Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

  I frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, come on, Su. You must have had some measure of suspicion, even back then. That my motives might have been a little bit more self-interested than I let on."

  While it was hardly difficult to imagine Kamrusepa having self-interested motivations for her beliefs, I had to admit this, specifically, took me a little by surprise. "You were sick?"

  "In much the same way as you, yes," she admitted with a nod of her head. "Not dementia specifically, but I was suffering from a degenerative neurological condition that I expected was going to kill me within a decade or two or best."

  "Wha-- What was wrong with you?"

  She shook her head. "A rare form of spinal cancer. Nothing remarkable enough to be worth discussing."

  I couldn't believe this!

  "So all that stuff you always said about death, about the moral imperative to make people live as long as possible-- You only said that because you were..."

  She interrupted me with a scoff. "Don't just jump to a reductive conclusion. Obviously it was more complicated than that. I always had an interest in the biological sciences, and in transcending the contemporary limitations of the physical body. I was interested in the Order long before my diagnosis." She shrugged. "But, well, it was an influence in my attitude."

  My shock faded, and I found myself giggling to myself, having to turn away from her so it wouldn't come across too much like mockery.

  "It's not that funny."

  "It is that funny!" I disagreed. "Every time somebody brought up associative collapse dementia, you always gave that speech where you were like, 'even if we can't treat it, it doesn't make preventing every other form of death pointless!' in some high-minded way, but of course you would say that! You were looking after your own ass!"

  "It was a true sentiment regardless!" she argued. "There were still thousands of potentially-lethal conditions back then which were still firmly within the remit of conventional medicine. When people question the reach of science, it's only sensible to argue for plucking the low-hanging fruit."

  I continued to laugh, rubbing one of my eyes. I was so used to wearing my glasses while walking around that the open air was starting to make them feel weird.

  "Besides," Kam continued, "there's nothing wrong with arriving at the right conclusions for a self-motivated reason. That's what I was trying to say in bringing this up." She pointed a half-curled finger. "You can't very well laugh at me when you just confessed to doing the exact same thing."

  "I'm not laughing at you," I said, calming down a bit. "I'm laughing at the-- I dunno. The way the world is. The way people are."

  She rolled her eyes.

  The wind slowly left my sails as I realized this seemed - for, well, obviously understandable reasons - to actually be kind of a sore spot for her. She was frowning now, looking up at the sky.

  "Sorry," I said.

  "No, no," she said softly. "It's fair for you to mock me. I led you to believe I was more of an idealist than I actually was."

  "Really, I wasn't trying to mock you," I insisted.

  "Whatever you'd call it. To find it amusing." She crossed her arms. "I seem to recall you saying to me once upon a time that you didn't believe people actually had earnestly-held beliefs, just post-hoc justifications for whatever's convenient to them."

  I scratched my head. "I can't remember."

  "I thought you always remembered everything."

  "Well, I can't always dig up a given thing on command if it wasn't a moment that felt important," I replied. "I say stuff like that pretty often."

  She clicked her tongue, shaking her head. "I wish I could say you were entirely mistaken. But to be entirely earnest, back then, when I spoke of the need to defeat death and the all-consuming irrationality of those who failed to see it, often it was coming from a place of fear and sour grapes as much as logic. Yelling at the people higher up the waterline while the tides were nipping at my feet." She kicked at the sand. "Beach metaphors for a beach jaunt. Lovely."

  "When did you know?"

  "Years before we met, when I was still early in my training in the Kingdom," she answered. "They caught it relatively early, during an examination for something unrelated."

  I asked the obvious question. "Why did you never say anything?"

  She scoffed. "That's a silly question, Su."

  I guess it was. I remembered how pathetic I'd felt a few weeks ago when I'd considered the idea of telling my family about my diagnosis. For someone like Kam, who obviously had a much more outspoken and willful personality, I had to imagine the thought of being constantly pitied - or else viewed as someone selfishly taking up resources she'd never really be able to benefit from - would feel absolutely poisonous.

  "Then," I ventured instead. "why did you join the program at all? I mean... I can understand still wanting to continue some kind of education for its own sake, but those were some of the most stressful years of my life. I can't imagine trying to keep up while dealing with a terminal illness."

  "Oh, it'd be hard to pin down an exact reason with any amount of introspection, I suspect," she mused. "Because it'd been my goal beforehand, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could still meet it. Because I thought it would be wisest to live under the assumption that things would miraculously get better, just on the off-chance they did. Because I had old enemies I wanted to spite and little indulgences I craved. Because to some degree I cared about knowledge entirely for its own sake." She glanced back at me. "And - I suppose most unrealistically - because I hoped it put me in a position where I'd have access to frontier medicine. Connections, renown. I genuinely did believe the world was on the cusp of overcoming most remaining ailments of the body."

  I frowned contemplatively. "Even after the redesign project, there were still some viruses and nervous disorders we never figured out how to treat."

  "Yes, well, I suppose you were right to be cynical about that much," she conceded flatly. "You can hardly blame me for going down swinging, though, can you?"

  "I mean. Technically, you weren't even wrong, right? After all, you were at the conclave when this happened."

  She smiled bittersweetly. "I suppose that is so." She sighed. "Still, from the perspective of the other me, I'm sure it all felt like a bit of a wash by the end."

  My face fell a little. "So that's why I never heard from you again."

  "From her."

  "R-Right. Sorry, I forgot about your philosophy on the whole thing for a second."

  "Mm." She began strolling along the coast again, and I followed after her. "It was about a decade later that it happened. I don't really want to get into it."

  I nodded sympathetically, though I retrospect she seemed more disturbed by the idea then directly upset, which I suppose made sense. Like, this might have been news to me, but her situation wasn't really different from anyone else's here. We'd all died at some point.

  "There's an idea I always used to comfort myself with," Kam began. "There is no such thing as a soul, ergo, there is technically also no such thing as true continuity of consciousness. We perceive our lives linearly merely because our minds continuously generate instances of cognition in each consecutive moment, which we contextualize through memory. But it is only circumstance - the fact that our brains and pneuma are physical, causal objects - that binds that process within space and time." She looked up at the stars. "The universe is infinite. It is inevitable, at least as far as we understand the matter, that the pattern of our minds in any given moment will inevitably arise time and time again within its vast expanse, perceiving no discontinuity from the moment of its earthy arisal. So in a sense, one could speculate that true death is not a certainty at all, but rather altogether impossible."

  I furrowed my brow. "Do you actually believe it works like that...?"

  "I don't know," she said with a shrug. "Probably. It seems like the rational inference of how we understand consciousness and the scope of the universe scientifically."

  "Because, like." I bit my lip as I thought about the idea. "If there are infinite versions of us being generated in reference to every second we're alive, wouldn't that include way more that are almost us, but slightly flawed in some awful way? With brain damage, the inability to feel love, things like that? Or that come into existence as part of some electromagnetic cloud and then die instantly? Or in an infinite torture dimension? It's kind of a scary concept."

  She side-eyed me. "Perhaps I misjudged the sentimentality of the moment, but I wasn't really looking for you to pick this apart, you know."

  "Uh, sorry," I said.

  We walked in silence for a bit as I mulled what she'd told me over. It was interesting, knowing this now, that we'd actually had a lot in common in terms of our motivations for joining the class. Her circumstances might have been a lot more, well, normal, but we'd both been hoping to use the position it offered in pursuit of a moonshot solution to a problem consuming our lives.

  She wouldn't remember, of course, but maybe this was what she'd been talking about during our conversation in the armory shaft. The reason why she'd been desperate to attend the conclave too.

  Assuming there's not more to the story than she's saying.

  "...You know," I began. "Reading that journal, you came across really differently to, uh, how I'd expected," I remarked.

  She flattened, then pursed her lips, her eyes filling with something complicated. "I'd imagine so." She looked at me. "You must be wondering about the riddle at the end. The one addressed directly to you."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "Well--"

  "As I said, I have no recollection of writing the thing," she interjected. "But I do have an idea of what it might have been referring to, and something of a theory of why I might have left it for you to discover. Though the threat may be somewhat ambiguous, if you do desire to solve the Manse--"

  "No," I said, cutting her off this time. "That's... not what I was going to say."

  She frowned. "No? Then what?"

  "I was going to bring up the things you talked about at the very beginning. About the dreams you had, about being something less than human." I found myself unable to quite meet her eyes, rubbing the side of my head. "And the bit afterward, about how you felt as if all the meaning in your identity was something you put there arbitrarily."

  She said nothing, and I wasn't looking at her.

  "It... surprised me, I guess. I don't know how much I should get into it, but I've thought a lot of similar things over the years, especially back then." I suddenly felt very uncomfortable, but persisted anyway. "I always imagined us as being really different people. You always seemed to have this incredible passion for life, these ideals, these really deliberate ambitions about what you wanted to do in the future-- But seeing that, it felt more like we... I dunno, had a lot of the same feelings, but came to different emotional conclusions." I hesitated. "Uh, not to suggest we're identical or anything. It sounded like you went through something really serious. But, well, it was just a feeling, I guess."

  I chose, deliberately, not to mention her strange conversation with Ezekiel, or especially the exchange she'd had in her bedroom about having apparently committed murder.

  She still wasn't replying, and I finally turned to face her. To my surprise, her expression was almost completely neutral, almost like she was a little bored.

  "Kam?"

  "Can I ask you an honest question, Su?"

  "Uh, sure."

  "You once told me that you don't believe anyone can really know another person. Do you still believe that?"

  I hesitated, but nodded.

  "Yet surely that wasn't an absolute statement," she went on. "You must accept the idea that people can know some things about their peers, otherwise social organization would be foundationally impossible. No one would be able to predict the actions of anyone else whatsoever."

  "Well... I suppose that's implicit, yeah." I picked at my eyes again. "When I say that, what I really mean is that they can't fully understand how the people around them work. The different things that drive them and how they all intersect." I looked at her. "But if you think about a logic engine - for example - not even most engineers know what all the parts are doing in specific, and the general public don't even understand the broad strokes. But still, everyone knows how to operate one, how to make it do the right things. What inputs lead to what outputs." I blinked. "Hm."

  She raised an eyebrow. "What?"

  "Nothing, I just realized we've circled back to the concept that came up in the game," I said. "The whole thing about rainmaking rituals. How ultimately even science is predicated on intuitive rather than truly fundamental knowledge. I was talking about it with Nahmi, too."

  "It's a concept we discuss frequently," Kam said with a nod. "That's the essential puzzle it represents, after all. Trying to diagnose the disease from the symptoms alone."

  I frowned to myself. There was some kind of connection I felt like I ought to have been making here - logical, emotional, something - but couldn't quite place it.

  "So," she began, in a definitive tone that indicated this was the actual question, "bearing that in mind, how well would you say that I really know you? How close am I to that unreachable goal?"

  It was probably better just to be honest. "Probably not very close. We were only friends for a couple of years." And it probably would have been hit-or-miss on whether I'd have described us that way on any given day, if I'm being honest.

  "And how well do you think you knew me?"

  "I'd have to assume about the same."

  "Yet, you felt confident enough in your impression of me to be surprised."

  I squinted. "If you're trying to point out how much of a hypocrite I am for always talking about how everything in the world is inscrutable, while also being really quick to make judgements about everything, then I already figured that out over a century ago."

  She clicked her tongue. "Do you think it's a good or a bad thing that we don't really know one another, Su?"

  It was an impossible question.

  "I dunno," I said after a long pause.

  "You can do a little better than that, surely."

  I thought about it a little more, listening to the sound of the waves. "I think... There's something paradoxical about human connection. Or, no, there are multiple things that are paradoxical at once." I looked at my feet. "On the one hand, almost everyone has some kind of desire to be understood. Humans are social animals. We want our convictions, our narratives, to be affirmed by and built upon by the people around us. And for that to happen, you need to be authentically understood. But..."

  "But?" She asked after I trailed off.

  "But there's a difference between being understood and someone just knowing a bunch of facts about you," I said. "And the worst thing is when someone knows the facts, but instead of feeling them within themselves, they just turn their nose up in disgust. Because they don't get it, or it rubs them the wrong way, or they think, or know, that they could have done better. And there are some circumstances where, uh, that's more likely to happen than others."

  Kamrusepa looked at me for a few moments with the sort of expression you might see on someone trying to open a really tight olive jar, then nodded slowly. "I agree."

  I looked at her for a few moments, trying to analyze this response, before I realized I hadn't finished my thought. "The... other way it's paradoxical is that, the closer you get to someone, the more the gratification from your connection can turn grating." We passed a group of people having an evening picnic, the scent of hot stew and fresh bread on the air. "People want-- No, need different things at different times of their lives, and sometimes that doesn't include the kind of love one gets from unconditional acceptance. Being known can feel like a prison. Sometimes you want the power to just... make up a new reality, and wish you hadn't given it away."

  Yes, I know I was being a complete hypocrite in saying this after all my meltdown about the culture of the Crossroads if you thought about it for more than two seconds, Yes, I know the entire thing was just projection and for-me-but-not-thee solipsism. You don't need to point it out.

  Kam nodded a second time, even more slowly. "We cannot understand the cosmos at such a root level as to be completely reconciled with it," she said, "and we cannot understand people at such a root level as to be completely reconciled with one another."

  I blinked. "I... guess you could draw that connection," I said.

  "So what is the solution?" she asked. "How can we attempt to know one another, when doing so completely is impossible, and doing so incompletely is intolerable?"

  "I don't know," I said. "It's really that bad for you?"

  She arched an eyebrow. "It's really that bad for you? Enough to let another little parasite inside of your head? Or is there still something you're reaching for, even now?"

  I flattened my lips.

  She looked ahead. "How serious are you about the idea of solving it, Su?"

  I accepted the digression completely, even though unbeknownst to me she was actually going to circle things back around again in a couple of minutes. "Well, I tried to trade a chunk of my lifespan to the Lady in return for her help when I first heard about it, and that, uh, might be on the table."

  "You offered to trade her your lifespan? What is this, an Aesop?"

  "I'm not sure if she was receptive or not," I said, glancing to the side. "Anyway, I'm not sure now. I'm supposed to go talk to her again soon."

  Kamrusepa shook her head. "Have you actually given much thought to what it would take to solve it?"

  "If you're trying to point out that it's insane to think I could solve a puzzle that people have been failing at for millions of years, then multiple people have said that already."

  "No, that's not what I mean." She lowered her voice a bit, even though we were in a quiet stretch, the hills behind us having givenway to white cliffs. "I don't believe it to be as insurmountable a challenge as many do. Much of the reason it's never been solved is simply that the people willing to use their attempt did so much earlier in history - when much less had been ascertained - while those who did not remain too cautious, always waiting for more perspectives, more information." She narrowed her eyes. "And of course, we're different from everyone else. We were there. Each one of us has unique knowledge that might prove the key to unlocking the mystery. You especially, since you've been absent so long."

  "Yeah, that's how I've been justifying it," I admitted.

  "That being said," she continued, "there's a lot you'd need to do to even have a chance. For one thing, you'd need to leave this Domain and come to our headquarters, the Coffee House Domain."

  "Why is it--"

  "To seem inconspicuous, obviously," she answered before I could even finish. "Though as it sounds like things stand, you'd still almost certainly be expelled from the Crossroads." She clasped her hands behind her back. "Our group has two dozen of some of the greatest scholars in this area, as well as a frankly ridiculous amount of documented research into the books, as well as various theories from over the ages." She inclined her head. "We're also associated with several of the others who attended the conclave."

  "Who?"

  "Yantho is the most regular fixture, but we also get visits from Ophelia, Seth, and Fang," she answered. "Even Linos appears occasionally."

  I'm not sure what it said about me that the idea of meeting Linos again felt almost weird as Neferuaten.

  "But that's the thing, Su," she went on, a little more serious. "Doing this would require you to pry into the affairs of everyone who was there that weekend, by whatever means required. To know all facts of the conclave with a startling, all-encompassing intimacy. Is that something you'd be willing to do?"

  "I-- I don't know. Probably," I said, without thinking about it deeply enough. "I mean. Even outside of all this, I've wanted to know what really happened for my entire life. It's always been in the back of my head, hanging over everything."

  "Are you absolutely sure about that?" She asked. "Do you really think there aren't things about all this you wouldn't want to know?"

  "Well, I'm sure there are," I said, frowning furtively. "I don't know why I would ever have committed murder, and honestly, I'm a little scared of finding out. But unless I just go out of my way to avoid everyone, I'm obviously going to find out most of it eventually."

  "I think you'd be surprised," she said. "Despite our little group, the overwhelming majority are more than content to leave sleeping dogs to lie."

  "E-Even so," I said. "I want to try. I think."

  She considered this a moment, then lifted up the journal for the first time in a while, coming to a stop. It took a moment to realize she was passing it back to me. "Let's make an agreement, Su."

  "What sort of agreement?" I asked, taking it.

  "To learn about one another only insofar as it serves our goal, if you're willing to commit to it," she explained. "I will tell you what I would have written in the rest of this book, and explain what I've already written, proportionally to how much you will tell me about yourself. What do you think?"

  It was a tall order.

  "I..." I hesitated, scratching the side of my head. "I don't know."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Quoting Socrates now, are you?"

  I snorted. "That's such a dad joke." I exhaled. The area around us had actually got very quiet, to the point it undermined Kam's original reasoning and made me a little worried. "I want to give this all some thought, I think. I mean-- I really don't want to get kicked out of the Crossroads, even if I'm not sure it's where I want to live in the long term. I've only just settled in."

  Kam instantly looked skeptical. "Is that really why you want to stay?"

  "N-No," I admitted equally immediately. "Ptolema said Ran visits sometimes. I want to see her."

  "Ah, of course." She clicked her tongue. "You know that you could just leave a message?"

  I shook my head. "No, I want to make sure I can see her with my own eyes. I don't know what she'll think about me now, and I..."

  I trailed off, not knowing how to finish the thought without saying too much.

  Kam sighed somewhat melodramatically. "Let's go back to base for a few minutes. We seem to be done with the most sensitive part of this conversation, and if you're going to drag this out for weeks instead of just making a bloody decision, there's at least some reading material I ought to give you in advance." She flicked her wrist, opening another portal.

  I followed after her as she went into it. "I still kind of want to know your stake in this," I said. "Why you want to change this world."

  "To truly explain that, I'd have to give you the story of my life since we last spoke as well, and I fear that might be somewhat more of an ordeal," Kam replied flatly. We re-emerged in the same room we'd come from, with the sofas and Nahmi's big terminal, but oddly there seemed to be no sign of her. "To give the short version, the problem with this place is that it's a walled garden."

  "A walled garden?"

  "Or an expensive retirement community, if you like," she clarified, frowning a little as she put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. "It is a place for a relatively small number of fortunate people, and temporary guests, to reside in comfort under fundamentally finite conditions. But its nature is rigid, arbitrary, and elitist."

  "You mean, it's not good enough because it hasn't saved everyone? That most of humanity died after the end of the Remaining World?"

  "That's part of it, but not exactly," she said, then gave a disapproving hum. "Where did she go...?"

  I looked around. "Are there any other rooms in this place?"

  "Other than the game area and the waiting rooms?" she asked. "There's that little lounge we met in initially, and a room for experimentation and design work - clothing, character work, that sort of thing - but other than that it's all a bit fluid. We do have quite a large bathroom, but technically--"

  There was what sounded like a scream from down below. Kamrusepa raised her eyebrows.

  I frowned in confusion.

  Was that Tuthal?