12-13 The Matryoshka Eaters (Patreon)

I have no idea why the hell Voidwatch made those things. I don’t. I also don’t want to know how Highflame managed to strike a good enough deal to afford them.

What I can decisively say is that you don’t want to get hit by one of these. Not one damn bit. They’ll grind against your cognition for one. Sure, if you got a Meta your mind won’t be overwriting outright by whatever tech-virus-shit that’s inside those shards, but damned if they aren’t loud. And damned if they don’t drill through your wards.

The best way I can describe them is… Like being caught between two flechettes trying to drill through each other. Or the same one collapsing inward–you’re basically being compressed… by an endless stream of self-loathing and self-mutilation.

For as long as the nanos run inside you, you’ll feel them. Screaming in your head. Screaming at each other. Trying to break free using your memories and mind as a fulcrum.

I saw a FATELESS catch one to the eye during the fourth big one. Poor juv just running the battlefield trying to snatch something worth a few imps. The stray screamer skipped off something and just hit him.

Poor little bastard went down and started clawing at his face immediately. Started screaming words I couldn’t understand. My ghosts didn’t have shit for me either. Then, he took a piece of metal from the ground and started cutting himself. There was nothing but… hate there. Just hate. Hate spilling out from him as his mind was eaten away.

Hate all the way up until he died.

I know that kind of hate. Felt it when I took a knife to the half-strand that sold my eldest. Same feeling. Same rage. Same burn.

Like you would give anything else to hurt them the way they hurt you.

-Quail Tavers on Ego-Screamers

12-13

The Matryoshka Eaters

Reaching deeper into the helix rewarded Avo with further mysteries. Though frozen, the phantasmal substance comprising the entwinement felt closer to grains of sand than the connected streams spun from a human mind.

Again, the voices repeated their pleas, but the words were more slurred this time, less coherent.

As he swept his ghosts through the structure, he studied the helix in detail and found himself unnerved by its structure. It wasn’t quite like what Walton had passed down to him. There were far too many steps in the shape of its ladder, and loose particulates slithered free toward nowhere in particular like dissolving contrails.

For all his knowledge of Necrotheurgy, for all his experience hard-earned and gifted from his father, he had no concept of what he was beholding. He felt like he was only glimpsing the blurred outline of the full picture, unable to penetrate the deeper secrets beneath the surface, hiding the organs that supported the entire system.

Nonetheless, he continued sweeping through his new prize with care. Each movement rattled his wards, but in this frozen state the trauma was in stasis rather than a flux, and it seemed castrated from its prior expression of free will.

Drilling deeper into its core, he found conflicting details pulled from its mem-data. Each bridge along verticality was manifested from two conflicting memories, both riven with pain, but each different in artifacts and sequence. Each presented scenes of torture and agony from the perspective of a victim, yet playing them simultaneously inverted the positions of both “characters.”

So deprived of memories to cycle, much detail had been lost to the memories. The settings were rooms of error-stained monochrome, with only instruments of bloodletting coming into focus. The two individuals, likewise, were stitched together from a loose collage of traits that Avo’s own Metamind had to fill in.

The only thing each section knew was that they hated the other for making them suffer and that the only way to be free was for the other to die.

But that was impossible, for the memories blended into each other, fusing across the totality of their beings beside specific points of separation that reminded them they were once too.

Even broken, the construct had to be one of the single most sophisticated he had ever encountered. It would be as linking the minds of two mortal enemies and then–over the course of months if not years–overlapping each and every recollection they had of each other until they thought they were themselves and their enemy at the same time aside from a few anchors of clarity that served as engines to propel the hatred eternal.

Yet, even after getting all that Avo wasn’t sure how this entity or entities could be self-directed. Ghosts were without will, they adhered to a thinking mind–a choosing mind. But the fire had made its own decisions and even exhibited open displays of emotion.

He expected such a response more from rival Necros than he did a hyper-advanced phantasmic. But with each anomaly discovered, he suspected he captured something that didn’t fall into either category.

+Please… Kill them… We don’t want to be together… I am me… I am me…+

Cautiously, he cast his own ghosts out at it, carrying a message. +Can you hear me?+

His emanated thoughstuff spread through the helix from threshold to threshold. It didn’t respond. It continued drowning in its own pain.

As the begging began to loop yet again, he took a chance to see if he could affect it another way.

Drawing most of his ghost out, he loaded Secondhand Fatality into his Ghostjack and channeled it into the frozen fire. Synaptically charged volts carried the memory through his Saguinity as each speck of blood crackled like a series of conduits. The death of Lucille’s sister impacted as lightning trying to hew fire.

The ghosts carrying the pattern splashed apart.

And then, as the bridge in the helix snapped out of place, it roared back aflame.

Immediately, it latched onto the ghosts he used to deliver the sequence and he released them from his Metamind. His Echoheads chittered his curiosity as he watched it scream and burn, the battle rejoined as traumatic destabilization reawakened it.

Still, even as it died down to sputter motes, he could not perceive where the source of its will lay. The only thing that was truly clearer was the helix seemed to be mainly burning because it was fragmenting each sequence of itself out of existence trying to kill “the other.”

As if its entire structure was engineered paradoxically for the organism to “survive” long enough to win, but winning meant suicide anyway.

He let out a breath and waited for Chambers to respawn.

After that, he repeated the process twice more for posterity,

***

“It’s not one mind. It’s two. Two woven into one.” Avo jabbed an Echohead at Kae. “Know how to fix you. Make the fire go dormant at least. But will need to feed it more ghosts.”

Kae’s expression turned radiant with joy almost instantly. She choked back a near-sob as she reached out to grasp for Draus’ elbow, seeking support.

Before they moved onto those proceedings, however, Avo held up the latest sample of the entity he managed to contain. He had a dozen different frozen fires now, but this one he had fed the least amount of ghosts to before breaking it.

From what he learned, each fire would suffer a breakage in its will upon devouring another instance of itself, the reaction coming from it like encompassing despair. Yet, when impacted by a severe enough trauma, it would once again default to its original sequence-incinerating state.

A fiery scar seared into a frozen instant of time, the entity–or entities–remained dormant multiple streams of perception washed over it. Of all those gathered, Kae and Chambers had their heads tilted in opposite directions. The former seemed thoughtful as she studied the construct at the root of her diminishment. The ex-Syndicate snuffer, however, simply wore a smug expression of triumph.

After he resurrected the last time, the first thing he asked was if he just “won.”

That time, Avo didn’t need to lie to him.

“Dove inside. Examined structure. The exterior has multiple thresholds. Like membrane. Or skin. Passing through converts cognitive artifacts. External sequences too. Breaks them down and uses them to maintain two interlaced egos. They’re bonded to each other in the shape of a helix. Similar shape to what Walton left me but not exactly.” Avo paired a simulation of its structure with a few ghosts and cast them out as phantoms. The structure of the entwined entities expanded into view as Denton and Sunrise took special notice.

Kae frowned. “If… if they’re alive… if they have–will… then why–why didn’t you get any Essence from them. S-sapient beings should be capable of… of worship.”

That was a good question. One that fell like a brick upon an existing foundation of mysteries. “Yes,” Avo concurred. “Shouldn’t be possible. Ghosts don’t have will. Can’t make own decision. But the fire does. Or did. Suffers mental collapse when it imbibes itself. Like it can’t conceptualize the horror of what it did.”

He timed a pause to give his words more weight. “Don’t think its a ghost. Not a human one anyway. Can’t be a full mind either. Full being. No ego. No Essence when it dies. Self-aware entities release it. Frame unfed. This is something else.”

Avo studied Sunrise, wondering if the swarm had something to say. Or if it even wanted to.

But while he had his gaze locked on the bioform, the Glaive surprised him by extending her hand. “Can I see it?”

The beast inside Avo snarled and hissed, recoiling at the thought of offering his rightful catch to another–a competitor with Nether-asymmetric capabilities he couldn’t prevent yet. What he wanted to do was bury the locus inside her skull, fill her cycler with Rend, and see how much force it would take his Echoheads to pry her in half.

What he did was place the captured entities in her hand. “Want it back.”

She betrayed nothing as she took it from his hand. “You will.”

Her review took but a few moments. From her Metamind speared static lances digging into the locus, and through the incisions did she pour her perception. Her eyes narrowed in something closer to disbelief than disgust but Avo wasn’t sure.

A second later, she exhaled in dismay. “Yes. Yes. It’s definitely a Nether-patterned variant of an ego-screamer.” She showed the locus to Sunrise, who sent a few of its bodies to scan the construct.

“He has stabilized the swarm,” Sunrise intoned. Surprise buzzed from the collective. It shuttled itself closer to Avo in a burst of interest. “How? How did you achieve this?”

“Distracted it using Chambers,” Avo said. “It started losing static thoughtstuff the more it consumed his sequences. I learned its habits. Taunted it. Goaded it from place to place. Then created another variant from Kae. Fed it through to face the original. Original swallowed its ‘twin.’ Stopped moving after that.”

Cas chuckled with humorless laughter. “Jesus. It even works the same.”

Avo frowned. “What is ‘Jesus’? The entities? Their name?”

The Glaive glared at her partner and he gave a muted wince. “He was a carpenter, but that’s not important right now. What matters is you managed to disable it the same way it was meant to be used. Against other uploads.”

“Complex post-sophont minds usually,” Sunrise added. A few bees landed on him. “Not like me. But more deconstructor swarms. Auto-forges. EGI cores. Suicider-forks. Even matryoshka hubs. The nature of the ego-screamers is to be deployed en masse. To confuse and eat away at high-processing cognitions. To subvert and cripple complex logistical networks.”

“So… it nulls voiders?” Chambers asked, sounding confused. “Voiders and their coldtech machines? And what’s a matrokasha-hub?”

“A megastructure with immense computational capacity,” Sunrise explained, replying exactly as Chambers’ finished. “We suspect that your ‘Necrotheurgy’ could be capable of similar functions on a more convenient scale considering the distinct lack of energy required and the absent of waste-heat generation.”

The conventional was interesting to Avo before, but it suddenly became enrapturing. “How does someone make one of these matryoshkas?”

Denton uncharacteristically cleared her throat and the swarm suddenly scattered backward. He shot a sharp glare at the Glaive whose face was back to being a blank page of impassivity. “Did it… say anything to you when you entered? Anything?”

He paused and considered his reply. “Repeated words. Asked me to free them. Kill someone. They just wanted to be themselves. Mostly just screamed after when I tried to talk with it.”

“This makes sense,” Sunrise continued. “They are but snapshots of snapshots of snapshots of two rival mind gestalts placed in a heavily frame-jacked virtual environment and formed to enact infringement on the other possibilities before their merging and deployment. There are other designs that aren’t so severe. I prefer those more.”

The more the swarm talked, the more Avo sensed that it too was quite untethered from human emotions.

“It’s good you secured a sample of this,” Denton breathed out.

Cas eyed her. “‘Good.’ Your father would be proud, rotlick. That’s… don’t think I know many other Jacks that could’ve done that.”

Avo hadn’t been particular about Cas so far, but he wasn’t above flattery. A low chuff of pride came from the ghoul. “Would’ve done it for the art alone.”

“Regardless, Voidwatch can’t know about this,” Denton said. “None of them beyond Aegis, anyway. If they find out that one of their polities had broken the Sophont Right’s Charter or that the Guilds somehow managed to seal a restricted construct…”

“My estimations show a high likelihood of an alloy and energy embargo like the one levied upon Noloth before its fall,” Sunrise said. “Along with a licensing ban for several essential technologies before the illegal asset is secured and returned.”

Avo found his curiosity aroused again. “Illegal?”

“Against the Sophont Right’s Charter signed by the Parliament of Polities under the Watchers,” Sunrise began, “we thus agreed to avoid any and all technologies that would infringe upon the individual rights of a self-aware being, such as but not limited to rewriting memories, inflicting deliberate neurological trauma, forking their ego without permission, uploading another ego into a mind without permission, and inflicting ego-death on another sophont being.”

Silence followed.

It lasted but a second before Chambers broke it with a sharp trailing whistle. “Damn. I think Avo here does all that shit. Does this make him some kind of… space terrorist or something?”

All the bees comprising Sunrise’s collective turned a few degrees to face Avo. “Technically, yes.”

Draus and Chambers both snorted at the same time. The Regular at least had the shame to look bashful at sharing a point of amusement with the half-strand.

“Alright,” Draus said, rubbing her face. “Glad we all got to listen Necrojack talk, but there’s a point that we’re not gettin’ to.” She lifted a finger and pointed toward Kae’s burning mind.

The Agnos just smiled demurely. “I–I don’t mind waiting. If… if Avo says he can f-fix it… I trust… And I like hearing–uh–it reminds me of how I felt with–thaumaturgy.”

“How you will feel again,” Avo said, refocusing on the Agnos. As her mood glowed even brighter he ushered her toward a new cell. “Take a seat. Shouldn’t take much. Just need to choke it right as it comes out with the static. Draus. Chambers. Come.”

They settled into place one final time in a new cell. The arrangments began in silence as glass slid into place and Chambers began psyching himself. Avo engaged the Thoughtwave Disruption just as Draus invoked her canon.

Again, his thoughts skipped, and again Kae’s mind was swept clean of harm.

As soon as his own focus returned, his ghosts cycled into action. Interconnecting himself, Chambers, Draus, his new locus, and Kae, he sent a cast to the Regular instructing her to part the glass so he could connect and boost his haemokinetic mass. Afterward, he dove into her flame-ravaged mind and found the crossing where her exocortex funneled its static flood over into her brain.

Planting the stilled ego-screamer in the way was a simple matter. The more difficult part was timing the release of his trauma just as the static passed over it. If he did it too soon, it would eat into Kae’s mind immediately and spread through her while the other entity choked and froze right at the precipice of entry.

Too late and it might wash over too far–so far, he still had no way to interact with the static thoughtstuff. Denton possibly could, but she lacked the capabilities to engage the fire on his level, his speed.

Ultimately, all it took was a little timing to settle, and when the flood came, he loosed his trauma and reignited the dormant flame.

It roared high within Kae’s Meta for a beat before a static-coated presence suddenly swallowed it. Then, as if a rock placed in the way of a river, the injections of restorative memory from the exocortex swept through the breadth of Kae’s sequences and began regenerating all she had stored within its contents via deployments of mem-data.

In the real, the proof of his success was obvious. A full second passed. Then another. Her mind didn’t burst into flames. Carefully, Avo plunged one of his ghosts into the newly frozen entity and found himself only able to peer into it halfway. A good portion of it was still hiding within the exocortex’s threshold.

This would require Denton–or maybe Sunrise–to aid him in extracting.

But it wasn’t moving. It was still. It was frozen. And it was broken.

Again, he had choked the flame on itself, and this time, Kae was free.

So long as no one struck that portion of her mind with a severe enough trauma, that was. So far, the exocortex wasn’t restoring her palace or phantasmics, just memories. She was filling back to wholeness but was even more vulnerable in other ways.

He took the opportunity to sequence an Auto-Seance, a Phys-Sim, a Quicksand, and an Incog back into her mind while tuning some basic functionality back into her stabilizing Metamind. Much of what he delivered upon her might be considered overkill for her supposed lifestyle, but she walked a path with him now.

He didn’t want her to be found lacking when his father’s “other selves’ inevitably returned for what they thought was theirs.

With final additions made, he exited her mind and watched in satisfaction as her accretion filled with thoughstuff. This time, the core behind it did not burn, and the flow of her thoughts didn’t come in spraying sputters. The pond of her mind was constant now. Intact. Persistent.

The entity that harmed her was quelled.

He released his canon and time returned to its usual stride.

A gasp greeted him, Kae’s voice choked with emotion at this long-yearned release. “So long,” she said. Closing her eyes, tears escaped. She covered her face and coughed out a few sobs. “I haven’t heard myself think for so long.”

Chambers looked at Kae and then back over to Avo. “So… did it work? Did we do it.”

Avo grunted, seeing no need to sully the pride he had in his work with wasteful words.

Draus was of a mind. All he got from her was a cuff to the shoulder before she patted Kae with a comforting hand on her back. “Alright, there consang. Told you Avo had it, didn’t I? How you feelin’?”

The Agnos was still covering her face. But from her rebuilt mind trickled the first emotions Avo tasted.

They were not joy and relief as Avo had expected, but horror and sorrow.

Something was wrong. Something remained hurt inside her.

But it wasn’t the flame’s doing this time.

“I remember…” Kae swallowed. The weight of her rage thundered louder with each sequence restored in her mind. Her heart twitched faster and hard. Her blood coursed through her veins as if she was getting ready for a fight. She pulled her hands away from her face, and for the first time, Avo beheld fury mantled upon a once gentle face.

She didn’t even have the right creases to snarl. “I remember what they did to me–what they had me do! I remember everything.”