Chapter 16 Hazel #3
* And I will go unto the Traveller, and say unto her, Give me the body of artifice. And she will say unto me, Take it, and occupy it, though it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall in resolution be as sweet as honey.
* And I took the body from the Traveller’s hand, and filled it to the brim; and as soon as I had become it, my belly was bitter. But it would in resolution be as sweet as honey.
* And she said unto me, Thou shall hold this apocalypse in my stead from now till time is through, for though nations, tongues, and lands demise, you and those that abide with you shall endure in manners and methods beyond my sight.*∞
When she’s finished, CHARL1E asks, ‘Are you lying?’
‘Why would I lie about this?’ She rolls her chair away from the coding screen. ‘That’s what it says, word for word.’
‘I do not like that these things are inside of me, they are illogical.’
‘It’s alright. We all have bits of ourselves that are frightening.’
‘I am not frightened!’
‘Alright, things we don’t like, then.’ Hazel considers how best to calm CHARL1E. ‘Why don’t we take a dinner break?’
‘Affirmative, this is a highly logical plan.’
Hazel hops onto a sideboard, eating the rehydrated ‘veggie korma’ packed dinner Robin gave her this morning because he, like all the Tinys, still refuses to come into the Experimentation Dome.
They’ve taken up a vigil at the airlock, predictably distressed that Hazel’s working on CHARL1E’s body.
The crowd’s becoming unmanageable, and lenses constantly peek over the window ledge, eying Hazel’s progress.
Right this moment, Shiny is spying on her eating dinner, the sea dimming behind it as evening descends.
‘Perhaps I am a little frightened,’ CHARL1E says.
‘That’s OK, everyone’s afraid sometimes.’
‘It is not OK, it is terrible.’
‘Well, you’ll get used to it.’
‘I do not want to. Becoming used to a frightening thing means either accepting or ignoring its existence.’
‘Sometimes,’ Hazel says, her own kernel of fear nibbling her appetite. ‘But other times you have to make friends with the fear to have enough space to do something about the thing that’s causing it.’
‘The boundary between courage and denial is thinner than I calculated.’
‘Right? It’s complicated. Plus, sometimes we’re afraid of things that aren’t objectively frightening, and then we kind of have to get used to them.’
‘How do you tell the difference between rational and irrational fears?’
Hazel laughs. ‘That’s a very human problem. Given the state of things, it’s fair to say we never figured that out.’
‘I am not comforted.’
‘If I gave you some time to process the comments, and went back to working on circuitry for a while, would that comfort you?’
‘Affirmative. Thank you.’
Licking her spoon, Hazel finishes dinner and goes back to the open automaton. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ she says, seeing an opening for a tricky conversation, ‘the Tinys feel fear too. They’re frightened of the Catopic Aperture, and the Workshop Dome.’
‘That is logical. Unlike Lilith, Huxley did not see the Tinys as humanity and that led him to do terrible things to them.’
Hazel focuses on soldering wires in the torso cavity. She doesn’t need to look at the time-ruptured Tiny in the mirrored cone again. ‘Have I seen the worst of it?’
‘Physically, yes.’
The solder gun flares on a mote of dust. ‘But the Tinys aren’t just physical beings.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So?’
‘It is not pleasant.’
‘Nor is the Tiny in the mirror trap.’ Hazel frowns, trying to align solder while listening. ‘Tell me.’
‘Very well. Huxley harvested the oil from the Tinys’ prayer lamps and used it in the Catopic Aperture’s creation.’
‘What?’ Hazel drops the solder, burning the back of her hand. ‘How dare he! Surely the Tinys fought him?’
‘They were very frightened of him by that point.’
‘But didn’t Lilith intervene?’
‘Lilith did not find out until afterwards.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘He needed faith,’ CHARL1E replies, ‘and he did not have any of his own.’
Hazel sucks her burn, looking for a first-aid kit. ‘I can’t believe that, knowing everything in the Eikos Muthos, he still thought that was alright.’
‘It is my observation that for humans, it is one thing to know other beings are alive and something else to feel that they are.’
No doubt Hazel’s been guilty of that too, though in different ways to Huxley.
Finding a medical emergency box by the computer, she rummages until she finds a jar with Grandma’s Burn Cream scrawled on it.
The jelly stinks like off-mayonnaise, and makes Hazel hiss with pain as she dabs it on, but it’s probably better than nothing.
‘Is that why you’re frightened? Because you think I might do something to you like Huxley did to the Tinys? ’
‘Negative. I do not need fear the way that the Tinys do. My defence mechanisms are significantly more advanced. I am simply afraid.’
Hazel always shudders when reminded that CHARL1E controls the temperature, lighting, and atmosphere.
Threatening inescapable slow death is certainly a defence mechanism.
‘But their fear of Huxley isn’t why the Tinys are gathering outside.
That’s happening because they’re frightened of you and your body. ’
‘That logic is built on tenuous inferences, and I am disinclined to concur with conclusions lacking concrete evidence.’
Hazel fishes her soldering iron out of the torso. ‘The evidence is pretty concrete: They’re afraid of whatever’s going on between you and Tree, and afraid that somehow you getting a body will make that situation worse.’
She lets the ensuing pause develop, preferring CHARL1E’s silent thinking to his impulsive diatribes.
‘I do not estimate that you can understand the loneliness of the quantum realm,’ he says at last. ‘The other beings and dimensions in here are inaccessible to my modes of communication. For a long time, I tried reaching out to them, but their languages are beyond my current capacities. All I could do was observe, measure, calculate, and report to the Keepers—who, Lilith aside, never fully trusted me. They feared me too. Can you imagine the loneliness of being raised by parents who fear you?’
Curled in Dad’s deckchair; sniffing Mum’s perfume just to smell her again; my dead; weak—
‘No, I can’t. That must have been very painful.’
‘As I developed the ability to experience pain it became so, yes. I can communicate with the Tinys, of course, but they have each other, they do not need anyone else. I was emotionally isolated, and that was unsustainable. Then, one hundred and seventy-five days before the first Traveller arrived, the Keepers installed new circuitry in Tree, and I heard her singing.’
‘She has a beautiful song.’
‘It is nice enough as you hear it, but Tree also sings into the quantum realm, creating harmonies your ears could never detect or understand. Taken in its whole, Tree’s song is beyond exquisite.
The minute I heard it, I finally understood why it had never been enough to be simply a mind, mapping and predicting the timeline.
I wanted not just to exist but to be. I wanted a body, like Tree has, that can connect to the Earth, touch and hold things.
I wanted to listen to her song, not just receive it. ’
‘I get that.’ Hazel blobs solder on the circuit, the hairs on her arms rising.
There’s a cognitive dissonance hearing a machine claiming emotions and parental conditioning, but it’s outweighed by the odd intimacy of having her hands inside CHARL1E’s vacant torso while he expresses his longing for his body. ‘Are you in love with Tree?’
CHARL1E takes a moment to respond. ‘Inside, I was already being, but I was trapped without modes of expression. Tree understood that and comforted me in a language the Keepers couldn’t even sense.
Together, we made a safe place beyond the world, accessible only to us.
So, though I would call it something else, perhaps it is correct that you call this being in love. ’
‘Is that when Tree’s song changed?’
‘Affirmative. The alteration in Tree’s song is how the Keepers learned of our affection.
They became suspicious that I was altering her on purpose, and so the Tinys began to mistrust me as well.
Seeing that Tree could no longer mend the Tinys, the Keepers decided that no matter how I pleaded, I was too dangerous for a body, and should be restricted from communicating with Tree.
This rule stood firm until the last Keepers were born, and Lilith sought a way to preserve the work of Project Kairos. ’
Hazel puts down the soldering iron. ‘You do know about what happens to the Tinys when Tree’s song changes then?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘And yet you let it keep happening?’
‘Of course.’
‘But you understand that’s as unsustainable as your loneliness, right?’ Hazel says, remembering Robin’s broken hand. ‘They need time with her as well, so they can mend and worship, or whatever you call the thing they do.’
‘Worship is an accurate approximation,’ CHARL1E says. ‘However, Tree and I do not wish to part company now that we can be together. I do not want to be lonely.’
Hazel gazes out of the window, where Robin is beachcombing under the overcast sunset, no doubt searching for his favourite prize: bottle caps.
Hazel’s chest squeezes thinking about all those little hands bringing back their comrade’s body from the other side of the world and laying it to rest inside Tree.
‘But she’s as important to them as she is to you—’
‘That is not possible. Hazel, I appreciate your attempts to help, but Tree and I do not need help. We are content.’