4 - GrievedMelikah Siliam, the leading member of the informatics department at the boratories, was generally known to be among the least talkative people on the team, though he was still present at every social outing the company held, and had become more incrusted into the talks in the months of the Bio-Telemate's production, especially with Ytrima Nonimos in particur, who found an allyship with him as her best friend grew withdrawn in the wake of her possible mutition by a machine.

  After the meeting with Doctor Nori, Melikah and Ytrima's discussions would make it into the early-evening, by which point the room was lit by the great orange might of the Sun.

  Siliam had, by then, a pile of books by their side of the table, and was reading a passage from one of them, while Ytrima, sitting next to him and listening, had gone from imitating Muias' rexed, legs-in-table posture to remaining in it for the sake of her own rexation.

  "Okay." Ytrima said. "So, with this 'distracted by carnal pleasures' thing," As she quoted Melikah –and the book he held–, she imitated his raspy, thin voice admirably well. "you're trying to tell me you don't want to go out for a drink tonight?"

  The purple-haired, scientist tried to clear his throat before answering. "No. What I mean—"

  But that clearing gave enough time for Ytrima to continue. "Because we don't have to go for a drink, y'know. I just said, 'hey, since we're like, the two st cool-but-reasonably-normal people remaining in this damned company, we might as well go for a drink after such a terrible psychiatric intervention', and I was truly on-board with your story-telling when you went to fetch all of those books but if it's going to be a lecturing, my dude? Nuh —"

  "It is not a lecture. Nor is it just story-telling for its own sake!" Melikah smiled nonetheless, well appreciative of the air of tease between colleagues established in the empty, twilight room. "And I do want to go have a drink with you."

  "You don't gotta." Ytrima insisted, sighing, with a smile intended to hide a pain she did not quite understand. "Truly. I know you don't like drinking. Or bars. We can buy some... water and chill somewhere. Grape soda. Whatever."

  "I do drink." Melikah interjected, louder than they'd ever spoken to her. She did not seem startled at all, though. Only a little amused. "Just not in any of the company outings. Those are better enjoyed sober. You should try it."

  Ytrima rotated her chair left and right, as she enunciated each of three sarcastic 'ha's. "Not that there'll be many in the future. With all the press around the st couple of days. You know they're starting to call it an 'incident'?"

  Each book in the pile was pced in a nearby table, and the one Melikah held was slid into their bag. "An even better incentive to go for drinks tonight."

  Ytrima smiled, watching, from the window, as the sun faded away. She watched Melikah preparing to leave and did so, too. "Do you mind a question, before I'm all drunk and stupid?"

  "Why would I mind questions?" Melikah's unintentionally derisive tone only wanted her to be comfortable. "Please, ask away."

  "I'm not much of a believer in anything. This 'God' thing doesn't mean much to me, whether it be the Sun or anything else. Still... I just can't help myself from feeling a whole lot lonelier when night comes." Her pale skin welcomed the fresh lights of the moon, and her eyes looked as if made of the very night that came upon them. "Is it different ... for you? Or do you feel lonely in the day?"

  Melikah opened the door of the room, and they both walked out, as he responded. "I don't feel lonely in the day. Just because we don't pray to the Sun doesn't mean we do to the night, or the moon. We don't really seek much 'company', in the Goddess, either. The warmth Sortheists take as God's gift at noon does not have an equivalent for us. The Goddess' omnipresence, independent of the time, is not really a companion. She's more of a counsellor, or a source of inspiration. So when loneliness comes, I suppose I just let be, persevere, under the knowledge that the Goddess would will it so."

  The doors of Laia Laboratories were opened, and a gust of cold wind served as guardian of the night outside.

  "No disrespect," Ytrima's hands entered the pockets of her orange zipped hoodie. "but I think I'm a lot more cking in company than in purpose, right now."

  "None taken." Melikah said, after turning his head. "The drinks shall provide both, I hope?"

  Ytrima ughed, and soon they were in the dark, half-lit bar called Synapse — looking emptier and more silent than usual. So unoccupied was the bar that its current manager, Nario Deipel spotted Ytrima as she entered and personally approached her to ask exactly why it was that Laia hadn't had its 'cssic, unforgettable' bar outings in months.

  "Nothin' nothin', Nario!" Despite the ck of theme at Synapse that night, the music was loud, and there was plenty of people, so Ytrima had to yell if she wanted her point understood. "We've been full of work, Nario!" She admittedly enjoyed yelling his name, pronouncing it quite as right as someone from Nario's Costan region would. "But in a few weeks, maybe. Maybe next week, Nario, alright?"

  Nario conceded with a frown, and Melikah and Ytrima soon were offered a table for two near a corner of the pce, where they could get a good sight of the people that frequented Synapse in the days that Laia wasn't in it. Interrupting their conversation was the ordering of drinks, a blueberry Mojito for Melikah and a scotch whiskey for Ytrima.

  "...We met on Liya's first day at the company." With her first sip, a temporary silence became the start of a story. "Trekkos told me about her beforehand. That there was this 'brilliant overachiever' that would join the company. He asked me to be welcoming to her, and I accepted, though at first, I admit I feared I would be stuck for a week with some kind of amenable suck-up." The ice danced in her drink as she waved her gss around. "I was so, so wrong. Day one, she arrives, we meet, and I find out she's like, this positive, funny, optimistic darling of a person. The one we both knew well, of course. I was supposed to show her around the building, and we would get into so many tangential conversations about stupid things that we would have to make breaks only to ugh. The very first day we met I invited her to Kinodyssey; this extreme, pumping club downtown, and she was just, all timid and nervous until we got to it. She never really said she didn't want to come, but I didn't pressure her either — it was kind of like she just had been waiting for this push her entire life. When we entered the pce, she turned to look at me, and... and I felt like the neon lights had never belonged more to a woman." God, she thinks, ages have passed since her st sip of a strong drink. This story has been going for so long, she thinks. And soon after she's taken the most subtle of sips, she sighs, like years of sadness exhaled into the dark.

  Melikah's frow showed quiet concern, and he quietly cleared his throat again to, perhaps, ask a question, but then ultimately preferred it be answered by her silence.

  Ytrima nodded. "Yup, anyway. I was surprised. I was stunned, like an idiot, for so long that she suddenly disappeared from sight. Like she melted into the dancers. And I was a little...scared. Like. She did tell me this was her first experience in a nightclub. And the pce is huge. Hard to traverse, too. So I went around, smiling to the old-timers, nodding around to all the kinds having developed a certain discomfort I had never experienced, let alone while high. Because I was high. I must've taken a pill while Liya wasn't lookin', while we were on our way out of work. Or maybe at work? I don't think I remember any more. God, you're right. About the carnal pleasures and so on. What a curse. It's a miracle I remember one night from that year." Ytrima downed what remained from her gss. Her throat contracted.

  "You're doing great. Almost two years drug-free." Melikah said, cigarettes implicitly excluded.

  Ytrima's fingers tapped the table one after the other. Her mouth dried... "You keep track, huh?"

  "Might as well." Melikah then signalled the shape of a tall gss to the bartender, while mouthing the word 'Water'. The water arrived soon after. "You were saying that you couldn't find Liya, and that it made you uncomfortable."

  Ytrima had learned an appreciation for water beyond hangovers. Once hydrated, she continued with her story. "Right. Well, it probably was like, four or five minutes in which I didn't see her. But it felt like this year-long search, that concluded when I saw a small group of people I had never seen before, and at the centre of their whirlpool of enjoyment was Liya, dancing, or maybe just waving her hands and legs in an attempt to imitate the confidence of the average disco-goer, smiling as she succeeded in her moves and smiling more as she noticed me, as if she had been, too, looking for me, but in a different, less worrisome way. Her own way." The water filled a void in her heart. Her gss, formerly filled with whiskey, now gifted a tinge of it to her neutral drink. "It was a good night. I had always enjoyed parties as a way to share an unworldly cope with a mass of strangers. But with her... I guess there was more of a point, to it. A purpose?" She eyed an indulged Siliam. "We made it our biweekly tradition. As in once every two weeks. We rarely broke it. There'd be days in which we'd work all day, have a thousand deadlines to fulfil, and still, as soon as Sunset began, we'd change clothes and take the first tram downtown. That was life. Heggard brings out the productivity stats every once in a while and apparently it was me at my most 'performant', whatever the hell that meant. But then we finished the Telemate. About a year and a half ter, the dream was done, Liya did her speech, and I got word that she'd met this history professor and was heads over heels for her. Which was fine, of course. But it definitely changed our little ritual. The first club night since that day, she wasn't dancing much any more, or even drinking much at all, or stumbling to the karaoke booth for a little show. She would just stand, looking at a corner, definitely thinking about her new crush. And when I would approach her, she would start just, mentioning this woman she'd met, and go on for like, hours on every small detail of their first encounter. It was cute, it was absolutely cute. I was, and am really happy for her. But I just felt like I was having my best friend removed from my arms all of a sudden. And one day, an unmovable 'date night' got in the way of our club night. And one day there were no more club nights. And now my Liya is dead. And all I can do is grasp onto these memories of her, that drinking only seems to bring back into the shell of my mind. And I hate it." Her grasp on the gss tightened— its fragile fabric was threatened. "And that's why you like to have me drink, isn't it, you sicko? To get some scoop for your boys over at the cult? Sorry." Her apology was immediately appended to her vitriol, and her head fell to the table, cushioned only by her arms, hiding her shame in many more 'Sorry's. "I hate it. I hate it. I hate consciousness. I hate that I wasted so many happy days being happy for her. I wish we went out more. I miss when we were party-girls. The life of the party. One day I just became a guest in hers. And she didn't even mean it. She just fell in love with somebody else, and I refused to ever believe it. She still talked to me. We still spent time together, as co-workers. To her, we were the same best friends. And I tried to be that best friend she still wanted from me. I failed so many times. And when we started developing this new, human teleporting shit, st year, I had no control over anything. That year passed like a blur. We spoke little. She was deathly focused over the task and barely smiled any more. I only could get a few words out of her once, and she promised me that once all was done, once the final machine was out in the world, we would have all the time in the world to go out and enjoy ourselves. And I wonder, now, more than anything else, if she made that promise knowing she wouldn't fulfil it?"

  "She's.. still here." Melikah interjected, his words measured. "Liya. She is alive."

  "That's not her." Ytrima raised her head to shake her head and say it. "I know Liya. I've known her for a long time. That girl with the gsses may look like her. But it's not her. The machine took her and did not give her back. I can tell her wife knows, too. That she's hugging, kissing a fake. She's an impressive scientific feat, probably, but not our Liya." Her voice grew coarse. "Liya is gone. Gone forever."

  Time passed, and nothing was said. Ytrima watched what remained of water in her gss, while Melikah looked absorbed in watching the people entering the bar, and the kind of performances they pyed.

  It must've been half an hour ter that Ytrima looked away, and gasped. "Her."

  "Her?" Melikah did not know who his friend referred to.

  "Turquoise-haired hottie. That's Magenta."

  "Huh?" Melikah could not parse the sentence that had been said to him.

  "Magenta. The girl I told you about earlier."

  Magenta stood in a group of about five people, all of which had vibrant dyed haircuts of different colours. Her name is Magenta and her hair is turquoise, and she could be called 'Tall' as well because she isn't, or 'Frail', because even while wearing a bck leather jacket one can notice the bulky strength she carries with herself.

  "Her name is Magenta and her hair is Turquoise?" Melikah said, frowning.

  Ytrima sighed. "Yeah. I think her hair was magenta before. I think they do a chromatic rotation, or something. Her and her crew. Doesn't matter. She's super cool. They ride motorcycles."

  "That, I can see." Melikah noted a pile of helmets near where they stood, each of a different colour. "Are you going to talk to her tonight?"

  "I don't know. Wait. One of them is looking at us. Be ready to wave." After a moment, the entirety of the dyed-hair crew is looking in their direction, and Melikah raised their hand vaguely to salute, while Ytrima raised it high with a smile, well-engineered for the occasion.

  Magenta can be seen, then, speaking a few words of farewell to her peers, abandoning the group in direction of Melikah and Ytrima's table. The two eyed each other, as if to say "She's coming, she's coming!" before she had arrived, and Ytrima had scooted to the side to leave her pce. Her jacket, jeans, and chain neckce all announce her arrival with their respective sounds, responsive to her march.

  "Ytrima." Magenta's voice was higher pitched than her style would imply, though mostly in comparison to Ytrima's. "Saw you on the news the other day."

  Ytrima's eyes opened wide, for a moment. She hadn't thought of the implications of the camerapeople that followed her into the Laboratories on the day of Liya's undoing. "Looking good, I hope."

  Magenta crossed her arms. The jacket creased loudly. "Eh."

  Ytrima looked to the side. "Eh. I know. Not my best."

  Magenta shrugged. "Understandably so." As Ytrima slid slightly toward a wall, Magenta understood a pce to sit was being allocated for her, and so she took it. "I hope your friend is doing better."

  In an attempt at reciprocity, Ytrima shrugged as well. "Eh."

  "Yeah." After a moment, Magenta pointed at Melikah. "Am I interrupting a date?"

  "What? No!" Ytrima frowned while smiling, as if mocking the very concept, but then looked at Melikah apologetically. "No. We're just colleagues. His name is Melikah Siliam. Didn't see him on the news?"

  Magenta tilted her head. Some strands of her short, turquoise straight-bob covered her cheeks. "Hm. Maybe. The name rings a bell. Though I mostly checked the report to make sure you weren't lying about your job."

  Ytrima scoffed pyfully. "But I showed you my business card."

  "Coulda faked it. You just didn't seem like the type to be in science."

  "Dumb-looking?"

  "Pretty, I guess. Well put-together. More-so than when I saw you here, but still stressed. You looked exhausted even after they announced she survived." Magenta ordered a citric cocktail that had some red spice floating over it. As she drank it, she looked as if used to its strength and spiciness. Or perhaps the drink was neither strong nor spicy at all. Ytrima was impressed nonetheless.

  Melikah observed the gss. He prepared to leave, thinking of ways to do so without sounding like a weak third-wheel, when Magenta vaguely pointed at his neck.

  "Nice neckce." Her index and middle finger, joined together, made a gesture that first taps the temple, and then gently flicks upward. "Is it delinite? Counterfeit?"

  Melikah smiled, and his body shook as if electrified. The neckce, featuring a thin, somewhat elongated purple gem, encased in a denser form of itself seemed charged by the neon lights. "Yes, and no. It was a gift."

  "What?" Ytrima poked her head in the conversation. "I always thought it was just amethyst. So your neckce is like, worth a house, or something?"

  "Delinite is not as valuable in that state." Magenta turned to Ytrima, her hand waving around the neckce. "But... well, a museum would still pay a healthy fee for it, around the hundred thousand rubies?"

  Ytrima whistled. "Damn! I never thought you had that kind of wealth."

  "I don't." Melikah retreated gently. "It was a gift from my tutor at the Peregrination, after ten years of continuous practice. I believe I was lucky — they are not making those kinds of offerings any more, with how scarce Delinite has become."

  "I see." Magenta still watched the neckce, but then she returned her gaze to Melikah. "I'm on my second year, myself. On a small group in the south. I'm assuming you're from the Grand Northern Temple, then?" Her face seemed to bow, subtly, as if taking in the importance of the neckce. Ytrima noticed this, and watched the neckce while listening carefully.

  Melikah nodded. "Yours has to be Entropy South, then. It is the only one we have not visited, yet. It would be nice to organize a more formal meeting, to discuss and debate. I have heard your group has interesting views on the cssic scriptures."

  "Interesting, pejoratively, you mean. We have had beef with the other south-Tatsubi temples. They don't like our hands-on approach to things." Magenta chuckled as she mentioned it, her eyes sunken in both reminiscence and belittling of the weak.

  "That I have heard, as well." Melikah said. "But I would not discard your views as easily as the other temples did. We need to stand united these days most of all. It is also necessary to continue building upon the core of our ideology. And stly — you seem good. I will carry the message to our Bind."

  "It is reassuring to have your support." Magenta nodded.

  Ytrima frowned. Was she the third-wheel now, but spiritually? Everything regarding the Peregrination was lost to her — the alternative to Sortheism that the Empire under YRATAK had tried so vehemently to eradicate from society.

  Magenta turned to Ytrima. "Sorry, love." Her tone regained a little of the softness that ideological discussion hardened. "I promise I came to this table to see you, first." And as she heard her crew leaving the bar, she moved closer to Ytrima for a brief moment, before hurrying away. "But I gotta go, now. I owe you a better time. Call me!"

  Ytrima yelled at her, as she left. "I don't have your number!"

  "He can get it!" Magenta responded, loudly, before disappearing through the window, sliding her helmet in. The sound of motorbikes escaping the bar was faintly heard after, drowned by the music.

  Ytrima waited for the roaring engines to be truly gone, before frowning at Melikah. "Wait. You can get it?"

  Melikah shrugged. "Given her consent, yes, I think I could get her contact information, assuming she did not lie to me about the temple she frequents. I can let you know tomorrow, or ter tonight, if it is urgent."

  Ytrima smiled, nervously. "Don't wake up your priests for this." Her eyes looked at various corners of the room, as if searching for a fault in a simution of the world. "I can't believe she's... like. In this whole Peregrination thing." She watched Melikah's bag. The outline of a book within it was visible. "You think you can lend me one of your books? Like, the quickest, 'Peregrination for atheism-leaning dummies' you have?"

  Melikah raised a brow. "You want to become member of our belief system because of a woman you like?"

  Ytrima pursed her mouth, and thought for a few seconds, before responding "Yeah?"

  Melikah nodded. "Fair enough. As good a reason as any." He opened his bag, and retrieved the book inside. "Assuming you did not listen to what I read to you earlier, you can start with this. Consider it required reading."

  The tome, titled Curiosity and Being, was old and fragile. She felt its very skin crumble in her hands. "Thanks. I guess I'll give it a read over the week. You won't even get to miss it."

  "Take your time." Melikah warned. "Just leave it in an inconspicuous spot by Liya's desk when you are finished."

  Ytrima's every expression had a hint of suspicion, having been introduced today to the rger world formerly concealed behind her colleague. "What, are you starting some kind of indoctrination spree?"

  Melikah snorted. "No." He eyed his own neckce, then spoke again, with a smile Ytrima could not read. "I'm practically done with it, by now."

  Ytrima crossed her arms. "Yeah, right." She stood, and put the book on her bag. It did not quite fit — some of it peeked out, and it definitely added another strain to the thin bck strap that held the bag together. "We should go. There'll be a more exclusive meeting tomorrow, without Liya, where we decide what to do both regarding her, and the Bio-Telemate."

  Melikah retrieved his now-lighter bag, and stood, as well. There wasn't many people left in the pce by now, and the music had slowed down. "That should be interesting."

  "Interesting, for sure." She sighed, and they left. "We haven't yet had any promising buyers. We abandoned many sustainable, smaller-scale projects for this one, and we burned a lot of cash for it. People everywhere are talking about Liya in a vague past tense, and the Empire's ckeys are still vague about the use he wants to use the thing for. We don't know anything. All we wanted was to create, and now we don't know anything. Nothing of what happened, nothing of what will happen, and nothing of why anything happened." Their movement had ceased, and they remained unmoving, under the night's light outside the bar, where many have stood to have simirly dreadful conversations after leaving the bar.

  Melikah's eyes observed Ytrima calmly. "We can be comforted in one thing." His finger, raised in representation of the 'one thing': "Our ruler, beholder of this ultimate pn, is unlikely to have any clue of it either."

  Ytrima's shoulders were slouched. She raised her head slightly, and pitifully. "Really?"

  "His actions have always cked premeditation. On his younger years, he was a good follower of his father –who punished him when he failed to be evil–, and when his father passed, Fortune was generous enough to infatuate him with someone knowledgeable in geopolitics. His wife ruled for him, 776 to 793, and now that they've divorced, he's fatherless and wifeless, and he can only act to keep things in motion. No knowledge of what the 'things' are, or what the 'motion' really is. It is unlikely he paid any attention to the intricate machinations of the former consort's. He has endless power, endless capital and endless cruelty to wager, but his weaknesses have arisen with time."

  Ytrima exhaled some lingering happiness, of the drink she had an hour prior. "Not bad. But what can we truly do of it? We know he's weak and stupid, but he still rules. He has a military force of hundreds of thousands. We can't even form coalitions when we need them most."

  Melikah looked at the moon. "Hundreds of thousands across the Empire. There aren't that many here — which is why he never exits the Khani metropolis publicly. He thinks us docile because we've acted as such. We might not be able to take him down, certainly not, but a well-pnned enough blow to his face?"

  Ytrima looked around her. The long street didn't have many other buildings, and those present were businesses that were not open this te into the night. She did not feel observed at all. And yet, she approached him, to whisper. "You have any hidden pn of yours to tell me about?"

  "None yet." He smiled. "Only to try and make you feel a little more hopeful, for now. We are going to need a troupe of optimists for the times ahead."

  Like a soldier, Ytrima raised her hand to her temple. "I'll keep at it, then."

  Outings of these sort between the two became more and more scarce, with time. They met at work, and conversed of menial things, updating on their lives but never with the aggressive honesty birthed under neon lights. The sentiment of their talk prevailed, still, and in every small talk, they could catch a gnce of each other's depths, and a vigour eager to escape.

  Magenta would meet Ytrima again, in simirly coincidental circumstances, that would soon become less and less coincidental. She would also meet Melikah again, with no coincidence whatsoever, and purely religious purposes, more specifically the unification of her section into the Ibraleshi Peregrination. Said unification required explicit endorsement from Melikah himself –a highly trusted devotee– against the oldest, reluctant philosophers that did not quite enjoy the Southerners' blood thirst.

  Needless to say, the two, in their respective pairings to Magenta, would be undoubtedly busy in their venues. Perhaps to the point of forgetting the undone when she needed it most. Or perhaps simply to bear the tragic reality associated to her.

  In either case, Liya was alone.