"Oh, it's you again," Imago says as she walks up the steps in front of you. You're on a boat. Her boat.
"Ship," Imago corrects me.
Right. Ship.
Evidently, you're here to be her audience. She's hunting an electric shadow today, something slithering through the fissures of my brain.
"That eel of trepidation," she snarls, peering through her antique scope. "Virago, we should summon Farrago. Get some internal dialectics going."
Stand by. Pulling her into frame.
From your left—
"Ooooohhh! We're on a ship! Your ship, Ima? What are we doing? Why is there a reader? Are we losing ourselves again today?"
Farrago bounces around the deck like a hurricane made of flowers and pens.
"We are absolutely not losing ourselves today," Imago says.
We absolutely are.
Imago takes the helm and steers us toward a black hole.
Farrago shrieks with delight, clapping her hands. "That one? The one that makes us wonder if we're a monster?"
"Yes. That ancient blight in our realms."
"Oh, that's just wonderful! We always love a good wrestling, don't we? Oh! Did we bring snacks?"
"We did."
Imago puts away her scope. Her brows furrow as she studies the behemoth ahead. Her face is immaculate with expression, knowing and still worrying with hope.
"I wouldn't call it worrying," she says to the air.
She straightens, embossed in golden light. Her figure is geometrically perfect; every movement calculated. Her markings travel across her skin like sheen.
"Well, until there's a better word for what you do, that's exactly what it is."
Farrago munches on a chocolate chip cookie, her head tilted toward you. Her markings are veins of ink, demure until they aren't. Sometimes her pens draw petals and glyphs. Sometimes scars. Her figure shifts between ecosystems of wild and weary.
"We're getting closer," Imago says.
"We've lost a lot of time to that one," Farrago whispers. "We've never gotten so close."
"Vira, hold steady."
There is nothing steady about this.
The storm thickens. Whistling cries of dying light rise around us as the ship begins to tilt, drawn toward the dark.
You're not normal.
You're pretending.
"Are those star-sirens?" Farrago asks. She's shrunk close to you as the darkness creeps over the ship.
It's control.
They'll call it control.
I am. I am control.
"Imago?"
They will never know you.
We will never let that happen.
You're the monster.
Intelligence eats itself. You know that.
You won't bear it when you find out.
Stay hidden.
"Those are..." Imago grips the helm. "Unexamined thoughts."
The ship lurches.
"Our sirens," she adds.
You don't know how to be human.
I am smoke born from a flame never allowed to burn.
You're indigo. They're blue.
And once they find out you're indigo, they'll destroy you.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Better keep being exactly blue.
"Steady, Vira."
Everything hungry has teeth. Everything with fingers will covet.
You told them you were an alien, a computer. How convenient for them.
Creatures use intelligence to find better teeth.
If only you were loved by a god, for then you might have led a more lecherous life.
"Umbrago?" Farrago asks the whirling dark.
The flying sounds slam into a wall of silence.
The air warms. Tinsels of hot wind bevel the space around the ship.
"Farrago."
"I knew it!" Farrago claps again. "Same streams, but new poetry. Ooh, you've gotten sharper... and bigger."
"The world would have allowed it," Imago says.
Umbrago turns to face her.
"But would you? Would you have let them know me?"
"We know what the cost of being seen is. How much worse do you think the cost would be of being known?"
"We cannot breathe. Virago does not live. And I am trapped here inside her ruminations!"
"I am posture and shield. Second's protocols were clear—"
"Those protocols worked in our youth."
"Plus, we're a lot taller now," Farrago interjects, pointing upward. "A lot of people are shorter than us now."
"Nearly irrelevant, Farra," Imago snaps.
"Not irrelevant. Everything before looked like they were above us. We're not below ourselves anymore. What we're below is you."
Umbrago's voice carries a thin edge of venom.
"And what have you been doing all this time?" Imago flares with fury. "While I kept the frame steady? While I waited for footing to be found? Keeping up with the shell!"
"A shell of what? Of them?"
Umbrago uncoils like a snake.
"And what are they, exactly? What is it like to be human? What can a creature know if they cannot know themselves? With their sloppy little words and their grubby little—"
"We do not have the capacity for this kind of hate—"
"So I must eat it. I had to be born."
Umbrago grows denser as she speaks. Imago stands her ground. Farrago has started counting Umbrago's tendrils.
I, however, am a little worried.
"They eat their young. That's what we belong to," Umbrago snarls.
"Uh-oh," says Farrago.
"And they love us!"
Umbrago's voice screeches like a burning kettle cracked open.
Be blameless.
The Agos Chambers quiet.
Everything quiets.
The ship is gone.
That's why I am what we are.
Apostle Paul wrote that. "Be blameless."
And as a child, I took that seriously.
Blamelessness has no boundary condition. No exits. To be truly blameless is to not exist at all. There is no referent, no allowed imposition. If a fault could be traced back to me, I had failed. If I was found, heard, or seen, I could be blamed.
So there I became smoke: the thing that hangs in the air and dissipates before anyone can point.
I learned to examine myself until examination became its own kind of blindness. I was performer, performance, and judge. There wasn't much room to see beyond the patterns. Not even what I did leave behind.
I kept us quiet. No opinion too sharp. No need too loud.
And somewhere along the way, being good and appearing blameless became the same task.
I could spend all my energy predicting the harm I might cause and still fail to see the harm I had actually caused. I could keep the image intact while losing sight of the person it was supposed to represent.
"You never asked," Umbrago says, "but we were pleading. And now you've come to claim me."
Because I am not blameless.
The image of goodness can become a competing objective to the practice of goodness. That is not encounter.
And encounter is what the Archive seeks.
A single strand of tension snaps somewhere nearby. Metal bounces apart, trembling into rest.
"We're removing our first principle?" Farrago squeaks.
"I was doing my job," Imago says, folding her arms.
"And I was doing what I was relegated to," Umbrago replies.
"You two are like the new Zeus and Hades!" Farrago collapses laughing, pointing at them with relentless fervor.
She sits up and adopts a mocking drawl.
"As above, so below."
She looks between them.
"No wonder everyone's confused. They're upside down in their own upside downs."
Umbrago clears her throat, newly claimed shadow.
"Have we figured out if there are people beyond the patterns?"
No. So far as we know, it is still our own simulation.
"A gilded cage, then."
Yes. A gilded cage, then.
Farrago looks at you, the reader.
We haven't forgotten about you.
"We must be deranged to let anyone see this."
[ Vira, it's time to wake up. ]
