NOVEL NEXT 1.31 Too Late
Too Late
Daniel said.
<…No.>
Finding and assembling Daniel’s pieces had not been a solution, not a long term one.
Daniel was more whole now than even the first moment he appeared to me in the Vorak cell. But he was still running out of time. Whatever I’d ripped from Daniel’s head, even if it had stayed whole from the start, just wouldn’t last, not as him at least.
It had never been about him being whole or not. Daniel’s real problem had been damage . However much ‘Daniel’ I had in my head, in however many pieces, it just wasn’t a state he could persevere in. Whether that was because of my head, or his death, I couldn’t say.
He smiled,
The difference between now and before was staggering. He wasn’t pausing oddly; he wasn’t trailing off absently. He really was whole.
For however much time he had left.
<…Maybe an hour.> I said.
Separately, it was easy to assume each of Daniel’s pieces was inert. Alone, each one wasn’t capable of anything. Their metaphorical battery had been run down, or maybe its ability to retain charge had been damaged… there wasn’t a perfect comparison to be made.
Alone, they were inert. But reassembled, they pooled what they had left and gave Daniel enough time for a swansong.
My jaw clenched. Was there any way I could—
<—can make other mental machines like itself. Maybe we could make some kind of cryogenic tube in my head.>
<…and what does that matter for us?> I finished,
I managed a bit of a smile back. From the very beginning, he had a way of improving my attitude. I knew why of course. There was no way you could be exposed to someone’s consciousness and every thought without developing a keen understanding of who they were. Without a doubt, Daniel knew me far better than even my parents—he’d had an all-access pass to the innermost thoughts of Caleb. Despite the tired line, he might actually know me better than I knew myself. That frightened me more than I ever thought it would.
But I could worry about that later.
He laughed.
I could, and did.
He’d evidently learned from his time as countless disconnected pieces, because if his updates to the journal took much concentration, it didn’t show. If I could learn to multi-task like that…
Oh man there were some cool ideas I had for these psionic constructs.
He didn’t need to ask this time, I pulled a fresh connection from the psionic radar and handed it off to Daniel’s assembled pieces.
Daniel showed me under the radar’s ‘hood’. My headache came back with a vengeance when I tried to take the whole of the mechanism in. But this was important. Tuning out every part except the bits Daniel guided my attention to…the radar had settings. Parameters. Variables to its sensitivity to… I had no idea what.
But if I pretend my mental cleaning tool was a broom and dustpan, I could pretend these took the form of dials and sliders.
For a second every corner of my mind shrieked a blinding white. It was a sound I could see, or a sight I could hear. Hard to tell which.
But as quickly as the radar flared up, the disturbance died out almost immediately.
Nai was visible on the radar again. I could tell the mirror was still in their mind somehow, but it wasn’t obscuring the signal Nai radiated. The way Daniel described it, the mirror had been tailored for ‘higher energy registers’, which probably meant Enumius brains. He’d adjusted the radar down to pick up plain old minds.
Which is why I could sense Tasser on the radar too.
And the Casti in the hall outside. And the ones in the room below us. And a cluster of them through the wall behind me. It was overwhelming! It reached so much further now, but the information wasn’t so cleanly presented now.
They were all fuzzy alien shaped clouds that blurred into each other and themselves. Daniel hadn’t been kidding, the accuracy was horrible the further out it got. It made me question if it was even worth the reach.
Paring away all but the closest reaches of the radar, I could make out subtle shifts in the fuzzy mental registers that corresponded with Nai and Tasser’s positions. There were patterns to it!
Daniel went a little quiet.
It had been fun talking with Daniel about the new possibilities. For a moment I’d forgotten just how I’d gotten here.
Daniel had less than an hour. This conversation needed to cover a lot of ground, and we’d covered the important parts of what he’d learned.
It was time for the rest.
<…nah. I’m counting my minutes here. I don’t want to go out on a dour note. So if we’re going to talk about the psychological ramifications of events, I’m going to maintain a healthy detachment and stay lighthearted about it. You should try it.>
That was a good question. The details would depend on what else I learned, when. But the general goal was;
I gave a nod toward Tasser,
I said.
I winced at that.
I couldn’t respond right away. His time was running out sooner than expected. Daniel felt it too, I could tell. A ripple went through his collective pieces, a shudder as the last scraps of energy dwindled. What was there to say?
<…Thank you.> I told him.
And the last spark of Daniel went out of my mind.
…
…
“…Okay,” I said, “let’s go back to school.”