“It was a complete waste of time to search the ship,” Mark said.
“Not true,” Lola replied. “You have demonstrated a good head for leadership, yet again, though I am rather certain that hiding this conversation is only something that can happen for the next 10 minutes, while we have it.”
Mark felt a bubbly sort of warmth at her saying that, but he focused on the problem. Lola, Sally, Isoko, and Mark, were at the front of the ship, hiding from Eliot’s sensors, and from Derek’s knowing vector, but that was only because everyone was respecting the wishes of Mark and them to have a private discussion about a Big Topic.
That respect was going to run out soon if they didn’t come out and tell them all what was happening, afterward.
“We’re going to tell them all, right?” Sally ‘asked’. “I want to tell them.”
Isoko said, “As soon as we leave this room we’re either going to have to tell them, or they’re all going to get furious, and rightly so, and Derek can’t keep a secret for shit, so if we tell them, we tell the world. It’s one of the reasons why no one has been willing to give him real power.” She looked at Mark. “So we’re telling them all, right? And thus telling the world, and starting a Second Reveal, for real?”
Sally said, “The demons aren’t going to like people knowing that they can be perma-killed with enough adamantium.”
Lola said, “The Two Worlds will want to work with Addavein a great deal once they know what he really represents.” She looked to Mark, adding, “And you, as well.”
Mark laid out his new theory, saying, “I’m pretty sure that Okuana has known how to kill demons for a long time, and probably from his time in the Dragon King’s empire. The demons are supposed to be ‘helpers’, or whatever the fuck a ‘daemon’ is, so there have to be normal ways to execute them… Or to ‘turn off’ their programming, maybe? Perhaps that’s all Dominant is doing with the adamantium; he’s forcibly pressing a metaphysical ‘off switch’.”
Lola was deeply uncomfortable as she said, “I do not like thinking of demons as assistants… and to call the Gods ‘assistants’ too was quite difficult to hear.” She softly added, “Quite difficult.”
Sally just frowned at the ground, at the wall, at everything.
Isoko asked, “Have you done one of those system questions about the demons? Asked System Prime about it?”
“Yeah. Didn’t work. System Help will tell you about anything on the Status screen, but anything beyond that gives you the same response— Here.” Mark could tell Isoko was holding on to a big hope that Mark had simply been asking the System in the wrong way, so he simply said, “System Call, Help. What is a demon? Display readout for all present.”
Sally looked to Mark, muttering, “You can ask it questions?”
A blue box appeared in the air for everyone, attaching itself to the air right in front of a wall.
Mark thumbed at the box, saying, “It has a different response every now and then, but the ‘Invalid Query’ is always first. Last time it said something like… Well Quark took a picture and put it on the message boards, right?”
Quark spoke up, “Yes I did, sir. Here it is again.” Quark brought up a holographic image of a blue box, in a much less striking blue, in a much less ‘real’-feeling sort of way, reading out, ‘Invalid query. I cannot answer that question.’
Sally went, “Oh… yeah. Eliot said that… that was there.”
Lola softly told Sally, “We’ve all had a lot on our plates, Sally.” She looked at the bright blue box, and said, “This is a lot for me to digest, too.”
Isoko excitedly said, “Ask System Prime to explain itself!”
Mark said, “System Call, Help. Please explain yourself.”
“That’s a weird one,” Mark said.
“ ‘Mismatched directions’?” Sally muttered.
“You’re doing it wrong!” Isoko exclaimed, suddenly at her wits end.
“Then how should I do it!” Mark spat.
Isoko yelled back, “You should ask it why it calls itself ‘I’ when it says ‘I cannot answer that question’, like the one you linked in chat!”
Mark yelled out, “System Call! Help! Why do you call yourself ‘I’ when you respond to a query! Show everyone here…” Mark faltered in his sudden anger, because he had never done this before. He continued, “… the answer.”
Isoko looked like she wanted to punch him and hug him, and she wasn’t sure which one she wanted to do more, but then a blue box appeared for everyone.
Isoko suddenly said, “Ask it about gates to Earth!”
“That won’t work— Fine fine! System Call, Help. Is there a gate to Earth around here we could use?”
“That’s even less information than usual,” Mark muttered.
Isoko said, “It already told us that all information of the New World is hidden by Decree of the Endless Court. That probably means Earth, Daihoon, Endless Daihoon, all of it. But we can ask about the System itself, right?”
Sally said, “Ask System Prime if you can get another house book for Eliot.”
“System Call, Help. Can I get another house book for Eliot?”
“Okay so it’s not even giving me anything now,” Mark said. “It’s never done that before.”
Isoko asked, “Ask Quark to ask it a bunch of questions. Just run through every possible thing you can think of to ask. Annoy the shit out of System Prime if you have to.”
Mark instantly said, “Quark can’t ask questions; we already tried that.”
Lola supplied, “I believe it wants you to ask it about itself, Mark.”
Mark paused. “Ah… yeah. Maybe. System Call, Help. How can I help you?”
Nothing.
… More nothing.
Sally looked at the air, asking, “Is there a box coming or—”
Lola had a small little gasp.
Mark focused. “System Call, Help. Is an Inheritor like a System Administrator? Or capable of becoming a System Administrator?”
Lola fell backward, throwing out a hand to catch the wall.
Sally looked victorious, but then crushed, as she said, “Holy shit, that’s a fucking quest.”
Mark felt like he had found his life’s calling.
Nothing else mattered than this, right here.
Aluatha’s intrigue. Mage Society nonsense. Okuana’s shit. Even Kardi and Thrashtalon didn’t matter in that one, shining moment, as Mark read those words in that box a second and then third time. And then the moment passed, he realized that everyone’s issues mattered a whole lot because this thing floating in front of him was an insane sort of quest for anyone to undertake at all. There was no way this was ever getting completed without the entire backing of a whole lot of people who would likely actively oppose such a thing, and each other.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
But Isoko had tears in her eyes, and she whispered, soft as a breeze, “Death to all monsters.”
And Mark felt secure again.
Sure, it was going to be tough, and some factions would be intractable, for sure. Would Thrashtalon ever agree to fix the System, to stop all monster spawning at the very least, by appointing a System Administrator that would do as such? Likely not.
So Thrashtalon and all of his Cultists needed to die, and he needed to be replaced.
Was that any different than Mark’s current lofty goals?
No.
It wasn’t different at all.
Mark said, “Death to all monsters.”
Lola got down on her knees and prayed, right then and there.
Mark told Sally and Isoko, “We should tell the team about Okuana’s supposed solution against demons, too.”
“I think this thing is calling them ‘spirits’,” Isoko said, mystified.
“It has to be a translation issue?” Sally quietly asked herself, and anyone who could answer. She looked to Mark, adding, “System Prime has been watching you? Us? It knows what we’re after? But it can’t answer direct questions?”
“I don’t know, Sally.” Mark felt something akin to lost, or maybe embarrassed, as he said, “It was giving me ‘Invalid Query’ over and over again for everything except Status screen questions.”
Sally looked at the blue box again. “What changed?”
Mark had no answers to that, but he tried, “The last time I poked around at it with Eliot and Tartu was when we were rebuilding my house, and Eliot asked me to ask about… something. I think it was the nature of the house itself. I got ‘Invalid Query’ and then whatever— I was just asking it about stuff, right before I called all of you here. I was asking about demons. It couldn’t tell me shit. And now it’s giving me hints on what it can answer?”
Sally looked to the box again. “Maybe it was being watched before? And it couldn’t answer?”
“We were in elf land until now?” Isoko asked/said. “Or maybe we’re close enough to an exit that it could actually say stuff?”
“Why would being near an exit matter?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know!” Isoko exclaimed, even as she smiled and giggled a little.
Sally smiled, too.
Mark chuckled.
Lola came back to herself, out of prayer, but her eyes glowed gold with Freyala. Freyala stared at the blue box in the air as Lola said, “A lighthouse has been lit by a gestalt entity that is not capable of doing much more than that, for the seas are treacherous and full of demons both literal and not. This changes everything and nothing at all. Maybe one day we will see the path forward… and the Collective is going to work in that direction. But now… Now we, here, must try to find our way home. We should focus on that.”
Isoko sniffled a little, drying her eyes with the hem of her shirt, chuckling once as she said, “Yeah… but how?”
Freyala was still behind Lola’s eyes as she said, “If it turns out we’re popping out in Okuana… We will go to war with Dominant over this if he causes war. Right now, we will be sending people his way to demand answers on a great many topics.” Freyala left Lola, and then Lola blinked, and said, “I believe we should tell the others about a great many topics, as well, and I have a few new interviews to do. Mark; you and I will be talking later.”
Mark said, “Sure. I expected as much, but… I didn’t expect this.”
“I don’t believe any of us did,” Lola replied, nodding just a little.
A moment passed.
And then Isoko burst out of the room, tapping her comms on her visor, yelling out to the entire ship, “HOLY FUCK, GUYS! Did you know that Okuana has a way to permanently kill demons but they need adamantium to do it?! I’ve been dying to tell you for months now! That’s why we’re worried about entering Okuanan airspace! They tried to get Mark to go to Okuana a bunch of ways, and they also did that shit with Thrashtalon’s family and they had the largest historical adamantium zoos, and—”
“They did?!” Mark exclaimed, as he followed Isoko out of the room. He hadn’t known that part. “I thought Aluatha had the big farms?”
“Minor ones compared to Okuana,” Lola said, following Mark.
“Wait a fucking second,” Eliot said, dominating the comms. “You can permanently kill demons with adamantium?”
“No way!” Derek instantly said, disbelieving. “I would have known if that was true. You can’t keep a secret like that.”
Isoko beamed as she said, “And now we certainly can’t keep that secret!”
Everyone started talking at once.
It took a while to get through everything, but not nearly as long as Mark expected.
Soon, Mark sat in a dark room with Lola.
They had about 30 minutes before the next zone transition, and they didn’t know what was going to greet them on the other side. From this side, that land out there looked like more red wastes, but the transition from the previous ocean to these red wastes had been completely unexpected, in retrospect. The transitions between the first, second, and third zones had been more or less seamless, except for the metaphysical changes in the air, locking the zones out from each other.
“We don’t have a great deal of time,” Lola began, lights dimming as she touched the controls she pushed on the other side of the table. And then she frowned, and pushed a few more buttons, bringing the lights back on somewhat, as she continued, “So I will be making these rapid fire— There we go. Lights on for this. Eliot can edit it to be darker later, if he wants.”
Mark nodded, sitting there in his chair, waiting.
Lola stared Mark in the eyes, and said, “Hypothetical: Kill 50% of the human population, and Earth is free of monsters forever. Would you do it?”
Mark swelled with disgust. “No fucking way.”
“It’s a button right in front of you. Press the button, half of humanity dies. But also, the monsters go away, Thrashtalon is gone, Kardi vanishes, the goblins are a solved problem, demons are no more, and the largest problems facing the public are now law-based issues that are solved in courtrooms instead of on battlefields.”
Mark frowned. “... No. I could never… never do that.”
“I could,” Lola said. “In a heartbeat. It wouldn't even matter who died and who lived. It could be the worst half of humanity that survived, and I’d be fine with that.”
Mark’s heart thumped hard. He felt sweaty. “Really?”
“Yes,” Lola said, eyes solid with conviction. “Such an opportunity would never happen for me, though.”
Mark breathed out a little sigh of relief, chuckling a little with nervousness—
“But it might happen for you.”
Mark tensed.
“It won’t be a button,” Lola said, “It will be a meeting in a board room. It will be a discussion with another high power. It will be a choice between evils. It will be a series of events that take years to unfold, that you will never know how it falls out until it falls out, which will culminate in the changing of the Two Worlds. It will be you, standing in the White Cauldron, wherever that is or whatever it could be, deciding to do something that will damn a great deal of souls to darkness and raise the rest to the light. Most of all, it will be you on a warpath, allies dying or dead, maybe some of them coming back if you can figure that out, but mostly dying.
“Do not mourn the losses overmuch, Mark.
“Keep your eyes on the goal. On that bright, shining future in a better world.” Lola Looked at Mark, and Mark felt seen, as she said, “Others have called you naive, Mark, because of your Death To All Monsters stance, but it is exactly what this world needs. And now we know it is truly possible. It merely requires several hundred miracles and a million compromises or murders, each harder than the last.
“When all is said and done, no one will ever know if the way you did it was the best way, or the worst. You will be called a monster and a hero and both will be correct, but more than that, it will be done. It will be done, and you will be living in a better world of your own making.” And then Lola grinned a little, and made a small joke, “If System Prime is to be believed, anyway.”
Mark smiled at the warmth in Lola’s vector, at the love and the certainty. He breathed, and he choked up a little, and then he calmed himself, and said, “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t lie. But… heh. System Call, Help. Are you lying to me about anything at all? Display answers for all.”
A blue box appeared to the side.
Lola stood up and bowed to the blue box deeply, saying, “I would hope for nothing less, System Prime.”
Mark looked at Lola doing that sort of gesture for a moment before he stood up and did the same—
“Never bow, Mark,” Lola said, still bowing. “Not you, not ever again.”
… Mark stood up straight, he supposed.
“… Well okay then,” Mark said, everything feeling way too serious.
“When this is over,” Lola softly began, tapping the lights to full-brightness before she rose to her feet, “And if this doesn’t end in something horrible, perhaps you should consider a proper higher education. Something fit for an emperor.”
Mark rolled with it, saying, “Isoko was thinking about ways to explain her sudden powerup to the Curtain Protocol world through the HVP, and she was talking about a school-arc. I could do that, too… But it feels way too hopeful to wish for such a thing, Lola.”
Lola’s eyes got watery, her voice cracking, as she said, “It— It could happen.”
Mark hoped it would.
