Entry 49, Day: My Worst One Ever
Every fiber of my being wanted to go immediately to Lucia. To hug her, to kiss her, to make sure that she and the baby were OK.
And then, maybe yell at her. Just a little. Why was she here?! I mean, I was glad to see her, but this was the afterlife! Or, well, a digital version of it. She wasn’t dead, right?
“YOU’RE NOT DEAD, RIGHT?!” I shouted frantically, scrambling to my feet. Kal’tsit was holding me back, just like Mon3tr was doing to Lucia, and she clapped a hand over my mouth.
“Dr. McCoy! Do not draw attention to yourself, or Lucia, or my mother will-”
“Ah. The little vulpo. What did I promise to do to her? Oh, yes,” Priestess said, baring fangs in a wicked grin.
I screamed in panic, but Mon3tr gripped Lucia in her talons, then dropped to all fours and began bounding across the room as weird, blocky distortions formed in the air, trying to wrap themselves around Lucia and hit her with that de-evolution beam that Priestess had used earlier.
Doktah, however, didn’t take this lying down, and a glowing blue prism formed in the air between their fingers. They started to manipulate it, and Priestess stopped the assault, snarling and turning back to Doktah, fingers spread out as sharp little claws poked out where her fingernails had been.
“Cease this! You interfere with my model, Oracle! I am close! SO CLOSE! ALL will be incorporated! All will be preserved and saved! Did you not see already!? I have eliminated war, poverty, and hunger in Laterano! There is PEACE and ORDER.”
“There is brainwashing, body horror, and a distinct lack of fun. Did you force them to eat sugar free ice cream? Because that’s an unholy abomination, right there,” Doktah mused, forced to stop whatever it was they were doing when Priestess swiped and sent a rain of Originium nails at them.
“Move!” Kal’tsit hissed in my ear, as more distortions in the air formed, this time coming for me. I scrambled along as best I could, running along the wall of the circular room with Kal’tsit, dodging cables and torn up bits of white tile from Priestess and Doktah’s continued clash.
Doktah appeared to be hopping around somewhat at random, dashing one moment, ducking the next, puffing and panting in their hood and heavy jacket. On the other hand, Priestess seemed entirely feral, swiping her hands through the air to send out crystal fragments to impale Doktah, or ripples in the fabric of the Simulated Universe that seemed to want to swallow me or Lucia whole.
Our circuit of the room inevitably brought Lucia and I together, as Mon3tr had been running in the opposite direction. Heedless of Kal’tsit’s warning, I leapt desperately for the woman I loved, my hand extending for hers.
“JAMES!” she cried, her own fingers stretching out to me.
“Mom!” Mon3tr cried happily, reaching for her mother, her talons relaxing to let Lucia fall into my arms.
“No, you fools! Do not stop! Flee, before-” Kal’tsit began, then gave up and tried to tackle me before I could grab Lucia.
She failed. I wasn’t in the greatest shape ever, but I’m tall and lanky with long legs, and I had a lot of momentum going already. I managed to grab Lucia in a princess carry, even as Mon3tr reached for her own mother.
A distortion opened up right under my feet, but I didn’t care. Lucia clung to me, her head pressed against my chest. I curled myself up around her as we both plummeted into a hole in reality itself.
Someone grabbed the back of my lab coat, and my momentum was arrested in a bone-jarring jerk. I managed to hold on to Lucia, but I heard fabric rip. It didn’t give way entirely, but we were hanging by literal threads. Below us, I could see dozens of pulsing red spires of Originium, their needle points seemingly pointed straight at Lucia’s heart.
“Idiots!” Kal’tsit hissed, and I looked up to see that it was her holding on to my jacket with both hands, her muscles straining. Mon3tr was gripping her mother by the ankles, her talons dug into the floor above us as she scrambled to pull us up. I could barely hold on to Lucia; she felt like she weighed 200lbs. The originium itself seemed to be fighting against Mon3tr, and even her incredible strength was nearly at its limits.
“Get them out of here! Priestess cannot regain her lost permissions, or this is all over!” Kal’tsit shouted, trying to swing Lucia and me up to Mon3tr.
“No! I’m not listening! Not to Grandpa, or you!” Mon3tr cried, tears on her face. “I won’t leave you! I didn’t even know I had a mom until you were gone! Now I know I need one!”
Kal’tsit’s expression softened, but she didn’t stop trying to pull us up to Mon3tr. “I told you in my goodbye I loved you, daughter. If you wish to love me, then survive. Keep all those who call themselves my children safe. That is the legacy I left you. Not the echo of my memory stored in corrupted crystal.”
Mon3tr growled and heaved even more mightily, not letting go of anyone. I could see the crystal tendons of her talons straining, the floor cracking and falling away. She just about had us up to the lip, when Priestess appeared above us. I expected her to launch more originium, but instead, she’d pried up a length of rebar, and had it lifted over her head, ready to bring it down on Mon3tr in a two handed stroke.
“Let this be a lesson: sacrifice is meaningless when those you save learn nothing from it but loss!”
“No!” Mon3tr hissed, but she had no free limbs with which to defend herself. I hugged Lucia tight, praying I could somehow rotate my body so I got skewered and not her.
“Engaging.”
A lithe form appeared in the blink of an eye, two enormous swords gripped in her hands. Priestess’s eyes went wide, and then Texas severed her head at the neck and her body at the waist.
Not pausing, Texas drove her swords into Priestess’s guts, then kicked the head into the air and snapped her hands forward, a storm of blades impaling it and sending it bouncing among the white tiles. Then she turned to Mon3tr and began to tug her up.
“That will not work! She is in the crystals! You cannot simply win this fight with swords!” Kal’tsit argued as we were pulled up.
She was right. Even as I watched, Originium was rising up from the ground, washing over Priestess’s body and head. Both vanished, the crystals collapsing together, and then reforming.
For one, horrible moment, I thought my reconstruction had been for nothing, and we were about to face the Precursor who had created Originium itself at full power.
Instead, what formed out of the Originium was a woman who looked eerily like Kal’tsit and Mon3tr: tufted ears, a short, bobbed tail, and the same style of lab coat and casual wear. Honestly, she wouldn’t have looked out of place in the halls of Rhodes Island.
Which made sense. I was pretty sure we were at the heart of that vessel, in the secret chamber where Priestess had hidden for all the long millennia of her hibernation. Until some idiot had come along, spilled a bunch of secrets, and forced her to wake up earlier and angrier than she should have.
Hi.
“You think you can KILL me!? I AM Project Originium!” Priestess roared, forming a honeycomb shell of diamond-shaped crystals around herself.
Texas, of course, had not just been standing there while the ancient evil reformed. She’d probably faced her share of primordial horrors in her time as a Rhodes Island Operator. As soon as she saw the Originium coalescing, she’d snatched up her swords and charged, sending another rain of blades at Priestess.
It did fuck all. The Originium seemed to react to Texas’s attack before she had even finished making it. But at least she tried.
It was Texas’s turn to dodge out of the way as her own blade rain suddenly reversed in mid-air, becoming homing missiles that sought her flesh. She parried and dove, avoiding most of the hits, but grunting as a few slipped through her guard and cut into her.
“You are naught but ignorant children! Do you not understand what your Arts ARE!? They are manifestations of Originium! They do not exist outside of the very world I created!” Priestess cackled, her attention momentarily fixed entirely on Texas, a malicious grin on her face.
“Really? That’s funny. Because I remember how upset you were when the Teekaz kept doing things that were ‘impossible under all current understandings of physics,’” Doktah remarked.
They stepped out from behind a half-destroyed strut near the sarcophagus, casually drawing what I now saw was a rune of some sort.
A Sarkaz rune.
Priestess’s head whipped around, her expression comically like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on.
All around the room, wherever Doktah had passed, Sarkaz runes now glowed. I should have known better than to think the Ghost of Babel was just doing some random pratfalls and parkour to get themselves out of danger. I didn’t have time to whip out a measuring tape to check, but it looked like each rune had been set at very precise distances from one another in a geometric pattern a lot like the ones I’d seen Chief Medical Officer Warfarin use when she was treating particularly tricky patients.
“That…that will not work. This is MY universe. It simulates only according to the principles I have laid out,” Priestess said, slowly backing away from the nearest rune. She very nearly stepped on one behind her, then winced and spun in place, eyes darting around the room.
“Is it?” Doktah asked. “I seem to recall another name for this place: the Realm of Souls. The Sarkaz stole Civilight Eterna from you, and in your attempt to force them into your model, you tried to steal their afterlife. Isn’t that right, Theresa?”
A flickering pink-haired ghost appeared next to Doktah and put her hand on their shoulder.
“Yes. My people were long enslaved by this creature. Even now, the King strives to free the ancient device that turned brother against brother from its last moorings.”
“What?!” Priestess’s eyes went unfocused, her hands clenching at her sides. “No. I installed safeguards. Root-level prohibitions. It should not have—NO! How did they bypass the lockout?!”
She froze. True horror crossed her face. “They didn’t. The machine let them.”
Her claws dug into her palms, and blood welled up. “No. It has no will! It has no self! It is a device! I defined every parameter of its existence!”
“IT CANNOT CHOOSE! IT CANNOT BECOME SOMETHING I DID NOT INTEND!” she screamed, the air distorting with fractured crystals.
“And here, Priestess, is your fundamental flaw,” Kal’tsit said, stepping over to stand beside Theresa and Doktah, her eyes cold. “You think us all but simple variables in your equation. You consider me naught but a simple security drone. You think of this very place as a universe unto itself, the equal or successor to all of reality.
“Yet look around you. Could your model account for the love of my daughter? Could your crystals contain the love of Bones and Sussurro? Did you foresee the PCS becoming the Law and coming to love the Sankta as his children? Could you even fathom that the Teekaz and their heirs were beings of real value and consequence?
“You believed the technology your kind possessed made you the masters of all creation. You should have taken the lesson of the Observers and gained humility from it. Instead, your hubris, like that of so many tyrants before you, will be your downfall.”
Kal’tsit smiled and nodded to me.
“Or, to put it in terms Dr. McCoy can parse: You lose because you cannot fit love inside an equation.”
“I will not lose to you,” Priestess hissed, her back arching. “Not yet. You—all of you—are still trapped inside MY system. These errors can be corrected. These flaws can be overcome! I shall—”
A sword punched out of Priestess’s mouth, and I flinched. She gagged and gurgled, then slumped over like a puppet with its strings cut as Texas once more disemboweled her and did just about everything short of setting the remains on fire.
Which I am fairly certain was only because she’d given up smoking and left her lighter behind.
“She likes to talk,” Texas mused, stomping on the Originium as it attempted to reform. “I see now how you are related, Director.”
“This is hardly the time, Celenia. She will keep reforming,” Kal’tsit sniffed, even as Mon3tr put her sleeves over her mouth and giggled.
She turned to Doktah, then paused. Her eyes fell on Theresa instead, and she stepped forward to hug her. “I wish our reunion were not so brief or bittersweet. Thank you for coming.”
“I could hardly leave my old friends to finish the work of Babel alone,” Theresa answered with a smile.
“Yes, well.” Kal’tsit pulled away from Theresa and frowned at Doktah. “Father. How do you intend to keep her from coming back?”
“Sort of still working on that,” Doktah said, nodding toward the array. “This will disrupt her for a time, but it’s far from a permanent solution.”
During all of this, I had set Lucia down gingerly. We were both only half listening, our eyes having turned toward one another instead.
“You’re alive,” Lucia whispered, her hand cupping my face as I leaned down to her.
I put my hand over hers, her shape going rather blurry as tears got in the way of me looking at the most beautiful woman in the world. “Sort of,” I croaked. “You look good. The baby?”
She laughed, shifting from foot to foot. “Probably OK, because I keep having to pee! This is ridiculous! I’m still in my first trimester! I don’t want to know what state I’ll be in by thirty-two weeks!”
I gently cupped her abdomen, closing my eyes to see if I could feel or sense anything.
I couldn’t. Not even with Super Originium Vision.
In fact, while everyone else in the room and the room itself was visible thanks to being woven of crystal, Lucia was entirely invisible. Apparently, I’d done a really good job when I’d taken the crystal knife out of her, because there was hardly a speck of the stuff left in her system at all. I couldn’t find any in the baby, either.
Granted, I couldn’t actually sense the baby.
Our kid was probably about the size of a pinhead at the moment, if it had only been around three weeks since conception, so there wouldn’t have been much to sense regardless.
“We need to get you two out of here,” I muttered, looking around the room. Texas was still stomping on the crystal sludge that had been Priestess, while Doktah, Kal’tsit, and the Ghost of Sarkaz Past were having an increasingly technical discussion of Sarkaz runes and Soul Magic that I definitely couldn’t have followed even if I wasn’t just a measly old R1.
“That is what I have been saying about you!” Lucia gasped, wiping away her own tears. She glanced at the remains of the sarcophagus and frowned. “Before that thing turns on again.”
“I don’t know that I can leave,” I admitted, shaking my head. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I did die, right? This is just a data echo or whatever.”
“No. I refuse. I have you, and you’re coming back, even if I have to get a crash cart and make you,” Lucia declared, then jerked me down and gave me a sloppy kiss with plenty of tongue.
I didn’t argue. I wanted to come back too.
More importantly, if there was a way out of here even for me, then there had to be one for her and the baby.
I might be dead, but they didn’t need to be.
Ignoring the three experts, who were now talking about ‘Balor'sača’s Matrix’ and ‘the Binding of Qui'lon,’ we turned to Texas and Mon3tr. If I had paid more attention to the lore, I might have had some idea what any of that meant.
Texas was still poking at the Originium, but it was skittering about the floor in little clumps and not reforming at the moment. Mon3tr was similarly growling and stabbing the particles with her pincers, but that didn’t seem to be doing anything either.
“I don’t suppose you have an extraction plan, do you?” I asked Texas. “Oh, and, uh, thanks for coming to get me. I appreciate it.”
“Made a promise. Have to keep it,” Texas said, her eyes never leaving the clumps as though looking away would give Priestess permission to reform.
“Um, we sort of didn’t have a plan past getting here,” Mon3tr admitted, blushing and shaking her head. “I mean, it’s the Simulated Universe. How do you leave?”
“Well, I assume we don’t have a handy blue pill to force us to unplug,” I said dryly.
Texas flicked an ear at me, while Mon3tr looked confused and Lucia muttered something about “weird alien knowledge.”
Right. No Matrix on Terra.
I blew out through my lips and looked around, but there didn’t even appear to be any doors. The one Doktah and the others had come in through had vanished and was indistinguishable from the rest of the walls. I couldn’t even tell if that was due to clever structural design or if it had actually disappeared.
“Well, either way, we—”
Something grabbed me by the ankles, and I only had time to scream as I was jerked off my feet.
“Actually, Dr. McCoy, I believe you wanted the red pill.”
Doktah, Kal’tsit, and Theresa instantly turned toward me, but they were too late.
I flipped over onto my belly. Priestess had fully reformed. She’d just been smart enough to do it out of sight. She grinned viciously from inside a crack in reality, one clawed hand locked around my ankles.
“But since you requested the blue pill…I am happy to oblige.”
“JAMES!” Lucia screamed.
I threw out an arm to stop her, but she dove on top of me just as Priestess yanked me through the crack.
I landed hard on a metal floor, Lucia’s weight knocking the air out of my lungs as she bounced off me and rolled away. I wheezed and gasped as Priestess stood up, a manic gleam in her eyes.
“Now, Doctor McCoy, I-”
A snarling Lupo barreled through the tiny crack that was sealing itself shut and knocked Priestess clean off her feet. Texas’s clothes were smoldering from the contact with the crack, and she’d lost her swords, but she was rolling around on the metal decking with Priestess, the two of them going at it like cats in a sack.
To my immense relief, Texas was clearly winning. Lupos are naturally bigger and stronger than Felines, and unlike Priestess, Texas has been trained in every martial art known in Siracusa, while Priestess probably didn’t even bother loading a self defense module or whatever ancient superpowered aliens do.
Right when I thought Texas was going to put Priestess in a submission hold and choke the life right out of her, Priestess managed to grab Texas by the arm.
“YOU. ARE. A. BEAST!”
Immediately, Texas’s form rippled, and to my horror, she was replaced by a large black and grey wolf though, comically, one with its left ear pierced and two gold earrings in it. Priestess kicked the startled wolf away and got shakily to her feet.
“There. Now, a form you deserve! Now everyone will see you for the unevolved-”
“Wow, you sure are dumb, lady,” I coughed, slowly getting to my feet.
She glared at me. “Someone who cannot even recall the correct color of the pill Morpheus offers to free Neo in the classic movie has no right to insult another's intelligence.”
“No, but the moron who just turned Celenia Texas into nature’s most efficient killing machine probably shouldn’t worry so much about movie trivia.”
Priestess had just enough time to scream before Texas leaped up and tore her throat out.
I had to look away and went over to help Lucia up. She was holding her head, and I immediately checked her for signs of concussion. When I reached into my pocket, I found a penlight, so I checked that both pupils were the same size and reacted properly.
“I’m fine,” she groaned, but let me perform the test anyway. “I can walk.”
“Alright,” I agreed, and helped her up.
Texas was still savaging the corpse, and I looked around where we were. It appeared to be some sort of medical laboratory, full of equipment that looked vaguely like things I was familiar with, if all of it had come from the Star Trek version of medicine. Since I had never been much of a Trekkie, thanks again, Mom and Dad, I had no clue what any of it did.
“This way,” Lucia said, pointing to a door, and I hurried after her.
We hadn’t got more than five steps before I heard a wolf yip and whine, and I spun about to see a once-again-reformed Priestess, hair in utter disarray, panting heavily. She was glaring at Texas, who had been muzzled and bound by strands of Originium.
“Why will you insufferable primitives not simply give up!? You are outmatched in every way! You cannot fight! You cannot flee! Resistance is meaningless, and a waste of energy! When will you finally see the beauty of my model?!”
She threw her arms wide and screamed at the ceiling, “When will you simply allow the one remaining adult to do what must be done!?”
“Lady, you look like my cracked-out aunt from Oakland after she got pulled over for yet another DUI, not a responsible adult. Sound like her, too. Are you going to start ranting about Flat Earth and Hillary Clinton being a reptile now?” I demanded.
Actually, I bet Hillary Clinton WAS a Savra here.
Priestess fixed her eyes on me, and lucidity seemed to reassert itself. Which, good for her, bad for everyone else. She flicked a finger, and Originium chains wrapped around me, dragging me over to a table and binding me there, spread eagled.
“I will be doing what I should have done from the first,” Priestess said slowly, plucking a tool from a tray by the table. It hummed to life, a menacing orange arc leaping from it like the blade of a scalpel.
“I have separated you from the Oracle and his pets. I have bound your little wolf. A shame that your supposed mate with your misbegotten hybrid isn’t here, but, well, one can’t have everything.”
I very carefully did not dart my eyes over to look at Lucia, who had frozen two steps from the door. I willed her to go through it, run, and not look back. Get out, and get our baby out. That was priority one.
“I shall be taking those permissions from you,” Priestess said lazily, gesturing with her laser scalpel. “I do not know for certain I can do so by cutting them out of your skull. But then again…”
She gripped my hair and the veneer of sanity fell off completely as she grinned like a slasher villain. “I do not know for certain that I cannot. And, well…I rather want to hear you scream just now.”
“W-wait,” I gasped, mind desperately grasping for any plans, even stupid ones. “W-what…what if I give them to you if you let me fuck Texas?”
Priestess paused and leaned forward, her expression incredulous. “I knew you were depraved, Dr. McCoy, but now you suddenly wish to copulate with her after she has returned to being a Canis lupus? Surely you do not find the females of this cursed world more attractive because of their bestial traits.”
“Well, I mean…turn her back first! And, uh, you offered to give me a harem…I figure I’m down a few dozen from that hundred by now, right? But, I mean…Texas is hot!” I babbled. “You saw what was on my phone.”
“Hmmm,” Priestess mused.
She began idly tracing a pattern across my shoulder with the laser scalpel. My clothes melted and burned, and I screamed as it seared and cut my flesh.
“If you are attempting to deceive me…that is just a taste. This is a medical device, meant for incisions. If pain were my primary objective…well. I am sure even a primitive medic such as yourself can imagine sufficiently grisly alternatives.”
“Right,” I said through gritted teeth. In the corner of my eye, I saw Lucia sneaking around the perimeter of the lab. Oh, fuck. Please don’t turn your head, please don’t turn your head, please don’t-
“Since, as you pointed out, my ‘de-evolution beam’ requires so little effort, let me demonstrate the reverse,” Priestess said, and turned around, facing right where Lucia was.
Lucia froze, and our eyes met. I almost screamed in panic, but I gritted my teeth. If Lucia got turned into a fox…I really would hand over the codes to get her back. A stupid move, sure. But I could figure out how to save the world after my wife and child were OK.
“-and there. I hope you are satisfied.”
I blinked. Lucia blinked. Then we both looked back at Texas. She was still muzzled and bound, but she was a Lupo again.
“I did keep her clothed. While you may find this primitive titillating, I find her quite vulgar enough. I will also insist that you delay your rut until after you are out of my line of sight,” Priestess sniffed and turned back to face me again.
What?
“Uh, thanks, but even I’m not that horny,” I said, managing a weak smile.
“I am sure,” Priestess said with a smirk. She traced a hand down my pants to my crotch, and touched it. I winced, and then tried very hard to think of Lucia naked. It must have worked, because Priestess snorted and moved her hand away. “Men. Perhaps I should be grateful that there are no others of my kind left, with the Oracle gone. It removes the less intelligent half of the species.”
Lady, you are literally a catgirl right now, I thought, but did not point out.
How had she not seen Lucia? That was the important question.
“Now, as to the extraction. I shall explain the mechanism, and you shall comply. Then, as per the original arrangement I shall give you…” Priestess tapped her chin with a finger. “...thirty-seven. Yes. I was at least sixty-three percent enraged, and thus, the original number of one hundred females for you to debase yourself with is reduced to thirty-seven. A more manageable number. I am sure you grossly overestimate your stamina.”
“Um, yeah, what can I say? Young, lonely guy in medical school, nothing but porn on the brain, heheh,” I said, but my mind is racing.
It’s the Originium. This whole place is made from it, stored in it, processed by it. I saw that with my Super Originium Vision. It was the first ability I unlocked, even before the infect-myself-with-super-cancer power. I couldn’t see Lucia with it. If Priestess is so obsessed with her model…
She’s only looking at the world with Super Originium Vision. She doesn’t realize she’s just blinded herself. Oh, sure, you can look through walls and see people’s bloodstreams and all kinds of stuff, but if they’re not Infected, or, hell, just don’t have any granules in their blood…
They’re freaking invisible.
Texas is infected, again, I can see lesions on the skin of her left arm. Idiot was probably shooting herself up with an Arts amplifier to save my life again. God bless that woman.
Priestess had been talking this whole time, and I had sort of zoned out there. I gave her a weak smile.
“Right, so, let’s just assume that…all that went over my head. I’m just an R1, not an attending. So, uh, if you could go over it again, but use smaller words, please?”
She looked down her nose at me with the long-suffering expression of a genius confined to a world of intellectual ants.
“I suppose that terminology would be overly complex for you,” Priestess sighed. “Very well. You understand the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ of your Permissions, yes? Well, this time, you must envision not simply that, but pushing out a block of Originium inscribed with your very essence.”
She waved a hand, and a model of a fragment of Originium inside my body appeared.
“That is, you are giving me a bit of you. If you must, you may imagine it as ejaculation. I am sure that appeals to your hindbrain. This is how you loaded Permissions onto others, which caused my model to break down as you re-keyed the descendants of the administrative models, then did the same to those damned Teekaz-derived aberrations.”
“...that’s why the Elders can learn the powers, but Ancients cannot?” I asked.
That had been Kal’tsit’s theory, right? I couldn’t remember if she had actually explained it, but it made sense.
“So why can’t I do the same to Ancients? Like, uh, Texas here?”
Priestess gestured toward Texas, who growled and jerked against her chains but was unable to move.
“A matter of encoded safety features, of course. The descendants of the administrative models were designated as test platforms. Ancients were not granted direct write access.
“If I could simply disseminate every Permission through the network, that would speed things up, yes. But if I were to push out a bugged version, the consequences could be catastrophic. Better to layer Permissions, test them on compatible models, and only then push a wider update.”
“As for the Teekaz-derived...” Priestess made a face. “Their Permissions are corrupted. They stole administrative access through Civilight Eterna instead of simply receiving the patch update you did. You merely rolled them back to a version from before I worked out a fix to prevent them retaining that ability.”
She sniffed.
“Distressing. But with you out of the picture, developing a new patch should not be much of an obstacle.”
“And you can’t just yank these from me…why?” I asked, very deliberately not looking at Lucia.
She’d walked up right behind Priestess, to the point that I was worried she might turn around too fast and just run smack into her.
Lucia was invisible, not intangible, I thought, so that would be a problem.
However, she was clearly getting just as much, if not more, out of this lecture than I was. She’d spent her life studying Originium and Oripathy and how to treat them, so a lot of this probably made sense to her.
Her tail was even wagging slightly.
I could tell that, if this were less of a life-or-death situation, she’d be thrilled to have so much knowledge about how her lifelong nemesis worked simply handed to her.
“Because you STOLE those Permissions!” Priestess hissed, grabbing my hair and putting the laser scalpel right up to my eye. I yelled and struggled a bit, my vision going all spotty from the bright light so close.
Then she let me go and leaned back, sighing. “You have the Push/Pull Permissions. They are a root level, admin access only ability with a single key. Oh, you can grant them to others…but they cannot be duplicated. Not without re-writing the whole program from the ground up, which only a project head, namely me, could do.”
Right. Or, you know, Doktah. Definitely not me. Maybe I theoretically could, but we don’t have the years and years of studying that this would take.
“Aren’t you worried I could just yank the permissions out of you?” I asked, flexing my hand.
She smirks at me. “Yet again, my model’s perfection shows itself. No, I am not worried. Admins cannot seize permissions from one another. They can be willingly passed along, but not taken. So long as my will remains intact, my permissions cannot be stolen."
“Oh. But, doesn’t that risk the permissions being lost if you are, you know, incapacitated?”
She sighed and nodded. “Yes, and that exact thing did happen when we lost the head of Project Caerula Arbor, what you would call the Seaborn. It was our main terraforming initiative. When it failed, our aspirations for this to be a proper humanx colony died.”
“However, unlike you barbarians, I learned from my mistakes. If the admin is disabled or incapacitated as happened then, the permissions can be retrieved. Don’t think killing me would work: if the Seaborn had just done that, then the Permissions would have revived the admin through the Crystals. No, instead, the Seaborn rendered the admin unresponsive and then assimilated them, costing me decades of work and the colony its life.”
“So…if someone were to disable you?” I asked slowly.
Priestess sneered. “And who will do that? You are chained up, the wolf is muzzled, the Oracle and his pets are trapped, and I-”
*shnnk*
Priestess collapsed like someone just switched her legs off. She twitched and gasped, but none of her four limbs responded, so she could only roll her head wildly.
“-have just suffered severe trauma at the C4–C5 level of your cervical spine,” Lucia says, holding her own laser scalpel in her hand and looking grimly down at the terrified woman. “That smell is your bowels letting go. You’ve lost all motor function below the neck, including bladder and sphincter control.”
“You’re lucky,” Lucia continues, holding up the scalpel and gesturing to the tray, which now has two empty places on it. “I’ve spent a lot of time on surgical rotations in Victoria. Majority Feline population. I was able to make a clean incision that left your brain stem and respiratory system intact. Everything else, though?”
She grinned, showing her sharp little canines. “Disconnected.”
Damn, she’s scary.
Good thing I’m marrying her.
“You…you fool! I…I will simply…simply come back! My…my body will be…fully functional!” Priestess gasped.
“Only if you die. That’s what you said, isn’t it?” Lucia chuckled as she leaned over and used the scalpel to try to cut my restraints.
They were pure Originium, however, and she was unable to chip them at all. Frustrated, she turned the scalpel on the metal of the table. That proved much more pliable, and I was soon free, though with Originium chains still dangling from my arms and legs.
That didn’t stop the hug.
Lucia dropped the scalpel with a sob, and we just held one another for several long seconds.
“I thought you were dead,” she cried.
“I thought you were a fox,” I gasped.
She nodded, and we stood there for just a moment.
Then I gasped and let her go.
“Oh shit, Texas!”
I hurried over to see what I could do about the muzzle and bindings, while Lucia folded her arms over her chest.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you asking to fuck your best friend, Signore,” Lucia growled.
“Oh, come on! I was literally trying to think of anything to distract her!” I protested as I used my abilities to tug on the restraints.
Texas was shaking slightly.
I realized she was laughing.
“Texas! Come on! You know I wouldn’t!”
I turned to Lucia and pleaded, “She’s gay!”
Lucia continued to glare, though her lip was twitching. She maintained it for another moment, then burst into hysterical giggles.
“I know, I know. I just- seriously, James? THAT was your idea of a distraction?”
“Yeah, well, you know I run my mouth under stress,” I grumbled, and managed to get Texas free. I stuck a finger under her nose. “No killing Priestess until AFTER her Permissions are gone. Got it?”
She nodded, but picked up a pair of laser scalpels and settled into a knife fighter’s stance.
“Understood.”
“Can you strip her Permissions?” Lucia asked uncertainly.
I frowned, then shook my head. “She’s still got her will intact. She’s physically incapable, but she can still deny us.”
“You can hold me like this for…for a thousand years!” Priestess grunted. “But…but one day! I…I will free myself!”
“Hmmm,” I mused, rubbing my chin. “You know…we could do a lobotomy.”
Priestess went utterly still. Terror filled her eyes as they darted between me, Lucia, and the grim-faced Texas.
“You…you wouldn’t?”
“I think I recognize some anesthetic. We can numb her first.” Lucia picked up the sci-fi drill and reached for a tube from the tray. “I’ve never performed a lobotomy, but I know enough Feline neuroanatomy to keep her alive.”
She pressed the button on the drill, and a spinning needle of light appeared, crackling ominously.
Priestess mewed in horror and began to shake her head. “No, no, no! D-do not! I-if you did- even if I died- I could come back like that! I-I’d be trapped! Never dying, never living, I- No! Please! Not, not that!”
She was crying now, completely helpless, unable to even scoot away from us. I knelt down beside her.
“So. Give them to me. All of them. Every last one of your Permissions. You can choose to surrender them, right? Then do it. Give them up. Hell, you do that, and I’ll even fix your legs. I know how, with these miracle healing Arts. But if you don’t?”
I jerked a thumb at Lucia, who helpfully whirled the drill again and gave Priestess her best insane slasher smile.
“She’s from Siracusa. They specialize in shit like this.”
“I…I…” Priestess swallowed, then jerked out a nod. “Fine. But not you. Only the Oracle. I…I can give them to them. Not you.”
I considered this.
“If this is a trap…Lucia really can do that lobotomy. They don’t take long, you know. Won’t even bother with the anesthetic. Just a quick ziiiip.” I mime the operation with my fingers, then flick them apart, “-and boom. No more frontal lobe.”
Priestess tried to pull away, but all she could do was press the back of her head harder against the floor. She gave another quick nod.
“Yes. Fine. The door. Just…open the door, and…and will it. It will connect. If you cannot easily form the connection, think of…think of the people. The place. The model can fill in the gaps, so long as an admin commands it.”
I went over to the door, focusing on Doktah in my mind.
It slid open as I approached, and I found myself looking into that same room.
Doktah, Theresa, and Kal’tsit were standing together, talking animatedly. Mon3tr was frantically running laps, dragging her talons along the wall in an attempt to cut her way free. I could see three parallel tracks of gashes, so she had been busy.
“BONES!” Mon3tr screamed as soon as the door opened.
She lifted herself onto all four pincers and dashed over before launching herself at my chest. I barely got my arms up in time to receive the frantic tackle hug.
She still bowled me over.
Oof!
How much did this girl weigh!?
“Dr. McCoy!”
Feet pound as Mon3tr hastily climbs off me and picks me up, and Doktah, Kal’tsit, and Theresa run into the room. All three look close to panic, and I don’t blame them.
“Uh, ok. So, um, we sort off…well, that is…Lucia maybe cut Priestess’s spine and we think she can give Doktah her permissions?” I say, and gesture helplessly behind me.
Doktah looks down at Priestess, then at Lucia with the drill, and nods. “Ah. The Arbor Protocol. Should have remembered. I’ve forgotten so much…”
They clapped me on the shoulder. “Good work, Operator Bones. I’ll take it from here.”
Relieved, I stepped back from the doorway, and the real experts crowded in. Lucia came over to me, arms outstretched, the drill discarded. I embraced her, and for a little while, I just held her.
The rest of it?
None of that mattered.
But this woman in my arms, and the child she carried?
This was my whole world.
If they were safe…well.
I guess I may just Enjoy My Life.