The vast marble-clad university grounds were a city within a city. Thousands of students and staff lived within the campus’s historical pedestrian-only core, and thousands more lived just beyond it, commuting in on any number of the plentiful elevated trains that ran above the historic streets of the Old City district. The familiar glimmering white buildings filled Chloe Sharp with equal parts prickly discomfort, and gentle nostalgia. Her time on this hallowed campus had been the best of times, and the worst of times. Her life had taken on momentum here, each class taken and each club attended carefully chosen to sculpt Chloe Sharp, awkward teenager, into that teenager’s ideal image of Chloe Sharp, successful adult. That sense of progress had been palpable, almost intoxicating. She understood why so many never left the university, progressing from students to research assistants to professors. Others joined research institutes chasing the same high brought on by building and curating knowledge and understanding. Chloe’s career in Audits was unexciting in comparison, but importantly, vitally, at the end of the day, at the end of the week, she could step away from her job and return to herself.
It was impossible to avoid the memories that accompanied the smooth, yet subtly uneven stone brick streets under her shoes, the smell of venerable antiquity permeating the old buildings, and the worn warmth of the familiar wood banisters, and to her chagrin, the memories that kept stubbornly surfacing were not the good memories. Despite the bright pleasantness of the day, the further she walked into the university, the more she found herself darkly ruminating. She couldn’t shake the sense that even as her skills and knowledge had demonstrably grew and developed, her personality never seemed to make the same progress. Had she changed at all from her university days? Even more darkly, she wondered if she’d gotten worse – at least in university she’d still had a rudimentary social circle. As she arrived at Professor Alfred Niirisu’s waiting room, Davis’s dumb smile came to mind again, like a haze hanging over her memories of the place. She tamped it down, ignoring the waiting room’s polished leather chairs and pacing irritably, as if the movement of air alone could clear the haze of memories she’d brought with her.
Of course, this meant that Professor Alfred Niirisu’s first impression of Chloe when he opened his door was her pacing irritably with a dark scowl on her face. She somewhat awkwardly stopped her pacing, straightened her posture, and tried to return her expression to something neutral and professional. To Niirisu’s credit, his only hint of surprise was that his invitation into his office was a few seconds delayed. As Chloe stepped into the Professor’s office, her neutral expression was tested from a different angle – the office was magnificent. Even having a waiting room was a noteworthy luxury when most meetings were no doubt virtual, but beyond the well-upholstered waiting room the office truly betrayed just how much esteem the university held for the Professor. The room was fully paneled in dark wood, lined with glass-doored bookshelves filled with books whose slight wear and elaborate bindings revealed both age and value. There were carved wood chairs facing a chess table, itself adorned with marble chess pieces of impressive size, and similar wood chairs faced the massive, minutely detailed wood desk that stood as the centerpiece of the room. Above it all, a golden 12-pointed star was inlaid in the ceiling, with a circle of cryptic runes arranged just outside it and a scene of angels and cherubs painted within. Practically every feature in the room was priceless. Looking from the chairs to bookshelves to the desk then back to the paneled walls, Chloe felt overwhelmed. “Is this all hand-carved?”
The professor’s voice was calm, gentle, yet magnetic, with immaculate enunciation. “You have a good eye. I’m afraid I’m rather hopeless when it comes to old craftsmanship. Industrial mass manufacturing is convenient for a great many things, and androids have a wonderful eye for detail of course, but machines work on imitation only, while at the same time reducing demand for high end artisanship. There’s simply not enough buyers for the modern woodcrafter to get to the requisite skill to match these old masterpieces. Ah, but there I go again. We are distracted. You were here for…”
I’m here to listen to you talk about antiques, please continue. Of course, Chloe didn’t actually say this, but thinking back to her own antique collection at home, she felt a tickle in the back of her brain, and the somewhat gratifying realization that some else understood. She wanted nothing more than to talk about antiques, but instead, she settled into one of the well-stuffed and disarmingly comfortable leather chairs facing the desk, readied her notebook and favourite pen, and said: “I’m compiling a follow up report on the Eingopher incident. A conceptual toxin was deployed, but it was unsuccessful. I was hoping your expertise may give you some insight into why.”
Chloe hoped her delivery hadn’t sounded too scripted – she had considered her words very carefully to avoid any implication of a connection between the Professor, and the mad researcher who’d nearly destroyed the city with his dangerous self-experimentation. It was important to see if he disclosed that information on his own. To his credit, he did almost immediately, although only partially; “Eingopher was a student of mine, decades ago now. I still remember his zeal for discovery, and his deep interest in extraterrestrial intelligences. You always hope the best for your students, but with the fields I teach, I always worry about those that might take their inquiries too far…”
Chloe felt a prickling of caution push away the lingering afterglow of her appreciation of his tastes in décor. He hadn’t mentioned he was a major stakeholder in Eingopher’s lab, only that he was a former student. That was perhaps suspicious, but hardly surprising. What was surprising was that Chloe finally, belatedly, did the math on how old Professor Niirisu should be. Eingopher’s diploma was from nearly 40 years ago. If Niirisu had been a professor back when Eingopher was attending university, he must be in his late 60s - at the youngest. Cosmetics could accomplish a lot, but he still looked far too young. His movements were sharp, his skin smooth and unwrinkled, and his blonde hair was untouched by grey. He had stopped talking for a moment, but after shaking his head, he continued, “I apologize, you aren’t here to listen to me reminisce. May I ask you what you know of conceptual toxins?”
Chloe didn’t let her sudden wariness show. “Conceptual toxins are the study of what is harmful to consciousness that are not based on physical reality. For example, demon fragments are the mental remnants of minds that arose only a few thousand years after the big bang – when the ambient temperature of the universe was still an inferno. As a consciousness type whose primary known element is their affinity with extreme heat, a natural conceptual toxin is the opposite - extreme, entropic cold.”
“Well put, Ms. Sharp. Never lose sight of that skill – I try to impress on all my students that being able to communicate knowledge is just as vital as the knowledge itself. Your summary is adequate as a summary, but I’m afraid it fails to address what conceptual toxins are. If you were a student, I’d introduce the topic thusly: What’s a conceptual toxin for humans? As you are not a student, we’ll skip ahead to the answer. After great displays of thought, my students, quite naturally, will usually arrive at answers that are conceptual: loneliness, despair, trauma… which are all very poetic and all very incorrect. A conceptual toxin for humans is lead. Arsenic. Cadmium. Substances that cause us immense damage at very low doses. Conceptual toxins are just toxins, Ms. Sharp. Human minds are built of atoms and electrical impulses, but other minds are built on light, or gravity, or the nebulous mass of unknowns called dark energy. Some work off completely alien laws of physics that bleed over from parallel universes. What is toxic to them is substantially different from what is toxic to carbon-based life as we’re familiar with.
“So why do we care? Why spend so much time studying them? Many things are dangerous to humans – we freeze in the cold, we dehydrate in the heat, and even something as absurd as a piano is deadly if it’s dropped at sufficient height. Likewise many things are no doubt dangerous to other minds as well. Yet when it comes to beings based on principles we are barely able to perceive, much less interact with, it’s imperative we can forcefully protect ourselves using the bare minimum of what we can perceive and interact with. Hence, we rely on toxins, which are dangerous at even the smallest contact.”
Chloe noted the information down into her notebook, her writing slightly messier from having to hold the notebook with one hand and write with the other. She wished she’d asked earlier to use the Professor’s desk. Chloe remembered little of her single second-year class taught by Niirisu, but to his credit she did remember he had a knack for making complex subjects approachable and intuitively understandable. “Given that, do you have any insight into why a known conceptual toxin against demons would have failed against something that observers, auditors, and researchers have all generally agreed was a high-grade demon consciousness?”
“There are any number of reasons an entropic round can fail – from misidentifying the target type to improper storage. I unfortunately do not have the details of this particular incident…”
His tone was measured, but leading, and as Chloe presented her written summary of events, he absorbed it with barely disguised eagerness. Her pen didn’t move, but she made a mental note of his interest. He wasn’t reading her report so much as he was devouring it. “What a fascinating case. Why the second round failed is obvious enough even your corporate investigators have figured it out - the casings only hold up against so much heat, so at those temperatures it would have failed well before it touched its target.” Chloe already had that detail in her notes, although it was good to get confirmation from an external expert. “The first round, though… that is more concerning. From what you’re showing me and the known laws of physics, it should have worked. There was no abnormal heat to damage it, the target was undoubtably a demon, and by all accounts it looks like it hit its target accurately. I don’t wish to intrude upon your job, Ms. Sharp, but I would be very careful about vetting any and all staff who handled that round before delivery. Entropic rounds are very fragile – a single degree of added heat before it hits its target can render it useless.”
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Such a vetting was already underway, but there was no need to tell Niirisu as much. “Thank you for the suggestion. I’ve heard your study occasionally touches on theories of complete demons – are you able to shed any light on that aspect of this event?”
“I’m afraid complete demons are more of an intellectual exercise than any kind of useful science. All that remains of demons are scraps of consciousness drifting on the interstellar breeze, whittled away to nearly nothing by universal expansion and the now-freezing cosmic background temperature. So, the question goes, what would their minds have been like originally? That’s the theoretical basis, although commonly when individuals refer to complete demons, they’re referencing specific experiments that attempted to stitch several demon fragments together to recreate something approximating an original demon. These experiments all failed, and the corporation now actively prohibits further attempts - it’s not only a hopeless puzzle, but a dangerous one as well. Coming back to Eingopher, what happened is a known reaction where a consciousness used as a congealing agent overtakes the mind it’s meant to support. Early theories about this process was precisely why my early work on conceptual toxins received so much funding – we needed to have some kind of fail-safe.”
“Did you ever participate in any of those complete demon experiments?” Chloe’s tone was as mild and uninterested as she could make it, and she kept her pen well away from her notebook.
Niirisu just smiled and shrugged. “While I’m always fascinated by novel experiments, I’m afraid I’m not one for puzzles. No, I’m afraid my work on conceptual toxins keeps me quite busy enough. For every one new toxin we discover, it seems other researchers discover three new consciousness types. The universe is larger than any of us can appreciate, Ms. Sharp, and all we’ve discovered so far are mere shadows. The more we learn, the more dangerous those shadows become. Humanity is an island under siege, and as our knowledge and more importantly our awareness grows we can no longer entrust our defense to polite disinterest from the rest of the universe.”
His voice was measured, but it held a quiet yet forceful urgency. Chloe shivered as, for the first time, she felt she caught a glimpse under the public-facing veil of ‘Alfred Niirisu, esteemed Professor’ – and prodding that veil any further could be dangerous. Chloe’s notebook snapped shut, and she stood up from the very comfortable leather chair. “I won’t keep you from your work any longer. Thank you for taking the time from your schedule, Professor.”
His response was as even as ever. “Of course. Best of luck on your investigation, Auditor Sharp.”
Despite the warm afternoon sun shining through the large windows, Chloe felt a chill as she descended the old wood staircase of the faculty building. Niirisu may not have directly prodded Eingopher to do anything, but that trace of intensity she’d seen leak through, and the urgency of his rhetoric – those hinted at something potent. They were the kind of influence that easily prodded others to radicalism. It would be too much to look into everyone Niirisu had taught, but Chloe added a postscript to her written notes reminding her to request a full investigation of any labs Niirisu was a major stakeholder in. In this case it might have been Eingopher lighting the fire, but Niirisu was close to the smoke, and it was only due diligence to make sure he wasn’t out there distributing matches.
****
After visiting her usual gym, Chloe set out for her usual jog. As usual, the physical exertion worked to steadily scrub away the frustrations of the day. As she ran, pushing one step ahead of the other, she let her attention wander to the leaves, still clearly visible on the edge of twilight – there was a faint tinge of autumn colour just beginning to touch the tips of the most eager trees. The evenings were getting colder, and it would soon be time to trade out her running shorts for pants. Her mind wandered, set to the steady beat of her feet into the ground, filled with the heady sensation of self-propelled speed, and faintly coloured by a growing sense of tiredness. Her mind raced ahead to her waiting bath, and afterwards, her warm couch, warm tea, and her waiting book. She was certain she’d be able to finish it tonight, which meant tomorrow she could visit her favourite bookstore to buy a new one. When she first started buying old physical books, rather than just reading on a tablet screen, she’d gotten a little overzealous, buying as if each bookstore she visited might burn down the next day. It had taken her a long time to work through that backlog, and by the time she did, she found the bookstores were still open and hadn’t burned down. From that point the urgency faded, and visiting an old bookstore and looking for a new book had become a comfortable weekly routine. Not for the first time, she reflected that if she continued her pace of reading, she’d soon need a larger apartment.
A sudden jolt of fear shot through her.
Instead of increasing her pace, she forced herself to stop, and as deliberately as possible looked ahead, to either side, and behind her. Her heart pounded. It felt like something was chasing her. Her surroundings were hardly reassuring – with the sun dipping over the horizon, the shadows among the dense bushes were growing dark - but there wasn’t anything she could see that would justify a sudden onset of panic. Another wave of terror crashed through her, and this time she couldn’t stop herself running. It felt like an eternity before she regained enough self-control to again stop, although it could scarcely have been more than a minute. Making sure to root her left foot solidly to one point on the ground, she spun around three times, then again looked behind her. Confirming her suspicions, three glowing, dripping red orbs were now plainly visible above the path behind her. She barely had time to register the fact before fear had her running again – a primal, animal fear that was surely what a rabbit felt when it noticed a fox running towards it.
The scenery of the park a blur around her, she certainly didn’t have time to be satisfied she had identified her assailant: it was a hunting sprite, a type red consciousness fragment, much like demons, except instead of a vague mass of worn, tattered thoughts, it was condensed hunting instinct. Scientists naturally had no shortage of disagreements as to their origin: whether they were an amalgamation of pseudo-minds from hunting animals on Earth, a hunting animal from a parallel dimension, or some kind of extraterrestrial impulse. The only two facts that were agreed on was they were extremely rare, and they were extremely dangerous. They’d never lay a hand on you, but the fear they created was so strong that once they latched onto someone, their victim would run until their body gave out and they died.
Even as she ran, Chloe’s mind was racing. Where could she run to that would be able to deal with a hunting sprite? Any of the city’s three main universities, certainly. And any number of corporate offices in the central district. The problem was none of these options were close. Even through the adrenaline, Chloe could feel her steps getting shakier. She’d already done a half-decent job of tiring herself out before the hunting sprite. Without much choice, she settled for Office 38, right on the edge of central district. On a good day she could make that run in 15 minutes or less, prodded on by the hunting sprite, no doubt she could get there even quicker. But the inescapable, crushing fear of being chased wouldn’t let her keep a moderate, reasonable pace. It would push her on at her absolute maximum. Would she make it in time? Would she have the presence of mind to explain what was going on when she did?
Just as suddenly as it had come on, the fear left.
Chloe couldn’t bring herself to stop entirely, but she could moderate her pace to a comfortable, steady jog while her thoughts caught up with her and her breathing leveled out. Why had a hunting sprite come after her? It was vanishingly unlikely that it was just random chance, a bit of bad luck. So was it deliberately sent to target her? By whom? And perhaps even more importantly, why had it left?
A rustle in the bushes ahead of her, some bright laughter, and two figures stepped out of an overgrown side path. She didn’t bother adjusting her pace until two sudden realizations hit her in quick succession. One: one of the figures was the priestess of the eclipse, laughing as if to make a mockery of the ephemeral dignity of her official corporate portraits. Portraits invariably accompanied by a warning to avoid contact as much as was politely possible. And two: while she was processing realization number one, there was a slight dip in the path she hadn’t noticed, meaning that rather than taking her next step from solid ground, she was instead trying to step on thin air. This quite naturally didn’t work, and gravity and her own momentum did the rest. She tumbled forward, a shot of pain searing through her knee as she landed, with a more delayed sting burning from her hands where she had scrapped them along the ground trying to stop her fall. As she waited a moment for the first waves of pain to subside, she saw the two figures had rushed over and were looking down at her with mutual concern.
“Hello, are you okay?” the priestess asked, the very image of neatness with her straight hair and cleanly pressed attire.
Her companion, a girl with messy dark hair and loose, pastel-coloured clothing, chimed up beside her with a voice like a middle-schooler, soft and almost insultingly innocent. “You, um, don’t look okay.”
Chloe struggled to get her breathing under control as her adrenaline returned, working overtime as it wrestled with her pain response. Still shaky with the aftereffects of fear and fighting down the sharp flood of pain from the fall, Chloe felt nearly at her limit, but she was resolute that she did NOT want to cry in front of strangers.
