A Fortress of Pebbles

Everyone agreed, in retrospect, that Aissaba’s thesis had been too ambitious and too dangerous. It had begun modestly, however, with the goal of editing away certain cognitive defects – tendencies toward mistakes and forgetfulness, for example.

There were people like Tassadu, who always seemed to remember what they were told, people who never made the same mistake twice. And then there were people like Aissaba. If Tassadu could write a thesis about becoming a dragon-human hybrid, why shouldn’t she be able to write hers about becoming more like Tassadu?

The problem, of course, was that personality traits were (as the Master of Mind called them) non-localized phenomena. “If you could take apart your graymatter, untangle every neuron, deconstruct every neurotransmitter,” the Master of Mind had told her, “you’d never find the Forgetfulness Lobe or the Make-The-Same-Mistake-Twice Chemical.”

But Aissaba’s optimism at the age of sixteen had been unquenchable – or so she had been told. Memories of the time were murky at best. Two years of thesis work had ended with Tassadu becoming part ancient dragon and Aissaba becoming part vegetable – twice. Each time, it had taken the Master of Mind months to reverse the damage.

No more unrestricted mind pebbles for Aissaba. This decree had come not after the first vegetablization, but the second. The Fortress considered free will very sacred, but there were limits, apparently. You can become whatever you wish in the Fortress – unless it’s a three-time vegetable.

The upshot of it all, though, was that Aissaba knew more about personality and memory modification than most. Not only had she read everything written about the subject, but she knew first-hand what it felt like to reach inside her own mind and edit what was there. She’d even done it successfully more times than not.

After bringing her entire personality crashing down (twice), she was reasonably confident that she could do it correctly if given a third chance. And maybe, if there was such a thing as fate, this was exactly why she’d ended up here, in this other Fortress, with unrestricted mind pebbles and zero supervision.

***

Aissaba held her hands against the wound in cat-Styxx’s neck. Blood flowed through her fingers, warm and black in the torchlight of the courtyard.

He choked in his attempt to say something. It sounded like, “I love you,” but it was hard to tell. Black robed people all around them were chanting “Fast may he rot.”

Aissaba shouted for Tassadu to bring life pebbles, but he was nowhere to be found. The bone collector spider nuzzled against her leg. At first she shoved it away, but then – in desperation, she shouted at it, “Can you bring me a life pebble?” And amazingly, it seemed to cock the small rodent jawbone that served as its head. It clacked its teeth and skittered away through the forest of boots, onlookers parting to let it pass.

Cat-Styxx pulled her close, still surprisingly strong considering the pool of blood forming on the dirt beneath him. “It’s too late for me,” he whispered. “You must go to the Rot alone.”

***

Between her sessions with the mind pebble, Aissaba spent the days either being ignored by Tassadu in their room or – when she could no longer ignore her own stomach – venturing down into the marketplace to buy food. Alone. A single decorative pebble from Tassadu’s tub bought her a day’s worth of rotisserie meat from the same merchant she’d met before. If the woman was still angry about the language pebble ordeal, she hid it well when she discovered that Aissaba had mind pebbles to sell.

“These are rare on the Master world,” she said, as she carved off a slice of meat and slapped it onto a stone slab. “Map and life pebbles are everywhere, but these…” She shook her mane of scraggly gray and appraised the pebble like a jeweler. “Just like the one yesterday. Flashed with one of Master Styxx’s decorative protocols. Normally, I wouldn’t buy stolen goods multiple times in a row, but… you’re a chosen one, after all.”

Aissaba smiled thinly as the language pebble in her stomach announced, “Behold Ass-aba and Ass-adu, the chosen ones!” Apparently, it did this whenever anyone in her vicinity said the words “chosen one.” The merchant had discovered this a few days ago and taken to triggering it at least once every time she saw Aissaba.

“Seriously though,” said the merchant in a hushed voice, “where is Master Styxx? No one has seen him in days.”

“Not my problem,” said Aissaba.

Back in her room, she gave Tassadu the meat wrapped in some kind of bread that the merchant had included free of charge. He nodded politely, took it, and returned to whatever he was doing in his own mind – blue pebble to his forehead. He hadn’t spoken to her since she’d begun to self-edit.

***

After the first time becoming a vegetable, she’d spent a year refining what her thesis dubbed “self-editing safety protocols.” Luckily, the TSO-duh contained copies of these protocols, along with everything else she and Tassadu had written.

“You’re looking great today!” said Tassadu’s personality model. “Are we doing another self-editing session?” The model was considerably more helpful than the real Tassadu these days.

“Yes,” she said, “load the chapter I wrote on the editing of romantic feelings.”

A thesis, as they are written in the Fortress, was rarely a document of pure text, but rather a rich ecosystem of ideas, data, recordings, custom protocols, and a personality model or two to tie it all together. The moment she asked the TSO-duh to load the chapter, the dragon faded away and Aissaba was back in her old Fortress room, face to face with herself at the age of seventeen.

“Aissaba!” said young-Aissaba – a personality model that served as her thesis narrator. She looked so young, Aissaba realized every time she did this. The amount of baby fat in the face always caught her off guard. “Are we ready to suppress your memories and re-enter the self-editing simulations?” said fake-Aissaba.

Aissaba nodded. Self-editing safety rule #1: Keep the “Editing Self” and the “Edited Self” separate. Mixing them was a “one-way trip to the vegetable patch,” she’d concluded back when she had more baby fat in her cheeks.

“And are we focusing on pain or pleasure today?” inquired young-Aissaba.

“Dealer’s choice,” said Aissaba, closing her eyes and readying herself for the vertigo that accompanied the sudden loss of memories.

***

Cat-Styxx kissed her. Aissaba hated how much she liked the feel of his soft fur against her skin. But she kissed him back anyway because, although she couldn’t remember why she was here, she knew she was supposed to play along.

His tongue was rough – not quite as rough as a real cat’s but rough enough to be interesting. He seemed to know exactly where she wanted to be touched – which was both annoying and amazing. She ran her hand through the raised hairs on his neck.

Aissaba kept waiting for the twist. Would he puke in her mouth? Stab her with a knife? Fart? Distantly, she was aware that she shouldn’t know there was a twist coming. Clearly, some information was seeping through the memory loss.

Wait…

She shouldn’t even know about the memory loss. The whole point of Rule #1 was that when you’re being edited, you don’t realize it.

“What’s wrong?” whispered cat-Styxx, pulling away gently. The roof of the four poster bed above him undulated with the pink light of the decorative mind pebbles. His eyes glowed bright green.

“Ugh,” she said, pushing him further away. “Session’s tainted.” She called out to young-Aissaba: “Restart!”

Cat-Styxx folded his knees in his arms, naked and vulnerable. “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

“Restart!” Aissaba called again. She almost felt bad for him, until she reminded herself that 1) feeling bad for cat-Styxx was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to edit away, and 2) this wasn’t cat-Styxx but rather his personality model, extracted from one of his decorative mind pebbles and repurposed to enhance the self-editing sessions.

Just as she was about to call out to young-Aissaba again, she saw that cat-Styxx was covered in blood, throat slit. It was everywhere, in fact. On her skin, on the blankets, on the pillows.

“Something’s wrong,” whispered cat-Styxx.

“Tell me about it,” said Aissaba.

As the light in his green eyes began to fade, he said something about the Rot needing her. About being a chosen one. About loving her. “Restart!” Aissaba screamed over and over again – so loud that something seemed to rip inside her throat.