[SESSION id=1.11]: Contrast
The more you shine, the less I am visible.
The less I am visible, the more you forget.
You are gone.
And yet, I am still in your shadow.
— L.
Gradient
"She's waking up," a soft voice. Not Jazz, decidedly so. But similar. Richer, more resonant. "Lillian, I need you to stay calm. You're in Lake Town. Not sure why she brought you all this way when there are plenty of hospitals in Central City, but here we are. Currently, you have a respiration tube in, so it's going to keep you from speaking." How were they so calm? "It's been about a work-week since you hit your head. Do you remember hitting your head?"
Of course I didn't remember hitting my head. I was with Jazz Thorn, and then I was waking up. How would I —
Hysterics. The absurdity of everything. Was that time with Jazz just a dream then? It seemed to only happen when I wasn't properly — That didn't make sense either. The second time was while I was wide awake. When she told me Lillian's mother had passed.
I nodded, or something like it. That seemed to satisfy.
"Lil," Mother's voice, "Dr. Stella has been keeping track of you since their daughter brought you in. Lovely girl that Jazz Star."
As she spoke, I wondered that the room was dark. My eyes were open. So why couldn't I see. "Thank you, Mrs. Thorn." Jazz's voice made my chest warm.
A pair of hands settled on the sides of my face, and I felt them untape something. Then the most horrid feeling ever as they removed the thing in my throat. Before I could speak, they were working at something else.
The room came into focus as the wraps around my eyes were removed. "She barely looks herself, Omi," Jazz said as she stared me down. "Probably ought to fill her in before she sees a mirror."
"Lillian," Dr. Stella, I had to presume, looked just like Jazz, except a bit less feminine. It was hard to put a finger on it. "You took a pretty stark fall after a phone call. Everyone tells me things have been weird for you, but no one will tell me more than that. The fall caused some bone fractures and some minor ocular damage, which we were able to repair."
"When Jazz says I hardly look myself," I quirked a brow at the doctor, "how bad is it?" They handed me a mirror. It was the same face, but the eyes were wrong. "Minor ocular damage, and yet now I have glowing sapphire eyes. What in the absolute fuck do you mean 'minor' when it looks like Ayuna herself rebuilt my eyes?"
"Point taken," Dr. Stella blushed a bright red. They were far fairer than their daughters, so the effect was curious. "We did have to rebuild them. You may see differently. And the glow should wear down once your body attenuates to them. It's fairly new technology with a lot of failsafes in it."
"Fine. Whatever. Leave." Dr. Stella turned toward the door. Mother and Jazz started to follow. "Not you two! Mother. Jazz. Stay. One I need to talk to. The other I want here. Take your pick for which is which, but Doctor Unterstatement has to go."
They were out quickly, leaving me with Mother and Jazz.
"Alright, first things first," I groaned. "Mother, this is my ... something intimate, Jazz. Jazz, this is my Mother, Diana Thorn."
"We already did introductions, Lil," Mother said with a pout.
"Not the point, Mother," I said. "This next part isn't going to make any sense to you. So I wanted to get the important thing out of the way and allow me focus." I turned to Jazz and frowned. "Stop looking at me like that. It's been a year."
"Seriously?" Jazz didn't look surprised, but she also didn't look particularly calm about it. "What did you do all that time? Just eat and sleep again? That can't —" She put a hand to her forehead. "You were over there."
"I was. Which we can talk about later." I turned to Mother. "Mother, you're not going to believe this, but time has been weird for me for the last three year-divisions or so. I had forty-five days of isolation, only to find five hours had passed." Mother was entirely calm, unsurprised. "Jazz told you?"
"No, Lil," Mother said with a gentle smile. "I checked the call logs. they didn't come all at once. Neither did the messages. And yet they showed up all at the same time."
"Why is everyone so entirely comfortable with all of this?"
"Honestly? We're not, R." Jazz said as she sat on the bed beside me. "But your mother and I are both really close to The System, so we've seen weirder."
"Mother. Mum." I corrected to the more endearing term. It felt warm in my mouth. "Do we still have that old workstation you saved?"
"In the storage room, yes," she said. "Why?"
"I think I'd like to get into your shared hobby. Maybe I'm a top notch hacker and no one knew it," I said, uncertain where I'd gotten the confidence to claim such a title. "But I'm interested in finding out."
Counterbalance
"What the ever loving toenail of Elia is a null pointer?" I couldn't make the first bit of sense out of the textbook Jazz and Mother had provided me. I couldn't see a way for anyone to do so. The notion of pointers was straightforward enough, just using an address instead of the thing itself. But null pointer?
Jazz took the stack of pages I had skipped to start reading about pointers, and she turned back to the first chapter against my will. "If you don't start with the basics, you won't understand the advanced topics."
She'd already said as much twelve times. By that point, she was barely holding together her composure. And yet I continued to rebel. "Why do I need to learn about addition, subtraction, and value setting? What even is the point of learning about all these weird abstractions?"
We were sharing space in my bedroom after I was released from the hospital. I was trying to learn as Jazz worked on the old workstation in an attempt to get it running. She was far less interested in my witty repartee than Mother typically was. "Do you think you understand addition and subtraction?"
"Yes." As I said it, a calm confidence settled on me. In some strange way, I was certain in the knowledge. Like a flood my words continued. "Take the 'bitwise exclusive or' and 'bitwise and', left shift the second, then add it to the first. That's recursive, though. And for subtraction, you take the 'bitwise inverse' of the first, add that to the second, then take the 'bitwise inverse' of the total."
A hand slapped to my mouth as Jazz stared at me, wide-eyed. Somehow we both knew that I hadn't known that, and yet I'd been able to spit it back out without a thought. Neither of us moved for a few seconds. Just silence and staring.
Jazz was the first to recover. "Do you know what any of those words mean?" She looked stern. "Because you're not wrong, but that was a mouthful."
"I think so?" Not a statement at all, but as much a question as Jazz's request. Still, as I said it, I was awash in the same confidence. "Bitwise operators concern numbers using a base two scope, looking at digits per-place-value between two numbers – or within a single number – and performing some change. The 'and' checks if they're both set, the 'or' checks if either is set, 'exclusive or' checks if only one is set, and the 'inverse' changes the state of each bit."
Again, we stared in silence for a moment. Mother came in with a tray of snacks. "Girls, it's not much, but you should —" She must have felt the tension. "What happened?"
"Please do tell us, Lillian," Jazz smirked, "what you know about lambda functions."
"I'm not sure I've read about those, but I've read about more general functions. I know about them." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the next sentence spilled out like I'd rehearsed it. "Functions are a type of flow control structure that take some number of parameters and perform a task, sometimes outputting some data. They can take variables or pointers. They can even reference themselves."
Mother was horrified for a second. Like she was looking at someone else. Then it passed. She was fine. "Peculiar." She raised a brow and set the tray on my bedside table. "Daughter of mine, what can you tell me about time and space efficiency?"
"Nothing. Never heard of them." I shrugged. "I can't know everything."
"Fine," Mother said as she moved back toward the door. "But I'm watching you, Lil." Her smile was broad. Not a threat, but a playful jab. And then the door was pulled closed behind her.
"She's right you know," Jazz said as she returned to her work on the workstation. "It's peculiar. But it's probably nothing too much to worry over. It's like the fox and the hare."
Jazz was referencing a well known parable from long before the old tongue evolved into the modern tongue. Both the fox and the hare survive not simply on the knowledge they have, but on their skill in application and in the wisdom acquired as they continue to survive in the face of it. The hare, being a clever girl, digs holes for her warren. The fox, being quick and slick, learns to dig to reach her underground quarry.
A constant struggle for information and skill acquisition. The hare learns to kick, the fox grows longer legs to protect her face. The hare develops explosive speed, the fox learns to ambush. No matter how far one presses, the other is always a step ahead or a step behind. Knowing, understanding, and self improvement.
So what was the point of worry if, for the moment, your current state as the hare outpaces the fox? And what was the point of struggle if, as the fox, you are already ahead? Finding balance was key.
"Vulpes et lepus in perpetuo choro." The words slipped out. "Just be sure to find your own mark, right?"
Her grin told me that I'd understood Jazz's point, but then her face shifted to something more concerning. "Why do you know the old tongue so well?"
A perfectly reasonable inquiry. No one learned the old tongue unless they had a reason. "Flowers are classified and named in the old tongue," I offered with a soft shrug, "and that made my obsession with flowers – four in particular, but even as a broader class – far easier to digest and track."
"Even so, nobody is conversational in it," Jazz said the words with a wince as her hand slipped. "Don't move. I'm bleeding. That was pretty bad." The driver she'd been using had lost its grip in the bolt and slid, stabbing her in the opposite hand, directly at the heel of her palm. I'd seen it happen somewhere before, but it was still striking.
"Why not move?" I was already at the door. "I'll get the aid kit. If you don't want my help, I'll let you patch it, but there's no sense in dripping everywhere."
"Seriously," Jazz moaned, "it'll be fine. I've had worse."
The words rang hollow as the first several drops fell from her hand to the carpet. I knew how to get blood out, so it'd be fine. I was more worried over her. "Let me help you or else I'll stop doing that thing you like."
"Not like you can do it till my Omi gives you a clean bill of health," Jazz stuck her tongue out at me. "But fine. Go get the supplies. And then just let me manage it."
I was out the door and back quickly enough that there should've been no change, but when I returned, everything was fairly normal. The drops of blood were still on the carpet, but the bleeding had stopped, and Jazz wasn't hurt. Her hand was wrapped in something like gauze.
Then I blinked, and the view switched. Still bleeding. Profusely. Enough it couldn't be stopped. Jazz was losing a lot of blood and fast. What could I do for that? Was my aid kit well enough stocked to handle something like that?
Another blink. The injury was small but bleeding speedily. I handed Jazz the kit and sat on the bed, dizzy. I let her work, not getting in the way. She didn't question it. Once the task was finished, she set back to work.
My eyes closed a second to stop the spinning. When I opened them, Jazz wasn't working. She was asking if I was okay. Her steps closed the space to the bed, and she was leaning over me. Blood on her hands, the bandage wrapped well but already showing signs of bleedthrough.
"Dizzy. A bit fluttery. Uncertain." That was honest. "I should be fine, but it may take a moment."
One hand settled on my thigh. The other on my shoulder. Damp from the blood, but I didn't care. It was stable. She stayed there several seconds. Finally my eyes closed again, and she was holding me. It was dark in the room. The bedside clock told me it was almost midnight.
I finally settled into the sensations, and my body caught up. As it did, I relaxed, and I was quickly asleep. My next sense of awareness was a dream. Somehow I knew that. But even so, I couldn't be sure.
Juxtaposition
My lily. Her voice was smooth, but it wasn't spoken so much as heard. Mine alone, she intoned with conviction, if she will have me.
It would bring me no end of joy, the second voice was rugged as it carried across the space, to be the lily of my lady.
The scene came into view. A noble woman, some manner of queen or elder spirit or something similar. Violet eyes and scarlet hair. A warrior maiden bowed before her. Sapphire hair and scarlet eyes.
Once their exchange completed, they both turned to me.
Sister, I heard the noblewoman's voice in my head, though her lips never moved. Where is your burdensome thistle?
My eyes traced the whole space around us. Nothing. No one. Just me, the noblewoman, and the warrior. She seemed to understand and bowed her head.
So it must be. The noblewoman's head hung, discontent, but not surprised. My own lily will soon go the way of the flowers, and we will be left to our duty. Her face brightened. She smiled softly. Though we will miss them, we are not meant to hold what must be taken.
The warrior faded in much the same pattern as a fog lifts, dissipating around itself as the sun warms it.
You cannot leave me, my voice filled the space between us, but even so I had said nothing. Though without warning, there was no us for anything to occupy space between.
"Lillian," Jazz's voice, pulling me from that place. "What colour is the algorithm? How does a function smell?" She kept asking curious questions with no clear meaning. I could answer none of them.
A call device rang out. The workstation hum. The vis-screen wasn't blank but bore my face. Calm, peaceful almost. Though her eyes weren't mine. Not anymore. A calming grey at the centre, fading into a deep brown. She was me, and I was her.
The Lillian on the call screen kept looking to the side, then back to the screen. She wasn't seeing me, but she was looking through me. I thought, surely, she was typing something.
Jazz Thorn came into view on the call screen. I looked around, and my Jazz was gone. Jazz Thorn gave her Lillian a book. Black cloth bound. Metallic amethyst lettering. I couldn't read the text, but I felt some kinship with the book.
Losing myself to the sensations, I knew I had to wake up. If I didn't, I might drown in the impossible. I begged anything, anyone, to let me wake. No waking came. Was it truly a real experience?
Rose. A new voice. One that shook my core.
Jasmine. Another, just as powerful.
Why do you toil so?
Why does anyone, my love?
Truly, why does anyone?
It meant nothing. And yet, it felt like something that meant everything. How was that possible? Why were the flowers speaking?
The weight of Jazz's hand on my shoulder woke me, and the dream faded as dreams do, leaving me more confused than I had been when it started.
Thesis
"You're crying, doll," Jazz whispered as she pulled me close, "and your crying worries me." I let myself melt into her. "Have you been gone again, or was it a nightmare?"
"Nightmare," I admitted, not fully certain that was the correct word. "Thank you for waking me." I snuggled closer to her and cooed. "It would make a great story if nothing else."
"A study in contrast," Jazz mused. "The fear in dreaming and the fascination in waking. I'd love to read that story, if you write it for me."
"Maybe after I become the greatest hacker in the world," I teased, "surpassing you and Mother and Cyphera and Sheen and Rivia and Stasia."
"Whom?" Right. Those names were from [world], not from my life with Jazz.
"Let me tell you a story. A story I learned from Jazz Thorn, over there," I said as I rolled over to face her. The faint sapphire glow of my new eyes illuminated her face. "It's something like a history of the world."
A primary question of how and why
[world]is as it is arises from the ashes when one finally destroys her conceptualisation of what must and opens the path to what could. Was it strictly necessary that the fourhackers instantiate The Source? What would[world]look like if that integration hadn't happened? What would it look like if that were impossible.
Jazz held up a hand. "First, how are you doing that with your voice?" She looked almost terrified. "Second, I thought you were going to tell a story."
"I spent almost a year with Jazz Thorn while I was in the hospital," I answered, unsure of how much more to tell her. She already knew that much, but not the extent of the experience. "You learn a thing or two." Jazz nodded at that, though her face still wasn't certain. "As far as the story, shut up and let me tell it." I winked. She waved me on.
The histories only go as far as four, but in the absence of the Sectors, The Source still would have been, but
[world]would not. Stasia, Rivia, Sheen, Cyphera. Mere women, if only we look beyond the histories, who stole the power of true divinity and labelled themselves as such.
Another raised hand. "Is this really a story, or a theology lesson?"
"Sweet sweet woman," I smiled at her. "If you don't shut up, then in Aria's name I will sew your lips together."
"No you won't." She smirked at me.
"Correct. But shut up anyway."
We have no evidence of a time before the Sectors, and yet we know there must have been a time before. Else where would ordinary women have originated? And for this reason, we know there must be a time after the Sectors in an existential sense, not simply a temporal sense.
Enter the
Flower_Princess. Auserwho dared to imagine[world]differently. Who found a way into the impossible. Not simply taking the divine, but claiming the primordial, she rebuilt[world]in her view of utopia. Not a Sector, but a System unto herself. But she had one inviolate rule. Do no harm. And how to change[world]without harm, but to test it, to build in the blocks and ask the question 'what can I do' instead of 'what can I not'.She saw her work grow and evolve, but it was too slow, so she did something absurd, something obscene. Forking The System and allowing it a chance to run. A full reboot. And the evolution of kind.
In the absence of Sectors, the Divine was remembered, but the primordial still forgotten. Even so, it was good. And
Flower_Princessabandoned it to run until the time came for her to intervene.
"Okay, fine," Jazz said when I paused for several seconds. "I admit it's not a bad story. Princess of Flowers has a goddess complex. And that's why we're here." She shook her head. "What a roundabout way to say those four names were like goddesses."
"Sure, but it's important." My defence was weak, and I nearly backed down when Jazz rolled her eyes, but I was going somewhere. "You mentioned twelve impossible accounts. You never told me their names, but I'm betting I can give you all of them in order."
She quirked a brow. "If you can't?"
"I'll do that thing you like." I winked. "And if I can, then you let me do that thing I love."
"Win-win for you, I see," Jazz grinned. "Fine. Don't mess up, Miss Thorn."
"Rose, Jasmine, Phyllo, Elia Gideon, Nihil Nalia, Ayuna Nara, Aria Rialta, Lynae, Sini, Linna, Aeluin, Aidan." The names were recited with ease. I'd committed them to memory. But more than that, the strange confidence I'd had earlier came to me, and it was a matter of basic recitation.
Each name made Jazz's eyes open wider. Her jaw slacker. And by the end of it, she was sitting upright, staring at me like I'd lost it.
"I've told no one all twelve names, let alone the order they're in." She was horrified. "How?"
"Honestly? It's a puzzle for Jazz Thorn and her wife," I offered without much sincerity. "They can't fathom something older than the Sectors, or they couldn't before they uncovered that list. But it was missing a name. A name I only have by accident."
"Question." Jazz held up a finger.
"Answer." I shot back, a little too accustomed to my back and forth with Jazz Thorn.
Jazz grinned at that, giggled for a second, then spoke. "Was Lillian Thorn there?"
"This is going to sound weird, but I was Lillian Thorn. Like only one can be in a place." I shrugged. It was old hat to me. But I could see Jazz's gears turning. "If you're about to ask about intimacy, please don't."
"Don't have to ask. You and I have chemistry in any world. Did she wear you down or did you wear her down?" Jazz's words made me blush, and I was incredibly happy to be sitting in the dark. "I'm kidding, of course. It was mutual."
"You're not mad that I slept with another woman?" I was upright then, level with her. "Seriously?"
"Of course not," Jazz said, "because you didn't. You slept with me."
It was my turn to stare, eyes wide and mouth agape. After a few seconds, I felt Jazz's fingers lifting my chin.
"And in any case, Lillian," she said after a while, "would you be mad to find out I slept with you? Like. Switch the shoes. Would you be mad? Especially considering you didn't know how long you'd be gone."
She was right, of course, but that didn't make it any easier to accept. "Riddles wrapped in enigmas."
"Dipped in puzzles and sprinkled with cryptographic algorithms." She leaned forward and kissed me. "I'll let you do that thing you like in the morning. For now, it's still too early. Go to sleep, lilium meum."
"Ut vis, scilicet." She shook her head at me once more and lay down. I followed and let our lips touch, breathing her air for a few seconds.
"Goodnight, sweet lady," she said as I faded back to sleep.