Andrej’s mind was not like the cold ratiocination of the Council, nor the poetic dream-consciousness of the Weaver.

x, recorded the engines, was unlike y and unlike z.

But with underlying structure and subconscious flow, with calculating rationality and impulsive fancy, self-maximizing analysis and emotional charge, x, the analytical engines calculated, was equal to y plus z.

The thaumaturgo-psychic motors followed orders. They combined y and z. They created a duplicate waveform to that of x and routed it through the output on Andrej’s helmet.

The flows of charged particles pouring into the helmet from the Council and the Weaver were added together into a single vast slew. The Weaver’s dreams, the Council’s calculations, were blended to mimic subconscious and conscious, the working human mind. The new ingredients were more powerful than Andrej’s feeble emanations by a factor of enormous magnitude. The vastness of this power was unabated as the new, huge current surged towards the flared trumpet pointing up into the sky.

A little more than one-third of a second had passed since the circuit had snapped into life. As the enormous combined flow of y + z dashed towards the outflow, a new set of conditions was fulfilled. The crisis engine itself chattered into life.

It used the unstable categories of crisis maths, as much a persuasive vision as objective categorization. Its deductive method was holistic, totalizing and inconstant.

As the exudations of the Council and the Weaver took the place of Andrej’s outflow, the crisis engine was fed the same information as the original processors. It rapidly evaluated the calculations that had been performed and examined the new flow. In its astonishingly complex tubular intelligence, a massive anomaly became evident. Something the strictly arithmetic functions of the other engines could never have uncovered.

The form of the dataflows under analysis was not just the sum of their constituent parts.

y and z were unified, bounded wholes. And most crucially, so was x, Andrej’s mind, the reference point for the whole model. It was integral to the form of each that they were totalities.

The layers of consciousness within x were dependent on each other, interlocking gears of a motor of self-sustaining consciousness. What was arithmetically discernible as rationalism plus dreams was really a whole, whose constituent parts could not be disentangled.

y and z were not half-complete models of x. They were qualitatively different.

The engine applied rigorous crisis logic to the original operation. A mathematical command had created a perfect arithmetic analogue of a source code from disparate material, and that analogue was simultaneously identical to and radically divergent from the original it mimicked.

Three-fifths of a second after the circuit had snapped into life, the crisis engine arrived at two simultaneous conclusions: x-y+z; and x^y+z.

The operation that had been carried out was profoundly unstable. It was paradoxical, unsustainable, the application of logic tearing itself apart.

The process was, from absolute first principles of analysis, modelling and conversion, utterly riddled with crisis.

A massive wellspring of crisis energy was instantly uncovered. The realization of crisis freed it up to be tapped: metaphasic pistons squeezed and convulsed, sending controlled spurts of the volatile energy shooting through amplifiers and transformers. Subsidiary circuits rocked and juddered. The crisis motor began to whirl like a dynamo, crackling with power and sending out complex charges of quasivoltage.

The final command rang in binary form through the crisis engine’s innards. Channel energy, it said, and amplify output.

Just less than one second since the power had coursed through the wires and mechanisms, the impossible, paradoxical flow of cobbled-together consciousness, the combined flow of Weaver and Council, welled up and burst massively out of Andrej’s conducting helmet.

His own rerouted emanations wobbled in a loop of referential feedback, constantly being checked and compared to the y+z flow by the analogue and the crisis engines. Without outlet, it began to leak out, snapping in peculiar little arcs of thaumaturgic plasma. It dribbled invisibly over Andrej’s contorting face, mixing with the gobbing overflow from the Weaver/Council emission.

The main aggregate of that enormous and unstable created consciousness burst in huge gouts from the helmet’s flanges. A growing column of mental waves and particles burst out over the station, towering into the air. It was invisible, but Isaac and Derkhan and Yagharek could feel it, a prickling of the skin, sixth and seventh senses ringing dully like psychic tinnitus.

Andrej twitched and convulsed with the power of the processes rocking him. His mouth worked. Derkhan looked away in guilty disgust.

The Weaver danced back and forth on its stiletto feet, yammering quietly and tapping its helmet.

“Bait…” called Yagharek harshly and stepped back from the flow of energy.

“It’s hardly started,” yelled Isaac over the thudding of rain.

The crisis engine was humming and heating up, tapping enormous and growing resources. It sent waves of transforming current through thickly insulated cables, towards Andrej, who rolled and jack-knifed in spastic terror and pain.

The engine took the energy siphoned from the unstable situation and channelled it, obeying its instructions, pouring it in transformative form towards the Weaver/Council flow. Boosting it. Increasing its pitch and range and power. And increasing it again.

A feedback loop began. The artificial flow was made stronger; and like an enormous fortified tower on crumbling foundations, the increase of its mass made it more precarious. Its paradoxical ontology grew more unstable as the flow became stronger. Its crisis grew more acute. The engine’s transformative power grew exponentially; it bolstered the mental flow more; the crisis deepened again…

The prickling of Isaac’s skin grew worse. A note seemed to sound in his skull, a whine that increased in pitch as if something nearby spun faster and faster, out of control. He winced.

…GOOD GRIEF AND GRACE THE SPILLING SLOSH GROWS MINDFUL BUT MIND IT IS NO MIND…the Weaver continued to murmur…ONE AND ONE INTO ONE WON’T GO BUT IT IS ONE AND TWO AT ONCE WILL WE WON HOW WIN HOW WONDERFUL…

As Andrej rolled like a victim of torture under the dark rain, the power that poured through his head and into the sky grew more and more intense, increasing at a frightening, geometric rate. It was invisible but sensible: Isaac, Derkhan and Yagharek backed away from the squirming figure as far as the little space would allow. Their pores opened and closed, their hair or feathers crawled violently across their skin.

Still the crisis loop continued and the emanation increased, until it could almost be seen, a shimmering pillar of disturbed aether two hundred feet high, the light from stars and aerostats bending uncertainly around and through it as it towered like an unseen inferno over the city.

Isaac felt as if his gums were rotting, as if his teeth were trying to escape his jaw.