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.

7. Whirlwind and PurplePiper

DISCLAIMER: Maybe I should claim that this is all my inventions. You know, just for variety? =]

Okay, maybe not. The World of Darkness and everything therein belongs to someone who's not me, yadi yadi yadda. Would be fun if it did belong to me, though. I'd be able to do a lot of things with it. I'd exterminate all bloody werewolves, for starters. (*sinks into blissful reverie on the subject*) Aaahhhhh…

Anyway. Seriously. This is the last chapter in Reign of Conformity, which I've been working on for… er, I don't know, actually… pretty damn long, anyway. More than a year, for certain. Simon and Diana has occupied a significant part of my imagination for all this time, and I daresay they will continue to do that. Without giving away too much, I can tell you that there'll be tons of loose ends when this chapter ends, and I fully intend to deal with them all – as well as with a great number of new ideas that I got during the course of writing.

My sincere thanks to everyone who has followed me all the way to the end (I know for a fact that there's at least one person, but hopefully there are some others, too =]), and I hope that you've enjoyed yourselves. I know I have.

Oh, and one final note: for those of you who haven't noticed, I've completely rewritten the sixth chapter. If you have only read the first version, go back and read it again before proceeding. Trust me, it will spare you so much confusion. =]

I really had no idea which part of town we were in when we finally got up from the subway. I could see that all the buildings were rather big and old, though. The word 'gothic' flittered through my head at the sight. They also seemed to be in generally good condition, despite the fact that they were probably very hard to maintain. An old part of town that had been built for rich people and was still owned by rich people, then – but that was as far as I got. Dougal isn't one of the world's major cities, but it is large enough that you can live there your whole life and still only know how a small part of it looks like.

Well, you can, if you're as boring as I am, at least. I don't really explore new territory a lot. Or I didn't use to.

"Where are we?" I said, looking from side to side as I followed Diana.

"Marbleton," she said promptly. "Just south of the business district. We're going to go and visit Kevin."

Que surge of insane jealousy, which I quickly suppressed. She had spent last night – well, last day, technically – with me. And she didn't seem the least bit guilty about that. That, surely, must mean that nothing serious was going on between her and Kevin, no matter how comfortable they were with each other.

I tried that reasoning on for size, and admitted that it sounded pretty good. Unfortunately, any sort of reasoning applied to Diana was prone to failure. Diana didn't really behave like most people. And while I had gotten to know her at least superficially over the last six months, and gotten to know her a whole lot better in the last few days, I still couldn't figure out what was going on in her head with any degree of accuracy.

"You think you'll need help to fight 'him'?" I said.

"That too," she said. "But mostly, I just need somewhere to log on. Ah, here we are."

We stood in front of a tall building that gave an impression of stubborn resistance to time. It was built in some dark stone, which was now chipped and broken in places. The railing framing the stairs leading up to the door were made of wrought iron, as were the decorations around the windows. Something in the make of the structure suggested that there ought to be gargoyles on the roof, but of course there wasn't.

"Not exactly cosy," I noted. Diana smiled.

"Kevin likes the ambience," she said. "He'll take style over comfort any time."

"For a given value of style, apparently," I mumbled as we walked up the stairs and in through the door. Inside, there were more stairs; apparently, the residents here felt that it would have been heresy to install an elevator.

"Just a few more stairs," Diana told me merrily, after we had climbed for a while. "Try not to collapse before that."

"Ehhhhh…" I managed to answer. Carrying Diana's luggage on plane ground had been bothersome enough. I made a quick mental calculation on the force I had to produce in order for me to get one step further up, and the result made me feel even more tired. And Diana strolling up completely unburdened didn't make it any easier.

"Come on, you can do it!" the horrible woman called from the top floor. She was grinning widely at the sight of me struggling. "We're all counting on you!"

"Ehhhhh!" I groaned and forced myself to take another step. And then another. And then, finally, I was at the top floor. I let the bags in my hands drop to the floor and leaned on the wall, panting.

Diana patted me on the arm.

"Good boy," she said.

I gave her my best Don't mess with me glare, but she just laughed and knocked on the door. There was just one on this floor, I noticed, marked 'K Harsh' on an ornamented bronze sign. There was no doorbell, but instead a wrought iron knocker in the shape of bird with its wings spread.

After a moment, there was a rattle of locks on the other side, and Kevin opened. He was wearing a different suite than he had the same morning. This one was spotlessly white with the exception for the tie, which was decorated with images of red roses. It was, however, just as stylish and impeccable as the dark one I had seen him in before. He looked great in it. But then, I was starting to realise that Kevin would look great in anything. His complete certainty that whatever he wore at the moment was just the thing, old boy, would make it impossible for anyone else to disapprove of it.

The Empowering had more uses than just magick, apparently.

"Diana," he said. His tone managed to express both pleasant surprise at her appearance and a polite question of what she was doing there.

"Hi, Kevin," Diana said. "Can I come in? The Man is out to get me."

"The Man is out to get everyone," Kevin said and gracefully stepped aside to let us in. "I really have no idea why. Maybe he's just not a very nice Man. Hello, Mr Stromberg, how nice to see you again."

I mumbled something vaguely pleasant in return as I stepped inside, following Diana. And then I caught sight of Kevin's apartment. It was… breathtaking.

I don't think there was a shred of plastic to be found. All the furniture was wood and metal, and carved and ornamented until every chair or lamppost was a marvel of artistry. The carpet in the hallway I was in was scarlet, with black patterns along the edges, thick and costly-looking. On the walls hung oil painting in intricate frames.

The air smelled like old books and dusty velvet. It felt like being inside the world's smallest Victorian mansion.

Style over comfort, indeed…

"I need to set up a DW interface," Diana told Kevin when he had closed the door again. "Two, if possible. Do you still have your old rig?"

"Yes," Kevin said evenly, "but I can't promise that it will work. I haven't used it for quite some time, you know."

"That's okay. I'd like to bring Simon along, but I can't make do without him if I have to. There's some other stuff I need from you, though."

"Ah," Kevin said with a certain lack of enthusiasm. "You are, I take it, calling in those last few favours I owe you?"

"Yep," Diana said cheerfully. "Now, first of all I need you to tighten the Gauntlet around here."

"That wouldn't seem to present much difficulty," Kevin said with a shrug. "It is Whirlwind, then, I presume?"

"Excuse me," I said.

"I think so," Diana said. "I've established an 86,55 % method pattern match."

"Are you really going to face him in his domain?" Kevin said. "I would advice against it. Especially since, I can't help noticing, there's a very high risk that he'd track your connection down and find me at the end of it."

"Excuse me!" I said.

"That's the other thing I need you for," Diana said, grinning. "I'm going to force him to step out of the Web. When he does…"

"Oh, I see," Kevin said. A smile spread on his fine-featured face. "Yes. Yes, that might indeed be just the thing…"

I took a deep breath.

"EXCUSE! ME! PLEASE!" I yelled.

Diana and Kevin turned to look at me. I glared at them in turn.

"I would like very much," I said, extremely politely, "if you two cut down on the trade language and explained to me, clearly and concisely, what's going on. Assume I know nothing, because I don't."

Diana looked astounded for a moment, but then she started chuckling. Kevin smiled, one eyebrow raised. Neither of them made me feel that much less angry.

"Okay, fair enough," Diana said. "One more storytelling session required, I guess. Just to make you understand what it is we're doing here. But I'm going to have to make some phone calls. Kevin, could you explain to him while you're setting up the ritual?"

"It would be my pleasure," Kevin said. He put one hand on my shoulder and guided me into the next room. "Come on, old chap. I'll tell you about Whirlwind. Or, as you two seem to prefer putting it," his eyes, half-closed, twinkled, "about 'him'."

I had seen that Kevin's door was the only one on the upper-most floor, but somehow, I hadn't realised what that meant. It meant that his apartment occupied the entire top floor, while all the other ones had three apartments each. Kevin was living a bachelor's life in an amount of space that would have been roomy for two middle-sized families.

I felt a bit taken aback. Kevin must be fairly rich to afford to live like this, and all this elegant furniture couldn't have been cheap, either. I had assumed that I had at least that advantage over him.

I could live in a place like this, I comforted myself. I've got the salary for it. I just don't see why I should. A place to sleep, that's all I need.

The room he took me to was sparsely furnished; there were only a few big cupboards by the wall. There wasn't a carpet, either, only the naked wood of the floor. It smelled faintly of incense.

Kevin walked up to one of the cabinets and took out five golden candle-holders, long enough that they would reach up to a man's waist when placed on the floor. He carefully placed them in a circle, moving one of them several times to make sure that it stood just right.

"Now, Whirlwind," he said to me as he studied the position of the gleaming rods. "His real name is Karl Militts."

I formed the name silently on my lips. Karl Militts. 'He' had a name. 'He' could be reached. And harmed. That felt very reassuring, somehow.

"I'm not sure how much Diana has told you," Kevin said as he went back to the cupboard and took out five thick vacs candles. "Do you know what the Technocracy is?"

I nodded grimly. Sure I knew what the Technocracy was. I had been working for it for most of my life.

"Splendid, splendid." He started placing the candles in the holders. "Then you also know that there are quite a few people who are not entirely happy with the way they run things. People who don't consider 'just because, that's why' to be an adequate answer to their questions."

"The Traditions," I said.

"Indeed. Hmm, where did I put that chalk?" Kevin opened the other cupboard and rummaged through it. Though 'rummaged' is not a very good word for what he did. It hints at far too unmannered and brutish an action. Kevin managed to make even searching for a missing possession look graceful. "Ah, here it is. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The Traditions."

He knelt down on the floor between the candle-holders and started drawing some sort of complex pattern.

"The Traditions," he repeated, not taking his eyes off of the work at hand. "Essentially, back in the middle ages, when the Technocracy first appeared, the Order of Hermes brought together all the schools of magick that was threatened by the change from a Dynamic to a Static way of thinking…"

"I'm sorry?" I said. "What was that last part?"

"Hmm." Kevin paused briefly and wrinkled his brow. "I think Diana would have said, 'from Chaos to Order'?"

"Oh." I nodded, feeling somewhat slow-witted for not having understood as much right away. "Yeah, she's told me about that."

Kevin grimaced.

"Very well, then, but realise that it's a clumsy way of putting it. The Traditions are not about Chaos. They are about understanding instead of simply knowing, about leading instead of merely controlling, and about co-existing peacefully with those who are different from you rather than attempting to force them to adapt to your way of life. Believe me, chaos is the last thing we want – we simply disagree that the only way to achieve order is by shoving it down everyone's throats, as it were. If you want to describe the Traditions' ideal in one word, then it's enlightenment."

I nodded slowly. Two different explanations from two different mages. Both, by definition, true – at least for a given value of 'true'. I wasn't sure how comfortable I was with Kevin's version of Tradition philosophy, though I supposed that it had some merit. It just occurred to me that it would be very easy to go wrong if you tried to follow it. Had the Technocracy initially set out to lead rather than control? I had no way of knowing, but it seemed possible enough.

"Be that as it may," Kevin said as he kept working, "the Council of Nine Traditions is an organisation whose purpose is, for lack of a better description, to save the world. But how do you, in fact, go about saving the world? Even with all our powers and all our knowledge – and believe me, the latter is far more important than the former – it is rather hard to know where to start, do you see?"

"I guess so," I said. "There's a lot of world, and not all too many of you."

Kevin smiled at that.

"Indeed there is, and indeed there are not. And one cannot simply destroy the Technocracy. Even if opportunity presented itself – and the Technocracy is not in the habit of presenting us with opportunities – we would be forced to hesitate. Much as we may resent it, the Technocracy has embedded itself deep within the world of today. It is what makes things tick along as peacefully as they do."

"I'm not sure things are ticking along that peacefully," I said dubiously. "If the Technocracy really wants peace and prosperity above all else, why are there hundreds of minor wars going on all over the world at this very moment?"

"Well, the Technocracy is not omnipotent, of course," Kevin admitted. "But the fact remains that things are rather more, shall we say, relaxed in our age. The Technocracy is maintaining order. The common man on the street might not know just how much it does for him in the course of an ordinary day, but if it were to disappear… well, suffice to say that that would be noticed. All over the world, in the most unpleasant ways possible."

"You sound almost as if you admired the Technocrats," I said, perplexed.

Kevin turned his head to look at me, his expression astonished. Then he laughed, a surprised and delighted laugh.

"Oh, dear me," he chuckled. "I seem to have given the wrong impression here. No, no, my friend, believe me when I say that I despise and detest the Technocracy and all its cohorts, its philosophy, its methods and its ever action. But then, I feel rather the same way about insects. They are all so inferior to me as to be beneath even contempt, and their existence offends my sensibilities, but if I were to somehow kill every one of them, the whole world would suffer. The sensible man will attempt to ignore them as far as possible, and of course take steps to ensure that he will not be bitten or stung."

I scratched my chin. I was starting to wish that Diana would be finished with her calls and get back here. I dealt with people on a daily basis, and my professional success depended on my ability to get along with each and every one of them. Even so, I had no idea how to deal with Kevin. The man seemed to have taken arrogance to a whole new level. He was so sure of himself that he didn't even need to brag, not in the true sense of the word. He was simply stating facts, without caring one bit whether or not I agreed of his lofty opinions of himself.

"Quite," I mumbled.

"In order to truly win over the Technocracy," Kevin said as he got up from the floor and carefully dusted his trouser legs off, "the Traditions have to not only destroy it, but replace it. Or rather I should say that they need to replace the Technocratic philosophy with the Traditional philosophy."

"You keep talking about 'they'," I said. "But you told me that you belonged to a Tradition."

"Oh, I do. Certainly." Kevin smiled at me. "I simply don't count myself among the… overly altruistic individuals within the Traditions. Which are most of them, I must admit."

"You don't want to save the world?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Kevin sighed melancholically as he went back to the cabinet and took out what I after a moment's confusion realised were sticks of incense. "In my misspend youth, I spent considerable effort and personal sacrifice on bringing about a rebirth of free magick in the world. Would you care to know what I accomplished by that?"

"If you'd like to tell me," I said warily. Kevin didn't exactly sound bitter, but his voice was a little strained, like he were having to work harder than usual to keep up his unworried attitude.

"I got myself a fairly impressive selection of scars," Kevin said, holding up his hand and bending one finger at the time as he picked off points. "I killed quite a few people, some of whom were Technocrats, most of whom were collaborators to Technocrats, and some of whom, I tell you with a certain amount of shame, were guilty of nothing worse than being stupid and cowardly. And I lost a man who was… quite precious to me." He smiled sadly. "And that, I'm afraid, is all I accomplished."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. I just watched him in silence. Kevin shook his head.

"Don't I want to save the world, my friend? Oh, but I do. The world, however, does not want to be saved by me. People like the Technocracy. They enjoy not having to do anything as unpleasant as think for themselves. These days, I mind, as the saying goes, my own business."

I felt sad. I didn't doubt that Kevin's fight against the Technocracy had been as futile as he had claimed. If the organisation had as much power as Diana had made it out to have, violence wouldn't be of any use, except in the rarest of cases. He had been right to abandon it. But it saddened me that he hadn't been able to find a better way to wage the battle. It saddened me that he had been unable to find a better solution than to give up all hope.

"Diana, of course," he said as he placed the incense sticks around the room, "sees it differently. She fought in the war along with me, and like me, she eventually wizened up and realised the futility of it all. But that merely made her become more subtle." He grinned affectionately at the thought of Diana. I restrained myself from growling. "She will, of course, ultimately understand that her current stance, as well, will avail her nothing. She is a clever girl, if a little stubborn about these things."

"Really?" I couldn't quite see what this all had to do with 'him', but my curiosity betrayed me. "What's she doing now?"

"She attempts," Kevin said while he took the long robe from within the cabinet, shook it out and started to wriggle into it, "to nudge the Sleeper world gently towards individualism and diversity – to a Dynamic paradigm, to be more formal. Her methods, as I understand them, are not unlike the Technocracy's tried-and-true approach; by inserting ever-so-subtle hints into the things people read and watch, so that they eventually mount up inside their heads."

"Does it work?" I said.

"It's a tad bit early to tell." Kevin put on the silver chain I had seen around his neck that morning, drawing up his long hair to let it rest against his neck. "They've only been at it for a few years so far, and at the start, their chosen vessel was not as widespread as it is now."

"Their chosen vessel?" I said. And then, everything sort of clicked into place. Diana watching me. The near-unbelievable progress I read about in my reports. Other things, that I could barely remember consciously, but which still each had given one minor hint to the greater truth. "Oh, God. Greystone…"

Kevin chuckled.

"Ah, yes. Greystone Entertainment Incorporated. A fledgling company, taken under the shadow of Diana's wings… along with the wings of her co-conspirators, that is. They have aided and nurtured it for years now. And every magazine printed, every television show produced, every book published has been altered ever so slightly by their arts. No matter what the formal content is, they all give the viewer or reader a hint of backbone." He shrugged, smiling amiably. "Or so I have been told. I never did bother to learn that particular brand of magick. My own skills are rather more ephemeral… and a great deal more powerful, of course."

"Of course," I said diplomatically.

Kevin reached up to the top of the cabinet, where a long, smooth-carved staff lay. He spun it in his hands, smiling introvertly. He made a striking sight; a slim figure in flowing robes, with his fair hair gleaming and his flawless face calm and self-assured. He looked like the very embodiment of magick.

"Here," he said, "we come to what I believe you would consider the point of it all."

"Militts," I said darkly.

"Whirlwind," Kevin agreed placidly. "A member of Diana's cabal, the real masters of Greystone Entertainment. They call themselves the Azure Angels. Insofar as they have a leader, he is it."

I blinked.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Are you telling me that Diana's boss has been trying to kill me? And probably her, too?"

"This sort of thing makes me most happy that I'm financially independent," Kevin said. The self-ironic gleam in his eyes made the smug grin charming instead of annoying.

I started pacing back and forth in the room. This was a bit much to take in. I had known that Diana had some sort of friends or allies who didn't approve of me, and that she had gone against them in a lot of what she had done and said. But I hadn't expected 'him' to be one of them. What sort of alliances had Diana made in order to carry out this grand plan of hers?

On the other hand, if she had defied someone so close and crucial to her in order to be fair to me, then that was actually very heart-warming…

"So… this man Militts… he owns Greystone Entertainment?" I said.

Kevin shook his head.

"You are taking what I have said rather too literally," he chided. "The Azure Angels do not need to own the company to control it. A small number of employees loyal to them for one reason or another, as well as their own collective power, which is considerable, is quite sufficient for the task. In fact, I daresay that the Technocracy would have found and dealt with them very quickly had they been that blatant. They know fully well that Greystone's products are… contaminated… you know. They have attempted to shut it down several times in the last few years, but the Angels are counteracting their efforts, and it's not, at this point, considered a high enough priority that they are willing to put in their full strength."

There was more to it than that, I guessed. Patrick had spent a great deal of time grooming me and placing me in my current position. If Greystone suddenly went bankrupt due to some sort of technomantic meddling, I would lose much of my value as a pawn. Patrick would want to root out the 'contamination' while still keeping Greystone intact. My guess was that he was an important enough man in the Technocracy that he could influence those decisions, if not make them himself.

If my reasoning here was correct, I had been helping that bastard Militts right from the start. I frowned. He damn well owed me some gratitude instead of this persecution, and I would make sure I got it. Somehow.

"As for money," Kevin said, "the Azure Angels can build fortunes for themselves very easily, should they so desire. Most mages can, you see. It's quite easy, with the right spells. But the watchful eye of the Technocracy aside, someone whose only wish in life is wealth for its own sake, well… all things being possible, let us just say that it would be most unlikely for such a person to ever Awaken."

Well, that explained the luxurious apartment. I wondered what it was Kevin wanted wealth for, if it wasn't for its own sake. He certainly did seem to relish it. All this fancy furniture, expensive carpets, golden candle-holders…

Then, in a quick mirroring of that thought, I managed to answer my own question. Money might not mean anything to Kevin, but style meant a great deal. For him, this gloomy urban palace represented the only acceptable kind of place to live, and as he was a mage, he had made sure he lived in it. In a way, I supposed that Diana's apartment, with its piles of gadgetry and strange tools lying everywhere, was no less an extension of her own personality than Kevin's apartment was an extension of his.

I wondered what this house looked like in Secondary. It was sure to be striking, I realised that much.

"So what's this guy's problem?" I asked. "Why does he hate me so incredibly much?"

Kevin raised an eyebrow, smiling.

"You haven't figured that out yet?"

I hesitated.

"He knows that I'm working for Patrick," I said. "Farson," I added to Kevin's questioning glance. "He thinks that I'm an agent for the Technocracy, sent to mess up his operation."

"Close," Kevin agreed, "but not quite there yet, I'm afraid. Give it some more thought, would you? Just think how more satisfying it would be for you to understand it on your own."

I considered that for a moment.

"No," I said. "I want you to tell me. What would you ask for in return?"

Kevin tilted his head, smiling enigmatically.

"What do you have, old boy?"

"You just said that mages don't need money," I said, wrinkling my brow. "But perhaps they need some help from people in high places, sometimes? I know a lot of important people who owe me favours. And others who won't mind me owing them favours."

"But there's nothing of the sort that I need right now," Kevin said, still smiling.

"You may later," I pointed out.

"You would grant me a boon, then?" Kevin said. "A favour to be named later, for my estimation of Whirlwind's reasons for wanting you dead?"

He looked far too happy about that possibility for my taste, but I was in no mood to hold back now. I wanted to know already, not try to piece together something from hints. I ploughed on.

"Yes!" I said. "Tell me everything you know or suspect, and I'll let you ask a favour later."

"Hold it right there," Diana's voice said.

She came walking into the ritual-room, arms crossed over her chest. She made a dark and almost menacing figure, in her black clothes and her black hair and her dark skin. The expression on her face was not quite angry, but strongly disapproving.

"You're taking advantage of my apprentice, Kevin," she said. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Look," I said, "I appreciate you looking out for me, but I can make my own decisions here."

"Sure, as long as they're informed decisions." She didn't take her eyes off of Kevin. "But thrust me, you do not have the information to deal with this old fox and get away with it."

Kevin grinned shamelessly.

"I was merely indulging in a little trade and barter," he said. "There is no harm in that, surely?"

"Surely, my ass." Diana rolled her eyes. "For one thing, didn't I tell you to get him informed?"

"Excuse me," I said dryly. "I'm still in the room, you know."

"I informed him of everything that was not in fact self-evident," Kevin said. He seemed quite unaffected by Diana's scowls. He was still smiling, relaxed in every muscle. "Anything beyond that, I see no reason why he should not have to pay for."

I close my eyes, gritting my teeth. They were bloody well doing it again! I was thirty-three years old, I sat in the board of a very successful corporation, and I was every bit as Empowered as they were, but just because I couldn't conjure demons or reprogram human minds, they thought it was okay to talk over my head.

Diana snorted.

"Right," she said dryly. "Come on, Simon. As far as I can tell, you've heard most of what you need, and the rest I can fill you in on later."

She took my hand and gently led me into another room. Kevin followed, smiling placidly. I had to admire him, in a way. If Diana had been cross with me, I would have been sweating. Kevin, however, was clearly not the sweating type.

The room Diana took me to had what seemed to my untrained eye to be a rather extensive computer system in it. It looked a bit strange in these eighteenth-century surroundings, but Kevin had clearly spend neither money nor effort to make it fit in better. The covers of the machines were not plastic, but dark wood – or at least plastic imitating dark wood, which amounted to the same as far as visual impressions went. Diana had clearly been meddling with it, though; an assortment of wires stuck out from the back of the computer, connecting it to a set of futuristic gadgetry that looked deeply out of place. Two mattresses were rolled out in front of it.

"You'll need to take off everything but your underwear," Diana told me and started pulling her shirt off. I raised my eyebrow while making a large point out of not making any effort to take anything off.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Just do it. You'll understand in a moment." She threw her shirt and jeans in a pile on the floor. I thought I saw Kevin wince at that, but when I turned my head, he had resumed his relaxed smile. I noted that he wasn't making any attempt to take a look at Diana's scantily clad body. For a moment, I felt relieved; then I realised that that might as well mean that he had seen her so often that he wasn't as interested anymore. You can't win with paranoid jealousy. It'll find a way to get you no matter what happens.

I sighed and kicked my shoes off, whereafter I proceeded to throw my clothes off in even more disorder than Diana had, just to bug Kevin. If I succeeded, I couldn't tell.

"Lie down," Diana instructed and pointed to a mattress.

"What is this?" I said, without much hope of a response. But I lay down all the same.

"In a moment!" Diana repeated, and started attaching what I could only describe as electrodes to my chest, my tights and my upper arms. They were all connected to the computer, I noticed. A connection suddenly appeared to me. What was the common theme with all Diana's magick? Weird computer stuff. And add weird computer stuff to electrodes and stir, and you got…

"This is some sort of VR thing, isn't it?" I said. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. "'He'… I mean, Karl Militts… he's in some sort of Virtual Reality world!"

"Got it in one," Diana said cheerfully and finished the ensemble by putting a pair of weird-looking goggles, like the once you wear with scuba gear, and a pair of headphones on me. I couldn't see a thing through them, but from the sounds she made, she was strapping on a set of electrodes, headphones and goggles of her own.

"Well, not just one…" Kevin noted cheerfully.

"But none of this makes sense!" I said. "How can you fight him in a…a simulation? Why not just go to where his body is?"

"That's what we're doing," Diana said, like that made perfect sense. "And as for the first part, well… that's complicated. For the moment, it's probably best if you thought of this as just a simulation, like you said."

"You mean it's not?" I demanded.

"Hang on to your hat," Diana said, without answering. There was a burst of static in my ears, and a body-wide sting of pain that made me gasp.

The next thing I knew, I was standing on a cloud.

Well, it certainly seemed that way, anyway. I could feel the soft, chilly texture underneath my feet, and I could see it when I looked down. It looked just like a cloud in the sky, all white and fluffy. This despite the fact that I knew for a fact – okay, so maybe facts were rather more negotiable than I had thought, but even so – that when you got close to a cloud, it was just a mist. And you definitely couldn't stand on one!

I looked up, and the sight took my breath away. The cloud I was standing on was just one of many in a vast field of them, floating over and under each other in all directions, driven by a wind I couldn't feel. A brilliant sun shone from a light-blue sky, and the very air seemed alive with radiance.

At the same time, I could feel the mattress under my back, the goggles against my face…

"This is amazing," I said matter-of-factly. "It just looks so real…"

I hesitated. 'Real' wasn't really the right word. A real sky didn't look like this. But it looked like a sky would look, if the world had been a different kind of place.

I know that explanation makes no sense. It was the best I could come up with then, though, and it is the best I can come up with now.

"Thank you," Diana said from somewhere by my side. "We put in a lot of work in it."

It turned towards her, and found myself standing there, gaping. Diana had turned into some sort of angel. She still had the same face and built, but she was now wearing some sort of white robe that was held together by a silken belt at the waist. She stood in the middle of a brilliant blue light that seemed to come form her own skin, and from her shoulders, two white swan's wings grew.

She winced at my look.

"Yeah, I know, it's corny," she said. "But there are a lot of restrictions on how you can look in here. Karl decided most of the form. He's into pretty melodramatic stuff."

I remembered a certain computer conversation. I saw her point. Even so, this wasn't melodramatic. It was breathtaking.

Realising something, I took another look down at myself. I looked pretty much like I always do, but here, I was see-through. The cloud was clearly visible through my feet. I looked up at Diana with a question in my (presumably transparent) face, and she looked somewhat embarrassed.

"Again, there are only so many options here," she said apologetically. "So I'm an angel, and you're…"

"Don't tell me," I said wearily. "I'm a soul?"

"Standard visitor's icon," Diana said with a nod. "I'm a moderator, so I've got some extra options. Karl's got even more."

I looked around, thinking I might have missed Karl the last time I looked. Still, the sky was clear, and the clouds looked peaceful enough.

"This is extremely impressive," I said. "I had no idea this sort of thing was even possible. But why are we actually here?"

"To mess with Karl." Diana grinned, a rather malevolent grin for an angel. "I made some calls while you talked to Kevin. Certain extremely important data has just been deleted by our agents within Greystone. It'll take him years to recreate it from scratch, which is why he keeps backups in here. This is the safest place imaginable, after all. Unless you're trying to hide it from someone who has a personal backdoor in here."

"And without this information?" I said.

Diana gesture in the air, and a swarm of blue sparks rose up from the cloud we were standing on, floating around her fingers.

"Access code PurplePiper 6729," she said, slowly and firmly.

There was a pause, then a burst of some sort of horn instrument. Diana smiled and started to move the sparks around. Her fingers moved quickly and deftly. The pattern shifted again and again, making no sense to me whatsoever. How she knew what she was doing was beyond me.

"We're talking about very precise data," Diana said while she worked, "advanced algorithms, statistics, libraries… Karl can't work the changes he needs on Greystone's published material without them. He'll still control the company, but he won't be able to influence the hearts and minds of people with it anymore."

"You're destroying it? Deleting it?" I said, a bit nonplussed. My personal feelings towards Karl aside, it seemed a terrible waste. I kind of liked the idea of Greystone as a tool that could change lives and remake souls.

In fact, I had started to wonder what that kind of power could be used for in my hands…

"No, just downloading them into my cybernetic memory storage," she said. "I'll have to delete just about everything else I've got in there, but never mind that, I've got backups. And once I've done that, I will delete what Karl has stored here, and copy something else over it." She chuckled. "Then he'll have to come begging to me if he wants his super-weapon back."

Meanwhile, I had discovered something in the distance. For a moment, I tried to fool myself that it was something native to this strange, make-believe world I was in. But I knew better. Diana had already hinted that Karl could choose rather… flashier… outfits than the ones we wore.

"Diana?" I said, trying to steady my voice. "I think he's coming now. And not to beg."

"Right on time," Diana said smugly. The sparks sank down into the cloud again, and she turned around to face what I was watching. Karl was approaching.

My appearance here – my icon, as Diana had called it – was that of a soul. Diana's was that of an angel.

Karl's was that of God Almighty.

I didn't have to guess where his nickname – if that was what you should call it – came from. Karl resembled a huge cyclone, tearing the clouds along its way apart as it approached us. Lightning was flashing along its sides, and from somewhere deep inside it, a brilliant, blue light was shining.

It towered over me and Diana, filling almost our whole frontal vision. The serenity of the Azure Angel's simulation of Heaven was torn apart by the roar of its winds and the crackle of its thunder. When it spoke, though, its voice – Karl's voice – outmatched them both easily.

"PURPLEPIPER," he said. "YOUR TREACHERY ENDS HERE."

"Oh, you're one to talk," Diana snorted. Her voice was defiant, but it still sounded very weak and small next to Karl's booming announcements. "Who sent me into Secondary, if I may ask?"

"I DID," Karl admitted without hesitation.

"And who tipped a certain furball off on where there were 'warlocks' hiding?" Diana went on. "It didn't fight its way into a fortified building just to check if someone was home. It knew that we were there."

"I TOLD IT THAT YOU WERE," Karl said. "CREATURES DRIVEN BY MALEVOLENCE ALONE ARE EASY TO MANIPULATE."

"This is all being recorded, you know," Diana said. "The others will know. Will they trust you after hearing that you screwed one of your own over?"

"THEY WILL THANK ME FOR EXPOSING YOUR TREACHERY," Karl said confidently.

I tried to remind myself that this wasn't real. I was still in Kevin's apartment. I could reach out and feel the floorboards underneath my hand, though I also felt the whipping winds caused by Karl's boisterous icon. What was more, I could feel the goggles, the headphones, the electrodes. I could tear them all out and be back in the real world. Karl could yell and scream and threaten all he wanted, but he couldn't hurt me because I wasn't really there…

"You're referring to my telling a newly Empowered mage about what he was going through?" Diana said. "You can't mean anything after that, because by then you had already started attacking me. And then it was necessary for me to be more open, because I needed an informed ally if I were to survive the position you had put me in."

"FOOLISH CHILD." Karl's tone of condescension made me tighten my hands into fists by pure reflex. I am by no means a violent man, but I would have given anything to get to punch this horse's ass on the nose. "SENDING YOU TO SECONDARY WAS A TEST. I HAD BEEN GIVEN CAUSE TO DOUBT YOUR LOYALTIES. IF YOU HAD BEEN TRUE TO OUR CAUSE, YOU WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM WHEN YOU HAD HIM ALONE, UNARMED AND AWAY FROM WITNESSES. HAD YOU DONE SO, I WOULD HAVE IMMEDIATELY BROUGHT YOU BACK. YOU DID NOT, AND SEALED YOUR FATE."

"Does he always talk like that?" I whispered to Diana.

"Ooooooh, yes…" Diana mumbled back, grimacing.

"SO I FOUND THE CREATURE THAT HAD BEEN STALKING THIS PARTICULAR REGION FOR SOME TIME," Karl went on. "I IMPLANTED IN ITS PRIMITIVE MIND THE SUGGESTION OF WHERE TO GO TO FIND PREY. YET IT FAILED IN ITS TASK, AND I WAS DISAPPOINTED."

"I feel for you," Diana said dryly. "Really. I do."

"AND NOW I FIND YOU HERE," Karl said. "DESTROYING WHAT WE HAVE WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD. YOUR FATE IS SEALED BY YOUR OWN ACTIONS. YET, I FIND MYSELF WONDERING – WHAT CAN YOU POSSIBLY HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH BY THIS? WHAT YOU HAVE DESTROYED WERE MERELY COPIES. THE REAL FILES ARE OUT OF YOUR REACH."

Diana grinned.

"You reckon?" she said innocently.

Karl paused.

"YOU'RE BLUFFING," he said, not quite sounding up to his former arrogant certainty.

"I've been known to," Diana admitted. "But not today."

"I ALONE KNOW WHO OUR AGENTS INSIDE GREYSTONE ARE," Karl growled. "I ALONE KNOWS WHICH CODES ARE NEEDED TO GIVE THEM ORDERS…"

"And you thought it'd stay that way?" Diana said. She grinned smugly. "I do have some skill in hacking into minds, you know. In fact, that's kind of what I'm contributing to this little enterprise, isn't it?"

"YOU… WOULDN'T… DARE…" Karl sounded like he was choking.

"I would. I have." Diana shrugged. "About fifteen minutes ago, one of your agents got a phone call. In your own voice, at that. He's deleted the works. Obedient guy. My compliments to you for hiring him. Oh, and since you took your sweet time getting here, I've deleted the backups, too."

"YOU… YOU… YOU…" Karl gave off a scream of pure rage. It made me clasp my hands over my ears, and seemed to shake the very sky. The winds of the cyclone grew stronger, and the azure light seemed to darken to a deep red. "YOU'VE DESTROYED THE CAUSE! WHY, PURPLEPIPER? WHAT DID HE OFFER YOU TO MAKE YOU TURN YOUR BACK ON ALL YOU HAVE EVER BELIEVED IN?"

Diana smiled faintly.

"You're just so damn sure of yourself, aren't you?" she said. "Did it for one second cross your mind to listen to my side of the story? Did you ever think that maybe I had reasons for what I did?"

Karl didn't answer. The sky above began to grow sunset red, and the clouds started turning into black, ominous thunderclouds.

"We were wrong," Diana said. "We thought Simon was Patrick Farson come to spy on us. He's not. I've seen the two of them together."

"THERE IS ANOTHER POSSIBILITY," Karl said, somewhat sullenly.

"Yeah. And that's one's true. Sort of. But Simon doesn't know anything of who Farson is that I haven't told him myself. I took the opportunity to scan his mind for information a few days ago. If he really was Farson, he could have shielded himself. Being… that other thing… he couldn't have. Not against me."

I gave her a we're-going-to-talk-about-that-later look. So she had done a bit more than just make me relax that time, had she? I supposed it was understandable, but it made me feel uncomfortable. My mind wasn't some drawer that you could just rummage around in, after all! Diana smiled sheepishly at me before turning back to Karl.

"He can make a great ally to us!" she insisted. "He wants to fight Farson. Imagine the possibilities if we could turn Farson's own…" She took a deep breath. "Farson's own clone against him!"

That was the point where my mind stopped functioning for a long while.

Clone?

Clone?

Clone?

But, God help me, it made sense when nothing else did. I should have known, I suppose. There had been all this weird science stuff; if the Technocracy could implant compulsions in my head, why shouldn't it be able to perform human cloning? Mundane science was getting pretty damn close to that.

Patrick saw himself as better than everyone else, didn't he? So if he wanted a competent pawn at the head of a major company, who would be better than someone who was made of the same superior stuff that he was?

And so he had watched over me all my life. Guided me. Turned me into as much of a perfect carbon copy of himself that he could, all the while able to give me orders that I had to follow. God, it must be almost like being able to be in several places at once!

Patrick wasn't my father after all. He was me. Sure, he had lived a different life, but essentially, he was me and I was him. How could I fight him? How do you fight… yourself?

I felt like I was going to fall off the cloud and plumage helplessly through this infinite sky forever. Was I real? Was I a person? Or was I just some sort of an appendix with delusions of grandeur, a by-product of Patrick, grown from his nail clippings or something, a soulless monstrosity, a freak who thought he was human…

"… TAINTED BY YOUR FEELINGS," Karl's voice droned on, somewhere very far away. "YOU HAVE LAIN WITH HIM. I CAN SENSE IT IN YOUR MIND."

"I don't trust him because I've slept with him," Diana said, sounding like she was struggling to contain her anger. "I slept with him because I trust him."

"YOU ARE A FOOL, PURPLEPIPER," Karl said.

"So you've told me already," Diana said sweetly. "Now, you're a useless, pompous bag of wind, but you don't hear me nagging you about that, do you?"

"YOU DIE NOW," Karl stated. "YOU AND HIM BOTH."

Somewhere in my shock, a thought found its way to my attention. That thought was that while I was not strictly speaking here – for that matter, strictly speaking here didn't even exist – that only mattered in a world where there was such a thing as objective truths. In a subjective manner, I was seeing Karl's Whirlwind-icon in front of me, I was feeling the cloud underneath my feet, and I was hearing the booming thunder around me. It felt like I was there.

So at least on some level, I believed I was there.

And belief shaped the world.

It was very possible that I could, therefore, die a very real death in this make-believe place. And Karl, who seemed to know his way around here, appeared to think so, which counted for a great deal, proof-wise.

Maybe I was just an appendix, but I was an appendix that wanted to live!

"Ah ah ah!" Diana said quickly and raised her hand. "Fry my brain, and you'll never get that data back."

Karl hesitated.

"YOU… DOWNLOADED THEM?" he said, suddenly understanding. "INTO YOUR OWN HARDWARE? I SEE…"

"Yep," Diana said, grinning. "But I'm not going to stand around here while you try to hack into my mind. If you want it, come and get it! Log Out!"

Again, there was the blast of static, the burst of pain…

… and I was lying on a mattress on Kevin's floor, covered in electrodes. I tore off the goggles and headphones in time to see Diana free herself from both them and the electrodes with an ease that hinted of experience. I struggled with my own while she got up and picked up her switchblade from inside her shirt, which was still lying on the floor. She stared, grave-faced, at something beyond my field of vision. I followed her line of sight, and saw what had her worried.

The screen on Kevin's computer had turned into a kaleidoscope image of colours and shapes, swirling quickly enough to become a blur. Electricity was crackling down the length of the machine, and smoke was coming from somewhere.

I had seen this display once before. Just before something had come out of the computer.

I had a feeling that I knew what was going to come out of it this time.

"Stop him!" I gasped. "Block him! Something!"

"No!" Diana said. "I want him to come! He's too strong to face in the Web, but in the material world, we have a shot!"

I wasn't so sure about that. Karl had struck me as a bit of an idiot, but he had also struck me as someone who was arrogant for a reason, namely that he had never found a reason to be humble. That world or this, I didn't want to face him, not even with Kevin and Diana on my side.

Speaking of Kevin, he was standing in the doorway, leaning casually on an elegant cane and smiling in a way that suggested that this was just a bit of faintly amusing entertainment for him. Bastard.

Diana opened the switchblade. Click. Her eyes were cold and her expression focused. I struggled to my feet to stand beside her. I had no idea what I might be able to do, but at the very least I had the bulk to be a disturbance. Besides, I wasn't just going to do nothing while my fate was determined.

A bolt of electricity shot out of the monitor, turned towards and struck into the floor. As I watched, the curve of energy connecting monitor and floor thickened.

And took on form.

And then, with a final hiss and a rain of sparks from the computer, Karl Militts materialised in front of me. The real Karl Militts, not some assumed virtual exterior meant to impress others and stroke his ego.

He was tall, though not as tall as me, and thin, bordering on gaunt. He wore faded jeans and an open black leather jacket. His face was young, pale and smiling insolently. His hair was coloured purple and cut into a rooster's comb. From his belt, an egg-formed, plastic object hung, and a wire connected it to a keyboard he was supporting with his left hand.

And yes, there was that look in his eyes. I-want. I-can. You-can't-stop-me.

Still, out of his element like this, despite the fact that his arrogance was unruffled, I couldn't help feeling that he was a little more… manageable. Oh, I had no doubt that he was more powerful than I could ever imagine. I didn't hold it for the least bit unlikely that he would, within a few moments, break Diana and Kevin to pieces and come after me, still grinning that superior grin as he killed me. But after seeing Patrick Farson in a rage, any other mage was bound to be somewhat less than impressive.

"Kevin Harsh," Karl said. "I should have known that you would be willing to flaunt my authority. You have made a serious error."

"Oh, dear heavens, have I?" Kevin said. As annoyances went, his smile was right up there with Karl's. "And here I thought that I was making certain that I would finally get an opportunity to show you what some real magick can do."

"And you call your wand-waving folly magick?" Karl said. "It's nothing more than superstition, a disgrace against the dignity of the human mind, allowed to linger only due to a regrettable laxness in the Consensus…"

"Oh my, the youngling speaks of the Consensus," Kevin said. "And what, pray tell, would you know about the Consensus? When did you ever study the ancient volumes that describe its workings in detail, as I have? What do you Virtual Adepts do but meddle, meddle, meddle, without a thought of the cosmic balance you are interrupting?"

Diana leaned over to whisper in my ear.

"Remind me to kick him for that remark," she mumbled.

"You are equating age with wisdom," Karl snorted. "Your vaunted Order is like a senile old man telling the young and clever what to do."

"What we are is the wielders of true magick and true wisdom," Kevin said with dignity. "And true power, rather than your technical toys. Ours is the thunder. Ours is the word. Ours is the glory."

"Yours is nothing but dust and empty pride," Karl said.

Diana sighed.

"Annoying, isn't it?" she said. "They've been known to keep this up for days… Hey, you two!" She glared at Kevin and Karl in turn. "Can we just fight? Please?"

"If you insist, PurplePiper," Karl said. Then he smirked. "Oh, wait – it's 'Diana' here in the land of meat, isn't it? I will never know how you stand this primitive world. Let me just invite a few friends in…"

He pressed a few buttons on his keyboard. Nothing happened, and he scowled.

"No, no, none of that," Kevin said. "No summoning spirits in my house. They always leave a mess."

"Round one to us," Diana said. Then she jumped forward, switchblade slashing.

Karl slipped aside like a ghost, his fingers dancing on the keyboard. Diana missed him, her slashing motion made her bump her hand into the desk and drop the knife, and she stumbled over a mattress and fell gracelessly to the floor.

"Round two to me," Karl smirked. "I'm more than capable of dealing with you all at once without aid, after all. Especially since my diagnostics show that the data you've stolen takes your whole memory in possession. You have deleted all your bio-enhancement programs, all your targeting programs and all your process override programs." He shook his head. "You are only human at the moment. I, on the other hand, am so much more."

I threw myself at Karl. I wasn't quite sure what that might accomplish, but I couldn't think of anything else to do.

For a moment, it looked like it was going to work. He hadn't expected me to act; his attention had been split between Diana and Kevin. My clumsy punch hit him in the chest, and he staggered backwards, gasping for breath. But at the same time, his fingers were typing on the keyboard.

A sudden, splitting headache made me sink to my knees, literally whimpering with pain. I couldn't even see; stars kept exploding before my eyes.

"You suffer, you fucking freak!" Karl growled, his pompous tone temporarily swept away by anger. "Don't you dare fucking touch me!" Then they came back, and somehow, I had a feeling that his superior smile did, too. "And what do you presume that you are doing, Diana?"

There was a gasp, and I heard Diana drop to the floor. I struggled to reach through the agonising pain in my head – it felt like my skull had suddenly become too small for my brain – and find out what was going on, but I couldn't.

"And now, for the master of the house," Karl said. "Go ahead. Show me what your ancient sorcery can do, and then I will show you some real magick."

"If you insist." Kevin sounded amused. "Semia geress elliadon!"

There was a scream, I think, and a lot of electronical whining, and something even greater, beneath all that, that might have been the sound of magick itself… but I wasn't too good at observing at the moment, as my headache had suddenly tripled.

And then it was gone. For a moment, all I could do was draw in a deep breath and enjoy the novelty of not being in agony. Then I slowly got to my feet and looked around.

Diana was getting up from the floor herself, looking tired, but pleased. Kevin was standing just like he had been all along, leaning against his staff, looking civilised and in control. Karl was tapping frantically on his keyboard, a look of panicked disbelief on his face.

"Respond!" he shouted. "You must respond! This is… This is not acceptable…!" He turned his wild gaze to Kevin. "What did you do?"

"Well, I did tell you," Kevin said, sounding faintly bored. "Ours is the thunder. Or, as you heathen technomancers would say, ours is the electricity. And right now, your little toy there has none. Which pulls your teeth out rather nicely, wouldn't you say?" He smiled. "This is why it's a bad idea to entrust the holy work of magick to fickle technology. I tell people so all the time, but will they listen?"

"You… you…" Karl growled, his face red with fury. I wondered when he had last been humiliated in this manner. I wondered if he had ever been humiliated in this manner.

I was fairly sure that it would be good for him. Suffering built character, after all, and the good Whirlwind could use some.

"And once again," Kevin said, "the wielders of true magick stand victorious, while the half-trained meddlers fall short."

Diana didn't need me to remind her. She walked over to Kevin and kicked him.

It was a little later. Diana and I were fully dressed again, and sitting at Kevin's dining-room table and enjoying a cup of tea. Karl was tied to a chair in a windowless room in the far end of the apartment. Kevin said that he would consider what he would do to him. Killing him was far too uncivilised, apparently, but letting him go would be awfully unhealthy. Kevin would come up with something, he said. It was always nice to have an ace up one's sleeve in these troubled times.

I was fully aware that I was being made accessory to kidnapping here, and I really didn't care. Either my morals were down or my ability to free-thinking was up. I would reason out the difference tomorrow, I promised myself. Before then, I just didn't have the strength to make the effort.

"So what happens now?" I said.

"I leave." Diana sighed and looked down in her tea. "I don't want to, but Farson will be up in arms against me for a while now. I need to hide."

I nodded gloomily. And cursed myself for not acting on my inclinations when I first got to know Diana. We could have been lovers for the last six months, instead of just getting one night and then having to cut the whole thing short due to intervention by angry Technocrat.

"Will you be all right?" I said.

"Oh, I'm good at hiding." She smiled faintly. "I've done it pretty often. The law doesn't like me. For some reason."

"I'll miss you," I said.

She looked up at me, blinking. Then she smiled.

"Oh, you won't have to. You saw the Azure Angels' node, briefly. There are more like it, lots more. I'll put you in touch with someone who sells gear for logging onto the Web. You'll get the hang of it soon enough. I said I'd take you on as my apprentice, and I damn well meant it. We'll just have to move our studies somewhere where I won't suffer that high a risk of getting killed."

I met her smile with a rather shaky one of my own. The idea of seeing her again soon, even if only in that strange way, did make me feel a little better. But then I grew sombre again. That hadn't been the greatest of my woes, anyway. Just the one that I knew how to think about.

"Am I really a clone?" I said.

Diana shrugged uncomfortably.

"I think so. I mean, nothing's ever certain, but… it fits the picture. The Technocracy is good at cloning people, and Farson is just the kind of egocentric maniac who would want more hims running around."

"God." I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. "How am I supposed to even begin to deal with that? My parents aren't my parents. I guess my real parents are Patrick's parents, whoever they were. I'm not even real. I'm just his shadow. I'm not human."

Diana pushed her cup aside, leaned over the table, grabbed hold of the sides of my head and kissed me resolutely. She kept at it for a long time, at the end of which my head was spinning, my cheeks were blushing and I felt like I was about to suffocate in the nicest possible way.

"Yeah, you see that I'm completely repulsed by you, don't you?" she said wryly as she leaned back in her chair. "Look, you'll come to terms with it if you just get a bit of time to adjust. So you're a clone? Well, I'm a cyborg. And Kevin wants to be a god, and Karl spends most of his time as a computer program. You're not really running with a normal crowd anymore, so it's okay to not be normal yourself."

"I guess," I said. I had to smile, despite myself. Diana had a way of making problems seem largely irrelevant.

"That's a good boy," Diana said and leaned over to kiss me again.

"Uhm." I figured it was now or never. If I wanted this particular piece of information, I had to ask her. "Should you really be doing this?"

She pouted prettily.

"Well, I didn't hear you complaining last night…" she said.

"No, but, er…" I tried to pull myself together. I had just been saved from a virtual god by a modern wizard. Compared to that, what was a little relationship anxiety between friends? "What about Kevin?"

She looked perplexed.

"What about Kevin?"

"Well, I mean, aren't you two… that is…" I was fumbling now. I could not remember when I had last felt this uncomfortable. This was another price of being Empowered, I guessed. You actually cared about things. You couldn't go around being all clinical in your views of relationships, like I had for most of my life. "… a couple?" I finished eventually.

"Uhm… no." Diana had a strange look on her face. "Not… really, no…"

"Oh." I felt that I was blushing rather deeply now. "Okay. It was just that you seemed so close. I mean, I know that men and women can be just friends, but I always though that if they were really good friends, some attraction was inevitable."

"Maybe." Diana's voice was choked, and her shoulders were shaking in a tell-tale way. I resisted an urge to squirm. "But that sort of assumes… hrrrmmmff! That sort of assumes that the man in question is…" She took a brief pause to steady herself, her grin threatening to split her face in two. "… is interested in women as such."

"What do you mean, 'interested in woman as…'" Then I got it. It was really quite surprising that I hadn't gotten it before. A stray phrase that Kevin had used drifted back into my mind. I lost a man who was… quite precious to me. "Oh," I said dumbly.

That was too much for Diana. She broke into helpless laughter.

I groaned and hid my face against the table. I should have known. I would have known, had I not been so determined to feel jealous. I felt very much like the dumbest and most neurotic person on the face of the earth.

I supposed that I had to apologise to Kevin. I had been going around hating him for absolutely no reason at all.

Well, aside from him being a horrible, arrogant snob, that was. But the whole he-saved-my-life thing probably cancelled that out somewhat…

"Okay, okay," I groaned. "I admit it. I am an idiot. And I'm also a jealous idiot. Will someone please shoot me now?"

Diana grinned at me.

"I'm sure that would count as a waste of natural resources."

"So you've told me," I said, remembering that morning, what felt like a lifetime ago. Could I really have had my whole world so completely turned up-side-down in only a few days. Could I really?

"And so I'll keep telling you," Diana said. "Until you realise that you've got no need to be jealous. Come on, Simon. I've had a crush on you since day one. That was back when I thought you were Farson, if you recall. It takes a lot for me to fall for someone I'm prepared to hate."

After that, I still felt embarrassed, but I also felt warm for other reasons.

"Be that as it may," Diana said, looking somewhat embarrassed by the uncharacteristic expression of genuine feeling, "this is how we're going to do this. I'm going to use my little brainwashing program and imprint some false memories in your head. They'll be very persuasive, I promise. When Farson questions you, you'll tell him what you think is the truth, which will be that I had you under some sort of mental control and yadi yadi yadda, and you don't know anything about anything, just the way he wants it. Then, in a few weeks' time, it'll wear off." She smiled. "And then, we'll meet again."

"I'll be looking forward to it," I said sincerely.

A clone in love. Good heavens.

I always knew Diana was good at her job. It's just that for most of the time I've known her, I didn't know what her job really was. She imprinted those memories all right, and when Farson found me – far away from Kevin's apartment – they dictated the story I told him. He seemed satisfied by that, and things went back just about to normal. Except with a new secretary. Who calls me 'Mr. Stromberg', no matter how many times I tell her not to. I don't let it bother me that much anymore, though.

The memories did eventually wear off. That was a fairly harrowing experience, but not a very interesting one to tell; it mostly consisted of me agonising over whether I was going insane. Once I became fairly certain that the resurfacing memories were the real ones, I started writing this little manuscript, as a way of getting it all clear in my head. I may have mixed up a thing or two, but near as I can tell, this is what happened.

So this is the story of my Empowering. I'm not sure if you can learn anything from it. Everything I've ever believed in has been wrong. I see no reason for why the things I believe in now should be assumed to be correct. Most of them are likely to be more of Diana's 'oversimplifications', anyway. And even she admitted that the real truth lies somewhere between the Technocracy's mechanical universe and the Traditions' will-driven one.

For now, though, what I've learned will have to suffice. I am not a wise man, after all. I am a foolish man, or at least a man who has been acting like a fool for most of his thirty-three years. And what I have learned and what I believe is this:

There is magick. It is weakened, maybe dying, but it exists.

There is a Consensus. It defines and enslaves us, turns us into animals when we should be gods.

There is a Technocracy. It rules the world. It hates magick, hates freedom, hates everything that might threaten its perfect order.

There is a reign of conformity on the earth. I will fight it if I can.

And, for better or worse; there is a new mage in the world.