Mother of Learning 3 - Finale Read online

  Chapter 55

  Threshold

  For nearly half a minute, the endless void they floated in was silent. Neither Zach nor Zorian knew what to say, and the Guardian of the Threshold seemed content to placidly wait for further questions. Zorian would have liked to say he was considering the implications of this new knowledge at the time, but the truth is that he spent most of it being surprised at how well Zach was taking all this. He kind of expected the other boy to freak out and start swearing and shouting by now. But no, Zach was surprisingly calm and quiet about the situation. The only evidence he was in any way upset was a slight frown on his face.

  “So,” Zach eventually said, his voice cutting through the unnerving silence that sprung up around them. “What now?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Zorian admitted. “I really didn’t think Red Robe had already left the time loop. It makes so much sense, though, now that I look back on things…”

  “Yeah, he really screwed us over, didn’t he?” Zach sighed.

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that,” Zorian smiled. “I’m pretty sure this is not what he had been planning. We were meant to disappear. The time loop was supposed to collapse when the controller of the time loop left this place, permanently removing us as a threat. But we’re still here, and if the time loop is this out of its normal parameters, it might actually be possible to get out of this place.”

  “Heh,” Zach chuckled. “Now that you mention it, yeah. And also, this means I can stop holding back. You too, for that matter. We’ve both been doing our best to keep a low profile to stop Red Robe from noticing our activities. Now that we know he is no longer here…”

  “Yes,” Zorian agreed. “The way I see it, we have three main priorities. Number one, we need to find out how long we have until the time loop collapses. Number two, we need to find a way to get out. And number three, we have to try and find out who the hell Red Robe really is so that we can take care of him quickly if… when we exit this place.”

  Zorian turned to the side to look at the Guardian of the Threshold, who had been quietly floating in place not far from them while they talked. It didn’t appear bothered by them ignoring it.

  “We should question the Guardian about everything we can think of,” Zorian noted. “Who knows what kind of critical secrets it knows, and it doesn’t appear as if it cares to share anything on its own initiative. Though that could take a while – we should probably return to our bodies for a while to make sure we aren’t interrupted.”

  “Do we even have to worry about that?” Zach asked, pulling on his jacket in order to demonstrate the way their clothes seemed an integral part of their body. “The cube seems to have ripped our souls out of our bodies to bring us here. Does it even matter if our bodies get killed out there?”

  “We could be just projected here,” Zorian shook his head. “It sounds like the simplest way to achieve this, to be honest. Then again, that would leave the loop controller awfully vulnerable while messing around with controls. Hmm… Guardian?”

  “You are merely projected into this place, but your stay will not be cut short by events in the outside world,” the Guardian explained. It was apparently smart enough to interpret what his question was likely going to be based on his and Zach’s conversation. Interesting. “If your physical forms suffer critical damage, or if soul tampering is detected, I will draw in your souls inside the Gate for safekeeping. Your time here will remain uninhibited, though you will have to start a new iteration of the loop in order to leave the place, as I cannot re-anchor your souls back to your bodies if they are not sufficiently intact.”

  “Well. Good to know, I guess,” Zorian mumbled. He looked at Zach, and found that the other boy was already staring at him. “Do you have anything you want to ask the Guardian or…?”

  “You go first,” Zach told him, shaking his head.

  “Alright. First of all, is there a time limit as to how long we can remain here?” Zorian asked.

  “When this iteration of the loop ends, so will your current visit to this place,” the Guardian responded. “Other than that, no.”

  So when the time loop restarts, they will be flung back to their bodies at the beginning of the month, but other than that, they could stay here as long as possible.

  They had plenty of time, then.

  “What are the criteria for each iteration’s end?” Zorian asked curiously. “Is mere passage of time sufficient, or is there more to it?”

  “Passage of time is sufficient,” the Guardian confirmed. “No iteration is allowed to last for more than a month at the time. Beyond that, there is a multitude of contingencies that will cause the iteration to terminate prematurely.”

  “Can you list those contingencies?” Zorian asked.

  “No,” the Guardian stated emotionlessly. “You aren’t authorized for that information.”

  Zorian blinked in surprise. Though he had suspected the Guardian wouldn’t be able to answer all of their questions, he thought it would have to do more with it being just a dumb animation spell in the end, not that it would literally refuse to help them like that.

  “What? But I thought we’re the Controller,” Zach piped in suddenly. “How can we not be authorized to know?”

  “The Controller doesn’t have unrestricted authorization,” the Guardian explained. “Only the Maker and his agents have access to information about the workings of the Gate.”

  “Maker?” Zach repeated incredulously. “Maker of what?”

  “Of the Gate, of course,” the Guardian said. Zorian could almost imagine the Guardian rolling his eyes at the question, even though its eyes didn’t work like that and its voice never changed in tone.

  “So the Controller isn’t the ultimate authority when it comes to the Gate or the time loop?” Zorian asked. The Guardian immediately confirmed this. “What can you tell us about this Maker, then?”

  “You aren’t authorized to know the identity of the Maker,” the Guardian informed him.

  Of course it was going to be something like that…

  “Ugh. This thing is so damn annoying!” Zach complained.

  Ten more fruitless minutes were spent on trying to question the Guardian about the Maker, its agents, whether it was a god (like Zorian suspected) or not, how long it had been since the Maker had last interacted with the Gate, and so on. The Guardian’s response was the same for each of them: they weren’t allowed to know.

  Zorian wished he could just invade the thing’s mind and be done with it, but their inability to perform magic in this place extended to his psychic abilities. They had no way to force the entity into cooperation, and eventually decided to move on to other topics.

  “You said no iteration is allowed to last for more than a month,” Zorian reminded the Guardian. “Can you tell us why?”

  “When an iteration is over, everything in it is destroyed,” the Guardian began. Well, good to have that confirmed… Zorian had assumed it was so for a while now, but having the Guardian verify it was nice. “Under certain philosophical outlooks, this could be viewed as mass murder…”

  “But not under all of them, huh?” Zorian mumbled distastefully.

  “Others do not view destruction of copies as a problem, so long as they do not diverge excessively from the original,” the Guardian continued, ignoring Zorian’s interjection. “The time loop is set up under such an assumption. Thus, it is imperative that entities copied by the time loop are not given enough time to meaningfully diverge from the originals, as their destruction would then become unethical. A month was determined to be a good cut-off point.”

  “What if one of the copies managed to achieve awareness of the time loop and found a way to mainta
in continuity across different iterations?” Zorian asked. “Hypothetically speaking.”

  “That would be very unfortunate for the copy,” the Guardian noted. “Only the Controller can actually leave the time loop, after all.”

  “See, this is the part I don’t get,” Zach suddenly interjected. “Why was such a rule put into place? I mean, there is only one Controller to begin with, so why put that sort of limitation in place?”

  “To stop the Controller from trying to smuggle some of the copies out of the time loop,” the Guardian said matter-of-factly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  There was a short pause as both Zach and Zorian processed this.

  “Why… why is that important?” Zorian asked shakily.

  “Because only the Controller has their real soul pulled into the time loop,” the Guardian said. “Everyone else is a copy. For a Controller of the loop to leave, I only have to re-anchor their soul back to their original body. For one of the copies to enter the real world, I would have to switch their soul with the soul of the original. This would effectively kill the original.”

  There was another, longer pause following this explanation.

  Zorian wasn’t terribly surprised at the fact that him leaving the loop would require he switch his soul with his original. It was one of the first ideas he came up with himself, after all. What surprised him was that Zach was apparently not a copy. Being the Controller had more to it than just having a marker stamped on your soul, it seemed.

  “So the Controller has their original soul drawn into the time loop when it is first made,” Zorian said. “They aren’t a copy, so there is no problem with them leaving. But everyone else would have to kill someone to get out, and that’s unacceptable. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” the Guardian agreed.

  “But you could do that?” Zach suddenly spoke up. “If one of the copies wanted to leave this place, you could switch their soul with that of the original?”

  “Theoretically,” the Guardian admitted, “but that goes against what I was made to do. I am the Guardian of the Threshold. One of the main tasks the Maker gave me was to ensure things inside the time loop could not menace the source of the template. If a diverged copy tried to kill the original by switching their souls with it, I would do my best to stop them.”

  “What about a normal, un-diverged copy?” asked Zorian. “Surely there is no harm in replacing the original with a normal copy. They’re practically the same thing! It’s what makes it okay to destroy millions of souls every month or so, isn’t it?”

  The Guardian hesitated. A short, tense silence descended on the scene as it considered the scenario.

  “So long as the copies do not diverge too much from the original, such a switch would be theoretically acceptable,” the Guardian eventually admitted. “But it is my purpose to keep the time loop from spilling out in the real world as much as possible, so I would still refuse to perform such a switch. Only the controller, with the knowledge and secrets they gathered inside the time loop, is allowed to leave and make their mark on the world outside, since they are technically of that world to begin with.”

  “Alright,” Zorian nodded, signaling Zach with his hand to drop the issue. Though still very placid, the Guardian seemed almost agitated by their current line of questioning. Zorian was afraid that if they pushed it too much it might realize one of them was a copy somehow and do something to ‘correct’ this. Best to leave the topic alone for now. “Let’s move on to something else. Guardian, you said the Gate is barred because the Controller has already left the time loop.”

  “Yes,” the entity confirmed.

  “Can you tell me how many iterations that was ago?” Zorian asked.

  “The Controller is still inside the time loop, Controller,” the Guardian said unhelpfully.

  Some more variations of that question confirmed that the Guardian had no idea when Red Robe left. The Controller left, but didn’t actually leave, and the Guardian was hopelessly confused about the whole thing.

  Asking the Guardian for Red Robe’s description or other identifying information didn’t work either – the Guardian didn’t seem to perceive the world in the same way they did, despite its fairly human-like appearance and the lifelike avatars he and Zach were inhabiting. It seemed to ignore just about everything in terms of identifying characteristics when it come to the Controller. Other than the marker, of course.

  “So the Controller that left has the marker, then?” Zorian asked.

  “Of course,” the Guardian confirmed. “How could he have left, otherwise?”

  “How does the Controller get the marker in the first place?” Zorian asked. “Is it hereditary, assigned by the Gate itself according to some criteria or what?”

  “The Controller is marked by the Key, by the Maker, or by its agents,” the Guardian said. “I am not aware of what criteria were used in choosing any particular Controller. It is ultimately irrelevant to my purpose to know such things.”

  “But the Key is lost,” Zach said, frowning. “Scattered across vast distances. And if the Maker is a god like you suspect he is, well… the gods have been silent for centuries. That only leaves his agents. Who would that be?”

  “Impossible to say for now,” Zorian shrugged. “But apparently you were purposely chosen by someone to go in here.”

  “Or maybe Red Robe was,” Zach said gloomily. “I know you think I’m the original looper, but the fact that Red Robe was capable of leaving just like… it could be that he’s the one who’s the real deal. You saw how the Guardian reacted to the possibility of switching souls between the copy and the original. How did Red Robe leave if he’s just a copy?”

  “I don’t know,” Zorian sighed. “It’s too bad the Guardian gets all stupid whenever anything involving Red Robe leaving is brought up.”

  “If it didn’t get all stupid about it, we would have probably been erased out of existence when Red Robe left,” Zach told him. “So that’s probably a blessing in disguise. Anyway, Guardian? This marker I have on me is unique, yes? There is no way for there to be multiple Controller markers?”

  “None,” the Guardian confirmed. “Before the time loop is activated, marking a new person will invalidate the old marker. Inside the time loop, the Controller marker cannot be invoked, and only lesser markers can be placed.”

  “’Lesser markers’? What the hell are those now?” Zach protested.

  “The Controller can temporarily add people to the time loop by placing a lesser marker on them,” the Guardian explained.

  “What?” Zach squawked. “There is a way to include someone in the time loop and you’re only mentioning this now!? And what do you mean temporary?”

  “Though I’m happy to answer any question you may have to the best of my ability, I am ultimately not designed to teach the Controller how to operate the time loop,” the Guardian said. “That is the job of whoever placed the marker on you. And by temporary, I mean that the target of the lesser marker will retain their memories and abilities for up to six iterations before the marker dissolves.”

  “Why would this lesser marker be temporary like that?” Zach asked, baffled. “Is there a way to make it permanent?”

  “It is temporary to keep divergence from the original to a manageable level and discourage the Controller from getting excessively emotionally attached to copies marked in such a fashion,” the Guardian explained. “There is no way to make it permanent, as that would be needlessly cruel. They cannot leave the time loop, after all.”

  “But if copies that retain awareness for more than a month count as people and killing them is wrong, doesn’t that mean that using these lesser markers is effectively murder?”

  “Yes,” the Guardian readily agreed. “But it is not the Gate that does it, so it is acceptable. It is up to the Controller to decide when and if they feel comfortable using such an ability.”

  “So…” Zorian began after a short pause.

  “I would never
have used such a spell,” Zach immediately said, correctly guessing what Zorian was about to ask. “Never. Why would I torture myself by bringing people into the loop, knowing that they would suddenly go back to their old, ignorant self in just six restarts?”

  “Fair enough,” Zorian said, guessing he had touched upon a sensitive topic. “Guardian, what about the ability to expel people from the time loop? Make them start each iteration soulless and dead? Does this ability exist?”

  “The Controller has such an ability as well,” the Guardian confirmed.

  By now, Zorian knew better than to ask whether such an ability had been used in the past. The Guardian had very limited awareness about what happened in the time loop itself, caring for little except the Controller itself.

  “How about the ability to restore people ‘erased’ in such a manner back?” he asked instead. He was still angry at the matriarch for planning to betray him, but he wanted her back anyway.

  “No,” the Guardian said. “The ability instructs the Gate to make changes to the base template that is used to construct each iteration. There is no undoing them without direct intervention from the Maker. The Controller is advised to use this ability with wisdom and restraint.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Zach and Zorian tried to question the Guardian about the manner in which these abilities could be performed by the Controller or about any other abilities they may have at their disposal. Sadly, neither of those inquiries achieved results. The Guardian did not know how any of these abilities might be accomplished, and it refused to list all the abilities the Controller had, saying they were not authorized to know that information.

  “This makes no sense,” Zach complained. “It’s happy to tell us about specific abilities if we ask, but a simple list of all options is forbidden?”

  “Well, it sort of makes sense if the Maker didn’t want every Controller to know about all the features at their disposal,” mused Zorian. “If some or all of the Controllers are given limited information, you don’t want to let the Guardian tell them all about it anyway…”