Chapter Forty-Five: Tanagua and the Drone

Before they had even returned to where you had left them, before they had even contemplated return, you could already sense the visitor who had appeared to them. Not only that, but you could sense the subtle shift--it was if, had you been asked to describe it, the acrid tang of fear had been sweetened; fear no longer.

You are not inordinately troubled by this development; it happens all the time. What is troubling, however, is the presence of the visitor. Although you are most certain that you have never met this particular emissary, you have definitely encountered his kind in the past. Generally, you understand, they keep to themselves, working out their own agendas on the unsuspecting people who walk unaware of the unseen forces that conduct the tides of human events. This visitor--this one is different. This one is not content to operate behind the scenes; this one is demostrative, this one talks, this one is getting more involved than they normally do.

You had stepped into this park restroom, the implication to your companions being that you had to use the facilities. In truth, you had gone in because you could feel a growing sensation, a tingling, starting as a pin prick in your side and then spreading outward along your flank, back, and your limbs. It caused a momentary fluctuation in your heartbeat; it skipped once, then once more. You coughed. From within the purview of your peripheral vision you could see that this cough caught Tedford's attention--he was momentarily confused, although he worked cautiously to try and disguise the fact that he noticed this slight infirmity. He knows--as well as you do--that Drones do not cough. That is, unless something is wrong.

Once inside the building you enclosed youself in a cubicle and gasped for breath. You were suffering from what felt like sensory overload--sounds becoming louder, colors becoming more vivid, lights becoming brighter, smells more pungent--and then suddenly the sensations would inexplicably revert to normal. More alarmingly, for the brief moments of these sensory surges, you could not feel the Hive--you could not tell where Tedford and Krystal were. At times these waves of sensational overload felt like nausea, a sickening feeling in the stomach that pulsated and threatened to make you pass out; then calm would return, only to be followed shortly by another attack.

As you gradually regained control of yourself, as you reoriented your sense inputs, you reestablished the location of your associates--and it was then that you grasped the change in their moods. Fear draining, being replaced by curiousity, and--dare you say it?--courage. It was then that you identified the presence of the visitor.

The being was very old, but perhaps that was not an entirely accurate description. "Old" is more appropriate when discussing people and things that exist in linear time; this creature, however, was not beholden to linear reckoning of time. It existed above time, hovering over, viewing all, seeing all, as if the expanse of human history was a tapestry upon which was woven people, places, causes, effects, and most important: choices. The visitor came from a perspective of time which was not made available to the Hive--Drones and Hive members as such were not commanders of time; they only sought to influence, nudge, redirect here and there. True, as you could sense the visitor explaining to Krystal, that the Hive were agents of balance more than anything else. The visitor came from a more, well, powerful place? Influential place? That did not begin to describe what you knew and understood. It came from a place that were the weavers of time, the choice-makers.

As you headed for the door, you felt it appropriate to connect with this unwelcome visitor, to extend, you might say, a word of caution. It was not communication in time or space as much as you projected a message in matter--a form of information transfer that was in a sense encoded into the fabric of being. It would be heard and understood.

You say: "Keep away from them."

The reply, equally as forceful and subtle: "It is none of your concern."

"Our agreement is that we do not overlap our authorities."

The ethereal response: "You only have as much authority as we wish you to have."

"That is the problem with you--Tanagua is it?" You have divined his appellation. "For you types it is all parlor games and portals, design and patterns. A heavenly manifestation here, a freak accident there. And for what? To demonstrate who gets to decide what happens and where. Don't ever forget that it is us--the Hive--who keep your patterns in order, who balance out the designs you mete out. You are nothing more than a tourist here. We of the Hive: we live here. We are residents. Claim authority all you want--it will never mean anything more to you and your kind than a circus act performed in living people. Vivisection."

Tanagua : "Complain as you will--you add nothing new; you are a mouthpiece, a conduit. You are an agent parroting your party line. We consider it a form of flattery the way the Hive complains about the way we conduct ourselves. It is because you are blind to the things we see--true, you can see many things; but we see more. This much is certain: if two beings can see, one can see greater and farther than the other; and what is moreover certain is that above those two will be a third even more farsighted and greater than they."

"We don't interfere as much as you would like to think we do," Tanagua continued. "You only think we meddle. We don't intervene, Drone; to intervene implies error, to intervene suggests a flaw in the plan. There are no flaws; we are the plan. And so are you." With a tone of finality Tenagra added: "So you will leave these people alone."

"We supply justice where you leave none. We impose order on the chaos you created. We bring balance to the entropy that is the mainstay of your creation," you respond, equally dispassionate, equally rational. "To attempt to command my action is to demonstrate how much you have no control over my actions. To command is to request, to request tells me that I have a choice: I can agree or I can disagree. And I choose to disagree. They are no longer in your control; they are under mine. They will do as I need them to do, and then they will die."

"You can no more do or not do than I allow you to." Tanagua's answer pulsates with great heat. "They will die no sooner or later than I allow it to happen."

"Then why not let it be and let it happen?"

"Only to remind you that we are watching you."

A small laugh. "We are constantly reminded that you are watching; what you do not ever seem to be capable of is doing. All you do is watch. And warn. We are left to clean up the messes you are incapable of providing remedy for."

"Like," Tanagua added, "the mess you about to create for yourself right now?"

"Necessity is mess."

"You should call it 'mess-essity' then." Humor did not become someone of such august stature as Tengra, and yet you cannot help but get the impression that this particular being was enjoying the moment. "Even so, you see what you want to see, nothing more."

"And so do you."

"We see," Tanagua scolded, "all that there is. You live in a medium, Drone. You exist only because you are a knot of a thread, one string in a beautiful and a grand fabric. You can vibrate the strings all you want and make whatever music you feel appropriate to your place and time. But you can never undo that knot--you can never re-arange the weft or the warp. You are a cell, or an arm. An appendage. In the end--if there is such a thing--you are only doing what you are told to do; there are no more choices than I, that is we,let you have."

"You are as much an appendage as I am," you respond, testily. "You are no freer than I; no freer than those people there--" you gesture, in a rather hyper-dimensional way, towards the absolute galactic coordinate of Tedford and Krystal and the others slowly making their way to this park. They have an X, a Y, and a Z coordinate--perhaps a W and a U coordinate as well, were you to chart them on a five-dimensional graph. "We all play our parts."

"Some better than others," Tanagua suggests. "I trust you will fulfill yours with great zest."

If there was such a thing as the existential sound of a door slamming, the sound of finality, that sort of reverberation concludes your exchange with Tanagua. Clearly this creature is or was not contented to continue. In your mind you conclude that, as his kind are prone to do, he would now watch events unfold--and, presumably, take credit for it in some mystical way.

Back in the temporal, the world of the green park, you determine that your conversation has taken no time whatsoever in the way that Tedford would not reckon things. You sensed their return, you composed yourself, and now you are meeting them outside in the open air. You watch them, shimmering, approaching towards you. In them you can see their termination, a completion drawing near. And in your own body you can begin to feel that uneasy sensation again, that rising of heat and exhaustion, as if your limbs were being slowly sawn from your body.