Huzzah for the 80k milestone! Today’s 5,000-word entry, making up for yesterday’s short entry, introduces Variable’s new fetch and the concept of The Leaf. And, in total craziness, the group of three move forward to other places. Lots of other stuff happens, too.

On my mother’s request, I actually TRIED sparking a relationship between Ames and Graham. I had initially avoided this because I didn’t want a mushy relationship to muck up the story, like it does to so many other stories, and my limited relationship experience alone is enough reason for me to avoid it. But when she read the story and then asked me, “Where’s the sex?”, I don’t think I could leave their relationship out of the story any longer!

Word Count: 80,063

“You’re going to have trouble,” said Variable, “if you want to do that. Luckily, that’s just the sort of thing I’m around for. I won’t help you hurt anyone, but if you’re going to approach The Collective, you won’t get far. People may be in stasis, but that’s not everyone. The greater Equation has no qualms with the collective itself.”

“Before we jump to conclusions,” Ames said, “why don’t we actually confirm who’s sending the electronics?”

“I don’t know if we have time for that,” said Graham.

“Cities aren’t going to build themselves. Even if they started building these cities years ago, we would still have months to stop them from getting new tools before the copies of Lanford are complete.”

Ames pulled down another glass screen and began sifting through components, looking for one that would prove a certain point she’d been thinking of, but found nothing. “There’s nothing about construction times in here? Why is there nothing about Talos? These databases are empty.” She fumbled around more, hoping to find more information on Talos. Graham joined in, but Variable cut them off.

“I have a feeling that there are certain projects, such as Cydia’s interaction with Talos, that The Collective wants to remain in The Collective. They can keep secrets from us just as well as we can from them.” He pulled down a screen of his own and began running a search. “I’d imagine it would be more productive to search existing shipping logs and databases that have been made available outside of the network. The glasses are largely on legacy support – the only recent software written for them was fetch compatibility. The glasses don’t receive information directly from The Collective. Those of us here use the glasses amongst ourselves via our fetches, and The Collective uses its own collective knowledge.”

“Then this is useless!” Ames shouted. “There’s no way we can find out anything. The Collective has shut you guys off from communication.”

“It’s a security measure.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re looking to destroy their operations!” Variable would have looked quite frustrated, could Graham see his face. For once, Graham wanted the man to unleash his real identity. It was still very difficult to trust a man whose face and skin they could never see – he was always a black figure in a tuxedo and derby. Variable adjusted the bowler at with his shadowed hand and returned to the screen in front of him. “Look, there is no way I can understand the severity of your situation; why you came here is a mystery, but I have the gravest feeling about it, and its relevance to my kind. Because you ended up here – on this island – I am sure anything you do will affect the greater Equation.”

“That doesn’t matter to us,” said Graham. “Terrible things are happening on Talos – we cannot sit idly by while their obscene killing spree rages onward! One president took care of himself, but I doubt the other leaders will be so rash, and we can’t expect them all to die and the problem to go away.” For the first time, Graham was not thinking at all of how to return to Earth – all he could think about was Talos, that struggling planet so very far away by now, and its people in distress. Human compassion, he thought, was finally overtaking him; the innate need to protect all living things that rests among the human species.

Where had this instinct gone for President Ford?

“Graham, you can’t take this out on Variable,” said Ames, concerned.

Graham breathed heavily. “I know. But for the longest time I simply wanted to get back to my home world – I wanted to return to Earth, and would go to any lengths to do so. A part of me thinks that I’m not even here to save Talos, but to find another portal that leads back to Earth. But I couldn’t bring myself to abandon you, Jessica; I could never forgive myself. You could never forgive me. And I don’t want that – so I’ve given up. Completely given up, in fact! These new worlds are my homes now. Hell, we don’t even know if we’ll get back to Talos! And even if we do succeed in stopping the flow of technology from Cydia to Talos, who’s to say that Taos isn’t already destroyed? Who’s to say that half of Lanford isn’t already dead?”

“Nobody can say that, James. But if we weren’t a little bit optimistic, there would be no point in attempting any of this. There would be no point in coming here, to Cydia. We have to do what we came here to do. Even if we…” she paused, to think about her statements. “…Even if we die here. If we succeed, Talos could be saved in its current form.”

Variable was just finishing his work on the floating screen. He picked it up; the way that he held it was so peculiar to Graham, who had absolutely no plans to die on this mission. He saw Variable hold the glass panel, and examine it, as though the man were looking for defects. His hand was pressed tightly against the glass, which was what Graham thought was so odd, because the glass panel was only virtual; it was nothing more than an image projected by the glasses. Yet how could Variable hold so tightly onto it, as if the pane of glass were real?

Graham reached out his arm and swung it through the glass. His arm easily went through the virtual object, and he felt nothing – however, the virtual glass also shattered, as it was programmed to react realistically to human interactions. Several of the glass shards scattered about and hit Variable, who let out a scream of pain.

“You really are inside the network, aren’t you?” said Graham to Variable, watching the man’s heavy breathing. There was no blood, but Variable was in acute physical pain. “I can’t feel the glass. All of these objects that the glasses project are only virtual. My hand goes right through them. I feel nothing, like interacting with air. Yet, you… you can feel them. The shattered glass caused you pain.”

Variable squinted his eyes behind the veil of his shadowed skin, glass the others could not see his pain. “Yes. Our minds are embedded in the network. Our fetches are connected inextricably to the network. And everything in the network, to us, is real. The glass feels heavy because this artificial body tells my mind that it is heavy; my fingers cannot crush the glass because the fetch prevents motion beyond a certain point if a virtual object is in the way.”

“What about a virtual bullet?”

“Well, when the bullet hit I’m sure my mind would think it had died. But there are precautions for such things; to prevent brain death my mind would probably be sent back to The Collective. I avoid deadly situations for a reason. I cannot be sent back to The Collective. I simply cannot. That is why, if you choose to participate in something dangerous, I won’t be going with you.”

Graham sighed. That was his fear – he did not want to drag Variable into Talos’s issues, but Variable had been the only one so far on Cydia to help them. He had brought them to his home, provided them with accommodations, and taught them how to use Cydian technology – without asking anything in return, all because he wanted the mu gun, and because he thought there was a significance to Graham’s and Ames’s appearance by the portal. Graham thought, for a moment, about giving the man the mu gun, but that would leave he and Ames helpless – that gun was their only source of protection on Talos, and he wanted more than anything to cling to it, especially as they moved further and further towards a dangerous situation.

In fact, he was tempted to ask Variable if they could get more mu guns, but knew the answer would be to return to Talos – the only source of mu guns he knew. The alternative, of course, was continuing on as they were. There were certain to be more mu guns at the point of shipment.

And that was how Graham figured out how to find who was sending technology to Talos in their pitiful yet successful attempt at playing God with a helpless, technologically deficient world. But it made little sense – it was impossible that someone could have been delivering technology to Talos for so long. Graham realized, then, that if Talos had been discreetly receiving technological deliveries from Cydia for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, then the culprits on Cydia may very well be an entire organization and not the work of a single man or small group of men. Graham wanted to cling to the mu gun more than ever, and was determined to keep it safe, convinced that even if Variable seemed even the slightest bit helpless, it was all an illusion, a fabrication created by his own inferior mind to convince him that Variable was not a threat, when in reality there was still no way to know if he could trust the man after the incident the day previous.

“Where did all the other Variables go?” Graham eventually asked.

“They are off doing their own business. Many of them have switched fetches, and I have no way of knowing where – or who, for that matter – they are. They will be back, eventually, unless they have found some other place to live.”

Ames, at this moment, sat down at the table n the lobby with her virtual glass screen, and tossed it away. It faded into nothingness as she moaned, “This is useless. I can’t find anything about The Collective stored on here except some old history. Even if they were shipping something, there’s nothing here about it.”

“You really are adamant about this venture, aren’t you both?”

“I’m ready to die to save my planet,” said Ames. “I’d die anyway, if I went back. I have nothing to lose – my friends, with the exception of one, have all been killed, and the last one is only barely alive.“

Graham knew she was talking about Wheat, and suppressed a few tears.

Ames continues, “And my family… they’re safe, I’m sure. They’re nowhere near Lanford, as far as I know. But if I don’t work fast, they could be dragged into the mess of a second Lanford. Variable, I need to know right now – are you going to help us stop Cydia from sending technology to Talos, or not? My life and James’s life are both at stake; we didn’t come here for nothing, so we’ve got to figure out what to do, and right now!”

“I agree with Jessica,” Graham said. “Variable, you’ve done wonderful favors for us over the last two days. But we still know nothing about you, and you only know a little bit about us and about why we’re here. But you do know what we came here to do, and both of us need to know if you’re with us, or with whoever is sending the technology to Talos.”

Variable had trouble responding – it took him a full two minutes to cough up a word, and even then he seemingly retracted it and began forming other incoherent phrases. Eventually he was decided. “I can’t swear allegiance to you. I’ve only met you, and though I helped you it was because of your mu gun, which I still don’t have. But if a world hangs in the balance, it is in my nature to wish to aid you two in doing all I can. I refuse to harm anyone; if you plan to use your mu gun for malice, count me out of that business.”

“Alright then. I’ve mulled it over a bit, and I’m pretty sure you must have some decent connections as a Variable. Can you think of anyone you might know that may have some information about The Collective’s activities?”

“Certainly, there are plenty, but none on this island. They are elsewhere, scattered about. Some are working undercover doing research supposedly for the collective – though once Collective researchers return to the network, they cannot exactly rush back to monitor the man they’ve left behind. Several of us use this to our benefit to maintain slight ties to The Collective without having to actually enter into the network.”

“Then you should take us to the nearest island with someone there. Is every island like this one?”

“Not at all. Before everyone sacrificed their bodies to become a part of The Collective, we all lived on millions of tiny islets scattered throughout the Cydian atmosphere. Underneath each island is a collection of magnetic rocks that interact with the planet’s small surface to keep them afloat. As a result, there are islands resting in every direction of three-dimensional space. Cydia itself is divided into two hundred countries, each with a similarly-sized cubical territory running from the center of the planet to the very edge of its atmosphere.”

Ames and Graham had trouble comprehending this – they were both used to the concept that countries were flat pieces of land, which was not so on Cydia. A country was made up of several island floating together in space, and these islands did not need to be right next to one another, but could be underneath or diagonally related to one another.

“What country – or, really, what city – are we in right now?” Graham asked.

“You happened to land in Country 122’s capitol city, Migard. Migard has become, if you haven’t noticed, an incubator for the greater Equation and for those who would rather take an ‘extended’ vacation in their fetch. But if we’ll be travelling, I suppose I should place someone else in charge of this place. It’s been quite a burden managing this building; and before you ask, it was mere coincidence that you should meet me and not another, less kindly Variable. You are both lucky.”

“Yeah. Thanks for being so helpful.”

“I have to gain your trust, do I not? I can sense that neither of you trust me yet.”

Graham chuckled. “I suppose.”

“I’m going to change fetches before we leave, then.”

“Will we be taking another light tram?”

“Ah, no – those are only intercity paths. We’ll have to take another mode of transportation – a much more physical one. There are carts that ferry passengers between countries and cities. They’re quite speedy, and they utilize the name principles of the floating islands to travel in three-dimensional space. They’re quite amazing, really, even if they’re old-fashioned.”

“I assure you,” Ames said, “nothing so far has seemed old fashioned to someone like me. I’m much too used to steam technology; it’s ruled my life since I was born, and didn’t change a bit as I grew. I’m very jealous of Cydia’s advancements. You all show real technological progress, while Talos is stuck in the mud. Our governments won’t allow us to move forward – we’ve been forced to remain dependant on steam and coal for fuel, and now, with a shortage, they’re secretly arresting citizens and… and…”

Ames could not finish her sentence. She bent over onto the table and poured out tears, praying that what she had seen and experienced back in the Black District hadn’t happened – that President Ford had not ordered the deaths of thousands of Lanford residents, to have them burned as fuel and used to power that massive city. Even without him, she was sure it was still going on! The knights would organize themselves somehow, and if they could not, then the ensuing chaos would kill just as many innocent men and women as the refueling did.

Graham finished Ames’s sentence for her. “The bastards in the Lanford government, a single continent on Talos, are arresting innocent citizens and burning them as fuel to create steam! Just before we came through the portal, five of our allies were melted down in a disgraceful manner, and the final ally, while still alive, has been manipulated into a clockwork robot. It’s nothing short of disgusting what they’ve been doing.”

Variable stood silent for several minutes at this, then finally: “Thank you for sharing that insight with me. The situation is clearly dire; if helping you will save Talos, then we should be on the move post-haste. Please excuse me for a moment while I change my fetch. Perhaps it will help you to know me better; I own no less than five different fetches.”

“Rich, aren’t we?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” the man said through his fetch as he left the scene through the double doors at the top of the ramps. While he was gone, Ames and Graham paced the room together, wondering by what facility the man would switch fetches, and what he would look like when he returned. Both were incredibly biased – his appearance, at least Graham figured, would alter their perception of his personality, and by extension their trust in him. For that reason, graham was sure he was really changing fetches so that Graham and Ames would trust him. Would he share his real name next? Was it all just to get the mu gun?

“James, what if he’s leading us into some sort of trap? What if he’s connected with Talos?”

“You can’t be worried, Jessica. Even if he is, you’re the one with the mu gun. You can defend yourself, both of us in fact. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“James, when I came to rescue you and everyone else from the Black District, I was just as optimistic. I came busting through the walls, completely disregarding the consequences of my actions – and as a result of my disgraceful failure, our Conductor is half machine, possibly more!”

“You can’t blame yourself for that, Jess. There was nothing you could do. When you’d gotten there, it was already started.”
“I could have gotten there sooner!”

“Yeah, and I could have not gone to Station A in the first place. Hell, let’s just say I could have never accidentally gone to Talos!”

“…Don’t say that,” Ames said, regretting her prior words. She stood up from her seat and walked over the Graham, wiping her tears off of the table, as Graham retaliated.

“Well, what do you want me to say? That you’re right, that everyone’s deaths are your fault, and we shouldn’t trust anyone? We can’t trust nobody, Jess – even if variable is up to no good, even if he just wants the gun, or even wants us dead, we have to go where he says the leads are. If we don’t we’re risking the destruction of Talos. In the end, I’m sure you’ll regret not going with the guy more than you would if you went with him. If we fail, at least you could say that you did all you could to save the planet.”

“I’m nervous.”

“That’s not the Jessica I know. You’re not nervous.”

“I’m worried about you, too, you know!”

At this, Ames lunged herself into Graham’s chest and wrapped her arms around him, crying into his shoulder. “You don’t need to worry about me at all,” Graham said, holding her, sharing his reassuring warmth with her. “We won’t fail. You’ll see.”

Ames backed away from Graham and wiped her face, then noticed that Graham, too, had cried. Suddenly, the two were laughing hysterically, wiping their faces and calling themselves silly. Moments later Variable returned in his new fetch, entering the room with a grand holler as he introduced his newest body – a stately looking male figure whose outer appearance resembled the old fetch, only now the skin was no longer concealed behind a strange shadow. He was a man with visible hands, and most importantly a visible face – and with one glimpse of this face both Graham and Ames could see that variable, perhaps, was trustworthy after all.

Until they saw what was resting on his backside. Strapped to Variable’s new back was none other than one of the guns that had once been pointed at the two travelers by the fraction of the greater Equation within that building, invoking fear and making the two back away from Variable.

Variable smiled, a muscle contraction so visible that it calmed the entire room down to a halt. “Don’t worry,” he said in his same voice, “this is for my protection. Like I said, I don’t usually go on potentially dangerous missions to deconstruct an entire shipping system belonging to an entity as massive as The Collective. I’m frightened out of my wits, but damn it all if it isn’t exciting to finally be leaving.”

“That’s quite a change of heart, Variable,” Graham said.

“Ah, it’s all the fetch, I assure you! Different fetches have different attributes. I wear this one when I need to be enthusiastic about something that might get me killed. I believe this is the first time I’ve worn it since my inception as a Variable.” Graham could see it: it was as though the smile never faded on his finely chiseled artificial face. The entire face was a lie, and yet it still soothed him to know that his acquaintance now had a face at all. That alone was sufficient enough to make him comfortable travelling with the man.

“I know a particular woman several countries higher in the atmosphere and northeast several clicks from Migard who used to work in the Cydian Deconstruction Movement, a Collective-based organization bent on eventually eliminating all cities and restricting the use of fetches for those inside the network. Naturally this has been moving slowly, but as someone who has been in the network longer than I have, her information will most likely be more up-to-date. And I know for a fact that she is willing to share!” What Variable did not say was that this woman would be willing to share far more than simple information.

Soon they were all outside of the house and traversing the Migard streets. Variable seemed to be trying his best to remain concealed by his bowler hat, feeling exposed by his new fetch. Even as he walked he acted in such a manner that one would have thought all his secrets were being exposed on the spot, and what kinds of secrets this man knew that has so devastatingly affected his personally Graham and Ames could not guess at; they simply travelled close to one another behind the man, in awe of the city around them and filled with great expectations of their next destination.

At the light tram station, they took a different turn, down several adjacent streets. Lights were out in these back alleys; clothes hang from primitive clotheslines, and everything was destroyed and in ruin. Walls rusted, black paint chipped, the sky looked bleaker, less bright with starlight, over these apartment complexes than anywhere else in Migard. Graham began to pay more attention to the details in the city, and with his new knowledge of the glasses he was able to switch modes and view more hidden objects that other people had scattered around the city. Eventually, by switching modes enough, he came across a mode whereby strange green objects covered the entire city.

They were odd green objects, shaped like a teardrop turned on its side. Graham stopped walking as soon as he got close to one, and began examining it up close. Three-quarters of a circle created the lower left, bottom right, and upper left portions of the shape, and straight lines brought the top right of the shape to a close with a sharp point. A strange dark line followed from the point to the exact center of the circle, and in the center of the circle a light glowed brightly. Surrounding this light and moving in the northwest, southwest, and southeast directions respectfully were three long lines of light, as if the circle of light at the icon’s center was emitting a sunburst in three directions about itself. From here, more teardrop shapes followed – and Graham began to realize that the icon looked like a false sphere. He rotated his head around it; it was indeed flat, but teardrop-shaped openings also marked the face of the icon, showing a glowing inner area. The outer skin of this icon was light, pastel green, and the inner portions displayed by the teardrop-shaped openings were dark green with a dim light shining through from behind.

Graham called variable over, “Hey, Variable, what is this thing? It looks like a drop of green water with some fancy design on it. Or a weird, mechanical leaf. They’re all over the city. It’s like I see one every five steps now.”

Variable walked over to where Graham stood looking at the floating icon in the middle of the road. “Ah, you’ve finally spotted The Leaf. I’m surprised you hadn’t caught one earlier. You are correct – it is a mechanical leaf, and certainly not a toxic green drop of water. The Leaf is the symbol of Cydia.”

“Like a flag?”

“Quite, though we have nobody else to flaunt our symbol to. I’m not too proud of it myself. It just showed how damned we all are here, so starved for sustenance that we had to go and make it ourselves. We killed off plants long ago, before I was even born, and possibly before my father as well. I have never seen a real tree – and for that I have always been slightly ashamed of my planet. But no matter, there are too many great things here for this one small detail to be of real meaning.”

“But why are they everywhere?”

“The Collective wants you to know where you are at all times, I’m sure. Before The Collective formed, they were Action Points – objects you could touch and manipulate via the glasses to get information. They were your access to news and updates about the world. Now they are dormant billboards, symbols of a day long gone, and only server the practical purpose of reminding you what planet you are on – The Leaf is always there, always watching through the eye in its center, a symbol of innovation and absolute terror. But you won’t be able to touch one now. Go ahead, try.”

Graham tried to touch The Leaf; his hand went right through it and The Leaf didn’t even react. At this, Graham sighed, and began to wonder about the safety of living in Cydia compared to living in Talos – or even Earth – as the group picked up pace again and began crisscrossing through alleyways and small streets. Through the back streets the group weaved, until finally they came to an unconventional and sudden break in the city architecture.

In front of them was a wide field. “Everything is artificial,” Variable told them, “and some of those trees are actually virtual, only existing in the realm of the glasses. There are no real plants left on Cydia. Hopefully this explains why our flag displays a mechanical leaf and not a live one.” The artificial field stretched right up to the end of the floating island, where another large version of The Leaf hovered in suspended animation, calling to every artificial leaf in the field, bringing forth oxygen and life – without any life at all.

At the edge of the island along with the gigantic Leaf symbols were hundreds of what appeared to be floating stones, fragments of the island that might have broken off. But as the group walked through the field, Ames and Graham realized his was not the case. Variable looked proud of these achievements; he most likely enjoyed showing off this advanced technology to underdeveloped minds such as Graham and Ames, never having the chance to do so in the past. They were not floating stones, he said, but ferries to other parts of the planet.

“And the best part is that they’re absolutely free. So I won’t be footing the bill for either of you two hopefully at any point during this venture.”

“They look like ordinary boulders to me, with the exception how they, well, float,” Graham remarked. “And what’s with the giant Leaves up there lining the edge of the island?”

“Well, you are about to ride Cydian transportation, and The Leaf is the symbol of Cydia. I’ve never really noticed or bothered to care about such trivial things. You should pay less attention to detail.” Those words made graham cringe with hate, for he knew that if he did not pay attention to detail that all three of them, in due time, would end up killed at the hands of a mysterious Cydian organization.