vous n'avez pas les bases

  Nina had not forgotten how to vomit. She had done it maybe four times in twenty four hours? She'd do it many more times. Nina was a very sickly girl; how many times had she stressed her ill nature? It was embarrassing, but it shouldn't be, so Nina could vomit out a few opinions when requested, couldn't she?

  Mamert Leda was an edifice. Kornelia was an architect. It deserved careful analysis. The work could not be done by Nina alone. It needed a group of girls to throw themselves at it, to misunderstand it over and over again until they found the right method! That was the history of human science. That was how humans had discovered fire, and agriculture, and housebuilding, and housekeeping, and statistics, and statecraft, and industry, and electricity, and psychic power. It was how humanity was discovering the black web, unbeknownst to Nina and the Acacia, this very moment.

  If Nina couldn't get past silly basic socialisation, she couldn't explain the issue, this stupid show being a microcosm of their enemy's ideals. If she even wanted to? No, things would be worse if she held it close to her heart. She had always been punished for keeping secrets. Aine didn't seem like a strong telepath, but she'd need to become one to survive their mission, so soon she'd be able to peer into Nina's heart—which had no value, but was something it seemed like Aine wanted? Hah...

  Her hands crept towards each other. Nina drew little runes on herself. She scribbled, didn't scribble herself illegible, didn't erase herself. Touch organised her thoughts, a mnemonic, a mind palace.

  She didn't panic. She was panicking, a little.

  Her task was to talk about the anime. It wasn't to talk about April, even if she just ended up repeating April's opinions. It wasn't to talk about Kornelia or Kornelia's ciphers.

  Nina said:

  "Everyone's really positive about Marit and Eline's relationship..."

  "Um, should they not be?" Aine said.

  Aine stared at Sophia's phone. Her eyes glazed over some London intranet anime forum's 2064 opinions.

  "I thought it was sweet," Emi said.

  Of course Emi thought that. She was a sweet girl, and a corporate heiress like the fictional Eline. She had not seen the whole picture. Neither had Nina, evidently. Kornelia's tapestry was so vast!

  "I mean, spoilers," Aine said, "but early on I think it's okay, and all's well that ends well! If it ends well! Which, I mean, I'm not telling you whether or not it ends well, but..."

  "It's scary from the first episode, isn't it?" Nina said.

  "Is it," Marzena said.

  Nina paused.

  "Yes?" Nina said.

  "You were—scared," Marzena said.

  "A little," Nina said. It was an admission, wasn't it? It felt like it should be obvious to the girls around her, who stared and leered and looked too closely. It also felt like she had to hide it. Wasn't that a petty contradiction? And in the end, they hadn't realised it at all since Nina hadn't vocalised it—Nina hadn't cried out, had never said stop.

  "That's an interesting reaction," Marzi sung.

  Interesting, special, special, interesting! Nobody ever shut up about this...

  "I know what happens later," Nina said.

  "What happens later?" Marzi said.

  She lay on her back. Her blonde tips scattered across her face, inviting, unteased.

  "Hey, hey, don't make her say spoilers," Aine said.

  "Why? You already know everything," Marzi said. "Everything, absolutely everything. Anny's so smart!"

  "For everyone else's experience?" Aine said.

  Aine spun back, knelt over her bus seat at Marzi, who did not look up at her, did not wait on her, did not have any sort of expectancy or apprehension in her eyes, did not take her words as orders, wasn't reminded of anyone by her—or maybe she was, but Nina was in the habit of not looking through other girls' thoughts and memories, and did not use divination as a surrogate for telepathy.

  Did Marzi smirk, a little? Was she paying even a little attention to Aine? The show a mere distraction, Aine a mere annoyance?

  "Isn't it obvious?" Aine said.

  "It's not obvious," Marzi said. "S—Ethelsbury..."

  "Ah, I'm the adjudicator?" Sophia said. "I'll adjudicate, sure."

  "You should be on my side?" Aine said.

  "Should I?" Sophia said back.

  "Beauregard, actually," Marzi said. Aria glared at her. "I was thinking a little about yesterday." Weren't they all? "About the bipartite theory."

  "What? From the fuckin' Agnes Project?" Aria said.

  "Yeah. Spoilers, too," Marzi said.

  "Total non-sequitur? What are you even talking about? You're so fiction-obsessed, gosh?"

  "There exists a certain approach," Marzi said. She continued to lay there, to face the ceiling. Aria leaned over towards her, a little. "Like, if you have two girls, and—" and she started snickering. "Okay, and one of them knows everything about everything beforehand, like our dear genius Aine, and the other one is blindfolded, and she stumbles about into the dark. Maybe she doesn't have intuition for something that she needs to see, like Emi over there. Maybe she just has an aspect of darkness, like Nina over there."

  "Awfully long time for you not to talk about '2073' or the 'Third World War'," Aria said.

  "Really really don't underestimate me. I was thinking all of the same stuff as Leuce yesterday, with Judy? How to deal with her? But when Lucy thinks it you're—all in for her, even if you're on the opposite team, even if you have the opposite approach, even if you get so confused by something happening that you just shut up and let other girls think for you."

  On the first day, of course, Marzena and Leuce had both attacked Judecca with the intent to kill her for her weird we?rd mutiny. Since enmity was Nina's aspect, Nina could gauge how badly someone wanted to injure someone else quite easily. The other girls with psychic or magical capabilities, so everyone other than Emi, could do the same. They didn't have the same intuition for it, but it wasn't a hard task. Figuring out why someone wanted to kill someone else was a task of quality, and a much harder determination to make.

  "Total non-sequitur?" Aria repeated.

  "No, everything is relevant to everything," Marzi said. "Like here, I'm thinking... I didn't really have friends, before I joined this mission."

  "I'm not surprised?" Aria said.

  "Mean?" Aine said. She didn't look; she slung her words over her shoulder.

  Emi sat there. Haio did, besides her. Sophia showed Aine some comment in particular, whispered something to her.

  "Yeah, 'Cecily' is so pathetic, that's what you're thinking."

  "True but totally irrelevant?"

  "No, everything is relevant to everything," Marzi repeated.

  "You two should stop talking around each other..." Emi said.

  "Yeah, yeah, okay—if she stops interrupting me," Marzi said. "What I was trying to say, is that going through some sort of... you know, during the War of the Generals, they used to say 'media'? Now we say art, as if everything ever is art, as if art is incorruptible and can't be reduced to mere data by the outside, as if the sacred feeling is the end all and be all everything and nobody cares about the craft or the individual steps—"

  "I did in fact do art history in high school," Sophia said.

  "Maybe you should have done craft history?" Marzi said.

  "I also did arts and crafts in high school," Sophia said.

  "Glad for you! Well anyway, anyway, anyway—if there's someone who's already had the entire experience, and someone who's new to it, it becomes a game of trust. One of those confidence building games, where you're blindfolded and someone—" and her arm jerked out and pointed at the drowsy damselly Haio Elspeth of all the girls present, "whispers so sweetly in your ear, telling you what to do, what to mind out for, what little data you have... you're not unused to that, right? That's what you were crying about last night, right? The secretary? The girl who thinks for you?"

  "Shut up?" Aria said.

  "Nuh-uh," Marzena said. "The secretary or Lady Westmoreland, who thinks more of your thoughts for you?"

  It was going to be Aine Hunlun at this rate, thinking Nina's thoughts. She was so smart and diligent and proactive; she detected all of Nina's weird traits and had a well-considered plan of how to deal with them, and secretly, probably secretly, got everyone else on board and hah and huh and hahaha—

  "You know, there's an episode about that pretty early on," Aine added. "Marit and Eline navigating an obstacle course together. It's a cute episode. It's a fun relationship."

  It was 'really fun', to be unworthy and incapable of charting your own course. It was 'so cute', being so sleepy, falling into the custody of other girls.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "See, like, I didn't know that! But I could figure it out, because Marit and Eline have asymmetrical information. They're doing heterosexuality with each other. Their relationship is about their differences. That's apparent so early on, right?"

  If Kornelia had been aware of the Agnes Project for a prolonged period of time, and the fictional works she created reflected her worldview, concepts that she wanted to work through, then it stood to reason that Marzena had landed on something very important.

  The pathetic part of Nina wanted to pout and say 'oh, she used divination magic!' That would have required her to have a hunch, and in any case sacred matters and military projects such as the Agnes would have barriers that produced junk data when they were discovered through divination, or when anything resembling a fact about them was divined against. Whatever Marzena had worked out was all her. It would have been all her had she used divination, but she probably hadn't.

  Annoying. Nina knew she was stupid, but she hated-hated when others got ahead of her like this.

  "I don't think that they're straight," Aine said.

  "They're het," Marzi said.

  "Isn't being het and straight the same thing?" Emi said. Oh, because she hadn't been aware that she wasn't straight until she had done the microritual? Nina had never thought about that...

  "Yes?" Aine said.

  "No. Being het is het—being straight is straight," Marzi said.

  "What does that mean?" Aine said.

  "I meant what I said?"

  "I agree with her," Sophia said.

  "What? Why?" Aine said.

  "Being heterosexual is being heterosexual, and being straight is being straight," Sophia said.

  April wouldn't entertain this argument, but if she did she'd say that Marit and Eline were straight girls on the proper path for the preservation of the human species, even if they were homosexual. Explaining this argument would require revealing the course of the entire show, though. Nina couldn't...

  "You're literally just saying words at this point?" Aine said. "Can you not confuse poor Emi?"

  Nina nodded in agreement. She was sequestered between Aine and the window to nowhere, though, so nobody saw. Probably.

  "It's okay," Emi said.

  "Okay," Nina said under her breath.

  Did Emi hear? She seemed to smile at Nina.

  "Word choice aside—it's a divide worth paying attention to," Marzi said. "One of us might get information early." She did not look at Nina as she said this. "She, or our teacher I guess, I guess our teacher is a man that exists—may choose to reveal it, or not reveal it. Even back in the sane world, learning about some stuff early 'spoils' things, ruins your relationships with others—takes away all of the lustre that seems to be in your life!"

  Kornelia should have revealed herself at the end, then. If Nina could be tarnished, then that would have tarnished Nina less.

  "This is a story about a deranged world," Marzena sung. "There exists information that is literally charged—you speak it, refer to it, and..."

  "So you were only pretending not to be familiar with the standard line of history," Aria said.

  Marzi laughed. "Yeah, I am familiar with the standard line of history."

  "Fuckin' sure," Aria said.

  "A girl named Erica was sent to raid a military base doing illicit experiments with magic... the United States government interpreted this as a covert attack by Russian forces, escalating into the Third World War of 2047—"

  Haio... shook a little, hearing this? It was some unsettled motion.

  "Marzena," Emi said.

  "What do you want, Senklerova?"

  "You shouldn't say things like that..."

  "Why shouldn't I say things like that?"

  "It invalidates everyone else's experience."

  "And what—everyone else gets to invalidate mine?"

  "I'm not... well, if you know that information is charged, then you know what happens when you say incompatible things," Emi said.

  "And?"

  "It rubs out everyone else. It makes them lesser. If you know that and do it anyway, then... I don't want to be mean, but we might have to conclude that you're doing it out of malice..."

  "It's really fitting that the daughter of a big healthcare head sounds just like—my many child psychiatrists. I'm just trying to be helpful—maximally helpful, even! I'm saying interesting things about the show and about our lives and about our approaches, everything at once."

  "Maybe we should deal with things one thing at a time?" Sophia suggested.

  "Maybe you should shut up," Aria said.

  "Well, well, if you're gonna 'standard line of history' me then—the standard way is to look at connections, interwoven webs." (Black webs, even.) "They've been doing that since, like, prez Winthrop sent his planes to depose prez Ishaq in 1997. Everyone who was like... hey, Beauregard, you should know this."

  "What?"

  "Like, did Lord Westmoreland treat Hillah and Babylon as two totally unrelated things, or as one?"

  "As one," Aria said, instantly.

  "What are you two talking about?" Aine said.

  "Hillah is the modern city in which the ruins of Babylon are entombed." Nina said, since Aine had commanded that she provide her with context. It was a bad answer, probably. Nina had some idea of how the leading military commanders, some of whom would become patriarchs of Great Houses, reacted to the discoveries in Babylon. That included its head, Princeps Westmoreland. If Aria had been raised under Westmoreland House's aegis, and if Marzena had done as much as read a specific public biography, they'd both have more knowledge than Nina. She hadn't been helpful at all.

  "Oh, okay. I didn't know that," Aine said. "What does that have to do with Lord Westmoreland..."

  Huh?

  "What does the birthplace of modern psychic power have to do with the Nobility?" Sophia asked.

  "Nina didn't say Hillah was the birthplace of psychic power..." Aine said.

  Aine's words paused the conversation.

  "Okay, but, like, you knew that," Aria said.

  "Why would I know that? I didn't grow up bound to Westmoreland House?"

  "You know the thing they teach to little fucking kids about the origins of the modern world though?" Aria said.

  "I was in Shanghai when I was a little kid?"

  "Weren't you in Bremerton?"

  "Um..."

  "They teach it literally everywhere?"

  Aine smiled at Nina. "Nina, do they teach it in the Acacia?"

  "Yes," Nina said, on command.

  "To be clear—I'm the problem? My worldview is the threat to your—wonderful, wonderful standard line of history? Cause I don't know enough? Because I say the wrong things?" Marzi said.

  "I'm just worried that you enjoy poking the boundaries," Emi said.

  Aine having never heard of a specific children's game every other girl on the bus had played was just statistics, Nina supposed. This was... Aine was somewhat strange! Aine was very strange?

  "Can we go back to talking about Mamert Leda..." Aine asked.

  "Aine what the fuck," Aria said.

  "I'm not the weird one here?"

  "No, you definitely are," Sophia said.

  "You're such a great colleague," Aine said. "I literally know lots of stuff about the Babylon War! My highschool report was on the Xiangxiang clique!"

  "How did it start?" Marzi asked.

  "So there was a girl called Erica, and—" Aine said.

  "Be serious?" Marzi said.

  "So there was a girl called Shoko, who's Chinese and has that name for kind of convoluted reasons, and so we call her Xiangxiang, and—"

  "Anny, this is a tertiary conflict that has political censorship against it. You can't seriously be suggesting it was the most important thing about the Babylon War because your highschool project was about it," Sophia said.

  "I mean, it was before the invasion of Mesopotamia?"

  "And she made her first public appearance after the 101 attacks?"

  "The... can we go back to talking about Mamert Leda?"

  "Aine, you know what the 101 attacks are, right?"

  "Um, yeah? With the like... um... um..."

  Ah, Aine was joking. Reiko had made this exact same joke, once. She had ended the sentence with 'planes', for some reason.

  "I mean, I know about lots of stuff! I know about the Compulsory Corporate Consolidation in Japan! I know about the conflict for the Pacific between the Australasian, Chinese and West Coast cities, the South East Asian states caught in the whirlpool between the big powers and slowly disintegrating! I know about how they sunk further and further into the hadal-abyssal zone, how that kickstarted abyssal colonisation. I can name every attempt to penetrate into the Void Chamber. I know—"

  "...what's the Void Chamber?" Aria asked.

  "A divination tool used by one of the nation-states within the abyss," Sophia answered.

  "The selection mechanism used by the Kingdom of Kongxuhundun to create heirs, though heirs has quite a broad definition," Nina answered.

  "I don't think that's—" Sophia said.

  "Nina's totally correct," Aine said.

  "...Aine, are you from the abyss?" Nina asked.

  "No?" Aine said. "I'm from Bremerton. And Shanghai, sometimes..."

  "Aine, these are things that it's standard to know about in the Pacific abyss, obviously, but aren't really the focus of history on the surface world..."

  "No? I'm from Pacific cities. Of course I'd know about Pacific-specific things."

  "I don't really know for certain, but we're allowed to talk more freely about this sort of thing in the Acacia, and my understanding is that the damnatio memoriae against Shoko is strongest in the West Coast cities, since they fought her the most viciously."

  "Nina, Nina, Nina. There's lots of outdated and incorrect information in the Acacia."

  "That's true. Sorry."

  "There's nothing to be sorry about, Nina," Emi said.

  Marzena snickered. "Pi?at should shut up and stop speaking. She's delusional; her ideas are stupid. Right?"

  "Do you need to do a victory lap?" Aria asked.

  "Yeah..." Aine said. "It's not necessary."

  Hey, would Aine attack if she were in the opposite situation? If someone else belonged to the wrong line of history, clearly, had some mistake in their birth or their raising or their tutelage that made them think and say and believe in the wrong things, would Aine attack? Would she? Maybe. Maybe Nina should cut her some more slack. She'd only prod and poke at them, so interesting. Aine was benign, and only wanted to see how they ticked.

  Then they could move on, and then they could watch anime again. They could distract themselves from everything that had gone wrong yesterday. They could stop trying to divine their future fate.

  Paranoid Aine looked over at the back. Kaninchen played with her phone. The kitchenette was still an awful mess. Should Nina help with that? She had no obligation to, she thought. She hadn't eaten at all. If she didn't contribute, she didn't have to clean—that was her motto in Shin Kumamoto. It had worked well, since everyone thought her a dirty presence.

  "Aine," Sophia said.

  "Should I put on the next episode?" Aine asked.

  "You kind of have to know about the Babylon War."

  "I literally do?"

  "You only know ultra-obscure things," Sophia said.

  In Aine's defense, if she knew as much about the Pacific section of the Babylon War as she said she did, she knew more than ultra-obscure things. Nina wondered if she actually did, though. They taught about all fields of the Babylon War in the Acacia, not just the Pacific and abyssal fields.

  Was this world unitary or variegated? Did each city exist in its own world, with its own story and knowledge? Or was everything one, united under the 108, codified by the Treaty of Nowhere? Was it possible to deal with problems on their own, or did you need to go crazy with connections?

  Crazy with connections. Across the dead link to the enemy something flashed. Calling code. Icon of brunette blondish who missed her with brunette reddish—that was her, that's Nina, that was Nina's icon. Icon of blonde girl with purple eyes—that was Emi, that's Emilia, but Emiliya Senklerova had blue eyes, so who was that?

  "Um, they're not obscure to me? They're clear. I'm a normal girl, anyway. I like normal things like watching super-popular anime that gets broadcast across cities on their respective cheap and accessible services and isn't so hard to pirate. But I'm a normal rich girl, so I buy it legally and don't pirate—"

  "I pirate it," Sophia said.

  "Yeah, so do I," Marzi said.

  "That's good for you," Aine said.

  "Look, this is really important. You do know what the Coalition is, Aine?" Sophia said.

  "Yeah, like... NATO?"

  "What does NATO stand for?"

  "North... Atlantic... something... Organisation..."

  "Treaty. Even if you were correct, the Coalition was never NATO, anyway. Do you not know the history of the forces we're going to be dealing with? That Kaninchen has set us up to fail against?" Sophia said.

  "I don't need to know every little detail about the Coalition to be useful? Nina, I've been useful, right?"

  "Yes," Nina said. She didn't hesitate, though perhaps she should have.

  "I care about the mission. Nina's devoted; I want to show my devotion as well. If I don't know something, I can look it up the next time I manage to connect to one of the intranets, right?"

  "You speak as if the intranets all agree," Sophia said.

  "Then I can look it up on another intranet and compare?"

  "You're missing foundational knowledge that allows us to assess things."

  "So, what? Are you going to lecture me?"

  "Yeah?"

  Aine thrust the remote at the screen. Sophia swiftly rose and snatched it from her.

  Sorry, Aine. It was hard to deny her wishes, since she fit April's archetype. April would never countenance—she'd never ever suffer this lack of knowledge. April had done so much to defeat Nina's ignorance, and to defeat Nina for being ignorant.

  "It's good to learn these things," Nina uttered.

  "Is it?" Aine said.

  The screen went white. Sophia stalked off.

  "I think so?"

  Aine didn't have a choice. Did anyone? The world punished those who were not learned enough to bear it. Did Aine possess a destiny? Did Aine want to claim one, using the power of the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands? Then it was vice and mortal error to be ignorant.

  April Kauzaki would have told her this.

  "Oh. Okay," Aine mewled.

  Sophia returned with a bundle of styluses from some compartment.

  "You're such a schoolteacher," Aria said.

  "I hate teachers," Marzi said.

  Haio nodded. Emi pat her head, lightly.

  "Don't hate me?" Sophia said, as Young-hoon might have.

  "I might," Aine said.

  "Don't say that?" Sophia said.

  "You're being so mean to me."

  "I'm being so kind to you... I'm preventing bad things from happening to you."

  Aine sighed.

  "I'm really smart, and I already know everything. But go on, everyone. Explain it all to me, so we can continue with the show."