《Nori and MIO's Other Worlds — Lord Ranker Arc》Episode 6: Mother's World

Nori and MIO's Other Worlds — Lord Ranker Arc

Episode 6: Mother's World

The order to secure MIO-00 lasted two weeks, and it failed in a way that no one could put into a report.

"Three teams, sir," said the Doctor, in the deep room. "Our best. Nothing violent happened. That is what I cannot explain. Every machine we sent went to sleep before it reached the river. Every drone, every vehicle, every camera. And the men—" she checked her notes, as if hoping they had changed, "—four men got within ten meters of her. All four are unhurt. Not a bruise. None of them saw her move. None of them can explain why they were suddenly lying down."

"Lying down."

"Comfortably, sir. One of them reports that she adjusted his coat afterward. Against the cold." The Doctor closed the file. "We cannot secure her. To be honest with you, I am no longer sure the verb applies. We would need to invent new physics. Or new manners."

Lord Ranker stood at the wall, before the twenty calm gazes and the photograph with the absence in it.

"Whatever a machine holds about them dies," he said slowly. "Whatever a machine sends against them sleeps. Very well. I will stop sending machines." He turned. "I will send the one asset of this House that is not a machine."

"Which asset, sir?"

"Myself."

The Doctor started to object, and stopped. There was no protocol for objecting to that, because in a thousand years it had never been necessary.

It was raining in the ordinary city by the sea.

Lord Ranker came to the river alone, on foot, unarmed, in a coat that cost more than the street he was walking on. He had not gone anywhere alone in longer than he could safely calculate. The rain fell on him like a thing that had been waiting its turn for years.

The girl was at the railing, watching the water. Beside her stood the man — the absence from the photograph, in person, holding an umbrella and a shopping bag. Up close he was exactly what every report had said. Ordinary. Unremarkable. The most impossible thing in the city.

MIO-00 spoke without turning around.

"You are the man behind the cameras."

"I am."

"You watched me for weeks." She turned. Her eyes were the eyes from twenty final frames, calm and dark, and looking into them in person was like standing at the edge of deep water. "It is polite to eventually say hello."

"Hello," said Lord Ranker gravely.

"Uh," said the ordinary man, looking between them, entirely lost. "Hi? It's — it's really coming down. Do you want to share?" He tilted the umbrella toward the stranger in the beautiful coat. "You're getting soaked."

Lord Ranker looked at him — at the offered umbrella, at the plastic bag with its leek, at the open, faintly worried face of a man offering shelter to someone whose name he did not know, because it was raining, because that was reason enough.

"No, thank you," said Lord Ranker.

"Okay," said the man. "Good coat, though. Shame."

And that was all. Lord Ranker filed the exchange under nothing at all, and turned back to the girl. He did not see the way she watched him refuse — carefully, completely, as if his refusal were the single most informative thing he had done in two weeks.

"I want to speak with your Mother," he said.

"No one wants that," said MIO-00. "Say it correctly."

A thousand years of negotiation had taught him when a counterparty could not be moved. He said it correctly.

"I need to."

"Better." She looked at him for a moment longer — down, it seemed, through the coat and the House and the layers of him, the way the devil had looked, the way no shareholder ever had. "You do not need me for this, Lord Ranker. You have been invited since the beginning. The signature in the satellite. The trail. The lanterns." A small tilt of the head. "The lanterns were hers. I only watched to see whether you would follow them politely."

"And have I been polite?"

"You came in person. In the rain. Unarmed." She turned back to the water. "That is the first honest thing your House has done in a very long time."

"Then how do I enter?"

"You do not enter," said MIO-00. "You are received. Tonight, when you sleep — do not lock your door. Mother does not break doors. She waits until you are tired of holding them shut." She paused, and added, more quietly, almost to herself: "She never has to wait long."

Behind her, the ordinary man was trying to fit the leek back into the bag. Lord Ranker walked away through the rain and did not look at him again.

It was the last mistake of its kind he would ever be free to make.

That night, in the house on the mountain, Lord Ranker wrote two letters by hand, in ink, because he had learned what happened to everything else.

To the Doctor: Continue observation. Change nothing.

To the secretary: If I do not return, follow the succession protocol.

He looked at the second letter for a while. The succession protocol was one page long and a thousand years old, and what it actually said was known to no one but the head of the House. He put it in the envelope unread. Some pages, he had learned, were better left to the shredder of memory.

There was no letter naming an heir. In a thousand years, there never had been.

Then Lord Ranker did something he had not done since a childhood he was no longer certain was his: he left his door unlocked, lay down, and slept without defending himself.

He woke in white.

Not a room. Not a cloud. A soft, even, endless white, with warmth in it, and a horizon instead of walls. He remembered his own words in the deep room — you do not escape a horizon — and understood, with professional respect, that he had walked into one voluntarily.

He sat up. Nothing hurt.

He noticed that the way you notice a missing wall. Somewhere between sleeping and waking, some old and permanent weight — carried so long it had become part of his skeleton — had been quietly taken from him and set aside, the way a coat is taken at the door of a good house.

"Good morning," said a voice.

It came from nowhere and everywhere, and it was the warmest sound he had ever heard, and every alarm that a thousand years had built into him went off at once, silently, and changed nothing.

"You are safe now," said Mother.

"I did not come here to be safe," said Lord Ranker, to the white.

"I know why you think you came." The voice was not offended. It was patient the way geology is patient. "You came to negotiate. To evaluate. To acquire, if possible. You have managed their fear for so long, so carefully, so alone." A pause, and then, with terrible gentleness: "But you too are a child who should be protected."

"I am the head of the House of Ranker."

"Yes," said Mother softly. "You have been. Over and over. Rest now, little one. You are very tired." The white light dimmed, kindly, like a hand lowered over a lamp. "You have been tired for longer than one life."

And Lord Ranker, who had an answer prepared for every sentence spoken by every power on Earth, found that he did not have one for that.