This time, the Lady - Yulia - was drinking wine when I arrived in her abode. She didn't even look up.
"You know, I'll just stop asking you to call in advance, I think," she remarked. "There's no sense in raging against the unalterable." She snorted to herself, like she was laughing at her own joke.
"I'm not here for a long conversation," I told her, not bothering to sit down. "I just wanted to ask you something."
"Well, shoot your shot." She turned her page. What was she reading, anyway? The cover had a picture of a faun on it. "We still haven't made a deal, so I'm not making any promises."
"When you interviewed Kam, obviously it was her that wrote the book you gave me," I said. "But you must have added some... metaphysical properties to it, right? How it conveys more information than just what's written, and how you can sense when it's truthful. The things that connect with the rules."
"That's correct," she said. "Though it might be a misunderstanding to say that 'I' did it. I told you before - the constraints on the loops were all just the logical conclusions of the commands given by the proxy, and by your own collective desires. They're still an inherent part of this world's foundations. The only thing I really did was connect the map to the territory." She sipped from the glass, angling it so it only touched the side of her face with lips. "So I wouldn't be able to, for example, apply the effect to some random monologue you've come up with on the spot. You'd have to go looking for something the people down there have come up with."
"Sure," I said dismissively. "I don't need you to do that anyway."
"Then what do you need?"
"Just the same thing you did for her. Let me give a testimony of what happened at the conclave, make it into some kind of physical object... Or the other way around, I guess... And then let me show it to people."
"Oh." For some reason, she looked a little disappointed. "In that case, I suppose this will be a short meeting."
She set the glass down for a moment and snapped her fingers. A black-covered tome, similar to the booklet containing Kam's account but quite a bit larger, fell to the table with a thud. It slid along the surface until it sat in front of me.
"What is this?"
She glanced up for the first time, mildly irritated. "What you just asked for. Are you a fish? Do you not have object permanence?"
Slightly confused, I picked up the book, skimming the contents.
Because of the style in which it was written - loose, digressional - it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. But quickly it became obvious that she'd spoken truthfully. It was an account of the weekend of the conclave as I'd experienced it, the page I'd opened on describing Kam and I's conversation in the armory after we'd discovered the suicide note. It was even in my handwriting.
"Wh... Did you make this?" I asked. "Or is this something I wrote before?"
"Both," she answered. "It's a copy of something you wrote that I just made using a little of your prop. Hope you don't mind the imposition." She picked the wine glass back up, swirling it idly.
"I wrote an account too?" I frowned. "Why didn't you mention that before?"
"Well, our discussions have mostly been centered around your little investigation, and it's not exactly relevant in that capacity, is it? This is information you already have."
"Why did I make this?"
"Beats me. I told you, I collected accounts from a number of your group when it was all over. Maybe you wanted it for reasons of catharsis, or maybe you wanted to show it to someone. I haven't been snooping on every detail of your life for trillions of years."
"What happened to being omniscient...?"
She shrugged.
I sighed. "Whatever."
"I must say, though," she remarked as I started getting ready to leave, "Whatever you're planning to do, I have a hunch you're not going to want to just go around showing that to people."
"What do you-- Oh. Right." I flicked through it again, going for the part at the end where I watched the recording of my meeting with Samium. (It was surreal, to read this without any memory of having written it myself.)
I got to that part, and... Oh. Oh. This was worse than I thought. Significantly worse.
Also, the part where I murdered Theo was-- Well, there was obviously extenuating context, but it probably wouldn't give the impression I wanted, to say the least.
"Um." I cleared my throat. "Would it be possible for you to, uh, redact some of this?"
"Which parts?" she asked, mildly amused.
That... was a good question. "The... personal elements. The conversations I had with Ran, and, um. Everything that happens at the end." I paused, then looked back down, flipping through it again. "Actually-- With Neferuaten, and... oh, I really talk about my body a lot here... Even this part of Nindar's apartment..."
Yulia looked away from the book to sneer in quiet amusement at my flustered expression, chuckling to herself.
"...maybe we could cut everything except what happened at the headquarter building towards the end of the loop, where we started getting attacked from the rooftop and were split up, then were knocked out by the prosognostic event," I floated. If I can be sure that was a prosognostic event. "For now, at least. And as long as there's not anything in there that I'm... forgetting."
"Mm, that would present you in the most sympathetic light to Ophelia, since that's when she died."
I twitched. "So you knew what I was doing all along?"
"It wouldn't have been hard to guess from context clues," she remarked. "It was obvious that you were going to go looking for your classmates. And it was obvious that some would trust you, considering..." She playfully made a throat-slitting motion. "From there, if you're narrowing what you plan to show them down to a specific incident, it would only make sense for you to choose one where they died and your innocence, in that context, would be affirmed. In this case the only options would be Fang and Ophelia, the former of whom I can't imagine being all that torn up about it in the first place." She made a circular motion with her hand. "Just from this, when you eliminate the impossible, etcetera etcetera."
My brow flattened. "But you would have known all that anyway. Because you're omniscient."
"Of course." She sipped from her wine, smirking. "But sure, I can make you a little pamphlet with just those few scenes, though I'm not certain it'll be as much as you hope for. Do you want to keep that, by the way?" She pointed her skeletal finger at the book in my hand.
I looked down at it. I definitely did, actually. Maybe there'd be some kind of hint that wasn't contained in my own memories. "Yeah. I'll hold on to it."
"Suit yourself." She twirled her finger again, producing a much thinner and smaller black book. "Here you go, then. One copy of the 3:05 to 4:00 PM period of your account of the serial murders in the Sanctuary of Apsu. Verified by yours truly." She flicked her wrist and shot it across; this one barely even hit the wood before it skitted over to me. "Was there anything else?"
I skimmed the new book, then thought for a moment. "What happened to the original copy? Of my accounting."
"What an interesting question!" She chuckled. "I'll leave you to think about it."
I was ejected.
𒀭
Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day
I'd never done it like this before, and the process wasn't quite as seamless as I'd hoped. When I made my way back into the Domain and reappeared in the room, Ophelia could instantly tell something had happened, her expression becoming suspicious.
"What was that?" She asked. "What did you just do?"
"I-- S-Sorry, I left my body for a second," I said. "I'm still getting used to how to do that."
"What were you trying to do?" She peered at me with her pale blue eyes.
"You asked for proof about the fact I was innocent at the conclave I remember," I told her. "I can give it to you."
The two books had both come back with me, held in my right hand. I passed the smaller one to her, then plopped the larger in my bag for safe keeping. (Then I put a barrier on my bag. Then I put a barrier on the barrier.)
Ophelia, looking like she fully expected it to sprout teeth and take a bite out of her face like some kind of monster in a fantasy novel, opened the book with obvious suspicion. "You... what is this...?"
"It's an account of my perspective on your murder during the conclave I experienced," I told her. "You should be able to tell it's truthful."
"That's, ah..." She wrinkled her brow. "This shouldn't be possible. We can't create reliable accounts of anything that happened before the realization of this realm."
But they can create ones after that? I'll have to look into it later. "Kam tells me that I have an asset that no one else does," I told her, then realized there was no reason to beat around the bush. "I've been talking to the one who created this world, supposedly. It's part of why she's been so eager to recruit me."
She looked up. "The one who created this world? You mean..."
"Yes," I said, nodding. "The voice we all remember hearing, at the very beginning."
She seemed a little befuddled, torn between being taken aback and trying to read my angle. "That's absurd," she stated.
"It's the truth," I said.
"If it is true, then it just makes you all the more suspicious," she said. "If you have some special line of communication with whatever did all of this... then I can't think of any reason why that'd be the case unless you were the culprit."
"Read the booklet," I told her, instead of even touching that logic. "It describes your murder in particular, and a couple others. You'll see that I had nothing to do with it at all." Too sketchy, widen the net. "A-And if that's not enough to satisfy you, I can get you more. I just want some things about my life to stay private. Other than that, I'm not trying to hide anything."
She looked down at the pages, squinting, and didn't reply for a moment.
"Whoever the real culprit was had to be manipulating all of us," I said anyway. "In my loop, Theodoros and maybe Yantho were the murderers. Theo thought there was some kind of conspiracy going on that almost everyone was involved with. He even confessed, at the end, to shooting Fang in the part you're about to read. And Yantho is the one who gave him that information to begin with." I sighed softly, looking downwards. "I can't just pretend everyone else's testimony was fake, but whatever happened with me must have been the same situation. Someone led me to believe you were all part of something abominable. Even if I can't imagine right now what that would have been."
For the first time in the conversation, Ophelia paused, and a wrinkle of what might - might - be uncertainty formed on her face, even though she didn't look up. "Yantho wouldn't have done that... if you're not lying, someone must have impersonated him. And that would..." She trailed off, biting her lip softly.
"I don't know about that," I said. "But my point is, Theodoros acted the way he did because he was told to. He didn't just do it of his own initiative."
She paused for another moment, and her expression became more resolved. "Do you know how many of us remember you as the murderer?" Before I had a chance to answer, she continued: "It's everyone I've spoken to except Ptolema. Kamrusepa. Bardiya. Linos. Seth. Yantho. If there was a mastermind... Then the most likely explanation was that it was you."
"Read the booklet," I reiterated. "I do things that would make no sense if I'd planned to kill everyone from the start, and just decided to manipulate Theo instead for some reason. You'll-- You'll see." And then, because I felt a compulsive need to place some abstract comprehension of being treated fairly over actually meeting my interpersonal goals: "I'm being generous here. You said it yourself, you wouldn't be able to prove that the account you gave was real; you could just say anything. But I'm giving that ability away. So... keep that in mind."
She jerked her eyes up at me for a moment. "Could we create others...? Like this, for everyone else?"
I blinked a few times. "I... I don't know. I'd have to look into it."
She stared for a moment, then looked back down, saying nothing more.
There was a clunking sound as the lock on the door was pulled back, and Kamrusepa abruptly slid back in. She smiled brightly but stiffly. "Forgive the interruption. Are you two still hashing things out? I'm afraid there's a little bit of an incident taking place I ought to see to, rather than keeping the vigil."
"Incident?" I asked, curiously.
She rolled her eyes. "It's not serious. Just someone throwing a bit of a fit and acting as if they're going to do something very foolish, when really they just want a bit of attention. Happens all the time here."
I frowned, almost chided her, then realized the conclusion I'd jumped to couldn't possibly have been true. "That's-- What? What are you even talking about?"
"They're threatening to go into the Manse and blow their attempt."
Oh.
"I've got something of a knack for this sort of thing, so I'm going to go try and talk them out of it. We can put it off for a minute if you're making progress, though." She glanced to the side of me. "What's that you're reading there, Ophelia?"
The woman in question didn't seem to be interested in replying, so I answered on her behalf after a few moments. "It's something else like the journal I showed you, to try and prove that I-- That I don't remember killing everyone, that I didn't plan it." I scratched the side of my neck awkwardly. "We couldn't really move past that."
"You had something like that with you?" She looked skeptical.
"No, I... well, I'll explain later." I glanced back towards Ophelia. "Anyway, I don't mind cutting this off for now... I was just going to say, until she's read it, I feel like we're at a bit of a, uh, impasse. Unless there was something?"
Ophelia turned a page over. Her expression was downright furtive now, troubled and unreadable. "No."
"Okay." I looked back. "Then I'll come give you a hand, Kam."
Honestly, I would have taken almost any excuse just to get out of the room.
"If you like. I don't mind if you want to go exploring on your own, though. I just won't be able to keep the vigil over this room."
"No, it's-- It's fine. It might be interesting."
"Suit yourself."
I stood up - almost bumping my head on one of the statue's arms this time - but as I did, thinking back over the conversation that had just happened and a few other things that'd happened recently, a thought struck me. I hesitated, not sure if it was worth acting on, but ended up going for it.
"Uh... also, just to say again," I began awkwardly. "All I want for now is to exchange information on the details of the murders, to the point I'm not a million miles behind everyone else. I'm sure you've told other people around here things, so I could probably get that second hand... but I want to build as much trust with everyone who was there and still wants to talk about it, even if it seems like that might be a long shot." I hesitated. "What I mean is-- I'm not being a hypocrite when I say I don't want to talk about anything personal. I don't expect that from you either." I cleared my throat. "That's all. I just wanted to make myself clear."
Ophelia once again failed to respond, so evidently the conversation was over for now. Sparing one last glance at her, I allowed Kamrusepa to lead me up and out of the room.
"Good heavens," Kam muttered with a sigh as she shut the door. "Well, I'm glad that seemed to come to something in the end, at least."
"Mm," I said, still a little preoccupied. "Yeah."
"It's unfortunate that she behaved with such... severity," she went on. "I knew that she still held judgment towards you for what happened at the conclave, but not so deeply. Again, she's been rather reticent since her migration here. I hope you're not too shaken up by the affair."
"I'm fine," I said, not sure how I actually felt. I found myself distracted by Yulia's parting remark, too, now that I had a moment to breathe mentally. "Let's get moving."
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Wh-- Oh, right."
I lowered my defenses again, and let her return me to Kasua - Susan's - form. The sense of vague disquiet returned, and I exhaled through my nose.
"That said," Kam spoke as we set off, "I know you're still trying to be one-foot-in-one-foot-out about all this, but you could have handled that a little less awkwardly. You ought to try and develop better composure, act your age."
"You're not my mother," I said, even though I knew she was right. "No amount of composure would make me able to handle someone who blames me for trapping them in purgatory for an eternity."
"I was more talking about that spiel at the end," she said, leading us back the way we came through the dark corridors. "What were you even trying to say there?"
"Oh." I bit my lip. "I don't know. I thought it would seem like less of a disrespectful imposition if I made it clear I wasn't expecting her to share anything personal, even if it happened to be relevant to how any of the murders happened, or the wider situation."
She gave me a funny look. "Su, at the risk of rather stating the obvious, you do understand that people in situations generally have motives for their actions? Which are in turn brought about by their circumstances? And that it's impossible to disentangle those motives--"
"Yes, Kam, you don't need to be condescending," I said snippily. "I know it's not cut and dry. That's why I was trying to, well, keep it open. To convey, like, 'only share what you're comfortable with', basically."
She rolled her shoulders, exhaling softly. "I worry for you, Su."
"Why?"
"Because it feels like you're going to end up peeling a lot of bandages off thread by thread when you could have just ripped them off." Her expression looked distant, for a moment.
"...well, like I said when we first met again, you could just tell me everything you know, instead of treating me like some delicate flower," I said, a little bitterly. "If you think I'm already setting myself up to misunderstand, or be traumatized and go back into hiding, then it's not like it matters."
"Do you have a hunch?" She asked, glancing at me and raising an eyebrow. "About what this is all about?"
I wrinkled my nose. "Of course I have a hunch." I faced forward. "I'm not stupid. I've thought about all of this a lot. All my life, and especially in the past month. I know that there's something about our class and the Order."
There had been too many clues at this point to ignore, especially now that I'd confirmed the nature of their final suicide. When you considered what Ophelia and Kam had discovered in their account, what Zeno had told me in his laboratory, the state of Linos's body... And everything else about the situation, including the game Kam had put together...
I didn't want to put it into words, my theory. Not yet. Not until I'd met Yantho, who after what Neferuaten said was obviously pivotal to the entire affair. And maybe even Ran. It wouldn't be long, now.
I shook my head, changing the subject. "That wasn't what I was thinking about with Ophelia, though," I clarified. "Unless there's something I'm missing. I more meant, uh, well." I glanced to the side, towards the brick wall. "Things about her personal life that might have come up because of Balthazar. That sort of happened in my loop, actually."
Kam flattened her brow. "Things about her personal life."
Well, I guess this is happening again.
"I mean... You know," I said. "When the two of them ran into one another, she had a violent prosognostic event, but he only had a minor one. Which, you know... I mean, Ptolema brought it up, but even you alluded to, well..."
I looked back over as Kamrusepa made an odd guttural sound. When I turned my head, I realized she was letting out a sardonic, near-humorless chuckle, shaking her head.
"You're ridiculous, Su."
"Sorry."
"No, I mean, you really are ridiculous." Her tone had grown a little more aloof, though not to the point of hostility. "You don't know anything about Ophelia's life whatsoever. Next to nothing. But instead of internalizing that ignorance, you've jumped to that conclusion like a bloody frog at a fallen leaf."
"I-I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with it," I spoke defensively, pulling up my arms a little.
"That's not what I'm saying," she said. "I mean that you have the thinking patterns of a snoop. You ought to mind your own business."
"I can't control my own thoughts." My face flushed slightly. "So you're saying she, uh, isn't...?"
Kamrusepa let out an extremely long, labored sigh.
"Sorry--"
"No, Su." She stated. "At least not to the best of my knowledge." We passed the hall leading to the security center, heading in the direction of the kitchen cellar. (It felt like it would have been slightly faster to go the other way, but maybe someone was sleeping in there or something. "Swapping it is a cheap form of distinction therapy. From what she's told me, her parents hoped for more for her than the average child growing up in the Diakos, and presumably wanted to give her every advantage they could afford."
"...oh."
I wasn't exactly sure why, but somehow this knowledge left me feeling... kind of put-off? I shook my head.
I mean, I guess Ophelia could just be lying to her, it occurred to me.
You're just saying that because it's what you would do, my self-awareness pointed out.
Kam regarded me for a moment with a visage that straddled the line between analytical and judgmental, like I was a piece of fruit she was inspecting for bruises. "You have a bit of an odd attitude when it comes to this sort of thing. You were the same way with your theory back in the game. Nahmi told me you talked about it afterwards, too."
"You're reading too much into it," I said dismissively, flattening my lips. "I just-- My brain just latches on to anything that's, I don't know, radical change. I have a complex about it, it's complicated." That's why they call it a complex, because it's complicated.
She tutted skeptically. "Mm, is that so."
"Anyway, you're one to talk," I said, accidentally raising my voice. "I remember the way you used to talk about Fang. You're incredibly weird about 'this sort of thing'."
"Those conversations were eons ago from my perspective, Su. You can't act as if they mean anything now."
I furrowed my brow. "The way you look at it all has changed, then?"
"I've reevaluated some of my priors. I have a more nuanced perspective."
"Nuanced in what way?"
She rubbed her brow. "Ugh, don't make me get into this right now, Su."
"No, go on," I said quickly. "Explain. I want to hear."
She peered at me, annoyed. "...obviously I've got to know quite a number of people deeply, during my time here," she spoke carefully. "Among some of them, individuals who had experiences with physical sex - the anatomy, I of course refer to, not the sexual act - and the social expectations there associated. I accept that there are people who, for a variety of reasons, may find that their sense of self - vis-a-vis, their bodily self image - does not align with the two typical reproductive templates."
At some point in her explanation, I'd started hiding my (Kasua's) face in my hands like I was a child trying to escape from a scary scene in a play.
"Of course, you can find examples of such things throughout history," she continued. "In Viraaki culture--"
"Kam, you can't--"
"--and more obscurely, in the priesthood of Phui--"
"Kam, you have to stop. You have to stop," I insisted, my voice mouse-like. "Dying gods."
She looked irritated. "You bloody well asked. If you find the way I frame things embarrassing, then don't hand me any portraiture."
We walked for a few moments in silence, during which I managed to somewhat recover, taking a deep breath.
But then Kam spoke up again. "In any case," she stated more soberly. "In most cases, it was never me that was 'weird' about it."
I turned to her sharply, feeling like a spider that had just caught a moth. "I knew it! I knew it. You're still weird about it, aren't you?"
"It still bothers me when the motive is pure self-indulgence, if that's what you're referring to," she stated stubbornly.
"Oh, you're absolutely weird about it." We began ascending the cellar stairs. "That's so judgmental! Even though it's none of your business."
"It's normal to be judgmental when someone's taking something serious flippantly," she countered, and I realized we were almost exactly rehashing the argument we'd had way back when she first met Zeno's other body. "You of all people ought to understand that."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
She rolled her eyes. "Your attitude about the customs they have in the Crossroads, of course."
"That... That's not the same-- That's more fundamental! Obviously." It's not really more fundamental, what does that even mean? Shit, fuck, stall for time to actually think about your argument. "It's like-- It's like-- I mean-- I mean, it upsets me because people are lying to one another all the time. Pretending to be something they're not." I flinched, rhetorically damaged. "That was the wrong phrasing. I meant that they're not even acting in a way that reflects internal truth. They're escaping into pure fantasy instead of honoring their commitments to other people as human beings. The whole social contract is twisted."
"That's exactly what I'm referring to, just to a less extreme degree," Kam insisted as we moved into the kitchen, folding her arms. "Take Fang. I mean no disrespect to them, of course, but honestly, do you think they were representing some 'internal truth'? They were obviously just messing about. The whole thing was a lark."
"And you're accusing me of being presumptuous."
"I'm not presuming a damn thing. They admitted as much, several times." She shoved open the door to the hall, then used the same hand to gesture at me. "They thought the whole thing was a jolly farce, practically leaned into it."
I scoffed. This was one of those moments where Kamrusepa's attitude honestly shocked me a bit. It was nostalgic. "Do you honestly think that having a sense of humor about your own identity delegitimizes it, somehow? Or that it's wrong to use people's own shitty attitudes about you against them? Both of those are really common coping mechanisms for social ostracization."
"Fang has never struck me as needing to cope with altogether too much," Kam spoke somewhat coldly, her voice echoing against the backdrop of the tall windows. "Neither back then, nor since." She glanced at me, her gaze surprisingly serious considering how ridiculous this whole exchange had grown. "What you're saying is true in some cases. But you must also acknowledge that there are some individuals who simply enjoy pushing social boundaries for their own enjoyment. That's been the case since the advent of human history."
"I mean-- Okay. So what if there are?" I wrinkled my nose, trying to think about how to phrase my point without sending Kam on some other weird digression. "Like, okay, take someone like, well, Professor Zeno. Where you might be right, and they are just doing the whole thing for fun or to satisfy some weird kick." I squinted. "That's still them being themselves, expressing a genuine desire in an upfront way."
She side-eyed me. "And what makes you think the people you're opposed to aren't doing the same thing? Expressing a desire?"
"It's not about the 'desire' part, it's about the 'genuine' part," I claimed. "Zeno never-- Well, he never seemed like he was treating his fundamental identity or his relationship with others flippantly. Only his body and social affect. And like... obviously I'm not some transhumanist or anything, but in principle, that doesn't feel any different from changing your clothes." I scratched the side of my head. "I've never understood this, I don't know, socially deferential streak you have. Aren't arbitrary cultural boundaries inherently irrational, just something momentum-driven in the same way you always talked about deathism? Shouldn't you think they're stupid?"
Kamrusepa was quiet for a moment. Then, just as we were approaching the doorway to the entrance, she suddenly stopped and turned sharply to face me.
"Do you know what it's like to be despised, Su? Not just by individuals, but by the entire world?" Her words were sharp; she peered at me closely. "You're from a comfortable upbringing. Can you even conceptualize the idea?"
I felt a little taken off-guard. "I-- I don't know. I mean. Probably to an extent." Even not touching ancient wounds, the last few decades in the Remaining World had been rough for anyone with sexual proclivities beyond the pole-in-hole model.
"Let me paint you a picture," she continued. "It is like being a cancer. A growth trapped irrevocably within a larger body. You're just trying your best to survive, but in every direction you attempt to grow or even move, you find yourself in direct conflict with forces that want to destroy you. To tear you to pieces, and then use said pieces to construct in your place something that serves their collective objective rather than rebelling against it. So long as you exist as you are, the situation is a zero-sum game."
I frowned uncomfortably. "Um, that seems kind of extreme. I mean, most people aren't trying to kill you, even if they don't, uh." It felt hard to put exactly what I meant in to words, feeling like the object of the conversation had got away from me. "Even if they do have a problem with you."
"The will of the individual matters not," she dismissed. "Macrophages and mast cells together are the most abundant of the immune system, and do no fighting themselves. Yet they are immune cells all the same, for the pave way for those who do. The body is one system. Its will is what is of consequence."
There was a look in Kam's eyes that told me that any attempt to play devil's advocate or pick at the specifics of her analogy would be taken personally.
"In any case, there are three possible ways this conflict can be resolved," she continued. "The first is that you simply die; either you submit to the constant pressure, or you're overwhelmed in spite of your best efforts. This is, assuming you're starting from a neutral state, the overwhelmingly likely possibility." The left edge of her lip curled down slightly. "The second is that you become strong enough to threaten the host. But so opposed are your natures that any conflict between the two of you would surely be cataclysmic, and furthermore, the body they have built is made for them, not for you. Even if by some miracle you should prove victorious and achieve total victory, the most you can hope for is to enjoy a hollow victory as everything falls to pieces in your wake."
"Finally," she said, "the third possibility is you find some way to coexist with the rest of the body. Perhaps you just never grow large enough to be worth its attention, and so go ignored. Perhaps you arrive at a stalemate where you're no longer an active threat, but would nevertheless consume too many resources to be worth trying to eliminate entirely. Or perhaps, by some miracle, you begin producing a chemical or nutrient that brings it benefit or otherwise pacifies it, and you achieve some crude quasi-symbiosis." She pursed her lips. "All of these possibilities are fleeting. The body could still decide to kill you at any time. It's simply not doing it presently."
She paused for a conspicuously long moment, blinking several times, as if she'd amassed a backlog and needed to do it all at once.
"I would like you to imagine the feeling that fosters," she resumed. "The sense of bitterness. The sense of being crushed, of being an irrevocably problematic entity to be disposed of." She leaned forward slightly. "You remember what a dendritic cell is, I trust?"
"...they're the scouts of the immune system," I recited. "They find cancer cells, but they don't attack them directly like T or NK cells. They just absorb weak or dead ones, and then show them to the lymphatic system so it knows what to look for."
She narrowed her eyes. "Imagine a cell that is not cancerous. That is not in any sense threatened, not crushed, not struggling to survive. And yet it is aware of you, approaches you, and affects you. Bringing in its wake the rest of the immune system. How would you feel about that, as the cancer cell, Su? How would you describe it."
"I think..."
I wasn't quite sure how to put into words what I thought. It was twisted, obviously. But it wasn't twisted in a way I had a good out of the box retort for.
"To be rational is to understand the world as governed by a network of systems," Kam said. "And interpersonal affairs are no exception to that. I am not 'socially deferential'. I am conscious of my own goals, and the goals I identify with indirectly, while also being socially realistic." She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a long breath, then began walking again. "Just as you are. Whether or not you wish to admit it."
After that, nothing further was said until we returned to the central bioenclosure.