Chapter Text
The hissing of her office door sliding open interrupted her writing, thought-to-text suddenly a gibberish of violence and action, local singularity-projection mnemonics auto-cancelled with a start before she whirled around, frown immediately easing on seeing who had derailed her train of thought.
“How many times have I- oh, it’s just you.”
“So, your dearest companion is now reduced to a mere ‘just you’? I’m hurt, Priestess.”
“There are three people with override codes to my door and I don’t get along with two of them. Playing the odds, Tobias.” A pause, a conflicted look on her face. “Or should I not be calling you that anymore?”
He had chosen many names, and she felt they all did not possess sufficient gravitas. This one she deigned to use, for it was the first one she had learned, the one that he introduced himself to her with, all those galactic cycles ago.
“I think you of all people have the right to call me anything you want.” Doctor Tobias Qiu wandered over to her workstation, six monitors displaying a dizzying array of data; graphs and notes both scrawled and typed, the holotanks on either side projecting computed renders of solid-state Originium clusters.
“Hmm… Trouble. Fool. Reckless. Inconsiderate. Bereft of coherent thought. Possessed of two brain cells screaming into the infinite void. A man that would attempt to eat the same rock, twice. A depth of-” The vindictive grin growing on her face as she ramped up, at least three more ridiculous titles ready to go before she was interrupted by a gloved finger on her lips.
“Let’s go with fool, shall we?”
Priestess huffed as she stood up from her chair, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing as tightly as she could, a gentle whuff of breath leaving him as she did. “My fool.”
“Priestess, it wasn’t as if-”
“No. No, I’ll hear none of that right now. No excuses, no analysis, no predicating. You have dared enter my demesne and as such belong solely to me for the next eight hours.” She laid her head against his chest, listened to the steady, strong heartbeat underneath.
“What project do you need another set of eyes on?” She could hear the fond resignation in his tone, only relaxing her grip after he reciprocated her hug.
“Sit.” Priestess manoeuvred him around until the back of his knees bumped into her chair, gentle pressure until he acquiesced. The chair and workstation auto adjusted to the memorised user, meta-materials shifting screens and interfaces.
Priestess plopped herself down onto her favoured seat, mnemonics and shorthand bringing pertinent data to the fore, the two holotanks flashing wavy distortion before settling. Data arrays flashed by as simulations were re-run, wavelets slowly filling the holotanks.
“The DWDB-221E project is progressing, even against my recommended safeguards.” Priestess made an offering, her seat was sometimes recalcitrant without suitable, actionable intelligence presented.
“That glorified database project?”
She could feel the roll of his eyes at the mention of the Black Crown, and she’d refuse to ever refer to it by the name the project director called it. “They’ve quantised memory, that’s perilously close to being able to hard rewrite existing engrams, as opposed to simple re-sleeving.”
A mnemonic gesture from him released single-read-only clearances, project summaries flashing into her holotanks. “Other departments are trying that anyway, or similar enough. Then we have the Strong AI proponents, the Uplift projects, the megastructure engineers trying to harness the full Hawking output of our local black hole-”
“So, what does the Extremum Edictum In Extremis plan?” She had interrupted him, snap-flicks of mnemonic gestures belying her irritation, clearing her workspace of redundant information.
“Your guess is a good as mine.” A low rumble in reply, an obvious deflection.
“Don’t lie to me Tobias.” A shifting of her seat on him, warning contained in curvilinear forms.
“Whatever remains in the ashes, however far into the future we throw a torch, there must be a keeper of knowledge and a final safeguard.” A rote recital of someone else’s words, there was nowhere near enough sarcasm or acerbic cynicism for them to be his own.
“It sounds as if they’re throwing their support behind the DWDB project.”
“Your AMa initiative as well. The sarcophagi have been greenlit also. Those are the priorities.”
“Unusual. Your leash-holders tend to be more decisive.”
“They already have a major strike planned as part of a multi-layered delaying action, I’m to help deal with the local Collapsal complications from the Gate failure.”
“Oh? Sidelining an important strategic asset? That’s more their style.” Actionable intelligence put aside for now, Priestess brought the two holotanks to the fore, projections of intricate Originium crystal clusters slowly rotating. “Southern deserts or the northern icefields? The last of our orbital arsenal is in polar orbit and they only have enough ammunition to launch a single salvo of kinetics and fusion warheads.”
Priestess felt him smile into the nape of her neck; the smile of a man who knew a fresh secret. A novelty, given the innumerable corpses of star systems that were witness to the sum of theirs.
“There’s one relativistic matter-conversion weapon in that arsenal. Focusable yield, singularity-catalysed. The major gate in the north is the primary target. We can’t just disrupt a dimensional tunnel planetside without, well, cracking the damn planet in half, but the support structures around the ring itself and the power supply will be destroyed.”
Priestess’ attention had already moved on, renewed hyperfocus on her own personal project. Weapons of war, no matter how advanced were so gauche. “Ah well, may as well use it, I suppose. Not much of value to burn thataways.”
Lines of conditionally solved equations scrolled down in a blur before one of the crystal structures blinked red, the simulation resetting before running again.
“Save for the… one and a half, two-thousand indigenous species that have their ranges mostly within its area of effect?”
“Necessary, unfortunate collateral. Besides, the preservation ecologists can’t cry if they don’t know.”
“Preservation of a biosphere should take precedence, as always.” A twist-tap of a free hand, the other having taken its rightful residence across her waist, pinning her in place. “There, some matrix instability. Rare and conditional on expansion and replication, not sure if that’s intentional?”
“Not intentional, thank you- ah, I see where that could be coming from.”
The quantum machine code of the universe abstracted into wavelets and string functions, a rub of a thumb smoothing out simulated space-time and equations one and the same. She had spent as much time on the interfacing as she did the actual work, threads of her own Edict forming a liminal latticework frame imposing understanding upon this iteration of the local universe with the gentleness of silk thread, and all the gravity of neutronium.
“I’m not entirely illiterate, you know.” A hand plucking branes and folding hypersurfaces, a seamless, beautiful harmonisation with her own work.
The simulations reset and restarted, and Priestess knew that she had the opportunity to find another, much more satisfying way to pass the time.
“Compared to me, in knowing the languages and listening to the elegies that only star systems are worthy to sing, know that I am the greater.” An idle boast, the truth she spoke paling in the face of the weight of history she currently sat upon.
“The better listener and the better testimony, certainly.” A pause for emphasis. “Though, perhaps your instrumentation is the best medium for the music of the spheres.”
“Mm, and your singing would certainly shatter star clusters were I to translate it into that grand language.” A slow smirk, accompanied by a teasing shift. “Perhaps the only sounds that I don’t appreciate coming from your mouth.”
“Priestess…”
“Yes, my dear lodestar?” A look over her shoulder, like Bose-Einstein condensate wouldn’t sublimate in her mouth.
“Was there something you wanted?”
Pressure above her womb, a warning finger placed just below her cricoid bone.
“Mm, perhaps?” A slow arch of her back, a calculated increase of pressure above and below.
“Then perhaps the linguist should use her words.” Pressure vanishing, his hands vanishing like gravemist, firmly placed away from her, on the armrests.
Priestess bit back a whimper, vexation fuelling insatiable craving- she didn’t like denial play-
“Your woman is ravenous, dearest.” Priestess swivelled atop her favoured throne, grinding against growing, lancing heat, straddling her man, movement in vectors all purpose and want. “Won’t you sate her basest desires?”
Glowing amethysts, etched with an Edict barely under control.
“How could I deny?”
“You’d better not.”