tell if they actually are?" She looked to me as she ducked under a tree branch. "I mean, we're talkin' about arcanists here, so obviously a fair chunk of 'em are gonna be Witches, you know? But even beyond that, there are some Primaries whose memories just seem plain messed up. Missin' chunks, thinking stuff happened that plain didn't happen..."

My blow flattened. "You think they're just deluded, you're saying."

"Well, I didn't say that. Just that I'm not really sure what the real explanation is." She considered her words. "Like, I've already told you how there's a bunch of ways to get your sense of self mixed up here if you really have a mind for it. Even if you can't fully observe through somebody else's eyes in the way you would your own, you can still spend enough time watching other people's lives that it gives you funky ideas. It can be hard to tell your proper Primary memories apart from your ordinary ones." She sucked on her lip. "On top of that, there's kinda a taboo about talkin' about your old life at all in some circles here, since a lot of people don't wanna think about that stuff. And, y'know, there are always people who make up things about their pasts to seem special, too."

"Mm," I hummed, nodding a little. "So it's less one thing, and more a bunch of little occluding factors?"

She nodded in turn. "Basically."

"But still," I continued, "if you've been in here for so long... like, hundreds of thousands of years... I would have thought it would have been figured out one way or the other."

She shrugged. "I'm sure there are people who've come to conclusions about it. But I don't really have the patience for those kinda mysteries nowadays, y'know?"

"Uh, I guess," I said, scratching the side of my head again. "So, to make sure I'm following properly, Primaries can't forget their memories of the Remaining World, right? But they can forget all the rest."

"Yep," she said. "That's how it works."

"Are those memories more powerful or central, or whatever?" I asked. I furrowed my brow thoughtfully, adjusting my glasses. "When I think back over my life, the ones I have from before we went to Apsu don't really feel any more or less clear than the rest. But... like I said, compared to how you are in the real world--"

"I haven't changed much, right?" She smirked teasingly. "You're probably thinkin' this is some kinda nightmare where you can't ever learn and grow, and you're gonna revert back to the way you were in school and stay that way forever, huh?"

I laughed nervously. "Uh, well, I wasn't going to approach it quite so explicitly..."

Ptolema laughed too, then shook her head. "Nah, I'm just a weirdo. No, it's more like... tch, how to put it..." She hummed under her breath furtively. "Like, even if Primary memories are the only ones that stick around forever, that doesn't mean all your other memories are any less you.And like I said, I can remember a lot of stuff. A bunch of it did change me, for a while." Something occurred to her, and she looked to me excitedly. "You remember I was talkin' about the Keep? The Domain where they do all the research?"

"Yeah," I said. "I remember."

"I was a headmistress at a school there, for a while!" She beamed at me proudly. "At a place called the Tourmaline Academy, doing physics and stuff!"

I balked a bit. "You were the head of a physics academy?"

"Sounds nuts, right? It's not like me at all." She smiled wistfully. "But some friends of mine started working there, so I joined up too, and then I started studying, the years went by... And before I knew it, I was runnin' the place." She gave me a suggestive, almost faux-haughty look. "I don't wanna make you feel dumb, Su - since this kinda thing is your field - but compared to the stuff in the Remaining World, the kind of natural philosophy people do here is bonkers.We were running interplanar experiments that would have made your head spin."

My face flushed, and I looked at her with a combination of skepticism and curiosity, perhaps tinged with a little indignance at the idea that Ptolema, in this reality, could seriously be more accomplished at one of my core subjects than me.

Come on, she's not even giving any details, my sense of pride said. She's probably exaggerating. They probably had her doing paperwork or something. If any of this is even real.

"But yeah, my point is, you have so much time here you can basically do anything, right?" she continued. "And you can never really lose anything 'cept for your reputation, and even that doesn't last forever. So you start to think about things differently. You can say to yourself, 'hey, I wanna become the best pan flute player ever!' And then so long as you stick to it, it can happen, no matter who you are. And you can live a whole, complete life like that." She glanced downwards, smiling to herself. "But eventually you kinda wring all the juice outta the fruit. So you put down and do something else."

"That... sounds great, actually," I said, earnestly.

My mind went back to Kamrusepa's speech in the transposition chamber. Her impassioned speech about what it would be like to live forever. To be able to pursue anything you wanted without fear of being locked into a single life, a single scattered fragment of one's potential.

...and then, even though Ptolema had spoon-fed it all to me already, it finally started to hit me - to fully hit me - what this place was. What it represented.

The Order... they actually got what they wished for.

This world, and everything I've seen in it... it's a product of a reality where the absence of death is a given.

I blinked, then shook my head.

"So, yeah," she resumed. "It's not like you can't change. You can change what you're into, get over hangups, accomplish stuff..." Her expression grew more complicated. "But I guess being a Primary is kinda rough in a more mundane kinda way. Like, even in the Reflection, people are usually pretty heavily shaped by their early lives, right?"

"Mm," I said, trying to maintain a normal expression. "Formative experiences."

"Even if you can get over a lot of stuff, it keeps coming up. Even though I didn't get to live there for very long compared to a lotta people, I remember that I got hung up a lot." She frowned a little. "Like how my mom died. I'd come to some kinda resolution about it, think I'd got over it, only for it to suddenly pop back into my brain a few years later when I was feeling lousy about something. Like poop that just won't properly flush down the toilet."

"I feel like you could have used a non-shit related analogy," I remarked flatly.

"Being a Primary is like that, I guess. 'cept instead of not having time to forget like regular people, you just can't, period. I guess you just can't tell the difference, 'cause you already had such a good memory to begin with." She rubbed her nose with the edge of her sleeve. "Anyway, a while ago I got tired of that sense of having changed, only to circle back around. So I just decided to squat in my rut for a bit." She chuckled. "I dunno. Probably doesn't make sense, right?"

"...no," I said. "I think I get it."

She smiled at me, then digressed, turning to face forward. The trees were thinning out increasingly now, and I could see the wide field and hillside where we'd started our trek in the distance. "Anyway, that's how it is to be a Primary. Secondaries are a lot simpler. They don't have any permanent memories at all-- Their 11-dimensional minds don't include 'em."

I frowned. "So... no one knows where they came from?"

"Yup," she affirmed casually. "Some people think they don't connect to anybody in the Reflection, while other people think they do and just forgot." She covered her eyes from the sunlight as we pass out from under the canopy. "Either way, the only thing that's totally constant about them is their basic natures. They can change their default body, too, so they can just shift into totally different people whenever they want. That's why the other name people've got for 'em is 'Proteans'."

My mind flickered, reminded of something.

"So it's like a dragon and phoenix sort of dichotomy," I stated.

She looked confused. "Eh?"

"Oh, right. I guess you weren't around for that conversation." I bit my lip. "Back during the conclave - in both versions I remember, actually - there was a discussion I had with Kam, Ran and Linos about the two ways that immortality myths are represented in mythology." I furrowed my brow. Actually, now that I was trying to recall specific details, it did feel like the recollection was strangely vivid. "On the one hand, you have stories about people finding ways to avoid aging, while on the other you have 'resurrection narratives' about people dying and being reborn altogether. A continuation versus a fresh start."

"Huh." She considered this for a moment, folding her arms and letting her eyes wander. "I guess I can see the connection, though Secondaries don't really die and come back as somebody new. It's more like they just slowly change, forever-- Unless they go out of their way to forget."

"Still," I said, "the core fantasies of both ideas are kind of there in the premise. Staying as yourself forever, versus constant reinvention."

"'Fantasies'?" She squinted, a little concern returning to her expression. "You're kinda talkin' like this stuff doesn't apply to you right now, Su."

"It's one of many coping mechanisms I'm employing," I said distantly.

Ptolema nodded awkwardly, then quickly digressed. "Well, most people think bein' a Secondary is better. That's supposed to be why we have more prop than them."

"It's not even...?" I hesitated. "Actually, what are the numbers for all this generally? How many people are there here? And how much matter is there?" I looked at the horizon. "Between this place and the Magilum..."

"Why don't we head back inside first?" she said, gesturing ahead. The rear of her cabin was now just up ahead. "If you need to sit down again, It'll better if there's actually a comfy chair around. And besides," she smiled, "I wanna show you something."