John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

“…and all for your love’s sake…”

But I did not have to. No matter how complex the web of matter was inside Quentin’s brain, whatever was not connected to the governing monad in which his noumenal self resided was, by definition, non-self-correcting. Only living systems can love themselves, change themselves, grow, correct themselves, put out new stalks and branches on the tree of possible futures issuing from their actions.

The dark matter, on the other hand, was inert. “Inert” equals “actions determined” equals “low probability.” All I had to do was…

I said, “ Thoughts are known by thought and thought alone .” And I reached out with… something… and twisted his monad back into its proper alignment, to bring the blight areas along the thought-axis parallel to the para-time axis of the dim areas inflicted by the dark matter in his brain. And…

“…Amen.”

The universe collapsed on me, crushing me back into three-dimensional space. I still had my… call it a hand… outside of its normal volume, reaching into Quentin. I did not have time to fold up properly.

And so I (my body compressed at the wrong angle) screamed; Vanity (looking at me) screamed; Quentin (clutching his head) screamed.

We all screamed. It was not a good moment.

I fell over and struck the floor. Whatever it was (A limb? A song? A thought? A psychic extension? A manipulator made out of solidified time?) that I had inside Quentin, slipped out as I fell, in the spray of reddish sparks.

I had not even been aware that I had a telescoping 4-D form meant to fold smoothly back into 3-D geometry until I was stuck half-folded. That sense of heaviness, of massiveness, which surrounded my hand when I tried to reach through the safe walls the night before was now spread unevenly through my whole body. Some organs felt compressed, others, distended.

I tried to look at myself, but my eyes were not working. Everything was afflicted with a blue haze. Instead, sense organs meant for some other level of reality were giving me information. I was receiving a sense of the internal nature of things from one pair of organs, and another organ told me how useful or useless certain objects and events around me were to my will.

Vanity’s internal nature was sweet and giving; Quentin was sad; the table was stern; the cigars were filled with malice; the doors to Boggin’s chamber were watchful and careful; the two clocks were bitter, filled with hate, and watching me.

Neither Vanity nor Quentin were of any use to me at the moment, my other sense informed me. That is, none of the world-paths issuing from me had any greater potential when passing near them.

But there was something shining with use-light coming quickly from a parallel area. It was either nearby in time or in space.

I twisted my head to see if I could bring another sense organ to bear. Through the wall, I could see two nervous systems, surrounded by glowing lines of superpotential, great usefulness, jogging up the stairs.

Then the first was at the door to this room. I could not see the door, but I heard it open, and the inner nature of watchfulness gave way to something masculine, selfish, disobedient, willful, lustful, and rough.

Behind the rough object was someone whose inner nature was logical, detached, dispassionate, stoic, skeptical about outer things, certain about inner ones.

I said, “Colin? Victor? Is that you?”

No words came out, but there was a rush of music radiation from me, flashes of wings of light.

Vanity screamed again.

Victor said, “Fascinating. Is that Amelia?”

Colin put his hand out. With a bump, the world snapped back into place. My new senses went blind. I was blinking.

I looked around. Everything was normal looking. No noises from subspace, no ripples of hyperlight thudding through skew planes. Just a room, and four friends staring down at me.

I looked down at myself. Honestly, I expected to see unimaginable horror, arms and legs twisted into Mobius strips, my body stretched into a Klein bottle, bones at right angles, lungs turned inside out, my head shaped like a question mark, with webs of flesh connecting me to older and younger versions of my body. Something like that.

But I was just normal. A girl in a plaid skirt, white shirt, black patent leather shoes, and a stupid necktie.

“What happened?” I asked.

Colin said, “You had too much energy in you. I sucked it away.”

I said, “How?”

Colin leaned over and offered me his hand. “I wanted you back the way you were. My desire was stronger than the desire of the world to keep you looking weird. I won.”

I put my hand in his hand. Instead of lifting me to my feet, he just caressed the back of my hand with little motions of his thumb.

“But—how did you know what to do?”

He smiled. “It’s not something I do consciously. It’s like lust. I mean, a man can’t ejaculate just by a silent act of willpower. He needs a girl to lick his…”

I yanked my hand away and climbed to my feet without his help. He started to brush off my bottom, and I clipped him one on the ear.

“Ow!” he said, clutching his ear and stepping back. “And you’re welcome for me saving your life.”

Quentin said, “I wish I had his paradigm. No fuss. No knives. No candles. No lists of names.”

Victor said, “Clap, and the dead Tinkerbell gets better, only if you really believe. Seems like a rather inflexible system to me. How can you perform experiments? If you can only do what you really believe in, you cannot be curious.”

Quentin said, “But look at how well he does with women!”

Victor said, “Does what? Annoy them?”

I said to Colin, “Thank you for saving me. Do you want me to say I’m sorry about hitting your ear?”

Colin, still rubbing his ear, said, “No, thanks. I want to stay mad at you, I’ll have an excuse later on for hiking up your skirts, turning you over my knee, and spanking you. Hit me again.”

Vanity said, “How come everyone starts talking about spanking when Amelia is around?”

Colin said to her, “It had to do with the shape of her butt. Some girls, you can just tell from the shape of their butts, that what they really want is a nice, strong…”

“Ugh!” said Vanity. “Just shut up! You’re the kind of fellow who thinks boogers are funny.”

“Well,” said Colin, looking a little puzzled, “Boogers are funny, most of the time. There is humor value both in the long, droopy kind and the hard, crumbly…”

“Speaking of gross things,” I said, “what did I look like? Just now, I mean.”

Colin said, “Big squid with eyestalks, just like you said.”

Vanity said, “It was gross. You got all thin and stretched, and these blurry lights and colors and sounds were coming out of you. I think you had wings. And tentacles—fiery tentacles coming out of behind your shoulders. There was a white spike through your head.”

Quentin said, “You had wings like an angel, and the horn of a unicorn. You looked like a centaur. From the waist down, your body was deerlike and very sleek. More like a dolphin, than a deer, actually. It was beautiful.”

Victor said, “I saw four legs, also. You had a long tail or flukes trailing behind that, which seemed to be embedded in the bookcase behind you. Although that must have been an optical illusion, because I can see the bookcase is unharmed. From the waist up you looked fairly like your self, except that your neck was longer and your head was smaller, and surrounded by a reddish haze. You had wings, or some sort of fans or vanes hovering behind you. They did not seem to be connected to any particular place on your shoulders. Streamers of energy composed of groups of light-dots were issuing from your arms and shoulders, and reaching to various points around the room. I also noticed a group of bulbs or globes floating in the air near your head, though some smaller globes were floating further away. You were also playing music, and filmy lights like aurora borealis were rapidly coming out from your wings in concentric ripples. There was an intense magnetic disturbance. I think the bulbs near your head were sensory apparatus. When Colin and I were still in the hall outside, we both saw a trio of bulbs appear in a splash of red light and move toward us. Colin told me you were looking at us.”