“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, “that your former cabal built a battery out of people, and the only reason you know this is because millions of Californians are missing?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How do you happen to know these Californians are missing?” I continued. “What’s your news source for stuff that happens in the material world?”
“Twitter mostly.”
I stood up, my intelligence sufficiently insulted for the moment, and tried to get a handle on the fury I was suddenly feeling. I could change the music from here if I wanted to, but I leapt down from the balcony and went to the DJ decks anyway because I needed to be away from Alexander while I processed all this exciting new information. Deep house was my comfort music, but the deep house set we were listening to actually seemed inappropriately warm and upbeat for this situation. I shut it off, but the resulting silence was its own assault on my nerves, so I put on some minimal techno just to make sure we still had a steady beat in the room.
I was naturally super un-psyched about the cabal using millions of people to create an actual human shield. I wanted to see the committee notes where they decided that “human shield” was their absolute only option, because I felt like there might be creative people in the world who could propose some alternatives. For instance, how did the experiments with shooting rockets and missiles at it go? How about building a big wall around it made of knives and explosives? Sure, the punctuation marks were victims of genocide, but to be fair, the punctuation marks couldn’t physically hold weapons so why were we relying on their advice for combat tactics?
But the other alternative on the table was equally abhorrent. I was not prepared to let Alexander edit the minds of ten million people to recognize him as a god. It would just not be a positive experience if one person had the talking stick literally forever. I did believe he wanted to save reality from the thunderstorm. Not just to save himself, but because he genuinely cared about reality on some level. But his desire to be a demiurge was greedy and dangerous. I mean, hooray, he cheated death! He should get a trophy—not godhood obviously, but some other trophy that we’d engrave to say 1ST PLACE DEATH CHEATER and it would look good on a shelf.
If I didn’t accept either of those options, then what?
Anyway, the cabal had already built the battery, so I’d clearly missed the public comment period on its construction. And it was on its way to being used if I didn’t intervene. At least Alexander claimed the people he edited would ultimately be released. It was the only factor tipping the scale in his favor—for now.
I leapt back up to the balcony and sat back down opposite Alexander.
“Why isn’t Olivia your prophet?” I asked. “She practically worships you already.”
“She’s a scientist,” he said, as though that was self-explanatory.
“And I should destroy her too if the cabal won’t hand over the battery? What about Bradford—wasn’t he your friend for decades? Did your old friendships with these people expire when you got murdered?”
“Even Bradford and Olivia must prove themselves,” he said quietly. “I’m sending them a prophet, though, in the hope that they will listen.”
“She has not agreed to be your prophet,” the Dauphine pointed out.
“I’ll look for the battery,” I said, which seemed to satisfy Alexander. “You could come with me, Dauphine. I’d welcome the company.”
“No, you do not need me to help you find the battery in a world I would not understand. I have an idea that might be worth pursuing, though. The weapon I improvised when we fought the herald—using a string of portals to create a tunnel—perhaps I can tunnel far enough into the thunderstorm that I might learn something useful about its composition or its weaknesses.”
Alexander said, “Intriguing. We all would welcome the discovery of any weaknesses. Dauphine, I offer my services to you. I can help you face the many heralds that will crowd your path on the way to the thunderstorm’s edge.”
I suddenly felt apprehensive and emotional.
I said, “Look, the way things are unfolding—I mean, if we don’t ever see each other again…”
“Then it has been a pleasure questing by your side, my Queen,” said the Dauphine.
“Godspeed on planet Earth, Isobel,” said Alexander.
I now had a significant new asset at my disposal, a perfect memory of the transmutation sequence, imprinted while experiencing Alexander’s memories, with complete understanding of all the visualization parameters it accepted. Practically speaking, this meant I needn’t rely on the Dauphine to transmute me back into Isobel; I could do it myself. And I could do it with sufficient granularity that I could visualize which aspects of the Queen I’d like to carry with me into Isobel’s form, from transmuting her complete arsenal of spells into corresponding power morpheme sequences, all the way to specifying exactly what street clothes I wanted to be wearing when the transmutation was complete (a glittersteel hoodie, black fitted jeans, practical ass-kicking boots—the pink tank top could stay).
I left my jetpack behind, and I placed Blades Per Minute in a display cabinet, alongside items with sentimental value, like my vintage enchanted MiniDisc player/recorder for storing music in a format that no foe would ever recognize, and my vintage enchanted iPod Classic that you could load music onto without using iTunes.
I didn’t know Maddy’s teleport sequence, so I expected I’d be arriving exactly where I’d been standing when I left: in the center of the gymnasium. The jury was out as to whether the Chinese knockoff headset would be there at the end of the process as well.
It felt more intense going this direction, accumulating mass instead of shedding it. But as before, only moments seemed to pass in which I experienced complete sensory isolation from reality in total, and then with a sudden extradimensional yogic twist, I was back in Los Angeles.
I stood in absolute pitch blackness and utter silence, doubting for a moment that I was truly real. But then I felt the familiar distribution of my mass resisting gravity and knew I was no longer afloat in the logosphere, not by a long shot. I was standing, judging by the slight give of the thin dance mat below me as I shifted weight from foot to foot. I bounced up and down a couple times, confirming I was under the influence of gravity as I remembered it. I felt the first few breaths escape my mouth as though they were giant clouds of mist. I felt the stuffy heat of this enclosed box oven of a building. I reached up to my forehead to check for the headset—it wasn’t there, meaning I hadn’t paid sufficient attention to reconstitute it. My tentative “Hello?” was greeted only by my own echo in the gymnasium.
As I considered my options, I realized with a pleasant shock that the transmutation sequence had indeed converted my entire arsenal of Sparkle Dungeon spells into corresponding power morpheme sequences that would have the same or similar effects in the material world. I could access them via instant recall just as I’d been using spells while traveling in the logosphere. The permanent upgrade to my capabilities had been profound and precise. The version of transmutation that Alexander utilized himself was apparently much more powerful than the version he’d shared with Olivia, or Olivia herself could’ve become an absolute terror to face by now.
I cast an End of My Rope Light spell, which ordinarily produced minor illumination at the borders of paths immediately ahead of you for a few feet, but I put a little more oomph into it and managed to get the edges of the room lit all the way around, and around the ring of tables and desks, too, as though I’d carefully laid colorful rope light on the floor all throughout the gymnasium. The resulting ambient glow enabled me to study the room more closely.
The computers, the consoles, and the projector were all powered down, and would not power up. But everything looked intact: nothing seemed damaged, no major equipment seemed obviously missing. A few cell phones were scattered across the tables, which seemed unusual; their batteries were all dead.
I decided to take a walking tour of the school, discovering the anarchists’ primary living quarters in various classrooms, checking out the library and the cafeteria and so on. Everywhere I might’ve expected signs of life, I found it—clothes and backpacks hanging in lockers, cots with blankets and pillows strewn about as though recently used. In the kitchen, perishable food items were beyond rotten, but quite a few dried and canned items remained stacked on the shelves. In other words, this school was currently empty of its occupants, but they hadn’t evacuated in any organized fashion.
I found a generator in a classroom near the gym, empty of fuel, with several full gas cans arrayed nearby. I refueled it and fired it up, then wandered back into the gymnasium. Overhead lights were on now. A small stack of what I guessed were cellular routers lit up on a shelf in a corner with pleasing blinking lights. I picked a workstation at a comfortable desk and powered it up, using a spell to bypass the password prompt, and soon I had internets.