Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  Alex suppressed yet another shudder.

  First the Strangegods, then the foreigners.

  It sounded more and more like he'd ordered military machines.

  Alex glanced around the room and quickly calculated the number of Eternium bars. There wasn't enough to gild even a single machine with Eternium armor, to say nothing of fifty. What had Stock promised him?

  "But the last time I spoke to him, Stock boasted about twenty-two hour days. Twenty-two! I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what he promised me! I swear it on my blood!"

  His smile grew brighter. His eyes sparkled with joy.

  "Do you know anything about that? How did he enforce twenty-two hour days? How did people survive?"

  A lot of them hadn't survived.

  Alex attacked her steak and took another bite.

  Emile lied without batting an eye.

  "Yes, it's been an interesting experiment. I'm not sure how successful it's been, though. The results are mixed. My dad is in charge of measuring everything. So the important thing to understand is you already control these people. If they don't work – they'll starve. So they have to work. And if they don't do what you tell them to do, you can just fire them."

  Steel scoffed.

  "Yes, yes, I know that. That's just the basics. I want to solve the human limitation! We tried making some of the people inside our floating palace work just twenty hours a day, and they keeled over."

  Emile leaned in, and her smile grew alongside Steel's.

  "It's all about distributed hours! We split them up just so. Three days of work – during which our workers work twenty two hours a day – and then a rest day. They usually just spend their time sleeping it off. Then back to work for the next three-day session!"

  She giggled conspiratorially.

  "See if you can spot something interesting."

  Emile counted off on her hand, bending her filled-out fingers with her other hand to hide the fact that Stock had mutilated them.

  "The idiots get two days off every eight instead of two days off every seven! But they're just too tired to realize it. It's marvelous!"

  Alex chewed a mouthful of rice. The food was losing its taste.

  Emile sighed theatrically.

  "The only problem is injuries. That's why it's not worth it. Even the mental strain was still too much. A lot of accidents on the assembly line.

  Steel scratched his forehead.

  "Well, that's a shame. It sounded like Stock had discovered a miraculous invention. A way to transcend the limitations of the human body."

  Emile laughed.

  "You know he can be a bit of a blowhard."

  Steel grinned mischievously.

  "Still, we have a lot of people. It could be worth experimenting on some of them, just to see what happens."

  By the end of that sentence, Alex's blood had turned to ice. She couldn't feel her fingers. She set her fork down.

  She had to get her parents off the colony.

  A door slid open from the back of the room, and another man stepped in. He was wearing a cleanly pressed white lab coat and a thick pair of plastic glasses with translucent frames.

  It took a moment for Alex to recognize him. He was dressed so differently, but it was unmistakably the Paragon general from before, the one who had apologized to them and handed over the contracts. He'd changed all his clothes save for the sword dangling from his waist. With his perfect smile and long wavy hair, he was nearly as handsome as Steel.

  The Governor grinned.

  "Sooner tells me you all have met before. He's my chief of staff – and our resident genius. He does everything! Manages our police force. Analyzes our colonial finances. And science too!"

  Sooner grinned, and Alex had to suppress a wince. From so close, his smile seemed incredibly discomfiting. His lips slithered across his cheeks.

  She smiled uncomfortably and was thankful when he didn't offer a hand to shake.

  "Science is my main interest. There were a lot of powerful secrets we forgot on Old Earth. Valuable ideas we discarded when we should have kept them. And I think they are being borne out today on Diligence! Just look at the Strangegods. On Old Earth, some scientists noted that religious beliefs were correlated with low intelligence. That's exactly what we're seeing right now!"

  Alex suddenly felt nauseous.

  His words jabbed against her brain. This was even worse than she'd thought.

  "And it's not just religion. No, not at all! It turns out you can uncover elements of intelligence by measuring skull shapes and sizes. There are places for empathy. There are places for ruthlessness. Places for dishonesty. Why, if I had my equipment, I could tell how likely it is that you're lying to me!"

  He smiled his snake-smile again before bowing gracefully.

  "Just at a glance, your lovely heads look very honest. Of course, religion and skull shape can only take you so far. I haven't even mentioned the biggest determinant of all. Race!"

  Sooner's voice burned with passion.

  "Yes! Race! You wouldn't believe it!"

  Alex felt very faint.

  "Yes, I know it sounds fake. But on my blood, it's true! But on Old Earth, some races had countless accomplishments! Warfare! Music! The arts! Literature! But others...well, I don't mean to be rude, but they had no accomplishments at all. That's right. None. Of course, some people pretended the inferior races did something, but it was only to be nice."

  He shook his head.

  "Who knows? Perhaps it became unacceptable to point out the obvious."

  Rage spiked through Alex's stomach.

  The librarian had carefully studied Old Earth history. The ideas Sooner espoused had been completely discredited. It was common sense that something as miraculous as intelligence and consciousness couldn't be measured.

  Before Alex could open her mouth to speak, Emile kicked her under the table.

  Right.

  Alex bit her tongue and reminded herself to stay political.

  She was a socialite from Plenty. Most of those people had swallowed Stock's lies about overpopulation. They'd probably believe religious people were dumb. They'd probably believe in race science.

  "The Plenty system fascinates me. The Blocks are ranked hierarchically, according to worthiness. But with our knowledge, we'll be able to do the same thing with far more accuracy. There won't be any inferior people sneaking in. When we bring Blocks here, I know exactly where I'll be putting everyone!"

  Emile was strong. She could probably smile and chat with them all night, but Alex couldn't do the same.

  "I need to use the bathroom. Where's the bathroom?"

  Steel chuckled.

  "Out the main door and two doors to the right."

  She stood up from the chair, careful to keep her steps calm and dignified.

  She should have seen this from the start.

  Nothing Steel identified as a problem had precluded Stock's actions. Stock had stayed on Plenty; he wasn't a foreigner. Southern Robotics built completed products. And the company's workers had always worked hard. It was just as Stock said the last time she met him. According to the laws of Plenty, everything he'd done had been legal.

  Like Waters, Steel didn't have a problem with Stock's actions at all.

  The two handsome and charismatic men sitting at the table were like Stock and Waters at the very beginning, back when Stock's father had been in charge instead of his delusional son, and Waters was still young.

  They were trying to create the same situation here on Diligence.

  Before Alex made it out the door, a tablet rang loudly. The noise echoed awkwardly across the room.

  "Hello?"

  "Governor Steel. The Strangegods have gathered outside the building. They are demanding to speak with you and Chief of Staff Sooner."

  The mask slipped off at once.

  Steel slammed a fist onto the table.

  The food rattled.

  "If only Stock sent the machines on time. We wouldn't h
ave to deal with this bullshit then. On my blood, they'd know their place."

  Sooner quickly ushered Alex and Emile out the door.

  "We'll speak again soon."

  Steel sighed.

  "Let's change into our working clothes and meet them."

  Sooner turned back to Steel, a malevolent sneer on his face.

  "These people..."

  He paused sarcastically at that word, then made air quotes to make it abundantly clear he didn't think they were people at all.

  "These people need to shut the fuck up for good."

  ____

  When they walked outside, Alex half-expected to see Macob listening at the door, but the former Governor was gone. The hallway was completely empty. Hidden alarms blared loudly from within the walls.

  Emile spoke at once.

  "We need to get the schematics now, while they're busy outside."

  Alex nodded.

  It was a very lucky break. They needed to complete the order in the next few days, and the two of them would never get another chance like this – nobody around them and the entire building distracted.

  Alex frowned again. The Southern Robotics Paragons were shams, but Steel and Sooner seemed too intelligent to fall for Stock's tricks. The two of them sounded completely confident that they had War Paragons arriving soon.

  "His office is inside the training room. I asked some of the soldiers before our game. They said he likes to keep an eye out for what they're doing."

  The pair pulled off their high-heeled shoes and held them in their hands as they sprinted back for the hangar. The Spire's book-corridors were filled with countless twists and turns, and secret entrances separated each of the floors. They'd spent years navigating the tower before Alex gained the ability to command the Eternium walls. Finding their way through a building, even one they'd only entered twice before, was child's play.

  A left. A right.

  Then a left again.

  Straight down, and then they were just outside the hangar.

  The angry outcry echoed from outside.

  "We're innocent! We're innocent!"

  "You can't do this!"

  After Steel's explanation, Alex understood what was happening.

  The Strangegods were angry about working two shifts a day. They wanted to spend time at their churches and with each other. Due to the new laws, their bosses could fire them for avoiding the second shift. Steel and Sooner called them traitors because they wouldn't join in their demented vision of a new Diligence, and the Strangegod leaders who Steel had paid off were saying the same.

  Alex could see the crowd through a hangar window. There was a swarm of people, far more than earlier in the afternoon, and Alex thought she even saw some people who weren't Strangegods among them. Not everyone held a relic.

  The sight was mesmerizing. The Eternium symbols went up and down, up and down.

  Alex suddenly thought of when the survivors of Plenty gathered around the library courtyard. They'd screamed the truth, and Stock's goddess of Ignorance had dissolved into thin air. The Strangegods and their supporters couldn't do that to the soldiers, though.

  Emile yanked her through the sliding door.

  "Come on. Hurry! We need to hurry!"

  They stepped forward toward the glass room filled with simulator pods. The room was empty. All the soldiers must have been outside. There was a door in the far corner with a big one-way window in the front. Emile strained at the door, but it was locked.

  Alex stepped forward, her fingers curling around the Eternium shard in the pocket of her dress.

  "I got this."

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, but the metal stayed cold.

  Her heart thumped in her chest.

  Infiltrating the office was scary.

  She'd never done something like this before.

  The librarian exhaled and stared at the pods.

  She felt the controls in her hands – light plastic this time instead of the heavy metal from before.

  In her mind's eye, she stood at one end of the street, her new composite rifle at her waist, and Claudia stood at the other with her weapon-hands raised to strike.

  This was just another fight, just another duel.

  Her opponent was ready to charge, but she was faster, stronger, and smarter.

  The Eternium warmed in her hand, then melted. She gestured, and the liquid Eternium gushed into the lock, perfectly filling all the empty spaces.

  Alex grinned. That wasn't from the stories. She'd thought of that trick herself.

  The Eternium hardened beneath her fingers, and she twisted. The door clicked open.

  Emile laughed.

  "That's good. I thought you were just going to smash a hole."

  The door to the office was locked too, but Alex just repeated the same trick. They stepped into a waiting room. The window was opaque from the outside, but they could clearly see from the other side.

  Steel and Sooner's offices were clearly labeled. This time, there was no need for an Eternium pick. The door swung open to reveal an office even finer than the vault. The trappings of wealth were so ostentatious that it was like a punch to the face.

  Two massive portraits of Steel hung on the left and right walls. In one, he dressed in a red and white suit with a windblown cape flaring behind him as he triumphantly raised a bloody sword. In the other, he wore a spacesuit of the same colors and seated inside a Paragon.

  His desk was carved from black Eternium. As far as Alex knew, none of the other colonies were mad enough to try mining it from the core. He must have created the desk the old-fashioned way, by buying up Eternium trinkets and then melting them down. It must have cost a fortune.

  His computer glistened on the desk. It looked like it'd been built out of pure gold.

  "Holy shit."

  Emile just laughed.

  "Man. I was tricked before, but they're all the same. Steel, Stock, Waters, Sooner, Macob, the kids we fought earlier today."

  She shook her head.

  "What a bunch of perverts."

  A picture of his family sat on the edge of the table. Steel, both his parents, and a younger sister. Dressed in fine white suits similar to what he'd worn tonight, they posed on golden thrones. At the center of the picture was a fat purple stone that looked almost like a big worm. Each of them proudly placed a hand on the ugly artifact even though it was shockingly out of place among the beauty and splendor.

  Alex shook her head. Stock had been like that too. Some of the Old Earth treasures they found in his home had been hideously ugly, but he'd displayed them like priceless treasures. The librarian pulled out her tablet then snapped a picture of the room and the photograph. She wanted to document Steel's private excess.

  Then she frowned as she got a closer look at the picture. All four of them had deep cuts on the fingers. Their blood trickled into the strange rock.

  Emile turned on the computer and swore loudly, jerking Alex out of her consternation.

  "Shit!"

  Alex hurried over to the screen and quickly agreed with her friend.

  "Shit."

  Stock hadn't sold his fake Paragons, the ones that only looked like the legendary machines without boasting any of their capabilities.

  He'd sold adapted versions of Jared's design.

  The Hands Paragon stared back at them, its once gentle hands broken and modified for war.

  ____

  The machine carried the same weapons they'd seen in the simulator.

  The fingers on the right hand had been broken to pieces. The jagged edges were lined with shining steel.

  The machinegun fingers on the other hand splayed out awkwardly.

  A pair of missile launchers were strapped to the back, and there was a massive cannon installed at the chest. The burdensome loading mechanism replaced the tri-winged flight pack.

  The once light Hands Paragon bent beneath the weight. Alex doubted the machine was capable of flight. No wonder Claudia and Hank ha
dn't been practicing it in the simulator.

  Emile cursed again as they photographed the schematics, sending everything back to Plenty.

  "Shit, why would Stock even try to sell this? What's the point? He was already going to become a god."

  Who could say?

  The man was insane. He probably intended to keep running Southern Robotics even after becoming a monstrosity, even after sacrificing everyone on Plenty.

  "This isn't going to work. Jared won't let this work. Nobody's going to let this happen. They'll rig the machines. They'll do something."

  The longer she talked, the more comforted Alex felt. The people of Plenty had sworn to prevent anything like the Southern Robotics incident from happening again. Now was their chance.

  They'd just finished transferring all the photographs when there was a sudden knock on the door. The two women jerked around. The whining voice was instantly recognizable.

  "Sir. Sir. Are you there? I don't see why I have to clean the room. It's ridiculous! I used to be a former Governor! The real workers are mocking me! Please! If there's any other way I could help you? There has to be another way!"

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  There was no place for them to hide. The desk was solid Eternium with no room for them to slip underneath it. Alex briefly grabbed the Eternium shard in her pocket.

  She could turn it into a dagger and kill Macob as soon as he stepped inside.

  She sighed, and the metal slipped through her fingers.

  No.

  She couldn't do that.

  She couldn't just kill someone in cold blood.

  After a few more knocks, Macob opened the door.

  Emile sauntered forward.

  "Governor! We got stuck here. Steel told us to hide from the thugs outside, but it seems like he forgot about us!"

  There was a pause. For a moment, it seemed like they'd just walk away. Then Macob's eyes widened, and he stubbornly shook his head.

  "No. No. The door is always locked. You broke in!"

  Emile frowned, her face icy calm in the face of the accusation. She raised an innocent eyebrow as Alex's heart thumped in her chest. It felt like she couldn't breathe. Once again, Alex imagined herself in the cockpit of a Paragon. She had to stay calm. She had to use her battle-mind.