And it is back to this strange forest that Envoy goes in her rather unusual ship that she decided to name the 'Gravy Boat'. It's a bad pun, and it may be inspiring Morpheus (who came along to make sure she behaved herself), because when he spots the strange trees up ahead, he says, "I do expect you to be on your best behavior and not raise their ire."
"Ugh. That was bad. Very very bad," Icarus comments from the back. He came along too, at Envoy's request. Why? Who knows, outside of his own innate ability to deal with the odd crystaline computers of the ancients, he's rather inexperienced in the ways of the world. That's almost sad when one realizes he's also over seventy years old. But then he's also the only one of his kind, and there is no knowing what his actual lifespan will be, or if he'll just be used as a weapon someday and burned out. Or ... oh look; the signs of the battle that occurred here a few days ago is gone! Or maybe they've just come to a different forest of eyeballs. Surely they're not that uncommon, right?
"I don't quite understand why Mister Thorndike and Miss Daedelus decided to stay behind. Is waxing someone's scalres really that important?" Morpheus asks.
"And why did that make Walter giggle nervously?" Icarus asks.
"I suppose he was being affected by the wax fumes?" Envoy guesses, as she checks on their cargo while opening the rear door: a big net full of crystal eyeballs, save for one large one that follows her around. "Let's get these back to their tree.. unless it's grown new ones already. I think I'll call them.. Peeping Willows."
"Ugh. I should have stayed home," Icarus grumbles as he herds the eyes out of the ship. Well, he tries to, anyway. Herding eyes is apparently a lot like herding cats; near impossible. Of course maybe it's because Icarus is half cat he manages to herd them at all.
"I don't quite see the point of creating trees that grow eyes. Eyes are not terribly efficient structures," Morpheus comments as he disembarks the ship ... and pulls at his clothing now and then. This is the first time he has worn real clothing and apparently it is nothing like what he imagined in dreams.\
Carrying the big eye, Envoy follows and talks to the orb in the odd Sifran language, "Remember the steps: First, reconnect. Second, scan for the anomalous crystal signature. Third, triangulate location and get as much detail as you can about it. Fourth, disconnect from the tree and return to me with the information."
And the eyeballs reply by hopping up and down. Granted, they do that all the time, but at least it is some sort of a reply. So is the mad scramble they make back to the trees. The absurdly sized crystal eyeballs hop up onto branches and seemingly melt into the pods, reconnecting.
"Are you also going to ... connect with them?" Morpheus asks as he watches the reattachment occur.
"Not until after they've done their work," Envoy says, letting the big one go with the others. "Connecting with the trees is dangerous. The big eye already suggested that I replace my head with one of the eyes."
"Why didn't you?" Morpheus asks with a straight face.
"We couldn't find her a big enough supply of eyedropsm" Icarus comments from where he moves the ship a bit by himself to a safer 'dock'.
"I'm.. still using my head," Envoy points out. "I have to eat and such."
"Your head isn't detachable?" Morpheus asks.
"Not anymore," Envoy notes. "At least.. not for an extended period of time, I think," she adds, as she watches 'her' herd of eyeballs.
The trees start to sway back and forth, perhaps in time to some unseen conductor. Then the music comes. Actual music; a rhythmic melody that seems to radiate from the trees. It's almost like hollow-reed flutes; soft and pervasive. The light follows next, a rolling wave of colors that flows up their trunks, then out across the branches and to the eyeballs. It seems to radiate out from the trees in waves; and when those waves pass over Envoy, she can feel it somehow. And smell it. And taste it. It tastes like ... roses.
"That's an ... interesting way to do spectral analysis," Morpheus has to comment.
"Oh.. my," Envoy says, smiling wide. "Can you two feel this?" she asks Icarus and Morpheus.
Envoy resists the temptation to put her hand against the tree trunk, just barely.
Icarus is too busy looking at himself to really reply. He's glowing. Rather, his sub dermal crystalline structure is. It's making his white fur ripple and shift as if it were made of thin fiber-optic strands. The effect is ... it's like he has a living pool of liquid light rippling across his entire body. Even the natural shifting-soft-glow of his eyes is brighter now. It might be the first time the truly alien nature of the bio-engineered life form is made so visible. He looks almost ethereal in nature, like there is a soft halo that surrounds him.
"Icarus!" Envoy yelps when she sees it. "Are you okay? The encryption should protect you from being overwhelmed..."
"I'm fine," Icarus says. Even his voice is different; because it radiates not only from him, but from all the trees as well. "It just feels like a warm breeze."
"Hmmm," Envoy goes, looking from Icarus to the trees and back again. "Are you seeing or hearing or... tasting anything unusual?"
"Yes? I think?" Icarus comments, unsure. "It's very ... floral. How do I know what floral is? I don't think I've seen a flower."
"Well, yes, it should taste a bit like roses," Envoy notes, heading over to Icarus. "What else though? Anything?"
"Like what?" Icarus asks, confused. "I don't have a lot to compare this too." That part does make him look a little distressed.
Envoy puts her hand on the boy's shoulder, and says, "Well, if you're still seeing out of just your own eyes, that's probably good."
"It's," Icarus says as his face scrunches. "It's like looking through windows? Like I'm seeing vague echoes. I can see the first, us arriving, us leaving, the eyeballs running around. It's like all moments are sort of jumbled together. But it's all very faint and unless I focus on it, I don't really notice it."
"Can you find the robot spider things from our first visit?" Envoy asks. "Backtrack where they came from?"
"I ..." Icarus mumbles. "No. It's all too jumbled. Everything at once."
The pitch the trees are 'singing' at shifts, and all the colors change to a more purplish hue.
Envoy hmms. "If I had Probe I could probably sort it all out," she says. "Are you getting anything, Morpheus?"
"He's resonating," Morpheus tries to explain. "He's not connected to the network; he's just vibrating, if you will, in a harmonic frequency. Remember, much of his skeletal structure isn't organic. And no, I'm not, but much less of me is inorganic in this shell."
"They trees are using a quantum resonance search to find the altered crystal, maybe?" Envoy asks, and thinks to look at her own exposed crystal on the back of her forearms.
It too is flickering in time with the trees. Now that she focuses on it ... it feels like something is tickling her arms from the inside out.
"The song.." Envoy says, smiling and looking back to Morpheus. "It's pretty, isn't it?"
Morpheus arches his brow. "Is this putting you into a mood?" he has to ask.
"It tickles," Envoy admits. "It's.. different. New. I like new things." She turns back to the trees. "It's taking longer than I thought it would."
The light grows brighter, then brighter still. The song volume rises, but lowers in pitch ... until it drops suddenly in a thunderous boom! It's enough of a boom it can be felt running Envoy's body! And then everything stops.
Envoy blinks, and checks on Icarus first!
"You were saying about it taking long?" Morpheus comments.
Icarus is standing in a small crater. Kind of. It's in indention about five foot across and three inches deep. Perfectly circular. Of course he might have been standing in it before, too.
"Are you okay?" Envoy asks, hugging Icarus.
"I feel better now that I don't look like a parade float," Icarus admits, grinning as he returns the hug. "Not that I've seen one, but I keep thinking I looked like one. I'm fine."
"I wasn't sure, the way things just stopped," Envoy says. "Did you make this crater?"
"Maybe? I was a little distracted," Icarus admits.
"Let's see what's been found," the Aeolun says, and musses up Icarus's hair. "Report, please" she calls out to the big eyeball.
The giant eyeball pops off its perch and scurries over to Envoy. The nest thing she knows is there's a giant eyeball sitting on her head!
"That looks silly," Morpheus comments helpfully.
"Some people just can't wear hats is all," Envoy says, and waits for the eyeball to 'connect' like it usually does.
And connect it does. Huh, so this is what the world would look like were she about a foot taller! Then her vision goes dark with only small pinpoints of light breaking the darkness, however feeble they are.
"Are these the anomalies?" Envoy asks.
No ... they're stars. It's like she's seeing from the planet itself, as if looking out into space. This twists about and soon she's looking at a glowing-amorphous-looking planet. Ripples of light appear here and there, and shifts flow across its surface as if it were breathing.
It's dizzying, so Envoy wobbles a bit. "I can see Abaddon, I think.." she reports. "It's very.. shiny and bright."
It gets worse as her vision swirls and zooms in, burying her senses into the planet itself. She can feel the movement of its core; the flow of static electricity; the shifts of plates; everything! She can also feel the delicate 'wiring' of its crystal veins. On the verge of being chaotic ... yet there is some subtle pattern to it and its meaning just out of reach.
To focus herself, Envoy starts to sing, using Abaddon's engine-song to try and find the pattern.
And this puts Envoy on the verge of a headache! Which might be a new experience in itself; though not a pleasant one. Her point of view keeps shifting and moving ... but there something is. A break. An actual area of nothingness, that stands out against the natural chaos.
That must be it, she thinks. An unscannable area. She tries to get closer to it, and try to figure out where it is, and if it's attached to the crystal network in any way.
It's not easy navigating the network. But ... it helps that the hole is near a place Envoy knows. Or perhaps it's a bad thing; because as things zoom and shift, and more resolution is brought into focus; Envoy recognizes the location. Or rather, what is on top of the location. About half a mile underground is the hole; and it is right below the museum that holds the clockwork dragon she has been trying to resurrect!
With a gasp, Envoy tries to back out of the connection before her brain boils over.
Pop The connection dissolves. The weird-worldview is replaced with the rather boring world that surrounds here. Icarus is waving a hand in front of her face. "Hello in there," he says.
Envoy waves a hand to shoo the eyeball off of her head, and takes deep breaths. "That was unpleasant," she remarks. "And he just couldn't have the decency to base himself out in the middle of nowhere where I could hit him with an earthquake.."
The eyeball hops off her head and starts running circles around them instead.
"Doesn't that make him intelligent?" Morpheus points out.
"I'm not sure," Envoy admits, rubbing her head. "I thought he'd be too egotistical to really think about defense. He's right under the Museum of Technology, about a half a mile. I don't suppose you can get the hangar gateway to work as a remote viewer?"
"Given time I could get it to open a gate into that point if you want," Morpheus claims. "I just have to figure out what the exact coordinate system it needs to use to go inward instead of outward."
"Can it open one-way portals?" Envoy asks.
"No. It's always bidirectional. Why?" Morpheus asks, and eyes Envoy suspiciously. "You're thinking of rolling a bomb in there, aren't you?"
"I don't think I want to set off a bomb under the Museum," Envoy says. "I just don't want to provide a way for us to be attacked back through."
"Unfortunately, I do not think there is any easy way to mitigate that risk," Morpheus admits, "And have you considered he might have a gate of his own? How else does he get out from that far down?"
"He might have one for his chair," Envoy admits. "But.. do you think he could have built one, or just found another hangar?"
"I wouldn't put it past him to have built one, frankly," Morpheus admits, quieter this time, and gestures towards Icarus. "Seventy years ago he figured out some way to integrate organic and inorganic; and tried to develop weapons based on it. And he has had plenty of time since then to keep researching."
"And he managed to create that chaotic crystal too," Envoy notes with a sigh. "But he's still limited without magic. We need a way to find out for sure what he has down there. If there's a gateway, then ours should be able to find it, shouldn't it?"
Morpheus blinks. "Well, yes, if there is, it should. That's just a matter of setting it to find the nearest join point. That's certainly closer than another planet," he admits.
"We'd need to disable his gateway before we could strike," Envoy notes. "Even if that means locking it open to ours so he can't use it to escape."
"That would mean he would have complete access to your home," Morpheus points out.
"And then there is that weird person who helped out that seems to gate on his ... or her own," Icarus adds in. "We still don't know what side that person is on."
"I don't know, but we can't count on mysterious aid," Envoy says. "We can try repairing the transport ship, Bucephalus. It may have weapons. The Svartifin drone skeleton is pretty powerful too."
"If it is controllable," Morpheus points out," But if it came to it, I might be able to 'ride' it. However, I suspect that would require destroying this body."
"Hm," Icarus says, and looks skyward in thought.
"It seemed reasonable last time, and I'm sure that protecting its ship from the person that damaged it in the first place wouldn't require too much prompting from us."
"I can't help but wonder why he built his fortress under the museum. Or why the museum was built on top," Icarus muses.
"You have an unusual definition of reasonable," Morpheus comments to Envoy.
"It's where the Leviathan was moved to," Envoy notes. "It might have been something else before it was a museum though. We can find out. Elsa might even know!"
"Do you think he wants the Leviathan back? Or to be near it for some reason?" Icarus asks.
"He may want to complete it," Envoy notes. "He needs a power source, and the eyes, and a stabilizer. He came after us when we got the eyes, after all."
"But why? It feels like something is missing. Surely it's not to just have a giant mechanical monster," Icarus points out.
"It's a machine meant for.. knowledge," Envoy says. "Maybe the hope was that it would become something like Morpheus - an intelligent part of the Sifran network, but beholden to him."
"Oh, well, that's probably better than trying to stick his own brain in it. Who would want a body like that, anyway," Icarus says.
"I'm a planet," Morpheus reminds Icarus. "I don't even really have a body. Existance is .... not defined by form."
"It already has a brain," Envoy notes, but frowns. "I don't know if Dr. Von Bronson would risk his brain. He could have cloned himself a new body probably, but still maintains his dying one."
"That's odd too. Why? I mean, he designed me. With help, but," Icarus says, frowning, "He should be able to fix his body, so why doesn't he? Maybe he can't because of another reason?"
"I don't think you were designed, exactly," Envoy says to Icarus. "The crystals may have played a larger part. There are.. mysteries.. about how things can come to be alive on these worlds. It's something I hoped the Leviathan could help me understand."
"So, you're saying I'm an accident then?" Icarus asks, looking hurt.
"No more than I am," Envoy says. "And I'm still uncertain about my own reason for being able to think, when it seems to be counter to what the Tribunal wants. I suspect.. uh.."
"You suspect what?" Morpheus asks.
Envoy clasps her hands together. "Well," she says, "It's just that.. since the crystals, I've been slowly changing. If the Tribunal needs all the worlds of this machine working, then they need more Svartifin to maintain them. But the Svartifin don't reproduce. Suppose they had one that could though?"
"You're thinking you're supposed to be a brood mare for them?" Morpheus asks. "Forgive me, but that is a bit ridiculous."
"I'm grasping at meaning," Envoy admits. "We all are, I suppose," she adds, and puts her hand on Icarus's shoulder. "I need to ask the Sifras. Maybe waking up the Leviathan will give me that chance."
"You really, really think that's a good idea?" Icarus asks, looking nervous. "I mean, it is a dragon. Don't they rampage and kill things?"
"Not all the time," Envoy assures. "I'm part dragon and I don't do those things."
"Isn't your mind damaged, though?" Icarus points out.
"Yes," Envoy admits, frowning. "So I'm more likely to act on my 'instincts' but I haven't."
"So, where from here?" Morpheus asks. "What do you need from me?"
"I'd like you to work with the gateway in the hangar," Envoy tells Morpheus. "See if it can detect another one close by first. Maybe you could examine the drone too. We may need to make a trip into the city to find out more about the museum."
"What about me?" Icarus asks as Morpheus nods, looking thoughtful.
"I'll need to get Cypher to also help with the drone. If it's going to be a puppet, it'll be a secure one," Morpheus comments.
"Maybe it's time for you to try and learn a bit of magic?" Envoy suggests to Icarus. "It's our main advantage right now."
"I'm not going to wear a top hat and a tuxedo," Icarus comments. Apparently he must have watched a 'movie' recently that had old stage magicians.
Envoy blinks at this. "You've seen mages. We don't dress like that. Only Morpheus does!" she points out.
"And Thorndike," Morpheus points out with a grin.
"He has a tuxedo now?" Envoy asks, surprised. "Although.. it does seem like something he'd pack for dimension hopping.."
"In any event, we should head back and get things in motion," Morpheus notes as he heads for the ship. "It's likely that Von Bronson detected the probing and may be more active soon."
"There's a happy thought," Envoy notes, and then puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles to the eyeballs.
"It's not like he could build more of me though, right?" Icarus adds as he follows Morpheus back to the ship. The eyeballs all detach themselves from the trees and come hopping along! It's like something out of a nightmare, really. Night of the hundred zombie giant eyeballs.
"His efforts have been.. less than elegant," Envoy notes. "I don't think he could have created you at all. He wouldn't have had the patience to let you develop long enough. He doesn't love his creations, only himself. All the same, I really don't want to have to kill him. It's going to be very hard for me, Icarus. But I can't let him have you."