Chapter Text
Harrier du Bois, 46, former lieutenant-rank detective of the Major Crimes Unit of Precinct 41 in the self-styled capital of the world, also known as Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau when on stage during karaoke events at a nearby hostel cafeteria or Tequila Sunset to his... buddies near the small coastal shack he lived in, was a recovering alcoholic. To this end, he mostly avoided them, the sole men left in the decaying fishing village, and contended himself with walking along the beach, to the tip of the peninsula and through the reeds in his free time, always on the lookout for more undiscovered species, or another sign of the giant phasmid he had recently seen, the famous local cryptid.
He hadn’t been able to convince anyone of its existence that didn’t already believe in it, and so had hired on various sailboats and cargoboats as a private guard, to sail from land to land, hoping for another chance encounter as a crypto-cryptozoologist.
The other reason was, of course, money. Losing even the small salary of a police detective had been a huge problem at first, even with him no longer turning money into cheap wine and not having to pay rent for his tiny wooden home, where he could barely take three steps in.
His reputation as a skilled conflict de-escalator, capable of resolving tense situation with no gunshots, meant logistics companies and eccentric yacht owners were usually willing to take him on, it almost didn’t matter he had pawned off his gun in a drunken stupor once while still working for the police and never had been able to get it back. But his disgraceful departure from the force, with no pension to fall back to, lowered what he was able to get as compensation no matter how good he was at his job. As did his refusal to do any mercenary work that some companies demanded in some unstable regions, including even the fishing village he now lived in.
Then there were the occupational hazards. Interisola travel, as sailing (or for the particularly wealthy, ornamental airships) between major landmasses was called, in particular was dangerous. The world did not offer up its secrets easily, and actively resisted even merely traversing its surface, seemingly impenetrable gray mist permanently hovering over it some distance from all shores, appearing like a corona of the planet made of cold vapor ripping apart landmasses and waters and isolating its inhabitants.
Compasses, clocks and all kinds of other scientific instruments stop working at this point, and once ships pierce the atmospheric curtain they are confronted by an even bigger problem: the total lack of any recognizable geographical or other features whatsoever. Or in other words, a total nothingness, a lifeless gray void ships can only traverse by orienting themselves with powerful radio signals measuring the distance to the next Isola, like the echolocation of a particularly powerful bat. A miscalculation meant being trapped forever.
The psychological effects of existing in such a suspended limbo-like state were profound. The disorientation, total lack of sensory stimulation, apparent lack of the most basic fundamentals of physics like time and space shattered many minds, either abruptly, or no less terrifyingly, gradually over time and prolonged exposure. The memory is usually the first to go, with those affected becoming unable to distinguish between their own memories and those of other travelers they knew or encountered on their journeys, or seemingly hallucinating entirely new ones and endlessly reliving them or ruminating on them.
And Harrier had spent any moment he could on ships in the past two years or so. His mind was nonetheless still *mostly* intact, which might partially be grounded in his iron determination to meet the elusive phasmid again, but nonetheless, he was now sometimes beset by what could be described as random visions of other people, often from distant times and places he did not recognize in the slightest.
Despite the lack of concrete scientific proof, there are not insignificant amounts of people that believe that those false memories are actually messages from the past or even the future, that the nothingness isn’t fully empty but rather filled with human memories, thoughts and hopes, absorbing them like a sponge resulting in the measurable growth of it, inching ever closer to the Isolas themselves.
It was during one of his shore leaves that one of those visions struck, when he met up with his sole sober friend and former partner Kim Kitsuragi, a now 45-year-old man in a bakery. A bakery with an interior furnishing so modern and impeccable that it felt deeply out of place in the dilapidated industrial building in the semi-abandoned industrial harbor district.
Nonetheless, as the place had been recently featured on a popular radio broadcast, it was oddly popular given its extraordinarily hard to find location, and in spite of it being just an hour after noon the sales assistant had to apologize to every customer trickling in anew that they were already almost out of pastries, pies and sandwiches.
Harrier had arrived just in time to nab one of the last croffins (intriguing!), that odd combination of croissant and muffin that had aroused his curiosity, while his friend Kim contended himself with just a cup of white tea (a true testament to self-restraint). The steam rising up from it fogged his glasses.
It hit him before he could even take a bite and see how cromulent crumbling of the croffin really would be, when he saw through the open door two children pass by on the street, about ten years old, one with short blue hair (very futuristic!) and one a girl with long pink hair. Both were holding cotton candy in their hands and evidently relishing it.
Despite the heartwarming scene Harrier felt a strong sense of melancholy flow through him. Not the kind of longing to be in their place that someone who had a, mildly put, troubled childhood and grew up in a world with no safety, much less cotton candy might have, even though that described his life well.
Then he realized it was from a pale memory. As it played out in front of him, he noticed it was clearly not his own, as he had never seen it or anything from it before. Children very similar to those he had just seen were tidying up some kind of relaxation space in his mind’s eye, an utterly foreign space, with much more colors and weird shapes that no place in the entire capital would ever have. Circular windows in tall curved walls, decorated with pennants and plants climbing next to them, circular couches integrated into the floor, ladder-like stairs with narrow steps extending from walls on the opposite side. And so many colorful pillows and potted plants everywhere.
Then, the memory let him overhear the pink-haired girl mentioning something about cotton candy, after which the blue-haired child left, presumably so they could get some for themselves and their friend while she finishes tidying up. Now the perspective shifted and he could no longer see either of them. He saw glimpses of a bookshelf, plush animals, some drawing and colored pencils, and before he could even properly register them a sound so loud echoed in his mind that he almost reflexively covered his ears before remembering it was just a memory. A memory of an explosion of some device in the room that had just killed the girl and left behind a traumatized child.
And despite his life having been marked by an overabundance of tragedy and dead innocents Harrier was distraught, visibly shaken even. The concerned voice of his former partner barely reached him.
“Detective” it called out in a force of habit, but it was muffled, the words wrapped in cotton. “Harry, are you okay?” A pause followed, but no reply. “Did you have a flashback again? Pardon the expression, but you look ... pale. No pun intended.”
He cleared his throat, perhaps feeling sheepish about the remark. Harrier would have better noticed Kim trying to make eye contact if he hadn’t starred into the distance, through the door, where the children had stood a few moments ago.
It was just one death too many. A particularly cruel and senseless one that toppled the complacency and resignation that had built up in him since his dismissal from the force. He had seen so many, and even, to his eternal guilt, been involved in a number of them, and whenever he had been able to help it was only after the fact. Solving murder cases, giving sad answers to desperate questions, sometimes bringing those responsible to justice. Never could he prevent a single death, even when he tried to.
But this was different. He could save this girl. He had to. All he needed was to be in the right place at the right time. And for once say the right thing, too.
There was only one man in the city that could help him. One man that defied physics almost as much as the blank nothingness between the landmasses of the world. Roustame Diodore, colloquially mostly referred to as Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy, whose wealth was so immense that it affected his gravitational field.
Due to number-go-up tendencies of his company shares at the local stock exchange counteracting it he avoided falling through floors of buildings (or containers, which he, being frugal, preferred for traveling) or things dropping *onto him*, rather than onto Earth. But light still bent weirdly around him, and he also had some small natural satellites circling him at all times, some small toy planets that people who know him better said had been orbiting him since he was small.
Most importantly, though, was that due to his immense gravitational field he could distort time as well. Not for himself, it remained perfectly stable from his viewpoint. But for everyone he came in contact with time could slow down precariously, and depending on how long they spent in this special field and how low their own wealth was, they would notice the world had moved on hours or even a day when it had been just some minutes for them.
Harrier, for his part, was after paying for the croffin earlier *entirely bankrupt*. And a, well, creative part of his mind had wondered what would happen if his wealth went below zero, if he owed money to Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy. He quickly finished his croffin, just to not waste such expensive food and then told Kim he had some ... business at the harbor.
After a sprint and then a trek through a coastal part of the city Harrier knew all too well, the site of his last case, passing a no-longer haunted bookstore and a cafeteria-hotel where he still sometimes sang karaoke (if the owner let him) he reached the industrial harbor of the capital, where the man he now had placed his hopes on still resided in a simple shipping container, typically meditating on the importance of personal time and space.
Kim followed in some distance, still not able to keep up with the athletic capabilities of his friend. Well, Harrier *had* been a Physical Education teacher in the past before joining the force, so he was no longer surprised by it and called it “Harry’s track and field” approach to work and life.
The industrial harbor was noisy as always, bustling with loading and dropping cargo from ships despite the economical crisis still lingering here as everywhere on the whole Isola. Two years ago the main employer, world-spanning logistics company had left following a strike of the dockworkers that they proved unable to crush, and now all of the harbor was under control of their union. In other words, Mr. Diodore was not exactly living among equals, but he had made it known several times he preferred it so. To escape targeted advertisement for luxury items, he said.
Only now did he confide his plan to Kim, who for a moment stared back at him, struggling to keep his composure, before deciding to trust him.
“You do seem to have an almost preternatural instinct for not just disaster, but also miracles. Sometimes, at least. I heard about your encounter with the cryptid. I wish I had been there to see it, too.” he said.
The tone of his voice, at first gently ribbing, then slightly wistful made it clear he was meaning it. Even though Harrier knew Kim as a staunch believer in scientifically grounded rationalism, who would never put forward any profession of religious faith, experiences with him, as his former partner, had made Kim more open to the strange and weird of the world. And for Harrier, Kim always had a grounding and reassuring presence, leading them both to be thankful for having met the other person.
Now, Harrier had a plan again. Previously, during his last case, somehow found the time to pitch a fanciful business concept to Mr. Diodore. It was a financial education youth center for children from low-income families, teaching them how to game the stock exchange, he figured he could ask for some “seed funding” for it, and ...
He had just climbed up the metal steps and opened the door to the spacey, but very barren container when he was blinded by a rainbow vortex of light and felt everything around him as well as himself twisting and contorting unnaturally. It was then he realized that he *had* already received money from the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy during the last meeting and that he had been expected to generate a return on this “investment”. But it had been *invested* in Harrier’s ... lifestyle instead, and with his debt he now found himself sliding into a colorful hole that had emerged in the ground.
Kim reflexively stretched out a hand, and Harrier managed to grab it, but it only served to drag them both into an prismatic abyss.
Both of them landed with a resounding thud surprisingly soon, as if there had been a secret underground floor beneath the container all along. Sure, the city was filled with those, bunkers and secret tunnels, often dating back to the times of revolution, dug by soldiers and workers burning with fire inside for their cause. Or even to before that, the times of the industrialization, when convicts dug them for children working in the mines and factories to transport coal and commodities between industrial plants, manufacturing centers and the harbor.
But this was a simple container on top of other containers that had not been there for long, wasn’t it? *Actually*, a logical part of his mind that, being able to keep time and memories very well, was usually repressed by Harrier, interrupted *it has been here over two years already.*. He had to admit he had no reason to doubt this memory, when another part of his mind, the one responsible for coming up with fanciful business ideas, suggested that it may have very well been constructed in that time, considering the exorbitant wealth of the occupant and...
Kim interrupted his friend’s inner trilogue with a pat on the shoulder. “You seem uninjured. Good. Let’s keep going and see where we ended up.”
Around them colors and light danced on two sides that seemed like walls of some kind. Behind and in front of them nothing but an empty, unlighted floor extending into nothingness tinged in the slightest hint of dark blue.
“This appears to be some kind of corridor.”
A part in Harrier’s mind that saw the world as a playground and still deemed dancing the solution to all woes got excited and made him involuntarily shout out.
“Woohoo! Exploration time!”
Kim didn’t bat an eye.
They still had to decide what direction to take first. One seemed to have the colors on the wall grow brighter and more vivid, the other one was the opposite, with colors gradually washing out and becoming more gray.
The same *fun* part of Harrier’s mind thought it was an obvious choice: pick the colorful option, there’s already enough gray tones aboveground.
And so he started moving. Kim, having no other option or expressed a strong preference, followed him.
It became soon evident that aside from colors becoming more brighter, they also seemed to change in hue, and that while no sounds permeated the walls, there were certain smells in the air that gradually changed as they kept walking.
They had already walked at least for a quarter of an hour in quiet, and the harbor smells of diesel, machine oil and industrial cleaner had gotten increasingly overwhelmed by the smell of borscht, lentil soup and other cheap foods that Harrier remembered had gained so much popularity in the early years of the recession that had started in the previous decade, but then increasingly vanished as open-air soup kitchens became cafeterias. For his part, Harrier had had enough soups for a lifetime, unless it was... no, not even the fortified *special* borscht appealed to him anymore. He had vowed to stay sober.
It seemed they were walking towards the past in a sort of ... time passage or something. Ahead, he saw that the bleak shades of gray and black that had replaced the plain white-red-blue hues so common in the harbor in the present were now giving way to a wonderful silver intermixed with a vibrant spectrum of all colors. Like those glittery balls that you hung from the ceiling...
And with the familiar, comforting smells of patchouli, tuberose and fruity cocktails hanging in the air now, it was enough for the part of his mind to take over that just wants to dance. Because this was disco! So very disco.
He was busting the most unseemly moves, moving forward by awkwardly large steps left and right, left index finger firmly wiggling in the direction of the invisible ceiling, hips swinging back and forth, but there was no one around to see anyway. Aside from Kim, and he didn’t judge. He just smiled and continued walking normally a small distance behind Harrier.
Then, another idea struck Harrier’s mind.
“We’ll just keep dancing until we smell cotton candy, then we know we are at the right place!”
- “Detective... that smell might also come from other things. Strawberry jam. Caramel. Or even just Katsura trees, as I recently read.”
Harrier was unfazed.
“There also seem to be no doors here on the walls. How would you suggest we even leave this corridor?” A slight hint of worry was creeping into his voice.
Before Harrier could reply, his still extended index finger inadvertently touched one of the colorful walls, and to his surprise, passed through with no resistance whatsoever. It was seemingly just air
He dipped his finger, then his entire hand and finally his head through. There seemed to be no wall whatsoever, it was like looking through an open windows. But he still saw nothing but blurred, hazy shapes in the same colors he had already seen. He reemerged back into the corridor, and now tried to put his food through the colors as well. It worked, and he even found there was something to step onto.
“Kim, look, like this!” Harrier said.
Kim sighed, although it was hard to tell if it was a sigh of exasperation or of relief.
- “Fine. Even then, we should pick a moment just after the cotton candy smell ended, since in your memory it was not present yet.”
Harrier had no issue with this.
“But just one step, so we don’t have to wait years, of course.”
- “That seems reasonable.” Kim replied.
An hour passed, and so had smells like gunpowder and burning oil and gasoline, growing only more intense minute by minute, after a while being joined by the viscerally horrifying ones like the iron smell of blood and worse, burned flesh and indescribable ones. The smells of the urban war from three decades ago, the foreign military intervention (probably more properly termed invasion) before it, and the revolution and civil war before that, all together also lasting some three decades. And Harrier had lived through most of it as child and teenager. It was, by and large, a miserable time. He avoided looking at the walls of light, but out of the corner of his eye he saw an endless mixture of shades of red, black, brown and peach.
Still, it was the smell after it that made him gag and cry the most, the one smell he wanted to forget the most because it was so directly tied to the biggest wound inside him that had just started to heal. The smell of apricots, not just representing the flow of colonial goods to the imperial center in prerevolutionary times, but above all also his ex-something.
A woman that was in his life every day for twelve years until she wasn’t anymore, having decided to leave for good, seeing no future for herself with a detective like him that scared her and sometimes couldn’t even afford electricity. Maybe it’s what caused him to look too deep into bottles, or maybe it was more the other way round.
After this, the smells became less recognizable. He didn’t know much about the history of the capital from the previous centuries, or its prehistory. And there was still no cotton candy smell anywhere. Instead, nothing but the ancient smells of the sea and primeval forests that had been largely razed centuries ago, and the corresponding colors of deep blue and various shades of green and ocker.
Kim stopped walking.
“Detective, how far do you still want to go? We seem to have reached the end of history for the city. Unless you think the indigenous people of the Isola had cotton candy, I don’t think we can expect to come across it after this point. Perhaps it would be better to turn around.” he asked.
-- “Maybe that’s better. Maybe we should have started walking in the opposite direction. What if it was somehow a vision of the future, not a memory of the past?” Harrier replied, hands holding his face, trying to not feel like a failure again and yet not entirely succeeding.
“It’s okay. You tried to do the right thing. It counts for something.” Kim tried to reassure him.
Absentmindedly, Harrier still kept on walking, until his feet could no longer find flat ground to step on. An abrupt incline in the dark corridor had surprised him, he lost his balance and fell on his stomach with a resounding oof, only to begin sliding down the tunnel like a child dashing down a snowy mountain on their sleigh.
“Detective!”
Kim, for his part, now reluctantly found himself forced to follow suit and take after Harrier.
It was a disorienting experience, especially with their speed quickly growing to dizzying speeds. And despite that Harrier felt no pain at all, not even much discomfort, and his and Kim’s clothes miraculously remained fully intact. The ground didn’t seem to provide any resistance or create any friction, it was as if wasn’t truly materially there and was mostly imaginary, or ... something. Harrier wasn’t sure, the encyclopedic part of his mind came up empty, so did the logical part of his mind, and even the most creative part had no ideas this time. The fun part simply wanted to enjoy the ride, and not knowing any better, or more serious options, he did.
They passed many colorful blurs, observing that the hues changed from green and blue to orange, yellow and various shades of pink and purple until they stopped just as abruptly and uncannily painlessly.
But the fun hadn’t stopped for Harrier. He got up fast and hurried on, ignoring all the various, often utterly alien smells in the air until he, an hour or slightly less later finally noticed that one smell he had waited for so long. Cotton candy. A few more steps and he finally stopped, catching his breath and allowing Kim to catch up with him, panting.
“Kim, what do you think the people will speak in? Maybe we’ll finally be able to find a use for that weirdest of school subjects, Ancient Tongue. I always wondered what it’s for.”
- “Ahh... language. Right. I had completely forgotten.” Kim replied, pushing his glasses up his nose. “The language barrier means we might not be able to understand them at all, sadly. Considering most scientists seem to agree that Ancient Tongue is the ancestor to our language Suresne, famously first spoken at the other end of the world, I don’t think we’ll find that it’s spoken here.”
He takes a step closer to the wall of pastel colors.
“Unless you want to suggest that the inhabitants of this island somehow managed to figure out interisola travel in prehistoric times and just absolutely no evidence of this remains...”
Harrier could easily tell that even under the present circumstances, after everything that had happened, Kim deemed this a bridge too far, just too unlikely on top of everything else. There was also clearly some worry in that voice, probably from not having any idea of what was behind this spectacle of colors they were both looking at.
Not only were they long past the point where the historical record yielded much at all, with science still having next to no idea about the distant prehistory of the world (especially in this part of the world), neither had the slightest idea of how far back they were in the past. There was no way either of them could know what was expecting them... except that it did smell like cotton candy.