Chapter 7: The Wolf
…
"Why are you okay with killing my friends?" Rover asked.
The air of levity was gone. Rover stared into the Conductor's eye. She wondered if a fight would break out if she gave the wrong answer.
The Conductor choose her words carefully. "I'm not going after your friends specifically, Rover. Do we agree on this?"
"That's not what I said," Rover interjected. "You are okay with killing my friends. Why is that acceptable to you?"
Tightening her grip on the bouquet, the Conductor brought it to rest on her abdomen and pondered what avenue of explanation would be least incendiary.
Rover, looking at her from the side, couldn't help but wonder how she'd look like wearing a red veil. With the way she was holding the flowers right now, it would be like she were at a wedding.
"Can I…" – the Conductor turned towards Rover – "ask for your patience? I have the answer, but I can't deliver it in a few sentences."
A tinge of suspicion flashed in Rover's eyes, but they assented.
"Thank you." The Conductor bowed their head in thought once more. Taking a deep breath, she began. "Rover, have you ever seen a play?"
Rover shook their head.
"On the stage, actors play out a story. These stories can be comedic, tragic, satirical – anything, but when the curtains close, we dispel the illusion. The actors go backstage, take off their costumes, and they go home. Even if these stories are hopelessly grim, it all comes to a close.
"This question you're asking me – you're asking me 'why am I okay with killing the characters in the play?' You ask me this, when I'm sitting in the director's booth above. If I have my way, your friends are going to go backstage. They are going to take off their costume and – as the people beneath the costumes – they're going to go home. When we die, we go into the ground as waveforms and turn into tacet discords. You protest that us Fractsidus experiment to merge with the them, but you neglect to mention how we are not fundamentally different. You want the actors to go backstage, but you want to trap them in the theater and keep them in their costumes – when those characters were simply an emanation of the person beneath.
"A normal person lives 80 years of life as a human, then they spend the rest of their eternity as a tacet discord. After that, they may be slain and returned to the ground, but they'll only become a tacet discord again. It might be scary, no longer being 'human' as we understand it, but that's not an excuse. Humans are no longer the default. We are guests wherever the Lament reaches – but if we reach the next stage of human evolution, the successful evolution of humanity into the thing that emanates rather than the emanation of what is beneath, we will no longer need the Black Shores. We will no longer need these vast militaries, these fortress-cities – we would be the person underneath the costume, and we could become any character we choose. The greatest obstacle is the question of how we consolidate and make the person rather than the character, how we make humans the thing that emanates rather than the emanation.
"The only goal of the Fractsidus in awakening the Threnodians is to awaken the remnants of humanity to the fact that this is the answer in the first place, that opposing the Lament is useless. We must change with it. That is all."
It was a lot for Rover to take in. They attempted a number of rebuttals. "A person does not become a tacet discord. They are dispersed, and waveforms belonging to many people combine to make a new tacet discord."
"That's even worse. If the Fractsidus succeed, we'll be able to keep our individuality, having consolidated into emanators. With your assistance, we can redouble those efforts."
"What about the Sentinels? They have been shown to be able to hold back the Lament. In Rinascita, Imperator holds back the Dark Tide. We can defeat the Lament by limiting where it can manifest."
"Even if I were to give you this, when a human dies they still become tacet discords. You're relegating humanity to become a factory of misery, creating people who will spend 80 years as a human then eternity as something breaking and reforming into something non-sentient again and again. If this is your solution, then it is best to just destroy humanity as they are now. This way, there is less suffering in the long run."
Rover growled, "You act as if you're above it all – you call yourself the director, but we're both on stage, aren't we? What gives you the right to say a person should die?"
"I…" the Conductor started. "The Fractsidus will be judged by the standards of the humans at the next stage of evolution, not by the standards of current humans."
"Those don't exist! Only humans as they currently are exist."
"We will make them exist. If we can't do that, all is lost."
With that remark, there was long silence between them. Rover could hear the leaves of the bouquet shuffling as the Conductor fiddled with it. The fire crackled, slowly working its way into the thick logs Rover had chopped earlier.
"So the Fractsidus operates off the moral code of future humanity, which we can't possibly know currently?"
Without looking at Rover, the Conductor replied, "Yes."
"Then…" Rover asked. "For what reason did you join the Fractsidus?"