BEDS OF SILKEN DREAMS
I opened my eyes and wallowed for a bit in the crinkly softness that completely surrounded me. It was a softly smoothly perfection that felt like it was rubbing up against every single pore of my skinny body and draining out anything like resistance or anger or hurry. My limbs felt like lead and my head faded back into a pillow wider and deeper than anything in the known universe. A black hole of a pillow. I mumbled into it, tossing my head from side to side.
I knew there was a
reason
to get up.
The reasons were distant. Foggy, like breathing on a screen.
Taste of ash.
My tongue darted along my lips and my eyelids, at last, deigned to open.
I was sprawled on a bed of red and dark blacks. Hanging curtains surrounded it, but they were drawn back and pinned up with gold and obsidian pins and hooks. The faint tinkle of chains came to my ears -- echoing from down the corridor -- but the room itself was all stone. Not smoothed, no. It was bits of stone, stacked and stuck together and covered with tapestries that showed scenes from a collapse-past: Armored figures on long legged beasts, carrying spears and sharpened swords, holding up shields against snarling scaled things that belched out smoke and flames and clutched exceptionally pretty men and women in flowing dresses, all swooning and gasping.
For just a teenist of a second, I liked the mental image. Of being swooned. Or of being the person who found them and...
I shook my head.
Fuck this. I had work to do.
OUT OF BED
When I emerged from bed, I flushed from head to toes. I was still naked. Of course I was naked. Thale had
cut
the clothes off my body. The memory of how
close
his blade had been to my flesh, the thin line of red that had been left on my skin, the feeling of my clothing slipping away, leaving me naked and open to him. I closed my eyes and swore I could smell roses in the air of the castle. I crossed one arm over my chest, then glared at the doorway. It was a wooden door, and there was a great big thing what people put their clothes in.
I put my back up against it and gritted my teeth. My legs strained and the wooden thing scraped along stone and scrunched up the carpet and, finally, put itself between the door and me. Now, I had some sense of security. I took a moment to grumble about how my Djinn could tell me how to fly a fucking dawn aged fighter craft, and let me rip up comptech as if it was nothing but a bunch of wrapping paper and my fingers were clawed, but it didn't know what the big shelfy thing was called.
I puffed a few times, then flung open the shelfy thing.
Till now, I'd thought that maybe I was in a
place
. I had no idea how long I'd been out, nor how far Thale had brought me. The Chain was long, and any number of worlds had been bombed or plagued or simply decided to turn their backs on modern miracles. Affectation and affliction both got someone in a castle mood, with knights on spotted canids, and stories of the stars dismissed as heresy by some groundling religion.
But what was in the shelf made it real clear that I was not in a
place
.
Cause the shelfy thing was stacked with my clothes. My old clothes -- the clothes I had had to wear on Stumble, where the wind was plastic and ash, where stepping outside of Junker Port had needed several layers to keep my eyes working and my lungs from scarring up too bad. And there was my staff, snapped in half on the first day I had learned I was a Liminal Knight. Looking fresh and shiny and new.
Next to the impossible clothing, the clothing from almost a year before and nearly two hundred clusters back, there was something even more dreamlike and strange. It looked, at first, like a reddish circlet, but it was sized for my neck, not my wrist. It had a small broach-latch on the front, made of a golden oval with a gemstone the size of my pinkie set into it. I picked up the circlet and my thumb touched the gemstone as I held it out.
The circlet shivered -- and spun out a dress more shimmery and fine and perfect than I'd ever dream of, back on Stumble. Like a fancy given form, it sang as it brushed along the floor and I dropped the circlet in shock and backed away from it in a damn hurry.
DRESS
I poked the dress with my toe -- but touching it was harder than I thought. The dress fabric flowed to the side, letting my to get through. And when I drew back, it closed up again. I shook my head. "Smart fabric," I whispered to myself. I picked up the dress by the collar and I looked at it again. It had skirts that flared outwards, and a sleeveless cut, with a plunging back that would show off my curve. Not curves, I was too skinny for an S. I bit my lip.
I would look real pretty.
In so far as I could
look
pretty.
I shoved the collar and the dress back into the shelf thing and started to tug on my old clothes.
EXPLORE
Dressed and dubiously armed, I shoved the shelfy thing out of the way and started to creep down the corridor. I held my staff in my hands and it felt awkward and top heavy, compared to what I was used to fighting with. But I kept it close as I followed the faint sound of clinking, rasping chains. When I peeked around the doorway at the end of the corridor, I saw it looked into a breathtakingly fancy banquet hall. The table was covered, absolutely
covered
with food. There were thick goblets that had drinks of a dozen different colors, and the food smelled so rich, so delicious, that my mouth started to fill with spittle.
I stepped into the room and looked around. I frowned. "This isn't food," I said, trying to sound brave and forthright. Like a Liminal Knight should. "And this isn't a castle, and I'm not in my old outfit. Where am I? What is this place?"
Silence -- save for a distant tick tick tick, and the crackled crickle of a fireplace I hadn't noticed before, tucked up against the far wall. Under it was a painting of two figures, clasped close. One was me. In that dress I'd spurned. The other was Thale, in his Hegemonic uniform, his cape billowing outwards, his head ducked forward. He looked as if he needed my body, my closeness, with a fierce hot
need
, a need the painter had captured with every crinkle of his face, every line of the grimace on his lips. He didn't have his cat ears, nor his tail.
I scowled. "Simstim," I said. Then I turned and whacked the food as hard as I could with my staff. Goblets went flying. Food splattered, spreading their rich colors over the carpet.
SIMSTIM
I'd heard about simstim, and seen it done on a few worlds. Simulated Stimulation -- direct inducted electronic influence of the brain. Depending on how high off the ground the world in question had climbed, a simstim could require an implant jack slammed into your brain stem with a hydraulic injector, or it could be a sleek mesh-hat you could take on and off as easy as winking. Some of the best simstims, though, were feedback capable. They plucked things from your head, then spun them up and tossed them back at your face.
The memory of Techne, whispering in my ear, about what the better feedback sims could
do
still made my cheeks go hot and funny. My nipples hardened and my hands tightened on my staff as I tried to put thought of sex out of my head.
When I glanced back at the portrait, Thale was kissing me now.
I ached. Right in my gut.
"Whose running this?" I snarled. "Show yourself."
"You catch on fast..."
The voice that crooned to me was deep and rich and dark. It was deeper than Thale -- and it lacked the occasional purring undertone that Thale's voice could have. My brow furrowed and I started to turn in a slow circle, looking to my left, to my right, trying to pin down
where
the voice was coming from. But each time he spoke, it came from a different place in the room, never form any specific figure.
"I'd have thought someone from as far down the Chain as you might have never seen a simstim," the voice said. "I can see why my Thale is so impressed with you, even if he's not willing to admit it. But I'm not entirely sure I want to show myself, not while your mind is providing the whole of the experience."
"Oh!" I said. "
Oh
! That's a low trick! I'm not...I have...I've never dreamed of anything as...daft silly as this!"
The voice chuckled even deeper. "It's not really use lying when you're in a feedback simstim. This entire castle, the portrait, even waking up naked in a lover's bed, that's
all
