"Okay here''s where we stand," I said to the overly affectionate anime-looking amber statue of me, "I''ve confirmed that my mana regeneration is slightly higher with my mind attached via the special thread, and I''ve connected my soul as well just by targeting the couple inches that I could see of it before it fades away. But this tells us something else important, doesn''t it?"


    She nodded, but showed no actual sign of understanding.


    "It tells us that the threads can cross into other planes as they''re attaching, at least if they''re modifying one that already does. So now the bigger question is... can I target Katrin and Errod somehow? If I did, they''d be able to join me here in the memory palace any time they wanted. Not that Errod ever wanted to. Could I use the fate threads that go to them as a guide? Would I fuck them up somehow? Also, Katrin was pissed about me spying on her that one time, would she be mad about this thing? No, right? It would have to be no. This is just awesome. I wouldn''t use it for anything bad."


    The amber version of me nodded solemnly, still with a certain vacancy behind its eyes. It was pretty cool, when it would sit still for a few minutes. It really did look carved somehow, with little... facets, kind of. Not like it was a low-poly model in a video game or anything, very much like a deliberate artistic choice someone might make when chiseling a sculpture. She was currently sitting on the ground, hugging my leg.


    "The other option would be one of you guys. You already kinda look like me, and it would be good to have a backup mind - right? The books Harmid had made reference to people having more than one, but not in any detail. Sentortzi for sure had some sort of swarm, though that might have been something completely different. And I know Sige told me there were planes people went to to bind spirits to themselves, but those were supposed to... do stuff. He mentioned one making you grow fangs, and I don''t want to fuck with that shit unless I''m sure of what I''m doing.


    "You guys seem pretty tame, and are almost certainly just those dream figment spirits which I know people have used for stuff before. But it''s permanent right now, until I can figure out how to break these things, and that means if it goes badly I have to destroy you. And I''m actually fine with that mostly, but there''s a teeny part of me that thinks it might be fucked up. I could use one of the doughboys instead, there are plenty around and I wouldn''t mind squishing them, but that one got really hostile and it was starting to get bigger and more solid too. If I can''t turn the connection off, and it runs through the wall or something it''ll probably just eat all the other spirits on this plane."


    I felt funny, like there was something I was supposed to remember. "I''m getting off track. Okay. How would I find a spirit that''s safe to experiment on? I could just snag another oydirme like you guys, but one that doesn''t look like me. I don''t know if that counts as less fucked up or not. Would you give a shit if I linked to some random spirit that''s the same kind as you, and then possibly had to murder them? You for sure at least meet the bare minimum requirements for being sentient, but how... sapient... are you?"


    It had mainly run around and hugged me or visitors, but I''d seen it go into a rage once when it walked into a bad memory I''d been poking into, and one time I found it in my old bedroom from mom''s house crying. It seemed to be, basically, nothing but a bundle of emotions. Since it appeared to like it in my memory palace, it was generally very happy - but was that it? Was there anything deeper? The other one, the one that looked like a normal version of me - give or take, there were some differences - just wandered my memories dispassionately. It seemed... interested... but fundamentally without goals. They were very different, but I''d been assuming both were oydirme. If one of them wasn''t, it was probably the amber one - the rest of the things that showed up wearing football jerseys all looked human, so this thing was the outlier.


    Although... they had all been a bit more animated than the one that was just wandering around. Maybe because they were already copying people, and the others were just starting to copy me? But then, shouldn''t it have fully developed by now if that was the case? I just didn''t know enough. It could be something about my memory palace being so... defined... was inhibiting the way they normally worked - and in fact, Harmid had said they usually pressed up against the edges of a domain, not that they went all the way inside. That also led to another question - how to pull another one in to compare and possibly experiment on.


    It ended up taking way longer than I expected for a few reasons. I did still have other stuff I was working on, and Hugh was still making me train at least some, and I got frustrated and quit trying for a bit, and finally - when I figured out my problem - it turned out to have a limited window of time I could work on it each day. The trick was that they''d only show up when I was sleeping, and it wasn''t enough to have my body sleeping; I had to let me consciousness start to actually drift away.


    It''s really hard to stay alert while also letting yourself fall asleep as it turns out, and if I fucked it up I''d just end up waking up in the morning having missed my chance. I tried reaching out to invite them in, the way I did for Katrin or Hugh, but if I concentrated too much it seemed to freak them out and they''d scatter. Or at least, that''s what it felt like; I was getting glimpses of them out the windows of my memory palace, which normally showed a slightly fluid AI-generated looking street on Earth. Instead, as my body slept, random things would show up out there - and some were people. Were they oydirme? Presumably!


    The other issue I was trying to figure out was how to tether them at all. I''d been experimenting, and my magic was still firmly originating with my body which needed to be out cold. The idea was that once the oydirme was in my memory palace it would stay put, I could wake up, and...? The threads could reach across planes, at least if they were fate threads, and I''d been able to tether my mind and soul - but those were using the existing threads, and they were a part of me. For a random disconnected spirit, did I need to identify it some special way? I was hopeful that it would just work when the time came.


    I was laying on my bed in the main room, the recreation of the bedroom from Bill''s house, and looking at the little crack in the ceiling. It had been one of the first things I''d noticed, back when my memory palace was just this one room. It had felt familiar, and so... specific. How many times had I laid in the real version of this bed and stared at the ceiling? Was I happy? What went wrong? I''d cleared away the false memories, leaving nothing but fog behind - whatever was left of the real memories that had been covered up, scrambled and worthless. Could I restore them now? Thought and Temporal, maybe, to get retroactive perfect recall? I was out of potential at the moment anyway, and I wouldn''t want to try it until I was sure it wouldn''t trigger the Granch to eat me.


    Everything started to feel loose, fluid, and with the help of many nights of practice I just stared at the crack. Relax. Don''t fall asleep, but don''t wake up either. Like holding on to a dream after you''ve realized you''re dreaming. After a moment, I slowly stood and walked to the window while keeping my mind blank. It wasn''t going to work anyway, so I didn''t need to overthink it or stress about it. Early on, when I''d first unlocked the ability to get to my memory palace, I''d opened the door to the outside while dreaming and interacted with a figment that looked like the elote man from one of the neighborhoods I''d lived in. I was just going to do that again, but through the window.


    I opened the window and leaned out, still masterfully maintaining my state of meditative relaxation. Instead of Jesus the elote man, it was Tony. Tony had sold drugs near Universal Servicing Systems when I lived there, and he''d bought me food a few times. He''d have fast food delivered, and if I was hanging out chatting with him he''d add on an extra burger or something. Nothing fancy, just the cheap kind, but it was nice. And he''d always toss me the food rather than making me come over to get it, because he''d noticed I wouldn''t stand within grabbing range of him, and he didn''t make a big deal out of it.


    But I grabbed him this time, just swung my arm out and grabbed his and pulled like I was helping him sneak through the window, and he climbed on in. I''d been struggling with this task for weeks, and just like that it was over. No problem. I closed the window quickly, suddenly pretty awake, and not-Tony looked around. He was nodding approvingly and poking at things a bit, and I just watched him for a moment before he suddenly spoke up.


    "Not bad. Better than that old office building, right?"


    "Yeah."


    "I kept it safe for you, sis. Whenever you need it back."


    Was this random dream nonsense, or something else? "You can give it to me now," I said, just in case he''d hand me something interesting.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    He handed me a hamburger. Well, that worked too.


    As I continued to try and talk to him, it became clear quickly that he was pretty dumb. He had the general vibe of Tony, mostly, but his knowledge was extremely limited. It was like a mediocre chatbot - for the expected stuff he''d reply realistically, but as soon as I threw a curveball at him he broke down.


    "Hey Tony, how''s business?" I''d asked him that every time I''d seen him, and he always replied the same way.


    "I''ll be a billionaire by Wednesday."


    "I ate a wallet full of dishwashers, wings and all."


    He nodded. "I was just about to order something."


    There was something about him, something that was nagging at me. The way he''d turned into Tony so easily, and had all the surface level stuff just right. I couldn''t put my finger on it, but that felt... not familiar, exactly, but... Hmm. I finally walked over and just took a chance, wrapping my arms around him and concentrating. There were layers, there, like the oydirme was wearing a Tony suit. And I could... pull... here.


    The illusion unraveled, and Tony faded away leaving a gray, lumpy humanoid devoid of all features. It was like the someone had set out to make a person out of clay, and had just mashed together the basic shape but hadn''t begun actually working on it yet. I let go and it stumbled away, and then just... stood there. I stepped forward and grabbed it by the wrist, closing my eyes and concentrating. And... there. I opened my eyes, and Mila was standing in front of me.


    "Hello, dear. I think I may be a little lost."


    It had been so easy. Of course it had, it was so close to what I did when I was making or unpacking templates - grab a concept and distill it down, package up all the relevant information about it. I could just peel the identity off this thing and slap a new one on as many times as I wanted. It made a lot of sense that it would work in the same way, but it was still a little crazy that I... oh. Oh shit. Fuck.


    I was being manipulated.


    It was probably the fate threads, since I would notice if someone was fucking with my mind. Little tweaks to probability, little adjustments of probability. Things that might have happened anyway, singled out of the endless sea of options and pushed in front of me. How many things had to come together for me to have this skill? Why had I asked Sentortzi for it? And I still didn''t know why fate would care, since being able to re-skin oydirme had to just be another link in the chain. What was I supposed to use it for?


    I took a mental step back. Was I being paranoid? Coincidences happened, this didn''t have to mean anything. I''d made Sentorzi give me the skill because it sounded useful, and here it was being useful. It could be as simple as that. Even if it wasn''t a use I would have guessed would exist. More importantly, it just... didn''t matter unless I knew what destiny it was working towards. If it was something beneficial to me, then I wouldn''t want to fight it anyway except - if I was being honest - kinda on principle just because I didn''t like being handled by people even when those people were actually magical forces of reality.


    And if it was a destiny I didn''t want? I wanted to figure out how to break fate threads anyway. I needed to set that concern aside for now, because wondering if everything that happened around me might be influenced by fate would be maddening and useless.


    I stripped Mila off the oydirme - it didn''t seem to care - and looked it over. Without anything imprinted on it, it seemed content to just stand there. I needed to decide if it was okay to experiment on this thing, and possibly have to kill it. I''d relied pretty heavily on this list of internalized rules about what was and wasn''t okay in society because I''d realized I personally wasn''t super bothered by anything; mostly I just lacked in the kind of empathy where you felt something just because someone else did. I could see someone was sad and think, "oh, they''re sad" no problem, and I could get sad or happy or whatever myself, but I''d never seen someone upset or excited or anything and genuinely just felt the same on their behalf.


    And probably because of that, and because - even if I didn''t remember it - I''d been raised by Sargher for the first few years of my life, I did some really nasty shit to people when I was a kid. Everyone stole shit sometimes, but I''d steal things purely to cause people anguish. I think it was just... interesting... to be able to cause emotions in people, and negative emotions were easier. It''s always simpler to destroy something than to build it, after all. Like a cat idly shoving things off of counters, I would make up and spread nasty rumors to see if I could start a fight or wait to go down the slide until someone was passing so I could "accidentally" slam into them.


    I got a little better over time, just because at some point you realize that you have to fake it so you''re not always in trouble. And then I met Bill, and before the missing memories when he was my case worker he was just so... good. And he didn''t seem to give a shit that I wasn''t - or he did, but he didn''t act like it was the most important thing about me or like it meant he could write me off. And from what little fragments of my time with him after that I could remember, he''d known that I didn''t care the same way that other people did. And probably because of that, I''d tried. Actually tried, for years, to follow the rules and be a decent person.


    And it had worked out pretty well. Katrin and Errod wouldn''t have wanted to be family with the old me, and I did care about them. I was genuinely sad when I thought about the idea that something bad might happen to them, and genuinely happy when we were together. Was it the same as with... humans? Probably not. Or not with an average, "normal" human anyway - but I''d never met one of those anyway. And now I had to ask myself about a situation I had no rules for, and try to guess if Bill or Katrin or Errod would care about me fucking with this oydirme, and at the same time know that I for sure didn''t actually give a shit and nobody would ever need to know but me anyway. So it didn''t matter, except that it very much did.


    Ugh.


    I poked at it, and it stumbled back a step and just continued standing there. "Okay fuck it, I''m going to do this. And if you freak out and turn on me, I''m gonna kill you and then probably never tell anyone in case that turns out to be... bad. Fingers crossed you''re basically a fungus or something."


    I woke up in the real world, and then back in the memory palace I dragged the oydirme into a live divination view of my room and lined my mind up with my body.  This was going to work.  I remotely controlled my body while looking at the oydirme, and spun up a thread.  It reached out, the end fuzzing purple as it vanished - for a split second I thought I could see it extend past that point, inside my mind palace, but then it was gone.  I felt the connection take hold, and I started tweaking what could pass through.  I didn''t want any thoughts flowing through, especially from it to me.


    It rippled, and snapped into my form.  Great, another me.  Just what I needed.  Except... wait.  The others didn''t have that feeling, like I could strip off the layer of what they were pretending to be.  Were they not oydirme?  I''d been ready to decide the amber one wasn''t, but... was it neither of them?  I wanted to go find it and check, but I needed to decide what to do with this one first.


    "Oh, you can leave me here," it said, "I''m cool.  Sorry to freak you out, but I''m getting your surface thoughts some.  Anyway now that I''m you I can tell you that I don''t really think there was anything else in here.  Like... it?  I?  Whatever this was was alive, kinda, but this is for sure the most it ever had a thought about something.  Honestly I''d say crank it up, I think if you keep it up I''ll basically just be a copy of you."


    "You''re not going to try to kill me and take my place?"


    "Nah.  It wouldn''t work, first of all - you die and I''m and the thread snaps, then I''d just go back to being this brain dead leech thing.  But second, I''m nearly you right now.  You like the idea of having a copy of you, someone that understands you and isn''t gonna get judgey and shit.  Also you might be a little bit of a narcissist, but again - no judgement here.  Anyway, I think you''re right - the others can''t be oydirme.  We should totally check on that."


    I narrowed my eyes at the copy of me standing there.  "I don''t know if I''m ready to have you talking about what ''we'' should do, since you practically didn''t exist a minute ago."


    It rolled its eyes.  "Look, trust me.  I''m in here, and it''s free real estate.  Switch the thread settings so that it flows both ways and you''ll just have two bodies here.  It won''t be ''we'' even, it''ll just be you.  The only reason we''re having a conversation right now is that the flow is restricted, you''re funneling some of yourself into this spirit and you''re not getting anything back so I have to just tell you.  But I''m serious, you''ve already overwritten what little was here.  The little flow of thoughts and personality coming from your end might as well be a pressure washer with how... open... this spirit is.  Was?  I feel like I might have firmed up some due to the connection."


    I very hesitantly tried to get some thought to flow the other way - I wasn''t ready to commit to the duplicate''s plan, but I figured I should be able to get just a taste without it being a problem.  Instead, it was like looking at a mirror in another mirror where as they tilt to face each other the background arcs off into infinity.  This resonant echo hit me and without even meaning to I somehow leaned into it until the floodgates were fully open and I was staring at myself from both sides.


    "Whoa," we said, "this is fucked up.  Wow.  Okay the original is... shit it''s hard to only point with one body at a time.  Shit, why did I do that?  That feedback is dangerous, I can''t believe I opened up all the way by accident.  It''s like I leaned over something and lost my balance.  Also this is going to give me a headache.  Can I..."


    I tried to dial back the connection some, and it was... jarring.  It worked though, and we fell out of synch.  "Okay," the other one said, "keep it right there for now but I think we might want to tweak it some.  Fuck, it feels strange to be the fake one.  I mean it didn''t a minute ago I guess, but after we were the same person it''s strange we''re not.  What am I?  Ugh.  No, it''s fine, I''m not going to freak out or anything.  No trying to kill me.  I think... let''s see how this works, because if we can find a way to have just enough trickle back and forth we can stay on the same page and I can... I don''t know, try to read some of these books here and find out if you get the knowledge."


    I only hesitated a moment before nodding.  "Not surprisingly, I like the way you think."