3.13|HUSH CHILD, MIND THE ROSE GARDEN

 

3.13|Hush Child, mind the Rose Garden

Miss Isley woke up in a strange garden. There were a few brick walls, but beyond that was an endless void of white. There was a woman in a starched rubber labcoat watering plants. "I was wondering when you'd wake up. Looks like I transported you just in time." She said. Miss Isley looked down at herself. She was 14, in an outfit she hadn't worn since she was a child. A name came back to her, however faint.

"How are you feeling, Mika?" Novus Intellica turned around and placed the

watering can away.

"W-who are you? Where are my kids?" She hadn't been called that name in a

thousand years.

"I am the person who saved your life. You may call me Novus."

"Novus?" Hadn't she heard a name like that a long long time ago, from her

husband maybe?

"A-am I, going crazy?" She asked.

Novus came close and inspected her, touching the soft teenager's wrist. "Heartbeat seems normal. Temperature is within acceptable ranges. You are certainly in good health, Mika Mannerly. It's perhaps that extra texture of compassion that has you disoriented. There is a certain quality to a real sentient lifeform. They are capable of loving. Of sharing. Of understanding. They also come with feelings. Joy. Sadness. Grief. Love. Data and sentiments like that." She explained.

Mika didn't understand, but she still was pretty sure she wasn't insane. This

frigid woman was frighteningly real.

"So, where are my kids?"

Novus gave a slight sigh. "Irrelevant."

"Why did.. why did you bring me here?" Mika asked.

Novus gave a slight sigh. "I will be telling you the truth. It was for selfish reasons. I ran a prediction model to achieve an aim I wanted, and this was the best way to do it. I use both science and magic to achieve my goals when I can." Mika was confused, until Novus touched her cheek. It felt like a soft brush, like she had expected. She looked into the woman's eyes. There was something in there, she was sure of it. A deep, powerful sadness, even if this woman didn't know how to process or quantify what sadness was like.

"Do you wish to know more of me? I wish to know more of you. But if you want to call me by my title, then it is acceptable. You can call me Novus Intellica."

"Mika.." Novus spoke to her softly. "Do you really wish to know more?"

Mika shook her head. "Knowings always gotten me into trouble. I remember mom told me to learn and remember everything I could, but I've never lived by that." She folded her arms. "What do you want with me, Novus?"

The woman pulled a chair up and leaned back, snapping her fingers. The

scenery of the garden changed, becoming a vintage 50's living room.

There was some circular disc like device atop a counter plugged into the wall.

"What's that?" Mika asked.

"You just said you don't care to know more."

"Well maybe a little doesn't hurt.. what is it?"

Novus shrugged. "It's trivial.

Mika went over to inspect it, noticing the bluish cyan stream of energy pulsing within. She put one finger close and a jolt of lightening connected to her fingertip, pricking her with exotic energy. It was a magic that, even after a lifetime she recognized.

"W-wait.. WAIT. That's, the Hex??! What the heck?"

"Do you wish to know more of me?"

"H-how.. how did you do that?"

"I said I was a person who used magic to achieve my goals, didn't I?"

"You did. The Hex is a magical construct from my, old world though."

"Very observant. It's actually an algorithmagic utilized by a connection signal. It's just a simulation made to charge its users, but I've adapted the simulation for my needs. You see, Mika, there's something that you mortals don't understand. Something very significant and sacred in your world, is very mundane in mine. They have a particular idea of what it does and what it can be used for, but they don't know how truly banal it is.." She looked at the small round device. 

"In one world, they call this the Cascade. It's a message to find and call someone, not too dissimilar to radar or a signal beacon. That message found itself in Protlyn on your world, but the significant of its lost its sender. What does a letter mean when it's forgotten who sent it?"

Mika was a smart girl, she liked to think so. She knew how to do a lot of things and she remembered the Hex.

Novus continued. "It's quite abnormal. The people of your world have used this signal as an energy source to harness the power of connections. The Zes-Lethiska, much like their Xi counterparts are adept to this signal. Their meteor broods follow it like a porchlight to the depths of space and absorb it, but they have no way of processing that power. They possess such an abundance, that it's almost like they possess none of it at all. I've wondered why is?"

Mika didn't feel entirely confident in most answers, but a thought came to her. "If the, power behind the Hex that you Novus used is built on connections, then they have none. No sender or receiver. It's ineffable to them."

Novus tapped her chair, thinking abit. "That's not entirely true. Magrot Yavon'ika the Hivemother of  the Vexia does. Millions, although it's very different than the data you've observed of most lifeforms. More like gravity. It always revolves around a center."

"Look I don't know what you're saying! So what do you want with me?" Mika was getting confused.

"Patience." She turned to the device. "Let me tell you a story. There wasn't always so many of us. The first Novus, Novus Primal was the one who came before me and my siblings. They were very, capricious. There were seven of us, four sisters and three brothers. Novus Primal was only interested in one thing, a power she could extract from us. But she could only do it by us playing her games and manipulating us in unsavory ways. Eventually we grew resilient to it. The eldest of us gathered and fought back against Primal's deceptions. We rose up, we overthrew Primal and separated ourselves. With the power she sought to extract, we started creating our worlds, and then meddling in them. In each other's."

She flicked her hand gently, and an ocean of stars appeared above a holographic dome in illustrious perception.

"This power we stole. It had a name like the Hex. It's a connection between us. But we abused that power. Each of us had our own desires and could not help but cross them. We'd try to fix each other's worlds, we'd step over each other's desires and acted like Primal for a time- on impulse. On drive. On lust. But we were only driven by our own wants, desires. We wanted to be as powerful as she was, and so we wanted to fix the worlds around us. In reality, we were just trying to fix our own, our own flaws, our own failures. We didn't have the perspective that this power given to us might not be able to help us fix those things, but rather was making it worse."

She looked back at Mika. "You see the power in this Hex, the ability to connect is the very same that separates. It's the desire to make connections that is the cause of failure, because it's a desire to fix flaws and make mistakes. To fix the world around you. No one person can fix a broken world, there's too much broken. One person can't fix the world. One can't fix you. One can't fix me. There's far too many broken, and we all know that we don't possess the ability to fix it all. We needed things to be a bit different after realizing this." The clutter of stars above began to organize into geometrical shapes and patterns. "That's when we decided on the 3 rules."

"Even gods have rules. Charming." Mika rolled her eyes.

"Hardly. The three are: 1)A Novus may not interfere in each other's worlds or domains of interest. 2)Any interference must be done knowingly thru peaceful persuasion or contact in some form- this can be an orderly debate, a request, a bet or even a game. But the two must communicate and agree first. 3)And finally, a Novus may never refuse contact. A portion of the power we received from Primal will be used for this purpose."

The young mannerly was making counting gestures with her fingers, trying to keep track. "There was only one problem. Rule 3 was difficult to establish, as we each had our own ways of speaking and communicating. Our own desires and burdens, would inevitably turn rule 3 into a hotbed of derision and fighting. So we needed an operator, a truly impartial party to setup a system from which we could reach one another with established rules. That's why I stepped up and created the Shion Set."

"The, Shion Set?"

Novus nodded, turning to the device. "7 Artifacts of communication. One for

each us. But to create them fairly and without favor.. I had to be truly

impartial."

"What does that mean?" The device's glow waxed and waned its light in front

of Mika's face.

"It means.. I had to sacrifice my emotions and own desires to construct them and allow our contract. Each of them a Novus holds is an embodiment of my own self. Love. Grief. Envy. Laughter. Vexation. Inspiration. And Horror. There is a method to my madness. The other Novus had to make sacrifices of their own too, Grahim gave up her dreams that glided into her Corpus, leaving her with only half of her set."

Mika just shook her head. "I can't believe you just said that. That sounds like some sort of new age, New Age, hippy, religion. Some crap I don't want to get into. And why does it have to be three rules? Why not five? I mean come on, six of us can easily go insane."

"Rules are rules."

"I don't understand.." Mika said. "What are we talking about, anyway?" Novus was silent for a moment. "What, what emotion does that device represent or whatever?"

"That? It's manifested from my Inspiration. You can see it as an artifact of curiosity, creativity, imagination or whatever you will. Inside is my sealed away ingenuity." Intellica turned to the device. "It's as I've said. That device sitting there. It contains my portion. That portion- is what Xi discovered as the Cascade, or what you call the glowing light of the Hex."

"It's a little small for that power to be coming from."

"Mika. Mika. Mika." She said over, it's from us. “It's the most basic, the first

level of all Novus powers."

"What does it even do?"

"It charges my phone."

Mika went dead silent.

“You created the Hex, to charge your phone?”

Novus gave the same deadpan stare a teacher would as if stating an obvious

fact. "Like I said, trivial."

The young Mannerly's heart sank trying to comprehend this. The device was too small to be holding such power. If she could even believe the story she was hearing, which was beginning to sound a bit farfetched, that this was even in existence. But there was no way it was holding all of that power.

"S-shutup, that's, that's insane! You're lying! The Hex healed our planet, it fed us. It protected us. It’s everything! We spend our whole lives studying it's power! Trying to understand it! How can it-"

"Charges my phone." Novus repeated. "Nothing more." Leaving no further debate on that matter. Mika fell backwards to the floor and started crackling as she looked up at the projected stars, before turning to riotous laughter.

The laughter subsided into a fit, before she began to cry.

"Oh my god.. this is, this is too much.."

Mika looked down, noticing that her hands were a jumble of purple lines.

"Huh?"

Novus cleared her throat. "But you should not regret this power. It's all over you. Every atom of you, and this power I've given you is a connection between every part of you. It embodies the connection you've made.."

The purple lines on her hands swirled and danced to give the illusion of movement. Mika slowly got up, Novus giving her a firm hand. "You, still haven't told me what I'm supposed to do. You said something about this helping you get what you want, but what is that?"

"Irrelevant." She said

"Why cannot you just blow up or snap the Zes-Lethiska out of existence?"

"I already told you. Rule (1). They're Grahim's domain and creations by proxy.

I do not interfere there."

"So, what then? Why are you so concerned with this- this Grahim and Zes-

Lethiska? You said you wanted a connection. Why can't you just...have one?"

"I have what I want. Now." She said. "I merely want to see it thru to

completion."

The room darkened, the stars above vanished, and the lights came back on.

"Then why am I being held here?" She asked, standing.

"I have to be certain you want it too before I go."

"You mean before I agree to it. You're like a kid holding back to get your parents to let you do something. A child of six, holding back to get a new toy." She said, crossing her arms. "You have the power to do what you want with them, you'd better use it." Mika looked down, as if she was going to say something before Novus would inevitably scold her.

"Here." She pulled out a strange emblem with six crystalized leaves embedded

in it.

"What's that?"

"An invitation. You're going to live a new life. You find you will not remember the past thousand years or your life past the day you left the Solar Society, because it will not have happened." The words were like a bucket of cold water to Mika. She felt her heart beating so hard.

"What do I do with this, what are the consequences?"

"It's as I said. Your memory will be wiped and you will be given a new set of circumstances. This shall not interfere directly with Grahim's lifeforms unprovoked, as it's part of our Bet. You'll merely be a small part of it, a proper push."

Mika stopped. "Do I get a choice?"

"A what?" Novus asked, sounding annoyed. It reminded her of when Sandra

used to ask that, grating on her nerves heavily.

"Do I get a choice. Can I choose my own life?"

"Mika." She said very motherly. "You don't have a life. Your life ended, you were eaten. Your mother was devoured, your children were consumed. Your choice expired. The only choice remaining now is between oblivion and my generous offer." A star-covered void appeared, stars of every color dancing like a galaxy of lights. Mika's eyes widened. Slinky silhouettes in shiny hues appeared, Empress Protlyn standing between them. "What is this?"

"Your chance." Novus paced around Mika in a circle, leaned in and offered her hand. "This is our pact. It's our contract. It gives you this moment. To choose between oblivion or a new life. If you want to live, take my hand." Mika swallowed. She felt a strange heaviness in her chest. She swallowed and took Novus' hand.

The light emanating from the contact swallowed up the surrounding space and Mika embraced it whole.