by A. Omukai
I felt a warm hand on my face.
“He got him. Are you okay?”
Was I?
***
It had taken a while to regain my senses. All three of us sat on the ground, tired but victorious.
The two looked at each other. The woman had introduced herself as Nadya. She didn’t worry me, even though I didn’t know her goals yet. Her companion, an American named Collins, however, was an unknown quantity. He had acted without hesitation and survived in close quarters combat against a faerie, then killed a Fir Bolg. He looked worse for wear, but nowhere near as bad as I felt right now. There was no part of my body that didn’t hurt.
“I was on a mission to remove the AI from the face of Earth. First of all, man should not play god and create life. More importantly, an unnatural being taking control and eventually ruling humanity is a fate worse than death. But my chance to undo it is lost, and with it any chance of redemption. There are more than just this copy you’re carrying, and hunting them all down seems futile. There’s not enough time to find them all before the war will make it a moot point. Nadya here should have a copy somewhere, too.”
She looked at him, raised his eyebrows, then grinned. “You wouldn’t have gotten it.”
“Let’s do this,” he said.
She nodded. “I can’t revive my friends, but we can stop this war.”
I stood up, but my knees betrayed me. I leaned against the wall, and the tall man grabbed my arm to stabilize me.
Then we walked the three steps to the console and I started the upload process.
41
Epilogue
In the end, my first agent mission had been my last. The times had changed, would change even more now, and I would be part of it.
“How do I look?”
“Serviceable,” Nadya said. “Thankfully looks don’t play a role in your new job.” She grinned.
We had become the official speakers for the AI. That meant I had become a speaker. My new companion worked with me, but didn’t take the spotlight. Nadya had been an invaluable helper, opening doors meant to stay shut for outsiders. Daniel had left us after a short relationship with Nadya that hadn’t worked out for reasons I didn’t know. She refused to speak about it, and I didn’t feel like drilling deeper and maybe opening a wound. The AI called this ‘growing pains’.
“No signs of danger. Security is tight.” Nadya sounded relaxed. She coordinated his security detail, and if she was optimistic, he could feel reasonably safe himself.
“Today is the day,” Nadya said.
“Today is the day,” I repeated.
We’d meet delegations of both the re-founded UN, and the two courts today. I’d represent the AI as one of the factions that had a role to play in the future, the grand plan to save humanity, and with it, the Otherworld.
People had heard of the courts shortly after the AI had shut down the missile systems, and large parts of the military of both Gilead and China, but this was the first time representatives of the hidden folk would show itself to humans in public.
I had taken my leave from the Summer Court, and the queen herself had given me her blessing. All in all, things had ended better than we could have hoped, and now all cards were on the table.
I got a notification from the summit meeting admin system. Time to enter the stage. The livestream would be available around the world. Not even Gilead’s and China’s firewalls would be able to stop the transmission.
I confirmed, pushed the notification off my field of view and stood up too hastily.
“Relax. Day one is just some formal small talk. Not even you can mess that up.”
I looked at the Russian, who had assisted the AI in removing some residual malware we hadn’t noticed on our first scan of the code. China had almost succeeded in hacking into the core. Nobody would ever know about it.
A text message appeared in my view. The AI had gotten quite good at reading my mood. I could probably risk reading it without danger to my nerves.
“Uehara was killed in Perth just now. The killer has not been found yet.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He would finally pay for both Ishida and Inoue. The Winter Court had dropped him the moment the AI had gone online.
With good news like this, I’d be able to get on stage without counting my steps in threes.
We were second on the stage. The spotlight was too hot and too bright, but that might just have been my nerves. I didn’t know the UN representative, but according to my system, his name was Jackson, from the Republic of Cascadia. He would be the ambassador of humanity for the next five years. The first human in this position.
He stepped forward when I came closer, shook my hand and gestured toward the table. My place was at the far end, next to the seat of the Winter Court.
I looked at the tall black man with his snow white hair, and he shrugged. He had obviously interpreted my look correctly.
“Mister Suzuki, as the speaker for the AI, please, a few words for our audience. The world can’t wait to hear from you.”
Could he have put any more pressure on me?
A text message blinked, I opened it and took a quick glance.
“You got this.”
I looked back to the curtain and saw Nadya’s face. She showed me a thumbs up.
Only six months, and the three of us had become a good team already. I nodded, first at Nadya, then Jackson, and walked over to the podium. The spotlight really was much too hot now. Sweat formed on my forehead, and worse, between each of the follicles on my head. I cleared my throat.
“The past is behind us. What sounds like an empty phrase is the only way forward. Old feuds must not stand in our way into the future. A future defined by our common goal to preserve humanity, by leaving this planet we sent into an irreversible runaway greenhouse effect.”
I stared into an audience I couldn’t make out. Blinded by the spotlight, all I could see was black. Then I noticed movement below, and turned my gaze. Daniel, standing between the front row of tables and the podium, nodded at me.
“Today marks the first step on our journey. You are witnessing a historical moment.”
Loud applause kept me from continuing. My throat was dry, and my mouth felt like a desert by day.
I would have to get used to speaking in public, but I’d take it over getting ambushed by killers any day.
Author’s Notes
I used to write a lot when I was younger. My writing wasn’t great, but it filled the void after I finished a book I liked and didn’t want to end. In a sense, this is still the case. I still love to read, and I’m still unhappy when a book I like ends and I’ll never see the characters again.
On the other hand, series with multiple volumes are sometimes daunting, because starting them means a serious commitment. Looking at it this way, as a writer, there’s only few options to deal with it. One of them would be to loosely follow the example of Terry Pratchett.
The Discworld series is really more of a collection of stories than a series. There’s casts of characters, like the guards or the witches, and stories featuring those characters. You can always get more if you want to, but you don’t swear an oath to sacrifice the next ten years of your life when you start the series.
Aes Sidhe is not exactly the same. Instead of completely standalone books, I decided to write a number of books that can be read without having touched any other volume in the series, but also short duologies or trilogies in the setting, each interconnected in the big picture.
This book here is an example of a story with a proper end, although there will be follow-ups based on what happened here. I’ll make sure to do my best to have each book stand on its own regardless.
I wrote this novel originally during a NaNoWriMo and let it sit in my desk. It was a pure sci-fi book. There was no fantasy component to it. No faeries, changelings, no magic. Then I wrote another novel (Pendulum) and decided to rewrite this current volume, so it fits in the same universe and exp
lains a few things you can read in the Aes Sidhe series.
Interestingly, this first book has, in hindsight, the better story. I learned a lot about plotting while reworking this, and I learned that sense-of-wonder man-vs-nature books with just one real protagonist might be awesome to read, but grueling to write, while thrillers with a fast pace are more my thing. Please expect more in the vein of Emergent, and less like Pendulum from me in the future.
I’m working as a teacher while writing. Books are not my main job, even though I hope to one day be able to make this my day job. From a financial standpoint, this might not be very smart, but it’s what I love to do, and if you want to support me and read more books written by me, spread the word please. I’m not the savviest marketing person, I hate spamming people on SNS, and I don’t currently run a mailing list. I do, however, have a webpage (link under “About the Author”) with a blog, which can also be subscribed. So if you would like to be up-to-date on my books, on random things about my books, thoughts about the Aes Sidhe universe et cetera, consider subscribing.
I hope you liked to read Emergent as much as I did writing it. See you again soon.
Nagareyama City, 2021
About the Author
A. Omukai was born in June 1975. He is finding it odd to write about himself in third person, but will continue to do so, because someone somewhere once decided that that’s the way to do it.
Originally of European descent, he fled to Japan many moons ago. His first finished, but thankfully never published manuscript was a terrible pulp story of about 20.000 words about a demon hunter. His love for books and the hole in his heart whenever he finished one, drove him to sit down and do it himself. These days, he’s a language teacher at a high school by day, and creator of worlds by night. He still loves to read, rediscovered his love for writing after years spent playing too many computer games instead of putting words down. He still looks longingly at this or that game from time to time, but these days, playing god in a text document is more fun for him.
You can connect with me on:
https://www.aomukai.com
Also by A. Omukai
Pendulum
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W46KKD9
Earth is turning into a hellscape. Water levels rise, violent storms ravage the surface, and life is becoming less and less viable.
Humanity needs a new home, and so do the Aes Sidhe, mythical creatures of the Otherworld of Celtic lore.
Druid apprentice Deirdre “Jump Drive” MacBreen has orders to scout the system Gliese 667 C. No known technology can transport the ship over these twenty-three light years faster than light, but her magic can, and she’s the best.
But even Deirdre can’t see that far, and her jump has dire consequences.
Not only are they trapped in the system, their arrival on Gliese 667 Cc triggers an anaphylactic shock—of the planet itself. The natural cycle the planet has been going through for aeons is out of balance, and now the pendulum swings back, gaining too much momentum, threatening to destroy everything.
Frantically looking for a way out, while saving not only her ship’s crew and herself, but also a planet spiraling out of control, she must learn to go beyond what she knows, as her magic fails her, and her time runs out.