The Seventh Stage: Rock-Ribbed (Part VI)

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Echo didn’t like the idea of his sister’s body being piloted by an evil transdimensional god-being. Debra knew that he wouldn’t, which was part of her plan all along. They believe that he has the power to conjure entirely new substrates for the six of them to inhabit. He does that—he gives Debra a new body—she’ll do what the rest of them want, and find the person responsible for transporting everyone from the original five realities to their new home in the Sixth Key. She’s not asking for this for her own selfish reasons. She needs it.

Debra is not evil anymore. She’s become a better person, and genuinely wants to help now, which she knows will only make her an even better person. That’s what she learned on the first stage. Diversity and community are the keys to harmony, even though they can lead to conflict. If she doesn’t end up being able to find who the Cloudbearer twins are looking for, it won’t be for lack of trying. Someone that powerful is a master of time and space, and may have the means to shield themselves from being pinpointed, detected, or identified. Still, even with the uncertainty of success, Debra doesn’t think that it’s unreasonable to ask for a new body to call her own. It’s not like they don’t want to give her one. They just don’t know if they can trust her. That’s okay, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to change their minds.

He’s standing there, still weighing their options. “Think of it this way,” she begins.

Echo closes his eyes and holds up a silencing finger. “Shh. Just shh,” he says, shaking his head. He continues to keep his eyes closed while trying to make up his mind for another few minutes. “You don’t have to convince me anymore. I just need to figure out how to do what I’m trying to do.” Though his eyes are still closed, he can sense when she’s about to speak again, and shushes her once more. “I don’t want your help either. I have my own simulations running through my head at the moment.”

Debra sighs louder than she meant to. She quietly says sorry, even though that technically only adds to the ambient noise, and distracts him more. She centers herself mentally, and stands before him patiently and quietly.

After ten more minutes, he opens his eyes, and stares at her with a cold disdain, but also a sense of...determined acceptance, if that makes any sense. “I know what I have to do. Let me talk to Clavia.”life

Clavia passes by Debra on their way to swapping places in their shared mind palace. The former is center stage now. “What do you have to do?”

“Did I ever tell you that I met my mother?”

“What? No. You’re not talking about Judy, right?”

He laughs. “No, I’ve obviously met her. I mean the woman who gave me life. When I put us back to being children, we both collapsed and fell unconscious. We had to sort of reset to factory settings. I don’t know what it was like for you. I guess you and the others were formulating your internal seven stages metaphor. I left my body, and communed with Olimpia Sangster. We actually spent quite a bit of time together before we both decided that it was time to part ways. So I won’t go over everything we discussed, but it was nice to get to know her. Anyway, when I woke up as a kid, I didn’t remember any of it. Judy and Bariq raised us as siblings, doing their best to mould us into well-rounded, productive members of society. It wasn’t until later that I was able to recover those moments with her.”

“I wish I could have been there with you,” Clavia says. “Debra is cognizant of facts about Team Matic, and all that, but they never met. Ingrid and Onyx each knew them only briefly.”

“You might meet them one day,” Echo says with a knowing smile. Perhaps she was there, just at a different point in her own timeline. He goes on, “she comes from a time on Earth when religion had largely faded from society, but it was still around. A lot of factors were at play, of course, but the greatest push towards atheism happened because those who believed in God or gods usually also believed in some kind of life after death. They let themselves die because if they didn’t, they would never have the chance to live in the paradise they were promised. If they had just accepted the longevity escape velocity as a new characteristic of a devout life, superstition might have survived. But these die-hards had children, who watched their loved ones die for nothing, so they switched out, and eventually, belief died alongside the believers themselves.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, Clavia, we are the gods. We are those who are believed in. And we’re about to give the two undecillion people of the universe everything they could ever need to be happy. If you think we’re revered now, just wait until we check every box in every religion’s idea of a true living god.”

“What are you saying? We should quit?”

“Absolutely not,” Echo insists. “I’m saying that we should leave. There is nothing for us in this new world. We don’t want them worshiping us.”

Clavia laughs. “You think they’re not going to worship us ‘cause we’re not around? I want you to think about that for a moment.”

“I should rephrase. We don’t want to have to watch them worship us. I agree, they’re gonna do it. I’m worried about a massive resurgence in religious belief, but I don’t think we can stop that. We can’t save them, and save them from themselves, at the same time. We can’t give them something tangible to reach out for.”

“It’s the opposite, Echo. We have to be there. We have to act like normal people. That’s what the Tanadama did, and it’s why those two undecillion people even exist. Almost everyone is from the Parallel. Ramses and Kalea are leaders. They’re accessible. If we too are accessible, it will make it harder for mysticism to take root, not easier.”

Echo looks away with a huge sigh. “I know.”

“Then why are you arguing against it?”

“Because I am going to leave, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

“What are you talking about?”

He turns back. “I can make new bodies for your friends, but I won’t survive it.”

“That seems arbitrary.”

“I ran thousands of simulations in my head. It never works unless I do it that way. I can’t make entire people out of nothing. I have to draw upon my own energy, and that will destroy me. I’m just trying to rationalize it by coming up with a way that that outcome could possibly be better for the universe once it’s done.”

“Even if it is, it won’t be better for me.”

“I know,” he repeats. “In a few different religions, depending on how you define them, there’s a story of the first man. His name was Adam. He was alone until God cut him in half and created a woman named Eve.”

“I’m familiar with Genesis,” Clavia says. “Debra is the First Explorer, remember? She watched all the people who wrote that book.”

“Right. Well, it’s kind of like that. But in my case, I have to split myself in sixths, and the result is that I’m no longer an independent entity. I suppose that my soul may live on in the others, but the simulations don’t have a definite answer on that.”

“No. There must be some other way. And if I’ve learned anything from writing several plays, it’s that when someone says there’s another way, there really always is.”

Echo smiles at her. “I’m not going to argue with you about it, but I am going to split myself apart, and give your friends new bodies. I don’t need to survive.”

“No. We just won’t do that. We don’t need to. They’re perfectly fine in there.”

“Debra says that she won’t help us if we don’t set her free.”

“Well, I’ll talk to her. If she knows that it will kill you, she won’t go through with that demand, and if she does, then we can’t go through with it, because she’s obviously lying to her advantage.”

Clavia’s consciousness suddenly disappears as Debra takes over. “Actually, it’s not a matter of being set free, but of getting my toolbox back. I can’t do what you asked unless I’m back to my old, powerful self. Here’s the metaphor. You’re asking me to shoot a target, but you don’t want to give me my bow and arrow. Recreating my body is like giving me the weapon. It’s non-negotiable. I don’t just want it. I need it.”

Clavia takes back control of the body. “I don’t think she’s lying.”

“I don’t either,” Echo replies.

“Hold on.” Clavia’s eyes glaze over as she recoils into herself to hold an impromptu meeting of the Seven Stages. It’s brief. “Okay. Andrei wants to talk to you.”

“Should I go in your mind?” Echo offers.

“Nah, I’m already here,” Andrei says.

“What’s up?”

“What would happen if you only split once? Just one new person?”

Echo contemplates it. “I’ve never run that scenario specifically, but I did try to generate one substrate at a time, as opposed to all at once, and it seemed to go all right until I got to the third one before I couldn’t continue.”

“Then just do that. Run that scenario for real, but stop yourself on purpose.”

“You want me to create a new body only for Debra?”

Andrei shakes Clavia’s head. “She has powers. She needs someone like you to make the kind of body that she requires. The rest of us can wait. There are other options. They’re just not in the Sixth Key.”

“I’m willing to try that, assuming you can convince everyone else.”

Clavia’s eyes glaze over once more. She comes back to speak for the group. “Will this work? Will you survive this?”

“I believe so,” Echo says sincerely.

Clavia breathes deeply, and looks around. “Couldn’t have picked a more beautiful place. They’re standing in the cold, sterile corridor in the finger of one of the matrioshka bodies. They don’t choose specific places to meet. Every time they’re in separate places, and need to reunite, they just think of each other, and rendezvous at a random location. Time itself seems to choose on their behalf, and it has no apparent preference.

He chuckles and transports them away. They’re now in one of the rotating habitats. It’s a lush garden, densely packed with life. In particular, they’re standing next to a very small, clear pond. It’s barely larger than a bathtub. They didn’t create this with any concentrated intent. They didn’t have the time or energy to conceive of every single blade of grass. They built macros from their powers, and programmed the worlds to basically build themselves, starting with a spark, and iterating from there. It was very effective, if not a bit unsettling. If they didn’t make this watering hole on purpose, did it just create itself, or is there another force at play. Is God indeed real?

“All right, Clavy,” he begins as he’s removing his clothes, and stepping into the water. “I’ll see you on the other side. Best put Debra front and center so it’s easier for me to extract the right consciousness.”

“I’m here,” Debra answers.

“Your residual self-image. Focus on it. Or...I guess if you would rather have the body of a tall black man, I’ll make that for you instead.”

“No one’s called me Airlock Karen in a long time, and I was never racist...” Debra pauses. “But no, I wouldn’t like to be a tall black man, thank you very much. My original form will be fine.”

He nods and closes his eyes, leaning back to float in the water.

“Though, I wouldn’t mind you making me a bit younger than I was before.”

Echo smiles but keeps his eyes shut. Like her, he focuses. He tries to count every atom in his body. Every molecule, every cell, and every organ. Atoms can’t really split, or they’ll explode, so the constituent parts of the new Debra substrate won’t really be coming from him. Instead, they’ll be composed of elementary particles that he sources from across the dimensions, and channels through his body. The energy builds in waves, accumulating in the pockets of space between his atoms. Pulsing, vibrating, firing. He can feel a hot pinprick in his forehead. It drives deep into his skull, and comes out the other side. The two ends travel down through the center of his face, and then further down his body. As the chainsaw of time and space cuts through him, the energy tries to escape, but the fundamental forces hold it all together. The two halves split apart, but they’re both incomplete. As one half morphs and transforms into a female form, new body parts take shape on both halves, replacing the bits that each lost.

When it’s all over, they both turn to face each other. Echo is confused. “Debra, this is not what you looked like, even at a younger age. You did want to appear as someone else.”

“Echo?” she replies. “I’m not Debra. I’m Clavia.” She looks down and away. “I’m alone. There’s no one in my head anymore but me.”

“We’re still in your head.” Someone piloting the original Clavia body remains standing on the bank. “You’re the one who has vacated.”

“Who is that?” Clavia asks from her new body.

“Andrei. I’m in charge now.”

“Why did you do this?”

Andrei frowns. “We can’t trust Debra. We only needed her power, and now...you’re the one who has it.” He lifts his chin in an arbitrary direction. “Go save the universe. We can’t hold you back anymore.”

“Don’t you understand?” Clavia questions. “You six gave me strength. Without you, I’m just...a baby.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” comes a voice from the other side of the pond. It’s some guy.

“Who are you?”

“Aristotle Al-Amin,” he answers stoically. “I believe you’ve been looking for me?”

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The Seventh Stage: Painting Rocks (Part V)

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Echo is standing in front of the blue wall, painting wispy white clouds on it, paying close attention to details. It would look complete to anyone else, but to him, the work is never done. He can always add one more curve...one final flourish.

Clavia walks up to him. “There you are. What are you doing?”

“Painting this wall. It ain’t gonna paint itself,” Echo replies, still watching what he’s doing.

“It’s literally going to paint itself,” she counters.

He smiles. “I know. Sometimes I just need a break to unwind. Like you with your little headplays.”

She nods. “Fair enough.”

“What’s the count?”

“Three thousand, seven hundred and four.”

He drops his elbow, and looks over at her. “Technically at quota. We’re ready for move-in.”

“Like you said, in the technical sense. We still need to figure out how to convince a supermajority to do it, or it’s not really helpful.”

“We also need to figure out how to do it without loading everyone onto a proverbial bus, and driving them here.”

“It’s time to talk to Cedar,” Echo realizes. They have been dreading this day for a long time. They like him, but they don’t know how he’s going to react or respond to this news. There are whispers that the Cloudbearer twins are building something, but no one knows what, and all of their guesses are wrong; though off by varying degrees. Cedar ran his campaign for power on a foundation of intercivilizational unity. He believes that the only way to keep the Reality Wars at bay is if there’s no one to fight against, because everyone is on the same side. The amount of space between people in this universe could tear them apart. It’s the distribution. Cedar is probably gonna have trouble with the distribution.

“Yeah, we have no choice. Do you think he’ll be mad we didn’t read him into the situation earlier?”

“He’s serving as Head Advisor to our parents,” Echo replies. “He was too preoccupied to worry about this. That can be our excuse for keeping it a secret from him.”

“Good idea.” Clavia takes her brother’s hand, and transports them both to what essentially amounts to a holodeck, though on a much grander scale. They’re standing on an island floating in the air. At least, that’s what it looks like to them. It’s just an illusion. The “air” around them is clear purplish water. They can still breathe, of course, and talk just fine. The sky above is much more unambiguously an ocean. It’s upside down. Waves jut down, and spray a sweet misty rain down towards them. Some of it tastes like chocolate, other drops like honey. Their feet are planted firmly on the ground, though they feel like they could float away at any second. All around them are crystalline structures, also purple, since that is the theme. A stream gives way to a waterfall that slips over the edge, and disappears into the oblivion below, though again, it’s just invisible floor. Between them and the sky are giant turtles, swimming around. One of them nods and winked before moving on.

They aren’t alone on this floating island. They summoned Cedar, and are currently patiently waiting for him to get his bearings in this new world. “This breaks the laws of physics,” he notes. “I’m assuming it’s not real?”

“No,” Echo replies. “Our powers do have some limits.”

“You’ve been gone for nearly a month,” Cedar points out.

Clavia smirks. “We’ve been gone longer than that.”

“Framejacking, or temporal acceleration?”

“Both,” Echo answers. Time is moving faster in this universe, so more gets done in a shorter amount of time in comparison to the Sixth Key, but their own minds are also operating at much higher speeds, allowing them to think and act more quickly.

“This is what you’ve been working on?”

Echo laughs. “This took only a few seconds to construct. We got the idea from Castlebourne. Most of the domes on that world are physical, except for the holographic sky. One of them is nearly all holography. You can make it look like anything. We chose this today. Isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah,” Cedar agrees. “What am I doing here, though?”

Echo clears his throat. “What is the number one cause of tension and conflict in the Sixth Key?”

Cedar dismisses his words with a wave of his hand. “Don’t pitch me. Just tell me what you’ve done, and what you want. You’re gonna need to learn this for when you take over in a more meaningful sense. We’re in charge of undecillions of people back home. No one has time to beat around the bush or be polite about it.”

“Very well,” Echo decides. He reaches up and pantomimes pulling a stage curtain open. As he does so, a tear in the hologram appears in the far, far distance. Behind it, they see what looks like regular outerspace, but as the curtains separate even farther, a figure appears. It looks like a big metal statue of a humanoid, or perhaps just a big robot. It’s hard to tell what scale they’re working with here, so Echo has to explain. “Have you ever heard of the matrioshka body?”

“I have,” Cedar confirms. “I went to a sort of school like you did. That’s where the afterlife simulation was housed, before it collapsed, and everyone was transported into Fort Underhill. The Sixth Key shares interdimensional space with them now. I never knew what happened to matrioshka body, though. That it?”

Echo shakes his head. “That. Is MB-3704.”

Cedar laughs. “You made your own? That’s impressive.”

Echo and Clavia exchange a look. “He said it was three-seven-zero-four.”

Cedar is confused, but only for half a second. Then his face drops into a frown. “You made 3700 of these things?”

“Yeah,” Echo says.

Cedar starts to pace around and shake his head, almost in disappointment. “Why? What do they do?”

“Well, they...have people live in them.”

“Who lives in them?”

“No one yet, that’s what we’re asking you for.”

“Asking me for what?” Cedar questions. “I told you, get to the point. Stop trying to be dramatic.”

“We need you to transport everyone from the Sixth Key who wants to live here. Send them all to their new homes...all at once.”

“I can’t do that!” he cries.

“We’re gonna let them consent,” Clavia defends. “We’re not gonna make anyone move, but this will be better, and I think there will be a ton of interest.”

“Think about it,” Echo begins before Cedar can make another argument. “There are hundreds of billions of stars, but we don’t have enough resources for everyone. How is that possible? Because stars radiate a ton of their energy away, even with dyson swarms. Matrioshka brains are more comprehensive, and more efficient. And matrioshka bodies are just stylish and cool.” Honestly, I don’t know why no one ever thought of it before. I thought that was the point of the original matrioshka body, and its successor, Big Papa.” There ought to be far more than two of these in existence. The Parallel was more than capable of doing it, but they chose not to. They still orbited stars. Even the interstellar settlements were quite literally few and far between. Why? Why keep the stars? Aesthetics? Safety? Ethics? Probably all of the above. Or. Echo and Clavia are just that clever.

“That’s not my point. I literally can’t do it. I don’t have that kind of power.”

Echo and Clavia are both confused. “What are you talking about? You already did it. You moved them all from their original realities, to the Sixth Key.”

“No, I didn’t.” He starts to look around on the ground. Guessing at his needs, Echo manifests a chair for him to sit in. Cedar hunches over and stuffs his face in his palms. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t do any of that.”

“What? It had to have happened,” Clavia argues. “Everyone’s there.”

“I’m not saying that it never happened,” Cedar tries to explain. “I’m telling you that I didn’t do it. I have powers, but not like that. That’s insane.”

“Then who did?” Echo asks him.

Cedar looks up to meet Echo’s gaze. “I have no idea. They didn’t tell me. They have to keep it a secret, even from me and my family, even now that it’s done. We were...a misdirect. It’s like sleight of hand. We were the left hand that distracted everyone so no one would see what the right hand was doing. I don’t know if anyone knows who saved everyone during Reconvergence. All I know is that it wasn’t me.” He pauses before adding, “I just took credit, per my instructions.”

Echo and Clavia manifest their own chairs to sit in. They sit there in silence for a good five minutes before Echo decides to speak again. “Time is not linear. If something exists at any moment, it exists in all moments. If you know something about the past, you can change it. Keeping it a secret was smart. Even if someone were to go back and kill you as a child, it wouldn’t stop the creation of the Sixth Key. You’re like a bodyguard, there to take a bullet if one ever comes flying through. That’s how I would have done it if I were there.”

“Maybe you were,” Cedar reasons. “Maybe you two are the ones who created the Sixth Key; you just haven’t done it yet from your own perspectives.”

They exchange another look. Clavia decides to explain. “There’s a small group of people on a planet in the Sixth Key who are aware of what we’ve been up to. Just a few billion people. They were our test group. We’ve already tried to transport them to our new universe. We don’t have that kind of juice either. Stars are easy. Giant metal statues are easy. Moving people? That requires a level of precision that we do not possess; not with hordes anyway. We could probably move them a couple thousand at a time, but that’s all but useless for our needs. That’s a meaningless rounding error compared to the total population.”

“What about Ellie Underhill?” Echo asks after another bout of silence. “I don’t remember how many she transported into Fort Underhill.”

“It was only 120 billion,” Cedar replies. “Not quite a rounding error, but still not good enough. Besides, she gave them all new bodies; it was a whole different animal.”

“So what we’re saying is that we need to find the person who actually did move everyone from the five realities to the Sixth Key. We need them to do it again.” Clavia starts to pace. Finding someone out there in the abstract is not something that she’s ever done before. She always knows who she’s targeting, or roundabouts where they are. This is a mystery individual, who might be in either of two universes—or, hell, maybe neither of them. They could have also done it subconsciously, like how Echo lived before he became self-aware and realized his true potential. Maybe it’s not just one person. Maybe it was a group, or somehow everyone. Maybe through the spirit of survival every single living organism consolidated their untapped collective power into one brilliant miracle. Ugh, Clavia doesn’t know, but you know who would?

“Hey, boys!”

Echo nearly falls out of his chair, but catches himself by spreading his feet apart. He stumbles away from her. “Debra. How did you get out?” She still looks like his sister. She’s still occupying that body, and nothing about it has changed. But Echo knows. He would always know. “What did you do to Clavia?”

“Relax, she’s still in here; on the first stage. She gave me control of the body, because you need me.”

“I need you for what?”

“I can find your mysterious god-being,” Debra spits back like he’s an insignificant little ant on the ground. “I found you, didn’t I? You were alone on a nothing planet in the middle of the universe. I knew exactly where you were. I intuited that you existed in the first place.”

“We can’t trust you,” Echo contends.

“Believe it or not, I’ve changed. Living with those people, doing those plays...it’s changed me. I’m no hero, but I’m not a villain anymore either. Clavia maintains full veto power. She can come back whenever she wants.”

“Prove it. Let me talk to my sister again. And don’t try to trick me, I’ll know.”

“I know.” Debra actually does what is asked of her, and temporarily returns control of the body to Clavia.

“She’s not exactly right,” Clavia says. “She doesn’t need my body, she needs my brain.”

“Can’t you just do it? You have all her power, don’t you?”

“It’s more complicated than that. You would understand if you could be inside my head. You would get it if you could see the construct that I’ve constructed.”

Echo steps forward, and places a hand on each of Clavia’s shoulders. “I bet I can. Show me. I think it’s about time that I meet your little brain buds.”

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The Seventh Stage: Rocking the Boat (Part IV)

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Clavia is taking a break to meditate. It’s not just for her mental health in the abstract sense. In her case, it’s non-negotiable. She has to do it or parts of her will overwhelm the others; usually the not-so-great part. One of her constituent personalities was told a story once. It’s not so much a story as a brief metaphorical anecdote. Well, it can be boiled down to that anyway. The gist of it is that everyone supposedly has two wolves inside of them. One of them is good, and the other is evil. The one who wins is the one you feed. It’s not so simple with Clavia, though. She actually has six wolves inside of her. Debra, a.k.a. The First Explorer is definitely the alpha. She’s the strongest, and the one who had initial total control over this body. When Echo Cloudberry regressed her back to youth, and tried to erase her memories, the balance of power shifted. Clavia became more of an amalgamation of all six identities. Yet those six original people are still technically in here, and in order to maintain the balance, she has to sort of commune with them every once in a while. She has to assure them that the choices she’s making are righteous, and that she won’t let Debra take over again. It brings a whole new meaning to being greater than the sum of one’s parts. Because if “Clavia” can talk to the seven people that she’s composed of, who even is Clavia at all? Is she a seventh person, or what?

“I would like to call this Meeting of the Seven Stages to order,” Clavia says from her perch on the topmost stage. She could have created a mind palace that looked like anything, but this seemed fitting. The stage area is in the shape of a hexagon, with the six lower stages surrounding the central stage. Curtains divide the six audiences from each other, and can be pulled further up so that each audience can only witness what’s happening on their particular stage. As it is situated much higher, however, the seventh stage is always visible to all audiences. Of course, there is no audience; it’s only a metaphor, but it works for their needs. Right now, the curtains are all pulled back, so everyone can see each other, including the one underneath the seventh stage, allowing the others to see each other. Clavia herself stands in the middle. Around, in clockwise order, we have Ingrid Alvarado, whose body Clavia is occupying; Ingrid’s love interest, Onyx Wembley of The Garden Dimension; Ingrid’s rival before the Reconvergence, when they lived in the Fifth Division parallel reality, Killjlir Pike; Ayata Seegers of the Third Rail; the dangerous one, Debra Lovelace; and finally, Andrei Orlov of The Fourth Quadrant.

The play that they would be performing this year—if any of this were real—is about a prisoner transport ship on the high seas of a planet called Earth. Clavia is obviously the captain, with Debra as their one prisoner. Andrei and Ayata are her guards. Ingrid, Onyx, and Killjlir serve as helmsman, navigator and quartermaster, and boatswain respectively. Again, the acting troupe is just the premise of the scenario, but Clavia felt that it was necessary to come up with some sort of fictional background to stimulate their minds. Their old lives are over, and there is no going back. They don’t even have bodies anymore, so it’s best to have something new to look forward to every day. They didn’t have to pretend to be stage actors—it could have been anything—but the name of their pocket universe made the concept essentially inevitable. They rehearse a new play every year. This one is called Rocking the Boat. These meetings allow Clavia to regain the memories that Echo took away from her, but before that happened, she had the mind of a child, so you can’t expect anything too complex or cerebral, even now that she’s older. Though, this one is indeed a little bit more mature. It still has that classic Clavia tinge of humor as Debra is playing the notorious evil pirate, Karen the Unappeasable.

“Can I get out of these chains?” Debra requests.

“I didn’t put you in those today,” Clavia answers.

“We did a dress rehearsal without you,” Ayata explains. She steps onto Debra’s stage, and unlocks her manacles.

Clavia tears up. “Without me?”

“Wait, look over here,” Ingrid requests. She goes on when her double turns to face her, “you did it. You cried on command.”

“I’ve been practicing in the real world,” Clavia explains proudly.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re using it to manipulate people,” Onyx warns.

“No people, just stars,” Clavia responds. “They are unmoved by my tears.”

“So the project is going well?” Killjlir assumes.

“Quite,” Clavia confirms. “We’re ahead of schedule. We’re more powerful than even we realized.”

“I knew your parents were keeping you restrained,” Debra says with disgust. “You had to get away from them to reach your potential.”

“We don’t know that they were doing anything,” Onyx reasons. “She’s older now—it’s natural for her to come into her own. Maybe it’s like a stage of puberty.”

“I chose them as my surrogate parents as a reason,” Clavia speaks up for herself. “I love them both. Echo and I are doing this in honor of them, not in spite of them.”

“Whatever,” Debra says.

“Aww, is someone a sad panda because I took away her solo?” Clavia asks.

Don’t get her started. “The story is about how we’re all feeling about our place on the boat, and how we’re dealing with those emotions without telling anyone about it. I have to sing, or my story’s not getting told.”

“No, the story is about how prisoners are silenced, and how the general public doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. That’s the whole point. The way your character keeps being interrupted and dismissed should be shocking and annoying to the audience. Karen lives in the subtext, and the negative space.”

“That’s another thing, I don’t like her name,” Debra says. “It’s what people actually used to call me.”

“Well, I admit, that one came from a place of pettiness,” Clavia tells her. “I kind of like it now, though. I can’t imagine calling her anything else.”

“I won’t say another word about it if I can play the hero in the next one.” Debra pitches this every year, and she has been denied every time except for the third year. In it, she did portray the protagonist, and she absolutely sucked at it. She’s the main character in her own story. Everyone feels that way, but she really feels it, and that came out in her performance. The rest of the cast may as well have not even been there the way she was chewing up scenery. If an audience really had seen it, they would have closed down on opening night.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Clavia says. She’s switching between smiling and frowning, because she doesn’t know whether she should even bring this up. They contemplated doing it a long time ago, but the technology is too unreliable and messy. Consciousness transference is very good about moving a digital mind from one substrate to another. It works by scanning an entire brain all at once. It doesn’t understand the concept of an amalgamated mind. Why would it? That doesn’t exist in nature. If two people are occupying the same body, they’ve probably been allocated entire independent partitions in the brain. The Seven Stagers are too entangled with each other. When they’re on these platforms, it’s very easy to distinguish them, but the mind uploader can’t enter this memory palace. It has no way of recognizing them as multiple units, which should be uploaded separately. The other concern is Clavia herself. They still don’t know how much she relies on the six of them to even be her own person. Perhaps she only thinks that she’s her own entity. Perhaps if they were to leave, she would cease to exist.

“Did you decide what the next play is going to be about?” Ayata asks.

“It’s not about the play at all,” Clavia begins to clarify. “There may not be one. There may not need to be one.”

The others look at each other across their stages. “Did you figure out how to transfer us out of your avatar?” Killjlir guesses.

“I think I did.”

“Technology doesn’t advance that fast,” Onyx decides. “Not even the Parallelers can do it.”

“To be fair,” she didn’t talk to any of them,” Ayata says to him. “She couldn’t, or it would give us away. Maybe she found someone to trust who has a new idea.”

“I already have someone to trust,” Clavia explains before anyone can come up with their own theories on what’s going on. She takes a breath before continuing, though. “I think that Echo can do it.”

Everyone has their own way of reacting to this, but some common threads are groans, throwing up their hands, and shaking their heads. It’s not that they don’t like Echo. They love him. They just don’t think that he can do this. He’s conjured little critters out of nothing before, but that was back when he wasn’t consciously aware that he was doing anything, or had any power. He’s proven himself to be too in his head since he wiped his own mind, full of self doubt and fear. As far as they know, unlike Clavia, he never got his old memories back, and he may never have been strong enough to create human bodies.

“Now, why do you think he can’t do it? We’re starscaping out there. We’re building an entire universe out of dark matter and elementary particles. You think he can’t build a few puny human bodies for you? With his help, I could guide each of you out of my brain, and into your new ones. That’s what the conventional technology is missing. It was designed to dump everything in all at once, but Echo will have the context and intuition that it lacks.”

“You’re missing something too,” Onyx begins to use his experience and expertise from the Garden Dimension. “Stars are somewhat uniform balls of plasma, composed of hydrogen, helium, and metals. You can just toss in all the ingredients, and the laws of physics will take over, particularly gravity. I’m not saying what you and Echo are doing isn’t incredibly impressive, but the complexity will come out of the imagination you have for how your new universe is arranged, not by the inherent nature of the individual celestial bodies. Human bodies, on the other hand, are extremely precise entities, with complexities on a smaller scale. But just because it’s smaller, doesn’t mean it’s easier. Sure, it requires vastly fewer resources, but one tiny mistake could lead to catastrophe. You’re talking about creating something that took billions of years to evolve naturally, and unlike stars, it only happened once.”

“Wait,” Killjlir interrupts. “He doesn’t need to conjure the bodies. Those can be bioengineered using the normal techniques. We would just need a way to transfer us into them from Clavia’s head.”

“He wouldn’t be transferring them,” Clavia contends. “He doesn’t have the power to upload digitized minds. These would be true organic bodies, imbued with your respective consciousnesses through interdimensional pathways.”

“I don’t understand,” Ayata confesses.

“When you bioengineer a human body,” Onyx begins again, “there are only two ways to do it. Either it’s an empty substrate waiting for a mind to be uploaded into it, or it’s a regular person. An empty substrate is inherently digital in regards to consciousness transference. Even if it’s organic, it’s encoded with neural formatting compatibility. It can read a mind from another digitized brain, or a computer server. A normal body can’t do that. Back in the old days in the main sequence and the Parallel, they had to first figure out how to convert people’s brains into the right format since they didn’t evolve that ability.”

“So let’s do it like that,” Killjlir offers.

“We can’t,” Ingrid counters. “Like he was saying, that would be a regular person. It would have its own mind already, right?”

“Right,” Clavia agrees. “However smart or dumb that person is, or how competent they are to learn new things, the body would be ocupado, just like someone born from a mommy and a daddy. You would be stealing their body. Only Echo can make something both undigitized and empty.”

“Then why can’t we just use the digitized kind?” Ayata questions.

“Because you’re not digitized,” Clavia answers. “Our minds came together through completely different means, using a rare if not unique metaphysical process, catalyzed by the magnolia tree fruit that Ingrid ate just as you were all about to die. And digitizing us can’t be done as an aftermarket retrofit, because like we’ve been struggling with, the computer can’t differentiate between our seven discrete consciousnesses.”

Ayata nods, getting it, then looks over at her love. “Andrei, you’ve been quiet this whole time. Thoughts?”

Andrei takes a long time to respond, but by his body language, it’s clear that he’s going to, so no one else speaks instead. “I don’t wanna leave. It’s too risky. We would likely only get one shot at trying something like that, and if it fails, our minds could become totally decorporealized, or we might just die. I think we should revisit the idea of rotating control of the Clavia body.” He looks up at her. “I wanna stand on the seventh stage.”

“Same,” Debra concurs.

She obviously just wants all her power back, but does Andrei have the same aspirations?

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The Seventh Stage: Hit the Rock (Part I)

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It’s the year 2508 in the Sixth Key. Big things are happening today. For the last several decades, Cedar Duvall has held primary control over the entire galaxy. He had every right to this, according to just about everyone. It was he who saved everyone’s life when the four original parallel realities were collapsing. The main sequence was different. It was not going to collapse, and still hasn’t. Everyone who was in it during the Reconvergence is out there, living it up in another universe. If they were on Earth at the time, though, copies of them are also here. Every living organism was duplicated perfectly, and transported here along with everyone from the other realities. These duplicates have no hope of returning home. They’re here in this new reality now, and have had to make the most of it. Things were chaotic when this all happened. Trillions of worlds with their own agendas, divided into five civilizations of varying cohesiveness, and now only 400 billion stars to support them all. War for energy distribution was on everyone’s lips, and a small group of leaders had to come together for diplomatic discussions. These talks were successful, and the galaxy went on in peace, even though the diplomats had trouble returning to their homes, and most of them lost all power. Two of them got their power back, and they’re about to get more. Or so they believe.

Following the Reconvergence, the main sequence copies didn’t want to be known by their old nomenclature anymore, so they made the decision to create a new identity for themselves. In keeping with the apparent numerical pattern, they voted, and settled on renaming themselves The Seventh Stage. Their reasoning was that this placed them above even the Sixth Key itself, which referred to all civilizations collectively. This was effective according to some, but not so much according to the supermajority. Even so, it was their new name, and it managed to stick. The real main sequence was back in the old universe, and there, it would stay. The diplomats in charge of the Seventh Stage were a General by the name of Bariq Medley, and his second-in-command, Judy Schmidt. They did not get along all that well, but they weren’t overly antagonistic. In recent years, they’ve grown closer because they’ve had to in order to raise two powerful children.

Clavia and Echo were not really brother and sister, but they didn’t know that. The former was the avatar of a magical tree, and the latter a projected consciousness of, fittingly, a temporal echo. Clavia corrupted Echo, and tried to use him to gain even more power, so he turned the tables on her, and regressed them both to childhood. They now have no memory of their past life, and have been living as twin siblings under Bariq and Judy’s care ever since. Today is their sixteenth birthday, and that changes everything. This whole time, they have been cultivated and prepared to take over for Cedar. It’s time for him to step down. The thing is, though, while this has been in the works for some time now, Clavia and Echo aren’t mature enough to handle the responsibility. At least, their parents don’t think they are. Echo really warped their minds in order to rid the both of them of all evil thoughts, and it has made it difficult for them to develop. They still need their parents, who have experience with this kind of leadership. Bariq and Judy will still be in control here, even more so now that Cedar will be out of the picture. The twins may have other plans, though.

The time has come for the twins to ascend. They’re standing in their ceremonial robes behind the curtains. They’re not the only ones being celebrated and honored today, they’re just the headliner. They have to wait for the other graduates first. They’re trying to not look nervous, but they are. Judy comes up to them, and starts to make minor adjustments to the hang of their robes, none of which will matter in a few seconds when gravity and their movements readjust them anyway. She just wants an excuse to talk to them. “How are you two doing?” she whispers.

“How are you?” Clavia asks her mother. “This day is as important to you as it is for us. I know how excited you are.”

“I’m great. This is what we’ve been working towards.” She breathes, and gives a sad smile to her son. “Echo?”

“It’s not right.” Echo doesn’t agree with anything that’s happening here. Cedar has been a good leader, and it’s not like he made every decision unilaterally. There are way too many people spread across way too many worlds for him to know everything that must be done to keep the joint-civilizations running. Still, he’s been number one this whole time. Doubling that to Echo and his sister, or even quadrupling it to the whole family, isn’t going to be much better. It doesn’t sit right with him. It’s not democratic enough. Unfortunately, it might get worse before it gets better.

“I know it bothers you, but this is the only efficient way to manage the universe right now,” Judy tries to explain yet again. “Even with all of our technology, we’re talking about undecillions of people. If we tried to vote, it would take years.”

Frustrated, Echo takes his mother’s wrist, and pulls it away from his collar. Gently, though. “Then it takes years. That’s what they should have been doing while we were growing up; figuring out how to coordinate a legitimate democracy.”

“Not all of the minor worlds recognize Cedar as the Sixth Key,” Judy says. “Getting them to get on board with a vote will be even more difficult. They simply don’t want to be a part of the new civilization.”

“So we take power instead?” Echo questions.

Judy sighs. “If we hold a vote, and some refuse to vote, it will call the results into question. There would be those who wonder if they truly refused, or if we didn’t let them” She brushes the non-existent dust off of his shoulder. “This way is cleaner. This is how the Tanadama ran things in the Parallel, and it seemed to work for them.”

“They were treated like gods,” Echo reasons. “So is Cedar. So will we once the people realize quite how powerful my sister and I are. I don’t wanna rule with an iron fist. I don’t wanna rule.”

“I’m not talking about this anymore.” Judy remains calm and self-assured.

“If you just look at my proposal—”

“This is your Ascension,” Judy interrupts. She’s been a good mother; kind of caring, but not very flexible. “I won’t be looking at anything today except you two on that stage, accepting your new posts with grace and poise. Do you understand?” she asks with a wide smile. It’s not really fake, but it’s not entirely genuine either.

“Echo, just let it go,” Clavia urges quietly.

The Assistant Stage Manager, dressed in all black, hustles up to them. “It’s time.”

“Okay, you’ll do great,” Judy tries to say.

“It’s really time, right now,” the ASM presses. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

“Okay, go,” Judy says, ushering them towards the curtains.

Echo and Clavia step into the limelight together. The crowd has been cheering for the other graduates, but they cheer much louder now at the sight of them. They smile and wave, just as they practiced. Echo is faking it, of course, but Clavia isn’t all that excited about this either. She doesn’t like the attention. Unlike her brother, she does want power, but she would prefer to operate in the shadows. That’s where all the important business gets done, where people can’t see it...and scrutinize it. She has improved from her original self years ago, but their parents worry that she’s heading back in that direction. Whatever was in her that gave her a weak moral compass is still there. Yet the debate between nurture and nature rages on, because she’s not evil. She’s been raised by good people, and Echo is here to keep her in check. She’s not sure that she agrees with Echo’s proposal for a galaxy-wide democratic republic, but she loves and supports him, and certainly wants to see what he has to offer.

The two of them stand center stage. They’re meant to go over and accept their diplomas and medals from the presider, but that can wait, because this is what the audience wants. That’s not all they want, though. “Hit the rock!” they chant. “Hit the rock! Hit the rock!” This is something that they do. It’s just a fun little handshake that only works with the two of them. Others may be able to approximate the move, but they can’t replicate the grand finale, unless maybe if they integrate certain technologies, like some sort of concussive weapon. Clavia holds her hand behind her ear like she can’t hear the audience. They chant louder.

“Okay, okay,” she relents, using exaggerated gestures since she’s not wearing a microphone. She gets in place in front of Echo, and he does the same. They begin by punching the air between them without touching, but quickly move on to the next phase. Their fists make contact in the middle, and as they’re pulling their elbows back, their opposite fists meet. Then they return to the first one. They go back and forth over and over again, getting faster and faster until it’s just a blur to anyone else, even if someone were to stand right next to them. Faster and faster still, the crowd is going wild. They’ve obviously done this before, but never with this many viewers. The whole galaxy is watching too, not just the people in the auditorium. Faster, faster, until boom! Without speaking, they reach back with both fists at the same time, and bring them back together for one final move. An intense force is expelled from their hands, and spreads out in a sphere, knocking caps off of people’s heads, and a few chairs over. Several people spill their drinks, but they should have known better. It’s not one explosion either. There’s a reason his name is Echo. A second wave, a third, and a fourth crash into the audience to their great delight, followed by a fifth, sixth, and seventh. They could have made more, but given the numerology of the day, limiting it to seven seemed appropriate. Again, they didn’t discuss this beforehand; that’s how in sync they are. They might as well be actual twins.

The enthusiasm remains strong for a few moments afterwards as they continue to smile and wave, but they do sense that it is fading. Deciding that the ceremony should be over roundabouts now, Clavia and Echo take each other by the and, and reach for the sky before a deep bow. Six bows later, they let go, and begin walking down the runway, still encouraging the audience to clap and cheer. The ASM catches up to them in the aisle between the runway and the seating. “You’re not done yet,” she whispers loudly.

Clavia nods. She teleports to the presider, and takes the diplomas and medals from him. She then teleports back to Echo so she can hand him his. They wave and smile some more until the end of the walkway. They slip through the doors under the balcony, and breathe sighs of relief. It’s over. They’re technically in charge of the Sixth Key now. It is expected of them to openly secretly grant all decision-making powers to their parents until they’re considered mature enough to take over in a more official capacity, but that’s not really what they’re gonna do. “You ready?” Clavia asks.

“Let’s do it.”

They teleport away. The Cloudbearer Dynasty has begun.

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Microstory 2305: Not Some Big Scam

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Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

I finished this stage script, and that’s what I’m mostly concerned about now. The novel is great so far, but I think that has more to do with Nick’s own imaginative mind. The musical, on the other hand, is a tool. It’s one last gift from him to us, and according to these version logs, he’s been developing it pretty much the whole time he’s been here. There are certain people in the multiverse who can travel to other branes, as he calls them, but there’s no way to contact most of them out of the blue. Could you imagine how difficult that would be? I mean, none of us even knew that the bulk existed until he showed up. But this musical, it’s our one chance. It’s an opportunity to prove that he was right all along, and this was not some big scam. A man by the name of Joseph Jacobson has a magical multicolored coat, which allows him to cross these dimensional barriers. Normally, he goes wherever he wants, whenever he wants. But he can sort of be summoned if you please him with a performance that depicts his life. His story has evidently been altered and adapted so many times, it’s not a hundred percent accurate of what happened, but that’s apparently not an issue. He just wants it to be good, and worthy of his time. This script is the first step in that endeavor. With Nick gone, it will be up to us to put it into production. That’s the next chapter in my life. I’m gonna produce this play, and prove once and for all that Nick was right. So...who’s with me?

Microstory 2297: Found a Happy Medium

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Yesterday, I announced that the Kansas City Metro’s response to Nick and Dutch’s passing would be a sort of forum where people could come up on stage, and say whatever they were feeling. I didn’t get into the details before, but everyone who asked to do this was going to have to submit an application at least the day prior, explaining what they were going to say. Then, while each speaker was up at the mic, the next one would be experiencing a screening process to make sure that they weren’t planning on doing something inappropriate, like a striptease, or a racist rant. Of course, they could always lie and switch it up once they got their turn, but we believed that we could have made it work. Sadly, most people online did not take to this idea. They thought it was stupid, dangerous, or just totally irrelevant. We hear you, and we see you, so we’ve changed our plans. We’re not going to be doing that, but we’re not going to be doing nothing either. We’ve found a happy medium. The two of them touched many people’s lives while they were on Earth, and their positive impact could be felt everywhere. We are in the process of contacting everyone that they knew while they were here. It is only they who will be speaking at the event. I appreciate all of you speaking out for your truth, and clearing a path for a better concept than we originally had. This has not set our schedule back. We will still be holding the event on Saturday, the 21st. We’re not yet sure where it’s going to be, though. A sports stadium would have a lot of room, but both of them hated sports, so we are sure that we want to do that. Y’all are good at giving advice. Where do you think we should hold it?

Microstory 2296: To Be a Gathering

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I had a meeting today with the Mayor of Kansas City. She regrets that we’re doing the memorial service in Chicago, but she understands, especially since our two cities have such a great relationship with each other. Still, she would like to do something in honor of Nick, and I think that would be fine. We had a lot of trouble figuring out what that might be. He didn’t like parades, and a vigil seems too depressing. We spent most of the day discussing it, taking breaks here and there so she could manage other needs of the city. In the end, we decided that it’s just going to be a gathering where people can come up to the microphone on stage, and talk about whatever they want. It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with the deceased, if they have something else to say. It’s unconventional, and a little strange, and I think Nick would have liked it. Dutch would have, that’s for sure. That guy danced to the beat of his own drum. Don’t worry, we’re going to be screening people throughout, to make sure they’re not offensive or otherwise problematic. It’s going to be a lot to coordinate, but we think that we can be ready by Saturday of next week. There’s a reason we chose that date. This is kind of going to be a Kansas City thing, so if you’re coming from elsewhere, and have made travel arrangements to Chicago, we don’t want it to be too easy to add an extra thing. You are welcome to come, if you want, but it’s mostly just for us. Thanks for your understanding.

Microstory 2235: Constant Federal Supervision

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This is Nick. The FBI has developed a way for me to write my posts, and have them published on my website without actually having to access the internet myself, and risk giving away my current location. I’ve been asked not to place myself in that risk in other ways, such as describing where we’re living, or anything, but other than that, I don’t have to run anything by them. There’s no approval process here. It’s just me, printing a copy of what I want to say, and sending it to the agent who has access to the right web accounts. I will tell you that I’m granted brief, monitored, and heavily secured access to the internet to make sure it looks the way I want it, but other than that, we entertain ourselves with physical media, like books and DVDs. They’re not that interesting to me, but the other two don’t seem to have any issues with it. I’m getting back into writing, because I think this world needs more compelling stories, so that takes up a lot of my time. God knows there’s nothing else to do stuck in this safehouse at 221B Baker Street in foggy Londontown. Ha! Fooled you! That is a reference from my homeworld. It’s not really where we are, you chumps. Anyway, my new stories have given me an idea of how I might get back to my friends, but it’s going to take help from viewers like you. I’ll have the details later—I just remembered this cosmic trick yesterday—but basically, if I put on a production of a particular stage musical, there’s a chance that a universe-hopper will come and get me out of here. I know that sounds bizarre and random, but it does make sense once you know the full story. Again, these are only the early stages. I’m still in protective custody, so if I want to take it one step at a time—which I should—carving a new life out for myself without the need for constant federal supervision would be the first one. So don’t ask me when auditions are. It’s not time yet. There’s a strong chance that it wouldn’t even work. Joseph is very...critical of people’s interpretations. I’ll give you more information at a later date if I decide to move forward with this plan.