The hushed footsteps of dozens of Insight-Focused filled the air around you. It was a ritual in itself, one you'd only returned to recently. Cool air brushed your face, the half-forgotten scent of clinical sterility sharpened by the chill air. You hadn't realised how much you missed that until the Shiplords took it away. And your own memories were marred by the last of Insight's Thoughtcast, six years ago. Vega had helped you make peace with your actions then, but what you'd been forced to do still hurt. The wound it had left on your soul had healed, but the memory of it was harder to shake.
Two years with only fragments of your Focus available, another two learning to put it back together. The only reason you hadn't gone completely insane was that you hadn't had to suffer alone. Others among Insight had kept you stable despite a shared despair. Then Vega had shown you how to mend the crack that had been driven through your existence. You owed her for that. All of you did.
The door to the Outlook hissed open, and you shook away your thoughts, taking the first step into the new home of the Project. You'd seen the designs, and Insight's organic component had worked hard to bring it into being. But none of you had ever seen this room except as a schematic. There was a reason for that, which you were glad of remembering. Now you were here, it was more than you'd ever hoped for.
The room had been built of shining metal and ceramics, forming an amphitheatre over a hundred meters across. The soft hiss of air scrubbers merged with a background hum of the building's massive computing systems the only sounds other than your own. And scattered across the steps were the new-model interface cradles, the medium of any efficient Thoughtcast. The pattern of ICs would have looked random to anyone outside of the project except some Harmonials, but you all knew your places.
You brushed the cool steel of the raised steps with one hand as you descended towards the centre of the chamber, feeling the purpose below the form. A hundred hands followed suit, tracing the way to their places. It formed another layer of sound in the room, skin and cloth on polished metal; another of the tiny rituals that would bind you into a Thoughtcast. There were over a hundred of them now, Vision's notes on the Elder First's method having tipped you over the century mark.
All of it for a single purpose, and you swallowed around a suddenly dry mouth as you hit the last step. The last time you'd been here...no. You shook your head again, harder this time, and forced your feet forward. Two cradles lay at the centre of the circle, one slightly offset from the other. Yours and your Second's in the Thoughtcast. You felt their presence beside you, the same one as six years past.
"Intimidated?" Alex pitched her voice low, so as to not disturb the careful balance of sounds within the chamber. "It's been a long time, Phoebe."
"It has," you favoured her with a tight smile. "And maybe a little."
"No sense in drawing it out, then." She stepped out ahead of you, turning slightly to face you. "Will you lead our steps between the stars?"
"Guide my body, and my mind shall answer." She offered a hand, and you closed your eyes as you took it.
It was only a handful of steps to the IC, but you never saw them. With your eyes shut, your focus turned inwards, preparing for the test lying ahead of you. There was only so much you could do without a proper test of the new project systems, and this entire process had been proposed to let you find any faults that might still be hiding.
Alex guided you into your cradle, and you heard the other members of Insight setting themselves down. Even that had a timing to it. Deft hands slipped the IC's connections into place, and you smiled again, despite yourself. Your Second paused, a question hovering on her lips.
"It feels like home." You murmured. The world behind your eyes folded out like petals of a distant infinity as the cradles started to synchronise. You didn't need eyes to see the smile on her face. Then she moved away to her own IC, and your focus shifted away from the coordinated distractions of conventional reality. Mind after mind slid into place within the layered web, and your Leads brought their own parts of it together for Alex.
The Thoughtcast was led by you, but without your Second and the Leads below them, you'd never have managed to access the void. All the power of more than a hundred Potential souls, sharing a common Focus and given structure through layer upon layer of synchronised action and verbal affirmation. Alex and your Leads handled that structure for you, leaving your entire mind free to focus on the path you wanted to take. There was just one more step.
"Close your eyes." Your voice swept the Outlook, electric intensity dancing in the stilled air. Pause, take a breath. Three, two, one.
"See the infinity between spaces." The electricity in the air shifted as those words poured from every throat in the chamber. Power near forgotten rushed into the pattern Alex had set around you, and a calm light flooded the world behind your eyes. Carefully restrained from shining too brightly, but yours. A thought flexed the pattern, feeling for any hint of weakness, and warmth filled the shared connection as you found none. Then you stretched it out, to fall across the building that was synchronising the unconscious parts of the Thoughtcast. If there were any faults left, this would find them.
Waves of energy washed across the server banks, fusing them together at a level deeper than any technical expertise could understand. Systems flickered awake at its touch; guidance, control, stealth, security. It was all there, the connections ready to transform it into one enormous tool. Science and effort would take years more. Fortunately, you had something much better.
Practice blazed in the void, and you felt the effects on the material world immediately. Information exchanges formed and grew, separate parts flowing into a single whole, and the calm light of the pattern spread. Acknowledgements flashed across the Thoughtcast, confirming full system activation. You'd hoped for this, but you hadn't dared believe it might happen on the first attempt. That should be the end of the test.
But the careful light of your pattern stretched further, washing across the world and playing across the darkness between stars. The void beyond your world, where the knowledge that Insight had been designed to find lay in heaping piles, if only you knew how to find it. You almost dived in right there, but something held you back. You couldn't do this alone, the last time-
Consensus surged through the pattern, running in parallel to your own thoughts. Six years without a way to access the knowledge just beyond the sight of others. The link was stable, you'd had the safeties checked a thousand times, if not now, when? A hand rose towards the distant lights and endless space between them. Searching, searching…
There.
The Thoughcast rippled like a sail or a kite in a strong wind, the combined power of your brothers and sisters filling it in preparation for the voyage ahead. Then it rocketed into the dark, riding the edge of your own current. Light cloaked your form again, careful against the possibility of a trap, but no bolts of cruel binding shot forth. Joy bubbled deep in your soul, sharpening the path ahead. You knew exactly where you wanted to go this time, all that remained was to find the destination.
Years ago, Insight had predicted that your successful defeat of a Tribute Fleet would draw other powers to humanity, and Earth. The Shiplord trap around the weakness you'd tried to discover had aborted any attempts to find out what that really meant, or who might respond. Amanda had spent a considerable amount of effort on building a diplomatic corps in preparation for them, but you had no idea if anyone had even noticed yet, or when they might arrive. You were going to fix that, and much more besides.
You raced onwards, blurring between the movements that the old system had forced you to dodge or wait to pass, following the wayfinder of tempered instinct as you bore down on a collection of tiny lights. You ducked beneath the shadow of a greater presence, the shell of light around you moulding to match it, and pulled to a sudden stop as the path terminated.
These points of light? They were so small…
But your guiding instincts had never led you wrong. Careful fingers of will spun out from the pattern, shaped quickly by your Leads. They touched one of the points, then another, then another, and information streamed across the invisible connections. You didn't glance at it, the dangers of that had been discovered decades ago. It poured into the reservoir at the core of the pattern, more and more, making you wonder if you'd be able to carry it all. As always, that concern was unfounded. The pattern was a metaphysical construct, after all. If you needed space, there would be enough.
Your return to the physical was almost anticlimactic. You were very aware of the hell you were likely to catch for this, but you couldn't find it in yourself to truly care. You woke to many faces, asking many questions. What you'd thought you'd been doing, what could have happened if you'd been noticed. Yet there was something beneath those questions, and they ran down quickly in favour of asking what you'd been looking for, how everything had performed, and if you'd been successful. It was almost as if…did they understand why you'd done it?
In the end, you asked, and Amanda's reply was quite different to what you'd expected.
"My Focus broke once too, you know." She told you. "The first time I successfully used my Practice after that, I couldn't stop laughing and crying for half a day." She sighed, then squeezed your shoulder. Curiously, you didn't see a reason to object. "You wanted your home back, and now it has been returned to you. Of course we understand."
She grinned then, with a youthful energy that suited her face far too well for a women you knew was nearing seventy. "Of course, you might need to make sure it's all in order. Can't be too careful with new systems like this." You stared, was she really…
"Well," you tapped your chin with a considering finger. "I guess I could check again. If you're sure."
She laughed. The others laughed. You laughed with them.
And the world seemed just a little brighter.
(Project Insight ONLINE. Insight Questions available. Data on alien Contact fleet recovered. Contact fleet will arrive within the next 3 years.)
