Chapter 15-16 Threshold (I)

Chapter 15-16 Threshold (I)

You have no idea the heights from which we fell.

We. Humans. Humanity. Us and the voiders at a time before time; before the gods and fissures bleeding over into the real. Before Idheim itself was ever a thing.

No idea.

They didnt torture me when I was discovered. Not really. Not in the ways we imagine. Instead, they just let me live in a simulation of a world that was, let me feel what was lost, and then dropped me back outside.

I lived a lifetime in a world of mundane miracles and quiet wonders. I I strode the stars. The existence that belonged to our forebearers... There were no gods thenno ruptures or Heavens or Hells or twisted distortions in the tapestry of reality.

Everything was the foundational world perfected. They harnessed fundamental laws to achieve wonders that we squander with our impossible powers. Ive seen them cradle stars in ships the size of our planet. Ive seen them move systems into and out of placelived on an Arm-Drifter during the reshuffling of Orion. I fought in a thousand worlds and burned a million worlds and destroyed a billion vessels yet took no life for the flesh and the self was parted.

I lived freer and truer and happier than I have everI have ever

I want to go back. I dont want this world, this nightmare, this poison! I dont want to leave the dark! I dont want to return to you! Oh, god, oh [PRE-PANTHEON DEITY REDACTED], they sent me away. They let me know and sent me away.

[Sobbing laughter]

Those those half-strands. This they didnt even need to twist my mind. Just knowledge of loss. This is enough. This is enough. Im I cant take this I cant remember this.

Take the memories out of me! Take them out! Ill kill myself if I remember! I kill myself!

-Former Sleeper Therese Therrin after her extradition back to Ori-Thaum at the hands of Voidwatch for crimes of espionage

15-16

Threshold (I)

True to Dentons words, the second visual display manifested over his cog-feed in trailing strings of solid lettering. There was a naked clash of aesthetics between the vaporous glow of ghosts and the solid blocks shunted from a still growing coldtech extension of his mind.

{Detecting stack

Unable to find expansive consciousness storage

Generating

Generating

Generating

Error: Unable to generate ego (Problem: Abnormal scan results)

Please contact your local EGI for further instructions

Ego generation failed, Avo muttered.

Thats fine, Denton replied, her own thoughstuffs a swirl of static constellations. Narrow funnels of mem-data threaded to and from her accretion at a staggering pace, and with the way her eyes were darting, he guessed she was interfacing with multiple messages at the same time. Its not an unexpected issue. The Conflagration is designed to eat and collapse EGIs themselves, so youll have to use your Sprites to link your cog-feed to your deck.

She spoke, he willed, and his mind changed once more. As the flames of his ego roiled, stitch by churning stitch threaded into the nanomechanical mental amplifier spreading through his brain matter, the clash between his two HUDs flickered, snapped together. All of a sudden his awareness onboarded, and numbers began to surge through his mind.

Necrojack entailed some limited coding while one was delving through mem-data or filtering for specific sequences, but what he faced now left him drowned in ignorance. Complex strings shot out like accelerating trains along the curve of his mind's eye. New display windows opened across the stretch of his perception and he found scant few points of understanding.

Updating biometrics

Warning: No heartbeat detected.

Users oxygen circulation abnormal

Users oxygen intake abnormal

Updating user morphological classification

Designation: Category-Plus Adaptive

Plus Adaptive? Avo asked.

Its trying to gauge your physiology to better optimize your biological functions, Denton explained. Youre getting a rating for your complexity and distance from natural human baseline. Plus means you are slightly more enhanced.

Slightly, Avo grunted. If a baseline ghoul was glass, then a flat would be tissue. To consider himself something just slightly above the category of natural human seemed

He reached a more likely conclusion: Voidwatchs clades simply ran a far vaster spectrum than those contained on New Vultun. Augmentations were relative, and so too were the clades. The Scaarthians, Kosgans, Ori, Sang, and others all had their little traits. The voiders were probably even more diversified in that regard.

Adaptives are designed toward surviving and propagation. Not so common for humans to occupy such a variant, but bioforms designed to seed a newly discovered world often gain such genetic traits during their creation. There are over four thousand other variants of morphology and three adaptional categories of separation beyond plus classified under the terms next, hyper, and ultimate. Denton took a breath as her thoughtstuff slowed substantially. Dont take these categories too seriously. They were primarily used by the Einherjar Leagues to separate their spheres of conflict for their seasonal war tournaments.

Avo understood nothing about what she just said, and neither did his templates. What?

She blinked and noticed the confusion leaking from his mind. It is a popular form of entertainment. Citizens scan their egos into various morphological sheathes and engage in combat across sections of the colonized galaxy bearing the anarchic designation. This is unimportant. Have you connected your Sprites?

Yes.

Alright, Denton sighed. At least Omnitech is good for something today.

There was much to unpack behind her words, but Avo found himself more curious at the fact of her denigration. Denton had proven neutral and measured in dialogue for as long as he could remember, yet here was an openly negative remark. Curious.

A low profile is the point, she said, giving him a polite smile. A few lines of data ran through their link.

Preparating Ansible for hyperwave transmission

Connecting to Threshold (55%)

The connectivity between their minds stuttered again. New warnings appeared about how his current deck wasnt able to download a full imprint of his consciousness this time, and how he needed to make reductions. He willed his flames to swallow all templates and memories aside from him and Benhata. A final slur was hurled from Abrel toward the Silver, but if the fallen Glaive cared, it was less than it took for him to feel. {+Just you and me now.+}

[Yeah,] Benhata said, swallowing back a pit of anxiety opening in his nonexistent stomach. [Just me, the man-eating monster dreaming me into existence, the voider plant, and the void gods themselves.]

Unnerved by how total a consciousness Benhatas template seemed, Denton pressed her lips together. Let him go too. Hes not a self-aware entity. Not truly since hes tied to you but holding a fork of someone elses mind after killing them in enforced servitude is definitely against the charters.

Avo blinked. Voidwatch cares about that?

The look of quiet despair behind her eyes told him all he needed to know.

Benhata sighed. [Thanks plant. Here I was glad to exist a while longer. Back to the Big Nothing again.]

The faintness of Dentons wince as Benhata vanished was almost imperceptible.

Connecting to Threshold (88%)

Going to be much harder now that I can only draw on memories, Avo said, grimly. They want this? My diminishment? Baseline? Show they can have the upper hand?

Voidwatch is uninterested in posturing, she said. We are, however, very keen about our ethics. It has taken me substantial effort to have Aegis overlook some of your previous actions. If you remember one thing, remember this: Voidwatch cares about human life. All human life. We prefer to preserve above all else. There are so few of us left after all.

Connected to Threshold (100%)

A building sphere of concentrated static and electric impulses began to collapse inward at the core of her mind. On the precipice of a departure, Avo swallowed a taste of melancholy from the Columner as she took a breath.

Are you ready? Denton asked.

Yeah, Avo said, unsure if he was lying. Ill keep what you said in mind. I will consider life to have inherent value when I speak.

The corner of her lip twitched. Looks like well make a saint out of you yet.

Uploading stacks to Threshold

Entering virtuality

Avos perception of the world shrank as the walls rushed through him after collapsing into needle-sized tunnels. A sightless horizon was accelerating toward him and his minds new amplifier was singing with an onrush of data that he just couldnt read.

Moments passed, but his consciousness never faded. There was no lurch between being awake and unconscious as there was in a deep dive, and he felt the building strain in his Sprites more than ever as details flowed from his Meta into his deck in a constant stream.

He wondered if he could reach past the blockade of coldtech with his fires and burn Denton regardless. He wondered if he could set the entirety of the voiders lobby ablaze

Pillars of light and color twitched into existence and hammered down across his perception as his awareness snapped together in full. Avo loaded into his new environment with a twitch in a manner not so unlike how he returned to reality post-resurrection. This lobbyno, too limited a descriptionthis virtual plane buried its teeth into his senses and rooted him in place immediately.

There was no period of adjustment. There was no confusion or active sequencing via ghosts.

He simply was, and Threshold followed in perfect wholeness.

Welcome to Threshold

Setting stack-identifier to private

Spawn-point: Avalon

Water ran beneath his talons, but he did not sink into the deep. Instead, he took a step back and watched the crystalline currents ripple. The volume of birdsong struck his senses like a shiv and each inhale made him choke from how fragrant the very air was. The horizon fell in drops of twilit reverie as mists lifted around to reveal a pale palace rising into the clouds from atop a nearby island.

From below, the waters began to rumble as a marble bridge rose into being, forming something between a columned pathway toward the fortifications and aqueduct from all the water it still cupped.

Letting the scene settle, Avo looked around and found no shortage of detail no matter where he swept his gaze. Perhaps he or someone of White-Rabs caliber could sequence something like this into a mind by merit of power or skill, but even then there would be inconsistencies. Glitches incurred by clashes of understanding. Small hairline fractures in the mem-data.

What his deck fed him was beyond comprehension, and what he perceived was beyond fault.

This place was perfect. Pristine. Scenic.

Avo had to slice away his growing envy as he wondered if voiders were taunting him with this work of art.

From behind, a series of pitched creaks pulled at his attention. The waters peeled to announce the approach of Denton seated at the prow of a small angular boat made from wood, and on the other end sat a stranger in dark blue robes.

The curved vessel came to a halt next to Avo, and finally did he notice the dark feathered birds perched upon the newcomers shoulders and the two wolves that lay snoring by his feet.

Wordless heartbeats passed as Avo swept his gaze between Denton and the strangerwho Avo noted to be missing an eye from the empty dark in his right eye. Yet, as he drank in the visage of the stranger, he too felt himself judged on a level he couldnt describe.

Do you wish to tread water or sail with us, the stranger asked. His voice was quiet, clear, and absolutely inhuman. An impossible weight existed behind every syllable, as if the stranger could call upon this world to strike Avo down, and all of it would listen and obey.

Would like to know the benefits, Avo stated plainly. More than two options. Could try stealing the ship from you. Could turn and walk away. Could run. Could see if I can make my own. Why do you want me to board? Who are you? Aegis?

Light struck the strangers face from the side, and in a moment more befitting cinema than reality, the brightness lit the strangers aged, grizzled features. I am to Aegis what a ghost is to you. Come aboard. Save us the time. Let us talk as an older myth greeting one younger. Then as the heart of man, to the heart of that which follows. I wish to see your true nature.

Avo offered a quiet laugh and spread his fangs. Wont take long.