“The actions of one affect those of the many. If each person were a thread and the amalgamation a tapestry, ‘ripple effects’ occur at nearly every moment.”
– Render
Staring at the truest possession. On my desk. Closed and beckoning, a stolen tome.
Not archaic, clean and brand, new not given teachers droning gibberish Neo English
crowd groans teacher moans like a TV ghoul, Mr. Compson, inscribing his soul on the blackboard. A stack of plain and red books on his desk, their spines deflated, covers named THE PITCHER IN THE FERRY of a lonely, lonely kid.
Chalk protest. A kid doesn’t own parents. A kid in the book ran away to the dumpster after burying his sister alive in the backyard, with her favorite toy horseman. A kid who dreamed would start with the baseball bat.
Don’t swing at sliders. Swing at sailfish, coming and going through the waters. Do I do the readings, do I ever, accomplish the delinquent wannabe dark runaway vigilante caped broccoli or something? Don’t envy him. But at least it’s literature. The one class I pay attention to, I reach down for my sword.
Utmost absent. Didn’t do the integrals. Secured Utmost in the fire where it is safe. Run away, run away, where are you going? Still in class and not knowing. Students’ rights. Students raise their hands.
Utmost on the roof besides some steel silver pipes. Go up there to see. Some students recreating baseball imitation sword and shield. Utmost by my side and yearning to play. I’d don my earbuds for those syncopating serenades of the sun, which is fire. Sun comes after the fire.
Seven minutes left on the clock. Forty three to the middle of the day where I run. I run upstairs to the roof for my sword and reach beneath those fallen shafts and hold in my hands the brazen wood. I practice the Cycles and integrate. There’s no one watching from the dugout. There’s no narrative in team, it’s missing the initials. I don’t think about the second one.
The sky had clouds today. A nice change from having empty blue skies for months. Skylark wondered if the weather towers worked on a set pattern or were random like everything else.
“Skylark, some help over here,” Falara said, somehow managing not to bump into the person in front of them as she was putting her V-books away, their spines vanishing one by one into the V-locker but sometimes one poked back out, so it looked like the cylinders were cut off and hovering shakily.
Skylark laughed and came over. “Just keep using your Thoughts, one by one,” she said, pointing back and forth between her forehead and the tips of each V-book. William Restor had gotten V-lockers just before this school year, and it was two months in but Falara hadn’t figured out how to use them. She was a wizard with the Worldnet, but somehow always managed to find physical technology so difficult. The other people in line behind them were trying not to laugh.
She looked back. The line was still pretty long. Skylark only went to these with Falara but they were always busy when she came. Tickets were hard to get via Worldnet, but Falara knew how to do that somehow. Skylark smiled to herself as she watched her friend finally step off of the self-scanner, her V-locker closing, those cutoff cylinders retreating. But using the Worldnet was far more––structured. You couldn’t see it and it wasn’t in one of those holograms they had up in Plent and High.
“Sorry, haha, Skylark,” Falara said, but Skylark smiled and nodded, before stepping up onto the self-scanner herself. Some of the people in line behind her sighed in relief.
nd
year William R H, resident #4012 district Q Might. A few seconds, and then: The self-scanner lit up a soft green, meaning that she could step off, identified. She stepped off and joined Falara, waiting next to the entrance to the Exhibit.
“It’s really not that hard, you just, step on, and the scanner TMs your receptor,” Skylark said, but Falara shrugged as they passed through the invisible field boundary, entering the huge domed space inside. “I don’t understand how you can use the Net like v-World but still have trouble with self-scanners.”
“Hmm… Look, Skylark, it’s the Rins!” Her friend said, pointing away to a cluster of techists, a family, grouped around what looked like three model robots suspended in an almost transparent liquid in a container, held a half-meter above the ground by an almost invisible string. Skylark looked up and could barely make out its connection to the ceiling of the dome high above.
The Rins were probably famous. Skylark clapped her hands to show some appreciation and watched Falara practically run over and immediately start talking to them. She was an absolute child when it came to techists. While the techist family explained their work to Falara, who was nodding her head every two words, Skylark let her eyes wander the Exhibit.
Its open-air space was floored with bioterra grass, and translucent magnetairs swung around slowly as they moved visitors between clusters of floafas, each one next to a different techist. There were many of them, techists and viewers alike. Skylark hadn’t seen this many in a while; it was almost stifling. She took a look back at the robots, and not surprisingly Falara was already at the next one, a collection of small triangles, no, white s that were held together in a confusing arrangement a little above the grass, next to which a boy with messy brown hair was sitting. Skylark came a bit closer and saw that none of the s were touching the grass, but with the clear lines––also strings––connecting them, somehow it all stayed up.
The boy was holding physical cards. He was visibly nervous, the cards twitching, and trying not to look at his one onlooker. There was no techist in sight—but then Skylark realized that he the techist, the Alter Crest badge on his shirt, and then déjà vu broke into Skylark’s thoughts, and she remembered––this was the same boy she’d found in the free grass reserve, putting alter darts together, and she might have succeeded in making one of them move––but it had been ten meters away, really far, she’d never moved anything from that distance before. The boy had seen her and so she went. And here he was again, only three meters away this time, and she almost jumped as she realized that. But she couldn’t take that chance. She almost TM’d Falara but Falara seemed too busy asking questions to the young techist, and the Exhibit was a big place. Skylark quietly stepped away.
“… this makes the alter darts essential. They’re arranged randomly, but that’s intended. Order might be more preferred than chaos, but the represents it in its more controlled form––structurally lacking order but held together by the unseen atoms that transcend––I mean, unseen forces. still equals .”
Tristan took a deep breath. He hoped they weren’t paying too much attention, besides Father, who was coming. He continued:
“Their being alter darts. Perfect adaptations of flight’s simplest form, modeled after when society last used paper, before forests became bioterra and cyber trees. Accentuated the work’s stillness, pieces to separate and take flight, I mean fly, not held to the overall structure.”
Done. Someone was excited about his work, so he had to say something.
It was Father’s idea. This month’s Exhibit had superior pieces; the glittering particle arrangement at the diametric end of the air space, the Rins…
“That makes so much sense!” the girl now standing above the
said, clapping her hands together, the movement causing her bright red bangs to shake. “You’re so young for a techist––what’s your name again?” she asked him.
Tristan smiled in spite of himself. “You can access everything about me through my Alter Crest, here, just enter via the Exhibit-system.” He pointed to the badge on his shirt. “My dad’s Meliodas Mott––he designed the Exhibit today.” He pointed up in that direction. “See,” he said.
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The girl looked up and gasped. “Oh my gosh, he’s so dazzling!”
“Thank you, okay,” he said. This girl was unusual, Father was famous but not for his style––he looked, and his mouth fell.
The much younger man walking down the nearest magnetair next to his father was bold and as beautiful as lightning. The weather towers rarely selected it for the calendar but he had golden hair, much longer than his own messy brown, and made Father’s bob look redundant, really bright, shining eyes that focused on his father’s, that face, Tristan touched his own and regretted not updating his body-maintenance prescriptions in the past three months. Broad, wide shoulders. Tristan found himself scanning the young man’s entire figure as he might––or rather, as the self-scanner had scanned him two hours ago upon entering the Exhibit.
Tristan saw that the people around the magnetair were also pausing to see; the people near were now coming towards his exhibit; the onlookers were being pulled like self-drawing magnetic field currents…
He dropped his card and pulled his hair back as far as it could.
“My son, Tristan,” Meliodas Mott said, gesturing towards the array of the white
and the awestruck child next to it. “The .”
Jaceus smiled and nodded. Here was the student who’d been absent from William Restor for his techistry, his father’s pride. The father, with a ruddy brown point of hair on top of his otherwise bald forehead, was pointing directly at the alter darts and saying something very precisely to the gradually growing crowd. All of them were looking not at the speaker, or at the techist, or at the piece itself, but at Jaceus.
He briefly considered it.
“Your son’s extraordinarily talented, Meliodas,” Jaceus said. “I could not have performed it better myself.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” Meliodas answered, waving his hand over the as it was named. “Talent means nothing without the proper command.” Jaceus noticed the father eyeing the son, and the son eyeing the father’s hands, gesticulating. He noticed immediately that one was smiling and the other was not.
“My son gave a good explanation?” Meliodas inquired of the one onlooker who was staring at the piece, although Jaceus thought that she had been looking at him very piercingly just before. She had her hands over her knees and was holding a hand just by one of the darts, nearly touching it; almost as if she was feeling for something. It was likely one of the he had read.
“Yes! Tristan explained it very well,” she answered, not looking up; and Meliodas, nodding affirmatively, dipped his head to the audience, before tilting his head to the side––likely receiving a message via his receptor, which blinked––and nodded again.
“Thank you all, for seeing our work. I must go,” he said, and with a few paces left them, leaving some twenty people’s focus on Jaceus unabridged. The techist Tristan was still pulling his hair back across his head, over and over again, trying not to stare with adoration.
Jaceus sighed and thought for a way to leave.
Skylark normally didn’t like the randomness in things but, because of it, she could get away on these magnetairs. There were a lot of people walking up and down them, like ants in an insect pod from a fauna reserve, and Falara wouldn’t be taking her eyes off of anything techist for a while.
Skylark kept looking around, the people becoming smaller if she squinted. She did see something special about techists––the highest engineering made into pieces of art for everyone to look at. Of course, being in Might they couldn’t have the latest technology or even the best. But it was still cool and exciting and wonderful for many, just not her, not that she couldn’t understand a lot of it, which was partly true, but also because she could do some of these amazing things just by looking, and raising her hand.
She didn’t envy them, wearing their badges and showing their names.
Skylark’s magnetair dipped down, close to what looked like a floating cylinder covered with changing illustrations; there were some words on them but they didn’t seem to be in Neo English. As she stepped off, her shoes making the soft as they demagnetized, she felt a run through her feet—but it didn’t stop there, lancing upward, shooting through her stomach and arms. Then up to her throat, which felt like she had just swallowed something sweet. Then, an urge, a desire, broke into her thoughts, and she looked behind her, down through the moving stairs and back to where the young techist had been, she just knew to look there, and the boy was not alone—he was surrounded by people, waving his hands animatedly—
Her heart came to a stop.
She felt herself rising off the floafa platform, almost, imperceptibly—flowing, golden hair laying past the shoulders—eyes so bright they shone from that distance—shirt stretched so tightly over skin—he was smiling at the techist, and Skylark heard lightning beat.
A perfect human. Not even perfect like BMPs made you perfect or at least the way you wanted to be. More perfect. Sometimes V-movies had AI like the citizens before AIV. He was like that. There was this kind of glow about him but he wasn’t glowing. She was slowly walking back down the magnetair as it slowly descended that way.
Even his hair looked like it was shining, but that was probably due to the light. It was well-lit here inside the Exhibit. She could see everyone else, frozen and slowing down, like they were in a golden liquid. Falara was standing there, too. Skylark was almost there. Almost at the end of this magnetair which would take her to—just two more, before landing.
He was now laughing, saying something to the people there, and the grew stronger. But Skylark ignored this new feeling she had, and was about to step off the magnetair when she saw the techist looking in her direction.
She thought she was close enough now to see. The techist was looking straight at her—not at the one with the golden hair, and light all around him—and his face changed, it showed recognition, and Skylark remembered, a day when she was staring with awe at her brother, who was causing the lilies of the field to shake from their roots, and leave the soil, and she had been distracted, and Alauda had been recognized, and—
Skylark had to leave. She couldn’t let that happen again.
But her eyes turned back to the ones of green and she just couldn’t look away.
The girl by the edge of the wandering magnetair looked familiar. But he couldn’t place who she was; and the more he tried to catch the attention of the man, who was dripped from sky, golden, who was just a meter or two away, his hair was perfect, it was perfect gold, or rather perfectly golden—there was no gold in the world—and he was drawing all the attention. The attention that had been wandering, uncaught, but now tethered firmly to— he was saying, telling his name to those asking, and Tristan couldn’t catch the last name. It was just Jaceus. It was certainly not a name inherited from Government families but it didn’t sound like a typical Sector name.
Tristan stopped staring, and he looked back to the girl—he knew he recognized her, but he just couldn’t place where—their eyes meeting, hers a bright, startlingly bright blue, she turned around abruptly and nearly flew back up the magnetair, which had just touched down on the Exhibit grass.
Why would she run—Jaceus had been drawing her attention, of that Tristan was certain—as he looked past those golden strands, nearly blocking out the light, he saw in his mind, a memory that was clear, formless but true, crystallized, as if it were reshaped from forgetfulness—
Tristan reached out a hand—The was floating.
It was floating of its own accord. No wind- or air strings from above. Vel’atta’s Resistance didn’t apply in Exhibits, and the absence of magnet waves or the other pseudo-float technologies available here in Might, not as advanced as those in Plent or High of course but the should not be floating, nobody else was doing anything to it, now those around Jaceus were looking at it in amazement, surely this was part of the Exhibit, it had all been planned, it was just one of many similarly floating pieces, the girl was nowhere to be seen, and Tristan noticed Jaceus, eyes fixed upon the work, mouth open as if he had just been interrupted mid-sentence.
The floated in a perfectly vertical vector back down to its artificial podium. Walking a few steps forward Tristan saw that none of the alter darts had been dislodged and that the arrangements were as immobile and still as they had been before.
Tristan stood still for a moment. He scanned the surrounding area for any Exhibitists who might have noticed. It was against regulation to depart from registered piece performance. Father knew that.
But Father was not in the surrounding vicinity anymore. Tristan couldn’t see him. The receptors on those remaining in the audience were blinking rapidly though and that indicated that they were uploading the spectacle to their parts of the Exhibit-feed. Father would check the Exhibit-feed but it wouldn’t be until later.
Well, something had happened. Like before, there had been the strange girl with blue eyes, but also like before, nothing had happened with the work. Technology would be true.
And eventually, Father would see what had happened, written and understood in his daily issue of . So Tristan stood there. His role forgotten. Father wouldn’t question it––more attention for the Motts––perusing his V-book over freshly ordered, no, hand-made coffee––congratulating his son on the presentation of the ––dismissing the unregistered, unexplained levitation as a sign of his son’s talent. Tristan smiled and beamed as he faced the crowd.
Jaceus waved them away, reciting the names of other techists he didn’t know, whom he had to meet. This way, he could now finally leave, and return to the school. He had succeeded in acquainting himself with the techist named Tristan, and unfortunately his father with him, but he would not meddle with their dynamic. He could tell that the boy saw his father in a convoluted mix of idolization, obedience, and fear and that such freedoms available to children of the––
Jaceus cleared his head. This was not the time to think of .
He turned and began to walk somewhere else; but then, he felt a Blue and . Glancing through his fingers and causing sparkling sights behind his eyes, unclear gleanings of the shapes of magic as they gained clarity. He felt his eyes pulled to one of the floating stairs and there upon it was walking quickly away, a girl with cerulean hair, and he knew, he hadn’t dared to suspect, but the techist’s piece moving of its own accord had been touched by , light, but magic all the same. Jaceus Myodor looked after the Scion, for Scion she must be, and the memories came unhinged, and as he took some steps forward he saw in his mind opening a door of lightwood, the door to the Tribunal, and a wash of light billowing out from its interior, the place where he was to receive his , and Triomphe clapping his shoulder as he entered.
He entered through that door, and the colors of the sun faced him…
Jaceus clapped his hands to his cheeks, brought up the first entry he could find in his Thought-feed––––and looked back at the Scion. She was now at another floating stair, or as they were called here, and she was trying to get to the exit… Of course, she wasn’t the same. But he knew without shaking that she had been the one to cause Tristan’s to rise and fall. She could be Scion . As he considered this the gold and viridian of his awakened memories faded. Scions were just so few. For her to be that distant and for him to notice––he quickened his step and nearly .
Taking a deep breath, he walked quickly after the Scion. He had to speak with her and tell her about her world––just as he had the others he had found here.
