I know what the override does in theory, but seeing it in action is different. The command draws from Libretto’s architecture, letting the user reshape the material of buildings and streets. Ouru has chosen excess—ze has hoarded this specific command—and ze summons from the ground itself goliath beasts, hammer-headed, mobile battering rams that mass and move toward Chun Hyang’s fortress in a silver tide. They’re almost soundless despite their size. I’ve never seen anything like it.
On my part I move on foot, Daji close to me as we navigate Libretto’s skeleton. The Cenotaph alone stands intact, shielded in a wide radius by an aegis maze. I wonder if Wonsul is in there, watching this the way humans watch dramas; whether he is bored by a spectacle that must have repeated many times. Or maybe he finds comfort in the predictable. Plenty of people read the same books over and over, even if they know the prose and plot by heart.
I imagine what that’s like for duelists who participate repeatedly, like Ostrich does, locked in this fatal cycle until finally it ends them.
But I have no room for such considerations. On the far side of the city, Chun Hyang’s fortress is done arming. Daji sends me readouts as the edifice’s nine-pointed sunrays bead with mercurial light. Emission spectra equivalent to military-grade artillery, except the entire system has been put together within hours. Armies and labs the galaxies over would die to know how the Mandate configures this, what composition and calculus go into these rapid-permutation armaments.
Two Assembly commands mean I can make much fewer city-drones than Ouru. I track the enemy fortress’ discharge with a timer and compose the Assembly input.
The Vimana’s ruin offers scant shelter, but better than its neighboring buildings. I start running, and wolves made of Libretto bud from the ground, joining me in a long-legged lope. Black-pelted, black-muzzled, nearly as tall as I am. Their white teeth glint behind and around me, a pack of asphalt and steel.
Not foxes? Daji’s message flashes.
Recadat called me a wolf. One last attempt at reconciliation, at a peace offering. I have my own preferences.
We make the Vimana in time.
Warzone acoustics takes over. The world becomes one of sheer sound, obliterating all other senses. The thunder that makes the air itself seem under stress, the vibration that seems a prelude to the splitting of the tectonic plate: a regurgitation of lava and the star’s soul, a scorching armageddon that returns Septet to its primeval beginning. The human perception isn’t made for this. It is a defective instrument. Even if you equip yourself with the finest sensors money can buy, by instinct you listen to your flesh receptors first, the hindbrain instincts. Functioning at all on the field is a matter of conquering that animal part, rejecting its antiquated response.
Modulators take care of my hearing, and when the assault stops I’m on the move once more, the timer ticking down for the next barrage. I send Ouru a status check; ze returns with a curt Fine. Not exactly versed in tactical communication.
By the time we reach Chun Hyang’s perimeter, its fortress has fired thrice. Thick smoke suffocates the air; what remaining city material has been reduced to rubble and, once I come close enough to view, so have Ouru’s drones. They lie shattered, split open or riven cleanly in pieces, and none look like they’re about to reconstitute. That override only goes so far, though zer drones have dented Chun Hyang’s fortress—immense impact sites and entry wounds that are slowly repairing.
From the haze tigers run at us, a revelation of gold eyes and topaz coat.
My wolves meet them, an answer in black tide and white teeth. Autopilot—they possess basic friend-or-foe heuristics and they know where to place their long-toothed jaws, how to scrabble with their claws, how to bite and rip and tear. As natural to the task as their organic counterpart, and I have more wolves than there are tigers, either because Recadat has conserved her drones or because she has spent all her overrides on Retribution.
A message from Ouru: I’m moving out.
Uninformative. I bring up one of my Seer commands and soon Septet’s satellites show me what ze means
Zer fortress has uprooted and reconfigured into an oblong crowned with writhing cilia, a deep-sea monster summoned to the surface, mouths arrayed across its head like serrated gashes. It is snaking fast across the city. Debris spumes and whips. The mass of it flattens all in its path, its passage the final blow to what’s left of Libretto.
I scan the vicinity for safe ground; being here when Ouru’s fortress arrives will reduce me to collateral pulp on the quick. As aware of this as I am, Daji gives the tiger carcasses a quick glance—to ensure they don’t get back up—and folds her sword back into herself. “Hold onto me, Detective.”
I’ve never been hoisted in a woman’s arms before—let alone one who looks this slight—but Daji conquers the logistics of it despite our disparity in height. Air roars in my ears as she starts moving, fast, faster; she leaps, balletic. The world flips on its axis as she runs up the facade of a skyscraper. The ground recedes.
She sets me on my feet and steadies me. We’re on the roof of a building that has survived Libretto’s reconfiguring, worse for the wear but in one piece. The streets look incredulously far away, even though we’re only ten or twelve floors off the ground. Daji covered this vertical distance in a minute. Less. As powerful as proxies are, they shouldn’t be able to manage this. Gravity against my mass—I weight close to a hundred kilos.
And then there’s no more time to ponder the parameters of her proxy, the boundary of its strength and propulsion.
Ouru’s fortress slams into Recadat’s. The building under me shakes. What remains of Libretto shudders in architectural death throes. Dust chokes the sky; even from this height there’s next to no visibility. I activate another Seer override. Not like there’s any point hoarding them now.
A feed that triangulates signal emissions and heat distribution, translating them into a clear visual. It comes online in time for me to see the façade of Recadat’s fortress give under another ramming blow. The material shatters into black rubble, inlaid with stardust.
Chun Hyang bursts through this fortress-wound like a nova.
Houyi meets Chun Hyang midair, blue-black void against golden star. They entangle, the outlines of them charring and overlapping. Warship ferocity. It peels back the illusion that my anti-machine ammunition could ever have had real effect when their proxies are engaged in true battle—at this range, with this speed, I could never have hit any of them. No lone human could. They fight with ruthless alacrity, two minds of perfect calculation competing for speed, seeking an advantage of bare margins, of a remote decimal point.
Chun Hyang’s kite-wings blaze with serrated brilliance, brighter and brighter, the glare of it like a miniature sun’s.
“It’s going to self-destruct,” Daji tells me. “We should be outside the blast range, but—”
Houyi is already pulling back from Chun Hyang, gaining distance, their oil-slick outline darkening and deepening into an aegis fog.
What happens next transpires so fast that at first I cannot comprehend it at all.
Chun Hyang’s wings dim—the self-destruct sequence put in reverse—and it hefts its glaive. I imagine that it smiles. I’m too far and the Seer override only grants me so much, a view that tracks the arc of the glaive as it flies, an uninterrupted line of kinetic perfection. Houyi’s Chariot dives toward the glaive, to deflect or take it, but not in time.
The weapon penetrates the façade of Ouru’s fortress as though it is made of paper. I’ll never know how the targeting can be so surgical. I catch a glimpse of those beautiful chandeliers, those granite stairways, the opulence that Ouru and Houyi constructed together—the symbol of their partnership. And then the glaive goes through Ouru. Lilies of blood erupt.
Houyi hurls themself at Chun Hyang.
Well before they can reach it, Houyi’s proxy disintegrates. Simply it comes apart, imploding from the center, the solid mass turning to blue-black dust. A regalia without a
duelist may not engage in combat. Wonsul’s Exegesis dispensing the Court of Divide’s penalty, as easily as that, tripping the kill switch that must be attached to every participating proxy.
Chun Hyang drifts low. Close enough I can see its smirk, wide and triumphant. Daji is already rising to intercept it.
I don’t quite think. I pull up one of my last overrides and activate Bulwark. Instantly it authenticates.
From its body, Chun Hyang draws a glistening javelin and throws.
There’s no time for me to move aside. You’d think a javelin or spear would be much slower than a bullet, but the truth is that the human physique has a finite limit. The machine weapon carries with it a vast momentum, propelled by preternatural strength. I would never dodge it.
An aegis blooms before me, layered like an enormous magnolia, in gold and red and sunset. The javelin falls. Daji’s second proxy shivers like a mirage with dissipated force, holding its shield-shape for a few more seconds before it reflows. First back into the fox, and then again into a nanite whirlpool. It rises and flows over me, coating my chest, my limbs, my face. Ablative plating and fox-bright weave spread, ink in water, until I’m entirely enfolded. My receptor feeds reorient as this armor establishes its module, flowing seamlessly into my overlays as though it has always been a part of me.
I stand sheathed in Daji’s body, clad in the sublime weight of her. When I stride toward the fortress-wound my steps are light, and I know that as long as I’m armored in her I will be proof against nearly anything.
Above me, she and Chun Hyang exchange blows, sword against glaive. They clash fast, striking as though they mean to rip out each other’s intestines and arteries, pulverize each other’s spine to thin dust. Almost as if they’re not AIs at all, and they fight not by impossibly precise vector calculus but by feral instinct. Sheer bestial longing, reenacted by machines.
I’ll deal with Chun Hyang. Daji’s voice in my ear is rich, sultry. But understand that Bulwark is the expression of ultimate trust between duelist and regalia—the act of fighting as one. You belong to me. I belong to you. Do what you have to do, Detective, and end this. I’ll be with you the entire time, and within me you will be unstoppable.
Recadat sits in a throne shaped like two hearts facing one another, cupping her between their fists. She can feel their pulses, calibrated so that they’re perpetually a few beats off, never in harmony. Chun Hyang’s work, determined to discomfit her to the last. A commentary on her relations with Thannarat—two clocks always out of sync. Two lines that never intersected. Territories with hard demarcation lines, when all she ever wanted was to be annexed. Once she believed herself hyper-independent, a creature of hermetic seals and impenetrable integument. For Thannarat she’d have discarded it all; she would have spread herself wide, sublimated herself to Thannarat’s preferences and purposes.
The tigers at her feet purr and rub their heads against her ankles. It is such a little gesture but she’s oddly comforted. Something cares, after a fashion. Maybe it is a remnant of older companion algorithms. She thinks back to her house on Ayothaya and how empty it is.
Chun Hyang has handled most of the fortress’ operations, leaving her to manage the Assembly overrides and not much else. In a way she is perfunctory, an appendage for Chun Hyang to fulfill the Divide’s requirements; she has barely lifted a finger, and when Ouru died she watched with indifference. Chun Hyang’s glaive piercing the enemy fortress and then piercing the enemy duelist, who died looking surprised. A feat that no doubt AIs back in Shenzhen applauded, a fine spectacle. They’re probably trading calculations on how Chun Hyang accomplished it, fortress integrity against regalia armament. Bets must have been made and won and lost, though she can’t fathom the currency that would be at stake.
Recadat watched Houyi’s Chariot attempt to avenge their duelist. There was love there, or friendship enough that Houyi was stricken when Ouru’s heart stopped. It is not that she hated Ouru, but why should she be the only one to suffer, to be alone. She imagines Houyi—immortal and numinous the way AIs are—always afflicted with this loss, this grief. A forever wound that will be present in every Houyi proxy. She imagines what that is like, to be eternal and permanently in mourning. Recadat will not last anywhere near as long. There’s consolation in that.
She will be done very soon.
When Thannarat breaches the fortress, she feels it physically—a haptic blow to her system. Either a quirk of the override’s configuration or Chun Hyang’s parting shot. She does not flinch.
All along this was the sole possibility, the final gift: to be annihilated by Thannarat. She only wishes Chun Hyang could fall with her; could be made mortal for an instant so that they’d be destroyed together, united in ashes.
Recadat stands—her tigers tense, coiling to spring—and parts the wall. On the other side stands her old partner, a figure in chitinous black, cerise at the joints and throat. She takes in the sight of this, a divine hunter come down to earth, leading a pack of black wolves. Enormous each, made from the same material that her Assembly drones are, and stunning. Thannarat did not skimp on details, spent enough time to imagine the sculpted muzzles, the long whiskers, the cinderous eyes.
“Your tigers are beautiful.” The armor melts away, baring Thannarat’s face. “Do you remember—I used to call you a tiger. A soul like gold, all fangs.”
Her mouth is full of bitterness. “I don’t forget anything. You know that.” And Thannarat has made hers wolves.
For a time they face each other, their drones put in standby, wolves and tigers both commanded to quiescence: against their nature, a prohibition of basal friend-foe algorithms. Recadat puts her hand on a tiger’s head and tries to visualize this woman’s death; she tries to visualize putting a bullet between Thannarat’s eyes or letting her tigers rip Thannarat limb to limb. The largesse of viscera, the practical demonstration of how much fluid a human body holds. But all crumbles before the reality of the person, this representation of what she’s wanted for so long. She cannot imagine Thannarat other than as she is. Impervious. Exquisite. I want to hold this forever, Recadat thinks, this war god, this armored vision.
“Chun Hyang killed Ouru to leave you without choice,” Thannarat says. “If ze were still alive, you would be able to forfeit.”
“Chun Hyang killed zer because I wanted that to happen.” She lifts her hand halfway to her holster. If she were anyone else, she knows Thannarat would already have shot and disabled her. “I’m not forfeiting.”
“Have you seen what happens to the losers?”
“Of course.” Chun Hyang made sure to show her the Gallery, not once but three times, making her visit every exhibit. A lesson for you, my jewel. “If you care so much what happens to me, you could forfeit. Sacrifice yourself for once. Ayothaya is at stake—that should weigh more than your selfish little needs. You must already know what the Divide is really for. You can’t possibly trust Daji. She’ll turn you against humanity one day.”
“The Mandate doesn’t need human collaborators to advance whatever scheme they’re building up. I’m a drop in the ocean, not some great mover and shaker they need to suborn.” Thannarat draws closer, a step at a time, as though she believes Recadat might spook and bolt. “We can do this differently. I’ll make my regalia back off and you make yours. Force the overseer to call it a draw. Neither of us needs to lose and I’ll do my best to help you win Ayothaya. I promise that.”
Recadat draws and fires, a single action that requires no thought. Bullet meets armor and falls off harmlessly, clink clink clink as it rolls across the floor. She fires again, to the same result—the hard lexicon of the gun tamed, the syntax of the bullet broken. Thannarat does not even flinch as she advances and the armor pours back over her face, a mask of garnet-black.
You’re at the end of your rope. Recadat can almost feel her regalia smile against her nape. It is a shame—I can defeat Daji, of course, I always could; you paired up with the greatest regalia in this game. I could have given your vi
ctory, clean and absolute. I could have given you back Ayothaya. But it doesn’t look like I’ve driven you to the point where you would have wished for my destruction, the complete charring of my true core. That’d have helped my case for dismantling the Divide—that humans may use it to harm us individually, that it provides a path for them to kill an AI one by one. The Divide must fulfill any desire that doesn’t injure the Mandate as a collective.
She fires a third time. She doesn’t answer Chun Hyang. There is no retort she could make in any case.
This is goodbye. A small pause. I fear I cannot wish you fine fortune, given your immediate future. For you there will be no next time. I’ll see if I can secure you a good spot in the Gallery, hmm? To show my gratitude.
The Divide module notifies her that Chun Hyang’s Glaive has surrendered, then bannering that the duelist Thannarat Vutirangsee and the regalia Empress Daji Scatters Roses Before her Throne have been declared victorious. It is a simple ping, barely ceremonious. No fanfare—a disappointment after all this trouble. Recadat stops firing. She’s nearly out of ammunition. All that she has diminishes. Less and lesser, and then nothing.
Thannarat makes no move to return fire. Simply she stands there, as imperturbable as any proxy. The picture of triumph.
“Recadat,” Thannarat says, the armor distorting her voice. “Please.”
In the end, everyone abandons her.
She raises her gun: a few bullets remain and she needs just the one. Thannarat starts running, but she is faster. Recadat knows the precise angle that will guarantee painless success. She presses the muzzle just so; she places her finger on the trigger. The world, finally, ends.
Chapter Nine
The Cenotaph. It seems unthinkably long since I last set foot in it, and in the interim it has adopted yet another aesthetic. Gold everywhere, the trappings of Theravada temples, though still absent the ubiquitous Buddha. But the rest are present: the bodhi trees, the talismans, the murals. I wonder if it is a message.
Shall Machines Divide the Earth Page 14