A Fortress of Pebbles

For Cassandra, time stopped. At first, she thought this might be the birthday present that fake-Orion had alluded to.

The Master of Language and Nessassa stood frozen in the middle of the room as Cassandra walked around them. “You can poke them if you want,” said fake-Orion. “They won’t feel it.”

To demonstrate, he poked the Master of Language in the butt, and his hand went right through. Cassandra declined to try. She looked instead through the window, down into the courtyard, where the council of the other Masters was similarly frozen. One scribe was mid-stride as he sprinted across the grass, probably bearing a message about the evolving situation on Earth.

“I can dilate time,” explained fake-Orion. “Time can’t go backwards, but it can speed it up or slow down. Believe it or not, you’re now slightly older than Orion. How does that feel?”

The real Orion often liked to point out that he was a few minutes older than she was. The joke had long ago gotten stale, but of course he didn’t care. The idea that she was now the older twin made her shiver, though she didn’t know why. She imagined seeing him again years from now – her an old crone, and him still wiping his nose on the sleeves of his flannels when no one was watching.

“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you that long,” said fake-Orion, as if she had spoken out loud. “Come with me.”

With that, he walked through the closed chamber door like a ghost. From the other side, she could hear him encouraging her to follow. The door resisted slightly, but she pushed through and followed him down the stairs.

A few minutes later, in the Hall of Language, Cassandra saw an expanse of office cubicles filled with frozen scribes, many with pebbles to their heads. The screens of computers and televisions displayed news broadcasts from Earth – an alarming number of which seemed to involve fire. Or people running.

“Things aren’t going so well Earth-side,” said fake-Orion. “Check this one out.” She followed his finger to a television screen mounted beside the big desk in the center of the large room. On it was a reporter frozen mid-syllable, with a very familiar house behind her. Words underneath read: Rural citizens refuse to evacuate epicenter of…

As Cassandra approached the screen, she saw her dad at the front door. She had to blink to be sure, but yes, he seemed to be holding it open for a small group of people in the front yard.

“He’s letting people in?” said Cassandra, almost too shocked to get the words out. She had heard him say, approximately one million times, that when the world ended anyone who wasn’t prepared would be S.O.L. “Mom must have made him do it.”

“The Rot has ushered in a time of chaos in which a great many unpredictable events are likely to occur,” said fake-Orion. He spoke in a grave tone that real-Orion wouldn’t have been able to pull off without bursting into laughter. “If we do not act soon – today, in fact – then even an underground bunker will not be enough to protect them from the Rotting of the world.”

“So why can I understand you so easily?” said Cassandra, reflexively changing the subject. “The Master of Language made it seem like interpreting the Master of Virtue was hard or something.”

“Technically, I’m not the Master of Virtue,” said fake-Orion. “I’m the birthday present.” She followed him as he walked through the sea of frozen scribes, ducking under a clipboard here and peaking into a cubical there. “Think of the Master of Virtue as an incomprehensibly complex computer. Yes, he’s a rock – but there’s more space within that rock than there is outside of it.”

He stopped in the doorway to a hallway and raised his eyebrow at her.

“What?” said Cassandra. She’d been distracted by the guards standing frozen at the hallway entrance. Also, by the fact that fake-Orion sounded like everyone else did when they were about to ask her to do something she didn’t want to do. It always started with a long explanation.

“I just told you there’s more space inside the Master of Virtue than outside,” said fake-Orion, poking one of the guards in the butt. “If you’re not impressed, you’re not paying attention.”

An image came to Cassandra of a rock flying through space. Distant galaxies twinkled like stars many lifetimes away. For some reason, the rock itself was metallic, like a mirror, reflecting those same galaxies upon its surface.

“There you go,” said fake-Orion, proceeding down the hallway. “Now you’re getting it. The universe we’re in now is tiny compared to the amount of space inside the object known as the Master of Virtue.”

He stopped before a metal door, this one also guarded. He walked through it as if it were open. From the other side, Cassandra thought she heard him say something like, “Not only that, but it’s not so empty either. It’s filled with pebbles.”

She followed him into a room where a man sat chained and sleeping in one corner. Cassandra recognized him as the non-cat version of the young Master of Rot that was attempting to recruit Aissaba and Tassadu.

“It’s filled with pebbles?” said Cassandra.

“Let me put it this way,” said fake-Orion. “There’s enough space and computing power inside the Master of Virtue to run many thousands of simulations of your universe.”

He crouched down next to Styxx and pointed at his bruised face. Cassandra thought he might poke him somewhere, but he didn’t.

“The problem,” he said, “is that the Master of Virtue isn’t the only such stone. There’s another one. We thought we destroyed it long ago, but somehow it’s back.”

“The Rot,” said Cassandra. Or maybe she just thought it.

Fake-Orion took a knife from the pocket of his jeans, and slit the man’s throat. There was no blood. Nothing happened, in fact. The knife passed ghost-like through the bruises on his neck. Cassandra wasn’t sure if this was like the benign butt-pokes, or if the man would begin to gush blood whenever time resumed.

“What are you doing?” said Cassandra.

“We,” said fake-Orion, “are taking matters into our own hands. The Rot will choose its chosen ones, and we must do so as well.”

He handed her the knife – an ornate ivory hilt encrusted with pebbles, supporting a long curved blade. It looked like it could cut through stone, or fate itself. Even as the words “Uh, no thanks,” stood poised on her lips, the knife felt right in her hands, as if she had wielded it many times before, in a thousand lifetimes. In every dream she’d spent searching for something unknown, perhaps it had been this.

Mug of cider in one hand and the knife in the other, she said, “You know I’m only thirteen, right?”