Old Yru Upper Plaza, Aetherbridge Lift | 2:31 PM | First Day

I'll be a little more specific. The seating areas were broken up into little semi-separate segments, divided by wooden archways, each with the capacity for about 20 people. Half of them had windows while the other half didn't, so that the people who wanted to see the view could do so, while the people who didn't could open up the book and pretend that they were just on a busy tram with a peculiar capacity for three-dimensional movement.

The exception to this rule was the uppermost level, which also had a glass roof (well, technically it was reinforced crystal, but let's not get particular). Because we were early and it wasn't a particularly busy time of day, our group had been able to get a segment at the top mostly to ourselves, though we'd lost track of Lilith and her mother. Hopefully they'd made it inside and nothing had happened. We stored our luggage, then moved to sit.

Ran took a seat next to me, and Kamrusepa, Ophelia and Ptolema took ones nearby. Over the course of the following ten minutes, the lift slowly filled with people, until the sound of background chatter became dense enough that it melted into an omnipresent white noise. The lift had a capacity to ferry about around a thousand, which was a pretty obscene number if you stopped and thought about it, and that didn't even count the operators and engineers at the central level and the middle of each floor.

"You know," I mused idly, my eyes wandering. "I think this is actually the fourth glass ceiling I've run into today."

"Mm, it's true that you don't see a lot of women working in Aetheromancy," Kam said, partially distracted in an attempt to cram the last of her many bags, which hadn't fit into the cage, under her seat. "It's an institutional concern, I think. The educational culture is very masculine, lots of bravado--"

"That's not what I meant," I said, my brow flat. "I mean literally. There was the carriage me and Ran took, the ceiling they've had at the auditorium since they rebuilt it, the entrance hall, and now this." I pointed upwards. "Well, I guess in this context it's different, but..."

"Oh," Kamrusepa said, sounding a bit put off. "That's disappointing. I was looking forward to arguing about politics."

"It's probably just a coincidence," Ran said, turning a page of her book.

"Well, I don't know if I'd say that. The feature is something of a Ysaran post-revolutionary stylistic flair, I suppose," Kam said, before delivering a final blow that was at last able to awkwardly lodge the bag in place. "Open and optimistic, but cautious and conservative at the same time. It lets in a lot of light, without running the risk of prosognostic events you get from a regular window in a public place."

"I suppose that's true," I said. "You never see it in the Dai League, though."

"Mm, well, every culture is different," she said, finally settling into her seat. "They socialized distinction treatment, so I suppose there have been less drive for such gestures of compromise--"

Just then, the doors to the lift slammed shut, and a distinct, gentle-toned bell ran out from the center of the room. This was an all clear symbol, signalling that there was no prosognostic overlap among the passengers and that it was safe to uncover our faces.

"Speak of the devil," Kam said, taking her veil off. I saw everyone else in the segment follow suit, except for Ran, who seemed disinterested in doing so with any great haste.

"Phew, that's a relief," Ptolema said. "It would've been really lame if could only see the view through this thing. That used to happen all the time when I was a kid."

"That's poor luck," Kam said, frowning. "What would the odds be? A few hundred on board, probably half or so of them having undergone distinction treatment considering the demographics... Then the risk of overlap pulling from a pool of about seventy-thousand, though I suppose there would probably be more Ysarans than average--"

I was about to correct Kam on her math when the ground lurched. For a few moments, there was the sound of stone grinding against stone as the mechanism that locked the lift to the base of the Aetherbridge detached, the limestone bars sliding backwards out of their resting slots. This was followed by the rhythmic creaking of bronze as an elaborate mechanism of gears and pulleys repositioned the lift slightly, and then a satisfying metallic clunk as the hooks of the central chains found their purchase.

When the Aetherbridge had first been built, this whole process has supposedly taken close to a half-hour, but now the engineers had it down to a fine art. It was over in less than a minute. After this, there was a series of slight disturbances, shifts in the air that would likely have been indistinguishable to a non-arcanist, as several incantations were cast in succession from both the central chamber and the base of the lift. The Mass-Nullifying Arcana. The Friction-Denying Arcana. The Pressure-Manipulating Arcana.

In truth, though, it was remarkable how little energy and application of the Power was really required. A shocking amount of the ascension was enabled purely by conventional engineering. It was a testament to how far Covenant Era civilization had come, considering it involved no iron whatsoever.

...well, that's what I want to say, in an objective, enlightened-person-invested-in-civilization way. To be truthful, I couldn't really stand the thing. Even glamorous public transport was still public transport, and I didn't really like machines. I felt put off being at the mercy of something I didn't understand and couldn't control.

"I feel kinda dumb about how excited I am about this," Ptolema said sheepishly, obviously not sharing my opinion. "Like I'm almost back to being a kid."

"Ahah, it is quite thrilling, isn't it...?" Ophelia said. There was a slight tremble in her voice.

I looked to her, furrowing my brow. "Do you have trouble with heights, Ophelia?"

"Oh, no, not normally..." She smiled, looking downwards. "I thought it would be fine, but now that's it's about to happen, it is, ah... Rather a lot...?"

"Just try not to think about it too much," Kam said, in an attempt at a soothing tone. "It's not as though it's dangerous. And if worst comes to worst, just look down. You won't even know it's happening, for most of it."

"Ah... Y-Yes, thank you..." She said, already looking downward, smiling in a way that was very obviously meant to conceal anxiety.

I gave her a sympathetic look.

The final step was for the the main body of the lift to attach to the central spire itself. We could see this happening from our seats. A series of bronze arms extended from the base of each floor of the structure, becoming magnetically attached to - but not quite touching - the tower. Any trace amounts of unsteadiness in the structure disappeared quickly, leaving it completely motionless.

Then, without much ceremony, it happened. The ground lurched, just a little bit, and then, slowly at first but with increasing speed, the lift began to rise into the air.

Kam had spoken accurately a moment ago. Because of the arcana used and the way it was built, it really didn't feel like we were actually moving except for the slight sense of gravity being a tad off in a manner that was difficult to describe. I was no aetheromancer, but I understood this was due to the difficulty in mathematically balancing the forces at work perfectly in line with variations in the number of passengers, as well as the constant decrease in gravity as we moved further away from the earth.

I watched upper Old Yru slowly shrink beneath us as we ascended to the height of the nearby mountains. The lift wasn't particularly fast, so this took a long time. But then, the conventional movement was only a tiny minority of the distance traveled in the journey.

"Wow," Ptolema said, looking downward out of the window. "Seeing this all again is really nostalgic."

"It is... Quite something, seeing the city like this," Ophelia said, apparently having worked up the nerve to look outside after all. "Like a little toy playset, that a child left out on the table. Somehow, it's almost calming..."

"You should probably try to savour it while it lasts," I said, looking upward. "We'll be starting to hit the clouds soon. Then it'll all be a blurry white mess until the transpositioning."

"Ugh, I hadn't thought about that," Ptolema said. "That kind of sucks."

"If I remember right, the skies should be clear on the way back, at least?"

"Yeah, but that's going back down," she said, in a tone that suggested the inferiority of this experience was self-explanatory. "It's not the same." She glanced to my side. "Aren't you gonna look, Ran?"

"No," Ran said. "I've seen it too many times. It's not exciting."

"Ohh, I'd nearly forgotten about that," Kam chimed in. She was also looking out the window, though affecting a demeanor to suggest she was less impressed by the experience. "You used to ride the Aetherbridge all the time for that one course you did in the Sibyls College last year, right?"

"Mm-hmmm," she said, with a nod.

Ran's specialization was Divination (one of the only fields old enough, having been established right at the beginning of the Mourning Period, not to fall into the current nomenclature of everything being a something-mancy), or to use the broader term, analytical arcana; the application of the Power to gather information. Every school of arcane study involved this to some extent. Many arcana in my own field of Thanatomancy required some information about to target just in order to function properly. The Flesh-Animating Arcana, for example, was spectacularly unsafe if you didn't know everything about the flesh you were using it on.

Ran, though, was a rare specialist in the field, which our context of medicine meant that she used it for diagnostic purposes, deducing incredibly specific information about the body's components and contrasting that data together to build a picture of what, if anything, was going wrong - to a far greater level of detail and predictive capability than a conventional physician could ever manage.

Because it's human nature to get more obsessed with the means of how to fix a problem as opposed to learning more about the problem in abstract, you barely ever saw divination-specialized healers. There were so few that Ran hadn't been be able to get fully trained at the academy. They'd had to send her up here, where the Sibyls, the only diviners in the world who were truly accomplished, did their work monitoring the natural world.

Kam smiled, almost looking impressed. "I'd consider myself something of a futurist, but I confess even I can't imagine going up this thing as a matter of routine, just yet. Though, I suppose things like it must have been common in the Imperial Era..."

"I dunno if I can imagine ever getting tired of something like this," Ptolema said, the tinge of childish enthusiasm still audible in her voice. "Whatever book you're reading must be really good, Ran."

"It's passable," she said. "I'm almost finished with it, now. About six pages left to go."

"What's the ending like?" I asked, glancing over to her.

She looked at me, furrowing her brow. "What do you mean, 'what's the ending like'? You haven't read the rest of the plot. It won't make any sense."

"I mean, it's a romance novel," I said, suppressing the shitty expression that wanted to form on my face. "They all kind of follow one of a handful of outlines, don't they...? Girl meets man but can't be with him because of wealth disparity or family connections, girl meets two men and has to choose between a good and a bad one..."

Ran gave me the kind of look you might see on a military official who's eye had just been spat in by some disobedient rebel insurgent, and for a moment I was overcome by a very real-feeling sense that she was about to throw me out of the lift's window. "I know you're fucking with me, Su," she said. "I've seen even you read romance that isn't just a laundry list of stereotypes."

"Ahah, well." I scratched at the back of my head. "You are pretty easy to tease about this stuff..."

"For your information," she explained, with a slightly huffy expression, "This is a May-December romantic tragedy."

"Ohh, I know what that is!" Ptolema interjected, sounding strangely pleased with herself. "That's where one of the two is young and the other is super old, right?"

"It is a story where the disparity in the age of the two protagonists forms the basis of the dramatic tension, yes," she replied, with a flat look.

"I'm surprised you know much of anything about romance novels, Ptolema," Kam said idly. "You don't strike me as the type."

"Nah, I'm not," Ptolema said. "My brother used to read them all the time, though."

A couple of regressive thoughts bubbled up from the crude regions of my mind at these words, before being promptly stomped down by the parts that successfully advanced past primary school age in terms of maturity. Kam looked like she was having the same experience, glancing to the side.

"This story is about a modern-day student, who, having been just left by his first love, meets a woman from the 9th generation who has just begun to experience the first symptoms of dementia," Ran explained. "It's about them being surprised by how much they have in common, and developing a relationship even as she slowly deteriorates as a result of her condition, while trying to cope with the judgement of people who see it as unseemly or tragic. At the point I am in the story, she just passed away after a long sequence in which she had completely forgotten him and the time they spent together. The final scene, which it looks like I'm at now, is about him burying her while questioning what meaning the experiences had."

"Oh my god!" Ptolema exclaimed, with a horrified expression. "That's so fucking sad!"

"She did rather say that it was a tragedy, Ptolema," Kam said.

"I know, but... Geez!" She was so affected by this that it seemed to have torn her attention away from the window for a few moments. "Who'd wanna read something like that?!"

"That is more high-concept than I was expecting, at least," I said, a little hesitant. "It sounds like it might upset me, too."

"It's actually pretty standard," Ran said. "Tear-jerker premises are a lazy and reliable way to sell books-- I'm pretty sure I've seen this exact concept a couple times before. The only reason I was interested in it is because the woman is the old one, not the man." Her brow furrowed slightly. "It's usually the other way around.""Stuff like this is popular?" Ptolema said, taken aback.

"Yeah, very much so," Ran said.

"Why?" She asked.

Ran shrugged.

"At the risk of usurping our dear Utsushikome's position as the class social analyst," Kam said, "I would expect it's because it provides a source of catharsis. People inevitably experience tragedy, and want to see it reflected in fiction as a form of second hand empathy." She looked in my direction. "How'd I do, Su?"

"Not bad," I said, "but even that might be reading too much into it. I think a lot of people just like to feel sad for the sake of feeling sad." I thought about how to frame it for a moment, "Like the nice feeling you get after throwing up."

She snorted. "That's likely true, too."

Ptolema, for her part, just shook her head. "People are so messed up."

"Um, would it be alright if I borrowed the book from you when you're done with it, Ran?" Ophelia said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "I didn't bring very much to read."

She raised an eyebrow. "Sure, if you want. In fact, you can keep it. It's not like I'm going to read it again."

"Oh, thank you!" Ophelia said, smiling warmly. "That's very generous."

"If you say so," she said, looking back to the book with a bemused expression.

The lift continued its climb upward, Old Yru becoming nothing more than a vague mass of shapes and tiny writhing points below. Then, rather abruptly, we hit cloud-level, and suddenly the entire world was white fluff. Thick droplets of water ran down the window above us, their impact silenced by the arcana. The storm, though not yet ripened to the point it would be when it raged tonight, was still thick enough that I doubted we'd break through into the pure, blue sky above before we reached the next stage.

"I suppose it can't be too long until the transpositioning, now," Kam said, echoing my thoughts, and then made a mischievous smile. "I wonder what would happen if lightning were to strike, right at the moment of truth? Would we be spread into a thousand little pieces between here and the stratosphere, I wonder?"

"I'm pretty sure that can't happen," I said. "Lightning is caused by a shift in pressure, and the Pressure-Denying Arcana--"

"Oh, I know, Su, I know," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'm just having a bit of fun. You're so serious, today."

"I think the hull of the lift is strengthened enough to take a pretty hefty impact, too," I went on. "It's supposed to be able to stay intact after a fall, even at terminal velocity."

"I bet the red stains that were once the passengers would appreciate it if that happened," Ran said, and then snapped her book shut.

"Finished?" I asked.

"Finished," she confirmed. "Heads up, Ophelia."

She tossed the book at the other girl, but she responded mutedly, only seeming to become aware of what was happening at the last minute, awkwardly catching it in her lap.

"Oh, uh..." She smiled in a way that seemed strange, brushing some hair out of her eyes. She seemed to be shaking slightly. "Thank you..."

Ran furrowed her brow at her. "You okay?"

"Y-es," she said, the word coming out stiff. "It's just, now that it's coming up, I think it's getting hard to get the anxiety out of my mind..."

"Ah, geez," Ptolema said. "You've gone and scared her with your weird hypotheticals, Kam."

"Oh, um." Kamrusepa, in a rare moment for her, actually blushed a little with embarrassment, seeming unsure what to say for a second. "I'm sorry, Ophelia. I'd forgotten what you said earlier-- That was thoughtless of me."

"No, it's alright!" She held up a hand reassuringly. "I just need to focus on something else. Keep my breathing regular..." She inhaled and exhaled deliberately, her face growing a little pale.

"Can we do something to keep your mind off it?" Kam asked.

"Oh, I don't know, really--"

"Su," Kamrusepa said, turning in my direction. "Tell one of your jokes."

"What?" I said, blinking. "What do you mean, 'my jokes'?"

"I've seen you telling Ran jokes all the time. I'm dreadful with them, but you must know a lot. Tell one!"

My eyes flicked over to Ran for a moment. She glanced at me in turn, her expression slightly wary.

"Uh. I don't actually know that many..." I said, scratching behind my ear. "I only try to think of ones to tell Ran, since it's, ah, sort of a running thing we have? It's hard to explain."

This was a half-truth. It was, at least at an essential level, incredibly easy to explain: I didn't want to tell a joke because all my jokes were awful and almost universally depressing. Ran only tolerated them because I'd successfully lowered the bar to around 100 feet below ground level over the course of our friendship.

Another chime ran out from the center of the lift. This was to signal that the transpositioning was to take place in 1 minute. Though it was difficult to judge the speed of the lift from within the cloud layer, it seemed to accelerate slightly, and Opehlia tensed up in a way that was subtly visible, gripping the side of her chair.

"Come on, Su," Kam said, frowning. "Don't be peculiar about this."

The peer pressure cut into me like a hot knife. I hesitated a little, biting my lip. "Well, uh, okay. I'll just tell a quick one." I swallowed, my mind quickly scrambling. "Okay, so, there's a woman who runs a dispensary for second hand goods. She sees a man come in who's a regular customer. He's kind of a mess-- Has a big beard, a bad complexion. He buys a razor, and tells her he needs it to clean himself up, because he has a date."

I could see that I now had Ophelia's attention and that Kam was looking pleased with herself, but Ran was watching me, too. I could see the look in her eyes. It screamed at me, with such vividity that it could be sold at an art gallery: You better not be telling a suicide joke right now, or we're going to have a talk.

But it was too late. The wheels were already in motion.

"About six months later, he comes back--"

The 30 second warning bell chimed. Ophelia was still breathing heavily, but she was also smiling, enjoying my attempt at helping. Ptolema, who was sitting near her, had shuffled over to her and put an arm around her shoulder for emotional support.

Internally, I was trying desperately to think of an alternate punchline. Why did I have to be so terrible at improvising...?

"--looking a lot happier," I went on. "This time, he buys a new tunic. 'For a special occasion,' he says. Another six months later, he comes back again. This time, he looks much better; practically a new man. He spends a long time browsing, and this time he picks up a diamond ring, and happily goes heavily into luxury debt for it. The woman, obviously, can put two and two together, so as he's leaving she tells him she's--"

The bell for the 10 second warning ran out. I continued. Kamrusepa, the perverse witch, seemed to have picked up on my discomfort to some extent and was evidently enjoying it, her lips wide with amusement. That she was responsible presumably either didn't occur to her, or enhanced the enjoyment.

"--very happy for him, and to tell her how it goes. Two days later, he comes back, and, uh..."

He says, 'So, I'm going to need another razor.'

"He, er," I hesitated, "he says, um... Rather, he browses--"

It didn't happen until a moment later, but the strength of the incantation was such that we could all feel it a second before the actual event. When enough eris is put to work all at once, you can almost hear the sound of reality giving way, like a wall of plaster in the path of a sledgehammer. Even laymen can sense it. It echoes across the skin, down to the bones.

W o r l d - B e n d i n g"...