Human, in the clothes Terenei had bought for me in Ottermarsh so I could feel more like myself, high red boots and bck leggings, white poet-style shirt and woven belt and red-bck-white scarf, my ever-adaptable white bag with its rainbow fringes currently a simple satchel, I stopped outside the familiar pilrs to run a finger over the five dots. The one in the middle was red.
Did I really want to do this?
I had to do this.
I took a deep breath, hoping this was the st difficult thing I had to do for a while, and stepped between them. Humming Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown,’ not the one I had expected my mind to offer up, I followed the path.
It looked like it ran more or less ft around the mountain, or maybe had just a gentle slope upwards, but once it had gone far enough that I could no longer see the shelter, it bent into a switchback. It went back again, and then ended at... it looked like a building.
Well, I wouldn’t know what it was until I got there. And eventually I did.
The building was made of red bricks with a bck shingled roof, with a gss door in the centre fnked by a pair of big pte-gss windows; on each window, rge cheerful letters had been painted, spelling out The Axis with the capital A stylized into a mountain. On the inside of the door, a blue and white sign hung that simply said WELCOME. It looked a lot like printed pstic.
There was nowhere to go but in, so I pulled open the door, obeying the little bck-and-gold sticker on the gss next to the handle, and stepped inside.
This didn’t belong in this world.
I saw an open-pn office of sorts, full of three-sided spaces with a desk on one side and two workbenches holding tools I couldn’t quite make out, and I couldn’t figure out how many there were. Along one side were rooms with closed doors, each with a sign, but I couldn’t read them from here. The various workstations had people at them, but they seemed indistinct, somehow. Everything was lit brightly but not harshly; the floor was entirely carpeted, but the workspace closest, the one I could see best and the only one empty, had a clear pstic mat protecting the carpet from the wheels of the simple utility chair and allowing it to move freely. The carpet was a soft dusty pink sprinkled with white and grey abstract shapes; the walls were white, but hung liberally with wooden-framed pictures of the outdoors. I recognized Crystal Pass, and a view of the Shallows, and a shelter on the Grassnds.
I was standing, though, in a waiting room area, with aluminum-framed chairs in both front corners upholstered in burgundy vinyl, and a low table with magazines on it. The one on top was called Alchemy Today and had a photograph of a green-skinned aquian holding up a potion bottle to inspect it.
“Have a seat, Nathan.”
I recognized that man, though I hadn’t actually seen him approach. Automatically, I joined him on the chairs in the corner, and accepted the condensation-beaded pstic bottle of water he handed me.
“It’s a bit of a hike to get here. At least there’s no altitude sickness.”
“Logan said you’re Jack.”
“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair. The neat grey scks and grey-and-white-checked button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up, fit with the setting but were out of pce with the construction of the metal-and-leather foot. “Well done, by the way. There’s no way to predict when newcomers will show up or what skills they’ll have, but man, did you ever show up at the right time with the right skills. The boss has very strict policies about direct interference, and ninety-nine-point-something percent of the time, that’s absolutely for the best all around. This situation got complicated. There were a few moments there when I wanted smack Logan almost as much as Carol, and a couple when I could definitely understand why he was so frustrated, but in the end you did it. With some quiet support behind the scenes from the team and I.” He gestured, and several hands of unclear colour and size waved in what looked like a friendly fashion; someone called, “Hi!”
“Nothing wrong with needing a support system,” I said.
Jack ughed. “Exactly. Chosen-One heroes doing it all on their own make it a lot harder on themselves. So. You’re halfway into the Axis. Reality is a bit fuzzy here, the setting’s determined partly by your own experiences and perceptions and expectations. I know you made a choice about whether to come at all, but you currently have the option of making a decision that’s at least somewhat more informed. There are still things I can’t tell you, boss’ rules, but it’s less restrictive. Until you actually go in the boss’ office, there aren’t any prices yet.”
One question above all, just a final absolute confirmation. “I really died? There’s really no way back to my family?”
He sighed. “Sorry. Yeah. Logan told you the truth on that. There’s a bit of a gremlin in the system... Logan calls it a section of basic code that has a fw in it. When people die, they’re supposed to forget and be born the normal way, whichever world that happens to be in. That little fw means that under a specific set of circumstances someone who would otherwise be born in this world to grow up here as part of it skips part of the process and wakes up here with all information intact. It’s... let’s just say that fixing it would be expensive and even the boss doesn’t really want to unless it becomes absolutely unavoidable. To tell you the truth, I think the boss is actually rather intrigued by the results, almost all of the time. That’s why there’s a system in pce to transte knowledge and skills into a form that will make it easier to build a life here. There’s some compassion there, too. Even someone with a lifespan that’s beyond our ability to comprehend it can care about people who died early and abruptly and are forced to either consciously choose to jump out into the void or cope with the loss of loved ones and pns and everything familiar. I know you were on your way here hoping to get home. I was hoping Logan would find a way to expin, since I couldn’t. I don’t bme you—he’s built up a hell of a reputation for himself, and he didn’t approach it very well. You’d think he’d remember me chasing him through all the sites, with him absolutely convinced that it was a game he had to finish. I managed to talk to him, at least, but that doesn’t mean he believed me.”
“You could have added a PS to one of the notes to tell me to listen, I suppose.”
“The boss considers that direct interference. Rewards for something you did on your own are okay, but instructions or recommendations are not. Speaking of which, we’re still trying to think of an appropriate reward for both of you. Logan’s secretly working on creating an airship. The boss has been a bit ambivalent about allowing it. I’m leaning towards negotiating conditional permission. Yes, I know about the hacking, and I keep an eye on it, but if he’s doing small things just for the challenge of it, he’s not doing any harm and it keeps him busy. He’s good about following rules the boss ys down, so I think I can find a compromise. I have no idea what to do for you.”
“I can’t think of anything. Maybe I will someday.” What did I really need, anyway? I had my house, my friends, my ever-adaptable bag, tools for alchemy and healing that I still needed to learn more about, a gorgeous guitar, food and clothes, and I could probably find anything else that came up.
“Fair enough. If I don’t come up with something amazing, we’ll just leave it open. Other questions?”
“Logan tried really hard to keep me from coming here. So did the Moss... Carol. Logan’s motivation seems to have gone from trying to slow me down so we could talk, through some confusing middle ground to being torn, feeling bad about telling me to come but dead certain that it was my best chance at surviving Carol’s anger. She didn’t bother to tell me what her reasons were, and she didn’t make much of an effort to do anything for a while.”
“Carol typically sends one invitation to talk to newcomers she reads as male, and otherwise ignores them. She sometimes pursues those she reads as female, although it’s not particurly helpful or informative. You rejected her pretty firmly, so she decided to ignore you until she realized you had healing abilities. She came to the conclusion before Logan did that a newcomer healer was likely to be a threat to her and would, at best, almost certainly be one of the healers who can unmake mosslings and zombies. She was also puzzled. Groundhogs have surprisingly good vision, but they’re low to the ground and don’t necessarily register some details well, like say someone’s build under a loose stiff jacket. Her bird saw you as a female centaur, and that’s rgely what she saw when watching you through the Forest. Even she can’t pick out a felid’s gender on sight from a distance. Her prejudices started to kick up after Ottermarsh when she saw you in human form a few times, and she wanted to confirm what she was seeing by getting closer to you. You saved Myu, but that gave her the information she wanted about gender and also told her that she was right, after only two sites you could interfere with her and you were still going. At that point, she decided she had to stop you from reaching the Axis.”
“Because I’d be a permanent threat, not a transitory one.”
Jack nodded. “She already hated Logan. He started off... eh, let’s just say he didn’t make young males look good when it came to young females. He really didn’t grasp the social rules here until a female warden finally sat him down, told him that there’d been a string of compints all along his backtrail, and she was going to assume that for some reason he just didn’t get it rather than being deliberately obnoxious. She took the time to expin very clearly and bluntly what he was doing wrong and what would get better results. He did take her seriously, and he tried. Even fell in love with a jotun woman. She made small-scale metalwork—window and door tches, cabinetry fixtures and handles, chainmail for jotun clothes, metal fasteners and decoration for other clothes, now and then metal designs for Highnd windows. They travelled together for a while.”
“What happened?” Obviously not something good.
“Carol didn’t believe he really cared. Or she just wanted to punish him for something I’ve never been clear on, I’m not actually sure because her story changed multiple times. She infected both of them. And just to prove she could, she repeated it immediately. She let them go after four years. They were both a mess. Even Logan never bmed his girlfriend for being completely unable to cope with the situation and running home to her family and refusing to see him again, but that’s when he started building his house alone in the Highnds.”
“No wonder he hates her so much.”
“Yeah. I tried to intervene and so did Effie, she was around when I got here, but Carol wasn’t listening to anyone. The zombies showed up a few years ter. Not sure they would have under other circumstances. Or they might, never know when Logan’ll get an idea and try it out. I’m optimistic that without Carol messing with him, he might actually have the space to grow up. Back to your original question... Carol had a vested interest in not having any more long-term rivals. I suspect she was hoping to drive Logan into giving up and taking his chances in the void, but she completely underestimated his obstinacy and his contrary streak.”
“She would have been the only... what, immortal?”
“Near enough, with some asterisks and footnotes.”
“The only immortal left. Which would feed her goddess delusion and she’d have all the more reason to find ways to keep anyone else away.”
“Yes. Logan, well... I suspect he was already stressed enough by her to not want to risk a new complication, but might have been hoping she’d be distracted from him for a while, but his own conscience would have been nagging at him about throwing someone else to the wolves. He does have one.”
“Even someone he considers a pervert.”
“Even then.”
“He really did do his best, between the Highnds site and now.”
“I know. But also, you were treating him less as an enemy then. I would have gone after him for that cave nonsense too. I might not have let it go.”
“You’ve been watching everything. Logan told me I was being maniputed.”
“It would be hard to know how to help if I weren’t checking in frequently to see what all three of you were doing. Think of me as the current liaison in charge of newcomers. I don’t know whether I would have resorted to manipution. You already had the same goal on your own.”
“Guardian angel?”
That made him ugh again. “You’re the one with wings, not me.”
“Mm. So what do I do?”
He sobered. “You decide. You can leave with the answers you have, and go back to your friends, the pretty girl who’s seriously into you and the cute cat, go down the mountain and maybe beat your other friends to the rendezvous. Or you can keep going. All the way to the centre where you can talk to the boss. And if you do that, you get three paths.”
“Wait, what? Three?” Now I had a total of four paths, not two?
“Anyone can choose to leave this world. It’s basically jumping into the void. There is no way to know which of many worlds you’ll be born in, and generally it will be just being born with no memory.”
“That’s actual death. Identity death, even.”
“It’s more complicated than that. Self is never really lost, it just doesn’t fit completely inside a living brain all active at once. But yeah, it’s scary. Or, because of the odd circumstances with newcomers, you can choose... how did Logan put it? A manual fix to that fw in the code. You reset and you’re born normally in this world with no memories. Both of those are always open to you. You can come back and ask for either one any time you want.”
“Okay, that’s good, at least.” No still-alive-universe-dying immortal hell stuff. Although that second option was still death as I understood it, just with a specific destination.
“Third choice? You stay. You’ll get bigger answers than I can give you, but the rules change. You’ll still wake up immediately at the nearest Quincunx site if you die, with your clothes and bag, and the memory and disorientation effects will eventually get weaker but they’ll always be there. You won’t age physically past this point, although you could find an alchemist to do cosmetic changes. You do always still have the option of coming back here when you’ve had enough—or you might eventually get offered a job, if the boss thinks there’s a good reason. Your various skills will integrate more smoothly—you still won’t be doing advanced alchemy in dragon form, but you can probably master doing some familiar basic ones with a little effort and practice, and you might develop some other small things that cross boundaries depending on what you do and what you use a lot, but that’ll take time. What you choose to do with all of that is up to you, but if you could avoid trying to take over the world or rebuild the culture, we’d all appreciate it.”
“I was thinking more about medicine and alchemy and music and art,” I said, my mind racing as I tried to process all that. “I like the world and the culture the way they are a lot more than I like home.”
“Funny how most newcomers, not all, either fall in love with the freedom and openness and peace and how little value there is on money and status, or they are absolutely horrified and repulsed by exactly that and can’t escape fast enough. Sometimes overt religion is part of that, sometimes it’s capitalism or militarism or other isms that act a lot like religion. I know. Sometimes having choices is actually harder than not having them. You get to wonder forever if you made the right one. But this is a choice only you can make.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to deal with watching people I love get older if I don’t.”
“You’ve spent your whole life til now in a world where anyone you love could be in a fatal accident or get a fatal disease with no warning. I assume your first thought, on meeting people, hasn’t tended to be an assessment of which of you has the longer life expectancy. I’ve seen you with animals. Have you been thinking about the fact that cats have a shorter lifespan than a person, and making sure you don’t care at all about Myu? For that matter, is a retionship really a failure if you’re happy together for a while and then part ways? All of those things are sad and they hurt, but what matters, always, is being alive and together now.”
I mulled that over; he stayed quiet, not rushing me.
I was pretty sure that Serru and the others would see it pretty much that way, just from the flip side.
“You make a lot of sense. Logan’s not likely much of a threat anytime soon. Carol’s currently contained. Are we supposed to hold her forever?”
“We’re working on that. We can’t get her out of this world unless she chooses, and we can’t remove her abilities, but that’s the team’s current project. I don’t have an answer because I don’t know yet.”
“Have there been other threats?”
Slowly, Jack nodded. “Carol’s not the first. Every now and then, instead of choosing to escape, one of the people who hate this world’s values or sees potential for personal gain decide to stay and mess with it. The st one referred to himself as the Hunter King. The one before called himself the Divine Ambassador of the Holy Word.”
Both of those sounded deeply unpleasant. Wait, hadn’t Aryennos mentioned a couple of this world’s boogeymen and an essay specuting whether they were so alien they might genuinely be aliens? One who wanted to kill every animal and somehow kept the skin. One who punished people for sex. That could be them.
“Then I need to stay.”
“Can I ask why? It’s not up to me to tell you if it’s right or wrong.”
“Personal reasons matter. I do need to give myself more room to be myself outside of work. The bance has to be better, and here, there’s no conflict between exploring who I am and being able to do my job effectively. I’m safe from the burnout I was headed for. But that doesn’t mean not being what I’ve always been. I was doing youth programs with St. John Ambunce when I was barely in my teens, and volunteering to help out with community first aid before I was old enough to drive. People who are suffering need someone to help, and right at the core of me, I need to know that I can do that as effectively as possible. I don’t want to be a king or a queen or a divine anything. Just the best first responder possible. Every world needs those.”
He nodded slowly. “Always good to know who you are and what matters. C’mon, then.” He stood up and waited for me to join him.
The various people at the workstations came briefly into focus when I was close to them, but I wasn’t sure they stayed the same when I wasn’t actually looking. Species and gender varied wildly. But several paused in whatever they were working on that I couldn’t see, in order to fsh smiles at me, and one said, “Good job with her,” and one said, “It gets easier.”
Jack led me to a back corner, and I couldn’t have said how far we went to reach it. He rapped on a closed door. The doorframe, I noticed, wasn’t wood; it looked like rough uneven grey stone, the same stuff the inner circle of every site had been made of. “Boss? Nathan’s here.”
