I turned back to face the Dauphine and said, “Is this guy just spewing nonstop power morphemes at me like I’m first level, or is he really suggesting this shit with a straight face?”
“Every word out of his mouth is masking a power morpheme,” she replied. “This delivery style is autonomic to him. He could not choose otherwise.”
“Guilty,” he said with a grin.
“But you are not currently a god,” I said, “which clearly undermines whatever persuasion you think you’re attempting.”
“Now look,” he replied, “I’ve tipped my cards plenty for you, Isobel, and all I’m asking in return is a little consideration on your part.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “What’s that old saying—anyone who wants to be the all-powerful god emperor of the multiverse is probably the exact person who shouldn’t be the all-powerful god emperor of the multiverse?”
“I never said multiverse!” he exclaimed. “I’m talking three, maybe four dimensions of existence and a couple stray planets tops.”
“Including Earth.”
“Yes, look,” he said, dialing up a hard sell, “it’s been a long time since Earth had an active demiurge to shape its affairs. I’m a good candidate for the position. Cheated death—check. Discovered transmutation—check. Aliens love me. I’m charismatic, I’m compassionate, I’m idea-driven—”
“And you need my help to make it all happen,” I interrupted.
“Yes, that is exactly what I need from you right now.”
Ahhhh, now we were getting somewhere.
“I’m looking forward to hearing all the details,” I said, “but I’m getting tired of this endless road trip. May I recommend a change of scenery?”
Reluctantly, Alexander nodded his assent.
We sat at a VIP table in the balcony above the dance floor in the Iridescent Warehouse. The logosphere outside the rift was like a vast wilderness, where Alexander reigned as though he was a park ranger taking care of all the indigenous memes roaming wild and free in the forest. The Warehouse, on the other hand, was my territory, with its pleasing prerecorded sets from the best DJs in Europe and South America, its flexible lighting options that gave the Warehouse its festive character, and of course, its enormous walk-in closet where I could swap out avatar costumes on the fly. For this conversation, I’d changed out of the Queen’s standard combat attire (glittersteel jumpsuit with fiber-optic trim) and into chill-out gear: fuzzy pants, Totoro slippers, pink tank top that said “I won’t techno for an answer,” and a blue bob wig for good measure.
Alexander seemed both resigned and determined, now that we were here, to lose no further ground in negotiation with me. I knew I had the upper hand somehow on an axis I didn’t see yet, but this man was ostensibly still the most powerful linguist mage ever, and I did not want to wind up fighting him. We both wanted this to be a civil conversation.
“We all have a theory about what the thunderstorm truly is,” he began. “The punctuation marks can only conceive of it as ‘enemy.’ Olivia thinks it’s Death. Violet thinks it’s the Devil. Lonso is afraid to admit that it might be Gorvod. Cameron always claims it’s Unfettered Capitalism. Bradford can’t decide: it’s either Hate, or it’s Silence.”
“What do you think it is?” the Dauphine asked.
“I think it’s reality’s revenge on us for what we’ve done to it. Regardless, the thunderstorm has always been central to our calculations and endeavors, you must understand that. We’ve made choices in the service of protecting our world that you may find … incompatible with your own personal beliefs.”
He stopped, struggling to find a way to continue.
I decided to skip right to the point. I said, “Tell me about the battery.”
“So you already know?” he asked.
“Heard rumors,” I said. “What is it exactly?”
“It’s a technical proposal originally offered to me by the punctuation marks, a means to protect ourselves from the thunderstorm. You understand, the reason the punctuation marks stopped on Earth and inhabited our minds is because they recognized a factor about us that made us different from the other life-forms in the logosphere, for example, who are more ghost than alive. Humanity had … a spark inside, like the spark of mine that I shared with the Dauphine. It’s a resilient spark—I didn’t lose mine by sharing it with the Dauphine. It replenishes itself—babies are born with new spark all the time. This is not a common model in the abstract realms.
“The punctuation marks believed you could … capture, or … harness a sufficient amount of this human spark in a rarefied form to create a battery. With that battery, you could power a shield against the thunderstorm. A barrier of spark that it could not consume. A population, in other words, held in stasis, minds networked together by the punctuation marks that flowed through them, sharing an interperceptual experience. At that scale, the punctuation marks believed that the shield would be an irresistible temptation, drawing the thunderstorm to it, where it would encounter an additional trap.
“Because while the punctuation marks held this network of interperception together, they would ruthlessly edit from memory any concept or idea whatsoever that could be used to form even the slightest impression of the fact of the thunderstorm or its true nature. And, as we saw repeatedly while studying the hundred and eight, perception of a thing is integral to a thing. So the thunderstorm would crash up against this shield where its own existence could not be perceived, and it would itself cease to exist. It would not simply flow around the shield, off to menace the next dimension of existence down the line. It would become undone.”
“And after?” the Dauphine asked. “After the thunderstorm has become undone? What becomes of the people who make up the shield?”
“The editing required to satisfy the requirements was expected to be … extensive. The punctuation marks considered these individuals to be sacrifices to the cause of protecting all of reality as we know it.”
I felt like I’d been holding my breath for a thousand years, even though I didn’t need to breathe at all right now.
“As you saw earlier,” Alexander continued, “the thunderstorm still exists. The shield does not.”
I almost relaxed just a touch, but decided that would be premature.
“After studying the thunderstorm at length, I have new ideas for how best to edit such a population,” he said.
“You intend to edit yourself into the minds of this population as a god,” the Dauphine reasoned. “In so doing, reality will rapidly begin to assign you those qualities of godhood you desire. And then—you?—god?—will protect us all against the thunderstorm?”
“Roughly,” he said. “The advantage of my method is that I will release the population from the battery after the editing occurs. No point in becoming god if I don’t have worshippers to spread the word of my arrival on the scene.”
“I hate centering myself in this awful discussion,” I said quietly, “but now we’re back to the question: what on fucking Earth could you possibly need me for?”
“I need you to find the secret location of the battery, and I need you to assume control of it in my name.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Fight the cabal if you must to make this happen, Isobel. They can’t be allowed to squander the battery on mere cowering.”
“Didn’t Olivia just discover a way to make the battery work like yesterday?”
“You’ve been roaming the logosphere longer than you imagine, Isobel. The cabal built the battery while you were gone. They’ve already begun populating it.”
“How many people does this battery need?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“For this proof of concept,” he said, “approximately ten million.”
“Oh my god,” I said uselessly.
“How do you know they’ve already begun populating it?” the Dauphine asked.
“Because millions of people are now missing from the state of California,” he said, “and no one on Earth has the slightest idea where any of them are.”