The Legend of Loxley Bottom 8

A new diary entry on hellsborough.com is coming soon:

Also known as "The Gabbleratchets of Sophie Hinchcliffe", this is a work in progress based on research that I have undertaken into the recent modern age of the history of Hellsborough under the rule of the nascenti. A local girl and simple shop worker, Sophie Hinchcliffe, who -- inexplicably -- becomes the first CEO of the DPDC -- that is the first Chief Executive Officer (the original boss, if you will) of the Dark Peak District Council, the local government that administers Hellsborough and The Dark Peak for the nascenti overlords.

Sophie is a major character in the forthcoming sequel to "Dark Peak -- Hellsborough Chronicles book one", so it is only right that I do the research to uncover her backstory, most of which I have gleaned from the local library in Hellsborough -- an awesome resource for research, because, as you would expect, those nascenti overlords want the populace here and hereabouts to understand the importance of local characters that have helped to define their rule.

It will be serialised here, as well on on Twitter/X in short form.

Read Chapter one, Chapter two, Chapter three, Chapter four, Chapter five, Chapter six and Chapter seven.

Chapter eight: Remade.

The physical work was done. Anatomically, Sophie was complete -- better internally, but externally whole -- a fully functioning human body.

Now, the nascenti scientists started in earnest on what they knew could be a more demanding task -- that of cerebral work, of filling Sophie's brain with the knowledge that would allow her to become the powerful new creature that they knew she could be.

It was constant, gruelling, grinding, back-aching, hard work, and again, the scientists' masters, the vegahorn had set stringent deadlines of what they considered to be positive and necessary progress.

The nascenti scientists turned to their old "friend" the fungal network in their quest to inject the required longing and curiosity that Sophie would need to jump start her learning.

Plugging her brain into the fungal network was a trivial affair -- the fungal networks' mycelium was allowed to mesh with her neurons and infiltrate he brain, filling her with knowledge of the environment via the fungai's connections to its organic network -- its eyes and ears, that saw and heard, its fingers and tongues that touched and tasted and smelt the environment without: The colours of the sun and moon through the murk, the sounds of the wisewood and the Damflask, the feel of the fishes and the grubs and the flits, the growl of the grizzler, the howl of the ripperthroat: The beauty of all of Dunlockslyn.

Sophie absorbed deep knowledge of the forest floor and the contents of the murk, she was at one with the nature of The Dark Peak -- an inginous warrior able to melt into her surroundings like a backflit melts into the gloaming, like a syncarid or the dun bog beast melts into the murk. 

The fungal network guided Sophie's learning, atuning her to her environment, filling her, flooding her with electric impulses of the world.

The next step was exposing her to the hivemind. This, the nascenti scientists expected to be the hardest and most dangeous task they had undertaken since they had synthesised life out of her passive DNA many days before, and the vegahorn watched on with interest about how this stage of the process would pan out.

Too much exposure to the hivemind is well known to induce fear and repulsion. This the scientists feared more than anything else, and secretly the vegahorn knew this was the riskiest part of Sophie's journey to date. It was feared that all the hard work thus far acheived could be for nothing if Sophie's immature brain simply went into overload and spasm -- she would likely be rendered nothing more than a shell, a fully functioning body, a barely functioning brain -- and in fact, the scientists and the vegahorn had been to this point before, with another subject, many decades past, when they had last tried this procedure:

In similar circumstances, a young boy -- about Sophie's age, history doesn't remember his name -- had been resurrected with nascenti blood in his veins (admitedly, it wasn't B'enderclaw's, but the DNA of an exacid -- the exacid are the the genetically engineered enforcers for the nascenti, originally bred from their own selves, but the principle was essentially the same). The boy was exposed to the organic network with no ill effects. His body was strong, he was fit and his organs operated perfectly. It was only when the fungal network jacked into the hivemind that the boy began to contort and convulse, his neurons exposed to supercharged frequencies that fried his brain from the inside and rendered him nought more than a hulse of flesh and bone. Just dead staring eyes. A useless cadaver, much as Sophie had wandered through the wisewood after the onslaught of the gabbleratchets.

The scientists and the vegahorn remembered that last experiement well, and they knew that the answer to the conundrum was likely redily available -- The missing element then, was rockcrust. Rockcrust, synthesised from a type of lichen only found in The Dark Peak and capable of opening the mind to the wonders of scerm and the glory of Dunlockslyn. Known also for its healing capacity, rockcrust, whilst being a substance that can be used, and often is used to "get out of ones skull", it can also act as a tranquiliser and a calmative substance when the mind is faced with the social onslaught of the hindmind -- with its rich colours, loud techno sounds and in your face advertising.

And so, Sophie was aclimatised to the hivemind by first pumping her body with as much rockcrust as was necessary for her to be calm, whilst the hivemind was introduced steadily via first her mouth, then eyes, and then later via her ears and other senses.

Sophie reacted well. Or, she didn't react at all, depending on which accounts you read -- but the important thing is, she didn't start to react against the incoming data from the hivemind, she just absorbed it.

I have a couple of experiences of my own that back up Sophie's experience:

Diary entry: 79.hail-ripperthroat.4.2

"And then my eyes were open again and I breathed, fitfully at first, then deeply, from the psycmask (as I now know it) that covered my face, purifying my air supply, and filling my thoughts and brain with strange images and sounds that made me feel like I had been transported through some new portal and to a world more alien that I could ever expect to experience.

I passed out again from the sensory overload.

When I next awoke, the psycmask's sensitivity must have been reduced, since the sounds and pictures that now flooded into my mind had a calming effect. Rivers and hills, trees, flowers, birds and creatures of the forest -- familiar sights to someone not unused to doing a bit of exploring of my locale."

Chronicles book one, chapter 10 

"Hah what happened there then? It stopped. Thing is, I didn't say anything, I did that with my mind... I willed it to stop, and it did -- maybe I'm somehow tuning into this hivemind thing. How is that possible? Is it the rockcrust maybe? Ah-ha, maybe this is what Van meant when he said I needed to find a way to stop them targeting me, a way to put it off the scent.

Job done then Van, no more distractions. He nodded knowingly and winked. Told you fella, he said without moving his lips, like he'd filled my consciousness with his other-worldly-worldliness: Told yer it'd make yer go blind otherwise young'en.

I'm not blind -- I grok Van! I howled like a ripperthoat, like a murker."

Yes, according to my research, Sophie reacted better than I did!

Sophie was almost ready. The nascenti scientists had succedded. They had built her anew. They had grown her body from mere cells, from her structural DNA, and that of the great B'enderclaw. They had grown her (their) fledling mind and nourished her (them) on the organic network. They had been matured with the hivemind. Now all that remained was to provide education on a wide range of subjects and disciplines, and fulfill the endless curiosity of a mind unleashed. Give her ideas and an endless quest for further knowledge.

The starting point is always this: Everything in life is connected. It's all about understanding and finding the connections. And so they took more from the fungai, used its knowledge of humankind to fill her with important human literature and political thought, economics and business, carefully tempered history of her species, and theirs, and the wonder of inventions from antiquity, through modernity and into the future of space and time and parallel worlds, of dark matter, of unheard of advances in material science, of fashion and the future of science at the boundaries of the unknown.

And finally Sophie was ready. They clad her in what looked like a smart business suit, which it was, but it was also an exoskeleton that performed in a similar way to the nascenti's own armour -- a carapace to protect her on her journey forwards.

It was fearsome night, long before murklight. The murk swirled with an anger.

They sent her back into the murk in the direction of Hellsborough.

In other news, Hellsborough Chronicles book one “Dark Peak” is now available on Kindle and paperback.

I am also tweeting on a daily basis, and you can follow me here.

If you can leave a review of Dark Peak on Amazon, I'd be more than grateful.

Cheers, until next time,

Pip :)