the agnes project

  Can’t. ‘Can not.’ Unable to.

  That... couldn't...

  It could. Nina had deceived herself.

  "I'm defective," Kaninchen said. "There. That's the Noble truth of Kaninchen."

  "How," Nina said.

  "The realm of nomoi that appears intact and so easy to access to you, Nina—"

  "You say such a heresy so lightly!"

  "—is distorted and decaying for me."

  Distorted. Decaying. Defective.

  "I'm like all of you."

  Nina accepted that as true. Should she? Her power forced Kaninchen to tell the truth? Did it? Everyone accepted it as such. Everyone seemed to accept that she could do that. Should they? The Treaty of Nowhere said that the Nobility were the supreme arbiters of truth—the only possible ones, the only group that could save humanity from the abyss and the outside and enmity and humanity from humanity itself.

  Nina shouldn't be able to enforce some other ideal of truth against Kaninchen. Kaninchen's body should be pure, inviolable. Instead it acceded to Nina. In ten dimensions the Nobility written into her blood, flesh, the so-called source code of reality and the so often spoken about genetic code and chromosomes was constricted, pierced through—perforated, struck through by arrows. Kaninchen did not quiver, though, not like Haio Elspeth.

  She was intact on the bus floor. Her pulled smile ended, and her face snapped back together, elastic.

  Through her eyes Nina saw—the arguments in the warped space had been like theatre, to her. Aine, Aria, Haio. Tabitha and Sarai looking for some way to defeat the warped space immediately, immediately return Judecca to the fold. Their lives and fates were but grand guignol grotesques.

  It was fun. Kaninchen had fun!

  Her smile was back, plastic. It only shined on those girls in the audience who understood. If they were distracted by thirteen, fourteen, fifteen viewpoints carousing and colliding, it was funny. All of these girls fell into disarray. They could not see through to the main story. It needed to be…

  "I can't, on my own..." Nina said or whispered.

  Aine. Bring order, as April had. Clarify everything.

  Aine. Tell her to unspool the red thread.

  Aine... since April wasn't here, since April would never work against her own influence, since April would never admit that any power ever could fix or rewrite Nina, it had to be Aine.

  Nina didn't vocalise this to Aine, nor did she transmit it by any form of telepathy. Aine didn't notice at all.

  "I have to speak, right? Let me speak, girls. Me. Not Young-hoon. Give me space. Give me ten or fifteen minutes. Judecca will be fine if we wait for her, I'm sure. I chose well. I chose girls who could suffer agony and adversity," Kaninchen said.

  "So you can—" Tabitha said.

  "Tell the truth."

  There was authority to Kaninchen's words here. Who gave authority? The Treaty of Nowhere? The black sea of ichor? Hideous enmity? Kaninchen? Nina? The world went topsy-turvy.

  "If she's lying, you'll let us know, right, Nina?" Aine asked. Sophia and Emi turned to Nina. Nina nodded.

  "All of you gathered here trust that the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands are real, right? That they can rewrite the world, and repair your ills. If you believed they were fake," and Marzena's hand shot up, "then logically you wouldn't be here."

  "Everything is..." Marzena said.

  "Even you're not immune to logic, Marzi."

  Her hand went back down.

  "But where and whence do they come from, girls? Ovvy? Young-hoon? East and Midwest, yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. How did the holy Haze House discover them? How do we know that there's this immense power that needs to be scooped up? Ah, girls, girls, girls! Have you ever heard of the Agnes Project?"

  Nina had never heard of the Agnes Project. Had Nina ever heard about anything? Emi seemed confused. So did Aine.

  Haio became alert at that instant. Aria too.

  "Haha, what?" Aria said.

  "I said that you've gotta give me space and time."

  Blushy and cherry-red and animated Aria stood. "What the fuck?"

  "See, I did do my research. I knew you knew, and that Haio knew, and that nobody else did."

  "That shouldn't be—I thought this was something different! Had I known..." Aria said.

  "We do little treacheries, here at Haze House. Small ones."

  In place Aria said: "Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you and fuck her too the star in her eyes is tormenting torturing me I can't bear it there's no escape from this no escape from any of this everything in America leads to the same place her and her and her and—"

  Emi tried to calm her down, but Aria swung impotent. She fell on her knees, in the aisle.

  "The Agnes Project isn't a bad thing," Haio said, to nobody.

  "Arguably, it's a very good thing."

  "What is the Agnes Project?" Sophia asked. Her voice was bland.

  "It's your everything now. Your lives are devoted to it now. You'll be used up for it."

  "I was already... I wanted to escape—" Aria said.

  "Used up..." Emi said.

  "I'm being dramatic. You'll live. Don't look at me like that. Dour. Fractured. Tired of me."

  "Then what do you mean?" Aine said.

  "In mundane terms, I think, the Agnes Project is the name for a variety of efforts the Second City, the Confederation of East and Midwest States, and their allies in the Coalition have made, all with the aim of gaining the ability and authority to 'repair reality.'"

  "Authority," Leuce repeated.

  "Yeah, like the Nobility. But not. Artificial. Unbound. A secret weapon that surpasses the Treaty of Nowhere. Cry about it, all of you faithful, loyal, secular girls."

  Was Kaninchen talking to Nina?

  "That's utterly insane. If such a project had the desired result, the balance between the Great Houses would be broken. The Babylon War would be reignited," Tabitha said.

  "Would it?"

  "Obviously?" Tabitha said.

  "Actually?"

  "Yeah, probably," Sarai said.

  "Yeah. You're right. It was—" and Kaninchen's words died in her mouth. "Ah, you're so boring. Would you cry if I lied to you, Nina? If I told you this were all a prank, that you mean nothing and that you'll continue to mean nothing, that nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes? Ovid, stop the bus. I'm sleepy and hungry and it's time for everyone to go home..."

  The bus, of course, was not moving. They were trapped in the warped space.

  "Why go after Nina?" Emi asked, as if Nina had not denied Kaninchen's birthright to dictate the truth. Kaninchen ignored her.

  "It didn't succeed. It didn't fail. Why would it be one or the other? Because I'm a failure? But they never let you just fail. You always teeter in the middle. Those who worked on the Agnes Project suffered greatly against an arduous task. They thrashed and struggled, against great adversity."

  "The keyword," Aine said.

  "Very astute, Anny."

  "Don't call me that?" Aine said.

  "But your Sophie can."

  "Have you even been paying attention to us?" Sophia said.

  "Maybe. You're becoming agitated, and anxious, right? 'Kaninchen... you haven't explained the parameters of the mission. Hurry up!'"

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  Kaninchen mock-boo-hooed.

  "So explain it," Tabitha said.

  "It's as follows: the breakthrough that the scientists of the former Coalition, or the current and ever-consistent Coalition—who knows?—made, their breakthrough was—blood sacrifice. No matter what, the idea of prying apart reality in a new way was going to be a thrash and struggle. It required suffering against the adverse, and so much ardour. It required them to sacrifice, and sacrifice so much! Family, life, the future—vanishing! Stolen away!

  "If they could find a myth that would encapsulate that, then they'd have their theogony. This really divine power that repairs and rewrites, it'd be theirs! So which myth. Which one?"

  "The suffering of young women," Nina said.

  "Nina, you're so frank! Honest. You need to couch it more. But yeah, and why not men?"

  "Young women are supposed to create houses, to give themselves up, and guarantee humanity's future," Nina said. "It has always been permissible for men, not burdened by the pangs of birth, to give it all up, to relinquish their homes and fight for their ideals."

  "What? That's crazy. What are you even saying. Those hamlets in the Acacia are super backwards. What are they teaching you? Don't answer, Nina. I already know. You wrote stuff like that down on your application."

  "She has access to our applications?" Sarai said.

  "That seemed obvious," Tabitha said.

  "I didn't think about it!" Sarai said.

  "This, I believe, is your own fault," Leuce said.

  "Exactly!" Tabitha said.

  "Guhhh..." Sarai said.

  "We... we don't do anything that isn't done on the surface of the Earth. We're part of humanity's domain," Nina said. "This principle is the same everywhere. Under the Old Faith, in the secular cities, at varying intensities..."

  "So cynical."

  "My point is," Nina said, "the Great Houses guard humanity's future."

  "Don't be sexist, Nina. Young men can destroy houses too. Right, Young-hoon?"

  "...I hate this," their teacher said. How gentlemanly.

  "They're supposed to. Doing this doesn't stop them from siring, they're not supposed to remain at the hearth. It's not inverting anything. It's not heretical enough," Nina said.

  "Girls, girls, would you ever think that your overpowered and fucked up colleague was meant to be a jewel for the dowry? An ornamental piece for some young lord's armoury?"

  K giggled.

  "Maybe...?" Aine said.

  "What. How can you tell..."

  "Be nicer to her," Emi said.

  "I am nice to her. She's cruel to herself. You don't even know the half of it, Emi!"

  "I don't think that you're being nice, somehow," Emi said.

  "Wait. Emiliya," Sarai said. "Senklerova. Do you see it. Do you see where Haze House comes in."

  "I..." Emi said. "I think. But the holy Haze House means well for its charges. Those of us offered to it, protected by it."

  "What? What are you realising?" Aine said.

  "Time for the two of you who know about the Agnes Project to start listening again!"

  Aria was a puddle on the floor.

  "Nina is right? Isn't that shocking. It's almost like her ultra-righteous ultra-cursed curse magic is in my head now, or something, that I think that. No, I'm joking! I'm joking. It's not mind control. Maybe everything is mind control, Haio? Huh?"

  Haio shrugged.

  "The Coalition eventually settled on making young women the flagbearers of the Agnes Project. For all the weird reasons Nina stated, even. There might be more, but we have to move on. This is where you come into play."

  "Sacrifices, you said," Sophia said.

  "Mhm. I was being a little poetic. It's not really that bad. The explanation is a little convoluted. Don't hurry me along, I'll give it to you. First, what method does the latest research in the Agnes Project use?"

  "Bipartite," Aria said, from the floor.

  "And that is?"

  "Do I have to?" Aria said.

  "I'm sure you have a nice voice, when you're not swearing."

  "Fuck you, bitch," Aria said.

  "Please?"

  "No," Aria said.

  "Ugh, fine. I suppose it's like a yin-yang? There are two kinds of creative capacity, in their view. We have a 'yang' side, positive, bright, refined, civilised, for the inventors of ideas, and a 'yin' side, negative, dark, raw, natural. I want to call it more physical, and more passive. The two aspects are partnered, and work in unison. If you were sexist, like Nina—"

  "I'm not sexist..." Nina said.

  "Then perhaps you could apply gendered qualities to these two sides. I won't, though. Nevertheless, the Agnes Project researchers came up with this paradigm: those on the 'yang' side teach, and come up with ideas, and those on the 'yin' side learn, divide, demarcate and dismiss them. My father, Herzog Haze, was quite enthused by this idea. It reminded him of the stories we teach in Haze House."

  "Well, only Emi and Sarai seem to know them," Aine said.

  "Ah, it would take a long time. We have quite a storytelling ethos, and even a failure like me believes that just explaining the story would take away the magic, and the artistry. Surely you get the gist of it, though, from reading the pamphlet? We sincerely believe in redeeming you weak and lost girls."

  "And what form does this redemption take?" Leuce said. "As nothing can ever truly be saved."

  "A future, and for you to be settled in a nice home life. That's what my papa would say, anyway. It's not for free, though. The greatest gains are made by pulling you out of the deepest muck. It's more satisfying for everyone, more fulfilling of the principle, if it's harder. That's ADVERSITY. For East and Midwest, it's the idea that human history isn't a history of the desire for complacency—it's struggle, and competition, reaching heaven and space. For us, it's the struggle for redemption."

  "So what's 'adversity score'," Aine said.

  "Anny, promise not to get mad."

  "You'd only ask this if you were about to make me mad..."

  "It's an abstract quantifier," Haio said. "From war-gaming, a way to rank how difficult particular engagements are."

  "That's so right, Haio. Now, uh, the microritual you all did to sign the contract to be here has two parts. The first raises the adversity score."

  "Haio just said it was an abstraction..." Emi said.

  "Yeah. If only one in one hundred or thirteen out of fifteen people had the power to pluck abstractions out of thin air and kill you with them."

  "Oh," Emi said.

  "Wait," Tabitha said.

  Ratatat rapping at the door, RNGOD said "Trials and tribulations are coming your way!" Or was it in Nina's head?

  "It was easy for me to do! I actually did it as a university project, like five years ago? I had help, of course."

  (From my friend K!)

  "Ah, but we don't really speak anymore? So it was down to me to do the next part. Weaving together magic of the heart to create a power that could match adversity. It worked, kinda? But like, have you heard of big O notation?"

  Nina nodded. Aine shook her head very vigorously.

  "Basically, the adversity required to really rouse artifacts related to the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands needs to rise super quickly, but gaining firepower and experience is flat. I wanted it to go a little steeper, but I didn't want to nullify the struggle, so I may have undershot it?"

  "Undershot," Nina said. "What does that mean."

  "Judecca had been saying that she didn't feel any increase in her preternatural power..." Sarai said.

  "I managed to write the difficult qualitative changes in. My Nobility is broken, so I had a little edge. Sometimes you need a fuck-up to fuck shit up, you know?"

  "What didn't you write in," Nina said.

  "The power increases. You should have seen the fucking look on Young-hoon's face when he found out he wasn't getting the super cool commanding ability, that he'd have to rely on his own skills!"

  Young-hoon grimaced.

  "The ritual does nothing," Nina said.

  "Um, no. It does some things. It draws powerful enemies to places they shouldn't be. It turned Emi into a girl. To be honest I used scrying to figure out everyone's genders without checking legal documents or anything cause literally why so like I didn't do that on purpose. I'm not sure I can replicate that actually."

  "You didn't do that on purpose," Nina said. Emi seemed to have less of an opinion on this than she did. They all had an opinion on the first part, that all of these powerful adversaries were being drawn to them to 'make the magic work', but it seemed pointless to say it, so Nina focused on the second part.

  "Yeah but it's pretty neat. It's neat magic."

  "Edict-violating magic," Nina said.

  "You're one to speak like it's crazy. The Edicts protect the Nobility, and yet..."

  "The edicts of integrity protect everyone, and are difficult to violate," Nina said.,

  "'Kay, 'kay. My secret, my defect: I can negate a few things. It's hard, and it's exhausting, and they push themselves right back into reality unless I really aim right, and it makes using magic or extrasensory perception really awful, and really painful! I'd like to get rid of that. Still, it gives me access to a couple of tricks."

  "Negate the space," Tabitha said.

  "Meh, would that work? It's not a very powerful ability. I mean, it does a few pretty sick things, but you have to aim it right."

  Tabitha groaned.

  "Okay, to be honest, it does the bare minimum! It creates the story required for the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands to be used."

  "What's that story? What exactly are the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands?" Aine asked.

  "To be honest, I don't know either."

  "You're kidding," Aria said.

  "I mean, you didn't know either, Agnes Project expert. Neither did Haio. We know that they're part of the Agnes Project, and we have a location on some of them, but we don't know what sets it apart, if anything. It could just be a particularly powerful focus. The microritual was like... black-box engineering. I had to know some things. Haze House's vision. The Agnes Project. I don't know all of the specifics."

  "But you put everything on Young-hoon's head, even though you couldn't fulfil your side of the bargain!" Maxine said. "That was really cruel of you to do, Miss Haze."

  "In life, we don't always get what we want. Your birthright, your best friends... these things can be cut away from you, through no fault of your own. You have to learn to pull smiles about it, and to learn to enjoy your suffering. To be able to take responsibility for others despite having no clue what that entails. To not be scared of paradoxes, or feel sick when you lead a girl you take care of through the rough because she'll cry about it, because 'you're hurting her.' To raise a great power out of nothing or almost nothing, from yourself, from others..."

  "Audrey."

  "Young-hoon, I believed in you. I believed your ability to suffer adversity. I really did."

  "Why?"

  "BECAUSE you wrote a lot and I really do mean a lot of stuff about how your experience struggling to beat difficult challenges in video games could be translated to real life on the application form and I was really impressed! You were at the top of your class! You really seemed to intuitively understand the mythopoetic principles of it all! I was expecting better! Literally..."

  Their dear teacher died inside, hearing this.

  "When you fight each other it makes me smile because we're getting somewhere! You make bonds and you break them and you sully yourself and you become bloodstained and all of these things that should make you happy but instead only serve to cover your deep despair shatter and break and become warped and distorted, and I know we're making progress! The script is progressing! It has so many pages but it inevitably comes to an end, and the end will be brilliant. Right, girls? It's what you all want."

  They looked around at each other.

  "Forwards," Nina said.

  "This is the easiest of what's to come?" Sarai said.

  "Are you scared?" Tabitha said.

  "I'm scared of the witch," Sarai said.

  "So you're not scared of death by drone," Tabitha said.

  "I mean I am but—"

  Tabitha rushed to the door.

  "We weren't going to make a plan, anyway," Tabitha said.

  "Huh huh what," Aine said.

  Nina drew back the arrowhead.

  "You're permitted to lie, again," Nina said.

  "I wasn't planning to lie," Kaninchen said.

  Maxine at their teacher's side said, "He doesn't have anything to answer for. He was forced into a situation no good man could bear, and acted according to his principles." Young-hoon vigorously nodded.

  Whatever. Whatever.

  Aine said to Nina, "This is scary. Becoming anything is scary."

  Nina grabbed Aine's wrist. "Emi has already become something. Emi, what do you think about that?"

  "I haven't thought about it very hard," Emi said.

  Oh. Fine. "I can't bear what I am," Nina said. It was why she fell in with Reiko.

  Ah, and that ended with Nina here! In Haze House's care. Why? Reiko sought perfection for all of them. Nina couldn't bear that either. She was anathema to it. It all was too much.

  "It's too late to go back," Aine said. Tabitha had opened the door, her group started to leave. Aine and Nina and Emi and Sophia (Haio half-awake) and Aria followed.

  "Surely," Nina said.

  "If the ritual won't provide us power in a normal fashion, and if everything is just going to get tougher and tougher, we might have to do something else to get around it, haha..." Aine said.

  "Like what," Nina said.

  "Um. Um."

  Why was she stuttering?

  "Protect me, okay?" Aine said.

  "From what, the drones? My shielding spells start to corrupt whatever is shrouded by them."

  "Um. From everything. Okay?"

  Aine was annoying, but Aine had ordered it, and so she would.

  "...Okay."

  Kay-kay! (Trials and tribulations are coming—your way!)