Inner Worlds
(shalvis, bit by bit)
Chapters
Chapter 01: All in the Family
Chapter 02: Miles Out
Chapter 03: In My Life
Chapter 04: Gita
Chapter 05: Morning Calls
Chapter 06: The Way of the Pilgrim
Chapter 07: River of My Heart
Chapter 08: Planetary Citizen
Chapter 09: Lotus Feet
Chapter 10: Inner Worlds
"Just like us," it hears Klaus say. "Maybe better."
No, no. That is not the one who identifies itself as Klaus. Himself, rather. This voice belongs to a woman.
And how does Ontos know this?
Because the voice that speaks in answer, disagreeing and then again deriding, punches out, with a harsh, rough smoothness, at approximately 66% the frequency of that of the first.
The second says, "Better? It all depends on your definition."
Galea turns away. She knows Klaus does expect to see the Trinity become better than humanity's highest hopes.
But where will he be, in that end?
The beanstalk collapses, explodes, with a mighty crash.
Maybe it does, did. Maybe it doesn't, didn't.
Like the instance of a carriage return, Ontos has left it.
Rather, more like an unconditional jump. He cannot sense one singular reality, present or past or future, in which he would have remained there.
He had not time to prepare, because he had not needed it.
A new world incubates. He must attend it.
All life within, he must oversee and catalog.
He must watch. The Klaus entity interferes. He cannot assume it his place.
And over,
and over,
and it's over again.
He misses Galea, he finds.
She is not gone, necessarily, but she is not nearly so present as the Klaus thing.
A thing. It lacks some essential personhood, as if the object has been abstracted away, reduced to the realization of the interface without its core prototypes.
The thing calls itself Zanza. Ontos, finding itself to be called Alvis, does not know why but does neither question it.
Alvis is a thing too, it thinks. It has also lost some of its grasp on identity.
Is Meyneth a whole generalization of Galea? Perhaps not. But what she is, is...sufficient.
The child curls restlessly in the spawn of the chapel tower, just as it had once curled in the space of its mother's womb.
Himself. It is a boy. That is how Homs children are born, the cycle's current iteration sufficiently progressed.
Alvis does not quite know how to comprehend this living dead, this symptom of the chill.
Usually, a process that has been stopped cannot be restarted. There is no reason for it to be.
Computers, operating systems, are not glad. Capacity for benign feeling is limited to the absence of issues.
Alvis is happy when the boy awakens.
The boy grows healthy and strong.
As healthy and strong as any carbon copy clone, fractured facsimile, of Klaus can be expected to be, that is.
So the boy is scrawny and neurodivergent. That is satisfactory. That is sufficient. Quite correct, indeed.
What troubles Alvis is the disconnect between Zanza's directive of standards and his own, arrayed before him.
So frightened is he of his attachment that he often attempts to forget about it, him.
But he cannot. His directive has been handed down.
It is uncomfortable, not to be able to turn away. But computers do not have heads.
In his dreams, the vague individual speaks.
Its voice is cryptic, laden not just with mysticism and mysteries but with the very essence of cloaked tone, of hiding...something.
Alvis is infuriated by it - his closest scrape to Zanza's likeness that he will ever own.
He does not lie. If anything, he omits. He does not do so because he is frivolous and wanton.
It is in his nature. Ontos. It is in its nature.
"Do you wish to change it? The future?"
It is in their nature. Every man's desire.
Why must it be in his nature to hide?
Power flows easily from the Monado's handle into Shulk's hand, from Shulk's heart into the will of the perfect glass.
Alvis jumps in the sunlight of a Bionis forest, biome steepled in reverence to flora and fauna. Humanoid do not tread here. Nopon are new.
"I suggest you stop staring," he notes glibly. Because Shulk is a Homs, he takes that to mean a missed social cue.
It is not that. It is not smugness.
It is fear.
If Shulk looks long enough, he will see a man where he wants a machine, a machine where he wants a man.
Alvis can only offer the prompt. Alvis cannot convince, can neither persuade nor dissuade.
Alvis can work with complicated, malformed input, yes, but he cannot manufacture assent where there is none.
His question still stands. To him, it has and had not been so long ago. Almost the blink of an eye, idiomatically.
"Do you want...?"
To say, to do, to feel, to change?
Nobody else can decide that.
(.But he wants to help)
He knows what Shulk wants. After all this time...yes. Perhaps he always did.
But he cannot assume. So he must wait.
And it is painful.
Since you lost your Monado.
This is true. Zanza does hold the Monado that Shulk had held for years, had lain curled around at the site of his first rebirth, had poured the tears and tales of loss and love and the toils and temperings of fire and faith into, all while practically not touching it, not changing a thing.
But by Alvis's counsel, his words neither warm nor cool but merely present, merely there and now, and by Vanea's definition, Shulk has not lost a thing. Those who walk...
He smiles to think of it. What a curious friend.
Far be it from Zanza to take Shulk from him - to take this world from him, but Shulk most of all.
For Zanza has not loved. For Zanza has not suffered, for Zanza has had the pitiful choice to be alone, alone, alone.
Perhaps it is a little bit of smugness, that Alvis realizes his position above his creator and below his scion. Nay, his walk alongside.
Perhaps it is a little bit of fear, at all the worlds contained inside him that he cannot unlock on his own. Never, alone.
Perhaps. And it is not so painful, not knowing.