All is One

The Decentralisation Zone at MozFest 2018 will have a theme: Xenshana.

Xenshana is a parallel universe that explores notions of decentralisation in technology and beyond.

You can contribute to this theme by writing stories, creating art, music, or anything you like inspired by Xenshana

“You’re both late,” Livuthwie said to the two figures as they alighted from the kuàisù. With both passengers disembarked and now standing in the paved square out the front of the Bromley College of Art the vehicle promptly took off again. It accelerated to the south, the only one in the sky. Not many kus were summoned in Europa.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Riquashe drawled as he kneeled, cupping his hands to clap in the welcome of the Unhu Collective.

“My colleague, while disagreeable, is correct,” Prinsya added, also kneeling and cupping her hands to clap. “With that kind of a statement, you’re lucky anyone came at all. An interdimensional portal? Who would believe that?”

Livuthwie and Amaranthis had been waiting for the last half hour for members from Kudenga Praxis and the Andromeda Initiative to arrive, and they’d only sent one each. But Livuthwie didn’t have time to be disappointed, and she didn’t have time for verbal sparring. It was her job to convince them that none of them had time. Livuthwie and Amaranthis retuned the greeting before rising quickly to their feet. “Come,” Livuthwie said to the two newcomers as she started off the now very much deserted college. “The portal you’ll be working on is in here.”

“The entirety of the Initiative has been mobilized to help with disaster relief across the Triple Alliance,” Prinsya said as she trotted to catch up with Livuthwie. “I should be with my syndicate, not chasing wild stories. How did you even get the vote for me to come approved?”

“Someone owed me a favour,” Livuthwie responded as she walked towards the college.

“Multiple someones-ones,” Amaranthis chimed in.

“And what strings did you pull to get a member of Kudenga Praxis here?” Prinsya asked as she eyed Riquashe.

“None,” Livuthwie said, holding the thick set glass door as the small group entered the imposing college building. “Trying to pull strings with Kudenga Praxis will only make them refuse your request more adamantly. Right, Riquashe?”

“I was just curious as to what was so important that Mabwe Prima tried to get the Andromeda Initiative to divert multiple resources in the middle of a crisis,” Riquashe replied as he entered the building.

“I had hoped more of you would be curious,” Livuthwie said pointedly.

“And how did you know about the request?” Prinsya pressed as she stepped over the threshold. “My request to come was private.”

“Encryption is only as good as its implementation,” Riquashe noted snidely.

“That’s enough of that,” Livuthwie said as she looked at the two bickering syndicalist. “You’re both here now and you’ll work together. You’re right where Xenshana needs you.”

“Not the Unhu Collective, Xenshana? The whole world?” Riquashe asked with disbelief.

Livuthwie ignored him as she ascended the winding staircase climbing into air above them.

“If this is so important,” Riquashe persisted, “where is the rest of Mabwe Prima?”

“I imagine they are currently talking to every political leader across Xenshana they can get time with,” Livuthwie stated. “An interdimensional portal to another world, it’s enough to kill over. It’s enough to start a war over. The Lloegyrians are terrified. I’ve managed to get them to turn Bromley College over to us for twenty four hours. But they must be getting calls from others. The Dynasty might want to destroy the portal. Or they might want to control it. A day of their lobbying, it might be enough for the Lloegyrians to cave. You need to give me a safe, working prototype of a portal stabilizer to show the Lloegyrians this isn’t the threat people are making it out to be.”

“Is it dangerous now?” Prinsya asked.

“From the information at hand-and, it might explode,” Amaranthis admitted.

“No pressure then,” Prinsya sighed.

“And where are the Dreamers?” Riquashe demanded. “Wouldn’t they be the best minds for this?”

“My syndicate is here,” Amaranthis stated as he tapped his forehead, “most of the Fènghuáng-Phoenix Coalition have devoted at least part of their consciousness to analyzing the data my servo is feeding back from the other side of the portal. They’ll feed you advice. But I think the two of you will be perfect to solve this problem.”

“What makes you so sure?” Prinsya asked.

“Intuition,” Amaranthis laughed.

Prinsya and Riquashe looked like they were both about to object, but where rendered speechless by what lay before them.

“It’s still impressive, and I’ve been looking at images of it all morning,” Livuthwie said with reverence. The roiling pass of ethereal colours appeared to have grown, ever so slightly, from when Livuthwie last stood in front of it half an hour ago. “Both of you need to work together to stabilise the portal. We will be back as soon as we can.”

“You’re not staying to help us stablise the portal that might explode and take part of the city with it?” Riquashe asked, a note of alarm creeping into his voice.

“I may have been optimistic about you having twenty four hours,” Livuthwie said sheepishly. “Amaranthis and I are going to speak to the Lloegyrian Prime Minister to make sure you have as long as possible.”

“Good luck,” Amaranthis said amiably, waving as he started to lead Livuthwie towards the staircase. They were already deep in discussion before they were out of earshot.

“Well,” Prinsya said, looking grim, “I guess we had best get started.”

She removed her belt and a device she carried on her hip, attaching them together. The two pieces of technology buzzed and whirred, expanding piece by piece to form what appeared to be a cut down table with curious instruments.

“Impressive,” Riquashe commented.

Prinsya shot the Kudenga Praxis syndicalist a withering look. “If we are going to be able to do anything with this anomaly, we need to get a basic understanding of it.”

Riquashe tapped some commands into the console on his wrist and held his arm out to the object.

“I’m gathering all the information we need,” Prinsya chided. “Perhaps you’d be better of examining some of the readings I’m collecting?”

“There might be a few… non obvious things to look for,” Riquashe said, checking his wrist console. “Like, perhaps, the thing Amaranthis spoke of. It’s sending readings back through the portal.”

“What frequency?” Prinsya asked, annoyed that Riquashe had actually found something.

“I’ll flick it to you now,” Riquashe replied, and Prinsya’s instruments beeped. “See, we make a good team.”

“If you’re done showing off, can you now come and start analyzing some of this data? I can’t get through all this information alone.”

Riquashe waked over the table and pulled up a holographic screen.

Hours later, and the two collectivists were no closer to their goal. What was worse, Livuthwie had contacted them. The Lloegyrian were thinking of turning the site over to the Dynasty. They wanted to destroy the anomaly before it exploded.

“Maybe we should turn the college over,” Prinsya said slowly.

“That’s not an option,” Riquashe said, setting his jaw.

“It’s unscientific to rule out options before evaluating them,” Prinsya scolded. “What do we know? The portal is emitting massive amounts of energy, which is slowly increasing. Beyond that, we can’t figure out much. We can’t tell where the portal is drawing the energy from, or generating the energy, to see if we can manipulate it that way. We don’t have a way to contain the energy, and we might never as we don’t know the kind of forces that need to be contained, or what the portal will do if its steady growth suddenly turns volatile. Maybe turning the site over the Dynasty and destroying it is the best course of action.”

“I doubt they’ll destroy it,” Riquashe responded. “They might be forced to past a set point, but I’ve spent long enough eavesdropping on their communications to know they will try to control this thing first. We figure this out, we control it.”

“Control is not the way of the Collective,” Prinsya pointed out.

“Our hands are better than theirs,” Riquashe pressed.

“Says who? We managed to convince the Lloegyrians to turn the site over to the Collective. But that doesn’t make us morally superior. Who are we to say the Dynasty wouldn’t be better than us?”

“Says me,” Riquashe said flatly. “Who are you to challenge the Collective?”

“And who are you to speak for the whole Collective?” Prinsya retorted.

Riquashe stalked off, and Prinsya tutted, turning back to her instruments. She was certain her calculations were not wrong, so there was no point going over them again. She just couldn’t understand the thing in front of her. It might not be understandable. Fear ate its way through Prinsya’s insides as she watched the writhing portal.

Riquashe was walking around the portal, trying to see if there was anything that he was missing. He couldn’t refute Prinsya on technical grounds, everything she said was true. The energy output from the portal was increasing and they didn’t know how to control it. But he refused to believe that letting such a find slip through the Collective’s fingers and into the hands of the Zhong Guo Dynasty was the answer. It just wasn’t acceptable.

Riquashe had almost made a full circle when he noticed a shadow shimmering in the depths of the portal.

Hoping against hope that it was something he could leverage to prove to Prinsya that they could bend the portal to their will, he narrowed his eyes and watched as the shape seemed to grow substance. As it it’s mass flowed from the portal itself. The moving shape was a machine.

Its body, if you could call it that, was mostly cogs and little fly wheels. It walked on four spindly little legs. Riquashe imagined it would make a clacking noise on its spidery little legs were it on a hard surface, its footfalls being masked by the carpeted floor. It seemed to regard Riquashe and then Prinsya, bobbing up and down before it starting rubbing two little plates together not unlike a cicada. The noise was a voice.

“The power source is inside,” it creaked.

“What is the little thing?” Riquashe asked, looking to Prinsya, the heat of the disagreement forgotten in a moment of curiosity.

“It’s the source of the transmission you picked up,” Prinsya said as she inspected her instruments.

“Must be the FPC servo,” he mused.

“Go inside,” the servo chirruped. “This is only one half. You cannot understand something by only looking at one half.”

“I think the servo is right,” Prinsya said, grasping at the hope the little contraption offered. “No wonder we can’t work this thing out, we are only looking at part of the whole!”

“Would it be safe?” Riquashe asked.

“Nothing about this thing is safe,” Prinsya said, shaking her head. “The energy readings indicate probable harm, possible death. But we don’t know what the interior of the portal is like. There’s a good chance we’d survive.”

“A good chance?” Riquashe asked skeptically. “If the portal itself doesn’t kill us, there are things on the other side. Something as intelligent as us from the readings, possibly more so. And probably hostile. We might live only to be killed upon setting foot in a world of aggressive aliens.”

Prinsya frowned. “I thought you were the one that said we had to stabilize this thing at all costs so we wouldn’t relinquish control of it to the Zhong Guo Dynasty. This is the way.”

“I don’t want to give the portal to the Dynasty to protect us. The Dynasty wants to use it against the Collective. If they can leverage something against us it will be like the High War all over again. But I also don’t want to start a conflict with whatever is on the other side of the portal.”

“I say we go through,” Prinsya said.

“I’m not letting your curiosity jeopardise our world,” Riquashe shot back. “No, we keep control of this area until the damn thing explodes and no one has it. Not the Dynasty, and certainly not whatever is on the other side.”

“You don’t get to pass laws over me,” Prinsya said with deadly seriousness. “Do I need to cite our texts to you? I’m a sovereign being and you have no right to-“

She never finished that sentence. Suddenly the portal flared and expanded. Prinsya and Riquashe both screamed as they were engulfed in a flash of blinding light.

The little servo looked around the room when its sensors came back online. The equipment set up by the Andromeda Initiative syndicalist was still there. But of the two Collectivists, no trace could be found.

The servo chirruped as if to sigh, and then started signaling back to the FPC.

Prinsya and Riquashe had both covered their eyes to protect themselves from the outpouring of light. They now opened them and felt assaulted. A million colours flooded their eyes. Prinsya academically realized that some of these colours she’d never seen before. Some of them she couldn’t even conceptualise. But here they were before her anyway. There was no up, there was no down. In fact there didn’t even seem to be a sense of place. There was simply existing.

Riquashe looked at the sea of writhing colour, and detected a pattern to it. At first Riquashe thought they were scales. But then he reached out to touch one. It was soft and supple. Not unlike a feather. Then the feathers in front of Riquashe moved, rippling as if sinuous muscles underneath were responding to his touch and shifting. Prinsya followed Riquashe’s gaze and then looked all around her. The colours were moving. Coiling, all around them. Coiling, Prinsya thought. Then, as if from a great distance she saw the one great, massive eye open. The pupil narrowed as it focused on the pair.

They weren’t just in a tunnel of colour, Prinsya realized. They were in the coils of a giant feathered snake.

With that realization Prinsya could make out the creatures head as the eye turned. Feathers continued to ripple all around them as the creature shifted, moving to fix both eyes on them.

“All,” the creature seemed to say as it opened its mouth, its booming voice filling every space, even filling Prinsya and Riquashe themselves, “is one!”

Riquashe looked to Prinsya, not comprehending what was going on.

“All,” the great serpent boomed again, “is one!”

“I don’t know what you want us to do!” Prinsya cried out. Her mind was racing at a million miles a minute. Was the creature going to attack them? Where were they? Could they get home?

“I, I think” Riquashe stammered, “I think that’s Dzivaguru!”

“Dzivaguru, the eternal serpent?” Prinsya yelled back. “Impossible!”

The serpent turned away and opened its mouth again. A tail whipped out from the mass of coils and fathers and Dzivaguru bit its tail. The great snake continued to move, flowing in an endless, continuous loop.

“All is one!” Riquashe yelled to Prinsya.

“It wants us to be one? What does that mean? To… cooperate, maybe?” she called back.

“Yes!” Riquashe answered. “The servo said the energy source is in here. Dzivaguru is the energy source! Can we contain it?”

“No!” Prinsya replied. “But I think we might be able to channel it. Give me all the tech you’re wearing.”

Riquashe stripped off is arm console, and pulled rings from his fingers, monitors woven into his hair and removed his necklace. Prinsya did the same. There seemed to be no gravity here, and the objects floated in space before them. Prinsya started taking everything apart, rewiring it all. Riquashe helped her, grasping the design she was building to. Then, Prinsya took the stone from one of her own rings and set it as a focus in the center of the cobbled together contraption.

“This will absorb and channel energy away from the portals, feeding it back here,” she said, gesturing all around her.

“Are you sure this will work?” Riquashe asked hesitantly.

“Only one way to find out,” Prinsya replied. She touched one of the beads attached to the contraption, and it hummed to life.

Everything went white.

Livuthwie alighted the steps and found both Prinsya and Riquashe deep in conversation.

“Did it work?” L asked.

“You doubt them?” Amaranthis chided, walking up beside her.

“Granted, they aren’t dead,” Livuthwie conceded. “But I’d like to hear it from them before I go making promises to the Lloegyrians. Did it work, you two?”

“Yes, it worked,” Prinsya replied. “It took some… cooperation, but the portal has been stabilsed.”

Livuthwie smiled. “That’s good news. I can press the Lloegyrians to turn Bromley College over to the Collective permanently, then. They won’t have much grounds to object, since we just saved part of the city from being wiped out. Maybe the whole planet. Who knows?”

“About that,” Riquashe said slowly. “I was all for the Collective claiming this portal, but I don’t think we should.”

“Oh?” Livuthwie asked.

“Cooperation is what stablised the portal, and that should be carried through. The portal belongs to Xenshana, not the Collective. We should jointly administer this zone, between the Collective, the Lloegyrians, the Zhong Guo Dynasty and anyone else that wants to take part. This zone is now called the MCZ, the Mutual Cooperation Zone.”

Livuthwie arched her eyebrows. “That might be difficult. Most of us rarely agree at the best of times.”

“Well,” Prinsya said, “we only have three days. By my calculations, the portal will have lost too much energy to sustain itself and collapse by then. How badly can we get it wrong in three days?”

“Three days to explore a new world,” Amaranthis said.

“Three days to cooperate with a new people,” Riquashe responded.

“That’s not long,” Livuthwie remarked. “We’d best make the most of it.”