Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "So, what happened? Why did your office stop returning calls?"

  "Don't know," the redhead said. A Kirkclair girl, judging by her accent. "Don't know about a lot of things. When we went into cryostasis, Doctor Elsinore was still working on the Harmony trials upstairs. We were only meant to be in stasis for a few years, but I suppose that whatever happened also made them forget about us. We only woke up a couple of months ago."

  "A century gone by in the blink of an eye." Archer could empathise. "Can't have been an easy thing to wake up to."

  "You have no idea," she said sadly. "Well, actually, I suppose you do. I can tell by your Ghost Ship tattoo."

  "Hah." He rolled back the sleeve of his lab coat. "Yeah. A youthful mistake. I got it on a whim after the episode where Isabel finds the–"

  "–necromancer's spell book and it turns out that Dorian–"

  "–was dead all along," he finished, smiling. "Well, thank God there's still people around who remember it. I thought once we reintegrate, I was going to look like an idiot walking around with a tattoo that nobody else gets."

  "I totally get it, but I went into stasis the month before the last season was released, so no spoilers, please."

  He laughed, tucking the gun inside the waistband of his trousers, and extended his hand.

  "Project Manager Tom Archer. Pleased to meet you."

  "Joy; botanist. My colleagues, Juneau and Wideawake." She shook his hand and the sensation of touching another person was incredible. Such a simple, mundane thing that he hadn't even realised how much he'd missed until now. Her warm hand in his, the sails of the Ghost Ship at her fingertips, and he felt dizzy as he looked into her eyes. Opening the door had been the correct decision. He was meant to guide humanity, but how could he do that while cut off from everything that it was to be human?

  "Nice to meet you all." He fished a handkerchief from his lab coat pocket and handed it to the girl, gesturing towards her face. "Got a bit of a nosebleed going on there, Joy."

  * * *

  Archer drove them deeper into the facility. His intention had been to take them straight to cryo, but the man called Wideawake had talked him into giving them a tour. He was easy to talk to, laidback and pleasant, and when he asked about the station's security systems, Archer was halfway through a thorough explanation when he caught himself. He paused, biting his lip, suddenly nervous.

  Joy smiled, shaking her head at Wideawake. "So eager to get back to work? Chief Wideawake was in charge of security at the Cato facility."

  "In charge." Wideawake nodded. "Just the way I like it."

  "So why were you in stasis?"

  "Crossmayne syndrome. Runs in the family. While it was just the shakes, I did my best to stay in denial, but once the night fevers started, and the joint pain... there's no denying death when it's standing in your hallway, scuffing its feet on the welcome mat. Fortunately for me, the Cato facility was running medical trials on half a dozen things – one of them Crossmayne syndrome." Wideawake held out a hand. No sign of a tremble. "Looks like whatever else happened on Cato, they managed to fix me up."

  A cure for Crossmayne syndrome, and the illness that would have killed Archer's grandson. Progress in leaps and bounds, none of it possible without Project Harmony. Wideawake's steady hand and the unbroken chain of generations of Archers were only a small part of humanity's rewards. It was difficult to feel proud when taking the sacrifices into account, but Archer felt his heart swell just a little. Enough that he found the confidence to engage the redhead, who, under normal circumstances, he'd have written off as too young and too pretty.

  "What was a Kirkclair girl doing working on Cato?"

  She turned from the passenger seat window to look at him. One of her hands remained on the window, her fingers tracing the runnels left by condensation.

  "How did you know I'm from Kirkclair?"

  "Your accent," he said. "It's pretty strong. Not in a bad way."

  She smiled, though there was a touch of sadness in her eyes. "It's a dead accent now. Did you know that? Nobody speaks like me on Mars anymore, at least not outside of period dramas. Not even language is immune to the passing of time."

  "It'll be different from now on. What we're creating here is permanence, a path from which humanity will never stray. A constant golden age, within fixed parameters."

  "By controlling people's thoughts?"

  "Oh, no." The question wasn't surprising – he'd fielded it enough in the past. "We're encouraging behaviours. The subjects retain free will."

  "Within fixed parameters?"

  "Well, yes. But don't think of the parameters as the bars of a cage – they're more like borders, there to protect the subjects and the project alike."

  "Borders are no different than iron bars," she said, "when you want to escape."

  "Fortunately, the subjects will never want that."

  "Lucky them." She looked at her hands for a moment, then back at him. The sadness in her eyes was accompanied by something he recognised very well: a desire to connect. "I transferred to Cato as part of a botany project, but I worked at the Kirkclair branch first. In Procurement, under Miana Dovedale. Did you know her?"

  "Of course. Not personally," he clarified, "but when the Ever Onward failed to connect to the Cascade network, her family were quite upset. There were over ten thousand people on that arc ship. The first few years, their next of kin practically lived outside our offices waiting for news. After a half a decade or so, most had moved on – but not the Dovedales. They kept coming, even after they spent their fortune financing the arc ship that eventually did colonise the Ever Onward's destination world. Poor old fools."

  "Yes." There was a glitter at the base of her eyelashes, but she blinked it away. "Was the Ever Onward ever found?"

  "Not unless it turned up in the last couple of years. A shame, really. I don't know if you're aware, but that ship was Hierochloe's Plan A. The idea was to get Gainsborough habitable and start moving selected people out there. Once settled, the Cascade was going to be destroyed. A new start for humanity, far removed from war and destruction. When that fell through, we had no choice but to keep working on more drastic solutions."

  The car turned around the final bend. Its headlights cast ghostly cones over the channel's dark water. Archer refilled it whenever he woke, raising the blast doors that led to the sea.

  "It's an old submarine base," he explained. "We bought it off Talien Castle. Cheap, since nobody uses subs anymore, and conveniently located. We actually managed to negotiate the price down a fair bit by offering all their men primers free of charge. Funny, isn't it? TC were infamously brutal. No amount of pleading to their better judgment could have made them to budge from their destructive mindset. Values have no value – can't even give them away – but offer consumer goods, and people will queue up, throw money at you and beg for more."

  He pulled up outside the cafeteria and showed the visitors across a retractable bridge and into the cryo facility.

  "You're lucky that some of the staff couldn't make it here in time. We've got about twenty pods going spare."

  "You want to put us in stasis?" Joy asked.

  "Well, yes. Until reintegration into society, all staff will remain in stasis unless required. The facility's systems automatically wake maintenance whenever something needs looking at, although according to logs, that's only happened twice in the last hundred years. I'm roused once every seven years to evaluate the project, and whenever Keiss deems it necessary." He frowned. "You must've spoken to Keiss, right? Don't really see how else you could've found this place."

  "He thought it best we come down here. Didn't want to jeopardise the secrecy of Project Harmony."

  "Makes sense, especially so soon after a security breach. Did he tell you about Fox Chapel Pharmaceuticals? Apparently they were quite close to decoding and reproducing raw primer. I wouldn't have thought it possible – the conditioning is quite strict about shutting down primer curiosity – but the data doesn't lie. The f
iles he sent over..." Archer shook his head. "It's concerning. In the past thirty years, we've had more security issues than in the first seventy. More problems than we should have. The worst part is, from this end, everything looks fine. But it's obviously not, which means that either I'm missing something, or the Prime Mover is degenerating. One more incident, and I'm going to have to wake the biology team. Not looking forward to that, I can tell you – if there's something wrong, they'll blame it on me, of course. I can hear them now: should've left a real scientist in charge."

  "I'm a biologist," the dark-haired woman said. "Not sure what a Prime Mover is, but I'd be happy to take a look at it before going into stasis."

  "Oh, wow." Archer scratched his chin. "Of course. If you've been frozen since before the last season of Ghost Ship, you've missed a lot. Do you even know what primers are? God, back then, we were still manufacturing h-chips."

  "Primers were at the discussion stage – much like the rebranding," Wideawake said.

  "Hierochloe is dead, long live the Primaterre. You'll get used to it. It's by far the smallest of the changes around here. If you thought h-chips were advanced, you should see the stuff we have now. In fact..." He tapped the cryo pod panel. "It's going to take a couple of minutes for these to come online. I could show you the Prime Mover. Give you the full tour, so to speak."

  * * *

  The Prime Mover did more than awe them. It shocked them, and Archer couldn't pretend he wasn't pleased. His baby deserved recognition for the marvel it was.

  "But what is it?" The dark-haired woman stood as far from the tank as possible, her hands clutched to her chest. In contrast, Wideawake had his hands pressed to the tank, kneeling as though in worship.

  "A universal conscience. The guide along the path. Simply put, an artificial mind that, via the primers, connects to all Primaterre citizens. Its neural framework can be adjusted, but it has no independent cognitive ability. It thinks only what I program it to think."

  "This is a life form, Archer. Being part machine doesn't change that. There are no guarantees that it won't learn. It could develop a will of its own, and then a billion people would be puppets for... for a thing in a jar." Her face twisted. "For a thing that might as well be a demon."

  "Catastrophic thinking, Ms Juneau. The Prime Mover is what we want it to be, and nothing else. Trust me, we know what we're doing."

  "Do you?"

  "I connect to it via my primer, interfacing directly with the Prime Mover. If you did the same, you'd feel the harmony. You'd know it is perfect purity."

  She didn't seem convinced, and her frown was starting to grate. A biologist ought to be more appreciative of the work that had gone into making the Prime Mover – and a guest definitely should be more polite. At least Wideawake was suitably impressed, and Joy...

  Joy had left the room.

  * * *

  He found her in the control room next to the lab, in front of a monitor.

  "Excuse me, but I'm afraid this room is off-limits."

  "Did you do this? Or the thing in the tank?"

  He peered over her shoulder. The screen showed a selection of surveillance footage captured from the Hecate, along with his notes on that particular intervention and how best to capitalise on it. It had been a great success, but it was hardly appropriate viewing material for a young woman. Without the proper context, it had to seem quite horrific.

  "The Prime Mover only exerts influence. Direct action requires human intervention. It's unpleasant business, I know, but as Project Manager, these are the types of decisions I have to make."

  She turned around, so close to him that he could smell the faint scent of citrus in her hair. Her hand fell to his waist. He opened his mouth, unsure of what to say, unsure of what the hell was happening.

  And then his gun was in her hand, and she struck him hard across the face, cold gun metal smashing into his nose.

  * * *

  He came to in the calming blue light of the Prime Mover's tank. The redhead no longer held a gun on him, but more strangers had arrived. No. Not strangers. Primaterre soldiers, and none of this made any sense. They had no reason to come here. They shouldn't have been able to come here.

  One of the soldiers forced him to kneel and cuffed his hands behind his back. Another approached. Their commander, judging by his suit, and Archer wanted to tell them that this was ridiculous, that the symbol they wore on their chests had been designed by Faith Nordin, a woman who slept in stasis not far away; that they weren't soldiers, not even really people. They were subjects, and he was Project Manager.

  The commander's shadow blocked out the blue light. He had a gun in his hand.

  "What is this?" Archer managed. Blood trickled from his nose.

  The commander said nothing. His visor was so dark that for a moment Archer wondered if there was anything behind it at all.

  He gave the redhead a pleading look. She'd been crying, he could tell, and she was nothing like these armoured subjects; she was a person from his own time, a person who saw the world as he did. Wasn't she?

  "Who are you?"

  "A Hierochloe botanist," she said. "One of the Ever Onward's ten thousand hopeful travellers."

  "The Ever Onward?" God, none of this made sense, and he wished it would all just end. He tried alerting the guards, but nothing happened. His primer couldn't even see the station systems anymore. A blackness seemed to surround him. "What... what happened to it?"

  "A demon." She sobbed, hiding her face in her hands. One of the soldiers put his arm around her shoulder. Almost like he was a person. Almost like he cared. How absurd. The Primaterre Protectorate needed strong walls and stronger weapons, and Archer knew how its soldiers were trained. The design documents from Military Applications had laid out the process, detailing the different branches and how they would win wars for the Primaterre. Brutally. Ruthlessly. Nobody could do what they did and still be people. They were a necessary evil, nothing more.

  And yet the soldier pulled the redhead close, holding her in a comforting embrace.

  Ridiculous. But maybe good news. Archer looked up at the commander, seeking what lay behind the visor. The subject that might yet believe it was a person, that might yet be convinced to listen to the Project Manager.

  And then the commander opened his visor, and Archer stared into the eyes of the death he had helped create.

  You have to understand, it was necessary...

  If you look at it logically...

  The benefits of the project far outweigh...

  Please don't...

  A thousand arguments and pleas flitted through his mind. But when the commander raised his black gun and his finger slid towards the trigger, all Archer could think was: I'm sorry, Jane.

  And then the end came, and its thunder drowned out all else.

  61.

  CASSIMER

  On the Hecate, he had kept pulling the trigger long after his gun's ammo block had been spent. A low moaning had bounced between the sleeping quarter's walls as the wounded succumbed to blood loss. A hull breach alarm had wailed in the distance. If he'd looked up, he might have seen the bodies of the flight crew floating past the viewport.

  But he had looked at nothing, had seen nothing. Had kept pulling the trigger over and over again. Not speaking, not crying, barely even breathing. He hadn't screamed until a rescue crew medic tried to wrap a blanket around him.

  And here he was again, his finger on the Morrigan's trigger, and he had to force himself to not empty the gun into the ruined face of the man on the floor.

  A shrill siren blared through the station. The sound seemed to warp the walls, turning their Hierochloe white into the Hecate's gunmetal grey. He breathed in deeply of ozone-tinged air, but he smelled only blood.

  Joy was beside him, one hand gently on his. He couldn't take in her words, but the sound of her voice was enough of a trail for him to follow back to the present.

  First, the job: the station security were being roused from their sleep. El
sinore had found the personnel files, and a quick skim was all Cassimer needed to see that these men weren't run-of-the-mill corporate security. Military backgrounds, meritorious careers. Everything pointed to highly-skilled operators, whose first port of call would be the armoury connected to the cryo lab.

  The layout of the station was simple. The submarine channel split the central area in two – one side housed the cryo facility, armoury and vehicle hangar. The other side was living quarters and cafeteria. A stairwell outside the living quarters led up to the laboratory where he now stood, and an adjacent control room. The only way in or out was a door at the back of the lab. Simple, straightforward. The environment could easily be used to their advantage, and he'd already dispatched Rhys and Florey to make arrangements.

  Second order of business: the dead man. His name had been Tom Archer and he was the author of a file called CASSIMER, CONSTANT, where every detail of a fifteen-year-old boy's life had been jotted down and analysed. His high school sports achievements, the merits he'd earned as a cadet, even his report cards ("grades above average, but not so much that he comes across as unrelatable"). They'd all been deemed useful factors; his background less so ("best keep the family out of it").

  Barring one unpleasant reunion shortly after the Hecate, Cassimer hadn't seen his family since leaving Kalix. It had been his own choice – or so he'd thought. Now, he could no longer be sure.

  He had killed many men in his life, but never without knowing the reason. He stared at the widening pool of Archer's blood as if the answers could be found there. Had it been revenge for the Hecate, or justice served? There was a difference, and it mattered. But how could he see which it was when he could be sure of nothing, not even his own mind?