Chapter #34The Projects of Will Prescott by: Seuzz   You settle back on your heels. You've got Joe's thoughts--up to date with last night, you see, when they'd taken the anima band off him long enough to get an unimpeded copy of him into a new mask. But you know from experience that plans don't copy well. "I thought I was supposed to spend my time synthesizing your knowledge base and mine," you say. "Not on goofing off."
"So synthesize while goofing off," Jonathan says. "Or take the weekend off. Get started in earnest on Monday."
"I'd kind of like to do some work," you say.
"Fuckin' Kenandandra," Jonathan snorts. "All work and no play makes Joe a dull boy."
"I think he's right, Joe," Frank says. "We should make every moment count."
Jonathan shrugs. "I got more moments than most. Joy of being Viritrilbian. Okay, you can wait back in my--" He grins at the appropriated pronoun. "My punishment corner. Frank and I will finish up with Daddy Moneybags."
* * * * *
You probably wouldn't have been able to make it to back to Jonathan's hide-away if you didn't have Joe's good memory to guide you; as it is, you still manage to make a few wrong turns. Will Prescott is waiting. "Oh, good, it's you," he says with relief as you come in.
"Why, you got a problem with the other guys?"
"Huh? No, except for them being a little scary. No offense, given who you're looking like," he says.
"None taken." You try a handstand on the back of the sofa. It's a bit of a strain, but you manage to do a few pushups before tumbling easily back onto the floor. "So what's eating you?"
"I just don't know where we are."
That's right. The golem will only remember up until the moment you took the mask off it downtown. You give him a quick rundown. "It sounds like you can be a regular here, if you want."
"It would be a relief from Westside."
You shove your hands into your back pockets and regard him thoughtfully. Perched high on the peak that is Joe Durras, the golem of Will Prescott seems almost beneath your notice. But you still remember the good times working with him, and his problem is still your problem. That fucking hex.
"I'm going to be reading up on hexes anyway," you tell him. "You're a perfect test specimen." He cringes a little. "I didn't mean it like that," you say, and pull him into a tight but friendly headlock. "We've got your imago in that mind band. If I could figure out a way to--"
And suddenly you see how to do it. Not fix the hex, of course, but how to get a grip on that insane, static-y jumble of sigils that makes it up. Will makes a choking noise as you squeeze him excitedly. "Oh, fuck me," you shout as you bounce around on your toes. "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"
Prescott turns very pale, and fumbles at the front of his jeans.
You shove him again. "Not like that! I just mean that this is fucking awesome is all!" You grab him up in another hug and dance all over the room.
Thoughts that were like quicksilver are now like molten diamonds. It's all right there: you can see it, you can almost grasp it, and as soon as you can calm down and concentrate, you'll be able to plan it out and put it all together. "Where the fuck are those cocksuckers? I gotta get to work!"
* * * * *
"Nice to see you being productive for once, Joe," Frank murmurs.
He doesn't raise his head from his homework; you don't look up from your own work. "I'm always productive, Frank. It's not always obvious, but--"
He's scratching away at paper, but you're fiddling with some tools. The table is covered with several dozen cheap off-the-rack glasses, the spoils of a shopping trip financed entirely out of Jonathan Straussler's folding money. You need them for analyzing imago.
It was an obvious revelation in retrospect: although the insane number of nested sigils are all connected to each other in myriad ways, there will still be a "bottom" layer that attaches to the underlying substantia, and a "top" layer that manifests as the appearance. Polarize and strip them away, and you'll get new "bottom" and "top" layers; strip those away, and a new set will appear. And so on until they have all been sorted. Each resulting layer might still be unimaginably complex, but they will be magnitudes less complex than the complete imago. The eyeglasses are for storing the separated layers for individual viewing. At the moment you are fiddling with a sigil that should light up each layer and transfer it to a set of glasses.
"Did, uh, 'Jonathan' say anything about how he'd be spending his weekend?" you ask after a bit.
"I didn't ask," Frank says. "I shut him up after he said something about trying to talk Monique into having unprotected sex."
"Mm. I wonder how he'd explain that. He can't say that 'Jonathan' is just a full-body condom that some other dude is wearing to trick her. And what about you, Frank? Any thought of losing your virginity finally?"
"Some," he says. "To be honest, I'm having a hard time navigating Frank's psychology."
You glance up from beneath your brows. "I love you like a brother and an alter ego, dude, so don't take it the wrong way. But you don't look like the kind of guy who'd have any trouble scoring pussy. Just make yourself available."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I love you like a brother and an alter ego too, so don't get the wrong idea when I tell you my cock has been throbbing for the past couple of hours." You're both silent for a bit. "There's also the problem of disentangling myself afterward."
"You pull out, tell them you'll see them around, and then don't," you reply.
"I'm talking about the emotional entanglements."
"So am I."
"Is Joe really like that?" he asks quietly.
"No. He knows how to let them float away without hurting them."
"And I'm too hard in too many wrong ways," he says, and doesn't react to your snicker. "It would be easier if I could just make 'em forget, or think the whole thing was just a daydream they'd had."
You look up to gaze over his shoulder. "Blackwell knew some mesmeric words," you say softly. "I bet there's a way of turning those to that kind of advantage."
"Yeah?" he asks, sounding piqued.
"Sure. You could--" You're seized by the same kind of glittering, quicksilver vision you'd had at Straussler's: This time, it's of a special sigil twined inside a Valentine's card. You drum your fingers on the table. "Oh, fuck." You start to tremble. "That would be another project. An awesome one, but I'm busy with this. Fuck!" You slap the table.
"What's wrong?"
"Just too many ideas! This synthesis of Joe's brain and mine! Arbol with Kenandandra! I look at the universe, and I see how to grab it and bend it and twist it into a yo-yo I can play with!" You stretch your hands, seeking to grip the vast, glittering vision. "Joe should be here helping me, the fucker. You should be inside Jonathan, screwing your brains out inside Monique, and he should be here helping me with these projects! He's got my anima in him, he's got my memories, he could keep up with me, we could double our speed, finish twice as much--"
"Would it really be the same with you guys?" Frank asks. "I always thought the gifts
had to do with essentia, not with anima or imago."
"Well, sure," you admit. "I got his knowledge base, and quickness of thinking--" You bend back over the sigils so he can't see your face. "And he'd have some of my tinkerers' ability. But I'm pretty sure I don't have a tenth of his real candlepower, and he wouldn't have the same practical dexterity I've got."
"Well, you're still right. I'm definitely wishing I was playing Jonathan with Monique."
You smile internally; it sounds like he didn't hear your private thought, which nearly slipped out:
What good is Sulva? Joe had dismissively asked.
The Moon is a mirror, you think. It concentrates and reflects light and power. You'd bet a lot of money that you can amplify the shadows of Joe's mental powers that come with his imago a lot more than Joe could amplify those that come with yours.
* * * * *
"Gyah!" Jonathan rips the spectacles from his face. "How can you look at that and not get a headache?"
"Yeah, I've been popping Tylenol like candy corn," you reply. You're peering intently into a different pair of spectacles, at the swimming sigils within. You tip the frames down long enough to scribble some notes.
"And you can actually see stuff in there?" Jonathan asks incredulously.
"It takes a lot of concentration," you admit. "It's like snakes or spiders skittering through all that static. But the sigils in each layer do contain fragments of larger sigils. Those fragments combine with other fragments in other layers to make complete sigils."
"What kind?" Jonathan asks.
"So far, I've spotted the basic sigils connected to the humors, the Empedoclean elements, and some of the zodiac signs. Those larger sigils will form larger ones still. You'd have to put, like, six glasses on a once in order to see them." You shake your head free of the last static-filled vision, and slide on another pair. "I'm not sure, but I think I'm seeing a sigil associated with 'green', but it's smeared across at least eight layers."
"And this is gonna help you find that hex?"
"Prescott's been working on the notes Blackwell left behind. It's an old gypsy curse, but he's got it analyzed down to its fundamental constituents. Once I find them, I'll be able to reconstruct it and locate it in the imago. You wanna help?"
"Not with this. Anything else?"  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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