16: The Sea of Possibility - Part 1

There is no rest for the wicked. While the techno-gnostics had been in a state of tension against the temple for time out of mind, things were now coming more to a head. They were beginning to prepare for the final push, as they believed that they were getting close to the ultimate development of the white lotus. So while they had done several missions in the last few weeks, including the retrieval of the midnight sun, they were already once again at work.

The final preparations for the current mission were now underway. Isaac was put in charge of both locating the pathway to the ouroborous as well as opening the ether bridge. Although he had only been with the techno-gnostics for a few years, in the past, he had a lot of books and time to study the ether network, and so he obtained quite a large knowledge of it theoretically, even if at the time not yet practically. So, applying this knowledge, once he obtained access, he quickly became an expert at maneuvering it. And so, in short order, had become quite proficient at it.

The ether network was the practical aspect of the Noosphere. Using an ether drive, you could manipulate the ether flow in order to do certain things, like interact with an esoteric space. It was however, by its nature, unpredictable. It was possible in theory to use the ether network to do things like generate a kind of explosion or other tangible esotericisms, but the truth is that it was not very practical to do so most of the time. Since there are few situations in which even most skilled users are going to find it more convenient to do this as a weapon rather than simply using a gun. And you might get some strange looks if you were to try.

But as Isaac himself was very adept at using it, he was a useful partner to help Mei on missions now to cover these more esoteric needs, as well as often providing gun backup. Although for this mission as he was necessary to control the link from the outside, he would not be able to follow her in. So they set up a place to establish a link in a safe house, and many others were there with them as defense. Because they were going to need it.

Mei was sitting on the table, waiting for transfer. Isaac stood next to her, holding the tablet. Isaac was much shorter than Mei, being rather small and effeminate. He always spoke with a soft voice and was often very skittish, although he could be matter of fact when he needed to.

“As you know, the ouroborous compass isn't even located within our universe. It will be difficult to scope the sea of possibility in order to establish a link for adjusting it. Since it is not even being done in real space. You will, in essence, be being transferred to a constructed space. It could be dangerous for you if our link is broken.

"However, the space looks to be unstable now. So we will likely only have one shot at this. Once we establish the link, if we don't see it through, we won't get another chance, since it will likely cause the space to destabilize. And if that happens, we won't have a way to interface with the compass.

“It is going to take a lot of ether to establish the connection. Most likely, if we use this much, the temple will notice basically right away. So once you are in, you will be on your own. Since we are almost certainly going to get attacked fairly quickly after establishing it.

“If we have to abandon this location, the bridge will likely collapse with it. And if this happens, there is a chance you will be trapped or worse, unless we can re-establish the connection. In essence, we will have to play it by ear.”

He looked at his tablet. “We have some time though, still, before we are ready. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

Mei stared at the ceiling. “I see.”

Some other people were coming in and out of the room, nervously looking out the window. There wouldn't be anyone out there since they hadn't yet established the link. But being in such a situation naturally put some people on edge. They knew what was coming, even if not when.

Isaac sat back, fidgeting nervously and dropping his more serious demeanor. “This mission is dangerous. You really shouldn't be the one going in.”

Mei looked up, staring into the ceiling. “It being dangerous is why it has to be me. Because I am the only one who can.”

Isaac made a sad expression. “You don't sound like you are saying that with much of a sense of pride.”

She looked over at him blankly. “Pride? It's not like I am the way I am because I and I alone got here with radical libertarian free will and my own determination. In a sense, I was born this way. Many expend just as much effort as me. But they will never be able to do the things I can. It's not because I am superior in any kind of moral sense. It's just the roll of the dice.”

She closed her eyes. “You could say that purpose is a prison of its own. I do this because I must.”

He looked at her sadly. “But you chose your own life. You are here because you choose to be. You didn't have to come this far.”

She thought about it. “That's true. But it was the only choice I could have made. Perhaps even your will is predetermined. If I didn't do this, many people would have been abandoned and left to suffer. If no one else can do this, then it is me who would be leaving them to die.”

She looked at him. “Could you abandon them?”

He looked away in shame because he knew he couldn't.

He thought about how there is a certain difficulty in admiring someone for what they do when what they do is dangerous. It creates a paradox where you are afraid to lose them. But if they weren't in this danger, they would never have been the person you are afraid to lose.

It reminded him of another story he had heard recently relating to the group that was operating out of the midnight sun. About the death of a techno-gnostic named Julius Kai in the process of retrieving the Epinoia key. And how this was what drove his friend, the breakaway Weihong, crazy, leading him to start this borderline death cult.

Isaac thought about what it would be like if Mei were to die. He was with the techno-gnostics in part to help people. But also, in part, to stay close to her. Would he be able to handle staying if she wasn't there anymore? Would he go crazy too if he saw her die in front of him?

Isaac didn't have any romantic feelings towards Mei. And not just because of the fact that his inclinations leaned in the opposite direction. But because he viewed her more like an older sister. This being besides the fact that he was technically older than her, even if his mind and body didn't show it. It was a kind of perhaps overly obsessive relationship based on what she meant for him, and what she did for him in the past. Perhaps not entirely healthy. But then again, who is?

“I'm just saying. I feel like you don't take good enough care of yourself.”

She held her arm up. “I take care of myself. I... ate a salad today.”

He made a deflated face. “That's not what I...

“...

“What was in the salad?”

Mei looked suddenly caught and looked away to avoid meeting his eyes. “Um... health. Healthy stuff.”

“What type of salad was it, Mei?”

She waved her arm. “Let's move on.”

He sat in silence for awhile. Like there was something else he wanted to bring up, but was worried about doing so openly. Mei didn't normally talk like this. But this wasn't the only self-depreciating thing she had done lately.

“But... for real. I... saw what you did the other day. I saw you notice a guard take a swing at you with a knife. You looked, and when you noticed that it wouldn't be a lethal stab wound, you didn't move. I know you had time to.”

Mei, still looking away from him, was silent. He continued on. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to notice. But... I know what you were doing. Do you... want to talk about it?”

“No.”

He looked away sadly. And they both sat there, feeling a bit awkward. After a pause, she looked back at him. “Do you... trust me?”

He spoke back with a soft voice. “Mei, I would follow you to the ends of the earth. But sorry. I don't always trust your judgment.”

She looked back up at the ceiling. “Good. Because my judgment is not always correct.”

He leaned back. “Mei, you're not alone anymore. You have people who care about you too. And you should also make sure to care about yourself. I just... I worry sometimes. About you.”

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She closed her eyes without looking back at him. “I know. Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Is this because... it's getting closer to the time where you will have to confront your family?”

“...Yes.”

“Well. When I had to do the same, there was someone there for me. So if you need anything, just know that there is also someone there for you.

"You've been preparing this for a long time. And we will soon be entering the last stretch. But I am glad to be here with you. As we begin the march to the final battle.”

She thought about it for a moment. And then looked at him and smiled. “Thank you. It means a lot to me."

She closed her eyes once more to lean back. “Maybe this is fate. In the end, you are the one who has to look out for me once again.”

“No. I do this because I choose to. And because... good lord, you aren't good at doing it for yourself."

“Heh. Maybe so.”

He held up the beeper as it started going off. And signaled to the teams in the other room. “Okay, it's time.”

Mei looked up to the ceiling, determined. “Alright. Punch it.”

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Streams of light rushed past Mei as she fell through the tunnel, feeling a rush of wind and a swirl of colors engulfing her. The tunnel itself was a construct made from tessellations of light to provide a path resembling normal space leading into the esoteric space on the other side. But despite this, the tunnel itself was not true space and did not share all of its properties.

She looked out the side of the tunnel. Out beyond the luminescent walls, you could see into the abstractions beyond the three-dimensional universe. This was the sea of possibility. The primordial nature of Tian, which consists of all the potentialities of existence for actual occasions. As it moved past, it morphed through shapes that, to a limited human mind, were beyond comprehension, as thin tendrils of color and shapes akin to mathematical abstraction twisted and moved in flux. For beyond this barrier was that which was never designed to be traversed by living entities. For a brief moment, she felt she could see the aspects of the extradimensional expanse which intersected into a compactified form, giving rise to limited three-dimensional reality.

But... maybe it was just her imagination.

Time began to lose linear meaning. She checked her counter quickly as she fell, only to see that it could not be read. For time was moving not merely forward but sideways in a way that defied measurement by human instruments. The speed of her movement was no longer definable in human terms. It was because of this that the journey would be perilous. For it was going to be no easy task to traverse through the tunnel from here on out, especially without your feet on solid footing.

But they had predicted this. An immediate concern was that time moving perpendicular to the normal flow risked pulling her in. And if this happened, then, from the sea of possibility, what might come out on the other side may end up bearing no resemblance to her standard self, ending as a scramble of inert, unmanifested abstraction. She tilted backwards against the flow, balancing her velocity against it. And as she did, she could see the silhouetted images flow off of her of the endless possibilities of time. Tesselating realities of the different paths her life could have taken.

There was no distance to the depth you can see from the tunnel, for this path did not operate by the rules of normal space. So though it pained her, and against her better judgment, she looked off into the end of infinity to see a possibility where her life had contained less of the pain that she knew so well. This possibility being a world where her family had loved her. In such a world, she may have never picked up a sword. And she would have been at peace. Seeing this, she reached out for it inadvertently. But then she hesitated. It wasn't real. It was only an illusion. But there was something more. In this possible world, there was no one to fill her role. Isaac was never saved. There was no one to carry them forward to the final battle. She nodded to herself in realization and then leaned back, pulling these out of view.

But she did not have time to rest. For the tunnel was quickly breaking and filling with cross bars that cracked across its fabricated space. She quickly tilted to the side to avoid running into these. But they spread in all directions, for the abstract dimensionality of the tunnel made it so that its linear path did not look like a single direction. She tilted back and forth between these barriers, which, if she bumped into them, most likely pull her out of the tunnel entirely and into the abstract brane space from which there could be no return.

She leaned forward, feeling like she was on fire. The tunnel was shaking. And she needed to get to the end before it spun her out into the void. But ultimately, she broke through. And in time, she came out the other side. And landed in something that looked closer to normal space.

She stood up to get her bearings and look around. She was met with shock as she did so. They did not entirely know what to expect from the simulated spacetime that surrounded the ouroborous. For although it was hypothesized to have an analogue of one, it was assumed that it would be composed of wholly alien structures that bore no resemblance to the human world, being composed of just a mishmash of meaningless data that she would have to structure into an interface.

But what she found was not like that at all, looking more like the ruins of a large city. One not unlike one that would be seen in the human world. But the sky was pitch black, having no moon or stars within it. Giving the sky an appearance almost like a low ceiling or depth of water. The city too had little in the way of lights still operating within it, looking like most of what had been there had run down and fizzled out.

But what made the city come off as ruins did not appear to be on account of age. For it looked more like large chunks of the reality had simply faded away. Large portions of the ground were gone. Not exactly a hole, but simply void. And what little remained of the land and buildings looked as if it were dissolving, trailing listlessly into the starless sky.

And it was quiet. Deathly quiet. One could tell at a glance that there was no life here. Whatever reflection of normal life might have spawned here was long gone. For the world no longer had the capacity to sustain it. It was conferred only to the dark reaches of memory. Or perhaps not even memory. For there was no one here to remember it.

Mei thought about this. And she felt sad. She was here outside the bounds of reality. But it seemed like there were, at one time, real people living here. And they must not have been here long. Just the blink of an eye. They must have seen their small, self-contained world ending, yet been unable to do anything about it. And whenever it happened, there was no one else who knew about them enough to save them. Would it have even been possible had anyone known? Or was their existence region-locked to this abstract space in a way that would not have allowed them to traverse to the normal universe?

Either way, it didn't matter now. It was too late. They were all gone.

There was an idle fountain in front of her that had run dry. On top of it was some kind of statue. But it felt nondescript. Like the type of thing you might see in a dream or a machine attempt to recreate art. She wondered if this was built by the actual denizens of the place. Or whether it was some type of phantasm that emerged wholesale when the space did. Maybe the question had no meaning. For if the people and the space are one, it becomes a paradox of causality where the origin point of the endless cycle cannot be defined.

She felt lonely. She was perhaps further now in a sense than any human had ever been. Even if only by a technicality. But she felt a bit guilty for feeling this way, standing on the graves of countless people who had it worse than she. And she could see now that there were various shapes on the ground around her, like abstractions. They looked like glitched bodies. The remnants of a world that had forgotten its own internal logic as it started to break down.

Lonely...

That reminded her that she was here for a purpose. She didn't have time to sight-see. She tuned her radio frequency to the metrics they were going to use for communication. Even though she wasn't in normal space, they could still communicate through the link if they knew what frequencies they were going to use. That, at least, was one thing they still had going for them.

She put her fingers up to the side of her head. “Come in, Isaac. I arrived okay. Just barely.”

She waited for a response. But it was long in coming. Since this was a timed activity, she would have to move forward even if there was no response. Although that would make it much more difficult if she lacked more precise instructions on what to do.

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Isaac walked to the window. Now that Mei was on the other side, there was nothing to do in the immediate interval until she checked in or until they got attacked. There was a small chance that their activities would go unnoticed, and the temple guards would not come at all. But he knew better. The guards may take some time to collect before rushing. But they would be here. The best they could hope for is to hold them off. Or possibly that Mei returns before the guards even got here, and they could abandon the area, leading the guards to rush into an empty building.

They chose a secluded building for this in the hopes no one else would be caught in the crossfire. But they were still in the city. The temple would not risk nuking a building that was so overtly visible. And it is unlikely they would want to anyway, because they most likely would want to take the portal to get access to the ouroborous. They would likely only turn more aggressive and try to take everything down if they realized they were not going to get a chance to reach it themselves.

Outside the window, the streets looked still. He walked back to take a look at the instruments. Everything looked normal. So he walked out to the stairwell to talk to Captain Jack.

At the stairwell, he looked down. They had several people stationed on each floor at various points to make an ascent difficult for any potential invaders. Doing this several floors up was theoretically sketchy, but it did afford more possible avenues of escape if it came to it. Although a more accurate way to phrase the coming events would likely be when it came to it.

Captain Jack was out, standing next to the rail with his arms crossed. Isaac went out to lean on it and speak to him. “Anything yet?”

“We don't have anything. Right now, it's just a waiting game.”

Jack shot him a sly grin. “How about you, though? Have you been getting out there?”

Isaac acted flustered. Jack was trying to ask him about dating. In truth, Isaac hadn't felt okay dating before recently. On account of his stunted aging, Isaac looked and acted much younger than he was, coming off as effeminate and barely adult. He often said that it was a strange feeling, feeling like you were both too old and too young for someone at the same time.

“Well, the people I talked to do tend to seem a little weirded out when they realize I am technically older than them. But I suppose that there is probably someone who will like it.”

He sighed. “Although... there is the other matter. What we do is dangerous. It feels like it would be dishonest to not clarify that I might just vanish one day. Die suddenly, and they never hear from me again. Come and go. Disappear into the void.

“But of course, one can't be too clear on that matter either, for secrecy. But I suppose I don't have to explain all that to you. It's just that I don't feel good having secrets. You know?”

Jack took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Some people choose to stay disconnected. But there can be a sense of hypocrisy in this if you don't advocate it for others. Just be warned; most people might not like it if more of your life is dedicated to something other than them.”

Isaac thought to himself. “Other than them...”

He thought this over. There is a dark side to living a life that can make normal relationships difficult. It can come with a sense of isolation. And this is only compounded when you are already someone looking for a type of relationship that is still viewed negatively by many in society, even if it is getting better.

But he didn't have long to think. An explosion rang out on one of the floors. He looked at it confused for a moment before realizing that the intruders weren't even coming from the bottom but had managed a surprise attack by quickly bridging the wall to the building next door. They had lookouts, but they must have managed to establish the bridge in mere seconds.

The soldiers down on the third floor began retreating upwards. Isaac and Jack quickly pulled out their assembled sniper rifles to provide cover. But before they could easily react, the third floor was quickly overrun, and the guards held up shields to block bullets from higher up as they began picking off people on lower floors from above. If the people on lower floors ran out, it would likely be into an ambush, wouldn't it?

He thought this over quickly. No, it couldn't be an ambush. Since they were doing a sneak attack, they likely expected people to think there were guards outside. But there couldn't be, since that would have given them away.

He pulled back and ran over to Jack. “They should evacuate beneath it and bring down the third floor. With no stairs, they will have a difficult time getting up higher. And they already gave away their trick. We can drop the floor without risking dropping the higher ones.”

Jack quickly looked over the edge. He was skeptical of this plan, but he tended to defer to Isaac. He radioed it in.

Isaac watched as the bottom floor members scattered and set off the lower explosives. The floor caved in, and with it, a lot of temple guards got caught, and it looked like they were now struggling to figure out how to get up the stairs amidst the crossfire. This would buy them some time.

But his heart sank slightly. Because the guards had mobile spider tanks with them, that quickly skittered past the fallen rubble. While larger spider tanks were built for defense, these ones were built for mobility. Some made a leap across the fallen stairwell and then shot back a harpoon that could be used to create a new bridge. Isaac tried to pick them off before this bridge could become useful. But they had shields to hold up, blocking his bullets. A vibro saber would be able to cut through them easily, but he was not Mei. He didn't trust himself to be able to get over there and cut them down by hand. And she wasn't here to help them.

But he needed to buy time. The guards were already climbing the cords. So Isaac ran over, dodging the fire from the tanks, and slid to the edge of the stairwell. He didn't have an explosive on him, but he used the ether drive to call an explosion up and drop the edge of the stairwell. As the edge collapsed, the spider tanks lost their footing and fell with it. He looked down as the tanks fell, hoping that they would get crushed on the bottom. But he could see that only two of them did, and so this wouldn't buy that much time. He ducked and rushed back before he was back in the line of fire.

Captain Jack slowly moved over to him, shooting over the edge. “Call it. Do we hold, or go?”

Isaac looked down, hesitating. If they close the portal, they might never be able to rescue Mei and would lose the ouroborous. But if they stay, they might all die. He wondered if there was a third option. But if so, he had to find it quickly.