Duvil

to be honest, real life stuff is only part of the issue. for some reason I've been having trouble with this part of the story, which is odd because I have a really good idea of what I want to be happening, and where I want things to go. cant really explain it. oh well. we move on

“Oh, that was odd. I felt a tingle. Anyways, can you tell Bella that this batch of honey is delicious?”

Queen’s quip went ignored while my thoughts raced to consider the implications of Rette’s concerns. But, truth be told, I didn’t need to give it much consideration. Even with Rette’s memories and speculations in tow, all it took was a bit of thought to realize what happened.

“Squawk.”

On the surface, Dip appeared completely ordinary. Waddling, squawking, pecking, flapping. It was only in minor details that something beneath the surface seemed to peek through. A formerly shiny, smooth coat lay ruffled and roughened. Skin on the feet was cracked and dry. Dark eyes ever so slightly dulled. By no means was I a Dip expert, nor was I a penguin professor. But as far as I knew, he seemed pretty penguin-like to me. Which was, of course, exactly the problem. Dip was no ordinary penguin; he was a penguin with a deep connection to a human, intertwined with her very essence and Mind.

A human who was effectively dead.

“I see. Well, you’re not exactly wrong to think Dip’s faculties have deteriorated a bit, but it’s alright. He’ll probably be dumb for a little while, but he’ll be back to normal in no time.”

Rette grimaced. “I wait all this time just for that? He’s just not okay. When Yelah was still here, there was a spark of intelligence in his eyes. It was like he understood you, even more than regular animals. Like he had a bit of human in him. It made him popular. Everyone loves him, damnit. He’s such a fun little guy. But… But he no longer understands how to go to the bathroom. He constantly makes a mess in my house. He doesn’t understand how to cool down anymore. I need to move him to cool spots and the river myself. Whatever he had is… gone. Just gone. Worst of all, he’s unhappy. Lethargic. He doesn’t understand that we can’t be picky and refuses to eat what little food I can give him. He understood the struggle before. He’s become… dumb. Which I hate to say, but it’s the best way I can think to describe it. It must have something to do with Yelah.”

I said nothing, which only caused Rette’s frustration to mount. What was I supposed to tell her? ‘Oh yeah, Yelah? Yeah, that Yelah. Well, her body is inhabited by my other Mind now, so she’s practically dead, which means her connection to Dip is unstable and causing him to lose the capabilities provided by the connection between their Minds. No biggie.’

Bella stepped in. “Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll manage.”

Down-turned lips curled into a snarl, but before Rette could tear Bella a new one, I quietly sent an order over the Link for her to keep her mouth shut. She tried to berate us, but found her lips sealed. Phew.

Unfortunately, there was little I could do for poor Dip. Toilet training didn’t matter much to me, but lethargy and loss of appetite were far more concerning. He refused to eat anything other than chunks of fish soaked in water. Which did make sense. Penguin. Even so, his death would be inconvenient.

So, where the hell could we get chunks of fish? All Rette had managed was treats Yelah once stored away consisting of dried and salted fish jerky. Not perfect, but Dip didn’t outright refuse it. Unfortunately, those supplies were dwindling, to nobody’s surprise. Those treats had been stored for several months since before the Burning, and no such thing was currently available in Yiwi considering the disrupted supply chain to the capital. The river, interestingly, housed no fish whatsoever. And that wasn’t the Burning’s fault; it just never had fish. It did, apparently, have some odd species of snail, but they hadn’t been sighted for months. Either way, the only way to get fish was from the capital, with it being a coastal city and all. Again, though, stupid supply chain issues.

“Sadly, I can’t accommodate Dip’s pickiness right now. Either force feed him, let him become desperate, or I can Link him to make him eat.”

Thanks to a mental shove from Queen, I allowed Rette to speak. I regretted it almost immediately.

“And yet you can afford to have your henchman toss food down Bob’s gullet? This doesn’t just affect me, oh great queen. People notice. Dip is notorious in Yiwi. He’s a penguin, for person’s sake. He’s not exactly a common sight. The excuse that he’s sad about Yelah’s absence is unraveling. Nearly a dozen people have asked me when she’s coming back in the past week alone. Wasn’t the point to keep people ignorant to your actions? Every little oddity piles up. This is why the Peacekeepers have become so annoying. I need you to do something about this.”

Well, I had no choice but to respond to that. However, before I could say a word, Bella’s eerily cheery voice echoed through my and Rette’s Minds.

“Careful, Rette! Commanding mother is a silly thing to do, far outside your purview. Besides, my experiments are super important for the hive’s future, and they operate with full support from Trice and my siblings. Maybe you’ve lost sight of my priorities.”

At this point, Bella had floated down to hover directly in front of Rette’s face. She never lost her cheery demeanor.

“If you want solutions, you should be more proactive in eliminating potential problems before they rear their heads. Like those Peacekeeper morons. I digress. If I may, mother; you can dig around the storages, Rette, but there is little we can do to improve your situation. We just don’t have the resources or logistics. So figure it out, and that’s that!”

Bella capped off her cheery tirade with a shrug.

“There are plenty of solutions I can think of, each less kind than the last. But you’ll have to make do. Trust me when I say Dip is best off here with you.”

Rette was clearly unsatisfied, but I was content to leave it at that. Bella said what needed to be said, and once she waved Rette away, I was relieved I no longer had to deal with it. At least not so directly. Certainly none of it was ideal, but the state of Dip was of little consequence compared to the dozen other threads currently being tugged at in my hive, sad as it was to say. I hoped he wouldn’t die, and that somehow we’d eventually figure out a way to get Queen a proper body befitting her station. Then Yelah might be able to come back, and Dip would be fine. Which was just about the only reason I could think to look forward to the hot-headed mercenary’s return.

Mesne joined the still storming Rette on her way out of the door, both off to continue the effort currently changing Yiwi’s entire course. What busy bees, heading to work even as dusk fell. Eventually, Bella decided to join them, happy to leave her experiments in the dark and Bob with his mounds of scrollwork keeping the company within the kingdom’s regulations. But as Bella left to wander the darkening rooftops, I could feel her excitement. Anticipation. Because she knew I was still ‘here.’ I delayed speaking with her about her work for that very reason. Bella had become concerning to me compared to most of the bees for a multitude of reasons. My worries had one specific origin, but it extended to everything she was getting herself into. It was thanks to the mercenaries watching her from the shadows, acting as our eyes and ears on the ground like a network of zombies indistinguishable from their fellow man. It came from the subtle glances thrown her way as she passed, from the Humanist priest Lord Hu-Leio, to the more subtle agents of Harven. It came from the acknowledgment by any bees she passed, whether they were gathering nectar from the flowers on the walls or doing their own important work elsewhere. For the people who held all the power in Yiwi, both before and after my influence began, there was one whom they recognized as the one with the power over their lives. One who made the decisions they followed in their everyday life. One who experimented with their precious stores of food in front of their facces. One who had them manipulate the people not for their own interests, or for the interests of their beliefs, but for a shadowy master they never saw. Bella was the one who held the elite of Yiwi in the crook of her arm.

And for the rest, they had little choice but to dance to the tune of the powerful.

She caught up to the two women just as they ducked under a large, tan tent in the center of the town. The flat square, once dominated by a massive dome and imposing tower, was the former home of Yiwi’s Rotor, cleared of debris and broken machinery, replaced now by the large tent and a small collection of similar tarps scattered about. On the outskirts of the square, scattered in alleyways and side streets positioned to prevent alternate paths into the square, were much smaller tents of patchy materials, distinct from the clean, orderly structures in the square proper. Those tents had a certain insignia - that of the Peacekeepers. Goofy parasites.

“Bella. We need to talk.”

For her part, Bella said nothing. She simply hung on to my every word with mounting excitement, staring at the tents below. Inside, a bustle could be heard as activity continued; lights rushed from underneath the tarps as night deepened. The tents in the square were one of very few sources of life in the city, everything else steeped in stillness and dark.

“You’ve been doing amazing work so far. Even a lot of your indirect influence has built into facets of control I hadn’t even considered. I mean, look at Mesne’s company down there. What did she say? That by now, even if she hadn’t absorbed the other merchant companies, at this moment she would be one of the top three employers in the entire city? That’s insane. Like, that’s competing with the mercenary companies. And unlike the mercenary companies, they’re all un-Linked people under our control, without crazy government manipulation or something. Amazing stuff.”

Bella only curtsied. She knew all this, even if I hadn’t praised her directly. But none of that was what she really cared about. Her anticipation grew.

“And now we get to a crucial problem. The thing that has plagued our hive since the beginning. Food. Now, feeding the hive is an ordeal. You’ve gotten us a good amount of food from Yiwi, even as their stores dwindle. So they went from starving to desperate. Basically, I’d trapped you. You had to bring us food from the city and deal with that same city which was on the verge of collapse. I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t my intent. I didn’t really expect it, to be honest. Beatrice kind of did, but she just disregarded the consequences for the humans. Not that you care overly much for them as a whole, but you’re a little different. You, like she does now, understood their value to us as an additional, separate workforce. You realized first, even if you don’t fully understand that you did.”

The image of Mesne and Bob floated through Bella’s Mind. It gave her pause; she wasn’t expecting me to go in that direction. Good. Had to keep her on her toes.

“And so here we come to the cakes.”

Ah yes. The cakes. Biscakes. Bella was buzzing now. Her beautiful, beloved, wonderful cakes. The cakes weren’t a brilliant invention of hers, or some catalyst for genius. They were a tool, really, something of a coincidence to act as a vessel for her creations and theories that had turned the whole of Yiwi on its head once again. She had plenty of ideas before the cakes entered her thoughts, plenty of whimsical concepts she thought of implementing, but just needed that final piece to make it work. The biscakes were that final piece.

It had started weeks ago, just before Ben and the others arrived in Lemonholm. I’d been so focused on that ordeal that Bella’s discovery had flown under my radar. She’d been testing foods for the resulting qualities of honey, something she did often and carefully, giving much more care to the process than her twin. This was Bella’s passion: food. She’d been unreasonably excited by the prospect of acquiring lemons for that very reason and had ramped up her testing in anticipation. She’d eat tiny quantities of certain foods, spit up honey made from it, and figure out what would be the best foodstuffs to send to the hive to supplement the sparse flower nectar. Even further, she would painstakingly mix minuscule quantities of food measured precisely with Mind, sometimes just to see what would happen. The special discovery came, one day, when her frustrations reached a head, and her annoyance coalesced into a tirade at Mesne.

“Give me something other than these mom-damned cakes! They’re gross.”

“Sorry Bella, but today that’s all we’ve got.”

“By the mother, why? Feed this crap to the humans and get me something better, I beg of you. I beg. Beg.”

Mesne only shook her head. If it had been Belle, that would have been the end of it. If it had been almost any other bee, even, it would have likely ended then and there. But Bella…

“Fuck off. Why are these cakes the only thing left? Here. I’m going to figure out a way to force-feed these people with this garbage and reserve the good stuff for us if it’s the last thing I’ll do.”

What she found piqued her interest. It wasn’t like we’d never encountered the cakes before, but they had been buried under a mountain of other, similarly disgusting pastry confections that drew my ire when I first visited. These small, round, airy treats known as biscakes were found at pretty much every bakery in town, though like many of those more unique foodstuffs, were mostly imported from the capital. For a person, they were just above bite-sized, and thick enough to fill you up with just a few. And yet, mysteriously, these cakes were the only ones not being taken by desperately hungry citizens anymore. Even very similar cakes and pastries were flying off shelves and being commandeered by companies and the city to feed masses. Except these cakes. Why?

Well. They just sucked.

Too small to satisfy, too thick to stomach. Not enough nutrition to matter and all at once too dense to digest. Like the others, flavors that could be called ‘bitterly nauseating’ was generous. In their origin, the capital, they were something of a traditional oddity that was often lumped in with desserts. They had to be lathered in other flavors to be stomached, and were eaten as accompaniments for smaller meals, like teatimes. Mesne explained that even in their homeleand they were unpopular; it was just that they happened to be easy to make and versatile in their function. And traditional, a potent force in itself. The problem was that the capital just tended to have so much plenty that its production of the cakes far exceeded local demand, so it was simply more profitable for the producers to ship them across the world, to the dozen or so people that might find a use for them. Meaning they were never the freshest, either. Mounds of them were apparently discarded every week, which bothered nobody since they were made with cheap crop. And sucked.

The problem in Yiwi, as in many places, was there was no way to take advantage of that versatility. Perhaps they once worked when fish spreads, seafood cuisines, fruit jams, or other strong flavors reached store shelves, but since even before my arrival, supply lines to the capital had been squeezed to near nonexistence.

Now, in this dire situation, plenty were eating them, of course. What choice did they have? But when even a starving population was throwing food away, something was seriously messed up with these damn cakes.

“I would say the biggest problem is their sparse nutritional value. You could eat a baker’s dozen of those things and come out with less energy than if you’d eaten leather boots,” Mesne continued to ramble.

“But they’re fascinating from an economic perspective. I mean, a foodstuff that they concede to transport just because they have excess stock? With practically zero demand? It’s really more of a way to get the other products in people’s hands. Lots of the most popular pairings with biscakes are produced by the same companies that make the cakes themselves, you know. I met a few of them; really intense guys. The capital is a different world when it comes to business. Here you just need a foothold and you can do pretty much anything, but there you have to be beyond crafty and devious.”

That was the spark in Bella’s thoughts. The idea that set things into motion. A way to get other products in people's hands.

What followed was a cascading waterfall of brilliant stroke after brilliant stroke. In test markets, Mesne had trouble moving tiny globs of honey to consumers. It was a brilliant taste of heaven, to be sure, but it mattered little when it amounted to a drop every few days. Unsatisfying. Confusing. Unfulfilled. More couldn’t be sold, as there simply wasn’t the honey to give. There were few still with money, who were not in our control, willing to purchase the precious liquid. And for those without money, they were far more concerned by the constant pain and inability to be productive to improve their situation. Worst of all, productivity seemed hopeless when all money could buy you was a fancier pile of rubble or useless items of luxury that did nothing to fill your belly.

If only people would eat copious numbers of gross little cakes. It would be a great way to give them the little energy needed to rebuild their homes and reinvigorate production. To give people the jolt needed to work their Minds and do the work once automated by the Rotor. A little motivation, even if artificial and short-lived.

The next day, Mesne’s employees announced a stellar deal. Purchase a now low-demand product from their inventory, or do a bit of work, or provide a splash of Mind, and receive a free biscake, now with a special, secret ingredient. At first, most laughed. Those disgusting cakes were already being distributed for free at every storefront in the city, and nobody even bothered giving them a second glance. Then a merc volunteered his services. And another. A disguised Harven goon stepped up. We just needed something to get the ball rolling, and a couple Linked Minds were easy enough to come by.

By that evening, the city was abuzz with the news. Whatever Stockitall and their lesser known partner had done to the notorious biscakes, it turned them from garbage items into a genuine delicacy. A treat.

Things only accelerated from there. A few drops of trash-tier honey gave the people of Yiwi something to look forward to. Something to fill their stomachs, no matter how poorly it actually nourished them. The sugar naturally present in the honey was a shock to their systems, enough to result in a tiny burst of productivity. Best of all, there were plenty of those little cakes to go around, since everybody hated them. Any companies not owned by Mesne, which was a dwindling number, struggled to move their product without knowing the secret ingredient, and ended up shoving their stockpiles of cakes into Mesne’s hands for pennies.

The tents were set up to manage cake logistics. Mostly. They served other purposes, but cake logistics was just about the gist of it. Metallic barrels of honey were floated from a nearby warehouse to the tents every day, where trusted workers would apply a very specific amount of the honey using spouts and Mind. People had to be hired to manage stock, distribute cakes, collect payment, provide instructions. The tents became a gathering place, and, best of all, a place to wait while their Minds were tapped to power a variety of machines no longer able to be powered by the Rotor. The citizens had gone from passively providing a tax of Mind to contributing to the continued production of its industry, giving a piece of their Mind to help the city shake the rust from its gears and start up again. It required a bit more focus from each person, and for it to work, they had to watch inscrutable machines they knew nothing about in operation. But at least they could talk to their neighbors. And eat cakes.

One of my favorite parts was the shipments from the capital. Mesne and Rette were going to deal with the second one soon. The first one had been something of a surprise. Because we still weren’t allowing outsiders to enter the city freely, more people had to be hired to bring the cakes in from the dock outside the city. And getting the shipments hadn’t been a trivial ordeal either. It took every connection and bit of cunning Mesne had to convince capital merchants to send excess cakes. Which spoke to the shambles our logistics were in. We were paying exorbitant prices for cakes nobody wanted, and it still took some coaxing. The barges arrived with only a single product, despite the abundance of basic recourses we desperately needed. Communication with those bureaucratic, MIS-choked companies was slow-going, but Mesne would soon find the cause of our breakdown in trade.

As I recalled the details, I kept a close watch on Bella’s Mind. Each little thing passed through, with nary a peep. I wasn’t naïve. Most of the incredible results coming from her random idea mattered little to her. Except for one thing.

People loved the cakes. Namely, they loved the honey. The cakes were just an easy way to get people to eat the honey. For now, it meant little more than a glint of pride at the indulgence of her creations. But Bella’s ambitions went far beyond such trivial benefits as ‘capturing the townspeople’s hearts’ or ‘renewed vigor to revitalize the city.’

“So now here we are, Bella. To your experiments. I’ve let you continue with them until now, despite how they make me - us - feel. So, I want to hear from you directly. Allow me to be blunt. These experiments, so far, have been a failure. They use significant resources, take up time, and in our opinion will lead down a dangerous path. So, tell me. Why should I allow you to continue your attempts to create Mind-control honey?”