Chapter Text
We’ll be honest: The little chest cavity Mariah made to carry us in still creeps us out. Yes, our perch there gives us a slight but vital amount of mobility and scenery change. Yes, it represents Mariah’s desire to keep us close to her. (We can debate whether that counts as a net positive.) But we’re never going to be comfortable with the idea that a host—even a metaphorical one like Mariah—would choose to injure themselves on our behalf.
And now, we find out this happened.
Mariah essentially gave up a vessel for us. Or, we suppose, she gave it up for the chance to remain in contact with us, which is not quite the same thing. We didn’t ask her to. In fact, we never even considered the concept of Mariah would end up in Trauma for our sake or otherwise. Until now, we didn’t even think it was a possibility that merited consideration. Her surface ventures (let’s avoid naming them) alway seemed so all-or-nothing. Either Mariah succeeds and returns to us, or she fails and someone else eventually takes over her job and, presumably, this space.
How quickly situations can change.
(See also: Our last mistaken choice in possession target.)
We fiddle around with the feelings implied in Mariah’s outburst for a bit and still find ourself lacking a good response to them. Maybe an Elohite would know what the the correct (most useful, non-dissonant) lines would be. That’s not us. So, we shove those thoughts down to a deeper, more internal mind. We don’t need to avoid them outright, but it might help to germinate ideas without the pressure of conscious thought. This lets our surface thoughts focus on the practical concerns—namely Mariah’s vessel.
We can’t say we’ve come up with an escape plan yet. A few vital pieces are still missing, most notably a demon (Mariah) who is both sufficiently motivated to escape and willing take us along with her. However, we thought convincing Mariah to leave would be the difficult part. Her vessel we treated as an assumed resource. Why wouldn’t we? Mariah leaves Hell on a regular basis, and she’s not a Shedite, so of course she has a vessel. We just didn’t count on her inconveniently losing it.
(Yes, that was the best possible outcome in the situation she described. It’s still inconvenient.)
It’s when Mariah drags in yet another box of components to repair that we realize there’s no guarantee Mariah will even get another chance to leave Hell. Vessels cost, and Mariah’s a low-ranking, disposable demon. They might just dispose of her.
(And then what happens?)
(We find another approach.)
(We make another approach.)
“Mariah!” The Damp Mop Djinn’s bellow rings through the walls. “Get your ass in here!”
Our favorite Habbie immediately gets to her feet. Around us, her posture stiffens into a perfect straight line. We go silent. Mariah’s about to talk to the Damp Mop Djinn, and we get the feeling she’ll walk out of the conversation with either a new vessel or a whole new set of problems. Possibly both, but definitely the latter.
—
Mariah makes her way to the Damp Mop Djinn’s office in haste only to stand in silence for what feels like an absurd amount of time while her supervisor makes deliberate, almost painfully slow marks with a pen. Finally, the Djinn speaks:
“The good news is: There’s still a quota to fill.”
That doesn’t sound like good news to us (for many reasons), but we hear a sheet of paper being passed from the Damp Mop Djinn over to Mariah. “That’s your appointment with our prince to request your replacement vessel.”
“Archangel.” Mariah mutters under her breath.
The Damp Mop Djinn pauses for a second but otherwise ignores Mariah’s remark. “If you’re diligent, you may be able to convince him that losing your vessel, your ring, and my catchers was anything other than an abysmal decision.” She makes a punctuating clack with what might be a beak.
We feel the motion of Mariah’s gulp and her subsequent nod. “What’s the bad news, ma’am?”
The Djinn sounds very smug when she speaks again. “Oh, well I can’t say for sure. That’s up to you and the Mad Genius to decide, isn’t it? The bad news may just be that you need to make your own replacement catchers before you go back up. That’ll cost you a bit and cut into your deadline, but you’ve always been a diligent little Punisher. I’m sure you’ll manage. But well…” The Damp Mop Djinn trails off and the slow pen drags resume. We [Mariah, mostly] wait for a bit, but it appears as though the Damp Mop Djinn’s involvement in the conversation is now over, and Mariah will be left to figure out the implications on her own.
“Understood, ma’am.”
—
“What was the Damp Mop Djinn implying back there? About the bad news?”
Mariah sighs and unbuttons her shirt slightly. “It’s very simple. Our archangel is driven by his Word to experiment. If I can’t figure out how to explain my latest failure to him, and there’s a hypothesis he needs tested, then I’ll likely end up strapped to the table.”
“That doesn’t sound fun.”
Mariah’s lingering silence says more than a direct answer could. She never told us the specifics of what happened when she talked to her prince, but we remember how her voice cracked at that part in her story. We’re suddenly sure she’s been on the table before.
(To use her lingo.)
“Weakness leads to mistakes, and mistakes have a price, Kira. That’s just how things work.” Mariah sounds like she’s on the verge of tears or about to use her Essence reserves to pass those tears on to us. The catch on her body modification opens, and we feel ourself being lifted out. The motion feels almost gentle.
“You’re not taking us with you?” We’re not objecting. We (unanimously) do not want to meet a demon prince or even be in the presence of one sans introduction, but it feels off to not go along with her, as though us tagging along means we can do something—anything—to make the meeting with Vapula go better for her.
(We can’t.)
Mariah enters the elaborate sequence of motions it takes to safely open our case. “I can’t. The Genius Archangel will notice, and I don’t have a good explanation for you as you are right now. Especially not to him.” Our crystal snaps back into the space reserved for it. “And when—(we notice she doesn’t use ‘if’ here)—he notices, the results will be…suboptimal for both of us.”
Do we hear concern for our well-being in Mariah’s statement? Or are we attributing made-up significance to her words? We know what the plurality of us would have guessed even a little bit ago. Now, we’re not so sure.
(Might she be inching closer to going Elohite?)
Mariah’s chair scoots across the floor, and we hear a deep intake of breath. “Anyway, I need to leave now if I want to make it on time. Which I do. Because archangels don’t like to wait.”
(That’s true, but we’ve never been terrified of being late to a meeting with ours.)
“I hope things go well for you.”
We half-expect Mariah to scorn our well-wishes, but all we get as she strides out the door is a curt “Thanks.”
—
Mariah stays gone for an unspecified amount of time. Without the radio going, we can’t give an actual duration. We can estimate though. A mind walks itself through the bits of Mariah’s route we’ve experienced before: The trip through the office level to the elevator down to that sonic ocean of a lobby that leads out to the streets and (we presume) the stop for the public transit that will shepherd Mariah to another part of Tartarus, which we now picture as a nightmare city of towering industrial districts where any structure that might cater to people (souls or demons or whomever) fights to exist amongst the labs and factories like weeds growing up through sidewalk cracks.
(Even Hell has to make room for people, right?)
We can presume the time it takes Mariah to get from here to her master’s laboratory can be measured on the same scale as the trip she took us on when we first arrived in Hell. Hours or minutes as opposed to days or weeks. We can also presume that Mariah’s journey through her master’s laboratory takes approximately the same amount of time as the walk from this building’s cafeteria to her workshop.
Then, there’s the hypothetical return trip. The intuitive (but possibly incorrect) assumption is that our Habbalite will retrace her steps. The way out of Vapula’s lab will match the route she took in. The transit that brought her out to the lab will have a reflected route to bring her back to this part of Tartarus.
Given all this, we can estimate how long Mariah’s trip should take. A very nebulous, error-prone estimate with no definitive time-nouns to attach it to or any actual way to match it to reality, but an estimate nonetheless.
The mystery lies in what will happen to Mariah at that point in the middle—the actual meeting itself. Obviously, Mariah meets with her demon prince, who is like an archangel in a few ways. Power for one. What can Mariah do against her master directly? Precisely what we could do against our own were we so inclined (we aren’t): nothing. Superiors on either side can do with their servitors what they will; generally speaking, archangels just have fewer sadistic tendencies, overall. Function for another. Above or below, anyone who wants a vessel needs to be granted one by an archangel or demon prince directly. Vessels don’t just hang around in cold storage for a mere servitor to pick up at their leisure.
(At least, we assume they don’t. But then again, what do we know about vessel acquisition? Sure, there was that one time we accompanied a Wind Cherub who wanted to ask our archangel for a replacement, and we did help Cole sketch out some possible redesigns of its pre-redemption vessels, but do either of those even count?)
But demon princes obviously differ from archangels, and the relationship between superior and servitors is one of the key dissimilarities. Demon Princes own their servitors the way Mariah acts like she owns us. We [angels in general] give our Archangels our service the way we choose to help Mariah.
(Not that Mariah is anything close to an archangel.)
Mariah’s meeting could be quick and simple. She explains what happened and makes the vessel request. Her prince gives it to her. Maybe she gets a lecture or her prince makes some veiled threats, but nothing that happens takes long enough to fall outside our estimate. That would probably be the best scenario Mariah (and therefore us) could hope for.
Or her prince might be in an ‘experimental’ mood (Mariah’s term), and she ends up strapped to the table as a test subject. How long might that take? Depends on the experiment most likely. It might take no more time than an ordinary lecture might. Atrocities don’t need to be drawn out to be atrocious. Maybe it takes long enough that people notice her absence. While Mariah has a quota and a deadline to meet, we bet a demon prince in an experimental mood wouldn’t give one flying car about those.
Worst case scenario, Mariah could stay gone. Experiments can’t be permanent almost by definition, but certain end results can be. Or close enough to count anyway.
(Death. Or imprisonment similar to what we’ll suffer if Mariah doesn’t come back.)
All this to say when Mariah shuffle-staggers back into our presence some reasonable amount of time time later, most of us feel a bit of relief. The worst hasn’t happened.
The meeting still seems to have gone poorly. She practically crashes down into her chair without a single word of greeting, and while her sobs are nearly silent, the table vibrates slightly from her hunched over posture and erratic breathing. We’ve seen her a similar state before when she comes back up from one of those breaks where her bandmates have been particularly vicious.
Right. Her ‘archangel’ is another Habbalite. We bet Mariah is nuked out her (likely over-pierced) ears by a Superior-grade emotion bomb.
“How did the meeting go?” We ask once we feel the sobs abate enough that Mariah seems up for conversation.
“Fine,” Mariah says dully. She gets up from the table and starts opening cupboards and drawers. This isn’t from the mad inspiration we’ve heard from her before, or even the quiet diligence that accompanies her usual repair jobs. This is the slow, pained trudge of someone who doesn’t want to but has to anyway.
“Just fine? Nothing bad happened?”
“Nothing you should concern yourself with.” Mariah sets a couple of objects down that make sharp, clacking noises when they strike the table. “I have a vessel, a task, a quota, and a deadline. A then couple more tasks in addition to the quota.” Something else thuds down on the table.
“Like what?”
“Well, first, I need to make a few replacement catchers. Those heaven-angels looted the supply I’d built up before they shot me.” She sits back down at the table. “And I can’t meet a quota without anything to hold the specimens in, now can I?”
(We say nothing. We try not to think about it.)
“Second, I need to work off the dissonance. The bastards stole my ring, and since it’s too risky to try and get it back, Tether work it is. So that’s a week away from the hunt right there.” Snip. Clink. Snip. Clink. The wires Mariah cuts land on the table in front of her.
We think of our own note of dissonance that occasionally fuzzes up and itches at us. “You could always wait for another trip. One note of dissonance doesn’t do much harm. Especially for dem—I mean, especially if you’re not at risk of Falling.”
“I used to think that, Kira. And then it turned out that accepting one note of dissonance as no big deal fucked up my resonance and my whole life. So I’ll take a tether up and spend the week there before I start my hunt again.”
(Nope. Don’t say anything. Mariah doesn’t choose her job.)
“And, finally, I was given punishment work to make up for the loss my old ring.”
“Which is?”
“Field testing the replacement.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. At least you have your artifact back.”
The laugh that escapes Mariah is tinged with bitterness. “You’d think that. But it’s model dependent. The new models that improve functionality? Those go to favored servitors. The one I got? It’s testing how much cheaper the rings can be manufactured for before the effectiveness dips below an acceptable level. And it itches. But that’s not the worst part of field testing.”
We’re curious now, and we’d rather talk about prototype rings than think too deeply about the replacement force catchers she makes. “What’s the worst part of field testing?”
“When it’s over, I have to write up a report detailing what needs to be improved and then present it in person once I get back from my trip. If that report isn’t thorough enough or if I fail to mention an important defect, then I’ll get punished for incompetence. If it’s too thorough, then I’ve pissed off a much more powerful and favored Wordmate. Possibly a Duke.”
We try to imagine how difficult that balance would be to strike. We’ve never need to think about organizational politics much for our own sake, but maybe we’ve had to navigate a bit of that for a previous host or two. “Hmm. That does seem pretty bad.”
Mariah sets something down again. It makes a similar clack to the original objects set on the table. “And the worst part is? That deadline? The one that everything needs to be done by? It’s my original quota deadline that’s already been mostly eaten up by Trauma, the wait for the new vessel request, and now the need to make my own replacements because Tizzy won’t let me use the pre-made ones.”
(Raye, stay polite. Avoid the subject.)
“That sounds like a whole lot to do in not enough time.”
Mariah sighs. “It is, but so what? Everything is a test. Those who can’t handle that fact will hit critical failure, and those who are strong enough will endure everything given to them and overcome.”
“Does that ever actually happen? The overcoming?”
Mariah goes quiet, the thoughtful kind accompanied by her nails clicking in a gentle sequence. “In the big-picture sense, maybe not so much. There’s always another test. But sometimes one of the granular problems proves solvable.”
—
Mariah’s tight schedule means she leaves the radio tuned to her favorite station instead of the disco one she usually changes it to. The upside is that we don’t have to listen to that damned (literally) morning show for weeks on end. The downside is that Hardstyle Techsynth is fast becoming our least favorite musical genre and none of the DJs on this station are allowed to have enough personality to distract from the noises. And of course, unlike the disco, none of the usual office scavengers finds this style of music offensive enough to turn off.
That lack of a gesture doesn’t mean anything. We’ve haven’t said or or done anything since she came out of Trauma to trigger anything more than faint irritation in Mariah. If we did, these kinds of passive-aggressive gestures—like leaving the radio tuned to the wrong station—aren’t really her preferred expressions of displeasure. Unpleasant emotional gunk is more her style.
Mariah’s not mad at us; she’s just in a hurry.
(Which is understandable. If our continued existence depended on completing a lot of tasks on a very specific and rigid deadline, we would be in a rush as well.)
And anyway, the radio station doesn’t matter. What matters is that our only tentative ally down here is under immense time pressure. How far might Mariah go to meet her quota when she’s pressed? Sure, she sounded sincere when she said we were part of her, but we’re still a captured Kyriotate, as much as any of those in the big catcher a couple rooms over, and slightly more than whatever poor choirmate might be in one of her crystals now. If this trip ends with Mariah one short, she may very well decide to let her pet become a specimen.
(Would she though? She gave up a vessel for us.)
(She gave up a vessel because the alternative involved the locus of a Heavenly Tether. Losing her vessel was her best option for survival. We were incidental.)
That’s the kind of thought that we play hot potato with in our minds. Mariah might be sincere in her feelings towards us, but she’s also a demon, and all she’s given us are words. If she had to make a choice, why wouldn’t Mariah choose her continued existence over our own? She could find a replacement anyway.
This is why we’re better off focusing on the external environment—listen for those who come in, use the audio clues to identify who they might be, and track what they might have stolen. (If Mariah wanted to give us a spoken description of what was kept where one of these days, we might be even more effective.) If we get too internal, most of us end up paranoid by the time Mariah returns.
And no wonder. The results of Mariah’s last trip prove how little control we have over our situation, no matter our resolve. Everything depends on luck and the whims of others. To get anything we want from this, Mariah has to: one, survive and maintain her vessel; two, realize Hell isn’t for her; three, take us with her when she does; and (optionally) four, do some damage on her way out. Even the chance we have now is miraculous in some measure. (Divine or infernal? We don’t know.) Even the first point, by far the easiest of the four to reach, isn’t guaranteed.
What if Mariah fails to meet quota or fails to avoid meeting yet another group of angels who would (rightfully) wish to stop her? Or what if, while she’s out, she decides to just try the whole redemption bit then and there? Either possibility improves the larger situation but leaves us [me, and possibly the other prisoners] stuck down here without a ride.
While yet another group comes in to raid Mariah’s supply cabinets of anything not welded down (Are half the staff secretly Valeforians in lab coats? Is that the explanation we’re missing?) these thoughts bounce between our minds like beams of light against angled mirrors. An idea takes shape. There’s one little request we can make to Mariah for entirely practical reasons, and maybe, we’ll get a chance to see what her actions say.
Assuming Mariah is able to meet her quota before she has to add us to it.
(Come on. Someone steal the battery to this radio already.)
—
We’re not so lucky, at least regarding the radio station.
If it were possible to get a headache while in trapped in a crystal, we would have had about six of them by the time Mariah hurriedly shuffles back into the room and changes from her soaking-wet outdoor clothing (that lands on the floor in wet splats) to one of her typical Hellside outfits.
We expect…we don’t know what we expect from her this time. A greeting, perhaps, or maybe for her to go through the intricate box opening steps one last time to take us out and include us among her other specimens. Instead, she completely ignores us and leaves the room without a single word uttered and a matter-of-fact stride, a sufficient number of captured choirmates likely in hand.
(Our relief at not being among them weighs down on us. It’s not quite selfishness. Our death by messy experimentation does no good in the long-term. But it still feels selfish, like we genuinely believe it’s better them than us.)
Mariah returns a bit later and immediately takes her spot at the computer. Her typing noises have a different cadence from the usual data entry. Hesitant keystrokes and more of them between punctuating line breaks. Ah, right, the report about the ring she had to field test.
She mutters under her breath occasionally as she jams down on a button several times in sequence. “Can’t call it a ‘piece of shit’…hmmm…how about ‘flimsy’—no!—‘flexible beyond optimal parameters’? Better.”
While Mariah carefully considers how to explain the apparently many, many defects of her new artifact to someone who can flay her alive, we consider how we want to approach Mariah with our own request. But we stay silent as she types, out of consideration.
Finally the report is in a state to be printed. We can hear the infernal beast fire up and then Mariah’s sudden sigh.
“Kira, who stole the ribbon from the printer?”
“You should build us an emergency exit,” we blurt out our request with one voice while another responds to Mariah’s own question with “It was either that Wind Chime Habbie who said something about the Help Desk, or one of the demonling cliques causing mischief again. How messy is the room?”
“What?”
“If the room has ink splattered all over, I would guess the demonlings took it. If it’s still fairly neat, then it’s probably the Wind Chime Habbie.”
Mariah taps her nails down on the counter. “Not that. The other thing.” She stalks over and opens our case. “You told me you wouldn’t try to escape so what good does an emergency exit do?” There’s a warning in her voice, but a light one. A growl that’s not quite ready to turn into a bite, but it could if we answer incorrectly.
We feel her lift our crystal out of our case. There’s a slight creak as the cage in Mariah’s chest opens for us. Thankfully, there’s an honest (non-dissonant) answer that falls within striking distance of ‘correct’. “If something happens to you while you’re out, then it wouldn’t doom me into spending the rest of eternity down here.”
We have a few more motivations than that. But we don’t share those with Mariah, and she doesn’t ask.
“Oh, is that all? Don’t worry. I can keep myself alive. Do you want know how long most of Tizzy’s former assistants lasted?”
“How long?”
“Two or three years on average. It’s why she doesn’t bother to train anyone until after they’ve completed a successful trip.” Mariah re-buttons her shirt. Her voice echoes around us. “I’ve lasted more than fifteen years now. So, what happened last time? That was just some bad luck. Now, I’ve passed the resulting test, proved it was just a fluke, and now everything will go on as usual.”
Yes, the usual. Where Mariah is about to step out of this room and get bullied by a Bandmate in hopes that she doesn’t have to use her limited essence to buy the bit of printer equipment she needs to can print out a report about some sub-standard piece of equipment that she’ll have to hand-deliver to a much higher-ranking demon than her and who probably doesn’t want to receive any feedback Mariah might have to give.
“Is that what you want?”
“What better options do I have?”
Of course she asks that question as the door to the storeroom slams shut behind us, and we’re left unable to speak for safety reasons. Hopefully our hum accurately conveys our opinion.
—
We suppose the important thing (to Mariah) is that she does get the ribbon for her printer replaced, which means that by the time we’re allowed to speak again, our Habbie can resume her fight with the printer.
A fight she’s currently losing in part because of the abject humiliation forced upon her by her bandmates not even an hour before. By the way, we mean the resonated emotion not the way she had to beg on her hands and knees for what appeared to us to be a moderately cheap office supply. Though, on reflection, the latter act probably helped to reinforce the former.
“Is that normal?” We ask, when Mariah steps away from the printer. “What your Bandmates did down there, I mean.”
(There were at least two Punishers that we could distinguish. The aforementioned Wind Chime Habbie, and then a second who didn’t make any distinctive noises when she moved, but talked at length about how weak Mariah was for losing track of her printer ribbon.)
“They don’t usually…” Mariah trails off. We should be glad she’s even capable of speaking to us in her current state. “No, it’s not that unusual. It’s what I deserve for being such a pathetic example of what an angel in Hell should be.”
Ahh. We already know Mariah’s bandmates use her as a chew toy, and clearly she’d rather not talk about it, but as part of our duty to look after our pseudo-host, we have other issues to press. “So what’s unusual about it?”
She takes her time answering.
“They don’t usually bother fucking with my stuff to bait me.” Mariah presses a few keys on the computer. A screeching whirr starts up, and then something plasticky clunks back and forth. The printer must be functioning now (for some value of ‘function’ that finally spits out her report).
“So why now?”
Mariah shuffle-paces across the room. “Ah—so since I’ve started carrying you around, I’ve been doing the extra work to avoid them. I—I don’t like when you see—well, hear—me like this.”
“So, you think they’ve changed their tactics to bring you to them?”
“Likely.”
“Why not just come up here while you’re at work?”
“Tizzy starts snapping when anyone without a title tries to co-opt her assistant. And that includes unauthorized breaks.”
We match this up with our image of the Damp Mop Djinn. It seems to fit. “Ahh.”
The printer no longer sings the song of its people, and that’s music to our ears. Mariah grabs the paper, makes a slamming chuh-chunk on the counter (stapler?), and then some robust paper bends (a manila envelope?). Mariah hesitates. “Of course they’d do this.”
“Do what?”
“Test me with this emotion right before I have to hand deliver a report to a distincted member of the field-testing division. I have to figure out how to do that when I already feel like I fell on my face and ripped open my pants in front of the entire Robot Wars audience.”
“Why not wait until it wears off?”
“If I do that, I’ll miss the deadline. And this isn’t fluffy little Heaven-land where missed deadlines get you cotton candy and a sympathetic pat on the head.”
(In our experience, missed deadlines get you very stern looks and, depending on the deadline-giver, either extra clerical work or disappointed friends.)
Mariah rushes out of the room, and we’re back to giving Mariah encouraging hums as she attempts to cross the office area without incident. Typically, we’d try to do more to help our hosts, but the we best can give now is our moral support.
White-collar sounds pass by us at decent speed, until Mariah crashes into someone and staggers backward.
“Watch where you’re going, sweetheart.” The voice—feminine, nasal—sounds more amused than annoyed.
Mariah responds in a whisper-soft tone. “Sorry about that. I’m in a bit of a rush. Very important report to deliver to a very important demon.” She presses forward only to have her arm caught by whoever she bumped into.
There’s a momentary pause, and then the bumpee blurts out. “Oh, you don’t need to bother yourself with that. Mail hasn’t gone out yet, and I can set this up to get sent out by end of business today. Express delivery and certified even.”
Mariah just bumped into a Lilim, didn’t she?
Please say no, Mariah. Please say no. You don’t need a Geas.
(We don’t dare hum.)
Mariah jerks away from the Lilim’s grasp. “Thanks for the offer, but no. My instructions were to deliver it in person.”
“Suit yourself.” The nasal Lilim calls out behind us. Her next lines become indistinguishable as Mariah takes us out of listening range, but the tone gets ruder.
Mariah steps into the elevator vestibule and mutters. “God and Lucifer, Free Lilim are so annoying sometimes.”
We hum inquisitively.
“Oh, they’re useful for doing all the boring receptionist work that no one has time for. But they’re always, always, trying to get hooks on people. It’s the absolute worst. Mostly it’s the mid-level people who are in the most danger, but even those of us on the ground get our share of the attempted Geases.”
At our second hum, Mariah answers our implied question. “It’s happened twice that I know of. Once I had to hand over an expensive reliquary I’d just bought. That stung. The second time I had to raid Tizzy’s supply room for the sedatives. Like I said, annoying. But there’s not much down here I Need that they could get a truly troublesome Geas on.”
We hum dubiously. We’re no Lilim (and, even if we were, we have no way to get eye-contact from inside here) to see what Mariah Needs, but we know her well enough to know that she has plenty of Needs that would get her killed if she got caught with them.
“And that shouldn’t be an issue, so long as you stay quiet.”
—
Once we leave the facility proper, everything goes fine. The walk to the nearest subway station? Fine. (We might have a different opinion if we had access to, say, our olfactory sense.) The train ride out to a central hub? Perfectly fine. The slight detour we have to take to get to the next train because of construction work on a tollway only two-percent of Tartarans own a vehicle of the appropriate type to use? Fine, despite what the crumbling concrete barriers and the crackles of the (alleged) tire fires might indicate. The second train to our destination where everyone is packed in together like the proverbial sardines in a hydraulic press? Fine again. (We don’t actually inhabit the body getting pushed and pulled every which way in this jam-packed coach.) According to Mariah everything is just fine, fine, fine all the way down. Business as usual, even.
(Is it any wonder we don’t find Hell appealing?)
Mariah’s meeting with the Field Testing Department goes fine as well. The Duke doesn’t actually show up to take Mariah’s report, nor even a Baron. Instead, it’s a weirdly intense Knight of Combustion who hones in on every slight contradiction in Mariah’s very delicately worded critiques and who then quizzes Mariah on concepts like ‘psychorhythms’ and ‘thermochromaticity’ that are clearly out of her area of expertise.
(And ours. Those sound more like new forms of personal expression than scientific terms.)
But she gets out of there with nothing worse than a bruised ego and some drained Essence (we would think Impudites as a band would be immune to social awkwardness, but definitely no). As a bonus, she’s allowed to exchange the prototype ring she was given to field test to one the knight derisively labels as the ‘stable release model’.
Despite this, Mariah remains in a bad mood. “All that work, and I just end up in the same place I was before. Or slightly behind,” she mutters while she navigates the crowd. “Same artifact. Less attractive vessel. A more irritated supervisor.”
Sympathy hum. Our Habbie has had a day.
“It’s just one more an an ongoing series set of tests. Be strong. Endure. Overcome.” Mariah lets out a gentle sigh as her body gets jostled onto the first train back. “At least, I still have you.”
The trip back to the facility is no less fine than the trip out.
—
A repair job waits for Mariah the moment she returns to the supply room. After that, the Damp Mop Djinn has another one lined up followed by a third job that’s exciting for being a single large and particularly unwieldy object rather than a box full of a dozen or more identical small devices.
(At this point, we’re pretty sure a good half of Mariah’s repair jobs involve devices decayed through their proximity to the Paper Shredder. We suppose good storage practices don’t mean much when you’re a Vapulan with a minion around to repair objects on command. Still, it seems risky when we consider the volatility of the average piece of VapuTech.)
(It’s a miracle we don’t hear more random explosions.)
Once the large and unwieldy item finally gets set back down on the floor (presumably fixed), Mariah shifts immediately into her next project.
There’s usually an easy flow to how Mariah works her repair on devices. She might grumble a bit while she tries to undo the results of entropy exposure, but the process itself is almost pleasant to listen to. We’re reminded that even a place like this has cracks for the Word we serve to shine through. This time, however, we can hear and feel the hesitation in Mariah’s movement. Her body rocks forward and back. Her nails tap erratically on the table. At last, she grabs at some paper.
“Difficult job?”
Mariah starts to sketch with her too hard pencil. Maybe it’s not yet another repair job from the Damp Mop Djinn after all. None of those seem to require anything in the way of design work. “Oh, no. It’s not a job at all. I’ve just thought about that request you made.”
Uh oh. (Oh good?)
“You and I are going to be together for a good, long time, Kira. Don’t worry about that. I have no plans to go anywhere. I’ve proved that I’m strong enough to survive the tests I’m given down here, and I don’t have any interest in becoming an Elohite. But you’re right. If I do have to leave you for some reason, you should be able to get out. No one else here deserves to have you.”
Oh, how sweet. We don’t say that out loud, but if we were in Angelic, the sarcasm tone intensifiers would be on max.
Unlike the body modification she made before, Mariah completes the planning stage quickly and gets immediately to the modification stage. She slides the case towards us [Mariah and me inside her], and we hear the sounds of the device—and it strikes us that our case is indubitably a device—getting partially dismantled.
The modification work sounds tedious. Click. Pop. Click. Turn. This repeats a number of times before Mariah reassembles our case. Then we hear a quick twisting sound in place of the elaborate sequence Mariah usually performs to open the box. “Hmm…needs more pressure.” Mariah stands up to rummage through a drawer. Surprisingly, she seems to find what she needs.
“Let’s see if that does the trick,” Mariah says, after another round of tedious modification and reassembly. She does the quick-twist maneuver again, and this time we hear the sickening sharp sound of cracking crystal. Glasslike shards scatter over the workbench with a tinkling noise. Mariah leaps up from her chair and lets out an abbreviated cheer. “That should do it!”
We’re about to ask Mariah exactly what should do when we catch the sound of the door code being entered. We go silent immediately and Mariah sits down and hunches over on cue. The door opens, and the Damp Mop Djinn thumps into the room. “That should do what?” she asks our exact question, with her voice sounding out from just above and behind us, like she’s peering over Mariah’s shoulder on to the scene below.
Mariah puts on a submissive tone suitable for talking to her supervisor. “Just finishing up a personal project.”
The Damp Mop Djinn’s voice comes in nearer. “Huh. Your recording device?”
“Yes. Exactly. I found a way of improving sound quality and thought I’d put it into practice as long as I’m between tasks.”
“How diligent. No worries, there’s more work waiting for you.” The Damp Mop Djinn sets a box on the floor next to the table and thumps away from us. As she opens the door, she finishes, “And Mariah…those quartz crystals are reserved for Force Catchers. Company supplies are not to be used for personal projects.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The door closes in the middle of Mariah’s reply.
Apparently, being a Djinn does not disqualify one from having a dramatic sense of timing.
—
“So, what exactly did you do?” We ask once we’re both sure the Damp Mop Djinn will stay gone for a while.
Mariah sounds entirely too pleased with herself when she answers, even as she’s stuck vacuuming all those quartz shards up. “Nothing too fancy. Just a little modification to one of the security mechanisms. Since you know better than to try to escape by now, I just swapped out the blades for a pressure mechanism. If someone manages to brute-force open the box, the Force Catcher will break, and you’ll have a chance of leaving Hell before the alarm system goes off.”
Ouch.
Short of breaking out, there are two ways to be freed from a Force Catcher. The first is to have someone who knows the password speak it out loud. In theory, there’s a sequence of sounds that once spoken by Mariah (or someone else, but probably her) would immediately loosen the crystal’s hold on us. Mariah, being a Habbalite, has naturally chosen the second way: Break the crystal, free the being inside.
(How would she have accomplished the first?)
(She could have at least tried.)
“You do know how force catchers work, right?” Mariah asks us right as we’re trying to figure out whether she designed the new mechanism to damage us by necessity or by choice. “As far as what breaking one does?”
“It’ll free us, but it’ll also do celestial damage to us.”
“Exactly. So don’t think about attracting unnecessary attention in hopes of an easy escape. It’s meant for emergency use only.”
“Emergency use only,” we echo.
We had multiple reasons to ask Mariah for an emergency exit. The first, obviously and most practically, would be that emergency escape route. But we also did it as a test of our own to try and sort out Mariah’s feelings towards us. Is she stepping away from Hell-type relationships? Does she see us as a friend worth a small consideration, even if it’s at the risk of letting us leave of our own will? Or does she still see us as a pet Kyriotate, a being that she owns and has mastered? Mariah can confess all sorts of feelings towards us (and likely mean them), but it’s her actions that we need to believe.
And what did she do? Mariah built us that emergency exit we asked for, but she also made sure it would damage us if we ever used it.
Half-credit, we suppose.
—
“I’ve been wondering, Kira, why don’t you?”
The noise of the cafeteria surrounds us, and Mariah sits in her usual spot. This is the last ‘break’ she’ll get before heading up for her next quota, and it’s the last chance we’ll have to freely talk for a while. The sea of noise nearly drowns out Mariah’s voice even at this proximity, which means we can barely be heard by her, much less by anyone else in this place.
“Why don’t I what?” We don’t trust this line of conversation. What have the Visiting Habbalah have inflicted on their poor Discordant Bandmate this time? Either she’s trying to trick us or her head is fucked in an exciting and novel way.
“Push me towards a…you know…a job change.” Her body tilts with furtive language we can’t see. The chance of being eavesdropped upon in this gigantic noise box remains omnipresent, if miniscule.
The radically direct answer, suitable for Seraphim, angels of Revelation, and novice Helltongue speakers is that we absolutely are pushing her towards that job change. We would like nothing more than for Mariah to take us with her the next time she leaves and then run for the nearest Heavenly Tether. We just consider a minor amount of subtlety to be more effective than the radically direct approach.
The answer we give instead keeps to our [mine and Mariah’s] established metaphor, that of a Kyriotate and her host. In that way we can talk around topics that neither of us trusts the other enough to discuss directly.
“When we were younger, before we fledged, we asked a Kyriotate about why they didn’t make certain choices on behalf of their hosts. That seemed to make the most sense to us at the time. They had complete control of a host’s body while they were in it. The mind is always somewhere else. So, why not just make humans do what’s best for them, when what’s best is obvious?” (Other corporeal creatures as well, but those tend to be less complicated.) “Anyway, that Kyriotate told us that it’s not our Choir’s job to make choices for our hosts. Sometimes, it might be necessary, but, generally, making a habit of deciding matters on behalf of our hosts was a fast-track down. Even if none of those choices harmed the host at the time. Even if the host subconsciously wanted to pick the choice. And once I actually started working with living humans directly, I quickly came to understand that myself.”
Mariah stirs her glop morosely.
“So, yeah, I’ve been hosted by plenty of humans who were discontent with their job situation. They might have hated their job, or maybe they just wished they could do something they were actually passionate about. They were a bit like you in that way.”
“Don’t be rude. I’m nothing like a human.”
“No, not very much like one.” Demons here generally get offended when someone attributes human-like qualities to them. (So do some angels, but that’s more of an individual quirk than a general trait.) We continue on. “But if I just quit a despised job on their behalf or signed them up for a new job without their knowledge, then it’s not unlikely they’d be worse off. They could have hated the new job, or they might not have the qualifications. Or maybe the new job doesn’t actually pay enough to cover their family’s expenses. Maybe after staying with one person for years on end, I could learn enough about them to get perfect accuracy. But even then...”
(What’s not said: We don’t want to stay with anyone long enough to know what decisions to make for them.)
“So instead, it makes more sense just to try and make the better choices easier. Maybe I just show them a change is possible. Maybe I show them a starting point to give them an easier path to follow if they do decide to take it. It’s about opening them up to more and better options, and my hosts can do with those what they will.”
Mariah continues silently shove her food around on her tray. Presumably, she’s thinking about what we said, but she’s just as likely lost in her own thoughts.
“So, you think changing jobs would be an improvement for me.”
This we can answer directly in complete confidence. “I’ve accompanied you on enough work errands recently to think you’ll be happier making the job change. For the improved work environment if nothing else. Other than access to me and the pride you take in your nature, I don’t understand what else keeps you holding on to Hell.”
“Kira—” Her tone is a warning to back off.
“But that’s my opinion. You’re the one who would have to take the risk, and so the choice has to be yours. One-hundred percent. But I’ll stick around, so I can help make sure that job-change option stays open to you for as long as possible.”
“And what about afterwards? If I did decide, I mean. Not that I would.”
We’ve had time to think of an honest and not entirely hopeless (for either of us) response. “We’d have to separate at some point, but it’s not impossible that we could meet again.”
Mariah pushes her tray away. Clearly she’s done trying to partake. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I’ll never choose that job change isn’t it, so get that ridiculous idea out of your mind.” She pauses, then adds, “All of them.”
With that, the conversation ends. We doubt Mariah will be receptive if we bring up the topic again anytime soon, but she remains silent even after we get back. Maybe our analogy will echo around in her head for her subconscious to process, even if she’s not yet ready to face the possibilities that seem so obvious to us.
(If so, we hope she doesn’t take the job change idea off in a completely different direction and decide to become Mariah, Habbalite of the Media. Or Mariah, Habbalite of Death. We’re not sure which would be worse. But we acknowledge the possibility. Our Habbie does tend to over-commit to ideas.)
Anyway, it’s not like we have time to continue the conversation anyway. Mariah leaves for the corporeal soon afterwards. The radio is tuned back to the usual disco station and no horrible emotion mucks up our soul. However Mariah feels about our last conversation, she doesn’t feel the need to punish (or Punish) us for it.
And, maybe, coming from her, that’s as good as an admission.