2.1|Et tu, Mi Amor

 

2.1|Et tu, Mi Amor

 

Amity Byte struggled in the puffy, thick elasticity of her suit. She remembered the endless tunnel of lights, then them hitting a planetoid body before they even knew it. There was no time to reroute the controls or navigate elsewhere, the entire Citadel had sped towards the ground as a massive hurling ball of flame by the time it hit the surface. Most of the shuttle was scattered, the city-sized impact leaving a massive crater. Inside the rubbery material encasing her, she could barely push her hands out and wobble forward. It took several gasps before she could reach the ejection plug, and almost ten minutes of struggling before she could pull it far enough to be released "Ugghf." The girl stumbled forward. She waddled in the crash site, scraping over metal and shards, having to climb from the massive debris. She saw a familiar figure up ahead. "Baron.. hey Baron!" And ran to go pull him out...

Only to find his upper torso dissected from the lower half. She yanked the head and torso out, one arm missing, the other a mangled mess. He was leaking blue biofluids fast, operating haul barely keeping him together. In the last 2 years they'd spent together, Baron was the closest thing to a friend she'd ever made, he was dear to her even with all their differences.

"B-baron? Say something.." Amity sniffled, eyes watering. "I-I..I..we didn't do anything fun here yet..."

About 2 miles away, a figure perched forward, struggling against gravity to arrive on two feet. Their legs wobbled, the blood rushing down their head in droplets. An assortment of scars covered the skin. The upper half of their body wore a white and black tattered uniform. They wore no helmet. Their eyes were pure white, with no visible pupils. There was the sudden burst of movement and a scream that echoed through the air as the purple liquid fell to the ground from their chest, the ichor of their body leaking away. There was, someone they knew they had to see, to protect. To find. But the pain and numbness everywhere prevented them from making it far before falling over. “Nnnghgh." The girl yelped, grabbing her head and holding it against the ground. Their head erupted into banter. "Who said that?" They asked. "Y-yes. I'm fine." She grabbed her face. Her mouth quivered a bit as she tried to talk. "What happened?" She said with a cough. "What happened Baron?" Her tattered white medic rubbersuit exposed her breasts. "Where is.. she.." her head felt like it would split "Wait .. Who is she? I'm-" The arguing went on, she fought herself. "I'm.. no I'm not.. I am.. I'm.." Was she? "Protas?" No. "Raelyn.."

"Protas, you don't understand," Raelyn interjected. The voice spoke over her own thoughts. Protas looked at her to her side, but the Raelyn she saw wasn't physical or real. Merely a figment of sense.

"That's what it was like. Being with you again. It's not real, you can't possibly

be real, because-Because you're not me.. You.. You.."

Protas stopped herself. "I'm her. I'm her. We're both me. You're us."

She groped herself. "I'm her." Protas thought. "I'm you! We share.."

"So now..?" Raelyn reached her hands up to the girl's face, less solid than

anything she'd like right now "Now what do we do?"

She shook horrified.

"I'm her! She's me! You're my other half! Our body parts can't be separated. That's the deal, remember?" She patted her again. "I have to find her... find Sandra." She looked in her face, and realized that was part of why she was there. She wanted to find her.

"I'm fine," Raelyn said with a yawn. She smiled. "I love you." She said. "So much. I love you. I love you. I love you." Her head hurt so badly, enough pain for two. "Whichever I am.. you are.. I love you." She'd repeat until she finally fell asleep.

Even the light in the sky had blue tones. She was almost too light to see, her hair was nearly a solid white. She could feel herself. She felt someone. It was so soft, this person. So real, not a physical being like a dream. There was nobody there but herself.

 

 

 

 

Eon seconds ago

Protas woke up. Dark hair, nude body, she was herself. Where was she? The room was pure white, with tiny cubes floating in the air, circulating in a neat path around a single figure up ahead. She could see that figure wearing a labcoat, very minor glasses observing the cubes above. She seemed to pour over the data, only briefly turning over to even look at Protas and acknowledge her presence.

"Hello sweetie." The woman had a strange accent. It was soft, and calm, but there was a faint metallic undertone.

The woman's eyes were a shade of grey that went right past Protas's eyes.

"Yes. I'm.. fine. What's that room?" Protas pointed at her.

"It's a simulation room. I use it to study the structure of the brain, as well as practice some sort of therapy on those that are troubled. It's just a simulation.." The woman moved her finger across her glasses and moved the cubes around. They flew over and hovered over a white and violet cube, which fell and crashed into the floor and was sucked in. "This is the brain. It is a very complex thing to work with."

"I'm sorry.. I don't understand." Protas said. The woman stared blankly, before reaching down and taking a small black cube in her right hand, then placing it against a screen of white liquid. It quickly sank and was engulfed by the white. A data graphic of a cerebellum was projected.

"Your brain, specifically." She blinked. "All brain activity.. ceased 1.0781934 seconds ago." She stared at the cube for a moment blanky. "It's a pity."

"I, died?" Protas's heart would sink, if she had one. "Terminal cessation of consciousness seems the approximate conclusion yes." The woman crushed the cube with her palm into data-like bits of 1's and 0's. "It need not be our conclusion however."

"What do you mean?" Protas asked.

"I copied you right before you terminated, your soul's algorithmic data. That is

to say, when you died I brought you here."

"Oh.." Protas was still shellshocked, a wave of sadness washing over her.

"I have been looking through your past, and I am concerned about you. There are patterns in your data, that worry me. That you seem to have been following a mission, a sort of mission.. and when I look more closely.."

"What?" Protas asked, but the woman went on.

"There's a chance.." An image of Raelyn popped up in one holographic, a  Llavalite in another. "That you were an intended stroke of luck for your benefactor."

"Rae!" Protas cried out.

"Yes, a child of Rose Nite. The clones of my daughter, and children of Ovid

were never meant to cross paths. I'm sure Sandra didn't intend as such."

Protas took a moment to compose herself, looking at the stern woman's glassy

visage, she seemed almost soulless behind her spectacles.

"The Grand Magus?"

"Is that what Sandra called herself?"

The woman scoffed. "As practical as gifting yourself a burgerking crown to solve a Finnish land-ordinance dispute. Ugh, I'm hungry.. Care to join me for lunch?"

"Uh.." Protas hesitated.

 The idea of talking to a labcoated stranger in this white void, while in all likelihood the body of the one that she loved was dead, was too much for her. "I.. Uh.. I'm.. I'm .."

"I understand." A voice chimed in, the woman's repeating from throughout all sides, as if playing from an invisible mic. "You feel a certain way, and you are feeling it in a manner that is logical to you, but it isn't logical to others. If you could overcome your fears, trust, love, then you could do better." The cold rational necessity of every word offset Protas a little. "But there will be plenty of time to discuss that, follow along." She began walking away without even looking at her guest.

Protas ran forward. "Wait, w-who are you?"

The woman folded her arms and opened a suddenly-appearing portal for her.

"Novus."

 

 

"Your name is, Novus?"

Raelyn asked. "You don't look like the Novus I remember. Err, I dreamed about once." The girl twiddled her thumbs. She shook both legs, surprised to have the other back. "I guess this means I'm really dead huh." The girl stepped back, dark inky puddles everywhere she looked. The three-armed being in front of her, with her curvy body and singular eye seemed large enough on her own, the massive girth of her chest and hips, and the dark swollen imagery of her black lips was causing Raelyn to blush up a storm. "So you're.. a god of some kind?"

Novus nodded. "You could say that. I am Novus Grahim. Goddess of the underworld. Creator of world's entropy. Lover of verse and the dark assorted beauty of all things. Observer of the all-departed, seer of the end." She outstretched her arms, goopy black threads falling into the ground like sheeny sleeves, only for pitch-red eyes to open up among them. Along the trails, along her busty torso, a giant eye over her chest and supple legs, the largest of them all atop her head. Long flowing dark liquid-hair left her top in a beautiful mane, the imagery of skulls and skeletons trying to reach out of it. The goddess was voluptuous and morose, when she smiled Raelyn felt like she was staring at a corpse grinning its sharp teeth, and when her lips perched, it could've been a juicy plum of death plucked from her mouth.

"So I'm.. dead." She looked down sad. "Is Protas dead too?"

Grahim nodded. "She’s deceased. But she is not under my domain. My sister,

Novus Intellica tends to her own creations, or variants of them. Not I."

"Oh." Raelyn tilted her head, remembering that woman's voice that kept

repeating it all over. "You do sound like her. Or how I dreamt she’d sound."

Novus smiled, her face changing into a skull with a grin, the two lips still being in play while the rest had faded away. She folded her arms. "You do not like the sound of that? It's a little early for a funeral." Raelyn blushed hard, and it was no longer the image of Novus that was making her blush. "I.. I don't know what to think."

"Yes you do."

"But I.. I don't know if I'm ready to face this yet." She took a deep breath.

“We can do a ceremony. It'll be like old times. I can light the candles, say the prayers of the star Nile and send you onto the dark beyond of the afterworld. Your soul will properly depart. But, if you'll come with me... We can leave this place instead. Which would you rather?"

"Would I rather, not be dead? Sure I'll take that."

Novus cooed, hundreds of red eyes across the girl's body staring back

menacingly in a pure-cherry red silhouette.

"And what of the others?"

"If they are not dead, then they may not die. Or be here."

Raelyn nodded. "One more thing, don't mean to ruin your mystique but, could

you please hide those? I feel like I'm going to get a seizure."

Grahim wobbled her chest. "My sexual nature intimates you? Many have lusted upon the eyes of death. My flesh is laid bare for all to see."

"No no, not your, boobs. I meant your literal eyes. But maybe both if I'm

honest."

"Hm." Grahim weaved her three hands, turning them into pure-black canines with razor jaws, they spun spidersilk which weaved into an ornamented gown and cloak, spun around her body until her eyes and breasts were covered. Then she shrunk, shrinking from her titan like stature to Raelyn's height.

"Better?" She asked.

"Less intimating."

"Good, now get on the ferry and come with me."

 

 

"I don't really understand why Sandra and Ellie have this distorted relation. My daughters are quite baseless in their axioms. Me and my siblings manage our rivalry just fine. Some never learn this lesson, that communication requires a mediated and measured distance, the parameters of boundaries and mutual respect. They have trouble cognizing this aspect." Novus Intellica said.

"Your siblings hm?" Protas chewed on the burger, the best she'd ever had.

"We, the Novi created the cosmos, the universes." Novus said. "Well, most of it. Just as my dear runt of the stars, Sandra has created and molded your universe, we have shaped and manipulated all of space. In time, we will manipulate it and shape it into what we desire. It's inevitable. But for the most part, each Novus strictly stays out of each other's hair and minds their own business."

"But Sandra says she’s the Grand Magus of her own universe? Of Xi?"

"Oh, she makes it out as a grand and glorious ambition.

She's illogically and predictably, full of herself."

"You created her?" Protas asked, a little excitedly.

"Yes."

"Like, with raw data?"

"Yes. That, and my eggs. She is my daughter in a more literal sense."

"So.. so Novus Grahim.."

"She's still my older sister, and she's is what you may define in your lexicon as a ‘piece of shit’. I hate her. I hate the love and closeness we had once, back when I felt things. But she is still my older sister, despite our beef."

They were quiet, the artificial sun peering down at them, like an eye peering from above. Protas was still hungry, the burger almost finished. "I have not spoken to Grahim, for a century and a half. She has yet to figure me out for over three millennia. Her methods and theories are so flawed."

"Flawed?" Protas's eyes darted to the other goddess.

"What I should say is, for as flawed and impulsive as they are, Sandra's methods and theories are much more logical than even my sister's. She's been manipulating nature for the last few centuries, manipulating her creations and creating more. As Novus Intellica, I've been observing that. So truly of course, all her methods are skewed, but it's been interesting to watch."

She cleared her throat. "I seeded the database query and charmed physics for the Tower initially from a gift of my sister’s, and that was Grahim's to mettle in and let according to her own operations, to play and string like a harp of dreams. It's mostly the handiwork of her sacrifice. Meanwhile she created the universe Xi was set in, a world of death and destruction initially. But I was given free rein to fine tune it- initially I set it up in a quite computed fashion, but my daughter got hold of it when she ran away and rather than prevent her, I found she was more interested at tweaking the variables than I." She threw her arms. "Interested, not necessarily better or good at, but nonetheless. She's still young."

"So you and your sisters both manipulated the other's universes, Sandra and

 Ellies."

"Yes. That is why we would fight over it so. My methods were more direct,

empirical and rational, while Grahim's were more esoteric and poetic."

Novus pulled a coffee cup to her mouth, sipping. Her eyes seemed tired. "I would like to seed a new Universe, one that has life which combines my sister's data. I'm abit impartial to magic, she's abit impartial to science. We're making bets right now how it will turn out."

"What kind of bets?" Protas was a little lost in the heaviness of all of this.

"That's not important. But.. My role is to guide you, to make you into the woman you'll be needed as. The people we need, will become your people. I would like to see if you can succeed in that task, then I can become like I once was. Or atleast, won’t reach the less optimal outcome.“

"What you once were? Is that what you fear?"

"I don't fear anything. I don't have a fear. I barely feel."

"But you are angry. I can tell. What are you angry about?" Protas said.

"Myself? My sisters? I don't really know. I haven't been the same for a long

time, now." Novus put the mug down and sighed.

"I'd like to feel again. Having variables I cannot account for or understand,

however rare is the only thing that brings me any semblance of dopamine."

"What's dopamine?"

"You were in the military, c'mon really?" Novus glared.

 "Yeah, sorry I wasn't a neuroscientist or anything. I learned how to shoot, pilot ships, did my job." Protas shrugged.

"Dopamine is the brain chemical that makes us feel emotions, such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, etc. What makes me angry, makes me feel what I'm supposed to feel. I just.. I'm confused as to why it's been stripped from me." Novus looked to the side of the simulation, and with a swap of her hand it became a theme park, then the ice ages, then a renaissance ball, and finally a suburban house, herself in a rubber apron and cleaning gloves. "Everything at my fingertips. All the data. It means nothing. Grahim delights in guiding the decimated. She greatly delights in what she does. Every bug or soul that passes through her is another trophy for her. My heaven is.. much more sterile. The variability is nil. The thrill is long gone."

Protas finished her last bite and looked ahead. "Okay. What's this all got to do with me? Outside, being a clone of your daughter like you told me on the way."

Novus fixed her lenses abit. "I would like to bring you back to life. I haven't felt much since I lost Sandra, my daughter. She was disappointing in many ways but, I'd like you to get her back to me. But more importantly.." Novus intellica stood and turned, beckoning Protas to follow her. She showed her a holographic of the planet she'd crashed on.

 

 

"You, want me to guide that place? To land on it for, your amusement?"

"Not amusement." Grahim spoke with a soft whisper as she paddled through the inky black sea. "Poetry." "What's... poetry to you?" Raelyn asked, looking out the boat at her reflection below.

"Lyrical. Ballads. Haikus. Harps and sonnets. I crave the rhythm of all things. Me and my sister Novus Harmonica used to delight in the balance of Life and Death, but she's gone off these millennia. What I call a verse or rhythm, Intellica calls 'data'. So we're going to revive you. A song to be played. An experiment to be wrung. Whichever you see it as." Novus told her. “Our bet is whether or not this world survives in the end. And whether that stubborn child of hers succeeds and prevails, or mine does in the end. Betting on our daughters like cockfights, it’s quite the ultimate maneuver to do right?”

"We'll do it right here. It won't change a thing. I'll be like, before. You won't even see it. You'll just... wake up with a melody in your head. Like you can't get that melody out of your mind, it takes you everywhere."

"O-ohhh. Right. Everywhere." Raelyn said.

"I sent my daughter, Yulentka and my brother, Novus Cormeuem, to collect more and more data. I don't think there's any end to the numbers. My sister Intellica is so very adept at making sure there's always a way around anything. There are so many methods and forms of data, I'm afraid to tell you about them."

"What are they?"

"So many.. but you'll have to ask me if you want to know. But more important than the data you'll collect for her, is on Yulentka's brood. They're all my children and I'm not certain I want to say just yet, how the universe will be so much different once they flourish inside one. Especially since you're.." Novus said with a half-smile.

"I'm not sure I get it..." Raelyn turned away uneasy. "Inside of you? Your daughter or her, brood are in you?"

"No. Not me. In you. In what's going on inside of you. That what's going on in your head." She gripped the scales and bubbly sheeny growths along Raelyn's body, "She is inside you. You are one of my daughter's now. Just as Protas is now one of Intellica's daughters, or carries a relation, you carry a relation to me. Llavalites were one of Yulentka’s races."

Raelyn swallowed hard, not sure how to interpret that. "When you send me back, what do I have to do exactly?"

 

 

"Oh that's the fun part. Incalculable."

Novus said with a chuckle, her face dimming in the simulated day. "You'll have her whole life to live, to grow, to change, to become. That's for you to decide. Do what you think is right. This won't be a universe of cold calculus like Xi. It won't be a realm of mysticism, chaos and 'verse' like the Grahim's Tower. But rather, both. A collaboration of sorts." She pinched Protas's cheek. "You and your girlfriend will be revived and sent there, atemporally. You will die and be sent here as you have, but you will also be revived."

"That's, a lot to ask me!" Protas shirked, still hungry. She couldn't imagine never having another meal again, let alone never having one with the love of  her life. Novus smiled. "Think of the future, Protas. For the first time, you will be ableto live what should be the best possible life in front of you. And then?"

"Then what?"

"Then you'll have to decide, which life is right for you. Either life for you and Raelyn or life for the children of Yulentka. Which scenario would you like to engage with?"

"I'd like to be engaged with my girlfriend." Protas sighed. "Alright, I guess I

don't have much of a choice? I-"

 

 

"Accept!" Raelyn declared confidently.

"Excellent. There is however, my dearest Raelyn one catch." She turned and an orb light dimmed at the end of the Ferry. Where Novus Intellica stood, a sphere on a spire of hers lit up. They both realized special conditions had been met.

"We only needed, that is to say only counted on one of you accepting. We're only going to revive one body."

 "W-what? What do you mean? Which of us would you send then?"

Novus shrugged. "You'll see."

She raised her hand, placed her palm on Protas's head and the light crushed her like a beam from above. Grahim played a harmp, and the dark squelching sea began to pull Raelyn under, until she sank into the darkness below.

From above, from below the twane would meet.