Conversation · Soona, the Programmer

"What not many know is: necroplasma exists."

"Great. What are we talking about? And why?" She gets back to work -- a clear signal that this branch of the conversation is over.

(Nod.) "That's probably wise. Not believing in them."

"Right, nothing to do with ghosts..."

"You do know there's no need to officially document this information, right?" the lieutenant whispers to you.

She has already turned back to her keyboard.

Form a theory on the two-millimetre hole in the world.

You don't have to. You already have. A long time ago.

Wait... how?

These thoughts formed in you somewhere, in a long forgotten discussion. Behind a kitchen table, in the evening light.

Drinking coffee and smoking. With a friend.

And a woman, she was there too. Her hair smelled of shampoo and she was smoking.

"Soona, it is the origin point of the pale."

"What?"

"The swallow -- it's how it starts. It's baby pale."

"But..." She looks up, and there's fear in her eyes as she considers the possibility. "But pale isn't here. We're thousands of kilometres from the edge."

That comforts her.

"No." (Look up first.) "We are twenty metres from the very edge."

She looks up into the darkness under the nave, then back at you.

You have her full, undivided attention.

The lieutenant's too. He takes his glasses off.

"The pale is only an effect. A transition between the world -- and that."

"Then... what is that?"

It's nothing. No... it's less than nothing. No...

"It's less than less than nothing. The final rest state for reality. Imagine if all this..." (Spread your hands.) "Never was."

"Then the pale is..."

"Simply a gradient."

"But the gradient -- it clearly hasn't started yet. We're here and the pale is not."

"One day, when it's larger, it will be."

"I understand..." She closes her eyes. "A theory of the pale where instead of an outer ocean it metastasises -- like a cancer or a mould -- erupting in points inside the world."

(Nod.) "This is one of those places."

She's silent for a second. Then she opens her mouth. "According to this -- how long..."

"...until it starts swallowing? It's already started. Starting with sound."

"And information," she nods. "Causing data losses in the East-Insulindian front. Have you considered why it's formed in a church? And, also, when or how it might start growing? Or -- if it has other effects? In addition to sound and data..."

An intellectual hunger fills her now, casting fear aside.

"I also have a question -- since we're piling them on. How do you know this? I'm not doubting you," he explains, "I'm simply curious as to how a detective of the RCM..."

... knows how to think this?

"I think I've had this thought before. That's how I know."

"An amateur-entroponetic police officer... I'd like to say I've heard stranger things, but I'm not sure. This is a hell of a guess, however. Well worded I might add..."

"Yes, it is very interesting, but I wouldn't say you know. This is a guess. One that's going to have to be proved -- by entroponetic scientists."

"It didn't form in a church, the church formed around it."

"Of course! A pinewood sarcophagus, or a..." She looks for words. "A containment facility of some kind, built by the first settlers."

"Or it can be a coincidence."

"Yes. But still -- I have considered the same. And the bad news is -- there were seven such pinewood churches built in the first decade of Revachol's settlement."

"Most of them were burnt down during the Revolution, or re-purposed before, during the Suzerain. I'm not saying all of them have one in them, but.."

Some of them might. A black grain, hanging in the air...

"Yes. Acting on an instinctual level. Or religious practices we've forgotten."

"I have considered the same. The bad news is -- there were seven pinewood churches built in the first decade of Revachol's settlement."

(Conclude.) "One day all the world will be like that two-millimetre hole."

She falls silent. The wind blows in through the hole in the stained glass window. Cold and moist.

"I'm going to leave that out -- but the rest... some of this I can use to start to explain this to the rest of the team. Maybe I'll sound mad, but..."

"Ma'am, you will certainly sound mad."

She shrugs. "One more thing -- maybe a club for anodic music isn't the worst thing you can erect around this particular... point in space?"

"The club is the only thing keeping this place -- and the rest of reality -- together."

"I wouldn't go so far as to..."

"YEAAAGHHH! ONCE THE LIGHT IS ON IN THE UNIVERSE -- IT WILL NEVER GO OUT!"

"Thank you, Egg Head. Let's leave it at that, shall we? We have un-entroponetic detection to perform in this district."

"What is there to add to that? Nothing."

"Yeah, that's still insane, but then again -- so am I."

"Perhaps not."