In short, gentlen: this farce must be called out for what it is. The organization that was ant to advance our understanding of souls for the benefit of all n has been supplanted by a labyrinthine and twisted tumor on the flank of governnt. I have no control over it. Though you will not recognize it, this chamber has no control over it.
What more to say? To state my regret once more, perhaps, but I have minted enough of that particular coin that I find it greatly devalued. In lieu of a final apology I will instead leave you with a warning: the monster I have created will happily devour you if given the opportunity. Do not let him grasp the levers of power. Do not speak to him except via interdiaries, who must then be considered compromised. He is not your subordinate or even your ally.
I have said my piece. Good-bye, gentlen.
- Stanzas Complaint to the Assembly (excerpt), 671.
Michael plucked at the red cloth of his shirt absently. It was simple in make but machine-sewn, and it lay well on him as the days heat began to build. He had been loath to give up his clothing but had to admit that these garnts were more comfortable, even if the color was sowhat glaring.
Here, Luc said, sitting down across from Michael. They were in a large, dim room with rows of tables, suitable for seating hundreds. As it stood there were rely dozens, all clad in the sa red garb. Luc slid water and a steaming bowl of porridge to Michael before happily addressing his own portion.
The sll of it hit Michael like a physical thing; his mind dredged up a hundred mories only to have them slip away half-seen. Frustration built in him. He hadnt cooked a day in his life, so why-
Its not poisoned, Luc chuckled. Co on, eat while its hot - thats the best part of living where we do, by the ti the white-shirts get theirs its gone half cold. His expression faded a bit. Not that they mind.
Michael took a bite, chewing with thodical slowness and trying to ignore the riot of failed connections thrashing about in the back of his mind. Whats the difference? he asked. Between the red and the white.
Red is the control group, white is everyone else, Luc replied. All the white-shirts have so sort of interesting soul, and the doctor works with them to do his research. Only - so souls work on other people. He shrugged and took a bite. So they bring us in and stand us in front of a Pulse or a Jitter or sothing. I wont lie and say that its a good ti, but we dont have to do it much. The rest of the ti we just - do whatever. Fish, swim, go on a walk. Hes got books, if you can read. Tutors if you cant.
Michaels attention drifted as Luc chattered away about how he liked to spend his days. The difference between him and the white-shirts he had t before was stark, and like that latter group Michael had been brought to the island for his soul. A face hung in his mind once more, smiling and vacant. It was doubly frightening in that he could not rember why it struck such fear into him.
Luc had stopped speaking and resud his breakfast, having sensed that Michaels thoughts had pulled him away. He looked up and smiled when he saw Michaels attention return to his food. Everything all right? he asked. You were saying how hungry you were.
I have a soul, Michael said, almost managing to sound as if his imagination was not tornting him with the horrific implications of that fact. I dont think Im ant to be part of the control group.
Luc raised an eyebrow. But the doctor sent you to us? he asked. Seeing Michaels nod in response, he shrugged and leaned back. There you go. He must have his reasons. Hes a good man.
Would the white-shirts agree? Michael asked.
The smile faded from Lucs face, and he set his spoon down in his bowl. They arent treated poorly, he said. They get food and a place to sleep just like we do. Its all I ever wanted, out in the world.
But theres sothing wrong about them, Michael insisted. Sothing broken. You cant tell you dont see it.
Luc snorted. The world breaks people, he said. You think a man who cos back from the War with half his face gone is less broken? The girl born into a brothel who never leaves? He leaned forward. I lived in an orphanage in Tenouf before the doctor found . The woman who ran it rented us out to a cotton mill as scavengers - to work under the machines, yes? Pick up all the cotton that spilled off while it was spinning.
He took an irritable drink of his water. Sounds like easy work, but they never turned off the machines. They would hiss and clank just overhead, very low. You must keep yourself flat against the ground and hope you have not grown too big, or that this machine does not pass a little lower than the others. Most years at least one of us died. Others lost fingers, feet. All of us lost hair. He turned his head to the side so that Michael could see a bare patch amid the short fuzz of hair on his scalp.
Michael opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say, and so shut it once more.
Yes, see? Luc said. It is horrible, and it is real. People are living it right now. I was lucky enough to et the doctor, and so I live on this upside-down island where the unsouled have their leisure and the ensouled work the fields. Back in Tenouf I never had a dream so pleasant as the life they live.
Im sorry, Michael said, still at a loss for words. I didnt know.
Most dont, unless they were born into such a life, Luc replied. Even then the ones who escape tend to stay far away so they can pretend it doesnt exist. Only a few rember and reach their hand back for others. The doctor is one of them.
I had never heard a thing about this place before I arrived, Michael admitted. What I did hear- He winced. I cant really rember a lot of it, but I think it was made out to be fairly horrid. I had certainly never heard of him taking in Esroun orphans.
Lucs grin returned. I dont think he tells the Ardans that, he said conspiratorially. They care about results. We are an unimportant step of the process, and to them it makes no difference where we ca from.
Michael nodded, and having nothing further to add resud eating his al. His hunger reasserted itself after a few bites and he was shortly left with a clean bowl, much to Lucs amusent.
Not bad, yes? he asked. A good way to start your day. Now we can-
Luc broke off, his eyes widening as he looked past Michael. The room had been quiet before save for the gentle noise of people eating and holding soft conversation, but now the air stilled entirely. Michael turned to look, nearly certain of what he would see.
Hello, my young friend, Spark said, looking much-improved from the last ti Michael had seen him. There was no anger left in his eyes, and a hint of the manic energy had returned. I see youre settling in well. After so reflection I have a notion of our path forward from here.
Michael felt a chill in his gut. You do?
I do indeed. Spark smiled, then shifted his gaze to Luc. My word, I havent seen you in months. I ant to ask you He trailed off, looking troubled. Oh my. It was important, and Ive forgotten.
You had lent so texts, sir, Luc supplied. Was that it?
Spark leaned forward, suddenly-enthused. Yes!he said. Rashid Bahlouls third treatise, what did you think of it?
Im afraid it went over my head, sir. Luc smiled, and Michael had the sudden impression that this sa conversation had played out multiple tis in the past. I dont know that Im ant for mathematics.
Ah, well, Spark said. Perhaps well stick with biology, I recall you enjoying the items youve borrowed from Claudes library. Now, if you dont mind - I need to kidnap your friend here for a mont. He and I have so work to do.
Michael stood watching a faint mote of light sail upward to the void. He had opened his eyes to see it shining there in front of him, looking bereft and aimless for only a second before it swam away to join the distant stream of lights overhead.
He did not know how long he stood there, staring into blank infinity long after the light had faded away to nothing - but at so point he realized that the distance sparkle had beco starlight and the abyss nothing but a moonless sky, hanging broad and chill over a denuded orchard.
A flare of orange drew his eye to the side, where he found the old man sitting on a stump with pipe in hand, looking pensive. He looked up as Michael approached and shook his head.
Nothing I can say that would make it better, he said. Nothing I would say. So things are horrible beyond rationalization. Stark reminders that the world has no inherent boundaries. No respect for your sensibilities. He took another draw on his pipe, the flaring light highlighting the crags in his face. Have to view it with clear eyes. Decide if it is sothing your will can prevent. If not, you learn to live with it. If it is - that is when you exercise your will, and see it done.
Michael looked at him and felt hopeless. How could I do either of those? he asked. Living with it seems worse than dying, and I dont know what I could do to stop it. I feel so - broken. He stopped. This is it, isnt it? This is how it starts, with the white-shirts. Years of living here, being made to suffer and experience suffering. Im already a little bit like them.
The old man grunted. That terrifies you, he said. It was a statent, not a question, but Michael nodded slowly. The shadows of the trees around him flickered with the faces from his vision, a man dropping to the quay with a smile on his face and blood running from his nose.
Im not sure what to do, he whispered, staring out into the dead, smiling forest.
There was a small chuckle, and Michael looked up - but the man had vanished. His attempt to search for his mysterious companion was brought up short by roots clasped tightly around his foot. Michael stared at them for a mont, then knelt to try and prise them off.
It was fruitless. The roots held like steel rather than wood, and gripped so tightly that his leg had already started to fuzz unpleasantly with pins and needles. There were no stones or branches that he might use to aid in his escape. There was only the dark, the cold, and the ruined orchard.
The dark was all the more terrifying because on so level he knew that the dark and despoiled clearing had been beautiful once. A different image overlaid itself on the night for a mont - one in which the trees were whole and healthy, sun-dappled with the last rays of day amid a warm breeze. It ca to him not with the uncomfortable and sharp-edged clarity of those mories on the quay, but instead as a soft and well-worn balm.
The warmth faded away to leave him with the night once more, but the night had a taste of warm and sun-dappled evening to it. It had been beautiful here, once, even if the dark had cast that beauty aside. He looked at the few standing trees and saw how they had once arched up with leaves and flowers in the spring, bent down in autumn laden with sweet fruit. How they grew bare, as they were now, only to surge forth again when the sun returned to warm them.
He saw the roots buried deep in the soil where the colds bite was not so harsh, the dormant wisps of life that lay sleeping. Even the broken trees would grow once more, and the ones that did not would decay to add their richness into the soil below. There were no endings in this charred and torn landscape, only change and potential that seethed in the chaos left by the old orders destruction.
In his minds eye the roots felt the first tickling heat of the spring sun and drank deep of the ashen water in the soil, stretched leaves out from their remaining branches and began anew. The ground turned lush and green, then speckled into a riot of color as flowers grew up from their hiding places. It was not how this orchard had looked, once upon a ti - but it was still beautiful.
He held the image in his mind for a long mont before he opened his eyes. When he did, he saw night. Ice dripped in skeletal points from the trees. Yet the dark was not an oppressive force occupying the clearing, nor the cold an eternal tyrant over the land. It was simply how things were at the mont, and change followed every mont.
Nothing stays the sa, he murmured, looking down at his feet. The roots that currently lay entwined around his foot did not want to be aboveground in the cold air. He bent down to trace his fingers over their rough bark, feeling the strength of the wood as it trailed away into the frozen ground.
The bulk of the root was still down there, slumbering until spring. He let his mind wander beyond what his eyes could see, imagining the natural path of the tree, the impulse that drove the root to slowly wander forward in search of fresh soil. Simple choices, tree choices. Mont by mont he drew the path through the ground, through the life of the tree.
When he opened his eyes the roots had withdrawn from his foot.
Mind frees the soul, the old man said from behind him.
Michael turned to smile at him. Soul frees the body, he replied. I - knew that, from sowhere. From here, perhaps, but at a different point along its path. When it was beautiful and safe, and I never wanted to leave.
Change is a fact of life, the man grunted. You know that too. So you also know that this garden of yours could grow once more. Not the sa as it was, but in a way the old garden could never see. He lifted an eyebrow. Do you know what youre going to do?
What, about all this? Michael asked, sweeping his arm over the orchard. Not in the least. But if this is my mind making sense of my mind, as you said before - then it appears I have a lot of work to do.
The man nodded and drew on his pipe. And how do you plan to do that? he asked.
Michaels mind reached out for a thread of thought at the phrase, racing towards a mory that it knew must be there. He almost flinched away from it, from the horrid blank space that lurked at the center of those shattered mories - but then he rembered the root. The longing for that natural path, the state of things as they should be. He held the thought still until he found the thin trace of that broken path and let the thread settle into it with a small, satisfied grin.
The mont of connection was electric, enthralling, like a breath of vivified spring air. I had a friend who once told the answer to that question, Michael said, smiling at the old man with a renewed warmth. He taught a lot of things about life and death, about the paths that our choices make. About pork and porridge and how to nd my clothes. And, most importantly, how to approach particularly recalcitrant problems when they intrude into your garden.
Jeorg smiled. One day at a ti, he said, then paused as his expression faltered. You know that Im not him.
I know, Michael said. You explained it about as well as I could expect from soone wearing that face. A shadow of a thing I cannot yet grasp. He frowned. One of a great many such things, with no end in sight.
One of the few constants in a life well-lived, Jeorg chuckled. Although hopefully the particulars shift over ti.
Michael snorted. Stop it, I cant take the nuggets of wisdom seriously when I know theyre ultimately coming from .
Perhaps Im just a wiser part of you, Jeorg replied. If you dont like it then you can find a way to change. , this garden, even that part of you that your mind recognizes as its own.
The garden lay dark around them, and Michael turned his head to look at it. The gentle drip of lting icicles played a dissonant beat against the soil, and he smiled as a fat drop of water struck him on the cheek.
Maybe later, he said. For now, I have a few ideas on where to start.
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