I quickly let go of her hand and slid away, but it was already too late. The idea was starting to shift as it stirred in its slumber. Pieces were moving, and something was being pushed in our direction.

  Glancing around, I noticed the occasional movement in the underbrush had stopped. The field had completely stilled.

  Aurin asked me something, but I wasn't paying enough attention to understand what she said.

  I tried to spot whatever it was doing, and eventually saw, far off in the distance but rapidly approaching was a white, blurry entity. The entity's mind was like a constantly changing song. One moment, it was triumphant piano music; the next, it was like someone trying to play power metal on a mandolin.

  “Something's coming!” I said, my hand going to the gun holstered on my hip. The idea didn't like that movement, so I froze mid-grasp for the weapon.

  I was a little bummed out by that fact. I really wanted to try shooting someone with it. Get a feel for what bloodthirsty bullets could do to a man. Though I'd probably be disappointed anyway, since I was pretty sure that wasn't a person.

  “What?” Makesi asked, turning to Aisling, who had spotted the thing moving towards us an instant after I spoke. “Don't engage; we don't know the laws affecting the overlap yet.

  “The place really didn't like handholding, apparently. It also wasn't a fan of me going for my gun,” I said.

  Makesi gave me an odd look, “Chastity and non-violence. It could be worse. Approaching thoughtform is not likely to be hostile unless provoked.”

  I was about to try to explain that it couldn't be chastity because I didn't have any lascivious intent. But glancing at Aurin, I realized that it wasn't me, and that chastity was probably a good guess.

  This gave me just enough time to sigh before the white blur arrived. Resolving into the shape of a fox with the moment it did. The fox was taller than me, and I found that notion slightly offensive.

  The orchids around it bowed before its presence.

  It circled us, its pure white eyes locked onto a point directly between Aurin and me, staring at something that even I couldn't see. The music that made up its mind rapidly switched between songs in a jumble of notes and instruments.

  “So, what now? Just continue, but no lewd thoughts allowed?” I asked, turning to Aurin, who had seemingly become fascinated by the shape of a cloud and refused to look my way.

  “No lewd thoughts allowed,” the fox spoke in a monotone woman's voice devoid of emotion. It sounded like it was poorly machine-generated. Aisling jumped several feet in the air in surprise at the sound of it. Hovering back down like she was a feather floating in the breeze.

  “Sorry,” Aurin muttered under her breath, still not looking at me.

  “You didn't know there would be a problem. I shouldn't have engaged, given that I at least have a little bit of an idea of what's going on,” I whispered to her.

  “It's probably a rulekeeper, right? So we can continue. Just don't break any rules,” Vivi said.

  “But what are the rules?” Aisling asked.

  “You were studying local culture, right? Did that include history? The idea is trying to mimic thoughts that have been spilled here. Drawing on those ideas to build itself,” I said.

  Everyone turned to look at me. I felt myself begin to squirm under the attention. There were a lot of bright spotlights pointed at me.

  Except not the fox for some reason, though. It was like the fox couldn't even tell we were here.

  “Where are you getting this information? How do you know it isn't pulling on current regional trends?” Makesi asked.

  I shrugged, “That's what it looks like. I don't know how to explain it. Nothing here is real. It's just information trying to mimic some kind of imagined ideal. Except it isn't a recent ideal, it's an older one, because… well, I don't know why it chose this. I don't think the fox is even sentient.”

  "A Bearer being weird, who would have guessed?" Vivi said as she walked up to it and waved her hand in front of its face. It raised one of its paws and did the same action in return to her. Flapping the paw around before going back to staring at nothing.

  “Alright, we continue. Hopefully it doesn't follow us,” Makesi said before taking off. Aurin and I followed along behind him like ducklings.

  The fox did end up following us. It seemed to have chosen a set distance and just never got any further away despite the fact that it wasn't moving its limbs at all. Staring into the middle distance the whole time.

  Aurin finally looked towards me. I met her eyes and watched as she shivered and tensed her legs. I couldn’t see her expression beneath her mask, but I understood what she probably wanted to say. It was fun to get back at her for breaking my moral scaffolding and causing me anxiety.

  She was probably going to return the favour later when we got back…

  Her reaction also confirmed the idea wasn’t reading our thoughts, at least. It was only our actions that mattered.

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  “Should we maybe chat with the locals before we come in next time?” I asked.

  “None of us speaks Mandarin. Unless you happen to have taken lessons or something,” Vivi replied

  I didn't respond verbally at first. Instead, I snipped a piece off the web that made up her mental concept and consumed it. She flinched but otherwise didn't even seem to notice what I had done.

  The memory I stole was pretty juicy. I was just going for something random there, but man. That was kind of wild, even from what I knew of her. All those poor interdimensional cow equivalents.

  Didn't pick up the name for the species for some reason. I think Vivi had repressed the memory after what happened.

  “That was a pretty wild night you had in Velgrait on your twentieth birthday. I'm sorry it was ruined by—” I started, only to be interrupted by Vivi screeching at the top of her lungs.

  “Shhh, shut up, don't speak of it. It never happened. I get your point, go borrow Mandarin and chat with the rice farmers or whatever,” Vivi interjected. The fox twitched when she said

  “Chat with rice farmers,” the fox said in almost the same voice as before, except its tone softened slightly, becoming less ‘cheap GPS navigation voice’ at the mention of farmers.

  After a far longer walk than I was comfortable with, I was starting to get tired despite everyone else looking as if they could go another fifty miles at this pace. Luckily, there was finally something other than white flowers and mist on the horizon.

  It looked like there was a mountain rising in the distance. I could see that it wasn't one of the massive creatures moving just out of sight because it wasn't moving. Obviously.

  “That's our destination?” Makesi asked.

  “Yes,” Aisling and the fox replied simultaneously, and we were suddenly there. Standing at the foot of what appeared to be a massive stepped temple that rose endlessly into the sky.

  Despite that fact, I could see the top as if we were already standing on it. The perspective oddity made me blink a few times, trying to clear the overlapping images out of my vision.

  “Does this look fucking weird to anyone else?” Vivi asked, “Just looking at it gives me a headache.”

  A round of agreement passed through the group.

  “What now? Do we climb it or something?” Aurin asked.

  “Climb it,” the fox said, its voice starting to actually sound human. Was it learning from us?

  “Well, might as well do as the fox demands,” Makesi said, walking towards the wall. It did look like we could just walk directly to the top of the temple.

  “We're doing this today, not coming back later?” I asked, and it felt like we weren't really prepared for what might be up there. We hardly knew the rules of this place. Be non-violent and be chaste, that was it. “I could gather some information from the locals, see if any of them have entered before and try it again when we're better prepared.”

  Makesi turned to look at me, then back up at the temple, and shrugged. “This was supposed to be an initial exploration to get a feel of the area, but we've been led to a significant location quicker than usual. General guidelines are that when you reach the first milestone in a Class Four overlap, you confront it immediately. If you leave and come back, the overlap has time to integrate your behaviours into the ideoframe, which is usually a bad idea. If there's a bad match-up with your specific team composition, then yes, you should probably leave and come back, just to see if you can roll a better environment as the knowledge of the region shifts.

  “This is as simple as they come, just walk forward up the temple. If there's some kind of task, it will likely be based on virtue, given the rules we've seen. The dimension wants us to go in there. It would be upset if we started to leave, wouldn't it?” he asked, looking at the fox as he did so.

  Turning towards it, the music was rather turbulent at the moment. I wasn’t sure if that turbulence was caused by random chance or if it actually understood what he was saying.

  So I turned around and started walking away. Only to stop immediately when the idea lurched in protest. The fox was suddenly standing very close to me, right at the edge of the barrier that Makesi was creating, blocking my way. It licked its lips for the first time and stared uncomprehendingly at me. The music in its mind was incredibly loud, but since it wasn't audible, I didn’t actually mind.

  It still wasn’t registering my existence, which was odd. Was the idea the one making it move? Would I be able to feel the spotlight of the idea itself if it were paying attention to me, or was the fox looking at my actions, not me, therefore it wasn’t showing up as a spotlight?

  All of this was very conceptual, and given the memories I borrowed from Makesi, there was no standard guide for Class Four overlaps, just suggestions and guidelines. It was kind of a ‘play it by ear’ sort of situation, or so the mission briefing said.

  “And when we pass whatever this temple thing is?” Aurin asked.

  “Then we walk out, our progress is saved, and we can come right back here when we enter next time. Class Fours are both simple and incredibly complex in that way. You never know what you’re going to find, but it always seems to work the same way, like it’s pulling on some kind of universal pattern. Ren, you can go learn Mandarin, and we plan for tomorrow. Maybe look up local mythology about white foxes. The next milestone won’t be so quick to find if it follows the standard pattern,” he replied, turning to look at the fox that was still staring blankly at me.

  “Can’t wait to show you what a Class One looks like,” Vivi offhandedly commented.

  “A sea of dead lying half-eaten in the best of scenarios. In the worst, they’re still alive and in one piece,” Aisling said with a shiver.

  I do kind of want to see that, yeah.

  I wondered why my mind worked like that for just a moment, then turned back to the temple.

  “Onwards and upwards,” Makesi said as he marched forward. He vanished in one part of my vision and reappeared in the other a few feet from the temple. Already standing at the top in the centre of the massive mandala.

  Following alongside him with the rest of the team and Aurin, we all popped from the base to the top. Turning around, I saw the fox was still behind me.

  “What now?” I asked, then the mandala inscribed on the ground flashed, and the space around me started folding together into impossibly complex geometric patterns. Then I realized it wasn’t space collapsing, it was me, my mind folded in on itself, and I was looking inwards directly at me, my mental conceptualization stood bare before me. I saw my own spotlight, then my mind, unable to handle what it was seeing, winked out just as the light in my spotlight popped.

  I dreamed of a fractal pattern expanding endlessly, and for some reason, experienced a constant wave of annoyance. Like I was staring at something that had been overused to the point of meaninglessness. Not by me, but someone else in another world, in another time.

  What felt like an eternity later, I woke up lying on a shitty bed, the memory of the dream vanishing the instant I awoke. I let out a groan and stuffed my face into the pillow.

  “Subject M-436, please report to the lab for testing,” a machine-generated voice crackled over the intercom in my room. The collar on my neck started to beep.

  I am not ashamed to say I had a panic attack.

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