Preparing for possibilities took the form of more training. Part of that was the usual firearm practice, exercise routines, and tactical-simulated combat. Another part took the form of brainstorming.

“I do believe this is what I was warning you about,” November said, seated in the rear seat of Emerald’s station wagon.

Although the vehicle had a rear bench, Emerald really only intended for occupants in the front two seats. All her weaponry and supplies took up a great deal of space throughout the rest of the long car. Most of which had been piled up in the back to provide space for four people.

Talking about potential problems with administrators, all of whom could access Beatrice’s log files even if she didn’t want them to do so, was simply a poor idea. It couldn’t be avoided entirely due to Beatrice’s omnipresence throughout the Carroll Institute, but more sensitive matters could at least be discussed here.

Even if Dyna felt like she had a knife jabbing her in the back from the station wagon’s rear seat.

“Warned me?” Dyna grabbed a heavy blanket and folded it up between her at the seat. It wasn’t a knife, just a spring—Emerald hadn’t filled her car with weapons to quite that degree—but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. “When did you warn me about anything?”

“You walked through Phrenomorphics, yes?”

“Yes.”

November cocked her head, raising an eyebrow. “And what did you see there?”

Dyna shrugged. “Scientists? Machinery? Tulpa? An administ—”

“How many tulpa did you see?”

Again, Dyna shrugged. “Ten? Fifteen? I assume there are more elsewhere, but the room I walked through was just the special tulpa. Like the mountain man and the Hatman.”

“Exactly,” November said, nodding her head. “There are seventeen ‘advanced’ tulpa in containment and an additional thirty-seven ‘mundane’ tulpa elsewhere in the facility.”

“I’m still not sure what you were warning me about.”

“Nor am I,” Emerald said from the driver seat, looking in the rear-view mirror before focusing back on the road.

They had no real destination in mind at the moment. They were simply driving to be out from under Beatrice’s eyes while talking.

“Don’t you see?” November asked, static snow sparking off her tongue. “It has been mere months since the Carroll Institute became aware of the existence of tulpa. Now they have quite the collection of them. An improbable amount, even. Fifty-five, including myself. Not to mention all the other tulpa that perished or escaped before they could be contained. Tulpa are a fact of this world. Or, it would be more accurate to say that tulpa have become a fact of this world.”

Dyna crossed her arms, a few pieces clicking into place. “Is this about your name? How you went around telling people you didn’t want to be referred to in any way?”

“It’s too late now,” November said, looking out the window at the passing desert.

“You’re saying that Ignotus is running around because we called you November? That is a massive tornado from a tiny butterfly.”

Ruby turned around in the front passenger seat, glaring at November. “What does this have to do with fighting Ignotus or traitor administrators?”

“Ruby’s right,” Emerald said. “We brought you along to ask about the advanced tulpa.”

“Yeah. Like how do we kill them when they show up?”

“The experimental disruptor was the most effective weapon I have seen so far. Alternatively, you could try to integrate them. I would recommend against that, given that none of you are tulpa.”

The disruptor project was on hold until they figured out what had happened. Dyna hadn’t told anyone that Beatrice had been the one to open the doors, not wanting to invite further scrutiny on the artificial intelligence. As for the other solution…

“Is that possible?” Dyna asked. “Integrating something like the Hatman?”

November looked over, then slowly shook her head. “Not for me. I would be subsumed just touching that thing. Or, with the Hatman in particular rather, my memories wouldn’t be my own and I would likely end up one of its thralls.”

“Alright. What about the mountain man?”

Considering, November adopted a frown. “I have not witnessed that entity integrating any other tulpa. Rating my chances are more difficult. It might be possible, but were I still in the noosphere and had never encountered you, I would have avoided it in my current state.”

Idea forming in her mind, Dyna asked her next question. “If we were to feed you all the regular tulpa in containment, then started with the weakest of the advanced tulpa, do you think that would work?”

November opened her mouth, but promptly clamped it shut as she snapped her gaze to Dyna. “You wish to turn me into a weapon against Ignotus-33?”

“When we were looking for Harold, I think I had a stray thought. A copy of me swept through half a dozen tulpa in the blink of an eye, eating all of them before joining back up with me, giving me the knowledge needed to hunt down Harold at the meat packing plant.” Dyna paused, watching November’s eyes grow wide. What little pupil and iris she had vanished entirely as a field of static snow covered her entire face.

“You integrated?” She leaned back, pressing up against the door and window. “No, your stray thought integrated? And then willingly reintegrated with you? That is… horrifying.”

“I’m not going to do it to you,” Dyna said, hurt that November would even think that.

“And you think you can control your stray thoughts?”

“Well… they are just me, aren’t they?”

November shook her head with vehemence. “I’ve been eating those,” she said. “They’re nothing. Wisps of fragmented thought. A sliver of an idea. A lost thought, forgotten when you got up to go to the bathroom. Everyone has them. At that level, they would have to integrate thousands of other similar levels of thought to even gain an amorphous form. I don’t remember what I started out as, but it would have been something similar. Now, I am a composite of well over a hundred million integrations and would be wary of integrating human-level tulpa.” November trailed off, drawing in a sudden breath like she had forgotten to breathe. “And you just made a stray thought capable of consuming several human-level tulpa in an instant? And it retained enough cognizance to know it needed to reintegrate with you?”

Dyna glanced around. Ruby was nodding along with November’s words, like she understood what the static-covered tulpa was talking about. Emerald, upon meeting Dyna’s eyes in the mirror, just gave her a shrug. “Uh… yes?” Dyna said, looking back to November. “Is that bad?”

November just shuddered. “Yes… no.” She shook her head like an old man exasperated with the youth of today. “No wonder everyone is trying to kill you.”

Ruby, despite her nodding along, twisted in her seat to shoot November a glare. “You better not.”

“I’m just saying it is a little more understandable. Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m more surprised about. You deliberately splitting off your thoughts to eat other tulpa—”

“It wasn’t exactly deliberate,” Dyna mumbled.

“—or you still being you after consuming several human-level tulpa.”

Furrowing her brow, Dyna asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“Integration isn’t destruction,” November said. “It is integration. I don’t know if other tulpa call it that, but I do for a reason. This isn’t exactly how it works, but should explain my concern: if I, a tulpa comprised of a hundred million integrations, integrate with a tulpa of only a hundred integrations, it barely affects me. I’m still entirely me.

“However, if I were to integrate with a tulpa of roughly equal level, I would become a tulpa of two hundred million integrations, but only half of those would be me. If that makes sense. There is a battle of wills, determining who comes out on top which is why this isn’t exactly correct, but still… if half of me isn’t me, am I still who I was before?”

“And I integrated… I don’t even remember how many. Between six and twelve. All at the same time.”

“Exactly,” November said, elevated static activity slowly diminishing and returning to usual levels.

“I understand your concern now, I guess, but I don’t feel any different. It was a shock at first. A bunch of memories that weren’t mine bounced around in my mind, but they were so obviously not mine… I’ve never fought in a war and I certainly didn’t live in ancient Rome.”

“Maybe it’s different for humans.”

“Maybe…” Dyna said, trying to think back. “You… November, you seem a whole lot more substantial than they were. Than any of the lower-tier tulpa are.” She slowly looked to Ruby, considering. “If you were to estimate, how many integrations would you say Ruby has? You can see each other through the noosphere, right?”

Ruby’s scowl immediately turned on Dyna, but she ignored the look, focusing on November.

For her part, November barely glanced to Ruby. “She’s human. It isn’t the same.”

“Guess? If you saw Ruby wandering around in the noosphere—when you saw Ruby in the noosphere before slipping through that spatial anomaly—what did you think of her?”

“I thought she was human. There was no question about it. She was too substantial.”

“Let me try phrasing this in a different way: If you were to integrate Ruby, how much of you would still be you?”

A clarity crossed November’s eyes, looking from Ruby to Dyna, then turning to the opposite side to stare out the window. “You want me to suggest that I am less than human. That doesn’t bother me. I know what I am.”

“No! No. I’m just trying to get a measure. November, I don’t think less of you just because you have a bit of static in your eyes.”

November let out a small breath of air through her nose. Something akin to a scoff, but not quite there. “Thirty-three percent,” she said, not looking away from the window. “Maybe only twenty-five percent.”

“Emerald and I are roughly the same?”

“I’ve not seen either of you in the noosphere.”

“Then assuming we are similar, six or more tulpa would have still been a significant amount for me.”

“Yes.”

Dyna nodded, feeling somewhat relieved. “Then it is simple. These tulpa are even less than we thought they were. I certainly don’t feel like I ate even three people’s worth of memories. Maybe like… a tenth of a single person.” Maybe. Dyna wasn’t an expert in all this.

November shook her head, still not taking her eyes off the desert. “They appear human. They talk. They comprehend orders. I’m not saying they are on my level, but close enough to it that I would be wary.”

Dyna shook her head. “You’ve never seen them in the noosphere and you just said that you can’t tell with me and Emerald.”

“I am not willing to compromise my existence to become your tool.”

“I’m not asking you to. At least not unless you are comfortable with it. But I have a theory now and it needs testing. Emerald, can we head back?”

“Sure,” Emerald said, turning on her blinker and pulling off to the side of the two-lane highway. “Question though, November. Just curious, but you saw the Hatman in the noosphere, correct?”

“Correct.”

“This is all pretty abstract to me, but I’m still wondering how many integrations you would guess the Hatman has been through.”

Emerald watched through the rear-view mirror while Ruby twisted in her seat. Dyna glanced over, curious as well. November didn’t answer. For a long few moments, Dyna thought she wouldn’t answer.

“A few trillion. Maybe a few tens of trillion.”

“Ah. Quite the disparity.”

“The Hatman isn’t human, doesn’t act like a human, and doesn’t think like a human. It has existed for longer than any of us. Perhaps even for thousands of years. At a certain point, I think it stops mattering.” November put on a small smile. “Not that I know for sure, obviously. I’m nowhere near that level.”

No one had anything to say to that. With the highway empty, Emerald simply turned around right where she was. They weren’t far from the Carroll Institute, having done little more than drive up and down the freeway. Dyna hadn’t wanted to go off and sit still where an opposing force could set up around them. It had still been a fairly predictable route.

They would have to change it up next time.

As they drove, Dyna considered all that November had said about the tulpa and integrations. She wasn’t sure what was up with her little incident in the noosphere. The tulpa simply couldn’t be as substantial as November. She intended to find out for sure once they returned to Phrenomorphics, she just needed to figure out how to propose her experiment.

It shouldn’t be difficult. There would be little danger if everything went according to plan.

She had her own theories about what was going on. This would help confirm them.

Someone was arming them and controlling them to direct them against Dyna. Whoever was doing that probably pulled out far less substantial tulpa. Perhaps they were easier to control in that state. Did that mean that the mountain man wouldn’t be as substantial as the Hatman?

Thinking about that, and what November had said at the very end, Dyna glanced over to the static-covered woman.

“Do you want to be?” Dyna asked softly. It felt like she had offended November. Offended and frightened her. She didn’t want to further upset her, but she was curious. “Do you want to be at the level of the Hatman?”

November frowned, looking back. “I want to exist,” she finally said, turning to the window once more. “I will continue to grow. I didn’t get this far by abstaining from integration. It is not in my nature to stop. But should I feel my being is becoming compromised?” She shrugged. “I suppose I’ll decide then. Who knows if I’ll be the same person.”

Dyna leaned back in her seat, careful to keep herself angled to one side to avoid the spring in her spine. “If you need support…”

“Your offer is appreciated.”