//------------------------------// // Chapter 16: Orienting // Story: The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards // by Cloud Ring //------------------------------// ☄☄☄ As she exited the elevator, Cursory was expecting anything. That silent six-legged mechanical beasts would come out to meet her and disassemble her into spare parts for the Black Moon’s creations. An endless library in which one step beyond the door is enough to get lost forever. Absolute darkness. Or maybe a familiar and soothing view of Metropolis from a height: three-storey houses forming habitats, lined up into triangles by wide avenues, eternal illumination of traffic routes, cloud houses a little to the side, built to the personal taste of each winged family, but with all the diversity still following unspoken yet coherent rules. Or so she thought. She certainly didn't expect to get into a forest. Fortunately, just a forest. Not the Forest. Tall, wide-standing birches, yellowish-scarlet soft moss; she snorted from the admixture of rot and young mushrooms. And a strange, almost complete silence. Not a single sound of animal life, no beast, no bird, no fish disturbing a surface of a pond — only the wind rustling the leaves. Nothing but the wind. With a barely audible noise, the elevator went underground, the slab slid back, closing the shaft, and not a trace remained, no matter how closely the pegasus looked, even poking the soft soil with her hoof. She looked up and overhead, above the trees, and saw... nothing. Totally black void. No Net, no clouds, nor stars, nor Moons; and rare sparks of maybe-stars were, most likely, born in her weary eyes unaccustomed to such absence of any light. She looked at the forest again. Diffuse light that allowed her to see all around and distinguish mostly natural colors was born without a clear singular source — from many small ones, judging by the shadows. But still, as she turned her head up, there were no stars, nor lamps, nor anything else.  Just the void. With each subsequent beat, Cursory noticed more and more things that were simply wrong. More precisely, repetitive. Birch branches were almost of the same pattern. The birches themselves were in almost perfect rows. Low mounds of fallen leaves were in a precise grid… except not exactly. As if the world’s artist had drawn them so at first, then hastily shifted a few of them away before submitting the world, to make it feel more natural. If so, the artist failed at that. Even the wind blew only sometimes, as if it almost forgot that, in fact, it should indicate its presence. Cursory blinked and jumped into the skyless void, flying vertically upward to look from above the forest for Gentle and Solid Line... to find them, pick them up and take them away from this lifeless void. After five beats she crashed into something cold and hard at full speed, pierced it and saw the void from outside. More precisely, from aside. Even more precisely, she was hanging over a giant black table, where an obsidian hemisphere was fixed on three holders under a bright white lamp. Not so big to contain a pegasus now, though. A hemisphere with a star-shaped black speck on the side; it was spreading, and the grains of glass broke off and fell inward right before Cursory's eyes. She shook her head and looked around again. Other tables — impeccably black even under the harsh white light, which had nothing of the usual ghost brilliance of the White Moon — stood all around, with no clues at all to distinguish one from another. And, as far as she could see, each one had its own hemisphere and its own lamp, exactly as the one she flew out from. Cursory saw a painful clarity of forms; not a single mistake in the contours; she felt not a smell, heard not a sound. She climbed higher, even higher, looked around the endless tables on a green floor — there was an elusive order in their placement, with no clear pattern. She almost believed that the place was infinite, that she would wander here until the end of time. Just in case, she checked the space for isotropy and connectivity — first she left a pair of crosswords on two neighboring tables, then looked at them while flying around; they did not disappear nor move in any unexpected way. The magnetic sense was puzzled, almost silent, reporting uniform weak interference from all directions. Then she chose a random direction — there were no special signs to rely on — and flew along it, leaving pentagon-beacons shining behind her so as not to go astray. The light of the White Moon could still be felt, trembling like a pearly flame in Cursory Streak, and then outside, in the sky invisible through the green floor, even though the sky was now far below. It calmed and supported her. It confirmed that she was not in a dream nor in a deliberate illusion. She was already starting to get tired when her gaze found a milky-smoky wall too far ahead, and she was definitely tired when she got to it. Gentle Touch was not there. There were a few doors and an almost familiar terminal at the door instead. Almost. The closer Cursory Streak examined the terminal, the higher she raised her eyebrows. No voice input, no projecting, five times the size of what it should be, with a concave and very small screen, a six-row keyboard — the seventh row, one for phonetic modifiers, was simply absent. If the terminal was only missing buttons for click consonants, that would at least make sense — they were added to the civilian language only two iterations ago, and Cursory’s great-grandmother still remembered the language without them. But there were no tones on the keyboard either — and tones always had been. And most importantly, it was rusty. On the edges and sides of the body, in small dark spots. The first flawed object in this room! There was not even a couch to lay beside it — and if it were, it would have been very high up. She tried, and failed, to lower the keyboard or the screen; and even at a glance it was clear that should she sit on top of the screen case, she would have to type blindly then. This thing was... impolite. It, by its very existence, denied that unicorns or earth ponies would work with it. At first Cursory refused to believe in such a thing. She looked for hidden levers or buttons; she pushed one of the doors, and behind it saw Metropolis, from slightly above the cloud level, as it should be if she were still on the black tower. She carefully considered whether to step through and fly away. Then she closed the door, returning to the terminal — it woke before she came next to it, displaying a green neon sigil at the lower half of the screen. She got the doubtless message of necessive automated recognition. A few beats later it disappeared from the screen — but kept floating there in her mind, requiring. She took a careful peek, and the screen seemed innocuous enough — normal dim yellow symbols in a normal if archaic mono-width font. Two fields to enter login and password; and, albeit not right away, she had found a slit in a terminal's box to put in a slice of paper — a snapshot or a blank. After a few beats of carefully examining the small screen she had found, tucked in the upper left corner, the prompt to switch to a text interface, and pressed the required combination. ---☄☄☄ : set language to civilian >>> OK : use the set language only, unless written otherwise >>> command unclear; did you perhaps mean ‘set language’? : disable all languages except civilian >>> command rejected: access denied The struggle with inconvenient interface while keeping steadily airborne would be relatively easy if not for the time. Completely out of her phase, as White Moon was in Her nadir, she was straining to stay awake for a while now, and the urge to sleep was becoming harder and harder to ignore, a quiet, persistent force at odds with the neon sigil shining bright in her mind's eye. Her own voice in this argument was advisory at best. The anxiety over other sigils to come was weirdly helping, though. Let’s try some more… : display my access level >>> access level: 2 (guest) : disable all output where language is not civilian >>> command unclear: can’t parse Too bad. Well, let’s move on and get this over with. : set the naming convention to white >>> OK : set the numerics to lunar >>> OK : start authentication >>> usage: >>> authenticate “name” authentication_factor >>> >>> to check if the user is present in the system >>> first enter the name without a factor Once she went this route, the demand for attention from the sigil subsided in a beat. She was doing the right thing. Drowsiness rushed in, taking advantage of its adversary’s setback, and she made a typo in a long word. : authenicate “cursory streak” >>> command unknown; did you perhaps mean authenticate? : auth “cursory streak” >>> user found, id 7869046 Oh, it knows aliases? Nice. : help auth >>> usage: >>> authenticate “name” authentication_factor >>> >>> suggested authentication factor is: >>> - a mnemogram: recall the designated memory while entering >>> authenticate “Exemplary Example” mnemogram >>> >>> alternate authentication factors are: >>> password or image >>> >>> to get a hint for a forgotten factor, enter >>> authenticate hint “name” authentication_factor : auth hint “Cursory Streak” mnemogram >>> hint: the mnemogram is set corresponding to the resting place : auth “cursory streak” mnemogram >>> provide the mnemogram in more detail >>> >>> authentication successful Cursory Streak slowly exhaled. It was not hard to imagine the Forest, with its green darkness and whitish shadows among the spruce trunks, with its heavy resinous scent, with its interlocking branches, from which thick moisture falls on the coat. From a certain depth it was more difficult to stop imagining. At least the neon sigil moved out of focus and hid in the lateral branches of her memory. The sleep was completely unopposed now though, threatening to wash over her at any beat. She wished that Gentle Touch was here, and almost succumbed to the sleep while doing so. The little mare had her way with dreaming, Cursory Streak was sure of that, however much her companion was evading the subject. For now, White’s perseverance would just have to do. She called for it, and got a reply, however weak it was. Just a spark in the darkness, nothing more. Enough to carry on. And, speaking of Gentle Touch... : display my access level >>> access level: 3 (user) : list users >>> display all 7863214 results (Y/N)? : N : list users summary >>> 7863214 resting users in the system >>> 2 active units in the system >>> 8245 heralds in the system : list users with keywords “gentle touch” >>> users with keywords "gentle, touch" not found I just have no time for that… I will find her, I promise. Just not now, not like that… Let’s move to Solid then. : list users with keywords “solid line” >>> found users: >>> name: solid line >>> rank: herald >>> id: 677821 Got you! Now, how do I contact you? : display commands with access level {3, 2} inline >>> would you like to see all 129 results? : N Cursory Streak spent at least half of a slice and more than enough faulty tries on it. The system was trying to help her, that much was a given, and more obvious with each following reply. It was just awfully clumsy and somewhat stupid, if not less friendly than modern terminals. But eventually she contrived the line that worked. : list commands where access level {3, 2} and functionality ≥ “limited” then sort by usage frequency then take first 15 results then group by functionality level   >>> full functionality: >>> alert, arrange, convey, help, list, logout, rest >>> >>> limited functionality: >>> cleanup, display, instance, library, mail, schedule, seed, set : help mail >>> usage: >>> mail user_id "message" >>> please note that user's immediate attention >>> is not guaranteed below access level 5 This is no good. But what about... : help convey >>> usage >>> convey user_id "reason for attention" >>> please note that the reason as well as the user's reply >>> will be processed by immersion subroutines >>> so please keep it concise and clear; >>> the target user has the undeniable right >>> to block conveys from your address Oh well. I have the reason, sure... : convey  id 677821 “joint mission for the trinity of moons” >>> trying to connect the user id 677821 >>> connection established: id 677821 >>> reason rejected by the user What do you mean, rejected?! She tried again with the first reason from the top of her head, and kept doing that. It was the single thing that was keeping her awake.  : convey id 677821 “we need your help” >>> connection established: id 677821 >>> the user requires rephrasing or clarification : convey id 677821 "you can revive the black moon” >>> connection established: id 677821 >>> failed to parse the user’s reply She is a Black Moon’s Herald, right?.. She typed the line, : convey id 677821 “new knowledge” almost sent it as is, then in a flash of insight added three more words to it. : convey id 677821 “new knowledge and new friends” >>> connection established: id 677821 >>> the user accepted the reason >>> solid line would like to be summoned to your location. Accept (Y/N)? : T >>> reply unclear. Accept (Y/N) : Y >>> summoning of user 677821 initiated >>> summoning of the user authorized by the system >>> the summoning of user 677821 is in progress; please wait at this terminal >>> connection to id 677821 terminated Cursory Streak’s body performed the soft landing by itself: the consciousness was MIA. Her dream of an ocean was sparkling.