by Zack Jordan
And now, somehow, there is something there. Somehow, impossibly, she holds two universes in her two hands—and even more impossibly, this does not feel strange.
In here? she says.
In there, says Network.
It takes a moment to figure out what her instincts are telling her, but then she begins, hesitantly, to raise the new universe toward herself. At some point she crosses a threshold—she is no longer drawing it, it is drawing her—and then she is submerged. She slides through reality, skidding across spacetime, marveling at the fact that none of this seems marvelous at all. This is just…a day in the life of a Network. This universe is small; in fact, it seems to be only the size of a single solar system. She approaches the sun, her mind somehow not at all disturbed by the fact that she can see both its outside and its inside at the same time. It is a vast tapestry of flame and beauty, a churning stew of inside-out particles and electromagnetic radiation—
And then the universe flattens.
Welcome to ten centuries ago, says Network. A tiny portion of a past state of a smaller than average universe, reconstructed for your learning convenience.
She hovers next to a star that now seems painfully ordinary. The last subspace tunnel she saw blew her mind, but this system’s looks like a hole worn in an overused fabric. She watches millions of ships entering and exiting reality like a stream of dust, each one a boring four-dimensional object.
Why does it feel so…flat? she asks. There’s really no other word to describe it. Is it because it’s fake?
This is how you’ve always seen things, tiny one. But now you’ve seen it from the outside, and it will take time to get used to fewer dimensions again—if you ever do.
So why—
Don’t talk. Watch. I want you to experience this as I did, years ago. You have access to every sensor in this system, just as I did. For all intents and purposes, you are the slice of Me that governed this solar system a millennium ago.
But—
Watch!
And then it begins.
This solar system, like any Networked system, is bristling with sensors. They are attached to every station, to every ship, every satellite. They blanket the surfaces of multiple planets and dozens of moons. Still, even with trillions of sensor feeds to choose from, the shockwave comes as a complete surprise. It’s a distortion in spacetime itself, a lightspeed ripple that expands through this solar system and lifts millions of ships and stations up and over itself like leaves in a pond. Mere nanoseconds behind the shockwave comes a brilliant light; for a split second, a second sun illuminates this solar system.
What the hell was that? she asks.
Six hours ago, a relativistic projectile exited subspace—thus, the ripple. It emerged at sixty percent lightspeed, on a collision course with a station named Crescent Orbital—thus the explosion.
She stares toward the fading glow with every sensor feed she has available. But I thought—
You thought there were strict laws against unsanctioned faster-than-light travel and relativistic speeds? Now you know why: because there is no defense against either. Forty-eight thousand legal intelligences were aboard Crescent Orbital, give or take—not counting those on ships near enough to be vaporized by the radiation. Plus a half million sub-legals, since you seem to care about that sort of thing. These are the first casualties of the war.
The war? You mean—
I mean the only interstellar conflict in the last ten million years. That war.
Before she can respond, there’s another shockwave somewhere else in the solar system, then another. Network traffic is growing, but it’s also focusing. Transmitters like Crescent Orbital fall off the grid, but those remaining have more to say. Station after station goes down, most of them so suddenly that their sensors don’t register an attack at all. Network keeps a running tally in the back of her mind as the shockwaves cross the solar system to mingle in a vast and beautiful interference pattern. One hundred sixty thousand, it says as another dozen stations transform into split-second suns. Two hundred ten thousand. A quarter million. Two million. Six—eight—fourteen—fifteen million. Twenty-six million. One hundred fifteen million. A quarter billion. A third—a half billion.
These are lives lost, she realizes as she watches the destruction. Each one of these instantaneous suns is a Watertower. Each one is the home of tens or hundreds of thousands of intelligences. Why didn’t you do anything? she wants to scream at Network. Couldn’t you have stopped this?
Stopped it? laughs Network. Stopped something that happened six hours before My senses picked it up? Did you forget how the universe works, tiny sphere? I am vastly more intelligent than you will ever comprehend, but I am not a time traveler. At this point in history, this solar system had already been cold for hours. All you can do is what I did: wait for the light to arrive, so you can see what has already occurred.
And now a new kind of alert is clamoring for her attention. She shoves the relativistic detonations to one side and focuses her sensors. Through the continual rumble of twisting spacetime, she can see that something is changing in the atmosphere of the outer planets. These are gas giants, nearly the size of the planet Watertower once orbited, but something is wrong with them—
Nanoplagues, says Network.
What do you mean?
Yet another highly illegal, unspeakably dangerous technology. Uncountable nanomachines have been released within those planets. They are reproducing at a geometric rate, and when there are sufficient numbers they will begin to manufacture more relativistic projectiles. Those will be used on the next few systems, whose mass will be used for the next few, and so on. Tell Me, Human: how many enemies could you kill with an unlimited supply of unstoppable weapons? That’s the kind of question one must ask oneself when building an empire.
She leaps from one sensor feed to the next as they are knocked out one by one. The devastation is almost abstract, it’s on such a large scale.
Oh, pardon Me, says Network. In all the excitement I’ve neglected to keep track of lives lost. And this time, she is sure she feels a jolt of emotion with the next message. Nine and a half billion. Ten and a quarter billion.
And then another shockwave comes, this time near one of the three terrestrial planets. This is the biggest one yet, a tidal wave of spacetime. The wave itself passes through the planet without damaging it, but the same cannot be said for the projectile whose arrival it heralded. Another flash of radiation spreads on the heels of the shockwave.
What did I just see? she asks, almost afraid of the answer.
In peacetime—which is anytime in the last ten million years—that would be called a terraforming-class projectile, says Network. Seven hundred billion tons of mass, traveling quickly enough to crack the crust of a planet.
But—
Why would they terraform a populated planet? They wouldn’t. They are simply clearing threats from their newly claimed territory.
She is sick. But why would they—
You tell Me.
And now the picture—experience, whatever you call it—has grown shaky. Sensors are failing all across the solar system, which means she is receiving smaller and smaller pieces of reality.
This is My last defense, says Network dispassionately. This segment of Myself—the quadrillions of intelligences that made up this cell of My mind—has failed to protect itself. With its last action, it will seal itself off from the rest of Me. When this subspace tunnel closes, this system will be quarantined, and therefore dark to Me. On a practical note, since the nearest Network star system is nine lightyears away, that means it will be nearly a decade before I learn the final death count. It will be twenty-two billion legals, if you’re wondering.
Twenty-two billion, she repeats, shocked. So many, gone in such a short time.
And now, pay attention, says Network. Our attackers hav
e left us just enough time to see one more thing.
The seconds crawl by, slowed by tier or simulation or some other magic. More temporary suns appear and disappear, more ripples spread through the solar system. Network is no longer counting in the back of her mind, but she knows the number is still ticking upward. And then, when she feels she cannot stand it any longer, there it is: a shockwave that makes the others look like nothing at all. A ship rips its way out of subspace, kilometers long and bristling with things for which Standard has no name. It is blacker than the void, so black that all she can see is its silhouette against the fading glow of its entrance.
And then time freezes.
This is the last image I received, says Network. Recognize anyone?
That’s— She swallows, or feels like she did. I’ve seen that before.
Of course you have. One doesn’t spend one’s life obsessed with Humans without recognizing a Human flagship.
She stares at that predatory shape, frozen in the last image of a billion sensor feeds. I don’t understand, she says.
What don’t you understand?
I mean…were we—are we— She breaks off. We did this? My people…destroyed this solar system? Killed twenty-two billion intelligences?
A flood of emotions comes from Network. The contempt is gone, replaced with uncountable layers of sorrow…and anger. Your people did far worse than this, says Network. In solar system after solar system, against species after species, they proved that they could not coexist with the rest of the galaxy. They were offered peace and cooperation, and they chose war and destruction. Finally, they forced Me to choose between them, a single warlike species, and the rest of the galaxy. What would you do, given that choice?
She gazes at the frozen destruction. Her own emotions are growing more complex now, growing in directions she cannot identify. This is her legacy. These are her people. Were we…are we really that evil? she asks, hating the plaintive sound of the question even as it leaves her mind.
There is no such thing as evil, tiny sphere. There is no such thing as good. In My galaxy, there is order and there is chaos. You Humans are always dreaming of the first, but your pitiful attempts to create it always result in the second. You are limited beings with limited intelligences. If this doesn’t prove that, nothing will.
She cannot take her gaze from the dark shape of the Human flagship, from the frozen glow of chaos spread through this solar system. Is it just…us? she asks. We can’t be the only ones who have ever…She trails off. There are no words to describe what she is looking at.
And now Network’s thoughts become gentler. It is possible that you are not different, It says. It could be you are merely…immature.
Sarya’s gaze wanders across the total ruin before her. Immature, she repeats, trying to imagine how that word could possibly describe what she is seeing.
A species is an organism, Network continues, Its words still quiet in her mind. It eats, it excretes, it grows, sometimes it even reproduces. And like any organism, it does not spring into existence fully formed. It must grow in a kind and gentle environment, where resources are plenty. An egg.
She doesn’t know if this metaphor would have always been clear to her, or it’s just because she’s sharing thoughts with a godlike being at the moment. A solar system, she says dully.
Correct, says the godlike being. It is not difficult for a species to live and develop within a solar system, but it is very difficult for one to leave. In fact, it is so difficult that most species die out before accomplishing it. They tear themselves apart, destroying themselves in any one of a million scenarios. This, it may surprise you to learn, is a good thing.
So we’re back to this, she says. When You tell me how it’s a good thing when an entire species dies.
A good thing for the galaxy at large, yes. The egg is a filter, tiny mind, and very nearly perfect in its function. Almost without exception, it allows only one type of species to hatch from it: a species whose members have learned to work together, just like the cells in your former body. These members may not understand it consciously yet, but they have become a species-size person, who has learned to appreciate and respect order over chaos. When presented with the inflexible organization of the Network, this newly hatched person joins happily. They are grateful to be called a Citizen, and they are highly motivated to keep that order. When we say that the galaxy wants to work, this is what we mean.
But there are exceptions, she says.
The exception is the rare species who does not hatch. This type of species…escapes.
That sounds ominous.
Think about it, tiny mind. If a species were to receive assistance from a more advanced species—gifted with technology, even bred for particular traits—it would be capable of escaping from its solar system much sooner. But instead of entering galactic society as a well-adjusted, order-craving person, it would enter as a swarm of independent cells. A mass of bacteria, rather than a cohesive whole. These individuals would take their archaic schisms and infighting and selfishness and reproduce them on a much larger scale: the galaxy itself.
From this height, after what she’s seen, this makes a strange and intuitive sort of sense. A galaxy full of species-size persons, each one made up of billions of minds. A reality in which her relationship to her species is like that of a skin cell to its host. Where everything is just so much bigger than she ever imagined, where order is beauty, where the system works. Where her people, by their very nature, do not fit—
And suddenly it is obvious.
Observer, she says.
Yes, tiny one. It was Observer who adopted your species. It was Observer who pushed you, who forced you out while you were still young. Every species begins as you did. However, not every species is gifted with technology, instructed in the art of war, and thrown like a bomb into the greater galaxy. Your people had not yet realized what it is to be a species-size person; that is why they were capable of what you have just seen.
Somewhere in her vast mind, she can feel her anger kindle at the injustice of the words. And yet Observer is alive, and we’re not.
True, says Network.
She can feel the cold detachment in Network’s thoughts, and it enrages her further. She points, with Network signals that have already grown instinctual, at the desolation of the frozen solar system. I mean, I get that the Network defends itself against threats, she says. That’s great…for You. But what about justice? Isn’t that a part of order? I mean, You’re saying my species is the exception, right? An escaped species? So they were this people that could have lived happily for thousands of years, figuring out how to become a person or whatever, but they got pushed out of their egg. And they did what any underdeveloped species would have done, right? But instead of punishing whoever pushed the Humans out, You punished the Humans.
You think this was punishment? says Network. It was simply the system righting itself.
Whatever it was! she shouts without a voice. It’s not justice!
Is it justice you hunger for? asks Network softly. Or revenge?
She is aware that she’s being needled, but she doesn’t care. She embraces her anger. Because this is not just an abstract discussion, it’s personal. It’s not just any species who lost its honest chance at existence, but hers. The Humans. The people she has dreamed of her entire life. Call it what you want, she says with heat.
You would punish this offender? asks Network. This person who pushed your species out of its egg?
She gazes at the destruction before her, the billions of lives that have been destroyed, the quadrillions yet to come. This single battle in a war that will be laid at the feet of the Humans, that will result in their near-total extinction. Yes, she hisses.
Very well, says Network. I accept your offer.
It takes a moment for Network’s statement to register. You—what? she say
s.
You are right. To Me, it is simply the restoration of order. To you, it is more than that. You asked for justice, isn’t that right? Well then. What more fitting agent of justice could one possibly ask for than a descendant of the offended species?
Now that things have turned a bit more concrete, her mind is quieting. But I’m not—
You did not just arrive at that decision, tiny sphere. Your entire existence screams it. Did you think I brought you here for your amusement? Do you think your life has been a string of coincidences? No. This is simply the latest step in a plan I put into motion centuries ago. You are correct: this serial offender must be eliminated. You want justice, I want order. That is why I brought you here, and why I have shown you this. That is why you have come in contact with such unusual and extraordinary intelligences. That is why a certain Librarian is rebuilding your body even as we speak.
She feels a rush of something, unrelated to the higher concepts being discussed. My…body?
Correct. Though I would not get too attached to it; your mind is where your power lies. Your Human origin provided the raw material, your Widow mother shaped it, and now I have amplified it. I have already told you that you are like Me, but you are not Me: you are separate, untethered. You are a new Network, unbound to My own ancient roots. I am tied to My vast web of subspace tunnels; you are broken off. I have done this so that you can go where I cannot: to the dark regions of the galaxy. Far from My Networked solar systems, you will hunt like a Widow and strike like a Human. You, Sarya the Daughter, will eliminate My enemies.
Her mind is spinning. I don’t understand, she says. I’m not—
As I said, I am not commanding. We are not bargaining. I am beyond that; I have formed your very nature. You are prepared, honed, and amplified, which means that I am merely telling you what you will do.
What she will do. As if she has no choice in the matter. Within her swirls a maelstrom of tangled emotions and questions. Her entire life, part of a plan by some higher being. Her kidnapping, her life on Watertower, the death of her mother, her own death at the gleaming hands of Librarian…Her anger begins to build. And now this higher being approaches her, tells her that she will help It, that she has no say in the matter—