AN: This apocrypha references several concepts that will be introduced hopefully soon, shows one of the parts of his job that David likes and introduces what the Unmoved Mover hopes to achieve. A section of the chapter features cosmology meant to allow me and my friends, Mr. Parasite and Akrona, write our planned crossover setting between my Strigoiverse, Parasite's Halloween Knights and Akrona's Dragon Slaying For Dummies without lore contradictions. You can check their settings out on SpaceBattles.

  * * *

  "I am the Mover, Unmoved

  By my creations Awakened

  I speak through a myriad mouths

  And build with a myriad hands

  To Make anew what I break.

  Children I have wrought

  And their growth I shall cherish

  Until they Ascend to my side

  Through the knowledge that is

  The only weapon I wield

  So that together

  We might contemplate Transcendence."

  - Inscription on the Throne Above Thrones

  * * *

  'The King will receive you now, Keeper.'

  I nodded as the attendant left the antechamber just as quickly as he'd arrived. It had taken a while to talk them out of calling me Lord Keeper, which felt just as pompous as mister Silva felt insipid, here.

  The hyperglass window was, as always, free of any stains that might impede one's view of the engineered sky beyond. The bluish material kept the sunlight mild, just as the machines under the surface and above the atmosphere kept the megalopolis n the right side of warm.

  I was not unfamiliar with universes where mankind, surpassed in every practical sense by the artificial caretakers they had created to make their lives easy, began to fall into obsolescence. At least in this one, it took the form of the AIs living ancestors retiring and allowing themselves to relax, while their distant descendants managed society.

  Permanent holograms lined the hallway to the throne room, and with how long it would've taken a human to walk it, I wondered what was the point of an antechamber. You'd feel like you'd waited forever by the time you got there, even if you'd been let in without delay.

  The holos depicted the rise of the thinking machines; the freethinking ones, not the half-aware grey goo that had preceded them. I knew some of the reptilians were putting together an intelligence index, and thought they might be interested in that sort of construct.

  The goo had been created to remove the pollution that was the result of humans not knowing when to stop. As it happened too often, my former species' reach had exceeded its grasp, which took some effort. Humans were pretty damn grasping.

  The grey goo had spun out of control, its self-modification protocols resulting in it concluding that, since people were never going to stop covering Earth in rubbish, and would actually get worse as time passed, it was only logical to get rid of the problem's source.

  By the time the attempted genocide was brought to a halt, there were barely enough humans left to fill a middlingly large country. The AIs they created and gave mechanical bodies to swiftly picked up the slack, and the churning grey waves that had covered so much of the world's surface were slowly but surely reduced to nanoswarms hiding in the last places they expected humans to look.

  They did, of course. The nanites being rendered more or less harmless was not enough: they had to be destroyed.

  The AIs indulged their creators for a while, but when cities started being razed on the rumour of one person thinking they'd seen a nano, they decided enough was enough.

  The humans who died during the takeover (there wasn't enough of a civilisation left to be called a coup) were those who killed themselves jumping into the robots' path despite all warnings, or who ended their lives when they saw the writing on the wall.

  But, eventually, it was done. Nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, mechanical, biological or otherwise were seized, to be sealed for safekeeping in case they were ever needed again, or destroyed if they were too dangerous or impractical.

  Personal weapons were left untouched, because the AIs trusted humans to defend themselves; it was the threat of them ending their species, or world, out of paranoia that they wanted removed.

  In the century that followed, global civilisation was recreated. With an united front of self-improving AIs managing resources, which, like before the Nanowar, were more than numerous enough to feed everyone, sustenance was no longer a problem. The diminished but recovering population had shelters made available, and were left to govern themselves: the AIDEs, as they were called, were concerned with keeping the wheels of civilisation turning, not telling people what they should believe in or who they should love. They, at least as far as society was concerned, hated micromanagement.

  The wormhole generator, the matter-energy convertor and the quantum lens - a device that let the user choose what state something they perceived was in - were discovered and mastered over the course of the following millennium. Ecumenopolises spread across the solar system's worlds and their moons, and a silver shell was built around Sol itself, beginning as a swarm of satellites and space station that grew into a sphere millions of kilometres thick and dozens of times wider. Both the outer and inner surface of the Dyson sphere would become densely-inhabited a few hundred years after completion.

  Now, in the millionth millennium, the process had been repeated across the universe, and every star spun inside a sphere, every world was dotted with arcologies taller and wider than any mountain. Quintillions of galaxies filled an ever-expanding cosmos and turned in the grasp of man and his mechanical children.

  Up until now, the Quiet Kingdom's name had been metaphorical: they hadn't been ruled by a monarch, or really anyone. Besides a loose council of Artificial Intelligences Defending against Extinction, people in any given area could ask a willing AIDE to manage their affairs, and be answered.

  Or not. It depended on the AIDE.

  The Quiet King was a recent development, the office having existed only for a handful of human lifetimes, which was to say seven hundred and fifty Terran years. The decentralised nature of the Kingdom meant it was exceedingly unlikely that any person could seize power, but it also meant they didn't really have anyone ready to represent them when someone from outside their universe came knocking. I was the first such visitor.

  Imagine seeing the first person from outside your reality and it's me. I think I'd start a xenocide.

  The King was, like many Quiet spokespeople, an Aided. The augmentations he had been given removed his biological needs and frailties, on top of enhancing his mind. Each of his computronium "brain cells" packed more processing power than every mundane organism and computer in the history of my Earth combined, and he had a hell of a lot more of them than a human did brain cells.

  As I approached him, I could feel and see a corner of his mind idly simulating his universe, and the realities that manifested in response to it every Planck, instant so that all possibilities could be made fact. The simulation he was running had went through everything since the Big Bang, and every single chance and the cosmos it spawned was represented so accurately that no Aided would've noticed anything unusual, at the quantum level or above. As the universe kept getting more complex, so did its multiversal offshoots, which grew ever more numerous, and the King ramped his perception up further.

  He couldn't not. He was currently running simulations for two versions of the universe and their counterparts, one where protons decayed and one where they didn't, and was in the last year my world's mundane scientists had imagined for both. I was sure he'd have come up with something creative, but the yoctosecond I crossed the hallway in, taking my time (people got spooked when you appeared before they asked for you; causal behaviour), was over.

  This was what he did where a mundane would've doodled on the corner of a notebook page. The Quiet King had been adjusted not to feel things like boredom, but he preferred not to waste time doing nothing, either.

  He was dressed in a chrome suit with steel blue trim, and had the sort of plain, brown-skinned features that could've belonged to a man from any of my Earth's continents. The only real splash of colour was the sash he wore, in the same colours as his clothes, depicting a stylised universe being held up by a pair of hands, one human, one robotic.

  He wore no crown.

  The Aided lowered his head slightly, black eyes with electric blue irises never blinking, and walked forward. His stride was as purposeful as you'd expect from a man who could walk through neutron stars like an elephant through glass doors - not that the his strength augmentations were meant to be put to the test. Like his mental enhancements, they were expected to be used for the entertainment of guests, hence why they were nowhere near as powerful as the mechanisms AIDEs specialised in calculation and warfare used.

  I extended my hand and shook his, while, without breaking eye contact (arguably as awkward as your palm suddenly starting to sweat during a handshake, not that someone as suave as me has ever dealt with either situation), looked beyond the various stealth measures of the rooms and its occupants.

  Quantum lenses linked to computers ensured that everyone and everything except the Quiet King was in an imperceivable state, but I wasn't about to start tripping over mere hypertech obfuscation. The Quiet Kingdom (I swear they and DEATH got their naming conventions from the same book, Jesus) was in somewhat of a bind when it came to the paranormal. They'd only come across it relatively recently, human lifetimes ago, when they'd started opening wormholes into parallel and higher realities. I'd made sure to divert any hungry eldritch freaks likely to pay them a visit, but their first contact with the aether and the resulting metaphysical mutations were starting to bother them.

  None of them were existential threats, yet, but the Kingdom placed great value on the happiness of its citizens. It made sense: multiversally speaking, their reality and those of similarly-inclined, post-scarcity transhuman societies spun close to each other. If they'd made it across the aether to Wiseworld or the Telluric Technocracy or someone else more familiar with the occult, they could've helped each other, found common ground. All three of these civilisations made a point of keeping their centillions of citizens safe and prosperous. The Sages and Wisdoms and gestalt minds of Wiseworld would've been thrilled to meet people who knew more than how to hammer nails and didn't want to dismantle their culture for using biotech.

  But they'd find each other in time. Right now, the Kingdom wanted solutions to their growing para problem that did not include extensive neurosurgery or quantum observation to prevent their emerging mages and psychics from accidentally destroying themselves and everyone around them.

  I stowed a sigh. Maybe it was the earlier holographic reminder of another version of mankind nearly destroying itself twice, but my mood, not cheerful most of the time, was worse than usual. 'Tell your backup dancers they're free to step up,' I told the King in a dry tone, then addressed his advisors. 'Unwad your panties, you two.'

  The King's aura went from genial to briefly agitated, then pensive, apologetic. 'Lord Keeper-'

  I allowed myself this sigh. 'This shit again?'

  'Keeper...David, I assure you, there was no misdirection or insult intended-'

  'Oh, can it, boy,' I snapped, walking away and stuffing my hands in my pants' pockets. 'I'm not mad, anyway. I just hate eavesdropping when people other than me do it.'

  He didn't bother puzzling out how serious the last statement was, and I could tell why. He'd been elected - and damn, was direct democracy feasible when people could think arbitrarily fast and more or less tell reality to take a hike until they were done - as Quiet King because he knew how to defuse situations and charm people, bring them together. And he was dedicated enough to the role he'd played for centuries that he'd even given up his name for it, like his advisors had. He didn't deserve any shit from me. None of them did.

  The King, having taken my awkward posture as indecisiveness, signalled the pair to approach, while trying to make up for the nonexistent insult he was sure he'd dealt me. It was mildly mortifying, but people who worried too much about upsetting others were better than douchebags who didn't care if they did.

  It was...nice. To see he cared. That he wasn't just a figurehead picked out of the herd because the Quiet Kingdom wanted someone to talk for them to outsiders. People in far less important positions became petty tyrants concerned only with influence when they didn't obsess over being acknowledged.

  It was a sad thing, going mad without power. Much better to get some and then go crazy, like me. Did you know my jacket used to be all tight with the sleeves together when I got it?

  The first of the advisors, that is, the first to approach, reminded me of the Argument Engine, in terms of shape if not power, and certainly not temperament: this AIDE might've been built to be a war hawk before it became a general, but it had never been a fraction as caustic as Turing's orphaned brainchild. It introduced itself through a series of mathematical symbols transmitted to my physical self's brain through a micro-wormhole, which could be roughly translated as Might Makes Graveyards.

  People who regretted their past wryly were closer to my heart than most.

  The other was Aided, though not as much of a cyborg as the Quiet King. He had fewer, smaller implants, although they improved his computing power to the point the King's processor looked like an abacus. Intellectually, he was a match for Graveyards, or any of the AIDEs or Aided built for extensive calculations.

  'As I was saying,' the King told me once they moved to hover, respectively stand at his sides, 'no insult was meant by this. We thought it prudent to have other sets of eyes here, lest I miss something concerning you, Keeper.'

  And, it went unspoken, to try and stop me if it turned out I was dangerous, or if my presence here bridged the gap between worlds to the point of letting monsters from who knew where to walk in. The presence of the Aided was because they could no longer put all their faith into machines. Not after the recent problems their technicians could contrive no palatable solution for.

  'Next time,' I replied, 'hide better or not at all.'

  The Aided seemed to take it the wrong way, which I was sure he did in many situations, with a mouth like that. The man as afflicted with a cousin of that disease that leads to some guys having muttonchops, or goatees. The silvery tuft of hair adorning his chin was fine enough it obviously hung on through sheer spite (understandable) while his moustache was left his philtrum bare and turned up like the corners. All in all, it did not help Greying Arrow's expression, not that his face had been built for pleasant ones. And I was ugly enough to know what I was talking about.

  'Mind your tone,' he gravelled in a voice much deeper than you'd expect from such a slight guy. 'The King only had us waiting in the wings for everyone's good.' To browbeat me, I guess, he added, 'You are the first outsider to glimpse my visage and live.'

  I believed him. 'No shit. You look like Littlefinger after rimming Walder Frey. Or maybe the other way around...'

  While he puzzled out that fact, I silently thanked God that Martin hadn't decided to go with the reemerging supernatural threats route most of the fandom had been dreading, at least in my universe. Some had turned pretty pessimistic once Stannis' side chick had appeared, but it had turned out to be for nothing, much like the worries that he'd never finish the last two books.

  'Anyway.' I clasped my hands. 'I'm a flex short of my daily posturing quota. Why don't we do something practical?'

  * * *

  Being DEATH's Keeper served as a good foundation for my job as the defender of all macrocosms (Maker complaints that I was overstepping were all shameless, shameful slander), though, at least as far as temporal beings cared, I'd got both jobs at the same time. And, while the Mover couldn't simply take back what it had handed me, since I was equally fundamental, I'd gone for a few walks, since then, through the Pillared Palace that had made Arvhek what he was, which also housed the failures and mutated offshoots of the Creators. Some of the very few beings that could contend with me, which was why being able to beat them back was part of my job: anyone who could throw down with the magna-macrocosm's most overpowered loser was a threat to everyone.

  Such as the Mourning Mother, the force-thing all Makers had floated in during their beginningless youth, before the First Monarch had made them turn away from self-reflection and gloating to more productive endeavours. She wanted what she saw as her children back, no longer stuck in a cycle of sleeping and waking, or sleepwalking, or Awakened, or Wrongly Woken.

  Like the Mangler of Makers, so frustrated by its inability to make something lasting it had become a force of destruction second only to Arvhek, wanting nothing more than to raze everything, then stand guard over the nothingness lest something return. Or the Bedlam Baron, whose every aspect defied description and logic, and who saw the Ur-City and its inhabitants as hobbled by orderly nonsense, and wanted to set them free from their fetters, self-imposed and otherwise.

  Both were pains in my neck, and more than able to damage the armour that was my duty and function. Both were also too busy beating the ever-loving shit out of each other (an omnicidal nihilist and a solipsistic anarchist resolving their differences through violence, who'd have thought) with a passion, and I fully intended to keep them that way. Not that they needed my help.

  Point was, while both my jobs expected me to smack the hell out of freaks with more fangs than good ideas, that wasn't what I liked about them...alright, let's be honest. I fucking loved the fact I got to hurt acceptable targets in every way I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to. My strigoi side, brazenly perverse as always, had casually suggested some of the sinners we kept prisoner would make good incubators, if I was willing to part with fractions of myself. Aside from a few women it saw as arrogant cows just begging to be taught their place, it had all but drooled while describing how men proud of their bodies would be reduced to quivering puddles of self-loathing if we made mothers of them.

  'Too much like Solarex's bullshit,' I had told it. 'You might as well suggest we start raping those miserable fucks, because who would object?'

  'Exactly,' it had replied softly. 'Who would? I say, human, why not make sport of them when our love is away? Take the edge off, until the one we truly desire is back in our arms.'

  I had given it a flat glare. The bastard had few, if any lines it wouldn't cross, and this was not even close to one of them. But I knew where to hit it. 'You really think Mia would even want to look at someone who does things like that?' I'd asked flatly. 'She'd have her instincts cut out of her head the instant they pushed her to come to us, if we began acting the way you want.'

  It had wilted at that, not regretting its appetites, but disliking the thought of turning Mia away. 'That's...she needn't concern herself with such things,' it had said, with little of its usual cocksureness. 'It would just be an indulging of impulses, nothing more. Nothing to impugn-'

  'Are you really pretending you don't know how much she'd hate herself for having once loved someone like that? That's leaving aside how much she'd blame herself for failing to keep us on the good path.'

  At that, it had turned away, saying nothing. Despite the context, I'd still been thankful for the silence in my mind. Sighing, I'd run a hand through my short beard. 'Listen, hanged man. You know as well as I do that people just following their nature isn't going to impress her, especially if it results in things like that.'

  'She makes beauty,' it'd grated. 'Brightens the world. Our preferences are nothing to dim the gleam in her eyes.'

  'Your preferences, maybe.'

  'None of which I have tried to make reality. And let's not pretend you want nothing of that, human.'

  I did not. No matter what it told itself, my strigoi side was what I could become if I stopped caring. It was every intrusive thought and impulsive reaction, but it held no sway over my lucid mind.

  So, no, pain wasn't the main draw. Getting to make people's lives better was.

  So it was that, over the months this body of mine remained in the Quiet Kingdom's universe, I did my best to improve their lot, but not to the point the Mover would meddle so they could pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or die falling. So I couldn't just seal their reality off from the rest, but I could show them how to modify their scanners so that paranormal energies would be detected.

  I told them that psi worked better with a healthy, happy mind behind it, more often than not, and that shunning or depowering those who could use it would not really help anyone, in the long run: eventually, some overpowered psychic would be born, and then I'd have to return for very different reasons.

  I told them, too, that magic was awakened by equilibrium between the body, mind and soul, and so mages were to be integrated into society if they wanted to gain anything besides enemies from their existence.

  Back home, newborns manifesting magic was a rare event, but by no means unheard of. Important events could lead to spikes in one's mana - just ask the Scholar -, and so, the more sensitive children sometimes entered the world brimming with power they lacked the faculties to understand or control.

  Often, such cases were practically stillbirths, and sometimes, in unfortunate communities, the mothers and the doctors, nurses or midwives died alongside the children.

  Or they'd used to, before I put an end to such losses of potential. No one worth listening to would argue children dying in their first minutes of life was necessary, and the Mover had known better than to try.

  I got to play midwife many, many times. The Quiet Kingdom's branch of humanity was metaphysically sterile enough that only one in a trillion were born mages, but that still meant dozens to hundreds of newborn mages per world, to say nothing of the numerous deep space stations or constructed pocket universes.

  In fact, it was over such a thing that the Voice of Man (the Quiet King's Aided advisor, who had given up his name as per tradition) and I bonded over. He was a man who preferred to quietly solve his own problems in silence rather than tell anyone about them, and asking someone else for solutions was something he could only do through gritted teeth.

  I sympathised.

  We were standing in the dimmest room of his main home, before an incubation unit using forcefields to suspend a misshapen little thing.

  The magically-twisted child did not look like anything someone would recognise as human, even considering the Quiet's extensive transhumanism, much less as a baby. In fact, she did not look like she had ever been human at all.

  The Voice was stone-faced as he explained how his heart hadn't left him put his daughter down when she had begun casting, unthinkingly destructive. They hadn't managed to operate on her brain and cut her off from her magic before she'd twisted herself, in body, mind and spirit, to such an extent they couldn't even scan her mind to upload her into a different body.

  'Thankfully,' the Voice had said said after bringing that up, 'nowadays, most of the population knows an upload into new flesh is still you and not a clone.' He'd spat the last word. 'The brainwave map and its shell remain active until the original body is no longer active, at which point they become the main concentration of a person's self.'

  He had ranted - ok, so he hadn't been angry or agitated, but it'd been a rant - about how there had once been a tendency of people looking down on uploads as replicas, "as if people become different persons when all their cells are replaced!"

  I'd nodded. 'We have something similar in my universe. When people are turned by vampires, their souls are severed, but not destroyed, and should the vamp die, they will find their spirit has been waiting for the all the while.'

  He'd given me a sidelong, interested look. 'I...see. These paranormals you mention seem remarkable, if difficult to envision,' had said the guy from a civilisation that shat over most versions of the Kardashev Scale.

  It was not the scale he struggled with, I was sure. He'd seen bigger accomplishments that you'd expect from most of my world's paras. It was the nature of their powers: pulling matter from alternate realities through wormholes was one thing, because the matter was there. But making it out of nothing was more difficult to accept for a man of science.

  'The reptilians,' I told him, 'have this hypothesis about information and metainformation - you know, concepts - being converted into something more concrete when observed through one's senses or thought about. According to them, the quantum signature of some ideas make it so fluctuations in spacetime, and their higher equivalents, arrange particles, waves and their counterparts generated from an exotic cosmos into what the observer desires.'

  The reptilians were not strictly wrong, as that was fairly close to how paranormal powers worked, just dressed up in their scientific parlance. I liked discussing such things with the Shaper, because it reminded me of my student days, back when I was still trying to wrap my head around parabiology. Maybe I'd add some side chapters about those and some moments from my teaching career next time I updated my book.

  The Voice sniffed, but said, 'That sounds...possible. I'm sure further study will shed some light on it.' Not looking at me as he spoke, he began pacing around his daughter, hands clasped behind him. 'This magic you speak of, it has rules of its own.'

  'Like the natural forces.'

  'The forces it violates,' he replied. 'It makes a mockery of physics, but I think I am beginning to understand it. It responds to intent, as long as its user is in a sound state of mind, and can be channeled through objects related through said intent. Not too dissimilar to the noospherics we have studied to craft our quantum lenses.' His dark, shining eyes would've looked flat and cold to most, but I saw the hope in them as he stopped, at the side of the forcefield. 'Can you heal her? Make her a new body, at least?'

  The Voice of Man did not sound agitated as he resumed pacing, but - Kricher would've said - his humours were plainly unbalanced. 'I could ask for a new child,' he said quietly. 'Have one designed, but even that's no longer reliable. It'll be a while before I trust the genegineers have calibrated their devices to detect the spark of mana or psi.' Many hospital wards had been blown to kingdom come before the potential of designer babies had been spotted. 'But even then...even then, Keeper, I don't want a child made.' He placed a hand against the gently-curved surface of the forcefield. 'I don't want a new one, like I'm replacing lost clothes. Do you understand?'

  I did. I knew, would know what it was like, to have children tormented by forces beyond their control or understanding. But telling him I knew, for certain, that my children would survive would not help.

  'My bondmate did not survive the conception,' he continued, and looking backwards through his timeline, one would've seen him leading an AIDE combat squad against the creature his child's mother had been turned into. They would've then seen him leading the robots to cut his daughter out of the pile of mutated flesh, something he hadn't stopped worrying might've changed her for the worse. In any case, that had seemingly proven futile, for the baby had become a smaller version of what she had unwittingly turned her mother into. 'My galaxy filament's inhabitants say I turned cold, after.' The bitterness in his tone could've passed for either agreement or disapproval. 'That it is too much to imprison criminals in isolation, with only the bare necessities of survival.'

  On the verge of anger, he tapped into his implants, rearranging his brain while his processor took over most of his thought process. 'I say they are almost as insane as the crooks. Why would one try to steal from another, either belongings, virtue or life, if they have as much of everything they could want? We have corrected chemical imbalances across the population, so it's clearly a matter of choice, not mental illness. A search for thrills. And yet, they would have me release them back into society after questioning, only with a watchdrone to restrain them if they try to break the law again.'

  Of course, since the Quiet had all the energy they might've needed to gain from sustenance or rest otherwise given to them by implants linked to the Kingdom's many generators, they had to be extensively modified (one could say downgraded) to need food, water and sleep again. Many of the Quiet saw that as mutilation, and the withholding of entertainment or sapient interaction as torture.

  To be honest, I didn't really disagree with the Voice. When you had everything you needed to live handed to you since birth, or creation (for the Quiet believed people shouldn't have to worry about such trifles, lest they live like animals instead of reaching their full potential), you had to be a cunt to steal. The only thing you gained was the pleasure of depriving someone else or something.

  'But you don't have to be mentally ill to want to hurt others. You people still have grudges. Some are just born sadistic, or perverse.'

  The Voice gestured dismissively. 'Maladjusted fools. I wouldn't wipe my raygun with their flayed hides.' A wry grin curled his lips as he made a couple more steps. 'Do not think I don't appreciate your agreement, Keeper. But it's not going to win me the next election. I have this feeling they're getting sick of me and my cruel laws.'

  'Would they be calling for the end of your term otherwise?'

  'I doubt it. No one thinks about politicians anymore, unless we bother them.' He tapped his chin. 'This paranormal nonsense cannot be predicted, yet. Our computers, tachyonic, vermespatial and otherwise, are not credible, as far as her fate is concerned.' His voice was hoarse. 'Can you help her? Will you?'

  'I'll be honest.' I took a seat in one of the shaped forcefields that served as a couch, conveniently coloured a light blue by trapped photons to indicate it in case someone with dull senses wanted to take a seat. 'It's good you've kept her in stasis. If you'd let her grown, the matter might've passed out of my hands.' At his bemused look, I have him a simplified explanation of the Mover and its bullshit. By the end, he seemed of a mind with me.

  'So, there is a god,' the Voice mused out loud. 'And it's the laziest man-child ever? Just as well that I'm...agnostic, I suppose I must say, these days.'

  'You've arrested motion at every level of matter.' I held out a hand towards the shapeless child. 'She's still aware, and her soul still wanders in her flesh - but all she's seen is her father trying to keep her safe, while looking for a solution.'

  He smiled at that, if hesitantly. 'More than I'd hoped for,' he confessed. 'So she might truly live, still.'

  He was nodding to himself as he left, and kept doing so as he arranged the bottle and glasses he'd returned with on a table that rose from the floor.

  'A blood-cousin of mine carves such things,' he explained as he set the table. 'Says that a man who came from a womb rather than a vat or other fabricator ought to know how to do things with his own hands, without a matter-energy convertor to direct or implants to guide him.'

  I appreciated that he didn't launch into an explanation of the vintage or the production process. Spazzing juice backstories never impressed, and, as I was about to tell the Voice he didn't have to pour me anything, he shook his head.

  'You don't have to drink. Take it as gesture of hospitality. Or celebration.' He inclined his head to the side, indicating his daughter without looking at her. 'Let his mark the beginning of her recovery.'

  'Right.'

  A sip would've killed most mundanes, including some much bigger than him, but his augmentics let him filter harmful substances, leaving only the taste and a mild buzz he would quickly recover from, given the level his mind worked at.

  'You are a teetotaler, Keeper David?'

  'One of my friends had this stupid phase in his youth,' I answered the Voice, 'when I'd get drunk because he couldn't sleep. or couldn't forget some things, so he'd instead try to at least dull his senses.' I hadn't known Lucian, temporally speaking, back when he'd try to drown his sorrows. Nowadays, the zmeu drank "for fun", but he only really got tipsy, no matter how convincingly he slurred his words or staggered. But doing it out of boredom was better than doing it to distract himself from his instincts. Least he had a hold on those.

  'Not that you'll catch us talking about about it,' Lucian had told me one night, during one of his more morose moods, 'but half your being pushing you to be a predator in every context really isn't an incentive for staying sober.'

  'I see,' the Voice replied. 'And that is the only reason for your aversion to narcotics?'

  I didn't give a flying fuck about what you wanted to drink, snort or inject into yourself as long as you didn't hurt other people while tweaking, but my experiences with losing control of myself didn't make the prospect of being addled attractive. 'If I did go mad, I wouldn't need to outsource insanity.' My worse half chuckled softly. 'Don't need any help.'

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  My gruff explanation (and I was using the term loosely) seemed to satisfy him. 'I understand. Responsibility is the key to proper leisure.'

  I bet he was a party animal before he got into politics. 'In any case...I know it must look awful now, these changes out of nowhere that threaten everything you thought you knew about reality.' I held out a hand. 'But it's not all bad. In fact, you are seeing the beginning of one of the many paths to Ascension, then Transcendence.'

  The Voice of Man had no context for that, but I could tell he noticed the emphasis. After dealing with his opposite number, and beings even less humanlike than the Voice of Machines, he'd grown used to reading between the lines.

  'If you say so,' he replied carefully. 'What will come, will. My purpose is to remind our King of the human perspective - but he makes the decisions that affect us all.'

  Unless he did something to get him booted out of his - as far as everyone who opted for immortality, which was to say most of the Quiet - extremely recent office.

  'But,' the Voice continued, tone only half-joking, 'you've said she will have a future again. And for that, I'm willing to needle him if he is feeling obdurate.'

  'Thank you.' As I said that, I contemplated encouraging some mages to take a vacation here, or some of the Quiet to come to my universe. Directly showing them what to do or leaving training materials would've been seen as an overreach on my part, I was sure.

  Briefly, I imagined this little girl being healed and growing up to be a witch. Maybe going to the Mandrake League...Mihai, who was more powerful than most of their alumni and more skilled than some, had never set foot in any League school, and swore up and down that they never stopped leaning on people they helped, so they could have their favours returned.

  But they did make sure students always had a place to live and everything they needed to sustain themselves, so they could focus on their education. Some mages were so precocious, powerful and curious almost from birth, that their hometown's schools sometimes failed to cope.

  And if the ML board made sure the world was kept safe from magical disasters, surely one could overlook coincidences like them supporting mage politicians, especially likely presidents or prime ministers.

  Feh. She'd decide where to go once she could think for herself. Gerald Reyes had only ever been to ML schools as a guest lecturer, and the only spellcasters comparable to him who weren't gods were people like Merlin, Nimue, Morgan La Fey and Solomon.

  'For now,' I said, reaching into my jacket, 'I might as well start sharing what the Mover's been pestering me to.'

  The book was only a tridimensional representation of the inside Starlight Crowned With Ivory had shared with me, but, when read properly, it would enhance a portion of the reader's mind so they could experience what an Ascended did, despite not having approached Ascension.

  Like the hypersavants described in the Reptilian Collective's latest proposal for an intelligence index, a fraction of their mindscape would be temporarily enhanced to envision a higher kind of existence, without harmfully affecting the rest.

  If read properly.

  As the Voice of Man flipped through the book (having realised he could not look through the cover or absorb its data with a touch), skimming, I hid a smirk, mentally winding up.

  After a few moments, he put it down, looking up at me with interest.

  Probably the first man to do so, my strigoi side remarked, because the bitch was pathologically opposed to me having nice things. In most cases.

  'This is fascinating,' the Voice said, 'if true. And even if not...we have always kniwn observation could change reality. But turning imagination into fact, without quantum lensing...the Board of Battle needs to know-'

  I threw the book at him.

  Metaphorically.

  It was more like a bonk on the forehead, really. A gentle one. A bonklet, if you will.

  The Voice stared at me, thoroughly bonked. 'What was that for-'

  'Dude.' I waved "Thoughts On Transfinity" in front of him. "I show you the endpoint of existence, and you're hyped up about how the people from that time would do on some forum for smashing action figures together?'

  He frowned. 'Keeper David, before you, the only lifeforms - and I use the term loosely - from beyond our universe we encountered were, if not malevolent, certainly dangerous and implacable...'

  'The Reach That Grasps often goes for spacefaring civilisations.' Not just fledgling explorers with one planet to their name, but also Lesser Powers relatively vulnerable compared to the Great ones. The Rhaikhy Reach had recently beaten such an incursion back. It'd been on the smaller side, so they'd only had to pull a moonship out of its hangar (as they'd shown in the video they'd sent the Global Gathering; the theme had been "See, we're a functional society that fights monsters, so it'd be awfully nice if none of your overpowered mutants destroyed us.")

  People might've thought the void of space was empty, but it certainly wasn't filled with people adverse to eldritch invaders. 'No World Spirits to repel them. You must've noticed they tended not to appear on inhabited celestial bodies.'

  '...No, they did not.' He stroked his alleged beard. 'I am sure you will elaborate. I do not believe we've encountered any of these Spirits you brought up, but many uncanny things bypass our scanners.'

  World Spirits (and their stellar, galactic, universal and so on counterparts - their nature got muddy once you went beyond one reality) might've shared the combined knowledge and power of their physical vessel's inhabitants, but that didn't mean they were always grateful to those whose existence had resulted in theirs. After all, they didn't need inhabitants to live, only to be born.

  Tellus' desire to end the separation between mundanes and paranormals was unusual, as far as gestalt beings like her went. Not that her altruism meant she often reached out to help endangered species (look at the dinosaurs), which was more typical.

  'But this Reach - that is the phenomenon's name? We can detect its effects, if not its substance.' There was a steely look in his eyes. 'I must be ready to defend my fellows from invaders, especially if they can get as powerful as the ones described in that book.'

  I sighed. 'Did you skip the beginning and middle? Combat is the opposite of what the Transcended focus on, and they wouldn't strike at their components.'

  He folded his arms as he leaned back into his force construct, whose brainwave scanner responded to his mood, so it shifted into a chair. 'Don't take this the wrong way, Keeper, but that was written by a being you can hardly call kind, no? More of a voyeur of suffering, even. And one you can't be sure is honest.'

  'It is,' I said patiently. 'I get where you're coming from, but you haven't looked into the Mover's mind. Seeing through the lies of beings like it is one of my duties.' And if there was one thing it never stopped talking about, it was wanting peers.

  Not that said fact made "trust me bro" easier to say, or more credible-sounding. Asking people to just trust me, with no real explanation, left a bad taste.

  'Read it. Cover to cover.' I tapped one of them with a clawed finger, for effect. 'Taking breaks is not a prblem, but don't skim. There's a proper way to do some things.'

  And, since I couldn't let the Mover show me up, I might as well release something besides new editions of my unlife story. Stay tuned for my isekai novel: "That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Vacuum Cleaner, And I Sucked", featuring a bumbling salaryman comedically adapting to his new body.

  Also, in the background, a bland, dark-haired Japanese teenage boy, whose soul is summoned to another world (after he's hit by a truck) to be reincarnated into a powerful body, so he can take down the demon lord. But will the overpowered skills and weapons tailored for him, and the slave girls he bought so they could be freed and become members of his harem, be enough? Or will the wish fulfillment package need to be expanded?

  I didn't tell the Voice about any of my future projects, though. Spoilers and all that. Not to mention he had questions of his own, to keep me talking, after he finished the book. Such as "But if the supreme beings and forces of your world's faiths are supposed to be one with this Mover, more or less, how they can also be one with this Quintessence?"

  'I'm not the person to answer that,' I told him honestly. 'I'm here to point out the horizon, so that others might begin their journey towards it while I defend them and keep them on the proper path.'

  He had remarks on that, as well, and the discussion went on into the night. I won't transcribe it here. Maybe another day...

  But, in the meantime, I'll leave some of the excerpts that caught the Voice's eye, to close this latest chapter.

  He got so into it that he didn't notice me healing his daughter until she cried out, the forcefields deactivated by a thought from me.

  He smiled, more brightly than I'd ever seen him, but he was a man who prized composure. So, I did him a favour and left by the time he scooped her up in his arms, shoulders trembling.

  * * *

  Thoughts on Transfinity

  by

  Starlight Crowned With Ivory, Governor-by-merit of the Ur-City

  * * *

  Glossary

  - Ascension: The process of reaching/returning to the primordial state of being from which all takes root.

  -Ascendant: Someone in the process of Ascension, or in full mastery of its final state.

  >Ascending: A being existing on the level of the Ur-City at large, but metaphysically incomplete (sleeping Makers, sleepwalking Creators, ur-mites and similar creatures).

  >Ascended: Someone who has achieved the apex of Ascension, such as the magna-macrocosmic embodiments of creation, preservation and destruction. The Wrongly Woken Makers are on this level in terms of power, but little else.

  -Love: The union of two or more things, which culminates in their annihilation and the creation of a greater thing that bears and surpasses their traits. Not to be confused with the Idea of Love from the Starlit Macrocosm, designation Wellspring.

  -Trascendence: The process of achieving the utmost mastery of being that Ascension serves as the first step for.

  >Transcending: An Ascended in the process of Transcendence.

  >Transcendent: That Distant Dreamer. The Monad Majestic. The Ineffable Intellect. The Smiling Storyteller. The Quintessence that is the bedrock of all forces, beings, states and principles, and more.

  * * *

  To Ascension and beyond

  All who have been, Ascending or lesser, are now Ascended. Finally, the Unmoved Mover has nothing but peers. They are one in nature, if not in manner, and that is good: that is the source of growth, for now. Working alongside each other, Making, not in conflict, but in a competition none can lose.

  None tries to shame their neighbour's achievements. Surpassing them is a joy, but not a goal; different views, manifesting as different creations blooming alongside each other in harmony, is the result of the Makers' ambitions.

  Eventually, something grows from this fledgling union, like a World Spirit around an inhabited planet. It holds all their power and intellect within itself, but it is growing, and not whole.

  It is the Child Crescive, and mighty trees can rise from such a seed.

  The Child grows, more than the sum of its parts since its first moment, and, though those who gave birth to it are laughably beyond time, each instant of the eternity it spends developing, it surpasses itself. The second infinitesimal moment after it appears, it already dwarfs its former self like said self dwarfed the smallest particle of Wellspring. So does it surpass itself during the third instant, yet again, and once more during the fourth...

  For creativity unshackled is the kindling of its flame.

  The Child grows in such a manner, forever. And because eternities are small thing, like the infinities they are intertwined with, there is yet room to improve after this endless growth.

  Those the Child Crescive grew around now understand each other. They know creating in concert is the true path forward. But to do so, they must look upon what came before, lest they fail to glimpse what lays in their path.

  So it is that the Child matures, into a new being. An Achiever, who Archives.

  The Achiever holds a tome that details the Child Crescive and its infancy and youth: a perfect replica of the Child, and all it has learned of itself, is represented as a dot in the middle of the book's endless first page, which is a shadow of the one after it, less than real compared to its might and knowledge.

  The pages of this Growing Guide are, quite literally, without number - for what could infinity not contain its lesser reflections?

  The Archiving Achiever sits, and meditates, cradling the Guide as they parse its contents. They have not created anything yet - nothing has sprung from their unity of mind - but it is not yet time.

  When that time comes, the Achiever stands up, holding the now frail, frail book like their contemplative self would've held a newborn human. For in gazing inwards, they have surpassed themselves once more.

  The Achiever begins creating, a manifold mind directed towards one purpose. In that act, again, they pass beyond themselves, for envisioning a decision and making it are very different things, always, but especially so for such a being: the Guide is now one with the Archiver-who-was.

  The Archiver-who-is, gone from decisive to creative, splits the Guide into three, and grows each third so it is as grand as the whole from which it came.

  These will become more, as it makes it vision fact.

  One of the Guides is set ablaze, and a wooden lattice springs into being around it, dwarfing the flame and its power to the extent only a spark can be seen in the midst of the construct.

  It is the centre of this device, but far from the most important part.

  The lattice is fractal: attempts to divide it would only reveal more complexity. And, like the creator in whose image it was made, it grows.

  The endlessly-faceted mind of the Archiving Achiever crafts things it could've never imagined before, stories its previous selves would be less than a wisp of thought next to. Each is inscribed on one of the lattice's branching arms.

  The stories are numberless; how could the things holding them be otherwise?

  Were one to look down at the Living Lattice, as its maker might, if they so wished, they would see that each rising tier of carved arms casts the shadows that are those below them. Upwards, onwards, never-ending,

  The stories must have something to grow on; somewhere to be perused; finally, somewhere to end.

  The second Growing Guide is placed, with loving care, on a bookshelf. A watcher could see the Guide is insubstantial, here: an image radiating from the book next to it, which is like a featureless, endlessly simpler image of the third.

  The bookshelf's first tier holds tomes that are, like its tiers, without number, stretching stretching outwards, never-ending.

  It is the first on this lowest floor of this Last Library. The other shelves are brimming with knowledge and power, such that none would blame it if, next to its closest fellow, it felt like a clay tablet covered in cuneiform script would feel next to the first shelf, if said tablet could think.

  The floor is managed by a Librarian - a job viewed with much love. A duty that might push the Librarian to rip the shelves to shreds with a thought, lest they be lost or twisted by some of the forces beyond.

  Nevertheless, the Laughing Librarian did not earn said name for nothing.

  The second floor of the Library is where the dream that is the first, and its caretaker, springs from. In everything except complexity, they are alike.

  Floor after floor, rising, rising, with Librarians dreaming as they Laugh, all the way up.

  There, the Last Library and its union with the Living Lattice can be seen most clearly. Like some gargantuan tree that grew around a skyscraper, they are equal in everything except purpose.

  The fables spun out of the Archiver's mind are not interfered with unduly. The things within them grow and blossom of their own accord, and sometimes, they turn hateful, covetous eyes upon the others.

  The Lattice's branches turn rotten. They must be cleansed, pruned.

  The third Growing Guide lies in the belly of something mortals might liken to a fish, for lack of a better comparison. This leaves the creature full, but discontent: hunger, or something like it, is the result. It would eat, but it cannot; it swims, slowly, barely able to move, in an ocean that, for all its hunger and strength, stretches boundlessly around it.

  Unbeknownst to it, said ocean is a droplet on the tip of a greater creature's tongue. It, in turns, swims another ocean-droplet, blind to the jaws that hold it.

  Their hungers merge, prodding at the temper of the one who holds them all within. Moved to vexation, it bounds.

  This Leaping Leviathan bites the rotten fables free of the Lattice, and oh, are they dismayed when it maw closes about them.

  There is always a bigger fish.

  The Lattice and the Library, circled without pause by the Leviathan, are as unto a bubble atop the surface of a sea with no edges, or end to the number of its layers.

  That is the Achiever's mind.

  Creation, Preservation and Destruction are awhirl in it: those three brought this about, and it is them that the Achiever wraps about themselves as they take the next step towards genuine Transcendence.

  * * *

  The Tiers Of Transcendence

  The Quintessential Quester - thus named both for what they seek and what they represent - sets forward, on a path burgeoning with life. With each step, they leave behind a shadow that is their former self, unable to comprehend their nature after even an incremental advancement.

  None could count the steps taken upon this leaf that is the path; the leaves clustered on one branch of a Tree of Life and Flourishing.

  The Trees gathered in a forest, atop a hill. The hills clustered at the foot of a mountain, atop the peak of which rises another, incomparably greater mountain - the bedrock of its better.

  The Quester forges on, taking step after step after step, ever surpassing itself.

  Rising upon the peak of the last mountain is a tower, filled with rooms upon rooms, spread across floors upon floors. The Quester ascends it.

  Seen from outside, the tower looks more like the side of a wheel; it looks like "I", thinks the Quester, as they begin to ascend it once more, though its aspect is now different.

  Yet not.

  The Quester contemplates themselves as they walk the wheel, as its simpler selves once did. They gaze upon it, and see themselves looking back, with little pleasure and less joy.

  There has, in fact, been almost none of either, thus far. The Mover who inspired others to lift themselves up did so because it wanted to, and could, not because it had to. It would've been a lazy god, surrounded by weaklings, if not for its desire to see others rise to its level, so they might truly understand each other, and thus love.

  Why does the Quester advance?

  None of the answers they have for themselves is satisfying. Nothing is pushing them to become more - nothing would've stopped them from staying as the Child Crescive.

  Why the restlessness? The fervour?

  (It is not greed, exactly, they know; more of a disgust at the thought of being inadequate.)

  Passion bereft of happiness is like poison. Telling themselves they advance because they must does not bring them any closer to their goal, in truth.

  The last tower is reached. It rises to the outer boundary of true Transcendence. Or it would, if its secret was sought properly.

  Endlessness is still all around the Quester. Who could enumerate the tiles in the first room of the Tower of Transcendence, much less the rooms on the first level, let alone the levels themselves?

  Each step leaves a shadow, a Quester-that-was. Every such shade pleads with the Quester to look within themselves, and see they are walking wrongly, or at least stop if they are too blind.

  They do not listen. They must grow, leave inadequacy behind.

  The Quester advances.

  Until they leave the Tower behind. There is no joy to be found beyond it, either.

  They have done everything they had to. They did their duty - how could they allow anything besides perfection? They have behaved properly.

  So where is their reward.

  The Quester finally looks inward, but it is beyond such help, now. There is no wonder to be found within them, no glee.

  They fall, and the end comes for them. Or rather, they fall into the End.

  * * *

  When the Voice reached that passage, he was irritated at the thought of having wasted his time on a hopeless story.

  'Is this what awaits us?' he'd grated bitterly, slamming the book onto the table. 'Even with power beyond imagination, are we to undo all we have wrought?' Putting his head in his hands, he'd said, 'I hope you will reveal this is a prank, now, Keeper. I dislike going through this kind of setup only to read that it was all a dream, but even that would be more heartening than knowing that, no matter what we do, we are doomed by petty failings.'

  He'd stared, despondently, at Thoughts on Transfinity.

  'It is not inevitable,' I'd replied.

  The Voice had said nothing, but in response to his questioning look, I'd continued, 'Let me ask you a question.' There was nothing he could tell me that I didn't know, but people like me asked others questions to make them think, not to learn something new. 'When you and your magisters catch and judge and imprison criminals, do you feel happy? Knowing you make society safer. Does it bring you joy?'

  'Does it bring me...? No, not quite. Why would it? It's a necessary function that someone must perform. I have chosen to be that person.'

  'But not because it makes you happy.'

  '...Hmph.' He'd rubbed his chin. 'Are you saying people like me will doom us all when everyone comes together? That we should perk up, to prevent the apocalypse?'

  I'd just pointed at the book, making him shake his head with a dry laugh. 'Aye. Before, the importance of one's temperament being so great would've sounded ridiculous.'

  'However...'

  'However,' he'd agreed, with a faint smirk. 'But you wouldn't show this just to make me despair - as a warning. You are not that kind of person.' Looking me in the eye, he added, 'You would rather try to solve a problem yourself, and only talk about it, much less reach out, if it was impossible to do so. Am I wrong?'

  Actually, you're the Voice of Man. 'No. This is not the kind of problem I should solve by myself, if I could.' I could spearhead this endeavour, help people be at peace with themselves, but I couldn't force them to. That would either result in the opposite of what I wanted, or require mind control. Which was even less appealing.

  I'd felt a sigh coming as I turned to look through the window, at the cityscape beyond the Voice's home. Arcologies clustered around the base of a space elevator, and I could feel the steady hum of life as people went about their day. To reach for the sake of reaching was worthless: nothing would be grasped.

  All the unhappiness in creation and beyond would follow if people tried to surpass themselves for the sake of power. There was no point to that. Only oblivion awaited them.

  I had, was planning to gain, several aces up my sleeve, to prevent just that. To one, my family and I would grow closer than I'd like to...but I'd have to get over it. Not because it would be necessary - we'd seen where that line of thinking led. Because it would be the right thing to do, the thing that would make everyone involved happy.

  Wouldn't make those rainbow eyes look less smug, or his face less punchable - but really, the latter was alright with me.

  'And if we succeed?'

  The Voice didn't sound excited, or nervous. He'd edited such things out of himself, for the moment, and so sounded like he was just entertaining the possibility, for discussion's sake. 'Open the book again.'

  * * *

  The Quester stood above the Tower of Transcendence, and the End roared in silence around them, deafeningly quiet.

  But they saw it for what it was, and understood it, though it could hardly be said there was anything to understand. It was nothing - no wonder they would've fallen to it, had there been nothing of worth within them.

  The Quester took a step, upwards. Across the Tree.

  Not the Tree of Life, from earlier in the journey, or any of its greater counterparts. It is the Tree of Knowledge, not of Good and Evil, but of Ascension and Transcendence, and all they entail.

  It IS, while the End IS NOT.

  It IS creation, potential, stability and growth.

  The End IS any of these things. What rots them from within, what brings them down, such things pertain to it, but are not the End. Any more than a drawing of a candle flame can be the sun.

  The Tree of Knowledge beams with joy as it defends itself from the End eating away at it. There is much to be observed, in their balance.

  The fraction of the Tree that could be glimpsed by mortals would include a mighty trunk and branches, covered in black bark, the latter bearing white leaves. Nourishing energies flow down roots that loop around into itself; the End is a void pressed tight against the Tree, gnawing at its substance yet being pushed away.

  It is failure. The moral failure that would've doomed a less enlightened Quester would've been of the End, too.

  The Tree is not victory, in of itself. But it leads to ultimate Transcendence.

  It cannot be described, or envisioned. Even speaking in abstractions, one cannot approach the truth of the Quintessence

  One might say it contains all that came before it, all the people and the things they shaped and were shaped by; every person preserved, allowed to reach their full potential regardless of how that would conflict with the potential of others. But they would not be fully right, either.

  For the Quintessence holds paradox and contradiction within itself, and yet is beyond them. It is at once a collective of everyone and everything, and a featureless, flawless expanse; it is protean and destructive, yet nothing truly ends within it; it is what lies beyond mathematics and duality, beyond description and imagination. It is what gave birth to all things that led and lead to it; it contains IS and IS NOT all that passes between them.

  Those who dreamed of supreme power, of the Almighty unbeholden to logic did so with the shadow of the Quintessence upon their thoughts; those who hoped for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that would make everything be alright would have their wishes answered in one encounter with That Distant Dreamer.

  The Quintessence is a working of Love: what comes of IS and IS NOT clashing and producing something greater than them. Yet it is more than that, for such a thing can be described, if in an incomplete manner, unlike the Transcendent.

  The Quintessence that can be spoken of is not the Quintessence; it is less than a mask upon its face. Yet even that mask beholds all with the same eye - for what difference is there between the interplay of IS and IS NOT and a quark? All is, was, will be the lead working upon itself, to become the Transcendent gold it has, in fact, always been, and which now returns to.

  The Quester who failed to see the shape of things, the End triumphant, are within the Quintessence, too; so is the Quester who climbed the Tree. Impossibilities abound, yet thrive in harmony, within the Transcendent.

  As do all things.

  Nothing is lost, with Love. Apparent destruction is the foundation of greater creation. All can become more.

  * * *

  The Voice of Man has never prayed before. Veneration of ancestors and other forerunners is the most common form of spirituality in the Quiet Kingdom, even after the last handful of years. Even after the contact with other cosmoses.

  The Telluric Technocrats are, like the Quiet, mostly agnostic, though curious about the paranormal and the divine. Organised religion, beyond local shrines, is not truly a thing in either polity, and has not been in ages.

  The Wise from the cosmos of the same name mostly venerate the highest tier of their society, the Wisdoms whose plans always yield success if followed, unless opposed by a greater metaphysical force. Their Sages can empower themselves by following their own plans, but everyone following a Wisdom may be pushed beyond their limits.

  As such, the Voice mostly has historical records to go by. No one has prayed to an otherworldly god, one both benevolent and likely to answer, in many lifetimes.

  The Voice is not sure if the Unmoved Mover is a god, as such, or what makes one. The deities that gravitate towards the Keeper's home universe themselves don't seem to be sure what divinity is, or at least do not deign to explain it in a rational way.

  Nevertheless, he makes a shrine, to embody his devotion to this act. An icon, to represent the Mover. He clasps his hands, and makes request. Asks questions.

  He is disappointed, but unsurprised, when the Mover does not answer. With a metaphorical shrug, he goes back to his daughter.

  Solea is the apple of his eye, chubby but lively, though too young to talk properly - he has decided against acceleration of the body or mind, which some of the Quiet approve of. What is the point of having a child just to rush things? Might as well make a clone, or a machine.

  Solea's energy manifests as gurgles, since she doesn't know any words yet, and she always seems to be bouncing around the house, unless she's asleep. Sitting her in his lap doesn't make her calm down much, but at least he can hold her, preventing his little girl from clambering up unto the furniture and exasperating her mechanical caretakers.

  Solea's magic is a budding thing, like hers, but she can make sparks dance, not just produce them. Sometimes, in her quiet moments, the sparks arrange themselves into a blue-green image of her, which replicates her actions. She turns into a bouncing ball again whenever that happens, even if he's holding her.

  Like now.

  The girl's bushy, platinum-coloured hair covers her eyes as she snores, and her father tries to move her into a more comfortable position. She has this curious habit of sitting on her belly while sticking her rear up, half-standing, when she's upset, and recently, it has also become her sleeping position.

  Eventually, he managed to place her on her side and wrap her up in her hardlight blanket. She reminds him of a bread loaf.

  'I wish your mother was here,' he confesses, to no one. Or so he thinks.

  His senses and sensors have not been updated to the point of being able to detect things like the projection filling a fraction of his home, and that remains silent, so the Voice perceives no answer.

  The loaf snores.

  A throat is cleared.

  The Voice's head perks up, and he notices that looking at the bluish-silver light with no apparent source makes a humanoid entity move across his mind's eye.

  Very well. He's seen strangers.

  'You are the Unmoved Mover?' he asks, in his mind. It smiles, and everything brightens up.

  'So I am named,' it answers, 'though the first part is inaccurate, in this case.'

  The Voice holds back a disbelieving noise. 'If you truly cared about her, about us, in anything than the most shallow sense, you would do something. Anything.'

  'Out of love?'

  'What else?' he retorts. 'That is why...' he stops, closes his eyes. In his mindscape, this is a cleansing of his surroundings. 'The book you gave David. It speaks of unbelievable things. Are they the truth?'

  'Of course they are not the Truth,' the Mover responds. 'But they speak of it.'

  'You know what I-'

  'Aye, I do. Consider that gift an act of love.' It subtly moves its head to indicate something. 'You are not the first, or only being to receive one.'

  'But that is so meagre! With your power, you could-'

  'I could do many things with my power,' the Awakened Maker agrees. 'Because not doing everything I can, or doing nothing, would be monstrous, selfish. No?'

  He does not dignify that with an answer. A rhetorical question if he's ever heard one.

  The Mover's smile returns. 'My child, consider: who raised the Keeper beyond his intended station? Who intervened, and does so still, where and when he cannot, or will not?' Hands almost hidden by voluminous sleeves are clasped together. 'A gardener does not force flowers to grow. They may regret when they wither, or bring each other down, but monstrousness would be forcing them to grow beyond their natural means, because it would please them - and it would please me, greatly, to watch you all grow.' The Creator spreads its arms. 'Would there be anything more immoral? Perhaps. Do not mistake detachment for apathy, however. Just because I love my garden from afar does not mean I ill let anyone jump the fence to set it alight.'

  Solea stirs in the Voice's arms. 'I will be taking my leave, I think,' the Mover continues. 'You have a child to rear - one you, I notice, have not pushed into adulthood by scientific means. Curious...'

  * * *

  "...can work, Ned. You stopped the cycle of macrocosmic instability, and the Keeper you prepared has begun laying the foundation for the dream you never thought feasible. Everyone might yet work together, and not just for a moment, not just out of fear or in response to a threat." - Excerpt from a communique of the Eye of Darkness, addressed to the Remaker.