What she saw was breakfast. She saw a pair of feminine hands with apricot-orange fingernails, wafting the steam from an attractively golden omelet. There was a green smoothie on the side.
At the same time, she smelled the mildew from her leaky roof. When the hands in her view partitioned the omelet with a fork and knife, Alicia's hands felt incorrectly empty.
This feeling of dissonance had become common for her lately. It was inevitable when using someone else's vision, someone miles away, while all her other senses were bundled up right where they were supposed to be. As if she were living two halves of different lives instead of a single, full one. Now that the school year was over, she was trying to make it normal and routine, but there was still a gradually rising vertigo the longer she kept her ability active.
Alicia watched as the Omelet and smoothie were pared down over time, gradually reduced to crumbs and bottom-cup residue. Partway through, a phone appeared on the rightmost edge of her vision. The person she was spying on had picked up a call.
She stared, trying to lipread. Depending on a person's facial structure, their lips would sometimes appear in their field of view when they talked, but she could only make out words like 'what' and 'wow,' words that brought the lips forward. The phone was gone before she could even guess what the call was about. Then the person's field of view began to travel through the halls of Lingard Mansion, this movement clashing with the rest of Alicia's senses, which all told her that she was standing still.
The person was Valerie Lingard.
There was always a chance Alicia had picked the wrong person's hair, but it hadn't happened in over a month. Not since the see-through plastic jewelry box she'd been using for storage had gone by the wayside. Now she used smaller individual containers, the kind you would use to store seasoning, which meant zero cross-contamination. Each one was labeled with a number, and each number corresponded to a separate document of god-tier names: 1. Vaughn Morgan, 2. Valerie Lingard, 3. Linette Lingard, etc.
The new system also had the benefit of being safer. A lot safer compared to her old one, enough that Alicia felt borderline embarrassed at herself. But the worse embarrassment was her previous impression of god-tiers, that they all had the same peak-level status, or that there wasn't much difference in the information you'd get between spying on a 6.2 or 7.1. It had likely wasted days of her time.
Alicia was making up for it now, at least, by watching the third-strongest living being in the sector.
Valerie's field of view stopped directly in front of a familiar vase of flowers. They were shaped like crimson sunflowers, but with spikey, bladelike petals that meshed into a jagged rosebud in the center. This time, the 'faces' of the flowers were pointed in the direction opposite from the windows, toward the inside of the mansion.
As Valerie had done the previous two days, she rotated the vase so that the flowers faced outward, toward the windows, and patted her hands together once all of them were aligned. Then the god-tier headed to the same room she usually did, the one that seemed to be a home office.
Previously, Alicia had watched Linette Lingard do the exact opposite with a flower vase. The clan matriarch had taken one with flowers that faced the windows and turned it so they faced the mansion's interior. Other members of the clan's inner circle had also engaged in the flower-turning ritual, and so far the tally was about a fifty-fifty split between those who mimicked Linette or Valerie.
It was objectively strange behavior, and it had baffled her for a while. More recently, Alicia was beginning to understand it. The initial, tempting explanation had been that god-tiers were all crazy enough to obsess over the alignments of flower vases, though she'd ruled it out because they only rotated ones with the same spiky crimson flower. Vases with other species were never touched. Another idea was that turning a vase unlocked some kind of secret door, but that whole concept was a fiction invented by spy movies.
No. She was pretty sure that the flower-turning was a hidden, disguised voting system. Probably, at the end of each day, the direction of flowers in a vase would count as a vote.
This wasn't an easy thing to think of, considering most people had no conception of what the word 'election' meant. She only knew it because she'd been absorbing Meili's strangely expansive knowledge of niche government systems over the years.
Still, Alicia had evidence for the theory. Through spying and general internet rumors, she knew that Valerie and Linette were supposed to stand on opposite grounds in ideology and politics, with similarly powerful factions following them. Or maybe Linette's faction was also her husband's, because they both had levels of 7.3, if that was how it worked. Whatever the case, Linette and Valerie's consistently opposite 'voting' and the presence of two equally powerful 'voting blocks' lent confidence to her idea.
All of this left a question lingering in her mind, even as she tried to keep up with Valerie's hyper-efficient email-checking routine.
What exactly were they voting on?
***Beautiful***
Dear Valerie,
We hope that you are well.
As we have come to understand, your family is presently making an important decision. Though it should not be necessary, we feel it is a reasonable precaution to remind you of the conditions of our agreement, namely that the ongoing 'election' in your family obligates you to act as outlined in section 2.1 of your signed promise statement. This includes, among other actions, a full and honest effort in bringing your family onto the correct path.
We understand that a number of influential, misguided individuals may become obstacles. We look forward to your success regardless. Within your sector, those who possess both the power and motivation to contest you are few.
Note that we assisted with your ability development for this scenario precisely.
Best,
The Central Authorities
***Beautiful***
In my previous life, teachers and school assemblies had made an effort to engrave tropey one-liners in young minds from K through twelve. 'Everyone has something to offer' was a nationwide classic, and at my particular school the principal liked 'the only person limiting you is yourself' and 'It's not about how you start, it's how you finish.' If I really tried, there was a good chance I could pull a full dozen from my head.
I'd found these lines annoying and infantilizing as a child, like a lot of other kids. But in my new life, I'd started wanting to hear them, wanting to read them on posters when I walked through a school hallway. I missed living in a world where they were treated as halfway true.
Worse, even among the one-liners, it felt like some of them translated particularly badly. If I were to pick one out, it would be 'put yourself in the other guy's shoes.' Unless the other guy had a level within a few points of yours, their shoes were categorically different from yours, and you knew it by the second grade. The saying was ostensibly a request that you try to understand the perspective of someone different from yourself, but it might as well have been asking you to mangle yourself into wearing a horse's horseshoes.
(And it was no small wonder, really, that I couldn't find the phrase on any posters.)
None of this had stopped me from making a mouth-slip and using it to describe Alicia's Vision Sharing, back when I'd been a few months into my second life. "That's really cool! You can really put yourself in someone else's shoes like that?" She'd looked at me like I was somehow crazy, and the memory had entrenched itself in my mind ever since, as an early lesson on how different my second life was going to be.
Now the memory was top of mind again, the day after I left the hospital, as I opened my apartment door to find Alicia waiting in the shoe room and trying on my heels.
I felt a burst of surprise, then questioning, about how and why she was all the way here in New Boston. Then it struck me that it was June sixteenth, meaning school was finally out, and that I'd texted her a virtual key so she could 'come over whenever.' The shock bled out for amusement and gratitude as I reached out to hug her.
"Alicia! I'm so glad you're here." I pulled away when I noticed her teetering. "How are you?"
The shiny black pair on her feet was slightly oversized on her, and she easily kicked them off. "Fantastic." She smiled. "Ready to forget the school year and mooch off god-tier entitlement for a summer."
I looked down conspicuously.
"Better than ready," she amended. "Already started. Your shoe collection is so amazing that I want to blow my student account to fail at copying it."
I laughed and shrugged my shoes off.
"You can have half of them," I said. "I'm not attached. The really expensive ones are from getting peer pressured by older, stronger interns into being a snob."
Alicia paused for a bit, considering. "I wish, but you know I'd get robbed." Then she mimed binoculars with her hands, looking around. "And where are the non-'really expensive ones,' then?"
I laughed again, feeling overly energized for what was the epilogue of a ten-hour workday. I started on a mental list of things to do in the city without my better judgment's input. Meanwhile, Alicia was putting my heels back in their original place.
I noticed that her two suitcases were still in the shoe room, so I took the larger one with me and headed inside, beckoning her to come.
"You want a small tour?" I asked, pivoting around to her when we made it to my bedroom. "I'm guessing you didn't explore."
She shook her head, staring through the open bathroom door at the shower and tub.
"More like a bath and a change of clothes." She pulled at her blue jeans and fidgeted with her top. "And dinner, I guess, if you haven't had any-"
I nodded. "I'll grab you a robe and order something."
"-And you still have to tell me about what happened to you a few days ago," she continued, "because that five-minute call was not enough. I also think we should talk about the things I've been seeing through Valerie's vision. An explanation about who this John guy is would be nice, with how much I probably didn't catch through your texts, and then there's the internship. "
She stopped and squinted at me, at my clothes. I was still wearing my work outfit.
"I'm realizing this isn't much of a vacation for you," she said.
I nodded, detecting the shift in her tone. I occupied myself with searching for a bathrobe instead of examining her expression.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
There was a joke to be made, about how quickly Alicia had put herself in my shoes… or maybe a real observation, with how long she'd been seeing through other people's vision. I could also dump everything out in the open. The fact that I wouldn't have been able to stand myself if I took a real summer-long vacation, if I made no progress toward helping anything. How I couldn't help but think of the people at NxGen as inhuman.
"You should try out jacuzzi mode," was what I said instead, tossing a fuzzy bathrobe into her hands. Soon after, once the sounds of running water were at full blast in my bathroom, I spoke loudly through the door.
"It's really not, you're right! But I'm glad you're here!"
She shouted something back, something along the lines of "Thank me by ordering something good!" Still, I could hardly hear her over the dissonance – the dissonance of a conversation where it was possible to be genuine, when even half the truth had been excessive for so long.
***Beautiful***
Dear Valerie,
After careful consideration of your application, we have selected you as a subject of the aura modification procedure. Taking into account your body-enhancement passive, there is a minimal chance of adverse side effects, and our range of expectation is that the procedure will add one to three points to your current level of 7.3. More precisely, we expect a final level between 7.43 and 7.61.
To prepare for the procedure and minimize any unforeseen issues, we have attached a promise statement to this message, which you are expected to return a signed copy of. Mandated dietary guidelines and medications are included. You will need to follow them for at least three months prior to the operation, as well as for multiple years afterward. If you do not, and you experience complications, you will only have yourself to hold responsible.
As you may have already inferred, scientists employed by the North Atlantic Authorities invented this procedure. Yet there are no suitable individuals in their sector to undergo it (those of a satisfactory level with a passive that directly toughens the body), ultimately resulting in your involvement.
Your belonging to a different sector, regardless of your merits as a participant, has led to dissatisfaction surrounding your selection. Those who developed the procedure much preferred to choose an individual from the North Atlantic, and you should keep this in mind.
Regardless, heartfelt congratulations, and we wish you the best in the months to come.
Sincerely,
The Central Authorities
***Beautiful***
Even if my thoughts were a bit off-center, relaxing in my room and ordering food wasn't hard. I changed into comfortable pajamas and put a pair in my bathroom for Alicia. Two Mediterranean skewer platters had arrived by the time she was finished, one of which she quickly absorbed as compensation for her earlier airline lunch. Unappetizing airplane food was a constant in both my lives.
Meanwhile, I was satiated enough to eat slowly and talk through dinner. After going into detail about my encounter with my grandfather, the conversation shifted to Alicia wondering how it was possible that none of this information was available to the public. She had searched for articles on her phone during the trip, finding nothing, but a god-tier assaulting his granddaughter in front of a hundred eyewitnesses should have led to some kind of news story.
I had done the same thing the day after the incident, searching for news of myself. I'd been similarly confused at the time. So I'd asked the Authority Agent assigned to watch over me, Agent Rivera, about what was going on.
"There's no need to worry. This is essentially normal for a case like yours. When the initiator of an assault case is significantly stronger than the target, we take special measures to keep them safe. Say an elite-tier and a god-tier. That includes keeping everything unpublicized, to lower the chances that the initiator will be provoked into a second try."
This was the response. Then the agent went on about the vast literature of research and case studies that informed any decision to block the news, how he was proud of the effort they always put into making the right call. And he'd seemed fully genuine through it all. Like it had never crossed his mind that public knowledge was half the punishment for a crime, a punishment those with high levels would rarely get. Given the policy, my guess was that maybe one in ten assaults by high-tiers were broadcast, which seemed like an awfully good way to influence people's perceptions.
(Naturally, I had chosen not to speak my mind to a member of The Authorities. I'd acted relieved at the news, instead, that nobody would know how badly I'd been destroyed).
"Wait a second," Alicia wiped her mouth, only a few stray pieces of skewer left on her platter. "Didn't you say there were like a hundred people in the cafe?"
I nodded. "Somewhere around there."
"If they can really hide things with that many testimonies, then…"
"For all we know," I said, "some god-tier had a violent breakdown in New Phoenix or New Atlanta or some other city last week. And nobody has any way to know unless they were there to watch."
"Or they're a member of The Authorities," Alicia agreed. "But that's not what I was thinking about. I mean, doesn't our sector news do stories all over the continent, in other sectors?"
I nodded after some thought. Our stations had covered the aftermath of an earthquake on the West Coast Sector just a few months ago. We'd sent reporters. Some of them were people whose faces I recognized, people who usually covered the local news.
"I think so?" But I wasn't sure what the big deal was.
"Okay, so then the North Atlantic Authorities block your news story – but how do they know that the Great Lakes Authorities won't put it out? Or any sector, really, because I don't think we're that unique?"
I blinked in surprise. She was right that every other sector probably had media no less 'outward-looking' than ours. Somehow, this wasn't a point I'd considered, literally at all.
"Blocking a story seems kind of pointless if everyone in the sector next door knows about it," she continued. "There's still word of mouth."
"They probably all have a similar amount of news to hide," I said. "Because they have similar-sized populations. Maybe they signed deals of equal secrecy. Like if there's an internal story you want to block off, other sectors will follow you, but in exchange, you have to do the same whenever it's their time."
Alicia scrunched up her face, meaning she was thinking. She stared into the distance.
My dining table was a surfboard-shaped oval of marble, situated directly beside a huge rectangular window with a view of city lights and street traffic. I pushed my platter to her side of the surfboard. The remaining lamb was still warm in its tinfoil, and she took a bite absently, chewing on it while she thought.
"I don't know why we would even think of them as separate sectors, then," Alicia said.
I felt startled, hearing such a strong statement out of the blue.
"What do you mean?"
Alicia glanced down at my platter, poking at it with a fork. "Well. We put a boundary line between two things when they're significantly different. So this is lamb. And I was having beef, and we think of them differently because they are different. They taste different, for one. They come from different animals."
She looked back at me.
"If all the sectors are going to be lock-step in what news they block and don't block, then they're basically the same. Isn't it more accurate in practice to think of them that way?"
I instinctively rejected the argument.
"In that one aspect, maybe," I disagreed. "But I think they're different in other ways, like how there's a department of transportation in the Great Lakes Authorities and a separate department of transportation with The Authorities here. And these departments have different people making decisions. In the South Atlantic, I know the trains only use a single level of seats, no matter what your ability level is."
"But New Toronto doesn't use the two-level system either," Alicia pointed out immediately. "Wellston clearly does. So that's something two cities in the same sector can already differ on. Is there any real difference in laws between sectors, ones you couldn't find between two places in the same sector? Not that I would be the best person to ask, but I don't know if there's even a good example."
It seemed obvious to me that there would be something. But ten seconds passed, then twenty, and I was still blanking. It was suddenly clear that this wasn't an argument Alicia was making out of the blue, or on pure instinct. I felt myself frown.
"I'm sure I could find something if I did some research," I said weakly.
"Maybe." She shook her head. "But I don't think so."
There was a heavy-feeling pause.
"I've been thinking about this a lot recently," she elaborated. "Like, instead of treating sector one as lamb and sector two as beef, the better analogy is that each sector is just another piece on the skewer." She held up the last skewer at eye level. "So maybe Piece A is a little different from Piece B on average; it has a bit more fat in general. But none of the sections of Piece B would feel out of place if you stuck them on Piece A, and vice Versa. They're not different in a real, substantial way."
I couldn't help but think it was a clear analogy. Not overtly outlandish, even when it should have been, as with any comparison between governing structures and food. Then, after sitting with the idea a while longer, I realized we weren't at the end of this line of thought. What did imply – that the geographically diverse sectors of North America, all with presumably unique industries and interests, had governments as indistinguishable as two pieces of skewer? She'd been looking for the chance to ease me into a harsher truth.
"Alicia- you've been using hairs from members of The Authorities, right?" I asked. "I know you have at least one from Valerie Lingard, and you said there was important information with her. When you were watching, was there- did you see something that made you think…"
I stopped. She gave me a meaningful look.
"I think we can save it for tomorrow," she said. "I want to watch a movie tonight. It would be a waste if we didn't use your literal wall of a TV."
I stood from my seat, agreeing gladly. I decided a little laziness was okay and left the cleanup for later.
From the big couch in my living room, Alicia and I took turns making fun of movie trailers, all of them written in that "Shoot 'Em Up" style where they consisted of a single long fight scene – except the creators took themselves entirely seriously. We struggled for a while to choose one. Then we resorted to reviews and decided jointly on a movie with a reviewer consensus of "Thought-provoking but slightly boring."
Later, in the middle of a Heat Grenade vs Freezing Arrow shootout, my gaze wandered to Alicia's legs. They were bare. But I almost expected to see my heels on her feet, with how well she'd put herself in my shoes.
***Beautiful***
The water boy came in with refreshments, slowly making his way around the silent table. But the title didn't quite fit, because the man was eighty, with children and grandchildren he cared deeply for, the precise reason they had selected him. It was a good thing, really, or an example of a good thing, because eighty-year-olds with nothing to care about had a wider range of potential actions available to them. Too much unpredictability.
It contradicted her current feeling, though, having a waterboy of advanced age. So she blinked and burned him to ash. Then the ash burnt, too, out of existence, until there was no trace of the man who'd once carried the tray of refreshments, and there might as well have never been a man in the first place.
From across the table, [Charon] shifted slightly behind his mask, and the tray disappeared before it could hit the ground. Its contents were all distributed in space as they would have been, including a small bowl of fried plantain strips that appeared between her hands.
"What was so wrong with him?" asked [Charon].
"His age," she answered. "We should have a boy, a real one. Too young to understand much of anything."
Several people around the table nodded.
"We ought to start, but a fine idea. I'll leave you to take care of it, [Mnemosyne]."
The masks made it take slightly longer to know who'd spoken, but it was [Helios], sitting at the head of the table. She frowned, finding that her title sounded slightly awkward from his lips – a reason why she preferred her real name, Anne, but anonymity was the point. The reason even [Helios] only had the title of a niche prehistorical god still escaped her, however.
"To begin," he said, "we have a singular issue with a significance level greater than 7.5. If you would all press the nose bridge of your masks for the briefing…"
She did, and parts of her previously see-through mask darkened with opaque letters, which would disappear if she commanded. She smiled and started reading. Not long ago, the case with the highest significance level was saved for last, resulting in foot-dragging and grumbling by the end of the meeting. It was much better now.
"The key factors in this case," said [Helios], "are not the individuals directly involved. The aggressor is only a 6.1, and the girl, his granddaughter, has approximately the same potential. But it was a public assault, witnessed by hundreds of eyes, in a city among the largest in the world. Further, the main source of significance is the girl's status – she is both affiliated with the Lingard clan and an employee at NxGen."
"NxGen being one of the groups we are currently backing for Aurology research," [Charon] added. "There were recently some successes in artificial ability development. Valerie Lingard, 7.3 to 7.5… still quite weak, of course, but surpassing her original potential."
"Precisely," said [Helios]. "The main concern is that those 'in the know' will perceive the incident as a simultaneous protest against the Lingard clan and NxGen. Particularly in the Great Lakes Sector, some see what they've done as an immoral breaking of what was previously a universal ceiling: an individual's inborn ability potential. And there are naturally those who universally oppose the partnership of powerful entities across Sector lines. Left unhandled, the assault may become the spark to light the pre-existing fuel of discontent."
The general briefing concluded with that, and they moved to an initial brainstorming of potential response actions. Most popular among them was a simple 'friendly warning' using the pretense of the girl's connection to the Lingard Clan – one they would dictate to the West Coast Authorities, who would then send it to the girl's grandfather. No need for excessive action when cowing a 6.1 into inaction. This was followed, as always, by a brief period of contemplation in preparation for a final vote.
During the period, [Mnemosyne] realized that the phrasing [Helios] used during the briefing was odd. 'Perceive the incident as a protest' implied that it was something else.
"Was it not a protest?" she asked. "That had been my impression. Other than the girl, I don't believe there is anyone else with a clear and current connection to both the Lingard clan and NxGen."
"Right, exactly." / "Quite the coincidence." Two of the others agreed.
[Helios] nodded in response, seeming oddly amused behind his mask, a rare occurrence.
"The motivations were nothing higher than petty, clan-related drama," he said. "Still, I would encourage anyone curious to watch the confiscated footage. I found it thoroughly entertaining."