IO Vapoura - Part V: Under Paper Shadows

  The day that the maker Sado came to my tea house was the twenty-eighth day of the thirteenth month. The next day would be New Years, marking the eleventh Terran year since the advent of Halcyon Electronica. It is a day worth recording. On this day, the Father of the Makers came to meet with the Mother of the Weavers.
  The weavers who told me of him called him "Shadow". His solitary nature and place as "the first one" had woven many myths surrounding the man. When a mind does not understand another mind, it fills that space with all sorts of assumptions and expectations. That is why on the day Shadow appeared in the gardens, I was sure to empty the tea cups and begin warming the water.
  Whether merely hesitating or out of authentic curiosity, the maker began wandering the gardens. He seemed to get lost in every leaf and tree, and even the chimes hanging from the branches. I was pulled away by the water. One must take care not to let it boil. Once both cups had been poured, I returned to the door of the tea house to find the maker leaned over on the ground and staring into the waters of the brook.
  "The tea is ready", I called to him. "You should come in."
  I stirred a slight breeze to cool the heat of the urn within the house. Once settled on the cushions, I sipped my tea in comfort while waiting for my guest to join me. Shadow, however, stopped and stood just outside the door. He scanned the open doorway as if searching for something.
  "Yes", I said. "This is my sanctum. Do you trust me?"
  Shadow looked at me, the tea and the cushion, then came and joined me at the table. His body was that of a human, unlike so many who came to this world. From the looks of him, he'd made no changes to himself. A head of dark hair, speckled with age and unkempt sat atop a protruding skull that spoke of modifications made long before coming to this world. The brown of his skin and slant of his eyes spoke not only of an Eastern lineage, but possibly Japanese. Although creased, his hands moved with precision and gave away how often he relied on them. His eyes though. This maker had the eyes of a child.
  Setting down my cup, I said, "One rumor proves true already. You're wearing a stark white labcoat. What an odd thing to find in this place."
  Shadow looked down at his coat, then smiled. "This is a good coat."
  I pulled out two sweetbreads for us and set them on the table. "You were from Japan, yes?" He nodded. "Japan was bad. My own body died years ago from the radiation, but she held on long enough to give birth to me. How is the tea?"
  "It's good. I haven't had tea so good in what? Decades? You prepare it instead of project it?"
  "I can project the tea, yes. But I cannot project growing the leaves, smelling their scent change over a season and I cannot project preparing them. These things bring me great joy."
  The maker looked out the door, towards where he'd leaned over the brook. "The waters are beautiful. You've given them their own center of gravity. You can see the stars on the other side of the waters. I would've never thought to build a stream that way... it is... inventive."
  "They are beautiful, yes, and thank you. But that is not why you've come here, Sado. Now, I will gladly answer your questions, but I ask that you be direct with me in return."
  Shadow nodded, picking his cup back up for another sip. "They call you the 'Mother of Weavers'. We wrote rules for our world here, and your weavers appear to be changing those rules. How?" He shook his head. "How can they weave together two spaces... more even... yet somehow they can both build and alter those spaces. We didn't code for this."
  "I understand your dilemma. The rules you wrote made assumptions based on human psychology. What you didn't code for, as you put it, was a person moving beyond their psychology. Have you ever been inside another person's sanctum?"
  "No... I mean, not before today."
  "And here, I rule, yes? What I expect is what I get, correct?"
  "Yes. You could destroy my projection, poison it or worse."
  "Then what if I consider this to be your sanctum as well, and with the same powers?"
  His child's eyes drew inward, the black core of them in their almost golden brown centers reflected the stars outside the tea house. When he came back, his voice still sounded distant as he said, "I don't know. We didn't calculate for this."
  "It is in that space of 'I don't know' that we have found a freedom to build together. It takes trust and it does take practice. One person may expect tea to taste different than the next person, so things do not always end up the way either person expected. What you are tasting is the tea of your homeland. I have never been there, so I poured only water."
  The maker began studying his tea, tasting it and swirling it around. Interrupting him, I said, "As this is your sanctum, this is your space as well. Do you hear the waters of the brook?" He nodded. "Brush the wind chimes with the wind so that they strike in rhythm to the waters."
  "I don't understand", he said. "Why should I move the chimes?"
  "This is your first lesson...
  We are going to make a song together."

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