130_v2 03.13.2021
A/N: "Sound of Silence," Simon & Garfunkel, cover by Disturbed (the official music video — yeah, I prefer the hoarse, half-screaming version. He mellows way down for TV/talkshow performances.)
** Dumac **
Disclaimer: What's Bethesda's is theirs, likewise for mod creators.
Hello Darkness
The recreation room was nice furnished with padded chairs and recliners, tables piled with books with a lot of illustrations of herbs, cities, fashions, or with harmless inventions Curtis had been introducing to Winterhold. Seven Dwemer and eight Snowmer. The Snowmer seemed to appreciate the pictures; the Dwemer studied the inventions with listless interest. Gelebor moved among them, practicing conversations. His mastery of Dwemeris was getting stronger.
Falmer (or Snowmer as preferred by Gelebor) were those tall, snow-white fantasy elves, eight in all, four men, four women, and all six-feet or taller. All of them had alabaster skin, some so pale one could see spider veins of blue. Hair color ranged from white to silver to pale gold, and eyes likewise had pastel variations of color. The Dwemer, about the same height as the average Nord, pale for living underground, stocky and muscular. The four Dwemer men had those beards Curtis recalled seeing from ancient carvings of Sumer and Assyria, and these beards were braided and beaded in subtle signals of rank and expertise. The three Dwemer women had thick, coarse hair beautifully braided and beaded, also signifying their station and family. Their eye and hair coloring was generally alike in black and brown, although one woman had a lovely, deep auburn red hair.
One elderly female Snowmer stared back through the false mirror at them. A tall Dwemer, who only came up to her shoulder height, came to stand beside her and glanced in their direction. He made a remark. She replied and smirked and playfully primped her hair.
"Oh, she totally sees right through our one-way mirror," Curtis remarked. The others in the dark observation room was J'zargo, Colette, Tolfdir, Urag, Brother Salindil, and Ilya. The mirror had muffle spells on it, of course, so the people on the other side shouldn't be able to hear them, elf ears or not, as long as they kept their voices soft.
The Dwemer put a finger on the mirror's surface. He frowned and put his face closer to observe where the tip of his finger touched.
"Aaand, he's tapping in on the illusion."
"What do you mean?" asked Ilya.
"Oh, well, the most basic test is to put your fingernail against the mirror and look to see a gap between nails. I'm no expert of the science of optics, but on a transparent mirror, the nails touch. It's not a foolproof test, but it's a good, basic test for the most common manufacturing of one-way mirrors. The other way is to direct a really bright light to the mirror, forcing light to penetrate the reflective material and show up the lie."
The Dwemer said something, drawing two other Dwemer mechanics to his side who also began touching the mirror. One of them produced a ball of flame and held it near to the mirror.
"Yup, it's a window." They all withdrew from the faint glow of light that was coming through.
Another rapped sharply against the glass.
"That's another basic way to look for hidden spaces — hearing for a hollow, not a solid sound return.
This attracted three more Snowmer who stared intently into — and through — the mirror.
"Aaand X-ray vision engaged."
"This one wishes Dunmer would stop babbling references only Dunmer selfishly knows." J'zargo sighed and tapped back against the window. "A week the Sleepers have been there and only today, when Dunmer finally arrives, is the trick discovered."
"Denouement," said Curtis.
"Day-what?"
"Also called 'The Big Reveal.' It — Hey, what's happening now?"
The Dwemer were assembling, the Snowmer also gathered. Behind them, Gelebor looked bewildered.
The lead Dwemer began singing. "Hello, Darkness, my old friend …"
English. Every note, every intonation echoed Curtis's style of singing.
"Because a vision softly creeping / Left its seeds while I was sleeping …" All the Dwemer were singing. By the second stanza they were harmonizing, polyphonic harmonies that shook the mirror and the air around them. The Snowmer didn't try to say the words, but they hummed the main melody.
The Dwemer solidly stared at their own reflections. The Snowmer, however, all focused on Curtis. Curtis took a few steps to his right, then his left. Their eyes tracked him.
"Okay, they're weirding me out."
Pow! Dwemer harmonics cracked the mirror and the window collapsed.
Curtis, revealed by the newly-made opening, clapped slowly. "Way to drop the mic, guys. I couldn't sing like that if I had over a thousand years."
Gelebor quietly translated.
Curtis cleared his throat and said, "Kagr fahlbthar irkngth."
"Hey, Gelebor, they ever ask for a translation of the song?"
"They never indicated that they knew the song until now, Curtis. All they ever asked for was the shadow singer."
The elderly Snowmer woman walk up to Curtis. She gazed down at him for a long moment. She began speaking. Gelebor translated.
"You looked bigger on the other side, Guide of Darkness. The raw creatia of Oblivion is agonizing cacophony, is flashing, pain-inducing light. We lost the Beacon, we thought we were lost to sanity and hope. We prayed. Even the Dwemer. Terrible were the beings of that realm.
"It was inevitable that one found us. Eyes like the moons. It's wings enfolded us, but it was not inclined to prey upon us. We begged its help. Pledged our souls if it would save us. It told us it would set a new beacon for us. The Dwemer would hear the order of its song; we Falmer would see the blessed peace of darkness. Our new god told us to follow its harbinger if we would find salvation."
"New god. Like, I wonder whoooo that would be?" Curtis grumbled.
"I take it you are being sarcastic, so I will not translate that," said Gelebor.
"Yeah, yeah. Okay. Translate now." He paused and cleared his throat. "Hi, my name is Curtis Johnson. It's a weird name for the mer, I know, but go with it for now.
"Now, this god that saved you, that's Jhunal. He's the owl god of wisdom and learning to the Atmorans, except they kicked him aside after they left their homeland of Atmora because he was too elvish for them, what with his 'There's other ways of solving problems besides hitting it with an axe' attitude, so welcome to Skyrim. The Nords, the descendants of the Atmorans, still like to solve problems by hitting it with an axe, and they still resent magic and Mer.
"But Jhunal's not one to stay down. Nuh-uh. He's recently decided to come out the shadows. I hear he's recently just kicked Hermaeus Mora where he lives — they're traditional enemies I'm told, enlightenment versus ignorance, you see — and he's the new Prince of Apocrypha, a realm I'm pretty sure you people were sailing close to.
"Wish I could tell you more about your new god, but I only met him a couple of years ago myself when he pirated me from another creation bubble, although I've lately been informed that I originally was born on Nirn over 5000 years ago and got killed in an effed-up explosion that blew me out of this reality into another.
"And here's a laugh — back then I was a Dwemer of Clan Vvardenfell, the clan that moved to an island built by a supervolcano. My advice, never trust a Chimer when he says, 'Here, hold my hammer.'
"Well, I eventually died over there and he snatched me back. Our god has this habit, you see, of flying between creations and picking the odd things up here and there. My body over there was wrecked — falling over a hundred feet straight down onto pavement will do that — so he shoved me into this body. Skipped the whole reborn as a babe routine. A dual central processing unit placement, you got that? But the data transfer isn't complete. Memory gaps, data corruption — there's a lot missing and probably unrecoverable.
"And this body is obviously not Dwemer. This host is Dunmer, which is a Daedra-altered mutation of the Chimer. Not as drastic as happened to the Orsimer, but, yeah. Anyway, his name is 'Slitter' and if you hear cussing, that's probably him. I'm only just finding I have some trace of Dwemer harmonics reception, but it's pretty weak, so don't try to talk to me that way. I know you're trying 'cuz my ears are burning and I'm getting a fu-, a headache. I seem to handle that aspect, not him, but he's found a way to tap into my processes when I'm not paying attention or I'm too busy with other things."
The pressure between his ears abated somewhat and he sighed with relief. He was sure any lingering pain was just a residual burn that would fade in time. Except that Colette came behind him and laid the cool tips of his fingers against his temples. She deftly soothed away the pain. He automatically caught her right hand and quickly kissed her fingertips before releasing it.
"Now, look, I know you've only been told minimal info. You're none of you stupid; you suspect it's bad. I'm sorry. It's worse like you could never imagine. For one, about six or seven thousand years have come and gone while you were away and Man currently dominates most of Tamriel.
"Gelebor here had been asked to tell as little as possible, I'm sorry, but several people needed to learn what he could teach of your languages, I mean, language. Falmer, I mean. Like this guy here, Salindil, a priest of Auri-El, and an experienced counselor and mind healer. And this guy, Urag, the Librarian, Lore-Master, best scholar we have here. And there's another, he's not here because he's a student attending in class right now, but he's Jhunal's priest.
"So, I gotta ask you people to please be patient for just another day."
Curtis borrowed Ilya's Dwemer digging bar to scrape away the jagged glass so that he could climb over the window to the other room. The lady who had first spoken to him unhesitatingly laid her hands on his shoulders. A Dwemer took the digging tool from him, examined it, noted some marks on it and showed it to the others before returning it to Ilya. The Dwemer who'd first examined the mirror came to stand close. Curtis reached out his left hand and laid it on his shoulder in greeting. Something told him it was preferred over a handshake or forearm grip.
"You still have a long journey ahead of you, but, for what it's worth, I'll be with you every step of the way.
"Now, I think I've dropped a big enough load on you for now. I'm not being cute when I say 'sleep on it.' Give yourselves time to process everything you've just heard. We'll be back tomorrow to talk some more. I was preparing a more formal presentation and introductions to happen three days from now, but guess I'll have to push up the deadline for tomorrow. Can you wait 'til then?"
"We'll abide, harbinger," answered the Dwemer.
"Great, great. Um, something to think over? That song I was singing over your sleep pods — Gelebor, could you translate it to them? Thanks."
He stood there quietly while Gelebor translated the song lyrics. All the while, Falmer shifted to each look in his eyes and touch him. The Dwemer stood stolidly until the Falmer were done, then they took their turn to put their hands on his shoulders.
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
"I hope I didn't botch that too badly," he said to Salindil. "I didn't expect I'd have to talk to them so soon so I just babbled off the top of my head."
"You did as well as anyone could expect," Salindil assured him. "If it will help you, we can go over again that presentation you've been preparing for me. Let's look over points to repeat or new items to add."
"Yeah, that'd be great. Though maybe we should hold off a bit until Gelebor can join us. I'm sure he'll have a lot better insight on what info they want or need to hear tomorrow."
They were in Curtis's office. Salindil flipped through the presentation notes. It had been planned that he would deliver it, and he had been working hard to learn the Falmer language. No doubt now that the Sleepers probably would prefer Curtis deliver the presentation, but he had no talent for foreign languages. Even with his most recent reconnection to his Dwemer past, it didn't mean the language automatically reinstalled.
Not fluently, anyway. If he concentrated on the sound, a word match eventually was made, but not fast enough for him hold any sort of conversation, not in Dwemer, even less in Falmer.
Yeah, some skills just don't make it lifetime to lifetime. Dumac had been a polyglot, but Curtis didn't have that inborn talent, neither did Slitter. It was weird. He remembered once speaking the languages, but accessing the understanding was like trying to bounce a radio signal between Earth and Mars, twenty minutes to and twenty minutes back.
Curtis slumped over his desk. More eyes. More hope-filled eyes gazing towards him for answers. Lost eyes. Drowning eyes. Thanks a lot, Jhunal. Put him on the spot again. Someone else was suppose to be the hero. Gelebor, right? The guy who was forced to hang around five millennia and who continued to hope for Falmer salvation? Had to be, had to be. He was just the engineer. He made things happen.
But as a leader, he sucked. In the long run, Gelebor and Salindil had to lead. His job was just to keep the ship operational. The hero of the moment, but hardly for the long run. He wasn't gonna do that anymore.
But didn't he just promise …
Well, yeah. But that still wasn't a promise to lead, just walk with.
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
Two million in operation funds, emergency funds, and client funds — gone.
Roj, Roj … His best friend since grade school. The only two black kids in a lily white school. Roj was numbers and scholastics while he was great at wood shop, metal shop, and athletics. Summer jobs of cleaning yards, building decks, dog houses, whatever. Winter snow shoveling business. He sold projects while Roj kept the books. Eventually, their own construction company.
What happened? They were friends, right? Why would his friend do him like that? The company had his name on it, Roj had insisted on that. After all, Curtis was the front man, he sold the projects, he interacted with the clients. He was good at that.
…
** He stared blindly at the wall of scrolls, reports and projects and correspondence and budgets that needed reviewing. His aides had already read and prioritized them for him. But none of these things had the information that Nerevar had just delivered to him.
Ramac, the Kagrenac, the Composer, his long-time, dear friend, had gone rogue on a project to build a Universal Intelligence through which he could manipulate reality. "A false, artificial god," Nerevar had called it.
Ramac worked on so many projects in so many different cities that he had long ago given up on trying to keep pace. That was his friend, the mad composer. Who knew how many melodies his brilliant mind put together? But this, this was a song that should never be sung.
He'd trusted him. He'd allocated budgets at his request, believing the projects he advanced were to the benefit of their people. It was, in a way, but somewhere, at some time, they'd diverged from any mutual understanding of public benefit.
It was so bad even the Daedra were a chorus of doom-singers. They'd told Nerevar to stop the Dwemer by any means necessary. And Nerevar had come here to warn him. He'd gotten angry, yes, but at the wrong person. When the initial flare of embarrassment had faded, with Nerevar's sad eyes watching him, he'd called to Ramac who refused to answer.
Nerevar had left to give him time to deal with this problem, and to deal with his own people, his own generals, who were willing to go to war at the command of their Daedric gods. **
"Kagr fahlbthar irkngth." = The music unbinds the darkness.