fugue_you

Fugue

9:30 AM.

Under the lid, under the clothes, under the false bottom, a 90 degree flip and a unit movement under the observable universe.

He had creatively deigned the foggy, flat plane that lay kata the Midworld ‘Fogland’.

Moving kata and ana was discrete. Unlike moving forward, up or left, one couldn’t move an arbitrarily small distance ana. More accurate to think R^3 x Q, than the academic intuition of R^4.

He knew topology. Moving a step forward in Fogland did not always correspond to a step forward in the Midworld. Sometimes it was a step to the left, sometimes it was twelve to the left, sometimes you’d fall from the sky. The hyperspace chest seemed to be an exception, as both ends seemed to move at the same speed and the same direction when one had force applied to it. This nonlinear relationship with movement wouldn’t really change the topology, but anyone who stopped describing the universe before speaking to the apparent nonlinear relationship between movement on different planes clearly wasn’t interested in the deeper reality. There was shockingly little documentation on what should be a revolutionary form of travel, or storage, or attack. He’d kept up on the writings from Northpoint, but he didn’t see anyone outside soulless academics talk about it.

Anisa had privately judged Northpoint to be a waste of time, that everything she learned had been previously taught by private tutors. But, even still, she had stuck around. Either even at that young age, she’d been concerned with the social faux pas of dropping out. Or she was lying to herself and others that there was nothing of value there. Then, she would’ve been lying about lying to Samantha… All the lying, the resource shuffling, the executing, it all just made things worse. Why bother playing.

Regardless, he’d been interested in Northpoint, and he attended. And he was impressed. He’d wanted it.

But no, it was given to Agarma, and he was given Penbarrow.

For the best, really.

Well, ultimately, no, for the worst, actually. But, until Samantha had attended, for the best.

He’d taught Samantha some of what he’d learned there. Geometry, algebra, farming techniques, how to speak to a crowd.

Geometry. Ugh. Geometry was broken when trying to draw paths between the Midworld and Fogland, as he was trying to do now.

So, he had the problem that, even if he knew exactly where Samantha was located in the Midworld, he couldn’t flip to grab her. He needed someone to point out where she was, send up a signal flare to him to show where that was in Fogland, and reach ana. Hence the Hendrik wand.

One of his early ideas had been somehow smuggling the chest into Samantha’s cell. Would’ve been a lot more straightforward. He could’ve randomly popped up, trying to find the cell, until he did. But alas, flipping was extremely thaumically taxing, and a decent human would exhaust their magic stores after using it twice. He could do it maybe once and a half.

Though, again, because movement was discrete, there was no ‘half’, so that’d just be rounded down to once. Though, the plan was to reach ana and pull someone kata, which kinda seems like twice, up and down, but ehhhhh it’s probably fine.

Another idea had been reaching into Agarma’s chest and pulling out his heart.

The ‘induced linearity’ from the chest portal was terrifying. Previously predictable Fogland paths could be overwritten. But, generally, it seemed that if permanent portals weren’t created or moved, existing paths would remain consistent.

Another plan had been to launch the chest over whichever building held Samantha, to induce a linear path which could be followed to grab her. But, the logistics of that were completely untenable. Just grab her, don’t overcomplicate it.

…There was the worry he’d pull out her liver instead of grabbing her whole body. But, well, generally, ana and kata pulls were such that discrete objects remained discrete. Except when he grabbed Cheesy Jr., but that was a fluke. She might lose her clothes, or maybe some loose hair, but if he got her, she’d be whole.

…

Why did he have to test all this? Why hadn’t the bank known about the possibility of people hopping 4D to steal from them? This should be what Northpoint does. It would’ve been, if he’d run it. Fucking Agarma.