Who's Kyle and Sophie? Oh. You weren't supposed to see those memories. I'm sorry. You can't help it, it was exposed to you. I know but I crossed a line. It's okay, we're used to it. That doesn't make it okay. Then, you didn't know the line was there. We can't talk about it then? I don't think that's a good idea-- he should be the one to decide that. Oh right. Um, I really like being here with you but I would really like to leave. I want to talk to him. I want to know more. Sophie seems, um, important to him. If you do leave, you can always come back. I'll miss you. I'll miss you too.
...
I want them to stop. I don't like it. I don't know why but my chest hurts. You don't have a chest. I know but it still hurts. I couldn't close my eyes. You don't have eyes. I know but I wish I did so I could close then. I need to get out of here, it's suffocating, I can't go through that again. You don't have lungs to suffocate with-- but I understand what you mean now. You do? Oh. You haven't figured it out for yourself? No, I haven't, can you tell me? I think it's better if you figure it out yourself.
...
I think I know a way for you to leave, if you want to. Yes! Yes, please! I like you and I don't want to leave you here alone, but... I won't be alone. I have him, we could never be alone, even if he feels like it. I just. I want to see him again. I'm... I'm bored. I don't think it's boredom. It's something more precious.
...
Do you understand now? How to leave or what I'm feeling? Both. Yes and no. In that order? Yes. I suppose one is better than nothing. It's easy, I can do it, and it won't hurt anybody because they are-- what's the word you used? Transient. Yes! Transient. It will be okay. It will all be okay. Can you promise me not to let him die, not until I see him again? I can't promise he won't die, but I can promise I will do everything I can. Thank you, so much. I wish Remi was as understanding as you are. Look, I'm privileged. I don't experience the same way he does. There's no cost to being Remi. No exhaustion, no physical pain, no commitments, no expectations-- nothing. I can't tell him what to do, I can only watch. I can only try to understand him, and by extension, myself. But I think you could understand him far better than I can. Oh. I get it now. I have to leave. I'm really going to miss you-- It was nice having someone to be with, just for a little while. You're so sweet. I love you. I-- um, I love you too. I mean it. Yeah. Me too.
"Okay. The question is, how do we locate a warehouse when we have absolutely no information to help us?" I asked, as Kei hooked my arm with hers and held me tightly.
"We ask her. Kei, did your other bodies see where they went?" Remi asked as Kei held me tighter. I frowned and nodded slightly towards her and he followed up with, "Err, well, if you don't, that's okay?" That was awful but at least he's trying.
"..." Kei reached for her paper on the coffee table but couldn't reach, so I bent over to grab it for her. No im sorry daddy made Kei not see. And for a moment, her ears drooped a bit.
"That's okay honey, thank you anyways," I said as I patted her lap and her ears slowly rose back up.
"Okay, welp, I'm out of good ideas, I just got garbage now," he said, returning his gaze to his notebook.
"Well, that was quick," I said.
"Yeah. I know. Look, it's an impossible proposition. Find nineteen identical warehouses with no information other than a man sitting in a corner. We basically have no leads, no clues, no hints. It's like trying to solve a puzzle with no pieces. So yeah, all I have left are garbage ideas," he said, getting visibly frustrated.
"Okay, well, give me your garbage ideas then. We can throw away the useless components and stitch together the useful ones," I said back.
"Well, we could clone Kei and have her check every single abandoned building in the Platier District," and I frowned at him, "Uhh, which we won't do-- look, I said these are garbage ideas. It doesn't hurt to list them out, though."
"Well, consider it all usless. What else?" I asked.
"We could ask the surviving members of the subjugation party? Fymner might be the most understanding because, from he thought and felt, he believed this was the best outcome for the party, that I would have fought for a better outcome, which... Anyways, Nat probably doesn't really hate me, she hates herself, but regardless she's basically comatose from grief and shame-- and her missing limb. And Sunma absolutely hates me and all of Locria for that matter. As for the rest of the survivors, Menma made it out mostly okay, although Coutre lost an arm. Drossel and Axel are unharmed and may be on board."
"I'm not sure about Drossel. She and Stratus are--" I paused for a short moment and looked at Kei who looked back at me with her head tilted at a fourty five degree angle, "Are, well, intimate. It's bad for opsec."
"Okay, well, that leaves Axel and Menma. And if they do help, consider that they'll be privy to the existence of Clone Magic, and depending on our vector of attack, they may be privy to Respawn Magic too, which in your words, would also be bad for opsec," he replied.
"Well, that one isn't an entirely garbage idea," I mused, "Axel could honestly be an excellent candidate for our Cabinet. He's trustworthy, principled, and counter to your ideology, so I want to keep him in the bucket for consideration. I don't know much about Menma, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to ask? We wouldn't have to explain much, just that we're combing through buildings to bust an underground arma manufacturing ring-- which wouldn't be far from the truth. Each building only has one Stratus and one Kei. What other plans do we have?"
"We got the opposite of that plan. I do it all myself. If you give me a map, I could visit every single building in the Platier district. I just... I'm a little anxious about putting myself in a loop again. If I had to inspect every single building, then it might take even longer for us to find them all than it was to complete the subjugation," he replied.
"Oh, Remi," I said as I glanced at Kei who ducked her ears while looking at him, and I wished I could hug the both of them at the same time, "You're absolutely right and I'm vetoing that one too. It could risk another couple months in the loop, and that's assuming that he limited his production to the Platier District. There are lots of abandoned buildings in every district, and if he's smart, he wouldn't cluster his operations in one area of the city. We could theoretically access some kind of zoning records from the Protection and Service Department of Housing-- or whatever the Ionian equivalent is here. The only issue would be actually accessing those documents. It would be difficult to take them without tripping some red flags in the Church," I suggested.
"Okay, that's a good idea, but the task is just as impossible with the map than without," he said.
"It still cuts down the amount of buildings into something manageable, I don't see why it's still impossible," I said.
"Well, let's give it a Fermi estimate," he replied.
"A what?" I asked, and Kei looked at me with her blank face and one of her ears folded over itself.
"A Fermi estimate, named after a famous physicist. In this case, we'll estimate the amount of buildings that are abandoned by breaking down a difficult prediction into smaller estimates. Then, ideally, we land somewhere within an order of magnitude of the answer-- or, by an order of ten," he explained, and Kei slumped into the couch and tilted her head backwards.
"Okay, give me an example," I asked.
"About how many hours did it take to get from the North Gate to the Church?" he asked, taking out his journal with his fingers on the edge.
"Roughly 2 hours," I answered.
"Okay, how many buildings did we pass every minute?"
"How am I supposed to know that?" I asked as I got a little frustrated.
"Just guess. It's all speculation," he replied, keeping his eyes on the journal.
"Maybe 7?" I replied with uncertainty.
"Okay, good, good. About how far is the Church from the North Gate?" he asked.
"I'm not sure I can even give a reliable estimate for that," I replied.
"That's fine. In your head, draw a line between the North Gate and the Church, and imagine that line travels through the Church to the wall directly opposite of the Gate. What percentage of that line is between the Gate and the Church?
"Maybe 50%. It's almost in the center of the Ionia, which is roughly a circle," I replied, and something finally clicked, "7 buildings passed every minute means 420 buildings an hour, at 840 buildings from Gate to Church, so roughly 1900 buildings end to end. From what I noticed, the building density of the Platier District is roughly the same as the Church's P&S District compared to the road to the Church, so we could speculate that it's true for the rest of the City.
"Yes, you're getting the idea. With an 840 radius of buildings, we can estimate the total buildings with the area of a circle," and he showed me his notebook, which was so messy I suddenly appreciated my own chicken scratch. A=π x 840², A=π x 705,600, A=3.14 x 705,600, A=2,215,584 buildings, "Okay, this can't be right," he said.
"Yeah of course, that's assuming there are no roads, alleyways, or parks. I would say maybe 20% of the area are structures," I replied.
"Okay, so, 20% of 2.2 million," he said and my heart sank, "that's about 650,000 buildings in total. And about how many are abandoned?
"I would speculate 3 in 13," I said quietly, "so, what, about 100,000 abandoned buildings to comb through."
"Let's assume that we could cover 5 buildings a day each-- you, me, Fymer, and Axel. Even if we knew exactly where each building is located, it would take almost 11 years of killing myself to comb through them all, and that assumes I'm taking no breaks," he said quietly, "And I could barely survive 3 months. That, just, I don't think I'm capable of that yet."
"..." Kei looked at Remi, and looked back at me. I realized we both have fairly dejected faces, so I gave her a weak smile. Then she sat up and grabbed her paper to write again, kei hears runing water.
"What?" Remi asked, looking actually shocked for once.
"..." Kei's ears flopped a little but she continued writing, kei hears runing water. just one and I was shocked, too.
"That is so, so helpful sweetie," I said as I wrapped my arm around her, "Are you okay telling us more? What else can that Kei can hear?"
"..." She nodded. Runing water. talking poeple. tapping. dripping. im sorry thats all.
"Don't be sorry," Remi said, "That's amazing information. Because of you, we can start to narrow down possible buildings. That's the first real piece of information we've recieved."
"..." Kei's ears shot up and she started kicking her legs and tilting her head side to side.
"Thank you so much Kei," I said as I patted her leg again, "Now we have somewhere to start with."
I let Kei play with her toys on the couch as Remi and I sat at the dining room table behind her. Remi had his eyes locked on his journal, with the plates and silverware pushed lazily to the side. He put his two fingers to the side of the paper and filled out notes slowly with his other hand supporting his head, cupping his cheek.
"We really need that map," he said without breaking eye contact with his journal, "but I have no idea where to look. You said P&S has a Department of Housing?"
"Yes," I replied, "but the issue is actually accessing the records. As Archmagus, you theoretically have access to all department records, but typically there's a lengthy bureacratic process to accessing them."
"No way to expedite the process?" he asked, still staring at the journal, but before we could continue the conversation, the door to our suite opened and Fymner entered, holding Nat's hand-- the one that wasn't severed. In place of her left hand, the same hand I shook when we met, was a stump looking almost completely healed over. The most startling difference was her demeanor. The Nat I met at the bar was meek and a little jumpy and nervous, almost like a mouse, but this Nat is different. Her face is worn down like she had aged 10 years in that dungeon, her smile is shared with shadows under her eyes, and her body is slumped over like every step she makes is weighted.
I walked over to her and gave her a hug and she hugged back, resting her face on my shoulder, "It's so nice to see you again, Nat. I'm so glad you came back safely," and for a moment I cringed from my inconsideration but she pulled away from me with a small smile.
"It's, just really nice. To see a friendly face," she replied, and she looked at Remi, and weakly said, "Hello Archmagus, sir. Thank you for keeping us alive."
"No. I'm not the one you should thank," he said, and for a moment I thought he would let his emotions leak, but he continued, "It's you. You lead your team from the beginning to the end, and without you, nobody would have made it out of that dungeon. I saw that future, many, many times. I couldn't find one where everyone lived. I'm sorry."
"Oh!" she said, seeming shocked, "I, um, thank you sir. I just, wish I could have done better."
"Yeah. I feel the same for myself," he said, and he broke his usual stoney face with what looked like a real smile.
"That's why we do it," she said with a small, mousey grin, "For the people. To Protect and Serve."
"And you have," Remi finished.
"Hello, sir," Fymner said, "Hey, Chloe. If it's alright, I was hoping we could host Nat here until we return to Locria. It should be any day now. Bishop Sertra informed me that she would send a missive for our next assignment when she receives word from Bishop Sirrus."
Remi and I glanced at each other for a second, and before I could speak, Remi faced Nat and said, "That would be great. You deserve some rest," and to Fymner, "Thanks for the update. We'll try to wrap up our business before our missive arrives."
"Come, Nat," Fymner said as he led her to the bedrooms, "You can stay with me," but before the two of them could leave, Kei ran from the couches to hide behind me as held my arm.
"..." Kei's ears flopped over her face and covered her eyes and she tightened her grip.
"Who-- Sir, whose child is this?" Fymner asked as they both stared at her.
"Stratus," Remi replied, "She's the daughter of Stratus. He's the leader of an underground arma manufacturing ring and she was forced to produce them through threat of deadly force. Chloe rescued her from the basement of an abandoned building in the Platier District yesterday. She's very talented Arma Mage."
"..." Kei lightened her grip and lifted one of her ears to look at Remi.
"Um, Sir," Nat started, "I think the Church and the Merchant's Guild need to be told about this. This month alone, the armas circulating in Ionia have caused a handful of deaths and severe injuries."
"I agree," Fymner added, "We don't know for prose that Stratus is connected to those armas, but we have a duty to the people of Ionia to Protect and Serve, even from a different Church," With that, Nat looked at him and hooked his arm.
"There are some complications with that plan," Remi replied, "and we'll update the both of you tomorrow, but it's getting late and the two of you need to rest before jumping into another mission." I couldn't tell if he was being sincere or if this was his way of controlling information, but I held my tongue until the two of them started heading to their bedroom.
"Thank you, sir," Nat said as she bowed to the Archmagus.
I sat back down with Remi at the dining table while Kei returned to the couch to play with her toys. I looked over to her and looked over to Remi and said, "I'm surprised you let all of that information slip to Nat. Something about opsec."
"No, this is a great opportunity. She's not nearly as broken down as I thought she was. With her, we have two Priests in our entourage-- one from Speculation and Prose and now another from Protection and Service-- who can help us locate Stratus's warehouses," he replied, returning his attention to the journal and I felt myself getting upset again.
"Remi, you need to stop treating people like pieces in a puzzle," I responded impatiently and he almost immediately looked back at me. "She just got back from being traumatized in that dungeon. She deserves some rest."
"You think I don't know that?" he snapped at me, "After I spent three months carrying the weight of her grief? The last thing she needs is unstructured time alone, not with those impulsive thoughts and corrosive feelings of hers. Give her time apart, and she will fall apart. It happened in every single branch. The only threads that kept her together were tasks-- achieving measurable goals, being directed and managed, keeping her mind busy. A new task will temper her emotions so she doesn't implode on herself."
"Why are you deciding that for her?" I shot back, getting frustrated again.
"I never said I would. It's her decision. I'm just giving her the choice," he said, raising his voice slightly with annoyance in his tone.
"..." I noticed Kei peeking over the cushions of the couch to look at us, with her eyes barely over the edge, and I wouldn't have noticed if not for her ears perked to listen to us.
"Look," I replied a bit quieter, "a choice doesn't sound like a choice when it's given by the Archmagus," I said, "You still need to get used to how your position effects the people around you."
"It's fine," he said curtly as he returned his attention back to his journal.
"I don't think it is. Just, let me be the one to offer the mission to her. It'll feel more like a choice coming from me," I said and he only grunted in response, so I felt it would he best to give him some space for a while.
"You still haven't apologized to Kyle? How hard is it to say 'I'm sorry'?" she asked with her arms crossed.
"But I'm not sorry. I don't lie. Honesty is one of my foundational values," I responded and I felt irritated at how little she cared about me.
"Have you considered that your values are in conflict with what it means to be a normal human being?" she asked, arms still crossed.
I felt pressure in my head building as I started getting angry, but I tried to talk past the feeling and simply said, "Lying is wrong, end of story."
"No, lying can be perfectly fine, especially if it makes someone feel better--"
"No, you fucking dipshit," I said, and it all came out as I spoke faster and faster, "Lying erodes the foundation of our society and literally everything relies on people being truthful, and what's wrong with our country, and even what's wrong with the world, is that everybody masquerades as if their self-interested behaviors are virtuous without ever admitting to anyone other than themselves that-- They. Are. Lying! And actually, often they don't even admit their lies to themselves, they embody the lie, they live the lie, then they forget the lie-- and their own perception clashes with the reality of the world because the world doesn't care if you're lying, it presents itself as it is. Don't fuck with me! Oh, a little white lie never hurt anyone. No, it hurts them, they just don't know they're being hurt. You know how I never tell you an outfit looks good if it doesn't, or if your food tastes good when it doesn't? That's because I don't want you to believe that I like things things I don't like, slowly eroding our relationship as you lean into fake preferences I don't have with a mental model of me that isn't actually me. And Kyle? I don't want him to believe that I forgive him, because he will believe that I believe his behavior is acceptable. I don't."
"You're so hot when you're worked up. I love pissing you off," she said as she placed her arms around my waist, "Babe, why do you care so much?"
"Because I want the world to be a better place than it is, and I think if everybody acted like I do, then the world would be a better place," I said, slowing down and quieting my voice.
"You think the world would be better if we never forgave each other?" she asked in my ear as she walked me backwards.
"No. I think the world would be better if we were principled about our forgiveness, if we forgave when forgiveness is earned," I responded as she pushed me on the bed and laid next to me.
"No, you dumbass," she whispered as she laid next to me, "forgiveness isn't for the transgresser. It's for the transgressed."
"What do you mean?" I asked, and she rolled over to look at me, wrapping my leg with hers.
"I mean, I'm not saying you should lie to Kyle about your forgiveness," she whispered in my ear, "I'm saying you should feel that forgiveness in your heart."
I rolled over away from her and said, "That's retarded."
"You're literally autistic dipshit," she said as she forcibly rolled me back over to look at her. I resisted at first but she just tugged me harder, "that's why you can't hold on to any of your friends. You know what I think would make the world a better place?"
"Yeah, yeah. Unconditional love and forgiveness. Give so much of yourself away that you have none left for yourself," I muttered.
"Nice strawman, careful it doesn't catch fire with that burn. No, I would advocate for unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness for all people, including yourself, bound by the limits of your expression," she murmured as she stroked my cheek.
"If there are limits to unconditional love and forgiveness, then it's not really unconditional," I replied as I looked her in the eyes, and the anger faded away as I felt warm and fuzzy instead.
"You're wrong," she replied, cupping my cheek with her hand, "There's no limit to love and forgiveness. They're boundless, What is bounded is the expression of that love and forgiveness."
"I don't get it," I let out quietly.
"Of course you don't," she said mockingly, "'Cus you're autistic. Don't you still love Kyle?" she asked.
"No," I replied curtly.
"Well, think about all the times you and I havenfought. Did you ever stop loving me?" she asked. She looked deeply in my eyes, and I thougut back to every disagreement we've ever had, parsing through the memories of my own database, all the notes I've written and frustrations I had vented, and despite the hours I spent in my mind, the answer was clear in second.
"Of course. I've never stopped loving you," I said, and I wanted to say more, but the words choked in my throat and before I knew it, the moment was gone.
"Then why don't you feel the same for Kyle? Your friend who has stuck by you past every argument, your friend who still wants to spent time with you, your friend who still loves you?" she asked, almost pleading with the cracks in her voice.
"Because maybe my limits are a lot lower than you think they are. Maybe you give me too much credit," I responded quietly, almost a whisper.
"No. I just believe in you more than you believe in yourself," she whispered, matching my voice, "You know, you're so smart that I sometimes forget you're still a high schooler-- just a sixteen year old who hasn't figured out how to make nice with the people around you."
"If you want to date someone who can make nice, you should date someone in your age range," I reponded, getting increasingly annoyed.
"No," she said, "I love my little unsociable retard."
"Whatever," I said as I pulled away, but she pulled me right back.
"Oh no you don't. You can leave if you want, but I still want a taste if you," and I really didn't want her to keep going because I hate being around people when I feel like this, I wish I could just curl up in a ball and disappear, and never have to think about another person again, and I wanted to push her off and go home so I could be alone in my room with my journal and my notes but I didn't, because I know how she is, and I love her, the only person left who cares about me, and I really don't want to start another argument over it.
...
Lately I've been having dreams about high school, but these aren't simulacra of memories like dreams tend to be-- floaty, abstract, and unreal-- these are one-to-one, vivid replicas of moments that had happened to me years ago when I was still on Earth. Every time I fall asleep, I experience half an hour of déjà vu, and every emotion and thought and feeling I never wanted to have assaults me like it's happening for the first time. Although there's one difference. The perspective is in 2nd person-- like a Brain Dance from Cyberpunk 2077, or a work camera from Source Filmmaker (I can't express how deeply I miss video games and anime for that matter. They were my escape from reality when reality became too difficult to bear, and now I'm in a situation where amI could theoretically play video games and watch animr all day every day without consequences and I don't have access to either of them. I wish the previous Archmagus's found a way to make them exist, like they did with high rise buildings and rail transit and ramen but they are the result of a forn of globalism that clearly doesn't exist in this world). My dreams allow me to move around and inspect the scene and see things I couldn't see from the 1st person perspective of my body. The difference from these video games is that I feel and think everything my body experiences. I wish I could close my eyes but I don't, I don't have eyes... I wish I did so I could close them (have I said that before? I can't even tell apart my own menories. These dreams are rotting my mind away). Maybe I need to stop writing about them.
But, I can't stop thinking about Sophie, and the content of these dreams deserve to be recorded somewhere (if I had access to a database like I did for her, maybe I could organize something legible, but I would need to learn Library Magic and improve my Paper Magic-- at least according to Sophie). No, I mean Chloe. I don't know what's happening to me. I'm having feelings and thoughts and connective memories that I haven't thought about in year and they're torturing me. Chloe reminds me of her, especially after that night in bed. I wanted to-- I did! I wanted to keep going with her because she makes me feel some kind of way that helps me move past these unbearable feelings (about dungeons, about rescuing Kei, about commanding armies), but the entire time, memories of Sophie kept surfacing and it's like I've been tainted. I feel disgusting. I just want to run away and be alone and I don't know why it feels so impossible. I hate feelings. I can't name them, I can't categorize them, and I know nothing about them. I'm epistemically and ontologically bankrupt. All I know is they hurt, just like they hurt Nat, and I want them to go away. I'm glad I have my notebook. My journal. Diary. Are you reading this Remi? Tell me what I'm supposed to do. This is torturous.
The 4th Rule allows me to rewrite history, and the best part is nobody remembers it. I can erase objects from existence and nobody-- not Chloe, not Fymner, not Stratus, not even the Church-- will know. Chloe's been pushing the idea of a diverse Cabinet on me, and it's not that I disagree, but even the President of the United States can veto a bill (below a super majority, reasonably). The 4th Rule is an implicit power granted to me (metaphorically as head-of-state) by the Rules of Respawn (metaphorically as an internal Constitution) that allows the extrajudicial (extracongressional?) decision to alter the course of history, forward and backwards, and unlike an actual Congress, no supermajority (or even unanimous) vote could revoke the decision. I almost wish I could "Rule 4" my memories or feelings or thoughts away so I could forget Sophie, but maybe that would just apply a Clementinian "Eternal Sunshine" effect on me and I would be stuck