124: Key to Success
Chapter 124: Key to Success
CROWN
I’d thought that the failure rate was unreasonably high. I’d never felt like I was in great danger so long as I didn’t screw up, when I’d been building it. I’d felt stress, to be sure, but in hindsight it never felt like I wouldn’t make the quota. I could only surmise that the people who failed somehow screwed up early on and had multiple mistakes like I’d made with the early ecology. I’d never gotten around to asking Orpheus about that.
Hearing that this cluster had it easy was… worrying.
“So back up,” I said, raising a hand. “Ours is the only cluster with an interface that interprets what we need? How is that possible? How can it be tied to one cluster?”
Orpheus cupped her hands together. “I take more of your energy than most cluster Administrators because I need it for defense… but even without that, all clusters collect a tithe. This goes toward maintaining a cluster substrate, which you can imagine as the filler material between universes.”
I scratched my head at that. “I thought that there was nothing actually between universes, since you need a universe to have a concept of space.”
“That is largely correct,” Orpheus agreed, holding up a finger. “The filler metaphor is not exactly right. The energy goes into the maintenance of connections between universes that allow us to talk like this and share our spaces, and toward the creation of new Administrators. In our case, even before I took over and needed to build defenses, our tithe was slightly higher. This is because Pleiades created something that would properly translate higher concepts with mortal souls and comprehension. What we call the interface. I do not know how it works, but that small tithe allows us much faster ramp up of new Administrators.”
This was still confusing me, but I remembered my earlier internal questions about how the interface acted like there was some kind of processor or computer behind it. Maybe that was still just my interpretation, but this did confirm that it was an artificial creation… albeit one handling concepts that I had no idea how to deal with myself.
Then again, I wasn’t billions of years old.
“All that aside,” I said aloud, waving a hand. “What’s this about grandfather and what do we do about it? I’m not getting rid of Akasha unless she actually does something, but I want to understand what she’s going through and how it can backfire.”
Orpheus rose from her seat and walked quietly toward the stairs up to the command center. She didn’t start climbing, she just tucked her arms behind her, hands clasped, and circled the stairwell before heading forward again while talking. I’d never seen her pacing before, and wondered what that meant.
“The part about grandfather is reasonable.” She spoke thoughtfully, unaware of my contemplation. “Your universe is part of him, therefore in a way you, now that you are an Administrator, are his son. She seems more willing to assign your universe’s genders to us, so it’s easiest to continue with that.”
Duck, who had remained silent for a while, spoke up at last. “Does this mean you’re our sister or what?”
A shake of her head had the High Administrator answer that. “Perhaps that is one way to look at it, but remember that we do not have family units the way you are thinking. These are labels Akasha is using in order to understand us, and should not be taken literally. I could be viewed as your sister, or your mother since I gave you the World Seed, or both. Or neither. What we are concerned about is how Akasha views us, and how she can speak to Pleiades.”
“And how all of this is your fault.” Duck said that bluntly, before I could stop her. It brought Orpheus up short with a brief grimace of pain… another expression rather new to me.
I held up a hand. “Easy. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter right now. She’s trying to help us out, if we take her word for it.”
Then I looked at Orpheus. “I expect you to be honest with us now though. We’re deep in this, you owe us that much.”
“You need not remind me that the entire cluster is my responsibility.” She frowned. “And I owe Pleiades. I do not know what they did, but I will do what I must to keep what they accomplished safe.”
Duck crossed her arms. “Okay, before we move on to what to do, I have a big question: why didn’t Pleiades just give the interface to everyone? Or at least tell them how to do it? If they want it so bad, why don’t we give it to them? Seems like that could only benefit everyone.”
Orpheus just spread her hands out. “I don’t know. I suspect it simply was not ready, but there could be more complicated reasons. Pleiades is much older than I am, and knows the… politics… of other clusters more thoroughly. It could be that it only works on very specific kinds of worlds, so it is restricted to this cluster anyway. I worry that the errors you are causing may be drawing you away, but becoming an Anchor would help against that. Perhaps… in some way Pleiades is still able to influence matters, and somehow caused that to happen.”
“There’s too much we don’t know,” I finished. “Which brings us to the actual matter we have to deal with. Akasha and her immature desires.”
My words made Duck frown at me. “Are they immature? Wanting to be an Administrator? She knows the System intimately, and can even manipulate our interface when it falls in her domain. It seems to me like she’d be an excellent Administrator, if you let her keep her memories. I’d assume if Orpheus did, that’s possible.”
“Oh, the only reason yours were wiped was due to imperfect extraction.” Orpheus frowned at me. “That was… admittedly part of the experiment. I owe you an apology for that, as well. I was desperate, but I know enough about you to know you would not do such a thing.”
I grunted. “Damn right.” Then I looked at Duck, and sighed. “Immaturity can come in many forms. She’s emotionally immature. Our emotions when we are here in our Sanctuary are flattened. They exist, but not as intense. Akasha is…”
The words failed me for a moment, before I grasped at what I was trying to say.
“She’s inexperienced with her emotions.” I nodded to myself. “They’re intense and new. Maybe she really loves this girl, or maybe she’s just attaching to the first being that treated her as a person. We can’t know because she’s burning so hot, emotionally, one blends with the other. I’m not exactly in tune with my emotions but I could see that much.”
Orpheus cleared her throat. “If you are not going to remove her, I do have another suggestion.”
Duck and I both looked over at her. I’d never heard Orpheus make that sort of noise for attention before. This entire encounter she’d been oddly emotional and… human compared to normal.
She clapped her hands. “Remember that for us, ‘soon’ is all relative. We are having an invasion soon. Do you believe that she would be willing to wait for an answer until after the incursions are taken care of? I worry about her attachment to a short-lived mortal being, but if she can be made to understand the risk involved in extracting her before the incursions arrive, perhaps we can put off the decision for a few dozen cycles.”
“She is trying to help us, and didn’t say she wanted it done now.” I paused as I said that. “Am I really the one saying not to get ahead of yourself? I think we’ve switched places somehow.”
Instead of taking my half-joking comment as the jest it was, Orpheus adjusted her glasses and stared at me.
“You are unaware of this, but despite your often lax attitude, you are rapidly rising in the ranks of this cluster’s Administrators, even if we do not account for your strange new rank.”
She hesitated to say the next part, but looked aside and continued. “Make no mistake: Pleiades was a far better Administrator than you are. However, you have great talent, and I do think – reluctant though I am to admit it – that you are the most likely of the current Administrators to have been picked as his protégé. You are as I imagine he was when younger.”
“Careless and absent-minded?” Duck broke in without missing a beat.
Orpheus sighed and scowled at the elf. “No. Well, I suppose Crown can be that, a little, but no.” She gestured toward me. “He breaks things. Not in the sense of destroying them, but in using them in ways they were not meant to be used. That is the very type of behavior that lead to what Pleiades did.”
“Hmm,” I replied, my mind turning over what she had just said. Good at breaking things…
I looked over to Orpheus again. “You know this does change things for us. If the other clusters don’t have an interface like we do, how do they make changes and monitor their worlds? Do they just brute force it? Or is there some trick we don’t know?”
“The interface simply makes it easier, but your intent is important,” she confirmed. “Surely you have had instances where you thought about the specific change you wanted to make and it was reflected in the interface? This is how most Administrators work. Our interface provides us with safety buffers and the ability to plan more carefully before execution, which is already a great advantage.”
“Too bad Pleiades didn’t have time to add an instruction manual,” I muttered. “All right, I have some thoughts on this. I know how an incursion is done to us, but now that I know they don’t have an interface of their own, there are a few things I’m going to need from you, Orpheus. This might help me defend.”
Duck raised her hand. “Excuse me, are we just going to ignore Akasha is flirting with a mortal now? Wasn’t that supposed to be a big deal?”
I glanced at Duck with a frown. “I sort of want to do something about it, but I think getting into a fight with our own System right now, only a few centuries before the incursions start, is a bad idea. That’s a lot of time for mortals, but we have to adjust to any unexpected results before then. We’ll have to just keep an eye on her and try to limit any fallout. I’m not sure what sorts of cascade this could cause, though.”
“Usually exposure to outer-world concepts results in major religious shifts and schisms.” Orpheus answered the not-quite question immediately. “With the genetic memory you have given your elves, I am not sure how this will work. It could be minor. It could be a complete upheaval. I hope you have some contingencies in place in the event of things going differently than planned.”
That brought a sigh to me.
“Unfortunately… yes. I’ll handle it.”