Page 86 of The Enduring Universe
“He has refused to destroy the Virohi.”
A stunned silence greeted her words. Basav’s eyes bugged out, and he was the one to break the quiet. “Are you saying that you changed an Ecstatic Architect’s capital desire?TheEcstatic’s capital desire?”
“He changed it himself,” Ahilya answered. “He has freed himself of the falcon-yaksha’s hold and of the past lives. But his everpower is waning.”
She could see their curiosity regarding what had happened, but there was no time nor purpose to filling them in. If overwritingwas going to occur the way she imagined, they would soon all be privy to her memories anyway. Right now, to tell them that she’d excised Iravan would only raise their hackles.
“Iravan has promised to try to repair the Moment,” she said instead. “But there is a reason he refused to destroy the Virohi. He could see finally that there is only one way for us to endure. We can avoid extinction and erasure, but we have to do it together.”
“Together how, exactly?” Dhruv asked, suspiciously.
She swept her gaze over them, the mutinous and scared faces, the trembling bodies. She knew she was not asking them an easy thing, and Ahilya’s voice softened. Her encounters with the Virohi had already had a brutal effect on her, and she could not deny the loss of herself she’d experienced. What she was about to suggest to the others would be to unleash such a loss on themselves, and everyone. They deserved to know why. She tried to explain.
“Ever since the Moment broke, the Virohi have been terrified. They were badly injured by Iravan’s attack on them with the sungineering bomb. I have seen them weep, and I believe they started the overwriting as a way to strengthen their consciousness against dissolution—something they saw occurring. The Moment has always been an anchor of our reality, but it was a manifestation of consciousness too. Without consciousness, there is no perception of reality. You all know this already.”
No one spoke to object, but Ahilya saw a few of the council frowning, Dhruv among them.
“With the Moment gone, our reality became forfeit,” she continued on. “The only reason dissolution has taken this long is because the Virohi began overwriting us. Reality needed a new anchor, and the vriksh was that anchor. Without the Virohi, the core tree was the sum total of all our remembered consciousness, butwiththe Virohi, it became something greater, a mini universe.Reality and consciousness intertwined in the vriksh the same way they once did in the Moment, and only the Virohi could do such a thing—they are creatures bound by physical laws yet not caught by them.”
Ahilya felt a strange exhilaration. The explanation had come to her when Iravan had nearly strangled her. It was as if in that moment when she’d lost it all, pieces had clicked together in her mind. She’d felt sorrow, and grief, and terror, because she’d assumed she’d die before she could share this with the others. But she was here now, and the others were listening.
“The Virohi are overwriting us, but it has all been for a reason,” Ahilya said. “We have felt the effects of dissolution because the overwriting is incomplete. The core tree is connected to us, and because we do not desire to be merged with the Virohi, we are fighting this assimilation. It makes us weak. We are ready prey for the planetrage and dissolution, and we are at threat of extinction—Virohi and human alike. But if we stop fighting this assimilation, if we encourage it, then it is possible we could stand together against what is to come. With us no longer resisting the tree’s desires, the tree could root into the earth deeper. It could anchor. Iravan could repair the Moment and fix our reality, and we—”
“We would be erased,” Dhruv said. “We would no longer truly be human beings.”
“We would evolve,” she replied. “Into something else. Yes.”
She knew the impossibility of her ask. The ability to make an enduring change for the survival of their species, yet do so with a deep loss of themselves… She had contended with this question as had Iravan. In a way, that question had defined both of them, and their marriage. It had set them on this course, long before either had known they were destined for it. No one person could answer this question.
But perhaps a people could.
Finally, it was all their choice. Not her burden alone, nor Iravan’s. But all of theirs.
“This is drastic,” Chaiyya said in a small voice. “There are other methods apart from overwriting. The vriksh has codes embedded within it to preserve architects and citizens, and I could show you methods to heal the Virohi. If you entreated—”
“Are any of us capable of healing the Virohi?” Ahilya asked. “I know I am not—you are asking me to healcosmiccreatures, and any knowledge of trajection will not be enough to heal a massive consciousness like that.”
“You don’t know that,” Chaiyya argued. “Architects perform healing on consciousness all the time.”
“For small injuries and with the Moment intact,” Ahilya said gently. “With time, and with patience. But you could not heal Airav fully, Chaiyya. You could not heal Manav, or any of the other excised architects. What the Virohi suffered with the destruction of the Moment is akin to that, but greater, so much greater.”
Chaiyya opened her mouth, then closed it, frowning.
Basav spoke into her silence. “Even if healing won’t work,” he said scowling, “this is still too drastic. Nothing like this has ever been attempted in our histories—even when Ecstasy was legal. The Moment is broken, but the Deepness is intact. Maybe the Ecstatics of the Garden can help all of us become Ecstatics. We could unify in the Deepness—perform some kind of supertrajection. If he cannot help us”—Basav pointed at Pranav who huddled down—“that little girl—Reyla—she seems to know enough about the Deepness; she could guide us along with the others.”
Ahilya’s brows rose, surprised. Pranav hunched lower in his seat, not meeting her gaze as she glanced at him. It was a measure of how shaken Basav was with her proposal that he was suggestingthis. Not just to become an Ecstatic, but to be guided by Reyla—a girl so young he would not give her a second glace if she were in his Academy.
“Has Reyla escaped the effects of Iravan’s subsummation?” she asked gently.
Pranav shook his head silently.
“I thought not.” Ahilya sighed. “You’re welcome to try,” she said to Basav, “but the Deepness is not working as it once was, remember? It is already melding into the allvision. Besides, do you think the collective will of the Ecstatics is capable of doing this? They are exhausted, as we all are. I will not browbeat you into this, but I do not see any other way except this.”
Basav’s body shook and he buried his head in his hands. The others fell silent too, and on their faces she saw their revulsion, desperation, and panic. They were clutching at straws, seeking another solution when there was nowhere else to turn anymore. Perhaps it was their panic making them forget things that had occurred; or perhaps, like Tariya had mentioned, they were simply experiencing a loss of memory. Either way, Ahilya felt their grief and it was her own. There was nothing she could say to comfort them. All she could do was give them a few precious moments to come to terms with the enormity of her request.
“It is not possible,” Purva said, speaking for the first time. Ahilya had almost forgotten the sungineer’s presence, but now Purva leaned forward, her face drawn into a skeptical frown.
“You realize what you’re suggesting, don’t you?” she said to Ahilya. “You are saying that all of us need to align our desires toward one thing. We can sit here in this council wanting and hoping for that, but how are we to make this possible for every survivor?”
