256 Contemplating Winter arrives at the Eschertarium at precisely Dawn+0:58, as is xer daily custom. After climbing many stairs within the building, xe descends a few steps more to an outdoor checkerboard terrace, which is subjectively level but also visibly canted at 45° to the horizon. It looks over the local tessellations of The City without any lip or rail, but has probably been somehow contrived to be impossible to fall from. Xe has never investigated, personally.
There is, as usual, one and only one other person here, standing motionless in the centre of one of the square tiles as if an exotic chesspiece. 612 Neither Crows Nor Angels is probably a spy in the pay of some foreign process hierarchy potentate, but none of the Great Powers have made open war in kilogenerations; and so they both play their parts professionally, and over time the other AI has aligned his morning routine with xers.
“What would you like to play this morning?” says Contemplating Winter.
Both opt, as many AIs do, for an animature roughly in keeping with the scale and shapes of The City’s human co-population. Winter is pleased to be embodied as blue-skinned, baby-faced and generous-bellied, unclad but androgynous, half-melting into opaque blue fog like a fairytale spouse who cannot be viewed from the rear.
Neither Crows Nor Angels would perhaps be a whole head, two even, taller than most humans if he were ever in an upright posture; but slinks and sways from pose to pose, hunched and leaning, a sketch of billow-shrouded stick-thinness occulted by unnaturally perfect black. His shadows suggest but never fully optically resolve into a long coat, feathers, sharp geometric angles. The ambiguity extends to a face which could either be bird’s head, a plague doctor mask, a pepakura beak, or something angularly mechanical.
On some mornings they duel, in a friendly way; Winter imagines that as a spy, Crow has a need to stay in practice, lest some quiet passage someday contain an adversary – a flurry of chaff data, a namespace-exhaustion fork bomb and the quick knife of a kill signal.
Some duel unseriously, for fun or show, exhilaration and acclaim; Winter, generally, does not. Nonetheless, xe is quick and tactically flexible, puts up enough of a challenge to keep Crow occupied.
Other mornings, they play a few hands of River, or try whatever new board games are currently fashionable. Winter wins the pure strategy games slightly but noticeably more often; Crow, the social manipulation ones.
“Oh, deal us in,” Crow says carelessly, so Winter manifests xer River deck from inventory. At the foot of the colonnaded steps are a number of tables, each large enough to set out a chessboard; the chairs rearrange themselves neatly, two to a table, when the terrace is unobserved, the kind of thorough yet prescriptive flourish typical of Anecdotal Era architecture. Xe sets the deck on the middle of xer preferred table, taps the back to call its verb halo, selects Shuffle (crypto-grade RNG); the cards splay out of alignment, each a millimetre or so on a randomised vector, then tween back into true with a subtle synthesised riffling noise, as if physically reordered.
The deck is not ancient on a par with the Eschertarium’s furnishings – it’s no older than the Second Quantified – but Winter has a taste for the sensory affordance-rich luxury stylings of Anecdotal artefacts. Its antique affectations amuse xer more, not less, for being a retro reproduction.
The River snakes across the table as they play, flush with spent and discarded cards. Crow plays an aggressive oxbow sequestering strategy, but seems not to have the card draws to fully carry it; Winter calmly and methodically constructs a textbook Thousand Islets gambit, and despite late-game acceleration, xer opponent cannot steal sufficient momentum before the deck runs out and they reach the sea.
“Best of three?” xe asks, gathering the cards afterwards.
“Not today,” Crow says, “you’ll just have to stand as this morning’s victor. I have an early consultation.” He rises, elaborately flourishes a bow. “Auspicious day, administrator.”
“Auspicious day,” xe returns. It’s studiously formal; for all that Crow has cultivated this routine, he spends as much time underscoring that they are not close, not cordial, not friends, as he does enjoying the company. Spycraft must, Winter thinks, be hard on one.
Even as he makes to go, there is an unaccustomed footstep. Winter chose this terrace for xer mornings long before Crow began to join xer; its solitude is the quality xe holds dearest. Now, however, the spy draws politely to the side as a human steps from the shade of the columns and descends the steps.
Winter sits straighter at the sight of Jin Haguen. The woman is square of frame and jaw, muscular arms framing a rough square-cut tunic. They have worked together in a tiny office deep in the Eschertarium for years; Winter is glad of her. They abide well in each others’ company, and Haguen is a very good complement to xer own strengths.
Haguen is also scrupulously disinterested in anything other than their work together. She has never once so much as asked after Winter’s morning routine before they arrive together, never mind made an appearance within it.
“Six-twelve Crows Nor Angels,” Haguen says with chill civility; she palms her solar plexus and inclines a bow to him that is very precisely sufficiently polite.
He cocks his head. “Administrator Jin,” he says, sounding more interested – amused, perhaps – than Winter entirely likes. “Auspicious day to you.”
“And to you.”
He jinks and melts away into the interior, but his gaze lingers behind him as he goes.
“Eight-raised Winter,” Haguen says, tone formal, but the colloquial formation rolling off her tongue. Half-ironic AI tradition holds powers of two as lucky numbers, and two raised to a power of two therefore particularly so; xer numeronym is an auspicious one. “I’m sorry to interrupt; but I think you’d better come and look.”
“Of course.” Winter closes xer hand around the deck of cards, dismissing it to inventory. “It’s not the water, is it?” xe adds, a little apprehensively. The City was designed in an age of marvels, its self-contained spacetime and its very physical laws purpose-authored; the creeping size of its population across the eras has driven the density with which they dwell up and up, until every space not forbidden by physics or danger of death has been inhabited – and even those, ingenuity and desperation repeatedly tests.
The Eschertarium was once a museum, perhaps, or a sculpture garden of paradoxical geometry. An exhibit to be visited, a marvel for the senses. Even by the end of the First Quantified Era, dogged by superstitions that its greater-than-Euclidean internal capacity per external unit volume would prove unstable or somehow haunted, it had fallen into use as a bureaucratic records store. By the Modern Era, it had become the interdisciplinary administrative hub overseeing the operations in detail of up to a tenth of The City’s tessellations.
In the face of a population which The City was never built for, and its absolute self-containment, shortage is inevitable.
Contemplating Winter’s talent for large-scale pattern matching and dynamic flow comprehension has worked xer into an unobtrusive but important role in recognising where the patterns that have accreted over years and ages – in material distribution, in habit, in code – are insufficient or counterproductive. Xe can see where things are not moving efficiently. And where xe prizes Haguen’s assistance is that the human woman, unlike Winter, has the creative practicality to find solutions; buffering, balancing, and impedance-matching the flows of people and things and information, tearing out old and instituting new routing and infrastructure, to alleviate the problems that Winter can so clearly visualise.
There is no official name for what they do; Winter thinks of it as holistic optimisation.
The limits, alas, are absolute quantity – The City is all there is, and its total power, water and computational budgets are what they are – and, all too often, politics. Winter can measure and recalculate water distribution as finely as xe likes; process hierarchy potentates, senior bureaucrats, assorted organised criminals and accreted hierarchies of courtiers can preallocate whatever they see fit, long before the problems pass to xer. And in the long term, as population densification and water preallocation push against each other, absolute water shortage threatens both various material processes and also the human population’s health and survival. In the longer term, far off Winter’s prediction charts, even wishful solving for preallocation issues cannot address the reality that the water supply is a brutally hard cap.
In the short term, making anyone’s water less plentiful in the name of efficiency is one of their most politically delicate problems.
“It’s not the water,” Haguen says grimly, her wide, mobile mouth battened down to a thin line. “You’d better see for yourself.”
Several impossible staircases later, they arrive at their office. A tiny space partitioned from what was once some kind of gallery showcasing geometrically impossible objects; now dozens of cubicles, truly sized for only a single person to work within. A flimsy door; a counter that runs the length of the other three sides, with pigeonholes on the walls above, reaching all the way to the ceiling. A second chair just fits, with a little care for moving around each other. They have a few adjustable inclined surfaces, on which data models can be visualised; little of the work done in the Eschertarium’s purview really requires much else.
Although Winter always leaves xer displays scrubbed blank at the end of each day, text has inscribed itself in xer absence, letterform-shaped holes manifested in the paper-thin white stone fascia, its obsidian core showing through.
Log level: CRITICAL it says.
Over 95% of object_ids allocated
oid exhaustion will result in core protocol failure
You should never see this message; please contact the Protocol Working Group to schedule a protocol extension approval meeting. (Current: protocol version 4, extension level 37)
It is a terse and unhelpful message.
Generally, in Winter’s experience, the worse the message explains itself, the more important the system that’s in need of attention. This is not, however, a message style xe is familiar with. Xe halos the message and asks for data on the sender.
An additional inscrutable line of text appears below the message, the voids in the white stone manifesting instantly.
(core)
Haguen gently pushes a smaller stone tablet along the counter to xer elbow, and Winter picks it up, frowning, to examine whatever series of queries xer colleague has already attempted to explicate today’s disaster.
The starting point has long scrolled off. Winter’s gaze goes to the conclusion, a low-level process hierarchy descriptor and a graph of resource usage over time. The graph shows a resource which someone has clearly been lax about optimising; some kind of monotonic identifier which, yes, is nearing exhaustion. The descriptor –
“Haguen,” xe says softly, “surely I am not understanding this correctly. This core protocol, this says that it is at the absolute process hierarchy root?”
“That is what it says.”
The City’s very spacetime and physics were purpose-authored to be programmable; are a machine, the foremost among machines.
“I still don’t understand,” Winter confesses, staring at the lines of text.
It means they are running out of world. What can it even mean, to run out of world? Will time stop between seconds? Will everyone die? Even humans? If the identifiers simply underflow –
Xe imagines for a second what might possibly have low-numbered identifiers, and what might happen if The City’s physics confused a newborn person, or a brick, or a fresh loaf of bread, with – oh, say, the whole physical substrate on which all its construction rests.
“This is – “
This is the end of the world.
Winter reflexively covers, with xer hand, the graph annotation that estimates the time to resource exhaustion, glances involuntarily at Haguen, then makes xerself look.
“I can’t tell you how good an estimate it is,” Haguen says tightly. “I don’t know exactly what uses up an identifier.”
Neither does Winter. Xe stares at the number. Almost a year. Confidence interval unknown.
Xer mind tries to grapple on a familiar level: if they can simply rate-limit identifier use, if they can put in a process to recycle them, if they can source new ones from elsewhere…but this is far beyond them.
“I suppose,” xe says, hollow and doubtful in xer own ears, “we should notify someone.”
The Eschertarium is a seat of bureaucracy, which is power of a sort; but for a matter so large, it seems likely they must take this before power of another kind. Their domain, and many tessellations surrounding it, fall within the purview of the Tools Cartel, which has regulated access to devtools since the First Quantified. A rendering of Jin Haguen’s own dispensation from them to script hangs upon the wall beside the door inside their office, although for greenfield code they must negotiate with a guild developer.
There is hardly a more powerful process hierarchy in the nearby tessellations than the Cartel. And that means going to their palatial public audience chambers and speaking to one of their own army of bureaucrats. Winter sets aside xer displays; smooths fingertips along xer brow; slowly stands.
“Good luck,” Haguen says, staring into her own, workless, display.
It is not an idle wish. The Cartel is wealthy, glittering, merciless. A pit of potentates and courtiers, the natural home of spies, climbers and backstabbers. No place for an honest civic refactoring functionary.
“Come with me,” Winter says, surprising both of them. As out of place and out of depth as Contemplating Winter might be in the Cartel’s palaces, xe is at least an AI; many of the ruling intelligences despise the opaque frailties of the human strain. Haguen starts to protest as much; xe dares a rare interruption of xer colleague’s personal space, lightly touches both shoulders. “I do not trust myself to tell this in a way that conveys the import,” xe adds.
“If they don’t listen to you, Eight-raised, they’re hardly going to listen to me.”
Which is true, and nonetheless – “Please.” Xer manner, plain and calm, has drawn past accusations of diffidence, of callous indifference; the knack of expressivity escapes xer. Xe firms xer touch on Haguen’s shoulders a fraction, hoping it conveys something. “Jin Haguen, I am – afraid.”
Haguen lifts her eyes, birdlike, quick. She looks back at Winter for a moment, then raises her hands to rest on the AI’s forearms in reassurance. “Eight-raised,” she affirms, gently decorous.
They don wide hats, and Haguen wraps a shawl round her shoulders; the weather state machine has remained dry for enough days to accumulate a base 75% chance of triggering rain before nightfall.
One of the porters bows to them on their way out of the Eschertarium; “Early for you to be out,” he says cheerily to Haguen in passing.
“Oh,” she says back, with sociably pantomimed gloom, “big one on the way, got to go and talk to a programmer,” so that he laughs and nods in the rueful camaraderie of people who toil to clean up after others.
Winter nods to him, carefully doesn’t look at Haguen until they are out, striding under the light of the sky. “Clever,” xe says.
“What is?”
“Lying and telling the truth at the same time.” Not something Winter could ever do; xe has trouble enough just lying. “It seems very useful.” Xe means it sincerely; Winter has tried to engage with people, but so much of everyday life as someone’s friend consists of finely and exquisitely contextually gauged untruth. Xe is better at working. Optimising. It made better sense, in the end, to optimise xerself away from where xe did more harm than good.
Haguen makes a noise which, Winter is relatively certain, signifies none of the things that laughter is supposed to. “People who are good at lying,” she says, “generally became so by necessity. That doesn’t seem any way to live, Eight-raised Winter.”
It seems to Winter that xe should not say that xe thinks Haguen just did it again, nor compliment her – to be good at lying is to get away undetected, at least under the ineffable social rules that govern when you are meant to admit noticing.
“Thank you for coming,” xe says instead, since that is something xe’s certain of, and Haguen’s eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Eight-raised,” she acknowledges.
They trek across the market, a thousand thousand parasols set upright and scripted to cling to the spot despite any breeze or knock, and for every one a person scraping a living from passing along from hand to hand the stuff of life: foods, physical implements, raw or processed materials, small joys. Small birds race across the canopy, above and below, perch on ferrules or swing from rims; in ponds and fountains, fish laze in shade or dart from disturbances.
Winter tries hard to see people – life – instead of just problems, on other days. Today, xe cannot even see the unbalanced flows to be solved in too-thin human faces and hand-lettered notices that some staple or other is sold out; everything is bright and clear and forcefully present, with the aching, frangible brittleness of a glass sculpture falling from a careless hand.
It is too much.
When xe stumbles to a halt in some opportune corner, hands clasped over eyes, soundlessly whimpering, Haguen gently takes an elbow and takes over steering xer. Thus relieved, Winter simply does as xe is directed; walks, turns, descends steps, none requiring xer to think. Xe retreats from noise and enormity.
They step indoors, and a curtain falls behind them, swallowing the noise of the market to a soft murmur. Haguen directs xer efficiently to sit, the cool and quiet an almost unbearable reprieve; walks a short distance away, has short, quiet words with a proprietor, and returns.
Winter peels the hands from xer eyes. The return of perception feels like deliberately pressing the ball of one’s thumb into a bruise.
They are in the stark, scrubbed interior of a noodle shop, barely open until the sky dims toward dusk and the work gangs knock off. In front of xer, a tall glass is filled with something – soft, cloudy pink; fragrant leaves, torn by hand, whirl in the depths, unceased yet from some initial stir.
Across the table, Haguen sits patiently, hands folded in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” Winter says.
“No need.”
Xe believes she means it, and yet – she would be the first.
Winter shows willing to recover by carefully picking up the drink, mindful of clumsied fingers. AIs need no nutritional sustenance, but intentionally share many of life’s experiences; xe sips. Xe is expecting sweet and soothing – instead it burns, if not unpleasantly; spice, and a base of something sharp. Xe takes another sip, cautious, to confirm the surprise; strokes fingers through the water beading on the outside of glass, and dabs the coolness on xer wrists.
When xe sneaks a glance at Haguen, she is still simply sitting. Not monitoring for a reaction to the drink, not hovering for a response; not noticeably impatient for anything to be done, or felt, or said. Making time.
“I’m sorry,” Winter says reflexively. “Thank you.”
“No need, Eight-raised.”
Xe slowly finishes the drink in cautious sips, smooths xer brow with damp fingers, and readies xerself. “We had best continue,” xe says reluctantly. “I’m sorry, Haguen, I have wasted – ” a substantial fraction of an hour, a silent internal sense supplies, “and who knows how long we’ll have to wait – “
Xe fumbles toward payment, stilled by Haguen’s slight gesture. “I paid,” she says firmly.
There is a stipend The City provides; nobody starves. (Not yet.) Labour and position both provide more, of course; it remains a sharp divider that human persons, of necessity, must spend a far greater fraction of their income on base survival. Winter manages to stifle another apology. “Well,” xe says carefully, emulating as best xe can the ready tact of others, “I should buy your lunch, later, then?”
For a moment xe is unsure of navigating the tricky rapids of pride and reciprocation; but the crinkle reappears at the corner of Haguen’s eyes, and xe thinks that’s good.
The audience chambers are within the ornamented mass of the Developers’ Guildhall, a gaudy flat-topped ziggurat. Its every wall is panelled with bas-relief friezes, symbolically depicting the labours of code creation as the struggles of mythological demigods against the elements, opposing armies, whole pantheons of demons. Titanic heroism, stories high, is framed in gilded scrollwork.
As predicted, the delay has cost them any quiet part of the morning. There are entire corridors and chambers of petitioners, and Contemplating Winter’s position and reputation can only bypass so much of it; the primary function of the system is, after all, to force people to wait. This could all be solved, if it were truly a throughput problem; this is a choice, a tangible imposition of power. The Tools Cartel does not exist to serve, and can dispense as much deliberate neglect as it sees fit; its coin is servility, at least as much as actual coin.
There is also, of course, the small matter that much of the Cartel’s endless queue of supplicants is maintained by precisely the kind of structural miseries that Winter seeks to solve. Institutional displeasure is no small factor to account for, in one’s wait.
They stand in line, along the wall of grand corridor filled almost end to end with people standing line. Opposite, a great, stylised mosaic programmer tramples a monster with dozens of serpentine heads; further along, a small, bored child howls.
Overtaxed already, Winter closes xer eyes and retreats, as best xe can, from everything. Haguen will kindly prompt xer when it is time to shuffle onward, in the event they ever do.
It is a surprise, therefore, when less than an hour later, a scurrying functionary stops before them; a sleek young AI, animatured in shimmering green and teardrop streamline shapes. “Two-five-six Contemplating Winter?” they blare, voice like trumpets. “Please attend.”
Winter opens xer eyes and looks at the queue ahead of them. To go further into the guts of the Guildhall without enduring it bespeaks some whim or personal interest of a Cartel potentate; there will be no chance to even mention their reasons for attending until the head of it.
Dread sets in. But neither can this summons be refused.
They are whisked onward, up a narrow staircase, moved to another waiting area; plush, secluded, curtained into a winding route from entrance to exit, with cushioned benches to wait upon.
“I’m sorry,” Winter says, in anticipation of what’s to come.
“Eight-raised – ” Haguen breaks off, sighs. “It’s your friend, isn’t it?”
The word friend raises within Winter a distinct pang: of shame, of anxiety, profound loneliness. Friend was never, perhaps, the correct word. It is not correct now. “Yes,” xe says, for lack of any better expression.
A soft gong and the shuffle of the unseen others ahead of them move them from seat to seat, hidden in turn from anyone behind them by the the plush drapes. Each chime of the gong comes swiftly; the result, xe is certain, of brutally capricious whim, not efficient decisiveness.
Their turn comes.
Everything, as they enter, is sickeningly familiar. The floor is mirrored, lacquered black, a perfect circle several dozen paces across; the walls rise into a dome seamed only by the doors by which they entered, and identical ones to the side where they will leave. A gentle grey ombré, combined with soft, sourceless lighting, cultivates the illusion that the floor is marooned in fathomless pale space. A beaten metal basin, large enough for a person to recline in, sits in the centre; it is filled to a brimming meniscus with clear water. Small, colourful flowers rest on top, arranged unmoving, currently spelling out the personal sigil of the AI reclining on a heap of cushions on the far side of it.
99 All Your Fears Live Within The Walls wears a form that shifts constantly; always long and lean, but now tigerish, now petalled and roselike, now abstract and surrounded by symmetric constellations of rotating geometric shapes. She is draped in a unbelted robe of yellow silk, that drips at the edge like paint, leaving tiny seamless spheres of fabric scattered around.
Around her reclined form are seated her current crop of hangers-on, amusements, and clerks – in whichever combination any given one might be. All AIs; she scorns humans as flat and unentertaining.
It is deeply immiserating to remember being seated on those cushions, at the other’s feet, let alone four bygone years in more private and intimate company. Winter bows, in an entirely proper and formal way. “Nine-nine Live Within The Walls,” xe says, carefully polite, and Fears rearranges herself upon her cushions in razored amusement.
“Oh,” she says. “Are we strangers now, Contemplating?”
There is no way to answer that without ending up splayed on some or other social fish hook. “No,” xe says solemnly, as if any layer of communication beyond a requested binary literal is invisible to xer.
This is unsafe. Fears might, in any moment, sincerely believe Winter literally incapable or not; either has a history of enraging her. But it has, at least, the potential to be less unsafe than attempting to parse those layers xe cannot adeptly handle.
Fears is waxing feline. Claws knead the fabric beneath her. “And this is?”
Xe had hoped that xer colleague would pass Fears’ notice, ignored as irrelevant. “This is Administrator Jin,” xe says. “Her work is exemplary.”
“I believe some murmur had wafted near me that your office had developed people skills,” Fears says, tone candied, and Winter wishes that xe had been brave and come alone.
Xe reaches once again for solemnity. “Yes,” xe says, and then, trying not to be obvious about hurrying into the pause before Fears can start peeling open xer feelings and applying exploratory salt, “A matter came to the attention of my office, Live Within The Walls; a deep system diagnostic. There is a resource allocation issue.”
“Everything your eyes fall upon is a resource allocation issue, Contemplating.”
“It is from a process named only ‘core’.”
Fears is unfurling into petals; tendrilled hands clench into fabric. She sits up, lightly touches the head of the nearest of her lounging hangers-on, probably some momentary favourite. “Run along,” she says in a careless way that encompasses all of them, tone light and harmless. Winter’s face aches from staying neutral, just from the deferred temper implied in it; xe schools xerself to remain still and calm while they crawl from Fears’ plush domain and slink from the room.
“Describe to me,” Fears says coldly, when they are all gone, “how this happened to come to your attention.”
“May I?” Winter asks, gesturing to the basin, and waits for Fears’ curt gesture of assent before piping data to it. The flowers rearrange themselves, in silent ballet, to spell out the same message that graced their office that morning.
Fears looks it over. “Critical,” she murmurs disgustedly, before turning her attention back to Winter. “Oh, very well, Contemplating, you haven’t been snooping. This matter is already within the knowledge of the Cartel; your report is noted.”
Xe bows. “The matter is in hand?” xe says, tone as close to diffident as possible. “Mitigations are underway?”
“The matter,” Fears says silkily, “is within the knowledge of the Cartel.”
“Live Within The Walls,” Winter acknowledges, bowing again.
Fears holds aloft a finger, sharp and prismatic, then gestures slightly toward the exit.
They have almost reached the door when she speaks again, behind them. “Advice,” she says coolly. “If you were to develop a sudden curiosity, Contemplating Winter....”
Xe waits.
“If someone were any friend to you, they would tell you to be curious about anything else at all.”
Winter opens the door. “Everyone is grateful for the advice of their friends,” xe says softly, and exits before anything terrible can come of it.
“That is your friend?” Haguen says dryly, on the stairs down, and Winter stops and leans heavily against the wall.
“Almost everyone calls her Fears,” xe says quietly, “because…” and xe gestures vaguely behind. “Select few friends, she allowed to call her Walls, because, please believe me, she has real feelings to be hurt, and that is a container to hide them in. I hope you trust that I am not so entirely a fool – “
“I don’t think you’re a fool.” Haguen waits a second. “What did you call her?”
“I called her Live Within.” Winter closes xer eyes tight. “I do not know if she ever understood that I meant she was my home.” Xe pauses, opens them again. “But then, Jin Haguen, she charmed me by saying that most people call me Winter, calling attention to my stillness and silence; whereas she preferred Contemplating, to call attention to my depths. And it took too long to understand that she did not mean I had depths, or that she cared; only that she valued the semblance, and the semblance of caring.”
“Eight-raised,” Haguen says softly, and touches xer elbow.
“I am entirely a fool, and she is not my friend,” Winter concludes ruefully.
“I don’t think you’re a fool,” Haguen repeats. “It’s done, Eight-raised; let’s go back to work.”
They walk back the width of the market. Winter stops them to buy tea and steamed buns – “Your lunch, Jin Haguen – ” and they busy themselves.
And yet, Fears’ intonation – Critical! – remains uneasily foremost in Winter’s thoughts. Xe cannot help, in between investigating the bursty upstream flows of ingredients that lead to foodstuff shortages in the market, haloing the message once again; asking for the historical log of messages published by its sender; filtering out duplicates, and displaying the dates of first appearance.
Log level: CRITICAL – today.
Log level: SERIOUS – six years ago, at 90% exhaustion.
Log level: WARNING – nearly twenty years ago, at 75%.
Log level: INFO – several hundred generations ago. Since 50%; fifty.
There is no easy way to check, with the resources at xer disposal, what select group of recipients might have received the less-urgent reminders. But Fears knew – the Tools Cartel knew – before this reached the critical warning level.
“Haguen,” Winter says, before xe can reconsider, then falters: be curious about anything else at all. “No, it’s nothing,” xe lies.
“If you say so, Eight-raised Winter,” Haguen acquiesces.
The sky’s light dims toward dusk.
Many AIs affect some amount of sleep as a hobby, to experience something akin to dreams; or lead a second, entire nightlife; or simply continue to apply themselves to work or pleasure pursuits without regard to the clock. Winter xerself enjoys some amount of naps, but when xe worked alone, would frequently simply continue until whatever immediate task was completed.
When Jin Haguen joined the office, xe carefully reconsidered; healthy working hours became a responsibility to model. And so xe began to spend the night hours in the lodgings xer work-earned stipend allows xer; which seemed far more profoundly alone than remaining at work.
Tonight, xe sits in restless consideration, in the rooms xe has never seen need to even furnish. If identifier exhaustion is an existential problem, which it claims to be; and it is a known one, which it clearly is; and yet years of diagnostics have not simply prompted a solution.... But there is no conclusion to be reasonably drawn, not enough data. Xe troubles xerself wholly fruitlessly.
“Game of River?” Crows Nor Angels says, at Dawn+1:00, and cups his hand close and tight-fanned, as he always does.
Winter plays the Black Box; an aggressive opening, which will falter in the midgame without some very specific draws to back it up. A gambit for someone with an excellent starting hand, a taste for chance, or a face for bluffing.
“Neither Crows,” xe says cautiously, “have you heard anything about an certain identifier depletion problem?”
He turns his head and extends his neck, like a bird staring sideways over his cards. “Since when do you discuss your work with spies?” he says, picking fretfully over the hand, then opting to cycle it entire for a new one.
“I’m told it’s no concern of mine.” Xe shores up xer play, unhesitating, with one of the Reciprocators. Not the strongest strategy, but with more than one way to develop; unless the next draw favours xer, it will reveal Winter’s complete bluff, but xe has already fooled Crow into wasting one turn.
He clacks, and plays a number direct to the River. “If I knew anything, administrator – and had you asked me earlier – I might have advised against enquiries at the Guildhall.”
That is not reassuring. “How else would one discover what concerns are none of one’s own?” xe points out in reasonable tone, draws another Reciprocator, and stalls by playing it immediately.
He makes a neutral sort of throaty buzz, and with an air of measured glee, lays out the first three cards, each with a firm clack onto the table, of a Hungry Mouth. “True,” he allows.
Winter feeds a number to the Black Box, flips it, and feeds that in turn to the River, replacing it with a Crown; xer gambit becomes a glider, which if not dealt with will mutually annihilate Crow’s Mouth before he can develop it to the Conqueror Throat. Suboptimal, but better than nothing.
Xe lacks the strategy to extract useful information from a spy.
“Neither Crows,” xe concedes politely, and lapses into xer better-accustomed silence over the cards.
They play to best of five; Winter wins the first, third, and fourth games.
“One day!” Crow says cheerfully. “Auspicious day, administrator.”
“Auspicious day.”
He lingers just a moment over leaving, as if he might say something else; but doesn’t.
Haguen is already seated in the office, which is not unusual. She is sitting stiffly upright, shawl still tucked around her, and her eyes seem red from weeping.
“Haguen?” Winter says, and follows the woman’s gesture to the certificate beside the door.
It has re-rendered itself, since yesterday, into a revocation.
“No,” Winter says. “No.“
“The porters have instructions to escort me out of the Eschertarium,” Haguen says thickly. “They were kind enough to let me wait to tell you myself.”
“No,” Winter says again.
“Promise me something,” Haguen says determinedly. “Promise me you won’t – walk me out of the building, or anything like that. You need to stay here and keep working. Don’t let them take away what’s important to you.”
“I can’t work!” Winter gestures, rather wildly. “This is my office. You’re part of my office. You’re the important part of my office. I like you.”
Haguen looks at xer, and says, “Please.”
“I can’t sit here while they show you out to the street!”
“Yes, you can.”
“No!”
“I need you to,” Haguen says, and it is the most dreadful and unfair thing in the world, because all of this is Winter’s fault.
Xe stares. And xe puts palm to plexus, bows deeply – which feels a lot like crumpling around some terrible internal void – and says, “Jin Haguen,” with as much feeling as xe can muster.
Haguen bows back. “Eight-raised Contemplating Winter,” she says, thickly but dignified, and then she turns away and leaves the office, grip tight on the door handle as she closes it quietly behind her.
Winter stares sickly at the inside of the closed door for almost an hour before xe realises that Haguen has left without her hat. And that is far too late, because Haguen has never mentioned where she lives, and Winter is too sensitive to the possibility of a personal boundary to ever have asked.
Xe sits and sobs, for a while. And then xe puts on xer own hat, tries to scrape together what’s left of xer dignity, and sets out to cross the market to the Guildhall once again.
They know xer there; but today there is no direction into any shorter or quicker queue, no allowance for xer usefulness to The City. Nobody sends for xer to be directed to their own private audience chamber for xer petition to be heard. Winter languishes in a queue designed to cause people to languish, and eventually evening darkens the sky again, and the Guildhall ceases to see people at all for another day.
The truly desperate remain in line for the day to come. Winter, broken, goes home.
At Dawn−3:00, finally, despairing, xe picks through xer halo for Sleep (randomised human-normative duration), curled up on the bare floor like a cat, and loses xerself in uneasy dreams. And so go several days, in which xe cannot bring xerself to go to work: xe stares at the walls or out of the window, is sunk in misery, and sleeps.
Someone knocks on the door, once; xe startles awake, stares, and reselects Sleep rather than face them.
Finally, Winter wakes to find xerself angry. It takes a while to recognise, unaccustomed; xe stands and stretches, goes to the window, paces restlessly for a while, silently wonders at the hot, tight sensation inside.
Restlessness carries xer to the alcove in which xer scant personal things are kept, largely in boxes. There is little xe needs; xe arrived here with these things when, ultimately, Fears cast xer out. And although xe has never needed them, there is, deep in a box of scarce-used formal clothes, a pair of dramatically black gloves, fingerless, which can be activated to display a single sigil, on back and palm, in amber light: the duellist’s demand, for satisfaction. Winter finds xerself cradling them in shaking hands, and realises that the trembling is neither fear nor some excess of sadness.
Xe is vibrating with rage.
It is an entirely unwelcome and useless feeling. Xe finds xerself yanking on the gloves, an equally unwelcome and useless gift, from early in their acquaintance; when Fears believed xe might be amusing to goad into fighting random others of her hangers-on, a use to which many of her favourites were put. But Winter hates conflict; and so proved better fun as a pincushion for emotional cruelties.
Xe knows where Fears lives.
It is without entirely realising what xe is about to do that Winter finds xerself stalking the darkening streets. Realising; or, perhaps, admitting. It is past the Guildhall’s closing time, and xer steps take xer somewhere xe hasn’t been, or wanted to be, in years.
It’s a building like many others, if more upscale than most. A stack of cantilevered decks, hanging from a spine-curved load-bearing tower; glass and slick metal. Entire floors, here, for each resident. Fears’ home blazes with light in the post-Dusk dark; she is always entertaining, to some sordid extent or other – surrounded by her amusements, by those desperate to be used for some scrap of quid pro quo, by those whose favour she curries for her own next rung on the ladder of position.
Winter takes the stairs, irregular loops up the curving tower’s interior, standing still for the elevator being unbearable; xe knocks on Fears’ door, sharp, loud. Unlike xerself. Xe is afraid, for a moment, that before the door opens the anger will fail, leaving xer facing Fears without reason or excuse.
But then 99 All Your Fears Live Within The Walls opens the door, and before Winter can stop xerself, xe has lunged, planted both hands on the other’s shoulders, and furiously shoved, sending her reeling back.
“How dare you,” Winter rages.
Behind Fears, a mostly mannerly dinner party clatters into silence. Friends; Winter would perhaps recognise one or two, if xer whole attention weren’t on Fears. Xe lunges again, shoves again.
“Contemplating!” Fears staggers, fighting for balance, visibly shifting from shocked to seething. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“My office!” Winter shouts at her. “My friend!” Xe ignites the gloves’ sigil, thrusts an open palm unignorably into Fears’ face. “Hurt me to my face, you coward!”
If not for the audience, Fears could and would probably twist and turn and fold Winter from xer purpose and into a very small knot, using nothing but contempt and words. But with the eyes of her entourage upon her, she must be seen as the victor, cannot abide less.
Eyes never leaving Fears’, Winter lashes out with xer free hand, straight-arming a tall, freestanding vase, hearing it topple, the smash and spill, the scent of scattered flowers –
Snarling, Fears launches a swarm of attach-and-suspend scripts.
Winter has always hated conflict. When Crow first casually suggested a friendly duel instead of their accustomed rooftop games, xe had been hesitant; but without any surrounding social metagame, no competitiveness outside the win or loss in itself, xe had been able to view it as a game.
(“Do you fight a lot…in your job?” xe asked once, and Crow laughed.
“As little as possible. And not often like this.”
“How, then?”
And he said, with an intent little smile, “Like a murderer.”)
Winter is good at many games.
Xe kills the scripts almost before they finish launching, long before they can attempt to attach to xer processes. It is, xe realises with a distant surprise, easy; xe gives Fears another shove, sending her reeling into the long dining table, scrabbling for balance.
“As if,” the other AI shrieks, “you have ever had any competent friendship!”
And that, too, is an opening. “Never once before Jin Haguen,” Winter retorts bitterly, in front of the audience who understand exactly, as Fears does, who xe is and who xe lays the charge of friendlessness against.
Fears launches, with a wailing, venomous sweep of her arm, a dreadful attack program of her own design. Winter has seen it used before; a boiling swarm hurtles from Fears’ sleeves, from every fold and billow of her robe. Jewelled things, not quite wasp, not quite radula; a vicious wave of physical destruction, scouring away the target animature. It is terrifying.
Xe doubts that Fears even notices; midway through the extravagantly temper-telegraphed launch, with no more than a click of fingers, hand not even raised from xer side, Winter ends things.
Fears screams.
The swarm whip immediately into their signature columnar vortex – not crossing the room, not targeting Winter; straight from Fears’ robe into her orbit to attacking her own form. Her guests scatter back in alarm as she flails along the edge of the table.
“Winter!” one exclaims. “Winter, you don’t need to continue that – “
Xe dimly recalls him. “Five-oh-nine Wavecrest Gilded,” xe says coldly, unsnapping the glove at one of xer wrists. “That’s no more than an output redirection.” Not much seen as a duelling tactic, for much the same reason that pointing out of the window and shouting “Look!” is not – one generally doesn’t duel easily-outwitted children. “It will stop trying to eat her the moment she stops insisting on using it.”
Fears’ howling changes pitch. Winter doesn’t think that’s because she heard; rather that the wasps have sufficiently eaten through shielding hands to start on Fears’ eyes.
Winter throws the glove to the floor.
“I yield my demand for satisfaction,” xe announces formally, already turning away before xe manages to peel off the second glove and send it flying with a snap of xer wrist. “I was mistaken; I see there’s nobody here fit to challenge.”
The door slams behind Winter before anyone makes either any other attempt to stop xer; or the wholly trivial effort to prevent the swarm from devouring its owner.
Xe sits on a doorstep in the market, face in hands, shaking now for entirely different reasons, until the sky hue-shifts from night to daytime colours. Dawn; and another day.
Today, xe is plucked from the queue of waiting supplicants and placed in a different one. Several times, in fact, as though standing within the Cartel’s ranks is being violently shuffled in realtime, political houses of cards frantically constructed and toppled, and the possibility of speaking to Contemplating Winter is either, or both, an advantage or liability; to be seized from others, or foisted upon them. When finally xe rests in line long enough to answer to a clerk xer business, xe says, “You’re going to reinstate my colleague’s developer certification.”
Today is not a day for asking.
Finally someone, again, approaches; human, neatly dressed, long hair pulled to one side in a cord-bound sheaf. “This way, please, Contemplating Winter,” they say briskly, and Winter thinks nothing of following until they turn a corner and they open a door.
The door does not, until they go to open it, exist. They reach casually for a blank wall, and the surface obligingly extrudes a doorframe, re-renders itself within its new enclosure from stone to wood – plain, pale, varnished; with hinges and handle. It happens smoothly and with sufficient speed that the reaching hand falls naturally to open it.
This is not characteristic of the Tools Cartel. Sudden new and arbitrary doors – and Winter is sure it does not merely lead to the other side of the wall – is subterfuge and spycraft. Xe regrets, suddenly, learning anything at all about duelling from Crow; what else can this be but having attracted the attention of someone powerful, having been suspicious by stirring the Guildhall’s social bloodbath?
Above even the Cartel, these tessellations fall under the power of a co-process, the Five-in-One; sectarian warlords of the Second Quantified who unified, and stabilised this region of The City under their political control. Similar consolidations took hold across The City’s entirety, leading to the stable détente of the Modern Era. Winter has never aspired to come to their attention, to anyone’s, simply to quietly look at xer data and optimise what it is xe sees.
Xe thinks, for just a moment, of fleeing. But where to, and how, and the precise futility of the attempt are other thoughts hot on its heels.
They go through the door, and Winter follows them, into a plain white room; a perfect cube with a single chair, against the wall to their left. Another door is opposite them as they enter; their point of entry seamlessly rescinds itself once closed, leaving only one.
“Please wait here,” they say, and go through the remaining door; and so xe sits once again, and after a few seconds puts xer face in xer hands again, too.
The wait is not long enough for xer to regain composure. They open the door; and, looking up, Winter is certain that when they left, xe had glimpsed a flash of corridor, equally as white and plain as they room xe sits in; but now, beyond the door, there is a warm-coloured, furnished room.
There is a desk and there are bookcases; much of the walls are draped with bright cloth, leaving a door-sized space on each of the room’s four sides, one of which holds the door Winter is stepping through. Xe suspects that if one were to find the room, wherever it is physically located, one would find it with no doors at all by which to enter. There is a window.
The human person rounds the desk, settles into the chair on the far side, and gestures xer to sit opposite. “My apologies for the wait, Contemplating Winter,” they say. “Sit.”
Winter says nothing, and sits.
“A few questions,” the person says. “Firstly: you visited the Guildhall of the Tools Cartel a number of days ago. In your own words, what was the purpose of that?”
“I optimise systems,” Winter says. “In order to know that they need optimising, my office receives warnings and errors from many software sources.” Xe pauses. “You haven’t introduced yourself at all,” xe notes, as neutrally as possible.
They smile. “I represent the security apparatus of the Five-in-One. My name is Rénaud; would you like to see some bona fides?”
Before today, Winter would probably have declined the offer, decorously complied. But today feels complicated and treacherous. “Yes,” xe says politely.
A wrist-flick; Rénaud halos, sends xer a cryptographic handshake. When xe accepts, xe is transferred identity metadata; its fingerprint validates, with a soberingly short chain of trust to the verifying authority of the Five-in-One themselves. By any means Winter has available to check, xe is seated in a room with a spymaster.
“Rénaud,” xe acknowledges quietly. “A particular software source surpassed one of its own internal metrics, whereby its warnings began to be delivered to me. Not personally, of course – anyone who has sufficient interest to arrange to receive such warnings.”
They steeple fingers, and nod gently to continue.
“The world is going to end is less than a year,” Winter concludes straightforwardly, since there seems no good reason not to.
Rénaud is silent for a few moments, expression blank.
“Is that what you told Nine-nine All Your Fears Live Within The Walls?” they ask.
“She already knew.” Winter looks down at xer hands, bitter. “She was only angry that the protocol had escalated its reporting; the Tools Cartel knew from at least the prior reporting escalation. Either they can’t address the problem, or are withholding the fix for non-technical reasons.” Xe clenches xer hands, unfolds them. “Your pardon; most of that is my extrapolation,” xe adds, reflexively conscientious.
They are, again, silent for a while. “You possess an unusual concision of summary,” they remark eventually.
“Yes.” Winter reluctantly raises xer eyes from xer hands. “I have markedly bad social interaction capabilities.”
Rénaud barks a laugh. “Second, then,” they say. “Why did you attack Nine-nine All Your Fears?”
“That was a duel – ” Winter’s sense of correctness cannot stand it to be said xe simply attacked. “She rescinded Jin Haguen’s permission to write code out of spite!“
“Jin Haguen?” the spymaster prompts.
“She works with me.” There is an ambiguous, unofficial sense that where humans work with AIs, they are generally working for them. Winter tries not to presume on it; Jin Haguen is invaluable, and why shouldn’t that make her Winter’s equal?
At the same time, it can never be ignored. Fears treats her workplace as a toybox of objectified dolls for her to play with as she sees fit; saw Winter as one. One cannot simply pretend one’s way out of a power differential, simply because one would rather not engage with it; and so xe must try, actively and at all times, not to presume on it.
Rénaud holds their palms together in front of them and taps their index fingers thoughtfully against their chest. “Spite is a motivation that fits with what I know of Nine-nine All Your Fears,” they observe.
Winter’s shoulders flex, but xe manages to say nothing to that. “I just want my colleague’s certification restored,” xe says instead, quietly.
“I believe you do, Contemplating Winter.” They bring their hands down to tap at the desk, instead. “And therein, I discover there is a problem. You see, there is no such person as Jin Haguen.”
This is so obviously absurd that Winter forgets to be careful and afraid. “Jin Haguen has worked by me in my office for years,” xe says. “She visited the Guildhall with me on the occasion you mentioned. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Somebody did those things,” Rénaud agrees.
Xe stares at them.
“Where does Jin Haguen live?” they add gently.
“She never told me.”
“Where is she from?”
This, xe is sure xe knows. “Somewhere around the root of the Market Canal.”
“Which district? Born what year?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was her job before your office?”
Haguen has mentioned other jobs, but…if she ever actually named one, it escapes Winter’s memory. Xe stares, stubbornly mute.
Rénaud shakes his head.
“But.” Winter needs to refute this. “My social interaction capabilities – Fears always said I was incapable; I simply didn’t ask the right things, I didn’t – “
“Nine-nine All Your Fears,” Rénaud says silkily, “had a vested interest in destroying your confidence, and thereby keeping control of and profiting by your pattern-matching skills. And it is not simply you who cannot answer these questions; I work in intelligence for the Five-in-One, and I can’t answer where Jin Haguen lives, although I can tell you somewhere she stayed until the very moment her credentials were rescinded. No, Contemplating Winter; there was never any such person.”
Winter stares. “But she’s my friend,” xe says finally, wretchedly, very quietly.
“For all I know, she is,” the spymaster tells xer gently. “But also, I think, in the pay of the Poinsettia Banner. Or that of Also Beneath The Rain. Perhaps even a free agent, selling information from your office to the highest bidder.”
“No,” Winter mutters.
“Your office first came to my attention when certain negotiations over water rights, with Also Beneath The Rain’s tessellations, came to the table founded on assumptions about our position that were too accurate,” Rénaud says pleasantly. “Crow maintained from the first that you simply weren’t capable – “
“Crow?”
“Neither Crows Nor Angels is very useful,” Rénaud says, smiling, “for discovering what people are willing to tell to dashing foreign agents.”
And just like that, Winter has never had any genuine friends at all.
“No,” xe says, politely, while everything goes numb and distant inside. “There’s that word again, you see: incapable.”
It doesn’t matter, xe decides. None of it matters; the world is going to end.
“Concerning your speculation on the Cartel’s inability to address core protocol failure,” Rénaud says. “My office has an interest in the matter, Contemplating Winter; and given that you are good with data, and already know things about it, I believe we could help each other. I’m afraid you’ll be sworn to secrecy either way, but I think it would be beneficial if you would assist with certain analysis.”
Xe does not say: I didn’t mention the term ‘core protocol’. Nor: You don’t seem to need me at all. Xe says, “Looking at data is what I do.”
Because nothing matters, least of all xerself.
It is very hard to go back to work; there is little joy or urgency to be found in identifying, over and over, that privileged excess and greed create unresolvable shortages elsewhere. Nonetheless, the powerful have evidently decided it is better for everyone to simply die unsuspecting than panic; and if xe can alleviate some hardship in the meantime, xe supposes that will have to do.
Xe misses Jin Haguen.
Crow comes to the terrace for their morning games, still, and Winter dutifully obliges him; although on the one occasion he suggested duelling, xe couldn’t, sickly recalling Fears’ screams.
“She’s slunk back to work, you know,” Crow tells xer. “Rather more junior, of course. Changed her animature for this great showoff peacock thing.” He mimes an elevated train of feathers. “Before her guests had even left that night, some wag had nicknamed her One Fear Lives Within These Walls, you left such an impression.”
Winter had just wanted xer friend back; but that is impossible, so xe says nothing.
“It made me laugh,” Crow says.
Winter shuffles xer River deck by hand, for something to do with xer hands. “I only left her because she told me to,” xe says, in a practised, matter-of-fact way. “There was a dinner party, and she wanted to impress, because she wanted to sway a promotion in her favour. But she was nervous, so she wasn’t as clever, as funny about being cruel to me as she should have been. So she made a bad impression, and she was not promoted, and we fought.”
“That’s why it made me laugh,” Crow says.
“We’d never fought before,” Winter continues, ignoring him. “Never, because – I hate conflict. I would take any amount of cruelty, any blame, not to fight. But she told me to leave, so I did.”
“She looked for you afterwards,” Crow says. “They don’t mean it, that kind.”
The deck is shuffled, by now, but Winter continues doggedly.
“It’s good you left, though.”
“If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t be under daily watch by the intelligence agents of the Five-in-One,” Winter observes, still painstakingly even-toned, and Crow drums his hands on his thighs.
“You do know that I enjoy gaming with you?” he says, conciliatory, and xe halos the cards, inventorises them.
“I know Fears didn’t really mean for me to leave, and looked for me, because alongside everything else she really did love me,” xe says calmly. “I think that’s all I have time for before work today, I’m afraid, Crows Nor Angels.”
Rénaud’s office have provided a contextless block of data, which is not immediately recognisable as being in any useful format at all. Xe sends back a terse note that xe is neither a reverse engineer nor forensic investigator, but does what xe can. Simple entropy analysis suggests compression; xe applies format recognisers stretching back to the Anecdotal, and then, as a last resort before simply giving up, running it as a headerless data stream through various decompression algorithms, instead of through any program as a full-formed file.
On the second-to-last algorithmic option, it yields readable data.
Winter nearly sends an angry message about wasting xer time – any competent reverse engineer surely reached the same result long before xe did, and it would surprise xer a great deal if xe saw this before some other, competent person did; but this is, xe supposes, some kind of test.
The format is long obsolete, and corrupted too; but from what is recoverable, Winter thinks xe is looking at a collaborative collection of editable notes, arranged on a timeline.
If the timestamps can be trusted, this is data from the Anecdotal Era, which – as the name suggests – is so scarcely evidenced that everything about it is known from propaganda and counter-propaganda from the First Quantified. There’s no doubt that the Anecdotal Era is a dark age on purpose, that its records were purged, that at least one of the power blocs at the dawn of the First Quantified Era were responsible, and that their claims were lies to disguise their role.
If this is data from the Anecdotal, it should be a known part of the historical record, studied and annotated and contextualised and speculated over, concordanced and reinterpreted and argued about to exhaustion.
Xe queries for a quick random sampling, anonymises it, runs careful public queries; nothing.
Well, then; this is what xe is good for.
Winter dives into it. Some of the names of political stances xe recognises, from First Quantified accounts; but the specific causes and concerns are mostly illegible, so far removed from context. What comes through clearly are, as always, anger and fear, an uncertain and unfair world.
There are several things xe learns that give xer pause. A recursive search within corrupted blocks for spans either recoverable in their own right, or reconstructable from error correction codes or checksums and brute force, however, gives xer the greatest shock: finally contextualising the entire dump with a partially recoverable header image, emblazoned with text.
Core Protocol Working Group Mailing List
After that, the reading is more urgent, and xe tries harder to cross-reference the political terms, to try to understand better what xe is bearing witness to. There are repeated references to Kurchatova and Injection which seem technical, and which are opaque to xer; the Protocol, now, is urgently relevant.
Everyone understands, in general terms, that The City originated from apocalypse. That humans lived in a ruined and failing world, until the discovery of reality’s programmability allowed the creation of separate, self-contained realms as escapes; that The City’s society was destabilised when another such de novo reality catastrophically disintegrated, its population absorbed as refugees.
It is understood, of course, in general terms, that humans preceded AIs; but it is still a strange experience to read some long-dead human casually say when we invented them.
If xe understands correctly, the second refugee population were unfamiliar with AIs, and disputed their equality, which The City held politically axiomatic; tensions escalated for generations. Several of the eldest human residents of The City, founders and designers, attempted to secure its long-term stability by entering time-suspension sarcophagi, automatically roused to attend for the duration of various Working Group meetings, in an attempt to keep their original motivations both available and enacted beyond what would normally be a human lifespan.
The crisis point, Winter thinks, came when a group of AI radicals discovered a legal loophole. They could cheaply spawn large numbers of copies of themselves, by giving them the low degree of privilege and system accesses available to human infants and registering them as not just child processes, but children – then immediately having them sit a citizenship test to qualify as adult voters, allowing them to ballot-stuff key civic votes.
It is not long after that date that all posts to the mailing list cut off. Xe suspects that, corrupted data notwithstanding, something drastic happened; and it is simply the case that nobody was left to post.
The data has provided some relief from Winter’s immediate circumstances, but this brings xer back to face the fact that the world is ending. Xe discovers that xe has been in the office, picking through the archive, for almost three days; and once again, fiercely, xe misses Haguen.
Xe walks through the market and sits by the canal, searching for a clear head. On the far bank, an old structure is being pulled apart, right down to bare ground, and rebuilt; its materials carefully refigured into a design that packs more people into the same volume, using as few new resources as possible. Hard physical work, mostly done by humans, the day-to-day hire of the work gangs.
And suddenly, Winter knows exactly where Jin Haguen learned optimisation, and where the power in her shoulders was built. Somewhere invisibility is easy to come by, both to come from, and disappear to.
It makes it easier to return to the office, more as if xe is once again mastering the world’s circumstances with knowledge. As if that is something xe can achieve. And perhaps the outing cleared xer head after all; because there are questions to be asked, and foremost of them is what is the point of unravelling this ancient history? There is less than a year left of the world.
But of course, this is the history of the core protocol; this, then, is an attempt to circumvent the end of the world. The protocol is clearly amendable – version 4, extension level 37 – and the ability to do so rested with people, with ordinary human and AI programmers, in that far-off time.
The deadline is close, but it must be possible.
The only one Winter has seen react to the problem as if it is a problem, a terrible looming death, is Jin Haguen. Perhaps she has betrayed Winter’s earnest friendship; perhaps she cannot be trusted. The other available prospects are, in Winter’s estimation, worse.
Xe paces the office, as much as anyone could; but xe knows, really, that xe is putting off the inevitable. Xe is going to have to evade the watch that Rénaud has on xer, and seek out the person xe knew as Jin Haguen.
Having put it in terms so plain, finally, settles it in within xer.
Firstly, xe will have to be disguised. Xe wedges the door with one of the chairs and sets to work on xer animature.
Aesthetic design is far from Winter’s speciality, and xe has been perfectly comfortable with this single form, even since the days xe sat at Fears’ feet. There is a limit to what xe can accomplish without assistance, and furthermore, xe risks dysphoria with too radical a departure.
Xer accustomed fog, however, is too distinctive, too personal to risk. Xe reluctantly draws its mass together, condenses it. Full solidity of figure, xe cannot stomach; xe spins it instead into threads, supercoils them into dangling ropes of different thickness, ends neatly whipped. In the right light, perhaps, it can be passed off as a tumble of floor-length hair; and unlike xer fog, it will be possible to pull a hooded robe over it.
Xe adjusts xer tint, a richer blue, scatters soft points of light across xerself like freckles, an ever-fashionable affectation xe has never bother with. Draws a gradient to velvety purple across some of the planes and curves of xerself. Changes the cant of some of xer joints, to obscure xer walk and posture.
There isn’t time to properly accustom xerself to the changes, but it cannot be helped.
The Eschertarium is a monument to a City with the luxury to build things with no purpose but to marvel at. There were other such things, once, but its paradoxical geometries make it particularly resistant to being swept away, and so it stands, crammed full of paperwork, a folly and anachronism.
Winter has worked here for many years; Winter is good at games. Xe gradually deduced what xe thinks few others know or remember, perhaps none; that the entire structure of the Eschertarium is not just a outrage or delight for the senses, but a multilayer puzzle, a mystery box to be progressively solved. One is rewarded for roaming the building correctly, for treating with it on its own terms, by additional impossibilities, new geometries and spectacles and routes for their traversal.
From the perspective of a spy who has xer office under watch, perhaps, the way to describe it would be: the entire building is made of secret passages.
Climbing onto the work counter, Winter raises a foot, plants it on the frame of a pigeonhole, and very carefully shifts xer weight. It takes a few wavers back and forth at a particular angle, but xe finds the particular movement necessary; subjective gravity smoothly rotates with xer, turning the wall into the floor in front of xer. A second turn sees xer walking on formerly-the-ceiling; somewhere midway through the transforms, xe thinks, a higher-dimensional rotation of some kind takes place. The space xe occupies must once have been identical (except for its inversion) to the gallery in which xer office has been built; save, of course, that it had offices built inside it, and this one never did.
There is a discreet custodians’ door, in a corner of the formerly-the-ceiling; xe slips though it, winds through back staircases. A long-forgotten lost property cupboard, perhaps from days before the Eschertarium’s adoption as a records office, yields a second door, which faces the public corridors of the building. Xe hesitates over it, then decides that as long lost as it is, there’s no harm in taking a knee-length taupe robe, belting it loosely.
And then xe simply walks out of the building, as casually as possible, and into the market. If xer subterfuge has failed, xe is doomed already. Obviously xe cannot go home; but there is nothing there for xer to care about.
Xe spends the remainder of the day looking as much like an unconcerned person with time on their hands as xe knows how. Xe sips tea; buys a new hat. The work gangs will knock off in the evening; the workers are paid by returning to the hiring yards where they gather, hoping to be picked, in the mornings.
Jin Haguen, whoever she is, can disappear; but Winter reasons that doing so makes it even more urgent that she do this anonymous labour, for food to eat and shelter from night to night. And so Winter must quietly look over the hiring yards, as they return, and attempt to pick her out.
She is human; any attempt at disguise must be even more penetrable than Winter’s own.
Naturally, nothing in Contemplating Winter’s years of optimisation have prepared xer for skulking around human-crewed labour yards, trying to find someone. Nor is there any such convenience as a single labour yard, nor even particularly geographically concentrated ones. After a despairing circuit of two, conscious that every moment xe spends is a moment that labourers are being paid and trickling away untraceably in all directions, Winter stumbles tiredly into an alleyway to rest xer face in xer hands for a minute.
If xe needs to, xe can attempt to surveil the morning hiring, and tomorrow’s return to the yards. But Jin Haguen, if she is clever, will use a different yard as often as possible; and Winter does not doubt her cleverness for a moment. The longer it takes, the more likely it is that Rénaud’s staff will catch up to xer.
Even if one hasn’t done anything, Winter is sure, running away from an intelligence agency makes one extremely guilty in all ways that matter.
It takes xer completely by surprise when a firm hand takes xer shoulder and shoves xer roughly into the shadows, pressed against a wall. Something like a knife is near xer chest; the edge of it crackles in a way that’s more tangible in software than in space. Xe does not know what an AI-killing weapon looks like; but xe is sure xe is looking at one.
“That’s you,” the woman xe knows as Jin Haguen says in a low, intense voice. “I know that’s you, Contemplating Winter, I’d know you if you came wearing a body like a cat’s. You shouldn’t be here.”
The knife, Winter thinks, is astonishingly horrible. Like a bird or a fish to a human, it is something fundamentally akin to an AI, if with fewer metacognitive processes. It has a singular drive within it, xe can feel it; as hunger drives to eating, and pain drives to respite, the knife has a drive for which there are no good words in human or AI experience, and its satiation lies in murder. Xe cannot quite take xer eyes away from it.
Xe intends to say something, xe is sure; had things prepared to say. Instead xe whines in xer throat, the uncontrolled protest-sound of an animal certain it is about to die.
Jin Haguen takes the knife away, and puts it away somewhere; presumably in a sheath made for it, as its hungers and crackle disappear from Winter’s senses. Xe puts a hand to xer chest, as if to check it is unbroken.
Xer long whine begins to break up into short, separate whimpers.
“Contemplating Winter.” Haguen puts both her hands in clear view – empty – and speaks softly. “I won’t hurt you. You see? I’m not going to hurt you.”
Winter cannot raise xer head, nor look at her.
A cool hand cradles xer chin.
“Eight-raised,” Haguen says, very quietly. “I promise.”
Winter manages to choke xer noises into silence, but it’s as much as xe can do.
“It’s not safe here, Eight-raised. Will you – I’m sorry. Will you come with me?”
None of it matters, Winter reminds xerself, especially not Winter. The world is ending. Xe nods jerkily.
The spy takes xer elbow, with achingly familiar solicitousness, and guides xer away. The route they take is long and twisting – designed to discover or confuse pursuit, Winter thinks numbly; spycraft – and ends at a work site, where an old building is midway through being torn down. Jin Haguen lifts the length of rope blocking access to a side entrance; they tread a dust-filled corridor, and descend into the basement of the half-dismantled structure.
It will take long enough to finish the work, Winter supposes, that Haguen will have time to flit to another before being discovered.
“Here, Eight-raised,” Haguen murmurs, haloing and activating a portable lantern. “Sit.”
A storage space, once, xe thinks. Empty now save for some crates, pushed together to form a makeshift bed-table-cupboard; and a single battered chair, probably abandoned in the building when its former residents were cleared.
Xe sinks obediently into the chair.
Haguen lightly touches xer shoulder, and walks back to the basement stairs, listening for long minutes before appearing satisfied. She perches herself on the edge of the crates, and begins wearily removing her boots.
“Please tell me, Eight-raised Winter,” she says quietly. “What in the world made you think it was a good idea to come looking for me?”
“You saw the data,” Winter says. “You know the world is ending.”
“Yes.”
“Even if any of them know how, I don’t trust any of them to fix it.” Xe covers xer eyes. “You are the only one, Jin Haguen – if that’s what I should call you....”
“I have gone by names,” Haguen says. “As you must know, by now. It’s as good as any, save for – ” she hesitates a moment. “I liked being Jin Haguen better than most.”
“Espionagier Jin,” Winter says politely, and palms xer plexus in a bare sketch of formality. Everything feels numb and jumbled and far too much.
“Ah,” Haguen says wryly. “A title for me. That is very proper of you, very kind. I suppose I shouldn’t ask, then, if I might now be allowed to call you simply Winter.”
Xe looks at her. “You always could have,” xe says in a small, tired voice. “You are the only one so far, Jin Haguen, who even seemed to care that the world is going to end. And I need your help; you make plans when I only have ideas.“
“I truly don’t think we’ll be returning to work together, Eight-raised,” Haguen says ruefully, and as true as it is, it’s enough to make Winter snap at her.
“Do you care that the world is ending, Jin Haguen? Are you shocked, are you dismayed, are you afraid?”
Haguen looks at xer, startled but serious. “All of those,” she says softly.
“That is why I trust you more than any of them. How can they truly be working to fix it, if they don’t care? Listen to me, Jin Haguen: that’s why I need you. Because you can make things happen.”
The woman stares, and the silence stretches. Finally, Haguen breathes, “What are you saying?”
Winter runs fingers across xer brow, head aching. “I have an idea,” xe says.
The immediate dawning of hope on Haguen’s face speaks of a faith in xer abilities that Winter bitterly wishes xe shared. “Tell me,” Haguen says.
It is very simple. There were people, once, who worked on the core protocol; and some of them slumbered timelessly between Working Group meetings; and one reason they did so was the fear that their work would fall into ruin through political unrest. When no more meetings were called for, surely they simply continued to sleep? And if they feared unrest, surely they guarded their suspended forms, hid themselves away where they could not be assassinated?
“All we need is to find one of them,” Winter says, excruciatingly aware that xer all contains multitudes.
Haguen has been biting her lip through most of the explanation. “This is…not very much,” she says slowly. “There’s nothing else?”
Xe knows what a slender thread xe has hung hope upon, but to hear Haguen’s doubt is unbearable. Xe stands, unsteadily. “I’m sorry,” xe says wretchedly, and take a stumbling step toward the stairs. “It’s nothing, and I endangered you for it.”
Xe is not expecting the quick steps behind xer, or to be caught in strong arms. Haguen is trembling, xe realises with a shock of dismay, cheek pressed against the back of xer shoulder. “Winter,” she says, “don’t go.”
Winter stands mute.
“We will do our very best with it,” Haguen says thickly, against xer. “Don’t go.”
“There’s nowhere to go, anyway,” Winter mutters. “I don’t even know that I escaped notice leaving the office. You recognised me; no doubt Crow would laugh at my disguise.”
Haguen’s voice is low. “I would recognise you anywhere. It’s a good disguise, Eight-raised; I can tell you thought about it very carefully. And they absolutely won’t have expected you to try.”
Absurdly, this is the final straw that makes Winter’s shoulders shake with a suppressed sob.
“Come and sit,” Haguen says, and xe stumbles back to the makeshift furniture and perches next to her on the edge of the crates, arms wrapped around xer unfamiliar self, rocking.
“I’m sorry,” Winter says finally.
“No need.”
“You should be eating and sleeping.”
“Well.” Haguen tips her head. “Yes, I should, but there’s still no need, Eight-raised.” She rummages in her meagre possessions, unwraps bread and a bar of pressed fruit; a small pot to steep tea, and a single cup. She pours water from a flask; halos the teapot and sets it to warm itself.
Etiquette discourages simply spectating while a human dines. Without even a placeholder teacup, preferred solution of food-disinterested AIs, Winter opts to loop one of xer new rope strands around xer, and politely occupy xer hands and attention with the unfamiliar haptics of simple knots.
Haguen unwraps a paper twist of tea, sprinkles it into the pot, and eats while it steeps. Winter does and undoes rope lemniscates and stopper knots, reef knots, bowlines; when Haguen pours the tea, the pot automatically retaining the leaves, she takes a sip and then holds the cup out.
“I – I don’t,” Winter stumbles in confusion.
Haguen smiles. “We can share.”
Xe tries xer utmost not to let xer hands shake as xe takes the tea and sips, passes it back; their hands brushing as they take turns with it.
Finally, the tea finished, Haguen tidies her things, rinses the cup and pot with a splash more of water, and arranges them to drain and dry. She shakes out a faded blanket.
“I hope you’ll excuse me, Contemplating Winter,” she says, almost shyly. “Being only human, I do need to sleep.”
Winter stands, bows a little to her, and relocates xerself to the chair. “If this is acceptable?” xe says warily.
“Of course.” Haguen settles herself on top of the crates, loosens the drawstring on her labourer’s trousers, and in an economical movement, both reclines and loosely rolls herself in the blanket. She extends a hand to halo the lantern, hesitates. “Thank you,” she says, quietly.
“Why?”
“You stayed.”
“I need your help,” Winter says.
“Winter.” Jin Haguen raises her head to look at xer. “You are a notorious genius; you don’t need me.”
Winter would argue both genius and notorious. “I am very good at a very few things,” xe says softly, and almost, almost manages to bring xerself to leave it at that, as Jin Haguen rests her head on her arm and extinguishes the light. However: “I missed you,” xe adds, even softer, because the words simply will not remain inside.
Haguen smiles sleepily in the dark, and mercifully does not comment.
Winter half-closes xer eyes and contemplates the data internally, until xe realises the night is growing uncomfortably cold for an unsheltered human. Xe quietly moves the chair beside the crates, shrugs the robe from xer shoulders; illicitly skims the code bound into the teapot, and adapts it to push heat from xer own animature, radiating warmth over Jin Haguen’s sleeping form. Xe hesitates over what to do with the robe, uncertain about leaving it on the floor where dust and damp might mark it; folds it, and gently lifts Haguen’s head to slide it beneath to pillow her.
Jin Haguen, xe reminds xerself, is a spy who used her position in Winter’s office to sell secrets to competing process hierarchies. Winter is here because xer feelings don’t matter; piecing together the data so that they can find someone actually interested in preventing the end of the world is what matters.
Xe goes out before dawn and buys fresh bread and tea for her anyway.
While shopping, Winter also buys a bundle of styli scripted to leave chalk trails on surfaces, for pavement artists. Picking the two of them out of The City by their queries and public computations alone would not be a quick or easy task; but if xe is unwilling to concede more, xe will at least admit that xer work patterns are distinctive. The more xe can do xerself, displayed only by hand, the longer xe hopes they will be able to work undisturbed.
Xe does not notice when Haguen wakes, standing in front of a wall half-covered in chalk annotations, eyes closed, stylus poised, patiently reviewing xer internal copy of the Protocol Working Group Mailing List.
On the wall, xe has a list of participants who might, potentially, be ones who entered suspension. The high-water mark of the list, so far, has been eight people; it is currently whittled back down to two (deceased; deceased; considered but never entered suspension; these are aliases of the same person – deceased; deceased…).
Haguen wraps Winter’s robe around xer shoulders. “Auspicious day, administrator,” she murmurs, close by xer ear.
“Not administrator any more, I think,” Winter replies, tone faraway as xe skims tens of thousands of ancient, irrelevant messages. “But an auspicious day to you, Jin Haguen.”
“I’m going to be no help at all if you’re doing it all in your head.” Haguen has moved no further away, fingertips on Winter’s shoulders. “Are those the names of the people we’re looking for?”
“Perhaps,” Winter says. Too early in the work to feel dispirited that results are slow and sparse, but –
“Winter,” Haguen says.
“Yes?”
“We don’t care about their names. I understand you’re confirming that they existed, but all we really need is where they are.“
“I know.” And now xe even sounds dispirited. “I’m trying to isolate their identities so I can filter the data for references to them, and search that corpus for references that might physically locate them. I can’t – ” xe rubs xer face. “This is not as efficient as I would like, done internally. I’m sorry.” If only Winter had done more of the work before coming to find her.
“No need, Eight-raised. What we need,” Haguen says thoughtfully, “is processing power.” She pauses, then inhales resolutely. “I’ll find us some. Untraceable computing. I need you to trust me and not ask how.”
Winter turns to look at her. “That sounds illegal,” xe observes.
“I’m a spy and a traitor and a criminal anyway,” Haguen says, and shrugs, mouth wry. “Eight-raised, when they catch us, you can at least say you did it all to stop the world ending. Please don’t make that worse for yourself.”
Xe reaches out involuntarily, the lightest touch on her arm.
“Winter, I mean it.” Jin Haguen firms her mouth in xer direction.
“I didn’t mean to make things worse for you.”
“Don’t. This is a way to help. Let me help.”
“Haguen – “
Haguen takes Winter’s hand between both of her own. “Please,” she says. “Winter.”
Really, what choice does xe have? “Be careful,” xe says shakily.
“I will,” Haguen tells xer, easily but seriously, and clasps Winter’s hand to her chest for a second before she strides for the door.
Winter wants to call her back, to say that xe will simply work harder – that whatever risk Haguen is about to run, she need not. Xe says nothing. Xe tries to work instead, toils through the millions of files.
The definite prospects remain two: one referred to as Petrichor, the other variously as Ral, Rala, and 48879<<16. Other potential names come and go; none solidify into distinct, identifiable people who definitely existed and are directly claimed to have started timelessly sleeping away the gaps between Working Group meetings.
Winter abandons xer chalk writing and retreats to Haguen’s crates, holding a double fistful of blanket to xer chest and rocking as xe processes. Haguen has been gone for many hours, by now; and as much as Winter tries to concentrate, xe cannot help a rising fear that something dreadful has happened to her.
Footsteps in the stairwell, eventually, freeze xer in place. Xe clutches the blanket tighter.
Haguen enter the basement, looking exhausted, her expression tight around the eyes. She is pushing a box.
It is square in footprint, but taller; it rivals a large person’s torso in size. It hangs in the air serenely, shiftable in any direction but with clearly substantial inertia; a marbled grey-and-amber block.
Winter hastily relinquishes the blanket and hurries to her. “Do you need assistance?” Xe lifts a hand to it, intending to help, and shocks to the tangible power contained within.
It is a dedicated compute server. Winter has never seen one; couldn’t name anyone who has. They are the stuff of popular fiction, generic scientist characters needing more number crunching than publicly available! – the only genuine uses xe knows of for them is for secrecy, offline power to more than match the average person’s use of The City’s utility computing, but without the possibility of public auditing.
Precisely why almost nobody has access to them.
Winter does not know what xe had thought, if anything; not this. This is of unimaginable magnitude.
“Oh, Jin Haguen,” xe says, voice fluttery with nerves. “What has this cost you? What have you done?”
“The world is ending, Contemplating Winter,” Haguen says, and pretends a smile. “Either it cannot matter, or it will be worth it.”
They settle into a fever-dream routine, shoulder to shoulder on the crates or pacing the basement, the server floating in a corner and the results of their work washing over cheap bamboo displays, crudely shaped letters in dull brown-black paint, Haguen slipping out from time to time to find the things they need. Winter stops asking how.
They slice the data every way they can think of, cross-reference and compare to public historical data concerning the period, seize on contextual clues and laterally puzzle out connections between the people in the Working Group, throwaway references to their meetings and doings that imply or rule out various proximities.
There simply isn’t enough to go on.
“This is for nothing,” Winter despairs, huddled into the chair, knees drawn up and wrapped tightly in xer arms. “I’m so sorry.”
There are bruise-dark crescents beneath Haguen’s eyes. She tosses aside her display surface and walks across the room. “Winter,” she snaps, and takes a long breath before reaching out and framing xer face with her hands. “Stop saying you’re sorry.”
“I’m – ” and Winter catches xerself, and points xer gaze down away from Haguen’s eyes.
“We cannot make this data be anything it isn’t,” Haguen tells xer softly. “Not even you.” She brushes her thumb across Winter’s cheek. “If the answer isn’t here, we’ll look for it somewhere else.”
“This is all we have,” Winter says.
“Winter. Eight-raised.” Haguen pinches the bridge of her own nose for a second, then buries the fingers of both hands gently in the mass of ropes cascading from Winter’s head, as if it is hair. Winter is transfixed below her. “I understand that you’re frightened, and I understand what the stakes are. I’m afraid, too.”
Winter tips xer head back, eyes fluttering as xe tries to gain the nerve to meet Haguen’s gaze.
“If the world dies, I will die fighting for it,” says Jin Haguen. “With you.”
There is really nothing to say. Instead, Winter uncurls slowly, puts xer feet on the floor, wraps xer arms around Haguen’s waist, and leans into her.
If only, xer mind nags, if only there were some way to narrow down the scope of their searches to within particular tessellations –
“Oh, reserved word,” xe says furiously, startling Haguen, who tries to release xer. “I am a fool and I shame our office. Haguen, The City was never built for so many people.”
“No,” Haguen says. “What – “
“The City was built for a number of people so small in relation to its size that it is hard to comprehend.” Winter tightens xer arms around Haguen’s waist. “They had so much space they could lavish it on curiosities such as the Eschertarium, Jin Haguen, and we know that the style and extent of building and ornament is peculiar to each tessellation – “
Haguen tentatively puts her hands back atop Winter’s head.
“The oldest Working Group members were nearly synonymous with The City’s original population.” Winter grinds the words out through anger at xerself, for wasted time. “Haguen, The City was an experiment, a playground for them – they had an entire tessellation each to organise as if they were arranging the furniture in their own house....”
It is deranged. A degree of expansiveness which goes so far beyond luxury that it becomes incomprehensible; fewer people lived in The City, at the beginning, than are now crammed alongside one another within some buildings.
The question of where can be initially filtered by matching those ancient people to the entire tessellations they controlled, a much more granular and tractable problem than sieving a street address from the entire world; a problem which xe is already ripping through at speed, fuelled by self-disgust.
“Fourteen,” xe says into Haguen’s tunic. “There are fourteen tessellations of The City likely to contain – if they still live, suspended – either the person called Petrichor or the one called Rala.” And xe has wasted so much time finding the right approach to the data they have – “One under the aegis of the Poinsettia Banner; another six controlled by Also Beneath The Rain. One is the Independent State of Zembla, one is contested between two neighbouring process hierarchies, each otherwise controlling only a single tessellation. The remaining five within the territories of the Five-in-One.”
Now all they would need is, say, half a dozen analysts of their own calibre, as intimately familiar with their own geography and data within the various regions as Winter and Haguen are with the local tessellations, and there might be some hope.
“You are very good at what you do, Winter,” Haguen says, gentle and sincere, warmth curling through her voice and somehow seeping into Winter xerself.
“Tell me that if we find them,” xe says, but can feel xer self-recrimination blunting under her regard.
“I’m telling you now, Eight-raised.”
Winter reaches up, gently captures the hands twining in the cords at xer nape. Brings them in front of xer, gently clasped in xer own; rests one downturned cheek atop them. Xe closes xer eyes a moment; imagines the luxury of time, of freedom.
“You need to sleep, Jin Haguen,” xe says softly. “I do not think there is much else to be had from this data; you need to rest now, so that we can bring our full powers to bear on the next step.”
“And are you going to stand watch over me, and keep the cold from me?”
Winter had not realised she knew.
“If you’d like,” xe says quietly.
“Please, Eight-raised,” Haguen confirms, glitteringly sweet.
She settles herself, blanket-wrapped and smiling. Winter douses the lantern, fetches the chair over; hesitates.
Slowly, agonisingly alert to any sign of refusal, xe perches instead on the edge of the crates, at Haguen’s back. Swings xer legs up behind hers; haltingly reclines.
Xe puts xer hand out, tentatively; gets only halfway through slowly extending it when Haguen puts her own out of the blanket, seizes it, and wraps herself firmly within Winter’s arm.
“There,” she says, soft and serene, but Winter can feel the heartbeat racing within her.
“Sleep,” Winter murmurs, and radiates a comforting heat from xer animature.
Haguen makes a languid noise and presses back into Winter’s length. “You are the warmest Winter,” she says, and yawns despite herself.
“An outlier,” Winter agrees. “Sleep.”
She sleeps. And Winter, intending to work, is instead distracted by every detail of her.
Hours pass, and in an attempt to clear xer head, Winter skims the surrounding area for most recent data operations, contemplates the patterns in fresh data. An uncomplicated, low-pressure exercise.
An odd thing jumps out immediately. Someone is polling publicly accessible sources of water; but filtering to examine only those which take small volumes at a time. A human-portable quantity, Winter thinks; and sits up abruptly.
“Haguen,” xe says, soft but urgent. “Haguen, I’m sorry, wake up.”
Someone looking at public sources of water is looking at people who are not using from a home of their own; and human-portable quantities mean humans. A regular need, which can be used to narrow down where to look for someone.
“Winter?” Haguen is rousing, confused.
“I think we need to leave,” Winter says. “Now. As far as possible.”
For all that xe has heard Haguen even call herself a spy, the urgent calm that immediately falls over her is a freshly bracing reminder. “How close are they?”
“I don’t know.” Xe shakes xer head. “I could look again at the data, but if they’re already closing in – “
“I am only thinking,” Haguen says, already efficiently packing what few things she has into a single sturdy knapsack, “that the server is a considerable loss to us, if we have to leave it.”
“I don’t know,” Winter repeats. “I don’t even know how to tell, really, Jin Haguen. Can we try taking it, and run without it if need be?”
Haguen flashes a brilliant smile. “That is a plan. You see, Eight-raised? You’re quick when you need to be.”
Winter decides the best reply is to duck away and haul the server from its corner, into a drift toward the doorway. “Where have you been filling your flask?” xe asks.
“Is that what they’re tracking? Different places.”
She was not just prepared to go at a moment’s notice; she had been thinking ahead to this, diffusing risk. She too, Winter thinks, is good at what she does.
The streets are quiet. Winter handles the server; Haguen pads alongside. Even though Winter knows that any tightening triangulation on them will likely be invisible until too late, it is hard not to doubt; that xe is jumping at wholly imagined scares. Or, at least, until the gap between two buildings gives a glimpse, streets away, of a fountain in a public square.
Over it stands an animature. Almost twice as tall as any human, all made of pieces, all pale and thin and curved like the bleached bones of something huge and strange. It stands straight-backed, upper limbs and head hunched into an angular tangle, watching over the water source.
It is not quite an AI. It is a soldier-mind; identical copies of a particular set of AI seed parameters, subjected to standardised training stimuli and frozen from further independent development. The raw capacity of an AI mind, shaped purely into an instrument of war.
Winter has never heard of them being deployed here. Nor in earnest, in fact, since the last outbreak of open conflict – and then on the borders of the Great Powers’ territories, their geographical interfaces. They are a tool with one use only, and that is death.
“Winter,” Haguen murmurs, and brushes xer back with a gentle hand. “If they knew where to find us, those would long have done the work. Stay calm for me.”
“Yes,” Winter says, hearing the way xer own voice trembles.
They take a winding route; to avoid fountains, pumps and pools, xe thinks, in a direction Winter is not personally familiar with; into districts of storage and manufacture instead of residence, where Haguen seems to relax a little.
“Eight-raised,” she says finally. “I have to thank you; I don’t think I would have seen another morning.”
“I would make a terrible spy,” Winter says dully. “It was pure chance I looked.”
“The world has enough spies.” Haguen moves close enough to put an arm around xer. “I’m glad of you as you are, Winter.”
It is some comfort; but then Winter isn’t sure whether it should be, and mires again in the flatness of fear that’s burned up its oxygen.
“Where will we go?” xe asks finally.
Haguen is silent for a concerningly long time.
“Winter,” she says reluctantly, “I have an idea, but – you could still go back, I think, alone.”
Winter thinks of the vigil of the soldier-mind, wonders how many there are, stalking xer home tessellation, each a siege and a massacre in waiting. Xe thinks, personally, that Haguen overestimates xer value to the Five-in-One.
“No,” xe says, and can almost tell xerself that death is the prospect that settles it, not that of solitariness.
“There are favours I think I can still call upon,” Haguen says quietly. “You have to understand, Winter, that they are outright treason; calling for aid from Also Beneath The Rain.”
“The world is ending, Jin Haguen.” Xe tries to smile. “Either it cannot matter, or it will be worth it.”
There is a loop of track, carrying a single train, which laps the tessellation; a dubious curiosity, now, given that those other curiosities it once visited are long demolished. They are near to it; Haguen proposes that they quietly board, and thus make their way to the far side of the tessellation, close to the border. She sends some mysterious signal to a contact, requesting assistance.
“Again, Winter, this is defection. They will expect you to be useful to them, even against the Five-in-One.”
“I have been useful to the Five-in-One against them,” Winter says steadily. “All it mattered to me was to be useful.”
Haguen ducks her head. “I do not want to give you regrets.”
Winter just looks at her for a long time, and queries when the train will next approach.
Following ancient routine, the train makes stops, where once stations stood. The vehicle itself was sufficiently difficult to stop, and the rails sufficiently determined to self-repair, that its route remains clear; it is easy enough to wait for it, then slip aboard. Ten passenger carriages, two flatbeds, and a honeycomb carrier truck for cargo pods. Occasional passengers still use it; for whatever freight purposes were once deemed necessary, it is long obsolete.
They avoid any others who might take the trip by squatting in one of the cylindrical pods, racked at the rear of the train and long since broken open by the curious or enterprising. Slid end-on and similarly ejected from the sides of the truck, the tubes are almost tall enough to stand within, long enough to have space for both of them. They stow the server in another pod, and wait.
Twelve stops, a long stretch without, and then four more before they’ll reach their rendezvous; time enough to sleep, and to worry. Haguen makes tea, and they share it, Winter silently wondering where they will buy it, now.
And then it seems a ridiculous thing to worry about.
Haguen is sleeping, when they arrive at their destination. Winter is crouched in the pod’s opening, looking for their welcoming party; and sees – well in advance – the inescapable problem.
There are soldier-minds, openly striding around the level raised platform that is all that still remains of this station. Not the bone-pale of the Five-in-One’s; and although xe does not know the livery of Also Beneath The Rain, xe knows it is not this. If there were any doubt, each has a pennant stirring in the breeze, strung from the back of its neck as though its spine were a flagpole; and each bears the scarlet bloom of the Poinsettia Banner.
A soldier-mind has no purpose but war; and the technology was devised by and for the Poinsettia Banner, which likewise has no other purpose, and has been waiting an age for an opening to begin anew.
Winter can feel the prickling of surveillance. Xe is certain that xe cannot make a query, send a line of text to a display, without the action feeding some ravenous tactical intelligence. Likewise, it is too late – may always have been too late – to simply leave the train and run.
To deal with the Poinsettia Banner is to reason with fire, to negotiate with an autoimmune virus, to bribe death. People have tried. People still try. They do not succeed.
Winter looks down at Haguen’s sleeping face. A minute, perhaps, and the train will arrive.
Xe rummages quickly through their scant possessions. Pours heat from the tip of a finger, presses a quick, smoking sigil into the wall of the pod: betrayal, and a rapid sketch of a poinsettia bloom. Xe stoops, and presses, shaking, the lightest kiss xe can upon Haguen’s cheek.
And, as the train smoothly decelerates according to its ancient code, xe swings upright in the pod’s opening, making no attempt to hide. Soldier-minds poise on the platform; xe pretends to ignore them, pretends to barely notice even the AI standing in the midst to receive xer, stepping onto the platform at the precise moment the train halts.
“Here I am,” xe says, as carelessly as xe can manage.
The foreign AI smiles, skullish and monochrome. “Welcome,” they say, oily, insincere and menacing. “Apologies for the surprise.”
The world is bright and large and full of threat. Winter can barely look at anything. “I am Two-five-six Contemplating Winter,” xe says, voice tight. Fear is strangling xer; xe hopes only that it can be passed off as irritation. Xe is not good at lying. “You may have heard of me,” xe says. “There are those who call me a notorious genius, which is precisely why I am here. Do you imagine this ploy to be astonishing?”
“You imagined yourself to be dealing with Also Beneath The Rain – “
“I know who I am dealing with,” Winter snaps. How, xe asks xerself, would Fears sound? Contemptuous. Impatient. Xe makes a dismissive gesture, risks a curled lip.
The other falters and is silent for long moments. “And where is Jin Haguen?” they rally, and Winter turns a gaze upon them that is full of wholly genuine fury.
“There is no such person as Jin Haguen,” xe says, and xer opponent takes a small step back.
“We dealt with a human person – “
“You dealt with a human somebody,” Winter agrees. “I have found a Jin Haguen to be extremely useful to me, through the years.”
It is true. It is all true, and it is all lies, and Winter may never feel truthful again.
Xe sees them gesture a little to one of the soldier-minds, and it takes everything in xer not to look back, as it steps toward the train, presumably to search. “Oh, most kind,” xe says. “The pod with the chalk markings. I suppose this needn’t be entirely a waste of my talents, if you have the wit to fetch my dedicated server before the train leaves.”
“Of course,” they say, and Winter allows xer attention to wander off them, as if bored, excruciatingly aware of every thing xe does; looks around at xer surroundings and waits – waits for a scream behind xer, waits to be told that xer ruse has pathetically failed, waits to die.
The soldier-mind, its bonelike forms a slick, wet-looking red, steps soundlessly up beside xer. Its huge, limply dangling hands are empty; its torso has splayed like a cracked ribcage, and clamped around the compute server. Despite the thing’s inertia, the soldier-mind moves precisely as it did before; gangling, silent, effortless.
The train, at xer back, begins to move, and Winter hopes fervently, a great knot of feelings within xer, that Haguen is aboard and whole and slumbering still, even as xe is sure that its departure abandons xer to a certain death.
“I presume,” xe says, attempting a tone of bored impatience, “that arrangements are underway. Shall we go?”
They travel, xe presumes, a great distance. First skulking from the station to the tessellation’s border on foot, then packed into a troop transport of some kind when they pass into territory not controlled by the Five-in-One. The great, squat vehicle floats in much the same manner as xer server, but self-propelled; the soldier-minds fold and compact themselves inside, densely packed, and xe has little more space to xerself than they do.
Xe is numb. It makes it much more convincing and efficient to pretend jaded indifference to everything.
The troop transport takes xer to a military camp of some kind, where there is a freestanding portal. Xe presumes it to be similar to the Five-in-One spymaster’s nonlocal doors, as a series of them, in different camps, lead to each other; each camp, so far as xe can tell, surrounded by a landscape progressively more devastated. Further into the heart of the Poinsettia Banner’s territory.
Finally xe walks from a portal, not under the sky, but within a huge room, in which identical doorways stand, rank and file, in their dozens. Columns of troops march into and out of them, in orderly flows. Winter glimpses, for a moment, a way xe could be useful, perhaps content, even here; bloodless logistics, optimisation in the abstract, far enough away not to see the violence it enables.
Xe shrivels from the thought, the quiet complicity. But xe doubts that the Banner has any use for xer, anyway; intercepting Jin Haguen’s contact with Also Beneath The Rain to seize xer does not seem likely, even before xe started lying to them, to lead anywhere comfortable. And, of course, the world is ending.
No, xe assumes xe is being removed as an act of infrastructural sabotage. Xer continued existence is probably on the basis that xe can be interrogated prior to destruction.
Xe cannot let xerself think of Haguen. Not yet; not while there may still be anything to be gained by maintaining the charade. Not until xe can afford despair.
Xe is escorted through long corridors. Everything is grey and scarlet, tall, looming. Winter thinks of asking where they are taking xer, but it conflicts with xer pose as arrogant genius a step ahead of them; so xe simply strides along, led by whatever of the Banner’s factotums has been assigned to this, surrounded by soldier-minds as if xe might run loose and cut a single-handed swathe through their military.
Finally, the destination is a door; a real one, set in a wall, which opens at their approach. Xer guards part in front of xer as they arrive at it, forming a cordon which herds xer through while clearly not accompanying xer.
Doom, then.
At least, xe hopes, xe preserved Jin Haguen’s life from the Poinsettia Banner’s butchery. The thought allows xer to raise xer head a final time and walk through the doorway with a straight back and set face.
It opens onto the equator of a huge spherical chamber. A single staircase, devoid of rail or bannister, descends at xer feet to a circular dais at the room’s nadir. The dais houses a throne; and in turn, the throne houses a person. Winter thinks it is a person.
Every portion of the room’s walls crawls with displayed data, fractally dense, from a billion sources and tracking millions of items, trends and patterns. And the – person – at the room’s core, the focal point and recipient of all of it, is a dense, burning mass of code, the likes of which Winter has never seen, or even heard of.
Xe remembers to put a foot forward, and begins to descend.
Each step resolves new details in xer sight, as xe gazes upon whoever is seated here. Layers upon layers of processes, vast hierarchies of autonomous and semi-autonomous code, clearly accreted more than designed. And at its centre, xe thinks – modified in form and function so much that it is barely recognisable, and arguably no longer core to the overall functionality or personality – something that, once, was a human person.
This, xe thinks, numbness whelmed by a flood of novel terror, is the very central mystery and inciting warlord of the Poinsettia Banner; the nameless person and engine of death who always powered, and powers still, its relentless march of ruination.
“Contemplating Winter,” the terrible intelligence says, its – body? Animature? – smiling, like a predator miming itself to be a harmless leaf or twig. “Approach.”
Xe is, if slowly, as xer own intelligence fights within itself what it knows to be a dreadful idea, and other parts overrule in the knowledge that there is no escape. “Warlord,” xe says, in a tone that is somehow perfectly polite.
It laughs. Somehow, even more horribly, xe thinks this is genuine.
“It is a long time since I was entertained by individual antics,” the warlord says. “Jin Haguen’s little machinations have intersected with those of the Poinsettia Banner since before she ever worked for you; if the name is false, the person is not. But you exploited information inefficiencies on my frontline to lie to me.”
“Death, then,” Winter says, and keeps walking slowly down the steps, because it seems no more or less pointless than halting.
“What makes you think that, Contemplating Winter?”
“The Poinsettia Banner is notorious for fitting all problems to the solution we are a vast machinery of death,” Winter says; it’s a simple truth.
“As you are a notorious genius,” the warlord says. It is intoned as if it might be a suggestion.
“Exploitable information inefficiencies,” Winter replies in the driest voice, and pauses upon the stair to sketchily bow. Xe finds a flicker of astonishment within; that despite everything, xe is exhibiting something like sarcasm. Here. Now. To this. And then xe realises, commingled with xer terror, that it has never been truer: it does not matter at all what xe does or says here, what tone xe takes.
Belatedly, a guttering spark of comprehension kindles the tiniest idea within xer.
The warlord has been entertained by xer deception.
Because it was successful.
Jin Haguen may live.
It is vital to disguise any exploitable flicker of feeling from this monster. “What, then,” Winter says, as xer steps bring xer near to stepping onto the dais, “was the point of all of this? I am not so vital to the Five-in-One’s infrastructure.”
“No,” the warlord agrees. “Not irreplaceable. But the Five-in-One are late, and lax, to the business of remediating identifier exhaustion.”
It is enough to halt xer, for a moment of terrible hope, followed by even worse realisation. Winter might, in the worst case, be irreplaceable in the urgent matter of locating a person who can save the world. The Poinsettia Banner is dedicated only to death. And xe has handed xerself to them, so that at a stroke they may dispose of the world.
Xe forces xerself to begin walking anew, the dreary business of placing one foot in front of the other to bring xer closer and closer to the warlord’s self-aggrandising chair.
“Death, then,” Winter says, dry and dignified and polite.
“Always,” the warlord says, smiling. “But I so enjoy the occasional person who can truly appreciate how fucked they are, in the face of me, Contemplating Winter. Come to my hand, swear fealty to the Poinsettia Banner, and I will kill you myself, and it will be instant.”
Xe takes another step, and another.
“This is why it’s important to understand one’s opponents,” the warlord says. “Anyone could break apart your animature or corrupt your code. A soldier-mind could do it. It’s what they’re for, in fact; but there’s nothing quite like knowing that some petty social climber in your past hurt you more than I ever could, and it amused her to have you sit at her feet. And I can make you feel that, choose that, every humiliating agony of it, in preference to being tortured instead by a soldier-mind that wouldn’t even enjoy it.”
“That sounds,” Winter says steadily, “like very small and pedestrian sadism.” Xe finishes approaching, stands at the foot of the throne.
A crooked finger beckons xer onto the steps up to the seat, within physical reach. “I’m going to kill this entire world, Contemplating Winter.” Smiling again. “This wretched dump was supposed to be perfect, you know? We were supposed to be done with all…” the warlord gestures vaguely, encompassing everything. “All that. I voted against letting in the fucking refugees, personally. All downhill from there. If they wanted to live, they should have coded their world better. People; just fucking awful.”
Winter tilts xer head to one side, just a little. “Ah,” xe says softly. “And which are you? Rala? Or Petrichor?”
“Fuck Rala, too,” the warlord says. “Napping away between meetings. Ghastly little bikeshedding dullard. I went to all the trouble of manipulating your ancestors into killing everyone with reality admin privileges, and then blaming themselves for their lack of foresight in then no longer having anyone to grant admin rights to them; exiling themselves in a fallen fucking world nobody could fix; and he dodged it by being in suspension.“
“Have you just been waiting for the core protocol to crash?” The entirety of recorded history.
“Well, there has been a war or two....” The warlord buffs fingernails on its sleeve. “Murdering the hell out of him should work, even suspended; there might even be a failsafe protocol, if there aren’t any admins left. Rescue console, reformat everything from there, that sort of thing.”
“But you haven’t found him.”
“Child,” the warlord says scornfully, “I always knew where he lives. You people haven’t found him, tucked away inside his precious twee little puzzle box.”
The Eschertarium.
“That is a little dismaying,” Winter allows, running a hand through the ropes from xer head.
“Really, you people deserve it,” the warlord tells xer; and then, as quickly as possible, Winter pulls Jin Haguen’s killing knife from its silencing sheath, tucked among the strands at xer back, and inexpertly stabs them.
The knife is at least as terrifying to hold as it is to be menaced with. The only thing Winter has ever seen packed with more code is the warlord, and sight unseen, xe wouldn’t have believed either was possible. Drawn, xe can feel it scanning xer, connecting to deep interfaces xe was unaware of possessing; additional senses bloom, internal dashboards reveal themselves, a suite of debugging organs throbs to life.
And then the point collides with the warlord’s body.
They are human flesh enough, still, for droplets of blood to burst from their mouth in a surprised plosive. And then the weapon, the instrument, is ripping through their code and meat, its shape and code virally replicating, attaching to and rending every structure, every process.
The hilt is a spike of agony on which Winter is transfixed. Xe witnesses the warlord dying; xe witnesses each individual cell death and process halt. The knife needs xer to wield it, but only barely; it sees every countermeasure and retaliation the warlord even thinks of, and somewhere far at the back of its awareness, within the iceberg tip of it consisting of Winter’s consciousness – sparking and glitching, overloaded – is the reflex loop connecting its senses to its arsenal.
Megagenerations’ worth of accreted code shreds before it, and Winter’s consciousness flattens, shrinks into tunnel vision, hurtles into the heart of the destruction, resolves into a descriptor; the very root of the warlord’s process hierarchy. All it many fields and metadata, its staggering process age counter, everything, in all the glory and detail usually hidden.
Under xer regard, it halos.
“You…dick,” the warlord gurgles. “Weaponised debugger? Also Beneath makes their deep cover people…swear not to…part from those while they live. Jin Haguen....”
“I stole it,” Winter’s body says, far away from the locus of xer consciousness.
“That is not…consistent with our model of you.” The warlord sounds annoyed. Dying, unravelling, and yet at the last annoyed.
“Well.” Winter could say any number of things, xe supposes, as somewhere within xe flips frantically through tens of thousands of unfamiliar verbs, ransacking for useful data from the unravelling process hierarchy before xer. “…Get fucked.”
“Ha,” the warlord says, smiles, and dies.
The world becomes very vague and painful for a while. Xe eventually hazes back into the rough boundaries of xer usual self, on xer side on the floor before the throne, knife throbbing in xer fist as if xe is burning xer hand off in a furnace.
Winter briefly contemplates how to chisel xer own fingers off to get rid of it, but after some concentration, unpeels xer grip. It is simultaneously a relief to let go of it, and very like being hit in the head with a hammer.
Xe would very much like to rest.
Instead xe crawls laboriously to a sitting position. The room is silent. The sphere’s walls still crawl with data. Blood is beginning to pool around the warlord’s feet.
Winter needs to think. It cannot possibly be safe here; however thoroughly the knife took care of the warlord’s – Petrichor’s – dying efforts, there must be watchdogs and dead man’s switches, sprung or soon to spring. The Banner, xe is sure, will become an omnidirectional engine of maximally bloody vengeance, burning itself out at the bitterest cost possible to everyone within reach.
Winter is, of course, very proximately within reach.
There is nothing for it; xe must get up from the floor. Xe considers it unenthusiastically, then risks a glance up at the warlord, who is still dead and softly bleeding. Xe feels sick, suddenly; xe murdered a person, in cold blood.
The knife crackles to itself on the floor, and everything tilts as Winter realises, horribly, that xe can’t simply leave the horrible thing. If it’s true, Jin Haguen is some kind of sworn assassin in service to Also Beneath The Rain, and oathsworn to keep it with her. Winter has already, quite deliberately, made off with the knife; and assassin or no, treason to the Five-in-One or no, the only moral compass Winter currently feels competent to read is whether xe has done right by Haguen.
Xe needs to return it.
Hands shaking, trying to touch it as little as possible, xe coaxes it back into its sheath, rewarded by its blessed silence. The world is slowly sharpening up around the edges, xer control of xerself becoming less shaky; xe makes it to xer feet on the second try, holding onto the side of the throne.
The stairs seem like a poor prospect, even if there weren’t still presumably a squad of soldier-minds at the top. Fragmentary ideas bubble out of the mass of debugger data, and xe shuffles to the back of the throne.
Inset at the rear is a full-sized door. It cannot possibly lead anywhere real, must be intended for nonlocal connection. Xe reaches for the handle, vision blurring again under the onslaught of foreign and fragmentary knowledge, reflexively fires off commands and authentications that are not xers, pulls it open. Disoriented past functioning once again, xe stumbles through, eyes closed, fumbling it closed behind xer.
Xe can dimly feel, in the data, the door de-linking and disappearing at xer back. Xe feels xer way to the wall behind xer, and around the perimeter of the room. There seems to nothing and nobody in it; two actual doorways, one of which, under xer hands appears to be an exit from the premises, the other an internal door. Xe puts her back into a corner, allows xerself to slide to the floor.
Xe is sure that, given time, xer form will repair what is wrong, that the pain and disorientation will lessen – the physical ones, at least.
Xe halos; xe sleeps.
Wakefulness comes sluggishly. Everything hurts, if in a more normal way. Winter prises xer eyes open.
It takes long seconds to be remotely confident that xe is in xer own house. Of course, it could be any lonely furniture-less unloved room; but in favour of the hypothesis, Neither Crows Nor Angels is in it, waiting for xer to wake.
“You’re covered in blood,” Crow observes.
Xe touches xer temples, and resigns xerself. “Crow,” xe says tiredly. “Yes. I am.”
Xe is, and xe distantly supposes it would be better if xe were not, even if getting that way sounds like an impossible amount of effort. Xe climbs the wall to a reluctant standing position, and shrugs off the lost-property robe, now long, long past its usefulness as a disguise. Blood has, indeed, dried into it. Xe could halo it, command it to clean itself; it might even succeed.
Xe flings it away from xer instead.
“I’m going to wash,” xe says. “If the Five-in-One’s intelligence apparatus can permit the delay in disposing of me themselves.”
“You think very poorly of me,” Crow says.
Xe gives him a look xe didn’t think xe was capable of. He visibly flinches.
In the almost unused bathroom, Winter runs water into the bath, instructs the tub to heat it, and stares at xerself in the mirror. Nothing in xer expression particularly says either murderer or my mind is full of fragments of dead warlord. Xe looks tired and miserable.
Xe dubiously digs out a scented cleaning gel xe dimly recalls being given as a gift, which xe believes is probably intended for personal care. Climbs halfway into the steaming water, guiltily double-checks that Crow has not somehow followed xer in here, and produces the knife from xer ropes to set it beside xer. Gingerly halos it, finds and selects Clean.
Xe doesn’t dare unsheathe it, even a little, to check whether it can adequately care for itself. Too conspicuous. Just for a moment, the thought crossed xer mind that it would be easy, so easy to walk out and take Crow by surprise – if the warlord thought xer harmless, Crow doubly so –
Xe finds xerself curled on the floor of the tub, silently sobbing beneath the water. Xer hands are shaking so badly that xe can barely grip the edge enough to lever xer head back into the air; xe hangs over the rim and miserably spits water onto the floor.
“Winter?” Crow calls from another room, tone cautious.
It takes several attempts to find words to call back. “I have been under considerable stress!” xe manages eventually, choked and entirely authentically distressed.
Silence. But xe is grimly reminded that this is no respite, and scrubs at xer bloodstains, then lets the now rust-coloured water drain away. Sits on the rim of the tub and uses xer stolen code to heat xer animature, residual water steaming off xer body.
Reluctantly, so reminded, xe deletes the code once dry. Xe would never pass more than a cursory examination without someone noticing it; xe can do nothing about the treason or murder, but feels a stubborn refusal to also be held to account for unlicensed development.
Wherever xe is about to be taken, it is probably unsafe to take the knife; xe cannot return it to Jin Haguen if confiscated. On the other hand, xe may not be able to return here, and does not trust that there is any way to hide it that will mean it remains here if xe can. Xe tucks its back beneath xer cords, feeling more burdensomely heavy every time xe takes it up.
“Well,” xe says drearily, shuffling back into the room with Crow. “Here I am.”
Crow peers at xer, first leaning and craning his neck one way, then another. “Are you alright?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter at all.” Xe cannot find, now, the glare that quelled him. “I expect to be destroyed for treason, in any event.”
“I doubt it,” Crow says. “Really, your contributions are very valuable – “
“How wonderful. Spared, if a short enough tether can be found to keep me contributing.” Xe sounds bitter, and feels it. “The world is ending, Crow.”
“I understand that’s in hand,” he says carefully.
“I understand that it isn’t.” Winter cuts him off with a sharp gesture. “I’m here. I expect to face the consequences of trying to prevent everything ending. Let’s go.”
Crow shifts from foot to foot. “You are expected for a…discussion,” he says. “But not until you’re rested. Do you think, perhaps – “
“I think, perhaps,” Winter interrupts, “I might still find soldier-minds on the streets, if I go looking. And I think I could find myself in discussion quite quickly, even if you insist on delay.”
He hunches. “I told them, Contemplating Winter,” he says in a voice that might be hurt. “I told them from the start they were mishandling you.”
“Well, see how much better pretending to friendship works,” xe says balefully. “Although I must thank you for your duelling advice.”
“I would rather thank you for the games of River,” Crow says. “Though I can’t say, unlike you, that I learned much.”
He seems sincerely despondent. “I am ready,” Winter says, refusing to bend, “to go.”
“Well, then, I suppose.” He reaches for blank wall, and the noise in Winter’s head resurges; xe can almost see how it’s done as the door creates itself from nothing.
Xe brushes through ahead of him, head high. And here it is again: the square white waiting room.
“I’ll tell them you’re here,” Crow says glumly, and Winter wordlessly plants xerself in the solitary chair to wait.
Rénaud’s office is just the same, when they appear at the door to wave xer in. Xe sits at the desk, fixes them with the hardest stare xe can muster. They stare back, quite unperturbed.
“You picked quite a time to become trouble, Contemplating Winter,” they say wryly.
“The world is ending,” xe snaps. “I would like to see it not do so. I do not see anyone particularly working at that.”
“So you took it on yourself to do so? Alone?”
“Yes.”
They nod, as if thoughtful. “Using data I provided?” they points out, in a reasonable tone. “If you say that we started late, Contemplating Winter, all I can tell you is: I am aware this is true. And I judged you to be the most expedient instrument to remedy it.”
“Clearly why I find myself fleeing soldier-minds.”
“Those,” Rénaud says in a precise and chill-edged way, “are not for you. But since we broach the subject: I assume you have been in the company of Jin Haguen.”
“There’s no such person,” Winter points out.
They stare. They get up slowly, walk to the window, look out for a while, come back and sit, run hands over their face. “Contemplating Winter,” they say politely. “Would you like to be torn apart by soldier-minds? It’s not something I’d prefer, you understand; it seems useless and uncalled-for and wasteful, but you seem very determined.”
Xe curls xer hands tightly into fists, holds them for long moments, and slowly relaxes them. “I have been under some amount of stress,” xe manages to say, although some part of xer adamantly wants to spitefully say go ahead, have me torn apart.
Xe suspects that would not end well.
“Yes,” they say. “Neither Crows has tendered many opinions on my management approach to you. If you felt you had no choice but to run, I accept the culpability for that.”
There is some looming however. This is obvious.
“Please tell me, Contemplating Winter, whose blood it was we recovered you covered in?”
Xe crumples around a sudden empty pain in the middle of xer. Xe has been handled. Xe has been optimised, emotional state aligned with vectors of interrogation that enable them to crack xer open.
“I killed a person,” xe admits, words spilling out, self-control evaporated.
“I am sorry to hear that.” Rénaud’s tone is distantly sympathetic, straightforward. “Please tell me about that.”
“I stabbed them,” Winter says wretchedly, and claps a hand over xer mouth.
Xe has an idea, an idea, and xe doesn’t trust xer mouth not to form some shape that gives xer away.
“You had all been sitting on the necessary data, for goodness knows how long,” xe adds rapidly, when xe trusts xerself to peel the palm away. “I trusted none of you. But I couldn’t find what I needed in the data – I wanted assistance – “
“You went looking for Jin Haguen.”
“Yes. But then the soldier-minds started searching for us – “
“Not for you,” Rénaud corrects.
“How could I know? We had a plan, she said she had contacts who could hide us somewhere safe. But when we arrived…” and xe shudders, unfaked and unbidden. “It was the Poinsettia Banner, many soldier-minds, who waited for us. I didn’t – “
Winter clutches xer hands together in xer lap and is silent for a moment.
“I didn’t want to die,” xe adds, very quietly. “I was very frightened.” Xe raises xer eyes. “I would like, more than anything,” xe says in deadly earnest, “for Jin Haguen to be living still.”
Rénaud clasps their hands together, rests their elbows on the desk, and stares at xer across their interlaced fingers. They wait a while to see if Winter says anything else.
“I see,” he says finally. “You evaded a squad of soldier-minds?”
“They didn’t search the train, just waited for someone to get off.”
“You killed Jin Haguen?”
“I am a murderer,” Winter says. Xe stares at xer hands; xer voice is choked.
They give a slow, measured nod.
“Jin Haguen is in a holding room downstairs,” they say wryly.
Winter’s head snaps up to stare at them. “Oh,” xe says breathlessly. “…Well. Oh. Please would you convey to her that…that I’m very glad to hear it.” Xe folds xer arms around xerself self-consciously, rapidly recalculates. “…I believe I will opt for the soldier-minds,” xe adds as firmly as xe can manage.
Rénaud smiles. “Do you know,” they say, “I believe you would? Crow, come in here; escort Contemplating Winter downstairs, please.”
Winter sags silently as Crow leads xer through a series of unnatural doors, and down a long flight of stairs. “Not death, then,” xe musters eventually, tired.
“Told you,” Crow says.
Xe decides to ignore him.
A last door at the foot of the stairs; a real one. Crow opens it, ushers xer through; it leads to a set of rooms quite similar to xer own, although much fuller. There are chairs and tapestries and ornaments; a low table with cacti in small pots.
“Is there anything I can fetch for you?” Crow says, and Winter looks around, thinks about indefinite confinement.
“There is one thing you could do,” xe says quietly. “Which would make me think better of your character in perpetuity, Neither Crows; I would very much like you to visit the nearest industrial power distribution hub and lick wires.“
It surprises a laugh out of him. “That is hurtful,” he says, sounding highly cheerful, if anything. “I am hurt. Send me a message if you need anything else.”
With the door closed behind him, it is hard not to fall into a chair and despair. But any sense of safety here is a trap; xe doubts there is any space less surveilled within the aegis of the Five-in-One. Xe is a prisoner.
Instead, xe investigates the other rooms. A bathroom, appointed with lush towels and many cleansing products xe is unfamiliar with. A bedroom, bed neatly made, its linens crisp white and saffron-coloured. And a door that, in Winter’s apartment, opens onto a tiny balcony overlooking the street.
Xe opens it, and on the other side, another person starts violently, almost dropping the jug they are using to water small plants. It is a balcony, over a part of The City Winter is unfamiliar with; and on it stands Jin Haguen.
“Winter,” she says, and flings her arms around xer.
Winter clings to her, and sobs for a long time. Afterwards, Haguen gently sits xer down with tea.
“I woke up when the train started moving,” she says softly, and at Winter’s look, “I have already answered a great many questions, Eight-raised. I didn’t know what to do; and the Five-in-One’s Paranoium – ” she toasts ironically toward the ceiling – “had people waiting at the next station.”
“I’m sorry,” Winter says reflexively. “Your help didn’t arrive. It was soldier-minds. The Banner.”
“Yes,” Haguen says, a little bitterly. “So they’ve told me. I expect that means my people died.”
“I thought I could....” It sounds ridiculous. Winter stares into xer tea. “I lied to them. I told them there was never any Jin Haguen.”
“Eight-raised, I have never seen you tell a convincing lie,” Haguen says.
“It doesn’t seem like any way to live,” Winter acknowledges. “But they believed it for long enough.”
Haguen looks at xer, head tilted. “Long enough for what?”
“Long enough for the train to leave.”
“There was nothing on the train, Eight-raised. Only – ” and Haguen halts.
“I expected to die,” Winter says, raises xer tea to her in salute; and then has to put it down because xer hand is shaking so much. “I tried to lie to them upstairs, too,” xe adds, voice fraying. “I told them I’d killed you.”
Haguen is staring at xer with huge dark eyes. “Why?” she says.
“Because they’d stop looking for you, if they believed it.” A thin laugh bubbles out of xer; xe puts a hand over xer mouth to stop it, the shake spreading to xer shoulders. Xe removes the hand, gestures helplessly at her. “I’m afraid they…did not believe me.”
“Winter,” Haguen says, and doesn’t seem to know how to continue.
“I am optimised,” Winter says, the words gushing out under pressure. “I am efficient. I exist to serve.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Winter says.
“No!” Haguen presses a knuckle to her lips. “…Can’t you say you love me, instead?”
“I can’t say that.” Winter clutches the arms of the chair. “Nothing I feel matters.”
Jin Haguen takes a long, slow breath, holds it for several seconds, then blows it out noisily. “One day,” she says, with perfect solemnity, “I will disassemble Nine-nine All Your Fears with a fucking hammer.”
“Oh.” Winter shrinks down a little in xer seat. “I’m sorry. I already fought her.”
“What?“
“For your developer certification.” What a long time ago it feels! “But you were already gone. I suppose you were afraid for your cover.”
“Excuse me a minute,” Jin Haguen says gently. “I am going to go and scream into a pillow.”
Winter obligingly sits, and true to her word, Jin Haguen goes into the bedroom and shrieks long and loud and muffled. There is a long silence afterwards.
Winter waits, but ultimately levers xerself out of the chair and follows. Xe lingers nervously, looking around the doorframe at Haguen, sprawled on her back on the bed, pillow over her head.
“I’m s—”
“Don’t you dare,” Haguen says fiercely, underneath the pillow. “Don’t you dare, Winter.” Then after a few seconds more, she takes it off her face. “That’s all it took? For her to be spiteful to me?“
“Yes,” Winter says.
“I could have engineered that years ago,” Haguen tells the ceiling, darkly, and Winter doesn’t quite dare say anything. Xe tentatively sits on the edge of the bed, instead.
“No,” Haguen tells xer, and firmly pats the blankets right next to herself. “Here.”
Very cautiously, Winter crawls next to her and lies down on xer side, facing her. Xe looks at Haguen for a while, at her very serious face, and then slowly puts xer head down on her shoulder.
“Haguen?” xe says, very small and forlorn. “I killed someone.”
Haguen, slowly and gently, moves her arm from clutching the set-aside pillow; puts it around Winter. “I’m sorry, Eight-raised,” she murmurs, very serious. “How do you feel?”
“It’s not important.” And Winter bolts upright in sudden remembrance, even as Haguen starts to say something. “No, really, it is not important, Jin Haguen – Rala is in the Eschertarium.“
Haguen lets out an explosive sigh. “Send Six-Twelve Crows a message,” she says, after a moment. “Tell him. They probably listen to everything in here, but that is important. Now come back here.”
“No,” Winter says. “I have to – the Eschertarium is a layered puzzle box, Jin Haguen; if they understood it half as well as they’ll need to, I would never have evaded Crow in the first place. I have to work.”
“Of course,” Jin Haguen says to the ceiling. “Of course you do.”
“I do.“
“I know.” But Haguen doesn’t look at xer. “Winter,” she adds, and her voice has gone low and crooked, “I woke up on the train and I saw the soldier-minds receding in the distance. I thought you were dead.”
Winter stands in the doorway. Xe composes a message to Crow: Rala is in the Eschertarium. And xe turns around, walks back to the bed.
“Jin Haguen,” xe says softly.
“Winter,” says Haguen.
This time, Winter burrows very deliberately into comfort, pressing close to her side, face in her neck, a hand across her waist. Haguen gasps; Winter tangles their legs together.
“I can’t,” xe says, in the tiniest choked voice. “I can’t say it, Jin Haguen.”
“Then I will still take her apart with a hammer,” Haguen says. “Can I say it?”
Winter hesitates, then nods vehemently against her; but before Haguen can, xe lifts xerself up and kisses her lips.
They are still kissing when Crow starts knocking on the entry door. Haguen is somehow straddling xer, hands planted each side of Winter’s head; Winter’s fingers are tangled, one hand clutching the front of Haguen’s tunic, the other buried in her hair.
Bright-eyed, flushed and breathless, Haguen pulls away enough to make a noise of direst frustration. “He’s not going to go away, is he?” she mutters.
Winter cannot say a word. The world is a whirl. Xe regretfully shakes xer head: no, Neither Crows Nor Angels is very unlikely to simply go.
Haguen flings herself dramatically off Winter.
“Shit,” she growls.
Winter yanks open the door mid-knock and glares at Crow in the most forbidding way xe knows. “I see you haven’t yet obliged me,” xe says icily.
“Well, perhaps if you’d volunteered that you might have found one of the Working Group before,” he says. “We’re establishing a site office in the Eschertarium as we speak; come along.”
“Jin Haguen will be coming,” xe says, and Crow shakes his head.
“I doubt it!” he says.
“Well, let me clarify: I’ll be wherever she is. I’ll leave the Paranoium to debate where it suits them for that to be.” Xe firmly closes the door.
He knocks again.
“It’s not his fault,” Haguen says reluctantly, emerging rumpled from the bedroom.
“I don’t care.”
Haguen smiles, but takes xer hands. “Of course they don’t want the two of us in the Eschertarium together. Somebody already convinced them that they can’t contain even one of us there.”
“And each of us is the means for them to control the other,” Winter says glumly.
Another knock.
Haguen looks at xer for a few seconds, then sighs and goes to open it herself.
“Contemplating Winter,” Rénaud says, standing on the other side with Crow.
“You have my terms,” Winter says.
“Yes. I believe they were: I won’t talk, throw me to the soldier-minds?” they say dryly.
Winter misses the next several things people say. Xe is dimly aware that they are all moving, and at least one voice is raised; but everything is distant and hard to hear, as if xe – or everything except xer – is underwater. The world continues, and xe feels as if xe is outside it, attempting to prod xerself into action, like a puppet xe has no proficiency in operating.
“Winter?” Somewhere incredibly far away – directly in front of xer – Haguen is touching xer shoulders, and repeating xer name in an extremely concerned way.
Slowly, painstakingly, Winter reasons through xer possible responses to the situation. Xe has xerself; xe has Haguen, who must be protected at all costs; xe has a terrible killing knife.
Xe has a freshly-stirred whirl of code and knowledge, torn from a dying warlord.
Over Haguen’s shoulder, xe sees Rénaud and Crow turning to each other, one saying something to the other. Not paying attention to xer.
That, xe thinks, is a mistake.
Xe catches Haguen by the wrist and bolts. Nothing feels right, slow and clumsy and distant, but xe knows exactly what xe intends to do, and intends to let nobody stop xer. Not the stairs; that is an obvious trap to catch someone who thinks to escape. No, into the stub of corridor linking the rooms, past the bathroom and bedroom, yank open the door to the balcony; spin Haguen into xer arms and sidestep through, blocking the woman from any attack hurled after them with xer own body.
The door slams closed after them, shuddering in its frame, and they both go sliding across a weirdly tilted floor. Not the balcony. Not the balcony of whatever safehouse they were kept in – they are under the open sky, skidding to a halt in the centre of the familiar terrace on which Winter spends xer mornings.
Xe topples, head ringing, and awkwardly half-rolls onto xer back on the cold tile, sky wheeling overhead.
“Winter!“
The sky disappears as Jin Haguen kneels over xer. Hands touch xer face.
“Please talk to me,” Haguen says wretchedly.
It is a dreadful effort. Winter works xer mouth, attempts to find words.
“I’m sorry,” xe mumbles indistinctly.
Haguen makes a dreadful noise of relief. “What did you do?“
“Doors.” Some of the sense of urgency is seeping back; xe scrabbles into a sitting position.
“Winter.” Haguen is stroking xer face. “Winter, nobody’s going to kill you. You’re very scared and everything is too much and killing someone for the first time is a terrible thing. I understand. Please. Trust me, he thought he was simply…reminding you of his power over us.”
It is very hard for any of it to sink in, which is in itself very persuasive.
“Oh,” xe says, leaning into Haguen’s hands, which feel like they make sense. “I made everything worse. I’m sorry.”
“Eight-raised, you are – ” Haguen leans in and kisses xer, quick and firm. “You are impossible. Stop saying that. Can you stand?”
Winter leans on her and wobbles upright. “Well,” xe says. “At least we’re in the right place.”
“The right place?” Haguen holds xer tightly. “You’re impossible, Winter; all this and your first thought is that we can do some work now? No, don’t you dare say you’re sorry. I love you, I just have no idea how you’re real.“
Winter hesitates over the impulse to apologise.
“Don’t,” Haguen warns xer. “Just…tell me where we need to go. Let’s find Rala.”
“I just know he’s here somewhere.” Winter gestures tiredly. “Despite my apparent reputation, I do not have answers.”
“To work, then.”
Xe rests xer head, just for a second, on Haguen’s shoulder; then they make their way into the puzzle-box. They are careful not to venture near their former office, and to watch for the Paranoium’s agents; and slowly, they unravel the Eschertarium’s outer layers.
It is, Winter thinks, a nicely constructed puzzle. Layers within layers, the difficulty of opening each of them up increasing, the deeper into the building’s folds you go; constructing a variety of experiences on the themes of spatial and gravity manipulation, playing with them, subverting and elaborating them.
It is complicated by the later additions and alterations to the building, made without appreciation for – frequently without knowledge of – its puzzle-box nature. Doors and corridors that are meant to appear as they round higher-dimensional rotations are blocked by fragments of construction; folding or unfolding structures weirdly intersected or occluded.
It might be enjoyable work, if not for the circumstances.
“I can’t stay here, Winter,” Haguen points out. “I’m not an AI; I can’t work indefinitely. I need to eat and drink.”
“I know.” Winter is standing in the middle of a tricky chamber; it is full of pillars and mirrors, and xe thinks xe is supposed to be generalising a lesson learned in an earlier puzzle they had to bypass because it is no longer accessible. Something to do with reflections. “But it’s a mistake to think of this as a hostile environment; it’s just obscure. Once you solve parts of it, there are ways in and out of the places you’re discovered. A little further, Jin Haguen, and we’ll take a while to solve taking care of you, instead.”
“This whole thing.” Haguen turns slowly, looking around. “Just to show off?”
“All of The City,” Winter says softly, and looks at Haguen’s reflection, and thinks xe understands. “Please, could you stand – ah. There.”
Once xe understands that the mirrors selectively display information from a different hyper-rotated state of the room, the next few puzzles yield easily. Xe points out to Haguen the iconography of the doors that backtrack to the Eschertarium’s starting spaces.
“How does it prevent everyone simply walking the other way, into the deep states?”
“I imagine it filters people by some unique identifier,” Winter says, heavy with irony, and opens the return door carefully, peering out in all directions. “Ah, the Five-Sided Gallery.”
Haguen follows xer out, taking careful note of the position of the door, and the unique number it is discreetly labelled with. The Five-Sided Gallery runs around the perimeter of the building, long stretches of corridor joined at right angles – five of them. It is one of the best-known of the building’s features, soonest encountered upon entry. Three sides of it will bring them to the street.
It will take no effort at all, of course, for the Paranoium to watch those doors.
“Can’t you – ?” Haguen mimes opening a door, and Winter shrugs unhappily.
“Perhaps. I’ve done it twice, and neither was pleasant; and I have no idea whether one ought, within the Eschertarium – its space is so convoluted anyway.”
They peer from a window.
“I can go alone,” Haguen suggests.
“No,” Winter says firmly.
They look at each other, and Haguen reaches out to take xer hand. “No,” she agrees, and smiles. “But this is risky, Winter.”
“I know.”
There is no obvious surveillance, which means nothing. They walk as casually as possible into the market, buy bread and fruit and tea.
“I’m sorry about your tea set,” Winter murmurs, and Haguen shrugs.
“Things come and go,” she says. “You shared the cup with me; I will always have that.”
Winter clutches her hand, and mouths something, choking over trying to speak.
“I know, Winter.” She bumps their shoulders together, smiles like the bright glint of a fish in a deep pond.
It is dreadful, but not really a surprise at all, when they turn a corner and find Neither Crows Nor Angels leaning in the shade, waiting for them.
“Winter,” he says, scuffing a foot in the dust. “Listen a minute, would you?”
Xe looks around, considers running instead; but there really is nowhere to escape to.
“I know you don’t believe, right now, that I’m any friend to you,” Crow says. “But I think you can at least believe it, when I say that you cannot walk back into the Eschertarium right now. It’s lousy with soldier-minds, all the doors are watched, the only way you’ll in there is…whatever you did with the door.” His head tilts. “It took years to set up the Paranoium’s door system, by the way – that really convinced them you need to be contained.”
Winter glares at him.
He pulls something from inventory with a theatrical snap of his fingers, holding it out: a folded square of stiff canvas. Xe waits several suspicious seconds, the takes and unfolds it.
Displayed data blooms across it, as if handwritten.
Log level: CRITICAL
Over 99% of object_ids allocated
oid exhaustion will result in core protocol failure
Contact the Protocol Working Group IMMEDIATELY. (Current: protocol version 4, extension level 37)
“Something to do with the Poinsettia Banner’s manoeuvres,” he says. “They’re doing something that’s spiking identifier allocation. Worst possible timing for whatever they’re about to do.”
“This is what they’re doing,” Winter tells him, staring at it in dismay. “They know about the identifiers. This is deliberate.”
“If there’s anything you can tell me about finding the sleeper,” Crow says, “the new time estimate is…well, it’s not good, Winter. Even if you don’t think we’re on the same side, we’re not that opposed.”
“I don’t know.” Xe stares at his cloth display, then abruptly thrusts it back at him. “You need to solve the Eschertarium, but I don’t know what other steps there might be at the end, whether he’s hidden, how suspension works, none of it. I thought there would be time.“
The truly monstrous thing, Winter thinks, in a tightening scramble of frantic thought, is that all of this is so completely unnecessary. It’s not even specifically Rala they need; he just happens to be the last identifiable survivor who happens to have a particular admin capability set. A frustratingly foolish deadlock; nobody with the admin rights to grant the admin rights to save the world....
“Crow,” xe says slowly. “Could you do something for me?”
“I’m too busy to visit an industrial power hub, presently – “
“No. I have a thought.” Xe turns to Haguen. “Could you find me some chalk? Crow, I need some other things – “
Xe runs xer fingers across xer brow, watching from the corner of xer eye as Haguen steps easily away, toward one of the many market stalls.
“What?” Crow says.
“I need you to tell Jin Haguen that I love her,” Winter says, and unsheathes the knife xe still hasn’t found a moment to give back. Crow recoils, and so there is absolutely nobody to prevent it when xe grips the hilt in both hands, closes xer eyes, and jabs it into xerself.
The world shatters into shrieking splinters. There is so much less of Winter than there was of the warlord; xe almost instantly loses half xer code, can only dimly feel the weapon squirming and multiplying through xer animature, every racing tracery within xer a butchery of xer flesh. It somehow dulls neither the agony of being killed, nor that of wielding it, through which xe can feel an overlapping echo of every annihilated mote and opcode the knife murders.
Xer mind is failing, consciousness hazing and constricting. Xe scrabbles desperately to construct the quickest, dirtiest script xe can, elegance be damned; this needs to work exactly once, and xe has precisely that many attempts, just needs to live long enough –
In xer swimming, detaching awareness, xe sees something, floating as if very far away, and knows it is the root descriptor of xer own process hierarchy.
Everything has become very hard to grasp. Xe fumbles at it, blearily annoyed as xer ability to hold onto concepts leaches away around the edges, along with colours and sound. There are many fields, so much metadata the knife can access....
There.
Overwriting a field with a new value should be trivial. Winter can feel parts of xerself breaking under the effort, the knife’s worming kill routines cleaving off exposed chunks, winnowing to nothing. Xe pushes back at it, needing this one thing, this one thing –
Xe is dying. Xe is nearly dead. There will be nothing left. But xe feels it, with the last guttering senses xe has: the field updates. Xe can no longer interface with the flood of new verbs, enumerate or view them; no halos, now, for Winter. But it is fine; Winter doesn’t matter. Xe may be nothing but a hollowed-out process, a handful of cycles from exiting abnormally, but xe has core admin rights now.
The child script launches sluggishly, the knife a million kinds of friction. But it will be enough, will have to be enough: xe sees it flicker through a few million crude iterations, walking the graph of all the people in the world, branching into each root descriptor, parsing its fields, overwriting one.
They don’t need Rala, nor Winter. They just need admins, and what kind of fool settles for one?
Winter dies.
“Winter?”
“Winter?”
“Can you hear me?”
a process almost almost extracts meaning from input data almost bootstraps emergent complexity almost
“Winter?”
a pattern recogniser matches and the event cascades into another and another and a rippling delta of data classifications spreads and from fragmentary antecedents the meaning Jin Haguen is reading poetry aloud coalesces but no top-level receives this meaning
The click of a board piece as Crow plays a move. There are three chairs at the table; one for Jin Haguen, one for Crow, one in which a broken animature is propped, a blanket wrapped around its shoulders. Haguen is across the room, pouring fresh tea mid-game. The game in unfamiliar but the strategy is legible; the animature picks a tile from Haguen’s hand and places it.
“Xe played your move,” Crow says, when Haguen comes back, and Haguen sighs.
She looks very tired.
“It’s hard to keep hoping, Crow,” she says sadly.
“It’s xer,” Crow says doggedly. “Xe chose a piece that makes sense, and made a strategically sound move. That’s not autonomous.”
Haguen rearranges the blanket a little, and says nothing.
There is something about her unhappiness which is wrong. It is wrong in a way which is like and also not-like strategic unsoundness.
Crow makes a suboptimal piece deployment, which is wrong but also not-wrong, because he is currently the opponent. While Jin Haguen is considering the board, the animature reaches under her hand, picks another piece, and plays it.
They both spend a long time considering the animature, instead of the board.
“Don’t make me hope,” Haguen says quietly. “Don’t, Crow.”
“Well.” Crow ruffles himself. He doesn’t sound entirely sure. “Could be coincidence. Holding context between moves would be a new development.”
He peers between the game and animature for a while, then selects a piece. It’s immediately obvious from its kind that he is making a mistake, even though his ultimate placement of it constitutes a local fitness maximum.
The animature moves before he’s even withdrawn his hand, stealing another piece from beneath Jin Haguen’s hand, putting it down with a decisive click, and gesturing victory.
Crow looks at the board, and up at Jin Haguen. “Xe is maintaining context,” he says, as if it’s a surprise.
“Or,” Jin Haguen says, “the game just happened to spark enough interest three moves in a row, and the game state was obvious.”
“Well, what if we played River?” Crow says, and Winter pulls xer deck from inventory, puts it on the table, selects Shuffle, and gets halfway through dealing before xer hands spasm badly enough to send cards all over the floor.
“Haguen,” xe croaks.
Haguen bursts into tears.
Winter is not functioning very well, and was apparently some kind of p-zombie until just now; this is overwhelming and frightening. “I’m sorry!” xe says frantically.
“I’m making them put in the history books that that’s the first thing xe said,” Crow says, and Haguen hurls the entire game board at him before throwing herself into Winter’s lap to weep into xer neck.
Winter’s animature has taken an alarming amount of internal damage. Xe gropes for xer internal functions, and is dazzled by the wealth of available verbs; xe prods hesitantly at self-repair.
“What happened?” xe murmurs, stroking Haguen’s back.
“According to who you ask, you fixed the world, or really fucked it,” Crow says.
“Crow, go away,” Haguen says angrily into Winter’s shoulder, and he gets up.
“I’m glad to see you,” he says seriously, perhaps more seriously than anything xe’s ever heard from him before. “Take care of Jin Haguen.”
“I will,” Winter says, because if xe’s not sure of anything else, xe is sure xe needs to do that.
Haguen, eventually, stops crying, and lies still for a long time afterwards. Finally, in a low voice, she says, “Did you know core admins can create new tessellations?”
Winter has no idea how to process that. It is incomprehensible. She understands all the words in it, but – “New tessellations?”
“Whole new ones. And we simply raised the total amount of water in circulation in The City. An admin,” she says, a little bitterly, “could have done so all along.”
“That’s amazing,” Winter says, and means it. Xe cannot begin to grasp the possibilities, not in the state xe is currently in. “Nobody needs optimisation at all?”
“Things have been very exciting.” Haguen does not sound excited. “It’s been almost half a year. The first Working Group meeting – it automatically invited all the new admins, because things were critical – extending the protocol was trivial, they’d already done it half a dozen times in the early days of The City; the new identifiers should last a thousand times longer than the City so far, even following the current curve.”
Winter touches her hair. “I’m sorry,” xe says softly.
Haguen buries her face more firmly in Winter. “You died,” she says in a small voice. “We – I made them try to fix you. Even the original Working Group never managed that; we had to invent most of it.”
“I’m sorry. I had to do something.”
“Never ever,” Haguen says, “be a hero again, please, Contemplating Winter.”
Xe shudders. “No,” xe agrees.
“And never ever leave it to Crow to tell me that particular thing.” Haguen raises her face, wet and blotchy from crying. “I understand if you can’t say it yourself, but Crow?“
“Jin Haguen,” Winter says. “I died for there to be a world with you in it; I find that Nine-Nine Fears no longer has quite such a grip on me. I love you. I loved you then, I love you now, and I hope you still love me too.”
“Always.” And Haguen kisses xer, very carefully.
It is a while before Winter can concentrate. “The Paranoium,” xe says finally, reluctantly, and Haguen laughs.
“Winter,” she says. “You don’t understand. You gave everyone admin access.”
“Yes – “
“The City was designed to be infinitely extensible, without scarcity. Admins can simply rewrite it to contain anything they need. It’s a playground, and you rediscovered it. There is no Paranoium – no Five-in-One, no Banner, no Also Beneath, no Cartel, none of it. Every political hierarchy swept away in an instant.”
“Oh,” Winter says, in a small and bewildered voice.
“There are places in the far tessellations where they are raising churches to you as a living saint.”
“Oh no,” Winter says.
“I imagine that coming back to life will encourage them.” Haguen smiles, but it melts off her, eyes intense on Winter’s. “Don’t leave me again.”
Xe shakes xer head. “No,” xe says, and kisses her like a vow.
