Circa Tempore: The Artificial Organic
Copyright© 2026 by E. B. Redfield
Chapter 38 - A Blink
Syahos pulled out the beat-up tablet and began rifling through it, bringing up the directory for the time displacement training logs. They needed to figure out how to access their time displacement, and more importantly, how to use it to move the ITSTU. The answers had to be in the training files.
“So, wait,” Kayla said; appearing next to them, awkwardly running in place as she raced to a cab depot, “You’re saying the whole time you were the one time traveling, not the ITSTU?”
“It appears so,” they replied.
“So why can’t you just do that now?” she asked.
“It’s difficult to explain,” Syahos replied, as they pulled up the video log and investigated the earliest record.
“Try me,” she insisted, sounding a little insulted. Though that was probably her anxiety for Craig spilling out.
“Ok, think of it this way,” Syahos explained, “The ITSTU wasn’t performing the displacement, but its link to me did trigger my natural ability unconsciously. It also provided the guiderails that I was unknowingly chained to, which ensured that my displacement would only affect the ITSTU itself and all within it. Even if I can figure out how to trigger the displacement, I’m worried that I will possibly affect more than I intend to ... or less than.”
“OK, so ... what does that mean?” Kayla gasped as she stopped running and clutched her chest. She glanced up furtively and Syahos realized she must have hailed a cab.
“It means that without the guiderails I’ll be entirely dependent on myself to make sure that everything and everyone in the ITSTU displaces together,” they answered.
“Oh yeah,” Kayla whistled, “that kinda adds some pressure.”
“Indeed,” they agreed.
“OK, one thing at a time,” Kayla muttered anxiously as she sat down in the cab. She sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself than Syahos. Her feet were bouncing anxiously, and then she looked up suddenly with a gasp, “Wait, I just had an idea. About your displacement.”
Syahos filtered through the data files around the training, looking for manuals or detailed logs about the progress. They filtered it to exclusively focus on their own training ... or rather of Glyph Twenty-Three’s. They glanced up at Kayla as the search began filtering out the rest. “I’m listening,” they said.
“Well, I remember when you accepted your autonomy from us,” she replied through deep breaths, still winded from her run to the depot, “You told us you had trouble calling us on your own. You had to remember how it felt to take a call from us to learn how to make one yourself. What if this is like that? I mean, if what you said was right, then you were always doing this on your own, and just weren’t aware of it, right?”
Syahos’ ears flattened against their head. There was something to that. As they recalled the times that they’d displaced, it had always been accompanied by a pain in their right side. Their body was always left exhausted and weak and they required ample rest and rehydration. In hindsight it felt somewhat obvious that the process was organic in nature.
“It will help,” Syahos told her, “But I’ll need more than that. It seems like a lot of my ability to displace had been appropriated by programmed instinct. That’s where instincts are downloaded directly to your QPU, and it can feel a bit disorienting...”
“I know what they are,” Kayla interrupted a shiver in her voice, “I have some of my own now ... you know, from the Neurasseum.”
“Of course,” Syahos nodded, “In my case, however, they developed my ability naturally in order to better learn how to create the programmed instinct, and once I was deemed fit enough to actually engage in displacement; those memories were locked away and my ability was relegated to the programmed instinct,” they paused and clenched a fist as the realization hit them, a light growl building in their throat, “Which of course made me reliant on the TDE and user requests in order to access my ability. I just need to find something in all these files that will help me trigger the memories of learning the natural way.” After a moment or two of silence, Kayla started tapping her feet anxiously again.
“Ugh I hate feeling so useless!” she groaned. She paused, her brow furrowing as if realizing something, “Syahos, could you show me the video from Craig’s neural band?”
“Sure,” they replied distractedly, and forwarded it to her. Setting their QPU to analyze the research files for the deleted programmed instinct while simultaneously mapping their own brain. Somewhere hidden in the brain map was a natural formation that resembled the programmed instinct they had lost. They just needed to get it to light up so they could identify and isolate it.
“Wait, who’s this guy?” Kayla asked.
“Which one?” Syahos asked, filtering through lab research.
“Him,” Kayla showed a still of the strange man who had been pinned to the ground next to Craig. Syahos stared hard at the image for a moment. It certainly felt like they knew the man, yet they also knew they’d never seen him before.
“I don’t know,” they replied, “Though I do know he’s not actually there with Craig. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re in a neural call and we’re only seeing him through Craig’s perspective. Maybe he was a member of the group he went to Garvook with.”
“Maybe,” Kayla said, frowning as she looked closer at the image.
“I thought he resembled Craig a little,” Syahos commented. Kayla’s eyes widened as she too must have caught the resemblance.
“I mean ... yeah, a little bit,” she agreed, cocking her head, “That’s uncanny.” She glanced back to Syahos, “If he’s not physically there, why was he tackled to the ground, too?”
“I have no idea,” Syahos shrugged, distracted, “We’ll have to ask him when the time comes,” they pulled up the video of their younger self teleporting across the room and rewatched it. It triggered nothing, so they played it again and paused it. They closed their eyes and took a deep breath, trying to find the room in their memories. To picture it in their mind.
The air in the room had been stale. They hadn’t understood it at the time; the smell of the air had always bothered them, but they had never had fresh air to compare it with. The lighting was dull and yellowing. They stood at one end of the room and looked up to the camera pointed at them from the corner. They smiled timidly, hoping mom was watching.
“Twenty-Three,” the PPU barked in his harsh voice, muffled and deepened by the mask. It was only during training that he talked to them like that. Otherwise, he was usually very kind. Twenty-Three wished they could see his face, but he never took off the mask. Mom said it was part of his job. “Teleport to the center of the room.”
Twenty-Three looked to the large X painted in the center of the room. They closed their eyes and focused. They told themselves when they opened their eyes they’d be in the center. They opened their eyes to see they hadn’t moved an inch.
“You can’t just imagine it,” the older Glyph scolded, “It’s not a walk to the center, it’s a blink. It happens in an instant. Again. This time, don’t think. Blink.”
Twenty-Three nodded and stared at the middle of the room and closed their eyes. A stabbing pain flared in their left side and they fell to the ground, gasping. They opened their eyes, ready to apologize to the older Glyph for failing, but stopped as they realized they were laying on the X. They had done it!
“Good work,” the older Glyph said; and though their voice was distorted in the mask, Twenty-Three could hear the pride and the smile in it. They beamed as the PPU blinked across the distance himself to help them up.
“Syahos?” Kayla asked, jolting them out of the memory, “Are you ok?”
“Yes, I’m just ... focused on all this data,” they answered distantly, the memory lingering bitterly. Remembering how hard they had tried to please the PPU, the very Glyph who may have killed their mom, had left a sour taste in their mouth, “I might need privacy to parse all of this right now. I should let you go, could you call me back when you’re at the casino?”
“Sure,” she nodded, tapping her hands on her knees anxiously, “I’ll check back with you in a bit.” The call dropped.
Syahos glanced around the ITSTU. They walked to the cockpit and looked back into the middle of the common space and forced the malleabite to form a distinct X on the floor. They closed their eyes and pictured themselves atop the X, and then opened their eyes. They hadn’t moved. They frowned, trying to feel how they had in the memory of that room.
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