Among those hidden parameters is a value called the violation index. Administrator quickly discovered that she could utilize this value to sniff out people who were skeptical of the Taboo Index she had set forth…
That had been from wise little Cardinal in the Great Library. This proved it: The Rebelling Index, as the box-people called it in the sacred tongue, was that very violation quotient she mentioned. All the dozens of “boxen” in this chamber were monitoring the values of every man, woman, and child in the world.
If they detected abnormal values, they would open a portal and peer into the location, identifying and reporting the violator. Then whoever received that report would order an Integrity Knight to bring that individual to justice. That was how Eugeo, Alice, and I were brought to the cathedral in the first place…
I was broken out of my stunned stupor by the sound of some kind of buzzer. Alice and I both tensed and raised our swords, but we hadn’t been spotted. The boxen stopped their chanting and all looked upward.
Until now, I hadn’t noticed that, on the walls just over their heads, faucet-like objects jutted upward. The box-people all opened their mouths, and a thick brown liquid abruptly flowed out of the spigots. They caught the liquid in their gaping mouths and swallowed it mechanically. Some of the liquid spilled out of their lips, staining necks and collarbones. That was likely the source of the stench.
Soon the buzzer sounded again, and that was the end of the liquid feeding. Their faces snapped forward again, and the chanting resumed: System Call…System Call…
This is no way to treat human beings.
In fact, even cattle and sheep shouldn’t have been treated this way, I recognized with a surge of anger pulsing up from my gut. I clenched my teeth.
Alice grunted, “Are they…the senators who help the Axiom Church rule over the human realm…?”
I looked over to see that her one visible eye was shining with fury. I hadn’t put that idea together, but it seemed accurate now. All of these dozens of people stuffed in boxes were the senators, the high administrative officers of the Axiom Church.
“And was it…the pontifex who created what I am seeing now?” she continued.
“I reckon it was,” I said. “I bet she found people from all over the realm who were weak in combat skills but excellent in sacred arts, then stole their thoughts and emotions and turned them into this senatorial security system…”
System was right. These weren’t people; they were devices. Their job was to maintain perfect peace—or stagnation—across the realm under the Axiom Church’s rule. Even the Integrity Knights, with their most precious memories stolen, didn’t suffer such an ignoble fate. It was atop centuries of this sacrifice that Administrator had reigned.
Alice slowly hung her head, until her dangling hair hid her expression.
“…This is unforgivable.”
The Osmanthus Blade in her right hand rang softly, as though channeling its master’s rage.
“No matter the crime, these are still human beings. But she did more than steal their memories—she removed the very intelligence and emotion that makes them human, stuffed them into these cages, and now feeds them worse than beasts…There can be no honor or justice here.”
She raised her head to a noble tilt and strode willfully into the chamber. I rushed after her.
The senators’ eyes did not move from their Stacia Windows, even with the shining presence of a beautiful lady knight in the darkness. She walked to her left and stood before one of the boxes. I watched the pale face of the senator over her shoulder.
Up close, there was no way to tell even a gender, much less an age. The endless period of captivity in this lightless prison had robbed all traces of humanity.
Alice lifted the Osmanthus Blade. I thought she was going to destroy the box at first, but instead she rested the tip right around the location of where the senator’s heart would be. I gasped and hissed, “Alice!”
“Wouldn’t it be a mercy…to end this life?”
I couldn’t answer.
Even if we returned their memory fragments—assuming such things had even been saved—it seemed impossible that it would return them to their former selves. I had to assume that the senators’ fluctlights had been broken beyond repair, twisted into something unrecognizable and wrong.
But even then, perhaps Cardinal or even Administrator herself could grant them some wish aside from death. It was this thought that made me reach out for her shoulder guard to stop her.
But just as I did, a strange sound from farther into the chamber caused us to freeze.
“Aaah…Aaaaah!”
It was a high-pitched, grating screech.
“Aaah, oh my, ohhh, Your Holiness, what a waste…Ohhhh, ahhh, you musn’t, aaah, ooooh!!” howled the bizarre voice. Alice and I shared a suspicious look.
I didn’t recognize it. It didn’t sound young, but it didn’t sound elderly, either. All I could tell from its voice was that it seemed to be in the throes of some kind of maniacal excitement.
Her anger temporarily forgotten, Alice lowered her sword and stared in the direction of the sound. The screeching voice was coming from another hallway in the wall, just like the one we came through but deeper inside the cylindrical room.
“…”
Alice pointed toward the hallway with her sword, motioning me on. I nodded, and we began to lurk toward it.
There were no pillars or furniture of any kind in the wide-open chamber, so crossing it was mildly terrifying, but none of the dozens of senators along the walls paid us any mind or seemed capable of recognizing our presence at all. Their entire world was the system window in front and the food spigot overhead, and that was it. I remembered feeling twinges of pity at the lives of the basement jailer and the girl controlling the elevated platform, but the word pity on its own was entirely inadequate to describe the plight of these creatures.
As for whoever was moaning and screeching at the top of their lungs right near this dehumanizing place, I couldn’t begin to fathom the mindset. Whoever it was, I couldn’t imagine them being an ally of any kind.
Alice felt so, too, and there was a different kind of anger now creeping over her pale face. She crossed the chamber on a straight line and peered around the side of the corridor, while I stole a look over her shoulder.