Confluence (Godbreaker Book 3)

by DJ Molles

  “I need to go talk to Sagum. Will you come with me?”

  Stuber made an uncomfortable face. “I’d rather not leave the city. Petra…” he trailed off.

  Perry studied the big man’s face. “I think she’ll be alright for a few hours, Stuber.”

  His nostrils flared. Eyes looking dangerous for a second. “I’d rather not leave the city.”

  Gods, what the hell was wrong with everyone? Teran, run off to “her people,” Mala, harboring old grudges to the detriment of their survival, and now Stuber, who had spent the last decade of his life as a fugitive, couldn’t bear to leave his wife’s side for a few hours?

  Perry closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and rammed both index fingers into his temples as though trying to pin his fracturing skull back in place. “Alright. Alright, fine. Will you at least take Hauten to the foundry and get him set up?”

  Stuber took a big breath that seemed to carry some discomfort on the exhale. “Yes, I can do that.”

  “Great,” Perry muttered. “I’m going to go talk to Sagum and Lux. Since, apparently, no one else will.”

  ***

  “I am walking up to the front door of Praesidium. A paladin is waiting for me. He introduces himself as ‘Paladin Atticus of House Annad, but you can call me Warden Atticus.’”

  “No.”

  “Right. I am in a large structure made of white stone. A paladin is smiling at me. He says, ‘Welcome to The Clouds.’ Oh, I believe that might be one of my very first memories, shortly after being activated. How interesting. Is it helpful?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll try again. Let’s see. In this memory, I am standing in the entryway of Praesidium with my fellow mechanical men, and a short, fat, bald paladin is staring at me with what I can only interpret as ‘disgust.’ His name is Warden Abbas.”

  “Well, at least we’re in the right century now.”

  “That would be helpful, if my chronology weren’t—”

  “Fragmented, yeah. Got it.”

  Sagum lay on his back amidst a scattering of tools, all pretense of order completely destroyed by an overwhelming depression. He stared up at the sky, watching the dawn light strike a few stringy clouds with orange.

  Pretty.

  How annoying.

  What was the purpose of pretty when it was all going to be destroyed?

  He’d got up before dawn, unable to do much sleeping the night before, and felt just enough verve to get himself working on Whimsby again. That had lasted for about an hour. Frustration after frustration, along with Whimsby’s constant retelling of memories that had nothing to do with anything that Sagum wanted to know, had stripped him of the tiny vestige of can-do spirit that he’d had.

  So now he lay in his tools. Everything in disarray. What was the point in keeping everything tidy? Why keep up pretenses? Orderly tools were just a lie he was telling himself. Acting like he was some kind of surgeon. Ha! He couldn’t program his way out of burlap sack, let alone figure out how to fix Whimsby’s memories.

  “I am flying on my skiff. I’m on patrol. Wait. No, I can see the date stamp on the controls. That was two hundred years ago.”

  “Not helpful,” Sagum grunted.

  “Primus help me, is he ever going to stop prattling on?”

  Sagum didn’t even bother to look. Or move. “Morning, Lux.”

  “Yes. It’s morning.”

  “That’s why I didn’t say good morning.”

  “You’ve a sunny disposition today.”

  “You’re missing half your praetors.” Sagum let that spiteful little observation hang there in the air. Because you know what misery loves? Company. And the ensuing miserable silence made Sagum smile nastily.

  A few quiet footsteps in the sandy dirt. The rustle of clothing as Lux pulled himself up into the skiff.

  From Sagum’s position, staring up at the sky, he could just see the top of Lux’s head, down by Sagum’s feet. He glanced down and met the demigod’s gaze. “What?”

  “Lost all hope, have you?” Lux said after a moment. He looked out towards the encampment where his own loss of hope was evident. “Throwing up the white flag?”

  “I’ve tried everything.”

  “Very well. Have you tried—”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “I just said I’d tried everything. By definition that’s…everything.”

  “Oh my. That confident in yourself, huh?”

  Well, actually, Sagum wasn’t confident at all in himself. So he let out a ponderous sigh and flicked his fingers in Lux’s direction. “Fiiiiiiine. What were you going to say?”

  There was actually a tiny sliver of himself that hoped Lux would come up with something truly brilliant that he hadn’t thought of.

  “Have you tried instructing Whimsby to create a subroutine capable of organizing the memories in some sort of logical order?”

  Sagum’s hope died in utero. “Well, let’s see. Whimsby?”

  “Yes, Master Sagum?”

  “Can you write a subroutine?”

  “Unfortunately, I am unable to comply with that request at this time.”

  Sagum lifted himself up onto his elbows and gave Lux a look, hands spread open as though to say See? I told you so.

  Lux frowned at the mech. “Whimsby, why are you unable to write a subroutine for yourself?”

  Whimsby remained motionless for a moment, as though thinking. Somewhere inside of his human-like shell, something whirred in a way that sounded decidedly broken. Like a tiny servo straining and not getting anything done.

  Whimsby twitched and looked apologetic. “There are large sections of my internal diagnostics system that don’t appear to be working correctly. Unfortunately, I cannot explain why I am unable to write a subroutine at this time.”

  Sagum groaned as he sat up, slouching over crossed legs. “Let me help shed some light on this situation.” He held Lux’s eyes as he pointed to Whimsby. “There are over one thousand logic circuits embedded in that core processor. These circuits allow a level of machine learning that gives the mechanical man the illusion of intelligence.” Sagum leaned over and poked his finger into the blackened hole in Whimsby’s core processor. “The bullet that made that hole right there appeared to fragment about halfway through the core processor, and the shrapnel destroyed, oh, I don’t know, rough guess, maybe forty percent of Whimsby’s logic circuits?” Sagum grimaced savagely and wiggled his finger around in the hole. “And there’s absolutely no way of knowing which logic circuits got toasted, and what the hell they controlled, although, obviously, some of them belonged to the systems that allowed internal diagnostics, chronology, and—Yup! You guessed it!—his ability to write subroutines.”

  Lux frowned, leaning back against the rail of the skiff and folding his arms over his chest, his longstaff cradled there, like a child’s prized toy. “Hm.”

  “Yes. ‘Hm’ indeed.” Sagum extracted his finger from the hole and wiped a bit of the carbon scoring from it. “So you see, even if we could figure out some way of organizing the memories besides their chronological time stamp, Whimsby won’t be able to write the program to search through those five hundred years of memories and put them in order.”

  “If he could,” Lux wondered. “How long would it take him? Hypothetically speaking.”

  “I don’t know,” Sagum admitted. “But he still has nominal processing speeds, so I’d guess it wouldn’t take long. Maybe a few minutes.”

  “Is there any way you can write the program for him?”

  “No.” Sagum started ticking the points off on his fingers. “One—I don’t know the language for programming mechs. Two—even if I did, or could learn it quickly enough, I’d need a hub capable of the time dilation necessary to condense the programming into Whimsby’s core processor. Three—I’m pretty sure the only place that has that type of computing power is likely in The Clouds, in whatever factory churns these mechs out.”


  Lux made a dismal face. “We stopped creating mechs some time ago. The facility was dismantled. I’m not sure if the equipment even exists anymore.”

  Even though it was already impossible, Sagum still felt like that little fact was salt in the wound. “There you go. See? The computing power necessary to do any of this shit doesn’t even exist on this planet anymore.” He put his head in his hands, freshly frustrated, depressed all over again. “It’s hopeless. Fucking hopeless.”

  Something hit the ground outside the skiff.

  Sagum jerked up, imagining a Guardian slamming to earth right in front of him.

  Lux whirled around, longstaff raised in an instant.

  “Whoa there, gents,” Perry said, smiling and raising a palm to Lux. “It’s just me.”

  Lux blinked a few times, then looked up into the sky as though wondering if some stealthy skiff had just deposited Perry from above. Back to Perry. “Where did you come from?”

  Perry kept his shield activated until Lux visibly relaxed and pointed the muzzle of his longstaff away. The translucent shimmer encapsulating Perry disappeared. “I flew. Or whatever it is you guys call it. Pulsing? I dunno. Mala taught me.”

  Sagum scrambled up beside Lux and leaned over the siderail, feeling the depression easing enough to let him grin. “Perry McGown, you tricksy bastard. You flew?”

  Lux seemed less enthusiastic, though it was probably the mention of Mala that did it. “It’s not a complicated process, once you know what to do,” he commented. “I’ve always preferred a skiff.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t have a skiff,” Perry said, grabbing the siderail and hauling himself aboard. He kept his smile even in the face of Lux’s dourness. “Good to see you guys. Safe and whole. I heard you were…” he stopped, realizing that Whimsby was apparently operational again, and watching him with a blank expression. “Shit. Whimsby, is that you in there?”

  A shadow of a frown crossed Whimsby’s face. “Yes, it is I. And you must be…Perry McGown.”

  Sagum watched Perry’s smile falter. They traded a look.

  “Whimsby,” Sagum questioned. “Did you remember that on your own, or through Bren’s facial recognition?”

  Whimsby nodded. “Bren.”

  Sagum grunted. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He turned to Perry. “It’s Whimsby…but it’s not.”

  “What do you mean?” Perry took a step forward, posting his longstaff and leaning on it. “What happened?”

  “Well.” Whimsby looked down at his open chest cavity and poked at the hole in his core processor, much as Sagum had. “It appears that I was in some sort of battle, wherein I sustained this very inconvenient damage.” He looked up, smiling brightly. “A bullet fragmented inside of me and corrupted forty percent of my logic circuits.”

  Another glance from Perry. Sagum nodded in confirmation.

  Still smiling: “My memories are not in any chronological order.”

  “Oh,” Perry murmured.

  Still smiling: “I can’t run full diagnostics.” A long, empty pause. “Or create new subroutines.”

  “Right,” Perry said. “Well, you seem in good spirits about it.”

  “As a mechanical man I don’t have spirits. Or emotions.”

  Perry leaned in Sagum’s direction, lowering his voice. “How close are you to fixing him?”

  Sagum’s momentary reprieve curdled, leaving him irritated again. “I’m not. I’m the opposite of close. I’m in the realm of the impossible.”

  “Come on, Sagum. You can fix anything.”

  Sagum huffed, putting his hands on his hips. “I seem to have bamboozled everyone into thinking that. But no. I can’t.”

  “Don’t get him started again,” Lux mumbled. “He’s in a mood.”

  Perry looked between them. “Everyone seems to be in a mood. Lux, why are there a bunch of your praetors in Karapalida?”

  “Not my praetors,” Lux replied bitterly. He nodded towards the encampment, where the sad remains of the more loyal praetors were in the process of breaking down and packing up. One of them looked in their direction, but quickly looked away as though ashamed. “And it looks like the rest are on the way out.”

  “No,” Perry said, rapping his longstaff on the deck. “Fuck that. Lux, you tell those praetors to get their shit packed on these skiffs.”

  Lux gave him a look of pure derision. “I think they’re already doing that.”

  “No, we’re going to all go back to Karapalida together,” Perry declared.

  Sagum shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, there was some talk about that, and—”

  “Yeah, Mala told me,” Perry interrupted. “And I don’t give a shit. I’m tired of all this backbiting. We’re going to all pack our shit up and go back to Karapalida together, because we’re in this thing together, and that’s how we’re going to figure our way out of it: Together.”

  “Mala and Legatus Mordicus might not see it that way,” Lux sighed.

  “Yeah, well, Mala and Mordicus will just have to adjust their perspectives,” Perry said, as though he ran the whole world all of the sudden.

  Sagum scratched his temple, grimacing. “Might take some convincing.”

  Perry shrugged. “I’ve been very convincing lately. Lux, give the order. And don’t let those praetors give you any shit back. You’re the one with the shield and longstaff. It’s time for them to recognize that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE PROBLEM WITH MEN

  Teran was surprised when she opened her eyes and saw daylight.

  She sat up with an ugly snort, wiping a bit of drool off her chin and staring out to the east where the sun had overtaken any glow from the burning city in the distance. Now all that remained of that far off carnage was a brown smudge on the horizon.

  At first she had the urge to jolt to her feet, animated by the nagging sensation of lost time—she hadn’t intended to sleep past dawn, but it had been one of those nights where she thrashed about in discomfort, and had only gotten to sleep shortly before the sun came up.

  But she stuffed down that urge to try to scramble and gather back those little grains of time that had slipped through her fingers. Such a thing was impossible. And rushing about never actually earned you any time back.

  She drew her knees up and rested her arms on them, still staring out. She’d chosen this spot to sleep because…well, she didn’t feel like being surrounded by a bunch of assholes that hated her. Didn’t make for restful sleep. Not that she’d gotten it anyways. But at least she was alone.

  Alone. Strange.

  Growing up as an Outsider, you were so accustomed to being crammed in with other people. Everyone always in everyone else’s business. Everyone’s noses up everyone else’s asses.

  She’d never had the desire to be alone before last night.

  Maybe she had changed. Maybe she didn’t belong here.

  Maybe these weren’t her people anymore.

  Well. There’s no better time to take an action than when you realize it needs to be taken.

  She slogged to her feet, groaning at her numb ass. Cold hands. Just the slightest skim of dew having settled on her clothing, making everything clammy. Amazing how the land around here was so dry, and yet it still gave up dew every night.

  “Better than the Crooked Hills,” she grunted to herself, rubbing some feeling back into her left buttock. Now, that place had been wet. Downright soggy for a dweller of the Wastelands like herself.

  She looked around her feet, as though surprised that she owned nothing to pack up. She shrugged, patted her pockets, and decided that she’d had enough of this place. She put her back to the smoggy remnants of that city in the distance, and began to descend into the chambers below.

  The smells. The smoke. The body odors. The morning’s porridge boiling up.

  They used to be the smells of home. Now they were alien.

  No, not quite. She was the alien.

  “Well, fuck ‘em,” she commented to herself, as she entere
d into the first of the main chambers, and not giving a shit that two women in passing glanced at her with some combination of offense and disgust.

  Through the narrow passages, where the people that had once been hers avoided eye contact and squeezed by her with shoulders brushing the opposite wall, trying not to get too close to her, as though she were a leper.

  She accepted the new rules of the game and didn’t bother seeking eye contact. Didn’t nod to them. Didn’t murmur a morning greeting. Just stalked past them, through them, around them. Pedestrian obstacles.

  Down into the main chamber now, where the smells were the thickest. Her belly felt limp and empty, like a deflated balloon inside of her. Food would have been nice. But she wouldn’t take theirs. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of whatever moral high ground they might derive from feeding her.

  Besides, their hostile looks dampened her appetite.

  Well, fuck ‘em.

  “Teran?”

  She didn’t bother to stop. Didn’t bother to look. Her decision was hardening by the second, her emotions calcifying against these stiff-necked people. She had places to be. If someone wanted to talk, they could follow her and talk on the move.

  “Teran, hold up!” It was Lucky.

  Well, fuck him.

  She heard the jogging footfalls behind her, and had already decided that if he so much as touched her elbow, she was going to give him a right hook straight to his crispy face. Maybe he spied her balled fists, but he didn’t touch her.

  “Hey, where you going?” he asked, seeming to struggle to keep pace with her.

  “Not ashamed to be seen talking to me?” Teran bit back.

  “Come on, Teran. It’s not like that. It’s just…”

  She grinned savagely. “Go ahead. Tell me what it’s like. This will be good.”

  “You know how it is.”

  “No, I don’t know how it is.”

  He huffed and puffed. “I have to live with these people.”

  She shook her head, catching a glimpse of Sage, who was catching a glimpse of her, over the stooped shoulders of a little coven of leaders, all huddled together. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Not-So-Fucking-Lucky. You’re going to have to die with these people. And I’ll leave you to it. Don’t let me stop you all from plunging headlong into your own fucking extinction.”