Author: Lurina

228: Locked Universe Mystery (𒌋𒐀) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

I'd got pretty good at explaining all this now, but it still took enough time that the lingering sunlight had almost completely faded by the time I was done, casting the beach into a gentle, blue-tinted darkness, save for some wooden torches every two-dozen yards. A band had started playing culturally-ambiguous traditional drum music off to our right, so we started moving to the left, where it was a little less busy.

"So this, well, I suppose avatar is the correct word-- Did it say when I was supposed to have had this conversation with her? It?"

"No," I told her. "I tried to ask, but she just said it was a while ago. She was really vague on timescales generally."

"Hm." She thrummed her middle and forefinger against the cover as she considered. "Interesting."

"You don't remember it."

"Not at all, which is somewhat curious," she mused. "If you're willing to accept a significant loss in detail, fidelity, and personal association, there are methods to extend the reach of one's memory in this place far beyond what is natural. The most common method is to construct an external neural data bank for safekeeping in one's own Domain, and consult it for reminders intermittently."

That's a really pretentious way to describe keeping a logic engine diary, I thought.

"I have one that goes back very far," she added, somehow making this sound like a boast.

"How far, exactly?"

"Into the realm of seven figures."

"How do you even conceptualize the idea of having lived that long?" I asked, briefly thrown off-topic by the insanity of the situation hitting me for probably the hundredth time. "That's three times longer than anatomically modern humans have even existed-- Had even existed, I guess."

Kamrusepa snorted as if the question was barely worth acknowledgement, still thinking to herself. "It's too soon to jump to conclusions, but I wonder if it could even be something that happened towards the beginning of this place's existence. We'll have to have it analyzed. And my own motivations... mm, it's very curious indeed."

"I'm surprised you just believe me about all this," I commented.

She looked to me, seeming to come back to earth. "Well, it's a little hard to deny." She wiggled the book at me. "This account is accurate. I, or at the very least someone whom I was comfortable sharing rather strikingly intimate information with, definitely wrote it."

"But I could have just had it lying around somewhere from a billion years ago or something," I suggested. "Everyone else I've talked to either doesn't really believe the Lady exists, or has seen her themselves."

She arched her brow. "Who claims to have seen her?"

"Neferuaten."

She pursed her lips.

"Have you seen her?"

"No, but stories of encounters with her aren't altogether uncommon, at least in circles with some curiosity regarding the nature of this world." She looked out inland. "Have you seen the temple they have here? Out towards the mountains?"

"That was one of the first things Ptolema showed me."

"I thought it might have been." She nodded to herself a few times, looking like she was coming to some internal conclusion, before looking back to me. "The accounts are inconsistent - it's impossible, of course, to verify whether this is an issue of reliability, or her altering the way she presents herself from person-to-person - but there's enough secondary evidence floating around that I've been assuming some truth to the rumors. There's even another member of the class who claims to have had an encounter."

"I shouldn't say yet. The rest of the story crosses into more personal territory, so they might consider it a betrayal of trust for me to even draw the connection." She clicked her tongue. "Besides which, I already know the nature of the experiment that created this place, so the idea that some remnant of the original human they used in their attempt to embody the entity persisting - or perhaps arising - in this realm doesn't feel altogether out of the question. In fact, it might stretch credulity further to imagine that woman's shot in the dark could have succeeded on the first attempt without something pulling the strings favorably behind the scenes. Humans are beings prone to error; we're lucky when we produce a food flavoring that's not poisonous at the advent, let alone a new plane." She bit her lip. "Not to say it doesn't raise a number of fascinating questions. How much power do they hold over this realm? Why do they hide away instead of interacting with us openly, if they were motivated in part by a desire for companionship? Outside of our class, who is chosen to see them and why? And their identity..." She trailed off.

I furrowed my brow. "Are you thinking about their gender?"

Kamrusepa blinked, then looked baffled. "What?"

"During the conclave, there were a couple times an artist in the Order was mentioned," I explained. "Who painted half the portraits in the bell tower before they had to 'retire'. It's a bit of an inference, but I think they're also the one who painted the mural. And I know that's 'Uli', the child they experimented on." I scratched the side of my head. "But Neferuaten described them as male, while the Lady is obviously a woman."

She stared at me, her expression somewhere between confused and irritated, for a few moments. "No, Su, that's not what I meant," she said slowly. "I was more considering their choice to embody this anthropomorphic personification of death as understood by human culture, and whether that's their only persona, or merely one they adopt for 'holding court', as it were."

I didn't resist the subject being changed. "Mm, I had the thought they might be incognito out here, too. We had this conversation about... Well, it doesn't matter." I shook my head. "Anyway, you're right. It doesn't really make sense that they'd coop themselves up in solitude if they feel any kinship with humanity."

You switched to using 'they', some part of me quietly pointed out.

Kam nodded pensively. "It's definitely a possibility worth entertaining, albeit one I'm not sure how to act upon. After all," she cast her hands out, "though the numbers may be small compared to the Remaining World, there are still a great many people here. It would be difficult to single out one suspect."

I nodded in turn, looking around the figures on the beach. There were so many sandcastles.

"In any event," Kam digressed. "What I find more inscrutable are two things. Firstly, the fact that I wrote this book at all, and secondly this so-called hourglass."

In retrospect, it shouldn't have been a surprise that this'd be the thing Kamrusepa latched on to. "You don't believe it exists?"

"It's a tricky question. I can't think of any reason why you would lie about it to me, and I especially can't imagine how a being like that could be mistaken. Fear of such a thing, too, could serve to explain your unnatural absence." She sounded a little sad as she said the last part. "But it's difficult to take seriously based on the broader circumstances. After all, this realm has persisted for a long time, and you're still here."

"That came up in a conversation with Ptolema, yeah. But isn't it possible that it's based on mental activity, not time? Meaning it wouldn't pass while I was Dreaming?"

"I can't see how that would follow," she said. "The mind doesn't just turn off altogether when doing such a thing, it merely becomes synchronized with its counterpart in the mortal world. I suppose you could hypothesize some metaphysical fine print for why it wouldn't count - say it operates on 'actions taken', or something of that ilk - but the idea feels unlikely." She raised a finger to her lips. "It's also simply been, well, an unthinkable amount of time. As you yourself have experienced, one can only Dream for so long before something comes along to knock you out of the trance. If you're really suggesting this is operating on as meagre a timescale as decades, then even those small interruptions would add up."

"Yeah, everyone I've talked to about it has seemed skeptical. It doesn't really make much sense when I think about it rationally, either." I shrugged. "But when I look at it, I can just, I dunno, tell. That I'm going to die when it runs out. I felt that even before I talked to the Lady."

"Let me see it," she commanded.

"You can't," I replied, but took it out of my pocket anyway. "It's invisible to everyone but me."

"And intangible?" She looked at the spot where it wasn't.

"That's complicated," I said. "I did this experiment with Ptolema, where I tried to put some grass on it to see whether it'd fall through or not, and something really strange happened. It was like reality itself split in half for a second, and then afterwards..." I trailed off.

She squinted. "Afterwards... what?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I think maybe time reversed, or it at least did something weird to Ptolema's mind. She was suddenly a few steps back, and when I tried to talk to her about what happened, she didn't seem to know what I was talking about." I felt a chill. It was still a disturbing experience to think about.

Kam's expression suddenly became intense. "And have you tried to replicate this?"

She frowned. "Why not?"

"Well... it was creepy," I replied honestly. "And I was kind of afraid of breaking reality or something."

She rubbed her brow. "Su, you're supposed to be a scientist." She began to kneel, gesturing for me to do the same. "Get on the ground."

I looked sideways evasively. "U-Uh, I don't know, this feels--"

"Get on the bloody ground!" She snatched my wrist and pulled me downwards. "Good God. You're still like bloody Ariadne on the coast of Crete. It's remarkable you summon the bravery to dress yourself."

"I--" I looked away evasively, not wanting to mention the fact I hadn't actually dressed myself since arriving in Dilmun.

Kamrusepa spun her forefinger for a few moments. Objects appeared around us - a simple mechanical clock, a much thinner one with subtle runework, and a third made out of glass and elaborate machine parts. Arcane and atomic respectively. I see what she's doing.

"Here's how we'll perform the experiment," she said, also summoning a writ of parchment and quickly scribbling some kind of letter to herself. "We'll use the three clocks to determine if there's any actual chronological anomaly - and to narrow down its scope if one does indeed exist, though to me it seems a rather unlikely prospect - and this note to try and determine if mental manipulation is occurring, or if it's some kind of bespoke phenomena that cleans up after itself in totality. Finally, we'll replicate these objects elsewhere on the off-chance it's local." She lifted her finger up, creating a copy of the four items, then opened a portal and dumped them somewhere. "Before that, though, we'll repeat the premise of the experiment back to one another for the next five minutes. Hopefully this will be sufficient for me to remember the situation, but if not we'll at least have a sense of the scope of the phenomena."

"You're taking this really seriously all of a sudden," I remarked.

"Su, what you just described is absolutely terrifying," Kamrusepa stated gravely. "An anomaly that can selectively alter minds? Or warp time, unbeknownst to the target? It's a harrowing proposition, with dreadful implications on our free will. We must get to the bottom of it at once." She handed me the letter, which was addressed to herself, again explaining what she was doing.

"O-Okay," I conceded. "Wouldn't it maybe be better to do this somewhere less public, though? In case something strange does happen?"

"Absolutely not," she said. "Having potential witnesses at a range of distances is a net positive. This way, if it's local rather than general, the scope will instantly become obvious. And if it's general, well, at least we'll know what we're up against."

I wasn't really comfortable with any of this, but the force of Kam's insistence was too much to resist. And I had been meaning to investigate this further, even if it made me uneasy.

When we were done repeating the explanation back to one another, she pointed to a spot on the ground. "Set the hourglass right there."

I did so. Then Kam took a sharp breath, then tossed sand on it herself.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The sand rested upon the hourglass. The sand did not rest upon the hourglass. The sand wrested ion top of the hourglass. thw hand thdo dnko t wehrs tjb aktnlwk

I flinched sharply, digging my nails into the sand. Knowing it was coming didn't make it any better.

I looked up at Kam anxiously. "Did you--"

"I saw it," she said, squinting at the spot where the hourglass - now untouched by sand - still rested.

I felt relieved, then confused. "You did?"

"Yes," she said carefully. "Though I'm not sure what exactly it was that I just saw." She turned towards the clocks, examining them one at a time. "No chronological anomalies, as expected."

"I--" I bit my lip. "I don't understand."

"Let's try and replicate the result, just to be on the safe side," she said. "Is it still in the same position?"

She dropped more sand on it.

It happened again.

"Fascinating," she said quietly.

"You must be immune to it somehow," I remarked. "Maybe it's because you're paying so much attention to it. Ptolema wasn't really that invested. Or maybe it's because of all the clocks, or the witnesses, or something."

"There are certainly a number of variables in play," she said, though I sensed some skepticism in her tone. "Let's try to narrow it down a little further."

We tried removing the clocks. The result was the same. We tried moving a little away from the beach for a minute, out onto the grass, but again the result was the same.

"What exactly are you seeing?" I asked her. "If you don't see the hourglass, I mean."

"It's difficult to describe save in retrospect," she explained. "It feels like I have two memories of the same event. In one, the sand falls uninterrupted to the ground, and nothing happens. But in the other, it comes to a sudden stop. And in that version of events, there is a sense of increasing disorientation, until it seemingly collapses, leaving the sand also on the ground." Her eyes narrowed. "The second feels more difficult to recall; I almost want to dismiss it as a daydream."

I nodded slowly. "That's more or less the same as me, then. Except that I can actually see the hourglass."

"Draw a circle in the sand precisely around where it sits, if you please."

I traced my finger around the spot in the sand, and then Kamrusepa began pouring a very fine trickle of sand at some remove, slowly moving the stream towards the hourglass. Surprisingly, the phenomenon occurred a little bit before it began directly touching it, though it was a subtle enough effect I might've been inclined to dismiss it as a false positive. Kam clearly thought something of it, though, because she repeated the process from two more angles with the same result.

"So the physical shape that you're perceiving doesn't equal the anomaly itself, per-se, even if it does have a similar spatial presence." She looked at me. "Su, can you describe the hourglass, as it appears to you?"

"Um," I said. "It's about as tall as my hand, a little less wide, and the head and bottom is made of some dull, dark metal-- Maybe it's supposed to be iron, actually, I suppose that'd make the most sense symbolically. The glass looks normal, there's no ornamentation of any sort, and the sand looks..." I peered down at it closely. "It's very fine, and sort of a pale white? Almost like dust."

"Does it cast a shadow?"

"Yes. Well, faintly."

"And can you sense it with the Power?"

I shook my head. "No, I tried that before. There doesn't seem to be any kind of objective way to measure its presence other than what we just did."

"So replicating a tangible copy would be out of the question," she thought out loud. She looked at me, an idea seeming to strike her. "You worked as an illustrator. You can draw?"

"I-I mean, to an extent."

She manifested a sketchpad and pencil. "If you wouldn't mind, then."

I sat back for a few minutes and drew a quick sketch of the hourglass as it sat on the sand, as accurately as I could manage with how out of practice I was, then passed it to Kam, who scrutinized it intensely.

After this, she wanted to do one more experiment with another deliberate participant, to confirm whether the 'immunity' was something exclusive to her. She seemed a bit more reticent about the idea of involving bystanders at this point, so she teleported away for a moment and retrieved Nahmi, who predictably seemed confused and annoyed by the situation. We repeated the process yet again and it turned out she could also see it, after which Kamrusepa sent her away before her bafflement could derail the investigation.

"Maybe it's the other way around, and there's something about Ptolema specifically that meant she had that reaction," I mused. "We've still only tested two people."

"I wonder," Kam spoke quietly. "We'll have to broaden our pool later. Still, there's a few things we can say definitively." She held up one finger. "First, it's definitely not doing anything exotic regarding time passage, despite seemingly pertaining to time." She held up two fingers. "Second, that it does somehow exist as a physical object on this plane, but its actual shape is not that of an hourglass. Rather, that's merely your 'interpretation' of it via the connection you possess."

"It seemed like it was shaped more like a sphere," I commented. "The sand had to fall a little further before it triggered, when you were pouring it right at the periphery."

"Since it seems to have no absolute form, let's think of it a point with a uniform radius of influence," Kam said pedantically, then held up a third finger. "Finally, it specifically affects people observing it directly. No one else on the beach noticed what we were doing, so there's clearly no sense of generalized causal distortion being generated, or something of that ilk."

"None of that actually seems that useful to know," I critiqued.

"Fundamentals, Su. One always needs to establish one's priors." She tapped her foot, looking up. "The more interesting part is what we can infer. Firstly, based on the fact it appears with you even when you're on the Stage, it probably forms a part of your 'persistent data' as a primary, in much the same way as one's memories and default form. And oddities in that regard aren't uncommon. Did you know that Index quirks still exist in this world?"

"No, I didn't."

"Because all - or at least most - Primaries began as arcanists, they were carried over in the process that transferred here somehow. And the interesting part is they also developed minor physical or mental components." She reached into a pocket on the side of her cloak. "You remember mine?"

"The junk data in your Divination incantations, yes," I recalled.

"Whenever I reset my form, this manifests with it." She withdrew what seemed to be a bound stack of paper, then tossed it to me.

I took a look at it. It appeared to be an old newssheet, though I didn't recognize the language used on it. It wasn't the same as the one I'd seen recently, either, the typeface looking more like corrupted Ysaran or Viraaki script. It could well have been total gibberish.

"Huh," I said, then looked up at her. "And you don't know what it is?"

"Not one iota. It's quite frustrating to have it permanently stealing some of my prop, I'll tell you that."

I bit my lip. "The Lady told me that the reason I have the hourglass is because I made some sort of deal with her, to..." I hesitated. I hadn't got into the details of the loop that I remembered living through with her, nor the other me, and especially not why she might have had a motivation for my 'real self' to remember that the time loop happened. It all felt like it'd inevitably lead to uncomfortably personal questions, if I wasn't careful. "...to remember some information from when we were trapped in the sanctuary. But you think it might be connected to my Index somehow, instead?"

"It's just a possibility," she said, pointing at the newssheet and causing it to vanish. "I wouldn't want to say anything definitive. Anyway, the more interesting part is what's implied by the hourglass's physical appearance."

"You mean, that the sand has barely gone down at all," I said, already having thought about this several times.

"That, to me, implies one of four things," she said. "One, that the hourglass's appearance has no meaning. It doesn't correspond usefully to the nature, or proximity, of the threat at all."

"That's not how it feels," I told her. "Again, I know that's not strictly rational, but if it's attached to my very essence, it should presumably count for something."

She nodded. "I agree. I think we can probably discount that idea, along with the second possibility, which is that it only came into existence recently. With one exception, the nature of this world is stasis. While we have dynamism as individuals, our natures and rules that govern them remain immutable. Which leaves the last two possibilities as the only real option."

"I can guess at least one," I said. "You're going to say that, since she didn't specify just how much time I had, the timescale could be so long as to make it not even matter. That the billion years or however long it's been since the conclave has only amounted to a little bit of sand, and therefore it's not even worth worrying about."

Kamrusepa looked at me seriously. "I would never say that, Su. Whether near or far, death is death. It's never an acceptable thing to have to face."

I smiled at her wistfully.

She squinted. "What's that face supposed to mean? Good grief."

I shook my head softly. "What's the fourth option? I can't think of what you might mean for that one."

Her eyes lifted, and she turned towards the sea, wandering back towards the sand. "The other possibility is that it's somehow circular," she said. "She told you that you would 'cease to be' when the hourglass ran down, but that doesn't per-se mean literal death. It could instead be something more comparable to a transformation, perhaps your mind being reset to the state it was when you first arrived on the Stage."

"I mean, that seems like a distinction without difference, at least from my point of view," I told her, following. "This version of me would still cease to exist."

"Perhaps, but there could be partial workarounds to such a fate. As I was telling you a minute ago, there are methods to back up one's memories." She looked over her shoulder curiously. "Incidentally, have you found anything from your past lying about?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I visited my Domain, but there was nothing there."

"Mm, pity."

"You're thinking that the third option is more likely," I surmised.

"Somewhat," she admitted. "I wouldn't want to draw any conclusions, when so much of this is so strange. I'm still trying to take it all in."

"You're not alone," I began. "Ptolema and Bardiya didn't really seem to take it seriously either. Even if the way they reach that conclusion is different."

"Do you think my reasoning is faulty?"

I frowned uncertainly, looking downwards. "It's like you said. I don't really have enough information."

"Reading between the lines, I think I'm understanding why you decided to attend one of our games this weekend."

"Is it the weekend? I haven't even been keeping track of the days since getting here threw everything off."

"It's Saturday, yes." We began walking along the beach proper again, Kam silent for a few moments. The music had grown quite distant. "As I said, I don't blame you for being very frightened about this. And it makes sense why you would be hesitant to fully embrace the spectrum of possibility here, now." She frowned. "But I confess some measure of surprise of just how frightened you are. You said you'd been awake for only two weeks?"

"Yeah. Well, a little more, but rounded down."

"It's an almost comically short amount of time, to turn to such measures. It would be an understatement to say that it's a bit of a long shot."

"The Lady suggested herself that I seek out your group, actually," I said. "Well, technically, she said to look for other people interested in murder mysteries, if I wanted to connect with other people interested in the... well, you know. And then it was Neferuaten who specifically brought up what you were doing."

"An odd coincidence," Kam remarked.

"I thought the same thing, actually. I wondered if they-- Well, I shouldn't get off topic." I sighed. "I dunno. Maybe in a month or two, once I have a better sense of how fast the sand is actually draining, I'll feel silly for having got so worked up. But... I don't know. This is all just been-- I can't even put it into words."

Kam gave a vaguely sympathetic hum, nodding her head.

We walked for a bit longer in silence, the wind picking up as the tides lapped against the shore. (Actually, I guess I wasn't sure if they were technically tides here at all.)

"The truth is, I should probably apologize to you," I said distantly.

She raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"

"It's something I've been thinking about... well, even a long time before I ended up here, I guess," I told her. "When we were young, I always used to act like you were stupid whenever you talked about death being this unbearable thing. That it was dumb to be so single-mindedly obsessed over something you never had a chance of changing, especially when we were both so young, and there were so many other awful things going on in the world."

She looked surprised for a moment. "I don't know about that," she said, in the sort of pseudo-conciliatory tone people use when they know they've already won the argument. "Even if I hold to my convictions in spirit, realistically speaking, many of the arguments I made were rather obscenely optimistic, both about technology and the arc of human progress itself. It's only because of the miracle that brought about this realm that I was remotely vindicated." She looked towards the ground, her expression uncharacteristically somber. "I wonder at times what the version of myself out there felt, forced to come to terms with that reality."

"After we fell out of touch, I was never really able to get my footing in life," I went on. "I did okay in terms of my career, but in terms of being happy or fulfilled, I had no idea what I was doing." I looked at her. "It's sort of like you were saying a minute ago. I gave up on fixing any of the things wrong with me that I really cared about, and ended up conceding more and more. Until eventually I settled into just kind of... existing. Avoiding things that actively caused me more pain, and thinking that was enough." I rubbed the back of my head. "But a little while before I woke up here, I found out that I had early-onset dementia."

Kam nodded a few times. "I hope you'll forgive me for saying I knew that already," she admitted. "It's... been a very long time since we last spoke, even if it doesn't feel so in this moment. I wasn't thinking of your privacy."

"That's, uh, fine, I guess." I made a dismissive gesture, then looked up in curiosity. "How did you find out, with the privacy field?"

"When it comes to documents, only things written by Primaries count," she clarified. "I just snooped on your general practitioner's archives."

"I just apologized!"

Thinking about it, I guess this also made it possible she knew I was an assimilation failure. Though that wasn't the end of the world. The real secret would be safe from any angle, at least, considering the proximity to the Order.

I laughed a little at her overreaction, then crossed my arms, looking out at the sea. "When I learned about that - uh, that I was dying, I mean, not your snooping - it was the worst I'd ever felt in my life. I'd kept saying to myself since I was a kid that I didn't really mind if I lived or died, but when I was actually faced with it, it was like this whole edifice I didn't even realize I'd built fell apart all at once. I realized that all I had was myself, and losing was so violently frightening it felt like burning alive." I smiled crookedly. "So I guess I was just a big hypocrite, acting above something I hadn't even really been engaging with in the first place."

Kam looked at me oddly for a few moments. "There's no real rational way to think about death," she eventually said. "Everything we do as living beings is ultimately informed by a desire to survive for as long as possible, albeit abstracted to varying degrees. Even the impulse towards suicide arises from a perverted survival instinct, imagining an escape from an intangible danger. When a mind truly sees no escape, it breaks down."

"Yeah," I said softly. "I wouldn't put it in those terms, but I was thinking about how I almost wished I felt suicidal when it happened. How I wished I could... offload my desire to live off on some proxy."

"A country, a king, a god, a lover," Kam mused.

"Not quite what I meant, but sure, something like that."

"One way to endure such a thing is to take refuge in false hope," she said. "It's a bit more expensive if you're not religious, but I always imagined I'd put my body into stasis once I was truly out of options. And if I'm being honest, only part of me saw it as a legitimate hope."

"My dad always used to say that cryonics was just following the legacy of the pharaohs," I said.

Kamrusepa made a disgusted little scoff. "So bloody reductive."

"You just admitted you didn't think it would work!"

"There's still no comparison! The level of preservation... Never mind. It doesn't matter." She shook her head. "In any regard, that obviously only addresses the issue emotionally. It does nothing to address the existential tragedy of one's selfhood being lost forever on its own terms. I..." She trailed off, biting her lip.

I lifted my brow. "What is it?"

"Nothing, just thinking," she said. "So this is why you feel compelled to address with such a violent fervor? Because you felt that fear?"

"More or less," I said. "I feel like, since this happened, it's just bubbling in the back of my mind constantly. And I feel like I need it to be gone before I can do... anything." I kicked at the sand. "But I guess that's probably a little different from what you used to feel."

Kam nodded, then fell silent. We walked for a bit more, and my eyes wandered back to her face. I was surprised to see that her brow was furrowed deeply, her lips shifting between various shapes on a spectrum between a smirk and an uncomfortable grimace.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She let out an uncomfortable groan, then a sigh. "Oh, what the hell. You read the journal anyway. You probably already have a hunch." She looked back at me. "To be honest with you, Su, it would be dishonest for me to affect some inherent wisdom or insight on all this, especially in reference to what I used to say back then."

"What do you mean?"

"The truth is," she admitted, "I wasn't exactly well myself."