Welcome to the Ringnet

Part One: Odin and Friia

And so they had a child, and it died.

Her lips were red like fire, but not from lipstick— they burned internally, combusting with a crimson flame that warmed the skin. Her face was pale as ice on a frozen lake and blemished only by freckles that dotted the sharp bridge of her nose. Her eyes were dark brown wells that brimmed up and spilled forth, blurring the sharp definition of her face and tickling the glinting, wavy black obsidian that was her hair.

And he was like Odin, the god. His beard, white as snow, was chopped to perfection, not a hair out of place; his beard climbed up his face in perfect symmetry, twin Greek pillars built to hold up the Parthenon. That Parthenon was a mop of slicked back, ice-white hair; and his eyes were the storm, his brow thunderclouds.

Wordlessly, he picked up what should have been a throbbing, breathing, crying baby. She cried out and tried to clutch it to her chest, but he raised one thick, meaty hand in the universal STOP position: and that crimson lip trembled then stopped. She knew exactly what that STOP meant.

When Odin Mackenzie stopped you, you felt it. Somewhere in those deep, direct eyes, you knew he'd seen a million worlds, and each of them had crumbled to dust that peppered his unblinking eyes. When Odin stopped you, you knew it was for a good reason— and that any attempt to stop him would be very bad. And probably very bad for all of your family and loved ones.

"Don't cry," he grumbled, and his voice was the thunder that blasted through the sky and echoed through the room. She swallowed hard, and under the pressure of that gaze, she couldn't speak. But she wanted to say, How can't I cry? and the air got stuck in her throat.

Odin lumbered over to the workbench and dropped the load unceremoniously on the table. It began to ooze. Meanwhile, he picked up a small, golden hoop, cracked it open, and picked up the baby with one fist.

What followed could only be described as a sickening crunching, an oozing, and a dripping. When it was done, the DNA of the baby was captured in the ring; it glowed a faint blue before that, too, faded.

The man dropped the biological remnants in a plastic bag. He lumbered around back, slung it with a slosh into the dumpster, and squinted at the smarmy brown sky. Then he sighed and walked back inside.

The woman stared at him like a trapped rat as he got on his knees and held his hands before her, palms pressed together. When he opened them like a clamshell spewing out breath, the pearl was a ring.

She stared at him accusingly. "Where is our baby?" she dared in a thin whisper.

"Put it on," he said patiently, but firmly.

And she did. As she gasped, out of the ring swirled a small hologram of a fetus. She clutched her hand wildly to her chest, felt the haptic feedback of the baby kicking against her ribcage.

"She'll be born in 10 more days. She's doing very well so far."

And so was the first Miscarriage Ring born.

~ ~ ~

Friia raised the fetus like a child. She would feed it digital, fake food; she would expand the small blue hologram to project into the room. She'd get down on her knees, jeans pressing into the electric rub of the carpet, and play with this hologram of a child. She taught the child language, arts, and mathematics; and raised it; homeschooled it, and made sure it was as happy as she was capable of makingit. She was particularly fond of tickling the ring: "Tickle wickle wickle!"

Now, the partially aware holochild would vaguely perceive happiness, and though it couldn't experience the color of the trees, the golden yellows of fractal leaves bleeding to fantastic fiery oranges and reds that darkly curled around the heart and soul and breathed in a whisper new life, nor experience the taste of the gâteau au crepe, nor feel the burn the chocolate booze that tickled the tongue and linked fire around the heart, nor even breathe the tantalizing smell of the ionized radioactive cape air on a blazing cape summer day;

Though it could not feel these things, it sympathized with these things. And it smiled as it knew that would make its ring-wearer happy.

Odin watched her one day kneeling outdoors while the holo-child reached its flickering hands into the sky; a thin wind rustled through it, distorting the image of his son. Odin was reading a copy of Captain Beatty's Fantastic Travels under the dappled, dancing shadow of a distorted rotting oak, and the deep smell of rain-muck permeated through the thin membranes of his nostrils. Odin pushed off his hammock, feeling the rough bark bristle under his palm and writhe upsettedly, and walked across the dark green moss, feet sinking in deeply to the earth like twin cannonballs burst from a galleon. Odin bent next to his wife in this shaded world and his brow darkened like a thunderhead billowing overhead.

"Give me the ring," he said. It wasn't a request; it was a command. Frowning, frozen in place with her skin going pale and muscles shivering mechanically, his wife slipped off then ring and complied.

Odin took it to the lab. He upped the child's sensory peripherals. He also took the time to program into it full, human, sentience, networking-- consciousness. Beforehand, the baby had been but a shadow of a human child; the sentience found in a human had not been fully developed, formed, or programmed.

For three laborious days, Odin programmed a full human; upgraded the child in the ring; and changed the way Miscarriage Rings would be used forever.

Following the child's enhancement, he also restricted it entirely and utterly to the virtual space within the ring. His son would never again raise its holographic fists to touch the swift draftings of the radioactive air again. But he did this for a good reason [of course, according to himself].

When Odin returned it and Friia noticed the differences, she froze and broke down.

She cried and berated him but one calm raised hand made her freeze, fiery lip trembling.

"I am going to market these," Odin rumbled, and the sky clashed and crooned back in response. "and I can't have normal people mingling with holo-children. Society would reform in a way we cannot predict, and in a way from which I cannot react."

Actually, he could predict it. He had run the simulations— calculated intensely probable outcomes of such an integration-- and disliked the results immensely.

And so the idea of ring orphans attending classrooms was quashed forever.

Odin assured Friia that the ring-child was a lot happier; that he now had full range of perception and contemplation of the world, though physically he was restricted. Even if perceived through a bulging, convex screen inside a digital cage, (this screen filtered through digital particles, smells, waves of heat, etc. from the outside world) he'd be able to contemplate it all in a much higher way.

And Odin wasn't lying.

The child could now feel a deeper range of emotion; was fully self-aware, intelligent, and sentient; digitally a human alive; and due to increased depth of emotion, happier than before.

For their son, it was like awaking from a fever dream.

Friia was mildly satisfied (and rather intimidated) by this claim from Odin, and ultimately had to quiet her concerns when Odin raised a meaty STOP palm.

Odin, however, had motives besides the avoidance of the outcome he saw in his calculations.  Morally, Odin had created the Miscarriage Ring with a set mission-- this ring was to be a therapizer, an outlet for excess care and love from a parent's body otherwise aimed towards an outlet that had been lost eternally through the death of a child. This ring was not meant to stimulate a growth in human consciousness, or perception, or emotional health for the ring-wearer-- but was merely a holding cell for what emotions in the wearer that would otherwise be stalled. Emotions that would otherwise be thrown into an empty pit of despair, or invested into a grey spot in Friia's emotionally temporal conscience.

Anyways, Friia got on with it. She tickle-wicked-wickled that ring into oblivion.

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And so completes the first part! There are 15 parts in total. If you liked or disliked or have feedback please let me know in the comments!!! any likes or comments are greatly appreciated.

I'll be posting these daily as long as nothing comes up!!!

Thanks for taking the time to read!!

My best,

DraconisSolutus