“If I strip this down to its algorithmic properties, we get something like this,” he said, before the screen switched to a series of lines very similar to what had been on the cavern walls. “It’s not exact, but—,”
“No fucking way,” I breathed. “That… that can’t be it.”
Yahweh hesitated. The grave implications of this discovery were not lost on him. “So, you see it too.”
I was shaking my head in denial. “Yeah, I see it, but that would mean—,”
“The Antediluvians were a machine race,” he concluded, solemn.
IMPETUS
Yahweh Telei—;
ADRIAL TOOK OUR MOST RECENT FINDING leagues better than Qaira had. Or me, for that matter. I’d come to the conclusion early last night, and had spent hours mulling over whether to tell anyone just yet. Something so ground-breaking might serve as a distraction to the more pressing matter of Aela’s current state.
However, it could also serve as a clue, and any clue was worth the risk. We were grasping at straws. Although none of us said it outright, we all knew that at any moment Aela could suddenly perish. If what I’d found had any chance of saving her and I said nothing, the guilt would crush me.
I showed him via conscious stream the same evidence I’d purported to Qaira. We were seated in his quarters—I wouldn’t dare summon him to Euxodia so late—and he reviewed it with only an occasional nod of understanding.
Truthfully, it was silly of me to expect Adrial to react any other way. He was exhausted and riddled with worry, the fatigue lines on his face had carved themselves even deeper than when we last spoke, only several hours before. The malay cigarette burned idly between his fingertips, the long tail of ash threatening to litter the floor.
“I’ve been reviewing more of the vis-captures,” he said, near whisper. “Coupled with what you’ve presented, it seems like a machine race is, or was, responsible for the creation of the multiversal collective subconscious.”
My gaze lowered to my lap. The way he’d said it added even more weight. Eschatis pre-dated the Framers—in fact the very breach of its material was what created the Framers. And us. And everything. “So, the metaphysical plane came before the physical.”
“Not necessarily,” sighed Adrial, shifting in his seat. He finally discarded his cigarette in the tray on his desk, to my relief. I was growing concerned that he would burn himself. “Perhaps this physical plane, yes, but a machine race can’t build itself.”
“So there are more universes, or multiverses.”
Adrial shrugged. “It appears that way.”
I sank further into my seat. “We are climbing a mountain with no summit.”
He offered me a somber smile. “It’s the journey that matters. I’m more curious to know why a machine race would create something they don’t even utilize.”
I had an idea, but the mere thought was chilling. I decided not to voice it, assuming he thought something similar. “Qaira is busy trying to disprove my hypothesis. For once, I hope he succeeds.”
Adrial said nothing, watching Aela as she slept on his bed at the other side of the room. Slept wasn’t an accurate term, but I didn’t know what else to call it. She looked peaceful, at least. “Such a discovery would make her very happy. All she ever wanted was to contribute in a meaningful way.”
His pain soaked into me. It felt so terrible, I trembled. “Then you can be the one to tell her, when she wakes up.”
Adrial looked at me, and I forced a smile. He did as well. Neither of us spoke for a minute.
“You should get some rest,” he offered. “I know it’s nearly impossible to sleep, but you’ll regret it sooner than later.”
I graciously accepted his dismissal, heading for the door. “I’ll see you at morning meal.”
Adrial murmured a goodbye to my back. I was certain he would sit there and watch over Aela until then.
*
The daybreak chimes rang and I shot up from my desk, confused and disheveled as attica continued to nag at my conscious stream, informing me that morning meal was in just under an hour. I smoothed my hair and rubbed my face, weathering the dull ache in my core that warned of overexertion. More sleep was out of the question; I’d just have to eat a bigger meal than usual and hope for the best.
How long had I slept for? An hour, maybe two; purely accidental. My research threads were still displayed in my headsup stream, having added to the confusion of my sudden awakening. I swept them aside with a blink and refastened the sash around my useless eye, then headed for the hall.
Everyone seemed equally haggard as we shuffled through the dining room, taking our meals to go. Preparing food wasn’t a priority as of late, so breakfast was hastily made grains and nearly-raw meat with slices of fruit. We were also given osmium marbles to absorb, which was a rare commodity. I took two.
I ate quickly, having finished by the time I made it into the mezzanine. I absorbed the plate for good measure, and snuck out into the courtyard to smoke before I had to meet with Mehrit for her morning lesson.
Qaira was already there, smoking one of Leid’s cigarettes. He gave me a nod in greeting, and then I realized I hadn’t seen him taking morning meal. There were dark circles under his eyes, his face so thin that his cheekbones protruded. A telltale sign that he was getting far too deep into his work.
“You don’t look so well,” I remarked, hoping that by putting it bluntly enough, he’d take the insult seriously.
“Good morning to you too, Sunshine,” he muttered. “You don’t look so well yourself.”
“You look worse. Are you going to eat?”
Qaira scowled. “Yes, mother.”
I bristled, exhaling. “Any progress?”
“Not really. I have a few other tricks up my sleeve, though. Sit tight.”
I entertained the idea of bringing up the theories Adrial and I had spoken about last night, but thought better of it. Neither of us had that kind of time. “Have you received any more pings from Aela?”
“Nope.”
I leaned against the wall, glum. “Why do you think Adrial doesn’t want Leid to know about this?”
Qaira rolled his eyes. “There’s always some kind of pissing contest going on between those two. But I think this time he’s right; Leid probably wouldn’t be able to do much, other than micromanage everyone to death.”
“But one of us is in danger. She’ll be upset if something happens and she wasn’t told.”
Qaira shrugged. “I agree, but I don’t want to get in the middle of it. Do you?” When I didn’t reply, he added, “Adrial wants to prove that he can handle things without her. It’s stupid, but I get it.”
Then, Pariah pinged us.
Come to the Reliquary, he said. There’s another vis-capture that you all need to see.
Now that my morning schedule was blundered, I tasked Mehrit with researching the demographics of our largest client colonies, and promised to resume our lesson after lunch.
If anything, Leid should return just so we had someone to stick our newest recruit with while all this madness happened. Adrial didn’t want her sitting in on the situation, and I understood why, yet I also felt we seemed extremely disorganized by leaving Mehrit alone and with nothing to do all the time. Then again, we were disorganized, but could surely do a much better job of hiding the fact.
At the Reliquary, Pariah already had the vis-capture up and ready for viewing. It must have come in during morning meal, as attica had not notified us of anything yet. Pariah must have been monitoring the thread.
“You’re not going to believe this,” was the first thing he said once we all were present.
“Play it,” ordered Adrial, clearly not in the mood for theatrics.
The capture opened with Aela trekking through a desolate sprawl. She was alone, and stressed. Her breathing was rapid, ragged, as if she were in a panic. She followed the right side of a phosphorescent train.
“Qaira, are you there?” she called within the capture.
/>
Beside me, Qaira had been shoveling food into his mouth from the plate held haphazardly in his hands. His chewing froze at the sound of his name.
“Yeah, what is it?” he responded.
“How long have I been in succumbence?”
“A ping would have sufficed.”
“Fucking great,” said present Qaira. “Now I’ll have to remember everything I said.”
“I need to know,” she continued.
“Seven days, is that all?”
“No.”
There was a pause.
“So, what else?” asked capture Qaira.
“I… I need you to stay on the line for a minute. Maybe longer than that. Can you?”
“Uh, okay. Is everything alright?”
“Yes, but I’ve been walking for a very long time and I’m starting to feel strange. Nibli and Laith have warned me that I am susceptible to madness because I am not fully subconscious here. I have to drink Yahweh’s tonic every so often, and I’m down to only a third of it now.”
The tension in the room was elevating. Pariah watched our reactions anticipatingly.
“Then drink the tea instead. Where’s Laith? Why aren’t you with her?” asked capture Qaira.
“She’s sent me to someone else that may have more information on Eschatis. I’m on the way there now. What’s my last entry in the thread?”
Someone else? Who else would have known more about Eschatis than the Quantum Sorceress herself?
“You submitted a vis-capture of a cuboidal anomaly, levitating in the sky. That was roughly three hours ago.”
Aela stopped walking on the vis-capture, as if what Qaira had just said was surprising enough to halt her in her tracks. She didn’t respond, only breathed.
“Aela?”
“I’m here. I think I’m better now.”
A few more words were shared before they cut the conversation, and Aela pressed on. We watched, thoroughly confused by what had been said within the captured exchange.
Aela kept walking, and walking… and walking. The tension dissipated.
I opened my mouth to begin an inquiry, but a flurry of Eschatis’s strange, green energy suddenly rose from the ground, and we were given a vis-capture of a pulsing, rotating cuboidal anomaly. The very thing capture-Qaira had foretold.
The conversation made sense now. Aela had no longer feared the trek because the end had been revealed to her. All of us watched with big eyes as it swallowed her up in a blinding flash of light—;
And then Aela reappeared in Litha’s Garden of Thasadem. The Framer’s ancient sanctuary.
We subsequently observed the exchange between Cassima, Mia and Aela with grim realization. When the capture ended after Aela crossed through the esoteric gate, we all shared a moment of contemplative silence.
“Well,” I said, breaking the quiet, “that certainly upped the ante.”
“So that’s where they’ve been hiding,” muttered Qaira.
Adrial was furious. “Why would she do that? How could she think to trust them?”
“You think their intentions were sinister?” I asked.
“I don’t know, and neither did she. Crossing an unmarked gate in an already unknown territory, without certainty of your safety, isn’t really standard operating procedure, is it?”
“What’s our standard operating procedure?” asked Pariah, to which Adrial shot him a look. “We asked her to explore, and so she did. Why don’t we wait to see what happens next before blowing our lids?”
“Danger aside, that was an extremely interesting reveal,” I remarked. “Retired wayfarers go through specific gates that lead to somewhere else. Did you see the markings on the gate? They’re the same as in the Antediluvian quadrants.”
Adrial didn’t bite. “They could lead out of Eschatis, and to somewhere untraceable. Cassima implied that they were solely one-way.”
“But he went there, and returned. He insisted she would make it out,” I said.
“He and his ilk also tried to exterminate us at one point,” snapped Adrial. “Her well-being probably isn’t their top priority.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Qaira, for once being the voice of reason. “She did what she did, and we’ll just have to wait and see. If the show is over, can I bail? I’ve got work to do.”
He didn’t wait for a dismissal, and stormed out of the Reliquary. While the others would definitely mistake his demeanor for callousness, I knew otherwise. He was just as worried as anyone else, yet tended to show it differently. Qaira believed his work would somehow lead to solving Aela’s situation, and it very well might.
“I’m tasked with him as well,” said Pariah meekly, retreating after Qaira. “Wish me luck.”
Adrial and I were subsequently left alone, the lectern still presenting the frozen image of Aela’s final moments before crossing the gate. In absence of an audience, Adrial deflated into the exhausted husk I’d seen last night.
“I’m going to piece a timeline of Aela’s envoy,” I informed him. “Place the captures in order, and offer summaries of her findings alongside ours. That’ll make it easier to review once everything is known.”
“If everything is known,” he murmured. “It seems the more we find out, the less we know.”
“It’s the journey that matters,” I said.
He frowned at me, and I gave him a tiny smile.
“Come and have a drink with me,” he offered. “You’re just the kind of company I need right now.”
I didn’t feel like drinking whatsoever, but Adrial definitely needed a shoulder. Usually he was the grounded one whenever things got tight, but love tended to skew perception. I could only hope that this would serve as a reminder the next time one of us lost ourselves to worry. “Mm. I have until lunch, and then I must meet with Mehrit.”
*
Adrial’s quarters were cool and dim, and a hint of wicker permeated my senses as soon as I stepped inside. He liked old things, often foregoing the convenience of attica records for physical books whenever possible. Stacks of journals littered most of his desk, leaving barely any room for the outbound-client obelisk in the corner. It’d been eerily quiet for the past few weeks. Apparently there were no catastrophes happening in the Multiverse right now, which I found rather suspect.
He retrieved a bottle of spirits from the cabinet behind his desk, opening the blinds to allow Exo’daius’s morning iridescence to light our space. I sat in one of the chairs, still heady from the recent events. Adrial poured two glasses and handed me one, taking a seat across mine.
“Is Qaira alright?” he asked, which took me off guard.
I would have to meander carefully through this conversation. “How do you mean?”
“He’s acting… distant.”
I glanced away, battling the urge to tell him he’d come off his medication. That wasn’t for me to tell. “Qaira is Qaira. He’s stressed, and always thinks the weight of everything is on his shoulders alone.”
“He does a terrible job of showing concern,” sighed Adrial. “Could you gently remind him that his behavior is making it difficult to work around? I’d do it, but he’d take offense.”
“You two used to be close. What happened?”
“This happened.” Adrial waved his arm around us. “And his demerits happened. Things haven’t been the same between us since. It’s hard to be someone’s boss and friend.”
I nodded in understanding. “I’ll tell him.”
“Thank you.”
And then everything went black.
Everything.
All light stopped, all sound stopped, and for a second I couldn’t even feel the chair beneath me. It was like I’d been cast into a void without warning. Before I could even start to panic, reality returned as if it’d never left. But it had. I could tell it had, because Adrial’s expression relayed that he’d just experienced the same thing.
Neither of us knew what to say. We surveyed the room in an attempt to spot an
ything that might give us a clue as to what just happened. “Did that affect everyone in Enigmus, or just us?” I wondered aloud.
“Shit,” breathed Adrial. “Yahweh, look.”
I followed his horrified gaze, toward the bed where Aela lay. She was still there, in the same position we’d left her, but now she was covered in shimmering red and gold script, scrolling along her skin like animated ink.
Stricken, I dared to take a few steps closer. A curious, subtle hum vibrated at the back of my head, which increased in intensity the closer I got. I remained out of the proximity of discomfort, still able to discern what was written on Aela’s body.
Antediluvian markings. Rows and rows of them.
THE MESSAGE
Qaira Eltruan—;
“ANYTHING?” I ASKED.
“Negative,” said Pariah. “And my back is starting to cramp.”
I cursed, massaging my forehead as the room began to merge into one blurry mass behind my eyes. We’d been at this for eight hours straight, and I was no closer to translating the script than when we’d started. “Take a moment to stretch. I need one, too.”
What I really needed was to hurl the entire console across the room and scream profanities until I was blue in the face, but Yahweh had already informed me that my behavior was becoming ‘jarring’ to the others, so I had to play nice.
Three days ago, Aela’s body became a literal scroll following a momentary blackout across Enigmus. We’d reached out to several clients and no one else noticed anything, so it hadn’t been Multiverse-wide. We took the turn of events as an escalation of stakes. None of us could begin to fathom why an ancient, machine language—from a metaphysical plane, no less—would begin bleeding through the skin of a physical host.
But whatever it meant wasn’t good; we knew that much.
Covenants: Quantum Dream (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 11) Page 14