Chapter 10

Jeeves’ idea to lie was a masterstroke of subtlety. Well, to be more accurate, the way he correctly read Marco, and used that to hide the truth was nothing short of genius. Considering that Jeeves was me, I was more than happy to take that compliment.

There was no way around Marco finding out my city had been unlocked; the question was simply one of hiding Charlotte’s involvement in it. In the seconds that it took Marco to cross the room, sit at the kitchen island and reach his hand out for mine; the butler-like representation of my own conscious had devised the perfect plan, although admittedly, most of the corresponding dilated time in my bunker had been spent with him calmly explaining it to me.

Jeeves had reminded me of Marcos’s initial reaction to my awakening. The rush of power that had almost scared my ‘mentor,’ or at least taken him back a fair bit. His idea was simply to prompt something of a similar reaction again. Letting him see the vastness of scale of my city, especially when compared to his own, we hoped, would distract him from asking too many probing questions.

Those frantic, panicked few minutes had all led up to this. Marco staring wide-eyed up at my wall, his mouth opening and closing like a very surprised-looking landed carp. His eyes kept flicking back to me, in a mix of astonished disbelief and almost reverent awe. His expression reminded me of a rabbit on a late-night, pitch-black country road; who thought the best way of dealing with a set of oncoming headlights, was to just stare at them until one of them gave up and stopped.

We had appeared in the meadow between our cities on what felt to me, like a gorgeous summer day. We had been orientated so that Marco had appeared with his back to my city, and my back to his. Meaning there were a few brief moments, before he turned around and saw the solid marble-esque walls jutting up into the heavens. He hadn’t said more than a few muttered syllables since then.

I didn’t need my powers to see that what he was looking at was on a scale so much larger than he had expected that it had robbed him of words. Leaving his thought processes reeling in a futile attempt to comprehend, let alone articulate, what was in front of him. For my part, I was just enjoying the feeling of the sun on my face. It was almost October, we were in the UK; we hadn’t seen the sun in weeks!

The new story was simple, and a lot of it was based largely on what Charlotte had explained to me. on that first trip to my Tron-like city all those weeks ago. My maturity and my education meant - so the story went - that I had a fairly decent idea of how the brain worked. Especially in relation to its control over bodily functions. When I couldn’t find anything in my bunker related to breathing or heartbeat, or any other primary bodily function for that matter, I realized that the office itself was, as Charlotte had called it, simply a manifestation of my control over myself, and wasn’t actually anything to do with my actual brain at all. Therefore, there had to be more. The door in my bunker that led out onto the balcony over my city had suddenly appeared, and there was my city. A few months - in mindscape time, at least - of wandering around it had given me a pretty good idea. of what everything was and how it worked. I had called the cities a lesson in metaphors when Charlotte had shown me around hers. It was a phrase I had repeated to Marco, with the slight caveat that my mental maturity and basic understanding of how the body worked; meant that they were not lost on me. I would just have to remember to act surprised that his city was so different from mine, when the time came.

Amazingly, Marco had bought it.

What he was struggling with was more than simply the scale of things. Take the walls, for example. Marco’s city was pretty similar in size, layout, technology, and - for lack of a better word- strength to Charlotte’s. His walls were more or less the same height. But a wall was more than just a measurement of how tall it was. A tall wall was good for not allowing people to climb over it, or see past it. But the thickness of the wall determined how strong it was, and its resistance to someone trying to go straight through it. The thicker it was, the harder it was to break down.

What it came down to was a compromise. An Evo only had a certain amount of mental power dedicated to the security of their city, and that was split between the height and strength of their walls. The split was not always even. I could see, for example, although I couldn’t even begin to know how, that Marco’s wall, although roughly the same height as Charlotte’s, was significantly thicker. From that, I could deduce that my Mentor was more powerful than my strawberry-blonde friend, albeit not by much.

The issue of scale that Marco was gawking at, was more than just the fact that my walls were several orders of magnitude higher and thicker than his. Just like I could, he was able to sense that the actual strength of my defenses was even greater than what he was looking at, thanks to the crisscrossing network of inner walls that he could feel, even if he couldn’t actually see them. In terms of strength, I imagine it would be what the sailors in a single ancient Viking longboat would feel, if they were confronted by a full US carrier battle group.

It was simply beyond his ability to comprehend.

And yes, I was feeling more than a little smug about it.

“I ... Um ... That’s ... That’s pretty impressive.” He finally managed to say after more pensive silence than either of us was comfortable with.

“Wait til you see the view from the top” I smiled back.

“Oh, no, that won’t be nec... Porca Puttana!!” A comical-sounding yelp fell from his lips as I clapped him on the shoulder and, as I had with Charlotte a few weeks earlier, simply willed us to the top of the walls. Marco’s panicked expletive in his native Italian tongue was a lot more satisfying than I am willing to admit.

I couldn’t tell you why, but I loved being on top of my walls. The view wasn’t quite as breathtaking as it was from the balcony in my bunker. There were far higher points around the city, all of which were accessible. But to me, the top of the walls seemed to have that perfect balance of height and distance.; High enough to get the view, and far enough away from what I would call the center of my city, to be able to take in the full-scale of the metropolis, without having to move my head too much from side to side. The balcony, by contrast, was much higher, but you had to physically circle the monolithic building it was wrapped around to see all of the city. It lacked the panoramic perspective that I had, so far, only found on my walls. I had grown up on movies that always had that same scenic overlook of Los Angeles, taken from high up on Griffin Park, it was a view that reminded me of the one that was before me now.

I arched my back a little, sucking in a deep, refreshing lung full of air, frowning momentarily as a soft breeze whispered around the skin of my face. Of all the time I had spent in my city, I could never remember there ever having been wind before. I shrugged it off as something to think about later as I turned my attention back to Marco, who, I suddenly realized, didn’t share my comfort at being this high up. He was clinging to one of the crenellations as if his life depended on it.

“Not ... err ... Overly comfortable with heights?” I asked, with an arched eyebrow and a barely hidden smirk.

“I don’t have much of a fear of heights,” he coughed, as he made a valiant display of standing upright. “I do, however, have a pretty profound fear of the sky ... and potentially falling out of it.”

“Ah.” I chuckled. “It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop when you hit the ground.”

“Precisely” He nodded with a visible gulp. “Talking of being on the ground, would you mind?”

I chuckled and nodded, putting my hand back on his shoulder, and, with a single thought, we were suddenly a few miles away in one of the plazas. The markedly more relaxed Marco, with his feet now on solid ground, immediately started taking in his surroundings. Wandering aimlessly ... and silently ... around the plaza first, and then into the streets and tree-lined avenues that branched away from it. I followed behind quietly.

It was a very different experience from the one I had shared with Charlotte. A small smile crept onto my lips as I felt the ghost-like echo of her hand in mine as her eyes, as Marco’s were doing now, followed the motes of light as they flashed by overhead. Zipping off to wherever motes of light zipped off to, to do whatever motes of lights did when they got there. He marveled at the statues of my major life events in the plazas - I silently reminded myself to keep him well-the-fuck away from the likeness of Charlotte on the other side of the city ... He stopped, awe-struck and scratching his thick main of jet black hair, as he craned his neck to stare up at the enormous buildings that loomed over the street. As with any tall building, you have to be pretty far away from them to be able to appreciate the full size of them. But Marco didn’t seem to let that stop him. Standing and staring for many long minutes as if trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

The main difference between Marco and Charlotte, however, was that of experience. If I understood Marco’s role within the Conclave correctly, it was his job to awaken new members and then, eventually, help them to unlock their cities. That meant he had actually been inside a hell of a lot of them. Whereas Charlotte seemed awe-struck by the size and splendor of my metropolis, Marco just seemed oddly curious. As if nothing he was seeing was new, just a bit different ... and a lot bigger. Charlotte had, for example, been utterly fascinated by the motes of light, going as far as trying to chase one to see where it went. Finally giving up after a few city blocks, before jokingly declaring that she didn’t trust anything that could move that fast without an engine. Marco had watched them for a while, maybe even shown a little interest in them, and then went on about his business as if they weren’t there. He had been infinitely more interested in the residential buildings and the statues in the plazas. He had even paid more attention to the trees lining the avenues, than he had to the things I would have thought he would have found more impressive. But either way, I let him wander in relative quiet.

Throughout the day, however, I started noticing a few oddities that I had never experienced with Charlotte. First, there was the wind. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that there simply hadn’t been any on my previous visits. It’s not like we were actually outside; we were literally in my head. Whereas my equivalent of the sun had the obvious function of providing light and warmth, the wind seemed disturbingly out of place. But what was more disconcerting was that the ghosts in my city, the spectral forms of various people who had made an impact on my life. Those who had helped shape my personality, would stop and watch Marco for a little while; a frown on their darkening faces, before begrudgingly being sent on their way by whatever forces governed their movements.

They had barely acknowledged Charlotte at all, and they rarely, if ever, seemed to pay any attention to me. They didn’t seem hostile towards him, but it was more than simple curiosity. It was like they were ... keeping an eye on him, for lack of a better term.It would have been impossible to bring it up to Marco without cluing him in to the fact that he wasn’t the first person, other than me, to have wandered my city. I would normally have asked Jeeves, but that was another secret I wasn’t quite willing to share yet either. For all I was supposed to know, that is how they would react to anyone. Flashes of the violently attacking crowds from the movie Inception kept popping into my mind, but for the time being, the ghosts seemed satisfied with just watching him, albeit suspiciously so.

I had let my mind wander as I followed behind Marco, letting him examine and wander as he needed. The dilation of time between my mind, and the real world, was something that I had started to grow accustomed to. Even going as far as being able to roughly estimate the amount of time I had spent in the mindscape. At a rate of one minute of real-world time translating to about forty-five minutes in my city and my bunker, I knew I had time to spare before having to get ready for my date with Olivia. Even so, I was beyond bored as the five real-world minute mark came and went, before Marco finally dropped himself onto a bench in a plaza, a few miles away from the one we had started in.

I glanced over at the statue, smiling to myself at the visage of myself in a hospital bed and Becky riding me frantically. Her face forever twisted in orgasmic pleasure, as my hands mauled her heavy breasts, her hair in the process of bouncing wildly around her shoulders, with her head tilted back to stare endlessly into the clear blue skies.

God, even her statue was beautiful.

“Your city is quite remarkable,” Marco finally said after hours of silence. “In all my years of doing this, I have never seen anything quite like it.”

“Really?” I replied, impressing even myself with the performance of faux surprise. “How so?”

“Well, for a starter, the size of it is much bigger than anything I have seen before, enormously so.” His eyes continued to wander over the skyline in the distance. “And not just your defensive walls or the actual size of the city, but the individual buildings as well. You see,” he went on when I simply frowned at him, gesturing for him to continue, “you have obviously worked out that each building has a function. The hospital for health, the library for the storage of knowledge, and so on. What you may not have realized, with no real point of comparison, is that those buildings are not usually located centrally in a normal person’s city. Their distance from the city center, along with their size is dictated by their importance to that person’s life. Yours are dotted around all over the place with no real pattern, and they are all sized as if they are the most important aspect of your character. In an unusual sort of way, that sort of makes sense for an adult. Having been fully developed and possessing a complete understanding of the relevant parts of yourself, would negate any function of their placement.”

He paused for a moment, then continued,

“Children may not value a good work ethic, for example, so their foundries would grow over time. But by the time our kind reaches maturity, our cities are more or less the same as they will be for the rest of our lives. Barring something like, say, an accident or illness that would make the hospital more important, or a new profession that would require a lot more learning. Incidentally, this rigidity in our city structure is also why things like languages are a lot easier to learn when you are young.”

“O ... kay...” I said after a suitably long pause from him. “So, your city does not look like this?”

Marco laughed, “Not even close. Your city is much more ... modern looking than mine. It’s a difficult concept to explain, the way our cities look doesn’t really have much of a function. A hospital that looks like it belongs in the middle ages, is no more or less effective than one that looks like yours. It’s more to do with how you identify with the world around you.”

I’m not going to pretend I was following, either. A position made perfectly clear by the look on my face.

Marco paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to put this into words. “Okay, firstly, do you remember when we were in the bunkers, I said that I couldn’t see yours, that I could only see mine? Well cities are not like that, obviously, what you see is what i see. But the variations between cities are massive. I have seen people with cities that look like ancient Rome, Medieval London, Renaissance Milan, and Industrial New York. I have seen ones that look no different than the towns or villages that a person grew up in. One young lady, many years ago, had a city that looked like it was an Elven village sucked right out of Lord of the Rings.”

“At first,” He continued, “I thought that it was something to do with power levels. And although the
size of a city and its buildings most certainly are illustrations of power. But what they physically look like is more a process of how your mind relates to the world. The era you were raised in has a big part to play in it, but even then, that’s not all there is. So your city, for example, is not just modern; it is futuristic. I would imagine that is based largely on your work with computers. Always looking forward to the next thing you can design, or build, in the hopes of pushing progress forward. Your city’s appearance is ... and I know this isn’t going to make much sense ... is almost like your own subconscious’s idea of how you would want a city to look like., But still heavily based on the realities that you cannot imagine being different. For example, I have noticed there doesn’t seem to be any water here. I was born in the mountains; I didn’t see the sea until I was an adult. So water, the ocean, always held a deep, almost reverent appeal for me, so there are canals and a lake in my city. I was brought up when the technology we take for granted today was nothing short of a miracle. To you, it would look almost archaic, but that is how I wanted a city to look when I was a child. You, being an adult, and having a better idea of where the world is going than I had when my city was formed ... Came up with this.” he swept his arm around the plaza with a smile.

“So no big surprises then” I smiled, somewhat disappointed that he hadn’t shared the same reaction as Charlotte.

“Oh God, plenty! Your walls are ... shit, they are colossal! I have never seen anything even close to that before, nor have I seen internal defenses quite so elaborate. Your buildings are enormous, and although, in a few instances, I have seen one or two in an individual city that have come close. In terms of size, I have never seen a city where all of them are. And the ones that were large in others’ cities, were often a result of some pretty serious childhood trauma. But what has surprised me most are those.” He gestured behind me to one of the residential structures that line the street.

“Errr yes, it’s an apartment building. I’m not following.” That part was true. Not even Charlotte had known their function.

“Are you sure?” He smiled as if relishing the moment of finally getting to teach me something. “Then who lives there?”

I squinted for a moment, looking back at the building. As obvious as it suddenly seemed, that question had never even occurred to me.

“They are not apartment buildings,” He grinned after I didn’t answer. “I have only seen them a few times before, never that big and certainly not this many of them but They are what we call ‘placeholders’ ... They represent your mind’s ability to adapt, grow, and change.” Both of us were staring at one of the non-descript buildings that, now that I thought about it, were everywhere in my city. They took up the vast majority of space within the sprawling metropolis. “It’s an evolutionary trait that most of our species has lost over the eons, but the ability to adapt is one of the hallmarks of what our people call “The Sovereign Caste.” he finished.

I blinked a few times, as much for my own benefit as for his. “You are going to have to run that by me again.”

Over the course of the next hour or so, Marco told me about the Conclave. Things I mostly already knew after my time with Charlotte. Having heard about their organization from a member of a group opposed to them. It surprised me to find that Marco’s account of the Conclave’s history matched, pretty much exactly, with Charlotte’s. My strawberry-blonde friend had neither embellished nor underplayed anything. There were a few details that, given the Sect’s split from the Conclave, she probably wasn’t aware of. But for the most part, their stories matched. What was equally surprising, was that Marco seemed to be completely honest about the Sect too. The impression he gave off when talking about them, was not one of hostility or mistrust, but something akin to regret. The split had happened before his time, despite his immense age, but it was like he was carrying around the collective grief at the loss of their members from the rest of the Conclave.

I honestly expected, as I had seen countless times during my ‘human’ life, for one side to blame or villainize the other. But it was as if neither of them even bothered with trying. They gave the facts of what happened without seeming to have any sort of prejudice or bias ... It wasn’t only surprising, it was oddly refreshing.

What he told me, that Charlotte apparently wasn’t aware of, was the changes in the Conclave’s political structure that came about as a result of the Schism. The Archon, the leader of the Conclave, was redefined as a position that would be served for life. The constant changing of this post when someone more powerful was brought in - along with the corresponding shifts in political focus - had been blamed for a lot of the inner-political turmoil that was ultimately held liable for the schism. A new Archon was anonymously voted in by the members of the next three ranks below it. This was done after the rules had been changed, ruling out the possibility that this law had been altered for the gain of one person. The Sovereign Caste, as he had called it, was the name given to the Newly established rank immediately below the Archon. All of whom were actually more powerful than the man himself, and would have replaced him under the old rules.

The Archon, a man simply known as Thomas, had made his share of political enemies in the early days of his reign, by insisting on a policy of peaceful co-existence with the Sect. A few of the lower-ranked members, feeling a deep sense of betrayal, had simply chosen to ignore him. A rogue faction within the Conclave, including the former Archon, had taken it upon themselves to go to war with the Sect, and had hunted them down with ruthless and merciless zeal.

This part, although from a significantly different perspective, tied into what Charlotte had told me about the Conclave viciously attacking the Sect in the years after the Schism. She and her people had assumed that the end of that war had come about due to Inquisitor attacks on the Conclave. Although this was partially true, the reality; at least according to Marco, was that this rogue faction was stamped out with a measure of overwhelmingly violent force, a force that the organization had never used against its own members. Killing one of their own was against the highest of all laws, and despite the members of the Sect having left the Conclave, they were still members of the same species. This faction, in the eyes of the rest of the Conclave, were serial murderers, and an imminent threat to the survival of the species. They were treated as such.

In a time when the death penalty was still used in almost every country on earth. Each and every single member of this rogue faction was ruthlessly hunted down, captured, drained of their powers, and then executed.

Marco spoke about the Sect in the same way someone would talk about a family member you had argued with; you may be hurt, you may be disappointed, you may feel let down, but they were still family. Even though he hadn’t even been born at the time of the schism, it was as if he held the collective sorrow and regret for the loss of former brothers and sisters within him. Which, in a manner of speaking, was exactly the case.

“But anyway...” He finished with what looked to be a genuinely sorrowful smile. “The political realities are what they are, as much as many of my brethren would like to change that. As for you, I can guarantee that your acceptance into the Conclave, given the power of your abilities, is pretty much a no-brainer if you wish to join us.”

“Wait ... If? I got the impression that after your help in awakening me that it was expected I would join, that you were doing this as a means to recruit me,” I replied with a confused frown.

“Yes, back in the old days, before the new rules, you would have been right.” He smiled, “but the awakening and your training have nothing to do with recruitment. Of course, we would be more than happy to have you join.”

“So ... why then?”

“Why have we helped you?” He asked, waiting for me to nod before answering. “That goes back to the threats I warned you about before. Normally we don’t talk about things like self-defense for a few more meetings, due to a child’s age and the stress that these processes can inflict on a young mind. But again, we can speed that part up and deal with that during your next lesson. But to answer your question, we aren’t able to reach and awaken as many of our kind as we would like. Those who are not reached, or those who choose not to join us, are more or less defenseless if they are attacked. After suffering too many losses over the years, it was decided that we would give as many of our people a fighting chance as possible.”

“I see,” I said slowly, pondering his answer. I had to admit, this was not the Conclave I had come to expect after talking to Charlotte. I was more than a little intrigued. “So, what now?”

“Well, that’s simple. I will step up your training. I will come back in a few weeks to talk you through things like intraspecies communication...” I frowned at that, prompting him to clarify. “How we exchange knowledge and memories with each other without violating things like privacy.”

“Ah, okay ... Go on.”

“After that, maybe during the same session, we will start talking about self-defense and combat. That will last a while, though, even with your age, that is a skill that our members spend decades of their lives honing. Then, depending on if you have joined the Conclave, your training will revolve largely around your position.”

“I feel like you are beating around a very large bush here, Marco,” I said with an arched eyebrow after he had finished.

He laughed to himself, that infectious, beaming, disarming smile was as bright in my city as it had been in the hospital all that time ago. “Fair point. You want to know if I am going to offer you a place in the Conclave. I am not sure you are in much of a position to make that decision yet, though. Most of us are awakened and start our training before we are teenagers, then are offered positions in the Conclave when we become adults. Obviously, you’re already an adult...”

“So I’m told,” I interjected with a smile.

Another laugh spilled from his chest. “That clearly changes a lot, but...” He paused and thought for a moment, his eyes wandering back over the skyline of my city, before finally coming to some kind of a decision. “I’ll tell you what,” He offered. “Most recruits, by the time it comes to make their decision, have grown up around, or at least with a fair amount of involvement with, the Conclave. They know quite a few people there, it helps inform their decision for good or for ill. In many cases, including mine, those people form something of a second family, but that is something that may be lost with your accelerated timeline.”

“I feel the overwhelming urge to wait for a ‘but’”

“But ... We do have one of our quarterly gatherings not too far from here in a week’s time. All the members and older recruits in this part of the country come for a little get-together. Nothing formal, just an excuse to socialize and catch up with friends outside the more rigid inner structure of the Conclave. Why don’t you come along, meet a few of the locals, and see how you feel then?”

“Yeah,” I said after a few moment’s thought. “That sounds like something I would be interested in. Send me the details, and I will make a point to come.”

“Excellent.” He beamed, clapping his hands together excitedly. “For now, though, I think our time is up...” He took one last long look around the city. “Truly remarkable,” he smiled to himself. Before existence faded away around us, and I found myself staring at him across the kitchen counter, before he said his goodbyes and promptly left, a beaming smile on his face.

The five or so hours in the mindscape had taken less than ten minutes in the real world.

I chuckled to myself and got on with some chores, while I waited for an appropriate time to start getting ready.

It had been arranged, earlier in the week, that my date with Olivia wouldn’t exactly be a one-on-one situation. Knowing that neither Jimmy, nor any of her friends - who had apparently known about her crush on me before even Jimmy had noticed - would ever let us go alone. So we were going to make it a group thing. She would arrive with her friends, and I would arrive with mine, and at some point in the night, they would leave us alone to talk without making things too awkward. Not only did that take into account my pre-accident shyness, which she had no real way of knowing was a thing of the past. But it also accounted for the fact that our friends were going to, ‘accidentally’ and conveniently, show up whether we wanted them to or not. So we decided to just invite them along and see what happened. With my apartment upstairs, and hers just down the road, plus the fact that she had a car, there were places for us to go if we wanted somewhere quieter.