18. Quies

quiēs ~ētis, f.

1. repose; the rest of sleep

in the depths of the Station’s noble spire, hidden far beneath the artificial ocean at its bottom, a boy watches the heart of the world move.

He’s no more than thirteen, with thin legs and brown hair and a soft face. The jets of his hoverchair allow him movement, and he turns them now to make a slow circle around the foot of the gargantuan tube filled with pale blue-purple gel and millions of gently undulating silver whorls. His guards move with him, their clanking armor and ready fingers on projection swords unsettling the many scientists hunched over monitors at the room’s perimeter. The tube dominates the center of the room; the silver whorls within flicker and weave among one another for three, four, five stories, the tube stretching into the seemingly infinite dark ceiling of the sub-nautical laboratory.

Something moves in the infinite dark, high up and around the tube, and the boy stares at it.

“Sir.” A scientist in a pristine lab coat approaches nervously, the guards’ hard-light visors focused on his every move. “I—I was not informed of your visit. Is there something I can help you with?”

The boy’s jade-green eyes narrow imperceptibly up at the dark. “It’s not supposed to be outside.”

The scientist looks with him. There, hovering outside the tube and far above them in the great vaulted ceiling, is something stringy and palely translucent. It wafts as if in a breeze, making a slow spiral around the tube as its tendrils hang behind it, long and aimless. The scientist bows hastily.

“Yes sir. We’re increasing the feed demand as we speak—with any luck, that will patch the problem.”

The boy tilts his head slowly at the scientist. “Luck?”

“What I mean is…overfeeding only temporarily solves the issue, sir. It used to be years between manifestations, but in the last four months alone, we’ve had three. Some of us think it could be an outside stressor, but in my opinion it’s most likely a matter of entropy—even suns die. There’s only so much energy this core can produce before the insenescent fibrils unwind—”

The boy flicks his eyes to a guard, and the hulking behemoth moves in a blink, pinning the scientist to his own machinery with a buzzing orange projection sword against his throat.

“Sir! Please!” the man cries. “His Majesty is aware of this, and I—”

“Those who make excuses are not worthy of invoking the king,” the boy says softly. The guard presses the sword so close to the scientist’s throat, the collar of his lab coat sizzles black and crumbles to ash. “You will find a permanent solution.”

“Y-Yes,” the scientist pants. “W-We’ll do our utmost.”

With all eyes in the room on the boy, the wispy thing hovering far above suddenly curls in on itself and shows the beginnings of teeth on its many arms—a carnivorous flower blooming.

“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me.” The boy raises his hoverchair to the scientist’s adult eye level, the millions of silver whorls rising along the tube with him, following. “You will find a permanent solution, or you and everyone in this room will be feeding the core yourselves.”

The scientist can only nod frantically, sweat beading his lip as the heat of the projection sword tattoos itself across his neck in phantom death. The boy nods, the guard drops him, and there is the soft hiss of jets and unsoft clank of boots as they leave.