The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

"I'm impressed, Kasua," the woman declared. "I suspect you have the truth of it precisely. The Uqartul is a cunning beast with far more versatile powers than even the locals believe, and certainly would have been attracted to a hoard of this size. Even failing that, it would also only be natural for it to replace what it perceived as the 'head' of the train. It must have happened during our long stop in the afternoon; likely it mingled among the travelers, only making its move after we'd already withdrawn into the train. It is said not to be able to use its powers in a way perceivable to humans, but that applies primarily to sight, so such a thing would have been more than possible."

Maybe it was the concussion, but this development left me temporarily at a loss for words. Why was she talking like that? It was as though she were an entirely different person.

And when had she even climbed atop the roof?

Tuthal was, of course, equally confused but a lot more inclined to be outspoken about it. "What in God's name are you both babbling about?" He craned his neck up at Summiri. "And what happened to your voice? Has the sight of a corpse somehow made you less touched, or have you just gone bloody mad?"

She chuckled with amusement. "You never change, Tuthal. Always able only to fathom that which already exists among the preconceptions of your closed mind. All the glory of the world could appear before your very eyes and you would only attack it!"

A deep grimace formed on his brow. "What are you..."

"It would be pointless to explain things twice," she said, turning away. "Come. Now that you've made your deduction, let's return to the others. They'll have noticed as well by now, I'm sure."

With that, she departed. Tuthal and I looked to one another with bemused expressions, then silently walked along the side of the train back to the side of the middle carriage, where it would be easier to climb back up. He leapt up first, then extended a hand down for me in a gentlemanly fashion, though his heart didn't look in it. After this, we climbed the ladder back up to the roof, by which point Summiri was already approaching the others. Bahram was bent over the nested corpses, but Hildris and the chef turned at our collective arrival.

"Summiri...?" the latter spoke in confusion. "When did you get up here?"

"Just a moment ago. I wanted to confirm something for myself, but these two beat me to the punch." She gestured towards Rastag and I. "The front carriage, I'm afraid, has disappeared."

Hildris looked increasingly thrown off the more the other woman spoke, but outright balked at the final word. "Disappeared?"

"Indeed! Although, disappeared is perhaps the wrong word." Summiri indicated the horse's corpse, which had now almost ceased smouldering, only wisps of smoke rising into the chilly nighttime air. "After all, it lies before us."

"Don't listen to her, Hildris," Tuthal said firmly. "She's lost her marbles. Kasua as well, I fear."

"I didn't say I thought that was what had really happened," I corrected him. "I said that was what the culprit wanted us to think."

"You too are clearly plagued with the disease of 'rationalism', Kasua, but in your case you're at least able to perceive the logic of this world before rejecting it," Summiri told me with an incisive look. "The patterns that underlie our existences are self-evident to all; we merely train ourselves not to see them. It is for this very reason that the cultures we condemn as primitive are the happiest. And yet! It is not progress that murders happiness, no; rather, it is the failure to marry progress to wisdom. To understand the world as disparate systems rather than as a divine order."

"Fucking nonsense!" Tuthal threw his hands in the air.

"The truth is laid out right before your eyes, so plain it could be seen by a babe," she went on confidently. "The Uqartul was forced back into its true form by use of fire, its known anathema, while this woman was within its shapeshifted form. She was crushed and its loss of mass and momentum caused it to be smashed by the front of the train! It catapulted backwards, eventually landing here." She gestured towards me. "But of course there are questions that remain. What was she doing inside the carriage to begin with, considering she did not even have an allotted time to claim an item from the collection? And could it not have been possible that the carriage was instead set alight from the exterior? After all, look upon its body. It is the flesh that has been directly burned, while the interior is merely a little bit cooked."

"Why is she talking like that?" Hildris asked, seeming not to have absorbed any of what the younger woman actually said. In the background, I noticed the cook, Irene - who up until this point I hadn't observed expressing a single emotion other than stunned alarm a few minutes ago when the train was being stopped - was looking increasingly agitated, looking between Summiri and the corpse with an anxious disbelief.

"Don't ask us," Tuthal said with an exaggerated shrug. "She just started a moment ago when she turned up at the far end of the train. Again: She's probably lost her fucking marbles. Assuming she's not somehow responsible for this and trying to construct herself the world's most deranged alibi."

"No, Tuth, I mean--" She bit her lip. "She sounds like... like..."

He grimaced in confusion. "Like what?"

Hildris seemed unable - or unwilling - to put the final words to the thought, while Bahram, the only other person who likely could have done so, seemed all but dead to the world as he was bent over examining the body a little distance away, muttering to himself softly occasionally. But even though I was the second least-qualified person here to understand what she was talking about, a very nasty suspicion was growing in my mind that I did.

...but that would be a bizarre direction for this to go in. I mean. It wasn't something that happened. And they said transmundane elements were excluded from the game. That was definitely transmundane!

Technically, the rules forbid it happening during the game itself, not in the backstory, my inner pedant pointed out.

Summiri seemed to be enjoying Hildris's flailing. She turned towards her, a gloved hand on her hip, and raised an eyebrow. "Indeed, Hildris. I'm curious-- What were you about to say?"

The woman paled. "You've never once called me 'Hildris' in your life. You've never even looked me in the eye."

"Would you prefer I didn't? I'd thought you told me you found diminutives like 'Hildy' patronizing'." She glanced towards Bahram. "From me, at least. Something about how I always sound too smug all the time. Or has that changed?" She chuckled.

Hildris shivered, and lurched back as if fleeing from an open flame. She lost her footing and fell to the roof of the train (once again denting it slightly-- Was it really that fragile? And if so, shouldn't the horse have broken through altogether...?) yet kept staring dead ahead at Summiri, now seeming outright terrified.

Tuthal, seeming to have finally caught on, stepped forward with the opposite emotion on his face; wide-eyed fury. He bounded towards her, lifting her up by the collar. "What the fuck you playing at, you touched little cunt? Did Rastag tell you about that? Did he put you up to whatever sick game you're trying to play at right now?" He shook her. "He tell you how to get into her head, huh?! Answer me!"

Summiri was likely the slightest person on the train, but though powerless to resist on a physical level, she seemed completely unfazed by this act of aggression. "Easy, Tuth," she said, in a tone of gentle faux-offense one might use to reprimand a friend being a bad loser at an echo game. "I'm not as strong like this as I used to be. If you try to get physical with me in the way we usually do, people might get funny ideas."

There was an expression forming on Tuthal's face that I don't know how to describe as anything other than 'masculine dread'. His face flushed, and he looked even more liable to strike her, but simultaneously a repulsed brittleness swept over his countenance, and he started to shake. His lips jerked awkwardly, unable to settle into a single expression.

Summiri sighed softly. "Alright, perhaps I'm being a little too mean. As to your question, I suppose it depends on your definition of 'told me about it'. But I recall that night well enough. We were up late in the hall, having one of our little reunion parties a few years - no, eleven - after we'd graduated. We'd all had a little bit to drink and were in the middle of playing charades or that other silly party game with the poetry, and Bahr was egging Hildris on make silly play. I joined in and called her 'Hildy' as a joke too, and you both yelled at me like I'd done something obscene." She snorted. "Of course, I'd have forgotten by now if she hadn't made a running thing of it."

"This isn't possible," Hildris rasped. "You could have just heard all that."

Summiri glanced over Tuthal's shoulder to meet her gaze. "Ask me anything."

"When his company was just starting out, on the day we were setting out to pitch our bid for the contract in Corum against the candidate put forward by the guild of engineers, I asked him what he thought his chances were."

"I believe I said that the whole provincial council was married to one another's cousins, were cousins, or both, and that we didn't have a snowball's chance in hell and had wasted our time." She laughed wistfully. "Positive or negative, life never ceases to surprise."

"At my first wedding, what did he bring as a gift?"

"A 340 vintage red from southern Ysara. I forget the label - I remember it was from either Nad-Ilad or Qatt, not as remote as Asharom - but you said it was a ridiculous amount of money to have spent."

"And what did he say after that?"

"That I'd found it in the cellar of my new estate. Though of course what I meant was that money was no object among friends."

Hildris was slowly becoming more and more manic in tone. "664. What were our initial numbers that year, before we'd balanced the books?"

"38.9 million income, 17.2 million expenses. Oh, and another 1.5 million in unlisted profits, plus the land grants we hadn't valued yet." She frowned. "Though I expect I'd have applied that sort of thing down to a protégé no matter what if I had any sense of professional responsibility, so I'm not sure how useful it is for your purposes."

"10 years ago. We had that meeting in Madam Mitia's teahouse. When I'd told you, what did you say to me?"

She glanced briefly towards me, raising her eyebrows. "I told you that shame is a dead end."

Hildris was silent for a few moments. Then she repeated: "This isn't possible."

"Have I not told you before?" Summiri countered. "All things in this world are possible, because all things are linked. It is merely a matter of knowing how precisely to pluck the strings."

The wind blew softly over us. Both Hildris and Tuthal appeared all but frozen where they respectively sat and stood, like they were golems with scripts caught in a logic error.

It was the latter who finally spoke, a newfound tremor in his voice. "...Rastag?"

The girl smiled. "In a manner of speaking." She glanced down at his hand. "Would you please let me go? This is getting a little awkward."

He was all too eager to comply with the request, shoving her away like she was a leper. "H-How? You're supposed to be dead!"

"Correct!" She said cheerfully. "As best I understand, I perished inside the firebox just over there." She pointed towards the middle carriage. "Pretty spectacular way to go, by any standard. It's a pity I can't remember it."

"How are you doing this? Are you a ghost? Are you possessing her body?!"

"Nothing so esoteric as that," she answered. "I've merely passed on an imprint of myself."

"A-- A what?"

"It doesn't surprise me that you failed to put the pieces together, Tuthal, but I am a little confused how much you seem taken aback, Hildris." She once again turned to her, still down on her butt and looking so tense she could throw herself off the edge of the train and run at a moment's notice. "After all, you worked with me closely on most of the Lifeblood Foundation's projects for years. We talked about many of these concepts directly."

"We... we discussed theory," Hildris stammered, somewhere between horror and disgust. "Not this!"

Tuthal looked sharply towards her. "This was planned? Why didn't you tell me?"

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"I didn't know! I don't know! It was supposed to just be an experimental learning method!"

"A learning me... how is this a fucking learning method?" He looked back. "What have you even-- What's even been done to you?"

"Tuthal, you have to understand," she began, looking fatigued by the prospect of having to spell this out. "Consider the arc of evolution. In the beginning of life on Earth, the first pseudo-organic compounds were completely stagnant. Carbon machines that arose purely by chance, never changing, only sophistically replicating themselves ad infinitum for millions upon millions of years. But then they stumbled upon the ability to store a small amount of information and retain it through the copying process: What we call the anima script or genes. And then that mechanism was further refined through countless generations. Life learned to absorb new information dynamically - epigenetics - and even to share information with other organisms, eventually becoming something recognizable as reproduction. Yet even so, this method was primitive: The information stored was irrevocably limited by the fact that it needed to be present in every single cell. Organisms became libraries with only a single book, the scope of their 'learning' limited to what was most pressing for their own survival.

"But eventually there was another leap. A technique was cultivated to store short-term­ information over the course of an organism's lifespan that was not burdened by the need to create multiple copies. Of course, I'm talking about the brain. This was an explosive development-- Not only did this format exponentially increase the capacity for information storage, it also unified its collection across the entire organism, vastly multiplying the quantity absorbed as well. But in vain! Because of course, upon death, this would all be lost. However. A compromise was found. Information learned sufficiently often through this method would by a combination of evolutionary and social pressures be retained, the anima script supported by an unbroken chain of group knowledge. Instinct, the precursors of culture!

"And then of course humanity takes it a step beyond. The social element expands to dwarf the genetic one. We develop language. Oral tradition. Writing. Video. Logic engines. More and more is shared. The story of life is the story of information consolidation."

"Oh my god, will you shut the fuck up and answer my question?!" For the first time, Bahram jerked his head up from his work, looking over his shoulder.

"But now consider a separate arc, the arc of human history," Summiri continued. "Despite our ability to retain tremendous amounts of information through our culture, this has failed to translate into maturity for the species et large. We continue to make the same unforced errors over and over again. We can see this in the world around us right now." She cast a hand over the darkened countryside. "Right now, the Kingdom - given the materialist opportunity to do so - is moving in the same destructive direction that countless nations have in the past. An economy has been built predicated on constant expansion and increased resource extraction, with no thought to the eventual transition to a sustainable economy. Already we've begun to see the consolidation of wealth and land under an increasingly small aristocracy and upper-middle class, and a transition to militarism as our needs have thrust us into conflict with our neighbors. We've run out of easily-colonizable steppe to claim. Where does it end? Obviously in short-termist bloodshed.

"I don't mean to lecture you, Tuthal-- Or even you, Kasua." She glanced to me briefly. "I'm hardly the first to make these observations. But my point is: Why are we doing it? Anyone can pick up a history book and read about the Bahat Crisis, or the Great Makarian or Imperial Civil wars. We should understand where this is going. But we don't, and the reason is that our information lacks fidelity. Unlike the knowledge passed down genetically, cultural knowledge is abstract and cannot be parsed intuitively. Individuals learn the dangers of the seductive nature of unmanaged expansion and resource consolidation through experiencing the consequences, but every time we produce a copy of ourselves - a child - it's set back to zero. In a sense, we haven't moved forward on this issue foundationally since the development of the central nervous system; we've merely sidestepped the problem. And this is dangerous because both circumstance and our ability to retain technical knowledge at a higher degree of sophistication has vastly increased the stakes. In the old world, at most, a catastrophe could set humanity back a few generations. But here, in the Remaining World? Why, it could be our doom.

"All this occurred to me when I was young, and only became clearer to me as I saw the cracks in the foundations of the Empire firsthand. Until, some 60 years ago, I came to the conclusion that there was only one way forward for humanity: To solve the retention problem. To become a form of life in which information is not lost in the process of copying. That is the end point of both the arcs of evolution and civilization." She lifted up her hands. "Not a terrible result for what I'd originally thought of as more or less a proof of concept."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Hildris said, looking off the edge of the train. (I also felt this, though in my case it was not acting.)

"T-This is insane," Tuthal stammered. "You can ramble on with the fucking pseudo-scientific drivel you want. What you're describing can't be done. The only way it could ever happen would be with the Power, and the Power can't touch the mind."

"Quite right," she happily acquiesced. "Of course, the ideal would be a seamless solution where the anima script was made exponentially more complex, but that would not only be politically unpopular, but more importantly far beyond our technology for the foreseeable future. Due to the absence of iron in this world, mankind has simply ceased to be a species capable of passing on information through genetics." She looked down at herself. "Instead, I developed a 'teaching method', as Hildris put it, that incorporated a variety of different techniques. First of all I found a candidate, an orphan whose attributes aligned with my own--"

"You're a woman!" Tuthal protested loudly.

"--whose metaphysical attributes aligned with my own as closely as possible while also being of suitable intellect, then used a combination of hypnosis, technology and ritual to create the impression. I am fortunate, in this case, that I have kept comprehensive journals throughout my life. From a young age, I have read these to Summiri - or, well, perhaps I ought to say that Rastag read to me - whilst in hyper-receptive consciousness state pioneered by Doctor Erkhart Junassun during his experiments in psychoactives at the University of Sarnak, while simultaneously undergoing brainwave synchronization using an artifice I had commissioned by the Altaian Academy. This allowed intangible components of the memories - sense, feeling - to be shared between us as the events were recalled. I also endeavored aspects of our spiritual and medical numerology in alignment through synchronized meditations, waking times, and blood exchanges. It took two decades, but eventually our souls were in a state of complete synchronicity."

It should go without saying that everything that had just left her mouth was, from any sort of actual scientific perspective, complete nonsense. Brainwaves didn't work like that. Psychedelics didn't work like that. You couldn't share memories! This was stupid! Were we even supposed to take it seriously, or just think she was nuts?

Why was this a component of the plot at all? Everything had pointed to Phaidime being Rastag, and instead this shit had been pulled out of nowhere. The only way this connected to the conclave was my motivation for being there, and no one except me, Samium and Ran should have even known about that, with nothing I'd heard from Ptolema, Bardiya or Neferuaten indicating it had somehow become common knowledge. And even if it had, this wasn't anything like my situation! Combined with the fact she looked vaguely Saoic, I could see Summiri's baseline character being a creepy exaggeration of my social awkwardness (although it was enough of a caricature that I'd be offended if that were the case), but nothing else lined up at all. This just felt like some pulp sci-fi twist, with Rastag played as the most awful villain possible.

This was awful. I felt both second and first hand embarrassment at the same time. I wanted to just quit. This had all gone completely off the rails.

Uh. No pun intended.

"So you're not really him, then," Tuthal said, grasping for any sort of vindication. "You've just been, what, groomed to the point of psychosis. Good god, I knew Rastag was a sick fuck, but this is on another level."

She scoffed. "What did I say, Tuthal? Such a reaction truly does befit you. It's like I told you when you pulled out your investments in my company: The only way you've ever known to react to the unknown is to stuff it in a box. It's why you've never had any talent for business beyond plate-spinning with your family holdings. You are incapable of imagining a changed future - or even the non-immediate past - and anything subjective might as well be sedition in your eyes." She shrugged dismissively. "It's a crude way to have gone about it, I'll admit; I'm sure my current mind has imperfections in its fidelity. But every product begins with a prototype. Now that I've shown it can be done, it's just a matter of refinement."

"I never thought it was like this," Hildris muttered, staring into the middle distance. "I thought you were just tutoring her closely. That it was the same as the other students, just more intensive."

"That's exactly what I was doing. You're not seeing the bigger picture I'm trying to convey here, Hildris. What is teaching? Human beings have always understood the need to pass down as much of themselves as possible to their young - applied knowledge, yes, but also values, philosophy, first principle assumptions. What is a book if not an attempt to implant a strain of one's own psyche in the reader? What is induced empathy, parental guidance, culture itself if not different applications of that same concept?" She took a step towards her. "You knew the method we were using. One-on-one teaching with individual tutors aligned carefully to the students, with an emphasis on the personal and vicarious experience. I discussed many of these same concepts with you directly."

"We were expanding the amount of knowledge that was passed down to include the more fundamental and experiential, not copying people! There's a difference between giving people more tools entering their adult lives and-- And not even letting them develop their own selves!"

"I beg to differ," she retorted casually. "In fact, I'd say those two are the exact same concept. What do you think a 'person' is? Children are sponges. Their identities form solely through the act of absorbing information and emulating others. The only difference is that this is generally a chaotic process where only a small amount of often-contradictory data is passed on. There's nothing inappropriate about correcting that." She placed a hand upon her chest. "Let me put this another way. My name is Summiri Hattusduttar. I was adopted by the Lifeblood Foundation as an infant, before I existed as a person and was educated precisely according to their goals. I am Rastag Mithraiossun only in the same regard that you are Rhunbardic. I am a continuation of a set of information and conclusions. There is no more to it than that."

"You told me our goal was to save civilization by passing only the right information! To breed a generation capable of weathering the struggles to come, and building a lasting society! Not to steal away the lives of the young and preserve nothing but ourselves forever." She looked repulsed. "What makes you think you, of everyone, were worthy of this?"

"Someone had to be the first, and it would have been irresponsible to pass the buck to anyone else." She crossed her arms. "Come on, Hildris. Why are you being so reductive about this? It's not as though I believe I'm cheating death--"

Suddenly, she was interrupted by Bahram slamming into her at full speed.

𒊹

7:45 PM | The Ninsirsir, Deck 3 | December 31st | 1608 COVENANT

"Huh. She's gone," Gudrun said unhelpfully.

"Yes Gudrun," Lamu spoke flatly. "I am able to see that."

"Maybe she went to the bathroom."

"We were just in the bathroom."

"Maybe she went to a different bathroom," the other woman speculated. "Maybe she's got, like, that thing. Broken piss disease or whatever."

"You mean paruresis."

"Nah, I don't that's it." She paused for a moment, then continued: "Your calls on this kinda shit are all over the place today, Lamu. You should stop trying to correct me."

Gudrun's words washed over her. It had been barely 30 seconds and already their plan was ruined. Where had she gone? What was she doing? Lamu was struggling not to panic. She could be in their room going through their things, or making a false report about them to security. She could be in the kitchen poisoning their food. Anything was on the table now. What had she been thinking?! Of course the woman would slip away the second they let her out of their sight! After what she'd said, that was only rational!

This was extremely bad. Things just kept getting worse.

"What do we do now," Lamu said, less a question and more an exclamation of despair.

"Uh, well. We're in public now, so we should probably get back to our seats. Maybe she'll come back too. You never know, right?"

You never know. Why had Lamu thought bringing this meathead along was a remotely good idea? Suddenly the shape of all her mistakes over the course of her entire life felt lit in neon. She saw it perfectly-- A world where she had sold out of the Brotherhood of the Scorned and the Order when she was still a child, had worked through her difficulties with interacting with others methodically rather than simply constructing a careful mask, and was now living a comfortable, honest life as an eccentric art critic or something. No being an enemy of the state. No sham marriage with a child she failed to sincerely love in a grotesque encore of her own mother's behavior. She could see it all laid out, plain as day.

"She's not going to come back," Lamu stated emotionlessly.

"Yeah probably not. I was trying to chill you out a bit." Gudrun shrugged. "Look. It's fine. This is why we came up with the B plan. And like I said, she can't do shit while we're sitting here with a million people around. So we'll make this place our fortress until we can talk to your friend." She smiled with complete serenity. "So just relax!"

She knew in her gut that this was a horrible non-strategy, but at the same time Gudrun wasn't even wrong. There was nothing to be done now. If they went looking for her it would only put them at greater risk.

Lamu nodded mutedly. "Fine."

They moved to sit back down. The others were done with their appetizers and were talking among themselves, but Theo looked up as they approached. Theo. If Gudrun couldn't think out of this, maybe he would. But how would she broach the topic--

A realization suddenly struck her.

"The man at the table. Theo," she whispered frantically to Gudrun as they approached. "I forgot to say. He's another one of my classmates."

She looked back at her vacantly. "What?"

"Ah, welcome back," Malko said, raising his glass. "You missed absolutely nothing."

Lamu glanced between the two of them. It didn't look like they'd missed absolutely nothing. Theodoros had a peculiar expression on his face, and had suddenly got very quiet upon their return despite seeming from a distance pretty animated.

Lamu squinted. Did he see her?

Gudrun glanced towards the stage. "The music's stopped."

"Mm, they'll be transitioning to a new act in a few minutes for the main course. They like to keep things varied for the first few hours to trick the newbies into sticking around for the charity auction. That's when things will really get dire." He leaned forward. "Word of advice: If the idea of spending anything crosses your mind for even a second, it's time to go to bed early. The art and antiques are all overpriced, the travel packages are just a way to funnel you to different charity auctions, and the celebrity introductions don't offer anything you couldn't get for free assuming you have better social skills than a teenager." He rolled his eyes. "Not that you'd want to. If I were making a registry of pricks, I'd start with the kind of people who think their time is worth selling."

"Oh yeah," Gudrun said with an affirming nod. "Nah, I'm not gonna be taken in by shit like that. I don't like spending money."

Malko clicked his tongue. "Forgive me. You're a working woman, of course you have some actual sense with your finances." It was more like Gudrun had never seen the amount of wealth Malko was picturing her having in her life, but Lamu wasn't the type of person to find misunderstandings funny.

"Yeah, I came into some recently, but trying to be disciplined about it, you know?"

Malko nodded absently. "I understand completely. When I collected my share of my grandfather's inheritance, there was this fellow I was infatuated with at the time who had taken residence in Xattusa. He loved the history and pomp and the like. I splurged on a modest estate to spend more time with him, only for him to suddenly embrace Paritism and become absolutely insufferable." He sighed. "If there's a disease endemic to a waning age, it's assuredly religion."

"Haha yeah totally," Gudrun agreed. "So what acts are they gonna be showing?"

Malko furrowed his brow thoughtfully. "I believe it's that comedian from Omiwa that everyone's been raving about lately, isn't it? The one who does the thing with the little flute."

"Er, actually, I think there's supposed to be another speech first," Theo chimed up.

Malko raised an eyebrow. "Oh? From whom?"

"The former head of the Arcane Office," he explained. "Eleanora of Halkysses."