Project: Ashes 006

 Chapter 4 continued

He moved the Alternator, no that wasn’t right, the Alternator moved everything else. Following the wide arcs of the script, dipping into the very essence of the portal, going deeper into the artful flourishes of it as it looped into itself, further into the letters, from large to small. This, was his art. There was movement and energy in all things. You first need to understand how they relate to each other, how they interact. Once that big picture has been established, you slowly sink into the details. Using the context of the large to guide you to the intricacies of the small.
The shadow of a memory was cast in his mind. The awe of the others at his art, how people said that this type of craft was the closest to “real” magic. He laughed. The Infinite Sky let him know that he had always loved this, how something so subtle, had the most spectacular effects. The fun he had not only doing his work but in doing it delighting others, returning to them a sense of wonder. The Young Trickster, a part of him that never was far from the surface especially loved how once understood, this art was the least in raw power, once you understood the flow and interactions, it did not take much force to push or pull the flow of things into a new direction, which the cascaded in spectacular ways to its new and intended form.
Yes, it was also possible to do that in a very subtle imperceptible way, but where was the fun in that?

He felt the totality of the portal and the room woven within, now connected to the alternator. For now he just followed with thought and motion the way it was now, turning around to Needs a Sense of Humour. He remembered some of her now. That face that constantly waited for something stupid to happen. The simple joy of making it fall apart into its nigh infinite configurations of exhausted annoyance. But that was a pedestrian joy. No the real challenge, was to get the most precious of prizes…

“Ready?”, he asked beaming at her.

There was “the face”. Lips a bit tight, one corner of her mouth pushing down enough to show her displeasure but making it clear that the situation did not warrant the effort to push it further. Her eyebrows slightly raised over tired eyes.

“Yeah… ready…”, Needs a Sense of Humour sighed.

He moved the Alternator, that was right now poised high above his head, pointing towards the portal, down and forward in a wide arc, which ended in a little flourish. Needs a Sense of Humour started rolling her eyes as he did this. But with the motion, the Alternator had changed the flow of the entire structure of the portal. The script glowing brightly, bursting on lightning paths into all directions. All the components started to glow indifferent colours, shifting into motion.
As they were enveloped by the shining parts, forming a shining dome above then, while turning into a transparent floor beneath their feet under which the main engine room was unfolding, he saw it, the greatest prize of all:
Her eyes had stopped rolling and where now wide, her favourite mouth corner had turned up into a warm smile and for a moment Needs a Sense of Humour was relaxed, enveloped in the joy of the moment.

“You are such an idiot.”, she said.

“I know. But tell me that this isn’t glorious.”

“It is glorious.”, she said shaking her head still smiling.


A few moments later they conversion was done. The Alternator, had disappeared again, melding with his being. While they both had to adjust to the strange and overwhelming view. Even he, who should have known better, felt how was overcome by a feeling of vertigo and disorientation.
Far below them he could see a gigantic spinning ring of light surrounding them. It was made of a countless number of tiny strands, that it spiralled out of it as it moved, slowly growing brighter and dimmer in a slow and steady rhythm.
What caused the feeling of unease was that they could see the ring at all. Here in the ‘control room’ it was made visible so that he could keep an eye on it as a whole, to always know in what state the whole of the machine was. It was also great for others to see it work, it helped them understand what was happening.
However the cascade spiral was a construct made to contain and stabilise the force of the universe. As such it was huge in a way that was utterly outside the capacity of any life form to comprehend. It was not infinite, it did not encompass all of reality, that was never the point and would have been completely outside of the abilities of Glorious Idiot and everyone else in the known universe. It was made to contain something and keep the things surrounding it safe and be able to draw enough energy to keep going for a significant amount of time on a cosmic scale. So it was large enough to contain several hundreds of galaxies within it.
Which is exactly what Glorious Idiot and Needs a Sense of Humour saw. The ring blow them wasn’t a representation, but the actual machine in its entirety, pulled together in a way by his art, that a single human could see all of it.
The shards and facets had not problem with this, they were blissfully limited in their abilities to understand at fundamental level what they were seeing, so that they could work with what they could comprehend and what they did know.
The Endless Sea and the Infinite Sky however were not so limited, they were there to take all in. Not this type of “all” though, this was beyond their capacity of the endless and the infinite.

“I feel like my soul is going to puke…”, she said. “And after that I’m probably going to puke out my soul…”

“I…”, he failed to come up with anything else for a while. “Look up. At the dome.”
He followed his own advice. The dome was also “transparent”, as one could look outside, it was ringed by a lush green forest above them a beautiful night sky. An illusion obviously. He should have known. But here was something that had vanished even from the Infinite Sky. He began to suspect the reason for this.
The illusory sky above him, calmed him. This was an infinity he was used to down to his animal core. There was an implication of the vastness of space, instead of a glimpse of its true expanse.
“No, really look up at the dome.”, he insisted, trying to find her in the periphery of his vision.

“I’m trying. But…”, she heaved, “Up doesn’t make any sense…?”

“Look away from the ring.”

“How?”, there was now a sharp serrated edge to her voice now. “It’s everywhere. It’s everything.”, her eyes growing wider.

“Just move your head around until you see something that isn’t the ring.”, he said, very careful to calm his voice.

“The rind is everywhere…”

“Your stupid thing!”, he said. “The dumb block of crystal you keep lugging around.”

“The Eternal.”, a spike of venom pushed through the panic in her voice. Hearing that he actually relaxed a bit. For a moment he was even thankful for how predictable Needs a Sense of Humour could be and that she really needed a sense of humour.

“Yes. That thing, that shows you all the threads of the universe. An counts stuff. And turns everything into lists and tables and arrays.”, he kept going.

“What about it.”, there it was that ever simmering ember of annoyance.

“Pull it up to your stupid face and look at it.”, he said.

“My face is not stupid.”

“You either should or shouldn’t look into mirrors more often, not sure what would be better for you. But look at the stupid thing already.”, he said, carefully stoking the ember.

“Why? It’s not like…”, there was a brief pause. “Oh.”
“I see.”, she said.

After a longer pause. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And keep looking at the Eternal or up into the sky above the dome. It will help you get used to the ring.”

“Does this always happen?”, she asked.

“I think it does?”

“I know, I have been here before. I know that this is one of the places where you are the most smug. This is like your cathedral of smugness.”

“I’m pretty sure this is the greatest thing I and…” he choked. “That we… that we ever made. There were others. There where so many others.”

Again there was a long time of silence.

“This is not the time for sorrow.”, she said, pulling him out of a deep dark pool into which his thoughts were sinking. “It will be worse, if we don’t keep going.”
“OK.”, she said her voice now calm and cold again. “We came here to see if your device is still working. Which it is,”, there was a slight waver in her voice. “So now what?”

“Now,” he said, the Cleaner taking over his mind, “I check the machine, while you find out what I need to do stop the universe from completely unravelling. Once things are stable again, we can go and look for the cause of this.”

“Right.”, she said, her fingers already moving over the surface of the eternal, every now and then grabbing a thread from around her pulling it through her device. “Let’s start with a bit of good news for a change. Your machine is actually overcompensating.”, she paused for a moment, “Heh… that also explains you wavy stick.”

That is not the kind of humour Needs a Sense of Humour needs he thought.

“But back to the important bit”, she said, “you can reduce the impulse and rotation of the cascade spiral significantly, that way the strands won’t fray as much anymore. You can use part of the energy to wrap the lose threads around the central ring and keep them there. At least I hope you can. And if possible store the excess energy so that we will have something to draw from later.”

He nodded. “Reducing the speed is no problem. Will need some feedback though as I will also have to adapt the impulse. I will also start introducing more helical torque that way we should be able to reduce the number of frayed threads too.”

“Perfect.”, she said. “Let’s get to work then.”