12 Miles Below-Chapter 42Book 7. : Can you say Hello?

“So to word it out again. You move rocks into the right place, and spell out the words.” I said. “The Odin can read them. Trust me.”

I was trying to workshop ideas with Bob that wouldn’t depend on it sending a bunch of animals to stay in one place and die.

“I do not understand how this will work.” Bob said, still confused at the entire thing.

As I’d discovered while walking down, Bob doesn’t think with tools. The most it had been able to consider using a non-living material to assist in it’s future goals had been to write down the alphabet all over using that dying Odin. And mostly it had only thought of it in terms of using the Odin as the tool. The writing was merely a byproduct that it had chanced on.

It was a glaring bias that Bob had never once considered. Considering its entire life revolved around moving animals and biomass, non-living material was something other. Or at least something Bob only thought about in passing, as part of the background.

“What’s the difference between a rock and a creature just standing in the same spot until it dies?”

“One is under my control, the other is not.”

“It’s fine if the rock’s not technically in your control right?”

“I do not understand.”

I groaned, rolling my head. I’d been beating this one issue for the past half hour now. Thinking like a human wasn’t helping. I had to think of it like a sentient bioweapon that doesn’t have a body would. “How about this - when you’re having your animals move the rock, it’s under your control, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then, would leaving it into the place you specified also keep the rock under your control? You don’t want it to move and it does not. It’s been moved by your control to where it is. Therefore, the rock is still under your control, because it’s remained in the same spot you wanted it to be.”

“It is difficult. A strange way to think. I understand however.”

“Thank the gods, all right, now I’m going into the cave while you start first contact with the Odin, sound good?” It had been real difficult. And over the entire trip I’d been stumbling over the trees here, until I reached a cave.

“This landmark will lead to the mites.” Bob told me. “I will not be able to speak with you there. They eliminate my spores.”

So I’d stayed up here to workshop things out with Bob, give the fellow a chance to start something with the Odin while I went down and possibly did something that could kill myself.

Average day so far.

The cave itself looked natural, until it started devolving into geometric shapes, with recessed lights inside all of them. And soon, I ran into the colony. Bright neon pink this time, all of the scuttling along eating away at the rock in order to warp it into this new geographical tunnel style.

“Three hundred and so years, and I finally get to see how my charge is supposed to be used.” Cathida said, chuckling. “Well, I was never the one expected to use it. It was being transferred over to another location, all I had to do was guard the two with me. I wonder if they had been mitespeakers this whole time?”

“Maybe? I think only you know the answers to that one Cathida. It was your mission. And for mine…”

I clicked the little button I had tested out a while back. A small tube telescoped out then began to suck air. “All right, just grab a few mites I think, right?”

I stuck the tube into the recessed groves, and watched as the pink lights were all sucked up like insects inside the black box. It hummed happily, but still remained sucking air.

Fortunately, there were a lot of other mites to go through. An endless supply. I walked through the entire cavern, sweeping them up, until it dinged and shut off.

“Is that it?” I lifted the black box before me. A new button had appeared, or rather had expanded outwards from its hidden recessed point. The other buttons to vacuum had vanished, completely flush to the walls.

“I think I need to click this.” I muttered. It had just appeared out of nowhere right? And the other buttons were gone. So I flicked it.

The metal walls slid down and revealed glass. And beyond the glass were the pink mites, all walking around the lantern like a geometric slow moving vortex. It didn’t do much light wise, but it did look pretty.

The lights started to shift, turning from full pink to a spectrum of colors. Blue, teal, red, pink, violet, yellow, brown, white and black. All of it.

“Is this part of it?”

“How would I know, deary? This is your show, you do the honors.”

“FIne. Next on the recipe is to reach out to my… other soul. Or something like that…”

“I’m sure it’ll be just fine.” Cathida said, rolling her eyes. “What could go wrong with ripping your soul in half and sending one part into hell?”

Can’t say I wasn’t apprehensive, but I’d come all this way for a reason. And one way or another, others had taken on becoming mitespeakers. Sure, most had gone horribly insane, BUT - a few managed to stay sane. And the mites seemed to believe in me.

I think.

“Here goes nothing…” I muttered, and reached a soul tendril out to the lantern.

There was something in there. Not quite a soul fractal, but similar - except distant. An alternate version of the soul fractal just not physically here. And yet the lantern had some kind of bridge that connected to it.

I hovered over the edge of the lantern, feeling cold reality try to eat away at my tendril like frost would a finger. The warmth of my own soul fractal kept the spiritual blood flowing through, finger still warm enough to resist the frostbite outside.

I reached a tendril into the miteseeker properly.

Something reached back. A tendril of myself. And instantly so did memories.

I was in a vast landscape of lights. A field of stars. “Uhh, hello?”

That was a mistake.

A distorted voice came back, scraping, screeching, and mentally draining in a way I couldn’t describe. Pain, yet not pain. Half-touched understanding, and yet not quite full. It slammed into me like an avalanche, so massively larger than myself, I may as well be a single snowflake among the snow.

“Whatever I did, sorry.” I called out of reflex, rushing right back to hide in my cloak of humor.

The voice called out again, a response. The pain was exactly the same. I had a feeling that even if I did fully understand, the sheer scale of it would squash my brain into parts. I screamed, held my head, and tried to hold tight as the noise passed by.

How’d I even get here? I’d turned in Wrath to the mite forge, watching her beady little violet eyes stare back at me from the sack as she was pulled up and through that nightmare looking portal of a thousand small jointed arms. Then I handed over a small gauze with my blood, and finally asked it for a weapon to kill god.

Ah. I see where I went wrong. I got way too greedy didn’t I? “Fuck me, this is how it ends?”

I remember lifting my hand up, and an occult blade looking thing came out of the portal, held once more by that mechanical arm with far too many joints to be practical. It slashed right through my wrist, and then…

And then this.

The bloodsuckers must have taken my whole soul out somehow. Was my body just crumpled out on the floor of that bridge? Scrapshit, Wrath needed me. She was going to step out of that mite forge and have to fight a pissed off Avalis.

I took a deep breath. Or as much as I could in this odd floating space of stars. I’m still alive, technically, so that meant there was room to escape. Maybe might even make it back home to see Wrath eat one more plate by accident.

Out there was the voice. It didn’t feel hostile, just inconvenient. Whenever it had spoke, the pain and intensity of it had really rattled me down. But I didn’t think that was the intention. It was just very, very intense.

“Do you… have a name?”

The voice answered. And oh gods did it hurt my head. The torrent crashed down into me, and I was helpless as a fly in a windstorm.

Time went by. I can’t be too certain how much time, since this was an endless field of black void lit up by a few million stars. Drifting in nothingness. Even my control of my soul felt weak here, I couldn’t move or angle myself. Just floating through, spinning away.

There wasn’t anything to do but try and talk to the voice or just slowly go mad. Not that I didn’t try just about everything I could think of. Even took to singing songs to myself in between making attempts with the voice. Had to take breaks, it was intense.

I started dreading each time I reached out to it. More time passed in between my attempts, and each time I renewed the try, I could feel something deep inside growing more and more panicked about the pain.

During one of the moments I floated in peace, I realized I was on a time limit to understand the voice. There were a finite amount of attempts I could do before whatever was deep inside my soul and mental state just could not continue with the pain. And I’d been wasting that by aimlessly trying to talk to it.

I think that’s what gave me purpose in the floating darkness - I had a challenge. Talk to the voice somehow, before my soul and head just could not physically pull the will to do it anymore.

I started more methodically after that. Keeping the same words to connect with it. I settled for a simple “Can you say hello?”

The answer came like I'd expected it to, and the pain followed just the same.

Out in the darkness, again. “Can you say hello?”

Then I’d recover, digest, think it through, and try again. “Can you say hello?”

It always answered back, and it answered back in the exact same way. A short screech of pain running through my soul, too vast to really understand. My time between each attempt grew a little bit, but not by the same speed as before, bolstered by the feeling of progress somewhere. “Can you say hello?”

It always answered back with the same exact feeling, unlike past attempts when I’d moved the variables around. The constant repeated pain and meaning meant it understood my request and was answering back with exactly hello each time. Otherwise it would have started to sound different. “Can you say hello?”

It also meant that it understood my language. Communication was possible. I had to firmly believe that. “Can you… say hello?”

It also had to be friendly in a way. Otherwise it wouldn’t be answering that question or even making an attempt to be faithful to it. If it was willing to play ball with me, I should be willing to make the attempt too. “Can you say… hello?”

I could start seeing something inside the noise. The more I was exposed to the same exact voice, the more I started picking apart the internal feelings behind it. The vastness came from it not being one voice. It was a multitude. “Can you say… grrrrrrrrr fuck! Can you say hello.”

A million voices. No, likely it wasn’t some easy answer like that. The mites didn’t make anything easy.I can’t even make a wisecrack or quip to help keep me sane. A single word out of my mouth and I might get an answer back. So I focused, because each time I spoke it would answer, which meant the moment I opened my mouth I had to commit, and if I ended my sentence on anything other than asking for a hello back, the pain would be vastly different from the harbor I’d at least gotten used to. “Ca- nononono, fuck, shit, grrrrrrrrr can-you-say-hello.”

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I held onto that little fragment of knowing there was progress being made. And that I was the one who got to choose each time the torture came. Knowing how it felt down to the details was what was starting to eat away at my resolve here though. I waited maybe four hours or so in between each attempt now, having decided to take a break and try to meditate in between. “Can… come on do it, say it, can you say… hello.”

It was painful. Progress was stalling, my resolve to hold onto anything was flickering away. Days passed between each attempt. Sometimes I found myself just drifting off into nothingness, no thoughts, only peace. And I’d wake up all at once, realizing I had no idea how much time had passed by. Minutes? Or days? But each time I called out, I felt weaker and weaker. The need to just stop, to just give up and not be hurt anymore was winning. I pulled people into mind, reasons to fight. “Can you say… hello.”

One by one, my reasons started to fall apart. It wasn’t worth the pain.

Some part of me still tried. One more time. Just one more time and I’ll be done. I lied to myself over and over. “Can… you… say… hello?”

It also wasn’t long before I wanted to leave here above any other thought. To stop trying. The pain was too much.

The pain.

The pain.

Nothing but the pain.

And then there was a small idea. One single, simple thought about the pain. Maybe I should focus on the pain itself, see what kind of pain it actually was?

That one thought snapped me out of my tumble, gave me one more direction to go down.

I replayed the message back in my own head, from my memories. The sanitized version was easier to digest, lacking the raw oomph the real one had. I started practicing with it, meditating on it, using the memory as my guide and occasionally calling out to go up against the real deal. The feeling I could make progress again bolstered me. I spoke the words with more resolve again, ready. Trying to learn. “Can you…. nnnnnnnnnnggg say…. hello?”

More oomph to it. I had more time in between attempts to settle down and center myself, while still feeling like I was getting somewhere. The fear of hurt was starting to grow dimmer, and the hurt itself wasn’t exactly… hurt. The pain was just not being able to get my head around the vastness of the voice. Or something like that. It wasn’t real pain, it was something other. Something my mind both couldn’t focus on, but felt utterly compelled to focus on.

That’s where I had to focus ironically, not the pain part but the hyperfocus part of myself. Maybe understanding the voice completely wasn’t the right direction. Maybe I had to accept that part of the message wouldn’t be understood and let go of the need to, but instead focus on the more minute items?

There were millions of voices all in that one echo as a god spoke into my head. Why did I need to hear every single voice at once? I focused my mind, sharpened my technique on my memories, tried to pick apart the voice until I could split it apart. “Can… can you please say hello?”

It really was a million voices. Maybe a billion. Possibly an infinite amount of voices, which is why my head couldn’t understand what it said. I’d never be able to, there were more voices than I could comprehend. The pain really did come from an instinctive need to understand it all at once. I had to train myself to ignore that call. I floated in space, knowing what I had to do, and just completely not wanting to do it.

But I had to try, to try and not look at the sun but squint only at the edge of it. I’d repeated the same attempt in my head again and again. Just one more time. I took a mental breath. The last time, I promise. No more after this. End it with a bang. Say it right.

“Can you say hello.”

The pain came and I let it slide over my soul like water, focusing on stopping myself from focusing on it. Trying to restrict its band until I could hear the voice of a few hundred instead of a few million. A god spoke to me, and instead of looking upon it, I turned away and let it pass by almost unheard.

And it didn’t hurt.

I mean, it still hurt. But not to a completely unbearable degree. A whisper in my noise overwhelmed ears instead of a shout. This was the most progress I’d ever done. I waited in that darkness a long time before I tried again. Spent time practicing inside. Finding better ways to contextualize the event.

It was… like facing the sun. I’d turn and face the deluge of pure light burning down through me, ripping into my mind. The solution wasn’t to hold my hand out against that power and believe I could defend myself. No, I had to become a fish that swam through the torrent. Mold myself until I was a sharp sleek stake of mirrors, where light would flow past me. And as the voice would wash past, only I would remain behind.

And then I’d actually look behind at the receding light and parse it out in my memory, but that felt a lot less cool to say.

“Can you say hello?”

The light came down upon me, slammed through my mental spike, split apart. I struggled in the grasp, focused on hearing to remember rather than hearing to understand. Focused on ignoring the massive amount flowing over on top of me, stopping my instincts from letting my mind unravel. Holding onto that focus like it was the edge of a cliff.

And when the voices ended, I looked back to the memory it left and could pick apart the voices at my leisure.

They all didn’t say the same thing. But I filtered through it. Taking a random chunk from anywhere, shaking it until the different voices all harmonized and collapsed into different categories.

One said HELLO. Another all said GREETINGS. A third wave of voices all harmonized to SALUTATIONS. From there, I picked only one and used that as my answer.

I repeated this again and again. Hello. Hello. Hello. Each time, I got better at ignoring the entire response completely, leaving myself an empty blank mind, allowing the entirety of the message to flow through me without any thought to understand. And only once it had passed through, I’d look at my memory and sort it there.

Pain stopped. The fear remained. I continued asking the same question, over and over. Not to understand the message - I’d done that. But to erase that fear, and heal the wound. Each time I asked, and each time the answer failed to puncture through my defense, that fear would be slowly eroded. Until my soul emotionally recognized the danger was gone.

I stopped expecting pain from any voice. I kept going, asking the question again and again, faster and faster, until I wasn’t even waiting a second in between each answer. Until I could even ask the same question in the middle of being answered by it.

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In the center of that maelstrom, the universe exalted me. Lifted me up into the light, burned through. The fire of the sun knew me, and I can walk through the blaze without a mark.

I laughed, cackled, wondered if I was still sane, but felt deep happiness. I knew how to speak to the god before me. And it wasn’t something I could ever explain to anyone else. No guide could be written. It had to be experienced, and learned from directly.

In the cosmos beyond, I asked a new question for once. “Who are you.”

The answer came. I didn’t know if it felt different or not, I could tell it lasted longer, but nothing more. The voices passed through me, and I let them harmlessly continue onto their journey, swimming through the torrent. And then I looked back into my memory of it, and found so many new and different voices to shift.

They collapsed into a few dozen different answers, but one had the most voices to it when I shook hard enough.

“WE ARE AS WE ARE.”

“Are you the mites?”

“AGREE WITH THAT DESIGNATION.”

“How… how long have I been here?”

“1 MONTH, 1 WEEK, 3 DAYS, 13:34”

“Felt a lot longer than that. A lot longer.” An entire month had passed by and I'd somehow remained sane.

“TIME IS RELATIVE.”

If I had eyes in this world, I'd have rolled them to the point Kidra would approve.

Kidra. My sister. Sparks of my old self felt coming back. Healing. I was once someone before I had to shut down everything. I had… friends. A family. People I cared about. Wrath.

Wrath, I wanted to see Wrath. I wanted nothing more than to hug that stupid toaster, hold her tight and cry for an hour or two. His past self had taken too much for granted. Where was she?

“What happened since I was gone?”

The time the voices didn’t send something I could shift around. It took me some time to understand this was a video. Very fuzzy since there was so much overlap. Different point of views. I filtered them all out and kept only the similar ones, all superimposed over each other, making a hazy dreamlike sight.

I saw another Keith, armored with everything minus a gauntlet, looking over his hand. “That was a tad bit dramatic, thought you were going to cut off my hand?”

“NO.” The answer came from the other side, but the Keith in the video had no way to hear.

“Is that it then? Or do you need to do another step? I don’t feel any different.”

“OUR TRANSACTION IS CONCLUDED.”

The knight in the video picked up a small cube. “This is what can kill a god?”

“THIS IS THE HIGHEST WEAPON WE HAVE CALCULATED YOU ARE ABLE TO USE.”

None of the answers were passing through, but the mite collective did not care. To them, they had answered. It didn’t mean much if the recipient had heard or not.

More video passed by, I saw the fight against Avalis. The Keith that continued where I dropped off went on to pull a win. Something inside my core felt elation at that. All my time in this world had been worth it, we'd won.

They’d won. Wrath had been put back together. The longing was deep inside me, the need for refuge from this place. To feel someone else instead of nothingness. Gods, I'd been such an idiot when I'd been alive. It’s only when I lost everything that I had actual perspective on what I lost out on.

I saw that Keith walk away, back to the surface. Then vanish. Until that he reappeared again. Following a guide, a full group of knights at his side and the stolen feather piloted by his Father. That Keith was stronger. More confident. Something had changed on the surface. His skills were slightly more sharp than I remembered my own being. Tools and gear were upgraded. They fought against Deathless and absolutely wiped the floor with them.

To think I started as a scavenger, with hardly a small pistol to my name. I watched this more dangerous Keith stalk through the land.

There was a call to help elsewhere. From another AI, one locked away deep underground. Asking to save some animals. The mite collective shifted to it. “RELOCATE.” Was the solution it had sent back, along with a coordinate, setting the portal location to a sunny biome that they’d calculated would sustain birds.

That was a while back. And then the original Keith, I suppose that's probably how I should think of him, anyhow he was hurtling through the second strata caused by a poor plan he'd executed as usual, and the mites decided they’d connect the two dots. A simple command and their portal led him down into deeper waters.

“Why send him there?” I asked.

“POTENTIAL.” Was the answer. There was a potential for something to happen, and so the mites had put it together because why not?

The mites really had their hands just about everywhere, though there were far less when it came to Relinquished. But I had seen Aztu, and the entire talk that Keith had.

This was live footage. Which meant anytime now, that Keith was going to come knocking on my door.

Eventually I felt it, a tendril of connection. But I wasn’t that Keith anymore. My soul and his had gone their own paths to long ago. I could tell right from the start. If I wanted out of here, I'd need to drag this Keith out of my body and take it over instead.

It would be easy. While that Keith had spent time honing his combat skills, having the time of his life running around; Inside this realm I'd done nothing but hone my willpower and need to survive. I'd witnessed apotheosis. There was nothing that Keith could do to stop me.

The tendril came out, hesitant. Probing around and feeling the bridge that would lead to the darkness I floated in.

It reached through, fumbling in the dark.

Like a viper, I struck. Grabbed the hand and held it tight. And then pushed back, forcing the Keith on the other end to return closer to his body. “Whoa whoa whoa, you don’t want to get too far into this realm." I said, "It’s not a fun place, trust me. Anyhow, hello other me. You sure took your sweet time getting here.”

“I got held up. Also I didn’t know you existed until a few hours prior, me version two.”

“I prefer to be called “me superior version” thanks.”

“Wha--”

“I called it first, it’s mine by right of dibs. Suck it loser.”

“... Fuck. Fine, Me Superior Version, what’s the situation like on your end?”

“Oh, been hanging out you could say. I’d share the footage, but you might go insane. Took me a month and a week to wrap my head around it. Not something I can share either, just the basics of it.”

I sent those memories through, the most diluted version of events possible. None of the apotheosis, but the general gist of what'd I'd been up to here.

“I noticed, you’re slightly… different from me.”

“Of course. I’m the superior version.”

“... I see now why people want to strangle me all the time.”

“I’m just a chip off the old block, eh? All right Keith Junior.”

“Keith Junior? No way. If you’re Keith Superior, I get to pick my own name to. No argument about that.”

“Two seconds, pick fast.”

“Uhhh… Keith Prime.”

“Booo, you suck at names, go home. I mean it works, but there isn’t even a joke anywhere in there.”

“You gave me two seconds to pick a name! You had days to pick yours, I can’t think of something on the fly that fast.”

“All right all right, Keith prime it is. On my end I figured out how to speak to the mites and everything. So you ask me what you need and I play operator for you.”

“And… you don’t want out at all? I thought we might have a fight for my body or something like that.”

“I honor my vow.” I said. And it felt right.

Sure. I could have pulled the Keith out there into this hell, traded spots permanently. Done the typical betrayal and never looked back.

But in the end I have to admit: I was terrible at being a real Winterscar. And even a month of torture out here, deep down inside I was still Keith Winterscar. A knight retainer. I'd given a vow of sacrifice to honor when it called me, and it had called.

Can’t be helped.

However… “I do think some vacation time would be nice, you know let me out here and there so I can eat some good food and drink. Maybe even take a nap. A few hours back in my old body to walk around and spend time with people. Also hug Wrath next time you see her and share the memory with me, that’s required before I let you do any mitespeaking, got that? It’s one of the few things that kept me going on this side.”

“You can probably go longer than a few hours, we could do a fifty fifty thing.”

“No way Prime. I’m Superior for a reason. You wouldn’t last a day on this side before begging to be let out.”

I felt Keith prime pull at me, attempting to merge some parts. Memories flowed between them, but I halted the trade. I wasn’t going to flood this Keith with eldritch knowledge that nearly broke me apart. Besides, I could tell we really had split apart too much to come back together.

“I could see the merge working out in the far future, if maybe you went through the same trial I did and learned to speak to the mites. But you wouldn’t have that same sense of desperation I had at the start, knowing there was no way out. There will always be a way out because I’ll be on the other side ready to yank you back to your old body when you tap out.”

Prime thought it through. “So… we’re two different Keiths then?”

“Yep. I’m the superior Keith though.”

“Yeah… but we’re still Keiths. Zero chance I let a perfectly good Keith hang out doing nothing in there when you could be out here panicking with the rest of us.”

“Oh. That’s a very good point Keith.”

“Thank you Keith, I’m a very smart person, if you haven’t noticed.”

“And handsome, don’t forget handsome.”

“Even roguish some might say.” Prime smiled. “Yeah everyone who said your best friend couldn’t be yourself was absolutely wrong. I can already think of a few ways to get you a workaround body out here, or at least have you tag team with me.”

“Honestly, I can’t believe I didn’t even start thinking about that. I was just resigned to float around here for eternity. I have dishonored us Keith, brought shame to our family.”

My time here had beat down a sense of acceptance into myself that the original clearly didn't have. Of course there was a way out of here. It might not be living through a flesh and blood body anymore, but we had options. We always had options.

“Don’t worry Superior. I’m sure there’s plenty of people we can piss off to make up for it.”