Technomagica 2 : 41 Space (Patreon)

I let go of her hands, staring at her wide, ruby and emerald eyes.

“That was… something,” Kliss muttered, blinking.

Fire crackled beside us in the large hearth of the dim and empty Fox and Fiddle pub.

“She’s lots of words and threats, simply searching for a way to escape her confinement,” I said. “I’ve no reason to trust in any of that doomsday nonsense.”

“I think that the Song of Wormwood is honest about the coming comet,” Kliss murmured. “At least she genuinely believes that it’s coming and that she is its herald.”

“It could all be deception,” I pursed my lips.

“Maybe it is,” Kliss muttered. “Either way, it is a distant threat and we have things to deal with in the present.”

A comfortable silence fell between us for a few moments as we simply stared at each other.

“You did good,” I smiled at her, pushing Sasha’s words to the back of my mind as something to deal with later.

“Hrm?” Kliss tilted her head forward, gemstones reflecting the flickering fireplace on her right.

“You claimed her,” I clarified. “A small section of the Astral Virus has been syntropically stabilized.”

“I didn’t do that much,” Kliss shrugged. “And I cannot command her that well, I don’t think.”

“It matters not,” I said. “Now that a part of her network has been suspended by you, I can thoroughly examine it with my Infoscopes, and understand how to take her apart.

“Are you going to take her apart?” Kliss asked.

“Probably,” I said. “On the account that she’s not something that could be trusted. All that talk of infinity is rather flimsy, unsupported by evidence.”

“What if she’s right?” Kliss asked. “What if we really need her?”

“To fight the ‘gods of order’ or something?” I asked. “Time, space, safety, termination, order? What kind of god is ‘safety’ anyway?”

“She didn’t say safety,” Kliss replied. “She said… assurance.”

“It could have been insurance or warranty,” I shrugged. “She said them in Omnicode. She was speaking in Omnicode the entire time, that’s how both of us were able to understand her.”

“Omnicode?” Kliss asked.

“The language of magic,” I explained. “It’s something I figured out before I was even born, when I was just a little Astral tree.”

“An Astral tree?” the dragon girl raised a red eyebrow.

I leaned back against the leather seat. I once again explained the death of my sixty-year-old self in Aralsk-7, my encounter with fake Gagarin and the Wheel of Samsara, my discovery of the Alanian Obelisk amidst the ocean of corpses, and my usage of Kopusha’s soul-song magic. I revealed to Kliss how I figured out Omnicode and turned myself into Astral Fungus and escaped from the Hollow Mother to be born as Dante Alan Skyisle.

“If they are indeed divine words, names of the true Gods of everything,” Kliss said, after I was done speaking. “Then it should be easy to check if she’s lied to us about them.”

“What?” I blinked at her. “How?”

“Names have power,” Kliss said. “If you can speak the language of the Gods, then you can order reality around.”

“I’m already ordering reality around with spells that I design using fractal mathematics,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” Kliss said. “If those five words are the names of the true Gods, then they should function differently from mere spells or other names or words.”

“Equality, Ishira and Amari call themselves gods too,” I said.

“Magic,” Kliss said, “at least from what I learned in Cessna Academy correlates with true, sacred knowledge. Why don’t we put it to the test here and now?”

“Fine,” I said. “What would you like to test?”

“Use the name of Equality said in Omnicode to try to manipulate reality,” Kliss suggested. “Then use some random words and then the name of Space to do the same. See if there’s a difference.”

“On what parameters?” I asked her.

“No parameters,” she said. “Just push your mana into your words and point a finger at the fire. “If we see a discernible change within the flames, then…”

I found myself smiling at her words. Usually it was me teaching Kliss something. I summoned up all five of my Infoscopes to observe what exactly would happen next.

“Fine,” I said, pointing a finger at the flames. [Equality!] I barked in Omnicode, pushing magic into my words. Without a particular fractal, the spell didn’t manifest and the pulse of mana simply rushed to the end of my finger and came apart with a spark that dissolved in the Astral Ocean.

“There you go, that was nothing,” I said. “As expected.”

[Ishira!] I yelled. The result was the same. [Amari!] Also nothing to show for it.

“Try random words now,” Kliss encouraged.

I rolled my eyes at her. Yelling words in Omnicode at fireplace seemed very silly.

[Explode!] I ordered. [Ignite!] [Off!] [On!] [Cold!] [Hot!]

Exactly the same result. My mana was running low, I had just about enough for one more failed spell.

“Going to try one of the ‘god’ names now,” I said. “But then that’s it.”

“Just one?” Kliss leaned towards me.

“I could do more but then I’ll need to pull mana from your hoard,” I said.

“I’ll permit it,” she smiled. “Go on. Say the name, just like the Song of Wormwood said them.”

I readied my mana once again.

[[Space!]] I barked, expecting absolutely nothing.

The mana around my hand did something impossible, unexpected. It organized itself into an orderly formation, suddenly fiercely pulling at the Sythropic Boundary.

If I didn’t have five Infoscopes pointed at it I wouldn’t have noticed anything different. There was a tiny formation hanging on my finger now, so microscopic that my human eyes failed to spot it.

[[SPACE]] I repeated, pulling mana from Kliss’ hoard.

The colorless spark at the end of my finger grew fatter, brighter yet, actually becoming visible now. It hung there, as if expecting me to unleash it. I had no idea what to do with it, didn’t expect for it to exist at all. The permanent thing affixed right at the edge of my fingernail stood against absolutely everything I knew so far about magic, didn’t fit into the Magical Assembly Theory.

“What the shit?” I whispered.

Kliss stared at the spark hanging in my finger and then back at my wide-eyed, shocked face.

“It worked,” she said. “It bloody WORKED! I was right, aha ha ha!”

[[S-p-a-c-e,]] I repeated very slowly, making silent spaces between each letter. The spark grew bigger yet, rearranged itself, formed a visible, tall rectangle, an edge of unreality that was there and also wasn’t. All of my Infoscopes were telling me that what I had created had no right to exist.

Kliss grinned at me with sharp chompers, looking far too smug.

“This… this cannot be real,” I said, staring at the impossible spell, a square rune of some kind that was just hanging there, minding its own business. “Specific names don’t, shouldn’t have special power. Spells don’t just self manifest, magic doesn’t just self-organize from a single word into a rectangle. This is absurd!”

“We should try the other names,” Kliss said giddily.

“The hell we should,” I muttered irritably, scanning the rectangle in front of me.

“Slava, why are you so snappy?” Kliss asked, examining my face. “Shouldn’t this be a good thing, magic that we can use?”

“You don’t get it,” I said. “This isn’t a spell, isn’t magic. It’s just… some kind of, I don’t know... a dimensional distortion, maybe, a dimensional anchor, a gate to nowhere? It’s not even a proper magical fractal. It’s just…”

“Just what?” Kliss asked. “There’s magic glowing around it that I can clearly see.”

“Yeah, but that magic… mana is simply being pushed to the edges of it, like electrical current that’s perpetually dancing atop of a metal object. But within, it’s… just… a rectangle of some kind,” I said. “I can’t even get any information about it with my Infoscopes, can’t identify it properly. All the System says is that it’s just... [[Space]].”

The two dimensional structure hanging on my finger grew bigger yet. I gulped, cutting off the flow of mana.

I pointed one of the Infoscopes at Kliss, just to make sure that it wasn’t broken, that I hadn’t gone completely insane. A vast array of information filled the NeuroVista with everything about Kliss, detailing her current state, level, anatomy, vital functions, soul-state, etcetera. I pointed it back at the rectangle. It simply said [[Space]] in Omnicode.

I felt my mind sliding sideways.

I switched my Infoscopes to scan the flickering mana surrounding the rectangle. It was stable, perfectly static, not even sinking away into the Astral Ocean.

What I had cast was a self-sustaining spell, one that didn’t seem to come apart at all. It was somehow absolutely stable, just like Kliss was, somehow maybe permanently bent Synthropic Boundary to reinforce itself into existence, spatially affixed to my fingernail, as if waiting for something.

I waved my hand around. The spell wrapped around the rectangle didn’t come apart, didn’t fire, didn’t waste a single unit of mana. It just was.

“Stop gawking at it and explain what’s going on,” Kliss said.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on, that’s the problem,” I stammered out. “I’m completely stumped. It’s just… Space, just something that’s there. It’s not even doing anything, it just exists.”

“Hrmm,” Kliss murmured. “I think that this proves that the elder Gods Sasha mentioned exist. This is simply evidence that their names have power over reality.”

“What about the comet?” I asked.

“That could be a lie,” Kliss said. “But I don’t think that it is.”

“I don’t even know what to do with this,” I eyed the inexplicable distortion on my finger with great suspicion.

“Apply it,” Kliss said. “You’re good at figuring things out and applying them, no?”

I cautiously touched the edge of the table with the affixed formation. It went right through the table as if it wasn’t there at all. I unfolded my wooden armacus, relocated it to my left hand and fired a microscopic [Electricity] spell at the rectangle on my right hand's pointing finger. The spell went right through it and detonated against the table, leaving a dark imprint created by a tiny ball of lightning.

Kliss watched me curiously.

“It’s not affected by physical matter or negatively-charged magic,” I said.

“What about positively charged magic?” She asked.

“I’d rather not get my finger burned off with dragonfire,” I said.

“I’ll be super careful,” Kliss said. “Just a little spark, come on.”

“No,” I said. “Not until I figure out how to move it off my hand, damn it. I don’t know how this thing interacts with syntropic magic.”

“Huh? Can’t you vanish it away, maybe cast it onto something?” Kliss asked.

“No I cannot,” I said, waving my hand. “Ordinarily negatively-charged spells fire or dissipate, have some kind of a visible effect.”

“Is it like dragon magic then?” Kliss asked.

“No,” I said. “Dragon magic also has a physical effect, obviously. There’s no positively-charged spiral flowing around this thing! It’s not interacting with magic, it just doesn’t make any sense, that’s the problem. I cannot see a cause to effect pattern to it at all, it’s not influencing the Astral Ocean, not interacting with the physical world, not doing a god-damn thing!”

“But you can make it grow if you say 'Space' in Omnicode?” Kliss asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I can make it grow, but I don’t understand how it works one bit.”

“What happens if you make it really big?” Kliss asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “And I’m not going to try.”

“Why not?” She asked with a bit of a whine, as if prodding me to do it.

“Because one does not experiment with an unknown tool,” I said. “Whatever this is, it could be dangerous.”

“Didn’t you experiment with Omnicode and Alanian Song-Spells before you were even born?” Kliss asked.

“That was… different,” I said.

“How?” She asked.

“I was bored and didn’t have someone to protect,” I replied.