123: The Why and the How
Chapter 123: The Why and the How
CROWN
Back in the Sanctuary, I finally left the ‘command room’ where I’d been spending so much of my time. My little jaunt to see Sena hadn’t been strictly necessary, but it had made me feel better. Maybe these brief ‘vacations’ were a good idea after all. It was definitely nice to see Asha living life to the fullest without having any real responsibility for her. Sena wouldn’t let me have any even if I wanted it.
That did make me wonder about Duck, and how she couldn’t leave the Sanctuary to have her own vacation, but I’d have to talk to her about that later. How did she even handle stress? That was a real mystery.
Maybe I should look into a video game console in the Sanctuary. I hadn’t seen it in the options, but I also hadn’t looked for one.
Duck was already there, and by this time I’d long ago bought a tea service with unlimited tea. It was all basically a simulation or whatever we were at the moment, but it did wonders for the psyche. Even Orpheus enjoyed it, though I suspected it was merely the ritual of welcoming someone that put her at ease.
Orpheus had also settled into one of the chairs, and she looked much calmer. She still had a slightly haggard look about her, but a little rest and relaxation was not going to erase the fact that she had the entire cluster under siege. Since neither she nor Duck snapped at me when I entered, I could only assume that I wasn’t particularly late in joining them.
I settled into my own chair and let out a long breath. Duck did her usual sprawl in her own chair, but left the talking to me. I had the strangest feeling like I should let her talk, then shook my head free of it as I realized that would be silly. She was meant to be adversarial to me, not to others.
“All right,” I began. “Are you more clear-headed? Or… whatever it is you have that holds your mind? Because I have a lot of questions and I don’t think you can dismiss them with saying I’m not ready for them. I’m in deep now and I think you know that.”
The purple-headed overseer gave me a thin, humorless smile. The fact that the perception filter worked well enough to do that still shocked me, but that wasn’t the sort of question I was here to ask. Orpheus sipped her tea, then let out a sigh.
“Understand that even the other Administrators do not know some of the details I will be forced to tell you,” she muttered. “I do not believe I can pressure you into keeping this a secret, so I will only ask that you have discretion in revealing anything. It is selfish of me, but I also do truly believe it would hurt the entire cluster more than it would help.”
I sighed heavily and rubbed my temples. Duck rolled over next to me, just watching with a lazy wave of her tail. I had questions for her, as well, but Orpheus needed my attention first.
Being the responsible one in the room was always a pain.
“Let’s start with the beginning.” I rest back into my chair and steepled my fingers. “What did Akasha mean when she said ‘this is the only reason you’re an Administrator’?”
“Not quite what you probably think.” Orpheus looked down into her tea. “Unlike you, my selection was not random. Nor was I ever a simple mortal – not until I became an Administrator and tried out an Incarnate Avatar for the first time. I was… something akin to what Akasha is now. Not quite a Terminal, but a Sub-Terminal that had, through belief, manifested a soul through the belief of its world’s residents.”
Duck perked her ears, but I remained more cautious. “So, basically much like Akasha then?”
Orpheus shook her head at that. “No… yes, similar, but very different in other ways.” She set her teacup down and placed her hands in her lap. “Pleiades was not like you. You are talented and creative, just as he was. But while you are explorative and perhaps something of a prodigy, they were intentional, deliberate, and something of a genius among our kind. Where you experiment off of an idea, they were more careful and planned every move.”
She looked over at Duck, who was now sitting up with interest.
“As far as I am able to determine, Akasha was created because of your heavy investment into Duck, your Terminal, which gave her a much stronger tether to your soul, and thus to your interface. When you granted your world a version of your interface, even heavily-guarded and filtered, this gave just enough external power to the belief in your system to create an independent entity.”
Duck tilted her head. “I suspected as much, based on what she told me. That’s why she regards me as her mother, and Donut here as her father. It took the existence of both of us to create her. What’s with the grandfather bit, though?”
Orpheus looked down at her lap. “We should set that question aside for now. The answer will make more sense once I have finished explaining my own situation, and how I came to be. Please be patient.”
I paused, then decided not to pursue. Orpheus had used the word ‘please’ before, but never quite in a request like that. It hit differently to hear my so-called boss say that sort of thing. I motioned for her to continue.
The High Administrator composed herself, took a deep breath, and spoke. “Unlike Akasha, I was an intended experiment. While I was not deliberately made as I am, I am the result of Pleiades harnessing belief in a way that no other Administrator has ever managed, and using it around a core of a Reality Seed – a smaller version of the World Seed that is used to create a new Administrator. This brought me into being as a Sub-Terminal responsible for universe stability. In terms your Earth would use, I was…”
She considered, or perhaps consulted her interface, I wasn’t sure. Then she nodded.
“An Earth deity, like Gaia.”
I whistled. “So, very large in scope… just like Akasha is.”
Orpheus nodded back. “Yes, that would be correct.” She clasped her hands together. “As I grew into my role, I had frequent discussions with Pleiades. We did so differently than your strange interface, but in time I began to make suggestions and ask questions about the universe outside what I could know. We began to grow closer. Not in the sense of lovers like you presume – such things were unknown to me at the time – but you may consider us close.”
Her head lowered as she stared at her hands. She didn’t say anything for a long while, and I looked at Duck during the silence. The small elf was twitching one ear and swaying her tail, deep in thought as well. I didn’t pride myself on the ability to read a room, but I knew enough to keep silent until Orpheus felt like speaking again.
Roughly five minutes later, she spoke again.
“I am afraid that the current problems are… likely to be from my own selfishness.” She looked up at the two of us. “As I said, Pleiades was what you would call a genius. They worked within another cluster, which is why my own true form would make no sense to you. It was them who defined your world, as one of the first seven of the cluster. They worked in secret, defining their rules very carefully so that they were similar, but not so similar that they merged. Then they initialized all seven at once, providing a sudden and very strong foundation unlike any other cluster. They created this cluster in that manner.”
She spread her hands. “I was still… young. Emotions were new to me. As they formed the cluster, they were unable to spend as much time with me. I demanded to be made a Terminal, and they said that was not possible. I then suggested Administrator… and they found the idea intriguing. They were able to swap my soul, in effect, and promote me to Administrator. Yet due to my unusual origin, we remained linked in a way other Administrators were not.. and I remained linked to my universe of origin.”
Duck’s tail stilled, and I knew exactly why. She’d come to the same conclusion I had, the revelation of something that had been bothering me for a while.
“This is why you can operate on his worlds.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Their worlds? I keep thinking of you as female, and him as male, though I know you aren’t either.”
Orpheus waved a hand dismissively in the air. “If that helps you visualize, then yes. My link with him allows me some control over his realms when he is unable to push back. But that is not what I was leading to. That is a positive that allows us to continue. It is also a disadvantage that lead us to our current problem.”
This time, Duck beat me to it. Her ears flicked in alarm and her eyes widened. “I get it. That connection is why the other clusters are attacking!”
The High Administrator nodded, and looked down at her lap again. “Exactly so. Normally, universes in a cluster only interact with one another, and only rarely have any contact at all with other clusters. Many clusters are not even aware of the existence of universes outside of their baseline rules, and only a few have Administrators that vary their parameters enough to drift outward. Administrators that bridge clusters are rare, and are normally the only way that one can find another cluster.”
She spread her hands. “But because of my tether to Pleiades, my presence can be… felt by an advanced enough Administrator. I would not be surprised if you soon develop a sense for me, even when I am absent. I think this is what led to the sudden aggression. Pleiades tried to protect me and all of the other Administrators that had spawned in this cluster, but without warning he vanished, as you know. We have been shrinking ever since. Tapping into the core seven universes is the only thing I can do to attempt to raise new Administrators.”
“So wait,” I interrupted. “They’re all trying to eat us because they’re after you? Why?”
Orpheus shook her head. “No. Or at least, I do not believe so. It is not me, they want.” She gestured vaguely all around the room. “It is the cluster substrate itself. As I said, Pleiades was an unusual Administrator. Unnaturally gifted. That is how he was able to create a universe like your own, that evolves from an injection of energy instead of by design. This cluster operates in a fundamentally different manner than others.”
I frowned, and asked the obvious question. “Different, how?”
Here, she fidgeted, lacing her fingers together. “The low success of new Administrators here used to be much higher, around three-quarters successfully stabilizing in the Fourth or Fifth Epoch relatively quickly. It is now much lower, around one-third, with half failing to even enter the Fourth Epoch for more than a cycle. However, other clusters lack a fundamental aspect of ours… the interface.”
Orpheus paused, adjusted her glasses, and sighed.
“Without an interface, the success rate of other clusters in onboarding new Administrators is approximately one in three hundred.”