by J D Cortese
But that reason had been corrupted. The simpler answer being that there was evil in the world, as much then as in the future. That would never change, and the Watchtowers had never tried to do good or prevent the Second Descent.
They had caused it.
And now they were all beyond redemption.
“Why, why your people...?” Sarinda tried to repeat the question, while Tysa had fallen in the same kind of silence that had possessed Agdinar before. She was also watching the black ocean of death that lie ahead of all of them.
“It doesn't matter anymore,” he said, grabbing Sarinda's hand and holding it tightly. “We are going to die.”
Chapter 55
He couldn't do it, even with Dhern’s help. It wasn't a question of firing his weapon against it or looking up instructions in Dhern's vast info-vault; this wasn't a human weapon. The device was a single unit, well beyond his understanding and any actions he could take.
“Can we do something?” Sarinda said, reading his mind.
“I don't think so.”
“Why?”
“It's a harmonic subatomic device, a quantum solid with antimatter in the core, designed to trigger a detonation and use it to develop the fusion reaction until...”
He realized it was pointless to try explaining the little he knew about the device. They'd all be dead—and everyone else above—before he finished.
“But why here?” Tysa's voice surged, always with a new question at hand.
“I don't know,” he said, absently. “A device like this, or at least the ones I've heard of, is anchored to a very precise position in space-time.”
“Anchored in space and time?”
Agdinar was losing patience with Tysa, while reflecting on how ridiculous that was. "It has to do with matter’s strings,” he said, “which are stuck in a location. The whole bomb functioning depends on....”
And he stopped, unable to talk. But silence was hard to keep in the strange place they were.
“Depends on...?” Sarinda said, just to break the silence. “What do you mean?”
“The bomb...that's it!”
“Please tell me you've figured it out,” Tysa said, now close enough to touch Agdinar’s arm.
“It was you—you're right,” he said to a surprised Tysa. “We have to move it. It would disable the mechanism.”
“This thing must be super-heavy,” Sarinda said. “I don't think we could possibly move it, even a little.”
She pointed to the object, floating above them like a strange piece of liquid quartz.
“No, we cannot,” he said, giving one step forward.
Please, Faith, come to us.
...I understand your idea, Agdinar, but Faith won't hear us from here.
Agdinar's shoulder shook, and Sarinda gave a step toward him.
FAITH…
Both Sarinda and Tysa flinched, and Tysa covered her ears.
FAITH…
...You shouldn't do that.
“It's too late for anything else,” Agdinar said.
FAITH…
Now Sarinda knelt, grabbing her stomach.
Agdinar tried to keep yelling with his mind, but he then started to lose control of everything inside his head.
* * *
He saw the city as a three-dimensional map. The city was having a stroke, its arteries clogged by the flow of its inhabitants stalled in tunnels and bridges. Half a million people were still fighting to leave, trapped in the outer membrane of the city. On its last night, New Yorkers formed an outline of light around their world.
Agdinar's thoughts traveled like waves, finally hitting Faith.
She lifted and started to fly toward Grand Central, preparing her guns for combat with the patrols.
He also saw the Towers, the heirs of an immensity of time hanging over the city. Time receded and the city became less and less populated, its grid of streets disappearing and being replaced by green spreading away from Central Park. He saw the old port, less and less crowded, and finally everything was reduced to a cluster of small shacks.
And then it was all pristine and covered by woods, as if a huge green beast had swallowed the land.
He saw himself, surrounded by instruments, and the Overseer trying to talk with him before he went into stasis.
There was another man there, with a big head and a lot of silver hair. A genius version of Rychar. Agdinar knew that that man was his father.
And then he glimpsed an unending darkness of time, before and after him. The vision ended, leaving him in the other dark of the poorly illuminated chamber.
“Faith,” Agdinar found himself talking again. “It’s Agdinar…are you there?”
…YES.
Sarinda was holding Tysa by her shoulder. “I finally understand what you want to do,” she said, “move the bomb with the transporter.”
“Yes,” Agdinar said, still troubled by words.
“Well,” she said, tugging from his arm, “what the hell—let's do it.”
Their timers said sixteen minutes to the explosion.
Agdinar thought, as hard as he could in his confused state, trying to get his thinking to reach the ship so far above them.
FAITH, MOVE THE ARTIFACT…
NOW…
* * *
Normally, the actions of an elevator would happen so fast that the human mind—especially the one being disassembled and sent away—wouldn't see the transportation occurring. But, whether because of the chamber’s depth into the rock or the amount of power needed to move the artifact, this time it was different.
The three of them got closer, like scared children. What they saw ahead, including the object that floated under a million small fireflies, wasn't as scary as what they felt inside.
They were standing in front of a large space, much larger than any canyon on Earth, and could feel an abyss spreading there, unseen.
There was a penetrating smell, something organic but not quite rotten, redolent of coasts and oceans. And they could feel waves of freezing air, pushing against their faces as they gathered speed and swirling around as if an invisible maelstrom was forming in the chamber.
Something like raindrops made streaks in the air. But it wasn't water; water didn’t leave streaks in the air like a meteor.
Agdinar knew it was space, being twisted and reorganized into a different combination—a new puzzle of reality.
Sarinda, shivering, embraced Agdinar from the side.
The ground shook, and then the walls, and finally, every single molecule in the chamber and their bodies.
Their minds stuttered as the world sidestepped around them.
Then, silence.
The object was now hovering at the boundary of what the environment lighting covered.
It seemed the same, but Agdinar knew it wasn't. He could see how all the shininess on its surface had vanished.
It was dead. They had stabbed it at its heart.
“I think it's done,” Sarinda said.
The cold was so deep every breath would prick Agdinar’s lungs with tiny knives.
“Yes, it's disabled now,” he said.
Agdinar turned to Tysa; she was pale and looked sick. “We are safe now,” he said to her.
Air was still moving around them, and the dust made a wall from slight scratches of light.
“Thank you,” said Tysa, and Agdinar saw how much the ordeal of the last few days had taken from her.
...I wouldn't be so sure about what you did.
“Dhern? What do you mean?”
Suddenly, a shimmering white curtain fell between them. It was a counter, like those they'd seen in Grand Central—white but with the same red numbers the others had—and like those ominous indicators, it had been set so that the city would know the arrival of the end.
And it was still counting.
14:26:059
Chapter 56
There were fourteen minutes left to midnight plus one last minute.
“This can't b
e true,” Agdinar said. “The device is dead, atomically disabled.”
...That might be true, Agdinar, but...
“But what, Dhern?”
...It might not be the only one, but one of several.
“Others?” Sarinda said, her voice again an echo in a cavern.
“How many?” Tysa said, her voice echoless but trembling.
...You know the answer, Agdinar.
The ghost that was a handle for Dhern appeared and stepped in between them. Its shape quickly hardened into that of a man, as tall as Agdinar and with a very ample forehead, his white hair flowing like clouds over his shoulders.
He knew who he was. His father.
...I left you a message...with your friend.
A flash of purple light blinded Agdinar, shining over him from the rocks above. It wasn't a hallucination, and he saw the consternation on Sarinda and the shaking in Tysa.
The light was real, and it was bathing them.
Agdinar had to force himself to look at the counter, every muscle crying with the effort.
13:57:022
The counter wasn't moving anymore. Time had stopped.
He was again in the presence of the Eye.
The world turned the color of the Eye—that impossibly complex shade of otherworldly purple.
And then he saw it again, all at once, the same vision he'd had at the Towers. Pyramids, rivers, golden flows, and a preternatural rendition of New York.
Then, everything darkened, and he saw only one thing.
The nine-point star.
Three white triangles, shivering and moving over a black background. Over the black infinite night.
The lines stretched, broadened, and turned into shapes that appeared to escape from the plane where they had been drawn.
Behind them was an old map of New York. Colorful, like those they'd printed for tourists before the Descent.
It slowly came forward to become the plate where the star rested. The star fought with the map, and then shrunk until its deformed shape fit into a colorful pattern of lines on the map.
Red lines for the West subway.
Orange lines for the Crosstown Line.
Green lines for the Lexington subway.
And indigo lines for the First Avenue subway.
Nine dots appeared at the endpoints of the star.
Nine dots. Nine subway stations.
Nine shafts, deep into the rock and with countless chambers.
He knew. He had to have known but didn’t understand. There were nine other devices, just like the one he'd disabled. This had been the one at the star’s center.
They had been baited to come there and play with the artifact.
It had to be a cruel joke from the Overseer, who liked to be definitive about everything.
A total overkill.
Enough bombs to liquefy the bedrock and sink the city into the waters.
It would be impossible to reach, or disable, all of them in time.
It hit him hard, the certainty of death.
Agdinar had awakened from the vision, and just like before, was staring at the floating counter.
13:45:031
Time was running again.
Chapter 57
‘What?” Sarinda tugged Agdinar's arm again. The vision of his father was gone.
“It's that...we can't.”
“The ghost,” Tysa said, “it's gone. What did he tell you?”
...I'm still here, people.
Tysa looked around, walking a couple of steps away as if lost. Dhern wasn't visible, and Agdinar thought there had been a little shame in his hiding. Playing the role of his father was a low he couldn't believe Dhern would stoop to.
...This may be the end.
“Is there any way we can stop the other bombs?” Agdinar said.
...We cannot target each of them with Faith...her elevator would have to be close by.
“Hey, Dernst,” said Tysa, peering into the darkness with open arms. It was still cold enough for the humidity to condense into a white cloud. “Tell us how to do it,” she added. “How many nukes?"
...Nine more.
“Oh, our damnatious luck,” Tysa said, lowering her head. “We are dead.”
“You said that Faith can't do this,” Agdinar said, frowning as he tried to think. “But, are there any elevators in the Towers that can do it?”
“Yes, invisible friend,” Tysa said, still speaking to the dark space, “what's the fairest elevator in the land?”
...The one you used to hijack for your trips...Tower Management Centre.
“I can still get there,” Agdinar said, “and use it. There's time.”
...Just twelve minutes and thirty-eight seconds.
“You can't be serious,” Sarinda said. “How are we going to get up in time? It took us...”
“I'm sorry,” Agdinar said.
“What?” Sarinda looked at Agdinar, her eyes desperate for time. Time that they didn't have.
Agdinar approached her head with his. It looked as if he was going to whisper something in her ear, but he shifted and took her mouth.
They kissed for seconds of swollen time.
“I am sorry for all the evil my people did,” he said. “We shouldn’t have come. But I will try to fix it.”
Sarinda got to see tears in Agdinar’s eyes. But then a swirl of air pushed her aside.
Agdinar was gone.
Sarinda stumbled backwards, and, touching her waist, she flinched. Agdinar had left his belt with her—Dhern's containment device—switching it to her waist while they were kissing.
The darkness of the chamber was almost complete, as the bright hanging counter had vanished with him.
* * *
It’s Dhern again, rethinking how to go on with my account. There's a moment in each story where the storyteller runs into some trouble telling it: that was the one for me.
As a nomadic artificial intelligence, I would've survived the end of New York, migrating to deeper layers of the ground and reemerging—a few years later—at the other side of the ocean. Unfortunately, I had been tricked by Faith—and don't get me started on that feisty lady—into a residency on Agdinar's belt.
The genie, trapped in a bottle. I can really be brilliantly stupid sometimes.
My point is that, perhaps because of some ancient programming that doesn't let me allow humans to kill themselves, or—and this I'm not even sure about—because I really liked Agdinar and he’d commissioned this story from me, I will continue with this tale, no questions asked.
I had a chance to reconstitute the following sections using (stolen) information from Tower City, and it would resume its course toward the fateful end soon enough.
But I should tell you, reader of the future, that even though Agdinar commanded me to tell you this story, and asked me to be truthful, I have—as I said—ancient programming barriers that conflict with some of his intentions.
Even a good friend—especially a good friend—lies to you once or twice.
* * *
Of course, I did help the human girls to go back to the surface, controlling their suits’ nano-cords to make climbing the shaft a breeze. And I got the subway shuttle to work in reverse, taking them back to Grand Central. I was proud of being so efficient, but at the end my work was just to distract them so they wouldn't remember to look at the counters.
We emerged to the night streets at the exit at Madison and 42nd. I couldn't hide the counters’ readings anymore: they were everywhere.
01:32:011
The young human females were almost sleepwalking as they crossed Fifth Avenue and approached the city's beautiful public library.
Sadly, I had calculated that they wouldn’t reach Bryant Park before the explosion occurred and ended the city. I'd wanted them to see some green trees and a little of the open space before the night turned to either blinding day or an even darker hell.
It happened before they reached the sidewalk.
If I'd been
a human, I would've jumped. They did.
The sky turned bright red, crisscrossed by green flashes of lightning—their color a bright chartreuse, if I may—with enough luminosity to cast harsh shadows.
They looked up and got to see it. Even I, having seen so much in my eternity of thought, could barely believe it.
The Watchtowers—all of them—were visible, bright orange against the blazing red fire. It was as if a vine had colonized the sky and sprung a thousand buds, its grotesquely-shaped colonies and blobs hanging from the matrix of space.
And then, as the sky darkened to a color closer to blood, an earthquake hit us.
The human girls fell to the ground, unconscious.
And, what's even more strange—inconceivable, if you ask me—is that for the first time in fifteen hundred years, I stopped thinking for what was close to two minutes.
Yes, I fainted too.
The girls woke up as soon as I did, and they were even quicker than my impaired nano-components to figure out what had happened.
The younger one, Tysa, pointed to the counter that covered the north wall of the old Schwartzman Library.
It took me ten nanoseconds—half of an eternity for me—to accept what their fingers were pointing to.
The counter had stopped, just after midnight.
00:19:014
Chapter 58
Agdinar stood on the street, just outside Grand Central. He was having considerable post-transport pain, and his legs were cramping. Faith was there, over him, like a huge blackbird that had an ancestry of prehistoric fish.
And the streets were empty, cars abandoned over the sidewalks and a barrage of objects left by the evacuation. Thousands of pieces of the abandoned city were strewn across 42nd Street, as if a fleet of trucks had overturned and spilled their contents.
This, he could see even in the night's dark. But the most ominous part of the scene was not visible; it was how all the drones and robots had left the station's boundary, if not the city altogether. Even the large scanning vessel from the Towers was gone.
They had known what was coming, and fled.