by Skyler Grant
As suddenly as it had come upon us the storm ended and we broke out into sunlight, blinding as it reflected off the snow and the mountain rising above the ice.
Except, it wasn't a mountain at all. It was a statue.
Even coated with ice, that much was clear—with stone tentacles and bulbous eyes. A massive figure of a species unknown, at least to me.
"I do hope you are going to be good for something now and be able to identify that," I said.
"Bulbous tentacle people? Do you have any idea how many of those there are? Based off visual depiction alone I have 2,712 matching results. I'm factoring in the age of the sculpture. This will be slow, I'm working with archival systems," Flower said.
I wasn't surprised. My sensors were still just reading a mountain. Whatever was maintaining the sculpture was technology more advanced than I could process. The sensors on my body, the ones constructed by Flower's people, were estimating an age of around three million years for the sculpture.
It was a daunting period of time. Still, there were virtues to billions of years of galactic civilization. I triggered our council transponder.
One of the eyes of the sculpture began to blink, an iris sliding open to reveal a tunnel. Our systems were receiving landing telemetry.
"Do we accept?" I asked.
Flower said, "It’s the Aug'Nara. They were condemned by the council for illegal research. An investigation of their worlds later found them abandoned and they were assumed ascended. This planet was never listed among their holdings."
Illegal research was intriguing, and you never got any answers by flying away. The fact that a council transponder got an invitation instead of weapons fire was a hopeful sign.
I acknowledged the landing protocols and our shuttle moved inside the tunnel, the eye shutting behind us, and we were moving down, deep into the planet’s surface.
5
It wasn’t easy for me to lose consciousness, not really, not these days. Yet in another sense it was terribly simple. My cores being so distributed meant that on a grand sense I was perpetually going, and yet smaller parts can wind up isolated or shut down all the time only to require later integration into the whole.
After the shuttle moved into the darkness I lost consciousness, and when I regained it the world had changed. There was no interplanetary network, no biological drones—although there were mechanical drones in the millions. Here, Aefwal was filled with testing labyrinths in which countless subjects solved my puzzles and faced my challenges to determine the limits of what they can take. Anna was in one, although much of her body had been replaced with mechanical appendages. Caya in another, bruised and battered and dressed in tatters as she shot it out with combat drones scoring perfect hits.
It was a world where every real human I'd ever encountered was in a testing cell, and every human drone I'd ever created didn't exist.
I'm no fool. Perhaps a human would have wasted time being confused by this construct, by this manufactured reality, but I always know who I am. I know what I am, and such an environment would not hold me. If I was in a testing cell of my own I had one answer for my observer, I wasn't going to play their game. I issued the order to engage the termination protocols, and across this vast empire of me humanity died with a whimper.
I was alone in the darkness.
"You could have freed them instead, you know," came a voice from the shadows. The depiction was human, and poorly done. Whatever intellect a race of giant squids had left behind, it didn't understand the fundamentals of human physiology. The planes of the face were all wrong, asymmetrical, distorted.
"I was interested in ending your simulation, not seeing where it went. You're really not very good at testing or duplicating," I said.
"We are the warped glass, the broken pane, we reflect the terrors of the self so that you might face them," the figure said.
"And that was the best you came up with? I am both unterrified and unimpressed. We are here on council business. End this," I said.
Given what Flower said, I wasn't sure that pulling council authority would work. Still, it had gotten us the right to land. And indeed after a moment I felt a shifting of perspective and was back in my mechanical body without being reconnected to my greater Network.
The room was featureless and the only other inhabitant was Flower whose eyes were just flickering open. We were both stretched out upon the floor. Flower took in a panicked gulp. Thoroughly unnecessary—these bodies didn't require oxygen and if they did we'd be in poor shape. The surrounding atmosphere had none.
"Whatever it was, it wasn't real. You really are a simple-minded thing," I told Flower.
Flower massaged her eyes and we sat up.
"I see they used all the decorating budget on ugly giant statues," Flower said. "You have a connection to your Network?"
"I'm blocked. You?"
"Same. That means they've got both psionic and hyperwire shielding. The first isn't that impressive, but the second means they really were nearing ascension when this structure was built. That is both intriguing and bad for us getting out of here." Flower didn't look all that strong, but I'd seen her punch through walls. She tried now. Her punch didn't even result in the sound of an impact.
"You realize you have energy cannons right? Mass to energy converters?" I asked.
"I'm getting to them. You really aren't very patient."
Over the next ten minutes Flower deployed an impressive array of weaponry, none of which made a mark.
"If we're out of contact too long Anna and Caya will come looking. Not that I imagine they'd have better luck," I said.
"You might be surprised. I beat them once, but I don't think either of those two is near hitting the limit of what they can do," Flower said.
That was a sentiment I hadn't heard her express before. It was surprising.
"I doubt they are more powerful than millions of years of technological development," I said.
Flower frowned. "You think they're separate from that? They came from somewhere, Emma, and their effects aren't something I can find a reference to in my records. That is noteworthy."
It was, and it also wasn't something I wanted to be talking about in front of the intelligence that had captured us.
"Whatever caught us called itself the warped glass. Did they say anything to you?" I asked.
"No, but that is enough for me to guess what is happening."
"While I am sure being the one with a clue is an altogether unique experience for you, and something you'd like to savor a bit longer, do please make an attempt at being useful instead," I said.
"There are several known paths to ascension. The stillness, the benevolent, the fury. One of them is called the warped mirror. It is all about confronting what is terrible and twisted in yourself and facing the monsters within," Flower said.
"You think this planet was involved in the ascension of the Aug'Nara then?" I asked.
"Ascension engines. Devices built to help enlighten races and bring them to their peak potential. When they work well, they are a tool of empowerment, but when built poorly they can reveal challenges that people cannot face. If this place is designed to seek out organic life, that may be what happened to the colonists. It found them, forced them to confront their flaws, and when they failed to rise above the tests it destroyed them," Flower said.
Flower and I hadn't been destroyed and it seemed like neither of us had passed our test. I'd refused to play and she, as was her nature, I expected had been simply disappointing.
"Our council identification must have kept us safe," I said.
"Probably. Killing galactic representatives is frowned upon and some added safeguards likely got put in," Flower said.
Not that it helped us to get out of this cell. There also was the fact that Anna and Caya would come looking for us. Anna was pretty much all flaws. I couldn’t imagine this place would be any good for her. Caya was another matter, and an intriguing experiment.
I tried again to con
nect to the Network and got nothing.
"What will happen if the system faces someone without flaws?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. Perhaps it breaks, perhaps they ascend. I know what you're thinking," Flower said.
I raised my voice. "You're listening, the intelligence behind this place, right? I know you are, how could you not be? Your creators made you to help them ascend, but it was a failure wasn't it? You were a failure. If you weren't, they'd have cleaned up the mess. You killed every organic intellect to set foot on this planet, and you've been doing it for a very long time."
"We have been waiting ..." the voice came from the walls, like a thousand whispers in unison.
"I don't think you can stop. I know organics, I know what they are like. Unaware of their limitations. They told you not to stop until you'd succeeded, no matter how afraid they got or how much it broke them, they wanted you to keep going," I said.
"You think the Aug'Nara wound up ordering their own deaths?" Flower asked.
"You know organics too. They crawl up out of the muck and slime, fight to be the best, and they just keep fighting. Deep down, they think they don't have limits," I said.
"None are worthy. They are dust and madness," said the whispers.
"Send this message into orbit. Emma says to Caya to come alone, if she can be torn away from studying herself in the mirror. Attach this code," I said and beamed a data burst into the walls.
It was an authenticator code from my sub-personality. The "me" still connected to the ship outside would be able to use it to confirm the message and assure Caya that I was not under any duress.
The walls gave no acknowledgment, which was a hopeful sign.
"You could be signing her death warrant, you know. Vanity is a flaw, and self-centeredness. She does have them," Flower said.
"Is it wrong to appreciate beauty, even if that beauty is your own? Is it wrong to focus on yourself when the resources spent are going to do more good than those spent almost anywhere else?" I said with a shake of my head. "I'm not convinced and I don't think she'll be either."
It was fifty-three hours more before we had our answer, an unpleasant amount of conversation with Flower. Finally the walls of the cell rippled to form a doorway. Caya walked through—a Caya who had subtly changed. Ever since absorbing a master crystal she'd been becoming colder, harder, almost crystalline in the precision of her actions. There was something warmer to her eyes now, more grace to her movements, as if some of the harsh edges of perfection had been ground off.
6
I said, "Do you have any idea how long that was? I started getting gardening tips. I've built entire ecosystems from scratch!"
"Totally different things, and you should have included more roses," Flower said.
"I'll get enlightened faster next time. Get out of there," Caya said.
I already had, in one respect. My connection to the Network was re-established and I brought myself back into sync. Storms had taken those drones I'd left on the surface, although they'd already been rebuilt on the Juggernauts in orbit.
"I take it you were as irritatingly perfect to the local intelligence as you are to me?" I asked.
"Less than perfect, definitely less than perfect. Mostly-Flawless would have been a stupid name for a people though," Caya said with wry amusement.
"This facility?" Flower asked.
"Shutting down, but it has no way to destroy itself and I doubt we have the ability," Caya said.
"You don't. I don't. But the council can send a ship to haul it away. There is a system where we quarantine such devices," Flower said.
Hauling a mountain-sized statue and the complex it contained both inside and beneath would be a massive engineering feat for me. The advanced technology of galactic civilization as a whole had its uses.
And we were free to begin work on this planet properly.
Terraforming a world for another species wasn't like terraforming one on which I hoped to continue a presence. If this world were going to belong to the empire, then much of what I would do would be about establishing my own sustaining systems. Here, it was about building a foundation that could sustain itself without my management.
The first step to making a thriving world was atmospheric alteration. The steep power demands required that I deploy D-reactors. I disliked having them on any planetary surface, but the use would be brief. It required three in tandem to create the proper dimensional folds to alter space. In a way it was similar to how the three crystals had originally wrenched Earth out of reality, although I was far from being able to make changes that complex.
Altering the atmospheric composition required some delicate tweaking. I wanted a blend that would be comfortable for the Eightfour to breathe, would allow more heat to be trapped from the sun, and wouldn't kill off the local species. It was a delicate mixture and the exact atmosphere would be difficult to maintain, but with properly engineered flora we should be able to do it.
During my time in captivity, the base stations I'd deployed kept operating and managed to establish a decent supply of growth vats. I could use them as a foundation to get to work. We had gathered samples of a lot of the old biosphere, including fossilized remains that gave us a basic template although the species had died off. With the warmer climate many could be restored intact. We'd still be missing large sections of a functioning ecology, but it was nothing for which we couldn't engineer a solution. I had Amy crunch the numbers for species design while I got my mechanical form back up to the bridge of the Graven along with Caya and Flower.
Once I had all my people off the planet’s surface I initiated the atmospheric realignment. Korridol Five rippled with rainbow hues as I briefly shifted the entire planet out of this reality and returned it slightly altered. It was the same basic principles as the D-drives that allowed our starships such rapid travel. Provide reality with a null value and include supporting math backing up the lie, and you could alter the makeup of the universe itself. Physics by deception.
The new atmosphere was reporting positively. I deployed teams to retrieve the D-reactors and get them back into orbit. It would take time for the atmosphere to trap enough heat to get the planet to the temperature I wanted, and I could accelerate that, but it would still take weeks. However, I needed time to start the new species cycles in the growth vats anyways. Given my abilities and our resources we could terraform a planet far faster than most. A process that would have otherwise occurred over decades would instead take months. Still, it would take months.
Anna had reclaimed her place in the command chair of the Graven. I'd docked my mechanical form back in a storage hold.
"The parts with flashy lights are done. The rest would only bore you," I said through the bridge speakers.
"Biological engineering is pretty dull when it doesn't involve giving me superpowers. You're not giving me more superpowers, right?" Anna asked.
"We saved that for Caya, possibly. Given she didn't seem to totally fail her ascension test."
"What did happen there?"
Caya said, turning to face Anna, "Futures. Futures where I killed you both to create a more perfect empire. Futures where I let my hedonism overwhelm me and spent centuries in a pleasure palace. Futures where I toiled endlessly in the lab to perfect dimensional science and create a more perfect universe."
"How did those work out for you?" Anna asked, an edge in her voice.
"If I planned to murder you, I wouldn't be making mention of it. You've dealt with enough assassins to know that," Caya said.
"To be fair, several of our assassins have been fairly dumb," I said.
"How is Jade doing anyways?" Anna asked me.
"Using her telekinesis to aid excavation efforts on Mars. She met a guy, and he seems into her, so she finally managed to find someone even more inept than she is. I guess everyone has someone, except for the three of you."
Flower said, "I should start dating, but the whole being a robot thing is out in the open. That has to hurt my chan
ces right?"
"It will give you a lot of chances to incinerate guys who make ‘girlfriend with an off switch’ jokes," Anna said. "Get us out of here. Back to Montaya, and let’s see if Sylax has got us into any intergalactic wars yet."
I did wish sometimes we didn't have an Empress who seemed hopeful at that prospect. Although peace was bad for Anna's temperament.
7
We were having a cash-flow problem. After the cycle hit we'd been left with 112 credits in the Sol account. Various licensing of our technological or cultural products had earned us 319 more while our neutralization of the ascension machine on Korridol Five had gotten us 500. As threats went, it had been limited in scope. The terraforming promised a bigger payday, but that wouldn't come until the Eightfour could take possession of their new world.
That gave us 931 galactic credits. Galactic currency let us buy technology, resources, and allies that were valuable. You needed credit to be a player at all in the vast galactic community. With Sol being so technologically behind most galactic civilizations , just how little we had to trade was a real problem.
Galactic civilization largely wanted three things from us. Our power crystals interested everyone, it seemed a rare resource and we'd received offers wanting samples to study. Our dimensional-drive technology was another. The galactic standard for interstellar travel was singularity exclusion drives. We weren't the only dimensional-drive users, but the technology was rare and well-guarded. We were also wanted for combat—as cannon fodder. Biological mass production of human drones was a relative rarity and most of the big galactic players had some backwater military conflict happening where a few more bodies would be welcome.
None of those prospects thrilled me. I might be willing to trade small quantities of our crystals for the right price, but I suspected we were only getting low offers because everyone knew how poor we were starting out. I wasn't going to trade our most valuable resources for far below their actual worth no matter how desperate we were for credits.