Arch/Eternal - Chapter Eighteen

Marvy

First thing, real quick…

For the newcomers: Arch/Eternal is a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little Dan Simmons. It’s also an experiment in long-form serialized fiction on Substack.

For the allcomers: If you haven’t read any of the previous chapters, I hereby give you permission to abandon any feeling of obligation to catch up, and instead just start HERE, with this chapter.

After all, that’s what the short summary below is for.

By the end, you’ll know whether you want to keep following along or not. And I promise to always include an updated summary, so you’ll never have to worry about keeping track of the important details.

Two other things (even quicker) —

If you really want to start at the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

I also recommend you check out A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy at some point, for a more immersive experience.

OK, now the summary:

Earth is a protected (read: ignorant) planet nested within a galactic community known as the Fellowship. In an effort to help Earth attain full citizenship, and to rescue its people from total self-destruction, historian/researcher and secret ambassador Rita Freeman is recruiting talented young people to build a better society.

One of these is Jackson River, who grew up with his grandmother in a tiny desert town in northern Arizona, and at 11 years old, lost his best friend after an episode of severe bullying. Another is Esther Quinn, who grew up in an idyllic home in Connecticut. When she was 11, her brother Adam was recruited by Rita to become the founder of a new movement called Cubensia. Years later, Esther moved to Boston to join him.

By some stroke of fate or fortune, Esther, Jackson, and their friend Deek are late to a Cubensian launch party that becomes ground zero of an attack that destroys an entire city block. Rita scoops up all three of them into her spaceship, and takes them through an interstellar gate buried on the dark side of the Moon to a planet called Priezh, where they will receive the Fellowship’s version of basic training, starting with a series of torturous physical augmentations.

On the way, they learn about the galactic drama that has been playing out between the Fellowship and the Confederacy, and the Firstborn, a powerful race of beings at the head of each of them — respectively called archs and eternals. Esther grieves the loss of her brother, Adam, and is vocally suspicious of an arch named Morning who was bonded to him, and should have protected him from what Rita claims was an attack by an eternal in Boston.

Meanwhile, a mysterious friend of Rita’s named Callan has been left back on Earth to try to figure out what happened. While visiting a dealer of exotic artifacts, he learns of a shady figure who might have known about the attack in advance. In an effort to track this person down, he decides to enlist the help of an old flame, a woman in New York named Margaret McEvoy, aka “Marvy”…

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Marvy

Among those on Earth with a legitimate connection to the Fellowship, there are basically two different types: in-network, and out-of-network. 

In-network means you’re in (reasonably) good standing. It means you stop by nodes periodically, and you keep up relationships with other citizens. It means you pick up the phone, so to speak, when other in-network types call. 

Out-of-network is the other thing. You’re as off-grid as you can be. Sure, you have an ID-embedded micrograft, but you’ve elected to keep your personal data to yourself, including where you are and what you’re up to. You don’t visit nodes. You don’t pick up the phone. 

People like Rita and Callan are very much in-network, and tend to be suspicious of Fellowship affiliates who are out-of-network. Because the question is why? It’s not like there’s some oppressive regime trying to exploit or coerce you. Being in-network doesn’t mean you owe anything to anyone, or cost you anything. So why stay on the outside? 

In Callan’s (admittedly limited) experience, there are really only two reasons a person would elect to never pick up the proverbial phone. The first is a somewhat crippling and antisocial form of anxiety about the reality of the universe. They prefer to LARP as a regular Earthling, going about Earthling business, and very much do not want to think about the galactic drama unfolding over tens of thousands of years. Which means avoiding people who do. 

So, OK, fine. Each his own, etc. 

But the second reason (often masquerading as the first) is that the less you associate with other ID-holders, the better you can leverage the privileges of your affiliation with the Fellowship. You can set yourself up very nicely indeed, and enjoy a pleasant and persistent sense of superiority as you cavort with the ignorant masses. You get to have big-fish-small-pond vibes wherever you go. 

These people suck, and Callan has no respect for them.

Anyway, the mystery man who passed through Twio’s shop looking for a quick payout was definitely an out-of-network type. And Margaret McEvoy is better at keeping tabs on people like him than anyone else Callan knows. Frankly, if she wasn’t running the New York node, she’d probably be out-of-network herself. The second kind.

Because it’s not like “running a node” is an official thing. All it means is that you make sure the place is available for the people who want to use it. And Callan can imagine there’s plenty of demand right now. Enough, probably, that it might be tough to access an entry point. One of the ways you keep a node hidden is by minimizing foot traffic — a lot of people use a door, someone’s gonna notice. 

But before he can worry about that, he needs to get dressed. He’s not going to go meet Marvy for the first time in over two decades wearing only his armor. 

The entry point he’s decided to try is in a comedy club that’s somehow still open at 3am. A block or so away, he finds an alley to slip into, decloaks, and puts his clothes back on overtop the armor. He wishes he could find a retailer that was still open at this time of night — his jacket, in particular, is looking tired after being pressed into the pack for hours. 

When the guy at the door asks for ID, Callan tells him he’s there to see Marvy. This guy has no idea who that is, but he does know that if anyone asks to see her, he’s supposed to just let them in. Good thing, too, because the only ID Callan has is the Fellowship code embedded in his micrograft. 

Inside, no one is on the tiny stage, and it’s all drunk young people and loud music from the 90s. Callan wonders if someone’s being ironic or if Marvy knew he was coming. 

In the back, next to the dingy bathroom, there’s a short hallway that turns back on itself and deadends in a locked door that has every appearance of being a utility closet. This is where the graft ID comes in handy — the door unlocks for him automatically. 

Once he closes it behind him, a yellowed fluorescent light flickers on to reveal dirty plaster and an open-cornered shower that looks like it hasn’t been used in years. Invisible to anyone without a graft, a blue holographic ring floats near the big rusty knob. When Callan puts his hand through, one of the tiled walls noiselessly depresses inward, then slides back to reveal a narrow set of stairs that spiral tightly downward. 

They descend quite a way before letting out into a cozy vestibule. It’s a space designed for waiting, with a handful of armchairs, a low table, and fireplace in the corner. Open flame in sconces on the stone walls. A real medieval vibe. 

Sure enough, there’s someone waiting, which makes him even more suspicious that the asinine grunge rock upstairs was for his benefit. Just the sort of psy-ops trolling Marvy loves best. 

The woman here in the vestibule is short, dark haired, olive skinned, and looks to be in her mid to late forties. Unaugmented, then, and no coded graft. Callan wonders how much she knows, how much she’s seen. There’s technically no rule against bringing someone inside. It’s just not looked on very favorably, because it often means that they don’t get to have a normal life anymore. 

“You must be Callan,” she says. “I’m Tara. Follow me.”

The little foyer lets out into a mess of stone hallways that would be impossible to navigate without a guide or a wayfinder. Callan wonders why Marvy sent Tara instead of just setting a wayfinder. 

Vanity. Or some kind of test. Or both. Whatever.

They wind through the underground maze for several minutes, passing plenty of doors and open rooms, but no other people, which is surprising. Callan hasn’t been keeping track of how many ‘shippers there are scattered around Earth, but he figures it should be enough to make this place a bit more lively after what happened in Boston six hours ago.

Finally, Tara opens a door and waves him onto the upper loft of an enormous three-story studio. Filled with canvases and art materials, the inside is all mid-century bohemian, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over a steampunk wetdream of a cityscape. Above, the sky roils angry grays and purples, while a setting sun pierces through to cast perfect golden light into the room.

The scene outside is fake, but everything else is real. Including Marvy herself. 

“Hey soldier boy,” she says without turning around.

Callan makes his way down a rickety brass staircase while Tara silently excuses herself.

As he gets closer, he can see she’s working with more than paint. Splashes of color move in cyclical patterns around her strokes. It’s a bit too abstract for Callan to make sense of, but he thinks it might have something to do with the fake sunset.

“Nice place,” Callan says as he stops a few paces away.

She glances back. “Thanks.”

She’s beautiful in a way that’s almost frightening, with cunning green eyes and a smile that suggests you’re about to lose a game you didn’t realize you were playing. 

Her cosmetic style has undergone a radical transformation in the twenty plus years since Callan last saw her. The thick red hair is now close-cropped, and she’s covered in tattoos all the way up to her ears. Her eyebrows are gone, underneath a baroque pattern laced all the way around those green eyes. Her graft could supply these effects easily enough, but he suspects all the ink is genuine. As well as the piercings in her ears, lips, nose, and almost certainly other places. She’s wearing tank top that doesn't leave a lot to the imagination. 

It’s hard to imagine how someone looking like that could keep a low profile, and suddenly Callan understands the Tara mystery. She makes it so Marvy never has to leave the node network. 

“Where is everyone?”

“Who are you looking for?”

“Honestly anyone who knows what the hell is going on.”

She looks back at him again, incredulous. “You’re telling me you’re not that guy?”

Callan shakes his head.

She tosses a slender brush into a bucket of water already half-saturated with paint, and walks away from him. “Well then what did I bother letting you in for.”

“It’s really good to see you,” he said.

Marvy rifles through a stack of other paintings.

Callan lets out a little puff of air. “So neither one of us knows anything.”

“Looks that way, old chap.”

“Except that I’m betting you at least know why this place is empty.”

She turns on him like she can’t believe he asked the question.

“You think I’m going to open up all the doors right now? I already told you I don’t know shit. What am I gonna risk letting in bunch of strangers.”

Before he can answer, she picks out a canvas from the stack and pulls it out to show him. It’s a depiction of her and the Earth, locked in an erotic embrace.

“Nice,” he says.

“I know it’s a little gauche, a bit self-aggrandizing, but it’s how I feel, ya know?”

She gazes on her work admiringly.

“What do you mean strangers?”

“No one’s made any claims,” she says, still examining the portrait. 

“You think it could be one of us.”

“Could be you.” She shoots him a straight-faced wink. “Did you do it?”

Callan remembered why he’d let twenty years go by without talking to this woman. Back when he was fresh, she had seemed as cool and as hot as they come. He had considered her romantic overtures a stroke of extreme good fortune. It was clear to him now that he had been a new toy for someone who had been running along on the hedonic treadmill for a lot longer than him. 

“So why let me in?”

She shoves the art back where it came from, and heads for a workbench in a different part of the studio. “It’s because I thought you might know something, which I realize is just me being a big fat dumbfuck because if you did, you wouldn’t have come.”

A wood frame creaks as she stretches a fresh canvas over it. 

“It depends,” he says.

“No it doesn’t. Anyway I don’t know what to tell you. I’m holding down the fort. I’m not letting anyone in. Plenty of other nodes to take in the huddled masses.”

“Any number of whom might be complicit.”

“See, you get it.”

“What are people saying?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’ve been staying off the networks.”

“Right. You been running with Rita. Yeah, everyone’s pretty sure her little social experiment was the target.”

“Did you see anybody, or hear about anybody acting strange before it happened, like they might have been anticipating something?”

“No. And now everyone’s playing the same stupid hand — kings of shocked and confused, queens of scared and suspicious.”

“What hand are you playing?”

“I’m not. It’s a bad game. I’m not a chump.”

The redundancy was out of character for Marvy, which belied her claim. She was playing right along with everyone else, with no better cards, and it made her furious. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

He shrugs. “It’s been too long. It’s bad timing. Take your pick.”

“I’ll take both.”

She finishes the frame and bounds up a nearby staircase to an open kitchen on the second floor. 

Callan retrieves the golden coin from his pocket — a ciphergram preloaded with a message for the mysterious seller Twio Vaird told him about.

“You had eyes on Vaird’s place?” He doesn’t need to yell for his voice to carry through the big open space.

“He wishes. You want anything?”

“Sure. Something dense.” 

“I had you at the airport.”

So that’s how she knew he was coming. “Glad you’re taking this gig seriously.”

With two bottles gripped in one hand, Marvy uses the other to vault over an iron railing and land lightly on the lower floor. Callan resists the urge to shake his head. Still an inveterate showoff. 

“Thanks,” he says as she hands him one of the bottles. It’s gunmetal gray with a black cap that irises open when twisted. One sip tells him it’s imported. Thick, with the nutty sweetness of carbohydrates perfectly calibrated to be metabolized into ATP. It’s exactly what his body needs right now. 

Plus, it tastes like a chocolate peanut butter smoothie. 

He lowers himself into a rickety wooden chair. Marvy leans against one of the windows in a way that half-silhouettes her against the fake sunset. 

“So,” she says. “Been seeing some action?”

“Some,” he says. 

They regard one another for a few moments, letting probability waves compound between them.

Eventually, Callan holds up the ciphergram. “I think I might have an ace for you to play.”

She rolls her eyes, shoves off the window, and pirouettes on one toe as she chucks her bottle up over the railing of the second floor, where it crashes into a stainless steel sink and somehow doesn’t bounce back out.

“Don’t pretend like it’s not your card you want me to play,” she says, walking back over to the painting she was working on when he arrived.

“Fine,” he says. “But if you didn’t have eyes on Twio, you don’t know what this is.”

She doesn’t look back. “I know what it is.”

That stops him. Wait… “You were the woman who sold it.”

“He’s quick, ladies and gentlemen, he’s mighty quick.”

A whole sidequest of mysteries branches off in another direction. But Callan can’t afford to get distracted. 

“Who’s it for?” she asks, expertly redirecting one of the flowing patterns on the canvas.

Callan briefly explains his suspicions about why the drifter wanted cash instead of credit.

“You don’t need that kind of money unless you’re dealing with the unwashed.” Her term of endearment for people ignorant of the Fellowship. “What’s the message?” 

“A time, a place, a name.”

“You’re not gonna tell me?”

Callan keeps eye contact for a long beat. I’m trusting you. “Three days, at the Himalayan port.”

“Not you, though,” she says. “Nobody knows you.”

“Sky.”

Marvy blinks. “Bullshit.”

Callan doesn’t say anything.

She shakes her head. “Bullshit.”

“Can you get it to him?”

“What makes you think he’ll believe it? I don’t believe it.”

The real problem is that she does, and her brain is chewing through the implications. She knows Callan isn’t the type to invoke one of the Three Archs as a bluff. And she knows that if Sky really does want to have a chat with this drifter fellow, there’s probably an eternal on the loose. Not that there haven’t been those kinds of speculations, but this is a whole hell of a lot more than speculation. 

“Where’s Rita?” she asks suddenly.

“I’m here on her behalf,” he says. He doesn’t say she’s already offworld, but he doesn’t need to. He can hear her heart rate climb. 

“Marvy,” Callan says, “all I need you to do is pass this along. Can you do that?”

“You’re making it up. You’re making it up to bait him out, whoever it is.”

“Marvy,” Callan says again. “Please.”

She gives him a look that makes him forget, for a moment, that she’s lived at least three times as long as he has. Her pet, Tara, the tattoos, the piercings, all the art and edges — all the trappings of her performance du jour melt away to reveal the thing deep down that won’t ever change. She loves to live. And she loves this world to live in. 

To take the coin is to acknowledge how fragile it all truly is. That there are powers and forces far beyond her own.  

“If I say no, you’re just gonna go find someone else.”

Callan nods.

“Fuck that.” She takes the coin.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome to stay,” she says, but she knows he won’t.

“We’ll see each other again.” He touches her shoulder. “Sooner next time, I promise.” 

As he heads up the stairs, he glances down one last time to see her looking down at the coin. Silent in dark futures.

She no longer suspects that she was right. That whoever shows up in three days won’t find Sky, or any of the Three Archs, they’ll find Callan. 

If it turns out to be an eternal, his and Rita’s suspicions will be confirmed, and he’ll be trading his life for that information. But if it’s anybody else…well, he has three days to make sure he’s more than ready.

This is the job. This is what it means to serve in the Protectorate of the Fellowship.

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If you would…

I’d be just super duper stoked if you’d slap/slam/smash/tap that little like button. You know, the one shaped like a heart as hollow as mine will be if you don’t?

Also, and always, all thoughts welcome.