Chapter 1: theoretical knowledge is practical purgatory

She took her to a nameless park. Nameless? Yeah, it's true! If you knew what ticket you wanted to take through the Kisaragi System, you could end up in many nameless places and find many little diamonds or glimmering sparks of light.

It was only them. How romantic. Not that they were dating. Lily would admit Carmen was simply adorable in a heartbeat, of course, but she preferred taking to giving herself over.

So what was she doing? They walked through the park together, not holding hands or anything of the sort but slowly, purposelessly.

Purposelessly? Was that apt?

side-a Yes. Carmen had no purpose at all, and yet she followed the perfect guide on how to befriend Lily step by step. The Second City Baccalaureate had assigned them to each other, and Carmen really had no nobody else, homeschooled until she was 16, everyone she met as a kid seeing her when she couldn't hide that she was 'only so many broken mirrors' or whatever. So, she, due to stop being a cute little NEET kid and start being a pathetic NEET princess, mewled in bed and searched up 'how to be popular', 'how to get others to like you', 'best bonding activities for a quick and strong friendship', took the advice to heart and acted purposelessly. Drag her on long pointless trips. Spend as much time with her as possible. If you share every precious second, eventually you'll break through to each other. Then, she can be complete.

side-b No. Lily had a definite purpose, and wasn't this a distraction? Carmen would cooperate no matter what. Lily had assured that. Lily didn't need to cooperate back. They were the strongest and weakest together, psychic superweapon and hazy failure, crybaby and indomitable girl. On paper, Carmen could kill Lily a thousand times in an a thousandth of a second. In reality, Lily could do whatever. She should do whatever. She considered it her birthright, even though they had gifted Carmen the world and told Lily that the moment they were partnered up, even though it came from nowhere, and nobody would agree to give it to her like they supposedly gave everyone equal life and liberty. Did she do whatever? No. She couldn't always be bothered.

That all seemed backwards to you? Didn't really make sense? You think I'm turning the truth over. Well, let's keep going together.

She led her through the sunburnt grass. The heat bore down on them. 

Lily snuck glances at Carmen, perfectly on time. (Please look through the kaleidoscope and report what you see.)

Carmen's short black curls ate up all the sunshine, so dull. Was that healthy? Magic -- sorry, ESP, an anomalous change to herself, like the way Carmen was porcelain pale and had barely done anything to herself before stepping out of the dorm and yet seemed unblemished by the sun, but Lily's skin was olive and already sunburnt. God. She needed perfection. God. She needed to pray to herself, to keep up her image.

Eventually, they got tired. The plains weren't endless, they just seemed that way. That difference was really the world. There was no endless for Lily, apart from the normal expanding universe, if that even went on forever. There were endlessnesses for normal people, though, and Carmen was perfectly normal. If Carmen ended up in one, she'd need the firepower to break out. That would end their perfectly sweet time together.

"Elyssa." Lily stared at Carmen. "Lily!" Good girl. They were communicating psychically, see?

That was a lie. Lily was a psychic brick wall. Ugh.

"Yes, Carmen."

"It's so hot."

"And?"

"I wanna lay down..."

"Okay."

---

"There's lots of litter here," Carmen said, head on a hill, hands by her side, tracksuit open but not off, white T-shirt already grass-stained even though the sun ate-ate-ate up all the chlorophyll.

"Really."

"Yeah."

"For volunteering in Years 10 and 11-"

"You're so British, Lils."

"-I had to do litterpicking. The council decides as part of civics, and Harrow is in Green-ACCELERATE coalition. So we had to go around in local parks with grabbers that never seemed to work when you pressed them and plastic gloves nobody wanted to wear half the time, picking up little wrappers and cans and getting shouted at when we weren't bothered."

"That sucks. The Second City doesn't do that, obviously. No primary education. It's super interesting to me."

"I know. You like hearing about these things, for some reason."

"I do, Lily. I really do. So, thank you."

"I had a point."

"Oh?"

"There's no fucking litter here?"

"But there's litter everywhere? Don't lie. It's super mean..."

"I'm not lying-"

"I know. I believe you, no matter what you say-"

"-yeah, yeah, but it's plain as far as the eye can see."

"Oh. Wait."

Carmen pointed to the sky, and the world shifted.

That was a lie. The world didn't change, not at all.

When dealing with anomalies, we split truth.
If you never learn that, how will you ever survive in this web of worlds?

Lily got bored, subconsciously ripping grass from the ground even though that would anger the Viridian-Obsolete-Execute park-keeper.

Wait. Fuck.

side-a The world went back to normal. The sun's heat bore down on them. They breathed freely and acted as they please.

side-b The world went back to normal. The sky remained dark, and the light reflected by the moon shone on them. They chittered together in the cold night wind. They followed the lines of fate together, even though they each had their own way to cut them.

You are reading story library of lily at novel35.com

"Carmen."

"Yes?"

"What's this place called?"

"It isn't called anything."

"No, it has a really stupid name."

"Oh, this is good for the project! We can put it in one of your cute little notebooks and file it in the geography section of our little library."

"...I guess?"

"It's your project!"

"I know. Were there rules when we came in?"

"Like on a billboard or something? No."

"I thought so."

Lily grabbed Carmen's arm and started dragging her. So forceful, Carmen thought, but then realised she didn't really mind it.

Which way was Lily running to? Lily didn't have a clue, Carmen knew it was south. Britain's north of the Second City, which is in the Persian Gulf, so it makes sense that you have to run south to bring out a southbound K-station if you want to go home.

Why was Lily running, anyway? Running with her was nice, sure. It was basically part of the plan. Fear makes the heart grow fonder, or something. It wasn't a nice tactic, but Carmen wasn't raised seeing nice tactics used on people. What wasn't part of the plan was Lily getting wild instincts - that was Carmen's job!

Well, who even cared about roles?

The park-keeper certainly didn't.

side-a It wore the face and body of someone who Lily knew. Was it even supposed to be able to dredge that up? Lily was a psychic brick wall, Carmen sure couldn't see into her. There were lies and so many other lies. Carmen chose the truth freely. This definitely happened to her Lily! Year 10, October 2065, near the start of the school season and the start of the volunteering season. If your workers were burnt out, please get your students to work for you. It's for the good of the United Kingdom, and the good of Greater London.

Little Lily (two years ago, was she so little?) was in group D, with Labrys Lily (who like every other Labrys asshole insisted on calling her Elyssa, because their maxim was that when the axe cut in and the wand scorched your skin you had one name, one body and you stayed in your assigned place forever), Emmy, Marcus Gavel, Marcus Perry, Callum, Harold, a few other less notable and equally intolerable people. Humanity was intolerable to Lily, and intolerable to this asshole. The students' job was to perfectly assist the park-keeper, the park-keeper hated his shit job and hated the fucking kids. What do you do with a bunch of little brats? You rant about whatever not expecting them to understand to assuage your loneliness. You get them to do the dirty work for you.

They came to the toilets. A bunch of high schoolers weren't excited about mopping the toilets, but the volunteering system came with harsher penalties, unless you were from Harrow School. Lily's genius was in the normal and not the abnormal and mundane. Her sister Lavinia, got the scholarship, she went to a comprehensive because the family money was being weighed upon. The bastard park-keeper then started ranting about cleaning the womens' toilets, your stomach turning as you have to pick up menstrual waste and nappies and shit as the students went pick-pick with the useless little grabbers taking up whatever trash had agglomerated onto the bathroom floor, and then he ran his mouth about women, perfidious, traitorous, dirty, and Lily and Lily each having their own obvious bias snapped at him at once.

Choose, choose. You make good choices, you make bad choices. You, girls, in defending your sex, made bad choices. I don't really care about misogyny? Detention for a week.

side-b Lily couldn't see it at all, but it held malice and she had lots of empty theoretical knowledge about anomalies and ESP from so many desperate trips through the K-system. She and Carmen could perfectly define it and add another book to the library, and so many lines to other books. Rinse and repeat as they were drawn together by bursts of interest and compulsion, and Lily would hit her apotheosis.

A perfect definition, then. She couldn't have it until Carmen described whatever had happened in human language to the best of her ability, but she could start on it.

Spaces without much complexity generally obeyed a single nomos. A nomos (the plural was nomoi for Lily and nomoses for Carmen) was a set of laws, both in the sense of 'laws of physics' and 'laws of the state', overlaid on Standard Model reality. Well, Lily wasn't sure if the Standard Model was true, she wasn't a physicist, but before 2041 there was only normal physics or whatever and after 2041 there were zones and mazes of zones where different sets of rules were added and interacted with each other. It got worse and more distant from normal reality, but the more distant it was, generally the safer people in normal reality were.

What was the nomos of this place? The billboard contained normal park rules, she thought. Carmen awakened it when she performed whatever shifting trick she had, and also said that there was a lot of litter? Maybe litter described something that Lily didn't intuitively understand, could never actually interact with? This place dredged it in. A filter? A Nomos of Sorting that infested reality with one strange algorithm, created a dividing line between in and out.

Lily stopped to catch her breath. Carmen ran to her north, facing the park-keeper, holding her hands out to protect Lily. Lily had to snicker a little: the other girl was a head shorter. Cute?

Well, that was the path Carmen wanted Lily to follow. Carmen faced the park-keeper down. He jogged towards them, boots treading on the sunburnt grass, line in his hand. Line? Straight line. Wait, it's not endless, this place isn't an endless loop. It's a line segment, but it still divides. Carmen's heart beat twice, one, two. She breathed in and out. She got it, she thought. She summed the park-keeper up. It was Rank 2. She was Rank 7. In a game of raw psychic power, only the true walking disasters could match up to her.

The park-keeper swung the line segment at her. She fired at it. The line split asunder.

Without a principle, this park couldn't survive. It'd be reborn, probably, but it couldn't hold them.

She held her hand as they fell through the tracks.

---

They were on the train-ride home.

Home wasn't just wherever Lily was yet, but Carmen hoped it could be.

"That was fun, Lily."

"Was it?"

"Did you have fun?"

"No."

"But you didn't feel despair, right? I don't really have a path, but the world feels actually nice to live in when you're here, you know?"

"I don't."

"But you'd choose to do it again, right?"

"I'll follow you again, sure."

side-a "That's perfect! We can do whatever we want together, you know? I can do anything with your grace."
side-b "That's incredible. We'll follow your path to its limits and past it! I don't care how malicious you say you are, you know?"

With Carmen, it was all true.