Putting his thoughts in order was not exactly the priority.
Maybe it never truly had been.
But did it make sense to watch that footage to understand the situation of someone he might never see again? At that moment, the answer barely mattered. An emotionally charged distraction was hardly the best way to calm himself.
He was tired.
Go to bed, he told himself.
But Antea was right there, in front of him. Beautiful.
That full, shapely ass — the one he had touched in the coercive flashback — exerted a crude, physical pull. Touching it in real life would have been simple. Complete. Instead, that privilege would belong to someone else.
If that bipolar mauve demon had been telling the truth, sooner or later Antea would give in to the thousands of advances a girl with that kind of aesthetic caliber would receive — even if she were the most unpleasant person alive. It would have happened in their original world — he knew it without knowing how he knew it. Let alone in this realm of boors, where a computational son of a bitch had trapped them.
It wasn’t the most lucid choice.
He made it anyway.
Lucidity, after all, is often just a decorative veneer applied retroactively to instinct.
The footage, based on that psionic technique, resumed.
For a while he followed the frames: the farewell to the drunken yokels, one man who seemed to know the blonde from the group, then the entry into the carriage. A carriage with the unmistakable aesthetic style of the Protectorate of Grem.
Watch that lanky braggart end up fucking my friend/goddess, the Mediator thought.
Jealousy, sometimes, is rarely about possession. It is about hierarchy.
The idea made him furious.
There was history there. And not a minor one.
He remembered the duel. Not one of the friendly ones.
He had lost it. Not narrowly — he had lost it in a way that still, more than a year later, produced a kind of dull irritation every time he turned it over in his mind. He was much stronger now, granted. He knew that. But the way Grem controlled body density didn't fit into any ordinary category — and around here, ordinary was already superhuman. He wasn't a mage, cause he was native to that world, and yet he could have faced any mage, the way he still saw it.
Sooner or later, they would fight again.
It wasn't just hope.
Even the blonde talking to one of the drunks was a knockout. The kind of woman Grem would go after immediately. The probability that he was somehow involved was high. Or at least it felt high.
Damn it.
Thinking about it, he had heard that Grem had remarried. Maybe the blonde was the second wife. An excellent addition to the harem, no doubt.
In a way, he felt at a disadvantage.
Partly because he had always considered Grem his greatest rival — the only one capable of matching him on every front, and often surpassing him. Partly because, when they had still been more or less friends, both of them had openly expressed the desire to build their own harem.
Men of their rank could surround themselves with as many women as they pleased. But they were selective. The beautiful girls orbiting them were rarely suitable, in their eyes, to become actual wives.
The problem was elsewhere: they spent too much time in military camps and in places where the best one could find were prostitutes, gold-diggers, or na?ve girls ready to fall in love with the first dominant presence.
And, truth be told, for all their talk about “settling down,” neither of them had ever seriously done anything to move in that direction.
Grem, on the other hand, was succeeding.
He had succeeded with a woman he had known and pursued for a long time, without ever truly breaking into her heart — or at least getting her into bed. And now another wife. And possibly a 9/10, if the blonde really was her.
He was seething.
He slammed his left fist against the table.
“Shit!”
Of course, he couldn’t be sure yet. He might be wrong.
And then, the silver lining: someone with a mind constantly smoking like Anton’s would never willingly join a harem. Impossible. Maybe he’ll fuck her — and if I get the chance, he’ll pay for it — but marry her? No.
Call that a positive.
His situation seemed to worsen by the second.
Meanwhile, the strange group traveled inside the carriage. Nothing significant happened. Occasionally someone said something mildly uninteresting.
His eyes, inevitably, remained fixed on Antea.
He wondered if zooming in was possible.
Audrey hadn’t mentioned a command for magnification, but maybe there was one.
“Zoom.”
It worked.
The image began slowly enlarging, without stopping, until the Mediator realized he needed to halt it — sorcerer’s apprentice situation.
“Stop.”
It didn’t work.
“Pause.”
That was the correct command. Audrey had said it. He only remembered afterward.
Now the image was enlarged and frozen in the narrow space between the two facing benches. Her feet were clearly visible. Poorly positioned.
He wasn’t a fetishist. Female feet didn’t interest him.
How the fuck do I move the view?
He tried various voice commands. Nothing.
He tried using his fingers.
That worked.
The experience reminded him of what he was supposed to consider his original reality.
Touchscreen.
Fantastic. Very convenient.
He was actually starting to enjoy himself — which felt strange, considering how much shit had rained down on him because of Audrey.
He shifted the view toward the exposed skin of Antea’s chest. Blood surged violently into the cavernous bodies.
Biology has often terrible timing.
His shaft pressed hard beneath the fly. He moved the focus to her eyes. He stared into that magical gaze.
Then he said, “Zoom out.”
Nothing.
What the fuck could it be? he thought.
After a moment: “Resize.”
Then, “Pause.”
Immediately after: “Forward.”
“Speed up.”
At some point the screen dissolved into a fast, turbulent chromatic stream.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Pause.”
The image froze on the carriage, seen from outside. In the distance, barely visible in the sparse light — due to the scarcity of lanterns or oil lamps — a tall palisade could be made out.
The famous palisade that separated Grem’s Protectorate from the rest of the city.
He was right.
Shiiit.
The Mediator stayed motionless in front of the screen for a few seconds.
He didn't think anything articulate. Articulate thought was too slow for that moment. There was only the dull sensation of something settling — like silt on a riverbed after a flood. The confirmation of something you'd hoped you wouldn't have to confirm.
Antea was going to Grem.
Maybe she didn't know it. Maybe she did. It didn't matter. She was going there all the same.
Naturally, the Mediator thought. Naturally.
It wasn't surprise, that feeling. It was the emotional equivalent of déjà vu — that revolting sensation of recognizing a pattern you'd have preferred not to see.
His blood simmered — faintly, but enough.
“Forward.”
“Speed up.”
“Pause.”
Now they were inside the Protectorate.
Another level.
Lights everywhere. Music. Euphoric crowds. Lavish buildings.
And so much fucking cosmic-grade pussy.
“Speed up.”
The image didn’t move.
What a fucking piece of shit system.
“Forward.”
“Speed up.”
“Pause.”
Now they were inside a restaurant he knew well.
He wanted to know whether they were going to Grem.
He had to know.
He wanted to jerk off.
Frustration always pushes you in that direction.
And yet he managed to hold back, without really knowing why. He would jerk off later. For some reason, he had decided things had to go that way.
People are strange.
Consciousness is a spin doctor working for instinct.
If someone had asked him why — and Audrey almost certainly would — he would have been able to construct a flawless explanation after the fact. Human nature, even when computationally warped, excels at producing elegant rationalizations that have nothing to do with the irrational core of one’s actions. We like to believe we are in control. Often we are not. And “God,” in this case, has nothing to do with it.
In the restaurant there was that lanky pussy-slayer, Grem. And his first wife was there too. A knockout. A woman with a breathtaking ass, and everything else perfectly on par. Beyond that, she was also a wonderful person: kind, polite, helpful, fairly sharp. Maybe a bit too submissive. For Grem, that was a bonus. Her shyness in public — one of Kahuyla’s traits — didn’t bother him. The Mediator — though we should say Micheal, even if that shared stretch of history among the three of them isn’t relevant right now — actually liked that trait.
Anyway, those big, firm cheeks were damn near perfect. One of the best backsides he had ever seen. Seeing her again stirred something in him.
But Antea stood out even beside her. And not by a small margin. That magnetic pull — was it a feature engineered by “God”? Who knows.
Grem apologized for something the Mediator hadn’t seen. That somewhat anonymous guy — if he remembered correctly his name was Mark — mistranslated the apology, and Antea accepted it without ever lifting her gaze toward Grem, who, as usual, was dressed extravagantly and wore those thick, ridiculous sunglasses.
Why was she keeping her head down?
Being desired is sometimes indistinguishable from being hunted. Is this the problem?
Was she attracted to him? Not used to feeling that way about a man? The apology had to matter. But Grem hadn’t been there earlier, so something must have happened off screen.
The short, nymphomaniac girl was there too. A damn festival of perfect, thick asses, he thought. She was beautiful as well. He had fucked her, more than once. One of the best sexual partners of his life. Very short, but with a body, a face, and an exuberance that gave her considerable sex appeal. The problem was she was always hunting for new dicks. And now, apparently, she wanted Mark.
Who looks like a bit of a fool, so he’ll never manage to get Antea.
Go fuck Thuljas, dumbass, the Mediator thought.
Competition clarifies male morality with embarrassing efficiency.
“Forward.” “Speed up.” “Pause.”
Now they were seated, and a massive waiter was bringing out plates loaded with good food. He knew it was good because he had eaten there. Obviously, the judgment was relative to the quality of the local cuisine, also because, thinking about it, he couldn’t really compare the flavors of the two worlds.
“Forward.”
Grem, charismatic as ever, dominated the conversation. He cracked jokes while explaining things of negligible importance to Mark, who translated them clumsily to Antea. They were explanations about how things worked in the Protectorate, thick with self-references, since there he was a sort of king. And even though he claimed to hate being seen that way, according to the Mediator he enjoyed it very much.
The anarchic drift of the city had not affected the social fabric of the Protectorate. He said it with pride.
“Speed up.”
“Pause.”
The frame showed Antea absorbed in who knows what thoughts. Her face looked uneasy, at times somber. The Mediator wished he knew what she was thinking. The disgusted expression perhaps revealed what he himself would have thought about the local food, if his gustatory memory had not been tampered with.
Mark, on the other hand, seemed to have fewer problems, judging by his expression.
He was witnessing the unsettling progressive amputation of ipseity.
I’ve only been here a short time. Had the erosion of his terrestrial self been that rapid as well?
“Forward.” “Speed up.” “Pause.”
His interest in the table’s chatter was relatively low. After all, the only person he truly cared about didn’t understand the language. And for some reason — probably simple social ineptitude, the Mediator thought, who had formed a poor impression of Mark from the very beginning — he was reluctant to steer the conversation toward a space that wouldn’t deliberately ostracize Antea.
And then, fuck, do you really have nothing more serious to talk about?
What the fuck do you care about the self-referential anecdotes, seasoned with the enthusiastic comments of his clique, from a guy you know nothing about, in a place where you might not even want to stay?
Ask about the world.
Gather information to understand what to do from here on.
Don’t let someone shape your future this easily, idiot.
And he kept moving forward in jerks. Always “forward,” “speed up,” “pause.” Never backward. There was nothing worth going back to.
He scrolled through the footage bored, like when you watch a podcast you don’t really care about before going to sleep, but keep watching because the person who matters most to you — suddenly central again in your life because of Audrey — is in it, and so you assume there must be something relevant there.
So the boredom intertwined with a deeper disappointment.
And this emotional patchwork became the interstice where guilt began to germinate.
The lash of the Superego. Or rather: shame.
For the first time he understood that the bombardment of revelations had first saturated him, then overloaded him, and finally stripped him to the bone.
Was that why he was treating that footage like a blackpilled Chad?
That girl he had cast as the prize in an imaginary struggle between alpha males was his best friend.
Hardly any time had passed since that epiphany.
Had he already accepted that he wanted to fuck her wildly and make her part of his harem like just another pretty face?
He couldn’t think of her in the same way he had thought about women up until then — apparently not even in his world of origin.
So the way he had behaved toward women there was wrong?
Pre-isekai Micheal had understood, thanks to that thing some weirdo had decided to call Sonder, that yes, it was wrong.
But morality, in this world, is different.
He laughed softly.
A bitter laugh.
I’m a son of a bitch, he thought.
After everything I’ve done, I’m wondering whether the way I’ve thought about women up until now is right? I don’t even know where morality lives.
Even before arriving here, apparently, I was a questionable person.
Since Psycho-Mike emerged, I’ve become the accomplice of a monstrous abomination.
But it was Audrey’s fault, right?
He laughed again.
And what have I done to oppose Audrey?
Moist eyes.
The Ego Ideal. The self we would like to be, the reflection of one of the infinite idealizable images of ourselves that our interaction with the Big Other — a somewhat ridiculous term, typical of psychoanalysis, for referring to the social fabric as a whole — shapes or selects, is often in conflict with what we truly desire.
Leaving aside this bullshit — only to move on to other bullshit, of course. Shifting gears, somewhat Anton-style, since we’re on the subject, and somewhat clumsily, again very Anton — as Feynman once said: you can’t expose yourself on two very different topics without making yourself look ridiculous.
I say there’s nothing wrong with being ridiculous, provided you’re aware of it.
Are you made of that stuff, you who are reading?
Then you’re ridiculous.
From the Byung-Chul Han–ian concept of self-exploitation to the Mediator’s pathetic yet understandable moral confusion, we can conclude that he first invented–idealized — two operations that sometimes go hand in hand, as in this case — on the basis of the previous bullshit; then internalized; and finally “psycho-institutionalized” (there’s a better term for it, and of course I know it, but I want to write it this way) the set of mental operations that a brilliant and intrinsically alienated person ought to enact following a forced immersion in universes situated at the extremes of a curve — the graphic version of cenesthetic variance.
The meta-narrative increases whenever I decide to write in a way an editor would define as “wrong.” Probably with good reason.
I swear I’m almost done with the bullshit.
It’s a typical self-referential mental fallacy, common among people who have lived as if they were special.
The imprint of a lost vocation.
How would I behave if I were as I ought to be?
You wouldn’t punch a wall because a guy you haven’t seen in eons got married to two bombshells.
For fuck’s sake, bro, you’re sterile.
Your best friend has become a woman.
On top of that, the woman of your dreams.
And you’ve also discovered that, deep down, you always wanted him to become a woman — because if a woman had been the way he was when he was a man, you would have fallen in love with her.
What the fuck are you doing?
“Forward.”
Apparently, he had missed a substantial portion of the conversation, because one word made his antennae twitch: “genocide.”
It had been Grem, the lanky bohemian, who uttered it. The Mediator focused.
“…A genocide of mages is underway. For about two years now, many mages have been killed under mysterious circumstances. For this reason, a large portion of them has migrated to Kublai Khan, the city erected more than twenty years ago by a group of extraordinarily powerful mages, apparently impregnable. No one knows what happens inside it, because no one ever leaves Kublai Khan. It is a censored place for anyone who is not a mage and has not chosen to enter; that’s why many preferred not to go there. But the extermination has changed the stakes. I’ll avoid laying out all the theories that have been developed about it, even though I know them all, because this isn’t the right setting and, after all, we don’t want to stay here all night, do we?”
Grem’s tone was both grave and playful, thanks to his spontaneous theatricality. A strange combination.
Pff. Look at that pompous bastard, the Mediator thought.
“So you have three options, in my view: stay with me — and I will personally guarantee Mark’s safety, though we don’t know who we’re dealing with; or Mark, who is likely the only one truly at risk, being the only one with magical powers, can go to the city of the mages, while Antea, who doesn’t have to walk into a closed box, stays here with us; or you both go to Kublai Khan. I don’t wish to influence your decision.”
Mark translated the three options to Antea.
The Mediator waited, faintly vibrating with agitation, for the response of his friend — of his beloved.
After a brief hesitation, Antea said that it would be more convenient for her to remain there, but that Mark was free to do as he wished.
The Mediator didn’t know how to react. He understood the reasoning behind her choice, but he didn’t want her to remain too close to Grem for long.
The stress did not subside.
“Rest—”
The psionic screen dissolved as if someone had delivered a cosmic backhand to a nebula in the primordial phase of a star’s gestation.
The Mediator sighed.
