Chapter 67

Two trial Aspirant qualifications.

Three Mender yearly evaluations.

Seven mismanaged procedure summaries.

One disciplinary recommendation.

Four inventory discrepancies...

As usual, there was nothing unusual as I reviewed every document that made its way to my desk.

Most were due to my relatively high rank as one of only a hundred or so Restorers in this Pulse Tower—the number shifted every time I went to look at it—with only a minority originating from mutual verification procedures put in place to limit the unavoidable spread of corruption.

I pressed my authorization seal against the stack, watched the ordinary wonder of this [Ether]-infused tool doing what it was supposed to by leaving a trace of myself behind, then finally set the administrative work aside.

The paperwork had been slightly heavier as of late, making me ask myself whether I should inquire why when I had the time.

That, or make a report.

I would see which was merited later.

Finally freed from the [Will]-draining workload of administrative paperwork, my thoughts turned to the newest addition to my responsibilities.

Solaena.

Barely two months had passed since I accepted her as my personal aide.

A yet insufficient period to properly evaluate her worth and resilience, but one more than sufficient to evaluate her foundation and potential.

And incidentally, one who had already proved sufficient for her true self to come to light.

Not that I found any issue on that front.

It was simply that at the beginning, she had acted perfectly normal, in accordance with what most humanoid mammalian sapient species blessed with complex emotions considered normal.

Her posture shifted with the direction of a conversation.

Her facial expressions changed in response to praise, criticism, uncertainty, and surprise.

Her voice carried inflections intended to transmit emotion.

Curiosity.

Embarrassment.

Concern.

Determination.

All expressed with a consistency precise enough to avoid immediate suspicion.

It was a commendable performance worthy of her [Secrecy] Aspect.

For the first several sessions, I had even entertained the possibility that her apparent peculiarities simply originated from cultural differences between the Red Sand Sector and the Everwell Sector.

Then she began changing.

Slowly.

Incrementally.

With every interaction, she allowed another unnecessary gesture to disappear.

Her vocal inflections flattened.

Her expressions lasted for shorter periods.

Reactions that served no practical purpose ceased appearing altogether.

At first, I assumed exhaustion was eroding the effort she dedicated to social presentation.

That hypothesis failed shortly when, instead of her performance degrading unpredictably, she deliberately withdrew from displaying the full range of her expected social mannerisms.

Or perhaps not deliberately?

The distinction remained unclear.

Either way, what vanished wasn't her ability to act normally.

It was her willingness to continue doing so around me.

She stopped acting.

Little by little, the veil of [Secrecy] concealing the being underneath loosened.

And what emerged could only be called singular.

Though even singular may be an inadequate word.

That the various high-ranked Faith personnel she had approached before wandering into the Pulse had apparently failed to recognize that was astonishing to say the least, when the Faith was known to assimilate individuals even when their qualities were ostensibly not worth the effort.

It was such a remarkable failure that I had already begun drafting a report to be transmitted upward through the hierarchy concerning the possibility that the Pulse could make an unexpected harvest if we were to go through the millions of entities that entered the Everwell Sector without having been recruited yet.

It wouldn't be my issue to act on that potential intelligence anyway, so nothing was really preventing me from sending it.

After all, what if this resulted in the Pulse successfully unearthing a couple of actual wild prodigies?

Wild prodigies.

That was the term the Pulse used for Essence Entities originating from less developed Sectors whose potential had been constrained by their environment rather than by any deficiency inherent to themselves.

They usually arrived lacking recognized qualifications.

Their education was inconsistent.

Their techniques were crude.

Their understanding contained entire fields of absence that more developed Sectors considered elementary.

Yet beneath those deficiencies sometimes existed foundations so abnormal that proper instruction produced explosive advancement.

The Pulse was always pleased to recruit such individuals.

Preferably before other organizations noticed them.

Preferably before some less than savoury academy bound them beneath decades of contractual obligations.

Preferably before the Faith or the Order convinced them that patient progression through its own hierarchy represented the only legitimate road forward.

Other organizations often described our methods as rigid.

Excessively demanding.

Crushingly exigent.

Unwilling to accommodate individual circumstances.

That criticism wasn't entirely inaccurate.

I would even argue that it was mostly correct.

It was merely irrelevant.

For the same standards that repelled the mediocre made excellence easier to identify.

The Pulse didn't lower its expectations to preserve the confidence of those unable to meet them.

Consequently, when someone did meet them...

Recognition carried weight.

Solaena had, for the moment, met them.

Not fully.

Not yet.

Her knowledge remained inadequate.

Her experience was narrow.

Her understanding of unfamiliar physiologies frequently relied upon principles too general to remain safe without supervision.

But those were environmental deficiencies.

Correctable ones.

The foundation beneath them was the important part.

I had suspected what she was from the moment she described her sustained Essence overdevelopment disorder.

Not merely because of the disorder itself.

Abnormal development wasn't sufficient to prove value.

Many Essence Entities developed rapidly through unstable Aspects, inherited conditions, or constrained and forced advancement.

But what mattered was how Solaena had responded to this creeping disorder.

In spite of her extremely young age, she had identified the problem, measured it, adapted her [Cultivation] around it, and continued advancing regardless.

And then she went above and beyond by writing an entire [Faith] text concerning her youth and Path to establish the foundation of a future [Faith] centered upon herself.

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That combination narrowed the possibilities considerably.

Either she suffered from delusions so profound that every apparent success had been accidental...

Or she was precisely what she claimed to be.

The qualification trial had severely limited the likelihood of the first possibility.

As for her readiness to abandon her social performance around me...

That truly had only increased the relative value of her future potential.

Because she hadn't dropped all of her social mannerisms.

She had only dropped them around me once she determined that I neither required emotional displays nor interpreted their absence as hostility.

Every other individual she interacted with, from the Pulse Tower assistants to her fellow trial Aspirants, was still blessed with her exquisite social performance.

The transition revealed what I suspected to be a variation of apathetic rationality.

Not emotional suppression.

Not [Clarity]-induced detachment.

Not exhaustion.

An actual absence—or near absence—of the responses most species treated as fundamental to sapient interaction.

That trait would disturb many.

For the Pulse's [Purpose], it was useful.

The Path toward deciphering the secrets of [Life] was emotionally demanding.

Physically unpleasant.

Morally corrosive to those unable to separate observation from reaction.

A healer encountered suffering continuously.

Pain.

Fear.

Bodies opened and altered.

Patients who died despite every correct decision having been made.

Patients who survived only to resent what had been necessary to preserve their existence.

Species whose definitions of injury, consent, identity, and acceptable alteration contradicted one another.

Those of weak [Will] either broke, withdrew, or constructed elaborate emotional barriers that eventually interfered with their judgment.

Solaena required none.

She observed.

Processed.

Adapted.

Continued.

Even as the two-month boundary approached, when an ordinary candidate should have become exhausted enough for every concealed flaw to surface after being given every trivial menial duty available, she displayed no meaningful decline.

She only kept complaining about her overdevelopment safety margin fluctuating above the threshold she considered acceptable.

Arguably, it was even the opposite that was occurring.

Her performance was steadily improving.

She even somehow found the [Will] to carry out an Aspect synthesis, converging her Tier 3 [Insight] Aspect into the First Order [Comprehension] Aspect.

Hence, altogether, while offering her a station as my personal aide immediately after qualification had been a slight procedural overreach...

Her present results more than justified it.

Better, once my decision would come to be reviewed, it would likely be considered warranted, beneficial, and irritatingly prescient.

I had no objection to being considered prescient.

The only uncertainty concerned how the Pulse would choose to handle her.

The usual wild prodigy assessment and incentive program remained the most probable option.

Extended duty-free periods.

Assignment to cases and procedures designed to broaden environmental deficiencies.

Periodic hidden practical assessments intended to identify whether her development justified her stay in the program.

Straightforward.

Reliable.

Boring.

The experimental assimilation processes were less predictable, and I doubted they would trial them on individuals who showed too great a potential.

The Pulse Of Eternity already retained its core members at a rate approaching totality, with those who reached the Mender rank rarely abandoning the organization even if strongly incentivized to do so.

Those who reached the Restorer rank and above leaving was unheard of, with the exception of confluences of factors that forced members to take on external duties they couldn't reject.

Even so, some considered a near-nonexistent attrition rate insufficient.

Mainly because trial Aspirants, Aspirants, and Menders had long since become prime poaching targets for organizations incapable of nurturing healers whose understanding and capabilities reflected the immense complexity involved in healing [Life].

Their proposals involved binding formative memories to Pulse institutions.

Placing promising arrivals under carefully selected mentors during their early integration periods.

Providing experiences that caused the Pulse to become inseparable from their first meaningful exposure to developed Civilization.

Not coercion.

The committees responsible for wording would reject that term.

Cultivated belonging.

Structured affiliation.

Directed gratitude.

All functionally similar concepts with enough distinctions to occupy centuries of debate if the Undyings had their ways.

And they generally did, thus explaining why most of those experimental processes mostly remained locked to the hypothetical stage.

Not that whether she went through the usual wild prodigy assessment and incentive program or one of the experimental assimilation processes, Solaena would be ignored.

She was barely four years old.

She had arrived recently enough that her impressions of the Everwell Sector remained malleable.

She possessed no entrenched local affiliation.

Her ties to the Faith Of The Aspects appeared practical rather than ideological, with her only moral debt to them being directed mostly at the actual Faith personnel who assisted her rather than at the institution itself...

All that, in addition to how her willingness to evaluate every institution according to their potential utility to her Path made her difficult to inspire through conventional loyalty.

Which would only make successfully securing that loyalty more valuable.

Politics would thus slowly become involved.

Probably sooner than I preferred.

What's more, she already possessed one foot within the Creed Of Nonexistence, assuming her account of her fairy mentor was accurate.

Membership within the Creed often propagated through association long before formal induction.

An entity deemed sufficiently [Worthy] rarely remained outside it indefinitely, lest the Fate Conclave involve itself to prevent those who eluded their [Purpose] from continuing to do so.

Solaena's age and abnormal development would also eventually attract the Fairy Court.

Perhaps not directly.

But the Pulse counted fairies of sufficiently high rank as members to recognize when one of their own warranted reporting up their infuriatingly efficient intelligence network.

Once that happened, the Court would investigate.

Then observe.

Then decide that her future held political relevance regardless of whether she personally agreed to it.

As such...

The Faith held primary claim through the education and assistance it provided.

The Creed had probable future claim through her mentor and whatever evaluation had been made of her [Worthy] Path and existence.

The Fairy Court would perceive an emerging asset and act on its perceived value.

The Pulse would claim institutional development.

And Solaena...

Would likely consider all of them resources until one interfered with her Path due to having too hastily judged her?

That possibility was almost satisfying to contemplate in view of the fact that the Pulse would have already executed its plan by then.

Still, the projected consequences were intellectually appealing.

For my part, no matter what would unfold, I would remain an average Restorer.

Competent.

Established.

Nowhere near advancement.

Not sufficiently influential to determine how the wider Pulse handled a case like Solaena.

But influence wasn't necessary to benefit.

If she continued progressing, I would have identified and personally taken responsibility for a wild prodigy before any formal program became involved.

That fact would remain attached to every future [Assessment] of her.

Her advancement would reflect upon my judgment.

Her contributions would validate my decision.

Her eventual rank—assuming she remained within the Pulse and climbed the ranks—would become part of my institutional history.

A future investment acquired at the simple cost of instruction I would have provided to someone regardless...

Alongside several irritating administrative disputes.

A favorable exchange, altogether.

Which made the matter of her report necessitate all the more careful phrasing.

Too much emphasis upon her abnormalities might draw intervention before she settled into her present routine.

Too little might allow another Restorer to claim shared oversight under the pretext of multidisciplinary evaluation.

Mentioning her [Comprehension] synthesis was unavoidable.

Mentioning the overdevelopment disorder was necessary to justify relative urgency and academic interest.

Her intended future [Faith] would attract attention from the committees monitoring cross-organizational influence, though.

Her probable connection to the Creed Of Nonexistence...

That was better placed within a restricted appendix.

The Fairy Court connection remained speculative and therefore unnecessary until someone else made it real.

I reorganized the report within my thoughts.

Initial identification.

Environmental deficiencies.

Observed performance.

Path profile.

Psychological characteristics.

Institutional compatibility.

Projected development.

Potential conflicts of affiliation.

Recommended action.

That would suffice.

The more immediate follow-up question was whether further opportunities existed to reinforce her integration with the Pulse while she remained firmly within her early-arrival period.

The memories she formed now would remain disproportionately influential for the rest of her life, after all.

Most species owning biological brains formed of neurons simply romanticized beginnings.

First institutions.

First mentors.

First recognitions.

First instances of being entrusted with responsibility.

Solaena might not experience the associated emotions, but memory still shaped preference.

Familiarity still reduced perceived cost.

Repeated utility still produced attachment, even if she classified it under another term.

An Everwell Realm delve?

No.

Too chaotic.

Too many uncontrolled variables.

Her survival capabilities appeared exceptional for her age, but the objective was integration, not exposure to a Realm capable of reprocessing her into decorative vegetation.

A temporary station within Everwell Prime?

Possibly.

The central branches offered access to specialists, rare physiologies, and enough institutional scale to make the Pulse's reach impossible to ignore.

It would also expose her to the exact political attention I preferred to delay.

Viable, depending on the available station.

Assisting the Order during a simulated brigade deployment?

No.

Too troublesome.

Too many rules unrelated to healing.

Too many officers who considered every deviation from procedure a challenge to authority.

She would either comply through [Guided] while privately classifying the entire exercise as inefficient...

Or identify a genuine inefficiency and refuse to stop explaining it, highlighting her abnormal logistical [Comprehension] and [Awareness].

Neither outcome benefited me.

A cross-Tower medical exchange?

Potentially.

A sponsored lecture series on high-order Aspects?

Useful, though insufficiently memorable.

Assignment to a rare Essence-disorder case?

Relevant.

Dangerous if she projected her own condition onto the patient.

Supervision would solve that.

A visit to the Crystal Mountain could establish the practical value of Pulse rank earlier than expected, though arranging access for a trial Aspirant would require—

No.

Not yet.

Perhaps one of the lower internal repositories would suffice.

Or a controlled research exhibition.

There was also the upcoming-

I stopped.

That possibility required checking the Tower's schedule first.