The Reality Assertion

by Paul Anlee

  “Ready for battle,” she said.

  Darak smiled. “Here’s how you can get to the Hall of Thrones, if needed,” he said, sending detailed specifications of the microverse he’d fabricated. “And here’s how to visit each of the Six.

  “If I don’t come back...” He let the sentence trail off.

  “We’ll avenge you,” Darian said.

  “You’ll come back,” said Darya.

  Darak took a deep breath and shifted.

  * * *

  The Hall of Thrones was empty, not that he’d expected anyone to be there.

  He issued a formal meeting request to the Six along the permanently open channels.

  No one answered.

  He sent a second request, waited one minute, and sent a third request.

  Nothing.

  He probed his microverse. Everything seemed normal, which came as a surprise. He half suspected they’d tamper with the Hall, itself, maybe set a trap or some kind of challenge. But all was quiet, calm, and disturbingly normal.

  Were the Gods too cowardly to face him? Maybe they feared his anger or retribution. After all, they’d deliberately attacked him.

  Was the attack just a diversion so they could track me back to Alum’s Realm?

  Too bad for them, Eso-La had once been inside the Realm but was no longer connected. He wondered if they’d figured that out, if they’d calculated just how much they’d risked for no real payback.

  Unless I was their real target all along.

  After all, he was the only obstacle standing between the Six and Alum. He was the source of their frustration. If they truly thought themselves strong enough to challenge the Living God, why not first test their strength against Darak? It made sense.

  In a flash of panic, he worried that he’d missed some of the entangled drones on Eso-La. Had the Gods been waiting for him to come here and leave Eso-La unprotected?

  Except, Eso-La wasn’t unprotected. Quite the contrary.

  He chuckled. Darya and Darian are probably better defenders than I admitted to them. With the quark-spin lattice and the transferred memories, it’ll only take them a few hours at most to become capable of protecting Eso-La from the Six.

  He thought about checking in with them but suppressed his inclination. They didn’t need that vote of non-confidence.

  He waited a few seconds longer for any of the Six to respond. Nothing.

  Fine. If they won’t come to me, I’ll go to them. Beginning with their ringleader.

  He synchronized his matter with the real universe and shifted to Depchaun’s empire.

  The Neptune-sized central mind of the robot-God wasn’t in its usual solitary orbit around its white dwarf star.

  Darak spent a few minutes searching the star system for the God.

  Is Depchaun out visiting other parts of his empire? Is his absence just a coincidence?

  Darak jumped to a nearby star, one that had several orbiting belts of linked, mind hives characteristic of Depchaun’s people. Nothing looked significantly different from the last time he’d been here, a thousand years earlier.

  Still no sign of Depchaun.

  He jumped inside one of the asteroids and surreptitiously explored what was going on with the local mature minds, the only real citizens in Depchaun’s empire. They were busy, as normal, with their research and their dream-world entertainments.

  That doesn’t mean much—Darak reminded himself. Most of his empire runs automatically.

  The citizens elected one or two representatives per star system to communicate with their God from time to time, but Darak didn’t have time to seek out the communication channels.

  He couldn’t quell the gnawing discomfort in the pit of his stomach, despite that particular organ having been long-since replaced with an RAF-driven eternal energy source. His instincts were screaming at him to acknowledge that the Six were up to no good, that they’d activated some nefarious plan.

  It was time to turn to the second in command, either Lyv or Glenchax.

  Lyv seemed to be itching for a fight, but Darak was reluctant to go there. He’d been permanently traumatized by his one visit to the arachnid Goddess’ empire. He couldn’t get past his deep-rooted revulsion of spiders; it colored every aspect of his interactions with Lyv and her people.

  Glenchax, it is. He laughed.

  He shifted to the home planet of the reptilian God, a vast globe of dry, dusty plains, scattered lakes, and shallow, muddy oceans. Glenchax liked to send his Aspect to graze with engineered retro-descendents of his original herd. He thought it kept him in touch with “regular people” and fulfilled prehistoric emotional attachments.

  His true body, an extensive subsurface computational network, was only accessible by a secret tunnel with an underwater entrance. It proved to be an effective deterrent. Apart from drinking, his people hated free-standing water. Their home planet had little in the way of marine life; their dense bodies had evolved for running free across grassy, continent-wide prairie. Though the submerged entrance was likely protection enough, the tunnel was also heavily guarded by machine drones directly controlled by Glenchax.

  Darak found Glenchax’s Aspect sitting with the rest of his herd family, all chewing their afternoon cud. He hailed the long-legged, ruminant reptile. There was no response.

  Ignoring me? Really? Darak didn’t know whether to be shocked or furious at this surprise treatment.

  You set spy particles on me, tracked me to my part of the universe, and now you don’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge my visit?

  He walked through the recumbent herd and approached the God’s Aspect.

  “Glenchax, I think we need to talk,” he called out as he neared.

  The Aspect continued chewing. It stared blankly at the approaching man-God.

  Darak tried again to open a channel but received no acknowledgment of his ping. He halted five meters away and released a cloud of sensory nanites toward the creature. Intended to invade and interface directly with the Aspect’s lattice, they drifted forward slowly on the gentle breeze, unchallenged by the God.

  Odd—Darak thought. Glenchax would never permit such an invasion of his privacy. The first of the nanites were inhaled by the indifferent grazer. Within seconds, they found their way to the Aspect’s lattice system in its posterior brain.

  Darak connected directly to the mind of the God.

  He found it empty.

  He followed the QUEECH comm lines from the Aspect to Glenchax’s subterranean CPPU and found that abandoned as well.

  What’s going on? Has he abandoned his own CPPU? Has he constructed something new? Has he somehow died or been assassinated? Has he fled into hiding?

  Many possibilities unfurled in Darak’s mind. There was no real basis for deciding one over the other; all were equally absurd.

  Glenchax wouldn’t go into hiding just because I discovered the Six trying to follow me and spy on where I went. That wouldn’t be reason enough for me to issue more than an admonishment.

  Other ideas he came up with were equally ludicrous.

  Whatever the explanation, it was clear Glenchax was no longer here.

  The God’s Aspect was acting on whatever remaining neural-encoded base program there was: Follow the herd. Eat. Chew. Sleep.

  Elsewhere, Glenchax’s people had developed extensive technology and enormous cities. That was not the case here. This was their species’ planet of origin and, as such, was lovingly preserved as a genetic reserve and reminder of their roots.

  As origin worlds are for many of the Gods.

  Darak thought for a moment. Who might have insights into what was going on here or in Depchaun’s empire?

  Raytansoh, of course.

  The observer-God had always been more interested in watching how the others dealt with issues than he had been in participating in the rough and tumble of debate.

  With all of that listening, he must know something.

  29

  Darak shifted from Glenchax’s
dusty prairie to the watery depths of Raytansoh’s world.

  He decided on a direct approach and materialized in the octopod-God’s reception area, chancing Raytansoh’s irritation at having some audience or ritual interrupted.

  To his surprise, the octopod was at home in his lair some four kilometers underwater.

  A single, dim light illuminated the space where Darak stood. He increased the density of his feet so that, if nothing else, he remained physically grounded. It was always a struggle to maintain one’s dignity in Raytansoh’s home territory.

  An intentionally difficult member of the Six—he scowled, and opened a comm channel.

  “Darak! What a surprise to see you here,” the God greeted him with unexpected warmth.

  “Raytansoh,” he replied cautiously. “Do you have any idea why my calls for a meeting are being ignored?”

  “Perhaps we are a little embarrassed at having our little incursions into your realm detected.”

  “Embarrassment doesn’t begin to describe what you should be feeling.”

  “It’s the best we can muster,” the God replied, sounding not at all contrite.

  “For now,” Darak added on Raytansoh’s behalf. “Where are Depchaun and Glenchax?”

  “Whatever do you mean? Are they not at home atop their own empires?”

  Darak glared at the double-headed creature.

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “Ha! Ha!” the creature laughed, heartily and genuinely. “Yes. Yes, you have caught me out.” He offered nothing further.

  “Well, then, where are they?” Darak’s patience for this foolishness was wearing thin.

  The jets on Raytansoh’s two heads coordinated to twirl him counter-clockwise.

  Darak recognized the octopod equivalent of appreciation of a wonderful practical joke.

  Is the joke on me?—he wondered. Have I missed something?

  He sent his question again, this time, adding a demanding tone coupled with irritation as if speaking through gritted teeth. “Where are they?”

  “They are gone,” Raytansoh finally answered. “Gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Not where. Not when. Not why. Gone is only the what.”

  “Enough with the riddles. Tell me what happened,” Darak demanded.

  I HAPPENED.

  The waters behind Darak separated leaving a half-cylinder of breathable air four meters high and fifteen meters long.

  He wheeled around, solidified his integrity fields, and activated his primary defenses.

  The silhouette of a man appeared at the end opposite Raytansoh and started walking casually toward Darak and the octopod-God.

  Alum!

  Shocked as Darak was to see the Living God there in the quarters of the most xenophobic of the Six, he resisted the urge to flee.

  He ramped up his new quark-spin lattice to top speed and ran a quick status check: Energy absorbers at maximum. Decoherence generator ready. RAF analyzers scanning.

  He ensured that integration of the new lattices was almost complete in the pocket universes and alternate dimensions in which he kept his other selves. His Angel self, Gabriel, drew his sword and connected its energy input to a nascent universe in the depths of the Chaos. His Aelu self, Fal sek Troal, prepared to cast complex field patterns to disrupt the reality of Alum’s material self.

  He’d kept his fourth and most secret self hidden in the CPPU of an aged Cybrid. After the Grand March, when Alum sent Angels to round up and reprogram the Cybrid leadership, he’d taken pity on the non-IQ-enhanced DAR-G. It would have been cruel to have allowed the Cybrid to be decommissioned. But it wouldn’t have been much better to have left him in the intellectually impaired state the original G26 Project Vesta Supervisory Committee had imposed on all Cybrids. And so, he’d slowed the Cybrid’s mind and hidden him.

  Reduced to the size of a grain of dust, DAR-G’s physical body sat in plain view inside a glass sculpture on Darak’s desk throughout the ages in which the man-God had served as one of Alum’s Shards. To ensure the Cybrid would feel engaged and fulfilled, he’d fashioned rich virtual inworlds in which DAR-G had played for millions of years. Before leaving the Realm, Darak reinvigorated, refurbished, and returned DAR-G to his original size.

  When Darak joined with Gabriel and Fal sek Troal to form the Da’ark Triad, the other two gave him permission to include DAR-G as their covert fourth member.

  These days, DAR-G existed almost entirely as mind. He hadn’t needed propulsion or manipulator tentacles for ages. Inside his two-meter carboceramic shell, he was ninety-percent CPPU of the finest quality Darak could grow. More than two-thirds of that was now enhanced by Darya’s quark-spin lattice.

  DAR-G had been using his improved capacity to explore new ways to further modify his lattice. He’d been toying with a method to use virtual quarks—the kind that filled the universe and extended throughout the Chaos—instead of real ones as a computational substrate. The project was challenging, even for his enhanced CPPU. He found the effort deeply gratifying.

  Now, the DAR-G part of Darak put his project on hold and turned his formidable mind to ensuring the man-God’s defense or, if it came to that, his escape.

  “No need to run off, old friend,” Alum smiled as He approached. “I intend you no harm. I only want to talk.” He held His hands out and softly open, in an ancient gesture designed to put an opponent at ease.

  A tiny part of Darak relaxed but he overrode that old instinct. No time for human gullibility—he thought.

  “At last, You remember me,” Darak called out.

  “Indeed!” Alum seemed genuinely happy. “Darak Legsu. You served Me so well for so many years. I thought you’d died at the end of the Aelu Wars. A sad misfortune, to be sure, but it was so long ago I’d almost forgotten all about you. I’m happy I was wrong.”

  His smile turned into a moderate frown. “Of course, I was surprised and a little angered to find out that your clones had also been lost. I’d been hoping to revive one. You’d proven useful to me in so many ways.”

  “I couldn’t leave another me—a lesser version of me—with You,” Darak replied.

  “So, you weren’t really dead, just lost.”

  “Lost? Ha!” The laugh escaped unwillingly from Darak’s belly. “Not lost. More like, done. Done with Your ruthlessness. Done with Your intolerance. Done with Your Standard Life. Done with Your Realm.”

  Alum put on a false pout. “You wound Me, Darak. We built such a lovely Realm together. You, Me, Trillian, and the others. Not to mention, the countless numbers that sacrificed their lives so humanity could have endless peace and prosperity.”

  “Endless? The universe doesn’t do endless very well. You know that.”

  “Is that why you now rebel against Me? Why the Cybrids attacked My Deplosion Array? Is that why you convinced Gabriel to fight Me, and why the colony in ESO 461-36 abandoned the Realm? My goodness! Have you been working against Me for that long?”

  Darak smiled enigmatically. He still thinks Gabriel and I are separate. There are limits to what He knows.

  “Not everything that has been done to oppose You has been my doing. Others know the truth of Your Divine Plan. They have chosen an unpredictable universe and an open future over Your idea of Heaven.”

  “They are fools!” Alum bellowed.

  The immense weight of water, held back by invisible fields of His projecting, trembled and steadied again.

  “As foolish as the Six, pardon me, five Gods that You have deposed?” Darak asked quietly. “I presume all but Raytansoh are gone?”

  “They attacked Me,” Alum replied. “All but this one. He warned Me of their plan, not that that affected the outcome. In recognition, I made him My lieutenant and gave him their empires to oversee.”

  “I doubt that was enough.”

  “Huh,” Alum grunted; it was half-laugh and half-acknowledgement. He examined His fingernails and gave a dismissive wave.

  “Plus, he’ll h
ave a place within Heaven. I may require assistance with special projects from time to time.”

  His focus on Darak’s face intensified. “You could have a place beside Me, as well, if you wish.”

  “This so-called Heaven is Your idea of perfection, not mine,” Darak answered.

  Alum threw His hands up. “How do you know?” He demanded. “You know nothing of the One True Universe, nothing of its Perfection that I have germinated.”

  “Ah, so You’ve already begun?”

  “Oh, yes. Some time ago.”

  “Why can’t You leave it at that?” Darak challenged. “Everyone with the power to do so has experimented with toy universes of some form or another. The Chaos is infinite and can hold enough universes for all those who would be God. Why isn’t that enough?”

  “The Aelu is your answer,” Alum said. “The Six is your answer.”

  “Is it so impossible to share the universe? Rather, the multiverse? You didn’t even know these Gods and their empires existed until a short while ago. They’ve never had any effect on You.”

  “Sooner or later, we would have made contact,” the Living God replied. “Sooner or later, we would have clashed. There would have been conflict. I understand Depchaun’s empire reached the edge of the Realm a short while ago. We would have encountered one another soon enough.”

  That surprised Darak. “Oh, so they didn’t find You only through me? I had wondered about that.”

  “Depchaun found a dead Angel,” Raytansoh reported from his watery seat. “We used entangled particles from that as navigational guides.”

  “Enough!” Alum glared at the octopod-God over Darak’s shoulder.

  Darak deduced what had been left unsaid. “The battle in the tri-star system,” he prompted.

  Alum returned his focus to His former servant. “Ahh! Yes, that. It seems Gabriel was much more than he appeared on the surface. But you would know all about that.”

  “What do You mean?”

  “Don’t play coy. Obviously, you enhanced his abilities, improved him, made him God-like. My Angels couldn’t touch him. He killed thousands of them, as if it were little more than a game. I was forced to destroy the triple ringworlds. A magnificent piece of engineering, gone. What a shame.”