To Walk the Constellations Pt. 05

The red thread's final destination.

TECH

The room was advanced in a way that reeked of the old magic. Of the Domain. Of the time before the Chain fell, before empire became a way of the stars. When people dreamed and built asteroid cities, rather than scrabbled for what they could cling too. It reminded me of the hulked ship that I had made my home, but new and shining where my ship had been so much decay and filth and silence. The room was circular, about five, six meters wide. The walls were smooth silver, and the center of the room had a pillar that bulged in the center, becoming almost disk shaped at slightly higher than head height. The area below the diskish outcropping had a gleaming black screen set on it -- and the screen was blank.

It was comptech. A serious, powerful chunk of it. Not a distributed system, not a handheld. This was the processing power to crack planets, all in a single pillar.

I shivered, feeling a sense of awe. A growing, sniffling sense. Looking at it made me think if only I could hand it over to Tiar, I could be set for life. I shook my head slowly, and instead walked forward.

Omega stood, silently, by the door, looking as awed as I was.

"Hello?" I whispered to the comptech.

"You did it."

Omega and I both spun. My blade roared to life, red and furious. Omega leveled his revolver -- who knew how many shots it actually had.

Standing in the door, his mask in his hands, was Arthur F.

ARTHUR, UNMASKED -- PART ONE

Arthur was not as handsome as I'd think a vampire should have been. He had a round, chubby set of cheeks -- which wasn't what made him handsome. It was more this weakness to the chin, a strange lilt to the nose. Each part, by itself, could have been handsome or cute or winsome or sigh-worthy. But put together, with the personality that animated them as it did, they were simple blandness. The only character to his unmasked face was a small, drawn on face-catapiller -- pencil thin and twisty. Like he was jealous of Omega's silliness.

He dropped the mask to the ground. It didn't shatter, though it felt like it should.

"This is it!" he whispered.

"What is it?" I asked. "Did...you want...you wanted me to find this? Why did you set everyone on me?"

Arthur tore his eyes from the comptech. "What? I could raise you from the dead." He gestured to the comptech. "This controller is the source of our pain and our torment. Ever since the phage transformed us into these cursed creatures you see, we have been kept here by the device...by the controller. If we die, the controller returns us to this mockery of life. This unlife." He breathed slowly in, then breathed slowly out, a long sigh. "Please, I beg you. Bring it to life. The Controller...I must know why. I must learn why this has been done to us."

I looked at him. "You've been running...these death races...for how many years to try and find a Liminal Knights?"

Arthur looked at me. He blinked. "Oh. No. That was smashing good fun."

SOMEHOW, I MANAGED TO NOT KILL HIM

I turned back to the comptech and glared at it. I reached out, my mind touching its machine thoughts. I felt it answering to me, nimble and quick. Words appeared on the screen -- and to my amusement, Arthur looked completely flummoxed. He couldn't read it.

I couldn't either.

But...

With a twist, I dragged the words into my mind, dragged them through centuries, and found my Djinn more obliging to translate them. But, at the end of the day, they made as little sense in my tongue as they did in the olden one.

VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE

THEATER OF THE MIND -- ULTIMATE EDITION

Game Settings

Quit Game

Game Time: 98,287,143 hours, 43 minutes, 23 seconds

"What?" I asked.

Arthur giggled. It was a high pitched squeaking giggle. It cut through his cultured tones and his reserve and his control. His eyes bugged. His hands went to his cheeks. He grabbed them and started to laugh and laugh and laugh. He stepped backwards, his laugh growing higher and higher. Then, at last, he shouted: "How pointless! How pointless!" And he started to stagger backwards as my fingers tapped at buttons. On the Tiamat, I had gotten shown how you could work comptech with your hands. Bringing up game settings, I started to figure out what it was.

The controller...controlled a game. A vast game of conspiracy and make belief.

A game of vampires.

And the settings were programmed to not allow death of any players. I shook my head slowly, so stunned, so completely gobsmacked by what this meant, I barely heard the click. I looked and saw Omega, leveling his pistol at the controller, his focus clear.

"No!"

I leaped.

And the gun roared.

BEING SHOT

Being shot is not fun. The bullet kicked me in the shoulder like an broken piston pump. It jerked my shoulder and sent blood spraying in a thick, red splurt that splashed along the silvery ground. When I crashed to the floor, my entire side felt as if it had been set on fire. I screamed out my pain and clutched at my arm, hissing hard. "F-Fucking ow!"

Omega, his eyes wide, his jaw hanging open in shock, looked at me. He let his pistol hang limp on his finger. "Lassie! W-What the bloody hell did you do that for?!"

I hissed and managed to prop myself up against the sleek silver column. I gritted my teeth and clapped my hand over my shoulder. Blood poured between my fingers and I trembled in pain, glaring right at Omega. "What the flip is wrong with you, Omega?" I snarled. "What the fuck were you doing?"

"I..." Omega looked at me, then at the controller. "I was putting this planet to its peace. These vampires have been suffering for ten thousand years, all for a goddamned game. By Jesus Christ and all her saints, it's sick!"

"It's life!" I snapped. "You didn't democracy em! How many goddamn vampires live here? A million? A billion? You can't kill a billion people from a gut punch reaction about some ancient Domain era plaything!" I started to stand, my knees knocking together. "These people, for all their sick and their evil, deserve more than that, Omega."

He looked at me, his eyes wide as saucers.

Then a great big furred black hand clapped around his throat and he made a gurgling urkkk sound as Mal thundered into the room. He held Omega up, and bellowed at him. "You shot my shipmate, you sorry excuse for a gladiator!" He shook Omega, making Omega's legs flip and flop wildly. I almost wanted to pass out from relief and piss myself from terror. Mal was so fucking huge, but he was normally so very gentle. Looking at him like this, big and tough and terrible, I realized just how nasty an uplifted gorilla could get. Behind and past him came Techne and Rossk. Rossk was holding a rifle in his hands, and Techne had a pistol, but she holstered it.

"Venn!" She cried out.

I grinned, weak as a kitten. "Hey..."

Techne cupped my cheek.

OUCH

So, uh. Getting a bullet dug out by an autodoc patch and getting the wound lasered shut for future nano-attention?

It fucking hurt.

RED, GREEN, BLUE

Mal was convinced, after a bit of patting and soft cooing, to set Omega down before Omega's neck snapped, or he throttled. Arthur was left where he was, curled up on the floor, whimpering and gasping. And me and my crew were all left, looking at the comptech controller. Once I'd explained what I found, each one had a different flavor of an idea.

"Gotta admit," Rossk said. "Part of me says smash it. It may be a toy, but in the wrong hands, it can totally fuck a planet." He nodded. "Look round at Em and Em for proof of that."

Mal shook his head. "This could be used to give everyone here amazing physical and mental abilities," he said, his eyes glittering. "If it can turn them into immortal bloodsuckers, surely, it could grant even more magical abilities, no?"

Techne, leaning in close to check the autopatch on my shoulder, clicked her tongue against her chrome teeth. "I don't think any of us has a right to choose that. We're just visitors, aren't we?"

I rubbed my shoulder. And then I realized, each of them was looking at me.

"W-What are you looking at me for?" I asked.

"You're the Knight," Mal said. "Anything we decide, it doesn't really matter. You're the one who can command the Machines and magic of yesteryear. It'd take me years to crack the code for this thing. And that's assuming I could translate the text without you." He smiled -- but I could feel like his calm was only a light sheen, a wrapping around a trembling anger and fear.

I gulped.

I was a newbie Knight. I had just gotten my sword, just barely been taught the very basics. Wasn't deciding this kind of shit for people who'd already made it to Home, then come back, with their powers secured and tightly gripped? But those Knights weren't here. They were trapped up the Chain by the Hegemony. I closed my eyes and wished, sorely, to dream. To be with Thale. To have him tell me what to do. To know the right answer. I could almost feel his lightly clawed fingers rasping along my shoulders, his voice soft in my ear.

And what would he say?

Uh...

My cheeks heated.

I had no idea. If I knew, then I wouldn't want so bad to hear it.

I tossed my head, then looked back at the comptech. The decisions were sitting there -- each a different flavor of change. The destructive red of smashing, the smooth green of enhancement, the bright blue of freedom. But what if they made the wrong choices? Everyone here had been twisted by ten thousand years of being...this. Being what they were. But what good was wanting to free the weak and empower the righteous if I didn't trust em to make the right calls when they had too? What good was belief if it had exceptions.

I breathed out. "I know what I want to do."

A KINDNESS

I rested my palm on the screen, my eyes closed. I reached into the welcoming Machine. It was so happy, so very eager to have me tell it what to do. It had done its job without tiring, without getting distracted, without being distress or disturbed...and if I told it to shut everything down and to go to sleep for another ten thousand years, it'd do it with a cheerful whistle, a wave and a wink.

But I didn't.

Rather...I did. But I didn't.

There were codes to end the game, hard stop. And there were codes to adjust the rules. To change what they meant. And there was one in particular that made clear what had to be done. It was a single checkbox, but it was chained to a billion billion exquisitely complex programs. Nanites by the trillion were rerouting thoughts, suppressing hormones, providing injections of new gray matter, all with a singular goal. If I had needed to cut that Gordian knot all by my lonesome, I'd have been here till the suns died.

As it was?

I just had to uncheck the box: BAN OOC CHAT.

OOC.

Translation?

Out Of Character.

ARTHUR F, UNMASKED -- PART TWO

The groan made me open my eyes. I turned and saw Arthur opening his eyes. He sat up, rubbing his temple. "Ugh..." He mumbled. "What the fuck?" He blinked, then saw us. His brow furrowed. "Are you sundivers?" He bit his lip, slightly, hooking fangs over the edge of his mouth. "What are you doing here, this is a GM's sanctum." He jerked his thumb to the door, to the two untranslated runes. GM. Gamemaster.

I grinned, slightly. "Uh, hey, Arthur?" I asked.

"That's my character," he said, rubbing his neck. "My name's..." He paused. "I...can't remember..."

I smiled, weakly. "Uh, so, it's been ten thousand years."

"What!?"

UP UP AND AWAY

Compared to the excitement of charioteer and the drama of a moral quandary like what to do with the controller, everything that happened after Arthur's stunned, gaped, shocked flabbling was pretty boring. The vampire government called all the vampires together with their com system and a consensus was reached worryingly fast: Most people had no idea who they were. They weren't their character, though. Ancient, nerve-bits were coming to life, and while true memory of the past had faded, they were able to think like people, not...mopy immortals.

And they were able to make changes to rules. One of them was that people could become human again -- quitting out and letting the nanophage that had sustained them for so long simply return them to mortality.

And what about the Tiamat?

We left. We left as fast as we could -- even though I'd have liked to get more than a chance to see Omega onto a sundiver that needed a new crewman, to wave as he walked up the gangplank onto another shuttle. I'd have liked a reward. But Techne put it quite clear: "This place is going to be crawling with the Hegemony once the Victrix starts climbing up the ladder. And they're going to mention you. So, we're going."

On the way up, I asked the important question.

"S-So, who fucked with us?" I asked.

"I've been studying Techne's memories," Rossk said, his tail lashing as he looked down at a piece of comptech in his hands. "And doing diagnostics. And it wasn't a Liminal Knight that did this -- that'd have left no trace. There's mild corrosion here, and there's bits of tampering here." He sighed. "It was the Controller that did it."

"The big controller?" Techne asked. Then she hissed. "Fuck, my brain needs more opsec now."

I snickered. "The controller was built to make stories for the Domain's kids. I guess it must have heard me -- and realized I'd be a great plot point..." I sighed as the shuttle cleared the edge of the solar shade. Stars twinkled and the sun shone as we rose towards the Tiamat. "But what about the Alliance contact?"

"Oh, I found her," Techne said.

"Annnd?" I asked.

"The Victrix is climbing up the Chain," she said, frowning. "And according to our spies past Stumble, it's gained two new Hegemonic Knights. Lord Drak got reinforcements from somewhere." She shook her head. "We're loaded with ice and antiprotons, but we're going to need to hurry to keep ahead of the Victrix's spindrive." She clicked her tongue. "There's almost a dozen worlds between us and the only place that can be safe."

"Where's that?" I asked.

"The cloud palace of Atom," Mal said, grinning at me. A big old toothy grin. "The finest city in the Chain, if you ask me."

"He's just saying that cause he's from there," Rossk murmured in my ear. I realized just how close in two huge hunky boys were to me. My whole body felt like it had been wrung completely out and I was trembling and twitching from adrenaline. My cheeks flushed and I stammered hummed and erred.

FALLING TOWARDS THE SUN -- A KISS

The Tiamat soared towards Masque Macabre's sun and I sat on one of the observation blisters and looked out at the stars. It was a different set of constellations, each glittering in their velvet black curtains. I shivered and looked down at my threshold blade, which sat on my knees. I lifted it up, feeling the weight. Why hadn't it worked? What had hesitated me? Or was it something in the blade that was wrong?

I held it up to the thin light in the room. I looked at the base, the side. My brow furrowed. There was a glyph written on the bottom -- a small set of interlocking triangles. Three in all, surrounded by a single circle. The circle had a dozen or so tiny etchings -- straight lines and arcs, curving into runes. My brow furrowed even more. "What the-"

A rap rap rap at the door made me almost drop the most valuable thing in my life and the whole reason I was out here in the first place. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the door was filled by the bulk of Mal. He was smiling at me, somewhat sheepishly. "Didn't mean to disturb you, Venn."

I grinned, shyly. "No, no, it's okay," I said, scooting so my back was pressed against the hard diamond of the observation dome. My back to the stars. It made me want to go all shivery. Then I saw that Mal, moving on a hand and a foot, was leaving a hand and foot free to hold cups that steamed. His leg swung forward and I took the cup from his foot, my brow furrowing. "Why is this drink hot?" I asked. "Is it to kill the bugs? Cause the bugs on Stumble have evo'd to survive some boiling, but if you-" I trailed off at Mal's look. He shook his head.

"It's hot to taste good, Venn," he said.

My cheeks heated. My dots were all visible. I looked down at my cup. "R-Right. Thanks." I bit my lip, looking into the dark liquid. "It's not just drink?"

"You mean water?" he asked.

I nodded.

He chuckled. "It's an ancient Home drink called hot chocolate."

I narrowed my eyes. "What's chocolate?" I asked.

"A plant that's been kept in a state of perpetual, evolutionary stasis by the single-minded, obsessive human sweet tooth for uncounted generations," Mal said, his voice cheerful as he blew on the top of the cup, sending the steam sheeting away. "Now-"

I knocked the cup back. Fire. Scorch. Pain. Choke. Death. I coughed, spluttered, and hot chocolate spilled all along my chest as Mal gaped at me. "You need to sip it, Venn!"

"Augh!" I coughed, then snorted. "Augh, I think some went up my nose!"

Mal let out a loud, belly deep laugh. His free hand slapped his belly and he laughed even more when he caught a sight of my dourful face. I scowled, then set what was left of my hot chocolate down on the ground by my knee. I hefted up my threshold blade. "I have a deadly laser sword, you know?"

He knuckled at his eyes, wiping the tears away. "Oh, I know, I know. I tremble in my boots, Venn." He reached into one of his many, many, many pockets and tugged out a napkin. I took it and wiped my face clean, smiling despite myself.

"You don't wear boots."

Mal chuckled. "Why, you are right, I do not."

I let the napkin settle in my hands, setting them in my lap. "So, Mal...thanks for finding me."

He coughed into his hand, then sipped his drink. "Well, uh, I'd do it for any member of the crew."

"Even Rossk?" I asked, grinning at him -- planning to tease the big ape a bit. But he looked so flustery that my heart did a little skip. Wait, what? He didn't meet my eye, but instead, chugged back a swallow on his hot chocolate so hard that I was worried he was gonna go like I did. Instead, he wheezed and pointed at the windows.

"W-Want to learn the names? Here? Of these stars?" he asked, voice sounding raw and stripped.

I blushed. I blushed so hard, I was shocked I had blood for the rest of me. My nod was quick and muted -- and for the next hour or so, Mal told me the names Masque Macabre sundivers had given to their clusters of stars. It wasn't from the Em and Em surfacers themselves -- the vampires had been under the great big solar shield for so long. But the names flowed out of my brain as fast as they went in, leaving me only with the comforting burr of his voice, his rumbling voice.

At last, though, he yawned and said: "We should be hitting the tanks soon. Inject is in only a few days and a slow build up is safer."

"Yeah." I nodded. And absently, I leaned in and kissed his cheek. It was a quick, soft, casual peck. My lips hovered near and my cheeks heated and I scrambled to my feet, slamming my head into the ceiling. I grunted, hard, and through the haze of pain, said: "Tank you, bye, gotta go thanks! Bye!" And then sprinted off.

Fast.

TO BE CONTINUED