The Story Of One World I, Chapter X “The Beginning,” Part I — Ombro, Captain Temanov [Major Spoilers]
Important Notice: This section contains significant spoilers from the final chapters of “The Story Of One World.” If you haven’t read the previous chapters yet, it’s highly recommended that you do so to fully enjoy the unfolding events. You can find a guide to the chapters here.
Ombro
The conversation with Kevar turned out less successful than she had hoped. It was, after all, a bit much to expect that he would immediately embrace the ideas of the Temple, let alone calmly accept the news of a second being living in the body he had always considered his own.
With Argomantis withdrawn into himself for the foreseeable future, Ombro saw an opportunity to take full control of their shared body without fear. It was hard to predict when Kevar would return to a stable state, but Ombro hoped for at least a couple of weeks of freedom — enough time to execute the final stage of the game’s first cycle without any issues.
With some effort, she surfaced from their refuge, leaving Kevar curled up in a fetal position, lying there in the chair. She even covered him with a blanket.
Ombro opened her eyes; it was bright outside. She was unaccustomed to seeing the world without the reddish hues of the visors, so the bright light initially caused her significant pain.
She cautiously glanced to the right — Cecilia was sitting in the same chair, intently studying her face — Kevar’s face, she corrected herself. Ombro, adept at reading facial expressions, quickly assessed Cecilia’s worried look, though she was trying to mask it.
“Hello, Ceci. Been out for long?”
“Hello, Kev. Two hours and forty-three minutes. How are you feeling? Remember anything?”
“Nothing at all. Seems hopeless.”
“What do you mean nothing? What about the wall? You broke through it, entered your memories!”
“Wall? What wall? I feel like I just slept through everything.”
“That’s odd… It shouldn’t be like this! Everything worked, you told me so yourself.”
“I don’t remember,” Ombro said, playing Kevar’s role, feigning partial amnesia and confusion. She shook her head, sat uncertainly on the couch, and even attempted a sorrowful expression. Still, her unfamiliarity with controlling her facial muscles turned it into a mere semblance of emotion: “I better go. I have things to do.”
“What things? You decided to take a break to escape all this madness.”
“I changed my mind. Really, I have to go,” Ombro stood up, staggering slightly with disuse. She had spent most of her life inside a spacesuit with micro-motors enhancing her movements, and now, she felt discomfort moving on her own for the first time in years. Human legs were weak, and the spine was a thin rod holding up the body. Vulnerability — a sensation that had always united the two beings sharing the body. Whose body was it, anyway? Ombro pondered. This body had intertwined the fates of one person or two independent minds — no matter whose it was, when Kevar returned, they would have to learn to co-manage it, and they would surely need to develop some common self-identity. Indeed, Ombro’s time as a shadow had passed — she would never again be just a shadow, and Kevar would likely never be the same either. However, they would have to discuss this later.
Ombro briskly and coldly bid farewell to Cecilia, left the apartment, and headed to the public transport stop, clinging to the side of the spherical building. What always irritated Ombro about Kevar was his excessive caution. Argomantis feared piloting flying machines, except for grav-vehicles, and even then, Ombro’s intervention was sometimes necessary. So this time, her unwitting companion had come here not on his personal cosmocycle but in the “tin can” of a public flying tram. And what Ombro truly detested with all her soul was the crush of bodies on public transport. If not for the need for secrecy, she would strangle with her bare hands all these despicable wretches, always trying to squeeze past, push out, step on a foot.
Yet, recalling her early years at the boarding school, when Ombro sometimes had to take control of the body, an image of a narrow alley covered with cobblestones and an old red tram floating above it immediately came to mind. It was an early summer evening; the lamps were already lit, thunder rumbled in the distance, and the approaching June downpour brought the smell of rain. The damp asphalt mixed with the scents of the tram: a bit of dust, oil, and ozone from the engines. Ombro sat on a bench covered with cracked faux leather at the back of the single tram car. No other passengers were present. The old lamps, which she adored for their soft, warm light, cast whimsical shadows outside the windows, and her thoughts wandered far away, lost in fantastic adventures and the free, wild life of space pirates.
She abruptly cut off the flow of memories. She couldn’t afford to truly become a wretch like Kevar. It seemed this infection was transmitted through their shared body, Ombro thought, smirking at the absurdity of her supposition.
Before entering the transport stop, she activated the spacesuit. Not her own, of course, but Kevar’s. She still had to play this role to the end, so for the time being, she would have to forget about her own familiar and ergonomically superior armor. When the mask covered her face, Ombro initially sighed in relief but then had to squint her eyes. The blue hue of the visors painfully pierced her eyes, immediately causing a severe headache. Struggling to overcome the throbbing in her brain, Ombro fiddled with the computer settings until she found the necessary menu. The detestable cold light switched to the familiar red, and the migraine receded instantly.
A strange weakness slightly annoyed Ombro, but she quickly restored her mental balance with breathing exercises taught at the Temple. Well, red visors, then. Few people paid attention to such details anyway.
Twilight was slowly gathering over the capital, the artificial sun dimmed, and a thick fog rose over the lake. Ombro reached the complex of buildings inhabited by families of police and military personnel by nightfall. Empty, narrow streets, pierced by fog led her through a dreary labyrinth of typical housing.
She walked confidently, her footsteps echoing on the pavement. Ombro knew where to go — Temаnov had mentioned to Kevar exactly where he lived — building thirty-seven, entrance five, eighteenth floor, apartment eight hundred and forty-one. Ombro rang the doorbell.
Despite the late hour, the captain was in full gear, only without the mask — apparently, he had decided to fly to Fraktura immediately, without delay.
“Kev, what are you doing here?” Judjur was surprised, “and what’s with the visors? Did your eyes get red from lack of sleep?”
“I changed my mind. I can’t sit idle; it’s unbearable. All sorts of thoughts creep into my head… I need to do something; help somehow.”
“You want to fly to Fraktura with me, then?”
“Yes. I forgot to tell you something important.”
“And what’s that?”
“The fact is, you won’t find anything there without me. The monastery only appears to the initiated — at least, they told me.”
“I know that, you told me yourself, forgot? But I’m not going there to look at the monastery. On the other hand, you could indeed help me,” Judjur responded thoughtfully, “listen, can you turn off the mask? Talking to a comrade is uncomfortable when you can’t see his face.”
Ombro tensed. First, she was shocked that there was something Kevar had done and said that she did not know. This had never happened before, and for her, it was a considerable blow: what other actions of the boy was she unaware of? Secondly, she realized that, although they shared Kevar’s face, personality imprints itself — facial expressions, micro-emotions — all of which could give her away. However, she ultimately reasoned that Judjur was not the best psychologist and was unlikely to suspect anything. She rolled up the mask and looked the captain in the eyes. They studied each other for a few seconds before Temanov said:
“Well, alright, just making sure it’s really you. We must be cautious these days, and then there’s your unusual visor color…”
“It’s just that the bright blue light started giving me a migraine. The red is more comfortable. You can imagine how the months locked up wore me out.”
“I can imagine…”
It took Judjur a few minutes to gather his things, leaving the apartment.
“Kev, I need to stop by my mother’s and sister’s place briefly, say goodbye, leave some money just in case. Who knows when we’ll be back.”
“No problem. Here’s what we’ll do: drop me off at the spaceport on the way, I’ll prepare the ship for flight and wait for you,” Ombro realized she needed to disable the talkative artificial intelligence of the ship.
“Agreed.”
***
“Echo” stood alone in the middle of an empty hangar, having gathered a thin layer of dust over several months. Ombro activated the computer and started checking all systems. The annoying artificial intelligence didn’t take long to make itself heard:
“Kev, are you alright? I almost went crazy here in hibernation! You could have at least rented me out while you were cooling your heels in the capital’s bars, may the Abyss take you!”
“Shut up, tin can. I’m about to ease your suffering by recoding your brain center.”
“What?” Judging by the tone, Echo was extremely surprised, something that rarely happened to the computer. Apparently, Ombro’s tone and words didn’t match the behavior of the old good friend Kevar that it was used to.
“I’m turning you off, so you don’t interfere. You talk too much. Kevar put up with you, but I’m not willing.” With these words, Ombro began entering commands into the central computer, sequentially disabling all the artificial intelligence’s functions.
“You’re not Kevar? Where is he? What happened to him?”
“How you all annoy me… ‘Are you Kevar? Are you not Kevar?’” Ombro said this with an intonation mockingly imitating Echo’s voice, “Enough.”
She punctuated each syllable of the last word by pressing the keys, activating changes in the artificial intelligence program. Now, the Echo, as a proper computer should, become a silent, useful, and unobtrusive assistant, unquestioningly executing the owner’s commands. This arrangement was clear and obvious to Ombro. There was her, there was the Game and its outcome, for which she lived — and then there was everything else, an optional addition to the first three pillars. If something external interfered, it needed to be eliminated; if it could be used — she would not miss the opportunity. In general, using everything and everyone possible was the creed of her worldview. It was convenient, effective, and yielded excellent results. The only person who had understood this approach of hers was Inisio. Apparently, that’s what she saw in Ombro when she and Savone first arrived at the Temple. They would meet again soon — too bad it was Kevar at the Temple then, not her — but it was necessary. Soon, only a beautiful and logical conclusion to the first cycle of the Game was needed.
Captain Temanov
Parting with his mother and sister was hard. The women couldn’t understand why their breadwinner, their only support, was unavailable again and even departing somewhere far away. Judjur tried to explain that it was his duty, that he had sworn allegiance to the country and could not put personal desires above state interests. But his logical arguments were drowned out by tears. He couldn’t bear it. Embracing his sister tightly for goodbye, he kissed his mother on the forehead and, leaving a stack of credit discs on the table — savings from the past four years — stepped out of the house. Unexpectedly, he found tears streaming down his cheeks. Striving to ignore them, he got into his tiny ship and, lifting it into the air, glanced at his family home one last time.
Kevar was waiting for him by the ship near the Argomantis hangar.
“You took a while.”
“Yes, it just turned out that way. Sorry.”
“Alright, I hope we can make up for lost time. Park your junk in the hangar and load up into Echo.”
Continued here:
The previous part is here:
