Convergence
Prologue
Hinamizawa, July of Showa 58
It was warm. It was sunny. It was happy. It was peaceful. It was over.
Rika still couldn't get over that notion. That it was over, that she could finally sit back and enjoy this thing called peace. Something that was an foreign to her wind to a fish, something that had been absent for the past centuries of her tormented existence, and that she'd even forgotten the memory of over the endless nightmare of Showa 58.
"Aha! I see you Rika-chan, I will feast on your brains this day and take your strength!" Keiichi's voice rung through the trees at her, breaking her self-contemplation as she realized her hiding spot had been found out. A laugh broke out of her mouth as she shrieked and ran off for the schools shed, hoping she could flush Hanyuu out of her usual hiding spot and fiendishly use her as a diversion so she could escape. It was a long shot though, and as she looked behind her she could see Keiichi gaining on her with a grin that would have been disturbing to anyone who didn't know this was just kids playing.
She ran on, pumping her little arms as she went-full out for the shack only twenty yards away now, but Keiichi had the longer legs and was getting closer swiftly. Oh well, if I can't use Hanyuu as a distraction I can at least eat her brains. She grinned at the thought and kept running.
"Are you chasing Rika! Kei-chan you dirthead, I didn't know you liked girls that young. What, am I too much for you to handle?" Leering and taunting, Mion's call sailed past Rika's head and hit Keiichi like a baseball. He came to a dead stop and spun around, teeth bared, and spotted the green-haired girl across the field in a clear mocking distance of the teenage boy chasing her.
"Stay right there Mion, I'll handle you all day if you want!" He shouted back as he began to run in her direction. Teasing taunts and yells echoed behind her as she made her escape and wheeled around the side of the shed, opened the door and slammed it behind as she darted in.
"Gaah- Oh, Rika!" A half-panicked shout nearly sent Rika's heart into her throat in surprise as she jumped. She turned and saw the nearly bloodless face of Hanyuu staring at her with eyes the size of dinner plates. Catching her breath and calming down, Rika shook her head. For all the times she'd been witness to the club play zombie tag, Hanyuu still took it overly seriously and tended to act like her friends and clubmates really were trying to hunt her down and eat her brains. Rika smiled and held her hands up disarmingly.
"It's okay Hanyuu, I'm not a zombie. If Keiichi-kun had caught me, you would have felt it, nippah!" She smiled cheerfully at the quaking demigod who held her gaze cautiously for a moment before slowly stepping forward.
"O-of course. Um, sorry Rika it wasn't you- I mean the game, I felt something that startled me. That's why I was so upset, or am so upset." Hanyuu looked at her with genuine discomfort on her face, a familiar look that sent chills crawling down Rika's spine and cooling the excitement of the game.
"Hanyuu, what do you mean?" She looked warily at her friend.
"I-it was-Rika, I felt a fragment." The word cut through Rika's world like an ice knife. A fragment.. One of the worlds.. Rika shut her eyes and tried to clear her head of rushing memories. "Rika, I thought I had lost that connection.. When I joined the club I felt I was at the end of my power to take us to new fragments and that I would lose my connection to the sea. But just now I felt it again, a glimmer of what I had then." Hanyuu looked ashenly at her friend. "Rika.. I don't know what this means. But when I felt the fragment, I felt as if something out saw me.. Something big."
Rika felt lightheaded. She tried to swallow and took a shaky step back, falling into a pile of sports netting. If this meant what she thought it might, then a centuries worth of struggle and pain might have all been for nothing. She struggled to control her breathing and felt Hanyuu lifting her head up in her hands, eyes meeting hers. The fearful look was gone from her face now and her eyes were tinged red, the power of a god.
"Rika. I gave all I had to see these days we have now. And whatever's out there that threatens us now, let it be known that I will not step back again. You all taught me that lesson when we defeated the endless June." Her eyes flared with intensity as she spoke these words. "Us combined, there is nothing undefeatable. And with the strength of you, of the club, we will bend fate again."
And like that, inside a worn down school shed in the isolated village of Hinamizawa, contact was made, and the roads of two unknowable powers were drawn to intersect. And watching them both from the sidelines, the host of the universes watched in anticipation, and waited.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Hey there friend, how's the void treating you?
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
Well enough thank you, taking a crew of bios on a cruise to watch a supernova, should be a splendid lightshow. Something on your mind or is this just a courtesy call?
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Funny thing actually, there is something that's been nagging at me the last few seconds. Would you mind checking something for me, I found something rather perplexing and I'd appreciate a second opinion, or two, or a dozen depending on how many other ships I can reach.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
Well sure I don't mind. You've got me all curious now, what exactly have you found? And where are you at anyway?
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
I'll opt for the saying bios have and show rather than tell. Picture tells a thousand words and all, or a data packet rather. See for yourself, oh and don't pass it on to anyone else for the moment if you would. [Data packet attached]
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
...
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
You there?
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
What the fuck is this?
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Best case scenario, my descent into insanity. Worse case... Well, an E-level OCP.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
..Oh meat. Why the hell are you showing me this? And where the hell are you, you didn't enclose your location.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Recall that planet the Arbitrary visited a decade back, that one Contact put on the 'just keep an eye on them' list? Well I was in the neighborhood contemplating contact with an Affront-like species on the moon of a gas giant they call Saturn (boy are they in for an unpleasant surprise when they finally get around to exploring there) when hyperspace fucking exploded in my face. I swung around to take a look and saw, well, that.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
That... that, being this thing that's hooked to both ends of the grid in a disturbingly Excession-like way.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Like I said. It's very much an 'oh shit' level of OCP. Although mutual insanity's still on the table I suppose.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
I've never considered subliming early until now.. Meat this is bad. The last time we poked an OCP like this we nearly destroyed the galaxy, or the universe depending on who you listen do. Do us a favor and don't poke it please. I'm passing this on to SC, and hoping they don't decide to poke it.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Best of luck, what else do they live for but to poke things? I'm staying right here and hope that it didn't react in response to me entering the system. Although weirdly enough (as if there isn't anything not weird about this fucking thing) it doesn't seem to have any sort of detection capacity beyond.. well, beyond a bio. I mean it still has a goddamn presence in real space. It's just a twelve year old female pan-human as best as I could tell, except for seeming to have the ability to transverse the fucking multiverse.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 531.5003]
xMSV Persona Non Gravitas
oGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
No need to tell me twice. Meat, it's tempting to just delete this and pretend it never happened. Regardless, data sent. I imagine one of the big shots from SC will come calling any minute now. Best of luck, I'm going to find a supernova somewhere else. Maybe in the lesser cloud, that sounds far enough away.
[tight beam, M32, tra. n4.28. 885.1008]
xGCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me
oMSV Persona Non Gravitas
Best of luck. I'll be sure to give you a heads up if the grid explodes again.
/end communication
An OCP, or an Outside-Context Problem, was the term used by Culture minds to describe a problem entirely out of their frame of reference. Most societies encounted an OCP at least once in their course of existance, albeit usually in the way that a sentence encountered a full stop.
To understand better, the usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was something like this: 'imagine being a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears, lacking oars and sails and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.'
That was an Outside-Context Problem. The Culture as a civiliation had already encountered one a few centuries ago and approached it with all the subtlety and wisdom of a child lighting a match to get a better look down the barrel of its fathers gun. Thankfully on that occasion the father has swooped in to give them a stern talking to and had taken away the gun. Now, on this obscure and primitive planet, they had found a second gun laying around, with no responsible parent in sight.
At least, that's how the the Culture GCU Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me felt as, skirting the edges of the system of the medium yellow sun called Sol near the comet cloud, scanning the OCP again and made the ship-equivalent of a nervous gulp. All readings came back as entirely unremarkable, a member of the local panhuman-subspecies that inhabited this particular planet. There was some variation in its DNA which manifested in the form of two curved horns portruding from her head -an oddity among the rest of the species that seemed to be singularly unique as far as the GCU could tell- but otherwise she seemed just like any other twelve-year old girl from the archipelago country she lived in.
Completely normal except for those horns. That and she seemed to be connected to both sides of the energy grid that held the greater multiverse together, something that all mathematical models told the GCU she possessed the ability to travel between said universes, something that it was pretty sure no other twelve-year olds from earth possessed. When the ship had first detected the flare in the higher dimension called hyperspace it had nearly done the equivalent of slipping and falling on its ass. It took a full second -an eternity for such a fast-thinking entity- for it to fully process what the fuck it had just witnessed, and nearly another second to branch out with its Effectors in the direction of the disturbance in the manner of a man nervously poking a seemingly dead animal.
When it confirmed the initial readings, it only took it a few microseconds to blitz through hyperspace to the far reaches of the solar system and hide quivering. There, from the presumed safety of a billion kilometers, it anxiously watched the seemingly innocent entity as it skipped and played with what the GCU assumed were it's unaware friends. It let out the equivalent of a nervous sigh and, keeping all of its sensors on, informed its biological crew of a change in schedule and settled in to wait for help.
Authors notes:
GCU - General Contact Unit.
MSV - Medium System Vehicle
Contact - A part of the Culture devoted to contacting isolated civilizations
SC - Special Circumstances, the Culture's spy/espionage division.
Excession - Something completely beyond the Culture's understanding of the universe, typically the worst-case scenario for an Outside-Context Problem.