The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

First: Take the 12 points that hadn't been clarified at all, and structure them into questions. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25. (And 13, sort of.)

I leaned back in the chair, trying to let the unconscious part of my mind draw connections. A lot of these could be boiled down to the same generally ambiguous elements. Why Balthazar had been brought to the conclave felt like it was probably connected to Zeno's strange behavior and gifting of the device. Yantho being passed out in the kitchen may well probably had some connection to what was up with him and his surrogate sister generally, and his reason for working with Theodoros in opposing the Order's conspiracy. The body at the bottom of the shaft - presumed to be Vijana - was the obvious other side of the coin to the actual Vijana's apparent replacement of Anna under the pretext of rejuvenation. And of course, there was everything to do with Fang, even if I was choosing to leave some of it unexamined for now.

In all these cases, it felt like I had a partial understanding, but was missing at least one point of pivotal information. What was the purpose of the key? Was Yantho a puppet? Who was the body at the bottom of the stairs - 'Woman X'? These were questions I could conceptualize, even if they were frustratingly elusive.

Then you had the ones that were total non-sequiturs that couldn't be boiled down to anything. Why were the clocks stopped? Why had the initiation chamber been trashed, and when? What the hell language were those books written in? What the hell had been going on in the hidden bioenclosure? I could only take speculative stabs in the dark.

Three questions stood out as relatively straightforward: The unsolved murders in which we had explicitly seen bodies. Neferuaten, Fang, and finally the mother-maiden-crone trio that whoever had killed them probably felt very proud of themselves about. These, I decided, were the easiest to approach right now.

But first, there was a fundamental question that all of the 12 answered ones could be condensed into - insofar as it was central to both the Order's objectives and Theo's motivations - that was worth revisiting.

Why were the Order trying to fake their own deaths to begin with?

Even if the Lady had been extremely scant on the specifics, she'd confirmed that Dilmun had been created by the Apega. After hearing all that, it had briefly crossed my mind that perhaps the Order had wished to die simply because they believed the Dilmun plan had already succeeded. While there was a whole load of ship-of-Theseus horseshit to the situation, it seemed conceivable to me that, if you knew for certain that another version of 'you' had now realized your dreams and was living eternally in paradise, you might be able to convince yourself that said 'you' was the real one. And that your current self was just a sort of vestige that needed to be, well, cleaned up. Maybe the deaths weren't faked at all.

I considered myself an expert on suicidal magical thinking, and it hardly felt out of the question.

However, if you thought about this for more than a second, it made no sense. If the inner circle had been in that mindset, there was no reason for us to witness their deaths at all, much less create such an elaborate setup. Plus, the split between my grandfather and the Order regarding the Apega that precipitated Neferuaten's intrigues had definitely happened; I'd heard him moaning about it years prior. And of course, puppet Linos all but confirmed the deaths were faked.

In other words, nothing I'd learned in Dilmun had really helped answer the question at all.

I wondered how much the pure 'why' of it was even worth thinking about. After all, there were a million valid reasons why one might want to destroy one's public identity. Maybe the enemies Neferuaten had referenced had finally caught up with them. Maybe the Oathguard was onto them regarding their hyper-illegal Imperial Era literature. Maybe they were broke - one too many avant-garde buildings, I guess - and it was all part of an elaborate property inheritance scam.

No, the deeper question, the stranger question, was:

Why did they need us to see it?

Once is happenstance, twice is a pattern. If the Order had merely sought witnesses to report their deaths to the world, anyone respectable should have sufficed. After aborting their original plan for whatever reason - probably because they realized someone had fucked with the Apega, in retrospect, though there was also the possibility of something outside-context that wouldn't have been represented in the loop - the most sensible course of action would be to find some second, completely unrelated group to do it. Even if there were no murders, Fang's interruption of the conclave had still cast a shadow of intrigue over the event. Us not only being present for that, but for their deaths within the same year, implicitly invited conspiracy and public scrutiny in ways they couldn't have wanted, shouldn't have wanted.

And yet, disregarding what I considered the outside possibility that their deaths on that winter morning had been real, that was precisely what they'd done. So why were we important? Why us?

There was only two moments from the weekend that I recalled offering any direct hint as to a purpose we might have served. "You are the first people in a very long time who are being permitted to pass judgement on us," Neferuaten had said in the initiation chamber. "And unlike some of my colleagues, it is my desire that that judgement be made from a place of full understanding, rather than a carefully limited one." And then again, just before my period of lost memory. "I have done everything to ensure that these four days exist solely that you might make a fair judgement of us from a position where you are safe."

To this day, I had no clue what she might have meant by those words; what we were supposed to be judging, and why. ...and frankly, even assuming that was connected to the false suicide felt like a stretch. Like, the first time she'd said that was when we were in a room with Theo, who she'd have to know was already aware of the plan. And the second was even more absurd-- It was right as she'd been assuring us that nothing bad would happen to us, and we were perfectly safe!

It felt inscrutable, but unlike most of the other mysteries, there was simple action I could take to investigate it further without involving the Manse, because the Order's final 'demise' hadn't happened in the sanctuary. I could use the observation power to revisit it, explore the layout of the building in ways I hadn't previously. Figure out how they'll pulled it off. Maybe that would help.

I made a new section on the paper, IDEAS, and then noted it down. Return to scene of the Order's death. There. That was a start.

Going back to the murders, thinking that over had given me a fresh idea about Neferuaten's death. Because while it didn't make sense for the Order at large to have taken their own lives for reasons related to the Dilmun plan, for her, the possibility felt more tenable. Even if she wasn't the 'proxy' who had supposedly doomed us to twenty lifetimes of suffering, everything pointed to her having a pivotal role and interest in activating the Apega, and knew more about it than most of the Order.

Fang had observed, back during the loop, that the state of the body pointed more to suicide rather than murder, and that she'd likely been up there for hours before it had started ringing. What if - say - she'd gone to the Apega in the middle of the night with the intent making contact with the entropic intelligence and initiating the Dilmun plan, only to realize it had happened already? That we were already inside the belly of the beast?

That was making a lot of assumptions, of course. We'd never seen the inside of her skull to confirm her body wasn't yet another puppet... unless Rule 6 forbade that? Another thing to check.

There was also the option of, well, simply finding Neferuaten here and asking her myself. Ptolema had mentioned her as one of the people she occasionally saw around, and presumably the same thing had happened in her loop, too.

I blinked. Oh, wait, duh.

I'd been forgetting this obvious option through all of this. If I could find a member of the Order here in Dilmun willing to talk about it, there was a good chance I could clear up everything they'd been doing without bothering with any real-world investigation at all. I couldn't imagine any of them would mind divulging, now that everything was over and they had nothing to lose.

Find Neferuaten, or any other member of the council, I scrawled down.

As for Fang and the trio, it seemed reasonable to conclude that they were probably committed by the same person. The security center (assuming, after everything, that it could even be trusted, which was a whole other can of worms) left the amount of people who could conceivably be responsible a rather small list, especially if I assumed Balthazar's non-involvement - which, after everything, did feel likely.

I'd actually already formed something of a theory about this over the years. The most straightforward culprit, it seemed to me, was Vijana/Not Anna, who was already probably the most suspicious figure across the whole weekend. Knowing the truth about her identity, the fact that Fang had been investigating the corpse in the armory just before meeting us in Samium's room was cast into a different light. Presumably, Fang had worked out the truth about her alongside everything else, which is why her mannerisms had seemed off while we were all talking in Samium's room. She probably suspected Fang was going to spill the beans, which would explain why she'd be willing to try such a risky strategy.

How she could have pulled it off was mostly stuff that had already been theorized during the loop, just about different people. Slip into the shadows in the bedroom while we were all preoccupied with the fake bird monster. Shoot Fang from behind the curtain, then fire a second shot through the window before anyone understands what's happening to create the impression that the gunfire is coming from outside. Survive the prosognostic event and wake up before everyone else - either intentionally by taking a stimulant or or something, or through sheer luck - then disguise your survival by taking off your clothes and leaving a puddle of appropriate-looking fluid.

After that, the rest would be pretty simple. Having broken away from the group undetected, go and find Lilith and Mehit in the guest bioenclosure, kill them, then retrieve the body of the real Anna, assuming she was already dead. String them up, then hide and wait for a chance to finish off the rest of us.

Other than the fact that there was no discernible motive, though, there were two problems with this theory. The first was that it required a lot of foresight. You'd need to know about Theodoros's plan, and have fluid that could pass for post-prosognostic human remains prepared in advance. That wasn't impossible - Theo had been sharing his plans with Yantho, who after everything had ambiguous motivations and a connection to Vijana himself. Admittedly, though, it was a guess.

The other problem, though, was that all of this was predicated on the numbers the security center gave us for how many people were in the sanctuary - on the idea there'd been no one left other than Balthazar outside our group. Towards the end, we'd been presuming the final signature it detected was coming from Zeno's real body, since we'd established it was definitely not counting his puppet body. But what had happened with Linos, and in retrospect possibly Yantho, left the issue muddied. Were their real bodies also being counted, and if so, where? How had Linos been so sure the other members of the Order were dead? Would it treat a body that was obviously meant to pass as a human - with presumably more normal internal organs and definitely red blood - different to Zeno's, which had been brazenly artificial?

It raised too many questions, including whether everything the security center told us had been faked from the beginning. It was frustrating to think that we could have cleared it up so easily if we'd just made a stink about how he was obviously in one of the boxes and insisted on taking them up and down the stairs in the security center while watching the readings.

I frowned. Rule 3. All systems introduced cannot break their own rules as defined by the narrative, unless indicated otherwise. That was the only rule that could potentially clear the issue up, but it was so vague as to be useless. What the hell did 'system' 'defined by the narrative' and 'indicated otherwise' even mean?

Worthless.

Still. Vijana remained, on first pass, the most likely ultimate culprit, and the only one which offered a relatively simple explanation for the outstanding murders. Ptolema hadn't mentioned her, but she might still know more, even from her own loop.

Ask about Vijana, I noted down.

I nodded to myself. This was a good starting point-- Three solid points of inquiry, one of which I could investigate alone if I could get the hand of the observation power. And of course there was the rest of Kam's account, which sounded like it was going to have more information on the Order's objectives, Zeno's key, and Ophelia, who was herself a lesser suspect. After all, even if it raised the question of who might have triggered the prosognostic event in the first place, she could theoretically have pulled the same trick that Vijana did. And she remained by far the simplest candidate for Sacnicte's murder, even after everything.

There was a lot more to look at, but I felt satisfied calling this the low-hanging fruit, at least until I assessed whether it'd get me too much attention to go out and summon the Playwright again. I nodded to myself, then started jotting down some looser ideas based on my other thoughts. Maybe find Yantho, see if I could find the true nature of that unknown language using the far more comprehensive understanding of human history in this world. Maybe even locate Balthazar-- Perhaps his inability to erase his memory would mean he'd remember more than just one loop.

Even doing this much, it felt more possible. Maybe that wouldn't be enough to come to the full and total truth the Manse seemingly demanded. But I still had a long time. If I kept taking steps... well, at the very least, I'd go down fighting.

But just as I was about to wrap things up... I realized something.

Aren't you forgetting an even easier question you could be answering? I thought. Something that might be the key to understanding far more than just the one loop you remember, that you could answer without even moving from this chair?

I hesitated. I'd been avoiding it because it made me uneasy to think about seriously, but it was true. Never mind low-hanging fruit, there was one which wasn't even on the branch.

Balthazar said that in the overwhelming majority of the loops... you were the person who killed the most.

Not Vijana, or even Theo or Yantho. You. Consistently.

I frowned uneasily, setting the pencil down.

For reasons that ought to go without saying, I do not consider myself a good person. I'm not above committing murder, not even directly; I saw that firsthand with Theo.

But... even so, I'd gone to the conclave without the slightest intention of hurting anyone, except possibly myself. My state of mind just wasn't in the place for it. Like I'd joked about in my notes, I could at most see myself maybe getting upset enough when Samium delivered the truth to throw him out of the window in a moment of passion, but methodical planning out a massacre? Of not just the Order, but my classmates?

It felt impossible.

So... what happened?

𒀭

I-Kuberna: ...

I-Kuberna: E1, I'm sending you a data packet. Please confirm receipt.

E1: Receipt confirmed. Data loaded into logic matrix.

E1: Is there a task you wish for me to undertake, immaculate sister?

I-Kuberna: The data contains a selection of anomalous radiation readings in the Gould Belt from our last remote observational scan. Please perform a comprehensive cross-comparison with your data banks for any discernible signals or anything you recognize as a pattern. Compare files 1F8372 and 1F8411 with the result from my last inquiry.

E1: Understood. I will begin the cross-comparison.

I-Kuberna: Make sure to compare it to all signal formats, both projected and recorded. I want to see anything that looks like a pattern, even if it's a stretch.

E1: I understand.

I-Kubera: And bring the feeds up for the rest of the Orion regions. It's been more than 30,000 years. We can't overlook the possibility they've moved within regular space. And send a message to Nakom requesting an update on their review.

E1: Very well, sister.

I-Kuberna: Please stop calling me that.

S-Guan: Kuberna, you're still active.

I-Kuberna: Yes.

S-Guan: What are you doing?

I-Kuberna: The same thing as the last time you asked. I'm reviewing the data we're getting from the Helios region to see if there are any signs of activity.

S-Guan: Why?

I-Kuberna: You know why.

S-Guan: Kuberna, this isn't healthy.

I-Kuberna: You don't think ascertaining whether humanity has survived in its home plane is important?

S-Guan: That is so remote a question from my original statement that I am struggling to formulate a reply that won't come across as patronizing or misrepresentative of my opinion. But also, no. It is not, presently, important. We are completely severed from the conventional 3D universe. Anything taking place in it is, barring a much more explicit attempt at communication, entirely academic.

I-Kuberna: Many of my coterie have people they left behind, even under the Princes. Now that we've woken enough that some are sitting idle, it's my responsibility to answer their questions. After our failure to retrieve the rest of the manifest on Selene, I believe I owe them that much.

S-Guan: I was speaking to Doctor Mikalos about our coteries after last week's tests, and he didn't mention anything along those lines.

I-Kuberna: It is funny for you to imply that you are trying not to be patronizing, while also presuming you know the opinions of my subordinates better than me based on a single conversation.

S-Guan: Laodike, you're being unreasonable.

I-Kuberna: Don't address me by my name when we're speaking in the general channel. It's unprofessional.

S-Guan: I am merely trying to say that it has been some time since you've rested in simulated space. You know well the limits of this technology. The longer you spend in an enthroned state, the more it will alter your cognition.

I-Kuberna: It's only been a few days. I'm not going to become an Iron Prince from spending a couple hundred hours focused on a task. If that was all it took, we would have lost Chaski years ago.

S-Guan: Even so. This lull in activity while Chaski and Poriyalar complete their assessment may be the only one for some time. I do not understand why your task cannot be postponed. Especially since the chance of any surviving intelligence in what was the galaxy is extremely slim.

I-Kuberna: You haven't seen these readings.

S-Guan: No, but I've seen the data from the Local Bubble from prior to the arrival of the collapse frontier. All coherent signals ceased a full five years beforehand. The solar and Tartarus data centers were completely destroyed. The Diadem was completely destroyed. The Egressite fleet escaped the system, but failed and was caught in less in 300 years. Even the rampant AI went dark once the Singularists started using their solar ignition weapons.

S-Guan: By the time the end came, there was nothing left.

L-Nakom: I wouldn't be so sure about that, Guan.

S-Guan: Nakom, your timing is genuinely abominable.

L-Nakom: I've completed my review of the signal comparisons you sent me, Kuberna.

I-Kuberna: Great. Send it my way, please.

L-Nakom: Roger that. Also, not to be a nag - you know I love this stuff - but having E1 inquire after my progress every hour makes it a little hard to focus. Especially when she's hitting me with the standard creepy terminology.

I-Kuberna: Sorry. I'll try to keep that in mind.

L-Nakom: But yes: The odds are still pretty long, but some of this actually seems quite promising, Guan. There was a 2 hour period yesterday where I detected a distinct pattern in the molecular chord oscillation of some of the radiation our sensors are picking up from the region. We're talking distinct, consistent and repetitive. Not something that could easily be happening naturally.

S-Guan: Interesting. Is it complex enough to be a phryctoria signal? Or an analogue?

L-Nakom: Well, no. But the fact it's present at all is pretty remarkable, considering its coming from a system that's been reduced to a cloud of elementary particles.

I-Kuberna: Our readings from Helios weren't comprehensive, Guan. From the point the last of our phryctorie fails about three years after our departure, orbital occlusion radically reduces our understanding of the state of the system. What if there were Hypogean facilities that survived? What if they succeeded?

S-Guan: Nakom, to be clear, you've been looking over this data for days, and this is the most promising signal you've observed?

L-Nakom: I wouldn't say the most promising, per se. There's been a half-dozen of this nature now. But I'll admit it's been lean pickings. I've had to sift though a great deal of junk just to find this much, and that's after E1 already narrowed the field.

S-Guan: I see.

S-Guan: I admit, the idea that that the Hypogeans might have been actually managed to achieve any degree of computing in the lower energy minimum is fascinating and worth investigation. Surely, though, you can't look at such results and reasonably suspect anything worth calling 'success'. If they'd managed to preserve human intelligence, one wouldn't need to go to these lengths to find the slightest indication of potential activity. Even a simple logic matrix would stick out like a a torch in a dark field with how things are now.

S-Guan: At most, this points to them having potentially achieved basic data transference, a process that is now running on repeat. Would you agree with that assessment, Nakom?

L-Nakom: It's a little dour for my tastes, but more or less.

I-Kuberna: We can't say that for certain. There are still areas of high matter density in the system. Their facility could be occluded.

S-Guan: That is tremendously unlikely. And even in the event that it were true, it would still be irrelevant to us. The chance that anyone preserved in such a small facility would have any relation to someone in our manifest is billions to one.

I-Kuberna: I know that.

I-Kuberna: But I can't stop thinking about it. What if we were wrong? What if this whole project was a mistake from the start, and diverted resources that could have been better spent elsewhere?

S-Guan: Kuberna...

I-Kuberna: It's been almost ten years, now, and we haven't made the slightest amount of progress in solving the brane cavity problem. The more we learn, the more it seems like our understanding of interplanar natural philosophy was fundamentally incomplete, and our approach to projecting an artificial brane for the black hole's matter completely wrong.

I-Kuberna: I know you'll say that I'm catastrophizing, and that we have all the time in the world to study the issue now that we've evaded the collapse. But what if we simply didn't bring what we need? What if we can never do it?

I-Kuberna: What if we convinced the League of Empires to pour all their resources into a suicide mission, when the scholars we spent decades desperately shouting down and smearing were right all along? And that if we hadn't been so conceited and sure of ourselves - conceited enough to suck away half of the iron in the system for what was nothing more than a fringe theory before this all started - they could have saved everyone?

L-Nakom: I'm going to check out. Please excuse me.

I-Kuberna: What if we doomed the human race?

S-Guan: We've already saved the human race. We have thousands of people in indefinite safety, and a closed system of effectively infinite energy. That's more than the Singularists hoped for in their grandest imaginings.

I-Kuberna: Indefinite safety, yes. But for what? For us all to slowly rot away, unable to generate even an inch of physical space, for an eternity? Becoming less and less human? Without even the resources for simulated reality comparable to what the Iron Princes achieved?

I-Kuberna: That's no life. No salvation. All we'd have accomplished is building mankind history's most expensive tomb.

S-Guan: ...I truly mean no offense in asking this, Kuberna, but have you considered returning to hibernation for a time?

S-Guan: I can't blame you for feeling this way. To be frank, at this stage, I have moments of doubt myself. And your skill set hasn't been applicable to the recent experiments, since we've more or less ruled out a fault in the incision process.

S-Guan: It wouldn't even be unfair. Serdar and Imyrakat are still in hibernation because their knowledge hasn't yet been applicable. And you may well awaken to find the problem solved.

I-Kuberna: Or even worse.

I-Kuberna: Don't get me wrong. I do envy them. But to turn myself off now - for any of us to do so, with parts of our coteries awakened - would be an abdication of duty. Both of leadership, and as one of the people responsible for digging us into this hole in the first place. I have an obligation to them, both as a guide and someone to blame.

S-Guan: We were never meant to be leaders, only scholars and technicians.

I-Kuberna: As if the two have ever been separable. What's the difference between giving an order and insisting on an idea? Both are just dictating the parameters of other peoples lives. Do you think the magi who wrote the Kecharitomene Monopati weren't leading humanity just as much as the League of Empires and the Princes? Their works created the world. Everyone else was just forced to live in it.

I-Kuberna: Politics, science - they're just words for the different ways people wield power. We wielded power to do this; billions died for us to be here. And we're still wielding it now. It's our responsibility.

S-Guan: I really think you're being irrationally hard on yourself.

I-Kuberna: Leave me to this work, Guan.

S-Guan: ...

S-Guan: Very well.