Reign of Conformity

by Baeraad

LAST CHAPTER IN PLACE! Here's the final showdown between the newly Awakened mage Simon Stromberg and the Virtual Adept who believes him to be a deadly threat.

4. Revelations

Insert standard disclaimer.

Oh, and there is a whole lot of new information given in this chapter. Tell me if you think I'm trying to cram the reader's head with too much at once, will you?

Diana's house had changed.

It had been a rather unremarkable apartment building at the edges of town. The facade had been pleasantly but unimaginatively white, and there had been a small, well-kept lawn surrounding it. It had been three stories high, and had balconies with an eclectic but not unpleasant display of flowers on them.

It was still three stories high, or thereabouts. The rest was... different.

It looked like the mad scientist villain's stronghold in a cartoon, all steel and wires and strange electrical sparks that ran down along the walls and earthed themselves in the ground. Hordes of video cameras glared out from it, turning to follow the car's movement as I parked it a careful distance away from the high-tech monstrosity. Most of the yard was covered with antennas of every size and variety. The moved faintly back and forth, like grass touched by a gentle breeze.

I glanced at Diana, who was studying the house with something that resembled amused interest. That did nothing to encourage me. I would have preferred it if she had been just a little freaked out, so that I would have had a reason to stay strong. Now she was staying strong, and I felt that I was beginning to freak out. Damn.

"Love what you've done with the place," I said dryly, trying to put some emotional distance between myself and a house-sized machine that looked a bit like it was sentient - or at least aware - and a lot like it didn't much like intruders.

"It is kind of cool, isn't it?" she said. I wasn't sure if she was deliberately misinterpreting my comment, or if she just couldn't imagine that anyone would not appreciate the sight of this kind of technology in action. All right, I had to admit that the house was rather interesting, but I would have been a lot more interested if I had been sure that it wouldn't try to eat me.

"So what is it?" I said. "Another one of 'his' traps?"

"I'm not sure, actually," Diana said. She opened the door and stepped out of the car. I unbuckled my seatbelt and did the same. She, of course, had neglected to put on hers. I suppose that if you're involved in shadowy conspiracies involving science fiction technology and a semi-religious belief in superhuman 'Empowered ones', chances are you will die of something else than a car crash. Especially if the car you're in is the only thing on the street that's moving. "Might be, I suppose. On the other hand, it might just be a reflection of the stuff that goes on here."

"Like what?" I said, eyeing the house suspiciously. It eyed me right back. With a lot more eyes than I had access to.

"Well, I suppose you could call them experiments," she said with a shrug. "I don't really like taking people's word for it, so whenever I learn something new, I always have to try it out."

I remembered what I had seen of Diana's apartment earlier that night, with strange, half-dismantled devices and gleaming microchips all over the place. 'Experiments', I guessed, was the polite term. 'Tinkering' might come closer. Of course, she hadn't blown herself up yet, so perhaps she knew what she was doing.

"And some of those experiments deal with Secondary?" I asked.

"Not really. I'm more into meddling with people than meddling with dimensions." She grinned at me. "But Secondary is impressionable. Things leak through from our world."

I shook my head, not to deny what she said, but just because I was feeling so confused. The explanation, I couldn't help it notice, lacked a lot in the common sense department. Of course, so did this whole situation, but I still felt that the remark about Secondary being 'impressionable' didn't quite fit in. The shape Diana's house had in this world seemed more like a metaphor to me than anything else, and metaphors was something people cared about, not something the universe cared about. The only way this could be true would be if...

I felt a thought enter my head, a thought that was so large that encompassing it was almost physically painful.

If the universe... cared what... people thought?

I shook my head again, more firmly this time, and frowned. No. Ridiculous. That was a childish fantasy. The cold, hard reality was that the universe was completely indifferent to the little scraps of life that it contained. We populated the world with concepts like good and evil, with ghosts and gods, with greatness and glory - and time and again, physical reality turned its back to us and showed us just how little those things mattered.

So why was there a part of me who was cheering, as if I had had an important revelations? Why was there a voice roaring a YES! Why did the thought about human thoughts influencing the universe feel so... so true?

Because it's an appealing notion, I told myself. Because that's what we all want to believe. That doesn't make it true.

And yet, part of me - the voice of Empowering, I supposed - was telling me that I could give an order, and by God the universe had better obey it. How could it deny me? How could dead, cold laws of nature challenge the authority of a living will?

I noticed that Diana was holding her hand over her mouth, apparently covering a large grin.

"What?" I said, a little testily. I felt confused and uncertain and in no mood to be made fun of.

"Nothing," she said merrily. "It just looked like you just realised something important."

"No." I frowned. "I just think that I'm starting to develop a bit of hubris."

"Ah." She smiled knowingly. "That's always been a problem for people like us. You have to find your balance there. Too little self-confidence and you might as well still be a Sleeper. Too much, and you'll eventually try to do something bloody stupid because you can't see how you can possibly fail."

I opened my mouth to ask what a Sleeper was, but then I found the answer for myself. She had said that another name for the Empowering was 'the Awakening'. If you weren't Awakened, you were a Sleeper. Logical. So instead I said:

"Yeah. For a moment there, I really did think I could do something impossible."

She shook her head, still smiling.

"Nothing is impossible, Simon. Some things are just bloody stupid, that's all. How about we see if we can get into my place without getting brutally massacred?"

She didn't wait for my answer but started to walk towards the door with long strides, her coat flapping behind her. I swallowed a few choice curses and followed quickly.

There was a narrow path between the forest of antennas, and Diana started walking down it. The spear of metal and plastic gracefully bent out of her way, like devoted subjects bowing to their queen as she passed. I hesitated at the beginning of the path, then took a deep breath and started walking down it.

I was allowed to take only a few steps. Then the rods and tendrils that had allowed Diana to pass so gracefully closed around me, stopping me from going forward and blocking my retreat at the same time. I had never before contemplated just how menacing the ordinary antenna looked. Or at least how menacing they looked in numbers. They seemed inhuman, insectoid. And they had captured me.

I stood as frozen for a few seconds, until I realised that they weren't making any more threatening moves. I laughed, quietly and hoarsely. They were just antennas, for crying out loud! It wasn't as if they were doomsday weapons! If they were feeling inhospitable, well, then that was too bad, because I was going in. I just had to be firm here.

I grabbed hold of two sets of antennas in front of me and started bending them out of my way.

Growing up, I had had an old aunt who lived in the countryside, and my parents had taken me to see her a few times. I had found it all pretty boring. The grown-ups' chatter didn't interest me, and there was nothing in her house to play with. I had passed the time by going out and exploring the surroundings.

There had been a field nearby, where a local farmer had his cows. It was surrounded by an electric fence. The first time I came there, I had tried to climb over it. I was too young to know what a buzzing, trembling wire was, other than yet another strange thing that I had to investigate.

It didn't exactly hurt. Not at the time, anyway. My hand stung a bit afterwards, and my chest ached, but when I put my hand on the wire, it wasn't really pain that caused me to scream and stumble backwards. What I remember most vividly was the sense of a quiver deep in my being, as if my soul was being shaken loose from my body.

This was like that, only magnified about a thousand times. My own scream seemed distant, as did the sensation of falling. Then I dropped to the ground, and that felt real enough. I lay there panting, while the antennas rustled and clinked around me. Just try that again, it sounded like they were saying. Just try that again, and see what happens.

My whole body ached. My breath came in quick, shallow wheezes. I stared in front of me without seeing. I felt somehow violated, as if some unpleasant entity - a bigger, badder version of Maurin, perhaps - had reached into me and touched something very intimate.

The antennas quickly fell out of the way as Diana hurried back. They were the very image of obedience when she was involved. The mistress wanted to pass. That was perfectly within the mistress' right. It was nasty intruders like me who had to be stopped. For a second, I hated them all deeply.

"Oh my God, Simon!" Diana gasped. For once, her normal expression of amused detachment was gone. She looked heart-warmingly concerned. "I'm so sorry! I had no idea they were going to do that!"

"I'm okay..." I said weakly. "I'm okay... I just feel a bit... tired right now..."

She knelt by me and hugged violently. Even in my current state, I couldn't help noticing that this action meant that a great deal of bosom was being pressed against me. It wasn't worth being electrocuted for, but it came pretty close.

"Fucking psycho machines!" she growled. "They're probably supposed to symbolize my fear of intimacy or something. Well, I'm not going to stand for this! Can you walk?"

"Sure," I mumbled and tried to get to my feet. It didn't work. My muscles felt like cooked noodles. All I managed was to look pathetic. Diana sighed.

"Okay, don't worry about it. We'll just have to do it the other way."

She closed her eyes and started breathing deeply. Each breath was quicker than the last, and before long, her whole body was shaking with them. I wondered if she was throwing some kind of fit. Diana didn't exactly strike me as the fit-throwing kind, but...

Then she suddenly gave off a roar and grabbed hold of me. In the same motion, she got to her feet, so that she ended up with me held on straight arms over her head. She grunted with effort, and then started walking down the path again. The antennas cleared the way for her again, thought a bit more reluctantly this time. It seemed to me that they were wondering if the mistress knew what the hell she was doing.

I calmly analysed the situation. I weighed maybe two hundred pounds, or perhaps even more. Diana had a sturdy built, but it didn't really seem possible for her to lift that much, especially not in the way she did. And yet, there you had it. Curious.

She put me down just outside of the door, out of reach for the antennas. The door, by the way, looked more like something you found on a bank vault than outside of an apartment building. I just thought that I should mention that, though at this point, that was really not enough to surprise me.

"Remind me to be more polite to you in the future," I said. I tried flexing a few muscles. It worked somewhat better than the last time, though they very clearly managed to transmit the message that they would much rather be allowed to rest for a while. I ignored their pleads and kept trying. I refused to be such a wimp in front of Diana.

She smiled.

"You're polite enough. On the other hand, aren't I due for a raise soon?"

"Very soon," I agreed. "I don't suppose you'd care to tell me how you just did that?"

She shrugged.

"I've got microchips installed in pretty much every gland in my body. All I had to do was to order them to bring on lots and lots of adrenalin." She grinned. "I can also decide how much of what I eat turn to energy, and how much turn into fat reserves. Hence the metabolism. So there you have two answers for the price of one."

"Handy," I said. I made an effort and got up to my knees. I could use a microchip or two myself right now.

"Yeah." Diana absently stroked a few loose strands of hair out of her face. "But the problem with doing something like what I just did is that there's hell to pay afterwards. I've just upsetted all sorts of chemical balances in my body, and once all that adrenalin wears out, I'll start feeling the effects of that. So it would be really good if we could get in within five minutes or so, because after that I'll probably collapse. I just thought I should tell you that."

"Noted," I mumbled and got to my feet. I had to lean pretty heavily on the metal fence lining the stairs up to the door to do it, but I did it. I was pretty resilient, despite having no cybernetic enhancements.

Cybernetic. That was the word, wasn't it? And that meant that I was together with an honest-to-goodness cyborg. I considered my feelings about that, and found that I actually thought that it was pretty cool. Other people read about them, but I was dating one.

I studied the door. There didn't seem to be any handle, or even a lock. It was just a rectangular piece of metal, blocking the way. Presumably there were hinges somewhere around here, but they were hidden and protected. If this had been constructed by anyone, then he knew his business - that business being to bar the way of anyone trying to enter.

"Open," Diana said.

The door remained closed. She took a deep breath.

"I said open!" she roared.

No effect.

"Now what?" she said wearily. "I'm allowed this far but no further? Where's the sense in that?"

"Maybe something more is required here," I suggested. "A password or something."

She shook her head.

"It's never as easy as that. If it was like that, anyone could enter if they just had access to the right information. No, I have to do something to get in." She banged her hand against the door. "I know what this is. It's just the same allegory, put in another way. I don't let anyone in, so now this door won't let me in. Damn it, I don't have time for this!" She glared at the door like it had personally insulted her. It was too bad that it wasn't wooden, because if it had been, I thought it might have burst into flame from being looked at in that way.

"Okay, but we got through the first allegory," I pointed out. "So there has to be a way through this one, too. Are you sure it's a symbol? It's not just a case of a big bloody door that's supposed to lock us out?"

"It never is," she said. "Not around here. No, this part of Secondary has absorbed parts of my personality."

"Well, then we have an advantage," I pointed out. "Because you know all about your personality. You just have to figure out how to translate it into the right symbolic language."

"No more than that, huh?" she sighed. "Damn, how I hate all this mystical stuff. I like programming code. Programming code is simple. Programming code is logical."

My own opinions on mystical stuff were divided. On one hand, it was certainly a nice change from balance reports. On the other hand, it was a pretty tiresome thing to have to deal with right now, with the both of us ready to faint from exhaustion.

"To start with the basics," I said, "why do you have issues with intimacy?"

She folded her arms over her chest.

"I prefer to be seen like the person I want to be, not the person I really am."

"Is the difference that great, then?" I said.

"In most cases, no. But sometimes it is. I don't see why I should go around putting my failings on display. What I feel is my business."

"Agreed," I said. "But right now, there's a very good reason to put your failings on display, because I don't think we'll get through that door until you do."

She gave me a dark look.

"And rumour has it there's a furball in the area," I said, smiling innocently. "You know, one of those things that must not under any circumstances find us out in the open, or..."

"Okay, okay, okay!" She frowned. "What exactly is it you think I should do?"

I glanced at the door.

"Open up?" I suggested. Diana gave me the glare the lame pun deserved.

"I suppose I could tell you about what this is really about," she said reluctantly. "They'll punish me for that, but if I don't have a choice, I don't have a choice. I could tell you about Traditions..."

I was tempted, heavens knew. I truly, deeply, desperately wanted to know what this was really about. And while I had never heard about the Traditions before this, I wanted to know about those too. But allowing yourself to exercise a bit of power was one thing, and to become a scheming, emotionless monster who used people for all they were worth with complete disregard for their feelings... well, that was another.

"No," I said reluctantly. "You've already given me plenty of hints, but the door is still locked. I think you have to tell me about you. Tell me what you feel, right this moment."

Diana shook her head.

"No way."

I made a big display out of looking down the street, raising my eyebrows.

"Isn't that a big, hairy thing over there?" I said cheerfully. "Why yes, I think it is. And it's coming this way..."

"Okay!" Diana snapped. "Okay, damn it!" She took a deep breath. "I'm scared and I'm out of my depth and I'm starting to hurt all over and in a moment I'll pass out and I hate that I'll be defenceless once that happens and when I get my hands on the son of a bitch who put me in this position I'll strangle him and I think I'm falling in love with you and I'm terrified that you're secretly Patrick Farson who's seducing me and plans to use me to get to the others and I'm tired and I'm confused and I want this fucking door to open!"

In the silence that took over once her voice faded out I could hear a low click. The door swung open on silent hinges.

"You're what?" I said dumbly. Then I realised that there had been an even more remarkable part after that one. "You think I'm who?"

Diana looked past me with eyes that seemed to have a hard time focusing.

"Well, what do you know?" she said unsteadily. "It worked."

Then her legs folded underneath her, and I barely had time to catch her before she dropped to the floor.

I managed to drag her through the door before it closed again, but that was as far as my ability went at the moment. I didn't think I was in any state to carry her - I was bound to drop her if I tried. Instead, I lay her down inside the door, folding my coat behind her head as a kind of makeshift pillow. That would have to do for a while.

I checked her pulse. It was steady enough. She didn't seem to have any trouble breathing. As that was as far as my knowledge in medicine extended - apart from knowing what pills to take when I had a headache - I had to assume that she would be fine with some rest. Meanwhile, I had a big house to explore, assuming that I didn't collapse myself. I didn't think I would, but I wasn't exactly feeling like I was in peak condition, either.

I was standing in a long corridor with blank metal walls that went on for - it seemed to me - quite a bit longer than the actual length of the house I had seen from the outside. Small, efficient lamps lit it from the ceiling. There seemed to be a great number of doors, all of them to the right. I started limping down the corridor, opening the doors and looking in as I went.

The first room had walls that were really screens, and endless equations moved down them. I had read a lot of books on physics, which helped me recognise a few of the shorter ones - the founding stones in the great building of calculation, as it were. If the symbols meant what I thought they meant, it all had something to do with electricity. But for every variable I could recognise, there were ten that didn't make the smallest bit of sense to me. The way it looked to me, the scientist who had written it - yet again assuming that any of this had been constructed by human hands, and had not just appeared - had gone straight through the Arabian alphabet, continued through the Greek alphabet and was now working his way through the Chinese alphabet.

Another room was a spider web of wires and metal threads, crisscrossing each other in some sort of surreal pattern. I thought that I could, faintly, make out the shape of something moving in there. I firmly closed that door again.

There was a room that was constantly changing. One minute, it was a modern office room, not unlike the one Diana worked in at Greystone Entertainment. The next, it was the classroom of a school, with a large blackboard, a cateder, and row after row of benches. A blink of an eye later it was what looked like a saloon from a western movie. I stood there for several minutes, but the room never repeated itself. Some of the shapes it took were downright disturbing; there was one that seemed to be a cavern in a crystal mountain, with a blue sun shining through the hexagonal windows. There were objects in there, made in some kind of black metal, but I couldn't tell if they were furniture or machinery.

One room was decorated with nothing but images of Diana. The wallpaper was meant out of pictures of her, in every age from newly born to the present. At least I assumed that the infant on the pictures was Diana. There was something in her eyes that seemed familiar; the baby seemed to be looking out at the world with an expression of wary appreciation, as if to say So this is where I'll be living? Well, I guess I could have done worse. Most of the floor space was occupied by very lifelike statues of her. They were all the same age, but each one portrayed a different emotion. One of them was throwing its head back and laughing, another one was in tears. One seemed to be shocked and disbelieving, while its neighbour smiled in a way that hinted of vast knowledge. Another one smiled in a different way, broad and naughty, that I couldn't quite identity at first. Then I realised that the statue was halfway through unbuttoning its blouse. I found myself blushing for no good reason. Oh. It was that kind of smile.

The last room I looked into was filled with paper. There was no furniture, only stacks and piles of papers lying all over the floor. All of them had at least a few words of scribbled text on them, and most were covered with notes and drawings and diagrams. All of them were done in Diana's handwriting. Just by letting my eyes run over the room I spotted pretty much all reasons there were to write something down, from grocery lists to what looked like an attempt to write a novel. The latter was full of crossed-over words and changes - apparently the author wasn't too happen with how it was turning out.

In comparison, the pages of code I found looked like an expert's work. It contained enough #include interface.h and {introduce integer variable X, Y; to make my head spin. But then, Diana had done this for a living. Not only that, but she apparently had some sort of intuitive understanding for how to make computers do things they ordinarily wouldn't be able to. According to what she had said, I should have that understanding too, so I spent a few minutes trying to make sense of the code, but I had no sudden flashes of revelation. The text stayed a mystery.

As I kept browsing through the piles, I found a paper where Simon Stromberg = Patrick Farson? was written in large letters at the top, and underlined three times. Below it the paper was full of scribbled sentences without any apparent order. The paper was broken in several places; the writer had been using her pen with some force. I let my eyes wander down it slowly, picking up words at random. In some places, the phrases used hinted of clinical analysis. In other places - and it was infallibly in those places that the paper had been broken - you could read something resembling desperation between the lines.

Able to find records all the way back to birth, it read in one place. Beneath that line, in smaller letters, the writer had added as an afterthought: But records easy to manipulate.

But he's got a sense of HUMOUR! it said in another place. I had to smile at that. Having a sense of humour was indeed proof of not being Patrick. I didn't think Patrick would know a joke if it bit him in the nose. It just wasn't his style. He might be able to fake it, though - how hard could it possibly be? This wasn't a holding argument; more of a gut feeling. Diana didn't think I was Patrick. She just couldn't be sure that I wasn't.

I walked out of the room and resisted the temptation of opening any more doors. It all seemed far too private. If I wanted to get to know Diana, I should do it by spending time with her, not by letting Secondary dig up her innermost thoughts and putting them into solid form. Instead, I sat down, my back against the wall. No risk of getting dust on the back of my expensive suit; there wasn't a single speck of dust or grain of dirt in here. The word sterile floated into my mind, but to be honest, I liked it. The house didn't feel unfriendly anymore; Diana had asked me in, and therefore I was welcome.

I could do with a bit of a rest, I decided; I could keep on looking for whatever equipment it was Diana wanted to use after I had relaxed for a while. And I had some things that I wanted to think about.

I think I'm falling in love with you.

Now, that was a startling revelation if there had ever been one. I had known that she liked me, for some obscure reason. I had even guessed that she was attracted to me. Why not? I'm a good-looking guy, at least I think so myself. But she had used the word 'love'. And that sort of put everything in a new perspective.

For instance, it made a voice in my head keep saying But why, exactly? Which was a rather insulting thing to hear from one's own mind, but valid, nonetheless. Women did not, as a rule, tell me that they loved me. I seemed to recall that one had said Damn it, Simon, I want to love you, but you just won't let me! That had been during our break-up fight, so all in all, I didn't think it counted for much. Besides, the woman in question - I thought her name might have been Veronica, but it had been a great many years ago and my memory was foggy - had been right on the money. Diana might be afraid of intimacy, but I wasn't - for roughly the same reason that I wasn't afraid of dying in childbirth. I wasn't capable of entering a situation where I would have anything to fear. Who could love someone like that?

Well, Diana, apparently. Or at least she thought she was starting to. And considering that she had once married a man for looks and money alone, I had a feeling that she was almost as unused to finding herself at her end of the situation as I was to finding myself at mine. It made a sort of crazy sense, I supposed. If I was her type, then she couldn't have found many men to her liking. As far as I knew, I was the only one of my type. For good reasons, too; no one else would ever want to be like me.

Okay, fine. Apparently she was insane enough to think I might be good boyfriend material. What did I feel about it?

Surprise and disbelief, mostly.

But wasn't there a warm feeling somewhere beneath that, though? I had had a crush on Diana since about the first time I saw her. I had done my very best not to think about it, because I deeply hated acting like a pathetic old cliché, and besides, it wasn't as if someone as charming and intelligent as she would ever be interested in someone who read physics books for fun, was it?

Only apparently it was like that, and that made everything extremely complicated. Of course, it also opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities. Some of them even involving clothes.

I pushed both kinds of possibilities out of the way - no prices for guessing which kind fought harder to stay - and tried to focus on what I should do. I supposed I owed it to myself to talk about this with Diana. See where we were standing, now that she had told me. And tell her of my own feelings, if I could just figure out what the hell they were...

Of course, there was an even greater problem. She thought I might be Patrick. Now, I was pretty sure - I refused to be completely sure; I had lost too many certainties already - that I was not, in fact, Patrick. I wasn't entirely sure who I was in relation to him. I had thought I must be his son, but now I was starting to feel doubtful towards that assumption. It seemed far too easy, far too mundane for this whole mess. But regardless, I was pretty sure I wasn't him. Diana, who had never seen the two of us together (if you didn't count hearing him on the phone and talking to me in person at the same time - and considering all the high-tech gadgets that seemed to be floating around here, that probably didn't count), could not be that sure. And the thing was that we looked almost exactly alike. If I shaved, it would take our respective mothers to tell us apart. Diana was very justified at thinking that I might be him under an assumed name.

Why was that such a problem, though? Who were these 'others' who she was afraid I was using her to get to? If there was a war going on here, what was it about, and who were the participants? And which were the stakes? Would defeat mean the loss of life, money, freedom, or what?

And what side was I on?

A good question. So far, I had - apparently - been on Patrick's side, helping to achieve whatever goals he had. I had been prepared for that work my entire life. I had done rather well, as far as I could see. If nothing else, Patrick had never been shy about giving criticism; if I had screwed up, he would have told me. Now I was well on my way to changing sides. Which was okay, I supposed, because I was pretty fed up with Patrick's side, but I'd very much like to know what side I was joining before I signed anything. It could, conceivably, be worse. Though that was a depressing thought to be sure...

It all came down to who Patrick really was. I had always assumed that he was in finance, or possibly working for the government in one way or another. Apparently, things were a lot more complicated than that. He might work for the government, but I had a feeling that he wasn't your ordinary federal agent or low-level administrator. Or your ordinary anything.

I realised that I wasn't getting anywhere and that I should probably get up and make myself useful. I got to my feet with a groan and walked unsteadily off to see what I could find in this crazy place.

What I could find, apparently, was an elevator. There were no stairs to accompany it. I supposed that low-tech stuff like that had no place here. This place was all about technology. Or maybe not exactly that. More like the idea of technology - the perception of technology. It was a part of human nature to assign a will to everything, because ultimately, the human mind was incapable of understanding the concept of not wanting anything.

Here, if a computer started spitting out error messages, it really would be out of spite. Here, science was a living thing. I didn't even try to understand those revelations, or even question where they came from. Not because my curiosity had decreased, but because these questions were meaningless. On one level, I already understood; and on the other, I probably never would.

The elevator had three buttons. I pushed the middle one, but that just took me to another corridor, exactly the same as the one I had left, only without Diana in the other end. I pushed the top one, and blinked at what I saw when the doors opened again. No more stainless steel and endless doors. I was standing in a perfectly normal hallway.

Well, mostly normal. There was a bench standing next to the wall, and it was full of strange pieces of machinery and piles of glittering microchips. So was the hat rack. So, I noted, was the table in the living-room, which I could faintly make out through an open door. This was Diana's apartment. It was even more of a workshop nightmare here than in Primary, but it was her apartment, all right. And since it contained even more stuff here than it did in its normal incarnation, chances were that the things she was looking for would be here. Finally something was going right.

In addition, there was probably a bed here somewhere, in which Diana would be more comfortable than she was now - provided, of course, that I removed all the equipment that was likely to occupy it. Also provided I could get her to it. The elevator meant I wouldn't have to carry her up the stairs, which I appreciated, but I was still feeling a bit shaky from being harassed by insane, electric antennas.

Well, I would just have to be a bit more careful, that was all. If she was having feelings for me, I'd hate to dampen them by dropping her on the floor...

I went down to the ground floor again. Diana was still out cold next to the door, but when I tried to lift her, she gave off a soft groan and opened her eyes. Her gaze was a bit unsteady.

"Simon...?" she mumbled.

"It's okay," I said. "I'm just going to get you to a place where you can rest better. Go back to sleep."

"No, I can walk," she said. I gave her a doubtful glance. "I can walk!" she insisted. "If you support me a bit, I can walk."

So we ended up staggering along the length of the corridor, arms over each other's shoulders, like two drinking buddies on their way home from the pub. We went up in the elevator, and Diana led me into her bedroom. Most of it was occupied by a computer system on a desk. Parts of it were also under, in front of, and to the sides of the desk. It was a very large system, far from the hard-drive-keyboard-screen version I personally used at home. I didn't even recognise most of the additions. Of course, this was Diana's place - I had a feeling that Bill Gates wouldn't do much better at identifying the machines she was using.

The bed was, surprisingly, void of gadgets. Diana dropped down on it with a sigh of relief.

"Ah, that's better," she said.

"Your sheets have fluffy bunnies on them," I noted casually.

"What?" She looked down on them, her expression almost comically startled. "They do! They bloody well do! This is not how my bed really looks! My sheets are black! And completely bunny-free!"

"Maybe Secondary wants to tell you that you're really a vulnerable child inside?" I said innocently.

Diana growled and buried her face in her hands.

"I can't wait until we get out of here! What does this place get off to, telling me I've got all these issues I have to deal with? I know I've got issues! I like my issues! I don't want to deal with them! Where's the fun in being perfect, anyway?"

"I wouldn't know," I said honestly and sat down at the foot end of the bed. "Will you be okay?"

"Yeah." She dropped her hands back onto the sheets, which were indeed covered with adorable, furry animals. "I'm just out of energy. And in this place, energy comes back quickly. Give me half an hour, and I'll start putting together a beacon." She yawned. "Until then, I'll just have to try to overcome my intense disgust of this insulting bed."

"If you're not going back to sleep," I said, "can I ask you something?"

"Sure." She smiled tiredly. "This whole 'woman with all the answers thing' is starting to grow on me. Maybe I should take a protégé."

"What's a technomancer?" I asked. "Maurin asked you if that's what you were, and you said yes."

Diana looked at me silently for a moment. I wondered if maybe I had committed some kind of faux pa. Maybe it was a terrible insult in Empowered circles to ask someone what a technomancer was. But that didn't sound very plausible. I knew nothing of Empowered circles, but I knew something about Diana, and she wasn't easily insulted, or easily shocked by tactlessness.

"It had to be that one, didn't it?" she then said flatly. "It had to be the big one. Just when I'm feeling the most unsuited for it, you have to ask me the question that'll start the most complicated discussion I can think of."

"I'm sorry," I said, startled. "You don't have to answer."

"That's right, I don't." She frowned. "In fact, I probably shouldn't answer. Against my orders and all that." A thin smile crossed her lips. "But at this point, I feel like I owe you better than that."

"Look, you don't owe me anything," I said. "In fact, you've helped me a lot more than anyone could have asked of you already. If you're going to get in serious trouble for it..."

"It's not that." She grinned. "I've been in trouble all my life. It's my thing. But if I tell you what a technomancer is, you're going to freak out."

"Diana," I said dryly. "During the last two days, I have been threatened, humiliated, mystified and, finally, outright attacked by various computers. I have reached a higher level of awareness and almost driven insane by it. I have found out that my entire life up to this point has been a part of some sort of shadowy agenda by a man I thought was my godfather and whom everyone else seems to think is me. And, jus to top it off, I have been kidnapped to some sort of alternative reality and forced to make my way across it, with all what that has entailed. What I'm trying to get at is that if I was planning to freak out, you would currently be looking at a thoroughly out-freaked man. Just tell me what a technomancer is. There is very little left that can still surprise me."

Diana smiled. It was a tired smile, but she was looking more like herself for every second.

"Can I take that as a promise?"

"Yes!" I said firmly.

"Okay, then." She took a deep breath. "A technomancer is a mage who performs magick through the use of technology."

I stared at her, waiting for her to laugh. But as the seconds passed by, I realised that she wasn't going to. She had given me the truth, as she saw it. I might have felt as surprised if I, when reading through a new book on physics, found that the author not only believe in Santa Claus, but used the fat, red-clad guy's existence as proof that an object could move faster than light-speed - that sled seemed to have no troubles with it, after all, so it must be possible. So far, everything Diana had said had sounded like a sort of pseudo-science. Now, it seemed that her science was a lot more pseudo than I had imagined.

"Magic," I said hollowly.

"Magick," she correctly automatically. There was a subtle difference in how she pronounced it. "With a K at the end. Don't ask me why, I guess someone thought that it looked flashier that way. Simon, are you all right?"

The words You're insane entered my mind. For a second I cling to them. They represented a rational response, after all. If someone told you magic existed, you told her that she was insane. Simple. Logical. Sensible.

Before I managed to get them out of my mouth, however, I remembered that I was sitting in a house that looked like an inventor's nightmare, in a dimension populated by yellow midgets with a taste for human flesh. Once you had accepted all that, what was a little magic - oh, sorry, magick - between friends?

"Will you... please... define the word... magick...?" I said, struggling to remain calm. It wasn't easy. The events of the last two days were falling into place, and it was a very ugly place. If you had to make allowances for the laws of nature, a lot of what I had been through seemed impossible. If you accepted the concept of magic, though, it all made sense. Or rather, it didn't, but it was okay that it didn't made sense, because it was magical. Magic didn't make sense. That was what made it magic instead of science.

"That's a tough one," Diana said. She was using the soft, mild voice that one employs when talking to someone that's very close to having a hysterical breakdown. "How about 'changing the world through force of will'?"

"Reality is subjective," I whispered, mostly to myself. The phrase suddenly made sense. An awful, horrible sense. I felt like the world was falling apart around me. When I had first started reading about quantum physics, and understood that what I had believed to be unshakable laws of nature was nothing more than the most probably outcome, I had walked around in a state of mild shock for days. This was like that, only a thousand times more so.

"That's right, reality is subjective," Diana said. "It's formed by the will and belief of all living minds together. We call that the Consensus." She smiled uncertainly. "The universe itself is the ultimate democracy. You wouldn't have thought it, would you?"

The thing was, I would. That's why I wasn't trying to deny what she was telling me. That's why I just sat back and accepted it. Because part of me had known it all along, had known it ever since I had come back from my meeting with Patrick. Ever since the moment of my Empowering.

"I... see," I said in a very small voice.

"How are you?" Diana said. "You've gone all pale." She laughed uncertainly. "I remember when Tanja explained this to me. I think I told her she was a nutcase. We all have different ways of handling unexpected revelations."

"I'll... I'll be fine," I said. "I'll be fine. It's just that it's a lot to take in. This is actually true, isn't it? Nothing I've seen has been technology at all. It's been magic."

"Well, it's been both at once, actually," Diana said, "because that's what technomancy is, but yes, it's been magick."

"Then everything I've ever known has been a lie," I said. There was a horrible emptiness in my voice that even scared myself.

"No, it's been true." Diana sat up and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "To a certain degree, what you've been told is true. But to a certain degree, everything is true."

"Because reality is subjective," I said.

Diana smiled at me.

"You learn quickly," she congratulated me.

Diana sat down beside me at the foot of the bed, making herself comfortable. I seemed unable to stop staring into space. Magic. The ability to change the world through force of will, Diana had said. The power to order the universe around, to alter the rules to suit you. It was possible.

A voice spoke up in my mind. In comparison to the rest of the chaos in there, it was very strong and clear.

I want to do that, it said.

And I did. The human brain is a sturdy thing. It's designed to adapt. A few minutes ago, the foundations of my world had been destroyed. Now, my mind had started making the necessary adjustments. If I believed - and obviously, I did, against all reason and against everything I had ever known - then I should investigate the possibilities of this new world. I should find out what the rules were and how things were done. I should explore it.

Wasn't that what I had always wanted, in retrospect? Wasn't that what I had filled what parts of my life Patrick hadn't managed to occupy with? To find things out - to explore. I had always been curious, and the Empowering had seemed to magnify that trait to an extent that was almost absurd. I wanted to know everything about everything. And now I had a whole new (subjective) reality to explore. Wasn't I the lucky one?

That thought almost managed to make me smile.

"The Consensus," Diana said, "is, basically, what you get if you add every human being's view of the world together and then divide by the number of human beings. Think of it as a kind of compromise. If a lot of people believe something, then that's more true - more real - than something that only one person thinks." She smiled. "And lucky for us, or all the mentally disturbed people of the world would turn it into an even more confusing place than it already is. The point is that everyone's belief affects the world a little, but the belief of many affects the world a lot. With me so far?"

I nodded. I didn't really trust my voice right now.

"Well, so then we have a world where the rules are decided by majority. If the majority thinks the sky is blue, then the sky is blue. If a few thousand people got together and decided that they wanted the sky to be red, maybe it would shift a little bit more towards purple, but don't count on it. Because let's face it, this planet of ours is packed with people. There are six billion blue-believers out there, and they generate lots of belief. So what we've got is a world - even more, a reality - where things tend to be exactly as the most people want it. Or as they believe it to be, rather, but that's almost the same thing; people usually tend to believe that everything is more or less the way they want it to be, because that's what gets them through the day. So a few nonconformists get disappointed, but hey, they're a minority, so it's okay, right?"

I nodded warily. Diana chuckled and shook her head.

"Wrong! It's not okay! Just because the others are many it doesn't make it okay for them to decide how your life is going to turn out. That should be your decision. And the good news is, it can be."

"Magic," I said. It wasn't a question.

"Magick," Diana agreed. "If you knew how to do it, and you've got the willpower, you can alter the Consensus in a limited way. You can ignore the majority. And that's all magick is, really. It's saying 'I won't let anyone else choose for me'. It's saying 'My life is my own'. It's telling the universe 'Yes I can' one more time than it can tell you 'No you can't'. You can do it with computers and machines and cybernetic implants, or you can do it with ancient runes and spells and eye of newt and all that stuff, or you can do it with... with meatloaf if you think that'll work better for you. But that's just different techniques. What it all comes down to is telling the high and mighty Consensus to go screw itself."

Somehow, the idea of telling the Consensus to go screw itself greatly appealed to me. To obey the law of gravity because it was an integral part of the necessary order of the universe was one thing. To obey the law of gravity because everyone else demanded that I stay on the ground was quite another. I'm not sure why, but that was how it felt.

"I can see where this is leading," I said. I managed a weak smile. "The Empowering. It makes you think that you're above all the rules. It takes an Empowered person to do what you said, doesn't it?"

"Surprisingly enough, no." Diana wrinkled her brow. "Anyone can learn how to do magick. I've got a friend who's about as Empowered as a brick, but he can still run technomantic statistics programs and predict the future as neatly as you please. He's nowhere near as powerful as I am, and he never will be, but there's no denying that what he does is magick."

"But it makes it easier?" I insisted.

"Absolutely. About a million times easier. Empowered people are custom-made for magehood." She looked at me, her expression very serious. "And that also means that once you've become Empowered, you will use magick. You just won't be able to help yourself. If you study, and get some sort of structure on it, you'll control it. Otherwise it'll control you. Either way, there's no way for you to get rid of it."

"I don't want to get rid of it," I said. And I didn't. If magick existed, then I wanted it. Wanted it so badly that it hurt. Wanted it, I suppose, from the bottom of my Empowered soul. It wasn't that I wanted to kick people around with hypnotic programs and cybernetic enhancements. It wasn't even really that I wanted to defend myself from all the people - and other things than people - who seemed to have no qualms about kicking me around. It was that I wanted to understand this world that I had been shown, and there was no better way to do that than to become part of it.

"At some point you will." Diana smiled sadly. "There hasn't been a mage so far who never wanted to go back to the days when things were nice and simple."

"You too?"

"As I said, there hasn't been a mage so far." She grinned. "But that was just because I was feeling generally shitty at the time. Magick has a price, but it's worth it. Don't forget that."

I nodded. As far as I could see, seeing the world as it really was had to be worth any cost.

"One more question?" I said humbly.

She winced, smiling.

"You and your question. Yes, okay, one more. Then I have to start working."

"What is the Empowering? I mean, what is it that actually happens? And why does it happen?"

She stared at the wall for a moment, biting her lip. Then she turned back to me, her forehead still wrinkled.

"No one really knows," she said. "There's lots of theories, but no one's sure. If you want to know what I believe, it's something you do to yourself. If you wish deeply enough that your life was different, that the world was different, then eventually some sort of barrier in your mind breaks, and you realise that you can make both your life and the world change."

If you wish deeply enough that your life was different.

I didn't say so, but Diana's theory fitted my own personal case very well indeed.