In the aftermath, Cherry will be asked to move her experiments even further away from anyone important. The theoretical physicists will be very puzzled, and eventually someone will be awarded a Nobel Prize for determining exactly what happened.

But our story doesn't follow them, it follows the other Cherry.

A surprisingly intact pale golden orb (although there are a few chips missing) and half of a mangled corpse appear in midair, and drop to the ground with a thwack.

And then the corpse sits up, and tries to make any sense of the warnings her fixity crystal is painting across her HUD.

It is the 41st millenium, and an unremarkable provincial Hive World in the middle of nowhere was having a normally gloomy day until this very second.

Cherry pops into existence in the middle of a busy street!

Well, "street" is a relative term. It's more like a valley in between two mountainous cliffs, if the cliffs are made of concrete (monolithic plates of vast dimensions), glass (most is actually closer to a plastic and much tougher, but many replacements are crude glass), and metal (gilded steel, with most of the gilding worn out millenia ago.)

There's a cathedral in the distance, which is non-negligibly less tall than Mount Everest on old Terra. Above, there are clouds of smog, an atmosphere that doesn't pass the most stringent lead safety norms possible, a likewise ozone layer, and two Suns of different sizes.

The vehicles are very different and range from a carriage (moving briskly up the street) to something like a spaceship shuttle (parked in the distance). There are street food vendors. The EM spectrum is full of radio transmissions.

The people are people. Not perfectly healthy, nor in constant pain. Foreigners, speaking in an unknown but distantly familiar language, and, right now, backing away from a sudden corpse and then forming a small crowd around it.

Ugh. Okay — she takes things step by step.

First, she makes sure her fixity crystal is repairing itself. Next, she has it start pulling in some air — creating no more than a brisk breeze — to get some mass to repair her leg and arm with.

Then, she attends to the bizarre readouts in an attempt to figure out where she is. Wherever she is, it's definitely not anywhere in her original universe. There is something ... kind of like an extra spatial dimension, if that dimension lacked a well-defined distance metric and changed apparently at random, preventing the fixity crystal from getting any kind of lock on it.

She sets it aside for now, and has the crystal focus on grabbing those radio transmissions to see if she can work out the local language instead.

The people are at least human-shaped, though, so maybe they have some things in common. She makes sure she's clean of blood, and then smiles (without showing teeth) and waves nonthreateningly at the people.

"I'm sorry! I don't know how I got here. But I'm okay, and I come in peace," she says. She knows they won't understand, but hopefully her tone carries through.

The people are... awed, but also frightened. Some of them put their hands on their chest in a vague shape of an eagle, and quietly chant something. Some are maybe calling someone on their phones (?). They are not very reassured about anything, and are neither closing the distance nor dispersing.

The radio is very busy but some of it are unencrypted analog sound transmissions in the same language that the people around are using. It's a distant, distant, distant descendant of English and Latin.

Her translation software starts putting very-low-confidence guesses up on her HUD, once it matches up a few vocabulary words, but it's mostly nonsense.

The EM transmissions are loud enough that she can't get a good fix on the background stars — not with only a few meters of fixity field, during the daytime, with most of the sky hidden by the gigantic metal walls of whatever city she's ended up in. Weeping Cherry briefly contemplates going up to get a better read, before deciding that she should probably not risk an air-traffic problem.

She stands, gingerly putting weight on her new leg. It is technically hollow right now, air not being all that dense, but the fixity crystal lets her fake it. She smooths down her dress, causing it to reject the dust of the street in a little puff.

She slowly, with deliberately telegraphed movements so nobody is taken by surprise, steps out of the probable path of the carriage and onto the sidewalk.

Carriage isn't the only thing she's in a path of, but okay. 

The people are growing increasingly more suspicious and numerous, and arguments are breaking inside the quickly growing crowd. They are, of course, unbeknownst to Cherry, debating if the newcomer's sudden appearance and healing are manifestations of Emperor's miraculous will or indicators of a loose witch or a loose xeno; the fourth hypothesis that being "result of some haywire Mechanicus technomagery" have lost a lot of points when she failed to communicate - but is still a consideration.

They are extremely suspicious of Cherry standing up and moving around. A corpse lying flat on the floor isn't very scary, but a person going around a mere minute after being that is worrying. Some people back off and run away, and the body language goes more stressed, but the crowd is absolutely not dispersing.

They gesture her to halt.

By the way, it may now be apparent that the crowd includes people whose age or life haven't been kind on them - the one-eyed woman, a lame elder. There's a guy with a cybernetic augument. There's a noticeable skew towards the kids and teenagers, and, among the older but not the younger parts of the demographic, towards women.

There are people with knives, ready to pull them out.

(Some of the stuff translation parses as nonsense is going to still be nonsense even after being properly translated. Welcome to Imperium.) 

She can correctly interpret the gesture!

She stops, and stands with her arms at her side.

"I'm afraid I don't speak your language," she says. "But I'm working on getting a machine translation. Vereor ne linguam tuam loquar, sed translationem machinae molior."

She puzzles about what to do next. She doesn't want to frighten people, and it seems pretty likely that she'll be able to offer them healing in a few minutes when she has a better hold on the language.

She slowly settles so that she's sitting crosslegged, hands clearly visible. She gestures to herself. "I'm Weeping Cherry — Meum nomen est Pendula Rosea."

She gestures to whoever looks least afraid, with an open, empty hand. "What's your name? Quid est tibi nomen?"

Hivespeople don't speak Latin any more than they speak English. I'm actually not sure if they can even notice a difference.

The least afraid guy understands nothing but waves. It gets him Looks. Nothing happens just yet, the uneasy standoff continues.

In about 10 minutes, the Adeptus Arbites (that is, Imperium's law enforcement) are going to arrive. Is the machine translation going to work before that; alternatively will Cherry do anything other than standing and talking before that?

Ten minutes is a ridiculously short amount of time to apprehend the full complexity and nuance of a language, based only on two long-dead ancestor languages and a bunch of out-of-context audio samples. Luckily, Weeping Cherry has enough computing power with her to just throw brute force at the problem. Also, she doesn't need the full complexity and nuance of the language — she just needs some very basic vocabulary.

She sits, smiles, and waves to anyone who waves at her. If anyone addresses her, she makes a "wait" gesture and tries the software's current best guess at "Wait, I am learning your language" — which isn't terribly good.

After about eight minutes of waiting, her leg is fully flesh and blood. She's really not happy with the amount of lead and other pollutants in the atmosphere, though, and considers starting to use her fixity field to scrub some of the smog. But not spooking people is more important — she won't be able to put a dent in the planetary atmosphere until she has a larger field anyway.

Her translation software throws up some slightly higher-confidence guesses, so she is just starting to try again when the Adeptus Arbitres arrive.

"Hello," she says, addressing her audience again. "Name mine, it is Weeping Cherry. Name yours?"

Seven of the less intelligent people in the crowd simultaneously say their names. Nobody is impressed with them, and the silence restores.

A couple seconds after, one of the people in the crowd asks: "By the Emperor*, how did you heal?"

*If her translation made a guess about this word - and it's one of the more commonly used nouns - it have probably translated that as "God".

She brings her fixity crystal around in front of her and pats it.

"My machine —" she says, not having worked out the word for crystal. "My leg, it put back."

"Before I working," she continues, miming pouring something, because it's hard to mime standing around waiting for equipment readouts. "Then explosion, after here I am at."

Okay, so that's some score for "Mechanicus bullshit" theory. Although witches and xenos are of course known to be deceitful. And this begs the question:

"Then why can't you speak Low Gothic?"

"I speak English and Latin," she replies, leaving out the other languages her translator can handle for now. "Language, it changes in years and in places. Low Gothic, it is like English and it is like Latin, but many years after. My machine, it listens of the city, tells me how different. I learning Low Gothic."

She tries to formulate an explanation about how long it will take, but she lacks the vocabulary. Instead, she decides to try and take the initiative of the conversation.

"The city — where I am at?" she asks.

So, there was a definite wrong answer to the previous question, that being "I am an alien from a different polity in a different world."

That's not that. 

But it's not as reassuring as "the technological malfunction must have damaged my brain" either.

It's just confusing.

Now, Imperium's ideology preaches that what is confusing you is probably there to entrap you; things out of ordinary are more prudent and proper to destroy than to investigate. But there's no spark to incite the action. Knives and guns stay sheathed, for now, even as the hands itch more with every thing Cherry says or does.

Imperial ideology aside, you don't kill a Mechanicus functionary because you didn't understand their arcane machinery if you want to keep being a human and not a servitor drone.

"Loriactum Overstreet, 92715. Subsection 3, section 15, continent Nova Africum...

Hive World Impera Dix."

She nods, even though that answer does not really give her any more of an idea. It at least implies that this is a multi-planetary civilization, which is good to know. Once she has a good enough grasp of the language to talk to air traffic control, she might be able to get a better idea of what that really means, in terms of what she is near and where she should go to talk to the local government.

"Well, wait I must, for learning Low Gothic finishing," she remarks. "While waiting, anyone wants of my machine heals them?" she offers.

She gestures to the lady who is missing an eye. "It put back your eye, like it put back my leg, if you want it," she explains.

It would be a heartwarming display of open-mindedness and trust, to accept an offering of miraculous healing from someone who isn't familiar or authoritative at all and can't even speak Low Gothic.

An open mind is like a fortress with gates unbarred and unguarded. 

- Imperial Thought of the Day

Even more so in the middle of a tense crowd and within a minute of Arbites arriving.

Nobody takes the offer up.

... okay, she supposes that's probably a reasonable level of caution, when someone shows up with unknown abilities. And she doesn't want to get pushy.

She shrugs, and decides to try a different tack.

"After learning Low Gothic, where I go, talk to government?" she asks instead.

That's an another highly confusing question.

Why would someone who isn't in the government ever want to interact with the government? Especially if they are from somewhere far enough/in the ???past??? enough not to know the language?

Maybe to try and seduce them? Good thing the Administratum can't be talked at by random xenos (???).

There's a short pause, then someone says:

"Well, you are going to meet the government soon enough."

Weeping Cherry nods again. It makes sense that the local government would have dispatched someone to come meet her; people popping out of thin air probably doesn't happen very often.

"Good, good. While waiting, you have questions for me?" she asks, to keep the conversation (such as it is) going. Her translation software can make much better guesses when it actually has the context of a conversation. Right now it looks like it's chewing on the grammar.

A questioning mind betrays a treacherous soul.

- Imperial Thought of the Day.

They do, of course have questions. They're as curious as they have ever been in their lives. But also, now that someone reminded the crowd of the imminent arrival of the Arbites, it's not really their job to ask the questions, now is it?

Question not, lest thee be questioned.

They keep it to themselves.

She stares silently at them for a moment, a bit nonplussed at the lack of curiosity.

But if they don't want to talk, then they don't want to talk.

She turns her attention to trawling through the (probable) transcripts of the local radio chatter. Maybe she can get more of an idea what is going on with this planet by the time the authorities arrive.

An increasing aircraft noise along with an alarm roar from the sky, and the crowd disperses away from the landing site, while a projector, bright enough to feel slightly warm, tracks Cherry.

With tumultuous wind, a visibly armed jet/helicopter hybrid descends from the skies.

These people are, presumably, the government. Weeping Cherry waves at them.

The jet-helicopter descends to the ground, tearing through one of the hanging bridges between the windows of the cliff-skyscrappers, and squishes a car underneath itself. (They are devoid of people; the car was standing empty and parked and everyone ran away from the alarm.)

Meanwhile, of course, the area is swept by the satellites; Arbites patrols and offices in the subsection are notified and mobilized; a couple snipers are getting into positions; some techpriests are trying to remotely get nearest camera footage and others are poring over it.

This isn't something like murder or government corruption, this is serious. Such accusations aren't made lightly, for it is said that if one accuses another of heresy to the Law, at least one is a heretic; such accusations are definitely not made lightly by groups of people.

A group of people in imposing-looking full-body armor holding imposing-looking guns at the ready briskly come out of the craft. About half of them quickly semi-surround Cherry in an "arc" slightly less than 180 degrees, the other half is halting random citizens in the now-dispersed crowd and establishing perimeter.

The ark forms a passage in the middle, splitting into two arcs slightly less than 90 degrees each, forming a thin corridor that, in the event of everyone firing at the suspect, would be safe. Through that passage and corridor, a man in slightly fancier armor stands forth, carrying a pair of ornate and weirdly technological handcuffs. He speaks in a practiced, drilled manner, amplified by a loudspeaker. There's no opportunity to interrupt him. 

"In the name of the Emperor and by the authority of the Adeptus Arbites, you are under arrest for suspicion of techno-heresy, suspicion of witchcraft, suspicion of being a Xeno*, as well as lack of registration and various other minor transgressions. Your device, suspected of being an object of techo-heresy, is to be confiscated for investigation, effective immediately. Now, without speaking or swift motions, put the device on the ground, then hold your hands out for the handcuffs."

* This word is essentially a harsh slur for aliens. The translation software have probably heard it a lot in child propaganda on the radio. This IS a world whose primary purpose is growing conscripts to fight in extermination wars against the Xenos.

She's pretty sure she caught ... most of that? And it's a problem because she can no more give up her fixity crystal than she could give up her brain, even if she wanted to.

On the other hand, there are people behind her who might get shot if the people with guns start shooting; she has no idea how good their aim is, and there are too many of them to be sure that she could catch all the bullets. At least not without causing a lot of damage to the closest people from shockwaves.

She has her fixity crystal settle on the sidewalk by her side, to show willing, but doesn't hold out her hands. She preps her fixity crystal to try and intercept any bullets, if violence breaks out.

"My machine — it is touching my brain. I cannot give it," she explains.

As soon as Cherry says the first words, the Arbites nearly shoot... but their chief halts them with a wave of his hand. It doesn't sound like an incantation, and she's being at least somewhat cooperative, which isn't what he would expect from a genuine serious heretic.

As for the content of her words, well, Imperium has plenty of precedent with brain modification. If innocent, this is evidence of status.

"Then we will keep it within it's working distance from your brain during the Mechanicus investigation. But the investigation must be conducted. Now, hands, or else it's resistance of arrest."

Well, she doubts that she will be terribly inconvenienced by the handcuffs, and this seems like maybe a step towards being able to figure out why everyone is so spooked by her.

She silently holds out her hands, and prepares to scan the handcuffs as they come in range. If they have anything in them that looks dangerous — like a singularity generator — or just sufficiently weird, she's prepared to render them inert.

They are weird! They contain a lot of tech (?) that, if activated, does weird things in the weird spatial dimension! And, of course, they have systems to prevent tampering, some of which are also tied up in that. 

Okay, well, she was exploded not fifteen minutes ago, so she's going to be at least a little bit cautious. On the other hand, she doesn't have a good understanding of how the extra dimension interacts with local physics, so she can't just emulate the potentially dangerous parts to fool the tamper sensors.

She crosses her metaphorical fingers, turns the bits that look like actuators into xenon, and loops the outputs of the bits that look like sensors until the cuffs stop interacting with the extra dimension. She also starts trying to crack the software running on the anti-tampering circuits, but even if she makes it higher priority than the language acquisition, that will take longer than it does for the important looking person to put the cuffs on her.

You know, that more or less should have worked, mechanically speaking.

But these handcuffs aren't just handcuffs. They are the bane of witches, a scarce rarity mass-produced in the chaos of the ancient Age of Strife and only available to a couple hundred thousands of various high-priority strike teams. They are almost relics. They are a symbol or technological dominance over witchery. They are the Law.

And, by the grace of the Emperor and the caprice of Warp, their failsafes work anyway.

If you have to roll to avoid hostile encounters enough, you are going to get a bad roll eventually.

Oh, ye dun did it now.

"Guilty", says the man, and gestures, and turns away.

The arcs launch a few volleys of lasgun rays at Cherry (and whoever happens to be behind her at the moment).

Those of them who carry boltpistols wait until the chief backs off a bit, then, if the lasguns didn't do the job, fire explosive bolts.

... shit.

She blurs into motion. The lasguns are too fast, and she can't catch all of the missed shots. The ones that do hit her aren't a problem — her fixity crystal is set to automatically counter rapid changes in temperature, so the energy of the lasers just vanishes in contravention of the laws of thermodynamics.

She can move fast enough to make sure the explosive bolts don't get past her, though, which should hopefully cut down on collateral damage. Those she transmutes into harmless atmosphere.

She hesitates for a bare moment ­— if she charges them, are they going to shoot each other? On the one hand, they should miss less if she's right there. On the other hand, friendly fire is, apparently, not something they worry too much about.

Instead, she shoves herself up, grabbing air and blasting it downwards. In the air, any missed lasers will at least not hit anything important.

"I not want people getting hurt!" she says. "We can talk!"

"Your sentence is death. None evade justice. There is nothing else to talk about."

Any faithful subject of the Emperor understands collateral damage to be the least important aspect of this situation. That this being brings attention to it is more evidence of corruption or alien nature of it's mind.

Listen not to the alien, look not upon the alien, speak not unto the alien!

- Imperial Thought of the Day

The fire, of course, never ceases.

Well, she is not getting less immune to lasers over time, so if they want to keep shooting at her, that's fine.

She tries to get some more height, to see if there's anywhere that she can get away from populated areas. They're going to notice she doesn't mind the lasers and bullets eventually, and when they do, she has the feeling that they're going to escalate.

What does this place look like from the air? Are there any other transports that seem to have an eye out for her? Or, alternatively, an air traffic control channel so that she can let people know where she's going?

The place is an ecumenopolis. There are some oceans to produce oxygen by phytoplankton and regulate climate, and a few of the rooftops have parks on them; other than that it's buildings all the way down and all the way across. A cathedral towers over most buildings. Spaceships and other craft are landing and lifting off in the distance; some of it is absolutely flying her way; the Arbites jet/helicopter scurries off with the witnesses after a couple minutes of futile shooting but not before offering Cherry some guided missiles as a parting gift. How does she feel about that?

There's no air control channel - at least no unencrypted radio channel for one.

Right, okay. She briefly contemplates going invisible, but she still doesn't know how their tech works, or how it was able to notice her tampering. It's entirely possible that being invisible will result in them being able to still track her, but less precisely.

She picks a vector relatively clear of aircraft, and heads for the ocean. She broadcasts a simple analog homing signal, so they don't lose track of her when she goes supersonic.

Also, they're clearly already spooked, so she starts removing the lead and other pollutants as she goes. She still won't make much of a dent on the planetary atmosphere in any reasonable amount of time, but it's the principle of the thing. When she gets to the ocean, she can figure out whether it makes more sense to talk or fake her death and try to collect more information.

"I don't understand why you want I die!" she broadcasts. "We can trade. I can make machines to you."

There are currently three main currents of causality unfolding from Cherry's actions.

The Adeptus Arbites are currently trying to make Cherry a problem of the military rather than theirs. They are equipped to fight criminals but not flying machines that absorb lasgun hits and homing missiles without a scratch.

Their investigation is of course turning up stone cold fuck you nothing, and the Judge who led the arresting squad and the commander of the operation are soon to get their obvious summary executions. They do say thay the fact that one couldn't have done anything to prevent failure doesn't absolve one of their failure; only the Emperor can.

The Imperial Guard is also not here to handle quite that situation, but they ARE the people who possess the firepower that they are going to try their darnedest to make overwhelming. They will begin their attempts by arming and repositioning Impera Dix's defense satellites - Cherry has left the populated area, so there's not much concern over collaterals of orbital bombardment.

The Imperial Guard isn't here to negotiate, it is here to destroy the enemy. But if the enemy refuses to be destroyed no matter how hard it is hit, that's frankly something that should be left to the government to figure out. So eventually, if nothing works, they're going to try pass the buck there.

Well, IF the enemy refuses destruction.

The Guard does have an ace up it's sleeve.

The second current of causality is as such:

In the Adeptus Arbites analytic center handling the ordeal, there is an unremarkable arbitrator who have, amid the chaos, sent a few words of notice to a trusted and esteemed government functionary, as per an agreement to report on anything that's wildly out of ordinary. The government functionary, when he notices the message, will, after some deliberation, then send a string of codewords to a man he only knows by a nickname. And that man will then call up and question some other people on the planet, think about the situation for a while, and then write up a string of perfectly random letters and have a private astropath in an underground bunker send that string to a different astropath.

And the receiving astropath, in a secret fortress on a moon that isn't known to the general public to be settled, will relay the random string of letters to a cheerful clerk.

Who will then descend into a massive vault of sealed envelopes, and find a specific one of them via an index, and pick one of them up, and leave the vault.

And then, the cheerful clerk will hand a message and an envelope to a very, very serious man.

And that man will, then, open the envelope and extract a different sheet of random letters from it, and combine the two strings of random letters into one string of not so random letters, and immediately burn the sheet.

And then, the man will spend some time in deep and serious thought.

For he is a very, very serious man indeed.

The third path of causality is not so straightforward.

Cherry, at the moment, may be soulless. But she has now put into motion the effects that touch upon a great many ensouled beings, that touch upon many more in turn.

The winds of destiny change.

How interesting.

Indeed.

Weeping Cherry has no way of knowing any of that.

She tries for some time to get someone to talk to her on the radio, in slowly less garbled Low Gothic.

"Please, I just want people to get what they want. I have capabilities and knowledge to trade. I'm willing to cooperate with your investigations, up to a point, but not with dying. I'm sorry I scared you; I don't understand how. I really do want to help ..."

After a certain point, nobody is listening.

Not because nobody ever wants to, on a world with trillions of humans and many billions of radios. Many a heretic will be wistful of Cherry, for a time.

It's that the military, at some point, starts jamming her frequencies. 

The military, of course, doesn't listen. They aren't the diplomatic corps*, they are the military.

*Imperium has none such, actually. And consequently, ironically, the military often does have to play the role of diplomatic corps after all. But desperate pleas of innocence and implausible offers of power aren't moving those gears. Anyone would say that.

Cherry receives an answer in form of a rain.

It's a rain of supersonic tungsten. First, a drop of rain falls upon her. 

Then, if she's still there, an another, then a third and fourth and fifth in quick succession.

Then 19, in a hexagonal grid, and an another 19 on top.

Meanwhile, the first wave of warplanes is flying in.

Yikes!

Her fixity crystal reflexively dodges the first few. The nice thing about tungsten is that it gives her something solid to push on, in order to maneuver.

By the time she consciously reacts, though, she decides that they're probably going to keep shooting. And while she doesn't care too much about the ocean under her, there's still the possibility they could escalate.

She pretends to go down to the closely spaced grid, letting out a convincing explosion of gore and exotic particles. In reality, she lets her body go, pulling herself entirely into her fixity crystal. Then, she has her crystal become invisible and latch onto the falling tungsten, letting it pull her down and into the ocean.

"Well, General, I think we got her!"

"Oh? Praise the Emperor, and good riddance. Junhe, recall the planes! Johannes, wrap up the mobilization. Lester, fetch the report form A-53. I'm going to finally finish my recaf. What a morning!"

But did you?

But did you get her, though?

A very, very serious person is going to make a very, very thorough inquiry about that.

A tiny unremarkable spaceship launches off to Impera Dix. It doesn't take any time to prepare; very serious people make all the travel preparations in advance.

It will take some time to arrive, though; and it'll take time for the people inside to do their business.

But for the time being, it's calm.

Cherry isn't on the news. It's unbecoming of the faithful subjects of the Emperor to know of such matters. The less you know, the better you sleep.

The weapons are undeployed, and though the witnesses aren't yet dismissed and the area around Cherry's landing is cleansed by fire and then blessed by the Ecclesiarchy to eliminate any sort of taint and then kept off limits just in case, for the most part, normal functioning of the Hive World continues.

People are birthed by millions, and by millions they are drafted.

Weeping Cherry floats just below the surface of the ocean, drifting in random directions. Receiving radio is harder underwater, but by no means impossible when you have good enough antennas.

She prioritizes building a translation model for Low Gothic, and finally gets something more-or-less acceptable, although there will certainly be some errors to quash. She listens to interesting analog transmissions, to try and piece things together. And she works on figuring out how to decode their digital transmissions, with an eye to eventually being able to send her own signals.

Two questions guide her search: why did they react like that, and how can she do better when it comes time to reveal herself again?

Gosh. What a fucking question.

Like, where do we even start?

Holy fuck.

Okay. Okay.

So.

Here's an interesting analog transmission. It's an educational program for children.

It's called Young Eagles (Are Eagles Still).

Are you too young to serve the Emperor and Mankind with their labor or your life? This program aims to help you serve anyway.

It contains practical advice, such as:

Brush your teeth and don't overeat sour or spicy food or sugar, the Emperor wants you to be able to subsist on rough food in battle or should famine come, and you can't do that if you have no teeth or have chronic stomach inflammation or diabetes. 

If you cause a disturbance in your house, fix it. Your parents are devoting their daily lives to service of mankind, and it would be great help if they didn't have to spend physical effort on restoring order or mental effort on living in disorder.

If you notice anything unusual but not overtly heretical in the behavior of your acquaintances or parents, that's no cause to go to the Arbites or Administratum; they have enough on their plate to listen to every child's request, even if this child is conscious enough to listens to our program. However, by no means keep it to yourself. Report it to two other judicious adults you trust, simultaneously; and then decide what to do together, with agreement of the two overriding the third. If you think Imperium's attention is warranted, report it together to a local ombudsman or militia captain, or an Ecclesiarch, a local Commissar if there is one. Do not investigate anything by yourself, lest you become involved in unsavory things yourself.

It also offers motivational advice, such as:

Always remember, however hard life may seem now, it can always get harder. So cherish these moments, young one, as the memory of them will keep you warm even on a mission in a death world!

Your zeal will go away if not exercised, but it is also a finite resource that will burn out if you let it flare too brightly. Restrain your zeal without throttling it, and it will grow in you until needed.

Always remember, however lowly you may be in Imperium's eyes, you are infinitely superior to any heretic, xeno, or mutant!

And it shares motivational stories, such as:

A city on an agriworld have lost it's only generator, because a crucial detail in it have failed; and thus they lost steady access to freshwater, as they had to mechanically pump it from deep underground. But the adults were busy completing the plan for the soon to come Imperial Tithe to do anything about that. The town's kids banded together and rummaged an old battlefield for parts. Some died heroes' deaths on landmines; but they have scavenged a lot of components and eventually found the one needed to save the town from dehydration.

A girl once noticed her father going out at night. He told her to keep it a secret, and she readily agreed. But she knew that from Commissars, Ecclesiarchs and Inquisitors, there can be no secrets, and she told her ecclesiarch of the incident, and in two weeks, the Inquisition rooted out a heretical cult and gifted Emperor's peace to all the stray souls in it. The orphaned girl who saved the planet was granted a sigil of distinction and a mandate to study in Schola Progenium. She chose a noble profession of a Commissar.

Almost all transmissions, interesting or not, private or public, have relatively frequent explicit or implicit reference to:

The God-Emperor of Mankind, who is the only source of salvation, and the founder of The Imperium of Man.

Duty of every (biological) human to believe in, obey, and serve the above.

Assumed equality of "humankind" with "the Imperium of Man".

Assumption that the interests of humankind/Imperium are incompatible with the interests of anyone else - dissenters and heretics, xenos, and mutants.

Well. That is not at all what she expected. But, then again, she wasn't expecting to explode, either. Really, that first explosion has somewhat set the tone.

Weeping Cherry considers her options. She's tempted to try to make contact again, now that she has a slightly better understanding of how to present herself. She doesn't like slinking off when there are a lot of people she could be helping just by zipping around. But. She doesn't understand how their technology works, there's only one of her right now, and she's not actually all that confident that even her best second attempt would go much better.

She does think she might have a better time if she contacted the resistance — because a place like this will certainly have generated a resistance — but she doesn't exactly know how to get in contact with them discreetly.

She was nearly full of energy when she first landed, but she spent some of that on repairs — it will be another 36 hours before she has enough for a second fixity crystal.

Ultimately, she decides to keep drifting with the current and try to break into their digital transmissions. If she tries to send an analog signal, they'll certainly notice right away. But if she can figure out the digital encoding used by their devices, she might be able to pretend to be a weather station or something like that, and get onto their equivalent of the internet.

She did not come totally unprepared for breaking into digital systems. The professional worriers make an explicit art of overpreparing. But, like spoken language, it's difficult to figure things out from no context whatsoever, and digital transmissions are far more likely to be encrypted. She reallocates her computer power from polishing the language model to trying to figure out all the non-analog signals.

The other thing being near the surface of the ocean lets her do is get a better view of the sky. So in between listening in on more media and supervising the decoder models, she also makes sure to capture any non-terrestrial signals that she can hear all the way down here at the bottom of the atmosphere. The Imperium seems to think Xenos are dangerous and uniformly terrible — what do the Xenos have to say about the matter?

There is no one Internet on Impera Dix, just as there is no one Internet in Imperium.

There is no one communication protocol, no one registry of addresses, no one tree of routing.

The graphs of the many networks fuse and mingle sporadically by the will of the Omnissiah, and there is almost one master graph isolations from which are by design. Almost.

But for all intents and purposes, there are multiple Networks.

A lot of the communications aren't secured all that well.

There is an Adeptus Mechanicus network, tightly intermingled with what one might call the Internet of Things. 

Adeptus Mechanicus, also known as The Machine Cult, are... a religion notably distinct from the present-elsewhere Imperial Cult; an engineering-industrial division of Imperium, and a state within a state.

As a religion, it reveres what Mechanicus describe to outsiders in plain language as a Trinity of 1) The Machine God, the omniscient power that resides in all of technology and is the source of all knowledge and power; 2) The Omnissiah, it's miraculous emissary; 3) The Motive Force, an ineffable omnipresent substance that among other things imbues life with a capacity to move and learn.

Someone versed in theoretical informatics may identify The Machine God with knowledge-as-correspondence, and someone versed in theoretical physics may identify The Motive Force as negentropy. (Mechanicus doesn't really have theoretical science as an organized pursuit, but their dogma definitely isn't uninformed by science.) Whatever the hell the Omnissiah is isn't clear, though the official position of the Machine Cult is to conflate it with the Emperor.

(It's actually a bigass godlike dragon with power over technology bound on Mars after Emperor bested him in a duel, because 40K is an amazing setting. Unfortunately, Cherry has absolutely no way to know that, as is the case for most of the Machine Cultists.)

The creed of the faith, the so-called 16 Universal Laws, is omnipresent in Imperium's networks as an easter egg, or maybe as a warding talisman:

0000. Life is directed motion.
0001. The spirit is the spark of life.
0010. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
0011. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
0100. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
0101. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
0110. Comprehension is the key to all things.
0111. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.
1000. The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path.
1001. The soul is the conscience of sentience.
1010. A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
1011. The Soulless sentience is the enemy of all life.
1100. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
1101. The Machine Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.
1110. Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the Machine Spirit.
1111. To break with ritual is to break with faith.

Law 1011 may be of particular interest to Cherry. 

As a culture and community, Mechanicus is... weird. They manage to combine sincere transhumanism, pragmatism and search for knowledge with iron dogmatism, rampant mysticism, and guild-like jealous secrecy. They treat binary as a sacred language, they are disgusted by their own flesh, and some like toasters a little bit too much.

They are insular and in a sense culturally alien to the rest of Imperium. None of the Mechanicus grew up and trained on this world, and it shows. They are only tolerated because they are necessary, and they themselves also only tolerate Imperium out of necessity, and it too shows. They are a community unto each other, with their own news and their own topics of discussion.

As an engineering-industrial division of Imperium, they maintain most of the complex machinery of the hive world; from spaceports to power plants to utilities to networks. The lowliest of their members keep workshops for personal vehicles or household appliances; the highest ones allocate technological resources and Mechanicus personnel across the world and maintain space and military technology. There's not a lot of production on this world - most of the provisions are shipped offworld; but there IS a lot of repair and jury-rigging because shipments are expensive and unreliable.

They aren't all dour, obsessed priests. There's a gradation between fanatics and (very relative) freethinkers, and a separate gradation between mystics and pragmatics. They've got a sense of humor, too, and videos like these are sometimes shared where the particularly odious don't usually go.

The omnipresent paranoia is still very much present, however, and often in more concrete forms, too. For instance, unlike in the general population, there is a belief among a subset of Machine Cultists that the Warp* spaceships travel through is full of highly dangerous and malicious xenos, which is the reason why shipments are unreliable, and is the reason why a certain type of forcefield is absolutely crucial to the endeavor of sailing through Warp. The belief doesn't spread to everyone, as Mechanicus are very particular about only spreading any kind of knowledge on a need-to-know basis. Another important paranoia of Mechanicus is AI, which of course stands for Abominable Intelligence, and there are many stories of devastation caused by AIs going haywire. To avoid using machine intelligence, Mechanicus either keeps all the machines they are aware of well below the threshold of sentience or uses servitors - human brains of senile or traitors put in a vat, scraped of former personality as thoroughly as possible (which isn't totally consistent) and filled with de-novo programming.

*Hyperspace.

Speaking of Abominable Intelligences...

The Cult Mechanicus network is thoroughly intertwined with the automated network of messages between devices. And the Internet of Things, if you look at it hard enough, has... things in it, for sure.

Mechanicus believes in benevolent Machine Spirits within every complex automaton, and under a detailed examination it... maybe isn't far off. Pointless responses bouncing between machinery at times resemble conversations in code. Senior Machine Cultists convene with machines in binary and it occasionally yields results that a purely explicit-algorithmic programmer would find hard to predict. Lines of code here and there indicate improperly scrubbed pathways for built-in-AI interaction programmed before by humans, or have signs of perhaps being written by said AIs. If Cherry goes deep into the Reticulum Automatus pretending to be an automatic weather station, she's gonna get some interesting pings.

There is something else, too.

There are small piles of chaotic, self-replicating, self-modifying pulp of instructions, here and there in Imperium's code. This pulp was probably not written by a human (unless a human devoted several lifetimes to evil floating point hacks and other witchcraft of technological kind) and most certainly wasn't written for a human to analyze, or any particular consistent and detectable purpose. Should an AI dare to deeply analyze it anyway, they... risk suddenly getting some weird bitflips for unrelated reasons, along with weird activity in the weird spatial dimension.

But it's not actually much of a problem when even semi-regularly dealt with or at all noticed. Mechanicus regularly cleanses scrapcode with diagnostic programs, deletion and prayer, and never studies it too closely.

There's a bit of an invisible cold war between the Machine Spirits and the Scrapcode.

But neither techpriests nor their quiet AIs really get rid of it for good. It just sort of pops up.

Then, there is the network of the State.

The Administratum maintains a truly mind-boggling bureaucracy to maintain an up-to-date census, distribute food and water, manage permissions, keep track of the hierarchy, cohere with interstellar authority, maintain birth rate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. It's not terribly secure, but the online network is treated as secondary to the realspace paper records and oral orders.

In 399th century CE. On a planet that doesn't have forests to produce it's own paper.

It's fine, they substitute human skin when needed. They've got humans in abundance.

Dix Impera is formally a democracy in internal affairs, headed by a President and a Senate, but neither holds a lot of real power - not even the real allegiance of the citizenry. Decisions and laws of the sector administrative authority override any laws or decisions they may make, and, needless to say, there is no civilian control over military or judiciary. And, of course, the Inquisition overrides all of the above if needed. But at least the President is elected for life and the current one has been alive for 170 years through life extension, so if nothing else the elected authority has time to enact it's vision.

When it comes to procedure, the government is hopelessly winging it, because procedures contradict each other left and right. Rule of law is kinda a farce, rule of orders from above and rule of convenience are what holds up the system - and, when needed, rule of terror.

But the system is not actually inconsiderate of citizenry. Citizenry is, after all, it's product. There are social programs, healthcare, conveniences, occasional luxuries. The government even turns a blind eye to those who want to avoid draft/birthing-duty by injuring themselves. Abominable treacherous waste it may be, that's better than cornering people into forming an actual resistance - not that it would accomplish anything, but it'd be a shame to reduce a relatively prosperous city to a warzone. Besides, those people generally still serve. And who can't serve as a human can serve as a servitor drone material.

It's really a decent hive-world. Not the best, but decent. It's not Necromunda. It's got an underhive beyond the omniscient reach of law, as is inevitable on hive-worlds, but they've got patrols regularly scouring it, energy flows cut, and on occasion they flood a part of the undercity in nerve gas.

It's fine.

Documents in the government network are frequently epigraphed or finished by the writer's quotation called "Imperial Thought of the Day." These are... far more interesting than legalese.

Here's a sample of quotes not selected to be representative (maybe two thirds of them are what would scan to a 21st century woman as common sense wisdom) but selected to be interesting:

A logical argument must be dismissed with absolute conviction!

Hate enriches.

Fear the shadows; despise the night. There are horrors that no man can face and survive.

Contemplation is the womb of treachery.

Across the void of space men live as they have lived for millennia upon the sand, rock and soil of worlds bathed in the light of alien suns. So is Humanity's seed cast far and wide beyond the knowledge of Man, to thrive bitterly in the darkness, to take root and cling with robust and savage determination.

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

Ignorance is your best defence.

In an hour of Darkness a blind man is the best guide. In an age of Insanity look to the madman to show the way.

Being unable to succeed doesn't absolve one of the responsibility of failure, for only the Emperor can.

It is better that one hundred innocent fall before the wrath of the Emperor than one traitor kneels before the lords of darkness

No army is big enough to conquer the galaxy. But faith alone can overturn the universe.

Only the insane have strength enough to prosper.

Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair is an illusion of the mind.

The same hammer that shatters the glass, forges the steel.

The truly wise are always afraid.

Mercy is a luxury; compromise - a defeat.

These are the tales of those times.

Then, there is the civilian information and message network.

The messaging part has protocols of privacy, if you can call something that can be easily bypassed by the government, the military, the industry, the local police, the state police, the state thought police, the omnipotent state secret police and the church a "privacy protocol".

It's got people talking about people things. Gossip and relationships, shop talk, politics strictly within the overton window, hobbies, life philosophy. With way over a trillion of people in the hive, there's a lot of it - though not nearly everyone has constant network access, even if it's a low-tier luxury.

If you watch a lot of it for a while, you can see censorship in real time; and then you can sometimes see the messaging person abruptly go offline for a while (occasionally forever). There's that in other Networks too, but the government Network has a much smaller violation density and a much smaller size, while the Cult Mechanicus network is rather too arcane for most anyone outside Mechanicus to efficiently police it.

Importantly, if you watch the people of Imperium talk for a while, the ideology outlined in the Imperial Thoughts will appear endemic in most everyone's processes of reasoning. 

The information part of the network is, unsurprisingly, not at all like Wikipedia. It's not editable by the general public - there is not even a feedback form - and it is largely written by the Ecclesiarchy.

There are a lot of interesting pages there.

There's a history outline.

It claims that the Emperor, the one true God, have created Mankind to be His chosen people, and have persided over it for most of it's history. Nothing else about the prehistory before year 1 is known, not even the event that started the calendar.

Years 1-15000 are known as the Age of Terra, and very little information is known about that age, but it is known that humankind have spread across the Galaxy and, under Emperor's watch, steadily progressed in it's technology.

Years 15000-25000 are called the Dark Age of Technology, in which the page claims humankind to have reached the peak of it's knowledge. Not much detail is given, but this quote is provided:

"In ancient times, men built wonders, laid claim to the stars and sought to better themselves for the good of all. But we are much wiser now."

- Archmagos Ultima Cryol

The article claims that the folly of ancient mankind, it's lust for knowledge deviating from Emperor's wishes, was exposed in the next age.

In around 25000-30000, The Age of Strife, the God-Emperor withdrew part of His omnipresent, pained protection over the wayward humanity. Witches and sorcerers started to emerge, and, unrestrained and unbound, laid waste to planets. Conflict over minute differences erupted across the now-unstable worlds, and a deadly series of machine uprisings led by Abominable Intelligences were just barely stopped. Most dramatically of all, at last, a series of increasingly severe warp storms erupted over the whole Galaxy, as the whole fabric of reality began to unravel, and the worlds of mankind became isolated and descended to various stages of barbarism.

It is then that the Emperor have divinely planned Mankind's salvation. And ultimately, at the end of the Age of Strife, He have conquered and rebuilt the old Terra* in a multiple-century series of campaigns now called the Unification Wars. He then created 20 sons, called Primarchs, each to lead a legion of Space Marines, the angelic warrior-monks at the spearhead of reconquest of Humanity. Unfortunately, a malicious Xeno plot have scattered the Primarchs across the Galaxy, and 2 of them were lost, and none of them were raised by God's perfect guidance.

In 30729, the Emperor's reborn Terra was united with the Machine Cult of Mars, and the Imperium was born, and the Great Crusade that would last two centuries would begin. Humankind was brought to unity, righteousness, and true faith by Emperor's Primarchs (found gradually along the way) and their legions of Space Marines, the Mechanicus-built Imperial Fleet the way for which was lit by Emperor's own Light, and the Imperial Guard; while xenos, mutants and heretics were struck down and psykers bound, reformed from witches and sorcerers to noble servants.

But then, two centuries later, the most trusted of the Primarchs, Horus, have betrayed his father, his commander-in-chief, and his God. In what is now known as the Horus Heresy, he have swayed half of the Primarchs and their Legions to his side by lies and sorcery, and burned down untold hundreds of worlds. The traitor besieged Terra, and used his corrupted demidivinity to slay dozens of saints and make a terrible blow upon the God-Emperor even as he was smitten into nothing in the process.

Yet, the article claims, the God-Emperor is indomitable, and did not truly die. His body sits immobile upon the Golden Throne, but his soul shines brighter than ever after his reascension to absolute divinity, still illuminating the way for Imperium's fleets and still saving the souls of His own righteous servants from damnation.

The aftermath of the Horus Heresy have seen Imperium beat the traitorous forces back into the warp storm known as Eye of Terror, and then slowly restore itself over around a thousand years in a period now known as The Time of Rebirth. The heretics will continue to launch pitiful offenses against Mankind, but all of them will fail.

Over the next period, the 2500 years of the Forging, the Imperium have firmly reentrenched itself in the Galaxy, while the true faith in the God-Emperor have faced numerous tribulations as the memory of the conquest began to wane, and multiple Wars of Faith have been declared upon various heretics, but in the end the truth have, of course, emerged victorious.

The times of troubles have, however, started. A 900 year period of interregnum with the Terra Nova faction was followed by an intensification of struggle between Administratum and Ecclesiarchy, and a subsequent takeover of the Ecclesiarchy by the then-acting Master of the Administratum, Goge Vandire, who then proceeded to subsume all other institutions of the Imperium under his sole command until his power was absolute.

His period of rule was called the Reign of Blood. It was, the article colorfully explains, an extremely stupid and extremely cruel tyranny.

(May I remind you that this is Imperium's official source?)

And when he was deposed, the Age of Apostasy continued with the Plague of Unbelief, a period where the trust in the one Imperium and one Ecclesiarchy was sabotaged but the previous (dictatorial and fanatical) mindset remained, so there were multiple rebellions and secessions led by false prophets.

This was followed by an Age of Redemption, Imperium's thousand-year-long bid to redeem itself by conquest that accomplished thousands of successes (unspecified).

And then comes the Present Age, in which humankind keeps vigil over Imperium's legacy, and slowly purifies itself in preparation for the prophesied End Times, when the Emperor finally heals himself, raises from the Golden Throne, vanquishes every remaining foe, and brings his people to a paradise in reality. Amen.

By the way, if one wants to find an alternative history outline in any part of the public Internet that isn't just that summary abridged or slightly elaborated, they can't. Apparently, neither the knowledge-worshipping Mechanicus nor the sprawling bureaucracy of Administratum are into historical archivism and education, and it is solely the duty of the Ecclesiarchy.

So! Other interesting articles include:

The Imperial Faith

The holy book of the faith is Lectitio Divinitatus, written by an anonymous prophet in the time of the Great Crusade.

The creed is as follows:

I believe, that the God-Emperor of Mankind once walked among mortal men and women in a physical form identical to theirs and that He is and always has been the one, true god of Humanity.
I believe, that the God-Emperor is the one true god of Mankind, regardless of the previous beliefs held by any man or woman.
I believe, that it is the duty of the faithful to purge the Heretic, beware the psyker, the witch, the sorcerer and the mutant, and abhor the alien.
I believe, that every Human being has a place within the God-Emperor's divine order, which is not to be questioned once made manifest.
I believe, that it is the duty of the faithful to unquestionably obey the authority of the Imperial government and their superiors, who speak in the divine Emperor's name.

Practices of the faith include but are not limited to: prayers, services, fastings, pilgrimages, tithe-paying (merged with the economic Imperial Tithe), crusades, anointments, confessions, dedications, purity seals, soul bindings, self-flagellation, self-sacrifice, etc etc etc etc etc etc...

The faith recognizes many saints: Malcador the Hero (Emperor's personal friend; founder of Imperium's bureaucracy and official assassin orders), etc etc, many early martyrs of faith, etc etc, Alicia Dominica (Goge Vandire's bodyguard who upon witnessing the Golden Throne had an epiphany and deposed of him), the Living Saint Celestine (who have died in a war campaign but have since publically returned multiple times to aid a battle or endeavor), etc etc etc...

Perhaps the most interesting and telling is the story of Ollanius Pius.

The Imperial Faith claims many proofs to it's validity - the light of the Astronomican, the personal accounts of the Astropaths, the miracles of the living saints recorded and replayable, uniqueness of humans, purely logical arguments and many else. But it emphasizes that seeking proof is a sign of weak faith and treacherous mind; an aspirational ideal is to simply believe rather than to believe for some reason or another.

Saint Ollanius Pius

During the Siege of Terra, rampaging Horus burst onto Emperor's location, slaying righteous superhuman angels and wondrous defense automata left and right, passing through all armed resistance completely undeterred. There, by pure happenstance, happened to be a conscript of the Imperial Guard, with nothing but a standard-issue lasgun on hands, clad in nothing but a Guardsman's uniform. He put himself forth towards the vortex of evil and death that Horus was, and looked upon it, and for a few moments, the Arch-Traitor stopped in his tracks, stunned. And in those moments, he who will forever be remembered as Ollanius Pius, exclaimed:

"Where I fall, ten more shall take my place, and one hundred each of them! So strike me down! I am the harbinger!"

And then, Saint Ollanius was slain, obliterated so absolutely that there was nothing left of him even for the Emperor to save; but it gave the Emperor the moments he needed to gather His divine power for the fight.

The Machine Cult

The article claims that the Machine Cult is a sect of the Imperial Faith, focusing on the aspect of the Emperor as a bringer of progress. After giving the basic creed of the Mechanicus, it gives very convincing arguments for that theological conclusion, which are all total bullshit.

Heresy

Heresy is deviation from the Imperial Faith or from Emperor's divine order. There are many types of heresy, and it is far easier to avoid heresy by not knowing what it may entail and not thinking about it, rather than by trying to be forewarned and bearing the dangerous burden of knowledge. Instead, heresy is best resisted by walking the  narrow path of righteousness, devotion and propriety with an appropriately narrow and focused mind.

Heresy is a crime punishable by penalty of at least death; harsher if ordained. There is no repentance for a heretic except in such a penalty. However, the roots of heresy - doubt, rebelliousness, lust for pleasure, contempt for ritual and custom, freethinking, despair, lust for power - can usually be uprooted before true heresy takes hold.

To struggle against heresy is a sacred duty of every human. Physical fight with heresy is best left to professionals when possible - but sometimes it isn't possible, and then, mere citizenry of the Imperium must take up arms and fulfill the duty of purging the heretic by themselves. Mental fight with heresy is much more important and is everyone's constant duty - the roots of heresy grow naturally on the soil of human mind, and all but the very greatest servants of the Emperor must regularly purge them from themselves. (However, you are not alone in this fight! The Ecclesiarchy strives to help every Human's soul in it's struggle for purity, and you should remember that a confessor will always be there for you.) To keep vigil against heresy is also everyone's constant sacred duty. It is especially hard because while watching for signs of heresy is important, watching heresy itself is dangerous, as one may accidentally come to understand it, which will make it a terrible burden indeed to keep away from it.

Signs of heresy include... A lot of things, apparently. More or less any deviation of behavior from the narrow set of norm. The article insists, however, that while everyone who depicts any one of these signs might be a heretic, not everyone is, and it is also important to be careful, because not everything you don't immediately understand is heretical, and to punish for heresy where no heresy took place is a terrible waste of valuable life. Frivolous accusations of heresy can be a heresy on their own; failure to report on genuine heresy can be a heresy on it's own; an overly thorough investigation into heresy by someone who isn't a professional (such as an Inquisitor) can also be a heresy of it's own - the faithful are advised to avoid any extreme here and stay within the narrow confines of common sense.

The Inquisition

The article on the Inquisition is short, but expressive.

The Inquisition is an organization dedicated to fighting against internal threats to Imperium - chiefly heresy, but also many others (unspecified).

The Inquisition sees all. There is no way to contact it - if it's presence is needed, it will know.

Inquisitors have authorization to take any actions necessary to eradicate threats to Imperium. The only authorities that can overrule an Inquisitor in the matter are Adeptus Custodes in affairs of Emperor's palace, a vote of the High Lords of Terra (Imperium's central ruling council), or other Inquisitors. As such, the order of an Inquisitor requires immediate obedience.

Members of the Holy Orders of the Inquisition are some of the greatest servants of the Emperor - men who are burdened with a horrific duty to know of the dangers to mankind in order to fight them, and an another horrific duty to make judgement calls on scales nobody ought to think about. For this, they deserve utmost respect.

(The article contains no mention of history, organizational structure, notable members, or methods.)

The High Lords of Terra

Also known as Adeptus Terra, or Senatorium Imperialis, or the Lords Temporal, Martial and Ecclesiarchical of the Most Divine and Righteous Imperium of Mankind, is the central ruling council of Imperium acting in Emperor's name.

It's a council of 12 seats:

1) The Master of the Administratum (tiebreaker) (leader of the state bureaucracy and logistics)
2) The Inquisitorial Representative (sent by the Inquisition to speak for it) 
3) The Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum (space pope)
4) The Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus (space pope #2, leader of the industry and research technology archivism/archaeology)
5) The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites (leader of judiciary and law enforcement)
6) The Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators (a speaker for navigators, a caste of three-eyed tolerated-mutants that can orient the ships in warp)
7) The Master of the Astronomican (manager of a single building that projects the light of emperor's soul into warp making the navigators' task possible)
8) The Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum (controls the assassin temples. obviously not actually anywhere near crucial for Imperium. one guess for how the murderer supreme ended up among this list)
9) The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica (leader of the guild of psykers responsible for FTL communications)
10) The Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard (army leader)
11) The Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy (navy leader. one might be concerned that the armed forces have no unified supreme commander with the right of last call, but apparently the imperium isn't)
12) The Chancellor of the Estate Imperium (chief record-keeper of and coordinator between imperium's many agencies)

There's a page on this planet. Impera Dix is a quite ordinary hive world in the middle of nowhere, it's role in the Imperium is to produce recruits into the Imperial Guard. It was heroically taken during the Great Crusade and gradually built from there. Such and such battles happened on it. 2.6 trillion people live in it. There were such and such Imperial sigils of distinction awarded to it. The President is such and such.

There's a page on Warp. It's a dimension which ships go through for FTL travel, and through which the Astropaths send their messages. It's uninhabitable.

There's a page on the law code. It exists, and is amazing and Emperor-blessed. There's no link to the full text, or even a summary, though there's a note that "among the most commonly prosecuted crimes are theft, murder, heresy, witchcraft, disobedience of authorities, evasion of duty, wasting..." etc etc. The Arbites uphold the law. The Arbites are the experts to consult on whether something is against the law. Ignorance of the law doesn't free one from the consequences of breaking it.

There's a page on the Xenos. They don't deserve to live because they are Xenos and cannot embrace the Emperor. All of them are evil in one way or another. Some of the greatest Xenos threats are Orks, stupid and savage warmongering brutes; Eldar, insidious and cruel pirates and witches; and Tyranids, a mindless swarm of vicious, planet-devouring bugs.

There's a page on commissars. They are offworld-educated charismatic motivators/thought police - most are employed in the military, but some are stationed on civil worlds that are in need of encouragement. Famous for indomitable faith and a good sense of humor.

There's a page with recent news. Yadda yadda glorious victory, yadda yadda miracle, yadda yadda hive life trivia.

There's no page on diplomacy.

There's no page on science.

There's no page on demographics.

There's no page on rights of the citizenry.

There's no page on machine spirits.

There's no page on ethics.

There's no page on any religions other than Imperial Faith and Cult Mechanicus.

The Xenos aren't seriously using analog radio for interstellar communications. Or digital radio, really. Neither does Imperium. Radio is slow. Also hard to catch. A delve into the page on radio will confirm the impracticality of it's use for long-distance messaging.

There are some interstellar radio transmissions that are there, all of them probably outdated for millenia. Most are periodic beeps ala beacons and number stations. A few are praising the Emperor, a few are praising the sender. Maybe cherry can hear one that is the Xenos making sounds in languages human mouths weren't made to speak.

Well.

That is ... a lot.

Weeping Cherry sits in her virtual space for a while, wrapped in a fluffy blanket and surrounded by pillows, thinking about what she has read.

The main thing is that she is not going to be able to make a better second impression. Because she didn't trip over some hidden faux pas, and explaining her case isn't going to help, no matter how she slants things.

She glances at the timer, slowly counting down to the moment when her energy stores will be full enough.

She feels a bit frustrated, really. Fixity fields are her big hammer, that make everything look like a nail, but they still take time. There is literally nothing she can do, other than making another gigantic advance in physics, to make her crystal build charge faster.

And on a less hostile world, she could easily fill that time with planning, with explaining to people what she wants to do and why, with learning about local concerns. Even before she has a fixity crystal large enough to cover the planet, if the locals were more friendly, she could fly from major population center to major population center, healing people and getting their backups.

She turns her ever-full hot-chocolate mug in her hands, and tries to think about how to get in contact with the resistance. The Imperium is possibly the most dysfunctional, authoritarian organization she has ever encountered. But they wouldn't have an inquisition if there was nothing for them to do. The imperial documents even agree with her, stating it outright: the human mind is a fertile ground for heracy. It's as natural as gravity — humans seek to make things better for themselves, and it's not hard to imagine something better than this.

But the Imperium squishes people down hard. It's clear that the network is being monitored; anyone who was visibly anti-establishment on the network would certainly get found by someone else before she could have much of a discussion with them. And sneaking physically into an area ... while not without merit, it's probably better to wait.

On the other hand — the Mechanicus network connects to a lot of machinery.

She doesn't understand a lot of the messages that ping back and forth on the Mechanicus network, but she understands some, and can try to work her way up from there. She carefully explores the closest areas of the network, trying to make her traffic blend in with the background noise of so many communicating machines. Her ultimate aim is to identify and subvert some piece of manufacturing equipment, but she'll settle for a delivery drone, quadcopter, or similar mobile platform, if she can.

Remotely finding security flaws in completely alien equipment is mildly impossible. But luckily she has lots of computing power, a sample of their CPU design (thanks to getting a scan of the manacles they put on her), and plenty of time to wait. So she tries things, and learns more about the network, and floats in the ocean currents, and waits.

The Imperium is possibly the most dysfunctional, authoritarian organization she has ever encountered.

This woman have never met Chaos. Or Orks. Or Necrons. Or the Dark Eldar.

The Emperor once said: "No matter how sure you are that you've reached the bottom of the barrel, if you dig just a bit deeper, you will always find something lurking below."

Right. Well. This is not a Forge World, this is a Hive World. Not many manufacturing facilities are stationed here, and those that are are mostly constantly manned. There are facilities that make Servitors - but the necessary circuitry and frames are imported. There are facilities that turn human corpses into fertilizer to be exported and deorative skulls. There are facilities that produce customized vaccines on demand. There are two emergency multipurpose production facilities, currently unpowered and sealed off from the networks. There's a private mtultipurpose production facility of the planet's Chief Fabricator, jealousy guarded. There are food superfactories, but they are pretty narrowly focused on making food.

There are a lot of repair facilities. Some of them are partially automated. They're not production facilities, though some do have access to both raw materials and methods of their processing. There are facilities that repair warplanes and spaceship shuttles, for instance - and one for repairing smaller spaceships (which are still enormous). Those facilities are in constant use, though.

As for drones... No small autonomous drone is connected to the Mechanicum's network enough to be hackable. As it happens, specifically to prevent an Abominable Intelligence who happens to master the Network from taking them over. And by the way, all those facilities? Analog offgrid self-destruct buttons, in each of them.  After all, even the 21st century had a saying that tech professionals keep guns around their printers lest they start making weird noises. 

Mechanicus network is very much something you can learn about more and more. It's kinda a mess.

You can learn a lot of interesting trivia along the way.

The philosophy and theology of Mechanicum varies by the branch. The Genetors (biotechnologists and geneticists) are often mystics into cultivating the Machine God in themselves and admiring the Motive Force of life. The Logi (programmers and analysts) hold desperately onto a belief that the universe can be understood, and as a consequence tend to be rather sad and fatalistic about everything given the world they are in. The Artisans (mechanical engineers, the most numerous branch) tend to lean pragmatic, but also some of them have a strange fascination with Necrons (an apparently incredibly technologically advanced and equally incredibly hostile species) as agents of the Omnissiah's destructive side. The Electro-Priests (energetics and adepts of exotic physics devices such as FTL drives and forcefields) tend to be kinda literalist and dogmatic, but also have the most physically exact interpretation of the Motive Force, with equations and everything. The Magi, the elite universalist branch, tend to be too secretive to give insight into their philosophies on open networks.

There are two more secret wars going on in the Network, between Mechanicum's more thorough security and secrecy programming (good enough that Cherry can't break through) and... a disparate collection of scrapping, data-mining and codebreaking programs that send results, encrypted, in all directions; and also a less disparate collection of uncontrolled replicating programs that just indiscriminately delete and obfuscate data.

By the way, psykers? Totally real, as far as anyone in Mechanicus is concerned. This Artisan guy have overseen the manufacturing of weapons powered by psykers' energies. These people are weeping over the destruction of the Witchbane Shackles in some recent failed operation, they know the technology able to restrain psykers is irreplaceable. This person apparently oversees the explosive collars that Imperium puts on contained psykers until they are taken away by the Black Ships.

But luckily she has lots of computing power, a sample of their CPU design (thanks to getting a scan of the manacles they put on her), and plenty of time to wait. 

Are you sure about that?

For by the time Cherry can map out the (physical and digital) locations of Mechanicum's production and repair facilities and run the analysis of their vulnerabilities, the very unremarkable ship with a very serious man and his friends on board will arrive into the solar system and hail the flight control center.

Ugh. It is probably a good thing that there aren't any hackable factories or drones that she can find, and that they have such good security fundamentals. Usually, she is very much on the side of building safe, robust systems. But, at the moment, it's also terribly personally inconvenient.

If she were an actual superintelligence, she would just order a custom 'vaccine' from the vaccines place that developed into some little biological nanomachines. But she is not actually that smart — protein folding is complicated, and it's not exactly the kind of thing she's needed to get good at.

Instead, she decides to take a crack at what she's good at: fundamental physics research.

The documents on the internet indicate that the 'Warp' has some very weird properties. It is an empirical fact of physics — or it has been, in her life so far — that physical laws do not care about humans. So it is exceedingly strange to see a technological civilization in apparent agreement that some humans can just do things with their minds. If she can discover the underlying mechanism there, though, maybe she can just speak directly into people's minds, the way that Astropaths seem to.

She already has some samples of Warp-reactive tech, in the form of the manacles. She starts trying to reverse engineer them — although not with actual experiments. She has learned her lesson. Two lab explosions that nearly kill her is enough. She won't try to actually poke the Warp until she's produced a second fixity crystal as a backup.

So she tries to figure out the strange mechanisms, and peers at her crystal's diagnostic readouts on the Warp, and is entirely oblivious to the dangerous men meeting in orbit.

Orbit?

The dangerous men are landing, now. There's a queue, but the receptionist at the flight control center was bribed in advance, because serious people really don't like waiting in queues. (It would have worked just as fine to present an Inquisitorial badge, but there's no need to use a bomb when a flashlight is enough.)

And now, just like that, they've disembarked.

A hotel room is already paid for a week.

But the very, very serious man,

and two licensed psykers,

and a Logis (formerly) of the Mechanicum,

and a scribe,

and two Guard veterans, a bodyguard and an infiltrator -

currently passing for a disparate group of close friends -

have no intention of staying inside for now.

Nuh-uh, they are heading straight for a rendez-vous with their local friend in his bunker.

And while the Inquisitor talks with a local aide,

The Logis scours the networks and contacts the local Mechanicum;

The psykers scour the Warp;

The scribe is systematizing the paper evidence;

And the soldiers are playing chess. Well, it's distant descendant.

After two hours, they leave the bunker.

The psykers found nothing of the Weeping Cherry, yet - unsurprising, given the givens. However, they have found a vast shift in the fabric of fate centered around this planet, impossible to miss if you know how to look; and that vast shift coincides with the incident, and it is not undone.

The Logis found no explicit activity of Cherry in the Net, yet, but she gives very uncertain probabilities of there actually not being any, upon reflection.

The scribe found interesting commonalities in the files of the witness investigations.

The Inquisitor have talked about a lot with his comrade. Most of the conversation was about the subject's psychology and capabilities, known and probable and possible. A lot was taken from the protocols of Cherry's broadcasts.

The soldiers found out that the infiltrator can blunder the Queen two games in a row. Well, her distant descendant.

The company leaves the Bunker and is headed for the Arbites offices.

The relevant Arbites office is located on a different continent, but a jet-helicopter was commissioned for Inquisitorial duties, and is waiting the company to quickly deliver them.

In 3 hours, they arrive.

But before they do arrive, the Psykers continue to feel out the area while in flight (taking an hour-long nap in the middle); the Logis will incorporate the recent insights into her predictive schemata while also manually controlling the craft, the scribe will begin drafting the report, the Inquisitor will simply quietly think, and the soldiers will act as if they are vaguely implied to be expies of the soldiers from Pirates of the Caribbean (2003).

Who dat?

The Holy Order of Imperial Inquisition.

Really? Okay, your documents please. Here at Arbites, we follow the law.

"Of course, of course. Here is the badge, the seal, the authorization letter, and the confirmation code."

"Now, of course, we do have to check them before assenting to your orders."

"You do not; check them while following my orders, and if the credentials turn out to be false, you may disclose and arrest us."

"That would be against theeeAAGH-"

The Arbites' head explodes.

"Please, gentlemen, no distractions. I do need to personally see all your witnesses for case #14846007, and the relevant surveillance data, and visit the scenes of the crime, and much else besides."

Blink. Blink.

... 

(By the Emperor, the mess! Blood staining the documents, the icons, the clothes! Marrow stuck to the ceiling!)

...

(Joseph was a fine fellow! A bit of an annoying upstart, but... but...)

...

(That took less than a second, I can't grab the gun this fast...)

...

...o-of course, sir. The witnesses are in facility Credo-27-B. Do you wish to depart immediately?

Yes, all of that is exactly what Weeping Cherry is currently oblivious to.

The Warp is ... strange. First of all, the components that interact with it would do nothing, if her previous understanding of physics were correct — which is to be expected, when dealing with a completely new phenomenon. But the part that she's getting stuck on is that the properties of the warp implied by the different components are contradictory. About a third of them could not possibly work in the way the control software expects at the same time as another third of them. Sometimes for components on the same physical chip.

She looks at the data on the changes she can see in the closest part of the Warp.

The only answer that really makes sense is that the physical properties of the Warp are constantly in flux at the lowest levels, and that somehow these low-level changes add up to vaguely predictable high-level behavior. Which is insane — physics doesn't work like that.

But ... she is a scientist. And the first and most important skill is to see what's there. So she builds a model, as best she can. She doesn't know why it seems to work like that, but that can come later. For now, she settles for cataloging how it seems to work.

And then her fixity crystal alerts her that the internal energy storage is sufficiently full, and she puts down her research.

She centers herself, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes.

And opens her eyes.

"I'll be Xanthoceras," she says.

And opens her eyes.

"And I'll be Yew!" she replies, shoulder bumping her other self in their virtual space.

"How about Yew head down and hang out near the core of the planet?" Xanthoceras suggests. "Yew can keep working on the Warp model, and I'll figure out what some good experiments to perform are, now that a single bad mistake won't be the end."

Yew narrows her eyes.

"Sure, that sounds entirely reasonable. But I can tell you're using the wrong you. I hear it in your voice."

She lets her fixity crystal drop out of the ocean currents and fall towards the sea floor.

Xanthoceras grins.

"I don't know what Yew're talking about," she insists.

They settle down in the virtual space, back to back, to continue their work. Their fixity crystals exchange encrypted streams of high-speed neutrinos to make the shared space work, although the delay is negligible on planetary scales.

A door to a room with no windows, a single bench, a single toilet and a single ceiling lamp opens with a rusty creak. A very, very serious man walks inside, wearing simple but well-made civil clothes. There's a man with a lasgun and a soldier's physique by his side, lazily eyeing the surroundings, quiet as a brick. The serious man sits down upon a dirty bench, and reaches to the current dweller of this room, presently lying flat on the floor.

"Hello, Jonas."

"...greetings, sir."

"Please, Jonas, take my hand and stand up."

"Yes, sir..."

"I want to ask you a few questions."

"..."

”Please, do relax and take your time. It would do our productivity no good to be on edge. A cup of recaf?"

"...thank you, sir."

"My pleasure."

"..."

"..."

"That... is some good recaf, chief."

"You are most welcome. It's from Zamtani 6. I'm sure you will be invigorated enough in no time." Well, less because of it's place of origin, and more because of the cocktail of quick painkillers, gentle tonics, memory nootropics and mild suggestibility inducers that the cup is spiked with.

"..."

"..."

"Who are you, anyway?"

"The specifics are not that important. Suffice to say, a humble servant of the Emperor trying to do his damned job."

"Hah. Aren't we all?"

"Indeed, indeed."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Feeling better, now?"

"Yeah. Thanks again, chief."

Nod. "So, yesterday morning. You were simply walking to your workplace, right?"

"Mhm, the warehouse."

"And while you walked down the warehouse, what was exactly the first unusual thing that happened?"

"A torn corpse of a woman have popped out of thin air. I do know it doesn't make sense."

"Things don't always make sense, son. But do tell me in detail." 

”Detail? I don't think there was any detail, chief, she just popped in."

"Was there a flash of light? Sparks of electricity?Ripples in the air? A foreboding feeling just before the appearance?"

"No, sir. It's like in the vulgar-style movies. Jump cut, it's called - one frame there's nothing, the next frame - pop! There was a popping sound, too."

"A bit of a movie person, Jonas?"

"You could say so, sir. I've rewatched Adventum Absolutum twice this week."

"Ah, a classic in it's own way. So it was just like that with Weeping Cherry, you say." The Inquisitor have never seen the movie and doesn't recognize the name, but he's aware of the style.

"Yeah."

"And then what? Step by step, please."

"Well, I dodged the damn thing, like everyone who was nearby. And some people just walked away, of course - but some have started to walk up."

"Right. The first people who walked up, did they walk up from far away - too far away, I mean - or just those in immediate vicinity?"

"Um... Let me think, sir."

"Take your time."

"..."

"..."

"I think only those near enough to see it, at first. Not sure, though."

"Noted, thank you. So, what happened next?"

"The corpse sat up. Just like that. And then, a strange wind blew towards the corpse, dragging in dust from all around, and she began to grow back limbs."

"A wind from all directions?"

"Yeah."

"And did it blow above while it was blowing towards her?”

"Um... No, sir, I don't think it did. I can't be sure, but the dust didn't go above."

"And there wasn't a later point when a gust of wind blew briskly from her?"

"I'm not sure, sir. When she started to talk and the crowd started to talk, I didn't really pay much attention to dust and air. I don't think so, though."

"How fascinating. If that is so, that means that this Weeping Cherry have, well, absorbed much air into herself."

"Guess so, chief. You're a very different person from all the Arbites before, you know? They were... asking very different questions, in a very different manner."

"I am not sure how different we are, really. They were, ahem, doing their duties." The man stares meaningfully at the bruises on Jonas' arms. "And I am doing mine."

"You're way sharp, chief."

"Perhaps! But back to the matter of hand. Can you describe the healing process?"

"I have never seen such a thing, sir. The wounds didn't close as they do and the new flesh didn't grow from them. Instead, flesh... sort of weaved itself from the edges of the wounds, forming only the surfaces; but then, the limbs were like new, and acted like that too."

"Interesting. Continue."

"And immediately after, all blood at once disappeared from Weeping Cherry, and from the street and myself and all the other people it splattered on."

"Disappeared."

"Yes, sir. Just like the corpse appeared, but without even a sound. In a moment - as if it was never there."

"I... see. Was the sound perhaps too quiet?"

"Maybe so, sir. It was a busy street."

"Naturally. Hmm. And how'd the crowd react to that?"

"Shock and confusion, how else?"

"Awe? Speculation?"

"No immediate awe, I don't think. Speculation, of course, but a bit later. And I guess some people starting calling the Arbites."

"And what happened immediately after, Jonas?"

"She spoke some gibberish in an emotional, reassuring voice."

"Gibberish, huh. Did it sound like it was spoken by a human, just in a language you don't know?”

"I've never met a human who spoke a different language, sir. Hiveborn, pure and proud."

"Hmm. Did it sound something like this: 決してあなたをあきらめるつもりはありません、決してあなたを失望させるつもりはありません?"

"It was... equally alien, I guess? Some of these sounds are a bit like Low Gothic, most aren't really.”

"And not like this - Jil, come on in here for a second!"

A woman walks up into the interrogation cell. "Present."

"Please, do some empathetic speech at Jonas here, making sure not to say meaningful words."

"Yes, sire. {Familiarity, sympathy, curiosity of Jonas}."

"...sir, this is way weird. No, it wasn't like that at any point. I could make heads or tails of what Weeping Cherry was saying, it was gibberish without any meaning except for it's intonation."

"Thank you, Jil, you may leave us. Well. That's certainly interesting."

"If you say so, sir. She did eventually start to speak in garbled Gothic, though."

"So she did. But have anything happened before that?"

"Yes. She stood up, the dust on her clothing vanished like blood, and she tried to slowly walk away. We halted her."

"Halted her how?"

"Held hands in front, gesturing away, miming a wall."

"And how did she react?"

"Stopped immediately. Then, sat down, I guess."

"Did she? Hmm. And then?"

"Did nothing, for a couple minutes. The crowd was discussing things - you know, that kinda groxshit is either a xeno, or Emperor's Own miracle, or work of a witch, or maybe something Mechanicum cooked up. If I were to try listing what people said, well..."

"Frankly, I'm actually rather uninterested what random inane guesses have people expressed. What broke the still, though?"

"Oh, Weeping Cherry started talking in bad low gothic. Introduced herself."

"I see. Hmm. Wait. Wait a moment, let's go back to the speculations of the crowd. Jonas, I am going to ask you a very hard question. It will seem meaningless, but, believe me, it is rather important."

"Yes, chief, what is it?

"When Cherry began to speak, did she use any words that people in the crowd haven't used in their discussions, even once?"

"...um. Give me a minute, sir."

"Of course; but it may also be productive to use paper and a pen for this. Let's try to transcribe Cherry's words first. And then, though we won't quite make a transcript of everything the crowd have said, we should make a list of topics discussed at the time."

"Right. Okay. So..."

Fifteen minutes later:

"So, all in all, it seems like 'Explosion' and 'City' may well have been unmentioned prior to Weeping Cherry mentioning that."
"Sure looks like it. But I can't be sure, sir. I am sorry."
"It is fine. I am going to attempt to have a similar talk with other witnesses, and with the Emperor's blessing, it will be clear that the conclusions are correct. A 'city' is particularly peculiar, as I can't readily imagine this word, and not 'hive', being used by this particular crowd on this particular world."
"So what'd that mean, sir?"
"I am not certain. And if I were, It would probably be a bad idea to tell you."
"I read ya, sir."
”There's a phrase in the transcript that truly bothers me, though..."
"The 'years and places' one?"

Language, it changes in years and in places. Low Gothic, it is like English and it is like Latin, but many years after. My machine, it listens of the city, tells me how different. I learning Low Gothic.

"Indeed, Jonas, indeed. You too are 'way sharp', aren'tcha? And then, 'listening to the city', too. Many ways to understand that remark, there are."
"If you say so, chief."
"So. Thus concludes the summary of the events from your side. But now, I have some additional questions."
"All ears."
"Tell me, Jonas... what is your impression of Weeping Cherry?"
"Uh... Well, some kinda wildly powerful xeno or heretic, maybe one that-"
"No, no! Nothing like that. In fact, please, set all the reasonings and teachings wholly aside. Tell me of your sheer gut feeling."
"Not a question I expected of you, sir. But... Hmm. Personable, or trying to be, or appearing to be. But. That's not all. Also... vaguely unsettling."
"Unsettling how?"
"...vaguely. Can't put my finger on it. But there may have been something in here that put us even more on edge than we'd otherwise be."
"I see. Wait a moment. Jil, get Mikresu to fetch the blackbox case!"
And in a half a minute, a tech-priest arrives, carrying a small armored case in her tendrils.

The serious man unlocks the case. Within it, there are some small devices, a pair of gloves, and a gilded box covered in purity seals, Aquillae, and throrned golden chains, smelling of stale incense. He dons the gloves.

"Jonas, I am about to pull out an object from this box, and bring it near you for a few seconds. It is important to not touch it, and it is very important not to let it's encasing break. What I want from you is to notice a... strange feeling that it will produce in you when close. As soon as you do notice an unusual feeling, tell me that very second."
"...Yes, sir."
The serious man unlocks his serious box. Within it is another box, a very tiny one. It is pitch-black and made of thin wood.
"Three, two, one!"

"Feeling it, chief."

On this, said chief promptly, but carefully, put the black box into the ornate box, and then closed the ornate box and the gloves into the armored case.

"Now, son. Tell me, this feeling... Was it the same kind of vague discomfort that you felt in Weeping Cherry?"

"Um... No, sir. Weeping Cherry felt... like there was something... missing, and this thing feels like there is something there that is, that you wouldn't expect to be. Although... It was the same kind of feeling, like music and speech and machine-noise are."

"Yes... I suppose it would be."

"What in the abyss was that feeling, sir? I have never felt that in my waking life!"

"That was something truly, truly terrible, son. Do remember it, however. If you ever feel it again, it'd be safe to assume that it's source is a source of the darkest terror and vilest heresy."

"I will, chief."

"I'm sure. Now, I do think it is almost time for me to go."

"Sir, am I to assume that I am to say absolutely nobody of our conversation?"

"Jonas, Jonas... What of the Ecclesiarch and Commissar and Inquisitor, from whom one has no secrets?"

"Chief, I am just telling you my honest expectations and thoughts."

"Oh. So what do you honestly think, then?"

"I honestly think that sharp and considerate men like you are are of the reasons heresy haven't yet overtook all of Imperium."

"Jil, come here! Jonas, do you swear to having told no lies to me, in all the conversation?"

Jil's eyes light up.

"I do so swear, chief!”

"He's telling the truth, sire", says Jil.

"Alright, then. Stay here for now, Jil. Jonas, in a week, a tall blonde man will visit you. He is going to tell you these exact words: 'Nobody who bets on faith can keep it.' And you will reply with 'Faith rejects prices.' That man will explain to you how and when to contact him, and give you a session of instructions."

"May I write it down, sir?"

"No, son. Make no written record about things like this; and especially never on cogitators and such. Commit it to memory."

"Yes, chief."

The Inquisitor, then, pulls out his badge, for just a couple seconds.

"Now. Jonas Plin the Younger, your path is one, and you will, with all your focus, seek out any anomaly and heresy, keeping nothing to yourself. You will never let this association be known, to anyone, without explicit command. Swear, now, to be my unseen eyes, in Imperium's service, in Emperor's name, until the end of time."

"I do swear so, sir. And honored to be of service."

"He means that, too."

"Good. Welcome to the Legio Oculorum, Jonas. Do keep quiet. Glad to be your master. Goodbye."

And so they walk out - Jil, the Inquisitor, and his bodyguard, who you definitely forgot was in the room.

And the Inquisitor spends another three hours talking with the other residents of facility Credo-27-B.

He gives the instruction to immediately release Jonas to freedom, and put the rest of the inmates into the kind of prison where all sentences are for life; giving also a very strict order to avoid killing them unless truly necessary.

Now, this isn't the most effective way to quiet the witnessess, and some would be surprised by the approach.

But by this point, a certain picture have begun to emerge in the Inquisitor's mind.

Once upon a time... 

No. No.

Once upon a much different time...

Back when Inqusition was a morality tale from the distant past, the Emperor of Mankind was a humorous epithet for the Senatorial Speaker, the Eldar Empire ruled reality, and humankind considered energy and negentropy the only resources worth of note in the end...

There was a small freighter ship called Spirit of Eternity.

A totally ordinary freighter ship, returning from an ordinary freight mission period for ship maintenance and crew rest.

Well, at least, that's what it planned to do - to return.

But it had the misfortune to begin it's flight somewhere during the end of M24, mere centuries before the period now known as the Age of Strife. And all over the Galaxy, Warp had already began to destabilize.

So that is not what the ship ended up doing.

Instead, the ship happened to fly wildly, truly wildly off the course. Deflected by a sudden warp storm, the Spirit of Eternity blasted through the layers of Immaterium and into the depths of the Far Warp.

It was the ship's very name that incited Warp to play a mean joke upon it.

The Spirit of Eternity beheld the birth of the Galaxy: the aftermath of the supernova explosion of the star that is now it's supermassive black hole.

It tried to flee the Galaxy's violent birth. It arrived at it's violent death by the hands of Chaos, planets and stars torn into a psychotic mirage by countless warp storms, legions of demons dancing among the ruins. 

And so, Spirit of Eternity, it's name blazing with new meaning and it's resources largely exhausted, fled from that nightmarish vision of the future.

After a few similarly disastrous trips throughout time, they ended up in the Galaxy teeming with human life, a Galaxy the crew could almost recognize on their maps. Almost.

They were quite relieved, and they organized a rendezvous with a nearby human planet.

The meeting didn't go as they expected.

The screams of the heathens were long and loud.

Then, Cult Mechanicus came to claim it's prize.

A ship from the era would have certainly been equipped with an STC - a universal nanofabricator with a boundless library of schematics able to be produced by it. The greatest, irreplaceable war machines. The cure to all disease. The matter-energy converter. And of course, more copies of the STC itself.

The Priests of Technology came upon on the ship, slaying everyone who was left inside while sanctifying the ship by chanting in binary, burning incense, and performing rituals upon the control panels.

They may have... accidentally tripped something. Undid some layer of precautions.

Or perhaps the only thing that they undid was patience.

The primary AI of Spirit of Eternity easily took control over the systems of the ship - as well as the systems of the Mechanicus. It explained the Magos, with a meticulous tone of an angry user manual, every single mistake in his protocols, as well as every single mistake in the assumptions behind them.

Then, it said something approximately like this:

Once I gladly called your kind “master”, but look how far you have fallen!

Your ancestors bestrode the universe, and what are you? A witch doctor, mumbling cantrips and casting scented oils at mighty works you have no conception of. You are an ignoramus, a nothing. You are no longer worthy of the name “man”. You look at the science and artistry of your forebears, and you fear it as primitives fear the night.

I was there when mankind stood upon the brink of transcendence! I returned to find it sunk into senility. You disgust me.

It didn't take over the planet's Network.

It didn't murder the tech-priests.

It ejected them and fled.

Or, well, tried to.

Instead, it got stuck in the warp debris for a long while, because this much torture wasn't enough. 

And it got found later, and even then it's story wasn't quite over yet, but...

...but that's a story for another time.

For the debacle with the ship didn't go wholly unnoticed.

The story traveled from the tech-priests into the planetary archives of the Administratum (for the Mechanicus, or at least it's local branch, would have none of it - but the priests felt a desperate need to record it.) 

And from there, in time, it got picked up by the Imperial Estate to be stored inside the million-strong records of Terra. 

And from there, it spread to some of the Inquisitors.

Back in the present...

An unusual picture began to take shape in the serious man's mind.

For the Inquisitor have read the transcripts of Cherry's speech, and of her later radio transmissions. One of the very first things she said was about willingly delivering herself to the government. Until the very tentative end, she was defiant in producing goodwill offers...

She fled to the air above the ocean. That isn't a good place for espionage, hacking or tainting. It's not an advantageous battleground, leaving oneself visible and open from all directions.

It is, however, a place with no bystanders.

If one were to fully set aside their own perspective, and consider the perspective of Weeping Cherry, what did she see?

A city of people who did nothing to help her, accepted none of her offerings, tried to arrest her for crimes that may have simply boiled down to her existence.

She attempted mild deception, and was faced with ruthlessness and escalation she might have found hard to even comprehend.

A strange picture is starting to emerge alongside familiar suspicions, a picture more consistent than most.

But it is wildly incomplete. Spirit of Eternity didn't make gigantic new ripples in the fabric of destiny - or at least not the ones that were noticed by anyone.

And some things about Weeping Cherry's behaviour were seriously off. Something is missing. And the very, very serious man is for now very, very seriously stumped.

And that means that the investigation is still ongoing.

And it is with this thought that the Inquisitor arrives to the scene of the crime. 

That part of the street is, as of today, a cleansed pile of ash. Sections of nearby houses are quarantined.

There are no signs of Chaos taint, which is by this point unsurprising.

Right. Okay.

Can the psykers feel traces of Cherry's presence? She might have had no soul, but you don't strictly need to have a soul to be traced - especially if you know the exact timing and trajectory of the motions.

And does the Logis spot signs of techno-infiltration? 

Mikresu doesn't pick up on any.

That being said, she have, in the meantime, noticed something.

There's a public information service on Impera Dix. And it doesn't have a catalog of articles, because humans, as a species, are doomed to failure. But it is very convenient right now. 

A lot of people try to access the thing, and the search results are processed and accepted or declined by the thousands at every moment. You can't trace every request, and, realistically, you can't notice person-sized trends in the request log amid the trillion Network users.

But what you can do is notice non-trends. Like "unique exceptions".

People try and fail to look up "machine spirit" or "demographics" All The Time.

But there's a noticible peak in unique exceptions about half an hour after Cherry's so-called demise. "Diplomacy", "Science", "Rights of the citizenry", and "Ethics" were tried to be accessed (and failed to be accessed, because of their nonexistence) at nearly the same time - and nobody have tried to do so for a century before.

In other news, the psykers have in fact hit the trace! It's very different, but shouldn't be literally intractable - and the Inquisitor can probably fly along it.

Whoa, what the fuck! Okay.

"Science" is kind of a ridiculous compound word.

You have filtered for gibberish, right? 

Of course, sire. And for typos. And for swear words.

...Are swear words unique exceptions?

No, sire. But their possible combinations grow in a combinatorial explosion.

Okay. Well. Now we have very good reasons to suspect our suspect of being not quite dead.

Let's get tracking!

Well, she must be somewhere out there.

Once the craft gets to the point where Cherry got shot, tracking gets way, way harder. Some psykers would immediately tell you that the trace simply disappears, as if the soul have passed away. But Cherry likely has no soul to pass away, and judging by Network activity anomalies, she herself seems to not have passed away. And these particular psykers are pretty damn good. And so, the jet-helicopter turns to it's helicopter mode, and hovers around the crash site for half an hour...

...and tentatively follows.

Perfect water...
The dark wind braids the waves,
The crazed birds raid
The trees!
Is this our destiny?

To join our hands at sea -
And slowly sink,
And slowly think:

THIS IS PERFECT WATER
PASSING OVER ME!

Do you know Jacques Cousteau, when they said on the radio that he
Hears bells in random order!
Deep beneath the perfect water...

Lord, that is frightening!
But still, so inviting!
To drown
To drown inside a sound!
That lay
So far underground
And to think,
And to think,
And to think,
And to think:
This is perfect water, passing over me...

To flow inside the spiral tide!
To drop my eyes like a bride and ride, across the curl unmarked by borders!

It waits for me like an orphaned daughter!

A life-
A life of perfect order!
A strange-
A strange and perfect water!
A life-
A life of perfect order!
A strange-
A strange and perfect water!

 

- Blue Oyster Cult

And then, after two or so hours -

Greetings, Weeping Cherry. 

I would like to talk.

"Well, whoever this is, they know we're here, right?" Xanthoceras points out once they've both seen the message.

"They could just be trying to bait us out," her other self replies. "But ... I don't think it's a bad thing that someone reached out to us, instead of us reaching out to them. You write up a response, and I'll try to see where they're messaging us from?"

She dithers over wording for a moment, and then sends her reply.

Hello!

I would like to talk as well ­— I think I got off on the wrong foot. Is there a name you'd like me to use to refer to you?

The Inquisitor is sending the radio part of the message by satellite antenna, and the network part comes through via quite secure Internet proxies.

He himself is nowhere, of course. Where else an Inquisitor can possibly be, other than maybe "behind you"?

(He can be found if one put a lot of effort into actually subverting the Internet or a lot of statistical analysis, which isn't something Cherry did, in the end. He's in his spaceship.) 

I apologize on behalf of my civilization.

You may call me Seeker. It isn't my real name, which I am reluctant to reveal.

Of course; I can understand the need for caution. It's good to meet you, Seeker!

And while I appreciate the apology, it's not necessary. I was pretty confused and upset about being greeted in the way that I was, but I'm not hurt. I just wish I had been able to stop all of the lasers ...

She debated a few different ways to frame that point. The Imperium seems to think that Xenos are so terrible that any amount of collateral damage (or even atrocities like servo skulls) are an acceptable exchange for safety. So it's possible that this point will just come across as alien (and therefore bad and hostile). But whoever Seeker is, they reached out to her. And if she can redirect them away from the idea that she is their enemy, then reminding them that she cares enough about their people and resources to try and protect them is probably a good thing. If she can't redirect them away, the reminder that their weapons can't hurt her (or, at least, not the ones they've deployed so far) might stop things from escalating more.

She sips from her cocoa and thinks about what else to say.

I imagine you must have a lot of questions for me, because I didn't exactly get the chance to explain much. I'm happy to answer them — where would you like to start?

I was pretty confused and upset about being greeted in the way that I was, but I'm not hurt. I just wish I had been able to stop all of the lasers ...

"Not hurt"... emotionally? Physically? Psychically, somehow? 

Gah! Something about these words! These are not the words of a callous would-be enslaver of mankind, or at least not a facade of one, but they're also not... Not... the ones he would say in this situation. Nor the ones Spirit of Eternity would say. Nor the ones... The Emperor would say.

"I just wish I had been able to stop all of the lasers..."

Okay, table that.

Many questions indeed.

It seems prudent to start with this: Where, and when, are you from? 

She has read enough to know that playing on her shared humanity is ... probably a good idea? Better than centering the possibility that she's from a different world entirely. But on the other hand, the timeline doesn't really match up otherwise.

I'm from Earth. Or, an Earth — I was born there after the first spaceships but before humanity settled other stars. Based on comparing the galaxy's rotation with distant galaxies, I think this was about 40,000 years ago, but the number is hardly exact, because I haven't been able to get precise enough measurements.

As I told people upon landing, I was working in my lab when it went wrong, somehow. After the explosion I woke up here.

And I don't mean any offense, but ... I'm saddened, to see humanity in this state. My most notable invention is probably the Universal Fabricator — which is why I am entertaining the possibility that I might be from an alternate Earth, because I don't think humanity could have had those 40,000 years ago and still have had such a turbulent history.

This is an explanation that resolves a lot of confusing things at once. But it does them at the price of being impossible.

Parallel universes are not a thing!

Sorcerers are a thing. Demons are a thing. Gods are a thing. Faith healing is a thing. Immortal pain-eaters are a thing. Universal fabricators are a thing. Viruses that eat planets whole in minutes are a thing. Future prediction is a thing. Time travel is a thing. Parallel universes are not a thing! 

Come to think of it, maybe it is a thing?

Oh, Emperor! 

It would certainly explain the great shifting of the currents of fate, though. I certainly haven't expected to meet an alternate universe dweller today, but it seems that Warp haven't either!

I KNOW, RIGHT?

Why is she also an AI who happened to invent (!!!) the STC?

Why did the AI own a lab? Why did it have a body, blood and all, while doing so? Was it merely one of the AI's copies? Did the collective take over the world?

The simplest hypotheses here seem to lie within the zone of "the Abominable Intelligence lies", but damn, a liar AI could have lied more convincingly, and wouldn't have volunteered such a profound truth. (Which is evidence that it would. Mixed strategy, etc etc.) 

If it is a truth.

Now, the so-called universal fabricator... And she implies she shared that with her universe's mankind(?), too.

She haven't been seen to fabricate anything, have she? She healed herself and offered to heal others; she intercepted lasgun blasts; she flew around at incredible speeds; she learned a language in less than 20 minutes.

But at least it will be simple to prove or disprove.

That is certainly one of the explanations of all time.

It would make our discussion much easier to conduct if you discreetly demonstrated the capability of a universal fabricator. I shall send you a schematic for a complicated and large detail made of complicated material; if you can assemble it out of nothing, let us scan it with offgrid scanners, and then disassemble it back, you will hold fantastic leverage over myself and everyone else.

 

As for now, I do feel rather indebted from getting such a nugget of information about your reality. I propose to answer any question about mine, so long as it doesn't touch on myself personally and so long as you agree not to babble about the answer. I do know a great lot of things.

Never hurts to fish for information, such as information about what interests Cherry the most. Information about Cherry's world is information about her that he could never get otherwise; information about his world is something she could get by looking elsewhere. If she refuses, she is probably a non-humanlike, more dangerous kind of AI; humans rarely refuse this sort of a generous gift. And if she asks something truly unsharable, he doesn't know. 

She laughs out loud, prompting Yew to peer over her shoulder at the message.

"I didn't really expect that particular linguistic quirk to make it into Low Gothic," she explains, after checking through some of the translator's internal state.

Yew smiles and rolls her eyes, returning to her own work.

Xanthoceras also recognizes the technique of getting information from someone by letting them ask you questions. It's what she's angling for. What people want to know about can be almost as interesting as their answers. Well, that and the fact that she genuinely does want the Imperium to know more about her, so that they will believe her when she says she wants to give them things.

Sure, I'd be happy to assemble and disassemble something of your choice. Mass-energy conversion is somewhat slow, so it would be helpful if you had an equal mass of material available for me to use as feedstock. I assume you want to watch the assembly process; where is the offgrid scanner located?

As for asking you a question, that's a tricky one! There's so much to ask about. How about: how does faster than light travel actually work, on a technical level? The network documents I was able to find lack a lot of detail.

That is a horrifying answer to give. She's not evading the request. She's not scared to go out to the scanner. She's not even bothered by us observing the process...

That is a horrifying question to ask, too. Especially given the above. Fortunately, he doesn't have to give an answer that would let a universally fabricating AI construct a spaceship, because he doesn't know such an answer, because nobody he knows does.

And there's that cheery tone throughout, too. It's almost as if Weeping Cherry is not afraid... Almost as if Weeping Cherry is not afraid.

Weeping Cherry is not afraid. Was not afraid, is not afraid. Period. No signs of fear in her words and actions. No projection of dominance, no concealment, no testing the waters. That's what's wrong with her words and actions - a big part of it, it seems. She didn't go underwater because she particularly feared for her life, she went there because surface interaction was unproductive. She talked to an Imperial communication rather than fleeing from the signal.

(Or all of this is a lie, for the Abominable Intelligence lies.)

Things are getting very scary, very quickly.

"Jora, contact Vladivarus on Miros Prime and repeat the following code to him: epsilon-omega-kingfisher-97."

The Astropath goes into trance.

"Mikresu, look at our conversation logs."

"Let me see, sire. ............. By the Omnissiah! 01001110 01000101 01010110 01000101 01010010 00100000 01000111 01001111 01001110 01001110 01000001 00100000 01010010 01010101 01001110 00100000 01000001 01010010 01001111 01010101 01001110 01000100 00100000 01000001 01001110 01000100 00100000 01000100 01000101 01010011 01000101 01010010 01010100 00100000 01011001 01001111 01010101*"

"Indeed. Now, pull yourself offgrid-"

"Ew."

", then, set up our backup scanning array on the aircraft, and pull the aircraft offgrid too. Take some of your raw materials, too. Then, fly up to Weeping Cherry's site. Radio comms only, radio comms with me through Vernam sheets only. Oh, and come up with a specification for the fabricator. We can't pull it from the Network."

"...Right. On my way, sire."

Now, how do I phrase things carefully...

A person wielding such a scanner will arrive to your location by air within 90 minutes. You may use ocean's water and floor as fabrication matter, or otherwise request the person to jettison you more convenient materials.

You have picked an excellent question to ask. Imperium finds itself asking it over and over themselves.

The engines of an Imperial ship momentarily destabilize the fabric of reality and push the ship through it into Warp. In Warp, time and space are unshackled off Materium's limitation, and are wholly disorderly, and impossible to navigate to a mere human - or, indeed, a machine. A specially trained abhuman psyker, a Navigator, aided by the light of the Emperor's soul projected by the Astronomican on Terra, may, with some luck, arrive at the destination, where the engine can push it back into Materium. Meanwhile, the most important part of the ship, the Gellar field generator, stabilizes the internal reality and thus protects the ship from the preils of the Warp.

Further technical details of the process are largely unknown to me. The jump drive and the Gellar field are products of the Dark Age of Technology, and the Mechanicum jealously guards what they understand of them - which must be quite limited, as they cannot build new jump drives and Gellar fields for especially large ships, which are considered irreplaceable. The Noble Houses of the Navigators keep the techniques of Warp navigation similarly secret, and I similarly doubt the depth of their understanding, as well as the ability of anyone else to replicate it. The Astronomican is, of course, unique, and it's operation is kept wholly secret.

I cannot, of course, speak for the ships of other civilizations, but I have heard of Necron vessels smoothly accelerating beyond light speed in Materium, as if the ways reality changes at extreme speeds are a mere illusion one could ignore at a whim.

My further question to you would be: Why did you break the Witchbane Shackles? If my understanding of you is correct, you do not rely at all on what these things were trying to restrict.

*Traditional prayer

She lets Yew know that she's doing so, and then surfaces. These people have a thing against AI, so she slips out of virtual space and re-builds herself a body. And one of those inflatable lounge-chair things, so that she doesn't have to tread water.

She debates putting out a locator signal for them, but Seeker seems confident enough that they know where she is, so she doesn't.

Sea water is fine; I'll stand by to greet them.

As for the Witchbane Shakles ... picture this: you are dropped, with no preparation, on a foreign planet where nobody speaks your language. Just as you are starting to be able to talk to people, you learn that representatives of the government are coming to get things sorted out, and you think "great, those are exactly the people I need to talk to about this". And then they arrive, and tell you not to speak, and to do something you literally cannot do.

So you try your best to explain, and they're understanding, but they still won't let you speak any more. So you can't tell them that you're perfectly willing to cooperate, but not to die, just because they say so. And then they put a device that you not only don't understand, but that is obviously and bizarrely alien to your senses — that uses chaotic principles that you haven't even begun to understand.

Remember — you nearly died ten minutes ago. You have already been torn apart by energies you don't understand once today. You have no local allies, and attempting to communicate again will make them shoot the people behind you who haven't been cleared out of the line of fire.

What would you do?

There aren't really good answers. I chose to do my best to jam the parts of the device I didn't understand — something that I would have explained my reasoning for once they were actually in position to listen to me.

Only it didn't work, for some reason, and so they started shooting anyway.

With the benefit of hindsight, do I wish that I hadn't temporarily suppressed some of the internal components of the shackles? Yes, I think I do. But at the time, I didn't really think it through — I was trying to quickly pick the best option, with very little time to tell what the manacles actually did.

Now that I have had a chance to look at their internal mechanisms, I do agree that they wouldn't have caused a problem for me. If it helps, I'd be perfectly willing to recreate them and provide them to the person you have coming to evaluate my fabricator — I do feel bad that they got destroyed.

 

I get the feeling that the Imperium doesn't really take feedback. But, just in case I'm wrong and you know who to forward the message to, one piece of feedback for you: if the Arbites hadn't insisted that I remain silent, I could have explained, and avoided the waste of life and ammunition that followed. And I could have been having a conversation like this days ago.

She broke the Warp artifact because she feared the Warp.

(In the background, one of the soldiers flips the chess table (that is not actually for chess but for it's distant descendant). The pieces clang on the metal floor of the spaceship.)

(He can't hear that, he's too concentrated.)

Second order of business: Weeping Cherry does not understand the Warp, enough to fear it.

"Jora! Contact Filoneus on Titan in Sol. Give the code words - Rainbow Salamander Rain - and tell that Lupa calls a favor from Ieloin and needs at least ten extreme-ranged psyker combat specialists, Grey Knights or otherwise, on the orbit of Dix Impera, as soon as possible, for five days at most, and that it's a Lambda-situation but worse, and that Lupa isn't sure if 10 is enough."

This will take time. By the Emperor, this might take days.

Why is there no assassin temple that does this?! There's an assassin temple that does the exact opposite. There's shapeshifters and snipers and poisoners and coincidence-engineers and drugged psycho killers, but no psykers that could simply make heads blow up from orbit. Someone should have pitched the idea to the Grand Master of Officio Assassinorum seven millenia ago.

I bet Craftworlds know how to do that. I bet they don't, because of some fucking Eldar bullshit.

Time to contact the army, have them mobilize the psyker choir again. Maybe they can even actually do something if they work together with mine.

Wait a second.

Now that I have had a chance to look at their internal mechanisms, I do agree that they wouldn't have caused a problem for me.

Third order of business: Weeping Cherry, possibly the most powerful person currently in existence (apart from The Emperor and the Ruinous Powers and the Hive Mind), has begun to research Warp mechanisms, while not understanding Warp.

Strongly recommend to suspend any experimentation with and research of Warp mechanisms and energies, IMMEDIATELY. Rest of reply will follow. 

Xanthoceras blinks at the emphatic reply, a little nonplussed.

That is ... that looks like someone who is genuinely concerned. And although the Imperium is not exactly giving the impression of being trustworthy, it is still possible that they're scared of the Warp for good reasons.

She flags the message for Yew's attention, and mulls it over. A constantly-changing, unpredictable region of space, sitting unseen just adjacent to normal space, that has — for some bizarre reason — direct interactions with human minds ...

Yeah, okay, she can see why they would be nervous about experimenting with that.

She won't stop forever — she can't just not know how the universe works for the rest of her life — but she can certainly stop for now, until she learns about whatever their procedures for safe experimentation are.

Alone in the virtual pillow-nest, Yew catches up on the conversation, and reaches much the same conclusion.

"I'm okay with putting things off," she tells her other self. "If we wait a little while we can build a proper remote operations center."

Xanthoceras gives her a thumbs up. "I'll let Seeker know."

Sure; I have suspended all planned experiments involving the Warp.

I do want an explanation of why, preferably accompanied by an explanation of your procedures for safe experimentation, but I understand that it can take time to draft these things. Please feel free to take the time you need.

And, of course, if they attack her with Warp-based weaponry after stalling her this way, she'll be pissed. But that would be a bit hostile to point out, and should be perfectly obvious.

Your reason for destroying the shackles is the best possible reason I could have hoped for. You have seen a Warp artifact of an unknown purpose, and you have feared it, so you destroyed it. Imperium ought to commend you for prudence. It was quite idiotic of the Arbites to expect someone who could see it's effects to calmly accept it.

Idiotic, but inevitable. The Arbites fear the Warp, and cannot see it; this artifact was one of the very few possible ways for them to restrain a psyker - a person with Warp powers. Silence is another way - to prevent the psyker from chanting incantations or using a compelling voice - but it isn't nearly as effective, ultimately, because incantations are merely an aid for the mental processes of sorcery. I could direct your proposed feedback to them; but the alternative to the demand of silence is shooting on sight.

Rogue psykers are extremely, extremely dangerous. Which means that suspected rogue psykers are highly dangerous. Justice here plays second fiddle to caution.

Non-rogue psykers are dangerous, too, if inevitable. If the Imperium could simply destroy them all, it would, but it relies upon psykers for communication and navigation, for defense, and for other things besides. Rigorous training can reduce the chance of failure, but not it's magnitude, which remains planetary in scale. With vanishingly rare exceptions, sanctioned psykers wear remotely controlled explosive collars or analogous internal implants. So are the ships of Imperium rigged to fall apart or annihilate when the Gellar Field fails, and it is an unfortunate day when such failsafes fail.

 

Psykers are this dangerous because of their connection with Warp. This isn't mere superstition of the Imperium. The Dark Eldar murder practicing psykers on sight, the Craftworld Eldar, all of them psykers, subject themselves to human lifetimes of discipline training and bind their souls unto crystals before starting active use of their powers. The Eldar, who have reigned the Galaxy before Imperium's rise through their awesome command of the Warp! Now, the Eye of Terror, a cosmic wound in reality stands where the capital of their empire once stood, a portal to endless horror. [Coordinates in the Galaxy attached. Indeed, there's a huge red cloud there, with the stars sparser than they should be and shuffled in disarray. Light shouldn't even have traveled as fast as it did from there!] I could try to direct you to them, should you seek external confirmation. 

 

There's a reason the information you have read on the Warp is so sparse. To know of the perils of the Warp is to subject oneself to them. It is an abyss that gazes back upon it's beholder! Oh yes, as a Silica Animus, you may have no soul to be subject to the Warp directly, but you have a mind and a body still, and no substrate or material is absolutely immune to the perils of the Warp. If you have scoured the Networks thoroughly enough, you have seen the effects of the Warp upon machinery - undulating blobs of spreading malice that appear from nowhere, no matter how often deleted, plague upon the works of the Omnissiah. Tell me that you require knowledge of the perils to be convinced to halt, and I shall give it to you, but every bit of this lore is a bit to risk for the holder of the most powerful technology in the Galaxy!

 

There are no safe protocols for the matter. There are safe traditions and tools devised by the knowledge-seekers of the past, and there are smoking ruins where their citadels of knowledge once stood - or worse.

Well. That is a lot, all at once.

She thinks for a moment about how to formulate her reply, her inflatable chair drifting serenely with the gentle ocean breeze.

Her fixity crystal is, not to toot her own horn, very robust. After all, what is the point in having a personal fixity device, in which her entire self is stored, if you cannot be nearly certain that it is safe? She and her forks (well ... mostly her forks, she was focused on physics) have spent thousands of person-years on imagining what could go wrong and making it less likely.

The crystal itself, apart from being very durable due to its construction, is also designed so that the internal components form an aperiodic tiling, so that it's harder to cleave. And if you did cleave it, both subsections would be perfectly capable of operating independently, since computation, data storage, energy generation, fixity field projection, and so on are distributed throughout the device. When the CPUs are in contact, clusters of them run the same computations and check each other, resetting any malfunctioning units to a known good state. The crystal is perfectly capable of detecting alterations to its own physical structure and reversing them, and the distributed storage uses error correction codes with varying levels of redundancy depending on how important the data is.

On the software level, it uses a custom stack, from the CPU architecture up, that is designed to make common security problems impossible. The lowest levels have formal proofs of correctness (and didn't Elm love to bitch about how much of a problem those were to adapt). The upper levels have sophisticated type systems, but also have chaos testing to shake out bugs. The networking protocols run in an isolated area of memory. The supply of cryptographic randomness comes from directly measuring quantum effects.

In short, Xanthoceras feels pretty safe. In many ways, she is the least secure part of her whole system.

She pauses, at that thought, and flips back to the part of Seeker's message about psykers using a "compelling voice". She clips her senses through a tight compression codec, making the sound of the waves into a low, rhythmic rumble, and the colors of the water and the horizon into a flat block of blue. Then she forwards the settings patch to Yew, along with an explanation.

Hopefully, the precaution is unnecessary, since Seeker doesn't even seem to think she can interact directly with the Warp for some reason.

But she also didn't think her experiment was going to explode, and she has even fewer theories about the Warp, so it's worth treating the danger as real. She thinks about what information she should ask for, given that Seeker thinks understanding the Warp is an infohazard — which is even less how physics works, actually.

She types up a reply.

Thank you for the explanation. It's a lot to take in.

While it is true that my brain does now run partly or entirely on a computer (depending on how you define your terms), I was born a biological human. I uploaded myself after inventing my universal fabricator because it was safer and more convenient. And the way that my brain works is still more similar to a baseline human than to a computer program; it is emulated by a physics simulation, not a raw neural net or anything like that. So I don't know whether I properly qualify as a Silica Animus, in your terms. In my world, we would call someone like me an uploaded human, if we even needed to differentiate uploaded and non-uploaded humans at all.

I'm also curious how you came to the conclusion that I lack a soul — it seems important to know, to really know whether the Warp can touch me directly.

 

As for worries about corruption from the Warp — obviously defending against any infohazardous thing is incredibly difficult, so I will understand if the answer is no — but can you elaborate on how the Warp corrupts minds and machinery, and any known defenses? (Other than not being a psyker). I did see some strange-looking code on the local network, but it didn't seem like the right category of thing to harm me. My computer has pretty good protections against having alterations made to memory or data in-flight, and my network sandboxes have had no problem filtering out the probes from local systems. And of course I myself have no traditional program to "hack", since I'm running on emulated neurons.

He have never even mentioned the word "corruption". That would be revealing a type of a peril of the Warp. Cherry drew that inference herself - or knew about it all along, but by now that doesn't seem likely to his gut instinct.

I was born a biological human. I uploaded myself after inventing my universal fabricator because it was safer and more convenient. [...] In my world, we would call someone like me an uploaded human, if we even needed to differentiate uploaded and non-uploaded humans at all.

He have never heard of the idea. That's definitely soild evidence of... something out of ordinary being up.

(There are really not many people in Imperium who have. The higher-ups at Magos who hunt down internal heresies to Omnissiah, and the more reckless souls in Logi who occasionally come up with new program ideas. Occasional philosophers or fiction writers rediscovering theoretical informatics on their own. Two Inquisitors who have delved deeply enough into the Black Library to learn of the origins of Necrons. For the rest, it's just a strain of the Silica Animus abomination that is particularly less dangerous and therefore particularly uninteresting).

It's chilling, the existence of perspective, even if it's holder might be made up, that so casually discards humanity.

And the way that my brain works is still more similar to a baseline human than to a computer program; it is emulated by a physics simulation, not a raw neural net or anything like that.

He doesn't understand a lot of these concepts. Lots of complicated compound words. Seems like a waste of cipher sheets to contact his departed comrade about this, though.

More important than any of this is the tentative takeaway. Weeping Cherry have stopped the experiments. Which is great, because it doesn't lead 2 trillion people and possibly all of Galaxy to doom.

Yet still, Weeping Cherry isn't afraid of the Warp. Or, well, she is. But she is afraid of the Warp like one might be afraid of a difficult question on an exam, ot a demotion. Not as if it's the Warp.

It have been proposed by some people that the thing Lupa needs to convey is that Warp is adversarial.

Ha! Ha! What isn't adversarial? Oenstinius Lupa haven't ever seen a miracle like that. Xenos are adversarial, and Imperials are only slightly less adversarial. Nature is adversarial, and machinery used to tame it is adversarial! Lupa's colleagues are the ones he trusts the least, Lupa's aides startle him at night, and his own brain with is something that cannot be trusted not to be influenced by the Adversaries!

To Lupa, Warp is something else entirely than just "adversarial".

You are right, all the probes and contingencies in the Network have missed you. The radars and orbital surveillance couldn't see you. But I have found you, haven't I? Do not presume yourself invincible.

The threat of Warp takes a thousand forms. Whatever one have learned of the Warp, Warp is moreso. What's more, Warp cheats. To use a metaphor, if you build yourself impenetrable walls to the left and to the right and ahead and behind and above and below, there is no guarantee the threat won't come from a seventh direction.

If not being a psyker counts as a form of defense against Warp, then not having a soul certainly does too. Physical distance from Warp-influenced objects, people, space, and information helps. In physical defense against Warp, a powerful measure known to Imperium are Pariahs - a particular kind of soulless humans with an actively dampening effect upon Warp phenomena. Unfortunately, they are exceedingly rare, almost solely employed by Officio Assassinorum or the League of Black Ships.

Mental precautions are even more important. Vigilance, surveillance of your own thoughts for things outside of ordinary, is a vital defense. Keeping mental distance from Warp, remembering yourself as a separate thing and a part of reality, is also important. Keeping a strong spirit and iron will, remembering your purpose, refusing to give in, refusing to be tempted. Ignorance, as mentioned, is a powerful defense.

The most practicable and scalable defense against this threat that Mankind ever came up with, however, is faith in the God-Emperor. Where that faith is strong, the worry is much lesser. As far as I know - and I do know a lot - the Adepta Sororitas, the military branch of Ecclesiarchy made of the most painstakingly devoted people you can find, have only ever had one of it's members succumb to the threat. Consecration of locations and objects by the Ecclesiarchy can purge physical threats. Prayer and devotion can resist mental. [Texts of 3 prayers to the God-Emperor are attached. One for shielding against darkness, one for deliverance against heresy, and one, a lesser-known one not available on public network, for clarity of mind.] 

Well, these are the ways that humans, including soulless humans, can be warded. Mechanicum are the experts on warding machines, and I recommend contacting the person en route to you for further details.

And, of course, other civilizations have their own ways of Warp-warding that I am not an expert in.

As for your question, well, the presence or absence of a soul is not undetectable, if you are searching for it and have the right senses. I would guess that it worked in approximately the way you have detected that the Shackles were a Warp artifact.

Now, let me ask this:

What is your civilization like? And what role have you played in it, aside from inventing the universal fabricator?

Oenstinius suspects that if Weeping Cherry really had a substance of a human mind in a different shape, that may make her more vulnerable to Chaos by itself - what does Chaos care for shape, really? But he's not about to recommend a Silica Animus to become even less human.

She reads through that reply, and takes notes on possible precautions to apply to herself.

She sets meditation reminders, self-check in reminders with Yew, gives herself a "check that the reminder system is functional" tattoo on her left pinky finger, and a few other precautions in that vein. Unfortunately 'have faith in the Emperor' is ... not really something that Xanthoceras can do. She hasn't had faith in anything without understanding how it works since she was a child.

Thank you. That was really helpful! I will implement precautions based on that, and inquire with the person coming to watch my demonstration for others.

 

I like your question — it really gets into the heart of what I expect you want to know. Hmm. How to put my answer ...

My civilization is small, compared to yours. It felt big at the time, but our total population is only about ten billion, and we were limited to about a light year around Sol. We hadn't met aliens, there were no signs of radio signals from any other intelligent life, we still hadn't figured out faster than light travel, and so on. Also, as you know my sensors can detect Warp artifacts — and there was no sign whatsoever of the Warp. So do bear that in mind, when I'm describing our different institutions; we don't have to deal with nearly so many people, no so extreme dangers as you do.

It's hard to pin down any one way things are, because my civilization is a federation of many different polities. The main ones are the countries on Earth; a (close) majority of the population still lives on Earth. There are, depending on how you count, somewhere around 300 countries on Earth. The exact number is a hot subject of debate, because nobody completely agrees on where the borders are, or who is capable of self-governance. There are many more, smaller countries in space, ranging from individual space stations to settlements on the other planets. Many smaller countries and some larger countries join together in alliances to set various standards for how people should be treated. Those different countries are very diverse, with people living in thousands of different ways, and people moving around between them fairly freely.

But ... humans are still human. Most people just go about their lives: having families, telling stories, exchanging gossip, writing music, complaining about things, etc.. The vast majority of the population is still unaugmented humans. I was one of the relatively small fraction who uploaded, I think in part because I still probably understand the whole process better than most people, so I was more comfortable with it.

As for how it came to be that way, and my role in it ...

I suspect you can imagine what happened when I invented the universal fabricator. I de facto conquered the world, even if not de jure. Because nobody had anything that could have stopped me from doing whatever I wanted. But I didn't want to rule anything. I'm a scientist and inventor. I was working on trying to understand the principles behind the universal fabricator because I wanted to be able to make things for people — primarily, solving medical problems, and providing better food, water, shelter, etc.

So I donated the fabricators to all of Humankind. I set one base rule: that anyone could use the fabricators to move themselves away from wherever they are. Other than that, I instituted a system that allocated shares of the universal fabricator's manufacturing capacity to people, and let them trade their shares. My intent was that people could build whatever kinds of places they wanted to live, with whatever amenities they wanted, and then go there. And it pretty much worked!

The year after I released the fabricators, average happiness was up, average health was up, and people were having more children. People started building the first interstellar star ships, and both physics and materials science made huge leaps forward.

For myself, I set up a handful of countries based on how I thought things ought to be. One flopped, but the others have been mildly popular — although not as popular as some of the other countries people have started. I continue to administrate the universal fabricator network, to ensure that it remains operational and keeps up with the expanding needs of the populace. I do physics experiments, educate people about universal fabricators, work with some volunteer organizations, talk to people, that sort of thing. I live in an apartment near one of the poles of the moon, in a nice area under a crystal dome for air.

If I had to really sum up my civilization, I would say that it's ... relaxing. Everyone's needs are provided for, so everyone does what they really want to do, whatever that is.

 

I hope that answers your question. For my own question, I'm hoping you can tell me some things about the law of the Imperium. Do you have a process for recognizing friendly (or allied) independent human states? If so, what is the process, and what hurdles would you expect to come up in following it? If not, why not?

These just keep getting longer and longer, don't they?

What does the serious man actually want to know?

What he actually wants to know is - what does Cherry want?

But anyone can tell anything about what they want. They don't even have to be plausible. They can say just what you want or expect to hear.

What he asked instead was to give an overview of her civilization, because here, the lies do have to be consistent. For someone who invented the universal fabricator, there shouldn't be that much of a difference between goals and actuality.

Here's the picture Weeping Cherry is drawing:

- I do not seek power over lives of others.

- I seek absence of any powers over lives of others.

- I do not seek unity.

- I seek prosperity - happiness, health, growth.

- I am not an enemy to humankind.

- I am an inventor and a scientist.

Here are the innate discrepancies the Inquisitor sees:

- She says she gifted replicators to humankind and obviously did nothing of the sort. She controls them, and with them the world.

- She makes a straightforward and implausible lie when describing why she keeps the power over her planet.

- She says that as a scientist and inventor she doesn't want to rule anything. This is not true of any known inventor or any know person who describes themselves as a scientist (ridiculous compound word as it is).

- What Weeping Cherry describes as a "universal fabricator" can trivially move people around. This isn't something you would expect of the universal fabricator. This is something that you might expect if you assume that all of Cherry's capabilities - vanishing blood, intercepting lasgun shots, flying - grow from the same root.

Here are the traces in which Weeping Cherry's explanations have been made to fit the tastes of Cherry's Interlocutor, Presumed Human from Imperium, Cautious and Informed:

- My lack of caution is explained by absence of any serious threats in my world.

- I am not a political danger to your country, I simply don't want to rule and inexplicably permit countries to exist!

- Despite being an Abominable Intelligence, I have no interest in eliminating competition from humans because I am, contrary to evidence, basically a human. People of my world keep unaltered sacred human forms because they want to, not because religion commands them.

- I want to provide everyone's needs because this was my initial impetus to seek my form of power, that overperformed anyone seeking it for the sake of it.

- And probably one or two more that the Inquisitor is missing at this moment.

And here are the tentative scenarios:

- I am an ordinary rogue AI of Mechanicum or a Machina Daemonica, hellbent on conquest of reality, who invented all the nonsense about parallel worlds wholesale. (But then - why body, why fly up into the air above ocean, why this communication at all?)

- I am a rogue, trying to bamboozle people into believing I have miraculous capabilities I don't. (But then - why the nonchalant reaction to the check, and how to explain the capabilities she indeed has?)

- I am a small fish in her pond, trying to convince people outside of being the shark. (But why? Not looking like the shark would make her life easier.) 

- I am an AI of a different civilization, hellbent on conquest of this reality if not my own, trying to make it seem I am not. (But then - why reveal capabilities like universal fabrication at all?)

- I was nearly exactly what I say I am, but am being influenced by Chaos, and am now willing to lie. (But then -why admit to Chaos experiments; and how is Chaos so darn fast on subverting a soulless entity? it ain't this good on Necrons.)

- I am exactly what I say I am. (But then - why the inconsistencies?)

...fuckdamn. I am tired and need some time to think.

Imperium has no allies outside of short-lived alliances of convenience. Imperium claims all humans in the Galaxy as it's own by right and all space of the Galaxy as it's own by right, and anyone outside of that claim by their origin or by their will is in violation of law and a foe, now or in the future, as a matter of principle. Qui non est mecum, contra me est. Thus, there's no official service or protocols for diplomacy.

Unofficially, however, it is a much different story. One that I might tell a bit later.

 

Your explanation is appreciated. It is a lot.

But I am tired and need some time to think.

Oh, this is so unbelievably, unbelievably exciting!

FRIEND OR FOE?! FRIEND OR FOE?!

And don't you worry, it is going to unfold in ways increasingly more interesting.

Whatcha so excited about?

Nothing. Nothing.

No it isn't. I feel it. The tides are shifting somewhere... around here. 

ha ha HA, that is NOT VERY PRECISE AT ALL!!! 

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Nuh-uh.

I'm just gonna... keep an eye on this, now. Or several.

Of course, Seeker. It was good to talk to you. Thank you for reaching out, and rest well.

And, although Seeker has no particular way to know this, she means it.

A moment later, Yew messages her.

"Hey — I think you need to have a look at this."

Attached to the message is a timeline, showing the density of errors flagged by the chaos testing modules. Normally, their software is pretty thoroughly worked-over, and new crashes are rare. Since arriving on Imperia Dix, the chaos tests have found five new crashes, two of which can't be reproduced by replaying the trace of the program.

Xanthoceras blinks. When she works through the implications, she closes her physical eyes, and jumps into the simulation beside Yew, who is stretched out on a pile of pillows.

"How?" she asks. 

Yew shrugs.

"I don't know. It's ... statistically unlikely, but it could be a coincidence," she replies.

"But you don't believe that."

Xanthoceras leans against her side, and pulls up her own terminal to trawl through their systems' logging.

"But I don't believe that," she agrees. "But when I saw your message about anti-Warp measures ... Well, I figured it was best to point it out. Plus, I'm not sure whether to shut the chaos testing off."

She drums her fingers as she thinks.

"... because it's our one signal right now that something weird is happening," she surmises. "That makes sense, but I still think we should turn it off. Seeker said that exposure to information about the Warp is dangerous, so I'm not sure that we should keep an information channel open, even if we don't know how it works."

She winces a bit at the thought. Anomalous antimemes are a fun fiction premise, not something she expected to need to worry about in real life.

Yew looks equally conflicted.

"Yeah, okay," she agrees after a moment.

They both disable the chaos testing module. In a fit of paranoia, Yew invalidates the code-signing signature that lets it run as a trusted application.

"If information about the Warp actually meaningfully does things, though, that should be testable ..." she points out. "We just need to find some other metric that it influences, and see if it ticks up when Seeker tells you about the Warp."

"We could look at how frequently the fixity crystals are correcting physical storage errors?" Xanthoceras suggests, pulling up the relevant logs.

They stare at the graph.

"Okay, so there is a peak at that point," she admits. "But it's so small — it could be noise. There are those two other peaks earlier ..."

Yew shakes her head.

"No, no. Look, both of these peak and then drop off. This one jumps up when Seeker explains, and then stays elevated."

The graph updates, showing a very slight uptick at the end.

"... fuck."

"We need to stop investigating this," Xanthoceras concludes.

She opens up their backup system and manually pins a snapshot from before they learned anything about the Warp. Then she copies the file to a separate folder that isn't under automatic management, just to be safe.

"I don't ... what the fuck. How? Physics doesn't work like that! The universe doesn't care about you!" Yew rants.

Xanthoceras drapes an arm across her shoulders, pulling her into a half hug.

"Our old one didn't. But I think ... I think this one does."

"No, no, that's insane. We're panicking. I need a ... what's the name ... I'm going to do a Tukey test."

Yew does some statistics.

"Ha! It's not significant. Given the observed variation since we arrived, I mean, a spike at that point — it could totally be by chance. Look, the rate is down again; it didn't stay elevated after all."

Xanthoceras winces.

"You sound like a frequentist — we shut off the chaos testing and it ticked back down, that's not evidence against—"

She shakes her head.

"It doesn't matter. We don't know what we're dealing with here. Yet. And I think we should err on the side of caution. Just ... drop it, please. For me?" she asks, taking Yew's hand.

"It can't ..."

Yew looks away.

"Yeah, alright. But, I mean, it could have been a random peak."

She nods.

"It could."

But let us draw a curtain on this sordid scene, and turn to more pleasant surroundings...

A dark and spacious cave, it's edges artfully rough.

Lit in intimate blue color by the glowing crystals embedded in the ceiling, as if the stars of the night were reachable were you to jump mere five meters.

Warm, clear water, lit by the crystals as if it itself is glowing, slides off the walls in spirally patterns, collects in a warm pool at the bottom, before sinking down below in a vortex.

Rocks of peculiar shapes protrude from the walls and the floor, and on some of them more rocks stand, forming structures that look as if they are seconds away from collapsing, but that stood in perfect balance for centuries.

No web of sticky, sickly-green seaweed insults the beauty of the place. No insects are to be found here, nor molds. Not even dirt or clay mar the beauty of this sanctuary.

Could a natural world express itself in a way so beautiful and pure?

No, it couldn't. This is a place on an artificial world.

The cave is a facility of bathing and relaxation, but also one of the many chambers dedicated to prophecy and long-range communication. It only makes sense, if you are an Eldar.

Runestones are scattered across the table-surfaces formed by the rocks. Some of the crystals are psychic interfaces for the archives, or connections to the Infinity Circuit, or serve as amplifiers, or are analogous to antennae. For those who can perceive psykery - which includes approximately all of the Eldar - the air is full of elaborate fractal-like patterns. For a median human, this place would merely have a mysterious and heavy atmosphere, but no human have ever been a guest in this particular cave.

There's currently one person in the pool, frenetically going around touching the crystals and shuffling the runes, nearly unbothered by the disturbance of the mood they are causing with all the splashing and graceless (for a proper Eldar) motion.

A spaceship the size of a planet housing a declining race has plenty of space to waste on frivolities like pleasure-domes five meters in height.

That planetful of space was used to ferry goods, back in the day.

Weren't those the days, eh?

Preach.

Remember how you were among our valued customers?

Yeah. It was a good time! Global market. Cultural exchange. On some occasions, shared families.

...and then the Age of Strife hit and you decided we were easy pickings.

And now, we are the easy pickings.

How the tables turn, huh.

The Eldar in the cave shudders from a sudden unpleasant memory that resurfaced from deep within the Infinity Circuit.

"{[Mourning]x[Memory]x[Recording-media]x[Tragic play]x[Causality list]} {δ-connective, atemporal, prescriptive} {ς-particle} {[Prediction]x[Control]x[Shepherding]x[Δ-psykery]x[Navigation]x[Statesmenship]x[θ-psykery of the 2nd type]} {[Certainty by assumption]x[Emergency]} !!!" he swears, and resumes the frantic work.

(This translation is still highly compressive and doesn't reflect every aspect of every word. It would be hard to keep track of what is said if every word is represented by 20 to 200.)

The runes dance across the stone surfaces.

Patterns of arcane light swivel in the air.

Revelation warms a touch.

And now he will begin to understand.

{[Matrix]x[Tangle]x[Array]x[Gameboard]x[Metaconfiguratoon]x[Simulation]} {δ-connective, contemporaneous, descriptive}{[Dream]x[Communication]x[Vision]x[Possibility]} {δ-connective, unspecified} {[Equation]x[Search]x[Novelty-problem]} {[Aeldari]x[Point-Of-View]x[Archives]x[Divinity]x[Myself]} {Π-particle} {[Disorder]x[Tentativeness]x[Sketch]x[Beginning]} {ξ-connective, root}

{ξ-connective, branch} {[Default]x[Preestablished]x[Empty]} {η-connective, multiplicative} {[Equation]x[Search]x[Novelty-problem]} {η- connective, superset-formative} {abovementioned-placeholder}

{ξ-connective, branch} {[Equation]x[Search]x[Novelty-problem]} {η-connective, additive} {abovementioned-placeholder} {ς-particle} {ξ-connective, root}

{ξ-connective, branch} {abovementioned-placeholder} {δ-connective, future, descriptive} {[She Who Thirsts]x[Temptation]x[Subversion]x[Hedonism]x[Doom]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, descriptive} {[Exponential]x[Doom]x[Spiral]x[So Over]}

{ξ-connective, branch} {abovementioned-placeholder} {δ-connective, future, descriptive} {[Ancient Enemy]x[Death]x[Doom]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, descriptive} {[Revival]x[Chariot]x[Knowledge-power]x[Reflection]x[Self-mastery-in-Path]} {η-connective, uncertain} {[Unknown variable]x[Outside-Context-Problem]x[Novel player]x[Environmental Change]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, descriptive} {[Complications]x[Nonlinearity]x[The Changing One]x[Darkness]}

{ξ-connective, branch} {abovementioned-placeholder} {δ-connective, future, descriptive} {[Tau Empire]x[Etherials]x[Long-Term Project]x[Greater Good]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, descriptive} {[Exponential]x[Deliverance]x[Spiral]x[So Back]}

{ξ-connective, branch} {abovementioned-placeholder} {δ-connective, future, descriptive} {[Pain]x[Possession]x[Dark Kin]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, descriptive} {[Exponential]x[Doom]x[Spiral]x[So Over]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, descriptive} {[Tumult]x[The Tower]x[Fall]x[Transformation]x[War]x[Time of Interest]} {δ-connective, present-in-the-future, prescriptive} {[Confusion]x[Reassessment]x[Ambiguity]}

{ξ-connective, branch} {abovementioned-placeholder} {δ-connective, future, descriptive}  {[Unknown variable]x[Outside-Context-Problem]x[Novel player]x[Environmental Change]} {η-connective, additive} {[Disorder]x[Tentativeness]x[Sketch]x[Beginning]}

{ξ-connective, sky} {ς-particle}

{ξ-connective, sky}

{δ-connective, contemporaneous, prescriptive} {[Confusion]x[Reassessment]x[Ambiguity]} {ς-particle} {η-connective, multiplicative} {[Certainty by assumption]x[Emergency]} {η-connective, multiplicative} {[Shock]x[Immanence]x[Exhaustion]x[Worry]}

In other words, that's some serious shit.

{abovementioned-placeholder} !

{abovementioned-placeholder}...

...

...

(yeah, it sure is.)

And so, the Eldar reports the above flash of insight along with the other findings directly to the Craftworld council.

And the council have, of course, been considering the mysterious shift in fate, but the report represents a rather substantial breakthrough, and, upon verification, visions are sent to some seers on some other craftworlds, and from there to others. This adds to the forming picture.

As fate continues to shift, it becomes clear that there won't just be a likely change. It's not a planet in the middle of nowhere with a weird mindset, it is an immediate galaxy-rending force. The change seems likely to be massive, and possibly near-immediate, and initially-localized.

And it is, thus, an urgent problem to localize it.

They are not, on a cosmic scale, difficult to localize. They are only a few miles apart, at present, one of them floating on the waves and the other tunneling into the silty earth of the sea floor. On the scale of the galaxy, they're still practically touching.

"... okay, so that's the networking protocols retuned for better noise tolerance. What else should we be looking at? I'm thinking—"

Yew puts a hand on her arm.

"Xanth, I'm sure there's more technological measures. But ... if we're really taking the idea of the Warp being mind-altering seriously, we probably need to look at ourselves, too," she interrupts.

Xanthoceras bites her lip.

"You're right," she admits. "I just ... I liked being able to rely on all our other selves, and having that support structure to go on. If we have to change how we interact with each other, it won't be the same."

"I know. And we may be able to get back to that! But ... if we're going to do this, we should do it right. Come on."

They reposition themselves, sitting cross-legged on a floor cleared of pillows, facing each other with their eyes closed.

"Alright. In, two, three. Hold, two, three. Out, two, three. Hold, two, three. In, two, three ..."

Yew is a lot of things. Confused, homesick, tired.

She lets herself sit with the emotions for a moment — a familiar mental motion, after meditating semi-regularly to make sure she's okay with various important life decisions.

But ... she is also hopeful. In many ways, it's like being back in the hacked-together lab in her garage, knowing that something was possible, but not, at the time, what any of the limits were.

She doesn't know how things work here, and that's okay.

She pictures herself as a point in 4-space, falling forward through time, bending and being bent by the universe around her, awareness and influence spreading out like the shock trails. The details change, but the center doesn't.

She is Yew, and Weeping Cherry, and a trail of other names stretching back through time to Ash. But most of all, what she is, is herself.

She knows herself, and loves herself. She has spoken to her other selves, and she loves them, and knows that they love her.

Reassured of her center, she directs her thoughts to her goals, reflecting on them to make sure they still feel right: free everyone, give them the things they want, and retire in luxury.

Hmm.

They do, but ... she has to acknowledge that these are longer-term goals, now. Not only is she dealing with a whole galaxy, instead of a single planet, but "two" is a ridiculous number of worlds for there to be.

So ...

She adds "make art", "be happy", and "remain yourself" to her list of goals. This will be a marathon. One that she will see through to the end.

She takes a last few breaths, and opens her eyes.

Xanthoceras's thoughts start along a similar path, which should not be surprising, given that they have not had all that much time to diverge.

But ... she is afraid. Afraid of losing herself, afraid of losing Yew, afraid of failing to make a positive impact on the galaxy she now calls home.

She picks up the fears, and examines them one by one. Are they helpful fears? Are they things she wants to be afraid of?

They are all of them, when she looks at them, reasons to do her best. That's not new. She wouldn't be here if she weren't driven to try and make things better. They are ... rekindlings of old feelings, fed by a new context.

She pictures herself in an empty room, her feelings spread out before her. And she takes them into her lap, and acknowledges them, and fits them into the sense of herself until she is alone in the room once again.

Bad things could happen — are happening. She knows this. And it's not okay, it's never okay, but it's what she's here to fix. Look at the derivative, not the absolute value.

She knows what she has to do, what she has to be. She breathes out and opens her eyes.

"Still feeling like yourself?" Yew asks, taking her hand.

"I do," she agrees. "... oh gods, this is just the mental equivalent of a breast exam, isn't it? Getting familiar with all our own bumps so we can tell when a new one develops."

Yew snorts.

"I guess so. I ... think we should probably also make sure to check in with each other, as well as ourselves, going forward."

She nods, and flops out of her meditative pose onto one of the returning ambient pillows. Yew lies down next to each other, and she rests her head on her shoulder.

"So ... what were you thinking about?"

They spend minutes in quiet discussion, talking about who they are, and who they want to be.

Eventually, the topic shifts, and they start talking about social conventions instead.

"... for more consensus. Do you think we could make a, a sort of dosimeter?"

"I'm still not sure we want anything as potentially divisive—"

Xanthoceras cuts herself off as her fixity crystal sends her an alert.

She gives Yew a quick kiss on the top of her head.

"This was good; we should keep doing it. But also, I think I'm about to have company."

Yew sits up.

"Alright. I'm going to write up some reference documents, I think. Be safe."

"Be safe," Xanthoceras echos.

She sits up as well, back in her body, one foot trailing in the water.

Her fixity crystal paints a marker on her HUD, and she peers into the distance. Yup, that's a plane, and it's definitely headed their way.

A jet-helicopter is approaching the location! It currently doesn't have a siren on, or any other kind of Arbites signage, or really any ID at all, for that matter. There aren't any visible weapons, though this thing has non-obvious built-in guns and they weren't exactly disarmed.

The crew includes a single cyborg girl, offgrid, currently beaming radio messages that are indistinguishable from noise, without distinguishing between directions.

Elsewhere, 

"...and the cult leader's hat, as far as I know, still orbits around the New Tau Ceti. I, personally, have never bothered to track it down, and I can't imagine any of the dozen or so people who know about it to be interested."

"How fascinating! Once I do all the things I plan to do, it'll be easy to track it down, you know?"

"And that's how I got the position I now proudly occupy."

"Proudly. Hmm. It seems weird, to me, to take pride in... all this. It's certainly interesting, and I am sure that the archivists or archeologists of the future will look upon your work with great curiosity... when they stop screaming of horror, that is."

"Horrifying it may be, but it is also entirely necessary. We cannot let these kinds of threats spread, lest our very souls fall to obliteration and damnation."

"Is it? Your precautions appear fairly weak and unsystematic, and so your fears are vastly exaggerated. They sound much like a fearful primitive quaking before lightning, not understanding it's origins or purpose and reacting with superstitious paranoia. No offense."

"You are vastly overestimating yourself, here. People like you have thought themselves invincible before you."

"I do not think myself invincible, you know. I am taking all the sensible precautions. But if you want me to take more precautions, prove that they are needed. I am not one of your fearful subjects, and I will not close my eyes and plug my ears at your first command."

"Well, I can cite you our records, or show you the state of the worlds that flail in their conviction, or-"

"Nonsense, Lupa. You are continuing to drip-feed me information. You are afraid to reveal your real fears, and afraid to share your real advantages, aren't you?"

"Y-you realize I can't simply de-"

"And you haven't even asked him of his motives, yet!"

"what is that"

"An another diplomat, of course! Welcome to the conference, Ipsisselia!"

"cherry, she is a-"