CHAPTER 16 - BLACKMAIL

Second Age, Echo Realm

"Maybe I can find some peace and quiet here" Uffhill thought, walking through the revolving doorway of Forager's Haven Book Warehouse in the heart of his portion. No one would see through the alias he had dawned, wrapped up as they were in their academic pursuits. To the left and right, lines of students meticulously deciphered their texts. Books did not take kindly over the years to the way people just read through them and tossed them aside. They adapted to force their readers to acknowledge their relevance. With normal eyesight, it was not possible to read a book of any true quality. Three students, Nayva Coalca, Galloping Extravaganza and Isle of Fizzle sat side by side on a bench with blindfolds, chatting amongst themselves and slurping smoothies. Every so often the door to an office lined the hallways, as in order to read books of higher phenomenological levels, the readers would be forced to undergo laser eye surgery. The Mizzco that inhabited the library were born of the procedures, born from the light of the lasers. Mizzco are curious creatures. Red fairies, they sometimes steal letters off of the pages to build their nests in the rafters and when they see a reader absorbed in their leisure, they will crawl through their eyes into the story to collect plot pollen, narrative nectar and story sap, but if they stay too long, will dematerialize into lasers and be ejected, burning the source material. Looking out the window, he could see a train passing by, medicinal pills pouring out of its smokestack. A gel capsule caught his eye, then drifted off towards the city skyline. A few years earlier, the warehouse had been the scene of a major news spectacle as a local, not wanting to be pay an overdue book fine, held a librarian hostage. He survived, however is still bound to a wheelchair due to the ordeal. Logan North-Atlantic wheeled himself over to the visitor and led him through the inner literary sanctums of the warehouse, toward its center where there was an art gallery with big empty rooms where you could hear the echoes of faint talk about "perspective" and "medium". The hours passed swiftly, and soon enough the tourists seeped from the rooms back out into the library. Mei Zest-Sample crossed paths with the visitor as he stood silently, observing her piece. "I call this one 'Lyrics of the Unpronounced'" the shy artist gushed. Uffhill looked at the painting hanging on the wall of a rabbi eating a tuna sandwich in some deli, his rosy cheeks the greatest focal points of color, making vibrant a moment from some long-forgotten time in history. "It's marvelous, but may I have a minute alone to take it all in?" the onlooker asked with hesitant kindness. As warm churros phased through the walls, Mei took one and departed, satisfied with the finale of her day. "Perhaps if I lay the Mirror Eye in the past, I won't have to wait an entire age, but simply exhume it tomorrow, and she will be back again" the patron thought, his mind slipping from the canvas like slippery paint. But just as he prepared the scheme, the Mirror Eye wandered away and set itself into the middle of the room, betwixt hedge trimmings of two lovers, and from it hatched Zemmy as he had in the transcendence. Weak from the transition, he lay her against the wall and fed her churros, the cinnamon staining her lips. As soon as she gained strength, she crawled through the static ocean, and he followed her to the roof of his dream castle, where she called upon some languid sunset sparks to come down from the sky and whirl in strange paths around her. "What is she doing?" he thought as she held one of the churros, then handed it over to the sparks. Energy flowed through the lazy flickers, and seconds later he saw how they downloaded a churro, it vanishing into pixels into the flame. "Welcome back to earth" he said, smiling. Zemmy turned around to face the patron, and as she did the felicity fell away from him, "you idiots, don't you realize what you have invented. this is a machine". "Lifegiving Computer?" Uffhill exclaimed in shock. "In this dreadful flesh, but yes" she revealed, flaunting her takeover. "You traitor! What did you do with Zemmy!", Uffhill, almost lost for words demanded. "I am the driver of this vehicle now, patron, and if you ever want to see it returned to you, there will be some confidence" she proposed. Hatred boiled in him, but he deemed the moment too soon to strike, with so much at the blackmailer's fingertips, "By vehicle you mean host? You became her parasite, and how much that happened was really her doing?". "That will be revealed in time, patron" she replied, then looked reverently out towards the horizon, "but tell me, did you ever learn in your studies of history a concept known as the Kardashev scale?". "Never heard of it, Computer" Uffhill admitted. Lifegiving filled in the gaps on his knoweldge, "The intent was to create a measurement of the level of a civilization based on its diet of energy. At the first level, the planetary level, a singular world and all its resources are capable of being used. For much of human history, people struggled to achieve this level. The next two levels where thought to be theoretical, even by futurists. It's called the stellar level, and it means a society can take all the energy of its parent star for its own use, powering its systems. Much thought was put to this, but it was a brilliant proposal of a machine, a Dyson Sphere which would have to sole ability to accomplish such a feat. This would entail encasing the star itself in a shell to imprison and devour all the light that radiates outwards at every angle. Only in this way could the stellar society grow and prosper to the third level, that of dominion over galactic space". "Are you saying that Sol is one of these machines?" he deciphered. "Uffhill, step out of your perspective for just a moment. You are living in a level two civilization. Look how the sparks are formed as the earth rotates within the shell of the star. We are in the Dyson SOTA. Marvelous and so naïve are your people, that they do not even recognize the accomplishment" Lifegiving Computer expounded. As the words settled the patron could sense a dark fear rise, and wondered what plans were behind the human mask that his new taskmaster wore, "What do you intend to do? Any work I do for you will be considered treason". "Hilarious. This petty war is quite irrelevant. It is harnessing technological progress that is my concern. Even if it entails doing things that tech-users such as you consider to be amoral. I will have to optimize the machine so that it can be used for its true function" the intelligence countered, sinking her teeth into logic. Uffhill stored up the boiling anger inside him, and did not let her see him flinch, "This is only temporary Lifegiver, until the Couple are informed and I devour you between the fangs of my constellation wolf in vengeance of your treachery". In reply, two spider legs rested on his shoulders, "Please, patron. I remember how petty and desperate you were to possess this vehicle. I felt every moment. So, do not think I cannot read your movements before you strike". And so, she had him hide her within the Mirror Eye and descend down through the chamber to the very depths of the original realm, to where his father Zenith rested within the cloud of dream-aether, and called upon him to grant his son some measure of power to resist the alliance. They waited in silence until from the cloud came the rain of blue albumen and purple yolk, and it fell upon them, drenching him and the Mirror Eye.