Aesthar: Dream of Mad Gods (Part 2 of 2)

‘There’s only one thing for it.’ Aesthar concluded as the cascading bug-bombs she had just unleashed brilliantly desecrated the glowing infrastructure that stood as the last defence of the higher city’s upper echelons. ‘I’m going to have to blow up the Scottish Parliament.’

‘Wait.’ McPuck hesitated in her ear. ‘Has anybody voted on this? Aesthar, this is not in the mission log! Repeat -’

‘This is not in the mission log,’ Aesthar repeated. ‘I know.’ Tearing down through the troposphere, Aesthar set her coordinates for the crazy-pavement citadel far below that called itself Parliament. Like good astral bodyguards, her trusty memshards spun around her, negging and scattering only the most critical of wildlife. ‘If I can get inside I can find the Problem. We know it’s located in the central hub of the building. Radical explosives might be the only option.’

She drop-kicked a caterzilla that had swung too close by. The creature’s head exploded, leaving its many-segmented body to writhe wildly around her. Like a shoal of piranhas, the memshards swirled back into her vicinity and rapidly consumed the unfortunate entity’s remains, filtering its essence safely back into the unrealms. The ‘shards didn’t always have their eye on the ball; too easily distracted by the swirling lights below. Aesthar was going to have to try to keep them on a tighter leash.

‘If you can get inside.’ Now McPuck was exasperated. This would reflect badly on him if the mission went kaput. ‘How exactly do you intend to get in? The memshards dissipate at ground level. You’ll be on your own! How on Earth do you intend to breach the building’s defences? The Problem is heavily guarded!’

‘We’re not on Earth anymore,’ Aesthar countered; regrettably aware that they were, after a fashion. ‘Toto,’ she added, knowing that McPuck would almost certainly not get the reference.

‘Fucking Wizard of Oz, very fucking clever!’ You don’t get one over on me, Mistress Smarty-Pants.’

The line had failed to go over his head. Aesthar was momentarily disappointed by her wit.

An itinerant jellycloud filled her field of vision. After having to make a last-minute, split-second landing calculation, Aesthar was forced to punch the beast in the head - or at least, in what she thought probably had to be the head. Jellyclouds had no fixed form that could be easily defined - generally they were placid and docile but if unexpectedly cornered, they were quick to encircle their opponent in a rubbery grasp that often led to eventual digestion in wherever the creature’s digestive areas were.  If it was necessary to pacify them, by and large it was best to go for the beak. If you could find which area of a jellycloud contained that.

The jellycloud made a foosh of disagreement and liquefied away. Pointing herself in the opposite direction from a nearby kindle of cat-things, Aesthar readjusted her decline and sped on to her destination.

Upside-down buildings hurtled past her as she descended. Sometimes it felt as if it was the whole universe that was moving while she was fixed unmoving to the firmament - immobile. A fleck on a windowpane.

Aesthar remembered the chair: the dark room. The last time she had been fixed. The inquisitor leaning over her with the electrodes in hand. What did she know about the bombings? What did she know about the protest?

She had forgotten most of what followed after. That had been another life; a life tied up, shut down and ordered around. There would be no more of that now. Now, there was only her rules; her mission.

Now she was on street level. cityghosts dashed about, secretive and transitory. None of them appeared to be paying her much attention.

The Memshards were gone. McPuck continued to rant in her earpiece.

In front of her stood the Parliament; a confluence of weird grey edges and strange windows that seemed to stretch all around her for ever. The building made for an impressive sight up close.

‘It’s not like it is in the real world.’ Aesthar announced to McPuck, when he had finally ran out of ranting steam. ‘You can hardly even see the top. You got my visual? This is the front bit, right?

‘I can’t… dammit…’ McPuck tutted and hammered some keys. ‘It’s in defence mode. Constantly rearranging itself and recalibrating. I can’t tell.’

Aesthar watched as several high-up windows of the edifice rotated, jutted out, transformed and became turrets, which gave birth to more of the familiar gunshapes. Other protrusions that looked like further armaments were emerging from the rocky heights of the building and inclining themselves to point down at street-level. Aesthar didn’t think any of the gunshapes were specifically singling her out for attention. She was not paranoid - at least, not so far today.

McPuck was still battering away on the keys: trying to blue-sky a solution to this new smaller problem of access. ‘You’re right, though. About the appearance. That’s security architecture. The version build is like nothing I’ve ever seen before… There’s no way I can break through it on my end. I’m going to assume at this point that you have a strategy? ie, one that doesn’t involve a clusterfuck of conflict, friendly fire, and you getting permanently disincorporated on this level?’

‘Pfft. Of course. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’ Aesthar set her appearance parameters to Tourist. Immediately she was swathed in a combination of sunglasses, ginger hair, plastic rain-mac and inappropriate tartan. Approaching one of the entrances and joining one of the queues would now be extremely easy.

She breezed past the SecuriTigers. They prowled mechanically but didn’t register her approach and passing. Other approaching entities swirled towards an emergent entrance node. She noted one of the tigers decoding a nosy spiritoid - the results were not glamorous. It reminded Aesthar of the electrodes.

Ahead of her was a vast arch emerging from a node, that resembled a doorway of some import. Above a neon sign confidently strobed the legend, ‘ACCESS TO DREAM OF MAD GODS.’

‘Okay, so I have to admit, that was not something I would have done,’ McPuck growled.

Two govstolen metalloids were monitoring the archway node. Aesthar’s mind crawled with ideas. ‘You remember that sim I was running the other day?’

She heard the sound of McPuck upending a beverage of some sort, possibly all over some important piece of communications equipment. ‘What? NO, Aesthar! You cannot run the sim! It hasn’t been tested!’

‘C’mon. Now’s as good a time as any.’

‘But… It might… it might start a WAR!’ McPuck hissed.

The metalloids of the node were scanning the code of every visiting spiritoid; checking for inflammatory ideas or insurrectionist thinking. Aesthar advanced closer to the entrance.

‘Remember your training, Aesthar, dammit! There are no such things as wars! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WAR!’

Aesthar reached the front of the queue. The metalloids rotated to face her. Their protuberances were all a-quiver, ready to scan.

‘WELCOME TO PARLIAMENT.’ the metalloids both droned in unison. ‘PLEASE HAVE YOUR REASONS FOR ATTENDANCE FOREMOST IN YOUR BRAINSPHERE. SCAN WILL BEGIN. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR CONTINUED ADHERENCE TO OUR NON-TERRORISM-BASED POLICY OF ATTENDANCE.’

Ignoring McPuck’s frantic screaming in her ear about beta version testing, Aesthar activated the first of her three planned simulations. Almost immediately, the external structure of the parliament building began to shift and break up into confusing shapes that began to float away into the sky.

‘Hello.’ Aesthar politely said to the metalloids: who by now had a look of extreme confusion drifting across their normally-inexpressive grilles. ‘I appear to be lost. Can you direct me to the Problem please?’

‘ALARUM. A POLITICAL FLASHPOINT EVENT HAS BEEN TRACED TO YOU. PLEASE EXPLAIN FLOATING-AWAY OF PARLIAMENT BUILDING BEFORE WE DISINHERIT YOU.’

‘Oh,’ Aesthar said, as surprising numbers of tartan-clad spiritoids began to appear and jostle up alongside her - quickly beginning to overload the metalloids’ motion-detection sensors. ‘That’s just a little program I like to call Reverse Tetriscide? It completely unlocks and reverses access to politically-sensitive astral edifices. Appears to be working perfectly, don’t you think?’

‘EXPLAIN,’ the metalloids stated, sounding faintly distressed. ‘EXPLAIN UNEXPECTED PROFLIGACY OF SPIRITOIDS OR BE DISINHERITED.’ 

‘That would be something else I like to call The August Offensive,’ Aesthar grinned at the baffled robots. ‘I sourced it from this town’s real-world equivalent? It’s designed to simulate the potential overpopulation and overloading of any given built-up astral environment - It’s based on an arts festival, but you wouldn’t know what one of them was. Soon an infinitely-increasing number of foreign spiritoids will overrun the area, destroy your parliament and release the Problem. It was the Problem I came for, if you want to note that on your records? There’s not really anything you can do about it. Sorry.’

‘YOU WILL BE… PREVENTED. FROM DOING THIS,’ one of the metalloids declared, before being knocked down and trampled underfoot by a number of paper-distributing and singing spiritoids.

Aesthar felt the world begin to tremble. She produced some pieces of holocard from her hypothetical pocket and offered them to further newly-arrived and panicking metalloids, who were already getting dragged away by ghostly revellers.

‘Would you like a flyer for my show? She asked: more to irritate McPuck than for any other reason. ‘It’s called, “Blow up the outside world.” It’s just starting now! You’d better prepare yourself. The reviews say it’s an explosive experience.’

Psychogeographical Field Trip - City Construct: Eden Burrow

MINDLINK PENDING… achieved  

UPLOAD OF HYPERLENSES PENDING… achieved

Transtemporal mission log - uploaded by Chronosentry Quinsar (Cydonia node of Psycojog Empire).

The primary outcome of this incursion onto enemy territory is to assess opportunities for Psycojog invasion of the humanoid construct designated ‘City: Eden Burrow.’ Ideally this will take the form of a stealth-mode invasion across time. Chronosentry lensfindings follow.

(For the purposes of this datablink, the 5 highlighted lenses afford an associative and interconnected cross-section of City in question. Achromatic eight-in-one flashthrough is operational.) 

Mission objective is to identify who will kill the city in the future. Focalized precogging has predicted a multipossible that the city will-and-will-not be destroyed in 2113. A floating undecidable. Many coggers could not handle and selfploded. Now will attempt transtemporal analysis of city health to discover overall fate.

1. Beginning exploration of humanoid construct Eden Burrow. Coordinates locked on to supposed locus of humanoid control mechanisms, ‘Scottish Parliament.’ Also detonation point of Chromobomb that is believed to have destroyed city. Fixed-point touchdown briefly coincides with nightcycle. Cityghost presence strong - one of many warring factions and potential enemy obstructions in city. Many different messages of control are being sent. Engaging psychic countermeasures. Will be necessary to advance interaction with other transtemporal spirit entities.

2. Cityghosts flee to mass around parliament locus. A mechanical island fallen from the sky in the future, a crashed and smouldering wreck. This is ground zero of the blast radius. Cityghosts mine it for intent. They are unseen by the humatons but are constantly at war with them, seeking to obstruct their progress - muddling their message. Being of Small Time, the humatons on this plane operate only as biowalkers - unable to see beyond clockstopped limitations of their realm. Those of Big Time walk above and battle always for supremacy.

3. First signs of biowalker technology designed to obstruct carporters - native vehicular intelligences of city. Also first forthcoming evidence of runespeak - primitive higher language of biowalker mystics. Appropriate use of runespeak allows for basic biowalker access to Big Time consciousness. Nearby at ‘palace of royalty’ there is little indication of consciousness. 

4. Talkboard ‘Everyone home safe every day’ reassures biowalkers that ‘you are here.’ Cognitive dissonance is achieved through deployment of contradictory phrase ‘Can’t: level.’

5. Early signs of city breakage. Ground level is infirm. Wounds in stone flesh attract tubefeeders and cellular infection spreads.

6. CIGS: runespeak acrospell conjured by solitary biowalker mystic. Stands for Cohesive Integrated Gigantic Smashface. I have no further data on this.

7. Speedworm overlane. Talkboard communicating futureslipped message predicts eventual of fate overlane: ‘GIVE WAY.’

8. ‘PERMIT’ runespeak. Allows biowalker passage down assigned travellanes. Big Time intelligences are mainly responsibly for implementation of language-based control systems.

 

9. Having strayed from its designated safe-territories, a balanceboard is time-murdered for attempted lanecrossing. Balanceboards are not permitted to perambulate.

10. Greenfeelers feed on the decaying carcass of an oldpass; re-wiring its travel coordinates. 

11.  Cargo-cult mechanoids, recovered by biowalkers and erected in paean to long-extinct sky-gods.

12. Nuugrafficks engage in slow-time conflict with elder surfaces. The result is a near-permanent stalemate of colour chaos.

13. Deceased Talkboard. Killed by excessive sensitivity to carporter motion.

14. Further extant manifestations of biowalker runespeak.



15. Native animal spirits, summoned via nuugraffick ritual, guard passing humanoids from malicious cityghost intent.

16. Activation of central city defences at site of neverending conflict called ‘Leaf War.’ Designated causal disaster zone. 

17. Armoured buildings attempt to protect their pastselves from cityghost reprogramming. Counter-intuitive interdimensional malware hacks and infects oldstone with self-replicating glassteel nanotech which regenerates city edifices into strange new forms - which echo past impressions without resembling them exactly.

18. Here buildings become sad and detach from gravitational constraints. This ongoing contradiction of time is predicted to cause a chain reaction and culminate in a self-haunting citydeath event in 2113 that will completely annihilate and permanently remove the temporal image of Eden Burrow from the prima worldarc.

19. Walls burn with runespeak layers, illustrating the conflicts of City. Being themselves negative astral imprints of unresolved humaton though processes, the cityghosts are perpetually locked into a cyclical deathmatch with the environment that originally created them - which continues to endure, persist and evolve where they cannot. As it attempts to evolve naturally in co-creation with biowalkers, carporters and other more benevolent spirit intelligences, the indelible shadow of cityghost thought re-writes, overwrites or deletes its memory of earlier versions. 

20. Cybrid Elefffant infantry defend the region on behalf of cityghosts. Henceforth, the cityghosts’ ultimate attacking goal is the deletion of the cityheart at the height of miles: the Remembering Stone Which Endures And Protects City. This wrongtime energy manifests itself as City tries to cloak itself from ghost attack. It is present in the travellane-dwelling biowalkers - many of their number cast adrift by soul mismanagement. Primarily it is in the disruption; drilling, hammering, beeping. Ebb and flow. Noise of City is noise of its beginning and end. 

21. cityghosts have a constant presence and police the travellanes by means of their stopgo system. Stopgos are limited-capacity AIs tasked only with mediating between the oppositional movements of both humanoids and carporters.

22. Leaving the war zone. Carporters are disincorporated mid-flight as they attempt to escape the conflict.

23. In isolated areas outside of the main war zone, small pockets of humaton resistance have managed to use the cityghosts’ own glassteel tech against them. Here a cityghost stands trapped behind an makeshift Armani field; its purpose negated by contradictory ideas of beauty and perfection.

28. This baby binface has been hiding the whole time. It is afraid, but safe.

25. Greenfeelers have solidarity for unchanging homeshapes. The two exchange memories, unite and combine to fight.

26. I am stunned by a message from afar. CHURCH HOUSE is here. CHURCH HOUSE could help turn the tide of this war.

27. CHURCH HOUSE activates runespeak on nearby talkboards. ‘Please treat the trees with care’ incantation gives new power to green feelers.

28. CHURCH HOUSE energy breaks the forced labour camps and frees a million bin faces who join the struggle Overjoyed, the baby binface I previously encountered is reunited with its parental units. 

29. Cityghosts are in retreat. Not for ever but for now. Eternal structures and memory shapes of CHURCH HOUSE are reinstalled and reinstated in new defence of old.

30... 46? I think this is a mistake.

31. City has ended. It gives way to the sea. I have kept ambulating until the die-off; except the city is not dead. It lives and dies in paradox. 

32. City sends me a message. My mission here is accomplished; I must return to the distant bank of stars from whence I came.

33. Another communication - Alien! Rock! Thank you, city! I hope I do your story justice!

34. Initiating launch coordinates. Destination Cydonia node, Psycojog empire. I shall return to Eden Burrow in 100 cycles. Remaining now-peaceful cityghosts send me a goodbye message. It goes, 666,666, 6 66. I’m not sure what that means.

35. Final lens portion. Cityghosts drift on into the night. They raise hands in worship to all that is old, all that is new. Integration. Cities can die but they know how to survive. This one must be kept under watch, always.

Aesthar: A Head Of The City (Part 1 of 2)

Aesthar closed her eyes and fell headlong. Into the endless, coruscating, circling dream of the city.