Conversation -65 ~ The Long Desired Starlight
A few minutes later, Rika went off to search for a particular book, with instructions to make tea with crumpets by the time she returns. Little did she know.
The idea of tea kickstarted a long argument between Mary and Dorothy regarding the proper method of brewing it, which turned out unexpectedly controversial for both. Dorothy insisted on ISO 3103, because in matters that flew right over her limited sensory apparatus – to her perpetual annoyance, her design permitted her to drink tea, but not to appreciate its finer points – she preferred to stick to established standards. Mary insisted on using the twelve rules as laid down by George Orwell instead, and had trouble describing what is it that she feels is essentially different about them, or why does she put so much faith into the words of a man some fifteen years younger than herself. It took them a considerable time to settle on a bizarre algorithm, that combined the features of BS 6008:1980, Orwell’s twelve rules, and some extra nonsense, including stirring the brewing tea counter-clockwise at a specific number of revolutions per minute, which Dorothy was now executing with precision that only a CPU with her clock rates could possibly manage.
“Why were we arguing, anyway?” Dorothy commented. “I’m pretty sure Rika can’t tell good tea from bad unless someone actually describes it for her. And that would have to be you, because I can’t tell either, so …whatever…”
“Wait, I don’t think I follow,” Mary said, even though her eyes were intently following the motions of the spoon Dorothy was stirring the brewing tea with.
Dorothy pulled the spoon out, closed the tea pot, and stared at Mary. “There’s not a single protein molecule in her body. Do the math. I thought you knew.”
“Well, I knew something was up, but I didn’t really make the connection. It looked pretty normal when she got cut open in front of me, once,” Mary stared right back with a hint of bewilderment. “I don’t pretend to understand, but I can’t deny what I saw.”
Dorothy made a pause to cover the teapot with a cosy and smiled. “A lifelike imitation. Engineered so that she would be comfortable with it. Only a few systems actually work. It’s organic, mostly, but nothing as complex as collagen, and the blood is primarily cycloalkanes.”
Mary made no attempt to conceal the surprise. “Why?…”
“No clue,” Dorothy said. “Maybe she just thinks it needs to be flammable because it’s symbolic. Didn’t you notice how she steers the conversation towards her relationship with the nature of the universe once every few days?”
“I noticed she’s afraid of losing her sanity and needs to regularly make statements about self to reaffirm she still has one,” Mary responded cautiously after a brief pause. “Which is perfectly expected from a human who became an eldritch abomination. I know I wouldn’t last a week.” After a pause, she added, pointing upwards into the hazy blue of the Library, “How does anyone stay sane while hanging around here for longer than a few days is beyond me. This is crushing.”
Dorothy shook her head. “There’s more to it. To put it short, she’s living in third person.”
“That sounds like the line feeding into a long detailed explanation,” Mary prompted.
Dorothy took a deep breath before continuing, in an uninterrupted tirade with no pauses other than those demanded by syntax, “Rika’s doll, for lack of a better term, has its own senses, but they are very weak. I don’t know how weak exactly, but I know she doesn’t have the vision resolution to actually read, she calls the story objects directly while here. No idea what sort of cheating she uses while inside, but here, if you tap the railing, you can see she’s constantly querying the spiral for data. I don’t know if she’s consciously aware of that, but for me it’s hard to miss. She prefers someone else’s narrative stream in almost all cases, reading the text everyone else is emitting as they live, using this to make up for most of the senses, so she is constantly observing herself from third person. Objective third person narration is her preferred mode. If your inner monologue is loud enough to make it to the story, she’ll even seem telepathic. The fact that you have two distinct narration streams at once confuses her enough that she regularly brings it up, even more than the non-linear multi-world-line story you came from. Good enough for a long detailed explanation?”
“…Two distinct narration streams?” Mary asked, after that sank in.
“Your eye,” Dorothy replied immediately, as if this explained everything. “I thought you knew, but if you didn’t, you need to. She seems to like you. She usually doesn’t bring guests for tea.”
Mary just silently sank back into the couch.
✶ ✶ ✶
The tea was just ready to be poured when Rika slammed the thin paperback titled “Taketori Monogatari” onto the table.
Mary looked curiously at the book as she poured Rika a cup. “…So this is the one?”
“Yes,” Rika responded, pushing the book towards Mary and picking out a crumpet. “It’s timeless, you see. Skim it, you’ll know what I mean.”
Mary wasn’t reading anywhere as fast as Rika, but the book was so thin, that Mary was done well before Rika finished her crumpet. “No such thing as timeless exists,” Mary said with a faint smirk.
“I think she means that it’s crystallized,” Dorothy said, spreading butter over another crumpet and handing it to Mary. “There are a few floors worth of story trees descended from this book, even more if you count the first order pattern echoes, but they are all contextually separate. This one is over.”
“Bet you whatever…” Mary grinned, as she took the crumpet, and paused to take a bite. “Bet you whatever that an unexplored branch exists,” she said, brandishing the half-eaten crumpet.
Dorothy shook her head. “Not to my knowledge,” she said, as Rika nodded vigorously in agreement.
“But it’s so obvious! It’s already there!” Mary exclaimed. Her golden eye sparkled, which she didn’t seem to notice. “You really can’t see it? It would only take five minutes. Maybe, some fisticuffs, but no more than five minutes.”
“Enlighten me,” Rika replied curiously.
Mary did as she was bid, which took slightly longer than five minutes. Even before she was done, Rika started giggling, and eventually her laughter got so loud, that a few nearby books fell off the shelves.
“That counts as cruel and unusual,” Dorothy commented when the laughter went back down to sporadic fits of giggling.
“That’s exactly why it’s sure to work,” Mary grinned. “It’s a cognition problem, you see. One good idea is all that’s really missing. Maybe a few hints to execute it, but only one atomic idea.”
“Hints and an idea only someone extemporary could give,” Dorothy added.
“Well, yes. So?” Mary said, and hid her grin behind the tea cup.
“Whatever, I’m doing it,” Rika said, stopping her giggle and putting on a serious face.
✶ ✶ ✶
The Emperor sat alone in the audience hall, with the last letter of his beloved moon princess. He sent the officer who brought it away, and then told everyone else to leave him, so that nobody would see the Emperor cry.
Because that was exactly what the Emperor felt like doing upon reading the letter, and even emperors are entitled to some privacy in moments like these.
He was interrupted by the sound of a quiet humming from somewhere. It was a song, beautiful, but not particularly uplifting. “Anyone who disobeyed our order had better show themselves,” he angrily threw into the twilight of the hall.
“I wasn’t there when you issued your order, so I can’t have disobeyed it,” Rika said, peeking out from behind a paper screen. Her glowing hair made her appearance majestic enough that the Emperor had to abandon thoughts of calling the guards. “If you plan to keep crying, tenno heika, I can leave you to it, but it seems to me, that actual help will do you better.”
The Emperor made haste to wipe his face. “Who are you?!” he exclaimed.
“Just a passing goddess, for lack of a better term,” Rika grinned. “Do you want to see your princess again?”
“More than anything!” the Emperor replied, seizing the moment. “But it would take a miracle now, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rika said blankly, slowly advancing towards him, “Precisely the kind of miracle I’m for. There are certain costs attached, but nothing you can’t do.”
“Tell me then, be you goddess or demon, I will do anything!” the Emperor exclaimed. He wasn’t exactly sure what sort of horrors would befall him if he agreed, but the whole scenario rang suspiciously true, like something he’d heard in his childhood. A story.
“Anything?” Rika stopped right before the sitting emperor, looking down at him. “You can refuse, you know.”
“Out with it, demon!” the Emperor hissed.
“Wish granted,” Rika declared, popping the cork on the bottle which the moon princess left for the Emperor, and which he completely lost track of during this conversation.
It’s not that Rika is that much stronger than a human without her suitcase, but she is considerably faster even then, so it was over before the Emperor could scream for help, and he was left on the floor, choking and shaking from horror of what just happened. He could feel the elixir working its magic, and dreaded it.
“Sh-h-h,” Rika whispered into his ear, still tightly holding him to prevent him from reaching for the sword rack, “that was just what you needed to do for the miracle to happen.”
“Live forever without her, you mean?!” the Emperor sobbed. He was no longer concerned that anyone could possibly see him crying.
“If you do it just right, five hundred years or so should be enough. Even in the worst case, a thousand years. I am pretty sure you’ll get there long before ten thousand years of ‘tenno heika banzai’ elapse, because that would be imperially silly,” Rika said, standing up and turning to leave.
“Get where?” the shaken Emperor asked to her back.
And Rika turned around and told him in detail, with the most neutral expression she could manage.
✶ ✶ ✶
It took him seven hundred years.
For a while, the Emperor, styled the Immortal Emperor since these unfortunate events, thought that his goal would be completed a few hundred years earlier. A war with the barbarians from far West four hundred years in plainly demonstrated that solid fuel rockets are not efficient enough for orbit, so he had to rethink his initial plan. Finding the savants capable of figuring out the notions of specific impulse and rocket equation caused a delay even more painful than the study of mechanics and kinematics, which actually came relatively easy, once he deciphered the cryptic hint about falling apples and planetary motion, and started asking the right questions.
Requisite developments in materials science that eventually brought him the current hydrogen/oxygen engines took much longer than he anticipated, as they required more conquests on the mainland, and a complex web of politics, both internal and international, which took far too much of his time. Even after that, progress felt painfully slow, but a cursory examination of his own memory told him that it was actually accelerating. Still, the sheer number of arts he had to patronize just to make even the most primitive intended use of those engines was staggering.
It was twenty years since the first artificial satellite. The expenses were legendary throughout the known world, and what embarrassed the Emperor most was that his empire could actually afford it. In the long enough run, every step towards his goal worked out to the benefit and glory of his domain, and he was the uncontested master of the long run these days.
It was ten years since the first man in space. It was three years since the first manned orbital telescope. It was five hundred years since his love story became a renowned work of classical literature, imitated and retold numerous times, and only twenty since the first major motion picture. There was a second one in the works, this one in color.
And as he was looking at the photos of the far side of the Moon and studying the detail of crystal domes of the Moon Capital, helpfully marked up by his analysts, it finally hit him:
Before deciding whether to make war, or send ambassadors, he needs to make a much more important decision. One that he was avoiding for hundreds of years, because he never had the courage for it.
He needs to start thinking what to say to Kaguya when he sees her again, and this is going to be the hardest challenge ever.
✶ ✶ ✶
“That’s… beautiful, actually,” Dorothy smiled, as Rika finished reading the page aloud. “So what do you think happens next?”
“One of three things,” Mary said, putting down her teacup. “The princess remembers him, whether immediately or after some kind of struggle, and is overjoyed that he took the hint. They lived happily ever after. The ever after probably includes some form of transhumanist utopia further down the line.”
As she talked, the book in Rika’s hands slowly grew thicker, which eventually resulted in an abrupt mitosis. The title on the book that split off was “Kaguya Space Program” for some reason, but Mary didn’t notice and continued. “Another option is that she doesn’t remember no matter how hard he tries. Maybe because the interpretation of her hint was wrong, or because her induced memory loss actually destroys all traces of personality. He turns the Moon Capital into another crater and goes on to reshape the world into a tragic Wagnerian space opera. Maybe he becomes a sealed demon lord, and gets unearthed many generations later in a space fantasy story, that sort of thing.”
The book split again.
“The last option I see is… wait, is it supposed to do that?” Mary asked, pointing at the books, which were preparing to split yet another time.
Rika put a finger to her lips and fiddled with the stack until the last book came free. She carefully set them back on the table and looked at them intently. The books shivered under her gaze for a few seconds, but eventually went still. “No, it isn’t.”
“It’s a good thing there’s only one of you, Mary,” Dorothy commented.
“What grounds exactly do you have to think there’s only one?” Mary wondered.
None of the three ladies had a good answer to that particular question.
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None but Hope Mary. None but Hope.
So that is the power of Mary.
oh man. that description just SCREAMS read me! and i will (probably) be happy to oblige.
I'm so excited that the break is done. This is one of my favorite stories to read.
>Orwell’s twelve rules for tea
I know eleven, what's the last one?
Wow, Rika was human once? I assumed she was born as a spirit or whatever. Can't wait to see her and Discord talk. Will they fight, will they make love? Not sure, but I suspect one of the two.
So I wasn't paying that much attention to Mary's Eye, for a simple reason: It's laid out like a checkov's gun, but this story practically has a checkov's armory of interesting and distracting story fragments that I wish could be tracked down and shown in more detail, and I couldn't focus on all those things at once. But at this point that eye of Mary's is clearly a Big Deal, and will be a big deal in the future.
Ok, Mary's not a Mary Sue, but Rika is definitely a self insert, right? She sees the world in 3rd person!
Looking forward to Mary and Rika's confrontation over all of Rika's meddling, they will have WORDS!
7612885
Remember that fairytale pattern, wherein a lady sees something perfectly innocent happen, and then suddenly starts crying?
When asked why, she tells a complicated, involved story, at least a page long, about a future she envisions, wherein her child, currently non-existent and not even in planning, will suffer as a long term result of this otherwise perfectly innocent event. This usually ends with her getting proposed to on the spot by the envisioned father of that child.
A fearsome power, isn’t it?
7613281
I don’t rightly know, myself. Mary isn’t from our world, either, and sometimes unexpected minor discrepancies turn up. :)
7613541
Re-read Conversation 7. ;)
This won’t happen for at least 30 more chapters, so you have a long wait ahead.
It is, though maybe, not exactly in the way you envision. See the comment above.
I thought the point of self insertion was that you don’t have to do that? ;)
7613836
Drat. I have a terrible memory. For stories like this I r-read the last chapter before I read the new one, but even so details escape me. Honestly I should wait to the end and read it all at once, but I don't have the self-control.
That'll give me time to understand what the protagonists actually are first.
You might think that, but is that what Oliver thinks?
7613847
Every story is about people.
Some of them are more people than others, though…
Just how many layers of abstraction are you assuming, here?… :)
I have the weirdest feeling of deja vu right now. I feel like I've read this chapter before somewhere, or maybe a draft of it. Was the bit with the immortal emperor planning to go to the moon mentioned in a blog post once? Or maybe a draft on a different forum somewhere?
On the other hand, it is 4 AM and I have no idea why I'm not asleep in bed. Still a neat chapter, and I'd play Kaguya Space Program. Just give Kerbals bunny ears, and add some decorative bamboo.
7613977
Rika refers to the events of this chapter in Conversation 15, that might be it.
Modding the models of kerbals themselves is exceedingly difficult, alas. A kerbal is essentially a single part vessel, but all those bones and animations are not readily accessible from plugin code...
Otherwise, we'd see a pony mod quite a while ago. :)
So I had just discovered this story off of someone's page, like, a month ago. In a week I got caught up. It's very exciting to be able to start season 2 in it's simulcast form.
7613541
I happened to have started reading this fic before I saw Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Prior to that, I had a mental segfault when trying to process "magical girl" together with "eldrich abomination."
I had a holiday weekend. Without my daughter. Keep in mind, I'm recently divorced, so when I say, "long weekend without my daughter," I mean, "long stretches of uninterrupted time to do nothing but wallow in depression without any necessary human contact and even the one shining, bright light in my life is not there." My thought: "I'll watch a magical girl anime, that'll cheer me up!"
Oh, how innocent I was!
DO...NOT watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica with a case of depression. Fantastic series, absolutely worth watching if for no other reason than to see an absolutely STELLAR treatment of the Magical Girl genre, but never...ever watch it while depressed.
From what I can tell from the reading (and mind I haven't dug into the comments for author's notes, so I could be wildly off on this) Rika was made in a similar process to the Magical Girls in the Madoka series, in that their literal essence was removed from their physical body and stored in a gemstone. This is done to allow their bodies to take unholy levels of punishment and still keep going.
7613861
At this point I assume Mary and Rika will one day realize the entire Library of Fiction is inside the mind of some sociologist, if they haven't already.
7614527 I read a Magical Girl original fiction series written by DG Davidson, in part because he used to write on this site. He's mentioned that fic in glowing terms.
7614603
See recursion... :)
I really love the space emperor take on the moon princess story.
7614527 I believe it's less "made in the same process" and more "ascending in a similar fashion". She's less a magical girl of the old type at this point and more like The Law of Cycles. She's not just a person, she's something closer to a personification.
7626656
You're a loose canon, Oliver! I've had it with your renegade ways! Turn in your badge and your gun, you are off the case!
7626991
Nice bit of wordplay there, considering my primary blogging topic. :)
Error 418.
7614527
Perhaps read Sailor Nothing.
7613861
Animal Farm, I see.
R. Dorothy?
myanimelist.cdn-dena.com/images/characters/6/77587.jpg
Umm ...
...
Ok, I think it's time to re-read from the first chapter now that I have a bit more understanding of who these two are.
I'm not sure how long it took me to realize that this was conversation *negative* 65, not positive 65.