From a cathedral’s vaulted hall spilled the solemn tide of cybernetic hymns, drifting out onto the night’s slipstream. These dark, manufactured melodies were felt everywhere in the city: structurally for those walking the cobblestone streets as a sudden exhilaration of extravagant emotions; visibly glowing like torches for those traveling into town via train or shining as stars for those falling from space. Folks walking along the same street were often gifted images projected into their eyes as they looked on—candles at a distance, lanterns as they approached the doorways. The music’s form as a beacon seemed to change into wild shapes depending on proximity.

Interior lighting for this stone-and-glass chamber was visualized as torches. The intensity of the flames were programmed to sync and sway depending on the music. The longer the choir groups sang, the greater the burn, and there were enough singers for an entire month of song. Essentially, these fixtures were devoured in their own glow continuously. And it was during this fine month of perpetual night, when most townsfolk paused as silhouettes against the light, to listen in and look upon those robotic and demon folk alike singing back the silence. Godlike instinct harmonized with diamond calculations. The Veil and the Void.

Those demon folk from across the sea were notorious for boasting that their perfect genetics could only be matched by Lantern Veil’s streamlined mechanics. While robotic folk from the Veil said Oud’s marvelously manufactured choir bots received their first calibration inside this cathedral along Lum Road—made to practice against The Void’s top vocalists—starting with a midnight lullaby about a girl. The soundtrack of the town.

The first note this lullaby had those choirs sing was the first thing this android girl did upon waking up in her country’s endless procedural wilderness.

She turned on as most new citizens did, in a hallway lined with figures standing idle in the gloom, draped in robes and wearing ornate masks of gold and sapphire and emerald and jade. Some held wine. All of them stiff in pose.

Unlike them, this girl was already moving. She wore only a thin black dress with silver buttons exposing her chest, arms, and legs. Solid yet perfectly adaptable, this piece of garb adjusted its figure to match the motion and orientation of her limbs, as she rolled down a dim hallway.

Torches along the wall pulsed on invisible strings. Dense shadows swallowed the space between these brief pockets of light. Not a single shoulder shifted, not a head turned. Figures with faces blank as coins stood between the torchlight and pillars. Moving her head came in short, measured jerks.

The hallway split off into three paths. Her first turn routed her back to where she’d first woken up. Another led to checkered tile stretching into the dark—museum pieces emerged alongside ancient artifacts on display in glass caskets and cases. Somewhere ahead drifted those augmented hymns that turned this story into a song, raising in volume whenever she chose the right path. That third hallway leaned into more masked figures draped in robes. Then the initial hallway where she had first woken up. Back to where it all began.

But the music was escalating, and it led her down a louder path. More obscure, frozen figures she scuttled past.

Those chosen by Lantern Veil’s divine grace were permitted to shape themselves into whatever they desired, came the sudden unbidden voice deep inside her skull. This answer—her intuition—they had not chosen their features… yet. These masked and robed folk were stuck in a character selection of sorts.

Yet this girl already carried her figure. Memory was currently under construction. This girl realized she could visualize this cybernetic guidance, as in physically manifest it before her face in a suspended digitized frame.

Memory, as it was categorized in bold letters above digitized charts and metrics, labeled construction as ‘In Progress’ at 5%. She could not remember choosing these robotic hands held together by joints constructed in metal knots that reached out into the cosmic graphics, let alone who she was.

Her eyes dropped down a metallic frame balanced on wheels, legs stiff, yet she rolled forward. No toes. This girl coveted feet.

This girl thought, Feet, and the condensed chrome of her wheels softened with the consistency of warm glue, flowed, folded, and reshaped itself beneath her until those wheels became ankles, those ankles molded into toes, and this girl began to walk.

Inset alcoves breached from the endless corridor through her initial, slow trot. Smaller chambers held groups of three or four frozen folk standing beside stone vases, wine glasses in hand, silent. Shells waiting for new souls. The dim lighting melted over them as the metrics seemed to liquify what felt like the bones in this girl’s skull. Minimal movement came from breathing only for the hybrid models, as the instructions in her head cooed again and again. Spontaneous knowledge.

This girl changed direction, and the endless procedural generation warped her through those museum pieces once again. This time she noted black and white checkered tile.

This girl changed her direction so many times that she almost didn’t see herself stumble. Through a doorway beneath a clock, into a choir group already assembled. The first thing she did was recalibrate the settings in her throat—not a thought, just a robot girl cracking her throat—so she’d sound good. And she sang.

Before this girl could register the fantastical lighting draining into the swollen carpet, the rows of rich vermilion chairs redistributing torchlight in kaleidoscope patterns (Emberbough Wood, her brain seemed to say), or the robot instructor raising his hands as instructions seemed to fall directly into her head, she sang.

There was no limit. For as long as this girl so coveted, she could sing.

Laonni Loncefellow—that was her name.

She stood in the back row (she remembered now she’d been a tall girl, organic in her scope) and belted out streamlined harmonics—perfectly—easily. Laonni could warp the air with her voice in a visible, digital stream she seemed to visualize at will. Torchlight above burst with the sudden escalation of the entire orchestration, splitting and subdividing, while Laonni’s voice wavered in the chaos.

Even the hush that came when she choked up dimmed the torchlight so low, all those in this choir group pulled back with her.

This first group lasted three hours. Laonni dubbed them Choir Group A.

Because veiled beneath Arlington, Arlington’s perfect veneer, choir groups were in plenty, and rotations were constant. Once a session finished, another formed. Groups that dissolved could mingle near the entrance, while some individual folks could carry on or leave. Give this girl a new voice that could sing, and the sudden math equation firing off in her head sent such sudden extravagant emotions through her brain, what could she do but continue on?

Laonni Loncefellow chose to walk from Choir Group A into B, which was just then arranged and waiting, as if she were the last piece of the angelic puzzle. Laonni coveted song, and they all from group B nodded their head, as if her thoughts were loud enough for them to hear.

And they began as Laonni’s first group had done, in minor variation, with the lullaby of Arlington, Arlington. An initial barrage of dazzling cybernetic cadence struck; the instructor chose to sync with Choir Group C—the same instructor Laonni would come to recognize as a constant throughout the night. He waved a hand and both the B and C groups flickered into one another kind of as waves lolling against the coast.

Choir groups could essentially flicker in and out of existence, Laonni came to find. Multiple groups could exist at the same time. This instructor brought many groups in for it, a confluence of what seemed hundreds of singers exploding musical grenades out onto the streets, a finale so loud those torches above beamed neutrons stars as eyeballs hovering and bleeding.

It vibrated Laonni awake, standing in place, same dress she had on when she woke up, but with ethereal choir garb flickering in and out, much like those other choir groups, letting her know they were there but only when she chose for them to be. This white apron of a dress is how those other folk saw her.

Who?

This analysis shifted her focus.

A sudden lull to the drug-like emotions gave Laonni time to mess with her settings.

Tinkering with her eyes’ filters exposed those folks looking at her from the streets. Onlookers from the cathedral’s entrance watched as her choir group wended together and sang about some robot girl finding her voice. The lyrics even mentioned deep purple hair. Same color as Laonni’s.

She fumbled with the connections, cycling through the endless overlays in her new eyes. The harsh interior torchlight became blindingly bright, washing out her immediate vicinity with the intensity of a white sun in full bloom, while the townsfolk outside appeared in beautiful, vivid silvery auras against the darkness. The instructor’s guidance still landed in her head telepathically, thankfully.

Her voice carried on in autopilot, while this midnight lullaby seemed to explain itself in fragments through her newly installed awareness: her eyes’ settings could be materialized from a query in her head, and it was this query that filtered the glare of overhead fixtures so she could perceive the shadows and distant silhouettes of townsfolk that ordinary eyes would miss in the artificial brilliance. Those folks were segments themselves, Crowd F. Reset, please, and as before, this newly created android girl could see as she did when she first started singing.

Laonni Loncefellow sang with four groups. Three three-hour segments before she felt a sudden surge of exhilaration, as if her perception had widened only just then to narrow. International folks from across the ocean parsed. Those obscure nightmares, born under a demonic star. Black Bough. The Harrowed Shores.

Someone more interesting than song:

A gal with horns and wings folded between her shoulder blades—Laonni saw those wings from the overlays fleecing that girl’s skin; settings switched on as easily as her fingers moved now, for that demon girl—prepping to sing throughout the designated hours that would make it actual nighttime for the city at the center of it all. Black shirt over Grey shots, beneath the same ethereal choir garb Laonni chose to filter out of her eyes.

This demon girl from Black Bough stood among the shifting arrangements of metallic singers, weaving through their designated segments, careless and easy, each voice meshing and hiding and exposing its brilliance at the right moment.

One look into this other Choir Group was enough for Laonni to step down from hers. She chose to speak with members of Choir Group D, mostly to figure out how to speak. Voice and telepathic communication seemed to blend without distinction; there was almost no control, but the rest of her group didn’t mind letting her learn. They all started just like her, as bots waking up in the grand hallways of their country’s perfect simulation. All of them robots in ornate configurations. None of them like that girl over there.

Two horns curved through midnight hair. Pink and black eyes—pink irises over black sclera, glowing faintly against the cathedral light. Polished white skin like the aura those born on the Moons had.

Yes, images of those born on the Moons effectuated within Laonni’s mind.

This robogirl drifted toward the edge of the room, utilizing the controls her mechanical mind established to weave in and out of different segments, filtering by those with a demonic heritage—hundreds of demons were singing tonight.

Laonni discovered fully how to redistribute herself accordingly within Arlington, Arlington’s perfect veneer. All because of a young demon girl from across the world. And this felt good. And that group—choir E—sang. The sound of angels and demons, together, civilization.

That demon gal looked her way, and Laonni screamed—hide! Hopefully internally. Phasing out into some other segment, an empty cathedral still lit by torches, minus a choir. If that demon girl didn’t see her, Laonni wouldn’t have to speak with her. Because Laonni didn’t know how to use her voice. Singing was easy. Speaking could also be her thinking out loud.  

So she chose this new vantage, and she gazed upon the posh cathedral chamber above. Tall and angelic in its menace, this stone-and-glass chamber was substantial. Hybrid tunes howled sudden shifts of the sapphire in those levitating braziers, despite this section being entirely her own. Laonni didn’t need to stay in the same segment to isolate the demon girl’s voice—her mechanical ears applied the filters—Laonni wished for this and it happened, and the torches seemed to know that she filtered for that demon girl’s voice and adjusted accordingly. Her eyes embellished the incoming starlight, while her ears sifted for something that would give her this demon girl’s name.

Looking away could only postpone the discomfort for so long, because now Laonni’s eyes dropped, and as quickly as she vanished, she returned, eyes on that girl exercising zero manufactured precision.

Singing as breathing, each note drawn in and released as naturally as air.

Pitch. Cadence. Microvariations.

The slight dilation of her throat before sustained notes. The sympathetic vibration of the vaulted chamber. Laonni’s processors seemed to favor this girl’s patterns.

It was the subtle bit of demonic nuance that caused the other choir folk to hesitate. Pause. Less than a second. But to Laonni’s newly precise perception, it was decisive. That demon girl leaned into certain notes. All the calculations Laonni could manifest inside her head and above that girl’s head said this math was wrong.

She (Laonni) quietly adjusted the settings of her own vocal synthesizer.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Laonni Loncefellow ran a few dozen simulations in her head.

She could look upon herself in the third person, standing in a marvelously manufactured room within her mind…

She still hadn’t seen herself properly. This new body bestowed upon her during this festival revealed itself as quite a beauty in a room full of diamonds.

Midnight voids for eyes, deep as Lindenfell’s lakes. Adaptable skin (color fluctuated at will). Solid hair that was metal but malleable. Her dress was metal. Even her breasts, torso, and legs were metal. She could manifest spheres under her feet that functioned as wheels. Laonni could raise and lower the volume of this place, her ears, how sound was perceived. Her mind thought flail and her hand dissolved into a deadly weapon. Microphone.

And Laonni sang through the configurations. Ten thousand calculations, as was fitting for this fine month of perpetual nightfall. Minor variations expanded into major shifts. She could take that demon girl’s voice—it was recorded in her head—and create hundreds of variations instantly. She could manifest that girl physically and have her lips move with the recorded sounds, a dozen times over.

Yet none of these adjustments sounded like that demon girl’s demonic boom, shaking Laonni out of that digital space.

A single trellised note left that demon girl’s throat and drifted upward among the cathedral’s ribs.

And Laonni watched it go, listening to that demon girl the entire time—phasing in and out all the same. She phased in and out for no reason at all. How beautiful it could be. Invisibility.

The song ended, and the instructor acknowledged that demon girl. “Samari, amazing. You are the reason we require our choir bots to reconfigure and optimize with near-perfect precision. There is none tonight that will sing like that.”

From thenceforth, Samari was this group’s lead vocalist.

Samari stayed for only one cycle of three hours; all the singers from this Choir group stayed for only one round. They collected themselves and congratulated each other near the entrance of the small cathedral. As Laonni came to find, this group had found itself accidentally, singing in a group that seemed to sync, so they stayed that way, and reconvened monthly. They’d been practicing together quite a bit. Laonni learned all this while she hid in the empty variant.

The group pressed close together in the shifting arrangement of voices. Samari slipped away at some point without anyone noticing, somehow.

Somehow, only Laonni saw her.

There were no implants in this demon girl’s head, no mechanics embedded in her skull; none that Laonni’s electronic eyes could see. There was no connection to the digital lattice which overlooked the city, the entire country.

Only empty cobbled roads remained. Two girls. Samari in front, Laonni trailing in her wake. They walked until a neat, gated structure pressed between two large buildings. Giant as it was—even with two gargoyles, just ten thousand tons of living stone, out front noticing Samari and adjusting themselves on their primordial pillars, shaking the world, digital skin and all, looking in the direction that Laonni should be in—despite all that, Samari’s home was dwarfed by the grand architecture of Arlington, Arlington’s living habs. Not that Laonni saw anything but her.

After Samari entered, information triggered in Laonni’s awareness: who she was, why she had been upgraded.

How she used to look before Lantern Veil told her tonight was her night.

*

Laonni chose to slow down the night Samari disappeared. Add on the sudden barrage of information overloading her skull, and it was natural to walk slow, even with her body able to walk on its own. The organic side to her brain seemed to reveal much with the overload: who she was, why she was here, her robotic brain, her family name.

Being a Loncefellow meant she had access to several Oud-certified residences scattered across the city. Information rattled off a penthouse for her family, a country residence in Lindenfell for her family, a side apartment just for her, right around the corner, a stacked slab of matte alloy and translucent mineral glass. All she had to do was turn from Samari’s demonic heritage home, and there it was, a few steps down the cobblestone road.

The city made it easy to disappear like this. The Loncefellows were connected to Oud and their resources were substantial. Urban geometry adjusted in subtle ways in Arlington, Arlington.

Laonni dematerialized her body at a molecular level—compressing into transit and reassembling moments later in her place, upon the subtle ripple of a tiny, exterior patio pond. The sound of water over stone spilled everywhere here.

Insects lit up the extravagant flowers Laonni had collected before her body’s upgrade. It was one of those coping mechanisms that those in charge of upgrading Lantern Veil’s folks said to embrace. They had an extensive list of ways to deal with upgrading organic humanity for circuitry (mad lad that Laonni was, she chose full robot mode), and Laonni chose flowers, cooking, and bugs.

She was an insect girl of sorts. Particularly fond of lightning bugs, which flickered through the garden in shifting bands of pink, blue, yellow, and green. These bugs seemed to be aware of who she was, despite the upgraded frame, and landed on her solid metal shoulders and hair, her fingers when she reached out. They spoke to her.

“Our lord.” “Laonni, your radiance.” “Do you remember us?” “Is your memory stark?” They said and asked. And Laonni tried to answer. Her voice crackled in cybernetic vocal tones. “Don’t speak too much.” “It’s only your first night.” “Tell us your thoughts.” “Lord Laonni Loncefellow, both organic and cybernetic.” “As our new node of Arlington, Arlington.” Lightning bugs crawled over her eyes and face, slowly up her arms and legs.

View from this apartment’s height showcased the city limits stretching southward in layered illumination. Her newly augmented eyes provided information about which units were occupied by the faint glow patterns in the walls: soft pulses of amber for awake residents, pale blue for sleep cycles, and a slow violet wash for someone dreaming under the dim burn of the digital world.

Below, Samari’s home remained dark—both interior lighting and the settings in Laonni’s cybernetic vision. A two-story structure partially veiled by Oud fieldwork. Laonni could tell from how its outline shifted when viewed directly, meaning that demon girl had the best protection. Although some demon folk from Black Bough did not require light the way others did. They could traverse a room with the lights off and they’d still be able to navigate and understand where everything was better than an organic chap during the daytime, like a cat.

…

Fatigue felt so distant.

The urge to sleep struck profoundly, but with a certain shift in perception now that Laonni embraced her robotic heritage. Now it was a clean directive about efficiency for what organic humanity this kingdom left her.

Messages in her head, piled into her head and visualized both physically and mentally in like auras—family, sisters, friends—bloomed an endless latticework of calculations and connections. Laonni had the ability to segment these messages based on risk. They were already categorized based on emotion. Thus, this desire to shut off meant no responsibilities for the immediate moment.

Being a robo-girl like her, Laonni discovered how easy it could be to power down.

Standing above Samari’s home, Laonni ran footage of that demon singing through her mind. Both outside on the patio and in her bedroom, the quietest place of all.

Her bed hovered slightly above the frame, covered in duck feathers, and adjusted the moment Laonni lay down. And as Laonni’s organic memories began to sync, she thought of the ceiling projecting the night. It was the stars that flourished then. Endless diamond fields on alien worlds.

Laonni didn’t need to sync her mind with the ceiling to have it showcase stars—her augmented eyes were closed when they vibrated with a kind of direct pressure. Space. She beamed through the ceiling in ghost mode, so quick. There she was among the clouds, and she paused mid-flight to look up at space.

Which, oddly enough, for tonight, was lush with spaceships. Boats with masts waved ribbons as octopi on the ocean floor. Juggernauts from one layer below the Veil’s and those from distant worlds ordered to return home. Numbering in the thousands, surely. Only those in deep space weren’t made to return home. Those education sims materialized in her memory banks. It would have to be direct orders from the highest source to bypass this wondrous month of perpetual night.

Visuals placed some alien world with a primitive species still unable to think in much capacity. Images turned into 3D objects; those 3D objects turned into footage, which moved and breathed based on how this robogirl interacted with them. Smells permeated alien citrus. And somewhere in it, Laonni and Samari were singing together in the wind.

*

*