Amram stepped out of his domicile and onto the concourse, though calling it a "street" was a concession to a primitive vocabulary. In fact, it was a concourse of silence.
He glanced around, performing the automatic, subconscious scan for his son’s resonance. Ezra was not here. The boy was already miles... or rather, milliseconds away. That was the efficiency of the Traverse. The moment Ezra had stepped through the domicile's partition with the intent of the cohort in mind, the Consensus had recognized the destination and shifted his t₁ coordinate. He hadn't walked to school, as it were; the school had simply become his here. Amram, having a different destination in mind, had stepped through the same wall and arrived here, on the street. It was a divergent commute based solely on intent.
Amram paused. He felt a spike of paternal anxiety, a t₂ wobble regarding Ezra's stability, but he clamped down on it instantly. Anxiety was a loud frequency. If he let it resonate, the neighbors would feel it as a cold draft. He visualized a gray, static wall dropping over that part of his mind, sealing the worry in a lead box.
Compose, he ordered himself. Be the Director.
The Olam Enclave was not built on the ground. It was suspended in a stable t₁ loop above the planetary surface, a glittering archipelago of crystal spires anchored by harmonic constants rather than matter foundations.
Below that suspension lay the surface itself. It was rarely visited, and even more rarely thought of. To the Olam, the planet's crust was merely a utility basement - a mundane "Under Maintenance" zone of geothermal taps, waste-heat sinks, and automated mineral extractors. It existed in the same mental space as a primitive subway tunnel: everyone knew it was there, everyone relied on it, but no one with any self-respect ever went down there to look at the pipes.
Below him, visible through the transparent floor of the concourse (but floating safely above that grime), lay the agrarian ring.
Amram paused, as he often did, to look down at it. It was the engine of their post-scarcity existence, and to his heretical mind, it was the most boring miracle in the universe.
He watched the process happen in real-time. On this particular day, it was a hectare of golden grain - genetically perfected wheat - shimmering. In seconds, it accelerated through its growth cycle, bursting from shoots to full, heavy stalks. This was t₁ Acceleration.
Harvest drones, silent silver discs, swept over the field, reaping the grain. That was the "take."
Then came the "give."
As soon as the grain was collected, the drones emitted a wide-band pulse. It wasn't a replanting beam. It was a reversion field. The cut stalks didn't rot and they didn't need to be tilled under. They simply un-happened. The field shimmered again, and the stalks reverted to their state six hours prior - green, youthful, and ready to grow again.
Infinite food… zero waste. A closed loop of perfect efficiency.
He leaned against the railing. A breeze drifted up from the ring, carrying the scent of ozone and crushed husks. It was a specific smell - sharp, sweet, and electric - and it yanked him backward in time. He didn't just remember the event; for a split second, the t₃ overlap threatened to pull him physically into the memory. He had to stiffen his mental posture to remain in the present.
He was suddenly small again. His hand was swallowed entirely by his father's.
Jenoch. He had been a structural harmonicist, and his hands had always felt like warm sandpaper - rough from shaping resonance, but gentle when they held Amram's.
"Dad, look," young Amram had whined, kicking his toe against the railing. "The drones. They do everything."
Jenoch had stopped walking and knelt, bringing his face level with Amram’s. He smelled like the ozone from the fields.
"They do the growing, yes," Jenoch said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in Amram's chest.
"So why do you have to go to the Spire?" Amram asked, the complaint high and thin in his throat. "The wheat grows itself. The walls heal themselves. There's nothing for you to fix! You should just stay here. We could go to the Hang Zone!"
Jenoch’s lips quirked upward, but the light didn't reach his eyes. Instead, the lines around them deepened, etching a sudden, weary map of the years into his face. He reached out, his rough, sandpaper thumb brushing a stray lock of hair from Amram's forehead, his hand lingering against the boy's cheek.
"We don't go to the Spires to survive, Amram. The universe feeds us for free. We go... so we don't disappear."
"That's stupid," Amram huffed. "I wouldn't disappear. I'm right here."
"You are here because you are loud," Jenoch laughed softly, the sound rumbling in his chest. "But in the Consensus, there are billions of voices. It is a very loud choir, little one. If you stop singing your part... if you stop solving variables or composing harmonics... the choir forgets you're there."
He squeezed Amram's hand. "We work to be Relevant. We work so the universe knows we still matter. Because if you stop mattering... you become Static."
Amram didn't fully understand, but he felt the shiver in his father's hands. He hugged Jenoch’s neck, burying his face in the rough tunic. "I won't be Static, Dad. I'll scream really loud."
"I know you will," Jenoch had whispered, holding him tight. "I know."
The memory faded, leaving Amram standing alone on the concourse, the scent of ozone still lingering in his nose.
Relevance, Amram thought, pushing off the railing. It sounds so noble when you're a child. But it's just a polite word for fear.
He felt a momentary flicker of cynicism; a dangerous emotion to broadcast. He quickly modulated it, wrapping the thought in a layer of philosophical detachment. To any passing telepath, he was merely pondering the socio-economics of the harvest. Safe. Boring.
He resumed his walk toward the Transit Node. Technically, the walk was unnecessary. An Olam of Amram's resonance could, with enough focus, translate directly from his kitchen to his office desk. But such behavior was considered uncouth, if not criminally negligent.
The physics of translation were absolute: you could pull yourself to any coordinate you could visualize. However, the universe did not prevent you from translating into a coordinate already occupied by another solid object. The resulting t₁ collision - a wet, horrific fusion of biology and stone, or worse, biology and biology - was something the Consensus frowned upon.
Transit Nodes were the "safe lanes". They were pre-cleared, high-traffic coordinates where the probability of collision was dampened to absolute zero. You used them for the same reason a primitive vehicle used a road instead of driving through a playground: not because you couldn't drive through the playground, but because the casualties would be unacceptable. The Node looked like a simple archway of black glass standing in the middle of the plaza. There was no track, no tunnel, no vehicle.
He stepped into the archway. He was not alone; a dozen other commuters were there, eyes closed, "dialing" their destinations.
Amram closed his eyes. He didn't visualize a map. He didn't think, I want to go five kilometers north. He thought of the coordinate. Target: Directorate of Stability. Sector 4.
He located the specific harmonic frequency of his office. He felt the "address" in his mind - a sharp, metallic vibration on his t₃ strand. He grabbed that frequency.
This was the hard part. The mental exertion wasn't in finding the destination; it was in rejecting the origin. He had to convince his own timeline that he was no longer standing in the plaza. He had to apply a force of will that overrode the sensory evidence of the wind on his face and the ground beneath his feet.
He pulled.
Translation.
The world didn't blur. It didn't streak like a warp jump. Instead, Amram felt his stomach lurch into his throat, a sickening, weightless drop as if the floor had vanished. But his feet remained planted.
The sensation was entirely internal - a violent disagreement between his inner ear and his reality. The amber light of the residential district didn't fade; it sheared. It peeled away from his vision like wet paper, revealing a cold, sterile blue underneath.
For a microsecond, he existed in two places at once - smelling the ozone of the fields and the recycled air of the office simultaneously. The t₃ braid folded, turning "distance" into a shared edge. He stepped across the crease.
Amram opened his eyes. He was standing in the lobby of the Spire of Stability.
The transition had been instantaneous to an outside observer, but to Amram, it left a faint metallic taste in his mouth - the residue of time-lag. Occasionally, if the translation was through longer “whens”, there might be a kind of popping in the ears… like altitude changes for humans.
"Director Amram," a voice chimed.
Amram turned. Ugh. It was Elara, a Sub-Director of Harmonic Maintenance.
Amram suppressed a micro-flicker of annoyance. It wasn't enough to just hide the feeling; he had to transmute it. If he projected annoyance, Elara would sense it, and she would interpret it as a challenge. He needed to project paternal tolerance. He needed to resonate with the frequency of a busy man indulging a subordinate.
He adjusted his internal dial. He smoothed the jagged edges of his irritation until his aura felt round and warm.
She was a study in absolute symmetry. By any objective metric - human, Olam, or otherwise - Elara was a masterpiece of biological engineering. The Olam genome had been optimized for millennia to reject asymmetry, and Elara was the resulting proof of concept: tall, with the effortless, fluid grace of a creature that experienced zero metabolic drag. Her features were struck from the Golden Ratio, her skin possessing the luminous, poreless quality of a surface that knew no entropy. She was dazzling, in the way a supernova is dazzling: undeniable, brilliant, and exhausting to look at directly.
She wore a standard-issue tunic of slate-gray mesh, but the weave was impossibly complex, a subtle flex of status that implied she had the t₂ priority to commission intricate matter-knitting. Her hair was pulled back in a severe, silver clasp that likely cost more energy to manifest than Amram’s entire kitchen.
It was the kind of beauty common to high-end navigational interfaces: sleek, impressive, and aggressively designed to be looked at. But Amram found the user experience abrasive. She exuded a specific, cloying kind of greed: not for wealth, but for Notice. She was overbearing in the way a gravity well is overbearing, always pulling the conversation, the credit, and the Consensus toward herself. She was the type of functionary who would amplify a minor structural wobble into a sector-wide crisis just to ensure her signature was on the fix.
She was holding a data-slate and looked like she was vibrating - literally. Her edges were fuzzy, a sign that she was running her personal t₁ clock slightly faster than standard to get more work done. Or, more likely, just to look like she was getting more work done.
"Elara," Amram nodded, projecting his fabricated warmth. "You're running hot today. What seems to be the problem?"
"The Sector 7 grid is fluctuating again," Elara said, falling into step beside him as they walked toward the lift-tubes. She was projecting urgency so loudly it felt like she was shouting in his ear. "We're seeing micro-knots forming in the structural lattice. Someone's been experimenting with localized gravity."
"Gravity," Amram said, keeping his voice bored. He consciously dampened his curiosity. He knew exactly what was causing the knots, but he couldn't let a spark of recognition flare in his mind. "How quaint."
He meant it. To a civilization that had mastered the fluid dynamics of time, gravity was nothing more than drag. It was the static cling of the universe - a clumsy, sticky byproduct of poor dimensional smoothing. It was "retro" in the worst way, like using smoke signals instead of telepathy.
"It's messy," Elara complained. "It pulls on the stasis. If we don't damp it, we'll have actual matter accumulating in the ventilation shafts. It's disgusting."
They stepped into the ascension node. It wasn't a box that moved through space; kinetic lifting was inefficient. Instead, it was a harmonic buffer - a necessary pause that re-indexed their coordinates to the higher primes, preventing the chaotic collision of a thousand employees translating directly into their cubicles at once.
"Have you authorized any t₂ variances in that sector?" Elara asked, eyeing him.
Amram felt the weight of the data-slate in his pocket - the stolen code. The ultimate t₂ variance. The question was a probe. Elara wasn't telepathic enough to read his mind through his shields, but she was reading his stress levels.
He forced his heart rate to remain steady. He visualized a flat, calm ocean. He didn't just lie; he constructed a false truth in his mind and projected it. I am bored. I am thinking about paperwork.
"My department is strictly theoretical, Elara," Amram lied smoothly. "We model instability; we don't cause it. The fluctuations in Sector 7 are likely just old resonance echoes. I'll have my team run a diagnostic."
Elara stared at him for a second longer, tasting the resonance of his answer. She found nothing but the bland flavor of bureaucracy. She sighed, her fuzzy edges stabilizing as she slowed her clock down to match his.
"Do that. If he catches wind of actual matter formation, he'll audit the whole floor. And nobody wants an audit on a Tuesday."
"Agreed," Amram said. "Audits are tedious."
The node deposited them on Level 401.
Olam architecture did not suffer the indignity of sequential integers; sequences were for space, not time. Spires were anchored on primes - the indivisible pillars of mathematics. Level 401 was a prime of particular stability, and therefore the home of the Directorate of Anomalies.
It was a vast, open space filled with floating holographic displays. Dozens of analysts stood in silent communion with the data, their eyes glazed as they worked in the t₃ consensus. They were not merely repairing the timeline; they were auditing existence. They were the custodians of the minimal gradient, engaged in variable damping: identifying the jagged, improbable edges of the timeline and smoothing them back into the median curve. They ensured that no single moment ever became too loud for the stasis to bear.
Amram walked to his office - a private sanctum walled off by a high-grade Privacy Damper. He palmed the lock. The wall misted, and he stepped through.
He let out a breath. He dropped the mask. The fatigue hit him instantly. Maintaining the "Bored Director" persona for ten minutes with Elara was more exhausting than running a complex equation.
His office was a sanctuary of calculated disorder. Holographic models of "failed" universes floated in the air - simulations of physics where stars burned out instead of looping, where entropy won every argument.
"You look like you translated sideways and forgot your legs," a voice drawled from the corner.
Amram didn't jump. He knew that harmonic signature anywhere; scratchy, erratic, and stubbornly un-smooth. It was the only resonance in the building that didn't try to harmonize with the background hum.
Jareth.
His oldest friend was sprawled across a suspension-field chair, his boots crossed comfortably on the edge of a holographic display, tossing a sphere of compressed magnetic flux between his hands. He looked less like a Master Archivist and more like a piece of debris that had drifted in and refused to leave. They had been Cohort since the Academy… two centuries of shared complaints and buried bodies.
"And you look like you're trying to breed with the office equipment," Amram grunted, walking past him. He didn't ask Jareth to move; he simply swiped a hand through the control grid, hardening the suspension field instantly.
Jareth yelped as the chair turned from a soft cushion into a slab of concrete, dumping his feet off the console with a heavy thud.
"Cruel," Jareth laughed, righting himself but not bothering to stand up. "Abuse of administrative privileges. I'll file a grievance."
"File it under 'loitering'," Amram said, dropping into his own seat. "You have your own office, Jareth. I assume it's currently on fire?"
"It's boring. Your office has the good view of the entropy models." Jareth sat up, spinning the magnetic sphere on one finger. The playful look sharpened into something more predatory—the look of a man hunting for gossip. "So…. the weekend? Tiphall?"
"Don't," Amram warned, picking up a stylus just to have something to hold. He felt his t₂ strand vibrate; the memory of Tiphall’s laugh, the warmth of her presence. He instinctively tried to shield it, but Jareth was already inside his guard.
"Oh, I'm doing it. The Consensus was practically vibrating. 'Director Amram, engaging in social harmonics.' It sounded exhausting." Jareth leaned forward, invading Amram's personal gravity well. "Well? Did you ‘synchronize’?” He raised one eyebrow as he said that. “Or did you two just sit there and politely exchange bio-data until one of you fell asleep?"
"It was... promising," Amram admitted, ignoring the jab. "She laughs in a major key. It was nice. That’s it."
"Promising is good. And Ezra needs a stabilizer. You've been running that boy on a single-parent harmonic for too long. He’s starting to lose cohesion."
"Yeah… he stays 'fuzzy' too long," Amram sighed, rubbing his temples. "He asks questions about things that don't matter. He's obsessed with 'Doors' right now. He wants to know why humans cut holes in walls instead of just translating."
"Doors?" Jareth snorted, as if Amram had said blood-letting. "Like... on hinges? Swinging slabs of matter?"
"Exactly. He wants to know why humans cut holes in walls instead of just translating."
Jareth laughed, shaking his head. "Imagine the inefficiency. You would have to physically push the world out of your way just to enter a room. It's disgusting. I love it."
Amram looked at his friend, and the years folded back. He remembered the first time he’d met Jareth. It was in the Traverse, nearly four centuries ago. They had been students, standing on the event horizon of a collapsing star, shielded by an observer-field.
The star was undergoing a t₁ failure. The gravity well - the time drag - was absolute. According to the consensus, everything within a million kilometers had a 100% probability of being crushed into the singularity. The math was solved; the outcome was fixed. The lesson was supposed to be about the inevitability of order.
The entire class - thirty golden children of the Olam - watched in respectful silence, their t₃ notes perfectly synchronized with the teacher's lecture.
Except for Jareth.
Jareth was watching the edges.
"Look at that," Jareth had whispered to young Amram, nudging him with a sharp, un-smooth elbow. He pointed at a jagged chunk of silicate rock that was refusing to fall. It shuddered, drifting sideways, clinging to a one-in-a-trillion probability curve where the gravity shear missed it.
"It's fighting it," Jareth had said, his voice filled with a scandalous admiration. "The equation says 'fall,' and the rock says 'maybe later.' Go on, you little bastard. Fight it."
They had stood there, two quiet heretics in a class of believers, rooting for a rock to defy physics.
They had been friends ever since. The two students who loved the things that fought the math.
"Jareth," Amram said, his voice dropping to a serious register, pulling himself back to the present.
Jareth stopped tossing the magnetic sphere. The grin vanished, replaced by the sharp, analytical look of a Master Archivist. "What is it? You're damping your resonance. You’ve gone opaque."
Amram hesitated. He felt the slate in his pocket. He weighed the risk. Jareth was his cohort, but even a cohort was part of the consensus. If Amram shared the secret, he was placing a burden on Jareth that could never be removed.
Not yet, Amram decided. I can't anchor him to this wreck yet.
"Just... the audit rumors," Amram lied. "Elara is worried about Sector 7. She thinks he is sniffing around."
Jareth relaxed, though his eyes remained shrewd. He knew Amram was holding back, but he respected the shield. "He’s always sniffing around. That's his function. He's the immune system and we're just the bacteria trying not to get flushed."
He stood up, clapping Amram on the shoulder. "Don't worry about Elara. She vibrates if the wind changes. Just focus on Tiphall. Solve that variable… please. The universe can wait, even if I can’t."
Jareth turned and walked toward the wall, harmonizing effortlessly to step through. "I'll see you at lunch. Don't be late. I'm not eating alone again."
Amram watched him leave. The office was quiet.
"The universe can wait," Amram whispered to the empty room.
He reached into his pocket and touched the slate.
“But for how long?”
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