Chapter 305: You’ve Got Rubble
Alexandra Erin on August 28, 2015 in Volume 2 Book 9: Who Is Mackenzie Blaise?, Volume 2: Sophomore EffortIn Which Dee Diverts
“What do you mean, destroyed?” Rowan said.
It was weird. As much as I had quietly freaked out over the ongoing realization that my memories were not necessarily reliable… not all present, not all real, not all my own… it wasn’t real to me in the gut-punching way that the idea of Rowan’s missing memory was.
When Dee said that his memories had been destroyed, I had this image in my head… well, less an image and more an impression, since I didn’t know what memories looked like, in the raw. But just the idea of craters, ragged holes, tears… wounds.
Presumably, given the fact that he hadn’t gone through his life recoiling in pain, the wounds were invisible to him. Maybe that’s why it was easier for me to freak out about his memory loss than my own.
I knew mine felt like nothing. I felt the nothing. There was nothing to feel.
I was on the wrong side of his skull to get that same reassuring lack of feedback about the information Dee had just shared. I could see his freak out, I could hear his worry. I didn’t know what it was like in his head. The overall effect was like hearing somebody screaming from the other side of a closed door.
“I meant what I said,” Dee said. “Your memory has been… to say it was altered both does not begin to cover it, and yet insinuates that more was done. I can see no false memories. To detect more subtle changes would require a more thorough search, but it seems unlikely anyone would have done anything so deft while leaving such ragged edges and gaping holes.”
“But… I don’t have any holes in my memory!” Rowan said. “There’s a few things I can’t remember right this second, but I… I’d know if they’d been missing.”
“Believe me, Rowan, I’ve been going through this myself,” I said. “Would you really notice?”
“Of course!”
“Do you remember every moment of your childhood in equal clarity, Rowan Hartley?” Dee asked.
“Well… no… some of it runs together, and I guess a lot of it just wasn’t significant at the time,” he said. “But I remember what was important.”
“It would perhaps be more accurate to say that you ascribe importance to what you remember,” Dee said, “for you cannot see the significance of anything you have forgotten.”
“Rowan, trust me,” I said. “Iit gets easier if you just accept it that you don’t remember what you don’t remember.”
“But… why?” Rowan said.
“Because such discrepancies are not an unusual occurrence from the mind’s point of view, and it must find a way to function regardless,” Dee said.
“I mean, not why don’t I remember that I forgot,” Rowan said. “I meant why would somebody do that to me? Is there something we both knew, that someone had to hide?”
“…it may be useless to speculate based upon the very limited information we have available to us now,” Dee said, “but nonetheless, an idea does present itself. However, I would not like to voice it prematurely.”
She did not glance in my direction when she said that, did not even shift in the slightest, but I could almost feel the awkwardness of that omission.
“Me,” I said. “I could have done it… if I was telepathic, I mean.”
“Mackenzie, you weren’t… we sometimes thought you could read my mind, or send your thoughts to my head,” Rowan said. “Don’t get me wrong, it was enough to make a believer out of me, but I know damned well you didn’t have it in you, at the age of nine, to obliterate memories.”
“I’m not talking about skill, or even maybe raw power in the sense that a normal telepath has,” I said. “But remember? My mind… a demon’s mind… is dangerous to contact. Things get weird when minds from different planes come into contact with each other. With demons, that’s bad-weird… actively malignant weird. The last person who tried to directly read my mind reacted like I was clawing around inside her brain.”
“Indeed,” Dee said. “But I do not propose that you are responsible for the destruction of Rowan’s memories. Do you recall what the remedy for Hissy’s condition was?”
“Hissy?” Rowan repeated.
“It’s a nickname,” I said.
“What for?”
“Something highly metaphorical, multi-layered, and unpronounceable even to elven tongues,” Dee said.
“Okay, so what kind of treatment did they give Hissy?”
“They had to excise her recent memories,” Dee said. “I have had enough mental communion with her to know that the work was done with a more even hand than the destruction I witnessed in your mind, Rowan, but the scope of the removal was similarly broad.”
“But the way you describe the damage, it sounds savage… not at all clinical,” I said. “Maybe if they hadn’t contained the wound in Hissy’s mind, it would have been the same?”
“I would hasten to point out that in Hissy’s case, the care was administered by trained mental healers working under clinical conditions,” Dee said. “Rowan’s mind might have been purged of infernal touches quickly, by someone without the necessary experience to do so cleanly. It may even have been the first time the individual in question had to remove memories on a large scale.”
“…which would make Rowan the test case for what was done to me, I guess,” I said. “If we’re assuming the same person… or group, or entity, or whatever… did him as did me.”
“I would not become too fixated on any single possibility, given how little we truly know,” Dee said. “But telepathy is a rare and precious gift, among the mortal and mammalian races of the surface. It would seem unwise to postulate the existence of another where one alone would suffice as explanation.”
I nodded… there was a kind of sense there. There was just one problem, though.
“Okay, but… if we proceed with the idea that I am a telepath… was a telepath, however that works… then aren’t we already assuming the existence of two?” I said. “That’s a hell of a coincidence.” Then it hit me. “It’s not coincidence. My father… he’s telepathic, isn’t he? This whole time I’ve been thinking of his nightmare schtick as a demon thing, like a form of possession. He sure let me think so.”
“It need not be him,” Dee said.
“No, I’ve been so stupid,” I said. “My grandmother was an exorcist… and before that, a demon hunter. But the whole time I lived with her, she only fought non-corporeal demons, the ones who couldn’t get their bodies out of hell.”
“Maybe he’s lost his body?” Rowan said.
“The imperial agent who told me about him didn’t think so. He said the man has been hanging around the material world for ages. Whatever his ultimate plan is, it’s got to do with keeping his feet out of the fire. I can’t imagine he’d trade his physical form just for the ability to visit me at night.”
“Mackenzie, do you know for a fact that a corporeal demon cannot impose its mind or mental presence on another?” Dee said.
“My grandmother only ever dealt with non-corporeal ones, that I heard of,” I said, though I realized as I said this that she’d never actually discussed her work with me. In fact, she’d kept it as far away from me as she could. I had never known that she’d been a paladin who hunted living, breathing demons until after I left her house. “That is… I never heard anything about a corporeal demon being around when she had to deal with a possession.”
“But the existence of corporeal demons on this plane is rare and brief,” Dee said. “Whereas slivers of their souls pass through the void on a regular enough basis for the position of ‘exorcist’ to be a necessary one in outlying villages. I do not feel that we know enough about the natural abilities of demons to hazard a guess as to what they can or cannot do. If anything, I would say that the fact that your father could visit you in your dreams in the manner you’ve described would suggest that he is not a telepath in the conventional sense.”
“But that’s got to be it!” I said. “What else could it be?”
“Mackenzie, if the abilities you evinced in this area were a result of your demonic parentage, would not they have been dormant until you turned?” Dee said. “Instead we seem to have the opposite situation. You appear, according to the testimony and recollections of this boy, to have been born with some telepathic gift which you have shown no evidence of since you turned.”
“Also… if demonic possession tore people’s brains… minds, I mean… apart, wouldn’t you know that?” Rowan said. “If your grandmother dealt with possessed people?”
“Well… it wasn’t safe or pleasant,” I said, though it didn’t seem like any of my grandmother’s surviving patients had needed to have their minds wiped. “Okay, I just… I can’t figure out what else it would be.”
Rowan looked at Dee, who, after a brief pause, nodded.
“What?” I said.
“Mackenzie… I think you’re doing it again,” he said.
“Doing what?”
A look passed between them, and the way that Rowan’s face changed made me suspect that it was more than a look.
“Guys, please don’t start keeping secrets on me now,” I said.
“I do not believe it would be safe or fruitful to pursue certain lines of inquiry at this time,” Dee said. “There may be a danger we did not anticipate.”
“Well, that statement is pretty much always true,” I said.
“Allow me to clarify: I am becoming aware of a potential danger I did not previously anticipate,” she said.
“And can you tell me what that danger is?” I said.
“Not at…”
“…this time,” I finished. “Right. So… it’s something that would upset me. Well, knowing you’re keeping it from me is just going to make me more upset, so you might as well just fucking come out with it.”
“No, the danger is not precisely emotional,” Dee said. “I would enjoin you from speculating, for your own safety, but I cannot imagine that instruction would prove beneficial. Very well… let me see if I can devise a way to describe the nature of the danger in a way that is itself safe.”
“You’ve got rubble!” Rowan said.
“What?”
“Like… when a building collapses?” Rowan said, looking at Dee with a mix of desperation and the need for approval.
“…yes, that may do,” Dee said. “Rubble, as when a building, or perhaps more particularly, a tunnel has collapsed. There was a bulwark in your mind which gave way, resulting in your ability to consider possibilities that were previously barred to you. Heretofore, we have been operating under the assumption that ‘the’ block in your mind was removed. What if it’s not gone completely, but buckled or shifted? What if there are more blocks waiting to come down?”
“Then let’s bring them down!” I said. “It’s annoying to think you’re keeping something from me, but it’s downright horrifying to think that I’m keeping things from myself. Thoughts I’m not allowed to think, things I’m not allowed to notice… be honest, Dee. Could someone do that to me long term and not have there be side effects?”
“…it is not an area where I have had much reason to inquire.”
“But it could be harmful? It could be harming right now?”
“If so, then most of the damage caused by the blocks would have been done long ago,” Dee said. “Change is not always to be feared, but a sudden, precipitous change in status is more often disastrous than a period of uninterrupted stability.”
“That’s basically the philosophy your society runs on,” I said.
“Because it tends to serve us well,” she said.
“But it doesn’t make for a really compelling argument,” I said. “So… you think I still have mental blocks. You think shifting them could, what… bring down the house? Cave my mind in on itself?”
“That seems… unlikely, but not so far beyond the realm of possibility,” Dee said. “I am more concerned with what might be unleashed, if the constructs placed in your mind were to come crashing down.”
“You think I’ll… go bad,” I said. My mouth had gone very dry. “Let my demon side out. You’re saying that all this time, I haven’t really been… not evil. I’ve just been… caged?”
“I… Mackenzie, I do not think that is likely, or even possible,” Dee said. “I would not for anything have you believe so poorly of yourself. But I think it is so important for your safety and the safety of those around you that we do not pursue this line of inquiry further that for a moment, I considered lying to you.” She bowed low, with a stance I recognized as apologetic. “I am sorry, I am ashamed to say it. I very nearly told you the worst thing you could imagine was true, in the belief that it and only it would dissuade you. I hope you will forgive me, but even if you do not, I hope even more fervently that knowing I considered this shameful alternative will convince you how serious I am.”
“Dee… get up,” I said. “You didn’t… you didn’t do anything. You were smart enough to realize something was a viable alternative, but too moral to take it. Okay. Is there really a danger in me knowing specifically what the danger is?”
“I cannot say,” Dee said. “If I tell you, I believe it will be your inclination to reject it out of hand, but the idea will be in your head, nonetheless. You may circle back around to it, and in an unguarded moment, even come to believe it. Given your previous experience, that may be all it takes.”
“So… we just have to give up?”
“I am in no greater hurry to abandon this mystery than you are,” Dee said. “It is not safe to directly pursue one line of inquiry, but there remains another. As dubious as I am about the possibility that your nascent telepathic ability was a gift from the demon, being able to rule this out would be a piece of evidence in support of the other possibility.”
I almost asked her what possibility, but that would only frustrate me since she wouldn’t tell me.
“Okay,” I said. “So… we hit the library? We should get Amaranth in on this, then.”
“Actually, I was going to suggest we defer to an expert.”
“Uh uh, no way,” I said. “I don’t know if you mean a Khersian priest or a diabolist, but I’m not getting near either one of those. There’s no reason not to just get what we need from the library… demon lore might be kind of obscure, but it’s not actually forbidden.”
“In the interest of time, though, I thought we might consult with someone who already knows everything the library has to say on the subject,” Dee said. “She is in our room right now, repairing her work clothes. Shall I summon her?”
Welcome back.
I’m sorry, this is still not working for me. Too many of the recent (chronologically if not in calendar terms) episodes have consisted of Mack’s mostly-internal monologues, and that has gotten wearing. In this episode we have the external equivalent: Mack talking fast and load, with whatever goes through her head, drowning out everyone else and ignoring the various elephants in the room. This would be effective as a change of pace, but it loses much of its impact by being a variant on the pace we’ve had most of the year.
It works for me. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of this arc.
Really excited to see what Two has to say, and really enjoying the rapid-fire conversations.
The elephants in the room that she is failing to recognise are the whole point of this arc; there are the blocks in her head that mean she’s unable to grasp the elephant, even when it’s right in front of her.
I tend to disagree. I’ve been really enjoying the recent chapters and what we’re learning.
Delurking to say: it’s really, really working for me. I love how well this arc is going, with each new bit of information muddying the waters of her backstory and making everything interesting and complex. It took me an embarrassing bit of time to figure out what the last elephant was, but at least I’m still ahead of Mack…
Thanks, AE! 😀
I gotta say I see your point.
The conversations themselves aren’t even particularly different. Its more or less the same tone everyone always talks in with the same tangents, if anything a shade less serious than normal. I’ve been having a hard time buying Mackenzie as any kind of concerned over this given she has no great degree of panic or consideration for the weight of events concerning her personally.
Yes, these specific events are long overdue, but the way Mackenzie handles them is even less involved than, say, her history electives, let alone major classes.
I feel like these will read much better all-together, once it’s ‘done’, so to speak. This is one of the issues inherent in a serialized story- taken all together, I think the latest chapters will be more tense and more ‘flowing’ once you read them all together.
I can see how these might be hard to read as installments. I have to let them build up for a while so I can binge read them. I love mu.
Yay, let’s bring in the expert! 2 < 3
I love it! Can you hear my SQUEEEE through cyberspace?
I’ve been enjoying the arc. Really interested in what Two has to say and what Dee is thinking but not willing to say. If Mack is telepathic, i could see why someone would want to remove any knowledge of it from her, including the knowledge of how, given her demon side and it’s affects.
Yes, yes, and yes. Finally, I’m seeing why her mother did this memory-surgery on her…because, at all costs, a telepathic half-demon must not have access to her powers until she is old enough and wise enough not to use them by mistake. Imagine a child with the ability to induce madness, or kill, literally with a though. What was the name of that Twilight Zone episode? Yeah.
yup, Billy Mumy in It’s A Good Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lLYHBdMFCE
Haven’t seen much of Two in quite a while. I’m looking forward to this.
This arc is too awesome for words… !
Dani, I have to agree with understanding your frustration at the wandering pace of recent chapters. This is why I no longer write stories in chapter format.
However, in my opinion, if we readers step back and consider the storyline as an integral whole, these storyarcs add up. Like the different shading of light?/colored layers?/pointillism?/puzzle pieces? of a hologram.
editor is glitchy.
include to preceding comment:
“We should consider ourselves privileged to be in the studio, looking over her shoulder. Where Alexandra is creating her monumental work of art.”
This arc reminds me of a Call of Cthulhu session. A lot of research and corroboration, a lot of talking things through.
But still a lurking suspicion that you’re totally wrong, nothing you’re searching for will be answered, and the deep evil will still prevail.
(Hope is a lie to keep us from screaming at the sky)
Is the hope is a lie quote from somewhere? Google couldn’t help me, but I love it.
It’s something my GM said once when I mentioned that things looked hopeless in the game.
typo alert:
“Iit gets easier if you just accept it that you don’t remember what you don’t remember.”
extraneous i in Iit
This is really exciting, and worth the wait! And a very effective way to show the block, that Mack literally cannot come up with an alternative as to who she might have inherited her telepathy from. It must have been her father! But it can’t have been her father! But who else could it be?! And Dee is just trying to keep her from being trampled by elephants…
I wonder if she should talk to Teddi about this? Dee is an expert on the mind, but not a psychiatrist, and this is getting more and more traumatic.
And finally, TWO, TWO, FINALLY WE GET TO SEE TWO AGAIN!!! (And Rowan knows what not to say about her!)
Yay for Two!
And Rowan better remember what not to say around Two.
Or Two will mace him, Dee will render him into a drooling houseplant and Mackenzie will incinerate him.
And then he will be in real trouble…
A lot of us have been waiting for YEARS for this very plot, so yeah, it’s working fine for me.
Also, every update with no Acantha is a good update.
Yeah, this has been long in the building. So many things have pointed to something like this, it’s great to see it start to pay off. And it’s paying off pretty damn well so far, with the introduction of a new character, and fun with talking around an issue for fear of mental trauma…
So awesome…
Knowledge isn’t free
And what ŦΨØ has learned about
Demons got her burned
Excellent
Hiya, I have to weigh in too. This new arc is going a lot more in the direction I’ve always hoped it would. All these tantalizing hints of pasts, secrets, plots… I’m happy we’re finally approaching some more involved resolution to the core of the story. Keep it up!
I think the final block or blocks is the only thing keeping Mack from reconnecting with her nascent telepathic powers.
That’s a possability, and if she did so… it could be very bad for any telepath, and possibly any living thing, around.
this makes me think that part of the point of the emily building plot was so that mackenzie has experience NOT hurting entities that come into contact with her mind. there’s probably some magic object that can help filter too… mackenzie should still have a big chunk of money saved up and MU probably would be willing to help out too, given the possible repercussions for their students.
if the powers had come back during mackenzie’s first year it would have been Very Bad though.
Shouldn’t the OwlThing have noticed that she has real telepathic powers and a blockage, rather than merely the ability to drop things on the floor?
The ROTT can’t really see memories the host can’t see. It has a perspective such that it knows something is up, but it couldn’t really see what
A thought occurs to me: Anne’s memories may not be wholly intact. Suppose Mackenzie turns, she accedentally attacks Rowans mind, and Anne intervenes to save Rowan and try to stop Mackenzie.
She enters an aggressive extraplaner mind and does the only thing she can: erases every memory associated with her telepathy, and blocks it from considering the possability, then finally drops a final suggestion: “It’s not your fault”… before collapsing into a coma.
Later, she awakes to doctors who just barely saved her, having expunged large chunks of the memory. Some deal is struck involving Martha, and she never sees Mackenzie again. She never realizes the extent of what she did, it was the hasty desperate struggle to shut off a leaking conduit of infernal psychic energy before it destroyed someone.
We see her later as a new person… what if she essentially is a new person, with so many memories lost and severe mental damage. She may no longer be the same Laurel Anne anymore.
The striking a deal thing is definitely plausible considering Lorellon’s mention of a “non-custody” agreement. I have a hard time assigning her a malevolent motive for that reason since it’s obvious that something bigger than her was going on.
That said, I think it’s time for them to at least brief Teddy on what’s going on. Delia might be the best telepath around, but she has no clinical experience and an actual mental healer could provide some insight into the rubble problem. And since we know that the university has at least some kind of correspondence with Lorellon’s employer, the way forward could be less dangerous even if (or especially if) Lorellon herself doesn’t show up.
But of course, that would be too nice and easy for ToMU.
This seems like inventing excuse and circumstance. Martha is so far off and for Mackenzie to know nothing is contrived.
Rowan also obviously shows signs of a slapdash procedure with no formal training, not some healers who showed up later and would have told him.
Laurel knew what was going to happen well in advance, so she wasn’t caught by surprise. She had time to plan this.
It seems like you’re really straining toward an explanation that exonorates Laurel of fault but she’s well aware Mackenzie has nental issues and to this way preventing help of any kind. She very clearly hasn’t got Mackenzie’s well being as a chief concern.
No, no. The healers who would have shown up later would have saved Anne – but Rowan would have already departed, with no memory of what happened and thus no reason for anyone to give him mental healing. Mackenzie would likewise have lost her memories and mental abilities. No professional healers would have tried to investigate her mind, knowing what she was.
Anyway, Anne couldn’t possibly have really know what would happen or when. Sure, she had some idea of what a demon child could do, but the extent of the damage that an infernal mind and body could do would have beyond her knowledge. Plus, no amount of knowing what could happen really prepares someone for that thing really happening to them.
Suddenly your daughter is standing over a screaming child and everything is on fire… No matter how many things you “knew” where possible, you are now in a situation where none of that matters anymore. You have to act now, and you can’t do things by half measures.
She couldn’t have afforded preemptive countermeasures. She couldn’t have know exactly when the turn would take place, and she likely didn’t know the extent of what an infernal telepath would be capable of.
Obvious logical problem though:
If ANYONE ELSE was on the scene while Laurel and Mack were there, especially anyone official, they would inform others. Odds are if it showed up on an official thing it’d get passed onto Mackenzie’s class, or else her neighbor, unless there was an immediate cover-up of the sort nobody involved could afford to engineer, especially not on short notice.
Though given the time of notice, I think it’s more than likley she had some government people on standby to cut a deal. She works for the government and their spooks met with her father. Given the prep time I think my current pet theory is that they cut a deal to keep Mackenzie properly safe.
Mackenzie gets watched over, which both parents want. Laurel assumes a new identity to specialize in such cases in an official capacity. Her father is either made to back off or given some kind of other deal. They drop her off with Martha and probably keep a watch discreetly.
From the perspective of secret Imperial goons, it’s pretty much a dream deal. They get an agent who can do shit brute force few others can, and a prospective agent down the line for when that one would retire. If they can press a favor out of a demon and keep an unaffiliated paladin who may be a troublemaker occupied it’s four or so gains for doing one job.
What makes you think she was working for the government then? Have I missed something? Is it just because she’s working for them now under a different name? Are you assuming the government intervened and gave her the new identity? Or was that explicitly stated or implied somewhere and I missed it?
The chances that she “cut a deal with the government” to protect her half-demon daughter so they could recruit her when she’s an adult – It just seems so far-fetched. I’m not sure where you’re drawing any evidence for this, apart from conjecture. I especially have a hard time believing that they cut a deal with The Man.
You may be on to something, but it seems tenuous to me right now.
Fantastic so far. I theorize that zeel has it partially correct, that Mack turned and attacked Ronan. But I don’t think she did it mentally, I think she attacked him physically (Virgin Blood), and Laurell saved his life, then destroyed Ronan’s memory of it to keep Mack safe, leaving the damage Dee ‘saw’ as obviously she was rushed.
And then blocked Mack’s memories, damaging herself at the same time, but leaving Mack with the distinct thought ‘its not my fault’
If rowan took an infernal beating it might explain why he looks so damn weird. Good luck having a healer fix everything to do with infernal damage without knowing what it is.
Mackenzie almost literally beat him with the ugly stick.
I would imagine it was both mental and physical. There was mention of a fire too, so it may well have partially or completely burned down the house.
I agree. I suspect that “turning” involves becoming completely and totally unrestrained. In which case, she would have thrown everything she had at him and anyone else around – mental, physical, and fiery attacks.
I suspect that it went something like this: Rowan came over as usual, the two children were playing nearby, and then suddenly the turn took place. Mackenzie’s demonic side is loosed and she comes at Rowan with everything she has. Anne would have become aware either through her own telepathic abilities, or simply by hearing screams / seeing fire.
She rushed to them, somehow managed to get Rowan away from Mackenzie (Martha may have been involved somehow, some sort of paladin magic to restrain the demonic child and protect the other but I have trouble believing she was there) and destroyed his memories of the event before sending him home. After he was sent away, Mackenzie’s mind was dealt with as well. I do believe it was after Rowan had been dealt with, because I think her mental barriers would have taken more time/concentration to implement.
With their memories dealt with, she left Mackenzie with her mother. Martha either knew her daughter was still alive and perpetuated the lie, or she was not present for any of this and perpetuated the lie unknowingly, receiving her grand daughter through some sort of official means as next of kin. That would mean she very likely does not know that Mackenzie has telepathic abilities, either.
But what if some of those blocks are what makes it survivable for mortal minds to be anywhere in your proximity? What then?
Going by the Emily situation, a nascent psychic with no blocks or artificial holes is likely to just shut themselves off completely.