It was finally time for more cultivation.

Lilijoy closed her eyes and receded into her Soul Space, enjoying the stillness. But not the emptiness.

I should do some decorating, she thought.

It wasn’t difficult for her to decide how to start. She pictured a tree, an ancient tree floating with its gnarled roots mirroring its broad spreading branches around the axis of a mighty trunk of thick folded gray bark. Nestled at the first juncture of the roots was her brain space, grown into the trunk as if a boulder had been incorporated over centuries.

The leaves of the tree were darkest green on one side and pale silver on the other, and if you looked closely, you could see each shape fit just so with its complement to create a perfect circle. She didn’t quite like the way the brain looked, ‘too squishy’, so she made it into sparkling black basalt, to commemorate the caverns. On a whim, she added giant blackberry thorns, just a few on the trunk and many more on the branches.

She pulled back to take it all in. It was still missing a certain significance to commemorate her trials the way she wanted. She carefully tailored the roots and branches until they looked just as wild and unkempt, but nineteen roots descended and only eighteen branches reached upward. Among the branches she subtly placed other mementos, a bell for Nandi, a delta winged glider, a small six-legged lizard that wound its sinuous form around any branch not being scrutinized, and a sparkling orb web, occupant conspicuously absent. She decided she would rather not incorporate the Nasty Hanging Tentacle Monster, but did include a sinister black blade wriggling up the tree’s trunk, almost as if caught between movements.

Now she was happy. She continued into her mind space, taking the voyage slowly. The anatomical geography was the same as always, but now new geometries of color articulated the ebb and flow of energies in the cortical columns. The integration of her flowers with her neural architecture created a lacework of shimmering reflection that captured the radiance of her innate thought and refracted it on new planes and paths. She hovered, captivated, and she could see her own sense of wonder manifest in front of her, a divine loop of perception.

Carried along by currents of momentum, she drifted through the area until she passed into the open space of the ventricles, now a jungle of busy vines and flowers weaving through one another’s paths. She continued drifting, condensing into the scale of the Golden Flower and reached out to it, joining it in a new round of creation.

STATUS: UNRATED Nanobody count 88,998 [Action Needed] Power Ratio 83% Stage One Integration 63% Stage Two Integration .02% Secondary/Support 3 detected, 1 identified Communications Stealth Mode Sensors Passive Active Interventions 3 Personal Quantification Ranking Display Options | Logs | Data | Reference | Menu

Lilijoy floated in her mind space, savoring her most recent statistics.

“I have noticed that you experience elevated cortisol when you engage with the submenus of the system,” Jiannu chimed in. “I have designed a new interface based on the ranking system widely in use in current culture. Of course, the Tao System has some differences, so it is a bit approximate. If you like it, I can continue to refine it. I will alert you to any important details lost in the simplification, and the new interface should allow a more comfortable relationship with your system as we grow together.”

“Thanks, Jiannu! Can I see it now?” Lilijoy said. She was very curious to see how she fared in the rankings.

Tao System Ranking Display Current System Potential Notes Rank 1: Senses 7 10 There are unutilized sensory skills currently accessible. More training required. See Details. Rank 2: Brain 5 10 Choose pain levels, hunger levels. Set basic mood. Boost. Focus. Non-Tao Systems are primitive in this area. You have far greater capabilities – see Rank 11: Brain II. More training required in emotional modulation, specific somatic feedback dampening Rank 3: Reflexes 2 10 Peripheral nervous system integration and myelin replacement. More training required to integrate sense information into reflex patterns. Rank 4: Blood 0 2 Secondary System available Rank 5: Skin 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 6: Bone 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 7: Circulatory system 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 8: Muscles 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 9: Nerves 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 10: Organs 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 11: Brain II ? ? Enhanced neural structures. Tighter coupling with external information sources Medical 0 3 Secondary System available. With significant research and customization there is a possibility these could improved to levels 5 to 10 (requires Tao Stage 2) Other

Infiltration sensor bugs. Tao system will far surpass these in time, but they may have a role in the near term.

She selected the details of Rank One.

Rank 1: Sense Details Vision 8 Work on: Integrated visual information (targeting), peripheral awareness, telescoping, expanded wavelengths Hearing 9 Work on improving spatial mapping, widening audible spectrum Smell/Taste 4

Develop spatial sense, better chemical and gradient analysis, larger library of identifications. Suggest training with no sight or hearing.

Touch 4 Train greater sensitivity in detail, air currents, focus on hair follicles Proprioception 3 Take what you learned from Emily’s piano and apply it to many movement-based skills, particularly acrobatics and martial arts. Practice mirroring – translating sight to movement Synergy 3 With experience, begin using senses together much more. Spatial map can be based on all senses simultaneously and can contain near complete information about your local environment.

Lilijoy thought about the new display.

“I really like that you are talking to me through the display,’ she said. “I think you could simplify the language even more. Instead of ‘emotional modulation’, why don’t you just say, changing your feelings?”

“I think you proved my point," countered Jiannu. “Sometimes big words convey concepts more elegantly and efficiently. As you encounter them, your system will expand your vocabulary. If I only use simple words and phrasing, your thoughts will remain simple as well.”

“But if you really master a subject, can’t you explain with simple words?”

“Ah, but how did you attain true mastery in the first place?” countered Jiannu. “It is another wheel that turns, from ignorance to mastery to enlightened ignorance. You must pass through the world to attain heaven.”

“Fine. But it still makes my head hurt when you say stuff like that,” said Lilijoy. “Anyway, I really love it. Now I know what to do to improve.”

“It is important for you to understand that the system requires years of training and skill development. It will make learning everything much easier, but the learning still needs to happen. As you learn more and more, your use of the system will improve as well. There will be many opportunities Inside for new skill acquisition, and you should see rapid improvement in your system there as well.”

“That sounds good. I need to go back Inside pretty soon to change my name. I’m going to use ‘Emily’. What do you think?”

There was an uncharacteristic silence. It dragged on long enough that Lilijoy started to wonder if Jiannu had missed her question.

“Jiannu, are you there?”

“Yes. I’m sorry for taking so long. There were some recently recovered logs I wanted to check. Using Emily’s name is fine. I think...”

At that moment a message intruded across Lilijoy’s vision.

External Message from Anda Mode: Local Radiant Message Content: Text

Title: Urgent News

Lilijoy, I’m sorry to interrupt. There is some news I think you need to hear. I’m not sure if it is urgent, but I also know you will want to hear it (in person) immediately. Please come Outside when you can.

Contact | Delete | Blacklist | Quarantine | Menu

“Sorry Jiannu,” Lilijoy said. “I need to go now. See you soon!”

***

Anda was watching her with an enigmatic expression when she opened her eyes. Eyes alight, mouth tight, his face couldn’t seem to decide if it was excited or concerned. As soon as Lilijoy surfaced, he started talking.

“I told you that I belong to a group called ‘Renaissance’. We like to pretend that we are a group of loosely connected activists powered more by idealism than common sense or political pragmatism. The Corp regards us as harmless eccentrics, with no real power to effect change or project power, and they leave us alone for the most part. That is what we want them to think; the reality is quite different.

We have carefully studied the history of covert organizations and adopted the practices of the most successful. We have information networks in many of the major clans, particularly in the Americas and Africa, all carefully compartmentalized into cell structures. Many of our members don’t even know they belong to an organization; we piggyback on social structures and find philosophically aligned people, carefully helping them to develop their thinking, arranging for information to flow in just the right ways to influence and change beliefs in the background. I like to think that we are the first subconscious secret society.”

Lilijoy wiped the blear from her eyes. “Anda, did you really just interrupt my cultivation to give me a lecture on your club?” She couldn’t resist teasing him when he was being so serious. He deserved it anyway, for not getting to the point.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted you to have some background for the information I just received.” He was so earnest that she felt bad for interrupting his monologue.

“Anyway, just a few minutes ago I received an anonymous message that could only have come from higher in the Renaissance organization. It seems that the Sinaloa Clan has been sitting on a little secret. About a month ago they found something unique in the grasslands in the east side of their territory. A mysterious bug that has resisted all analysis. The rumor is that even their best systems shut down immediately as soon as contact is initiated and that attempts to retrieve biological samples have been fruitless.

Sinaloa are masters of Rank One and Two bugs, thanks to their background as purveyors of the drug bugs that replaced mind-altering substances in the mid-twenty-first century. But they are not good at understanding legacy bugs that fall outside of their specialty. So they are stuck for the moment, refusing to seek help from another clan because they want to keep this mysterious new system for themselves.”

Lilijoy thought she knew where this was going. “Do you think it’s another Tao System?”

“I haven’t told you the best part. It seems the system is contained in an individual who wandered over from the former Amazon region. A boy, twelve or thirteen years old, described as under four feet tall, with signs of environmentally influenced developmental abnormalities. They call him el duende. Would you care to guess what that means?”

This was impossible.

Lilijoy knew that this was impossible. She refused to let herself feel any emotions. There was simply no way. Images of fingers dripping with bloody mucus, the sound of hacking coughs that ripped and tore at the listener as they did at the lungs. The flopping limp body draped over Grabby’s shoulder, arm waving back and forth as she walked away, waving goodbye.

Even before her system told her, she knew.

“Does it mean ‘goblin’?” she asked.