The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

11:52 AM | Ai Nua Clinic | June 10th | 1608 COVENANT

The phrase hit me like a lightning bolt, somehow both incomprehensible and portentously clear at the same time. It felt like I'd been physically attacked by the information, my mind feeling like if it could just spit back out, it could simply unhappen.

"I understand this might be distressing for you to learn, especially considering your age," she said after what felt like too short a period, like she was anxious about the possibility of things going off-script. "If you need a moment before I continue, then I'm happy to step out of the room for a few minutes."

If I'd pictured myself in this situation beforehand, I would have imagined myself denying it. Saying stuff like... 'No, that can't be right. Associative collapse never occurs in people younger than 400, especially not the forms that are still around in the modern day. It's a one-in-a-thousand change. There has to be some mistake.' I would have imagined myself demanding to have the tests done again, maybe even getting angry and yelling, screaming.

But instead, I just nodded calmly, speaking in a quiet voice. "Uh, no, it's alright," I said. "What's my prognosis?"

"Well," she said, looking down at the sheet of parchment clipped to the wooden board in her hand, "specifically, you've been diagnosed with Axon Feedback Delay Syndrome, sometimes called Shalmaneser's Disease. It's a abnormal form that involves the pneumaic nexus becoming desynchronized with the nerve fibers of the brain, and is unfortunately known to have an earlier onset period than more conventional forms."

I had only vaguely heard of the specific condition-- There were hundreds of documented variants of associative collapse dementia, most of which didn't get a lot of attention. The most common, Synaptic Resonance Decay - caused by the extra-dimensional synaptic receptors simply 'going dead' and ceasing to respond, resulting in the processing that would normally be done on the level simply not happening and making the according inter-neuron connection useless or even outright harmful, producing incorrect bichemical signals that interfered with parts of the mind which were still functioning - was incredibly well-understood by scholars at this point, and could all but be considered 'cured' from an at least preventative standpoint. But the disease was like a hydra. The longer people lived, the more ways the pneuma could fail appeared. And the white elephants, the rare manifestations, fell to the wayside in pursuing treatments relevant to the majority of the aging population.

Even most of my own recent work - well, back when 'work' was still a thing I did - had been along those lines; In a lot of ways, dementia was the only problem left in medicine and healing. So I knew all too well that the one absolute, the one constant regardless of what variant you were talking about, was that once the disease had manifested, once prevention had failed... The patient's days were definitively numbered.

For a lot of conditions, you could slow it down, for some variants as long as half a century. And when that failed, you could treat the symptoms for a while longer; keep the decaying mind upright by supplementing it with drugs and using Neuromancy to shift the burden away from the parts that were broken. But it would kill you, one way or the other.

How you got to that point varied. For some people it was like Yantho, where the body went first, while for most it was like my grandfather. But no matter what road you traveled, the ultimate destination was the same; a confusing, embarrassing, existentially-horrifying death. Turning back mentally and physically into an infant before withering away into nothingness.

The woman took a breath. "The good news is that the condition has a naturally slow onset period. Even though we've been able to spot the early signs now, there's been no recorded case where symptoms have appeared in under a decade of the estimated advent, and in most instances it's over 15 years. And based on your neuroimaging, we've caught this very early, so you still have all of that time."

"Where did the scan find it?" I asked her. "The signs."

"...in your orbitofrontal cortex," she told me, mercifully frank.

So that means the first symptoms I can expect will probably be behavioral. Impulse control, worsening judgement... Personality changes. Or on an off-chance, loss or change in my sense of smell and taste. One and then the other, regardless.

My throat tightened.

She broke eye contact, looking back at the parchment. "Now, unfortunately, understanding of AFDS is relatively limited compared to some other forms of complex associative collapse dementia, which means that your treatment options might be more limited-- Though much of that will depend on the exact progression of the disease. Since you're so young, that means that the rate of progression once symptoms begin will naturally be quite slow, and no matter what it should be possible to offset them further to a degree..."

It was a strange feeling. Despite my relative ignorance of this specific manifestation I almost certainly knew more about dementia and the ways it could be treated than this woman - who based on her uniform was probably only a junior doctor - did. I knew exactly what was being left unspoken when she talked about 'treatment options' being 'limited', which was that I was looking at a mix of neuroplasticity boosters and palliative care-- Maybe some experimental Neuromancy designed for other conditions if I was bold. And I knew that though youth certainly did often result in slower progression of the disease, it would be optimistic to hope for anything more than, say, 20%. If I just told her I'd been in the field and asked to look at the sheet myself, it'd save a lot of time.

But I found myself deluding myself into thinking that wasn't the case. And that maybe she could really surprise me with a piece of information that would offset the creeping sense of dread that was rapidly crawling up through my body.

"What sort of-- What sort of time am I looking at, after I start experiencing symptoms in earnest?" I interjected. "I mean... on average."

She paused, hesitating. "It's difficult to say conclusively at this stage. Again, the condition can evolve very differently depending on a variety of factors, and I wouldn't want to end up giving you a false impression." She subtly shifted over to her desk. "A specialist would be able to review your case specifically and give you the best answer, though there's no need to rush into that. I'm certain this is quite a shock, so it might be worth considering--"

"Again, just on average," I repeated, interjecting. "I insist."

She stopped, closing her lips and letting a touch of unease show on her face. She looked at her notes again, then withdrew her own logic engine, placing her palm on it for a moment.

"...from onset, the average life expectancy for the condition is about 31 years," she explained. "So another 15, roughly, after the onset of symptoms."

It wasn't what I'd wanted to hear. I nodded distantly, my eyes unfocusing.

"But again," she continued, "that figure is largely based on people much older than you, many of whom also have different diagnostic profiles. It's most common for the disease to originate in the primary motor cortex, which could lead to an entirely different prognosis." She smiled in a casual way that probably meant to be reassuring, but felt utterly at odds with the weight of the moment as I was experiencing it. "So, please try not to let it affect you. I understand that news like this is... difficult to come to terms with, and I'm sure you're frightened. It's natural to want any sort of clarity about your future. But it really is important to emphasize that every situation is unique-- There have been cases of AFDS where people have lived for three times that number."

"Right," I said. "I understand."

"So, the priority right now should be your needs in the immediate term. As I was saying..."

The appointment lasted about another 15 minutes, most of which was spent on concerns of my mental health following this diagnosis: Whether or not I had a family and how I should break the news (or not, for the time being), where I could find support over the logic sea or locally if I needed it, and how I could seek a leave of absence from my workplace, which I didn't bother to make clear wasn't a concern. After that, a specialist appointment was booked a fortnight later, and then I was just left to go home. As if it had just been an ordinary appointment.

Somehow, the whole experience felt very reminiscent of the final visit to the acclimation clinic.

I left the place feeling surprisingly normal at first. Because the world around me hadn't changed - because I left the building to a normal sunny afternoon in Ai Nua, just like I would have if the tests had come up normal - it was difficult to feel that my place in it had, either. I went to the distribution center to pick up some groceries like I'd planned, then went a little further downtown to buy some books, an echo game, and a new pan for the kitchen. I walked back to the carriage and loaded it all up.

But as I rode home, I couldn't help but think about it.

I'm going to die.

I couldn't bear the idea of trying to keep living with dementia. I'd seen too many people go through it at this point, and that was terrifying enough-- I didn't want to find out what it felt like to lose piece after piece of my mind, of my very self. The paranoia, the confusion and distress, the ultimate apathy when there was finally nothing left.

A cleaner death early into the onset of symptoms, where one could depart comfortably on one's own terms instead of as a breathing corpse pissing itself in a hospital bed, was preferable. But that left me with what, 20 years? 15, for the safer bet.

15 years. Fifteen years.

Fifteen years. That's all I have left.

Fifteen years. Less than 10% of the time I've been alive.

The figure felt incomprehensible. It was such an unspeakably small number. It felt like I'd only moved into Deshur recently, and even that had been about twenty. It wasn't enough time to start a new career, it was barely enough time for even a serious relationship. If I had a child now - god fucking forbid - they wouldn't even be physically an adult by the time I was dead.

It wasn't fair. This wasn't supposed to happen. I was only just turning middle-aged. Death wasn't something I should have even needed to worry about.

I hadn't comprehended it before, but all of a sudden I realized that - despite everything that had gone amiss with my life - I'd been taking succor in the fact that I still had time. Even if I'd given up on changing or attaining the things I'd wanted, some part of me had believed there was still a chance that something could change, just as I'd held that blind optimism that I could adopted and whisked off to some dream life as a kid in the foster home. Sure, there no was visible trajectory now, but it could have happened! Those narratives were everywhere. People who'd been misfits their entire lives suddenly meeting the perfect person, or reaching some profound revelation that changed their whole view on the world, or, or...

Gods, had I really still believed in shlock like that? Even though I knew the people in those stories were always idiots who didn't have any real problems beyond being depressed? I'd thought my heart had hardened.

But now that was gone. There was no time. No time to grow, no time for anything to meaningfully change short of a miracle. I could no longer wipe away my tears and tell myself that tomorrow was a new day, and that things could still be alright if I kept moving forward, because there was no moving forward; only a wall of hard, immutable stone that stretched to the very heavens. I only had two realistic choices: To spend my last few years in the same solitary quagmire of an existence here on Deshur, or else go back to my family and pretend that I was somehow okay with what was happening for their sake.

Oh, god. My family.

How will I even tell them about this?

I felt sick. It was all so piercingly, relentlessly sad. My story was coming to its finale. But it wasn't a happy ending, or even the bittersweet sort of one I'd always assumed I'd eventually arrived at. It wasn't an ending at all.

Just a sudden stop. A fizzling out.

By the time I got home, I felt breathless. I tried to just go back to just screwing around in my bedroom, thinking I could just put off thinking about all this for a while - pretend it hadn't happened. But as soon as I laid eyes on the place again, something stirred in my gut. I suddenly felt repulsed by the mess I was living in, and how much it reflected my complete failure to grow up, to ever have internally transformed into someone complete and mature. I felt ashamed of myself, overcome with the sense that I'd failed, utterly and completely, at something of the gravest importance. I wanted to smash it all with a bat. I wanted to set it on fire.

I couldn't relax, no matter what I did. Eventually I left altogether and tried to cook myself a big meal - a leg of lamb with some bread and fried beans - but when I was done, I didn't even want to eat it. It felt like everything I was doing was wrong, somehow a failure to make use of my time properly.

Eventually I ended up leaving the house altogether, the contempt I felt for my room seeming to spread outwardly like a mold. Despite the fact that it was getting dark, I decided to take a long walk down the street to a little supply store at a crossroads I'd stopped at a couple times in and out of town. I must have walked for well over an hour, but it felt as though no time was passing at all. My mind just kept circling the truth over and over again, like it was scalding hot water it could only bare to tip its toe into.

I'm going to die. In just a few years, I'm going to die.

This world will continue on, but for me, everything will be gone. Just nothingness. For a billion, billion, billion years. For eternity.

I made it to the store; a tiny wooden and granite building with a bioluminescent glass sign simply reading 'YONDAL COMPANY RESUPPLY STATION'. It had only two rooms - not counting a tiny bathroom - and a single member of staff, a Mekhian man dressed in an off-white, slightly dirty uniform. There were eight shelves inside, all packed tightly with stacks of necessities, snacks, and emergency items like bandages. I picked up some water, a bag of nuts, and a small pack of opium poppies in the hope of calming myself down. I stepped over to the counter, causing the man to look up from his logic engine.

"Just these, please," I said to the man, my voice cracking unexpectedly as I placed the items in front of him between two bronze plates.

"No problem," he said. He pressed a button on the desk, and a light briefly shone above the plates to indicate a scan was taking place. "That'll be 1.3 luxury debt."

"Mmhmm," I said, placing my hand on the logic bridge embedded into the counter.

"Would you like them bagged?"

"Yeah," I said, biting my lip slightly as my eyes wandered across the room. "Sure."

He reached to the side of the counter and pulled a thin silk bag from the side of the wall, stuffing the three items inside. My eyes wandered for a moment, looking at the magazine display.

"Here you are," he said, as he finished. He passed the bag over to me, smiling mirthfully. "You should probably drink that water," he spoke in a joking-around sort of tone. "I'm, uh, not sure I've ever seen someone who looks so dehydrated."

I laughed awkwardly in response. Now that I think about it, I haven't eaten or drunk anything since the appointment. Feels like I'm just piloting my own body from a control panel.

I went back outside. At this point it was fully dark, with only the light of the lesser, pale lamp - meant to imitate the moon of the Earth, or more specifically to imitate the similar one on the Mimikos that did that - to illuminate the surrounding area. Now there was nowhere to go but back home, but I didn't want to be there any more than I did an hour ago, the idea almost leaving me physically repulsed.

I glanced around, spotting a small metal bench at the side of the store, half in shadow from the angle it was adjacent to the sign. I sat down and withdrew the bottle of water, draining almost the entire thing in one go, then tore open the papyrus pack of poppies, sticking one in my mouth and chewing firmly.

The wind blew gently against my face, and the desert sprawled out in all directions before my eyes. Proper landscaping still hadn't been done over most parts of Deshur, so once you got this far out, there was literally nothing; no mountains or even many hills, just the landscape sprawling out for hundreds upon hundreds of miles until it began to tip upwards with the incline of the bowl, the clouds rising up before you like great white walls.

But despite that, I felt overwhelmed by a sense of being trapped in an increasingly small space, smothered by an encroaching force. Cornered, with nowhere I could go physically or mentally. Even after taking the drug, I couldn't get myself together. It felt like my mind was trying to eat itself.

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to disappear.

It's not fair. There's so much I haven't done. So many ways in which everyone has left me behind.

It feels like I never even began my life properly at all.

My true self, I... I never...

It was just so sad. I couldn't stop feeling sorry for myself, for all the things I'd failed to do, failed to savor. I inhaled sharply, wanting desperately to be able to relax, just to feel normal enough to go home and get some sleep.

It's okay.

It's okay, Kuroka.

We did our best, didn't we? We went to a lot of places and met a lot of interesting people. We even changed the world a little bit. We did all that together, just like you'd dreamed.

And now... we can finally stop. You don't have to keep up a front for the sake of my family any more, nor for anybody else. It's not your fault, and you no longer owe anything to anyone. You can rest. Atone.

It's fine, isn't it?

We'll go out there, finally, to the edge of the Mimikos, like we talked about when we were kids. Well see what the world looks like there.

And then... We'll disappear together.

I'll be by your side until the very end.

It'll be... alright, it'll...

But the words were empty. Nothing but a sad little performance I was putting on within my own mind.

It's 'not fair'? a more truthful voice, deep within me, said. Ridiculous. After all this time, how can you still be so conceited?

You had everything. Talent. Wealth. Love. Even people willing to overlook your acts of grotesque depravity and selfishness.

You stole this life and got away with it. With just a little willpower, you could have done anything you wanted. Been anything you wanted.

You just didn't.

I gasped for air. What had happened to me? What had happened to me? So many times in the past I'd told myself that I longed for the day something like this would happen, and I could stop living for the sake of my family or for Shiko or for whatever stupid justification I was going with at any given moment. For the day I could finally face the long-overdue justice for what I'd done. But now that the fated hour had arrived, all that existential bravado had gone up in a puff of fucking smoke. When had it become fake? A shallow self-deception?

I fell apart. I broke down in fearful, pained tears, placing my face in my hands. My gut ached with ferocious panic, and my breaths became desperate gasps and choked sobs as I was rendered unable to suppress my true feelings.

I don't want to die!

I'm so scared! I don't want to die!

Someone help me... Help me! Please, save me!

But there was no one to save me. No one in the world left who even really knew me at all.

In that moment, I felt convinced that I should have perished back then after all, during my visit home after the conclave. In those days, everything I did had felt so weighted with meaning. My guilt and regrets, yes, but also my moments of happiness. If I just hadn't had that stupid conversation with my mother about my favorite food, I could have died feeling like I'd lived my narrative arc to its completion, and found some form of redemption and peace. Or even if that alternative world had been real, and I really had been shot dead by Balthazar, given punishment for my failure as I deserved.

But now it was all just... distant. Diluted. I was nothing but a ghost of that person, going through the motions for what had long been no good reason at all. The thing I'd feared most when I'd watched my grandfather die had some to pass, and I was alone, in a wasteland of absolute reality. No story remained. Only primeval, animal fear, terrible and all-consuming.

The answer I'd come to on that beach, even if it had been the woefully wrong one - even if it was barely an answer at all - had given me a means to come to terms with living. But in return, it had taken something that on some level I'd understood was even more precious: My will. My belief in something that mattered in a way that transcended my own existence.

It was funny. Through all the bullshit with the Order, for all the way the philosophical goals behind the pursuit of immortality had been explained to me, until this moment I'd never viscerally understood it. Why people would dedicate their entire life to a cause that was just delaying the inevitable, with a ultimate goal that was physically impossible.

But now I understood. All I could think of was that I wanted to live. That desire raged forth from the absolute core of my mind, swallowing everything else like a black hole. And I would have done anything to appease it, even if I had to venture into hell itself.

I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. No, no, no no no!

I need more time! If I could just have more time... Maybe, maybe...

But that ugly voice had been exactly right. I'd already had countless second chances, countless 'maybes' that could, even if the chance was remote, have led to new beginnings. And I'd let them all pass me by. In my heart, I'd already given an infinite number of 'no's. I'd wasted the chance the other version of me had spoken of in that vision, that she'd all but begged me to seize.

But even so, it didn't feel like my fault. I was overcome by a sense of great injustice. That though I'd lost the game, the rules hadn't been fair to begin with. That this wasn't right. That the world itself was somehow wrong, perverted from its true shape.

"R-Ran..." I spoke through my tears, my voice feeble, "what should I do?"

𒊹

'Should you come to fear death, return to the gateway to the sanctuary. Here, you shall begin your journey, as Gilgamesh once did.'

Those were the cryptic words, the profoundly unhelpful words, that Neferuaten had left me with. Compared to the other part of her message - the code that didn't even work, in case that slipped your mind - the meaning was pretty straightforward. 'Sanctuary' obviously meant the Sanctuary of the Universal Panacea, and I'd only ever been to one entrance I could 'return' to: The Empyrean Bastion women's one. The implication was clear. I was supposed to go there, visit the place, and be set on the path to some secret piece of technology that would fix everything.

...okay. Maybe that last part was presumptive wishful thinking. But still, that was definitely the gist of it.

Except it obviously wasn't that simple, not least of all because the sanctuary no longer even existed. After the inner circle had been murdered (or, well, not) and the remaining membership had schismed and ultimately voted to disband the organization, the entire place had been stripped for parts by different stakeholders, with the installation being converted into an outpost for observing deep sea wildlife for about 100 years before eventually being sold to the military. I wasn't sure how that would have affected the 'mirror' sanctuary on another plane - if any of that stuff had even been true - but at least in terms of the one on the Atelikos you could physically visit, what was left was virtually unrecognizable.

And knowing Neferuaten the way I did, it felt like a long shot that she was being literal with such a loose statement in the first place. It seemed more likely it had been meant as some esoteric riddle which had gone over my head. Maybe it was some sort of disguised equation, with the words corresponding through some abstract means to figures; it was structured like an 'if X, then Y' statement, after all. Maybe it was an obscure literary reference. Maybe 'fear death' was a real place I was supposed to physically visit (probably in Rhunbard, they loved naming their smaller towns weird, grim shit), and there was buried treasure under a nearby gate.

My point is, if you thought about it for more than 5 seconds, only a desperate idiot would decide there was any point in actually going to the place, especially with the foreknowledge that it was, factually, a dead end.

But in the wake of my sudden awareness of my own mortality, well. It turned out I was learning all sorts of things about myself.

Getting to the Empyrean Bastion in modern times was actually quite difficult. After fundamental problems with the architecture had been found around 150 years ago that prevented further expansion of the structure, it had slowly been sidelined by new installations as the colonization of the Empyrean had begun in earnest, until after another 70 years it was disconnected from the Aetherbridge in favor of the Alliance Celestial Dock, a new structure engineered primarily for hosting large numbers of voidships.

In the present day, it was mostly abandoned, with only the dock and a small fraction of the civilian area still pressurized with breathable air. There was only one regular public shuttle to and from the place I could find - based out of Qatt - and it only made its round trip once a week.

That probably would have been fine if I'd been in a normal state of mind, but I felt a tremendous sense of urgency, like every second I spent fucking around could somehow mean the difference between survival and oblivion. I considered just taking a ship back to the Mimikos and getting a tank of eris to fly there myself using the Power, but with the Empyrean frontier so militarized, that sort of thing had become extremely dangerous.

I ended up calling in a favor from the Ikkaryon Guild of Aetheromancers, who I'd worked with back when my career was at its high point-- Entropic Thanatomancy had some overlap, and the junior guild master, a friend of Sapanbal's, had got into the habit of sending their energy conversion incantations to double-check the math while I was living in Old Yru. Though confused and curious about the situation, he'd agreed to have one of their junior pilots take me there; in a moment of fortune, one was even available on Deshur.

It was the first time I'd ever done anything like that. 'Called in a favor'. Even after all this time, I didn't know how the hell that sort of adult networking stuff was supposed to operate, and was kind of shocked when it actually worked.

The voidship with a tiny thing that looked like a legless beetle; a shuttle designed for small teams of researchers, painted black presumably in an attempt to make itself less visible and minimize the risk of it being shot at by a real ship. It had only eight seats, and I sat up at the front for the flight, feeling awkward about distancing myself from the captain since he was doing me a big favor. He was a mustached Ysaran man, his head shaved nearly to baldness, and had an offputtingly enthusiastic manner, constantly asking invasive questions.

"They've never let me shuttle a grandmaster before," he said, a few minutes after we'd taken off. "Feel like I'm moving up in the world."

"It's not really that big a deal," I said. My arms were crossed, and my vision was fixed out the window, waiting for the Bastion's approach. "Since the Hypathian Reforms, the Arcane Office gives the title out all the time."

"I read about you, actually," he said, a broad smile on his face. "You were part of the core team on the Human Redesign Project, right? I found an article that said you were focused on rationalizing the lymphatic system." He chuckled. "Weird to think I'm sitting with the lady who programmed my white blood cells."

"There were more than 100 of us," I told him, getting a little annoyed. "And we were broken up by specialization, not by anatomical features. I worked on the lymph nodes a little more incidentally, but we were all spread across the whole project." I brushed hair out of my eyes. "Anyway, I didn't 'program' anything. The Oathguard only let us make tweaks. Most of it's still just nature."

"You're so humble," he said, seeming amused. "Not like the blowhards I'm usually playing ferryman for."

"I'm not humble. It's just the truth." I squinted, taking off my glasses for a moment. "How far are we from the Empyrean Bastion?"

"We're just passing over the Temple State now," he said, gesturing towards. "Should be over the Mmenomic in about 5 minutes, then I'll tilt us down for the final approach. Be there in time for dinner, assuming they still serve food there."

"Alright," I said. "That's good." I tapped my foot quietly against the metal floor of the ship, impatient.

"Why are you heading out to that dump, anyway?" he asked. "I thought the Sibyls finally moved their headquarters out a few years back. Not exactly many masters or grandmasters making the trip these days."

"I'm going to meet an old friend," making up an excuse on the spot to as to avoid having to give the genuine, borderline-psychotic explanation. "They're... sick. So I've been, uh, concerned."

"Oh, sorry to hear that," he said. "You're in medicine, right? Are you going to try to help them?"

"Maybe," I said, and thought of Gilgamesh. "I'm going to consult with someone with experience."