Gramantra

Myrie was five and a half years old when two events changed her life:

Her grandmother died at the age of 111. That wasn’t much of an old age. Usually, dwarves lived up to 300 years, most at least 250 if they did not die an unnatural death, and unnatural forms of death were very rare. Usually, great-great-grandmothers experienced their great-great-grandchildren, but had little or no contact with them. In most cases, two to three generations lived together before children moved away and started their own families, or lived in shared flats with their favourite people without starting a family. The result was that usually dwarves were not confronted with the topic of death without respawn for the first time until they were perhaps 50 or even a 100 years old.

Of course, there were exceptions from time to time. Families that have lived together for sufficient generations, for example. Or cases in which a shared flat was created by very young and very old people. There were suicides from time to time. And there was rarely an accident, especially among people who liked to live risky.

Nevertheless, children at five and a half were not necessarily informed about what death without respawn was about. And Myrie had heard of it scarcely.

Myrie was sitting at the living room table with her three siblings and her dad at lunch when she heard about it. The table, like most of the furniture in this house, was made of dark solid wood and shimmered a little. Its four legs were not the same length and it wobbled.

“Gramma Lorna is dead. Dead without respawn,” her dad had said. “That means we will never see her again, neither here, nore in any virtuality.”

He looked distraught, Myrie thought. And she understood that well. She tried to imagine never seeing Gramma Lorna again and it was strange and didn’t feel good. She liked Gramma Lorna. She always told beautiful stories. She had always told beautiful stories, Myrie corrected herself in her mind. And that felt strange too.

It was snowing outside. It was autumn, the ground had been frozen for a week now and it was the first snow that remained on the ground. Tiny, white flakes scurried past the window so soft. Myrie released her gaze, which this time was particularly glued to the flurry outside, and went into her gaming room. It was a small, bare room, the walls of which were adorned with a network of wires.

“Ocean. With air,” Myrie said, putting on her VR glasses and the soft headphones over her ears.

The room disappeared and instead she saw nothing but water. Huge waves, blue sky with a few clouds, the mighty sound of the sea. A wave lifted her off the ground, and she floated in the ocean. She would have had to row with her arms to keep from sinking, but she didn’t want to. She let herself sink slightly below the surface of the water. The current stroked her skin pleasantly coolly. She turned so that she headed nearly downwards and slowly swam, accelerating. It became darker and quieter. And the display of how much air she had available showed less and less. She could hardly remember having it turned on. She must have deactivated it much earlier, but a faded memory of something that happened when it was empty motivated her to reactivate it this time.

The display of remaining air flashed before it ran out, and that stressed her. She wanted it anyway and when the display was finally empty, she could no longer swim forward by herself. Her torso was fixed, only her limbs and head could move freely. It was quite a pleasant posture, Myrie thought. The respawn button appeared at an easily reachable distance, announcing itself with an electronic voice that said “Respawn”. A small text appeared underneath, which was also read aloud:

“Please don’t try this in reality. For more information, click here or say ‘Further information.’”

She remembered hearing this text many times before, but she had, until now, never asked for more information. To be honest, she couldn’t remember when she’d first seen it, or even her first time diving in the ocean. The ocean was her favorite virtuality when she wanted to be alone. She usually dived so deep until it was oppressively quiet, and she felt the weight of the water on her, isolated fluorescent beings floating around her quietly, and fascinatingly beautiful.

“Further information,” Myrie said.

A longer text appeared on a transparent, dark background, so it had good contrast and she could still see the water behind it, even if there wasn’t much to see there. And as always, the text was read to her at the same time. Myrie couldn’t read that well yet. “Diving in reality: There are bodies of water in reality, too. Lakes, rivers, seas and even oceans. In contrast to virtualities, however, it is necessary to hold your breath underwater so that no water enters the respiratory system. Do you want to test how long you can hold your breath?”

The reading paused so Myrie could answer.

“Yes,” said Myrie.

“Take a deep breath, hold your breath and put your finger under your nose,” said the electronic voice.

Myrie exhaled deeply, then inhaled, holding her breath and her gloved finger under her nose. She counted quietly in her head and was grateful that the text was not read aloud any further while she was busy concentrating. When she got to 74, it started to feel uncomfortable and at 79 she exhaled.

“83 seconds¹,” the voice said, pausing for a moment before continuing with the text.

“The air bar in the ocean virtuality lasts 100 seconds. Let’s say you dive longer than you can hold your breath, then you’d have to breathe in water. The water would enter the lungs through the respiratory tract and can lead to death without respawn. For diving in reality, therefore, a lot of practice of air control is necessary. It is therefore not advisable to swim or dive in reality, or to learn it very carefully and under precise guidance. If you want to learn to swim in reality, it is advisable to take part in a course supervised by an experienced person or, if you are a little older, to be taught by an Educational AI. Would you like to hear a summary of other issues with diving and swimming in reality, learn more about them, be informed about death without respawn, or leave the menu?”

“First, a summary of other issues with diving in the real world, and then death without respawn,” Myrie said. She observed her own voice as insecure.

“Your pulse is raised. Your choice of topics is unusual. Have you suffered a loss?” asked another, new voice as a new page of text appeared. The new voice sounded less electronic than the first, almost familiar. She sounded feminine and warm to Myrie’s ears and although they didn’t seem like hers the tiniest bit, they reminded Myrie of Gramma Lorna somehow. Myrie didn’t like any of that. She didn’t like the fact that there was a voice that seemed to take care of Myrie. A voice in a world where Myrie would retreat when she wanted to be alone. The electronic voice that read text aloud was characterless and purely informative. That was fine. But a voice that asked personal questions, that was not okay at all.

“Go away,” Myrie said harshly. The voice didn’t say anything anymore, and Myrie hoped that meant they was gone. The other voice had started reading the text and Myrie hadn’t been paying attention because she was so agitated. Therefore, she restarted the reading:

“Other dangers of diving in reality in areas close to civilization are mainly given by the real temperatures. Due to a protective function, the water temperature in virtualities like here can never get colder than 8°C. Also, the temperature in virtualities is increased if you freeze too long. Neither is given in reality. Bodies of water maintain their temperature even if the person bathing in them begins to freeze and the temperature of water is limited only by the freezing point at 0°C, at which temperature water becomes ice, depending on the salt content.”

Myrie actually already knew that, because she had held her feet in the Glukka from time to time and sometimes broke through the ice cover to do so.

“The Glukka in Byrglingen has a temperature of 4°C at the moment. Prolonged bathing in the Glukka without prior training would lead to hypothermia and severe pain, and can lead to long-term or irreparable damage to the real body, as well as death without respawn in extreme cases.”

“You can train that?” Myrie asked herself in surprise.

“I could adapt such training to your needs and put it together for you,” the strange voice from earlier said again.

Myrie squinted her eyebrows angrily. “Why are you still here?” she asked.

“Because you asked a question. I am your Educational AI. Your stage of development suggests that you are now at an age where you can start learning.”

Myrie had indeed heard of Educational AIs from her siblings. They were responsible for education and were specially designed to meet the needs of the learners. Some children had only one, some several. Some Educational AIs taught several children at once. Most children attended a learning community from the age at which it was assumed to fit their needs. Then they learned together with other children who learned best in a similar way. Myrie had been afraid of this for a long time, because whenever she had met other children in virtualities, she had felt uncomfortable. But her dad had reassured her by saying that if she couldn’t study well with others, she wouldn’t have to. He told her about her mother, who had only had one-on-one tuition until she was 12 years old. Then she had tried group lessons for half a year, but had broken it off again. And yet she has become a very educated, wise woman and nothing about it is reprehensible.

Her dad liked to narrate about Heddra. Myrie had never met her mother in person, and yet she had a clear idea of her character and liked to hear her dad talk about her.

She had sometimes wondered if she would get one or more Educational AIs, and if she would be able to get on well with it. Sometimes she had even almost looked forward to it. But now she definitely knew this was not the right time to get in contact with a new AI. It was not without reason that she had withdrawn into the ocean virtuality.

“Go away,” she said once more, and to the other voice, “Again, starting with ‘without prior training,’ please,” because she hadn’t listened again.

“Another issue with diving in reality is a lack of displays and influence. The remaining air is not displayed and a spontaneous change of location by teleporting or accelerated swimming is not possible. Even if you are tired, the watersides can only be reached by active swimming. Similar to how going home from places like arcades, restaurants, or cafes can only be achieved through active walking. Currents can also be dangerous. The current of the Glukka in Byrglingen is harmless, but where the watercourse becomes wider and deeper due to inlet, the current has such enormous forces that you cannot swim against it. This means that you can’t return to the surface of the water and cannot breathe.”

That wasn’t quite true, Myrie thought. When they had been to Bwalin’s bar from time to time, and she had been very tired afterwards, her dad had carried her. Myrie was a bit disappointed by the inaccuracy of the text.

»In waters outside civilized areas, there is also the fact that dangerous animals can swim in it. For example, on uninhabited coasts in the sea, there are stinglings, which hide in algae. They have a pointed sting on their backs. If it comes into contact with a person, they shoot a poison into their body, similar to mosquitoes. The venom of the stingling is a strong neurotoxin that leads to very high body temperature, nausea and vomiting and requires medical treatment. If left untreated, such a sting can lead to death without respawn in infants and the elderly, or living beings with weak immune systems.

Would you like to have more detailed information about the risks of diving, about death without respawn, or leave the menu?«

“I already said that: Death without respawn,” Myrie answered. The text was updated.

“Death without respawn: Death without respawn is the term used to describe death in reality. The name makes it clear that there is no respawn. If something leads to death in reality, it means that all bodily functions come to a standstill for the affected person, including those of the brain. The affected person is no longer able to move or think about something, including the ability to imagine or feel something. The body loses all its functions. This process cannot be undone in the event of death without respawn. Whether there is anything that the person can still experience without their body and brain is unknown.”

Myrie got a little dizzy trying to imagine not being able to imagine anything anymore. She also failed miserably. Less miserably, she failed at the idea that someone else could be in that place. Now then, Gramma Lorna lost the ability to think. It might seem strange, but she probably didn’t miss it either, because missing was a way of thinking. Gramma Lorna didn’t know that she might be missing something, because in order to perceive that she was missing something, she would have to be able to think. But Myrie would never be able to talk to Gramma Lorna again. She would never hear Gramma Lorna’s voice again because Gramma Lorna wouldn’t be able to use it. It was a bodily function. And Myrie did like that voice. This familiar voice. Gramma Lorna had loved knitting and it had been so nice to just watch her for hours and lie on her stomach and hear how she talked to her dad and how her belly gurgled. Warm.

Tears came up in Myrie’s eyes. That rarely happened. Her throat tightened and something inside it seemed swollen. It was like a forced breath-holding. Almost. She could breathe but it was hard. It hurt. And it was frightening and somehow beautiful at the same time. It felt real.

“Do you want to know why snowflakes are so neatly symmetrical?” the new voice asked.

That, on top of all this, made her angry, but only for a short moment. She had had enough anyway and wanted to get out. She took off her headphones and VR glasses and the ocean disappeared.

Myrie ran out into the snow. Without shoes. Inside, she was always barefoot. She liked to feel the wooden floorboards under her feet, and her feet were almost never cold inside. She had thick, leathery, pale gray-olive green skin. But she felt the cold of the snow through the soles of her feet. She ran to the stream. The small stones on the path pricked slightly into her feet. It hurt a little and with every stone she felt, she felt a little more controlled. That was good. She ran along the Garden Path to the main road, which only deserved the name Main Street because it was the largest street in the village. All the streets in the village were made of firm, gray sand, interspersed with pebbles of different sizes. The Main Street was just a little wider.

Myrie ran to the bridge her father had built and climbed down the narrow slope to the Glukka. The Glukka was a stream or river that was perhaps three meters wide and just as deep. Myrie took off her outer clothes and threw them into the snow. After a short consideration, she also took off her EM suit, – a tight-fitting, thin overall, even with fingers, almost like a second skin, which was considered for experiencing virtualities.

Now stark naked, she held fast onto one of the wooden pillars of the bridge, and put her feet in the water. One after the other. It was icy cold, very pleasant at first, then it hurt. And in a way, that was pleasant too. Also it got her out of all the doleful thoughts about Gramma Lorna, or about her dad’s troubled face. Her focus was completely on the cold, the stinging sensation and the feeling of being stimulated. As well as on the beautifully glittering, flowing surface of the water, on the snowflakes that sparkled around her, and then again on the feeling in her feet. At first she felt the fine currents of the water, but slowly the feeling faded. She quickly dipped her body up to her waist into the stream and then lay down in the snow on the bank. Maybe her dad would be looking for her soon. Usually he let the children run around outside as they wanted. He had explained to them a few times what to look out for, such as that they shouldn’t jump into the Glukka, and as soon as he could count on them not to do such things, they were allowed to go wherever they wanted. Nothing happened to children in the village. Myrie’s older brothers, the twins, had often gone out to play with other children of the village. Ahna, the eldest sibling, had liked to go for walks with Myrie, for example to Gramma Lorna, who lived on the outskirts of the village. Had lived. Myrie’s eyes began to swim again. This time, however, she didn’t know exactly whether it was really about Gramma Lorna or caused by the cold.

Myrie’s dad somehow had a sense of when something did happen. Once, Myrie had stumbled on her way home from Gramma Lorna and hit her knee. It had bled terribly and Ahna couldn’t carry her because Myrie was too heavy. And it hadn’t been a minute before Myrie’s dad came running and comforted Myrie and carried her home and took care of her. Or rather, they had her cared for by one of the local medical robots.

Another time, Myrie had wanted to play with her brothers and their friends. But the other kids had made fun of the fact that she didn’t have a beard and how long it took her to learn the game they were playing. Then they had left Myrie crying and her dad had miraculously been there again and comforted her. He had scolded the twins, and taken Myrie to Gramma Lorna, who had told her tales. Gramma Lorna with her wondrous fairy teller voice. And her specific scent Myrie would smell nowhere else. Myrie found it neither good nore bad, but it was Gramma Lorna’ and she probably wouldn’t smell it often no more. Maybe it would remain in her belongings for some time, but smells would fade. She would most likely be unable to recall it soon. The memory would fade like the smell.

When Myrie had asked Gramma Lorna if it was really so bad not to have a beard, Gramma Lorna had shaved off her beard. Thus, Myrie was no longer the only beardless person in the village. And her dad had also said that he would shave off his beard to show that it wouldn’t be a bad thing not to have a beard, but Myrie didn’t want that. Some changes would take away a sense of habit and thus a stability she needed. And this was no exception².

Gramma Lorna however shaved every day henceforth. Some of the villagers tattled about it, but that didn’t bother her in the least. She insisted that they had no idea. This is only an ideal of beauty, which comes from the fact that they didn’t know it any other way, but once you had looked into a beardless face for some time, and overcome the first surprise and reservations, then a beardless face would be just as pretty or beautiful as any other.

Although the cold was now eating through Myrie’s whole body and she was shivering uncontrollably, she couldn’t help but imagine her grandmother’s wrinkled face. And she had been right. Myrie had found it quite unusual to see her face beardless. At first. She had rarely seen a mouth. And her grandmother had all kinds of moles on her face, a large round one on the right side of her chin, for example. Her face was soft and a little grayer than her dad’s, and you could clearly see the pores. And when Myrie had gotten used to it, it had always seemed really pretty to her.

Myrie not only shivered still but burst into sobs and when it happened so, she raised her upper body from the ground. Tears ran into her mouth. She considered running away for good. Climbing into the mountains. Her mother had often done that, her dad had told her. But he had also forbidden her to do so because it was so dangerous. But Myrie didn’t care about danger right now. She didn’t mind. Maybe she would even meet her mother in the mountains. Maybe her mother didn’t have a beard.

A snowflake touched Myrie’s leg and didn’t melt. It touched the bare olive green-gray skin of her thighs. No one else here had a skin color like hers.

A snowflake had never settled on her – they had always melted immediately because her skin was so warm. She seemed to be cold enough now to get snowed up. Myrie looked at the snowflake closely. It was made up of six tiny wedge-like tiles, all of which had the same pattern. Not quite the same, a part was missing. But she was able to fill in exactly in her head what was missing. Why did snowflakes have such a symmetrical pattern? It wasn’t the first time Myrie noticed this, but it was the first time this question had formed so clearly in her mind. No wonder, this AI had asked that earlier. Myrie defiantly wanted to stop asking herself this question. But she was not able to push the thoughts away. She had often asked Gramma Lorna such questions when they came up, and Gramma Lorna had answered them all. More or less detailed, perhaps, but all of them.

Myrie sat stubbornly for a moment, then she picked herself up, grabbed her clothes and walked home naked through the village.

Her dad was waiting in the doorway just about to leave to look for her. He didn’t ask or say anything, took her in his arms and his incredible body warmth slowly flowed through her. He didn’t even say that she should never do anything like that again. He took her to the bathroom, where he put her under the warm shower. Although he got soaking wet along with his clothes, he stayed with her until she was warmed up. Then, when she was cozy, he wrapped her in a huge towel and put her to bed. It was only early afternoon. He stayed with her and stroked her hair until Ahna called him. Ahna seemed to be crying too, Myrie could hear that in her voice. That might have been the reason why her dad might not have come so quickly. All of a suddon she felt terribly sorry for him. Actually it was his mother who had died, and his children needed so much attention from him. And no one comforted him.

Myrie jumped up and hugged him. “If you’re sad, I want to comfort you too,” she said.

“You comfort me by the fact that you exist and I love you so, so much,” he hummed and smiled. Myrie saw that his eyes were filled with tears too, before he stroked her one thin strand on her head and walked on to Ahna. His face had taken on a strange expression between blissful happiness and abysmal sadness.

Myrie took her VR glasses from her gaming room, lay down in her fluffy bed and put them on. “Beach,” she said.

Due to the lack of an EM suit and EM field, she still felt her soft bed around her, but she saw sand and sea, waves rushed onto the beach, but did not reach the place where she lay. A number of seagulls flew in the sky, but so high that they could only be heard softly.

“Why do snowflakes have this symmetry?” Myrie asked.

“That’s not an easy question to answer,” said the voice from earlier.

“But you asked earlier if I wanted to know,” Myrie complained.

“I thought it might interest you. I think I can tell you bit by bit why that is.”

“I have time, I guess,” Myrie determined.

“Snowflakes consist of a solid form of water, which you also know by the term ice. Water is made up of very small particles. You might start by imagining puzzle pieces. However, first imanine these to be not permanently connected to each other and layered on top of each other. When you swim, you squeeze yourself between the pieces of the puzzle, so to speak. When it gets cold, the puzzle pieces sort themselves. They can only be composed in certain ways. These puzzle pieces are shaped in such a way that, under the right conditions, this six-fold symmetry occurs when they are put together.”

The voice was patient and calm when explaining. They paused in the right places, and now, after this short section, they stopped speaking altogether so that Myrie had enough time to think and imagine puzzle pieces. After a while, Myrie began to paint puzzle pieces in the air. She first painted a hexagon and to her surprise, her finger left a trail while painting in the air. Next, she changed the edges of the hexagon so that at one point a nibsy looked outwards, and all other sides had a socket into which such a nibsy fitted.

“Can I have a lot of them?” she asked.

“Of course,” the voice said, copying her puzzle piece so that Myrie had a pile lying next to her first one. She hooked them into each other, which did not succeed immediately because she had drawn too loose. She drew the lines a little smoother until it fitted, and she enjoyed it. There was something deeply relaxing about it. And when she had reached the point where the pieces were pretty neat hexagonal puzzle pieces that fit perfectly into each other, she built snowflakes from it.

She continued all evening until she got tired. Then she got up again to have dinner with her dad and with Ahna. The twins were already asleep. Ahna’s face was tear-stained, her beard was all wet. Her father seemed tired and still very sad. Myrie hugged them both. After dinner, Ahna asked if Myrie wanted to sleep in her bed next to her and Myrie did so.

First they lay awake for a long time, then they slept a little. But they both woke up at dawn thinking of Gramma Lorna. Cuddling, they talked for hours about what they would miss, – or remained silent and held each other as tight as they could.

It took Myrie quite a while until she didn’t have to think about Gramma Lorna constantly. It also took her dad quite a while to walk upright again and smile with his heart in it. After a few days, he had started carpentry again and was constantly busy sawing, turning, sanding or carving. Myrie was used to it, but not that he did it almost continuously and often late into the night. A new chest of drawers for the neighbor made of light recycled wood and a large, long, dark tabletop for Bwalin’s bar with many fine carved patterns were the result of Vadime’s work. The latter, a masterpiece – the best her dad had managed to do since the bridge. And the bridge was older than Myrie herself.

As always, he did nothing about their dining table. Almost once a month, whenever he picked up a grinder, he said:

“I finally must grind the legs of that table into shape.”

But he either didn’t feel like it, or always found another person’s woodwork wish much more important and exciting.

And so the table kept wobbling and their wall clock stayed slightöy asymmetrical and the spot where one of the twins Minke had once knicked the kitchen shelf when he had abducted the axe for fun and thrown it against it had still not been repaired. Myrie’s dad had not been angry about the damage at the time, but he had been very relieved that no one got hurt.

Whenever Myrie had to think of Gramma Lorna, whenever it got too bad, she first ran barefoot through the snow, maybe bathing her feet or legs and then asked her Educational AI, the one question that was answered slightly more elaborated each time:

“Why do snowflakes have this symmetry?”

“It appears to me, this question has become something of a mantra for you,” the Educational AI said one day when she did it again.

“What is a mantra?” Myrie asked, dipping her feet in warm water in a virtuality to warm them up again.

She liked these extreme temperatures, but she didn’t go so far as to shiver so uncontrollably. She kept it at a scale that her Educational AI considered healthy. And Myrie had confidence that this Educational AI wasn’t too overly cautious, like some of those explanatory texts she had heard before, but made good assessments.

“A mantra is a kind of prayer, a thought, a motto or something that you say over and over again that helps you focus on something that is good for you,” the AI replied.

Myrie didn’t just learn about snowflakes from her AI. She learned to read and spell better, she also learned arithmetic, of course, and various simple things about history and technology. Often, when she asked about snowflakes, it wasn’t about snowflakes at all what she learned, but it was the lead story on to another topic. For example, after explaining the term mantra, the AI went on to explain what role mantras and prayers played in different religions, recited some known mantras and prayers and what they meant, and gave a lesson on religions. And like her grandma Lorna, the Educational AI answered every single one of Myrie’s questions, just as detailed as Myrie wanted them to.

Myrie enjoyed learning a lot. She was slow and thorough. And above all, she learned a lot about nature and their dangers. She did strength exercises, learned about the animal species in the area, and that they were mostly shy and harmless near Byrglingen, and learned how to lie in wait near the village and watch them. She learned a lot about her own body and she learned to climb trees. Actually, she learned it all by herself, but was still informed beforehand about what could happen to her.

When she was six, she got some kind of sweatband that allowed her to take her Educational AI with her and listen to their lessons with headphones far afield. She made more and more excursions away from the village and hiked steep paths into the mountains.

On a sunny, warm late spring evening, she sat on a branch of a lime tree on a hill and looked down into the village. From here she could see the bridge over behind the houses and heard nothing but the faint sound of the anvil. Birds were chirping and she smelled the scent of lime trees. There weren’t that many lime trees in the area, because it was actually a coniferous forest area. But her father had planted some fast-growing trees here so that he could use wood from time to time that was not the recycled wood. It smelled different.

“Do you happen to have a name?” Myrie asked her Educational AI for the first time.

“You can choose one if you like,” they answered.

Myrie mused for quite a while, looking at the grass between the stones on the rocky ground, moving in the light, warm wind. Myrie could look at these fine movements for hours.

“Gramantra,” she said eventually.