A week following that, I was summoned to governor Cyrene's office for a second time. Her attitude was as cold as ever.
"We've completed our initial investigation into your circumstances and activities, Utsushikome of Fusai."
I frowned. "I thought you said you wouldn't be doing it until after a month."
"That's the review of your citizenship eligibility," she clarified sharply. "I'm referring into the investigation into your behavior, and to the groups interested in you."
"I wasn't aware I was still being investigated."
She didn't seem to deign this worthy of a response, looking through some papers without making eye contact. "We've managed to make contact with some of the leadership of the Magilum Domain, and concluded that your story of being an autospective dreamer is, if not necessarily authentic, then at least plausible. At the very least, it appears you were genuinely in stasis for some time, and awoke professing no knowledge of your circumstances."
"I could have told you that," I said flatly.
"We've been attempting to learn how you came to be in such a state to begin with, but so far haven't reached any definitive conclusions," she continued. "We've also been tracking your activities. Other than a few minor anomalies, your conduct has largely not been suspicious, at least insofar as doing nothing is not suspicious."
I can't believe I'm being bullied by the government for being a fucking NEET.
"Though there is one exception worth addressing." She narrowed her eyes. "You participated in an immersion game just over a fortnight ago. Why?"
'An immersion game'. So she didn't know its exact nature?
"It was recommended to me by someone I used to know, so I could reconnect with a friend running it," I answered, which was true. "You can contact them directly. They'll tell you the same thing."
Her eyes narrowed. "Is this something you could verify? Presumably your resonator still has the records from your pre-screening for the event."
"That seems like kind of an invasion of privacy," I replied. "Am I allowed to refuse?"
"By law, I cannot compel you to surrender any personal correspondence, nor conduct a resonance audit, without either a warrant for your arrest or a special exception from the assembly," she explained. "But cooperativeness would be looked upon favorably, for someone in your circumstances."
"I'm not sure I understand what exactly my 'circumstances' are, if you haven't found anything out of the ordinary."
Silence fell over the room for a moment.
"Officially," she finally stated, "you're being cleared of suspicion. You're free to leave the Domain without being subject to investigation, so long as your movements are not recorded as anomalous using our usual procedures, and your destinations are Domains in good standing."
"What exactly constitutes a 'domain in good standing'? Does my own count?"
"You can consult our records on the assembly's resonance hub," she explained offhandedly. "And your own does count, though with your situation, I'd recommend you exercise some prudence in terms of the time and duration of your visits."
I crossed my arms silently.
"Unofficially, I'm going to extend the same offer I did to you at our last meeting." She set the papers down, putting her hands together. "Tell me the truth. The groups and individuals that have been in contact with you, what pretenses they have you operating under. I assure you that they do not have your best interests at heart."
"I don't even understand what you think is going on, if you know that I've mostly just been sitting around my friend's house all day." I wouldn't give her everything I wanted, but I at least pulled up by resonator logs for the past week, pointing the screen in her direction I hadn't heard from Neferuaten again - yet - so the only content was small talk I'd had with Kam and Ptolema. "I haven't been 'in contact' with anyone."
"Don't treat me like a fool. It won't change reality." Cyrene leveled her gaze. "You're being used, Miss Fusai. Your history is being taken advantage of by forces antagonistic to civilization. That's undeniable to me, now."
"Based on what?"
She didn't reply, simply staring at me piercingly.
Eventually, she relented, looking back to her papers. "If you're unwilling, then we have nothing further to discuss-- For now." She inclined her head. "You can show yourself out."
"Is there a reason you keep calling me in to these personal meetings?" I asked, irritated. "You're the governor. Shouldn't you have something better to do?"
"Believe me," she said, "there are many things I would rather be doing."
I left feeling deeply annoyed. Because of my background, I'd never experienced being harassed by the authorities like this before, and it couldn't say I was a fan of the experience. She hadn't even volunteered any new information this time; whether I was still being stalked by some cult, or the nature of that cult, was something it seemed I'd need to account for myself.
While I was skeptical about the claim that I was no longer subject to investigation, I couldn't stand fucking around all the time any longer. I headed into the Raurica town square and took out my resonator again, getting into contact with Kamrusepa.
Utsushikome: Kam. Are you free today?
Kamrusepa: I am, though this is rather sudden. Did something happen?
Utsushikome: I just got out of another meeting with the governor. Apparently they've cleared me of suspicion.
Kamrusepa: I see.
Kamrusepa: Not that I'm complaining - you know my stance on all this - but is it really prudent to be doing this immediately? If I were them, the obvious move would be to make you lower your guard, then monitor you even closer.
Kamrusepa: Though I'm not sure of the legal technicalities of the Domain, to be fair.
Utsushikome: I don't care any more. I can't stand waiting around like this, retreating into myself to avoid dealing with this reality.
Utsushikome: If they boot me out, then so be it.
Kamrusepa: Fair dos, I suppose.
Kamrusepa: I'm a little preoccupied at the present, however. Cleaning up after another game. I should be free in an hour?
Utsushikome: That's fine, I guess.
Kamrusepa: Where would you want to meet?
I looked up at the clock tower, considering it for a moment.
Utsushikome: There's a bookstore in the city. There's something I've been meaning to do there too, so we can rendezvous there afterwards.
Utsushikome: I'll give you the address.
Ever since I learned its secret, spending time in the City made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. Sure, people were no doubt doing the same stuff in the Valley to some degree, but the efforts to create a 'real world'-style environment necessarily fostered consistency. Most people had jobs - or at least full-time hobbies - and even families, or were at least heavily involved in their communities. You couldn't just arbitrarily change your face six times a day, especially since using the Power at all was frowned upon in a lot of contexts.
In the City, though, people were probably trying out new identities every other day. Just thinking about what was going on inside the central tower made my skin crawl, even if I knew it was ultimately none of my business.
At least the layout didn't seem to be fluid. Nora's shop was at the same spot about half-way up the spiral, and once again didn't seem to have any customers. She sat at the front counter alongside one of her cats, this one white in a way that matched her hair, reading a book lazily. She glanced up as I pushed back the silk folds at the door.
"Oh," she said ambivalently. "Hey."
"Hi," I replied somewhat stiffly. "Uh. Sorry about last time."
She shrugged. "No worries. You seemed pretty freaked out."
"Y-Yeah." I swallowed the air, not really wanting to talk about it. I cleared my throat, looking up at her. "I was wondering if I could ask you about something."
"About what?"
I wasn't actually sure how to best contextualize this. "The... people who live here, I guess."
Nora looked puzzled. "Uh, sure. Although, aren't you still living with Ema? She could probably tell you anything I could." She inclined her head from side to side. "Don't get the wrong idea from the books or me trying to get all mentor-y with you last time, I don't actually know shit about anything. I just like being a snoop."
"Well, this is just something I want another perspective on. I've already heard her side of it." I bit my lip. "That makes it sound more serious than it is. It's just a... common knowledge thing where she might have a bit of a blind spot, that's all. Though I guess it might lead into a more personal question." I folded my arms, feeling a little awkward about this idea now that I was actually doing it. "I didn't really want to bother you while you're working, but I just-- Well, to be honest, I still don't really know anyone else yet."
Technically, I guess I knew the guy at the watch house, but that felt like a much worse prospect.
"Alright, well, let's not have a conversation about the conversation," she said, exhaling and setting the book down. "What is it?"
"I was wondering if you knew anything about the connections that Primaries have to the Order of the Universal Panacea."
"Oh." She sat back a bit. "Yeah, that checks out, I guess."
"You know about it?"
"Well, I know Ptolema, so obviously I know about it," she said, "but it sounds like you're asking about people's connections from before all this, right?"
"How much do you know already?"
I hesitated for a moment. Aside from some tidbits from Ptolema and Neferuaten, most of my information on the subject had come from the Lady-- Yulia, so I had to be careful not to provoke any questions. "I know that there are a lot of them who have no apparent connection at all, but there are enough that the belief that the Order brought people here is baked into some of the belief systems." I frowned. "Although, it doesn't seem as though there's widespread awareness of the specifics."
"Hmmm." She nodded along.
"What I don't know is the nature of those connections. I've only really heard bits and pieces, and I sort of made some inferences, but... Sorry. I'm rambling."
I had four major pieces of information I'd been operating under when it came to this subject. Firstly, what Ptolema had told me in the chapel about many Primaries having been connected to the Order personally. Secondly, the Lady's explanation about how she had used Indexes to transplant 900,000 arcanist's minds in order to populate Dilmun. Thirdly, what Kamrusepa had discovered along with Ophelia in her account of the weekend, where they found a list of names of high-profile arcanists connected to the Order.
And, finally, Neferuaten's discussion of the conspiracy they'd been a part of. The Brotherhood of the Scorned.
Without even fully processing I was doing it, I'd woven all of these into a narrative. The Brotherhood had wanted the Order to create a paradise for them, which had been the purpose of the Apega project. These individuals were listed and, using that list, 'targeted' by the machine. Ultimately, they were copied and brought to Dilmun, leading to... this.
But I'd kept neglecting to actually confirm any of that definitively. And if you thought about it, it didn't really make sense. After all... hadn't the Order already given up on the Apega, and invested themselves in whatever their new project was? Why would they be collecting names for something they believed to be defunct?
I still knew so little about how this all worked. For example, the Lady might have implicitly confirmed the origin of Primaries, but I could have asked her about Secondaries too. Whether she would have told me was another matter, but... Well, the point was, I'd been pretty lax.
"No worries," Nora said, batting a hand easily. "I'll tell you what I can, though I don't know how useful you'll find it." She paused for a moment, seeming to not know where to start. "Actually, before we get into that, has Ema told you about the patterns that have been documented with Primaries more generally?"
"Not really," I said. "She mentioned that some people's last memories aren't of April the 29th, and that some people even claim not to be arcanists, but that's about it."
"There's a lot to it. About half of all Primaries seem to just have been picked at random from 1409 - you meet everything from replication mules to military dropouts - but the rest are like..." She frowned, rubbing her nose. "There are a bunch of priorities about who seems to have been brought here, and some of them seem way more arbitrary than others. Like, pretty much every arcanist even tangentially involved in academia got transferred, and that makes sense. It makes sense that you'd want the best and brightest for... whatever this is. Likewise, most of the arcane artists from the era are here, too. But after that it gets fuzzier. It seems like there's a loose preference for people who were younger, but also for people who were exceptionally old. There's seemingly no selectiveness based on Party or class, but there are less people, proportionally, from the Duumvirate than the Grand Alliance. But on the other hand, arcanists from the Lower Planes are over-represented. So are people who were politically active - regardless of what those politics were."
I nodded, taking all this in even if it wasn't exactly relevant. Who would have made these decisions? The Order, or the Lady? I'd have to satisfy my curiosity later.
"There's also a bent towards certain types of... personal situation," she went on. "The word I always hear thrown around is 'outcasts', but that's not really it. It's more like people with really specific, rare experiences. You get folk with rare diseases or psychological issues and the most fucked-up childhoods you've ever seen, but also hyper-rich shitheads who never worked a day in their lives. And also people who just, I dunno, started a logic sea business, or explored a bunch of caves. Things like that."
"You're making it sound like it was all about novelty, mostly," I observed. "Just getting the people with the most developed and unique perspectives." I hesitated. "Though, uh, that wouldn't explain the Duumvirate thing."
"Well, again, keep in mind this is all only true for about half of Primaries," she commented. "Ish. There's a lot of debate over how much of it is seeing things that aren't there." She looked up at me. "By the way, you wanna sit down? Kinda awkward to be doing this with you looming over me."
"Uh, sure," I said. "What if you get a customer, though?"
Her expression made it clear she considered this an absurd proposition.
She gestured to the side, where a stool sat adjacent to one of the shelves. I pulled it up to the side of the counter, so I wouldn't be in the way if she got any actual customers. The noise briefly startled the cat, but she patted it on the back, soothing it.
"There there, Snow," Nora murmured. "It's aaalll good."
This lady has really uncreative names for her cats.
"What was I saying," she said, zoning out for a second.
"The trends with Primaries?"
"Right, right." She shook her head, still petting the cat. (I kind of wanted to pet it too, but felt too awkward to ask.) "So yeah, that leaves the other group you mentioned, people who didn't come from 1409. They're notoriously hard to keep track of, because people love to pretend to be exceptions to all the rules, and unlike in the 'present day', you can't rely on privacy shields being all over the place to verify that they were really there." She glanced up at me. "So the guys who research all of this only really trust the broad trends, which is that there's a lot of people who say their memories stop in the mid 900s."
"After the Tricenturial War?"
She nodded. "Though, we're still only talking about maybe a thousand Primaries at most. There might be others from different eras, too, but it's almost impossible to verify."
"And none of this is the people actually connected to the Order."
She nodded, then hesitated again. "Why do you wanna know about this, by the way?"
"Uh, somebody in my family was a member." I wasn't sure how much Nora actually knew, and explaining everything could compromise this whole idea anyway.
"Yeah? You think that's why you ended up here?"
Had Ptolema even told her she was at the conclave? She must have. "Something like that."
Nora looked at me skeptically for a moment, but shrugged it off. "I don't know much about them myself. I was never much interested in medicine out in the real world, and I stay the hell away from everything people connect to the..." She frowned to herself, then spat air. "Well, whatever. Point is, barely anybody here has any direct connection to them. I've heard most of their members are around somewhere or another, but there's no consistent preference towards their secondary colleagues or the fan club they apparently had. But there is a connection. Do you know about their associations?"
Okay, this is going the way I expected so far. "You mean, the assimilation failure organizations?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Every arcanist from those are here, with almost no exceptions. I've heard it's a chicken-and-egg debate about whether or not it's because of the Order, or the Order is there because it's associated with them. I mean-- Between the people who think any of this is relevant." She ceased petting the cat, which had returned to being a curled-up lump. "It's a big group. About 41,600 people."
"That's a pretty specific number."
"Yeah, well, I should know it. I'm one of them."
I blinked sharply, taken by surprise. "You're-- You're an assimilation failure?"
She snorted. "It's kinda weird for you to phrase it like that, like I am the condition."
"Sorry," I said hesitantly. "I didn't mean to be rude. I'm just... surprised, that's all."
"And here I was, thinking I was getting ahead of where you were already going, saying this might turn into a personal conversation." She leaned over the counter lazily, looking like she didn't know what to do with me.
I glanced away. "N-No, well... I realized I recognized your name, that's all. Your full name you gave me before, I mean. Eleanora of Halkysses."
"Oh, gods," she muttered in resignation.
"You... Or rather, the alternative version of you was Overseer of the Arcane Office in the 1570s," I told her. "I remember seeing the name in the news. Uh, unless it's a coincidence."
"It's not a coincidence," she admitted. "Though I don't know how the hell it happened. Last thing I remember from out there, I was working as a middle-manager on the Illykrios certification committee, arguing in circles about whether ex-revolutionaries should be allowed to keep their public casting privileges or not and whether we should let 'em sell out and become cops." She wrinkled her nose. "I don't autospectate and don't intend to start, so I can only guess I must have fucking perfected the art of failing upwards."
"But you were working for one of these groups? Even back then?"
Honestly, the idea of a conspiracy of assimilation failures still kind of took me completely aback, especially how I'd somehow lived my entire life skirting the edge of it without even noticing. I'd want to grill her on the subject even if it had nothing to do with the conclave murders.
"Well, I don't know if you could call it working," she said dryly. "I was in a group called the Silent Alliance of the Cross. They helped me get my job, and once in a blue moon they'd ask me to lose a file for them, but mostly all we did was have therapy-flavored tea parties once a month. We'd sit around in someone's damp basement or musty loft where the Oathguard couldn't find us and bitch about how much we missed our old families or bodies or whatever for a few hours, then at the end the chapter head would give some creepy sermon about how the day we'd be able to live freely was coming any week now, and we'd all go home. If people were feeling lively, maybe we'd play some shitty reconstruction of a game from the old days." Her eyes grew subtly melancholic. "The whole thing was ass. I was wishing I could quit by the end."
"You were worried they'd..."
"It was a secret organization of arcanists the size of a small army," she told me. "So no, quitting wasn't exactly on the table."
I bit my lip. "How... You don't have to answer this. But how did you end up joining in the first place?"
She snorted. "You realize that's basically asking me for half my life story, right?"
"I just meant in terms of, well, the process, I guess," I lied awkwardly. Truthfully, I felt extremely curious about the entire thing, but this seemed like the right way to thread the needle. "How they recruited you."
"Oh, that's easy. If you're an assimilation failure, they put you in these special classes to try and make you identify more with your new body. It's real crank shit-- Thought exercises, hypnosis, a whole cocktail of drugs. It's one of those token treatments where if you're getting it at all, everyone involved already knows the whole thing is fucked out the wazoo. God, if there's one thing I don't miss from out there, it's fucking psychiatrists." She sighed. "Anyway, there was this boy I met at one of those. I was scared and didn't know what was real and went the distance, but he wised up quickly and started telling them what they wanted to hear within the first few months. Ended up getting involved in a logic sea community instead, and they scouted him there, then scouted me through him. That's gotta be the only way something like that could work without getting exposed-- One big web of friends-of-friends." She squinted. "You're making a really weird face right now."
I hastily moved a hand up to rub my eyes, which I'd probably been gaping with a bit. "I-I'm just taking it in. I only found out any of this was even going on a couple of weeks ago, so it's all kind of a shock. That there was a whole side of the world I just didn't know about."
"...I guess so," she said with a small shrug. "It's all normal to me at this point, so it's hard to even tell." Her eyes shifted back towards me. "Anyway, back then, I felt like I was going so insane from having to pretend to be 'Eleanora' all the time, I would've bitten my own thumb off just to be able to talk about my old life for five minutes. So I went for it."
I frowned. "But you're still calling yourself 'Nora' here."
She flinched in a fashion that made it clear she considered this observation tedious, and I instantly regretted it. "Yeah, well, that's the fucking thing, isn't it." She shook her head. "It's the same way in those groups, in the end, just the other way around. They wanted me to pretend this was all simple, that you could just live a perfect double life where you go home and kiss your fake family on the cheek and don't feel shit." She snorted. "But I guess you wouldn't get it."
I said nothing.
It sounded like she was a type II, though maybe that was viewing the situation in the wrong light. I knew all too well the system of five discrete categories didn't really survive in the long term.
This was getting uncomfortably personal-- I needed to wheel it back. "S-Sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have been presumptive. I'm sure it's, well, really complicated."
She made an ambiguous, skeptical sound, peering at me oddly.
"So, you didn't even know about the Order, back then?"
"Nope. Like I said, the whole thing was a web of need-to-know associations, and I was just a grunt. They didn't even let me drink the good coffee. Maybe that changed when I eventually became somebody important, but I wouldn't know."
Okay, this was a little complicated. So the Order had brought the membership of the assimilation failure conspiracy here, as promised, and not just their own membership and their immediate associates. But that hadn't been what the list Kamrusepa found was supposed to represent, but rather an even larger group. So how had they been selected?
Maybe the answer was simpler than it seemed. If the Lady really was omniscient, then presumably Neferuaten could have just written something like, 'find every single assimilation failure' into the mandate that led to Dilmun's creation. But that still left the question of what the list was really for, and why there were exceptions from almost 500 years in the past.
Well, those could be explored later. I had to remember to keep my ultimate goal in mind.
The murders in the loop, no-- The creation of the loop itself both happened for a reason. The whydunnit. The culprit, however they'd cheated the death that should have come to them in becoming the proxy, had obviously wanted our class and the Inner Circle to suffer. There was no reason I could think of to configure the loops in the way they had other than pure sadism. For that reason alone, there was a good chance they were also the mastermind behind the killings. They'd probably manipulated me to do their dirty work for them in some loops, while in others, like the one I remembered, they'd used different people, like Theo.
Theo had said he was led to commit his murders by Yantho, who after my call with Neferuaten, I'd been thinking more and more about.
Setting aside the questions about him as a person she'd provoked, there was one very superficial characteristic about him that set him apart from everyone else at the conclave: He couldn't speak. His mannerisms were also extremely subdued. If Linos could be impersonated by a puppet body - presumably by himself, I don't think anyone else could have pulled it off - then for Yantho, it would've been easy.
Which means that, on the last day of the conclave, after the loop had ended, he could already have been dead.
Of course, as I'd already speculated briefly, it could have also been the other way around-- Maybe he was being controlled from the very start. But it was something to consider. I didn't know much about Yantho, which was itself a kind of information. The fact that he was a stranger to our class meant that if he was the culprit, or even just connected to them, then his rancor couldn't have been towards any of us, but rather the Order itself.
Despite everything, I still knew shockingly little about their history, and didn't want to just hear it from Neferuaten. If I could follow Yulia's advice and get in contact with some more peripheral members, well, that'd be-- Well, it'd be something, at least.
Though, since Nora seemed touchy about the Manse... maybe just getting more information about their network would be enough for now.
"Did you know about their goals, at least?" I wondered. "I heard they wanted a place like this. Some kind of paradise where they could escape to."
"Yeah, I've heard people say that, but it was news to me." She paused for a moment, reflecting on this. "I mean, like I said, they loved giving those big lectures about how everything was going to change, that we were going to bring back the world we remembered. But I never once took that shit literally. It's cult shit, the endless build-up to judgment day." Snow got up again for some unclear reason and hopped off the counter, and Nora's eyes followed it as it walked up the stairs. "Everyone's got that, what would you call it, migratory impulse. When humans are miserable, they wanna pack up and go somewhere else. And when there isn't anywhere to go, they go nuts. Start dreaming about clean worlds where everybody they don't like is dead or gone."
"I'm kind of surprised it had such a strong emphasis on that aspect," I remarked. "If a lot of people were like you, I would have thought it would have been more about, I don't know. Finding a way to bring the truth to light. Making everyone have to accept it."
She raised an eyebrow. "You think that shit could have ever been accepted?"
"Well, it would definitely have been difficult," I conceded. "You'd have to do a lot to avoid the government eventually cracking down like they eventually did under the Idealists... and of course it would tear apart families. People would never be able to trust arcanists in their families the same way again, assuming they were even willing to hear it in the first place..." I bit my lip. "But at least in principle, there are ways you can make the group sympathetic. I mean, there's literally multiple national holidays about them, sort of."
Nora squinted. "National holidays?"
"To honor the people who died in the collapse, I mean," I clarified. "Sorry, I guess I phrased that awkwardly."
There was a silence that at first I thought was contemplative, but then dragged on uneasily, her expression not changing.
"Oh god," she said suddenly. "She hasn't--" She cut herself off sharply.
I frowned, suddenly a little alarmed. "She who? Hasn't what?"
"I-- I though, since you'd been here a month..." She glanced away evasively. "Shit, a minute ago I thought we were doing a like, wink-wink-nudge-nudge-pretending-you-don't-know-about-this routine. Now I don't know what the hell was even going on."
"What are you talking about? Are you saying I don't know something? That Ptolema should have told me it?"
She ran a hand over her face, her words halfway to a groan. "Dude, I can't do this right now. I still haven't even had breakfast." She looked at me tiredly. "This is too weird. You should-- You gotta ask someone else."
"I don't-- What? I don't even know what this is about."
"Assimilation failures," she explained.
"What about them?"
"Why they were really being covered up."
What? What the fuck does she mean, why they were 'really' being covered up?
My guts churned with sudden anxiety. "I-- Who should I ask?"
"Anyone. Literally anyone else. Everybody knows." She frowned uncomfortably. "Or buy a book, or look it up on your resonator, or... I dunno, anything. You saw me last time, I'm not good at doing Conversations."
Nora politely ejected me from her shop, and I stood awkwardly outside for 10 minutes, feeling as though I was going to die from suspense. I frantically tried to look up what she was talking about on my resonator as she'd suggested, but only found inscrutable pages filled with terminology I'd never seen before.
Eventually, Kamrusepa flew in down from the crystalline ceiling.
"Oh," she said, seeming inscrutably disappointed. "I imagined I'd be early, but you're already here." She cleared her throat, a cheery smile forcing it way to her lips. "Well, never mind that. Good afternoon, Su!"
"Kam," I said immediately. "What's the truth about assimilation failures?"
The smile died in the crib.