He wakes up in a small steel room, in a body not his own. He is a statue, precisely cut from stone and covered in circular glyphs that channel a blue energy down his limbs. He has sensation, but it is blunt and dull. He can't move.

Nem'rea mamria-SHALDEA mimset, sings a artificial-sounding voice.

Physical-interface remote-ADMIN install, something in his mind translates for him.

The stone melts away, reduces to a generic human bodyplan. Sensation floods in. He still can't move, though. 

Nem'rea mamria-SHALDEA-ki mimsai!

Physical-interface remote-ADMIN-Heartsong update!

Brown hair blossoms on his head and grows to the correct length, and his body grows and fills out, going from a generic neuter body to his body, correct in every detail. There's a shiver of cold air across his delicate parts as his sex forms from blank skin. 

minri li!

Tutorial Execute!

NAME: Teddy Anderson
USERLEVEL: Local Admin (Data)
HYMN: •••
~Chords of the Hymn~
Administrative Body v10.7.4
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ◘◘◘◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: •••
CHA: •••
Heartsong: 『Share the Light』
When doing something for what you deeply and truly believe is a morally good reason, act as if INT, WIS, and CHA are all 1 higher.
Passion Core: ◘

The voice that was singing continues in what seems to be English.

"Welcome to Heartsong, Remote Administrator. You have been reincarnated here in order to repel the Corruptors, beings of twisted Heartsong that seek to overthrow the Hymn. This is a prerecorded message; I cannot know at what time this will find you or in what place. But you have been called here and given administrative access in order to do what we cannot. There is a manual of Hymnos in your user docs if you sing it. Good luck. Adzi, First Singer of the Hymn."

"W-wha-"

He takes gasping breaths.

He's not dead?

Were his parents right? Something after death? But-

He sits, naked, on the cold metal floor and breathes, staring at his feet, trying not to freak out.

He was hit by a truck. And now he's here. Nothing hurts. It doesn't feel like a dream. He thinks he's thinking clearly. But if he's not actually thinking clearly, does thinking he's thinking clearly count for anything?

You pinch yourself to wake up from dreams, right?

"Ow."

Okay, so, for now, assume this is not a dream.

"...Tutorial? Administrator- What is this- Where am I?"

A phrase comes unbidden to his lips: mamria-shalnea aka, remote-location display.

He has so many doubts about this. But fine. "Mamria-shalnea aka."

It comes out in song, with precise intonations that feel important. 

A blue and brown sphere forms in the air with a red chevron poking out of it. Apparently he is at the tip of one of the continents by a curving bay. It's a pure terrain map; no borders or roads or cities appear on the image.

"Syntax is important... Lucky I have a cheat sheet in my head I guess? What the fuuuuck."

Sigh.

"Hymnos? ...Minri lee satura-anske Hymnos."

A basic tutorial on how to display and access Hymnos records displays, followed by a list of basic functions, centering on the ability to retrieve data in various forms. 

Okay this is sort of familiar but... What... Is a Hymnos, exactly? A program, or a file? A song? A function? Can he figure it out from reading this?

Hymnos is the name for the sung language that precisely specifies code, which is then executed by the World-SYSTEM, also known as the Hymn. Some advanced songs in Hymnos specify code through dance as well. Here is an example, a song and dance that permanently enchants an object to produce heat along a given surface when activated via a Hymnos-defined switch. There is a written form of the language, it looks like a lot of circles with curlicues.

"This... Is a videogame. Or a rescue simulation..."

Fuck.

Deep breaths.

As superpowers go 'execute code on the world' is a pretty good one. Pretty convenient that he's apparently not going to have to practice singing.

Hopefully he can use macros or something. It might get embarrassing to sing all the time, not to mention dancing.

.......

If this is a videogame, and he's in the tutorial...

He'll have to face enemies sooner or later.

"...Minri li satura-anske Heartsong. Minri lee satura-anske Administrative Body. Minri li satura-anske Corruptors."

A Heartsong is a data record that precisely specifies for lack of a better word a soul. When executed on the SYSTEM as code, Heartsongs grant permanent unique abilities that are keyed to the personality of the owner. 

An Administrative Body is what he is wearing right now; ageless, tough as stone and steel, flexible as a living human. No need to breathe, sleep, eat or drink; energy to run the Administrative Body is provided by the SYSTEM. It plays host to his Heartsong and thus can be said to be him. That allows it to also function in all the ways that a living human can, if need be. Sex in particular has had some attention paid to it, due to its ability to recharge the Passion Core. (See manual entry for Passion Core.)

Corruptors are people with a Heartsong that has become infected with a virus that originates outside this reality. Their very souls have been twisted by unnatural code, and they seek to take over the Hymn and thus acquire local omnipotence. His duty as an Administrator is to prevent this.

...Why. Well, he probably won't be doing that. Unless recharging the passion core is important and it's the only way to do so. He'll - have to figure something out, then.

He looks for the manual entries for passion core, hymn, and looks for more details on the Corruptors. Also 'administrative body status' - HP? And core draw.  And int, wis, cha. The last three seem self-explanatory but double checking is prudent.

Passion Core: The part of the soul where flow lives. A powerful mana source, which can be used to repay accumulated cycle-debt to the SYSTEM, also known as Core Draw. Best tapped through sex or artistic endeavour. 

Hymn: The SYSTEM as a persistent, living metaspell. Not quite alive, but running continuously to make enchantments function and answer Hymnos spell declarations.

Corruptors Index II: There are four main methodologies used by the Corruptors: Destroy, Infiltrate, Seduce and Torment. Destroyers and Tormentors seek access through violent means, by threatening ruin unless access is given or by trying to sieze the physical hardware.  Infiltrators try to access the system through semi-legitimate means, and Seducers seek access through the intimate lives of users and administrators.

Administrative Body Status: Yes, it's HP.

Core Draw: Represents accumulated mana/processor debt to the Hymn. If maxed, you will be shut out from registering programs with the Hymn until you use your Passion Core to clear the debt.

Int, Wis, Cha: Are as expected representative of Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma.

Seducers? Oh look, another reason not to have sex with anyone. As if he needed more of those.

So there's physical access points here. Hell, maybe he's a physical access point. It sounds like the Hymn is an overlay to the physical world... Not a simulation, but a physical place with persistent 'magic' that runs as a computer system laid on top.

If he believes that. All this information is new and videogamey and the easiest way to run a video game is on a computer, not in reality. And he definitely died. He was hit by a truck and crushed and ohgodithurts-

Deep breaths.

Anyway, there's so much bullshit here that it basically has to be a simulation.

What do the simulators want?

No, no, not the time to get into thoughts like that. He'll be stewing for days.

He's feeling restless and tense. A new world, coding-like superpowers (that he doesn't know that much about yet), a chance after death. And if he buys into the premise here, he's basically the hero from another dimension who has to save the world. He should be doing something. He should be figuring out how to get out of this metal box. If this is a video game he can blunder around exploring and nothing will immediately eat him.

But is it? Genre knowledge does not work in real life. If this is 'realistic', or somehow actually a real other world, his expectations of things based on how video games work are useless at best and misleadingly dangerous at worst.

...Ugh. Thinking in circles, just like he predicted.

He pulls up the Hymnos manual again. Does it have any function that can detect the Corruptor virus? For that matter, 'summon clothes'? Even if he's a "data" administrator (implying there's more types) there ought to be some general stuff right...?

The Hymnos manual has a Virus Scan function, yes! It's "[Target] [Virus-Detection] [Execute]", very easy to remember. 

Hymnos cannot generally make solid objects out of nothing, but for an administrator some rules are stretched. The system warns that materializing him clothes will take three Core Draw, but does so if prompted.

He can make heat and light and electricity, impart physical force to objects, scry on faraway locations (or close ones), manifest physical documents such as books or manuals... 

...Can he get the cost of clothes down to two or one by asking for less material? He tries various configurations of requests, cancelling them as soon as he gets the core draw warning. If the cost to make objects seems to be material-independent he might ask for several outfits at once as well as a cloth bag, and whatever other survival gear he can think of.

But he also needs to figure out how to get out of here.

He's on a planet, near the coast and near a bay. But he needs a much closer view to figure out how to... Escape? Well, it's a tutorial area, it won't be that hard, surely.

Wait. Video game logic = bad. This might not be a video game.

...He figures out how to specify location of the remote viewpoint spell, then calls for a view from a hundred meters above himself.

If he's willing to go for just underwear the Core Draw goes down to one, just shirt and pants is two, shoes and socks bumps it up to three. He can get a whole second outfit if he's willing to max the gauge to five. 

From a hundred meters above himself there's a bustling town, with a town square centered in the middle of the view. People are going about their daily business. It's evening. It seems to be vaguely medieval save for the fact that there are bright red streetlights all around the square. In the center of the town square is a tall statue of a man singing.

...He'll probably go for a full outfit at three core draw, trying to match the styles in town. But not quite yet.

He scries lower down on the town, a street level view after several guesses on height.

Huh.

What about the view... One meter away, on the other side of that wall? On all four walls, for that matter. And above and below him, why not.

There's gardens past the first wall, townhouses past the second and third, and the fourth seems to be a path down towards the harbour. 

There's nothing below him but dirt and rock. 

Above him is the pedestal of the statue of the singing man.

Hmm.

He is... Not actually sure whether he wants to attract attention or not.

Try to hide his special status, likelihood of success? Very slim. He knows he's socially awkward enough to probably fail. He doesn't know what's normal or not around here.

Hide-->Succeed, possibly minor, possibly major gain, in that the 'corrupted' won't have a reason to suspect him of anything.

Hide-->Fail, minor loss. Embarrassment, maybe reputation issues? He's not sure. He does know it would be trying and stressful and he might not actually learn much useful.

Do not hide-->Good reception. Major advantage. Probably embarrassment since, well, it kind of seems like this might be a religious thing.

Do not hide-->Bad reception. Unknown quantity of disadvantage. May have to run out of town. Worst case scenario: Actively hunted by locals, including Corrupted.

Hmm.

HMMMMM.

...He is not going to bother trying to hide his status.

Now, how to actually get out of this... Pedestal.

First, he looks around. Are the walls totally featureless? He'll scry around, if so, and try to find some hidden mechanism. If nothing, he'll need to figure out what Hymnos he's supposed to use here.

Scrying turns up a hidden mechanism to his left with a control panel consisting of hymnos symbols, and a hidden doorway. They appear ro be linked.

The obvious thing to do is to activate it, which his new brain happily supplies is ke.

Okay.

Okay, but.

His heart is pounding. Does he even have a heart? It feels like his heart is pounding. This is all too surreal.

He could stay here and read more, right? Maybe overnight. He could figure out how to listen through the scries, surely there's a function for that, and... Try to figure out how this society works, try the 'hide his status' thing. Get familiar with all the Hymnos commands, maybe work on some slightly more complicated algorithms than the samples provided.

He's nobody special. Why the hell pick him as a 'local admin'?

...He's being drafted, really. He's not dead, but now he'll have enemies to fight. It could be dangerous. It probably will be dangerous. He's never deliberately done anything dangerous or attention-getting in his life.

His mind runs in circles for a while.

He could try summoning a bunch of books here and reading them but that feels like cowardice, and also probably wouldn't be as informative as another person. As seeing things for himself.

...Does the virus scan function return a simple yes/no? Or a location of the virus?

He scries on the topography of the town for a while, then attempts to perform a virus scan of the whole town - defining the space so it will get any possible basements but not 'waste' space scanning the middle of the sky or deep below the earth.

A virus scan of that size costs a Core Draw, does he wish to proceed?

...What's the largest virus scan he can get away with without a core draw, he wonders. For that matter, probably these 'little' applications aren't actually 'free'. If he tries to game it by doing two things just below the threshold of a core draw, probably that... Gives him a core draw. Even if it's measured in distinct dots, it would make much more sense for it to have more distinctions. A 32 bit integer or whatever tracking resource use, marking a full dot when he's used so much.

And the virus gives a boolean answer. He can binary search it if the answer is yes, but if there's multiple Corruptors in town- Hmm. He'll scan the same thing, but in quadrants around the statue, at first.

North-eastern quarter of the town, defined thus with a somewhat long song: Any viruses here? And what about his core draw, does it cost one?

No tick on his Core Draw. No virus.

Promising.

South-eastern quadrant. South-western quadrant. North-western quadrant.

He gets the expected Core Draw warning on his third scan. No virus detected from the second, either. Does he wish to proceed?

Yes, if he knows this town is - safe - then he'll feel a lot less nervous about poking his head out.

He has one Core Draw remaining. 

The town is free of virus.

He wonders if scanning just a cubic centimeter containing a person who is Corrupted returns a 'yes'. If so he can work out space-filling patterns, search larger areas with less core draw... For that matter he needs to take a serious look at how enchanting things works. Something that virus-scans without ongoing core draw would be very good. But, later.

Well, that's something to think about later. He has one core draw left now, and the ways to fix that are art or sex, or apparently masturbation (inefficiently).

...He blushes. He'll have to get good at art, somehow. It's not like anyone would want to have sex with him.

He stands and straightens his clothes and faces the door and feels like this is a point of no return but intones, "Ke."

The panel slides aside neatly, and little stone stairs pop out to allow him access to the outside world. 

He steps out of the statue and tries to look nonchalant.

And... Nobody's freaking out or paying him especially much attention?

Nobody's noticed just yet, it would seem. It's getting dark, though.

If he sings ke again, will the statue close up?

Come to think of it, does this 'administrative body' need to eat or sleep? It didn't really sound like it. That could be convenient. He'll see, he supposes.

It closes up quite neatly.

Okay. So. What now.

...He walks around the square and tries to listen to people talking?

They appear to be speaking something that his internal software converts immediately into English. It isn't English, he can hear the sound of it, all rolling consonants, but his brain simply smoothly interprets the meanings, like it's being dubbed over. 

Snatches of conversation he picks out include:

"Have you been to the mages' quarter to repair that lamp yet?" 

"I hope Clara's ship comes in soon. I'm starting to worry."

"I love to peoplewatch. It's relaxing. Have you ever tried?"

He wants to offer help with the lamp, scrying for the ship, but he's not really used to the commands yet... He probably can't target a scry on "Clara"...

Instead, "Excuse me, sorry, could you please point me to the mage quarter?"

"It's that way," the bearded man points, "can't miss it." 

"Thank you."

That way he will go. What can't he miss, exactly, he wonders.

The lights get festive a little ways that way, all different colors and sizes. There's a large inn-like building with a quite well-done picture of a violin over the double doors, a Hymnos legend that reads "User Collective" and another legend in curvy flowing text reading "Mage's Guildhall".

...Into the guildhall. Maybe he can ask about work and figure out how special he is, exactly. Or just sell his last core draw doing a standard spell for someone.

There's a reception desk and several closed doors. 

The woman in a snuggly sweater at the desk looks up at him. "Customer?"

"I'd like to convert a core draw into money, actually. If I can." He says a bit sardonically

"How's your grasp of the Singer's language?"

That's the one Hymnos is in, right? Right. He seems to have an implanted understanding of it, so he says, "I think I could probably read off something moderately complicated, especially if it's related to data."

"Have you amanoied yet?" 

The word means "sign up, as for a user account on the SYSTEM."

"Uh..." He looks confused for a moment. Probably, right? It said 'Userlevel: Local Admin (Data)' "Yeah. Sorry, just, there's a lot on my mind right now. But yes."

"Then you must be low on Core Draw if you're only offering one. Would you like a muse?"

Ohboy. Uh. He's not overinterpreting things is he?

"I just have one left, so." He shrugs. "How do you mean muse, exactly? If you have pen and paper I could try something..."

He's not an artist, but code and math can be art. He can work out some of the implications of the Hymnos, try to build a few algorithms, and see if that does anything.

She nods. "You're new to this aren't you? It's fine, there are always learners. And if you've amanoied you have a right to be here. Would you like the tour?"

He notices how tense he is, and deliberately tries to relax. He sighs slightly. "Yes. I think a tour would be really helpful, and much appreciated, so, thank you."

"Please just take this stone and ke it for me? Security check."

For what, Corruptors? Fake mages? He doesn't know if it'll read weirdly to him, but refusing would be hella suspicious, so, either way, "Ke."

The stone glows green. 

"Welcome, rel'he." The word means user, he's seen it in writing. "Let me explain a few things for you." 

She gets the door behind herself and steps through, beckoning for Teddy to follow.

He follows. He'd be ready to take notes if he had any paper, though attempting to conjure some would be - counterproductive, let's go with that.

"There are two ways of getting lodging in this guildhouse," she chirps. "You can be an artist, and pay in coin, or you can be a muse, and pay in Core Draw refreshes. Yes, that often means sex. Rel'he generally become a bit more sexually permissive as a result of their professions - I've sure you've experienced that already. So this is a safe place for all the art and coding and sex we do. The building is warded against displaying video or taking pictures from within it, so don't try. Are you on the Rel'he'ar?" Userboards.

Would being a 'local admin' override that though.

Does that block his virus scan function though???

...He's just thinking about the security. Really. He's pretty sure that's actually true, even.

He still looks kind of uncomfortable with everything. "Hmm. No, I'm not. I'd - probably feel more comfortable on the artist side of things. If I had any coin."

"There's no charge to stay awhile in the common room and look for opportunities. It's just a bed that will cost you. And the services of Muses are open to all rel'he."

Topic change please. "Are the rel'he'ar used for looking for work, then?"

"Yes, often. Also for conversation and so on. They are entirely in Hymnos though, so if your grasp is weak - nothing to be ashamed of in a new rel'he - you might have some trouble."

She opens the door at the end of the hallway and leads Teddy out into a common room with tables and a small kitchen. There's a balcony overhead on all sides with more tables; there are also some quite beautiful painted landscapes on the walls. It seems quiet; only a few people are in evidence at this hour. 

"Welcome to the Guildhall," says Clematis. 

"I'd like to see how to use them, then. ...Oh, nice. I suppose you would have good art here... Can you charge a passion core off coding? I've, well, studied it in the abstract, even if I haven't used Hymnos until recently."

"It's not generally possible, though there have always been rel'he trying to do so. Tell you what, since you're short of cash I'll put you up for the night on the expectation you pay me back tomorrow, okay? Either as a Muse or Artist, I don't mind either. Or you can wash dishes, never anyone interested in that."

"I'm pretty wired so I don't think I actually need a bed tonight, though I do appreciate it. I think I need to... Learn more about the world of rel'he and see some coding done and find some work... I feel very out of place."

He frowns. "And I'm honestly kind of uncomfortable with the idea of - muses. But I don't know if you want to get into that with me at all."

"I'm sure somebody here will explain how to use the rel'he'ar for you. As for muses - it's mostly a way to encourage matches where pairs of rel'he restore each other's output. The Artists are being charged for access to the entire Muse pool, from which they can almost always find someone willing to help. The system does throw some new rel'he, but it works and helps more rel'he reach their goals."

"But it's-" Sigh.

"If you're offering to... Well actually I suppose don't actually know if you're a muse I suppose, I just assumed that, but, the idea is not entirely unappealing. My core draw is high, and it would be better if it was low, to say nothing of, uh, and-" He's babbling. "It's just - I feel like I'm missing a lot of things. And it's uncomfortable to engage with things when I feel confused. I guess. Sorry. I'll shut up now."

"Oh, I'm flattered. But I have the front desk to mind. If you were interested in that, then - Hannah?"

A woman with dark brown hair wearing a simple black dress stands from her table and walks over. "Hey, what's up? New rel'he?"

"Yes. Very in need of guidance. I have to run the desk but can you get him up to speed? I'll owe you a refresh."

"Sounds like a good deal to me. Hey new kid, what's your name?"

He is feeling terribly awkward and blushing. It's not helping him, the blushing, the feeling awkward, the fidgeting.

He has to figure out how to - exist in this world. It's not so easy to just banish the feeling like that, like a snap of the fingers, but closing his eyes for a deep breath helps a lot.

"Thank you. I'm Terence. Or Teddy. I'm pretty excited to actually start writing code, but there seems to be quite a lot I don't know. It's Hannah, right? I'll - try to keep up."

"Hey Teddy. I'm Hannah. Muse, energetics specialist, probably the third most experienced person here. Welcome to the club." She walks back to her table and sits down. "Do you know the basic interfaces yet? You can always satura-anske things if you're really low on Core, but for just a little bit more you can get something much more user-friendly. Kaldea-anske rel'he'ar rel'he Hannah Ashford." 

A stats screen pops up:

NAME: Hannah Ashford
USERLEVEL: User
HYMN: ••
~Embers Of Light~
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: •◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: ••••
WIS: ••
CHA: ••••
Heartsong: 『Wild Girl』
When your Passion Core triggers, it triggers the Passion Core of everyone you're touching.
Passion Core: ◘

"Seen that for yourself yet?"

"I've seen my status screen but I think I'd benefit from whatever explanation you give a total newbie? Also, uh, my heartsong is slightly embarassing so I don't want to bring it up..." True, and provides an excuse not to display 'userlevel: administrator'.

Hannah laughs. "You do realize that page is publicly accessible, right? As soon as it gets around that you're here someone will satura-anske your name. So it's best to just get it over with. Kaldea-anske rel'he'ar rel'he Teddy."

She looks at the status page that comes up. Her eyes widen. 

"... Ah." 

She takes the screen back down. 

"You need to talk to our local administrator."

"I don't know what I'm doing." He hisses. "There's a scan function, I- Fuck."

"Yes, I know, there are docs on this, I've read them, calm down. It's quiet, and these people are on your side. You're a rel'he. That makes you one of us."

"Okay. I need to read those, too."

"I'd thought they were historical, but..." She shrugs. 

"Anyway. Let's go talk to Rosalie."

He was going to not bother hiding anyway, right? So this is close to ideal, right?

"...Okay. Do you think the wards block- Hannah Virus-Detection Execute." He tries to sing this quietly. He relaxes considerably at the negative. He sighs. "Okay. Okay. Let's just- Go."

Hannah nods at the measure, and flashes a thumbs-up. Then she leads Teddy up the stairs and knocks on a door.

"Rosalie, are you up?"

"Minute..." 

A few seconds later the door opens to a red-haired woman in a pink bathrobe. She blinks at them from behind her glasses. "This'd better be an admin thing."

"Can we come in? It's delicate."

She looks back and forth between Hannah and Teddy. "Yeah, go ahead."

Hannah steps inside.

He follows Hannah in.

What is he supposed to say here.

"Sorry. Hi."

Rosalie closes the door behind them. "Hi. Hannah, I assume he's the situation?"

"Yeah. Check his rel'he'ar profile, his name is Teddy."

Rosalie satura-anskes the profile. 

Her eyebrows lift. "We live in interesting times," she says. "Welcome, Summoned Admin. I'm supposed to interface with you, which..." She sighs. "I suspect you have a lot of questions, yes?"

"So many I'm not sure where to even begin. Actually, uh, first - should I come back in the morning now that the immediate panic is over? Though, I'm not sure if I still need to sleep. I'm not sure how urgent - things are."

"No, you're safest here. This is a safe town, but you can never be too safe and we can't risk the Corruptors getting their hands on you. Here you have the entire rest of the local rel'he to defend you."

"It may just be a rumor but I heard you have beds here, I meant to you specifically. You look like you were asleep. Uh."

He thinks.

"As far as I know nobody but you two knows about me. The receptionist at the front desk knows my name. I virus-scanned the town earlier and found nothing, but I don't know how one might subvert that. I assume it's possible, even likely, to do so. What is my comparative advantage here, to ordinary rel'he? Because I honestly would not have picked me if I were picking a - remote administrator. I already know how to code because we have computers, but... Oh. We don't have the Hymn where I'm from. We have computers, physical machines for executing code, but they can only do... Information, basically."

"You have higher Core Draw, which means you can execute programs that require extreme resources, and you have administrative access to all data kept by the SYSTEM. So long as you can format a query you'll get an answer. That's not usually true."

"Can you-" He falters. "I think I would benefit from whatever explanations one would ordinarily give to a small child who wants to become a rel'he. Also from an explanation of how to take notes into the SYSTEM."

"I don't think you need me personally for that. I can tell you about what admin access means culturally, what the corruptors are up to, that sort of thing, but for the moment you should be alright with Hannah. Hannah, take him to your room and let him have your bed, we're full up at the moment."

"Oh if you insist."

"Pretty sure I don't need to sleep but I do need to be out of the way while I get my head on straight. I'm going to have questions like that once I know the basics. Like, what Corruptors actually do. What the physical access points are... Uh, thank you." He glances at Hannah. "Time to go, I guess?"

"Yeah, it's time for me to stuff your head with basic facts."

He follows Hannah out.

"...I didn't ask for this," he confides quietly after checking that the hall is empty. "I'm gonna do it, but I didn't ask for it."

"Yeah," says Hannah quietly. "Accounts are you're sort of - volunteered." She walks down the hallway to another room, kes it for access. "Come on in, the water's fine."

He goes in and looks around at the room.

...He's in a girl's room. A muse's. And-

Why is he being a useless teenager about it now, huh?

"...Volunteered. Right. I'd- I'm not sure I want to talk about it, actually." He shivers.

It's small. There's a bed with what looks like an extremely snuggly duvet. There's a small standing desk with a pad of written Hymnos which looks to be a program for how to accelerate and brake something. 

"Welcome to my humble abode." Hannah sits down onto the bed, and smiles up at Teddy. "You'd be surprised how many people you can fit in here if you work at it. But that's beside the point. You want the lowdown, right? Let me see..." she taps her chin. 

"Okay, first of all the overall structure of this place. You have el'he, rel'he, and shaldea. Guests, users and admins."

"el'he still have Heartsongs and Passion Cores, but they have a sharply limited amount of Core Draw and they can't enchant anything. They likely do not know their own Heartsong. On the whole they probably know about a dozen words of Hymnos, and use them for basic tasks like generating light or heat or keing artifacts created by others. They don't understand that what they're doing is coding on the SYSTEM, they don't know how magic works, they just have a small toolkit of common phrases and that works for them.

"rel'he have put together enough basic knowledge to amanoi. They have an understanding that Hymnos is a language that executes code. Low-level rel'he have poor singing voices, and a poor understanding of how algorithms function, but they still understand Hymnos syntax. High-level rel'he are like me, trying to build autonomous artifacts that can be operated by el'he without killing someone. Generally you establish yourself as a Muse or an Artist somewhere between the two points.

"Lastly, shaldea are elected from the community to gain control of the most secure and dangerous systems. They're able to casually call up searing flames and blinding lights, and they can throw whatever's nearby fast enough to kill. With their access, they can search you down, scry your position, and then produce one of the above nearby you, all from several miles away. There is no hiding or safety from a shaldea. Naturally, people are going to want to sound you out."

He peers at the program curiously while listening.

"Great. I'm socially some weird combination of - of - judge and executioner. All I ever wanted. Is it democratic most everywhere? What do Corruptors actually do-"

"Yeah, it's democratic most everywhere. Corruptors are people. Messed-up people, but people. They try to break the system any number of different ways. They infect people with direct contact and change their heartsongs and their minds. Blah blah. You're probably here for access to the Heartsong records so we can retrieve backups of people's heartsongs."

"...Hmm. Change them back to how they used to be?" He doesn't sound entirely happy about it.

"Better than killing them."

"Yeah, but best would be..."

Shrug.

"I don't know. This is not my place... I want to try helping with that code, to see if the skills are transferrable. What are you trying to do?"

"Build a moving platform that'll stick to a rail or something like that, move along the rail and not mow down people in the way, stop automatically instead. I'd like it to be fast but as long as it's as fast as walking it'd be useful."

"Oh, we had to do that with steam and physics. And electricity later. You can let it stick to the rail with just, like, gravity, as long as the center of gravity is low enough... Just a big boxy, uh, wagon with rows of seats, rails built into the street."

He peers at the circles again. "I think the trouble here would be as much in the physical design as the magic. I also think making it sufficiently safe and automatic is much harder than giving it a human driver and then coding safety-stop systems. Two simpler problems instead of one harder one, right? Can multiple... Enchantments, like, talk to each other?"

"Any enchantment needs to be managed by an actual person who it's pulling Core Draw from, or else draw from the Key of the Hymn with a shaldea's permission. Usually we build things to run on the Core Draw of an ordinary person, but this would take too much, it needs a rel'he to handle the forces involved, which defeats the point. So it needs to be keyed by a shaldea. That means it's part of our public image, but we can do a lot more in terms of complexity with it. Hence why I'm trying to figure out how to make it automatically guard. It's kind of possible for two enchantments to talk, but it's usually better to do it as one if you're getting something keyed anyway."

"Yeah, you'd have to be super careful with security keys like that... The way I'm used to doing code has a lot of abstractions for shared memory and permanent storage and communication between units. Hmm. Is 'person' a valid criteria for a space-search function? Do those trigger if only a small part of a person is inside them? ...Ooh, do you have electricity-storages?"

"We can generate electricity with Core Draw, but we have no way to store it. Yeah, you can search for a person."

"It might not actually be easier but I think it'd be cooler to make electricity-storages and electric motors - converting electricity to motion and vice versa. It'd be hard and complicated but it wouldn't need the Hymn at all except to charge the electricity-storages whenever they get low. Though... I don't think I understand the Key of the Hymn - does it stop needing Core Draw if you use a Key?"

"It stops needing Core Draw if you Key it, it's a permanent resource allocation on the part of the SYSTEM. The Key is a huge natural mana source at the root of the SYSTEM's physical instantiation, and it's managed by the shaldea collectively."

"...That could go wrong in several ways." He shakes his head. "I think a key would work better here than trying to make batteries and electric motors. Anyway. The problem is - keeping it from running into people. Or anything else, I presume." He looks over the code properly this time. "What do you have so far?"

"I have a good precise definition for the top velocity, a smooth acceleration and deceleration curve without too much jerk, and now I need to write up the collision detection and I need to know how far out to detect potential collisions. I think I can get the SYSTEM to calculate that for me based on the deceleration curve and the current velocity, but I haven't looked into it enough to know for sure. The controls will come last because how they're shaped depends on decisions we make here."

"I think you could do that with a bit of calculus, if the curves are also calculated? Probably you can stop a bit harder than is comfortable to prevent an accident, right? That'll might shorten the distance a bit, if there are two different stopping curves."

He looks for the parts about the the acceleration curves.

Hannah points out the symbols where they're defined. They're surprisingly complex.

He's really not used to this method of coding, but he's pretty good at math.

"I wish I had Excel and Matlab... Are there any debuggers for Hymnos? Can you register new functions?"

"You can register new programs, yes, that's essentially what we're doing here. Normally you'd enchant an item with a program and then it runs the program when you ke it, yeah? But we're using a key. You can do... subkeys? to a main program, but that takes specialized vocabulary I don't know. What's a debugger?"

"Our world's code has them, they're incredibly complicated to build, but in our world you can copy code easily so anyone can just copy one a bunch of other people made, it just can't - directly affect the world. But uh, sidetrack, a debugger executes an algorithm and displays what it's doing, but pauses at whatever steps you told it to, or will go through it one little step at a time, and reads out and displays all the values as it goes, so you watch it go and figure out why your merge sort is glitching and returning null, or whatever."

"Oh, if only."

She pauses. "- there might be one that you have access to as a data admin! We'll have to investigate that later."

"Yeah, I don't- Aww. I was in a good mood again, thinking about code." Sigh. "...I'm worried I'll pattern-match in not-useful ways, here. 'Summoned to another world with special powers to save it' is a known story archetype. I'm trying to watch myself for thinking I'm in a genre I'm not, though."

"Sounds like you need a distraction. And you do need to recharge your core, right?"

"-Ah. Um."

He is suddenly aware, again, of where exactly he is.

"...I notice that I am reflexively trying to think of reasons not to."

"Let me set aside one for you. You saw my Heartsong, yes? "When your Passion Core triggers, it triggers the Passion Cores of everyone you're touching." Think for a minute about what that implies. And about how you would optimize it. I'll wait."

"They're personality based, I guess. Soul programs. And if you- Okay, so you would- But that's not the-! Rrrgh!" He rubs his hands over his face.

"Slow down and give me full sentences please, I'm trying to help. What's the trouble?"

"I," he bites out after a deep breath, blushing, "Am a virgin."

"And you can remain one if you want to. Were you not paying attention? I can hold your hand and... entertain myself... and that'll be enough to restore you."

"That's- I did not think of that. But that's still almost as much internal screaming as before! I know I'm being - something - irrational right now, I know I'll need a lot of, restores, before all's said and done, but I can't just turn that off."

"I could give you the room for a while and let you restore it yourself, but you're going to want the... more advanced methods."

"I don't think I'm capable of that right now. Maybe if I calm the hell down. It's not like I don't want to. It's just - alarm bells and cultural baggage and ugh. I'm sorry."

"It's cool. Just, you're going to be kind of useless if you can't get back your core draw."

"I'm the wrong person for this. A spineless neurotic asocial nerd. But. Not acceptable. And if you eliminate the unacceptable..."

Sigh.

"...What even is a flow state?"

"It's when you get really into something and it becomes your whole world for a little bit. It's possible to get them for intellectual work as well, but for some reason that doesn't trigger the Passion Core."

He wants to pace but this room is not really big enough for that.

"I probably shouldn't be ranting at you like you're a therapist. Even if I could kind of use one I think."

He stands with his back against the wall and stares at the opposite wall.

"...I could hold your hand and think while you - have fun. I - I - guess there's probably a cheap contraceptive Hymnos? Do you guys have - infections other than the Corruptors, at all?" Wait, Administrative Body would make that not a concern anyway.

"Heartsongs make that kind of minor self-modification relatively trivial, for rel'he at least. It's like setting a flag. Heartsongs generally preserve the body well against attack or wear - not indefinitely, but the average el'he lives to about 150. The average rel'he lives to 200. Shaldea can live until killed. Usually by magical accident."

"That's nice. I wish we had that. People live to be... Eighty, a hundred, at most, at home. If we're even talking about the same years."

"Our calendar's got three hundred forty days per year? And you can see how long a day is for yourself."

He's crying.

Why is he crying?

Well. Because he's supposed to save a fucking world. Because he's been given phenomenal power, locally, and that means attention which he can't handle, and responsibility which he doesn't deserve.

Because he's been hit by a fucking truck and he is dead and this is a fever dream of his brain as he fades out, or an afterlife, and he'll never see his friends or family again, and Mom will be so crushed, Dad doesn't deserve that and-

It's just too much. So now he's sitting on the floor of a girl's room, crying.

She hugs him. 

And then she remembers herself. "Oh, sorry -" 

She pulls back. "All a bit much, huh?"

"I-" Sniff. "Yeah, it's just... I died. And then I woke up in a steel box with a disembodied voice singing to me about shaldea and Corruptors and- I'm not supposed to be weak enough to cry... But I think a hug is actually okay."

"Okay." Firm hug.

Hugs are an acceptable thing to want, when so much else isn't. Even if the 'so much else isn't' is mostly composed of stupid societal expectations. It's surprisingly comforting. Even if he doesn't actually know Hannah. Even if she's probably only helping him because he's a shaldea.

He thinks for ten seconds before awkwardly hugging back with one arm. Still feels like he's about to cry at any moment.

She settles in next to him on the floor and leans her head on his shoulder.

"I get it. Really I do. And if you want me to go away and give you time to process then I will. Do you want some food?"

"I don't know what I want. I don't know you, don't know anyone here..."

"Food... Would be nice. Sorry."

"Focus on the simple things, it'll help." 

She gets up, and goes out the door.

His head thunks against the wall.

He's looking at the vehicle-platform code again when she comes back. A page of the notepad is half covered in symbols that aren't in her language or the singers' language.

Hannah comes back with a saucy sandwich in a bun. "Oh, working something up? Cool. Can you translate for me?"

"Sure! This is - calculus. I'm trying to create a mathematical function that will tell you how much distance you need to stop given the acceleration curve. It's basically just integration. Uh, mind if I eat first though? Do you know calculus?"

"Go ahead." She sets the plate on the standing desk. "And no, I don't know what calculus is. I know some approximation methods that are pretty good but nothing that'll give an exact answer."

He will totally explain calculus between bites of sandwich!! That's distracting! He draws helpful graphs. One approximation method is to draw a graph and take vertical slices of it, right, well, what happens if you keep making the vertical slices smaller and smaller? They get more accurate. Calculus is a branch of math that, for reasons he doesn't quite understand, will get you the exact area under a curve, among other useful things, it's somehow taking infinitely small vertical slices and adding them all up. Though you need a precise definition of the line you're calculating under and it doesn't work for all possible definitions of curves. It works like this!

Fascinating! Can it go the other direction?

Sort of. Here is how derivatives work. They're rates of change. Jerk is the derivative of acceleration is the derivative of speed is the derivative of position. And limits let you determine how a function behaves if you let it continue to infinity.

He sobers up some when he finishes explaining limits. "That is about all I know... Actually, I wonder... Uh, what to check... Satura-anske Frankenstein by Mary Shelley."

He gets a mental copy of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

He literally jumps in the air in excitement. "-Holy shit I can get books from my world. At least one book."

"You're a data admin and the SYSTEM has access to your world, so..."

"We don't have any rel'he. We don't have Hymnos or core draw, where I'm from, so why can it read...? Why did it bring me here- Can I go home and bring the Hymn, I wonder, it'd save so many people- This is taking me back into thoughts that are way too big."

Sigh.

"I think I'm calmer now, at least. Food and math, that's the ticket. A-and hugs."

"If you'd like more hugs I can provide more hugs. I don't know how other worlds work; only mamria-shaldea would know, and there hasn't been one in a thousand years." 

"I don't know how other worlds work either. At least not the getting between them... More hug would be nice. I really do need a distraction, and- You're hot, and I'm a young guy, so obviously I want that kind of distraction on some level, it's just that I was raised to think sex is something you do with your wife, or at least someone you are in love with, and don't talk about, so even if I think that's stupid and backwards and rel'he do it totally differently... It feels scary and wrong. You know?"

She steps in and hugs him. 

"Yeah, I can get that. It's that way for most new rel'he, the transition can be scary. Because, well - you can get by with the inefficient methods for a while, but the muse system exists for a reason, you know."

Hug good. "I really do need to get it back to zero. And be careful about how I use it, not waste core draw. I would be - comfortable enough I think, holding your hand while you... Have fun, and then maybe doing the same thing alone, I think. Especially if you have, er, lube and a shower."

He is blushing the color of a fire.

(He could use the SYSTEM to look up porn from Earth if... Listening to Hannah isn't enough. This doesn't feel like as much of a push somehow.)

"Exposure therapy. Get used to it bit by bit."

"We have those things, what do you take us for, savages?" She smiles. "And you're very brave, being willing to... take the first step, like that. It's a little weird for me too, since you're so young, but... I think we can come to an arrangement."

She gets down on her hands and knees and fishes underneath the bed, and comes back with a glass bottle full of a pink oil. "Lube. And there's a shower room down the hall, the door locks. Do you want to see where that is right now?"

Oh yeah, she could be anywhere from twenty to a hundred, couldn't she? This is a magic world, where normal rules of aging don't apply.

"Probably a good idea. I, uh- Only have this set of clothes. They cost three core draw to make."

"Make!" She whistles. "Not a usual command. But I can get you another set pretty fast I bet, by one method or another. Might be a little hard to do it conventionally this late, but..."

"There's a command to teleport in my userdocs but it probably takes multiple core draw, that's extremely overkill. I could probably just - clean them? Or," blush, "Use tissues so they don't need cleaning."

"I um. I have an exceedingly washable blanket I put on the bed when I'm using it for sex, you could use that...?"

"-Hymn this is embarrassing to talk about. That sounds like the best plan on short notice if you don't know where to find a spare male outfit on zero notice which um where's the shower?"

"I'll show you, it's just down the hall." She leads him out onto the balcony again, heads past a few doors, then opens a sturdy oak door on her left and lets it swing open to reveal a tiled room with a large bath - big enough for three or four people - and an overhead shower. The taps are right in plain view. 

"Here. I could start knocking on doors for a loaner outfit but I don't think it's worth waking people up."

"Okay. So- I'm very anxious. I know this is weird. So, thank you for trying not to be weird about it. I'll wrap myself in the blanket when I'm done and dress in here, I guess?"

"Works for me. Nobody's likely to see you. I should get out the blanlet for you."

Back to Hannah's room. She pulls out the neatly-folded blanket from beneath the bed.

"In case it wasn't clear, don't go reaching around under my bed or else you might lay your hands on something personal." Hannah halfsmiles. 

"I, uh, wasn't planning on snooping through your stuff. If you're not comfortable with this-"

"No, I'm fine, it just occurred to me that you might want to put the blanket back afterwards or something. Sorry."

"I know what a dildo is," he blurts out, then blushes. "And other stuff. -Okay, shutting up now, stupid..."

She laughs. "Well now you know where to find one."

"I'm just sabotaging myself over and over aren't I?"

He shakes his head and sits down next to the bed. Facing away from it.

"Oh, so you still wanted to do the - Okay." 

She gets up onto the bed and lies so she can drape her left arm down onto Teddy's shoulder.

"Comfy?", she asks.

"Trying to be brave," He says. "Yeah, this is comfy."

"Okay. I'm going to do my thing now, okay?"

"Okay. Not to repeat myself but- Thank you, again."

"It's no problem."

There's a rustle of cloth, and Hannah shifts on the bed. She settles back down with her hand on Teddy's shoulder again. 

Should he be thinking about what's going on behind him or not? He's really not sure. He kinda sorta wants to look but that would be mortifying, right at this moment. He'll settle for taking deep breaths and trying to focus more on the 'excitement' than the 'pit of dread'.

He shifts slightly and nudges her hand on his shoulder a bit.

She squeezes back. 

There's a soft breath. If he listens he can hear some small slick sounds. 

Oh, he's listening.

Sigh. Shift. Another small shift. Little sounds from up near Hannah's pillow - she must be tossing her head a bit. 

Then it's quiet, except for steady slow breathing. 

He mutters the command to bring up his user page.

NAME: Teddy Anderson
USERLEVEL: Local Admin (Data)
HYMN: •••
~Chords of the Hymn~
Administrative Body v10.7.4
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ••••◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: •••
CHA: •••
Heartsong: 『Share the Light』
When doing something for what you deeply and truly believe is a morally good reason, act as if INT, WIS, and CHA are all 1 higher.
Passion Core: ◘

There are some more apparent slick sounds coming from behind him now, and Hannah's breathing has sped up. Her hand on his shoulder is starting to grip a bit.

"...Oh."

He feels a little stupid now.

"I - Kind of - Want to watch?" He sounds uncertain.

Hannah tenses a little. 

"You may.~" Her voice is husky and warm. More than warm, actually, positively heated.

"Okay." He shivers.

He turns around and grasps her hand with his own. (Licks his lips without noticing.) ...Watches.

She's lying with her legs apart, right hand between them stroking and touching, looking focussed and a little flushed. 

She meets his gaze with her own, then looks away. Her flush deepens. She keeps stroking. Her grip on his hand tightens. 

He feels himself growing, well, suddenly warmer. Hannah is very attractive and this is the first time he's seen anything like this. ...Outside of internet porn, that is. It's still much - more real and headier, right here before him.

Should he say something? She's - kind of focusing, right? He settles on squeezing her hand a bit and smiling.

She smiles back.

She lets two fingers slip inside herself, and strokes that way. Her eyes close as she gets a look of intense concentration - 

And there's a little ping in the back of his head.

(It's surprisingly nice to watch her and imagine how she's feeling?? 'Good', presumably.)

"This is - Hot. Are you going to, uh, keep going?"

She doesn't answer, she just keeps going. It's pretty clear when she orgasms, between the ping in the back of Teddy's head and the full-body shudder she has. 

She keeps going even after that, and drags herself to a second orgasm within a minute. That pings too.

And then she sighs, takes her hand away from her sex, lets go Teddy's hand. 

"Is that, mmm, enough of an answer?~"

"-Yeah.

My turn, I guess. I've got - good material to work with." He cringes as soon as he says that. It's so cheesy.

She laughs. "I'm glad. See you in a while." And she heads on out of the room.

Okay, so-

He takes his pants, underwear, and shirt off. He grabs the bottle of lube and lays back on the blanket.

He gently brushes his hand over himself and shivers. Right, he's - more sensitive down there now, the Administrative Body section said that. It seemed weird at the time, but it sort of makes sense.

He closes his eyes and strokes his flaccid cock with one hand as he thinks about Hannah. Her hands rubbing at her sex. Her expression enjoying it, her hand in his. He's soon hard enough.

Then he takes a small dollop of that lube and spreads it - slick over his cockhead. He strokes more, listening to the squelching sounds.

-He imagines Hannah on top of him, smiling down at him.

Something about the grip he was using was a bit uncomfortable. He changes it. He usually masturbates sitting, in front of a computer screen- It's pretty different lying back like this. More comfortable and relaxed.

He tries cupping his balls with his other hand, but that feels weird and isn't actually, er, exciting.

He keeps having trouble getting into it, letting the worry and anxiety and feeling-weird fall away and just - exist - focus on the pleasure. He stops for a minute, thoughts chasing each other around his skull.

When he tries again, he imagines more erotic things involving Hannah (and also pornstars from Earth). Someone hugging him from behind and stroking his cock, someone whispering moans in his ear, someone giving him a blowjob-

He finally starts to properly relax into it. The lube has dried out, so he adds a little more.

He remembers something about changing the stimulation every so often. He hasn't actually masturbated much, but...

He tries rubbing a finger in circles around the head. Ooh, strange and good. He tries alternating pace, fastfastfast, slow, slow, fastfastfast-

And now he's properly focused on it, soaking in the sensations, imagining blended-together scenes of sex and fucking and fingering and soft hugs, breathing hard-

-cumming - ping-

-He's breathing hard, and there's a splatter of semen on his belly now.

He's down to zero core draw, but there are 'partial' core draws as well, he might have as much as half of a core draw and it would just not register. One more activation would fully clear him, right? Right.

And he can just keep stroking, after a couple dozen seconds to let it stop feeling oversensitive. So he does.

He's in a sex game now. He can have sex, he has a body designed for it, designed to feel good, with a whole collective of people who are sexually open, muses who he can just go up and ask- Who are probably very good at it by sheer practice-

He's groaning out loud now, with both hands on his shaft, one above the other, squeezing over the slick mixed cum and lube and sliding and twisting and-

-again. Ping.

And now he's properly exhausted, and also much more relaxed. He breathes deeply and zones out for a minute. Okay, a few minutes.

Okay. Time to start doing things again. He - wipes the lube and cum off his hands and himself on the blanket, feeling a little bad about it. Bundles up his clothes, wraps himself in the blanket, goes and has a shower, dresses, folds the blanket so the mess is on the inside and sets it on the floor.

Hannah's not back yet. Is she even going to come back, or is she going to find another room? Can he lie on the bed? He feels like lying down and closing his eyes, even if he's not tired physically.

He lies on the bed in shirt and pants but no shoes. He doesn't go under the duvet, though. After a minute of trying different commands, he figures out how to turn the lights off. He naps.

Morning comes, and he's awoken by a knock at the door. "Teddy?"

"Come in! I expected you to come back earlier actually, sorry!"

He stands. No grogginess, no need to stretch, no confusion from his interrupted dream. He could get used to that part.

She opens the door and comes in. "I have to sleep sometime too, you know. Rosalie let me cuddle up since she threw me out of my room. Breakfast?"

"Sure. I'm not actually hungry? But... Little things. Hmm- What needs to get done today..."

"Probably we introduce you to the locals. You can talk to Rosalie more about your questions. And we should probably use your Core Draw for something."

"-I'd have to put it back down again. I guess that's not a bad thing." Blush. "I still feel like I don't know how any of this works, maybe I should shadow someone's workday or something. Or go ahead and try to figure out how to un-corrupt someone."

"I think the first thing to do is to locate the corrupted, and that'll take a planet scan. Which is your department. Rosalie should have a more sophisticated virus scan algorithm than the default, we should ask her about that. And then once we know how big a problem the corrupted are we can talk about what to do about it."

"And obviously it should save the results somewhere. I wonder if I can learn the low-level, the actual steps it's taking to virus scan people, and- Ask Rosalie that, not you. She seemed kind of intimidating, you know? Even in, uh, pajamas."

"She's an artist - both in the sense of artist/muse, and in the sense of actually powering most of her programs off art. The paintings downstairs are hers. She's... impressive."

She gestures out the door. "Anyway, let's do breakfast. Rosalie's not up yet, so we have some time to chat."

"I feel a sense of urgency, just..." Shrug. "I guess there are probably programs someone wrote that would be nice to cast in theory but turned out to take four or five core draw, somewhere?"

"Probably! Rosalie would know more about that than I do." She starts off down the hall towards the stairs. "So um... Wanna swap life stories?"

"Sure? Sure. Tell me how much context I need to backfill? I lived in the USA which is one of the better places to live, a big sorta-complicated democracy. Dad moved us to a little town kind of in the middle of nowhere for his work and I hated it, I preferred our old place. I was about to graduate from compulsory education and worried about being accepted to a good university. My parents are a manager and a housewife, my brother is so annoying and is going to be a lawyer, I wanted to do something technical, but I'm kind of shy and was bullied a lot for being a nerd in school. And then I got hit by a truck and died and woke up under that statue in the square, so."

"Compulsory education? You're forced to learn things? Around here it mostly works on an apprenticeship system. And then there's rel'he and they're their own thing. The way it went for me was I was apprenticed to a weaver but I had a boyfriend who was a rel'he and he discovered my Heartsong in, um, the expected way, and he invited me to get set up as a rel'he and come live as a Muse because my Heartsong was so perfect for it, and it was a hell of a lot better than weaving for the rest of my life so I kind of ran off with him. It cooled and we fell apart; we were more sexually compatible than emotionally so... But he's still around, and we're still friends. And hook up occasionally. We work a lot better when we're not being serious."

She's reached the bottom of the stairs now. "What do you want for breakfast?" she asks.

"Every child and teen has to go to school, basically, yeah. I'm not sure about the history of it but I think it's partially to make everyone knows things and partially for, like, socialization? Lots of - general stuff. Math, science, history, language class. Umm. No meat? Wait, you probably don't have factory farming and I'd feel less bad about meat here, then..."

"We maintain a library here and it's available to all members, but we don't teach mass classes or anything like that. Sometimes one of the more experienced rel'he will tutor a junior. I can do an egg and tomato and cheese frittata?"

"Sounds tasty. We as a society do a lot of mass classes, yeah. I've uh, never had a girlfriend or anything. -Can you turn your body into a girl's if you're born male? I'm not - that! But I knew someone. It was pretty hard for those at home. And societal expectations didn't help."

"Yeah, that can be done. My ex has some mods like that, he was born female. Still has the downstairs parts but he lowered his voice, reduced his breasts, that kind of thing. It's not always respected by el'he but rel'he generally know better."

"...I hope they're okay." Sigh. "The thing that killed me was sort of like the platform you want to make, by the way. For moving stuff around, instead of people. But no auto-safeties, driver controlled. Accidents with vehicles like that are - common enough to be one of the leading causes of death, actually. And occasionally murders with vehicles like that."

"Yeah, there's a reason why I'm reluctant to hand the thing over to el'he drivers." She ducks behind the counter, gets out a frying pan from the cupboard and sets it on the stove.

"Want me to help with that? 'M capable of chopping and not burning the place down, at least."

She reaches into the fridge and comes up with a tomato, then goes into the cupboards and drawers for a cutting board and a knife. She sets them down to one side of her. "Dice that, and I'll get the eggs started."

He cuts the tomato into something resembling cubes, taking a bit longer about it than someone else might have. 

"I still haven't got a good idea what rel'he do with their time. Besides a lot more sex than el'he probably."

"We do magical work. Investigations, permanent lights or heaters, things like my sledge project, cosmetic modifications to others' bodies..."

"Kind of a wide range there. Can magic do cooling?"

"Yeah, that's how the fridge works." She takes some eggs and cheese out from it, opening the door wide so he can see the Hymnos runes on the back. "You have to remember to ke it every so often to keep it cold."

"Gonna be honest, I'm trying to find some kind of idea or product I can usefully... Import. Do ships use, uh, sails? Ooh, how do you copy books?"

"By hand, though you can satura-anske most writing if you know it exists."

"Printing press. Arrange stamps in a frame, then use levers to press them into ink and then into paper repeatedly, make three thousand copies of the same page, then rearrange the stamps and do it again until you have three thousand books' worth of loose-leaf. I'm not sure how bookbinding works but from what I understand it's the easy part."

"Intriguing! I'll have to bring the idea up to Rosalie. In the meantime, frittatta." She cracks an egg into thr pan, steals half of Teddy's tomato bits and mixes them in, and sprinkles shredded cheese overtop. "Let that cook a couple minutes and it should be good."

"I'm glad. There's also radios, which transmit sound over long distances... Could probably make some without too much fuss with Earth books... The rest of the tomato's for yours, I guess?"

"Yeah, you only need half of one. We can do long-distance communication pretty well with the Hymn already, the rel'he'ar is global with sections per town. The shaldea organize that, too. They wear a lot of hats."

"Radios might be different enough to synergize nicely. El'he can't use the message boards directly can they? And you can send music over them."

"- if you can send music over them, I wonder if you can send Hymnos commands. I suspect not, there would be no heartsong involved, but..." She shakes her head. "And yes, radios might be useful for el'he, that's true."

"That could be useful. Might be, like, hackable, though. I'm not an expert on radios specifically. Not an expert on anything really. Uh, I've been wondering, if it's not rude actually - how much older than me you are." He winces a bit.

"I'm thirty-four. Young for a rel'he."

"Yeah, I put that together when you told me about the body commands. It's obviously great that rel'he can live a long time but it's not what I am used to."

"What... Happened to the remote administrators from history?"

"The last one was a thousand years ago. She lived to be five hundred and thirteen. She didn't keep a diary, but you can read her autobiography of the war; it's entitled "The Destroyers And Me." She didn't have any major advances to bring us, and I'm not sure she was from the same world as you, but..."

He shakes his head, shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath.

Five hundred years. It seems... Almost sad. People live longer here. Longer, but not forever. So close to a body that would last forever, and yet-

"But not forever. Even if I could figure out how to give... Everyone that, not forever."

"Not forever. But... How long do people live where you come from?"

"Longer is better! I know. Just... Eighty or so, but a fair amount of range. A hundred is rare. Sixty is... Not that uncommon. Cancer, heart failure..."

"What's cancer? We have heart failure in the very old, but..."

"Cells in the body getting damaged in a way that makes them replicate out of control, and the body's self-defense mechanisms failing to catch it."

"Doesn't happen to us, Heartsongs keep the body in tune with itself. Do you have other diseases like that?"

"Sure. Well, 'cancer' is a big bucket of things that are technically different. Autoimmune issues, allergies, uh, we can do organ transplants and blood transfusions but those risk rejection, hormone balance things... I don't know every incredibly rare disease or syndrome that's ever existed, though. Oh, if we're going by deadliest, there are strokes - blood vessels to the brain get blocked - alzheimer's where the brain sort of... Degenerates, I think. Lung blockage. Diabetes is something about your blood sugar. I'm not a doctor." Also he's a little depressed now.

"We have strokes, mental degeneration in old age, lung blockage, sugar sickness. Sugar sickness isn't treatable here so far as we know, we haven't found the cause to fix it... I don't know what an "autoimmune disorder" is, but we have allergies. We can't do organ transplants or blood transfusions. We're kind of behind you except that Heartsongs make our bodies function more effectively in the first place, sounds like."

"I will get medical textbooks later, but off the top of my head sugar sickness is a result of the body not properly creating a chemical called insulin, and you can manage it with occasional blood sugar monitoring and regular doses of the stuff... I think it mostly kills people pretty quickly if they can't get any insulin, there was a lecture in history class about medical advances that mentioned it..."

"Yeah, that tallies. If you have a text with the formula for insulin that would save lives."

"Not off the top of my head but I am definitely going to research it. I know they used to get it from pigs and found a better way..."

"That's something, I guess." She gets a plate down from the cupboard and flips the frittatta onto it. "Now eat that."

"-Ah, thanks." He finds a fork and takes it to a table (where nobody else is) and noms pensively.

Hannah's still puttering around in the kitchen, so he has a little time to himself.

Then a black-furred catboy comes and sits down across the table from Teddy. 

"Hey," he says. "Heard you're new, wanted to stop by and say hi."

"-Ears. Uh. Yeah. Hi. So you can do stuff like that too, huh? Neat."

"Yeah, it's advanced work," his ears twitch, "but I like 'em better than the original. I go by Cocoa. Did Hannah mention me at all?"

Uh quick diplomacy check uh, "You got her into being rel'he?"

"Yeah. Worked out pretty well in the end, though there were some rough patches. You?"

"Well uh-" He glances over at Hannah and frowns. 'The secret will get out eventually', yes, but no reason to make that happen any faster than it needs to right? "I'm still pretty confused by all the everything but I know some math that's useful for her latest project, apparently. It's called calculus, pretty cool stuff actually!"

"Calculus? Never heard of it. How'd her being your Muse go, is what I'm asking, I heard you kicked her out of her own room?" He tilts his head. "Skittish?"

"There's kind of a special circumstances thing going on and I'm not entirely sure I should talk about it to be honest? But yeah, 'skittish' is a pretty good adjective for me."

"Oh, that. It's out, dear, first thing I did when I learned there was a new rel'he was satura-anske you. And it's alright. You'll grow into it, or you won't. And in the meantime you can help with calculus and other rare things like that."

He fights the urge to facepalm.

"Great. Of course. It's all over the rel'he'ar by now probably too, right? I'm more of an idiot all the time."

"Not yet on the rel'he'ar but it's just a matter of time I bet."

"-I need to read the history books." Huff. "Anyway, if you must ask, I'm shy. I held her hand. And I don't really want to talk about it more?"

"Fine, fine. Forget I asked." He smiles. "So, how's this world so far?"

"It's not like I've seen much of it? I showed up last night, pretty much went straight here. Haven't even looked at the rel'he'ar, I'm just - guessing what it's like based on something else. Overwhelmed. Heartsongs and the Hymn are amazing - for the body-changing too, that's... Way more difficult where I'm from, and we die sooner. At the same time, you don't have lots of stuff I'm used to that can really improve peoples' lives, but I hope I can bring those over. I'll need to talk to craftsmen and stuff for that though."

"Fair enough. I think everybody here is going to stay quiet about you showing up on the rel'he'ar until some serious virus scanning is done, given the givens. Someone might be foolish, but," he shrugs, "can't stop fools."

"I virus-scanned the town yesterday, but yes, people move around. Still - not sure what I'm supposed to do about Corruptors, if it's so important I never even get near them. I assume Rosalie will want to talk to me about that today..."

"Remotely virus scan them down and then replace their heartsongs and get them to safety."

"Mm..." Nom. "Lots of, uh, core draw clearing in my future, I guess. But yeah, everything is kind of... Up in the air for me. Doesn't quite feel real. I think I'll get along with rel'he though."

"Good luck. And just in case it wasn't clear, I don't own Hannah and what she does with you is her business. I'm not here to push you or anything. Much." 

"...Thanks. It did kind of come off that way. And I should probably be making friends, now that the secret's definitely out."

"Sorry, I'm kind of a busybody. Are you interested in men at all, for the record?"

"It's not stigmatized here. Okay.

Theoretically? Especially closer to the side of 'cute' than 'handsome'." He makes a vague gesture in Cocoa's general direction. "'Nother thing I'm skittish about though."

"That's alright. I'll let you get used to the standard arrangement first before I start nosing about. You'll find that most rel'he are, not to put too fine a point on it, sluts. Rosalie excepted."

"Been getting that picture." He halfsmiles. "What kind of coding or whatever other work do you do?"

"I cook, and I do the usual sorts of rel'he things - lights, kitchen appliances, and so on. I've never really made a specialization of it, I just find it fun and it supports me so why not do it? I spend a lot of my time on the rel'he'ar too, answering questions and just chatting."

"Mmhm, makes sense. I'm kind of a nerd, so I'll want to invent. Ooh, say, do you have magic dishwashers or is it wash by hand?"

"It's wash by hand, there've been a few attempts with kinetics but it tends to break plates or else not get everything off."

"What about streams of hot water mixed with soap? That's what we did. Eh, probably not urgent compared to sugar sickness..."

"Good thought, kinda fiddly. Might be doable though. And yeah, sugar sickness is a higher priority if you've got a fix for that."

"Not a cure but my world figured out a treatment that works. I'll need to do some searching. Should maybe get started now, even."

"Don't feel like you've got to fix everything right away. It's fine to take some time for yourself first."

"...Not really. It's well... You read my heartsong. Those are who you are, more or less, or something, right?"

"They're an expression of a core part of your soul. It's not all of you, but..."

"Yeah, I guess.

It's not rude to look people up, is it? And now I'm sort of curious. Satura-anske Cocoa."

NAME: Cocoa
USERLEVEL: User
HYMN: ••
~Categorize This~
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ••◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: ••
CHA: ••••
Heartsong: 『Ordinary』
Your Int, Wis, and Cha are all increased by one for the purpose of modifying someone's Heartsong or body.
Passion Core: ◘

"If you use the full syntax of satura-anske rel'he'ar rel'he Cocoa you'll spend less Core Draw," advises Cocoa. "And please don't give me shit about the natural heartsong-modification ability, I just don't like to see people stuck in ruts."

"I'll remember that syntax. And it's all about consent, isn't it? Not my business who or what as long as there's informed consent. I'm not really used to the implications of heartsongs and modifying them, though. We didn't have any. Or the Hymn."

He nods. "In any case, you have work to do, yeah? So I'll leave you to it."

"Good to meet you!" He glances over at Hannah again, then starts... Attempting searches to get medical journals. More specific means less core draw, but he doesn't actually know the names of any medical journals...

He tries 'satura-anske wikipedia latest page version insulin'.

He receives a copy of the latest wikipedia page for insulin!

...Biochemistry is complicated.

He reaches around for his instinctive-somehow grasp of the language for a command to take notes with.

What he gets is a text editor not dissimilar to emacs.

He reads the Wikipedia page and takes notes, including useful-seeming references. But the page for 'insulin' takes like half an hour to read even once through. This isn't going to be as easy as he hoped, even if he can definitely notice his heartsong kicking in as he studies...

Hannah will find him staring off into space a bit and maybe muttering.

"Hey, you doing okay? You're projecting a bit of an aura, you learn to sense these things as a rel'he. Getting carried along by your Heartsong?"

"-Um hold on."

The difference between hexastable insulin and monomer- He shakes his head.

"I was reading stuff from my world. Sugar sickness is really complicated. I expected it to be really complicated, and it's still more complicated than I expected."

"Yeah, I kind of figured you were buried in that. And... I have a question for you. Do you know how you're speaking our language? Because that speaks to the existence of some form of translation utility, and if you had that you could provide all kinds of technical manuals and so on..."

"I just know it. It's - instinctive. I don't know what the mechanism is, but I think I probably could translate some technical manuals manually... No idea if there's a function to pipe them into, though."

"I'd look through the Hymnos docs you have access to for that, your time's mostly more important than straight translation."

"Oh good point, I haven't even fully read those yet. The kind of story I expected from 'summoned to another world' would have included a lot more running around and fighting so far..."

He saves his insulin notes and brings the Hymnos documents back up with a muttered chant.

"A smart shaldea should never need to confront their opponent in battle. They should end it from far away." 

The Hymnos documents give him a translation routine noted to be good for 50,000 written words per Core Draw. There's a second, much less efficient one that translates and also transcribes audio.

"...I can translate a small book's worth of stuff for one core draw. So I'm not going to be able to dump all of Wikipedia on you guys by any means. Er, wikipedia's sort of like a rel'he'ar specifically dedicated to factual information. Sort of. I could start with some science textbooks, I suppose."

"You could always Key it."

"Still don't know how that works. And isn't finding Corruptors more urgent? If I key anything, it ought to be... A map that tracks them across the world or something."

"Good idea! You have Data access, you could build that. Probably be a pain to specify well and efficiently, but it could work!"

"I can flowchart out some ideas and then talk it over with you! I'd suggest Rosalie but she seems more like a manager than a coder."

"Oh, she can code. But she usually doesn't, she prefers her art. I'll have a look at those flowcharts!"

"Should we go talk to Rosalie?" He wonders, already thinking about the structure of the program.

"Probably not right now, she's likely to be grumpy about her interrupted night. Tomorrow." 

"If you say so. Should I, uh, not even leave this building in case of corruptors- I'm nerdy enough to do that but it seems like it'd get stifling awfully quick. I still need to get my own clothes and..." Pause. "Do laundry and stuff."

"Virus scan the local area for some fifty leagues in a circle around the town and if you get a "clean" you're probably good to be out on the town. People don't move that fast and the local rel'he are going to sit on this, Rosalie sez. And we hardly want to imprison you."

"See, people do move that fast where I'm from so I didn't feel sure."

He thinks for a minute about a good formulation of the scan, limiting it to close to ground level height, then casts it.

One Core Draw, zero virus.

"No virus. I think I'll go for a walk. Fresh air, clear my head..."

"Sounds like a good idea to me. Have fun."

He goes for a walk. Down to the harbor to observe the boats. They're probably renaissance-ish, even if rel'he could surely help with navigation, right?

They have tall masted ships in the harbour, but nothing ironclad. There are a number of smaller fishing boats as well. It does look sort of renaissance-y.

He wonders if they use compasses or more sophisticated things they can ke. He wonders if this planet even has a magnetic field.

He wanders some more listening to people live their lives.

Eventually he returns to the User Collective and looks for Hannah again, then figures out the command to display a document that he's been working on.

"Here's what I've got so far. It's super rough, probably going to throw most of this out, and I feel like I'm not thinking of something obvious with this part." He taps the little flowchart on the right.

He can get a glimpse of an artifact displaying a luminous dial that looks much like a compass.

The townsfolk have average problems and small concerns. Nobody notices him listening in; his hearing is better in this body.

Hannah nods along. "I'm pretty sure we can get some indication of where Corruptors are through the rel'he'ar, at which point it ought to be more efficient to work in the other direction, right?" 

"Like... Yeah, going from small to large would work and just bounce the mark upwards... Do you know how the cost of a scan scales with size? Directly? Is there a way to find out other than trying it."

"It's directly for most searches. Might be worse for your virus scan."

"Oh of en for a direct search like that seems likely. -If we scan in a space-filling pattern so that nobody can walk between it but we're not scanning the whole area, that's a possible efficiency gain. Oh, do you have a concept of... Algorithm complexity? Some sorts are en-log-en, some are en-squared..."

"It's fairly advanced but yes, I have the concept. I agree, oh of en is most likely."

"If we did it top-down I think it could be oh of en log n, or something like that, worst case. Bottom up is much better, it'd just be oh of en... Huh. I haven't actually looked at the rel'he'ar yet, how do you do that?"

"Just sing kaldea-anske rel'he'ar. That'll give you the top level board and navigation from there via a touch interface."

"Kaldea-anske rel'he'ar."

A flat panel appears with a message board displayed. All the text is in Hymnos; this seems to be a welcome board with a tutorial on how to navigate the rest of the rel'he'ar stickied, along with a listing of boards. The listed boards include: Casual Lounge, Hymnos Practice, Travel Lounge, Muse Connections, Code Help & Review...

"Huh. You don't mind if I explore this a while, do you?"

Poke, travel lounge.

"I don't mind."

The travel lounge has a bunch of threads about potential journeys to be made, meetups being planned, and stickied threads about known navigational hazards. Apparently there are monsters in some places in this world.  

Huh. What are some interesting travel locations?

"Yeah, I'm just... Still feeling lost, like I should be doing something. I'd be in school by now, normally."

There is a ring of mountains around the site of the Key, and it's traditional for rel'he to pilgrimage there. (Stickied thread.) There are a few larger cities which might be able to provide more resources for his research. There's a particularly monsterhaunted stretch of woodlands that he might want to steer well clear from. The oceans have no monsters but are treacherous enough to be well-respected. Land travel is generally safer.

"There's nothing you need to do this instant. Relax a bit, if you can. Try to settle in. We're working on getting you your own room."

"I guess... I don't really want to ask for an allowance, but uh, I do need clothes. The Key sounds like a major target for Corruptors... I might want to move to a big city once I know what the hell's going on. More people and stuff to invent with. What's the story with all the monsters?"

"Descendants of people with twisted Heartsongs from the first few times this happened, living in wild places and preying on foot traffic. They are... not good people."

"Shit. Not just - beasts, or rogue machines or something?"

"Those too, but most often in the hands of people."

"Maybe there are some inventions I shouldn't invent."

He looks through the message boards a while longer.

"...Do you guys have, like, board games?"

"Yeah, we do, check in the chat lounge."

He checks the chat lounge.

There's a hidden-information game with role cards, something vaguely chesslike, a game that involves linking together similar-sounding Hymnos words, "count to 100 before a shaldea comes"...

He snerks at the last one and is sorely tempted to post 'hi', but that would be a terrible idea. Actually, he shouldn't post anything at all here, if it'd break the news about him.

"Any, like, private-to-this-user-collective boards?"

"Yeah, the 'local instance' link ought to be in the top right."