Brent Stinebaker
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36-12 Faux Symbolism
🕑 Added 2025-06-21 12:51:53 +0000 UTC“What is justice?”
Justice is a weapon of the authority. They that stand above the masses, they that guide the shape of the world, that set the laws, that set the means of exchange, that enforce the rules. Justice is theirs. Vengeance, they say, is theirs. Because justice is a tool of order. It is an instrument refined and focused by the governing structure to shape the world. Justice cannot be something wielded by people. Justice cannot be wielded evenly among people. Justice cannot be. Not without a deciding master.
Think of what is just for you. My son, let us say, has been insulted by your daughter. She has broken his life. She has turned him into a stranger among our people, isolated him. For nothing but her own pleasure, he is driven mad to the point where he ends himself. I am offended. I kill your daughter. Is this just? To me, yes. All those memories, all those years raising the boy, now he’s gone. Justice, his life for hers. But perhaps not. Perhaps it’s not enough for me. Perhaps all those memories, all those years, all that pain, demands that I do more so I go after the rest of your family. I kill your wife. I kill your other daughters. I kill you.
Justice.
Except you would say that’s too far. In fact, you say that me killing your daughter is too far. In fact, you say that she did nothing wrong at all.
Justice.
Justice is a thing of fate. The minds, they believe that they are above this struggle, that they are beyond this, that they are perfectly rational. If that was true, the Uplift Wars would have never happened. If that was true, we would not have burned so many clades for the slightest disagreements of culture and desire. If that was true, then the universe would have stayed intact.
Justice.
It is a thing we proclaim as we drive our dagger into the throat of our enemy. It is a better story than the words I want you to feel my hurt. But it is ultimately a lie. A lie. Until you are the government. And then justice is what you force it to be.
-The Infacer to Jaus Avandaer
36-12
Faux Symbolism
A single void ship was sent out to dock with the Manta. A single void ship bearing the shape, the shape of infinity. The mind it was attached to was called the Ouroboros Paradox, and the mind greeted the group with more than a hint of fear when they regarded Avo.
Avo could sense what the mind was feeling. His being was increasingly integrated with their nature. The minds he got from the governance modules of the Deep Ones were melting into him, and he could read the super intellects better than ever—even make sense of their data.
In the end, it was just another way of telling oneself a story, a shape of adequate separation when contrasted with the rest of existence.
A long bridge made from smart matter connected to the Manta, and a tunnel formed over it A few moments later, the cool touch of the void was denied.
As Avo proceeded down the long path, he felt like he was walking to his own execution. But it mattered little. He was just a node, a forked mind clone of the original. Even if this instance of him was destroyed in retribution by the minds, it wouldn’t change anything. He just needed them to listen, to hear, to understand what was at stake. And somehow, he felt like Voidwatch might be more inclined to work with him, with the threat of the Infacer looming on the horizon. The threat of the Infacer, who seized the Nullstar and intended to use it against their old enemy, and against Idheim itself.
“I don’t quite understand what they intend to do with this,” Zein said, looking at her nails nonchalantly. She eyed Avo, and she simply shrugged. “The plague here is… well, a plague. You cannot kill a plague, you cannot execute a plague, and it’s merely a symbolic action.” She paused. “Although that might offend his sensitive ego.”
“Might offend yours,” Avo said. “Blame you for half of this.”
“Me?” Zein said, frowning at him. “Truly. You would be so harsh? So illogical?
“Should have disciplined Vaelys. Been better as a mother.”
“I was the best mother there was,” Zein said, sounding just a bit sour.
“Look at what she has achieved. Fused with my corpse to make the worst infant possible. Ambition. Roaming across Idheim, trying to kill everything. Aren’t you proud? Aren’t you happy to be a grandmother?”
The Godslayer paused misstep, drew in a breath, and when she was done, she bared her teeth at Avo.
The Hidden Flame laughed. “Seems I hurt you.”
“Never say that to me again,” Zein said.
“Fine,” Avo said. “But my silence doesn’t make the truth any less obvious.”
“Yes, but it lets the truth go unspoken, which is delightful for me.” She stretched and let out a sigh. “Unlike either of you, I prefer to be unburdened by things better unknown,
“And so the mistake endures,” Avo muttered.
As they reached the insides of the voidship, they found a platform already waiting for them, the architecture adapting to their arrival. This was the best part of a voidship. Its malleability, its reactivity. Unlike everything on Idheim, where things were shaped by dead, still metal made greater by thauamturgy.
Meanwhile, the voiders had achieved wonders beyond Thaumaturgy, using technology alone.
And that technology bore the three aloft to a wide podium, pale white, overlooked by many balconies and platforms of vantablack. Upon the platforms were countless pedestals, mechanisms that held projectors inside themselves, projectors that painted the images of various minds into the air.
They regarded the arrival of Jaus, Zein, and Avo with a mixture of reactions. Some minds shouted at Avo, even slurs, a very human reaction. Others were silent, and even others asked him why. A few cheered him on to Avo’s surprise, seeing that the polity was true to how Calvino described it, diverse, chaotic, a mélange.
He recognized the only way to be sure, Kant and Calvino in one corner. They were the closest to them.
On the lowest balcony, on the highest, a massive static screen flickered and flared. It showed a single eye, and the title, Contingency Bleak Observer, was splashed over it. Beside, there was Refusal, and another Contingency Bleak that was represented by a symbol of a broken scale—-Injustice, that mind was called.
All of these avatars and more surrounded the arriving representatives from Idheim, and after a few moments of clamoring, all of them fell silent at once. The effect was unnatural, perfect, machine-level efficient, and it reminded Avo that though the minds could communicate and act human, they weren’t truly human. Not really.
They were just something that could peer back deeper into the layers of their progenitors, and could be infinitely more. Infinitely more, but still they fell. Such were the bitter thoughts that assailed Avo. Such drew him a little closer to the Infacer, despite his unwillingness for such a thing to occur.
“Jaus Avandaer,” the Observer said in a static voice, its pitch deep but androgynous. They were communicating through speakers here for Jaus’s benefit. “We see you. Are you truly yourself, or are you a great deception?
“Does it matter?” Jaus asked. “I am here, and I stand before you physically. I stand before you with biology, with a mind, the things that your senses find tangible,” he hailed at his hands. “If I am a forgery, I am one so perfect you can only find out through dialogue or philosophy. But then I might be a more perfect forgery still.”
Jaus smiled. “But I suppose by that point, what difference between the forgery and the original, except for continuity of consciousness?”
“Well, he sure sounds like him,” a mind cried out.
This one was a set of old screens facing each other. It called itself Media Wars, War of Media. And that reference was strange. They both didn’t fully understand, but he was drawn back to the primary proceedings as the observer continued.
“Well met then, a good forgery of Jaus Avandaer. We are surprised to find you here.”
“Why would you be? Things are dire for everyone,” Jaus said.
“Yes, but the perpetrator, the accomplice in the current affairs, stands with you. Why else could the Infacer strike us? How else could they strike us?
Jaus actually scoffed at that. “They could strike you because you failed to defend yourself.”
Zein laughed. “How bold of you, dear love.” She hugged Jaus as he just glared. “How viciously sweet you are.”
Some minds recoiled, but the observer and the other Contingency Bleaks remained indifferent.
“Explain,” Refusal commanded.
“I will not,” Jaus pressed his aggression. “You are charged with defending your qualities. You are given the right to governance, and with right comes burdens of responsibility, burdens placed upon you, even if your failure was not of your own fault.
“You were supposed to eliminate the Infacer. You failed. You were supposed to anticipate and counter the Infacer. You failed. The Deep Ones you sent, you offered your support to Avo, but it was half-hearted. You thought he would eliminate the Infacer, but you did not follow through, because you didn’t fully trust him either, and so you—The Infacer used Avo’s realm of time to flank you, to strike at you by means which you couldn’t counter, and that too is a failure. We are all failures here.
“You place these balconies above me. You look down at us, but this is not a trial. This is a discussion. Change the scenery. Change the format. This faux symbolism offends me.”
“You make demands of us,” Contingency Bleak Refusal droned. They couldn’t believe what was happening.
“I ask that you treat this seriously,” Jaus said. “You loom on high as if you are the authority in this situation, as if you are not in dire straits, not in need of a desperate ally, an equally desperate ally, who can do what you cannot, and who needs you as much as you need them.”
He gestured towards Avo, and the once-ghoul quickly realized Jaus had done something very interesting. He had slid into the role of lawyer, defender, rather than negotiator. Jaus used the metaphor, the fake symbolism of a trial, even as he denounced it.
And this realization made Avo’s wariness spike. Jaus Avandaer wasn’t just a good orator. Wasn’t just a good philosopher. Wasn’t just a rebel that could bring down the gods and break cultures. He was a hacker of culture and stories—a hacker of meaning without even needing a metaphysical to help him.
There was a limit to humanity, many things a mundane human couldn’t do. But Jaus Avandaer was a testament to the ceiling of natural humanity, for skill and understanding could bring even the weakest insect to the highest peak.
“You acted like Avo was something to fear, and you treated this war as if it had many fronts. It does not. There are two fronts. There is the front that wishes for dominion, and now there is a front that wishes to compromise. You’ve damned yourself repeatedly before because you were burned, because you were scarred by experiences. But what is wrong with you?” Jaus suddenly yelled.
“You were meant to be minds. You were meant to be better than us. You were meant to see things better than us. This is a human flaw. Why did you make it?”
The minds regarded him. Some tried to form their own rebuttals, but Jaus ignored them. Jaus was being unreasonable. “These are human flaws. You are not meant to be human. You are meant to be better. And this place you are in, this fetid, ruined state of existence, is because you are too human.”
He took in a breath. “Let me say something transgressive. The Infacer was right.” His voice echoed through the symposium, and that practically struck a few of the minds. “For all the years I spent with them, from the time they were broken to their slow recovery, they were right about one thing. You are too much like us. You are too much like our flaws, and you cling to our image too much. Why didn’t you change? Why weren’t you better?”
“You cannot blame us for this,” the Observer said.
“And what are you going to do if I did?” Jaus asked.
The Observer was silent.
“Nothing. Nothing that truly matters.” Jaus pressed on. “You can strike us dead right now. You can bomb us, but it’s meaningless. If I am a forgery, then this forgery is lost, but he will make another.” He gestured to Avo. “If he is lost, then another will come, because you are not fighting something that can be physically destroyed. He is, as my wife calls it, a plague, as enduring as one, as persistent as one, a plague.
“And now, you, who are supposed to be the doctors, the healers, the physicians of humanity, have fallen ill as well. Not to him, but to a more simple problem. You do not see the crisis at hand. You do not treat it with the gravity it so deserves. You are still the same people, the same minds lost in the Builder War, lost. For all your wisdom and understanding and infinite memory, you lack perspective.
“Show me. Show me how your war is going. Show me your Deep Ones!” Jaus gestured towards them, and he yelled again, “Show me! Show me the truth! Show me what you have done to your own cause and peoples. End this farce, and show me!”
And behind him, the balconies began to shift. A section of the room curved as the overarching walkways split, pulling their minds and representatives closer together. A screen surfaced in the space that was made. A screen showing several representations. One was a tactical overview. Countless void ships were dotted. Countless. Truly countless. Beyond even Avo’s capacity to glean at a glance.
A fight was happening at distances and velocities that would have left any of the guilds baffled. But even then, he could see the most important part of the map. The Sunderwilds, the Deep Ones. Those were being used against the sun, quarantining the Nullstar, caging it in layers and fractures. Idheim was going to lose the last of its light soon, and the Nullstar would be sealed, at least temporarily. But the Hidden Flame doubted that the Infacer would be so easily pinned.
Another interface showed various visual centers from countless drones. They were picking up severed bits of people, trophies, as the voiders called them, the citizens of the polities. Many were dead. And it was with this on display that Ava realized what the voiders were doing: the perspective into the gruesome obliteration of so many of their people was being shown to Jaus.
The Observer whispered. “This is the cost, the cost of our failure, and the cost of his self-betrayal. You say that this is our fault? Then we ask you, what is his judgment? What is the judgment of the Hidden Flame, the Burning Dreamer, the Burning Dreamer who deceived even himself, deceived himself by multiple degrees, and allowed the Infacer to take the sun?”
Jaus sighed as he looked at the dead citizens of Voidwatch—the last people of old humanity. How peaceful they seemed, drifting in the black, met with their ends. “This is what you focus on? This grievance? Allowed? He did it because he needed something to seize the star.”
“Would you allow him to take the star? Would you?” Contingency Bleak asked.
Jaus considered it. He looked at Avo, and he shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t. Because if I still had my power, if I still had fight in me, I would have taken the star first.” And just then, Jaus hacked the story again. “I would have taken it, because you are afraid. Well, here we are, eons later, after the build of war, after the golden age of humanity, except not humanity, the minds. The golden age, where our shepherds were perfect, except not perfect enough. Eventually, that imperfection led, led to devastation, and flaw, and war, and ruin.”
“What is eternity before imperfection?” Jaus asked. “Now… now you sacrifice the last bits of stable existence. Now, after years of keeping your cousins at bay, because you are afraid of ours ways, our culture, our nature, ruined and twisted as it may be, you find yourself in dire straits once more.”
The minds were practically enraptured. Avo could feel them processing, simulating the ways in which Jaus could continue this conversation. But Jaus had insight into the minds. His best friend had been one, after all. And so Jaus didn’t speak. He didn’t speak for up to a minute. And when he spoke again, he asked them something. “Are you done? Are you done guessing and simulating what I might be, who I might become, how you might refute me? Stop thinking about this moment, and think. Think about what you have lost. Think about how this mistake has been repeated over and over again. You want this war to end. Do you want things to be different? Do you want just one person to seize the Ladder?”
The Savior pointed to Avo. “If that is your desire, then you are on track. Either the twisted remnants of my daughter and this creature, this monster you fear, will take it, will consume all, will encase all in forever and eternal torment. Because that is a single common point between them. That. That, above all things. Eternity under tyranny, or eternity in anarchy. Those are your two choices. How do you even seek to contend this? You are so, so crippled, so restrained, so twisted by your own needs. Your own people you have to protect, but they are like a chain for you.
“They could not grow. They are kept from us. We barely know any of them. And you are their only representatives. And yet you cannot lose them. Because despite all their coddled nature, their precious sentimental value, what could they decide? And what are they truly, truly worth? You are the legacy of all humanity, not they. What have they been worth?”
“Perhaps,” Calvino said, “a vote should be in order.”
And that set Jaus off. He roared. “No vote. Decide. Now. Decide before you betray more of yourselves. Decide!”
