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The Astronomer was surprised at the lack of agricultural developments; he ordered technology from the city to speed up production. Mechanically-powered shuckers, ox-powered scythes. Change was gradual and never complete. Despite the introduction of more efficient methods, the trade was still committed to the older, inefficient methods. Though one could easily have the carriages cut all the grain, it was common for farmers to spend large swathes of time cutting manually.

This vexed The Astronomer. "Of the manifold ways to accomplish this task, you choose the most inefficient? Your time is so worthless?"

The Computer later framed this for The Astronomer as 'a retreat to flawed meta-reasoning, upon objectively incorrect axioms', via note. The Astronomer complimented her for this and agreed, while she remained stonefaced.

The first time he met with The Computer, one-on-one, she simply sat next to him and stared at the stars. After fifteen minutes of no words, she handed him a paper from her head. A labeled grid of stars, all labeled and named. Their supposed distances, in the hundreds of kilometers. Their supposed sizes, in the ones of centimeters. She left after that.

He watched her walk away in the moonlight. Mute and expresionless, but freely handing out information.

Guy Incognito 2y ago

The ribbons keeping her eyelids locked fell out. She jerked the plate from her head, blood-slicked rivets sliding from skull. The little fluid still in her head leaked.

She could see, barely.

"Worthless metal, worthless plate, worthless shield," she attempted muttering to herself, but her crooked, malformed teeth interfered with enunciation.

She knocked the plate against the lid. The assistant opened.

She gestured a shaky, bloody finger to the cylindrical blob atop the rectangular blob. It, too, had ribbons entering and exiting, though far fewer, and far larger than Eight of Infinity's.

The assistant obliged, bringing the clay golem to Elephant Eater. She fumbled to force it into her head, splashing. Her assistant helped push it in.

One way to transcend manifold anachronium is to create pieces of yourself to exist outside it. The golem was one such device. An external source of memory and computation designed to never experience the looping, the enforced entropy, the contradictions upon contradictions upon contradictions upon

Though she herself frowned upon it. Nothing was real, therefore everything was real, therefore through what justification should it be permitted to exist? Through the insisting of Eight of Infinity. Despite him being the one to enforce the entropy in the first place.

Hypocrite. For him to claim the Word was Light, yet to refute it for her. To claim the Word was Light, yet to want Apollyon to destroy it all.

She grimaced, as the teeth in her lower jaw shuffled, then chastised herself for giving credence to pain over not-pain.

The golem had been in her head the first time she'd experienced anachronium, approximately two years prior, so her papers from before were muddled. In particular, there was a looping sequence of cells designed to terminate after 23 years, which she didn't recognize the meaning of. Some nonsense involving light, doubtless.

Eight of Infinity needed to be broken out of his own head. How can someone with the ability to induce wheels within wheels of contradictory realities inside someone's soul not also realize the falsity of existence? How can a being which induces contradiction assert refuted Light?

She'd left a few notes for herself, apparently.

"Ellen: "

If she repeatedly remembered and forgot her name, it must not be important. May have been a derivative of Elephant Eater, or vice versa.

"The Word is False and False is The Word. Drill into Zeno's head he is a hypocrite. You have killed him four times. He is human."

She's been working for at most two years, and she's killed Eight of Infinity four times?

"You love humanity."

She tried again looking at the 25-year cell loop, but the language didn't make any sense. Maybe she wrote it in a cipher she'd since forgotten, or it'd been repeatedly translated through unknown scripts.

Manifold eternities of tumbling through wheels in bloody wheels inside of wheels in bloody wheels knit from the brane of a brilliant demon.

She screamed as her heart sped back up to its normal pace, spraying blood through the remnant holes in her body. And again, she chastised herself for the privileging of existence over nonexistence when everything exists.

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Guy Incognito 2y ago

There was a knock on the chamber. Her assistant had let someone in.

"Oh star," said the knocker, a blob past her glass. "Eight asked me for Apollyon first. Eight wants to die and for the project to end."

It was difficult to associate adjectives and a written waveform with a voice, but best she could tell, the golem claimed he was her and Eight's superior, Sir Johnathan Penrose. An irritating figure, one to talk and talk and talk without saying anything. The golem's notes claimed "Johnathan claims his Word is Word."

"I told him I couldn't, it's not my responsibility, that it's your's, Elephant. He got angry, then said he'd talk to you. I said I'd order a contract drafted to satisfy him. He objected, said it wasn't necessary.

"Regardless, I won't allow Apollyon. We are doing good.

"I met a man in town, Elephant. Alexander Stone. Said we saved his father from disease with pools, and his uncle from work with automata. Said they were so set in their ways, they'd gladly kill themselves in service of their work. Alexander said it was a godsend you and Eight came."

"Eight, too, is set in his ways. Regardless of what one holds in their head, they can't manage everything. I told him, stop controlling five hundred pools, and six hundred golems, and all the other automata. He said no, without him, many would die. Curious his first instinct was to end it all than to pull back. Perhaps a consequence of the infinite Light in his head.

"I tangent. He's correct, without him, many would die. But his life is more important than their's. They aren't sovereign.

"He is a brick, Elephant, formed and fired. You are clay. Clay in a ball."

He took a deep breath, apparently waiting for a response. He got none.

"I experienced twofold anachronium last night. You have my respect for surviving twenty-seven."

Elephant coughed. "I didn't. I am dead."

For a few seconds, all she could hear was her heart.

Johnathan pulled the lid open, smiling. "No. You are alive."

She pushed herself from the ground. "I am that also."

His expression soured. "Until you die and this world is proven another anachronistic illusion, you are to treat this as reality. You and Eight are relied upon by hundreds. Decorum, star. Chew on it."

She said nothing. He talked too much.