Transmissions field in the style of Abstract Expressionism, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Chapter 46: Lovers are strangers

  Planet Jord, Confluence dimension

  Year 42 of the Confluence Republic (local time)

  Developments were moving fast in Confluence society. As people merged their Transmissions circles, large-scale groups started forming, and then those groups began to merge as well. Confluence citizens were getting used to share their mental and feeling spaces with more and more people. It seemed obvious that the Confluence was headed for uncharted territory.

  Many people tried to describe the emerging state of communal interconnectivity, but you really had to experience it to know what it was like. As the Transmissions circles grew wider, the experience of sharing mental and feeling spaces changed. Sharing a space with a few close friends was noisy, and when more people joined the noise turned into a cacophony of thoughts and emotions. At some point, however, the many voices turned into something like the sound of a waterfall or the wind, a thought- and feeling-equivalent to soothing pink noise. Some described it as swimming in a sea of mental and emotional currents, and for reasons no one quite understood, similar thoughts and feelings tended to merge together into something like collective streams. Some called them thoughtforms.

  When the two largest Transmissions circles in the Mikla area decided to merge together, there was no individual leader or a group of such leaders who made the decision. Instead, the decision seemed to make itself. As many individuals started thinking and feeling that maybe it would be good for the two circles to merge, the notion rose to the forefront of the collective space and thus made itself known to more and more people, thereby gaining further support as new people found themselves agreeing with it. The wave also produced a number of counter-waves, and then the respective thought- and feeling-level arguments proceeded to mesh into one another until the differences were straightened out and various equilibria and consensuses were obtained.

  This whole dance seemed to happen by itself, without anyone directing it, perhaps as some kind of epiphenomenon. In the end, both the two large Mikla circles reached the conclusion that merging would be beneficial, and then they opened up for each other and blended into one another like two great rivers turning into one. No one could say exactly how the conclusion had been reached or by whom; the issue simply sorted itself out.

  In this fashion, the Confluence Transmissions circles kept growing, and it seemed clear that some sort of singularity was approaching. Even the most recalcitrant individualists and privacy-conscious citizens joined a Transmissions circle and found themselves swallowed up by the surging waves. Old-time loners who had opted out of the global networks during the early years of the Republic and spent their time living alone in the wilderness without any social contact found themselves invited into something they could not and did not want to resist. Many jokes referencing the old fairy tale about the Borg floated around.

  People spent all their time being plugged into the Transmissions collective because no one wanted to go back to what they were before. Nevertheless, various Transmissions circles regularly ended up deciding that some people should plug out for a while just so they could see what it was like and report back to the others. Some people spent a day or two away from their group before returning; while they could not quite explain why, they always wanted to go back. That Confluence society could change so dramatically in such a short period of time seemed almost scary to some, although in a way that might be best described as appreciative, like an ancient-era warlord being almost intimidated by the might of his own army. In any case, the race to a unified Transmissions state continued unabated.

  Nobody was in control. The process directed itself and moved forward on its own timetable, approaching the singularity like an ocean liner caught in a giant maelstrom or, perhaps more precisely, a spaceship inside the event horizon of a black hole. There was no getting off and nobody wanted to. There was no going back. It was beautiful and perhaps horrendous, but deliciously so. Nothing would ever be the same again.

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  Some people already had long-established Transmissions fields with their familiars and brought them into the collective. They liked it too, although not quite as enthusiastically as their humans. The idea of inviting all living creatures on the planet into the Transmissions collective never gained traction, however.

  When Isengar and Nurgle returned to the Confluence with Soth, nobody had the energy to care about Soth’s crimes. He had murdered Jonathan Harker to steal his body, which was obviously bad and punishable, but it seemed long ago and not really relevant to what was happening here and now. Also, Harker had abandoned the Confluence security arrangement by isolating himself from his global network, which now seemed like an utterly bizarre and perverted – in the bad sense of the word – thing to do. Isengar and Nurgle, already fairly experienced with all-in Transmissions states, quickly joined the collective. Soth remained a holdout, left to wander the world on his own, protected by very many defensive layers that nobody challenged or cared about.

  The Special Circumstances section also remained outside the collective for the time being. Their agents were in Diankoran and arguably had enough on their hands, and the board thought they would wait until things were wrapped up. There was no hurry.

  Transmissions field in the style of Férnand Khnoppf, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Gaganendranath Tagore, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Hieronymus Bosch, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Ju Chao, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Mikalojus Konstantinas ?iurlionis, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Pop Art, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Psychedelic Art, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Ren Xun, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of Utagawa Hiroshige, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Transmissions field in the style of William Blake, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.