Microstory 2643: Fresh Pair of Eyes

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Mandica awakens once more, but doesn’t open her eyes. There is something wrapped around her head, and for a second, she forgets the trauma. Then it all comes flooding back in. She’s lying in a bed, but obviously can’t see where she is. Someone brought her here, but they could be bad or good. It could be Cardinal Sin, not finished with her after mutilating her face. So she just remains relatively still—not rigid so as to pretend to still be asleep, but not getting up. She’s unmotivated, because what would be the point of doing anything? It’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but she feels no gratitude.

The bed jostles a little, and she feels something pressing against her leg. “How are you feeling?” a feminine voice asks. “Are you in any pain?”

Actually, she’s not, so she supposes that’s another miracle. “Not right now, but I’m eyeless. I don’t think you understand, they’re not going to heal. I’m not going to transfer back to another body. Or if you’re just an NPC, none of this means anything to you, and you’re either confused, or you’ve been programmed to ignore anything which might break your interpretation of the world around you. I really don’t care anymore.”

“I’m not an NPC,” the voice claims. “And you’re not eyeless.”

Mandica feels the woman’s hands upon her face, and flinches, but relaxes, because it seriously doesn’t matter. Her life is over. She made a mistake, and it cost her everything. The hands gently lift Mandica’s head off of the pillow, and slowly unwrap the bandages. Shards of light appear before her. How is that possible? Some kind of weird neural firing in her optic nerve? People are supposed to have eyes, so maybe it’s not used to being without, and is still trying to produce an image. As the bandaging becomes thinner and thinner, the light becomes more uniform and even, until it’s all gone, and she sees the ceiling above her, as well as the young woman’s face. “Did I imagine it all?”

An old man’s face appears next to the woman’s. “My finest work,” he muses.

“This is Sigurd Olander,” the woman explains. “The best tissue regenerator in the sim. Don’t worry, he’s clueless.” She looks at the man. “None of this is real. You’re just a robot with skin. I could pull off your head right now, and I wouldn’t even get in trouble.”

Sigurd doesn’t look at the woman, or acknowledge what she’s saying. He keeps smiling proudly at Mandica. “I’m sorry, I may not have gotten your eye color quite right. Unfortunately, I did not have much to work with. Your original eyes were too badly damaged. I may be able to fix the color, though, if you prefer. Can you move them?”

Mandica switches her gaze to the wall on the other side of the bed. She sits up, and looks around the room. It’s pretty bare, probably because personal lives don’t matter much to people pretending to be superheroes. There is a nightstand to her left, a desk against the far wall, a metal rack of clothes instead of a closet or wardrobe, and Jaidia. “Jaidia!” she cries. She clambers to the corner of the bed, trying to use the blanket and pillow as armor. “Get away from me! Get away!”

Jaidia holds her hands out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t do this to you.”

“No, I saw you!” Mandica argued. “You tore out my eyes!”

“That wasn’t me,” Jaidia insists. “I would never do that. Even to an NPC, I’m not that sick.”

“Oh, you’re gonna tell me you put on that red costume, and you turn into a different person?” Actually, that’s not that crazy of a scenario. Real world technology would absolutely allow a player to shift personalities to more fully immerse themselves into the simulation. That’s what they do in Zombiedome. If you get infected, you can turn into a zombie, and—no, why is she thinking about Zombiedome? It’s not relevant.

“No, it just straight up wasn’t me at all,” Jaidia claims. “It was a shapeshifter. We believe that she didn’t design a regular body for herself at all, but is composed entirely of interlocking nanites. This allows her to appear as anyone or anything with the right amount of volume. I don’t know why she made herself look like me, or why she targeted you, but I promise that I had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry you went through that.”

When Mandica looks over at the other woman, she nods. “She’s telling the truth. We came here to fight each other for fun. Mildred’s backstory, and Cardinal Sin’s modus operandi; they’re just figments. She doesn’t actually ever do any of that stuff. We time our battles so I show up before she can go through with it. Morgana, on the other hand, is not a part of that. She has her own plans; her own script. I genuinely had to fight her off. I shouldn’t have won, though. She’s more powerful than anyone, so that tells us she wants me to live, and she wants you to live too.”

Mandica sighs. “Morgan Le Fay was a shapeshifter in the stories, but I don’t understand why Vanore would do this to me. We weren’t in love, but we parted on decent terms, and I’m the one who should be mad at her; not the other way around.”

“We’ll help you figure it out.” She offers a hand. “My real name is Elysia MacNeil, but in here, I go by Alanis Morrissey. Unless I’m in costume, in which case, I’m—”

“Ravensgate Rescuer. Yeah, I teased that out. Your masks don’t exactly conceal your identities, you know that right?”

“We do know that,” Jaidia replies. “It’s tradition. Superheroes are intentionally dressed in poor disguises so the movie stars playing them can still be clearly seen.” She circles her own face with her finger. “No one wants me to cover this up.”

Mandica nods, and begins to climb out of the bed. “Do you have a mirror?”

“We can bring you one,” Elysia offers.

“I would rather get up, and get moving around,” Mandica contends. “Just point me to the bathroom.” Jaidia holds her hands out awkwardly as Mandica is slowly making her way across the room, prepared to catch her if need be. Mandica doesn’t need any help, though. Her body is weak because she’s not eaten in a while, and she wouldn’t call what she was doing before sleep, but all she needs is a sandwich. And to see what she looks like. She flips on the light, and approaches the mirror. As the man said, these are not her eyes. They’re the wrong color, and maybe shape? That can’t be right. She turns her chin side to side for different angles. Can the color of the irises make them look entirely different? Maybe she’s imagining it. Or Morgana did damage to the rest of her face, so that had to be reconstructed too.

“I’ll let you ladies help her acclimate,” the doctor says as he’s walking towards the exit door. “I must leave for another appointment, but you have my number if anything goes wrong.” He stops and stares at Mandica. “Truly my finest work.” He leaves.

Mandica was going to thank him, but he wouldn’t get it anyway. He’s a program with hands and feet. She turns back to the mirror, almost wanting to smile, but this never should have happened, and won’t again. She is not fit for this world. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Elysia asks.

Mandica looks at her. “I’m unregistered. They had to give me spoof lenses so I could move about at will. Now those lenses are gone, and I’m stuck here. Forever.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 14, 2399

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Imani Pettis is a Compliance Enforcer in the Church of Daltomism. Unlike most Daltomists at her level, she began in a starter house where she could have easily been lost in the crowd. People who have risen up the ranks to be where she is today have done so after being born into more elite status. There’s a downside to this, because while it’s impossible to begin in the uppermost levels, those who start at the upper levels just under those are not always considered worthy by the general Daltomistic population. Imani garners a lot of respect, because she started at nothing, and earned her place. She belongs to what is called a Singularity Church, which basically means that she operates autonomously, and at the behest of the Primary Church. The paradox is complicated, but even though there are thousands of members of the Primary Church, they each technically belong to their own church. That is what gives them the highest elite status.

Imani attends services all over her region, which encompasses the majority of Northeast United States. She is there to ensure that the local chapters are following the Word of Dalton faithfully, and that no one in the congregation strays from the path too significantly. The point of starter houses is to determine who is worthy to move up to smaller meeting houses, which means that technically, people here don’t have to do anything The Word says. But she will still instruct the local leadership on how to guide the wandering flock towards the Mountain of Truth. It’s unclear why she has requested a meeting with Leona Matic, but Heath wanted to impress her because of what she can do for their mission, so he set it up right away.

“Madam Pettis,” Leona says with her hand outstretched. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” She shakes her hand. “You may call me Imani.”

“Thank you, Imani. How can I help you today?”

Imani looks around, and walks forward a little. “What is the purpose of this building?”

“We hope to turn it into a refugee sanctuary. It’s not quite ready. We need to inspect all of the rooms, and there are many.”

Imani nods. “How did you come to create it? Or did someone create it for you?”

Leona looks to Heath for guidance, but he isn’t giving anything away. Okay, so a building appeared out of nowhere in the middle of downtown, which threw out the whole secrecy thing. For now, Leona has been able to remain quiet about how she’s not stunned that this happened, but it may be time to change that. If she were freaking out, she would probably be telling people, and asking the public how the hell it happened. She doesn’t know how it happened, but she knows that they can’t help her. “Someone appears to have created it for us. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, and this building fits those parameters. I’ve taken it as a gift from an anonymous donor.”

Imani laughs. “An anonymous donor builds an invisible building for you, and then just suddenly makes it visible? I would like to meet the person with such power.”

She probably doesn’t need to know about the Omega Gyroscope. Whoever built it may not have known that it would be activated, and was intending to keep the Superscraper hidden for longer. Unless that person was Dalton himself, which is a plausible theory. “There are things in this world that most would not understand.”

“Yet you understand it?” Imani prods.

“Some things I know, some things I don’t,” Leona quotes a TV show.

“Quite,” Imani replies. She looks around some more, and steps a bit deeper in. “A Dark Citadel will fall from the heavens, and make its mark in the Center of World Power. The Watchers who come out of it will change the world forever, and the people shall know the Life of God.”

“Ma’am?” Heath asks vaguely.

“Word of Dalton, Book Two, Chapter Thirty-One.” She grins at him. “Yes, dear, there is a second Word of Dalton book. You have not learned enough to know it.” Pretty impressive, keeping the existence of a whole prooftext out of public knowledge, especially in this advanced informational age. She goes on, “tell me, do either of you recall the date that this building appeared?”

“March 1,” Heath replied.

“March 1, 2399.” She holds up a tablet, and navigates to the chapter in question. “Chapter 31...month three, day one. Page two,” she says as she swipes to the second page. “Paragraph three, words 99 through 137. March 1, 2399,” she repeats. Numerology: the fool’s excuse for being late.

“Interesting,” Leona says, trying not to scoff at the absurdity, knowing in the back of her mind that it’s possible that the book is telling the truth, and this has all been orchestrated to turn out exactly as Dalton wished.

“Tell me,” she repeats herself, “would you consider New York City to be the Center of World Power?”

“One could argue that,” Heath says.

“One could also argue that it’s Kansas. Perhaps the whole country is the world power, and Kansas is literally in the middle of it.”

Imani points at her. “Exactly, my child. Because that’s how Dalton’s words often go. He frequently means something literally that most would take metaphorically, or culturally. And while Daltomism began in Africa, many competing religions were started somewhere in the land which would become North America. Some believe that Kansas holds a plethora of sacred secrets. Besides, look around...would you consider this place to be a dark citadel? Why, it’s so white, I was nearly blinded by the façade when I pulled up.” She’s right. Normal arcological megastructures are painted a gray base, which can alter its tint automagically to reflect or absorb sunlight, depending on the regional climate, and current weather where it’s built. The Superscraper is shockingly white, making it stand out even more amongst all the puny little skyscrapers below, and it doesn’t appear to change colors at all. Plus, it shouldn’t really be described as a citadel.

“So this is not the structure as foretold in your...little book,” Leona says, knowing that it’s a pretty disrespectful way to word it, especially considering it may all be real.

“That was why I wanted to come here, and why I appreciate your accommodation, despite the line of others ahead of me.” It’s true, the number of people who have asked to cross the border has grown exponentially, and that is showing no signs of slowing down. Most of them likely don’t have any particular reason they want to come. They’re curious more than anything, but as soon as they find out that she was invited without any sort of waiting list, or whatever, others might start to feel a little ticked off. Hopefully Imani does not intend to ask for more than just a few answers.

“So we’re agreed that this is not the Dark Citadel?” Leona presses.

“It’s not, but that does not mean that it is not something else. Mr. Walton, tell me what you know of the False Watchers of the Other Worlds.”