A/N: Changing up the inherent abilities of the Dwemer because I found the lore where the 'mind-calling' or group telepathy is attributed to the Psijic Monks. So, if Falmer had television, Dwemer had telecommunication. Audiophiles with a real sound-system obsession, with their highest practitioners being "Tonal Architects." That "sounds" like a revealing clue.

Disclaimer: What's Bethesda's is theirs, likewise for mod creators.

Chapter 22: Constructs

With the new CPU online, Gelebor was able to find the right magical key to open the sleeper room door without any problem.

But there was no waking of the sleepers yet. Translations of science and engineering notes and notations went much faster now that Gelebor was assisting Calcelmo. What it came down to was the sleep could only be broken by the Sleepers. Their minds and their souls were elsewhere.

"I don't know if they can come back," said Calcelmo, listlessly restacking his notes. "If I am understanding correctly, this 'ship of the imagination,' as you call it, is largely a construct of the Dwemer minds. Their return beacon was to be their Dwemer compatriots of this facility using the inherent Dwemer distance talking power. What was the word you used? Tele—?"

"Telecommunication. Long-distance speaking and hearing," said Curtis. "Some kind of magical hearing versus the Falmer seeing." Under his breath he sang, "Radio killed the video star. Radio killed the video star. Steel drums played and broke your heart …"

Calcelmo nodded. "Yes, we finally determined that what they had was not the same as the Psijic's 'mind-calling' power that links their minds and magics. Being underground facilitated that ability."

"Hear the world's heart beating like a big bass drum. Don't you think you ought to know where the beat comes from. It's you, it's the tapping of a million shoes …"

Calcelmo continued, by now used to Curtis's constant humming and having realized the mer was incapable of thinking without making a lot of noise. "The Falmer used their inherent sight abilities to navigate in the chaotic creatia of Oblivion, but the Eye was their beacon, their lighthouse, but it's gone." He shook his head. "I would there were better analogies to all this, but I cannot think of any."

"And with one dead crewman, we can also pretty much assume there's a critical failure in the ship's systems," said Curtis. "When power fluxed, he was likely first in line and died before surge protections activated. One dead chief engineer. Of course, I'm just guessing" he added apologetically.

"You've been uncannily accurate so far with your guesses."

"Not a big comfort because everything I'm guessing is leading to a big, fat zero chance of saving them."

Calcelmo patted his shoulder in sympathy then took himself and his notes elsewhere to assimilate with other studies he'd made.

One dead Dwemer, presumably fried by some energy surge that caused the soulstones of his pod to explode to dust. The body had been removed to be studied. The pod, once it was detached from the mechanical power lines, was being disassembled and studied by Calcelmo and Arniel Gane.

Yeah, Arniel lives. The Archimage had helped him in the early stages of his research, but when she was sent to fetch the missing special delivery item from Morrowind and discovered it was the legendary Keening, she refused to give it to him and ended his research, correctly deducing he was trying to do something incredibly stupid, like, reenacting the Nerevarine's actions against the Heart of Lorkhan to find out what happened to the Dwemer.

Curtis knew what the end of that story would have been. Arniel's shade had been his brother's favorite battle slave. It took zero energy points to summon so even a total novice could use him. And as a ghost, Arniel had a good lightning attack, he couldn't be "killed" or banished before his runtime ended, and a higher level necromancer couldn't take over control.

Tolfdir and Urag had been horrified by that story.

Arniel stayed with the College, though clearly depressed that his research was exposed and canceled. Still, it couldn't be denied that he had a dangerous talent for intuiting Dwemer logic processes. Calcelmo gave him a hard lecture about his carelessness. However, Baladas took him on as a student. Arniel was too useful to just dismiss. If Arniel wanted to continue with his line of dangerous Dwemer research and remain at the College, then he would have to accept a modified apprenticeship under Baladas who would teach him what he had learned about Dwemer magic and technology from the ruins and records in Morrowind, and just how mind-blowing stupid and dangerous Arniel had been to think he could handle the tools of Kagrenac.

The other pods, recharged by the Archimage's basket of black soul gems, glowed strong. Arniel had figured how to reroute the lines of the re-powered, restored giant motherboards in the lower levels below around the damaged pod to the others. If his calculation were correct, the Dwemer engineers on "the other side" were already responding by the changes that could be seen in their individual monitor displays. Colette could not sense any physical changes but Drevis, more attuned to mental interaction with magika, did sense increased responses, though more from the Dwemer than the Falmer.

Curtis ran his hand over one pod. "Agrund Ychonard" according to the nameplate, energy physics, first rank. Whatever that means. "Hello, Darkness, my old friend," he sang, only half paying attention to the words. "Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you." He wondered if there was some subconscious significance that The Sound of Silence was the only song that wanted to be sung whenever he stepped into this room whenever he got deep into repair work in this place.

Yeah, if he thought about it, he was calling to them. There was a theory that comatose patients may still have a sleep and awake cycle, and that during an awake cycle, they could hear, maybe even process or comprehend at some level. It was a mad hope. Yeah, that definition of madness, of doing the same thing over and over again. And so he sang to them. The words would mean nothing to them, but it meant something to him and so, as his old choir director often said, he put his heart and soul into it.

"And echoes in the well of silence."

As far as he could tell, there was nothing in this room within his ability to repair. No broken or leaking pipes, no wall or floor cracks, nothing. The ambient temperature was cool, no excessive moisture, no heat spikes, not even dust. A real clean room until their intrusion.

So he made his way around to each pod, laying hands, reading their names aloud from the name plates he'd insisted Calcelmo make for each, and crooning his song.

"Curtis."

He looked. Tolfdir and the faux Archimage.

"Oh, this is familiar," said the Pretender, looking around. "But so strange. The energies here are hot, so unlike the cold that wrapped my bed. No blood sacrifice here will end their sleep and wake them."

Curtis did not like the sound of that. Tolfdir closed the door. The Pretender removed her mask and showed as a Nord woman with alabaster skin, aristocratic features, large, dark eyes type. She smiled at him, open lips type.

Dracula's bride type. Those were some long, white, shiny, pointy chompers there.

But she was a close friend of the Archimage. Right. Okay. No surprise that the Dovahkiin, with her ghost-talker husband, had a vampire bestie.

"Curtis, let me introduce you properly to Lady Serana Volkihar," said Tolfdir.

"Lady Volkihar," said Curtis, giving a little head bow.

"Oh, no, Lady Volkihar is my mother. You may call me 'Serana' or 'Lady Serana' in private," she said, smiling. She wandered to the nearest pod and caressed Lesshan Yrevarys's cover. "Lesshan," she read the plate aloud, "2nd Navigator. Falmer." She looked sideways at Curtis. "You were singing to them."

"Yeah. The Dwemer lost radio contact and the Falmer lost their Eye-of-Magnus-lighthouse beacon. I'm trying the 'foghorn in the storm' method. Can't hurt to try. If nothing else, maybe it'll get them to wake up faster just to tell me to shut up."

She laughed at that. "Yes. I've read your strange theories on sleep, deep sleep, and comatose. Drevis and Colette both hate that this research forces them to work together, but have they come up with anything useful to you?"

"Uh, not quite. At least, nothing that I can use. What I know of Illusion is an insult to Drevis. He calls them low-grade, cheap, slight-of-hand tricks. A surprisingly close-minded attitude for a Master of Illusion."

"How so?"

"Well, we once got into a discussion about that story of 'Azura's Box,' the one where the Dwemer tricked Azura and got her mad at them. In that tale, they built a special box and asked her what she saw inside. She looked and pronounced it was a rose. But when the box was opened, it was empty. She got mad at their trickery and the author made some inference that the Dwemer weren't to be trusted who could trick a Daedra Prince. But, you see, the Dwemer weren't lying. Not by their reasoning. I believe what they created was a three-dimensional hologram, an illusion of light to create the perfect image of a rose that would only exist inside that enclosed space. They asked Azura to look — visually look — not to touch or to smell or to taste. If it was a trick, it was a trick of light and, yes, of intent then, but a daedra confirmed that a virtually perfect rose existed in the virtual reality of the box. Drevis didn't like my interpretation. He said he wasn't going to argue if the image in a mirror was equally valid as the object the mirror reflected. It was an old student bullcrap reality-vs-perception argument every Illusions student pulled out over drinks. And, to be fair, I can't out-argue with him because I don't know enough to create the machines that are needed to create that type of hologram. I can manage a simple illusion with light and mirrors, but inside an enclosed space and real enough to fool a god? Nope.

"But I'm thinking, I'm thinking this whole setup is just a bigger version of that box. Thinking real sci-fi here. A galaxy in a marble. A whole society in a transition station locker. Windows of reality in a card deck sealed in Amber."

Lady Serana and Tolfdir exchange a familiar look. "And the walls remain." Yup. He'd lost them.

"I'd like to see that light and mirror illusion," said Lady Serana.

"But here's the good news that Tolfdir and I were originally coming to see you to tell you. Savela and Colette have been able to confirm this morning their procurement of three master alchemists. Savela brings in Avrusa Sarethi, who was trained in Morrowind, and Colette is bringing three priests who were her teachers, two are master alchemists, the other is a Master of Restoration, all from Summerset."

So all the way back to Curtis's lab in the Hall of Attainment. He showed them his hologram toy of two parabolic mirrors. Dropped a septim at the bottom and let them study the projected image of a floating coin. "Real basic light manipulation," he said. "The hardest part was making the mirrors. I was surprised at how … primitive mirrors were when I got here. All these master glass smiths, and none of them could turn out quality mirrors. That's only a one-side projection. To get a full 3-D creation that looks real top, bottom, sideways, you need a box setup."

"And so you started a new industry here. Good mirrors, and those special see-through mirrors." Lady Serana poked at the illusory coin. Flipped it out and dropped in a ring. Curtis was startled to see the strange rainbow flares, like solar flares, from the surface of the ring's image.

"That's a ring of enhanced illusion," said Lady Serana. "I wonder …" She shook that ring out and dropped in another ring. This image had a sullen red glow. "Destruction." She looked at him. "Another reflection of reality. This non-magical device seems to work incredibly well as an enchantment detector."

"Another freaking … It shouldn't be able to do that," said Curtis, reluctantly fascinated. "There's some principle at work here that I can't think of, like, gunpowder doesn't work here but magic does. Freaking mutant… I'm starting to think if somebody dropped nuclear reactor core from my world here it wouldn't work because it was built on entirely the wrong set of physics. Freaking—"

Tolfdir sighed loudly.

"Okay, okay, nevermind me; I'm just babbling again." He watched her play with the mirror bowl and other magical objects. "Um, you said something about your own sleep?" He ventured to ask.

"Oh, yes. Enchanted sleep since the First Era. My mother sealed me in a protected coffin to keep me away from my father."

Curtis nodded. He'd heard this before. One hell of a custody battle.

"Helsette rescued me. Not intentionally. She was just being herself and sticking her hand in where it shouldn't be and triggered my awakening. She was doing a job for the Dawnguard and was nice enough to let me come fully to my senses instead of being practical and beheading me, especially when she saw the other thing my mother put in my coffin to keep safe."

"An Elder Scroll," Curtis breathed, still awed by that totally ballsy move. "Yeah, I know." They looked at him. "Revyn Sadri told me about your dad — really sorry about that; fear of dying makes people do or try a lot of crazy things — and the Auriel's Bow quest. He thought it important that I know some of those details since Jhunal pulled me back to life to deal with some of the fallout.

"But, um, back to you being asleep. Do you remember anything while you were in that magically induced coma?"

She was quiet for a long moment. "There was nothing, nobody in that place where I was sealed. I have vague memories of reliving parts of my life. Exuberant or terrified. Extremes that reminded me that I was alive. Had once been alive. The magic kept me from feeling the hunger that would've driven me irreparably insane. The times I think I was fully awake were almost as torturous as the ceremony that made me a vampire. Paralyzed, unable to bash my head against the stone to stop the despair and loneliness. Longing for and welcoming the renewal of sleep." She shook her head. "I don't believe my experience has any bearing on what those poor elves are going through. They went willingly and through very different means. I can't even begin to imagine what they are experiencing. I would be amazed and count it a miracle if they were still sane."

She picked up the dragonpriest mask and flipped it face up and stared down into its empty eyes. "It's in the hands of the gods. And since you're the chosen of your god, like Helsette is the chosen of hers, all I can say is follow your instincts no matter how it flies in the face of reason." She lifted the mirror toy. "May I take this with me? I have some experiments I want to try."

"I'd be happy if you did. Don't forget to document. It's only science if you document."

"Oh, yes, I know. My mother taught me the same thing. Very important in alchemy."

"You practice alchemy? I don't suppose…"

"Help you? I would, but the Archimage Antonia is known for shouting and Destruction; it's her half-sister who is known to keep her husband's store stocked with alchemy potions and enchanted trinkets when she's not adventuring. In any case, you'd be better off with my mother, but I doubt she'd be welcome here."

Right. No, the Vampire Queen would not be welcome at the College.

X—X—X—X—X—X—X

"Priests of Akatosh," confirmed Colette when Curtis asked her later that evening. "Like many, they chose exile from Summerset when the Thalmor became warped after the Oblivion Crisis by a fanatic group calling themselves 'The Beautiful.' Racial purity, that nonsense. My teachers delayed settling with their kind at Sentinel, choosing instead to come first to Kvatch, my hometown. Kvatch, if you didn't know, was the largest city the Dominion armies did not raze to the ground because the primary Imperial temple to Akatosh is there. The common armies refused to violate sacred ground, and the Thalmor commanders knew better than to make an issue of it.

"Because they were in Kvatch, my teachers escaped the terrible slaughter at Sentinel, the Night of Green Fire in 4E42 when the Thalmor Dominion slaughtered every Altmer refugee there, partly because of how dangerous they were and partly because of the great insult their leaving implied. Many of those refugees were some of the best scholars, artists, philosophers of their generations. There were also many honored veterans of the Thalmor old guard, worn down by the battle to shut the Gates, who had wanted to believe the new Thalmor regime that they and their families would be allowed to live in peace if they accepted exile and did not speak against the new Thalmor Dominion. A lot of people left. Far fewer arrived. They were betrayed and cut down in transit by the new regime's assassins, their names and legacies questioned and discredited to all of Summerset and their accomplishments stolen."

"Stolen valor," said Curtis sadly. "And 'Night of the Long Knives' as only the new regime could do it."

"My teachers were also pursued by Dominion assassins. Oh, the Dominion armies would not invade Kvatch, but that's not to say they didn't send their nightblades to silence the traitor priests who would not accept being dictated to on what they were to preach in Akatosh's name. For a time, the Imperial priests kept their Altmer brothers hidden, and the Altmer priests, unable to practice, took instead to teaching Restoration and Alchemy. I learned all my initial skills from them. But even so, they were still hunted and eventually, a year before the Great War, sent all the students away for our own safety before going deeper into hiding. And so I came to Winterhold."

"What made you contact them, Colette? Not just for this project I think."

"No," she smiled sadly at him. "If the Sleepers awaken, they'll be sent somewhere that's been hidden for ages. The Snowmer, if Gelebor's any indication, still worship Akatosh, or Auri-El. My teachers are priests trained in ways traditional to the Altmer, another reason they refrained from preaching in an Imperial temple. Aside from not wanting to draw attention to themselves, there are some significant conflicts of basic philosophy between the strictly mer-centric teachings and the ones practiced outside of Summerset. Auri-El was first a Mer god and, by ancient definition, Man was not a creation of the Aedra, not even spawn of the Daedra, but of Lorkhan." She shrugged, a rueful gesture. "Anyway, they might be able to salvage something of the ancient Falmer ceremonies."

"You want to hide any survivors in the Snowmer Vale," said Curtis. He couldn't help the scowl on his face. The whole "Man is but a mutant, errant malformation that shouldn't exist" view of the mer was annoying. But then, Nords are proud of being creations of Shor.

"I haven't told them anything of the Vale. I'm not promising them anything. I merely told them something of your theories. Not enough to give any significant information away if my letters were intercepted or were read by eyes who shouldn't be reading, but enough that, knowing my teachers, they would presume the missing elements enough to be interested."

"So, you know who are coming?"

"I'm not sure which two alchemists, but the Master Restorer would be Salindil Greyeal, the leader."

"Arch-priest?"

"No, not that high up in the church. A low-level priest who tended to the serfs and the country folk, who taught the bucolic gentry's children, and abbot to a half-dozen other brothers to help him run a hospital for those needing healing or a place to retreat and meditate for their mental or spiritual health. He lacked political ambition, but he was passionate about philosophy and was often consulted on sensitive matters of theology."

"And he told the new Thalmor leaders to stick it. Got it. I'm surprised his ship didn't mysteriously sink."

"They were smart enough to ship out on a Breton merchanter who was making good money evacuating their countrymen off the islands. Those Breton sailors had some of the best water wizards on board to make sure nothing strange happened. That was because their normal routes were through the southern seas and skimmed near Maormer waters."

"They sound like great bunch to have here. You might want to talk to Olve before they come. If you can get our chief priest of Talos on your side, that should cause our Jarl and his kind to hold their tongues about bringing in more Altmer."

List of OCs:
Olve Tera (Talos priest), Salindil Greyeal (master healer, Akatosh priest)

Songs:
Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel); Video Killed The Radio Star (The Buggles); Hear The World's Heart Beating (Unknown, 1970s)