God’s work? I thought this was all designed by people?
The OverSoul is in everything.
It’s beautiful; however, those bats just seem lost to me, lost in their single-mindedness. A little sad, I think, Lily said.
We are all just thralls of biochemistry, D_Light replied. Besides, it would be wasteful to make them any other way. Have you heard the old saying “The world is a jawbreaker”?
No, she answered.
There was a time, a time before the OverSoul, when the world was like a jawbreaker, a hard, round candy, that we sucked and gnawed on over the centuries, slowly consuming it. We didn’t do this because we were evil, we were just animals doing what animals do-eating.
What a silly saying. So are you-I mean, we-no longer animals?
Of course we are! However, we now have a shepherd.
Perfect! So we’re not even handsome animals? We’re the livestock, chewing our cud and grinding our lives away?
Yeah, I suppose. Just like that, only less nihilistic.
Too late, I think I’m going to drive my bike off the bridge, just like a big dumb cow, Lily said with a laugh. So on the bright side, the world’s no longer a jawbreaker?
No, it’s this. In a grand gesture, D_Light had Smorgeous pan out for the optimum view of the House of Monsa. He then turned to look over at Lily to see her reaction. He was startled to find her gazing right back at him. She was obviously not watching Smorgeous’s feed.
“Umm,” D_Light said out loud as he stumbled over his words. “Your, your veil is off.” D_Light’s front tire wobbled, and he struggled for a moment to keep from colliding with the railing.
“When you plugged me into your cat’s eyes, I saw myself as another person. It was…unsettling. I’d rather keep track of who’s who,” Lily said.
He could see the silhouette of her exquisite face in the glow of the marina. Fine for now. No one’s around. Put it up again before we arrive, he said through the blink.
She nodded as she returned facing forward. He glanced back over his shoulder at the seemingly endless bridge behind. From time to time, he continued to look back while he pedaled as though making sure the shadowy bridge was still there…and to keep an eye out for rogue bot trucks.
Meanwhile, Lyra and Djoser were just ahead, riding side by side. The two nobles chatted aloud. “I’ve arranged to meet a friend of mine,” Lyra mentioned. “She’s not of very high rank, but she is a mother of this house and has promised to get us in. Actually, Djoser, you know her. Sweet_Ting?”
“Sweet_Ting?” Djoser shrugged. “Uhhh! I’d look her up, but-”
“No! Don’t even consider pinging the Cloud. We don’t know how we might get traced. Only peer-to-peer blinks,” Lyra warned. “Look, you met Sweet_Ting when I did, at that mixer last year, remember?”
“Hmmm, drawing a blank here.”
“For Soul’s sake, Djoser, you perved the woman!”
There was a pause. “Oh, right! That skinny, bug-eyed girl!” he exclaimed. “Hmmm, she wasn’t the brightest, was she?” Djoser chuckled.
“That didn’t stop you from going in on an intimacy permit with her,” Lyra jibbed.
“Actually, that bitch made me pay for the whole thing. Said it would ‘soooo be worth it.’” Djoser turned his head and spat over the side of the bridge rail, down into the blackness below.
“Maybe not so stupid after all,” Lyra said, “although seducing you is about as difficult as pedaling this bike.” She then looked back over at D_Light. “Not that I would know from firsthand experience,” she added with a wink.
Lyra leaned back on her seat. “Aside from convincing you to foot the bill for an IP, I believe your estimation of her intellect is correct. She can’t even get a breeding permit. She told me she was turned down just last week.”
“Ouch,” Djoser said. “But she’s a mother of an important house.”
“True, but she was born with her title. Apparently, the DNA fairy chose to withhold the brains. I guess even parentage like hers is no guarantee,” Lyra replied.
Djoser let out a low whistle. “Her parents must be peeved. Imagine spending the points for a breeding permit and then having a dud like that? I bet her parents wished they could have engineered her like in the old days. Makes you wonder why the OverSoul changed the rules.”
“ Everyone knows why the rules were changed. Even Sweet_Ting knows that,” Lyra spat.
Djoser looked back at Lyra. “I know, but if I ever decide to have one, I’d like to make sure. I mean, I want to get some kind of return on my investment!”
Lyra switched to a blink, effectively shutting D_Light out of the conversation. Genetically engineering humans is a deadly sin, she said with emphasis. Would you want to risk being demonized? You need to have your familiar erase your archive of this conversation.
We’re demons now and it’s not so bad, Djoser responded.
Suspected demons, Lyra corrected. She looked over toward D_Light. Only Dee and the new girl are demons. Besides, our sins were necessary to win the MetaGame and will be purged upon completion.
Lyra’s thought pattern was a little ragged, and Djoser thought it sounded like she was trying to convince herself. He would have preferred more resolution in her tone. After all, he was taking a big gamble with this whole game. He had half a mind to turn D_Light and Lily in to the Divine Authority and be done with it. He did not want to lose the MetaGame, but he did not want to get on the wrong side of the OverSoul either. The last thing he was curious about was what, exactly, “demon atonement” entailed.
“Anyway,” Lyra continued out loud, “even D_Light didn’t commit a deadly sin.” She looked pointedly at Djoser. “You watch it or I’ll turn you in for heresy. Erase your archive or not, I’ve got mine and D_Light has his.”
“Oh, I’d prefer you left me out of it,” D_Light said flatly.
“Look, thinking outside the box is divine. I’m not serious. It’s not a sin to think about sin, right?” Djoser’s voice was pitched an octave or two higher than usual.
“Well, at any rate,” Djoser continued in a tone that seemed to suggest that the conversation may as well end, “lucky for you and me that we both have good parentage and the brain genetics came through.”
Lyra was quiet for a moment and then said in an offhanded tone, “By the way, if Sweet_Ting brings it up, you know, about the breeding permit? Be sure to console her properly.”
Djoser rolled his eyes.
The stairway leading up to the main entrance of House Monsa was long, and it towered over them. Snaking down the staircase was a line of tightly packed people waiting to get into the lounge, the house groksta. Some were there simply to enjoy the groksta, while others hoped to find a way into the house itself and perhaps-if they possessed the right traits-even apply for family membership.
Following closely behind Lyra, the party ignored the line and withstood the weight of many hateful glares as they ascended to two enormous doors that stood wide open. Half a dozen armed guards flanked the doors, and while a few of them nodded to people as they passed through, most of the square-jawed men just stood stoically.
Lyra walked straight up to the first guard and said, “We are here to see-” Her sentence was cut off by a screech from just inside the immense doors. A slender pandectic woman with a beautiful face but distinctively bulging eyes rushed out and embraced Lyra, nearly sending them both backward down the vast stairway below.
The woman’s assault was so fierce that D_Light half expected an edgy Amanda to sink a blade into the stranger’s side. Amanda, however, did not react at all except to watch the newcomer carefully. Products like Amanda were designed to read body language very well, much better than most humans, which was no small feat given that human evolution had dedicated a great deal of effort to learning how to perceive subtle signs from one another.
“Lyra, it’s you!” Sweet_Ting exclaimed as she carefully parted Lyra’s nanofiber veil. “At last you visit me!” Sweet_Ting let the veil fall back into place to hold Lyra by the sides of her head as though gazing into a crystal
