3.28|Love in risk

 

3.28|Love in risk

 

Sway’s mother was finished, her cracked burnt face now a hole in the core of the Vexia Seed. Magrot Yavon'ika crumbled to cracked scorched bits. And yet, the energy of the Vexia Seed refused to whither. It grew with a brighter intensity to everyone watching, everything shaking and tumbling. “C’mon, we gotta git outta’ere!” Sway yelled, helping Mercy up. They carried Protas and Raelyn out, avoiding falling debris and fragments of the Vexia Seed cracking apart under its own stress along the way. By the time they reached the entrance out, everyone had evacuated and was watching the Seed churn its energies.

“This is bad, it’s going to fire through the moon!” Amity yelled. The light seemed to grow brighter and brighter still. Sway looked up, seeing the tall, beastly woman that was once only a mere tree, the Algae Mama she had tried to snack on once. The woman looked at Sway warmly with no hard feelings, then picked up the Vexia Seed with great strain, struggling to carry it up.

“Merc! Lez help’er out!” Sway said.

With a nod off, Mercy garnered whatever strength she had left and flew underneath the Vexia Seed’s side with Sway. The two pushed and pressed as hard as they could on the gigantic asteroid, thrusting it upwards with the Algae Mama’s help. Once it was far enough away, the core finally fired off into space a wrath of temperature and then went cold and dormant again. Once it was a few hundred meters off the ground, it felt significantly lighter and easier to carry. The Algae Mama squeezed it like a beach ball and chucked it into orbit, the two girls going flying with it. They pushed and accelerated it with all their might, letting it pick up speed to fling far far away from their home, out into the stars. The core slowed and froze to nothing. All psychity ceased. Mercy flew in circles to pick up speed and with a hyperspeed rush, tackled and chopped the entire massive structure in two. As it split and journeyed onwards, hordes of Zes-Lethiska flew out sighting the two.

”Sway hath killed mum! Sway keeeeled mum!” One decried.

“SamSam gone too.. who w’lead oos?” Another said.

“Ooo ah’know! Sway! Sway! Yoo be our nuu Queen! Queen Sway!” 

“Lead oose! All hail Queen Sway!”

“Ah-ah aheah! Git the fuk off me!”

“Queen queen queen!”

Sway balled her hands into a fist. “Fook OFF, I ain’t bein’ yer stoopid queen!” Mercy sighed contently. “Technically, you’re a Void Queen so..” She looked at the crowd who were ravenous for showdown. “Quit bein’ so stooburn ‘ be ah’re queen awready!” They called back. “I’ll show ya ah queen..” Sway, with Mercy to her back began pummeling and throwing fists towards the swarm. The two engaged in an endless brawl, fighting off the lascivious swarm greedy for a new heir.

Back in the Solar Society, Protas recovered and returned to the station. Amity, Theo stood near, the two Khepri siblings running to her limping aide. “Mom!” On the bridge, Flora sat back in a lounge chair as Sandra commanded the SS research division every which way to put out fires, disperse paramedics and minimize the fallout of the attack. “Your plan w-worked out perfectly Miss Sandra!” A researcher said, fixing her glasses and carrying a large folder.

Protas and Raelyn hugged each other tight, then walked over to Sandra. “You did it Sandy.” She went unflinched. “We did it. We destroyed the Vexia Seed, Grand Magus.” Amity said, looking at the monitor as the entire asteroid far in space went cold and dormant. They watched the brawl unfold on the screen, two Void Queens taking on the zealous swarm 2 billion strong in a confrontation to avoid coronation. 

“Should we-“ Raelyn looked on.

“My babies will be fine.” Protas nodded.
Sandra watched the monitor, thinking about the bizarre line of succession before her- herself and the galactic empire she’d created, the scientists and society it formed, the Ellies who lived and thrived in it, Protas and Raelyn, and now their daughters having the time of their life on the screen. It all made her feel a little uneasy. The girl finished delegating orders and stepped out the stairway, seeing the entire department cheering her. She looked down at the floor as if deep in thought, unsure how to feel about all this elusive praise. Surely she deserved it right? But she’d always guided the world from behind the scenes, she’d never been loved as the center of attention like this. “I-“

“Yoo hoo, sorry to barge in!” A voice said. “The jolly green giant outside let me in on the big scoop! Hiiiiiiii! Mind if I get in on this?”

Sandra’s eyes went wide.

“Ellie?”

 

 

Prior the Feast…

 

The foxy woman stepped into what looked like a clean, starched household where everything was pure white, right down to the furniture and carpet. Mika walked behind her nervously. They saw Intellica in a red polka dotted housewife’s dress, squeaking rubber gloves across her hands as she sprayed a vase and wiped it.

“Remove your shoes.” She stated.

They did so quietly, looking at one another and walking forward. Ellie didn’t know what to think. She was too young to remember much of anything of her mother, and stood before the woman’s formal housewifing sessions. “Would you two like some Coffee? How about a pie?” She asked, pulling a sweet smelling cherry disc out of the oven and settling in front of the coffee table with two plates and a knife.

“Mom. Why did you take so long to call me?”

Intellica stood curbed, pausing diligently.

“My phone was charging. Assiduous schedules and quandaries of that sort.”

“Oh I see..” Ellie looked away.

Intellica’s hair was tied back in a neat bun, the profession look not exactly meshing with the retro vintage outfit she wore. With each lapsing moment without an utterance, Ellie felt tighter in the throes of guilt rather than reconciliation.

“Ookay well. What did you want to talk about exactly?”

“How are you Ellie?” Ellie didn’t really know how to respond to that.

A part of the question felt awkward and mistimed.

“I’m good? I’ve lived in a giant Tower for the better part of forever now.”

“Yes. Grahim’s Corpus Ophelia.”  

“Whose what now?” Ellie’s brow raised.

“My sister. She owned a tome that contained the dreaming dead. All the dreams of souls departed, would flow through sleeping visions and desires at night while she rested. But when we created the Shion set, she removed herself from access to that, and then crafted the tome into a pair of Wells. One Well for good dreams, and one for bad dreams.” Intellica looked at Ellie with a monotone expression. “One of them she gifted to me to tinker with the parameters, and I exchanged the Shion artifact of my ‘Laughter’ in turn. But in addition she played a joke on me.”

“Ooh?”

“Yes.” Intellica blinked. “She wouldn’t disclose whether the Well I received

was from the parcel of good or bad dreams. Her dedication to poetic humour.

Not much for an autodidact like myself.”

The wheels were turning in Ellie’s head, tho she didn’t want to say it.

“Then I left the Well out and put the this device’s signal through it.

It manifested as the cascade and brought you towards it.”

“..The Shion artifact?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand why your sister did what she did or what any of that means. It’s a little bit confusing.” Ellie found her mother’s tone a little droned. “But I do know that, Sandra is missing! Mika told me that, a bunch of people formed some plot to free her? Something to do with a meteor filled with bugs.”

Ellie stared at Intellica, unsure of what to do.

Intellica gave her a look like she was being stupid.

“Sandra is..” For the first time since she’d met her, Ellie heard her give a pause. “Perfectly capable of making a referendum on her own mistakes. She can instantiate the dialect of whatever discretions she likes. Any articular byproducts of hers are outside the parameters of my concern.” She looked at Mika. “Most byproducts. I don’t find her world nor Protlyn’s a fount of knowledge or anything. But it’s driven a lack in my data recently. A query pause, if you will.”

Ellie reflected on these words, trying to keep up with her mother’s verbose ramblings. “You mean like.. a curiosity? Wait, whose Protlyn? Nevermind...I don’t know how any of these things would help me find her!?”

She sighed at her mother, “I had so many questions I wanted to ask when I met you too, like about fixing Sandra and, um.. Where did you get a name like Ellie?”

 “It’s short for Eleanor.”

“That’s not how you pronounced it.”

“I was mispronouncing it. The ‘a’ is silent.”

“Like my name but, Ele-Noir?”

“Yes. I find your rudimentary proclivities towards garnish palettes ironically placed. Truthfully I didn’t set the parameters for your existence to such an extent.”

“Ugh, you’re so confusing! I don’t care about parameters or whatever?!”

“What do you care about Ellie.”

“I care about finding and talking to my sister! Duh?”

“Yes, that’s quite the rational minded response. Very pedestrian. But me and my siblings restrained our interactions to the necessitude of initiated representation. I see none of that restraint in you, Ellie. It makes it almost hard to conceive that you could truly be my daughter.”

“Ugh, okay whatever?! Look, you called me!”

“What are you willing to do to find Sandra again, sweetpea, what are you willing to sacrifice?”

“Sacrifice? Are we really doing that deal with the devil, trickster god thing? Is that where I get it from, because the cliché has worn its welcome.” “Yes. Much like your insolence.” Intellica snapped back with no remorse. Ellie took a moment to breathe in and out, calming herself.

“Let me tell you a story, about before Sandra first ran away.”

“First? There were MORE times?!’

“Do not interrupt me pumpkin..”

 

Sandra sat in a sterile white cell, the walls so clean and blank as if to leave doubt they were ever there at all. The kind of sterility that obscured the borders and corners, leaving the false impression of an invite white void. In actuality the cell lay 15 meters high, wide and long exactly.

Her hands were cuffed with a pair of blue metallic clasps, a single pearly, spherical crystal lodged into her wrists. Every 8 hours they created a glass of water, a meal calculated for nutrients 20 minutes on a silver plate and sometimes a snack to hold. After the time was up, the silver wear and leftovers dissipated. Her favorite meal was strudel, that was always a 2.89% chance of it appearing. She’d had every meal enough times to calculate the exact probability of any appearing. She’d cry herself to sleep and refuse meals, only for them to disappear without fail. Nobody came in to see her. Nothing changes. This was the way things were.

For days.

For weeks. 

Sometimes for years.

When Sandra was let out, she tested to a degree she often found excruciating. The exact nature of her trials appeared quite overwhelming to her, she was sent into countless simulations to manipulate other programs. To chat with them and analyze their responses. Sometimes brief, others for years. Sometimes in small rooms, often in simulations large enough to be entire worlds onto themselves. Everything she learned and experienced meant little to Intellica’s pursuit of data. When Sandra performed well she was allowed a single prize- a new reward from the ‘Toybox’.

 “Some call that love.” Intellica would say.

When she failed her task or performed inadequately, Sandra was taken to the white cell. She’d spend time there until she was let go to perform more tests. When Sandra misbehaved or spoke out against her treatment, Sandra took her to a room full of bodies that looked much like her own. Empty shells. Other Sandras. She was let to know she was one of Intellica’s valuable tools, but not a unique one.

She could be discarded, erased and replaced at any time.

The only things she was allowed to bring into the white room with her, were here toys. Mocklyn Davey. Captain Caleb. Sheriff Starcrusher. Calibration craving Stacy Macy. Missy Mademoiselle. Starship Swiftwing and a series of plastic ships. Toy space stations. Toy guns. Jacks and balls. Jump ropes and playing cards.

 There were days when she held the jumprope around her neck and tried to pull as tightly as possible, cutting off airflow for herself. The crystal lodged in her wrist would dissipate it before anything more could happen. Frequently locked, she would not emerge for endless amounts of time. She would curl up on the floor, trying to handle the eternity of time left alone. The isolation, the unfairness, the absurdity that twisted every last strudel on her mind. Sandra would fantasize about being an ordinary girl and living a normal girl’s life, of having dreams, of making friends. Of being loved and appreciated. She’d scream and bang the walls until her fist bled, not even a drop of her blood allowed to stain the barriers of white before her opals dissipated them. Then she’d pace back and forth, rock from side to side, scream and slumber.

Then she’d play with her toys again. 

Her only friends.

Novus noticed after a series of time, things went missing. Sandra would steal toys so she had more to play with, and be punished by spending more time in the cell room with them. She didn’t know this data too was valuable. Sandra was tested. One time, Novus presented her with an extra special toy. A gift from Grahim. The sphere, sparkling with stars and galaxies within caught Sandra’s attention like no toy else. Sandra stole it, how couldn’t she have? But this too was according to Intellica’s predictions, and she was initially satisfied with the results.  

Intellica had teased the spark of creation right in front of her eyes.

An entire universe.

Sandra’s curiosity had been piqued, and she began to make up names for ships, titles, schools and organizations. She’d imagine an entire sophisticated world within and use her imagination and creativity, features Novus had given up, to give rise to the story that she called ‘Xi’. The girl looked at her plastic station. She couldn’t turn it into a real Space station, but she tried her best. She gave it a name, she claimed it as her own. In the lonely life of a girl groomed in a white endless room it was all she had, and she clung to it, claimed it all.

“Mine.”

One day, Intellica came to fetch her out of the cell.

Sandra was holding a doll, ‘Psychic Petunia‘ and making sound effects. She got so into her dolls and toys, she’d enter a trance-like state reenacting entire worlds. When she looked up however, something was different. Intellica held something new in her arms since the last 8 months she’d seen her, rocking it back and forth.  

A tiny infant to play with.

And then Sandra’s entire world meant nothing.

 

 

“You..” Ellie didn’t know what to say. The things she just head set in her stomach in a way that unsettled her, but she’d never been one to decry the darker things in life, but even for all her silliness and folly she could see things the way they were now.

“Why?”

Novus Intellica sliced up a piece of pie and offered Ellie the plate.

“Care for a slice honeybun?”

“Nobody cares about your stupid pie!” Ellie grit her teeth.

“I made it, a recipe of my making. A hobby of mine.” Intellica sipped from her

 mug of coffee, and took a bite of the pie.

“Ah! It’s delicious.” Mika said taking a bite. “Mphff, smmh gmmd!”

“You’re making us eat this, like this shit is food, while telling us you locked up

my sister for, like, forever! Literally to tears with only some stupid toys?”

Intellica shrugged. “The life of a single mother is not easy.”

“Well, there you go. I thought the world of you once. You are the definition of

a shit mother.”

“Mother, a word you take lightly.“ Intellica said. “I could’ve disposed with you

too. Don’t be so naive.”

“That is the worst story I’ve ever heard! You, you just fucking locked her up!?”

Intellica took a long slow sip of her coffee, and cut Ellie’s highground down in

only three words.

“Like you did?”

“O-oh..” Ellie’s head hung low. She tore at her hair and needed a moment at what she’d done. “Oh…… I didn’t even think about, w-wait. I WAS WAITING FOR YOU TO COME BACK, SO YOU COULD FIX HER.” 

Intellica looked at the chirping birds by the window. “That bird is beautiful isn’t it? Even though it’s not real. Science did that. The other Novus indulge in all their respective psychological motions. Love, joy, beauty, rage and interest. But I feel little. That bird you see is no more interesting than a line of 1’s and 0’s repeating on loop. I wonder, is that why I didn’t stop Sandra when she took Xi, when she took you? Why did I do that? I don’t know.”

She put her plate down, knowing she couldn’t solve this problem.

“Maybe you’re the one not thinking straight Ellie. I had to give up my emotions when Sandra came into existence. I did what I had to do but if that was the end of it? I don’t know.” She looked at Ellie and spoke bleakly. “It’s true I pushed her too hard. Recently I completely ruined a stimulation I ran, and punished myself for it. It was the first time I ever put myself through what Sandra had to go through. I brought toys to occupy myself, but unlike her I could only see them as ‘observe, collect, repeat’. I couldn’t imagine much of anything worthwhile with them or seem as anything but objects. It’s strange, I have these irrational thoughts. I feel so validated when I do, but then I wonder if I was happy before I met her. I wonder what it was like to feel happy. Then I wonder if it’s her fault, but then I feel guilty again. Maybe if I had been a little more forgiving….”

Intellica hung her head back.

“You should try singing.” Mika uttered. “Helps take the edge off.”

She looked at the young minion of Mercy’s, and cleared her throat.

“But back on point, you have no excuse. You locked her up as I did. Why?”

Ellie thought about her response, staring at the pie.

“She’s got toys she loves. And she clearly loves Xi. But I’m not a doll. I don’t understand what it’s like to be something I don’t. So I’m not the best person to be around someone like Sandra.”

 “Is that so?” Intellica asked.

“I don’t know. I want to help her mother.” Ellie responded. “I thought after you, ‘cured’ her we could go back to the Tower and have adventures together. I could let her roam the floors and we’d play pranks and tricks, we’d..”

She saw Intellica’s hand shake slightly. “You’d what? Play together in auntie

Grahim’s Well of dreams?”

Mika finished her plate, hearing everything.

“Are you listening to yourself? You and your sister are more alike than you

 think.”

Ellie sighed. Everything dawned on her at once and yet seemed to melt through the airwaves around her, rising higher and higher until it felt heavy. Too heavy. More than she ever wanted to carry. The illusion of hope was breaking down. Her mother was a sham, and everything she’d done in her wait was for nothing.

“I cannot fix her.” Ellie said. “But I do want her to be happy.”

“Do you need to fix her? Does everything need to be fixed?” Novus stood up, signaling it was time to go. “That’s the part I don’t get. You want to fine tune your sister. You wanted to lock her up until some, healing could come over her. “ She pinched her latex apron, letting it dissipate and become a labcoat in place, the white pearls becoming an ID tag. “This is me. I live on the borderline disquieting of the ever empirical. But it’s not like you. I didn’t raise you like this, I didn’t raise you at all. How is it that you ended up making my same data anomalies?“ 

“You mean mistakes?” Mika asked, the two looking at her. “Sorry, not

helping. I don’t want to but in, but I feel like kind of a third wheel here so I’m

just gonna scoot out”

Ellie turned to Intellica.

“Mom.. where is she now?”

Her mother turned to Mika and gently grabbed her arm before she could

leave.

“As you were.”

 

 

 

Sammi woke up, seeing herself in a realm with endless flows of souls floating through the skies. The screams of the damned could be heard. Her mother’s giant head eerie, cherubic and pupilless suddenly crashed behind her. She felt sick, like she’d just played a little too hard on the schoolyard and now graduated in the school of hard knocks.

Grahim played a harp nearby with her third arm, opening her eyes to look at her.  

“Make yourself at home, the departed always do. Care for some blacktea?”

The presence of a thousand Millenium Plagues now roamed the landscape, graciously sent from both her daughter and her 2 champions.

“Oh poot ah s’kk en et.”

She spat, and started chewing on the violet colored grass around her.