Page 54 of The Enduring Universe
“No, not clearly, not since they escaped the ashram. You know this.” But Ahilya cut herself off, frowning.
She had seen murmurs of citizens in there before, of Dhruv and Chaiyya, and she’d spoken to Iravan there. She’d seen the weeping, huddled shapes of the cosmic creatures too, though those had disappeared. Now past the leaves of her memories, she glimpsed something in the Etherium. A shadow and a whisper and a thousand tendrils of smoke bleeding into dark echoes. The Virohi were here, except instead of being a single mass of grieving shapes, they had diffused somehow to permeate the tree.
An image came to her in explanation—the cosmic creatures caught inside the vriksh like little seedlings, traveling through osmosis into her mind.
But not just her mind.
All of the citizens’ too.
Her eyes grew wide and she stared at Basav. He saw her comprehension.
“You understand then?” he said softly.
“I—I—”
Basav’s voice grew cold. “When you allowed the cosmic creatures into the tree, you gave them access to all of us, architect and non-architect alike. To our knowledge, our memories, everything. To the codes of trajection. They have more knowledge about us than we do, they know what we have forgotten about ourselves. You already know this, don’t you?”
Ahilya remembered that time in Nakshar when she had seen the desires of people spark within the rudra-tree. When she had understood how archival memory was created, and how it was maintained within a core tree. The vriksh’s sentience, its life… these were the lives of people, a living history that had formed within its trunk, and that dictated everyone’s reality within the ashram. All the lives of every citizen on Irshar were inextricably tied to the vriksh. And with the Virohi within the tree, the vriksh was tied to the Virohi too. A choking sound emerged from her throat.
Chaiyya reached forward, concern on her face, but Ahilya pushed her aside. She couldn’t bear to be touched, not when she had been violated so deeply already, not when she had violated others in return. She felt sick.
“We’re calling it overwriting,” Airav said quietly. “The Virohi have access to the tree, and they have always seen you as one of them. Now that they have access to us through the tree, throughyou, they are attempting to take over our consciousnesses. Should they succeed, we will lose ourselves—to be human no longer, but this corrupted version—whatever they wish us to be. Our perception of reality will begin to warp. I’m afraid, Ahilya-ve, that humanity might simply become their vessels.”
“Like me,” she whispered.
All three councilors nodded. Ahilya shivered. She had been resentful of the others for never knowing how she suffered with the cosmic creatures, but she never wanted this. She could imagine itclearly—each thorn of memory filling her with the citizens’ secrets until she was a nothing but a vessel that held all of them. Then with her at the helm, the Virohi would reach for each of these people in turn, connecting to them through the vriksh. A true hive mind, until each of the citizens became mere marionettes, sheaths of skin and meat holding nothing but the Virohi. The Virohi had split into architects, holding them as a vessel alongside yakshas, but this would be every single person. All of humanity lost to its mind, brief flashes of memory reminding them of who they had once been. It was like the old joke she and Dhruv used to tell each other when discussing their place in Nakshar. What was worse than erasure? An everlasting memory of it. Ahilya thought that she might vomit.
“What triggered this?” she asked, past the stone in her throat. “After all these days and weeks, why did the Virohi attempt to overwrite us now?”
“Does it matter?” Basav said.
“If we know it, perhaps we can prevent it from occurring again.”
“We cannot know it,” Basav replied, nearly spitting. “It is likely a natural consequence of things occurring. And it is already too late to prevent it. Now that they are in the tree, the process of overwriting has begun. Perhaps the Virohi needed those last few weeks to evolve and understand their new position before attacking us. Perhaps this was always going to occur right from the time Iravan-ve created Irshar and manipulated all the other core trees, making themopento the Virohi’s infection. We can never know. All we know is the effects that rendered when we all momentarily became you. We became your playthings. For a brief time, we lost ourselves completely, our consciousnesses tossing around inside your own.”
Ahilya’s hands tightened on her covers again. She stared at the fabric, the coarse weave of cotton, the tiny patterns on the cloth. Scattered images came to her, of the vriksh weeping, and Iravanreaching his hands for her. She tried to build a complete picture, but it was as though she was performing archeology on herself. The feeling was so bizarre that the tightness in her neck increased, itching.
Overwriting, she thought—and Basav called it them becoming her, but no, this was about Ahilya becoming the rest of these people. Not the other way around. Did it make any difference?
Pieces of the puzzle appeared and vanished in her head. Iravan, the mirrored chambers, the manner they had spoken in and communicated before—and then what had happened with the vriksh. She had started down this path to be recognized. She had once wanted to be important. Everything she had done had been motivated by it, once upon a time. Archeology, the study of earthrages, her every action, all of it had contained the seed of her pride. She had become entangled in the architects and their lives, in the politics of survival, but who was she really? Just a simple archeologist, with little training for anything else.
Ahilya closed her eyes, and just for an instant she saw not the nightmare she lived in, but a shining moment of the past. Iravan and her lying on their backs, looking up at the sky from one of Nakshar’s terraces, discussing and theorizing arbitrary matters, which neither of them ever could imagine would become real. Very carefully, she smoothed her hands over the covers, knowing that the others were watching her every move.
“All is not lost,” Airav said softly. “This incident has given us a warning of what can occur, but while the Virohi are contaminating the tree—and you—like an infection, as long as you keep control over yourself, you will slow their corruption. You will be the necessary barrier between them and us. But if you don’t, if you give in or give up, it is likely that the Virohi will convert us to what they wish. Suffice to say, if they did so we would be erased.”
Ahilya could still feel the thorns under her skin. What Airavsaid was tantamount to allowing herself to live with such an attack, while holding onto her reality and self. How could he ask her this so callously? Did he not know she was weak?
“I have failed you once already,” she said softly. “I have failed you many times.”
“We know,” Basav said shortly. “Which is why we have thought of a solution.”
“This is an opportunity,” Chaiyya said gently. “Ahilya, you would never have been able to extract the Virohi from the tree. All your attempts so far have failed, and none of us know enough about the Virohi to help you, not with all our records so lost. But if they’re contaminating the core tree and are visible to you there, you can use your control of the vriksh. You can help Iravan destroy them.”
Ahilya recoiled, staring from one to another. “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she said, swallowing. “I don’t have true control of the tree, and I only see the Virohi in shadows. I don’t know where they are, and if I did, I wouldn’t know how to destroy them.”
“That,” Basav said, “is why I am here.”
From his satchel, he removed a thick book. Ahilya had once owned a similar satchel. She had carried it everywhere, but now Basav had taken over that affectation, carrying his most precious possessions with him at all times. No place was safe, after all, not since architecture could change on a whim even for Senior Architects.
