Chapter #77All The Pieces In Place by: imaj   “The two sets of essentia can’t get entangled,” you explain to Frank an Joe. They both listen to you attentively whilst Chelsea kicks her feet disinterestedly over at the opposite side of the ballroom. “So I had to keep them separate with sigils. There’s an inert layer between each set of essentia that prevents connections forming. You don’t get tangled up like that guy Lucio did in the story you gave me Joe. But it means any other connections your essentia has are temporarily blocked.”
“Like between a golem and its master,” asks Joe.
“Exactly like that Joe,” you say, feeling pleased with yourself. This kind of applied work isn’t Joe’s strength, but at least you’ve made it clear enough to him what happened. “So Chelsea remembered that she’s supposed to like us, but she didn’t have to follow my instructions. She couldn’t see the essentia that she’s supposed to obey.”
“That could make things tricky,” frowns Frank.
“Not really,” counters Joe. “We just have to switch between essentia to make sure that we have the right one active. Or we order them to always follow our orders.”
The brothers continue to bicker, but you barely notice them. Your mind is already racing with possibilities as Kenandandra kicks in. New avenues of investigation open up in your mind and you can’t help but wonder how you missed them before. A faint smile creeps onto your face.
“Hey Will,” says Joe shaking you by the shoulders.
“Huh?”
“I said, what are we going to do next,” asks Joe. “You were a million miles away.”
“Oh,” you murmur. “Chelsea, did you get the mind bands?”
The golem looks up and then scuttles across the room toward you. “Here,” she says, thrusting out a hand at you. “This is all I could get. The party was totally lame and she had no right hosting it.”
You look at the three bands she has given you, and the names written on each one: Molly Shaw, Amanda Fergusson and… “Isn’t Kendra your friend Chelsea,” you ask. You lean in to whisper in her ear. “I thought I said I wanted bitchy girls.”
Chelsea tilts her side for a moment to consider. “She’s a snake Will,” she says in a low voice as though confiding in you. “I have to watch myself around her to make sure she doesn’t get too uppity.”
“Aren’t you worried about me using her mind then?”
The golem looks momentarily puzzled. “Of course not Will,” she says, batting your nose lightly. “You’re my friend and I like helping you.”
“Right,” you murmur. “What about the other two?”
“Amanda keeps Ricky on a tight leash,” explains Chelsea. You refrain from mentioning she does the same with Gordon Black. “Kendra says Molly is wired into a lot of things with the wannabe crowd.”
“Thanks Chelsea, you did a really good job,” you tell the golem. She smiles happily at you. “You should go home now. I’ll call you when I need your help again.”
The golem pouts adorably. “But I want to help,” she whines, running a finger down your chest. You gulp nervously.
“It’s gonna be dull,” you say, tugging on your collar with one hand. “Got to work out how to put all this together.”
“Oh, right,” says Chelsea, suddenly switching off all the smiles and charm. “I’ll be seeing you then.”
“Actually, you won’t,” you grin. “I’ll be someone else next time I see you. Don’t worry, you’ll recognise me,” you add, thinking about your new understanding of how your essentia links you to the golem.
“Oh, okay,” is all Chelsea says. She kisses you briskly on the cheek then strides out the room without a goodbye.
“I know power is supposed to be an aphrodisiac,” says Joe quietly, suddenly appearing at your side. “But judging by that performance you must be the most powerful person on the world.”
“Yeah, thanks,” you mutter. You’re pretty sure he just insulted you. You think…
“I think she might be trying to manipulate you,” continues Joe. “Hard to tell. She probably does it without thinking.”
You look at the mind bands Chelsea has left you with. “I think I’ll be a match for her next time I see her.”
*****
You check over your experiment one last time before beginning. Two of the little golem voodoo dolls lie on top of a large sheet of paper covered in intricate sigils. The mind bands of Kendra Saunders and Amanda Fergusson lie on top of them. You’re as ready as you can be, though the truth is you don’t know exactly how this is going to work.
You close your eyes and concentrate. You can see Kendra and Molly again, but this time they seem like shadowy webs rather than thin strips of metal. You dive forward at Kendra until she presses in all around you. Memories flit past you. For a brief second you remember Kendra whispering to Chelsea: I could wrap him round my little finger in thirty minutes, forty five tops. Then the memory is gone, with other similar ones trailing along in its wake. That’s what you are looking for: her imperious self confidence, and her ability to push the pieces round the board.
You keep searching, but try as you might, all you can find are memories. Times that Kendra has behaved the way you want Rosalie to emulate. That’s not what you are looking for, you want personality traits. Why can’t you find any?
And that’s when you realize that there are no "personality traits" as such to copy. There are only her accumulated experiences. Kendra’s skills come from what she's learned; her habits from what she's done; her proclivities and moods and quirks from the way those experiences have twisted and grown around each other. The girl herself is the sum of her experiences. Your heart sinks as you realise that you can't copy that form without copying everything. You don't want everything. Having the conflicting memories of three different girls floating around inside your head will only drive you mad.
But can you get the form without the content?
You look again at Kendra’s mental imago. Between the strands of memory, between the filaments of the web that is Kendra Saunders there are dozens of gaps and spaces – a negative imprint of what it is like to be Kendra. That might be what you are looking for. You try to grab hold of them. Though it takes a couple of attempts, eventually you get a grasp of them, your will curled round the gaps like an eggshell.
You dismiss the actual mind of Kendra, then pull in the one of Amanda Fergusson and push.
Amanda’s mental imago is stubbornly reluctant to move, it strains against the hollowed out shape of Kendra until is seems as if Kendra is about to splinter and crack. You push again, harder this time, and there is just the tiniest fraction of movement.
Then you lose control. Amanda starts pouring into the gaps left by Kendra. The two imagos writhe and warp. In places, the eggshell like hold you have on where Kendra was splinters and deforms and Amanda’s thoughts push themselves into a shape they are more comfortable with. In others the sense of Kendra hold firm, twisting Amanda’s experiences into a new shape.
Tentatively you prod at the combined imago. No memories of Kendra’s remain, but as you review Amanda’s thoughts, an odd sense of something being out of place starts to steal over you. Amanda’s reputation round Westside is, though no one would say it to her face, that of a ballbuster, she suffers no fools and keeps her boyfriend Ricky Golia firmly under her control. Yet the Amanda you are exploring now seems more knowing, more self absorbed and definitely more manipulative. You snatch at a stray thought as it passes: I could really get Ricky to do anything I wanted if I asked him the right way. He’s totally wrapped round my little finger and I should take advantage of that.
You smile, because this is exactly what you are looking for. Amanda’s memories, tinged with Kendra’s personality. “More mind bands,” you say hoarsely without opening your eyes. “A blank and Molly.” There is a movement around you and after a few moments you feel someone shoving two strips of metal into your hand. You fumble Molly’s into place where Kendra’s was.
Then you repeat the process again – emptying Amanda’s memories and cramming Molly’s into the gaps left behind. They twist and turn and merge again. Finally you remove Molly’s experiences, leaving only the gaps between the combined imagos behind. You place the result into the blank mind band and sigh loudly as you open your eyes.
Joe looks up from a nearby seat, putting one of the books you rescued from Blackwell’s library down as he does so. “Are you ok,” he asks. Of Frank there is no sign.
“Yeah,” you say, your lips dry. “I figured out how to join their personalities.”
“You were doing it for over an hour,” states Joe.
It didn’t feel that long, you think to yourself. Suddenly you realise just how drained the experience has left you. “I’m ready to put Rosalie together now,” you tell him. “But we’ll wait to after dinner. I feel tired.”
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