I thought they were heading off to negotiate details of the alliance, Hamish mused. Vital matters of how power will be apportioned and which policies to pursue. Instead, this looks like some kind of ceremony.
Could I be watching secret initiation rites of the Illuminati?
Hamish felt a thrill. I was pretty much convinced that such things were just lurid rumors or romantic exaggerations, foisted by my fellow sci-fi writers. Could this mean the oligarchy really does have an inner, ritualized core? One the Prophet is now invited to join?
But not me?
Hamish quashed his sense of pique, focusing instead on curiosity, wondering-How could my sources have steered me so wrong?
Only… Hamish soon found himself revising that first impression. There seemed to be no pattern, no orderly arrangement of people crowded around the table below. No symbolic regalia. No rhythmic chanting. Just a murmur of worried wonder.
One of them, the owner of this vast palace, raised his voice a bit in answer to a question. A tone of querulous anxiety colored Rupert’s tone as he waved an arm in response, gesturing toward the table. And Hamish managed to pick out a few snippets.
“… in my family for three centuries…”
and then,
“… suddenly started, last night…”
and finally,
“… never did anything like this, before!”
Abruptly, Hamish realized, Glaucus-Worthington was talking about the object that lay before them at the center of the gathering. What Hamish had first taken for a simple-if somewhat dim-tabletop lamp, he now realized was something else entirely. A roundish lump of glass, about the size of a human head, and-he realized with a chill-rather shaped like one. It seemed to glow from within.
The contaict lens covering his left pupil kicked into operation, responding to his interest, performing some wizardry of magnification and image enhancement, zooming in toward the object. Image dissonance between his two eyes briefly sickened Hamish, till he shut the right one. Even looking only at the enhanced version, it took several moments to sort out the glitters and complex refractions before realizing.
It’s a crystal skull. One of those weird relics that people get all mystical about, in films even sillier than mine. Though most proved to be modern hoaxes.
Of course, “most” was not the same as “all.” Archaeologists did admit that a few seemed genuinely ancient, but still just works of art-natural chunks of quartz that had been laboriously chiseled and rubbed by artisans in olden times-showing no sign of mystical properties. Yet, some of the strange skullptures had never been put under public, high-tech scrutiny, allowing fervid tales to keep swirling.
I recall, one of them was kept in Switzerland, in private hands.
He never cared enough to learn more than that. Ancient occult artifacts were never a propelling topic for Hamish. Not as much as dangerous scientific innovations and Things Man Was Never Meant to Know. Nevertheless, there had always been something alluring about the works of authors and sceneasts like Joanne Sawyer and Ari Stone-Bear, who spun tales of mystery and wonder around arcane objects from the enigmatic past.
Someone-Tenskwatawa-reached out to touch the translucent cranium-pushing with a fingertip. Turning it till the rictus grin and sunken eye sockets almost faced Hamish, glowing with an expression of fey amusement…
… when a sudden shaft of brilliance gleamed, spearing him right through the contaict lens with a shrapnel-clutter of overlapping images-
– a planet of dark continents and narrows seas, conveyed in murky tans and grainy grays, except for a single, wavy band that flickered with detailed color, from azure seashore to snowcapped, purple peaks-
– a jumbled, jigsaw cityscape that stirred together a tangle of mud huts, skyscrapers, stilt houses, and gleaming domes, topped by thatched roofs-
– a crumpled mosaic of faces, jaggedly combining beaks and jaws and fluted stalks that, while twisted together unnaturally, seemed to snort and cry out with some kind of delirious urgency.
The impression lasted only a couple of seconds. Then it was gone. Benumbed with shock, Hamish sought refuge in logic. In scientific speculation.
That jumble of degraded images… mixed and overlapping chaotically… they could be remnants of holographic memory. Unlike the Havana Artifact, this one offers just a few surviving fragments, retained after the thing was damaged.
Perhaps by the primitive artists who used powders and stones to grind and polish it into a shape worthy of veneration, never knowing how much harm they were doing… or else even earlier, when the crystal came crashing to Earth.
Broken and ruined, unable to communicate clearly, perhaps it could only offer brief snatches of ambiguous confusion and dreamlike images. Enough to terrify our primitive ancestors with thoughts of death. Maybe inspiring other tribes to make their own crystal skulls, in vain efforts to duplicate its power. No wonder oligarchs like Rupert thought this too disturbing to share with the easily alarmed masses.
Hamish turned his attention to Glaucus-Worthington. To the unhappy look on the man’s face.
But didn’t Rupert just say something? That this showy display started only last night? Perhaps the skull never wakened-but for rare flickers-till a few hours ago.
Only… why now?
Hamish had no trouble coming up with a most likely hypothesis.
Oh my.
This is Tor-“Zep-girl”-Povlov, reporting to you from my new beat. Web-Eighteen, level Z12. The hippest, heppest hot-hit-hat… or not-this-that… in the Mesh. And, yes, I come before you as a purely-pearly virtue-virtual, wearing the nimbus halo of a holy-hollow holo. Hello? You expected, like, veri-real shots of the Heroine of Washing-tin? My current-realtime phys-visage?
Granny would say, as if! That cadaver-shell is just container-support. I live here now, in the Over-World. Pat this avatar on the back, I feel it. If I ever let one of you horny fans talk me into a back room privirtcy (or pervertcy), the sustainer pod’ll convey it. Nothing wrong with the old Tor’s hormonal system!
(Sure… like THAT’s going to happen! Still, you can keep offering.)
So yes, there’s still plenty of “me” left. And one thing I promise-I’ll never let my presence here run on aitopilot.
Tell you what. Help boost my ratings, and MediaCorp may spring for a more palp-able holvatar. Even one of those android-mobiles, I can send to chase down real-layer stories. Meanwhile, though, there’s plenty to occupy us here, in the Val-hall-levels, where citizen/amateur heroes like you can hunt iniquities, skewering lies with lances of transparency and light! Like we did, together, back on the old Spirit of Chula Vista.
So let’s get started.
What? Many of you want to hear about me, first? What it’s like to live this way?
Each year, hundreds of catastrophically injured people become gel-encased refugees, like me, who experience life through remote sensors, rather than organic eyes and flesh. Though the Mesh is home, we’re not “uploaded” cybernetic beings. Cams and sensors still feed old-fashioned nerve channels of a very wetbrain.