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« on: February 29, 2016, 08:13:49 pm »
In restrospect, Merlin reflected with a stray thought in the half a moment before it was swept up by one of the greater currents running through his mind, I did rather tempt fate. Reminder to self for later, never do that again.
And then the morsel of unharnessed mindpower was gone, redirected by the wizard’s overarching subconscious to one of the many concurrent, extremely difficult tasks he was handling. Unlike most other times, there simply was no room for excess mental excersise.
And the day had been going so peacefully too.
An indeterminate but short amount of time ago…
Merlin nodded in contentment as he bustled through the small cavern where the crystals grew. They were growing well, and soon it would be time to harvest the power that was coruscating inside of them. He'd seen no imperfections as of yet, but with power as resonant and volatile as the crystals held, it was important to keep an eye on them. After all, it was his magic in them. Even though he'd started out with a small initial investment of power, the unique internal structure of the crystals enabled them to channel that power upon itself, transmuting itself and gaining energy from that transmutation, then using a fraction of that new energy to grow the crystal's matrix while the transmutation cycle continued. Of course, the crystals could only contain so much power and if they were left to build and build it, their structure would eventually collapse under the strain of containing it and the accumulated energy would be left to do whatsoever it so pleased, which would be a waste of time for so much effort. "Yes, yes," Merlin muttered as he gently placed his hand on the last group of crystals, "Everything looks to be going smoothly."
0.2 nanoseconds after he uttered those words Merlin realized the temptation to fate they presented, and in the next instant the surge happened.
Those with lesser minds would have been unable to perceive it happening, but Merlin saw, although was powerless to prevent, the painstakingly accumulated energy inside the crystals warp and grow and spasm far beyond the capability of their matrices to handle. Then, for no reason at all (though that was a reason in and of itself) they morphed into 7 kittens that seemed to have a slight purple tinge to their otherwise grey fur. Merlin stiffened as he stared at them, possibilities for this frankly catastrophic occurrence (years of work lost!) running though his mind at light speed. A security compromise? Some sort of fluctuation in what today’s scholars called the quantum field? An impossibly quick and fortuitous case of eye cancer causing his retinas to process the images of the crystals as these kittens? Almost as soon as these ideas sprang into existence they were discarded, because Merlin could feel what was happening on a level deeper than thought, inside his very soul. It was a surge of distorted reality beyond anything he’d ever felt, and his thoughts immediately sprang to Matthew.
His apprentice’s safety to verify, the status of the spy bug network to check on, the anomaly of these cats that needed to be tested to see if they were volatile or not, the supernatural materials Jules had provided him with, the possibility that this surge may have disconnected the shop’s metaphysical self from its anchors, possible effects this may have had on the security system, and more importantly who or what the fuck had caused such a catastrophic distortion such as to reach into a pocket dimension welded onto the main universe … all issues that needed to be dealt with, and none could be delayed in the case of catastrophic consequences if one of them were to turn out for the worst.
To an outside observer, the wizard initially made no movement, continuing to observe the kittens. Then he seemed to stand up from his own body – that is to say, he remained kneeling by the kittens while also simultaneously standing up from his kneeling position, resulting in two Merlins in the room. The standing Merlin turned around and ran to the door of the cavern, leaving himself carefully poking at the kittens. All that energy had to go somewhereMatthew and surveillance main destinations, can divert further along path.
As Merlin firmly closed the door behind him, another copy split off of himself and began running to the main stairwell, the shortest route to the room with the spy bug monitor in it. An observation about a perception-based movement system implementable in the mansion through extensive reality altering that would vastly improve convenience was tucked away into a far corner of his mind rather than waste valuable thought further contemplating it, and as Merlin fairly sprinted to the door that led to the shop, he was also fully aware of the testing of the kittens in the cavern and himself running to the spy bugs, as well as the multiple copies that split off of him and each other as they spread out to ensure the entire mansion was secure.
He was methodically searching through every compartment in the well-stocked kitchen the manse had, and finding no oddities.
He was ensuring all of his scientific, pseudo-scientific, and outright ritualistic equipment had not moved from their proper spots and finding all in order, thankfully.
He was holding one grey-lilac kitten aloft, gnarled fingers gently poking and prodding and extrasensory sight scanning to see if they possessed any significant anatomical differences from a common cat.
Ah damnation, the others were climbing up his robes. Stop it, you possible aberrations in reality. Those robes had sentimental value.
He was carefully going through Matthew’s room, being careful not to actually displace anything, not wanting to disturb the boy’s privacy more than absolutely necessary. Fortunately, no distortions were evident.
He was seating himself in the comfortable leather chair in front of the marble slab that displayed the activities of his network of surveillance insects – Noticing sensations still, good, means I’m not at my limit yet – and immediately viewing multiple feeds at once. What he saw was in line with his 70% worst predictions for what could have caused such an abnormality – locusts falling out of the sky like rain, probability going against itself and hundreds of people winning the lottery at the same time, old people’s dentures falling out as they grew new teeth and young children sprouting candy from their gums. All across the city a feeling of strange enticing wrongness pervaded the air, with an underlying sense of final defeat. Triage estimates indicated he couldn’t afford to assist with the mental devastation that would shortly be following such an event. Observation must be kept going to ensure no threats to the manse were incoming. Merlin kept watching.
He was rushing through the shop, dimly and yet fully aware of splitting off and laboriously checking over every facet of the security system and everything in the shop, all of the inexpertly yet competently made trinkets Matthew sold, all the alterations he had made to its metaphysics, everything.
He was outside the shop, and he saw Matthew lying on the ground in the midst of a seizure.
Oh no. He’s been hit by whatever this is.
Merlin was at his side in an instant, planting a hand down on the boy’s forehead. And then
He is in Matthew’s mind, watching shards of memory fall down around him like a rain of silvered glass. A word spoken, and the shards are halted, his mental processes vastly sped up to the point where time hardly seems to be moving at all. He will have to work quickly though, he can feel this speed of thought straining his mind – it is fortunate many of the Merlins searching the mansion have completed their tasks and fade away, lending their combined mental capacity back to the whole. Best not to waste time.
Merlin cast his eyes multiplicatively across the scope of Matthew’s memory, vague shimmering faces peering in at different memories, attempting to piece together the whole. Overall his memory was relatively unaffected by the surge, but his recollection of the last few days was fragmented and scattered, with great chunks missing entirely. There were still some shards he could save, but the effort of securing any one of them for observation would leave the others unable to be retrieved in useable condition. There was still hope, however – the gaps left in Matthew’s memory of his interactions with Jules were still fairly recent, and if enough raw material could be provided and charged correctly, it would fill the gap so closely as to have functionally never have been there – the memories could be restored, in other words, but raw thought material would be needed, and it couldn’t be from his own mind or any other mind other than Matthew’s due to the innate structure of his thoughts.
A troublesome moral quandary, that. Undoubtedly obtaining Jules’ conversation and whatever hints of information the entity had provided to his apprentice would be incredibly useful, but was violating Matthew’s memory an acceptable action to take? What right had he to forever take his unique experiences from him, whatever they may be, and use it to fulfil one of his own schemes?
This is why I’ve always disliked magic to do with manipulating the mind, Merlin reflected. The things I did to ensure the ascendancy of Arthur’s kingdom still trouble me all these years later, no matter how much greater good was ultimately borne out of it. And if what I’ve read in today’s literature is even the slightest bit accurate, Camelot fell not long after I did. Seems I just missed the night descending upon the land we built. Side note, must look into how exactly Camelot fell; I believe it was no doubt very different than what historians nowadays envisioned it.
In the face of the end of things, though, did I do any good overall? If the land I and that boy labored so hard over is now known only as a tale for children and the inquisitive to pry into, did I really put as much good into the world as I took out of it, in the end? Similarly, would taking these parts of Matthew’s life away from him forever be morally acceptable if it all comes to naught in the end?
…
But that’s just it, isn’t it. I’ve been denying it somewhat, but the incidents have been increasing in both intensity and frequency. Something’s trying to break the world, and with this surge it may not hold together much longer. Questions of whether my actions are morally right in the end or not are not a factor in the face of a situation that quite literally threatens the end of the world. I can and should attempt to put things as right as I am capable of perceiving them to be, but drastic times call for drastic measures, as is a phrase in modern culture.
His course of action decided, Merlin rolled up his currently metaphysical sleeves. His mental projection of himself faded, his mind now entirely focused on the task before him. He reached out with razor-sharp tendrils of psyche, extending deep into the recesses of memory before him. Years passed him by like a blurring fog, and as he traveled back in Matthew’s mental timeline he witnessed events in his apprentice’s life, mostly ones of significance to the boy. Those were the clearest, while the others were mixed by time and false recollection. He tried to block them out; viewing them without Matthew’s permission was bad enough considering what he was about to do, but some got through nonetheless, the wizard’s innate curiosity overpowering his shame.
He was scared! Where was Big White Face Green Eyes? It was scary-but-familiar and where he was was not! The change of scenery made him scared and his crying rang out into the night air, his little lungs heaving breath after breath out. He was wrapped in a warm cozy fuzzy thing and it smelled nice but his crying was making him hot so he kicked and thrashed around as best he could inside it and he kept crying because he missed the familiarity that the big people had taken with them.
Eventually his crying was answered and the white wall next to him creaked open to reveal ... another big person? He gasped - he hadn't known there were more than the soft cozy milk one and the big green white scary one. This big person's face wasn't like the cozy one or the green one - it looked like a mix between the two, sharp but soft? He scrunched up his face in confusion. For its part, the big person heaved a sigh. "Another one abandoned by their parents without even any explanation. Sometimes I wonder why God lets any of us into heaven."
It stopped talking for a second and made a sound of confusion, then reached down and picked up a thin white square of something. It looked at the square and pursed its lips. Then it cast the square aside and picked him up, holding him close to its face.
"I suppose I'm going to be taking care of you in lieu of your father, little one. He didn't give a name, though. What'll we call you?" It wondered aloud, tickling his nose with a finger. He stared intently at it. The big person frowned and pursed its lips again. "Given that you did gain my notice during my study of that particular saint, I suppose it would be auspicious to name you after him. Eh, Matthew? Do you like that name?" Matthew stared at it harder.
"It's settled then. Now let's get you settled in, Matthew - it's a cold night out here."
"For the last time, Matthew, I will not answer your inane question!"
"But Matron Gwen, I wanna know who was my daddy!"
"Matthew, I have spoken to you enough times on the importance of proper grammar and enunciation. Say what you just said again, and correctly this time.
"...I want to know who my father was, Matron Gwen."
"That is better. My answer is still no, but at least you are asking it without that detestable slurring together of your words."
"But Matron, you know him!"
Matthew flinched back at the sharp look the matron gave him from behind her desk. His five year-old legs kicked back and forth off the edge of the ground, still quite a ways from reaching it.
"Know is a subjective word when involving your father. Safe to say he is unable to be here to raise you, so I am. And as your guardian, it is my wish that you not know who he is. Even what little I know about him is dangerous."
"Dangerous like what?"
Matron Gwen looked at him.
"How is he dangerous?"
"Dangerous enough that I will not divulge the slightest hint to you. He's not a man that should be associated with, Matthew. Best put it out of your mind entirely."
"But Matron, he's my dad and you know about him! How can I not be curious?"
"It is a difficult task, I admit. But it is not one that will be made any easier by blathering on about the man. Instead I suggest you focus on the father you have in Heaven. He may not speak directly to us, but He will still be a better father to you than ...he could ever be. Now then, unless you had any other questions?"
Matthew sighed and shook his head. "No, Matron Gwen." He pushed himself out of the scratchy-backed chair, nodding his head at the matron's 'good day', and tottered outside her office. He really wanted to know who his daddy was! But how would he ever know if Matron Gwen wouldn't tell him? She was the only one he knew who knew his daddy. Maybe he'd have to sneak into her office and find the papers she was probably keeping on him, yeah! But how could he get in? She always locked the door when she left. Maybe he could build a super lock picker! The toybox probably had parts for something like that...
He was walking back to the orphanage entrance with a prospective mom, her weight leaning heavily on his nine year-old shoulders. She was tall, but willowy and frail, and her hair was brittle and blonde. She was breathing with difficulty, and Matthew looked up again to make sure she wasn't dying. He flinched at the sight; her bruises were definitely getting worse. She turned her head down to look at him and he snapped his gaze back in front. No matter how used to this sort of thing he was, he didn't wanna piss anyone off by poking around where they didn't want him to.
They walked in silence for a while, the woman (Beth?)'s face occasionally screwing up in pain as the movement jostled her wounds. As they neared the orphanage, limping across the dilapidated park that Gwen took the kids to sometimes, she waved them over to a bench wet and falling apart with age and moisture. She sat down heavily, huffing out a few more breaths.
"Sorry."
Matthew shrugged. "It's not your fault, whoever worked you over did a damn nasty job of it. I'm surprised you're awake right now."
Beth sighed.
"No, not that, kid. I'll heal. I meant sorry for ... this whole situation. Taking you in, getting your hopes up, now I gotta give you back 'cause it's unsafe with me. I should've considered this beforehand."
"No big deal really, it didn't really last past the week so there wasn't much chance to get attached, ya know?"
Beth stared at him with hollow eyes.
"A kid young as you should not be that jaded. Naturally expecting things to be as bad as they are shouldn't be a thing to kick in until you're 20 at the least." She sighed again, less heavily than before. "I blame this city. You'd swear it sucks something out of you. That inner spark that makes living worthwhile, your fire or whatever you want to call it. It steals it from you, I swear it does."
Matthew sat there a little uncomfortably, politely listening to the lady ramble. Certainly wasn't his first time listening to adults ramble on, though he'd started to notice that all their rants kinda centred around one central theme: I'm tired, I'm weary, the city sucked the life out of me, I'm old before my time. It sorta made sense to him, already he was kinda tired by the endless process of adults looking to adopt him but not really, only actually looking to make themselves feel better with a kid. It was obvious he wasn't really ever gonna get adopted off, so shouldn't they just skip the pretense?
He was interrupted from his musings by Beth's hand gripping his arm with the weird light pressure she had.
"I think I can keep going now. Sorry to bog you down, Matthew."
He shrugged in an unsure manner.
"It's no trouble. C'mon, we're almost there."
They stood up and resumed their slow walk across the park, towards the orphanage. Each was locked in their own thoughts.
Eventually they stood at the door of the orphanage. Matthew looked up at Beth, who took her arm off his shoulder and planted it on the doorframe.
"You'll be okay, Beth? You're still a bit shaky."
"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. For a while at least. Do you remember what I told you in the park?"
"What, that thing about how the city sucks the life out of you and all that?"
"Yeah. Keep it in mind, will you? I know I can't really ask you to do anything what with me leaving you here like this, but ... I want to pass on this one thing to someone. Might be the only actually worthwhile thing I ever do. Just remember it, okay? And don't let it drag you down like it did to me. There's hope for you yet."
And with that odd, likely sleep deprivation-induced statement, Beth walked off unsteadily. Matthew watched her until she went around the corner and out of sight before turning and going into St. Peter's.
Darkness. He was breathing heavy.
Don't forget it. Mustn't forget it.
What was it?
He looked about in the darkness. He couldn't see anything. He was sure if he could see something he'd remember what it was.
He stumbled through the black, flinching back at each half-expected obstacle he thought might be there. The air was thick and slow-moving, and with each breath in it felt as if it was seeping into his brain. His thoughts felt slower than before.
Wait. What was that?
A point of light.
He stumbled towards it, a sleepwalker swimming through treacle.
With each step towards it his stride grew quicker, the lead in his limbs dissipating.
Now he could see it was a fire. A small fire, but it beat back the omnipresent darkness.
He stepped into it. It seemed like a good idea. It didn't burn him. He felt stronger, even. Like he could lift a hundred tons or jump over a building.
But it was only a small fire and the dark was vast. And he didn't know how to make the fire bigger.
Wait. That was it! He wasn't supposed to let the fire go out! That was it! That was what he mustn't forget!
Something off to the side caught his attention - another light. He turned and beheld another fire, one many times the size of his. It looked different, too - more channeled and focused somehow, a purer fire than his untapped one. What did it herald, he wondered? Maybe it was-
"Matthew! I said wake up! We've a visitor!"
He jerked awake with a start. He was breathing heavily. What was ... he'd been dreaming about something. Something important. He couldn't quite remember it, though it was on the tip of the tongue, metaphorically. It was something hot, something -
"Matthew! Get dressed this instant! Remember your lessons on sloth!"
And there went any chance of recalling it. He sighed, muttered a 'yes Matron', and pulled some clothes on. Shaking the last vestiges of the dream out of his head, he trotted downstairs, to meet a wizard who was there for even less a reason than he was; still operating on instinct.
Seems the boy's talent for magic was expressing itself even before I took him on, Merlin reflected. But such thoughts could be fully processed later. It was time to proceed.
Like an ethereal spider made out of the finest glass the tendrils of Merlin's mind slid into position above Matthew's memories. It was fortunate he possessed the necessary power to counter the momentary decay of the material as he transformed it into the desired memory, otherwise Matthew would be left with obvious holes in his memory.
Wait. No he didn't; the other matter just brought to his attention elsewhere needed the necessary power. He would have to hash things out with Matthew manually, it seemed.
With wraith-like quickness Merlin executed thousands of minuscule cuts in Matthew's psyche, excising thousands of small, hardly-acknowledged memories - the faint recollection one experienced as they entered a place they'd been a few times, the fuzzy form almost-forgotten faces took, what memories remained from infanthood that had not receded wholly into the subconscious. He tried his utmost to keep the alterations unnoticed, or as close to as possible, but the required memory material was too much to remain wholly such. His apprentice would be left with a variety of odd sensations: when he entered an area he'd been in before, he'd feel an odd sense of reverse deja vu - he'd have the sense of being there for the first time, but knowing he'd been there before. Faces he hadn't seen in a while would lend that strange knowing-yet-not sensation to him. When he thought back to his past he'd have a niggling sensation that something was missing. There would be slight holes in his memories - perhaps a face of a playmate he knew well would be obscured, or the layout of a building would be gone or wrong from his thoughts.
He left the magic he'd taught Matthew intact, of course. Some things could be sacrificed in the name of survival, but tampering with magical potential risked hitting the soul.
He took the innumerable tiny bits of psyche gathered from these cuttings and fused them together with as much magical power as he dared to use without imbuing them with his essence. Then, transferring his view and the bundle of raw mind over to the missing memories he intended to repair, he performed the mental equivalent of welding, fusing the bundle of psyche to the various degenerating memories and letting the raw memory stuff act somewhat like mental stem cells, regenerating the lost portions based on underlying mental patterns in the memory 'tissue'. Before his eyes, metaphorically speaking considering he was viewing things through a symbolic lens of magic at a timeframe so fast it was faster than thought, the memories fused together into one coherent whole. It would require a bit of time for the memories to settle properly and be able to be viewed without strain on the mind, so after some preventative checking to ensure they wouldn't fall apart after he was gone, Merlin exited the mind of his apprentice. He opened his eyes to see Matthew's own slowly fluttering open.
Matthew groaned as his eyes creaked open. His head felt terrible; not quite as bad as it had under the cultist apartment complex, but close. The fuck happened to me? Where am I? The sound that came out of his mouth to match his thoughts was less coherent; somewhere around an 'oeurgh'. A figure gradually faded into view, looming over him somewhat. The sun was shining from behind them, silhouetting them to his eyes. It took several seconds before they passed into relative shadow and his vision cleared into seeing it was Merlin, carrying him. He coughed and groaned, his throat eventually giving way to his protestations and allowing speech again. "Merl? Wha... the hell happened?"
His gaze flickered about as Merlin carried him inside the shop, and Matthew blinked. Was he seeing double or something? He scrunched his eyes shut several times and shook his head vigorously, but as Merlin helped him down into a chair, he couldn't deny that there seemed to be more than one of his mentor bustling about the place. One was checking and rechecking the positions of every magical artifact on the shelves (they'd always been arranged that way, hadn't they? They seemed unfamiliar somehow), one was tracing his fingers over the walls as if to tap into the security system (which he had helped make... had he not? Why was he questioning this, of course he had), and a third was seemingly standing by the door staring at the frame, his beard spread out into a silvery globe for some reason. He turned his head to look at the Merlin currently sitting in his own chair in front of him, raising one eyebrow. "Is there any particular reason for the ... er, triplicate of you? Or am I just seeing things?"
Merlin paused before he responded, his face twisting up slightly as if to say 'now how do I say this...'
"Something... odd happened, something I'm still unsure of the nature of. Some sort of magical surge, that warped reality itself to a minor degree. There was more than one thing that needed handling simultaneously," the wizard shrugged. "Still is, as a matter of fact."
"Huh. So I guess I got caught in the surge then? That's why you were carrying me inside?"
"Indeed. I need you to try to remember something for me. I did what I could but the effects of it may have left additional memory damage. Do you remember what you were doing before the surge hit?"
"Uh..." Matthew strained. He reached back through the receding headache he had and grasped for the last thing he recalled before waking up. He saw... "I was ... in the shop," he relayed. "I don't remember if it was like regular or closing or what. Then there was ... a noise? I saw someone? No, no, I heard someone. Something, I think. Probably not a human, a stray dog maybe or something. Or maybe some dumbass thinking to rob the place, I'm not sure. Either way, I grabbed ... grabbed not my staff, but the, the..."
"Baseball bat?" Merlin supplied.
"Yeah, the bat. I went out to scare them off just in case they were thinking about doing something stupid, and then ... then the surge hit me, I guess. I don't remember exactly how it felt but I remember it felt horrible. Then I woke up and you were carrying me inside."
"What do you remember of the last few days?"
"Well..."
As Matthew plumbed his memory to see what was left intact, going over what events he did remember in agonizing detail at Merlin's insistence, the wizard's duplicates slowly finished their work and merged with the original sitting across from his apprentice. This left only three Merlins operating separate tasks simultaneously, freeing up that much more brainpower for him to figure out a good way to tell his apprentice he'd deleted a good portion of his memories for the sake of just a few crucial ones.
'You'll treasure these memories of your father' wasn't going to cut it considering the content of the memories.
