Draft Update 26/06/24 (Patreon)

(I feel like not much happened in this chapter; I guess it's mostly setting out mood and concepts for the stuff later.

I wonder if there's more I could do with the previous chapters to just be extremely clear what the story going forward is going to look like structurally in advance. I feel like even now that's not really clear. I wonder if there's a way I could condense or revise a lot of the Fate Inescapable chapters to fill that role, while giving the previous two sections a little more room to breathe.

Thanks as ever for reading!)

What? Introduce myself?

Don't be ridiculous. That was implicit from the last two scenes.

Ugh, fine. If you insist.

My name is Kamrusepa Murslisduttar, or 'of Tuon' by the unifying conventions of the Grand Alliance. I am... or, well, if we're being particular, was... a Chronomancer - quite a good one for my age, if I dare say so myself - a rationalist, and the 3rd ranked student of the Exemplary Acolyte's Class at the Old Yru Academy of Medicine and Healing, one of the most most exclusive academic programs in the Remaining World. These are accomplishments I seized for myself, by my will alone, for which I am justly proud.

In April 1409, on the weekend of the Alliance's 200-year anniversary, our class was invited to attend a special iteration of the bi-annual conclave of a group known as the Order of the Universal Panacea, an underground sect of arcanists specializing in life extension research. The Exemplary Acolyte's Class has been partially created as a diplomatic exercise, so us attending exclusive conferences was hardly anomalous-- Yet all the same, this was an exceptional circumstance. Even though we would only be meeting a small number of the most public-facing members of the organization, we would be the first guests openly entertained by the Order in hundreds of years.

In those days, I was (as all people should have been, if they had any sense of self-preservation) an enthusiast of longevity scholarship; while I've certainly spun my share of vapid speeches over the years, my words on that day were my own, if tempered somewhat. For many years, I had been part of a few select groups... mostly informal and on the logic sea, admittedly... who imagined a better, more reasonable future for humanity, where we shed the specter of luddism had dominated our culture since signing of the Covenant of the Mourning Realms. Certainly man's response to the Iron Prince's mismanagement of the crisis was not without reasonable intention, but our culture had developed a reactionary streak that bordered on the religious. It was categorically absurd that we had, until recently, considered something as banal as modest organ and bodily system redesign to be impermissibly transhuman.

I mean, come now. Whatever line had been crossed with the ascension of the Iron Princes, it wasn't curing bloody irritable bowel syndrome. Or making spines that weren't still halfway designed for walking on all fours.

So naturally this news delighted me. I had followed the Order's research with great interest for the majority of my adult life, not just because of the content but because they were, at the risk of hyperbole, a bit of a sensation in those circles. Every time they released a new paper through one of their dead drops - even on the rare occasions that it concerned trivial hokum about gut microbiomes or some other beaten-to-death facet of the field that never yielded quantifiable results - it was always an event.

It's a sad but immutable truth of human nature that how you market a product is often more important than the product itself. You could make a mountain of all the research papers and works of art that might've changed the world had the right people paid attention to them, but went unnoticed on account of being ill-championed, ill-timed, or just plain dull in their presentation. The Order wasn't the only organization to defy the Alliance's interpretation of the Covenant's provisions regarding human biology, but their methods made themselves the face of that defiance to a degree that far surpassed their peers.

With their rituals and extensive arcane talent, they had captured the public imagination, especially of the aging generations. The children who had inherited the world from those who fought in the Tricenturial War - those presently between 300 and 500, roughly - did not hold fast to the beliefs of their forebears, and had come to mislike the idea of dying earlier than they needed to. There was no direct connection, but one could well say that the Order had been indirectly responsible for the changes to the official interpretation of the Covenant thrown as red meat to the elder generations and landholders themselves!

So being able to meet with them like this was not only a personal dream of mine, but a tremendous opportunity for my career. The Order had connections to the elite of society - the real elite, not just wealthy patrons but persons of tremendous influence - that under normal circumstances one would never be able to make in medicine.

So even though half of our class seemed apathetic or openly intent on squandering this chance, I'd done everything in my power to make it work. And now, on that day, our efforts were finally going to come to fruition.

...

...are you enjoying this?

Am I saying what you expected?

May I ask a rather peculiar question? That was rhetorical; I know you can't answer me. I'm going to force-feed you this bollocks whether you like it or not.

Have you ever felt, in moments of weakness, that you might not be sentient, per-se? I'm not talking about being depressed here; though I certainly had my moments of misery, my state of mind didn't exactly fit the mold of listless, emotionally-grey disinterest that normally pointed to the condition. But I sometimes think about the mythology around golems. Not the modern machines that have usurped the term, I mean, but rather the constructs of ancient Ysaran folklore. Soulless beings of clay, driven to animated behavior only by a holy script bearing the name of a god, dictating their nature and actions.

That sometimes felt like it described my own internal world, my behavior constructed not of something undeniable and fundamental, but rather a series of self-imposed directives. Like I was a sort of... automaton of concepts, of things I had arbitrarily decided mattered but held no intrinsic meaning. When I completely cleared my mind, I found it difficult to discern just what I actually, truly cared or felt about anything.

Oh, I cared about something, to be certain-- In that sense, I definitely was still human. There was an all-consuming passion in me, a sense of manic urgency to do something even at the worst of times. I just couldn't precisely trace the thread, per-se, to any of the things I'd come to regard consciously as important.

It's a frustration to me, as someone who despises the idolization of simple rural living perhaps more than even deathists, to be forced to admit that perhaps the human brain simply isn't equipped to handle the escalating complexity of civilized living. If one is pushing around a plough all day and only interacting with a dozen other people on a regular basis, it's easy for the mind to keep track of what it thinks about things. But the more complex your goals, the more hats you have to wear to meet them. And the more hats - or mayhaps 'masks' is the more apt comparison, in this instance - the more you start to get your peas mixed with your porridge. Thinking tactically begets feeling tactically.

All this is a lot of waffle to say that I suppose, really, I don't know what I felt about the Order, deep down. When I was younger, I genuinely had admired them. Call it peculiar, but even as a child I'd always found the immortalist cause rather enticing-- There's an appeal to it that you don't need to be on death's door to understand, I think. You might call it a bit on the nose considering my vocation, but I was - and suppose still am - always tremendously conscious of the passage of time.

Life is made up of all these little things we regard as vital, and yet you only get one attempt at. One childhood. One adolescence. One first crush. Perhaps, because my life got off to a rocky start, I already felt some sense of grievance at my treatment and wanted (if you'll forgive me an indulgence to stereotypes) to speak with whomever was in charge.

But by then, well... it was hard for even me to know what my feelings were. Only my objectives.

You understand, I expect.

...

What? You pity me?

How condescending. Why do you think I'm telling you this in the first place? It's certainly not for my sake.

No, make no mistake.

This is a warning.

But I digress: I had been excited for the event, for one reason or another. And still was, to a point. But within the past week, a complication had come to my attention. One I was being forced to attend to on top of being the only member of our class concerned with keeping the wheels from falling off the entire affair to begin with.

But I had it in hand, as I always did.

Anything used against me, I would turn to my advantage. Any knife drawn against me, I plant in my opponent's throat.

𒊹

Old Yru Academy of Medicine and Healing, Auditorium | 10:52 AM | First Day

After that little tête-à-tête with Ezekiel, I felt just about ready to bite someone's head off like a mantis in heat, but this was to be a busy day and there was little time for frivolity; depending on how the Order had structured our schedules, the next hour or two could very well be the only chance I'd have to relax until it was time to settle in for bed.

Out in the backstage proper, I spied Utsushikome, Ran and Theodoros sat at one of the two little brass tables that were pretty much the only decor of substance they'd been able to cram into the space. Naturally, they were sitting in morose silence, Ran immersed in some novel while Su idly chewed on a bar of chocolate and stared into space. Had the two of them been alone, I'd likely have caught them in furious conversation and felt compelled to leave them to it with only a quick 'hello' on my way out, but Theodoros was such a wet blanket that he functioned as a breed of conversational depressant.

Oh, I don't mean anything against him by that, of course. Theo had his charms. I am a firm believer in the idea that there is no such thing as a useless person, only people not put to proper utility.

I approached them, setting a wide smile on my face. This would help me relax a little after that unpleasantness. I glanced upwards at the glass dome that crowned the auditorium; it looked like it was starting to rain.

"Well, well," I said. "I see you pack of sad sacks are still lingering about."

Theo jumped at my sudden arrival, while Utsushikome looked up and furrowed her brow at me. Ran didn't react to my arrival whatsoever, her eyes glued to the parchment. I really wished she'd be a little less inscrutable from time to time.

"Hi, Kam," Su spoke, fatigue heavy in her eyes and voice. "I thought you'd already left."

"Left?" I raised an eyebrow. "No, no. Just attending to a little business with the headmaster and some of the guests. The city council's medical officer wanted a word about our class's research budget."

This wasn't a lie. It really had happened. It had just only taken about five minutes, compared to the ten or so I'd spent sulking in the back room.

"Are they, er, going to cut it again...?" Theodoros asked.

I shook my head, my lips curling sourly. "Not as things stand, though it sounds as though it's on the table for the spring budget revisions. They're apparently still aggrieved about that fiasco with Lilith's project from a few weeks ago."

"You mean the thing with all those logic engineers she requested shipped in from Asharom?" he further inquired.

"Mmhmm." I crossed my arms, clicking my tongue. "It's really started to seem as if the new bunch of councilors regard our whole project as a liability. The rate at which they've got us spending more and more time with the regular students, I shouldn't be surprised if 'exemplary acolyte' becomes little more than an honor for the standard doctorate programs by the time their 10 years are up."

"I think that's kinda hyperbolic..." Su objected. "This is only the second time, isn't it?"

"Twice is a trend, Su." I asserted confidently. "It's obvious which way the winds are blowing."

There was this little thing I noticed that Utsushikome did every time she wanted to roll her eyes but was suppressing it, where her eyelids flickered rapidly like she was having some manner of seizure in miniature. She did this.

"Honestly, I don't know why they're treating it as so catastrophic," I continued, overlooking this. "They were only paid for, what, three days worth of contract work? The academy fritters away bigger sums on flights for student trips and novelty guest speakers every week. It's a drop in the bucket."

I was being a little dishonest, here. I understood perfectly well why they were treating it as catastrophic. She'd embarrassed them, and there were few things humans responded to with reactionary zeal like embarrassment.

Going briefly back to what we were discussing a moment ago, do you ever say things you don't mean? Sometimes I feel like I can have the entire conversation in my head before it even happens, and the act of doing it is just a fun little dance where we're each playing our respective parts.

"I'd, well, imagine it's mostly about how it looks more than the actual cost," Su contended. "If you let a kid bring in a bunch of adult professionals to work on their project, only for them to drop the whole thing when it's only half finished and refuse to even give a real explanation, it sort of looks less like you're running a serious academic program and more like you're running the Remaining World's bougiest daycare service."

Theo was nodding. "It does sort of make sense to me. The whole program is only for publicity reasons at the end of the day, so any time that aspect goes south, well, it seems only natural people would start asking questions about why we're getting such special treatment to begin with."

"If they were worried about things like that, they should have just damn well banned children from being part of this at the advent," I retorted, with a sigh to myself. "No matter how talented they are, anyone could tell you a tween is going to act like a bloody tween..." I thought about Lilith for a moment. "...or, well, not act like an adult, in any event. If you want the public interest generated by a visibly underage genius, it rather feels like you need to accept the good with the bad. I don't see why we should have to be punished for their lack of foresight."

Su shrugged, while Theo just looked on in his usual muddled ambivalence.

"Well, it's counting the shards of a broken vase at this point, anyway," I went on, before digressing sharply. "So! Are you all feeling excited for the weekend ahead of us?"

"Very excited," Ran spoke flatly.

"I'm-- Well, I'm feeling a little better about it than I was when I woke up this morning, at least," Su said. "You did a pretty good job hyping the whole thing up."

"Ah, so you were paying attention, eh?" I giggled. "With how dour you looked for the whole thing, I halfway thought you'd slipped into one of your fugues."

She squinted at me, adjusting her big round spectacles. "I don't know if I'm comfortable with the perception you have of me as some waif who disassociates the second I'm hit by a strong draft."

"Oh, come on, Su. I'm just bantering." I put a hand on my hip, leaning forward a little. "So? What did you think, pray tell?"

"About what?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"About my performance, of course!" I clarified, feigning indignance. "My little speech, and how I answered the questions!"

"Oh." She contemplated for a moment, taking another bite of chocolate from her little papyrus-wrapped bar. "I think you did well. Everyone seemed to like it."

I frowned. Well, that's no fun.

"Come ooooonnn, Su.” I insisted playfully.

“What?”

"I know you're holding back," opening my arms in a gesture of symbolic self-exposure. "Give it to me. Your full-frontal critique, no holds barred."

That had come across a little more like innuendo than I intended. This sort of thing just seemed to happen when I was teasing Utsushikome for her ridiculous wishy-washiness. I'd never really teased anyone before, and I suppose the persona still felt rather like a fresh pair of shoes, tight and lumpy and wrong places.

"I'm not holding back," Su insisted. "Really, I think it was fine."

I peered at Su. She was such the picture of what one imagined when thinking of an over-reserved girl, it could have passed for parody; the glasses, the braids, the stiffness to which she held her body. And of course how quickly she seemed to retreat inwards at the slightest provocation. It was all just too much! It made me want to pull on her hair like we were both schoolchildren!

Everything about her was so silly, and yet she was so intelligent. So good a conversationalist once you could actually bait her into it. But just getting there always felt like a process.

"Su, I've known you for-- For..." I hesitated as my brain failed to produce the proper figure. “Ran, how long has this class been going for, now...?”

I'm not sure why I asked Ran in particular. Maybe it would have felt like too much of a power concession to ask Su, and knowing Theo, he'd probably just pull out his damn logic engine.

Ran turned a page of her book, still not bothering to look up. "Don't ask me. You're the one who's supposed to be the time expert."

I clicked my tongue. "That's not how it works, Ran. They don't implant a bloody clock in your brain the moment you enroll in the Hall of Hours. You know I'm dreadful with time passage."

"I think that's the first time you've ever told us a thing about the place," she stated, turning a page. Off to the side, I heard Su mutter what I assumed to be the precise amount of time it actually had been since we'd met.

The Hall of Hours, also known locally as the Locked Tower, was of course the home of the Order of Chronomancers in Rhunbard, the only serious institution devoted to the discipline in the Remaining World... or at least, the only serious known institution. Chronomancy was an extremely tightly-overseen branch of arcana, both in terms of legislature and self-policing. I probably don't need to explain why; the ability to manipulate time is a terrifying power, unmatched in combat potential. It was often said (usually by a particular breed of history enthusiast) that if Sara of Xattusa had forced the Hall of Hours into compliance with the Rhunbardic crown prior to the last few decades of the Tricenturial War - enough to train a few regiments of war-arcanists - they could have seized the Mimikos all but alone.

Everything about it was a tightly-kept secret, and it was an absolute bugger to so much as gain admission. There weren't just academic tests, but personality tests, background checks, and the like. You had to have a record cleaner than Queen Sienzana I's arse.

At least in theory. The fact I'd passed probably said quite a lot about the institutional competence of the Grand Alliance, but that was neither here nor there. They also made you swear enough oaths that you probably had to watch your tongue more than if you were a secret agent. (Though of course none of that shit matters now, so I can speak quite candidly.)

In a lot of regards,you never really left the place once you'd enrolled - there wasn't really a concept of graduation, just an ambiguous, gradual transition from student to researcher, teacher and potentially manager. It was a strange slice of the past that way; its own little structure closed from the outside world, as all circles of arcanists were during the Mourning Period. I had certainly planned to return there for further study once I had my doctorate.

I had mixed feelings about it - the tradition, of course, was rather tiresome, but I'll admit I found the sense of being part of something so exclusive rather thrilling.

Put a pin in that, actually. We'll come back to it later.

In any event, none of this stopped being a Chronomancer from opening a tremendous amount of doors outside of the Hall. But it was something of a frustration socially. It was a formative chapter of my life I felt proud of.

"You know I'd say more if I could, Ran," I said, my brow flattening but not letting my smile waver. "But my hands are tied."

"Yeah, I know," she said, finally flicking her gaze up from the pages of her novel. "It just feels weird, sometimes. Like, at this point, I feel like you must know most of my life story just from bits and pieces of random conversation, but I still don't really know anything about you from before you came to the academy."

I wasn't sure if I would have gone that far. I only knew the broad strokes of Ran's past: That she was born in Lac Uyen but moved to Oreskios as a child, that her family life was troubled and her father was violent, and that she'd met Su at some private school she'd had to get into on a scholarship. Had there been more than that? Admittedly, my listening skills weren't my best trait.

"Oh, come on, that's not true," I said. "I've talked about my youth before joining the Order - the other Order, I mean - multiple times."

"I mean, that you grew up out in the middle of nowhere in Rhunbard, yeah," Ran said. "But not any details."

My smile flickered slightly. I wasn't much fond of how this was derailing Su and I's exchange.

"I just find it depressing, that's all," I told her. "You know me-- I never like to bring down the mood of a room." I digressed before she had a chance to say anything in response, looking back to the other side of the table. "Anyway, Su, my point is, I've known you for some time. And not once can I think of us discussing something you didn’t swiftly identify a bunch of flaws of, and then proceed to pick at relentlessly. The fact is, you’re chronically opinionated.”

"I'm not opinionated," she retorted defensively. "I think I'm very tempered."

"Tempered."

"Yes."

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"I mean... I don't like to make a fuss," she stated, biting her lip.

"That doesn't mean you're not opinionated," I pointed out. "It just means you're..."

A doormat, I thought.

"...excessively polite," I spoke.

Su frowned, scratching the side of her head.

"So come on," I said, finally pulling up a chair and sitting down myself. "Be honest. What did you think?"

Utsushikome sighed through her nose, swallowing the chocolate in her mouth. "I mean, if you insist, I feel like you probably kind of alienated some of the crowd with all of the... anti-death rhetoric. Talking about ending mortality." She glanced to the side. "That, and you maybe came across as a little... defensive, with Alexandros of Myrh's question about dementia and the futility of other forms of life-extension."

I leaned back and briefly faced the ceiling, just hearing the name feeling as if it were some manner of drain on my power. "Ugh, I'd like to have a more personal conversation about mortality with that piece of work. You could cut someone's throat with the angle he was pushing." I shook my head. "'Cult-like fringe organization-- For goodness sake, why did they let someone like him in for this event? He has a bloody column. He's not hiding his views on the Biological Continuity Oath."

"The second question was sort of unreasonable, yeah," Su intoned, "but you didn't really answer his first one."

I raised an eyebrow. "How do you mean?"

"Well, it seemed like he was asking what the point was of raising people's lifespan if dementia still remained as a hard cap, since it would mean people would live longer only to have to suffer through an awful quality of life while their brains leaked out their ears," she explained. "But you didn't really engage with that side of it at all. You just talked about how great it would be to live a few extra years assuming you didn't get dementia, even if that scenario is inevitable sooner or later."

Shit. I'd expected Su might bring up the idea I'd laid on my feelings about the Order's research a little thickly - the headmaster had been giving me those funny looks, after all, so I'd already been concerned about the possibility - but at least that would have still got the message out in the event I was quoted, and probably endeared me to them further. But in this case, I'd been so eager to wholeheartedly reject the idea that extending lifespan was futile or dementia a sure thing, I'd let an aspect of the question fly totally over my head.

Now I could end up looking foolish. I could see the article now, written in his usual smug, suggestive journalistic tone. 'Indeed, as the realm of longevity healing forges ahead, progress may very well be made. But if its greatest champions like Kamrusepa of Tuon are any indication, we might find ourselves lamenting we weren't careful what we wished for.'

Why did everything have to be so difficult? Why couldn't people just be normal about living longer?

I shook my head derisively. "It was a stupid hypothetical anyway. Obviously dementia can be treated - any disease can - so he's just making up fantasy premises where he's right and the Order and I are wrong, and expecting us to argue out of them. He might as well have asked me something like, 'would you still want immortality if you had to eat a baby?' It's ridiculous."

"Would you, though?" Theo asked.

I blinked. "What?"

"Er. Want immortality if you had to eat a baby, I meant."

I squinted at him. I wasn't going to dignify that with a response.

"I'd probably eat a baby if it meant I could live forever," Ran said casually.

Utsushikome started laughing softly, but Theo's eyebrows perked up. "...really?"

"Yeah," Ran said. "But I'd try to have it be, like, a really shitty baby."

Now I couldn't stop my voice cracking a bit either. "What exactly constitutes a 'shitty baby' in your eyes, Ran? I simply must know."

"I dunno," she seeming callously indifferent to the particulars of the matter. "Just shitty."

"L-Like loud, you mean?" Su asked, holding a hand half over her mouth as she continued to giggle. "Or needy?"

"It's not something you can quantify that specifically," Ran insisted, looking back down at her book. "Sometimes they just didn't cook right, and they come out as little bastards. You can just tell."

"My goodness," I said. "I didn't know you held such strong opinions about infants, Ran."

"It's not an opinion, it's a fact," she insisted. "If you don't get it, you just haven't spent much time around them."

We all laughed for a few more moments, except for Theo, who looked bewildered.

"Gods," I said, shaking my head. "You know what, Ran? You're right. I would eat a baby if it aided the Great Work. I would make that sacrifice."

"Noblesse oblige, huh," she said.

"Exactly!"

"A-- A shitty baby, you mean?" Su asked, still smiling widely. Sometimes she dragged a joke out a little too long. That was another of her awkward traits.

"I said what I said," I said, clasping my hands together.

"I'm glad I could be part of your self-actualization journey, Kam," Ran said dryly.

"It's always a pleasure to learn something new about yourself," I said, staring up at peculiar shapes the rain was forming as it slid down the glass roof. I'd sat down sort of hoping I could bait Su into an interesting debate, but this sort of thing was fine too.

Some of my enthusiasm had left me as a result of my past being brought up, anyhow.

"...but anyway, Kam," Su spoke, after she'd calmed down. "I sort of doubt he even did it consciously. It's just natural for people to think about worst case scenarios when you're talking about just a major change to the status quo and what people have accepted as, well, the way things are."

I looked back at her. "I think you're significantly underestimating the malice of the commentariat, Su. These people are barely human."

"I'm just saying, how individuals conceptualize the world is always going to be framed by the knowledge they're going to have to die somehow," she went on. "Because--"

"I know, I know," I said holding up a hand. "Because people have to believe in things. Because people would go mad if they were forced to accept the idea that all is chaos, and predicting and accounting for their fate in both a positive and negative sense is completely out of the question." I decided to spoil myself with a little chocolate, too, reaching for the snack bowl. "We have touched on this all before."

"...I mean, that is true," Su said. "But I was actually going to say that they might just not, well... share your belief that death is even bad?" Her gaze wandered downwards in the way it always did when she was trying to parse something difficult."If you're not opposed to the idea in principle, then surely your whole incentive structure changes. When you die matters less than how you die, which leads to concerns like Alexandros had."

I unwrapped the papyrus, taking a bite. Ugh, it's milk chocolate. I was hoping for dark. "People only feel that way if they're operating under some manner of delusion," I said, after mentally checklisting that my present company were all atheists. "That oblivion is bad is self-evident. It's the end of everything."

"I mean," Su repeated, "I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but--"

"Don't say it didn't bother me before I was born," I interjected, pointing at her. "I hate that cliche. Whether you're suffering isn't the point."

"Quit trying to guess where I'm going in the middle of a sentence," Su instructed, furrowing her brow. "It's annoying. ...I was going to say that there are a lot of people that would argue that perception itself is sort of a subjective matter."

I snorted. "A lot of religions, you mean."

"You don't think there's any truth to that?" she pressed. "Sometimes I don't really feel like I have a consistent self, honestly."

I looked at her.

"Don't be ridiculous, Su," I said, with a dismissive shake of my head. "I think, therefore I am. Isn't that as basic as it gets?"

𒊹

Loge | The Timeless Realm

I stared at the images and sounds as they were displayed by the projector - if indeed they could be called that, when what was really being conveyed felt like something far more sophisticated - now resting in the center of the table. My teacup lay untouched.

"What... is this?" I said, so quiet I felt like it should have been inaudible.

It wasn't, though-- At least, not to her. She looked across from me, arching an eyebrow.

"Isn't that obvious?"