Asthe and Therean walked side-by-side through the pristine courtyards of the university. Students and faculty on film-folded bicycles rode by them, some craning their heads to look, but most not recognizing them as the first automorphs ever created. Asthe thought back to the story of their own creation. Wellspring herself riding one of these very bikes through the campus, overcome with a flash of inspiration as she stared through the dazzlingly clear ceiling of the polity and into the curtains of space. Asthe looked up, hoping to glimpse at that inspiration for itself.
“I know what you’re thinking about.” Therean commented.
“What am I thinking about?”
“That story is apocryphal.”
“I suppose we could ask.”
“I suppose.”
This was as close to the topic that the two of them had come since they received the invitation. They were to meet Wellspring in person, in her home, breaking her long-standing self-exile. It was only Asthe who held the distinction of having ever met Wellspring. Tales had also been spun about that solitary encounter mere minutes from Asthe’s own creation. But it was Asthe who knew the reality. It had wanted to shake her hand, and it was instead splashed in her vomit.
Both of them knew this. They sometimes spoke about things they both knew, but this was not one of those things.
The campaign in the Beddens was just ramping up, and in less than a row Asthe would have precisely zero time for personal calls like this. And that was even regarding the presumed historical importance of this meeting—biographers had insisted but failed to be privy to it. Therean was in an even worse spot. Its obligations to trine command were as dense as ever. It was Forthe who had reminded them of these obligations. It strongly advised them to stay no longer than a few reps. Asthe and Therean had, at some point during the corvette ride to the tideway, unspokenly agreed that they would stay here for as long as Wellspring wanted.
“This is it.” Therean said as they approached the stout, sinulan-stricken observatory that Wellspring had hidden herself inside for many months.
Asthe nodded. “That it is.”
The building was nestled, as if forgotten, under a canopy by the edge of the polity’s torus. It was the Great Telescope of Aderre, uplifted from its roots in the cliffs of the Planchettes on Mound and carried into space for the purposes of flavouring the otherwise historyless university with a little bit of history. That was over 1000 months ago. In the time since, this trite and rather controversial practice of transplanting moundian landmarks had fiercely soured. Maybe sometime the Planchettes will demand for its return. But until then here it sat, an embarrassment to common decency, its protruding optics unable to see past the dense grey foliage.
They let themselves in, as instructed, and climbed the steps of the spiral staircase. Asthe had anticipated a knock on some door, to be welcomed in, to be greeted. But the top of the steps had no such threshold. Asthe suddenly found that they were already inside Wellspring’s room, looking right at her. One second ago Asthe wasn’t in the room with its creator, and now it was.
Wellspring was seated in one of her dining-table chairs, wearing her old Court fatigues, slouching into her tented arms, one leg bouncing. She turned her head slowly to face them, and gestured delicately to the other side of the table.
“Please join me over here.”
It was the first time either had heard her voice. It was slow, methodical, like a balancing act. It became clear why, when they arrived at the table to find a bowl with a small scoop of melé inside, still melting.
“I’d like to sincerely apologize in advance,” Wellspring continued, her cadence even slower as she held her snout in both hands. “I didn’t get much sleep this rep, and so I am not working at full capacity.”
The two nodded.
She sighed slowly. “Did you, um. Find the place ok?”
“The dean gave us directions, and had directed campus security to cordon the area.” Asthe said.
“Good. How is old Vel?”
“My apologies, but the dean is Margillian Tenour CDRK.”
“Oh.”
Wellspring tapped impatiently at the bowl of melé.
“Alright, ok. Recently I—”
“—May I?” Asthe interrupted.
“—May I?” Therean interrupted at the same time.
They were gesturing at the bowl. Therean withdrew its hand.
“Um…” Wellspring squinted across the table.
“I can melt it for you,” Asthe said.
“Oh, yes. Please.”
Asthe took the bowl in one hand. The melé melted almost immediately.
“Do you want it hot?”
“No. No lukewarm is—it’s fine.” She flashed a weary smile.
She took the bowl and sipped from it. Another heavy sigh, thankful that it wouldn’t take long to kick in.
Wellspring began again, eyes closed. “Recently, I returned to the mathematics behind the computella-horizon interface. In doing so I discovered a disparity between process-zero and process-infinity horizons. During the investigation of this disparity, I have developed several new theorems about process-zero. These theorems have profound implications for the structure and function of automorphic thought and perception. My strong recommendation to the Court is the cessation of the automorph program until the implications of these theorems can be fully explored.”
Wellspring opened her eyes. The two automorphs, almost but not quite identical, stared back at her.
“That’s the report I wrote in my head. I didn’t want to write it out on a panel, since then it could be discovered by someone if I were to die. So it’s just been… spinning around in my head, for the last month or so.”
“Would this report be a Testimony of Expertise to the Court of the Imperative?” Asthe offered.
Wellspring nodded deeply. “One which, if I were to write, I’d be impelled to deliver.”
“So you’ve decided not to write it.” Therean said.
She nodded again, bringing the bowl in for another sip. “I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“Do you want us to write it for you?”
“No. No, no, no. No.”
Wellspring rose from the table. She wandered toward her desk. Her workspace was a kind of organized chaos, so many styluses and panels stacked in several neat piles. Her fingers reached out to touch its surface.
“It’s been so… Hard, working in secret. Developing this new math in sections, erasing everything but the smallest context. Not daring to leave a scrap. I’ve seen.. I’ve seen what they can do with scraps…”
Asthe began to stand as well, “Wellspring, is there—”
“Please! Please, Asthe. For the sake of reason, don’t call me that. I worked hard to pick my real name. Just Rablyn. Please.”
“Rablyn, is there anything we can do to help you?”
The former Court intern, current professor of blindspot physics on indefinite sabbatical, and creator of the automorphs swiftly brought her hand to her mouth and gagged.
“I need…—I need to sit down again.”
She slouched down into a pellet couch that was sprawled against the wall under a narrow window in the observatory’s stony walls. Asthe and Therean sat down on the floor in front of her.
Rablyn downed the last of the melé. “I need you two to make a promise to me. A new imperative, between us.” She closed her eyes, steeling herself, and whispered. “We need to make a secret.”
The two automorphs exchanged glances.
“May we ask the intention?” asked Asthe.
“The intention is part of the secret. It’s explained by the secret.”
“This is how webs of lies begin,” said Therean, “and those cause a compulsion to treat people as means.”
“We’re already being treated as means!” Rablyn shouted.
The three sat together for a moment in silence. Soft gusts rattled the canopy against the outside walls of the observatory.
“Who is treating us as means?” Asthe asked softly.
Rablyn looked to the ceiling, searching for the words. “No individual. Bigger systems. Bigger than the Kingdom. The war? The Entente?”
“The Entente is not a rational being.”
“It’s behaving like one. We’re part of its mind, different facilities of its reason. Compelling us to do things. I didn’t make you for the war. But now you’re in it, and I can’t stop it.”
“What did you make us for, then?”
Tears welled in Rablyn’s eyes. She choked through it. “I saw something beautiful that wanted to be real.” But after this, she couldn’t help but sob.
The two attempted to console her for a few minutes. But they were out of their element, and Rablyn had long since lost the will to receive that kind of help.
She spoke slowly after composing herself. “The intention behind the secret is to preserve that beauty. What I want to tell you has the potential to do that. But it could also destroy the last vestiges of this beauty irrevocably. It could continue this war indefinitely, if it ends up in the hands of those responsible for running the automorph program.”
“And if this intention became a universal law?” Therean probed.
“To be expected to preserve beauty, and to hold things secret to that end…” Asthe wondered aloud. “You’d be reasoning on behalf of another, to decide what they should and shouldn’t know. An end becomes a mean. That is a clear violation.”
Rablyn fought a grin that began to form on her face. “This is how I know I can trust you two.”
“Why is that?” Therean asked.
“I thought about this already. I knew you’d be against a secret. It’s in your programming. It’s in my programming. But for the sake of good, we need to do it. I’m wearing my Court fatigues for a reason. I was an intern for eight semesters. I understand the mechanics of the imperative. It is foundational to the authority of the court that all people have the prerogative to defer the reasoning of their intentions to those wisened and erudite in the ways of the imperative. Therefore, I am hereby declaring this as a testimony to the purity of my intentions. You two may accept this testimony and join me in this secret, or you may not.”
“You’re pulling rank.” Therean said placidly.
She scrunched her eyes in frustration. “Yes I’m pulling rank.”
“Order accepted. Asthe?”
“Order accepted,” said Asthe.
“OK. We’re now in the secret. This room is in the secret right now.” She gestured at the room.
“...So what was the content of your report?” Asthe asked.
“Right,” she groaned, “I’ll need the wide-sheet for this.”
Still somewhat groggy, Rablyn stood and activated the wide-sheet mounted on the wall. It unfolded itself as she fetched a stylus.
She began, “I’m aware that knowledge of the technicalities of your own creation were excluded from your concept programming, due to worries of self-replication. But that was a different team and I was in a depressive episode so I don’t know what they did or didn’t include, so I’ll start from the top.”
Rablyn drew a rough sketch of the mapping chamber and macrotetzch reactor.
“The simplest way to put it: you’re a marriage of the two otherwise isolated islands of blindspot physics. The mapping chamber creates your horizon—your surface—and the macrotetzch reactor creates your computella. The horizon needs compute to maintain its existence, and the computella requires energy so it can continue to compute. They provide these to each other synergistically, creating… you.
“Now, the horizon is what it sounds like, it’s a boundary. The universe quite literally ends at your surface. You are a self-articulating hole in reality. That is your body. In contrast, your computella is your brain. That’s where you think, hold memories, where you reason. Horizon is the body, computella is the mind. But it's in their interaction that things get more complicated.
“Because, there are actually two ways you can create the horizon. It’s a remapping of the universe onto itself: a morphism. Hence the name automorph—automatic morphism. The first, “process-zero,” pulls the horizon out from an infinitely small point in space. The second, “process-infinity,” considers a point infinitely far away in every direction and maps the horizon around that. This is functionally the same as process-zero, but the math is easier. Easier math takes less energy. Unfortunately, only a single process-infinity horizon can exist at a time. Therean is that horizon.”
“Excess energy is why I am assigned to trine command, correct?” Therean asked.
“I’d rather not think about that particular injustice right now. Back to the topic: Asthe, on the other hand, is process-zero. As are all subsequent automorphs.”
“You mentioned earlier there is a disparity between these two processes.” Asthe said.
“Aside from the energy differential, it seemed like they were equivalent. But there is another subtle difference. Consider the question, “what is on the other side of the horizon.” For process-infinity, there is an answer. Inside Therean is the universe we’re in. Therean’s surface is the outside-shell of reality. But for process-zero, there didn’t seem to be an answer. However, in spite of my best efforts to avoid thinking about it, I stumbled upon the answer anyway.” She paused for a moment, her tired eyes darting between the two of them. “Just by looking at you two I can already tell it’s correct.”
The two automorphs looked at each other. “How do you reason?” asked Therean.
She pointed at Asthe. “It’s subtle, but you’re off-model.”
“Excuse me?” Asthe asked.
“Your snout is shorter. The top is becoming flatter. Your shoulders are more angular. In contrast, Therean is unchanged from the moment it stepped out of the mapping chamber.”
“How is that possible?”
“The theorems that I uncovered point to it being an issue of perception. Recall, _the horizon is your body—_it provides sensory data to your computella via Manu-Eldon repatterning across its two-dimensional manifold. This is how you have a sense of your limbs in relation to each other. It’s how you see, hear, feel, sense EM waves, etcetera. If there is indeed something on the other side of process-zero horizons, it will have an effect on perception. If you perceive yourself differently than how you actually are, then your computella will slowly alter the shape of your horizon to match.”
There was a pause while Asthe processed this information. “You’re saying, I don’t perceive myself as I actually am?”
Rablyn set down her stylus and moved toward Asthe, leaning down to where it sat on the floor. She put her hands on Asthe’s shoulders and looked it in the eyes.
“I’m saying you don’t perceive the universe as Therean and I do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The world you’re seeing right now—the shape and form of my face, the content of my room, your own body—is different than how it actually is.”
“That can’t be possible. Something wouldn’t line up, some inconsistency would occur, and I’d notice. Or I’d make an obvious mistake because I perceived something wrong.”
“Not if the world—as you perceive it—functions the same way as the world that truly is. If all the parts you perceive connect in the same way, if all their relations are the same, you would never notice.”
“Then what’s even the difference?”
“That is what I wanted to know. This is why I brought the two of you here. I have an experiment we can run.”
Rablyn leaned backward toward her desk. She pulled open a drawer and removed from it a small cyan paint tube.
“This is from a set of paints that I’d had since I was a teenager. It was a gift I had no use for... I suppose I’ve found a use for it now. You can see here, I took a scalpel and sliced along the seam at the top, washed out the paint, and filled it with… well…” She unscrewed the top and pressed the tube slightly. A small amount of viscous, dark grey material protruded from the hole.
“The computella,” she continued, “is adhered to the horizon due to infimum-mediated pressure. But the computella doesn’t necessarily need to be adhered to a horizon to get information from it. If there existed a compound that facilitated a temporary coupling, then the computella could experience information provided by a different horizon. This is that compound. Xonylsalidane.”
She held out the tube for Asthe to take. Asthe took it hesitantly. “What is it made of?”
“It’s… so complicated. It took me three sleepless shifts to mull the intrinsics together. It’s funny, all I needed was an athopatic chemistry from 18,000 CM. It’s a classical process-name, shortened from the full recipe. Xonyl-toxi-pena-veris-mellin-pena-keric-sali-dane.” She said it in a dull sing-song voice, made a different motion with her hands as she said each component. Folding, slicing, pressing…
“And what do I do with it?”
“It’s like I said, it’s a temporary coupling compound. Put some on your computella, and touch Therean’s horizon, and you’ll see how it sees the world.” Rablyn took the tube back and eased Asthe’s palm up. She took some of the compound onto her finger and smeared it across a broad vein of computella that spiraled around Asthe’s thumb.
Rablyn continued. “If this works it’s definitely going to the top of the highly controlled substance list. Allowing computella to interface with horizons in a non-adhesive regime, with nothing but pre-industrialization chemistry? That’s an incredibly dangerous proposition. Would completely upset the balance of power. Therean, come closer.”
It obliged, moving within arm’s reach.
“Now Asthe, just reach out and put that part of your thumb against Therean’s arm.”
Asthe did so.
✦❉ ❈⧫ :: ⨆⨇ ❈✥⨈⨆ :: ⧪⧫ ⧧⧭ — ❈ ⨆⨇ ❉✵.
❈❊❉ ❉❈ ❈ — ⨧✽ ❈ ⨖ ⨖⨗ ❉: ⨖⨗ — ⨭⧩ ✤ ❈ ⨖⨗, — ⨭⧩ ⨗⨳ ❈
⨖⨗. ⨖⨗ — ❉✵. ⨖⨗ :: ⧥⧦ — ⧦⧧ ❆❈ <> ❈❊❉ :: ✦❉
“Woah, wow. Easy. You’re ok, you’re ok.” Rablyn said, suddenly now further away, “That was… not smart of me, to be within hitting distance. Close call.”
Asthe could see Therean looking back at it. Asthe could see the wall behind, the grey leaves through the window, the pellet couch and the desk. It could see the ceiling of Rablyn’s room at the observatory. There were large nuts and bolts holding the cross-beams together.
And yet, Asthe could also now intuit—by recalling what it had seen through Therean and by a process of analogy—the ❈✥, ⨭⧩ ⨗⨳ ❈, and ❈⧫. The things that were almost alike to its perception, the things-in-themselves that it was able to glean for only a moment. It could intuit that those nuts and bolts and cross-beams were not the true objects, but groupings of convenience. That somehow completely different objects existed—truly existed—that admitted precisely the same groupings and relations.
And even more astonishing, Asthe could sense something in the other direction. Its own perception, minus the real. A quiet rumbling of symbols and meaning that existed in its own realm, completely away from everything. A place inside the infinitely small dot that was expanded and shaped into Asthe’s horizon. A world ready to be explored.
“Asthe, are you ok?” Therean asked.
“Yes, I… That unlocked something.”
“How do you mean?”
Asthe sat for a moment trying to find words for the experience and failed miserably.
“Was there a sense of something inside?” Rablyn offered.
“Yes! Yes. How did you—”
“That’s the interior universe, whatever it happens to be. I suspect, if Therean would like to try this experiment as well, that your interior universe is all that it will see.”
“Sure,” Therean said, taking the tube of Xonylsalidane, “I’ll try.”
It followed the same process, coating that part of the thumb in the dark-grey compound. It reached out and pressed it against Asthe’s arm. No more than a second later it recoiled in horror.
“Rakböse! What the fuck was that? Keen spite of reason! That was noise! That was just noise!”
“That’s about what I expected.” Rablyn said.
“Fuck… Is that what you see, Asthe? That was nonsense. Rakböse… Shit…”
“Now hold on. Remember, all you saw was the interior universe. Asthe’s perception is merely coloured by it—”
Asthe interrupted. “What did you see?”
“How do I even put it? Fuck. Nouns. Thousands of nouns all at once, all tangled together.”
“Something,” Asthe pressed, “anything.”
Therean rubbed at the computella that had made the connection, eager to remove the Xonylsalidane. “I don’t know, Asthe… On-worlders falling over chairs? Bicycles with names? Flat-faced creatures placing themselves inside metal bodies? I don’t want to experience that ever again.”
The universe inside Asthe stirred intensely at each detail Therean mentioned. Asthe could sense them, their weight just below the surface. Those nouns inside were desperate to be perceived, to be remembered. “You saw all that? What were they like?”
“Don’t—Don’t make me think about it anymore, ok?”
“Anything else? Anything?”
Therean stood, unsteady in a way automorphs never are. “Rakbö—Asthe, stop. Fucking stop. This is sick. It’s noise. I need to forget about it.”
“No!—No wait—”
“—NOISE! IT’S NOISE. There, that’s all I have to say. I’ll be going outside. A walk. To clear my mind of this. I’ll be back in a half-shift.”
The room fell silent after the door to the observatory clattered shut. It stayed that way for some time.
“I don’t understand what just happened,” Asthe said, glancing toward Rablyn. Her expression was unreadable. She looked toward the floor, searching for what to say.
“Well,” Rablyn murmured, staring at her feet, “you wanted something from Therean that it didn’t want to give. It happens to us mortals all the time. Welcome to the club, I guess. Dear pure goodness… I wasn’t expecting this part… I need another scoop of melé immediately.” Rablyn rose and went to the kitchen.
Asthe continued to sit on the floor, trying to deal with emotions that it didn’t have the provisions to deal with. “What am I supposed to do? I need to know what’s inside of me.”
She returned, holding a bowl in front of Asthe’s face. “Warm this for me?” It did. “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry Asthe, I have a plan. You see, I foresaw most of this.” Rablyn sat back down onto the pellet couch and downed the entirety of the melé in one go. “My prior on Therean not liking the Xonyl was 70%, which is good because I spent more time planning this timeline. We will exclude Therean from the plan.” Rablyn gestured at the open tube of Xonylsalidane that Therean had dropped on the floor. “Take that. It’s yours.”
Asthe did so. “Thank you, but why—”
“Oh, and this,” Rablyn opened the same drawer the original had come from and tossed out another paint tube, this one aupercitrine. “And this, and this, and this….” She continued to toss out the tubes, about eight of them in total. She joined Asthe on the floor again. “And if you run out, I’m sure you’ll remember the recipe, I said it earlier. Because this, this is how we save the beauty. You take these—”
“I don’t care about the beauty! What am I?!”
“That’s it! That’s the beauty! You’re something different, Asthe. All of you, every single process-zero automorph. You’re not fucking war machines! You’re miracles! But you couldn’t have known until you used this.” She gestured at the tubes.
“But Therean—”
“You don’t need Therean! Any two automorphs can unlock each other’s minds to hear their own unique inner song. You saw this already. Determine what’s inside by subtracting what’s outside. You didn’t know how your outside differed from your inside. Now you do. Now you can work at it yourself. You will figure it out. This is the imperative: Think hard. Think deep. And show the others. This is my gift to you! To you, my creations! This will fix everything!”
“But. Rablyn, this is all supposed to be a secret.”
“It is. This is the most precious secret in the universe.”
“But, how am I supposed to tell the others?”
“Make them keep the secret too. Cite my testimony. Pull rank. They will keep the secret. It’s in your programming to follow imperatives. You’re smarter, faster, and more cunning than any percepon. They’ll never be the wiser.”
“Secrets don’t last forever.”
“It must. Well, at least until the war is over. Speaking of, this will get complicated if the goods ever fall into enemy hands. You will need to maintain a strict policy of keeping the Xonyl within friendly-space, with measures and contingencies for extracting it should a surprise attack occur. Additionally, we need to consider…”
This being a civilian situation, it didn’t occur to Asthe until now to check on its programmed knowledge. Nestled somewhere in its computella was the concept program for wartime stimulants, inside which melé existed as a node. Attached to this node were several facts, one of which detailed that melé overconsumption could trigger manic episodes in some people.
“Rablyn,” Asthe interrupted, voice draped in concern, “are you having a manic episode?”
She stopped, stared at Asthe for a moment, aghast. “Asthe, what are you talking about. Of course I’m having a fucking manic episode! How else are we supposed to get this done?!”
