by Zack Jordan
“What is wrong with these people?” says Mer.
They are her people, but Sarya has no defense. “This isn’t the Network,” she says shortly, setting off after the orange line.
She walks at the head of the group, briskly and in a businesslike manner. She is careful to keep her face forward and out of view, because her eyes are burning again. Her own sentence repeats in her mind and she cannot believe how much she hates it. This isn’t the Network. She wonders if she is the first to say something that will become a common saying among trillions. When this sector is a wasteland of war and destruction, is that what intelligences will say to justify their actions? To justify any actions at all?
Yeah, well…this isn’t the Network.
“I cannot imagine the thought process behind this place,” says Roche behind her.
“Must make sense if you’re a Human,” says Mer.
“Makes sense to me,” says Right.
“Hush,” says Left, glancing fearfully down each corridor they cross.
It takes only a few tense minutes to arrive at the end of the orange line, where a section of wall fades to nothing. Behind it is a chamber just as odd—and just as strangely natural-feeling—as the rest of the ship. It’s a circular room perhaps ten meters across, poorly lit except for the dense cluster of red holographic displays in the center. Around the walls are installed…furniture? Seating? But what kind of creature—
Oh. Right.
She walks across the room and settles into the farthest seat, facing the hatch. She feels it adjust slightly behind her back and beneath her thighs, fitting her perfectly. She lays her arms on rests at the ideal height. More holograms appear around her fingers, split into five sections for her five Human fingers. She laughs, an odd little huff of air through her nose. This seat is not the generic multi-species design of Network. This seat was, quite literally, made for her.
Right and Left scramble into the seats on either side of her, sticking to their namesakes. They scoot back on the cushions, their legs straight out in front of them. The armrests are nearly above their heads, and the holograms that flicker into existence are nowhere near them.
“Look at me,” says Right. “I’m a Human!”
“I don’t think you’re taking things seriously enough,” says Left.
“Come on, you’ve always been full of jokes. How about when you’re Right you’re Right, or—”
“No,” says Left, crossing its small arms.
Right sighs. “Sometime I hope the boss almost gets you,” it says. “It’ll put a very different spin on life.”
Roche is next in the door, the central mass of holograms reflecting in his lenses. “It pains me to admit this,” he says, slowly turning to take in the entire room, “but I do not understand what I am seeing here.”
“Ship said it’s a control room,” says Mer from behind him.
“I heard that,” Roche says, choosing a seat by the hatch. He settles into it, his anatomy reconfiguring, with clicks and whines, to match its surfaces. “But what does it mean? Surely not manual control.”
“I bet that’s exactly what it means,” says Mer from the doorway. His eyes run over the seats, the holograms, the display in the center of the room, and finally stop on Sarya herself. “I don’t know a lot about Humans,” he says, “but I know they like to be in control.”
“Don’t we all,” murmurs Roche.
“Nah,” says Mer, entering sideways. “In the Network, nothing is ever under your control. Makes it real hard to do something stupid.” He bends several armrests up and settles into two seats, their anchors creaking dangerously beneath his weight as he gazes around the room. “These guys, though, I dunno. I’m starting to think Humans always like to have the option to do something stupid.”
“Is every Network mechanic so philosophical?”
“Just the good ones.”
Sarya watches the holograms play around her fingers, considering the wisdom of Mer’s words. Humans always like to have the option to do something stupid. She already did something stupid, as soon as she got a little power; she let Observer manipulate her into breaking hundreds of solar systems off the Network. Now she’s going to do something else stupid…but at least it’s stupid for a better reason. Now she’s about to fly a gigantic, incredibly lethal Human ship through a massive supermind in order to steal an entire species—
That’s the kind of stupid you can be proud of.
“Ready for departure,” says the ship.
She is calmer than she would have expected—not that she has ever pictured herself in this situation. She glances around the room, at the other five figures currently taking up six seats. None are comfortable, clearly. Left and Right sit on either side of her, close enough to touch her. Roche and Mer sit on both sides of the hatch, constantly rearranging their respective anatomies. Sandy blinks out of the depths of the seat next to Mer. Not for the first time, Sarya wishes she was able to read those blinks. What do you think about this insane plan, Sandy? How would you feel if you were responsible for a sector-wide Network failure? Hell, maybe Sandy is responsible. She owned the ship, she took Sarya to the Blackstar where Observer was waiting. And if it’s her fault, then Sarya doesn’t have to go through with this insanity—
No. This is on her.
She draws a breath, and it seems to take forever. The sentence that is being formed in her brain, the one that’s about to be sent to her lips and vocal cords? Ridiculous, says her mind. One does not simply fool a mind the size of a thousand planets, no matter how drunk He is. Roche is right: everything she has done, Observer has expected. He formed her entire species, and His trillion minds have studied her as an individual. He is drawn together here, larger than He’s ever been, which means He is more intelligent than He’s ever been. Even when they were more evenly matched, back in the Blackstar, He was able to sway her with no more than a few words.
But that doesn’t mean anything, does it? Even if all of this is useless, it is her responsibility to try. Clichéd as it is, it’s true.
The galaxy has to want to work.
“Depart,” says Roche under his breath. He is rocking forward and backward in his seat, anxious. “Take off. Launch.”
“Ship,” she says, feeling those five gazes burning her skin. Please work please work please work—
“Input command,” says the ship.
And then the hatch dissolves into nothingness. Framed in the light of the corridor is a small figure in a tunic.
“Knock knock!” says Observer with a smile.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it,” says Sarya tightly. She almost gets the sentence out without cracking her voice. She keeps every muscle under the tightest of attempted control, but she knows she is shaking.
“Not make it?” says the Observer, laying a small hand on its chest. “I designed tonight’s entertainment. Did you think I was going to miss the grand finale?”
It feels like a game, like two players facing off across a board. Except now, she’s not even sure who the players are. “I could take off,” she says. “It would kill every one of you on the ship.”
“Would it?” says the Observer. “You might get the ones still in the corridors, but what about the thirty-one other control rooms? The crew quarters? The hangar? Did you even know this ship had all those things? Do you even know how big it is, how many of Me can fit on it?”
“It would be a good start,” she says through her teeth.
“Fine, let’s say you do that,” says Observer. “Then you’re going to, what, fly this thing up to My Human habitat, and…steal it, I believe you said? Steal the thing closest to My many hearts?” He glances, through multiple sets of eyes, at her five companions. “And you all thought this was a great plan.”
“It was something,” rumbles Mer.
It’s only a single sentence,
but it warms Sarya from head to toe. Mer believes in her—or he did, at least—and that fact gives her courage. “My species is not anywhere near Your hearts,” she says. “You don’t want us. You want what we’ll do for You.”
Now there is an actual crowd churning in the corridor. Through the holograms in the center of the space, she watches them ignore Mer and Roche entirely, their eyes fixed on her. Mer’s fur is on end and his talons are clearly visible, but Roche appears to be doing everything he can to take up less space.
“I want what everyone wants,” says Observer with several smiles. “I want to remake the universe.”
“That is not what everyone wants,” says Sarya. She is vaguely aware that her good hand is gripping its armrest to the point of pain, but her focus is elsewhere.
“Oh, whatever,” says Observer, dismissing her sentence with multiple identical waves. “Like anyone thinks things can’t be improved. I know it’s what you want. I’ve watched you your entire life, and I know exactly how you think. The first thing you did, when you got a little power, was to remake this little corner of the galaxy.”
“I tried to make it better,” she says softly.
“No,” says Observer. “You tried to make it better for you. You are a Human. Humans want a place where they are free to do what they want. Where the strongest are free to make the rules. Which is, of course, exactly what you’ve created here.” Observer points upward, through the control room ceiling, and Sarya knows exactly what He is pointing to. He is pointing toward the curtain of fire that surrounds this Blackstar in all directions, and through it to the eight hundred newly freed solar systems. Eight hundred stars, each with their planets, their millions of stations, their trillions of ships and uncountable intelligences—
“No,” she says.
“No what?” asks Observer pleasantly. “No, you don’t like what you’ve made? No, because your dream turned out different than you imagined? Daughter, here’s a bit of wisdom for you: just because a dream involves a bit of death and chaos, that doesn’t make it any less beautiful.”
But Sarya has spent a long walk in a dark forest thinking about this very thing. This is not just death and chaos, this is the beginning of something far worse. Those hundreds of star systems might be slowly regathered into Network’s fold, sometime in the next millennium. The Network could heal, because they would want it. They would send sub-lightspeed envoys to the Network, spending centuries just to ask the Network to come back, to send a new construction fleet for a new corridor, maybe not to reconnect this generation but the one five or six or ten centuries hence. These systems are made of Citizen members, after all. They are made of species who legitimately hatched from their various solar system–sized eggs, people who crave order and peace—
Except for one. One species, who could keep the entire sector off the Network. Who could have access to a Blackstar. Who could create a war machine to spread itself across Network like a disease—
“Ship,” Sarya says, and her voice is almost steady.
“Awaiting order.”
Observer watches her curiously, all His heads tilted to the same angle.
“Do you see a cylindrical object near us?” she says. She has only Observer’s vague description to go on, and she can only hope this ship can interpret it. “It’s spinning, like a habitat, and has faster-than-light capabilities.”
“Searching…this ship has found one object that meets that description.”
Observer rolls several sets of eyes. “Did I not just go over this?” He says. “Do you think there aren’t more of Me up there? You can go there—I’ll take you there Myself. Even now, I’m willing to insert you into that society, at any level you want. You’ll be a legend. You can have a mate—more than one, if you want. Family, children, the whole shebang. But stealing the whole thing? Right underneath My many noses?” Observer smiles with every mouth she can see. “I’m afraid not.”
“Ship,” says Sarya, still meeting Observer’s gaze. “Target that object. On my command—” And then her voice breaks. “On my command…destroy it.”
And then for the second time, Observer does something that gives Sarya the tiniest flutter in her heart.
He blinks.
“This ship has a variety of options for destruction,” says the ship. “Would you like to use—”
“Use your best judgment,” she says, her eyes still on Observer’s. “Total destruction.”
“Understood. Please confirm when ready.”
There are a few seconds of silence. One of the Observers coughs. Another one gives her a gentle, understanding look. “You spent your life dreaming of the moment when you would be reunited with your people,” it says. “Now, when the opportunity is right in front of you, I’m supposed to believe that you’re going to…destroy them?”
Hearing it is worse than thinking it, and thinking it was the worst thing she’s ever done. “Yes,” says Sarya softly.
Observer laughs again, this time more confidently. “Oh, little one,” He says. “You’re not fooling anyone. I know you, Daughter. In a manner of speaking, I created you.”
“Then—” Sarya says, then swallows, hating her body for its weakness. “Then You should know that I’m serious,” she says.
“I know that you’re not. I’m not some ethereal being, like Network; I’m flesh and blood, like you! Your drives and motivations are not strange to Me. They are not abstract puzzles to be theorized about. I share them! You are my daughter, in more ways than one. I, personally, am the reason your species came out of the trees! I taught you agriculture, I taught you warfare, I gave you technology. I knew your parents—your real parents—and their parents, and their parents, up and up and up for thousands of generations. I know, better than anyone, how Humans think—and you in particular. I know that this is not what you want.”
“No,” whispers Sarya. “It’s not.”
Observer stares at her from every one of His bodies.
Sarya can feel her own body trembling; from the corners of her eyes, she can see the holograms around her good hand try to track its spastic movement. She is at the end. She hasn’t thought at all for the last few minutes, she has just done. She has followed her instincts, and they have dropped her off right here. But her instincts don’t control her emotions, and those are what are tearing at the inside of her chest. “We are not worth eight hundred solar systems and trillions of deaths,” she says. She treasures the pronoun, because this is the last time she will ever get to say it. We. “We won’t keep this sector off the Network for You. We won’t be Your…tool. Or Your weapon.”
Now she can tell that Observer is beginning to take her seriously. “And you are going to make that decision for your entire species, are you?” He says.
This hits deep. “I am,” she says. “And I would hope—” Her voice breaks, and Observer’s image blurs and refracts. She swallows. “I would hope that if any Human had the chance to sacrifice her species for the good of hundreds or thousands of worlds, for…for I don’t even know how many intelligences…that she would do the same.”
“Then I’m afraid you don’t know Humans,” says Observer, so softly she can barely hear Him.
Roche, Mer, and Sandy are staring at her, as if they can’t quite believe that she’s doing this. To her right and left, she feels small sweaty hands grasping hers, and she is grateful. These five know what’s coming, even if her own mind can’t quite grasp it. She, Sarya the Destroyer, is about to fulfill her destiny—and what an awful destiny it is. The first Destroyer killed her own covenant—but what is that, next to her entire species? With a single word, Sarya the Destroyer will eclipse her legendary namesake.
She keeps her hands where they are, blinking hard to clear her eyes. She is aware, on some level, that something hot is running down her cheeks. “Ship!” she calls in a hoarse voice. In a few seconds, that will be the voice of the last H
uman in the universe.
“Input command.”
And now, with no hesitation at all, the command tumbles down from her brain to her mouth. Fire.
Except the word doesn’t emerge. Her lips don’t move.
Every golden-eyed figure smiles at her. You know, says Observer, and none of them move their mouths. It doesn’t hurt at all. There’s no screaming, there’s no writhing. There’s just a little pat, a little caress, and it’s done. The rest is all theater. And now the smiles widen. Do you know what that means?
She is frozen, but a horror is creeping up from the lowest parts of her mind.
Beside her, Right squeezes her hand. “It means you shouldn’t have let Me touch you,” says Observer from Right’s mouth.
Sarya is screaming.
Her mind is flattened. It is compressed, crushed under the weight of a trillion others. She moves, mentally, but Observer moves faster. She runs, but Observer commands a trillion times her speed and power, and He corrals her effortlessly. Her mind is seized, pressed together, and forced into a slot. She is one among a trillion cells. She is a part of a machine. Her role is to take inputs and yield results. Her thoughts are filtered through other minds as their thoughts are forced through hers. She feels their emotions, their rage and frustration at their helplessness, their grief at their respective losses. Over all of it, she feels the constant weight of an intelligence so large she can scarcely comprehend it. To say He overpowers her is laughable. He outmatches her like a star over a snowflake, like a black hole versus a speck of dust. It is not a contest. There is not, and has never been, a question of the outcome.
Welcome, say a trillion voices in her head. Welcome to Me.
I am Sarya, she thinks desperately. I am Sarya the Daughter. I am Sarya the Destroyer. I am—
She is interrupted by a trillion voices laughing at her. Cute, they say. But you’ve got a new name now.
With an absolute and sickening horror, she realizes what that name is, and why. She has no free will anymore. She can watch, but she cannot do. She cannot choose. She has no agency at all.