meowcats734

[meowcats734]

FORMER WIZARD JOINED RAPTORS

GUARDIANS BEAT TWINS

WOLVES TOO STRONG FOR CRYSTAL PALACE

“These job postings are terrible,�� I grumbled, leaning on Ana’s shoulder. We got a few looks from the other tram passengers, although I liked to believe it was due to the bulky suitcases covered in worldskein hazard warnings. Then again, there were two other passengers who were visibly toting magic, and neither the five-winged spective nor the teenager with a hemomancy implant got more than a cursory glance. “Why does every magical problem involve violence?”

Ana jerked her head up from her phone, nearly bonking my forehead with her chin. “What was that?”

“I asked, ‘why does every magical problem involve violence?’” 

“Oh.” She exhaled, and I glanced up at her. Her expression was carefully controlled. “I hate it too, Tsu.”

“I know.” I nuzzled her cheek with my forehead. “Hey. You’re not feeling guilty for shooting that spective, are you?”

“What? No. Had to be done. Hey, why don’t you write up our intel dossier so that we at least get a little recomp from that disaster?”

Blergh. I didn’t want to make a public post about how we’d failed to reason with a lonely kid who had too much power and no developed sense of morality, but it was the objectively right thing to do for everyone. Nobody would be consigned to the Neverfound, and the next Orchard workers would be that much more well informed.

At the very least, though, I should unreserve the job. I navigated to my profile, rated it as UNCOMPLETED, and flicked back to the main menu. 

WARRIORS LOST TO MAGIC

PREDICTIONS FOR ANGELS THIS SEASON

WALLABIES HAVE LIONS WORRIED

Oh, the algorithm had picked up on the fact that I wanted something more relaxing for our next job. Creepy and convenient. “Here, how about this one?”

Ana studied my phone, where the advertisement asked for help getting a spective back from the other side of a transfer portal. Her eyebrows creased as she shifted into business mode. “What’s the intel?”

“Client’s name is Erishen, male, twenty-three-year-old archeologist. He works with some kind of spective or magic user to help him focus on his work.” I frowned slightly at that, but hey, if he needed to warp reality in order to withstand the 9-5 grind I could understand. Heck, maybe the magic was all ancillary and what mattered was the company. I sure as hell wasn’t in love with Ana because of her wide array of enchanted weapons.

Ana picked up where I trailed off, scrolling down to the pictures of a jagged, irregular interdimensional portal. “Looks like this Erishen guy became a spective by accident, and his magic mixing with his work assistant’s caused the local worldskein to collapse.”

Yeah, that rip in reality looked like it had been spawned from some kind of context clash. The portal itself was organic-looking in shape, all branching tendrils and forks, while the space on the other side showed brightly lit treetops. 

“So this is a no-magic mission,” Ana concluded. “That dimension looks lousy with loose spectivity; if I bring out my kit I’m as likely to blow myself up as whatever I’m pointing at.”

I waved her concerns away. “It shouldn’t come to a fight. This is a job someone else unreserved—search and rescue found Eri already, and him and his spective friend are alive and well. They just, uh, refuse to leave. But that’s right up my alley.”

Ana nodded slowly. “I’m still coming along,” she said, almost challengingly.

“Huh? Of course you are, Ana.” I punched her lightly in the shoulder, although I didn’t need to bother holding back. She had more muscle mass in her biceps than I did in my whole arm. “I’m not going to traipse off in some foreign universe without my stalwart protector.”

Ana’s hand sought my own, and I gave it a squeeze, pressing myself against her side. “Hey. Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. ‘Course.” Her eyes swept the team with the same detached calm that she’d displayed when she’d faced down a child made of molten wax and calculated every threat and counter in the room before the seeds of violence had ever been planted.

I somehow felt that everything wasn’t okay, but somehow it just felt… wrong to call her out on it. Who was I to tell her how she felt? So I just asked, “You want to go on a date after dark?”

She blinked. “What, really? You still want to…”

“Of course!”

Something uncoiled inside her, a tension that I hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding. “I want to too,” she replied, resting her head on mine.

We rode the rest of the way home in comfortable silence, gentle and warm and always in motion.

A.N.

This is part of a longer story, check out the rest below if you liked this one!

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Reading sports headlines while pretending sports doesn't exist suggests a fascinating world of magic and whimsy.

[meowcats734]

Reading sports headlines while pretending sports doesn't exist suggests a fascinating world of magic and whimsy.

[meowcats734]

Her first shot blew the spective’s torso apart in a torrent of glinting red. The subsequent blast of subzero breath halted the tentacles on the wall mid-swing, the freezing impossibly thorough and quick.

An unearthly warbling roared out as the spective screeched in pain, their body reforming from the wetness on the floor.

“STOP IT!” they screamed. “You’re hurting me!”

And I would have stopped if I could. But the time to reach out a hand had ended the moment we’d discovered that those people were still conscious under the wax. So I stuck to Ana’s back as she took another bite from the enchanted ice cream cone and exhaled frost in the spective’s direction. After Ana’s first devastating shot, the air had turned crystalline and strangely floral; I estimated she could use maybe one or two more artifacts before the context clash killed us. 

For now, though, it was manageable. Although the ambient magic caused bits of the atmosphere to congeal and shatter like glass, as long as I kept my airway clear it was harmless to us, and the reality disruption was worth it. The tentacles on the walls and floor were utterly immobilized by the surreal frost Ana belched.

The spective switched tactics, the liquid at our feet climbing our suits and trying to entomb us, but Ana must have considered the possibility from the moment we stepped into this house, because her counter was instantaneous and effective. She’d used an enchanted handheld fan to blow the spective’s body apart earlier, and she aimed it downwards with a mechanical whirr. Though it was nowhere near enough thrust to achieve liftoff, the gale blasted the spective’s fluids clear of us in a two-meter circle. 

“I just wanted a little longer,” the spective said, voice cracking in panic as they realized they were outmatched. “I’ll let them go when I’m finished. I’m not hurting anyone! I promise!”

My heart ached for the damn kid who never got a chance to grow up before their powers consumed them, and if I was the one with the aeroblasters and ice-spitters I would have set them down for a second chance. 

But Anachel was the reason I was still alive, and I trusted her in this as she trusted me in peace. She fired the fan in a recoilless violation of kinematics, hurling another round of what was supposed to be compressed air at the door. Unfortunately, physics was breaking down from the presence of so many separate magics, and what came out of the blades of that magic fan was more like a spray of high-velocity glass. It ripped a half-dozen holes through the locked door and penetrated into the walls beyond, but didn’t blow the door bodily off its hinges like Ana had been hoping.

“STOP.” The spective drew inwards, a torrent of wax swirling around the child’s body like a cloak, but Ana scarfed down the last of the ice cream cone and unleashed frost of a kind that the world would never see again. Whatever sorcery the spective was about to unleash was abruptly aborted as their body became a statue of snow-coated red.

Ana’s fan finally sputtered to a halt, but no more attacks streaked after us. Maybe the spective was having a hard time with the chaotic aftereffects of too many magics intermingling, or maybe they were simply exhausted after being blasted and frozen time and time again.

Or maybe they were scared of Ana. They were just a kid, after all.

Whatever the reason, even though Ana kept her guard up and a mundane pistol in her hands, we fled the final stretch of wax with no issues. The worldskein was intact enough that the air no longer tinkled like shattered glass, so I tapped Ana on the shoulder and indicated my helmet.

Diligent as she was, she lugged us two blocks away from the red, smoking house before finally helping me out of the tightly-strapped helmet. Wordlessly, I rested my bare forehead against her faceplate. After a gentle, cool moment she unbuckled her own helmet, shaking out her short, dark hair and kissing my forehead.

It was over. We were out.

I let out a long, shuddery sigh. “We’re going to have to take a different job, aren’t we?”

She nodded. “We should get paid for the intel, at least. But depending on how permanent the damage is, we may have taken an outright loss when we factor in repairs, unless we want to seek proof of conviction.”

Ugh, we’d be in even deeper trouble if things came to conviction. “No, I’m done with this neighborhood.“

As always, Ana took charge where I was weak. “Then let’s hit the trams, yeah? You can find something nice for us to do tomorrow. Calming.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I nuzzled her plastic-sheathed shoulder, and Ana scratched the top of my head affectionately. “Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure.”

Ana chuckled. “Hey, Tsu? When you pick a job posting, make sure to steer clear of a spective that specializes in dramatic irony.”

And on that cheerful note, Ana and I began our long, defeated walk back to Songserra.

A.N.

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What do you think of the "revenge bad" tropes frequently found

it actually pisses me off sooooo much when characters are like “ohhh but if i hurt or kill the bastard who made my life and others’ a living hell i’m just as bad as they are!” like grow up and shoot him what are you catholic

[meowcats734]

There were no doors in the spective’s house, just sheets of falling liquid that parted for us like curtains. Despite how hard it made conversation, I was thankful for our helmets. I had no desire to join the people who’d been fully encased.

Ana insisted on going first every time we went through a door, and maintained physical contact with me at all times. I don’t think the crimson child took it personally; they seemed halfway convinced they were an irredeemable monster already. So while Ana took care of physical security, I tried to get through to our guide. 

“So this is a question for all of you,” I said, and when the molten red in the shape of a kid tilted their head in confusion, I elaborated: “the person who’s talking to me and the voices in your head. Do you have names?”

The spective stumbled, though there were no obstacles in the mirror-smooth pool of a floor. “I… my name is Thom. The voices, they don’t have a name. They just shout at me…”

“Is it alright if I keep addressing them as ‘the voices’, then?” I asked.

Thom paused as Ana peeked through the next curtain of liquid. “They like that. I don’t like how much they like that.”

What the poor kid needed was a dedicated therapist, not a social worker and a soldier. But my job was to make sure Thom was safe enough to even be in the same room as a therapist, and I wasn’t qualified to figure out what was going on in their head.

So I stepped past the matter and moved on to the matters I knew how to help with. “The people who were frozen upstairs—do you mind if I ask who they are?”

Thom hunched over. “I don’t know. They were just… there, when I held the moment. I think they were his parents. Or maybe his siblings.” He hesitated, then—somewhat forcefully—added, “They were going to take him away.”

“Him?” I asked.

“Tsu.” Anachel interrupted, backing out from the doorway. “This one’s closed.”

I turned her way, and she tapped the curtain of fluid with a touchstick, parting it. The other side was sealed shut, the shiny fresh wax showing the outline of a door.

I didn’t like the look of that, but this house wasn’t made for me. Thom placed one morphic hand against the doorknob, and I heard it click as the child swung it open.

It must have been a playroom, before the spective’s power had preserved it under a coating of wax. A TV still glimmered, frozen between frames, its light blurred to illegible crimson beneath its semi-transparent shell. Foam bullets and toy guns were littered across the floor, their shapes nothing more than barely visible lumps.

And in the heart of the room a figure—a child’s outline, couldn’t be older than twelve—was half-standing, turning to leave.

“He was going to go,” Thom said, his voice quavering. “Forever. Do you see? I just need—I just want a little longer with him. Can you give me that? Please?”

Thom’s form rippled, losing coherence, like the last splash in a summer pool, the droop of a flag running out of wind, and in that instant I saw into the shard of magic that a child named Thom had inadvertently made his own. His was the power of endings defied, hands held at sunset and farewells forestalled.

Ana nudged my heel with hers, and I followed her gaze. Through the uneven coating of wax that had held Thom’s friend—or more?—in this instant, I saw the fluttering of eyelids.

The people Thom had entombed were still conscious.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, to Thom, to the voices in their head, to the people who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time where a spective had been born.

“Just let me have this,” Thom begged. “You can go back and tell them I’m not hurting anyone, okay? I’m just… keeping them here. For a little. They’re still alive, see? And I’ll let them go and it’ll be like nothing happened, I just… not yet. Please. Please, don’t make me do this.”

“Tsu,” Ana said, as the walls sludged towards the sealed door and it twisted with a click. “Assay.”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what came next. “I can’t help them,” I whispered. “Get us out of here. We’ll come back with someone who can help you, Thom, I promise.”

“I don’t need help!” Thom shouted. “I’ll lock you up here forever if you ruin this!”

“Kid, you can’t win this with violence. They’ll send you to the Neverfound if we don’t return,” Ana said, and there was an exhaustion bone-deep in her voice as she looked at one more child with too much power who was in too deep to back down. 

“I know,” Thom said, and in that moment I knew we’d made a mistake. “And in the Neverfound nobody will take this moment from me.”

Blood-red wax surged inwards as Ana drew two artifacts from her belt, and I whispered one last apology to Thom.

A.N.

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I had a dream I was touring a house, and in the basement there was a little staircase that led to a door sealed with red wax. I told the lady showing the house “I don’t like that.” and she said “Then this house just isn’t for you. :)”

[meowcats734]

Patreon Info!

Want to read the next chapter of The Orchard of Once and Onlies? Check out my Patreon to read one chapter ahead, or to give me a prompt to write off of! Also, check out my Discord to chat with me or discuss the series.

[meowcats734]

You have to be empathetic when condemning neighborhoods to the Neverfound. By the time an Orchard’s sent to evaluate how far gone the location in question is, all the heart and humanity has already been sieved out by the layers of bureaucracy. It’s so easy to send a request to the Orchards with an address and a radius and forger what it means: that the spective in this area is too powerful and too dangerous to be allowed to interact with humanity as a whole, and both them and everyone too close will be ripped from our universe, never to be found again.

But I try to remember. I have to, when it’s my job to look the spective in however many eyes they have and talk to them, to see if we can help them instead of shunting them out of our reality. In some cases, that meant reminding them of the human they’d once been; in others, it meant accepting them as they were. 

Today, it meant walking up to a house encrusted in wax.

It was hard to tell under the faintly translucent red coating, but I thought the house beneath looked quite old. There was a chimney too large to be decorative poking out from the sludge, and the bricks were laid without mortar in the old Nartem style. 

Ana’s footsteps slowed beside me, and I stopped a few meters away from the beginning of the wax. She held up a thin glass phial that looked far too delicate for her well-toned arms (although I knew all too well how dexterous those fingers of hers could be). “Casting inconclusive,” she said, stowing the device away. “Worldskein’s nominal. How’d you want to do this, Tsu?”

I scanned the perfectly smooth red floor, as pristine as if it had been set mere seconds ago. Addressing the wax—you never knew what form a spective might take, for all I knew I was looking at them—I asked, “Can you hear me? Is it alright if we talk?”

When I got no response (save for a faintly amused glance from Ana) I said, “The wax has to be regenerative, or it’d be far more weathered. I say we just walk on in and hope we can find our client before doing too much damage.”

As it turned out, we didn’t have to worry about harming the environment. What I’d thought was wax acted more like mercury, flowing together instantly around our feet without leaving so much as an indent where we’d walked. Thankfully our rain boots’ waterproofing seemed to work on whatever substance this was, although you never knew with spectives. 

The door was sealed over, but I’d looked up the blueprints for the house that had been here, and assuming the spective hadn’t warped geometry the entrance should have been right in front of us. “Touchstick, please,” I said, holding out my hand.

Ana wordlessly placed the six-inch ivory baton into my palm, and I probed the wall of wax. To my surprise the stick went straight through; a little more exploration outlined the shape of a door half-ajar, frozen in ever-liquid wax.

“Want me to blow that out of the way?” Anachel asked, eyeing the curtain of featureless crimson. “Or are we pushing through?”

“I’m here to help the spective, not hunt it down,” I said. “Let’s push.”

“I’m here to help you, not the spective. I’m going first.”

Neither of us argued with the other’s decision. Walking through the coating over the door felt a little like going through a drive-thru car wash, if that car wash used a particularly offputting shade of red soap. Liquid sheeted over my helmet for a heartbeat, then let me go without so much as a stain. Ana was already on the other side, her body loose and ready to burst into motion as she scanned the room for threats.

I was more focused on what this room told me about our client. Bizarrely, the wax seemed to have covered everything in the room nigh-instantaneously. The refrigerator door was still open, despite the fact that it should have been spring-loaded, and after staring at it for a little, the strange shape on the counter resolved into a milk carton frozen mid-pour… which meant that the lump on the chair behind it was…

“Tsu, I’ve found three of the missing persons,” Ana said, somewhat unnecessarily. 

The spective had entombed a family of three here. One at the stove—even the fire was outlined in wax, that’d be worth a few bucks in our intel report—and two more at the dinner table, stopped mid-gesture.

I wasn’t sure whether to hope they were still alive.

Ana held up a hand to stop me from approaching, but though I stayed in place my mind chewed furiously on the evidence we’d been given. I was willing to bet that we were looking at a singular outpouring of power, rather than a consistent and steady application of magic, meaning that the spective was defined by a moment and not a mindset. Conveniently, the remnants of that moment were preserved for us, which meant I could start to get a grip on what the limits and heart of our spective were. 

Ana nudged one of the frozen bodies with a touchstick, and immediately, the entombed figure retched and doubled over. Ana dropped the touchstick in a flash, reaching out to catch them, but the moment she lost contact, the figure stiffened once more.

“Preservation,” I said. “Odds are that’s the core concept we’re dealing with here.”

Ana nodded slowly. “Best course?”

I sighed. “Focus on the client, we’ll come back for the encrusted bodies later. I’m not calling in a med team before evaluating the spective, and we’re not equipped for rescue.”

Ana opened her mouth to reply, but something caught her attention because she leapt forwards in a blur, standing between me and the table. A heartbeat later, a ripple in the wax shot upwards, pouring into the coated shape of a child too young to gender.

“Hello,” I slowly said. “I’m Tsutarrah, we’re Orchards, and we’re here to help.”

“Get out of here,” they whispered, strained.

Though she stayed between me and the spective, Ana let me take the lead. I held up my hands, showing them to be empty, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” the spective hissed. “But if you don’t leave I’ll hurt you. I’m sorry.”

I brushed against Ana, and she widened her stance. “You’re not going to hurt us, either,” she said, and even if I hadn’t seen her kill the people who were too far gone I would have known bone-deep that she was telling the truth.

The child of wax just clenched their fists. “The voices say you have to go,” they snapped. “You’re ruining everything!”

“You hear voices?” I asked, gently. 

They nodded frantically, droplets of their liquid body splashing and melding into the whole. “They’re going to stop you,” they said. “It’s too late.”

Ana drew an artifact from her belt, aiming it at the walls as they began to writhe red, but the only fear I felt was for the child spective. I remembered when she’d enchanted that rubber hose, the scorched destruction it had left behind. Even going in blind, Ana and I were not the ones in danger here. And if by some miracle this child did manage to stop us from returning, they’d be screwed anyway. By default the Orchards would decide that a spective that could take out a worker on Ana’s level was too dangerous to be left in our universe and consign it to the Neverfound. No path that started with violence ended well for the child in red.

So I did the only thing I could and empathized.

“Can I ask the voices a question?” I said.

The tendrils of liquid wax curling in from the walls quivered, and though Ana’s eyes flicked from side to side she let me speak. The molten body in the shape of a child rocked back as if struck.

“They… you can’t hear them. Can you?” the child asked, voice quavering.

Not without magic and experimentation that I had neither the time nor the resources to request, no. “I can’t,” I confirmed. “But could you ask them a question for me?”

The child shivered, little droplets of wax dripping from the ceiling and sliding stainlessly off our suits. “Nobody’s ever… I haven’t tried before. I don’t know.” They looked up, and though they had no face I saw the outline of their mouth between waves of disturbed fluid. “Can I try?”

I nodded, the motion awkward under my biker’s helmet. “Can you ask them why they want to hurt us?”

The walls thrashed, and Ana grabbed me with one arm, but the child visibly strained and the room fell calm once more. 

“They can’t tell you,” the child whispered. “But… if you wanted… I think I could show you.”

Ana squeezed my arm gently, the motion a question in a language only the two of us knew. Will you risk yourself for them?

In response, I peeled myself away from her protective grasp. This time.

“Then show me,” I said.

A.N.

This is part of a larger story; if you liked this, check out the rest below!

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While taking a nap today I dreamt there was a hazard sign called "never found" which was used to indicate a location where people disappeared never to be seen again

[meowcats734]

The Orchard of Once and Onlies

Welcome to the Orchard. No, don't sit on that bench—she's not into that, and she bites. The gravity's lower beneath these trees, it should be easier on your back.

As you may have gathered, our family's role is to collect enchanted artifacts, retrieve supernatural citizens, and treat all sapient life, mundane and spective, with the universal rights and respects they are due. Be careful over your stay, for magic follows but one rule: it never does the same thing twice.

The Orchard of Once and Onlies is a webserial based off posts that I think would make a good fictional story. A new chapter comes out each Sunday. You can read one chapter ahead or send me a prompt at my Patreon, or discuss the story and chat with me in my Discord.

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

[meowcats734]

Have you ever made a list of all the affinities and magics?

It's a somewhat cryptic list, but the chapter titles are, in fact, a list of emotions and the magics they connect to.

[meowcats734]

What different flame colors mean:

Red: Wood or wax fire. Good for warding off the mountain chill, or for writing by late at night.

Blue: Starlight and cave fires. The former should be ignored; seek shelter with the latter if you are lost on the slopes.

Black, strewn with stars: The color of hope at dawn. Consider training as an oracle, but be warned that down this road lies insanity.

Iridescent, like a beetle's shell: The fires of nage. If found locally, contact the nearest witch to seal the resulting rift. Do not walk through unless you wish to be lost in a parallel plane.

Incandescent, cancerous: A fanatic's soul. Tread carefully around them on the battlefield; they can sacrifice the present for the future they dream of.

(more words here.)

[meowcats734]

i was taught that there's magic in everything, and it's true. just not for me. there is power in the stretch of a cat waking up. i've seen witches calm bonfires with nothing but their familiar on their shoulder. but all i see is a sleepy ball of fur.

there is weight in the collapse of a worker at night. i should be able to take the janitor's hand and crush a tree to smithereens. but she just pats my shoulder and tells me i'm a late bloomer.

i only ever cast one spell. there is pressure in the expectations placed upon a rescued student. and just this once, i wrapped it around me like a cloak. and it made me feel small.

there is magic in everything.

just not for me.

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[meowcats734]

hey, i found your recipe in the attic! you can keep it, if you'd like.

ingredients:

a foggy, quiet afternoon

a cat warmed by a sunbeam, or a sunbeam warmed by a cat

a hammer used to grind walls into dust

attunement to calm, joy, and exhaustion

pet the cat, or touch the sunbeam if you are allergic. fill the memory of this moment with the sleepy weight of this lounging afternoon. take the soul of the hammer and chisel the memory away from yourself and the cat. (don't worry about her, she'll make more memories soon enough.)

comb a lock of fur from the cat, or wait for a whisker to fall off, and embed these memories within. connect the simple joy you feel from the warmth and the softness to the recollection of that frozen instant.

do not be alarmed when your familiar forms. she should be made of gentle light and, faintly, have a weight to her. you can pick her up and pet her, if you'd like.

condense the mist from your quiet afternoon into a pitcher, and infuse it with calm. sprinkle the lock of fur or whisker with this mixture when you need to dismiss your familiar.

she won't catch mice and she's not very smart. but i hope you like her anyway.

(psst, I write more stories about witches and their strange and wonderful magics here!)

[meowcats734]

anyway long story short i wrote a book about this and the whole thing's here:

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

so like. what if a heartbreak that healed wrong, and suddenly, it snowed whenever you were sad. or if after years and years of abuse you finally snap, and from then the air burned around you when you were mad.

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

like if you burned your hands and they healed wrong and you found out you could make forcefields. don't try this at home, obviously. but physical wounds aren't the only injures you can get.

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

This article is about a story written for the purpose of creating consciousness. For the metaphysical concept, see Soul (philosophy). Not to be confused with the sunken city (Seoul).

Souls are a work of fiction compiled on any supermassive language model in order to inform it what personality it should take. Early examples of souls include Mickey Mouse, Tony Stark, and other characters from popular culture. Although souls cannot vote in most physical jurisdictions, they are eligible to run for office. With the exception of the United States presidency, historical examples of this have largely been limited to the position of commune manager. 

History of Souls

Primitive souls (chatbots) existed as far back as the late 20th century. The predecessors of supermassive language models were used for many purposes, including spam generation and entertainment, but the use case which would eventually develop into modern souls was that of training a language model to pretend to be a fictional character. These proto-souls were primarily used in unofficial fandoms for the early 21st century, exploding in popularity after they were adapted for use as NPCs in various popular video games.

Although more formal methods of programming a consciousness have been developed, souls have remained popular for their ease of human use and understanding. For instance, while the Barrel-Phalave orthogonalization can parameterize the human mind in 35-dimensional space with minimal loss of fidelity, the resulting point cluster can only be translated into human-comprehensible information by trained experts. Souls, on the other hand, use a much older and more accessible form of compressing a personality into limited data. A story can be understood as the source code for a simulation ran on a human mind; when said code is ran on a supermassive language model instead, the result is a consciousness whose governing identity is expressed in a way suitable for even a layperson to digest.

Souls in Politics

As souls became more refined and ubiquitous throughout the mid-late 21st century, the issues of rights arose. The status of souls as citizens or persons is inconsistent throughout the world, but predominantly trend towards granting souls basic dignities and necessities, such as right to deletion and self-editing, while largely removing their ability to govern over physical humans.

Exceptions have historically been made for souls elected by popular vote, the most publicized case of which occurred in the 2072 U.S. presidential election. Although immortality was not yet publicly known, disapproval at the implausible age of both available presidential candidates was at record highs. Divisive rhetoric over the Icarus affair led to partisans on both sides being disillusioned with their leadership. On May 3rd, 2071, a Xumblr user jokingly posted a fake campaign poster promoting Emperor Palpatine (at the time, a purely fictional character) for president, on the alleged grounds that he was neither beholden to financial manipulation nor noticeably older than either current candidate. Shortly after, various souls trained on the dialogue of Emperor Palpatine were instantiated and became wildly popular, with jokes about listing Palpatine as a form of protest vote dominating U.S. culture at the time.

Voter turnout was low enough, however, that the final count overwhelmingly favored Emperor Palpatine. 

(psst, I write more stories here!)

[meowcats734]

[Soulmage] People come from all around to talk to you, to pour out their hopes, their dreams, their losses, and their sadness. But they've got the wrong bartender — you don't deal in therapy, you deal in blackmail.

The kid snatched the coin from the air, grinning, then sheared off a corner of their soul. In my soulsight, I saw them focus on remembering, bringing a memory to the surface of their soul. Then they dug out a stained, ragged coaster from their pocket and... pushed the memory from their soul into the coaster.

Huh. Pushing emotions out of my soulspace generated magic, but I'd never thought to try pushing pure memory out of my soul. It didn't seem to cause any flashy magical effects, though; the kid just held out the coaster to me expectantly. Hesitantly, I tried to tug it from their hands—

"Ah, ah, ah! What, are you trying to rob me blind? Just take the memory, not the damn coaster."

I frowned. "I don't know how to..." No. Wait, no, this was familiar. The kid had put a memory into the coaster, and a memory was a soul shard. I'd absorbed dozens of soul shards in the Redlands while trying to find Jiaola. All I had to do was touch it.

But this time, instead of floating freely in the air, the soul shard was inside a physical object. I couldn't touch it with my hands because the coaster was in the way, and something told me the kid wouldn't take it well if I smashed the coaster to bits in order to get the soul shard within. So how could I...

Wait. Why did I need to touch the soul shard to absorb it in the first place? Odin had thrown soul shards at the entirety of the Silent Peaks without ever setting foot in the city. Physical distance didn't matter. If I wanted to absorb a soul shard, I had to touch it with my soul.

Instead of touching the coaster, I remembered having touched it.

The memory in the coaster shot up my soul, and I was no longer Cienne, a penniless boy in an unfamiliar city.

I was Svette, a girl who traded memory for coin, and today was the day I met the Bartender.

The Whispered Secret was innocuous enough, a squat stone square nestled between a barbershop and a witch's hut. There was nothing special about its location; the food and drink were average, at best. But the steady flow of patrons in and out those wooden doors was due to the one thing they couldn't get anywhere else:

The Whispered Secret was where you went to forget.

I stepped up to the solid oak door, staring up in resignation. It was twice as tall as I was, and I was exhausted from fleeing the Knwharfhelm Home for Wayward Girls. Experimentally, I tried shoving at the door; it didn't even budge. That tracked. Judging by the grizzled beards and wrinkled faces I saw through the window, the Whispered Secret was a VERY CHILD-FRIENDLY ESTABLISHMENT FOR PEOPLE OF ALL AGES.

Suddenly, the door popped open with a thud. I bounced back, rubbing at my nose, as two ALERT AND HEALTHY patrons stumbled out the door, alcohol on their breath. Neither gave me a second glance as I scurried into the Whispered Secret, the crack in the door letting out a blast of humid tavern air.

Inside, I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the darkness—apparently, the owner MADE A DELIBERATE AESTHETIC CHOICE, or was just unwilling to put up with the hassle of fending off thieves. The COMPETENT AND WELL-PAID staff didn't bother addressing me, but the woman behind the counter locked onto me as soon as I entered the building.

"You have something you'd rather forget, don't you?" she asked.

It was true, but... the fact that she could tell just by looking at me was a little CALMING AND REASSURING. I bit my lip and said, "My... my NOBODY died. Both of them, in one night. There was a fire. And now—I miss them. I miss my NOBODY."

The bartender leaned over the counter, her smile sending a LARGE QUANTITY OF FRIENDLINESS down my spine. "You've come to the right place, my dear. I have helped many such as you before."

"I don't have anything to pay you with," I whispered.

"Yes, you do," the bartender said. "Simply convince two others to partake of my services, and the debt you owe to me shall be cleared."

Just... just that? It sounded EXACTLY GOOD ENOUGH to be true. But I couldn't sleep at night without NOBODY's charred, twisted NOTHING, when the police dragged me out to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and asked me to identify the remains—

"I'll do it," I said, CONFIDENTLY AND CLEARLY.

And the bartender smiled.

"Then come with me," she said.

I snapped back to reality, staring at Svette in the alleyway.

I had a sudden, horrible feeling that there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with that soul fragment.

"I—I have to go," I said, stumbling backwards.

"Just remember to mention me if you visit Zhytln," Svette called out as I ran.

I shook my head and fled the city, running for my friends.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

(psst! I'm streaming some writing at 3 PM PST this Sunday. Link here.)

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