ADMINISTRATOR POV
I snapped awake and blinked at the barren ceiling.
Tastka’s watch would happen shortly, but that’s all relative. With the time dilation in place, that still gave me at least a dozen hours, likely more. A much shorter time than I usually had when Tastka slept, but I rarely used the entire time anyway.
This time I didn’t just go back to sleep though. Tastka had felt confused that she hadn’t gotten an impression from me about the marsh she was going through. It was a good illustration of why I did an incarnate avatar, though. My perspective was too high up to notice it. The marsh was small, butted up against the mountains there, and I tended to pay attention to the entire swath of biomes nearby.
For me, the marsh was a tiny detail that I could examine, but only if I knew it was there. For the inhabitants of my world, the marsh was a major obstacle, and a place where life and death hang in the balance.
Probably. They hadn’t actually seen anything dangerous yet, but the sense of dread was something I still remembered. I doubted they’d be so lucky as to have an uneventful stroll through the marsh.
I sat up and rubbed my chin, one of the human habits I kept despite this alien body. The question was… should I look into this area and see what they were facing? It would possibly give Tastka a hint, and might save her life if it were truly dangerous.
There was no guarantee it would help, of course. Tastka’s impressions of what I did in Sanctuary were very blurry and fragmented, with feelings and snatches of thought being more common than solid data. She might not remember at all, in fact. I wasn’t sure what determined how much and how often she took back information from Sanctuary, but I knew it was very unreliable.
That still didn’t resolve the question of if I should. Incarnate avatars weren’t supposed to have this two-way connection, and it felt like ‘cheating’ if I used it to help her. Yet… I certainly didn’t want her to die. It was so tempting to just look into the swampy area and see what was there.
It didn’t take much mental debate, but before I could make the decision, it was taken out of my hands.
I perked one ear in interest, then moved out into the main room that I considered my ‘living room’ now. It hadn’t been that long in Sanctuary time since Orpheus had last visited, which made this a very quick visit. Then again, in that short span of time, years had passed in my universe… and many more could have passed if I hadn’t been tied to the avatar this way.
A dim memory bubbled forth from my previous life. I couldn’t remember actually doing things, or the experience, but could remember things I had seen. An old movie starring an old comedian, who was playing the part of God. He’d been asked if he really created the world in six days, and replied something about how for him, a day was very different, that he didn’t experience time the same way.
Come to think of it… that was George Burns. The man seemed to have been born old. And a proxy avatar was made, not born. Could that movie have starred…
I shook that thought away. It didn’t matter, my old universe had probably run millions of years in the time I’d been fiddling with my new one.
I accepted both invitations and turned toward the door.
Scale filter? What?
The door opened, and Orpheus, still the very picture of a mid-level functionary, stepped through first. “Hello again, Administrator Crown,” she said without preamble. “I have brought one of our experts on Incarnate Avatars, given some recent peculiarities in your universe.”
I froze. Without biology and glands, many emotions were muted… yet I still felt them. Now I felt apprehension – even fear. A peculiarity would likely mean the odd two-way connection had been noticed.
Then the other Administrator stepped through the blackness of the doorway, and I forgot all about that.
It wasn’t that I was shocked. I knew other Administrators were not human, or even humanoid. That didn’t mean I was prepared to see something so alien right away. It wasn’t even horrifying, just… unexpected.
Diamon was a quadruped, to start with. The swaying, lumbering form wandered in, and I understood the scale factor now. This creature gave an impression of heft, of presence… presence that would fill the room. Now, it looked around five feet tall – no, I was in a shorter body right now, make that four feet and change.
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The creature was covered in thick, shaggy brown fur, and walked on four stubby legs. His body was rounded and heavyset; two pairs of eyes – one pair small and much like a human eye, the others large and glistening black – were set upon his head. It had slits of nostrils and three trunk-like appendages in front, with the middle one sporting multiple dextrous, pale pink tendrils at the end. The ears were large, but curled upward and tapered like a fox or cat, but oversized for the head.
It kind of looked like a small woolly mammoth or something, with just enough alien bits to give my mind a workout trying to categorize it. If I were still human, I likely would have found it more disquieting than anything else. As I was, it was merely a startling curiosity.
“Er… hello,” I said awkwardly after a long pause.
“Greetings,” the creature returned. I was once again reminded that we weren’t actually speaking English, even if that’s what I heard. The voice that came out was that of a relatively neutral, youngish, affable man.
Orpheus gestured to the tiny mammoth – an oxymoron if there ever was one – and introduced us. “This is Administrator Diamon, one of our senior Administrators. He is Rank 11, almost as high as you can reach as a universe Administrator. He has extensive experience with Incarnate Avatars, and should be able to determine if your situation is a problem.”
That statement surprised me. “You mean, you know what’s happening and it isn’t forbidden?”
She clucked her tongue and tapped the omnipresent clipboard she held. “No, not exactly. It is not the first time we have seen information leakage from a Sanctuary, but each case is different. It can range from harmless to useful all the way up to dangerously destabilizing.”
Diamon shuffled forward, head swaying as it took in the Sanctuary. “I have been looking forward to meeting you,” the mammoth said, voice polite yet holding an edge of eagerness. “These linkages are rare, and to have found one in your first experiment is a testament to the rules Orpheus put in place.”
I looked at Orpheus sharply, but she didn’t say anything to Diamon. Although she often had trouble understanding my expressions, this time she caught on right away. “Administrator Diamon refers to some matters which I cannot directly speak of to one of your rank.”
She paused, giving Diamon a look, and then continued, “However, Diamon has permission to share what he deems is necessary for your continued success. I will leave you with him for a time. Other matters have my attention at this moment.”
Showing her typical lack of concern for normal manners, Orpheus turned and stepped back through the doorway. The door shut behind her automatically with a loud click.
I stared after Orpheus for a long moment, before Diamon shuffled forward and lifted the two trunks on either side of their face. Something appeared between them, like a large ball, and blossomed into what looked like an elaborate flower, the petals facing the mammoth’s face.
Normally I would have hesitated, but it sounded as if Orpheus had already given Diamon the big picture. If the strange mammoth was here to diagnose, and only requesting to view, I didn’t see any reason to deny him. I hit accept, but tried to open discussion at the same time.
“It… sounded like she couldn’t tell me certain things, but knew you could,” I murmured. “Is this some roundabout way of giving me information she thinks I could use?”
“Precisely that,” Diamon replied, the middle trunk tapping at the flower a few times. That must be their version of the interface. One trunk gestured toward me in a motion I interpreted as friendly curiosity. “You do know that the High Administrator lacks a gender, do you not?”
My tail twitched in irritation briefly. “Yeah… I call her a her because that perception filter thing makes her look female to me. It’s a long story, I guess. Should I not?” I paused, then added, “If you don’t mind me asking, how should I think of you?”
Light touches kept adjusting the petals while Diamon spoke. “It does not matter for the High Administrator. As for myself, I do not believe my species has the same genders as you conceive.” After a moment of poking at the flower, he clarified, “If I were to align myself with the genders you have present in this universe, I would most closely be termed a male, so you may consider me that if it makes you comfortable.”
I nodded, “Thanks, it helps. I’m uh… male, but the body is female. Avatar’s appearance, you know.” Remembering Orpheus talking about teasing, I quickly moved on. “So I’m not imagining things… Orpheus isn’t telling me some important stuff, right? A lot of these rules don’t make sense…”
“The rules are very new, but they make sense,” Diamon answered bluntly. “When I was trained, everyone started the same, and were guided through the creation of their first universe. Diversification and innovation took multiple universes, and now the Cluster cannot afford that.”
I blinked and settled into my chair. “Can’t afford that… what do you mean?”
The mammoth tapped a few more petals. “Without saying too much, the substrate that all the universes sit upon requires upkeep as well. Even your Sanctuary and your presence here requires energy… and we are in dire need of more, rapidly. We need new techniques to study, and we need them now.”
He lifted a trunk to point at me. “That is why Orpheus has put these rules in place. They are high risk, something that the High Administrator would never do normally. Yet they are a logical creature. The safe and normal manner of training new Administrators and creating new universes is not fast enough. It is guaranteed destruction. In such a case, the high risk route is the only option.”
That was definitely news to me. It didn’t answer all the questions I had about the debt counter – still way too high for my tastes – and why the failure rate was so high for new Administrators, but desperation I could understand.
My interface opened up on its own, and the moon came into view. I jerked upright, wondering if I’d mistakenly let Diamon control the interface somehow.
“Explain to me the mechanism of this and how you have tied it to your interface,” Diamon ordered, adjusting the petals of his flower-interface. “I can see this is the cause of your leakage.”
All business, huh? I shrugged and took a breath, starting the long explanation of what I’d done. Answers could come when I’d satisfied Diamon… and I wanted to know if the whole mess with this ‘Soulkeeper’ class was safe or going to doom my universe somehow.
The moon explanation turned to dreams, and from dreams to the system, and then how the system was operating. Minutes turned to hours as I walked Diamon through each element, and he patiently asked me to stop and clarify multiple times. The intensity he brought to the task was striking and, in a way, admirable.
“I see you have a pattern comparison here, and it stores it into your own storage space when it finds a new pattern,” he was saying. “How do you compensate for the energy required to do the sorting?”
I grumbled, “It’s not perfect, but it only generates a new pattern when the activity is notable to begin with.” I tapped my interface to zoom in on the parts in question. “For monsters and non-thinking animals, this takes a lot longer, so I did run a deficit for a while.”
“Interesting,” the mammoth murmured. “And here, the patterns are formed by comparing the soul’s outward wish and synchronization with the body, to-”
The clean and sterile not-air of the Sanctuary suddenly had a scent. A familiar scent of stagnant water, moss, and rot. So used to having no scent in the room, it hit me like a punch to the gut.
And that was the moment I blacked out.