mory is a weakness; mory is a weapon; mory is a place; mory is water.
mory, ultimately then, is a thing of modularity and malleability. But still–and do not forget this–mory is matter incorporeal.
And it must be the will of the Necrojack that infuses it.
-Forge of the Fallen
3-18
Instrunts of mory
Ved was lying about the state of the Galeslither. First, it wasn't in the motor pool, it was rotting away in a quarantined cesspit. Second, the golem wasn’t just broken–its Heaven was outright missing. Upon approaching, Avo tasted no resonance ebbing from its shell, no shine of the dismbered fla that once burned within all gods. Instead, the narrow combat platform lay in three jointed segnts so thirty feet long. It looked almost train-like in its design, with a roundel-shaped head and a deflated lattice made from unknown materials clinging to its back.
Rust coated its exterior as well. A sign of decay and negligence. Truly, Conflux kept their treasures like trash, leaving sothing that could still be salvaged to languish instead. A picture began to form in his head regarding the Syndicate’s woes. Lingering hisses of whispering ghosts trailed in the air–the unmistakable presence of decaying m-contagion strands snaking uselessly against Avo’s wards.
Soone was targeting Conflux. And nigh constantly. Might even be the sa group that jocked those missiles after him just as he left the Crucible and entered the gutters.
Sothing to consider.
Producing his m-marker, Avo held up the small stick-like device as it pulsed a spray of mories from its micro-locus. The ghosts it cast out splashed over the golem as it began to groan, a door on its side hissing and grinding open with a squeal.
Looking around to ascertain there was no one else visibly or phantasmally tracking him, Avo studied the room. Shredded tarps and sloppily poured plascrete were the aesthetic of this floor. Clumps of hardened matter sealed forr breaches while the light shone through the tears on the tarps. A large gate was fused into the walls; its tal fra lted in pools that spilled into webbed fissures.
This might’ve been where aerial vehicles could launch from. Or it was, before the block was made so destitute, so damaged.
Stepping into the golem required Avo to dip his head. Clearly, this was not designed with ghouls in mind. The primary control module was located in the middle segnt of the golem, which itself was split into an upper piloting gimbal and two lower auxiliary stations. Neither gimbal nor stations would serve his purpose; he simply wouldn’t fit. However, the walkway between the two stations offered eight feet of room.
Activating the marker again, Avo laid down upon the soothing chill of the ground before closing doors could even shut away the outside lights. Between two dormant loci–now seated at the center of concentric slots–he settled his head and embraced the comfort of darkness. It might’ve taken promising Chambers a favor for the marker to sleep within this golem, but at that mont, it was absolutely worth it.
No noise.
No distractions.
No Mirrorhead.
Just him, his tamind, and the darkness.
Good enough conditions to begin reconstruction.
Stretching out his neck one final ti, Avo plucked m-data from the local locus and looked at the ti. It was five in the afternoon. Which ant that he had been awake for nearly eighteen hours now since the night before.
He didn’t know how much ti he would have to himself for his sequencing, but at least for now, it seed that his use to Mirrorhead had run its course for a day. Still ant that he needed to prepare and modify his essential phantasmics before anything else.
Best that he got his sequencing completed before soone else got the drop on him. Avo preferred to hold the initiative instead of reacting. And these days, he had done a lot of reacting.
With a thought, he set a tir for six hours. Six hours wasn’t much, but he wasn’t in his workshop and didn’t have the tools he needed to tune complex constructs. Thankfully, what he needed right now wouldn’t require anything too complicated, though he could do with more ghosts.
GHOSTS - [42]
Forty-two was workable, but not ideal. Much like with his Liminal Fra, he needed to claim more victims. Two hundred offered a much vaster expanse of options. That was where a tamind went from a re tool to being a phantasmal operations platform.
Avo shook his head. Ifs, buts, and coulds. Those didn't matter. He needed to focus on the now.
“Prepare dive,” he said to his tamind.
RECEIVED
INITIALIZING TA-DIVE
He could have done the command ntally, but it was better enunciated. More brain activity for the tamind to pick up; sped up the descent of his consciousness. A white flash splashed across his cog-feed, spilling over his vision like stretching needles.
And suddenly, as if a blade had cut him free from the strings tethering himself to the weight of his body, Avo plunged into his own mind.
Like a raindrop of pure color, he fell into a vast grey expanse. The horizon around him was factory setting, barely adjusted. This tamind must’ve been new. Just recently forked from a clone of his mind, but not tuned into a palace yet.
Guiding himself down like a tungsten rod from the Heavens, Avo envisioned the mory that would form the foundations of this place. The mory ca to Avo clear and solid, refined and shaped through years of visualization. And with this mory swelling inside him like a seed, he plunged into the greyness of the land. Out the clay-like depths, he rose, pushing free from the shapeless nothing as around him the gablock of his youth rose, a bright “thirteen” shining on its side.
With four arches running across its corners and an open-air lobby, detail began to bleed from Avo’s mind into the building around him. Doors, columns, and spiraling jump-tubes spread through the building like veins. A single blackdred tree stood, three hundred feet high and half again as wide, its spear-like branches expanding from the tumorous growths that dod its bark. Next to the tree, a web of tubes splashed, bodies flitting to and fro across the entirety of the block. Slowly, the lobby took shape, spreading until the light began shining through between the dancing holo-ads of the entrance.
Shaped from the matter of thought itself, Avo pulled himself loose from the soil of his mind and made to leave his still-growing ho.
Much of the palace was only surface deep. He knew that beyond the doors and walls, in places where he hadn’t imagined or rembered, there would be only greyness again. But that was unimportant. The lobby; the tree; the jump-tubes; the holographic advertisents. Those were the things that rooted his mind and helped serve as a junction to join the other ghost-made mory constructs.
And with that in mind, Avo left, stepping beyond the threshold of his tamind’s new central nexus to see his current inventory of phantasmics.
Stepping past small food stalls and the neuro-cade ga consoles, he descended the steps of the block and found himself standing before an empty street, shining a resplendent hue of opal beneath the violet gaze of the darkstar.
On the horizon, a grand vortex of ghosts swirled, their etheric forms filled with the shapes of objects and people spinning, shrouding the insides of Avo’s mind behind a veil of roaring traumas. Out of everything, at least the wards were begrudgingly acceptable, though they were functionally simple to pierce if the opposition had enough pressure.
That was as far as his palace could stretch for now. The total space that the total cog-cap forty-two ghosts could simulate, anyway. It would do for now. But he would need to expand, both vertically and horizontally soon. In the anti, Avo turned his attention to his phantasmics and imdiately found himself wincing.
Dead gods. The structure sequencing of his phantasmics was horrible.
Bleeding into the street, five crude lanes of featureless grey extended outward, connecting the ordered design of his gablock to five very different structures that stood waxen with chaotic mories dolloping from their structures. So poorly held together they were that Avo couldn’t even tell what he was looking at.
mories had structures and ghosts enforced them–molded them. But there was a limit to what they could do when the design wasn’t clear. The cost of bad sequencing was either an unusable construct, a self-corrupting construct, or a construct that demanded far more attention from the ghosts than it needed.
With a command, he rematerialized high up into the air. With another, he called upon all his ghosts, and, despite the risks, montarily drew as many ghosts away from his wards as he could without collapsing them outright.
Forty rippling visages descended down on strings of thought, bound to his tamind. Forty floated there, just staring at him, their faces attentive, the fragnts of their minds shining, his will flowing into them through sinews of thought.
Each of these ghosts offered tithes of mories to provide the architectural composition of the phantasmics below. As he scanned his gaze over each of his constructs, his tamind filtered the requirents directly into his mind.
Normally, he would have spent hours to months just working a single ghost, tuning and pruning the mories until there were no flaws left in the structure. Now, with what little ti he had, his need was going to be more focused on his goals.
Presently, he needed two things: more ticulous wards and more distance should he need to assail an enemy mind. Sothing that could let him attack from beyond visual range.
And thankfully, Avo already had an idea about how to deal with the latter.
[GHOST-LINK] COG-CAP: 6 SEQUENCES (FIXED)
STRUCTURE: “A LETTER DRIFTING, CHASED BY A SCRAMBLING NU-DOG AS AEROVEC FLIES IN THE DISTANCE”
FUNCTION: DELIVERS COG-DATA TO A CORRESPONDING WITHIN VISUAL RANGE.
[SPECTER] COG-CAP: 15 SEQUENCES (BASELINE)
STRUCTURE: “A BODKIN DRONE FALLS TO STRIKE A COUNTRYSIDE HO, KILLING A MAN EATING ALONE AT A TABLE
FUNCTION: ALLOWS THE EXTENSION OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS BY 60 FEET; CAN BE EXTENDED BY MULTIPLES SHOULD MORE SEQUENCES BE USED
In total, both would occupy twenty-one of his ghosts, as each ghost could only simulate a sequence of mory at a ti. And to make matters worse, since he didn’t have the ti to spend weaving all his ghosts together using points of symtry, all he had were individual circuits instead of a proper network. This ant that only certain ghosts could fuel certain phantasmics: not every ghost had the right mories to draw from to flesh out a structure.
Very inefficient.
Sorting through his current inventory, Avo saw that he actually only had twenty-eight ghosts that could offer the requisite mories to run the Specter. Forty could feed the Ghost-Link though, so there was so overlap.
Most people died knowing what an aerovec, nu-dog, and letter were. The scene was easy to create.
But not every ghost knew what a bodkin was, nor had the mories to approximate its design.
Such were the limitations of cognition. You couldn’t create what your ghosts didn’t know, after all. To this regard, phantasmics were much like blueprints more than anything–specific constructs mined from soone bearing enough ntal significance to ripple across a plane of thought.
Fortunately, Avo knew enough of the art that he could reduce the required upkeep.
Dismantling the structures of both the Specter and Ghost-Link, he began to line them based on points of tic symtry. Generally, the flowing winds and backgrounds could be left to be simulated by a single ghost. That reduced the total sequence required by one. He could probably get another off. One of these minds was able to simulate both a Bodkin and a standard aerovec.
Slowly, he rged the two mories and planted them back in his mindscape.
Before the road in front of his gablock now sprinted a six-legged nu-dog, yapping at a flying letter while behind it, a flitting vehicle snapped down, striking a villa before expanding into a ball of fire. The mory stuttered. The mory looped. The dog had five legs this ti.
Avo frowned. There was probably a tic bleedover happening between the mories of his ghosts–two different ghosts were rembering two very different morphs of nu-dog and the simulation was getting confused about which one to simulate.
Part of Avo wanted to dive in and prune the mistake now. His better sense told him not to. Once he started, he wouldn't be able to stop. This would do for now. He renad his newly rged phantasmic and moved on.
[WHISPER] COG-CAP: 19 SEQUENCES (BASELINE)
STRUCTURE–
Avo skipped that. He could already see the structure. It looked like it could simulate fine. Wasn’t clashing with anything else in his mind.
FUNCTION: ALLOWS THE EXTENSION OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS BY 60 FEET AND THE DELIVERANCE OF COG-DATA WITHIN SAID FIELD OF AWARENESS; CAN BE EXTENDED BY MULTIPLES SHOULD MORE SEQUENCES BE USED
This would allow him to thought-shiv soone through a wall, at the very least. Saved him the trouble of getting close. Of course, he was still burning a ghost due to using them as a fragntation weapon. But there was no easy way to replicate the functions of an offensive phantasmic like a Ghostjack.
Of course, he probably didn’t want to build sothing that ghost-intensive or sequence-demanding either. Not unless he wanted Mirrorhead to get suspicious and trigger the cortex bomb, that was.
With his new phantasmic made, Avo grouped the ghosts that fed its sequences into a specific area of the palace. It would make pruning them easier when he had the ti. Always better to have a stable of ghosts specifically dedicated to keeping a phantasmic functional.
Turning his attention to his other constructs, he passed by the Phys-Sim without too much attention.
[PHYS-SIM] COG-CAP: 18 SEQUENCES (FIXED)
STRUCTURE: “A MISSILE LOCKED TO AN AEROVEC, EVER INCHING CLOSER, DODGING INCOMING POINT DEFENSE FIRE”
FUNCTION: CALCULATES THE ACCELERATION VECTORS AND IMPACT LANES OF UP TO TWELVE DYNAMIC OBJECTS
He could probably improve on it, but that was going to require more components. Better design. Best to leave it for now. Focus on his wards. With his current cog-cap limitations, he doubted he would be running the Phys-Sim and the Whisper at the sa ti anyway. He just didn’t have the sequences between those two and his wards.
Uninstalling his Whisper for a mont, he let his Phys-Sim run. Overhead, he watched as the missile chased the non-descript aerovec, bullets tracing through the air in a ballet of violence.
Good. No issue.
He moved on to the final modification he wanted to make this night: the wards.
[OSARAI MGUARD] COG-CAP: 20 SEQUENCES (BASELINE)
STRUCTURE: “A HURRICANE TWISTING AND HURTLING SCREAMING FIGURES AND BROKEN STRUCTURES”
FUNCTION: GUARDS THE MIND USING A LAYER OF TRAUMATIC MORIES: CAPABLE OF WITHSTANDING AND REFORMING AGAINST HEAVY-MASS PHANTASMAL INTRUSIONS; VULNERABLE TO NARROW-BUILD INVADERS.
Avo frowned. No reason that should have eaten up the attention of twenty ghosts. The only good thing was that pretty much all his ghosts could simulate the structure needed. Still, the enhancent here was simple but ti-consuming.
He would make the storm thicker–he would bind the trauma of the ghosts into a lattice where he could. There was another thing all Necrojacks could do, but few mastered. Linking symtrical mories together.
For the remainder of his ti, he worked, binding similar traumas together from ghost to ghost, weaving what used to be re milestones along the storm's border into a net. From his mind, he stitched mories. The first two he joined were between Hap-Tat and Little Vicious. Turns out, both had lost nu-dogs in their ti. The only difference was Hap-Tat lost an actual dog and Little Vicious watched her ten-foot tall dog-looking bioform get turned into paste by a gauss-cannon fired from a block over.
He was about to connect another two when a dull ringing sounded from on high. Avo froze, stopping his work as he waited, wondering if it was a secondhand mory bleeding over into his mind, or if he was actually–
The ringing grew to a hamring then. Definitely not a mory.
EXTERNAL PRESENCE DETECTED
RETURN TO CONSCIOUSNESS?
Avo stared glumly at his wards, barely fractionally strengthened. No ti. Never enough ti. At least he planted his foundations down. Let him continue building his palace next ti. Make things easier for himself.
“Yes,” he said, turning to stare at his gablock. “End dive.”
Light suddenly flashed into Avo’s eyes. His body still felt tired and sore but his mind was refreshed; ghosts drained most of the cognitive burden while he worked, tamind lucid while his brain slumbered.
Blinking, he heard the hamring sound thumping against the door to the golem again. Turning, he spotted a glint of thoughtstuff shining through the wall.
“Mornin’, consang. Sleep good? Did you dream any ghoulie dreams?” Chambers said, voice muffled by the plating of the Galeslither.
Didn’t look like there was anyone else but Chambers. Did he want the favor back already?
“No,” Avo said, grunting as he felt a tension headache begin to build. His ligants were screaming. It felt like his joints were on fire. His body was still punishing him for abusing the Celerostylus.
“Asked you two questions; you just gonna answer with no.”
“Yes.”
“Real sociable. Do I need to lube your conversational bits up with a daily hostage incident so that I can get a full sentence out of you? I think I can still find the flat. Hand him an actual gun this ti. See how many techs he takes hostage and how many he kills.”
“No,” Avo said, rubbing his head. “You. Why are you here?”
“Gotta take you to go rig-fitting. Ti for you to put the Nightmantis on. Take it for a test run. Mirrorhead’s orders. Turns out, since ol’ Chambers is the only one willing to deal with you, so you might’ve just got my ass a promotion. Looks like I’m your personal nanny now, Moonblood.”
The enforcer laughed his hyena-like laugh. Avo stared at the ground and sighed in annoyance.
At least he was getting a plate of armor out of the deal.
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