A Fortress of Pebbles

“As for language pebbles,” said the Master of Language, ignoring Orion’s antics and speaking directly to Cassandra, “they primarily interact with the material world by reading and writing information. They can process sound waves created by voice, the bits inside a computer, or the pencil marks you’ve made in your notebook for math class.”

He gave her a wink, as if to tell her that he knew she hadn’t been bothering to take notes. Then he placed a blue pebble on a book that had been sitting on a table. Suddenly, she heard a voice in her mind, her mother’s voice: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times; it was a bright cold day in April; and the clocks were striking thirteen. She looked to see what book it was – A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

“Is that how the story goes?” said Cassandra.

“Not exactly,” said the Master of Language. “My point is that language pebbles can read, transform, and transmit information.”

“But,” said Orion, “if we hear it in our mind, that’s mind magic. Or, as I like to call it, a flaw in the system.”

The Master of Mind arrived back from the other side of the room and handed the phoenix to Orion. It became a pebble again the moment it was in his eager hands. He added it happily to his hoard.

“Pebbles can do any kind of magic,” said the Master of Language. “It’s just that the more they specialize, the more efficient they get. There are equations. But again, I won’t bore you.” He winked at Cassandra, who was, in fact, yearning to write down some equations.

“So what does this one do?” said Orion, exasperated. “You say you don’t wanna bore us, but I gotta be honest here…”

***

“Okay, so it’s a test,” said Aissaba, eyes on the orange lights. “For what?”

Tassadu tossed her a dark pebble. Her limbs were too stiff to catch it in time, so it bounced off her chest and onto her lap.

“Put it to your forehead,” he said.

She did this, arms atingle from the venom. But nothing happened. No handsome dragon, no utilitarian interface, nothing. “You sure it’s flashed?”

“It has to be,” said Tassadu, grinning. “The Third Law of Pebble Magic states that within each pebble…” He gave Aissaba a chance to recall the formulation.

“I don’t know,” she said, “something about time and space. Information and computation. Stuff like that.” She knew the Laws as well as anyone in the Fortress, but she wasn’t in the mood. Her legs felt like they were full of bees.

“Inside each pebble, space has been bent, allowing for effectively infinite informational storage,” he said. “And time has been dilated, allowing for effectively infinite computational speed.”

“Yeah?” she said, using both arms to pull one leg into a right angle, disturbing the effectively infinite number of bees inside them.

Tassadu folded his arms, apparently not willing to tolerate her faux-ignorance any longer.

“You bit me,” she reminded him. “And almost left me to die.”

***

“To help children at the Fortress remember it,” said the Master of Language, “we call it the tummy-to-forehead rule. The distance at which one pebble can begin to flash another pebble is roughly the distance from stomach to forehead.”

Orion mimed swallowing the pebble, slid it along the front of his throat, and held it at his stomach level. “So if we swallow one, it can flash the others before we can use them.” He placed a second pebble at forehead level.

He got another pebble for this “incredibly effective demonstration.” Cassandra received nothing, even after asking if the tummy rule was because of the amount of matter being reflashed inside the effectively infinite pebble space.

Actually, not nothing: The Master of Language smiled and winked at her. This felt better than every pebble she’d gotten so far. Orion – being too distracted by his hoard to notice the wink – rolled his eyes, assuming she had said something dumb. For once, it didn’t bother her.

***

“I wasn't leaving you to die,” he said. “I was leaving so I could die.”

“Does it matter? If I hadn’t mentioned the Laws, you would have left,” she said. She was just opening her mouth to berate him further when the orange lights flickered again, as if reminding them that they weren’t here to squabble.

“The whole pouch of pebbles was dark just minutes after we got here,” said Tassadu, talking to the lights directly now. “Most of them have the entire TSO-duh inside. You can’t wipe that much information that fast at a distance.”

The lights in the concrete turned white. It was like being released from a drugged nightmare, a bad mind pebble trip. The pebble in her hands began to glow the soft green of life magic.

“I guess we passed the test,” said Tassadu.

(Blink: “Swallowing the pebble is the key to making the whole game work,” said the Master of Language. “Notice that it’s blue, so you can be relatively sure that it won't effectively alter your biology or your brain. Nor will it give you…” He leaned in conspiratorially. “...poop made of lightning.” Orion howled with laughter, while Cassandra and the Master of Language exchanged a knowing look.)

“No,” Aissaba said. “We still have to pick a direction. Up or down.”

The lights flickered again.