The worries of my death are greatly exaggerated… but understandable. 11 years is a long time to go without missing an update, and in that time I’ve been through new jobs, constant travels, hurricanes, conferences, workshops, breakups, new relationships, holidays, family emergencies, and more, some of them within the same month. This December was another where a few of those stacked on top of each other to limit how much time I could write, but the main thing that kept me from publishing yesterday was a sense that the chapter just… wasn’t done yet. Wasn’t good enough. It’s a complicated one, and I wasn’t satisfied I’d written clearly so everyone will understand what’s happening and why. I’m still not, but one day late is as far as I’ll let it go. If edits are needed, then edits will come.
I did have some hope that I could make it through the next few years that I estimate the story will take to finish without breaking my streak, but I’m not beating myself up over it. I will still, however, apologize to everyone who woke up today waiting for the chapter, and felt disappointment, some of them for the first time in over a decade of loyal readership. Thanks to all of you for sticking with me over the years, and hope you have a happy new one.
Chapter 136: Multitudes
Bill’s lab is a labyrinth in the dark.
Red hurtles through branching rooms, disconnected islands of crimson emergency lights that leave the spaces between dark with shadows. Looker said that the lab has its own power source, but that was either taken out by Rowan or turned off intentionally by Bill.
He follows the sense of wrong and off that ping back against his psydar pulses, letting them guide him through what his glimpses and half-faded memories pieced together with his surroundings. Chemistry… fabrication… engineering… material design… He would teleport to where he needs to be, but he can’t remember the lab well enough to triangulate to a spot near where Bill is from his memories…
Red nearly trips over a knocked over chair, then skids to a stop as his next psydar pulse reveals Bill moving in a new direction. Red looks around, then backtracks to find a new path to intercept him as Rowan shifts course to keep following Bill’s new trajectory. It’s hard to tell how far apart they are; the same room? No. Same lab? Likely. Bill might be able to lose Rowan temporarily, but his psychic range is decently sized. All he’d have to do is go through the middle labs to tell where Bill is in the others… that or use his alakazam, though if he does that Red can project sakki into it.
Red wonders why Bill hasn’t just left, but maybe he’s protecting something. Either way, it’s a game of cat and mouse where the cat can see through walls. Running isn’t going to save Bill forever, which means he hopefully has a plan of some kind, one that isn’t being influenced by Rowan. If so, Red needs to know what it is if he’s going to be of any help…
Before he can start the merger though, there’s a small tug in Red’s sternum, subtle enough he almost dismisses it under the battle calm… a battle calm that itself is barely keeping a lid on a slow churning in his stomach and the ongoing ache in his head, an ache that feels more mental than physical.
But he’s had over a year of practice on noticing and paying attention to the subtle feelings inside him. He listens for the tug again, and feels it more clearly; not in words, or even a yearning, but rather a simple notion: If I’m in the center, I can maintain mental connection throughout the lab.
He’s not sure why his innermost self (he assumes) is steering him to do that, but he can guess why it’s happening so subtly, and simply follows without further consideration, doing his best to navigate from one lab to another, at some points running parallel to Rowan and Bill, until finally he moves away from them and down a hall to the Engineering lab at the center of the sprawling underground facility.
He stumbles against a table, panting for breath as he sends another few psydar pulses out to confirm that Rowan isn’t on his way here… then focuses his senses on Bill. The last time Red dipped into his thoughts, the scientist got upset with him, but he’s pretty sure he’ll forgive him this time.
“Sorry,” he murmurs anyway, and closes his eyes as merges deep into—
heart pounding, skin cold, legs straining
Fear-anger-shock-fear-anger-shock
gotta-get-to-the
—and, at the same time—
The other mind. The other minds, really, a fractured mess of Rowan’s various mental parts all swarming around Bill’s thoughts and feelings like durants, picking pieces apart and bringing them back to the central hive-mind to make sense of them…
No, that’s not quite right, just an affectation, a way for Red’s brain to make sense of what he’s brushing up against without a deep merger of his own. One he really doesn’t want to do, because even a glimpse is frightening. A swarming durant hive is easier to accept than what Rowan’s mind has actually become.
But he’s going to have to do more than accept it. Red feels Rowan’s lingering shock at his appearance here, the thread of it lingering in all the independent partitions. It implies Rowan wasn’t expecting Red to show up, which is encouraging. Whatever is happening here, it probably wasn’t a trap set for him, Rowan was focused entirely on Bill…
Unless of course there’s a deeper partition that’s hiding all that from the rest of Rowan…
All these thoughts and more race through Red’s mind as he delves deeper into his merger with Bill… or tries to. There’s something strange about Bill’s mind, it’s almost… slippery, in some way. He’s never felt anything like it, and feels increased alarm over whatever Rowan might have done to the scientist’s mind.
He focuses as best he can and tries harder, partitioning off the parts of him that are distracted by other things, and preparing more to tank the brunt of the cross-merger with Rowan’s mind so as not to risk infection by his madness…
gotta-get-to-the
There. A glimpse of Bill’s impulses and thoughts, hard to grasp for longer than a moment at a time…
gotta-get
the-the-the
!
…What
What am I…?
“Looping,” Red murmurs to himself in the dark. Amnesia? Is Rowan targeting whatever Bill is looking for? If so, it’s effective enough to keep him scurrying circles in the dark.
If so, Red can try blocking it, but direct merger for thought transfer would open an entirely different channel for Rowan to follow, a mental path rather than an emotional one that he can’t counter by simply leaning into his battle calm.
Red prepares at the very least to project Battle Calm, which might help Bill to evaluate the situation and come up with an alternate plan. But before he can, Bill comes to it on his own; not from a memory of Rowan, but an inference, an evaluation of all the data available to him that leads to one inevitable conclusion:
Lab is fucked. Eva offline. Intruder.
Gotta-get-to-the
!
There—a web of fear and anxiety woven around Bill’s mind, caging his thoughts before they can complete.
He’s resisting it, though. In addition to whatever is keeping Red from merging for long, Bill has an extremely strong mental block for a non-psychic; something like a fractal geometric pattern that’s hard not to get mentally drawn into.
Red pulls away in time, but Rowan has swapped away from Bill and is merging with Red directly now, and even through the battle calm he has to fight the panic as the chaotic thoughts and feelings start to press in on his thoughts from all sides.
He doesn’t know what to do, he’s throwing up partitions as fast as he can think but defending isn’t enough, he has no idea how to…
The sensation of new thoughts rising up, new pathways forming in his mind, a mental reshuffling as partitions fall
…how to…
not new ones, old ones, months old, so many it feels like turning to a mirror and seeing a face years older than the one he expected
…fight.
“Psychic combat isn’t something I’ve taught before,” Sabrina said. They sat in her living room, two nights after Rowan appeared to Red on the roof above. “Nor was I taught it. So far as I know, every school and master will pass along defensive techniques and philosophies, but offense is a more personal journey.”
“Because people want to keep their capabilities secret?” Red asked. “Or prevent more of an arms-race than already exists?”
“Both, I imagine. The latter serves as a convenient cover for the former, at least, and spycraft, whether corporate or regional, is a legal grey area. The idea of being able to compel or otherwise affect another person… well, I’m sure Director Tsunemori or Interpol would know of secret tasks forces meant to counter such things if needed.”
Red nodded. If such things existed, he couldn’t remember being told about them. “Leaf and I had a similar worry, a long time ago. Is all of this a disclaimer for why you might not be able to help me much?”
“More of an apology. Rowan is my responsibility… but in all likelihood, of the two of us, you’re more likely to face him again next.” Sabrina’s voice was soft, fingers tracing the edge of her teacup. “I’ll prepare you as best I can, but it will be nearly as much a learning process for me as you. Will should have more to teach you, and I’ve reached out to let him know how urgent the situation is… but the most valuable thing I can offer compared to him, or anyone else, is that I’ve learned enough from your unique partitioning to believe I can hold my own even if you don’t hold back.”
Red nodded, understanding her to mean that she was giving him permission to merge as fully as he could, and trust her to hold onto her deepest secrets. “Like Rowan.”
“Precisely. I would say that a psychic battle between you two is as close to an even match I’d expect either of you to ever face…” She smiled, suddenly, a sharp expression that made her eyes as hard as her voice was soft. “But thankfully, you have one advantage that I plan to help you exploit as ruthlessly as I can imagine.”
It was an ominous thing to hear, but also one that made him hopeful for the first time since Rowan teleported away.
The partitions fall, one after another, and behind them aren’t just memories of conversations, nor new knowledge.
There are people.
“I’m flattered you came to me,” Rei said. “Should I take it as a grudging admission of my defensive skills by our old sensei? Or perhaps not so grudging, to be fair to her.”
“Not grudging, no. Sabrina and I have been practicing, and it seems like the best way to beat another psychic is to learn the way their mind works faster than they can learn yours, anticipate what they will do next—”
“—and cut them off from what they need to fight back,” Rei finishes. “People need both motivation and knowledge to do something well, so successfully targeting either would be a decisive blow. But these are deep, connected things, not easily isolated, and they would know exactly what you were racing toward.”
“That’s why Sabrina pointed out that my strongest abilities all come from the same root: my mirroring of mental states.”
“Ah. And when you swap between them… the more you have, the more unpredictable you can be.”
“Right. But there’s only a few people I’ve ever done a deep merger with, and even fewer who might have some idea of how psychic interactions work.”
“And I qualify for both. Less flattering than I thought, but still flattering… and of course I’ll help, in any case. I doubt I’ll ever get a better opportunity to learn this so well.”
In truth, Red and Sabrina had shared some doubts about equipping Rei, who neither fully trusted, to become even better at psychic combat than she is. But they would be focusing on defense, with her, as it’s her specialty, and the situation was a desperate one, and every extra mental state Red could unexpectedly swap to might be the one that put Rowan on the backfoot.
Sabrina is the first to join him—or rather, a partition of Red that’s holding the Gym Leader’s mental state from their psychic sparring. It immediately gets to work identifying avenues of attack, monitoring every thought and emotion of Rowan’s they can feel through the merger and chasing down the ones that seem promising. Rei comes next, assessing the situation with an analytical detachment that’s similar to Blue’s battle calm, but with a mind for psychic strategy rather than pokemon battles.
Both immediately notice how, among the dozen different subminds that make up Rowan’s, surprise is evident in about a third of them. The rest seem to be either focused entirely on their goals, such as projecting the fear and panic at Bill, or acting in a way that seems chaotically random, for now… because of course he knows what Sabrina and Rei’s minds feel like, and while Red’s partitions aren’t quite the same, they’re close enough to be noticeable.
In what might otherwise be a tangle of potentially fake or dangerous targets to merge with, the surprise is very… human. And in some of the minds, it’s accompanied by something else:
“Remarkable,” Sabrina breathed, rubbing her temples as her shoulders slowly relaxed from the tense position they always end up in during their battles. “You have it almost exactly, I think.”
Red let out a long breath of his own, then began to stow away his copy of her mental state. “What was it like?”
“Like looking into a mirror for the first time, as an adult. Or finding a long-lost twin, perhaps…”
“I’m glad it doesn’t feel… I don’t know. Like you’ve been stolen from, or something?” He remembered Blue’s hesitation with sharing the battle calm with him.
“Yes, that’s definitely there too.” Sabrina gave him a tired smile. “But for now I’m focusing on the goal, and this is a clear advantage for you. More than one, against Rowan specifically.”
Red was about to ask her what she meant, then remembered…
No! No, not her. I’m not ready to face her.
“I’m still not sure what he meant by it,” Sabrina said, voice soft and eyes distant. “Or if he’ll be ‘ready,’ by the time you meet again. But I hope it helps you, somehow, for me to be there with you, in some small way…”
Fear. Love. Betrayal. But mostly surprise and fear.
The Sabrina partition doesn’t waste a second, deepening the merger along the shocked threads of Rowan’s mind, using them as highways toward his innermost thoughts and feelings. Partitions reflexively rise up, trying to shunt them into dead ends or false trails…
…until Leaf emerges from another partition in Red’s mind, beaming a desperate, deep compassion at Rowan with an intensity that even spreads to some of the subminds focused on Bill.
“I think it can work for non-psychics too.”
Sabrina raised a brow. “You’re thinking of… Leaf’s ‘ability?'”
“Right. Blue too, in a way. I’ve merged with both of them deep enough. Projecting their mental states, specifically their love or battle calm, is something I already have a lot of practice in, and doesn’t require them having insights on psychic battles to be useful.”
“Yes, I see it. From what I know of you three, they also seem to have somewhat different approaches to problem solving, which might help in unexpected ways as well. Let’s practice with Leaf first…”
Red can sense the change, amidst all the things his partitions are doing, even as more and more memories keep bubbling to the surface: as Rowan’s fear and confusion grow, more and more of his threads are becoming legible, and Leaf’s projected love keeps them from returning to the fight.
Leaf’s deep care and compassion must be destabilizing, all the more because it’s real. She knew Rowan, cared about him even as an acquaintance and student, and all it took from Red was a single conversation to prompt her into a mental state of how she felt about him, what she hoped for him, for Red to copy.
A flash of guilt with the memory, for using her that way, but he was sure she’d agree if asked, and he couldn’t tell her, couldn’t tell any non-psychic, just in case…
A pulse of attention from the Rei-partition, a wordless sense of here it comes, and then Rowan’s many wrong subminds are finally withdrawing from Bill and focusing on Red, a swarm of durant, a howling cacophony of pain, fear, confusion, excitement, grief, and even stranger things, flashes of color, snippets of music, physical sensations that don’t match anything Red’s body is feeling or has ever felt…
He collapses to his knees, hands holding onto the edge of a desk as he feels the wrongness pressing in, the warping influence of outside. The inside of the helmet suddenly feels claustrophobic, and Red tears it off, taking deep gasps of breath and closing his eyes as he tries to ground himself in his own body sensations, to block out the sudden feeling of the room tilting around him, of freezing cold feet and blistering hot hands…
The Sabrina-partition tries to retaliate with the combined memories Sabrina, Rei, and Red have of suffering from Ghost attacks or exposure, only partially hampered by the Leaf-part that’s still projecting compassion and care. But it’s like hitting a mimikyu’s disguise, each mental thread collapsing only for more of the inborn madness to fill the gap and flood back out at Red’s mind…
…which unfurls again, letting an Agatha and Jason partition out to tilt Red’s mind into a sideways configuration where the disparate bits of madness take on a less immediate, more dreamlike quality. Red’s hands aren’t burning; he’s just noticing that there’s a burning sensation on his hands, not too far from appreciating spiciness in food, even if it’s slightly painful. And the tentacles growing out of his back is actually a rather silly feeling, isn’t it? He can quite easily shift his mind to be curious about it rather than horrified…
From within that strange mix, the Rei-part rallies their mental defenses, memories of what Red is here to protect, borrowed and reinforced from the Leaf-part. The collaboration is new, and the Sabrina-part sees it, learns from it, then works in tandem with the Leaf-part as well, shaping its offense to one that works with it, a mental spear tipped with a deep compassion from both of them:
Are you still doing what’s best, Rowan?
Is this really the way?
Is this what you want?
Red helps by sending his memories of the damage and deaths at Cinnabar and Pallet, flinging own grief into the merger, a three-pronged attack that pushes deep into Rowan’s mind, until some direct thoughts finally wash back through the merger:
YesNo!YESsorrySORRYSORRYRRYRYRYRY—
Flashes of memories, a mix of imagery and impressions, each with such weight that Red feels them like punches, reeling as his headache gets abruptly worse, his partitions trembling—
—Rei-partition abruptly starts lowering more of them, flooding Red with unimportant memories, increasing the noise in his head but relieving the pressure on the remaining partitions, noise that gets swept up in the flow of Rowan’s memories anyway—
—as he relives The Dream as Rowan experienced it, an overwhelming feeling of dread and foreboding mixed with images of an infinite swarm of unown undulating across planes of existence, all funneling back toward—
IT IS COMING
—a black hole of hungry madness that left Rowan with nightmares for weeks…
…and with a startlingly sharp memory of a mind behind the partition, a mind he touched upon waking from the dream and reaching back along the projection.
A mind so alien and powerful that it carved an immediate impression on Rowan’s, one more compelling than the dream was frightening.
A tulpa was created, not so much a choice on Rowan’s part so much as a reflexive, ambient desire. “The Lonely One” had its own motivations, its own perspectives, its own impressions of the world and ideas of what was possible, but no memory or knowledge. Just impressions of who… or what… it was a lingering impression of.
Rowan pursued the unown to find answers, until he found a
beautiful/horrifying/mesmerizing/orderly/chaotic
swarm in the wilderness that left a much deeper mental impression, a scar that he and The Lonely One didn’t realize was actually a virus until it was too late. They thought they were learning from what they called The Hungry One… right up until it was clear that more and more of their mind was being subsumed.
Glimpses of them (for it truly was a them, after that, with no clear sense of which motivations came from Rowan, the Lonely tulpa, or the Hungry one) traveling around the islands, testing their new ability to communicate with the wild unown throughout the islands, see from their eyes, sample from their “memories,” and channel the Hungry One’s power through its countless limbs—
—are they of It, are they FROM It, or does It simply USE them, as It USES US—
—!…Rowan…?! ROWAN!—
—being kept in various labs, half aware that just merging with them was seeding something into each swarm, but unsure how to stop it from happening, or even if they should. Fragmented fantasies of turning the unown against their master are side-by-side with plans to turn them against the humans so they would take the threat seriously, and seeping beneath both motivations is the creeping Hunger that simply drove them to further spread its influence anywhere in the world they could.
Their message to Red was a final act of desperate defiance, a hope borne of Rowan’s memories and the news of Red’s unique powers. A hope that he had another Lonely One inside him, one that could help guide them in what to do to stop the Hungry One… both within them, and, more importantly, the one that it was a pale shadow of, a drop from an approaching tsunami.
The Sabrina-partition digs deeper, and Red relives slices of the rooftop meeting from Rowan’s perspective… and with such direct memory, the corruption is more clear. Red appears fragmented, the colors of his clothing and skin fluctuating wildly in saturation and brightness, bits of him bleeding into the environment around them before snapping back into place while the echoed impressions of his words barely match anything Red remembers saying.
It throws the previous memory impressions into doubt, as well as the felt connection between that conversation and the following resolution. A resolution that led to the attacks at the labs, and to spread the Hungry One’s reach/wake people up to the risks…
—RYRYRRYYRRYRYIHavEtoHAvEtoHAVEHAVE—
Jason readily agreed to help Red form an internal model of him, adding that he hoped it was helpful for more than just a potential psychic battle with Rowan. Elite Agatha was also surprisingly easy to convince, even insisted on drilling him on how to use it properly. Elite Will was more cautious, however, which made sense to Red given he never met him before… but when they did, it quickly became clear that familiarity wasn’t the issue.
“How independent do you expect the mental clone to be?”
Will sat with one leg crossed over his knee, arm draped over the chair behind him. They’d met on the roof of Sabrina’s school, and Will led the way down to the communal kitchen, apparently very familiar with the place… he even knew where they kept the chocolate, and brought a bag to the table to eat from with one hand. He was dressed in a bright blue jacket over a black vest with silver embroidery, and looked very out of place in the simple kitchen despite his relaxed demeanor…
…a relaxation that didn’t diminish the feeling that his avid gaze was drilling a hole through Red’s head. Despite the apparent hyperfocus, his mind, or what Red has felt of it from surface sensations, was… odd. Sparking, almost, like his attention was snapping around with a will of its own.
“Oh, not independent at all,” Red said, taken by surprise. “I’m not sure what Sabrina told you, but I’m not trying to make a tulpa. You know what that is, right?”
“I do, and Sabrina didn’t imply you were. But your abilities allow you to create independently acting minds behind your partitions, in addition to mirroring their mental state. Correct?”
“Well, sort of. It’s hard to explain, but more like I have a nested consciousness that, when my partitions are up, can still think independently while my partitioned self is unaware. And I wouldn’t be turning any minds into the mirrored person, I just adopt the way they view the world, temporarily.”
“And what else is there to a person?”
Red stared at him a moment, wondering if this was a genuine belief compared to some sort of test. “I think I get your point, but in this case it doesn’t fit. It’s like believing if you convince me to change my mind about something, so that I see the world a bit more like you do, I’m becoming, I don’t know, 1% more ‘you’ and 1% less ‘me.'”
“It is like believing that, yes.” Will grinned and tossed another chocolate into his mouth, so smoothly that Red suspected psychic assistance.
A genuine belief and a test, it seemed. Red took a moment to try this new lens of reality out, waiting for any objections to come to mind… but none do, since it seems mostly like semantic mapping. “Okay, but I’ll be swapping between different mental states as needed, and even if my partitioned self is the one that were to do it, that’s stacking two temporary effects on each other. They’re a separate person to some extent, but they get reshaped and reformed by the partitions we make all the time. I make all this work by treating them as an equal as best I can, but… it’s really a ‘them,’ not a ‘him,” I think. There’s no coherent place to distinguish them as one continuous ‘person,’ let alone an independent one.”
Will listened to all this while munching on chocolate, then offered one to Red. He took it to be polite, and because it seemed like a peace offering of sorts, or a reward for giving a good answer maybe. “Good to know, before I handed over a bit of myself to take root in someone else’s psyche.”
Will smiled, and Red smiled back. “My sense of identity has been going on a bit of a weird journey over the past couple years.”
“I bet. Broken down to basics, from what I’ve seen, most brainy-types say they are what they think. They’re attached to their beliefs, their philosophy of life, or the way they solve their problems. Others say they are what they feel, what they want. If someone switched a flip in their head and made them hate the people they loved, they would argue they’re not at all the same person.” Will popped another chocolate into his mouth. “Others say, nah, forget all that, people can come up with any justification for any action, the same feelings can motivate wildly different actions, so at the end of the day, you are what you do.”
Red nodded along, guessing where this was going. “But what we do is influenced by what we think and feel.”
“It is entirely the result of what we think and feel. Well, there’s reflexes and instincts and habits too, but other than that, all actions come from feelings. They’re your motivation, while your thoughts are how you optimize or balance them.”
Red smiled. “Yeah, I actually realized that not too long ago.”
“Good on you. It’s understandable for most people to confuse them, but every psychic figures it out sooner or later, and sooner is better.”
Red took the compliment with a nod, and ate the chocolate he’d been handed, a round ball with nuts inside that he enjoyed more than he expected to. He barely finished it before Will was levi-tossing another toward him, which he caught out of the air. “So as long as I feel something different because of a mirrored mental state, or because I learn to think in a different way that affects my actions… I guess by every definition I do become a bit less myself and a bit more someone else, for a while.”
“And this makes your technique both defense and offense. What do you prioritize, when sparring with Sabrina? Do you follow some thought down to interrupt it, or trace the feelings and project them into something else? Which part of a person do you feel more comfortable changing, to defeat them?”
Red swallowed his chocolate, skin feeling a bit cold. “I’ve… tried doing both. To be thorough. But… yeah, changing feelings felt more uncomfortable. More wrong, maybe.”
Will snapped his fingers and pointed. “So go deeper. Go for the killshot.”
“The…?”
“Not literally.”
Red frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean, but I’ve thought about taking all my worst emotional experiences and throwing them at him, trying to immobilize him with grief and depression.”
Will bobbed his head, lavender hair swaying so elegantly it’s like a move he practiced in front of a mirror. “It’s not a bad idea, if you can pull it off without shutting down yourself. But I doubt that would work on someone as good at partitioning as he supposedly was.
“No ‘supposed’ about it, he was amazing before. Now he’s… scary.” Red suppressed a shiver, thinking of that “hundred and fifty-seven,” and what number of partitions Rowan might be up to now.
“Mm. Well, it would be messy in any case. No, a real killshot is more direct, more personal. You find the thing their whole worldview is dependent on, something that they take for granted is true in order to have any hope or coherence, day to day. Then you flip that switch, and see what comes tumbling down without it.”
“Does… that actually exist, in people?”
“Maybe not everyone, and probably not in a way that would derail everything they’re trying to do. People are complicated, memories are interconnected, motivations aren’t all sourced to a single emotion or belief. But the deeper you go, the more connected it all gets. If you need to be sure, aim deep.”
—VEVEHAVEITALLALLLLALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
Red senses the counterattack coming while still processing the new memories, but the Will-partition is already acting. First it supports Rei in bolstering their defenses with an efficient reshuffling of what matters to Red right now and what’s irrelevant, then joins Sabrina’s assault/search, distracting the onslaught and causing much of it to fail as the shape of Red’s mind changes drastically once again. Agatha and Jason handle what gets through, then become more free to work proactively, preparing each of the partitions for what they might encounter as the madness gets worse.
(And part of Red wonders, in the wake of that newly remembered conversation, how he has so many partitions inside him that are so autonomous. What he said to Will felt like the truth when he said it, and he was as close to unpartitioned as he ever safely got during that conversation…)
But a second attack follows up from the first, and it’s something new, directed from a mind so alien that it scythes through his defenses like they weren’t there. Each attempt to stop or derail it is ignored by deft mental motions he’s never experienced before, following thoughts into feelings and feelings into thoughts that seem completely disconnected to Red, that none of his partitioned mental states can predict, and for a moment Red’s mind feels like it’s being laid bare, his innermost values and beliefs revealed as all his partitions shudder and begin full, systematic collapse…
…revealing another, final partition, which reshuffles everything in its wake.
Red Verres.
Red blinked, distracted from his meal by wondering why he just thought his own name. He dismissed it and shifted his pillow before starting the next chapter again…
Red Verres. I greet you.
The words appeared in Red’s mind without any apparent precursor or followup, a departure from his usual experience of thinking. The closest thing to it was when his partitioned self got sent words from his unpartitioned self, but even those were jumbled with attached impressions or feelings, and… he was the unpartitioned self at the moment.
Or at least, he thought he was… wow, surprising how he hasn’t had a nightmare about that yet…
Hello? he tried thinking to himself, reinforcing his shields at the same time.
Hello.
A shiver went down Red’s spine, hair rising at the nape of his neck as he looked around the kitchen. He was just starting a dinner break before continuing some training with Sabrina, and a quick mental search through the building showed him only familiar psychic minds. Which would mean… someone with longer range? And an incredibly clear ability to project direct words…
He should have been more afraid, but mostly he was just cautiously excited.
Hello. Who are you?
That is a difficult question to answer. I hope to be a friend.
Suspicious, but then again, being telepathically contacted is suspicious too. He quickly considers then mostly discards the possibility that this is some ploy by Rowan, and runs over all the potential suspects…
I am not Rowan. You would know me as The Dreamer.
Red was just coming to that conclusion, and feels mildly robbed. He wonders if he was preempted, and wonders how much he can trust his shields at all right now…
Not much. I apologize for the intrusion, but wish to be open.
Another shiver works through him, but he’s smiling.
Yes, “open” is perhaps the wrong word. Honest, at least.
Part of him was panicking about the lack of security to some of his deepest secrets, but he practiced more mundane redirecting and blocking techniques to keep from thinking of those, taking a deep breath and focusing on the air rushing through his nose and throat, the beating of his heart, and the taste of his food as he ate a forkful of noodles.
Okay. I think I get it. It’s… nice to meet you?
It is nice to meet you too. I have watched you for a while, a few times, and followed your history as best I can from online sources.
Red twirled his noodles around his chopsticks, trying to think of how to take that. Something about the word choice and “pattern-of-speech” was interesting, to him, very formal and also a bit… off, somehow. Not quite robotic, AI apps use compound words…
Are you Sabrina’s student?
There’s no response, for a while. Red slurps more noodles up, wondering if he asked too sensitive a question, worrying slightly that it was too direct given how the Dreamer was clearly trying to stay anonymous. He already regrets it, he should have asked other things first—
I am.
Sorry, was that… would you rather I not ask things about who you are?
I will choose not to answer if necessary. I was surprised she mentioned me, but saw from your connected memories that it would be safe to confirm.
Okay. Well, I have about a million questions and I don’t know what to ask first, and also I don’t want to scare you off, so if there’s something you—
Ask. I may not answer, but I will not leave unless forced to.
Red wondered what that meant, like he might attack them or something? He adds it to the list of curiosities burning in him, but it’s low.
Why did you send the dreams?
Because I felt there was a need. You have not had it, directly, but from others. The threat is real.
Yes, but why the dreams? Maybe this is too revealing, but there are so many better ways to… or maybe not, I guess, if you’re trying really hard to stay anonymous, and also want to be taken seriously quickly… sorry, I don’t mean to criticize and don’t know what constraints you’ve been under, but has it gone as you hoped, at all? The dreams stopped, should we take that as a good sign?
No. Some things went as I hoped, others did not. I decided the dreams did as much as they could, and began to prioritize other things. But perhaps I should continue sending some, now and then, if people believe the danger is passed.
Yeah, I think so, but… uh… maybe try to be gentler with it?
Ah. I see. Yes, I regret the harm I have done to those you met, and especially…
Rowan.
Yes. I suspect his madness comes from the unown, from merging with a wild hive of them, and not from my dream. But I suspect the dream put him on that path, and I feel responsible for this.
Is that why you reached out?
Partly. I was considering it, before, but when I saw what you have been coming to train for… yes. I wish to help, if I can.
Red pumps a fist, grinning even as he grabs a paper towel to wipe up the ramen droplets he splashed everywhere.
Awesome! I’d really appreciate any help you can give, but… I guess you’d want me to keep this conversation secret? Even, or especially, from Sabrina?
That would be best, yes. I will not take it as a full betrayal if you do, but I will stop attempting to contact you in Saffron, and I do not know of a safer place to naturally do so yet.
That’s okay, it’s better infosec not to share it anyway, just in case Rowan gets to her first…
Red’s thoughts became jumbled as various worries and excitements began competing. He knew better than to take a random voice in his head’s word for who it is or what its intentions were, but there’s nothing actionable he could do about it other than tell it to go away, shielded up fully, or go tell his guards. By contrast, the potential upside of taking the voice (cautiously, carefully) at its word was huge.
Okay, we need to come up with a fallback then. If for whatever reason you feel it’s not safe to contact me here any more… I sometimes visit a ranch north of here. Would that be okay?
During the day, or in the evenings?
Day.
No.
Red frowned slightly and ate some more noodles. The meetings would have to be at night?
Yes.
Well, that’s a bit of an issue. He’s not really in the habit of going anywhere at night for safety reasons, and he can hardly invite them to contact him in his room at Interpol, unless their range is very far…
This may work.
Wow. Really?
Really. Where is it?
Uhhh…
Nevermind, I will find it.
Red drops his forehead in his palm and rubs. Looker will love this, he’s sure.
If the security is too strong, I may decide against.
Yeah, that’s fair. And if you’re actually Rowan I guess you would not have a hard time finding it, if you really wanted to. And I doubt you’re with Rocket.
No. Team Rocket are no friends of mine.
Right. That’s… good to know. Is there… anything you can do or say that could act as proof of that? To my boss, maybe, if I can use it as an example?
You desire a demonstration of my power, used in opposition to them?
I mean… I wouldn’t say no, if you wanted to do that? But I imagine you haven’t for good reason, so I don’t count it against you or anything. I just know my boss would be reassured.
There was silence, for a while, and Red checked the time to make sure he wasn’t going to be late to meet Sabrina, then started eating a little faster.
I see, came the eventual reply. I will consider if there is some information I can share with you, that will be of benefit against them, and is safe for me to reveal.
Great! That would go a long way, I think.
My priority, however, is to stop Rowan, as I believe he may be acting as an agent of a much larger threat.
Yeah, makes sense. Do you have any idea what he’s planning?
No. But I suspect if he can do something, it will involve using the unown, the way the boy from Hoenn did during the incident there… except to some much more destructive purpose.
Red shivered in the warm kitchen, heart pounding as he remembered the madness Rowan showed. How could the Dreamer know that, unless…
Yes. I suspect it because of my own brush with the mad god that uses them.
Could you use them that way? Or for something better?
Possibly. Risking the madness again is deterrent enough against trying.
Red wonders if he should worry about Wally, suddenly. He also wonders how he can trust the Dreamer to know they weren’t corrupted…
It is a reasonable worry. Do you wish me to leave?
No. No, I know it’s a risk, but the fact that you’re working against it is good enough, for me. Maybe just because I’m desperate for any edge against him.
Desperation is dangerous in itself.
I know, but… could you defeat him, if you met? I don’t know how strong you are other than the ridiculous range and projection ability, but…
I do not know. I suspect so, but I have never battled another psychic before. And I worry about infection from his madness.
Yeah, me too… but I guess it might be just as bad if you get corrupted.
Worse.
Red blinked. It was a bold claim, said very confidently, coming from someone who said they had followed his news-worthy exploits. Red didn’t think he had a big ego, but hearing the admittedly-also-impressive Dreamer say that… well, given the power of their projection, it’s not hard to believe, really. They could give entire cities endless psychic nightmares, keeping anyone from being able to sleep, while being nearly impossible to catch…
Okay, I have a lot more questions but I should probably focus on the important thing first. How much time do you have? Should I cancel my meeting with Sabrina tonight, or do you have to go soon anyway?
I can stay for a few hours.
Alright, I’ll do that, then we can try getting some training done so I don’t waste all your time just satisfying my curiosity.
I do not mind, but this seems prudent.
Red nodded and started texting Sabrina with one hand while he finished his food, heart racing with excitement. After slurping down the rest of his noodles and grabbing a drink out of the fridge, he told his guards about his change of plan and went up to his old room, lying on the bed and closing his eyes so he could focus everything on his psychic senses.
Ready when you are. Should we start with a simple merge, or are you worried about me learning too much about your identity that way?
I am not worried. I will initiate.
Red felt it, the gentle prod, gentler than he expected given the Dreamer’s power. He met them halfway, and found their mind on the other end of the void at the edges of his psychic range. It was a strange feeling in itself, but even stranger was that the mind itself was… small? Quiet? Limited, somehow, almost like he was linking with a pokemon or extremely young child instead of an adult.
It wasn’t from lack of thought complexity, however; it was the lack of physical stimuli. There are emotional signals—trepidation, nervousness, curiosity, hope, excitement, all underlying the Dreamer’s anticipation—but despite the merger continuing to deepen, no physical sensations came with them. It was like the Dreamer was just a brain in a vat.
I apologize if this is uncomfortable for you.
Uh, a bit, yeah, but it’s fine! I’m just surprised, mostly.
I should explain. Throughout our conversation, you have been interacting with a tulpa. You may call me Dreamer; I was created specifically to be a psychic interface for the one you know by that title.
Woah, cool! Wait, how often do you make tulpas? Or, how often does the Dreamer, I mean… wait okay this might take getting used to.
It is fine. I function as an extension of them, and speak for them, and refer to myself as them. You may refer to me and them interchangeably. To answer your question, I have made six tulpa in total. It is the main thing I believe you will find useful if you battle Rowan on a psychic level. In return I will enjoy understanding your own partition system more clearly.
Red shifted in his bed, wondering, suddenly, if he should maybe be a little more concerned about the Dreamer, even if they were a student of Sabrina’s. Would Red’s partition abilities be useful to others doing something dangerous? Not that he can imagine, it’s not the key to sakki or Miracle Eye, or his ability to teleport indoors, though it helps with that. Still, someone with this much control over tulpas is probably not far off from being able to figure that out if they need to.
Besides which, it seemed like a very fair trade, though he had some moral questions about whether he should be making tulpas in the first place, particularly for such a specific purpose…
It is a reasonable concern. I admit that the moral question of tulpa creation is not one I have considered much; they are extensions of myself that already exist in illegible ways, and are given more autonomy rather than less by becoming legibly distinct. This may not be true for everyone, but I do believe that your experiences uniquely suit you to cooperating with your tulpas well, and creating them safely.
That’s mostly reassuring.
Enough to begin?
I’m not sure. I think I would prefer not creating full tulpas just yet, but finding some less autonomous version, if possible?
An interesting possibility. I admit I have not studied the topic extensively, and have had no one to research it with. Sabrina did not assist with this, did not even know I was studying them, and once I left her tutelage I learned all I know myself.
Oh, that’s really impressive! Okay, let’s get started with theory first, then…
The partition with the Dreamer’s mental state emerges in Red’s mind and shares its way of thinking, its unique associations and deft navigation of thoughts and feelings, with the rest of the partitions. It acts as a force multiplier even as it moves directly to counter its mad mirror; the Lonely One, as Rowan called it, the tulpa shade of the Dreamer who drove him to find out what was happening with the unown, to stop them… and which got corrupted right alongside him, unable to beat the madness they glimpsed the way the real Dreamer could.
The invading mental presence gets beaten back in moments, and soon Sabrina and Will are pushing deep again, finding the deepest core of the Rowan/Lonely/Hungry amalgamation’s emotions and memories, Red’s various partitions working together to sift through hundreds of impressions for the most impactful flip they can switch—
—Rowan’s desire to feel less alone—
—The Lonely One’s desire to stop the Hungry One—
—Rowan’s belief that no one else can stop it—
—feed, consume, destroy—
—Rowan’s belief that the world is at stake—
—The Lonely One’s distrust of everyone—
—all of them are important, and Red’s partitions work to flip them.
Leaf’s compassion, Rei’s indifference, Blue’s determination, Jason’s humility, each is projected at a different core feeling or belief, and Red crafts new ones as needed, using many-mirrors-and-a-dim-room to numb all emotion from the ones there’s no easy counter to…
…and little by little, Rowan stops fighting back.
Stops doing anything but enduring against the hungry madness in him, partitions working to keep his core self safe enough to function. He’s been fighting the whole time with those partitions up, hundreds of them.
The deepest core is still there. A drive so deep it’s not really a thought, not really an emotion.
The desire to live. To survive. To persist.
All three have it, keeping them locked in a dysfunctional equilibrium. Rowan knew he was infected, but he felt he had to act to stop the Hungry One… but also because if he didn’t have a purpose, a noble goal, there would be no reason not to just let it consume him. It couldn’t function on its own, couldn’t control his body, couldn’t make sense of his skills. It needed him to do that, not even the Lonely One could…
A full-body shudder works through Red as a pulse of agony moves through Red’s head and down his spine. He’s overstretched his powers, and soon he’ll be too exhausted to control his partitions.
He has Rowan disabled. If he can just reach where he is in the lab…
He can what? Arrest him?
A cacophony of mental noise and confusion washes through Red’s awareness, the lingering effects of so many partitions being brought down earlier, and he comes back to himself after a few seconds to find that his projections against Rowan have weakened. His parts quickly reinforce them, causing another shudder of pain to rip through Red’s head, sending tears down his cheeks.
Red won, but he can’t hold him. Can’t stop him, can’t make sure he won’t keep hurting others.
He doesn’t know what to do. If there was a pokemon around, he could use sakki…
The Will-partition is tugging at his attention. Watching him. Pointing.
If you need to be sure, aim deep.
The will to live is still there, at Rowan’s core.
Red never felt suicidal, not that he can remember, not in the darkest parts of his grief. There was always something, some lucky genetic roll or robustness from his life growing up, that made him want to keep living.
But he remembers what it feels like, from a different mind. A young man in a storm, standing in a broken building beside his mother’s body. A young man whose mind was filled with so much pain, that an end to it all seemed like the only relief.
It feels wrong, more wrong than using the sakki. But it’s all he has.
The Will-partition drops the mental state of the Elite, and reconstructs that desire for oblivion that spurred Red to action when he felt it a block away in the storm.
Reconstructs it, then, before it can cause the partition to delete itself, projects it out toward Rowan’s core.
I’m sorry.
For Red, many of his partitions are automatic. He had to learn to build ones that got maintained with effort, while dropping the others felt like relaxing a muscle.
Rowan is holding hundreds in place with hands that have trembled for months, while a war was fought every day in his mind.
Red can feel his sigh, as he lets it all go.
Oblivion pulls them both down, together.
When Red wakes, the world is still bathed in dim red light. His head is pounding, and when he shifts, his whole body aches from muscles that feel as though they were held tense for hours.
It takes him a moment to recover, and another to remember where he is, and what happened. A quick psydar pulse sends fresh agony through his head, but confirms that Bill and he are the only awake minds in the lab.
Rowan…
Red feels the desire to curl up, the ghost of a sob shuddering through him. Instead he pushes himself to his knees, one careful movement at a time. He swipes a lock of sweaty hair from his face, then looks around for his helmet, then remembers the net is down.
He tries to get up, but his legs are shaking too hard to support him. Instead he unclips the container ball holding the radios from his belt and summons the box, then crawls over to it and pulls one out. He twists the frequency knob, taking deep, full breaths as dark spots swim in his vision, switching past snippets of people reporting, questioning, coordinating, mostly rangers, until—
“—ll or Red, come in if you can hear me, over.”
Red fumbles with the buttons, and just before he identifies the right one Looker’s voice comes back. “Come in, Bill, Red, anyone, come the fuck in gods damn it all, over.”
Red presses to transmit as soon as the sound ends. “It’s me. Red. It’s over. Need medical. Need…”
He tries to think of something else to say. What do they need? It’s so hard to think, and the tiled floor is so cool against his cheek…
“—already sent—”
Looker’s voice, as if from a deep well.
“—st hang on, Red… cus on… y voice…”
He tries to press the button again, but can’t remember which one it is. When he turns to look, he realizes the radio isn’t in his hand anymore, and reaches for it with hands that feel like they’re burning.
“—d? Red, say something, over!”
“M’okay,” he whispers. “Rowan… needs help…” He can’t feel the radio button, can’t feel it in his hand at all, and oblivion takes him before he can check if he dropped it again.