The Chaos Sutra

by Gregg Vann

  Volasi clones didn’t posses a complete set of memories and the personality of the original—the true, individual persona. Only the Bodhi monks could do that. But the Volasi could map out and parse the entire mind. They just couldn’t figure out how to transfer all of that information into the clone, to create a functioning matrix that would allow the same person to live again.

  But if they ever did, I thought, the breakthrough would cause a fundamental shift of power in the galaxy…at the expense of the monks.

  Help from Bodhi Prime wasn’t an option on Volas; the local conditions precluded it. Besides, even if the monks could do something, I doubted they would. They knew there was something wrong with me, so I’d decided to refuse all contact with them to prevent being recalled. I would need to find my own way now, and devise my own solutions.

  I didn’t dare contact Idra, the new Idra, directly. From what I’d learned about her condition, she wouldn’t even know who I was. But I did have a good idea where to start on this final penance task. With her father, Magistrate Sev.

  During my brief communication with him on the way to Volas, he had been clear and unambiguous: Sev didn’t want me here. Not because he hated me, or even held me responsible for his daughter’s death. Sev simply saw my actions as irrelevant and self-serving.

  But I wouldn’t give up that easily. I knew I had to be persistent. Fortunately, that was a trait I had in abundance. It was a skill I‘d learned from one of my earliest victims—an ability born from my very first act of atonement.

  Making my way through a white door leading out of the hangar, I reflected back on that important lesson.

  When I first awoke in this body—the original cyborg construct, actually—the monks had already devised a master list of penance tasks for me to perform. I’d been pre-programmed with all of the abilities and restrictions necessary to accomplish these goals, but also granted a great deal of autonomy to do as I saw fit to make proper amends.

  Within reason, of course.

  The list was longer than most, they informed me. Fallon Gent had managed, through careful planning, constant mobility, and a great deal of luck, to avoid being caught for a very long time. This had given him ample opportunity to hurt a great deal of people. But despite the difficulty those numbers presented, the monks and I worked together to create an appropriate travel schedule, and to formulate a partial list of remedies that would satisfy their stringent mandates for resurrection.

  They reached out to all of my victims. Or the next of kin, in many cases. Some were receptive to their mission, but others were not. A few even refused to speak with us at all. Those I would visit in person, and make every effort to help. Or confirm once and for all that they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be healed.

  One of those refusing to participate was a woman I’d raped and viciously assaulted during a stop at an asteroid refueling station. Incredibly, she’d survived the attack—eventually making an almost complete recovery. According to our records, she still lived on the asteroid, even keeping the same job.

  She would be my first attempt at redeeming this soul. And unfortunately, the hostile confrontation would set the stage for the very difficult road ahead.

  When I first landed on the asteroid I was unsure what to expect, and stepping out of the ship into the thin, artificial atmosphere I was almost naive—bursting with good intentions. I remember looking up and seeing the densely packed collection of satellites in orbit, their gas emitters steadily maintaining the layer of precious oxygen that made the place habitable, if just barely. The sluggish movement of the artificial constellation was easily perceptible against the charcoal black sky, as were the plumes from the continual gaseous discharges.

  I half-walked, half-bounced up to the small group of residence domes, strolling through several rows of them until I found the one labeled, Jennifer Tashe. Taking in a deep breath of the asteroid’s dusty air, I prepared myself as the monks had taught me. Then I rang the buzzer. Within seconds, the door jerked open, clanking loudly as it slid into the wall.

  And she was standing right in front of me.

  Jennifer’s eyes widened slightly, and then I saw the intense emotions register on her face. There was confusion first, and then a brief flash of fear, before finally transitioning into a look I didn’t recognize.

  “I heard you were dead,” she said emotionlessly.

  “I—”

  Jennifer held up a hand, stopping me before I could say anything else. Then she disappeared back into the dwelling. I was left standing in the open doorway, not sure what to do next—or what she was up to.

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  Jennifer returned with a gun. And without saying a word, shot me twice in the chest. I had just enough time to notice that it was an old style projectile rifle before the door closed in front of me, and then I fell off the short stoop to the ground below.

  Dying…again.

  Slowly, agonizingly, I crawled back to my ship, marveling at how far the short distance seemed now that my life was slipping away from me. I choked on fine sand from the asteroid’s dusty surface as I moved, inching my way across the rocky terrain until I finally reached the vessel.

  I cautiously pulled myself up the ramp, its surface made slippery by the mixture of mechanical and biological fluids, pouring from the jagged holes in my chest. Crawling inside, I screamed from the pain, wincing as I pushed and pulled my body through the ship. I used a combination of elbows, hands, and legs to move myself forward, leaving a thick trail of blood and lubricant in my wake.

  I eventually made it to the ship’s small infirmary. And after several attempts, managed to heave myself into the waiting medical chamber. The last thing I remembered was the equipment initiating a damage assessment.

  Then I passed out.

  The following day I was completely healed—no trace of the gunshots remained. Even the ship had been cleaned up, and the only remnants from the experience were the unpleasant memories.

  I am designed to be very much like a typical human, the theory being that I should experience all of the pain and discomfort necessary to encourage regret—and to foster empathy for my victims. But the reality is that I am much sturdier. I can certainly be killed; it’s happened already. It just takes a great deal more effort.

  Fully recovered, I returned to Jennifer’s dome and rang the buzzer. This time, however, she was already armed—opening the door just long enough to shoot me in the head before closing it again. That prompted another difficult trip back to the ship. Even though I could walk this time, I fell often en route. The projectile had hit me squarely in the eye—partially blinding me, and causing intermittent monocular vision that compromised my balance.

  I went back into the medical chamber.

  The following day, I tried to speak with her again. But this time, she shot me in the head, chest, and groin; once again, without uttering a single word. Dragging myself away for the third time, I began to wonder if the ship carried enough supplies to keep putting me back together.

  After healing, again, I made another attempt. As expected, the door slid open and I found a gun pointed at my head. But this time something was different. This time, Jennifer spoke.

  “Why?” she asked in exasperation. “What do you want from me? I told those monks not to send you. Why won’t you just go away?” She looked down and stomped her feet, then thrust the gun hard up against my temple. “Well?”

  “I want to apologize,” I said. “And to help you in any way that I can.” I looked in her eyes and saw the hatred. “I seek forgiveness.”

  “You will NEVER be forgiven,” she yelled. Her finger tightened on the trigger, and I braced myself for the bullet’s impact.

  “Nonetheless,” I said as calmly as I could, “what can I do to help you heal?”

  “You raped me!” she screamed. I heard doors slide open behind me as Jennifer’s neighbors came out to see what was happening.

  Balancing the rifle with one hand, she waved the
spectators away. Then she continued in a lower voice. “You took my life from me, you bastard. Did you know that I can’t have children now? You…damaged me.”

  I didn’t know that. But it explained the grief I saw mixed in with her anger.

  “My husband left me,” she said, still holding the gun to my head. “He couldn’t handle it. The rape…the sterility. He knew it wasn’t my fault, but he just…”

  Tears began to roll down her cheeks and Jennifer started shaking. Not with fury or wrath, but with sorrow. The gun dropped to the floor.

  “You took everything from me,” she sobbed.

  I had a passing impulse to hold and comfort her, but I knew better. My programming was clear on this point: No physical contact with victims or their families.

  Ever.

  “I can’t undo my actions or change the past,” I said softly, “but I can pay to help you with the medical condition—to repair the damage. I can also arrange counseling for you and your husband.”

  I pulled a data chip from my pocket and reached out to hand it to her. She recoiled at first, taking a few steps back into her home, but then came forward and took the card.

  “I implore you to contact the Order. The monks will do everything I’ve promised. More, if you wish it. They will talk to your husband and make all of the necessary arrangements. Please…try. Not for me, but for yourself. I assure you that you will never see me again.”

  She looked at the card for a moment and then nodded. “This changes nothing,” she said acidly. “I will never forgive you.”

  “I know,” I replied, and then turned to leave.

  I walked back to my ship and left the asteroid.

  {Playback complete…}

  The memory ended just as I arrived at Osala’s administrative building, fading away to join all of the others stored in the soul—the good, the bad, and the horrific. But it had served to renew my sense of purpose—reaffirming my duty, and leaving me with the same focused determination that I’d experienced on the asteroid.

  I would find a way to help Idra. Whether anyone wanted me to or not.

  The door to the civic building slid open as I approached, exposing a grand, multileveled room, teeming with people. Like all Volasi architecture, the structure was open at the center, all the way up to the ceiling. And the interior was bathed in natural light streaming in through the glass overhead. A sculpture of the city floated in the middle of the great atrium, and the various municipal offices could be seen lining the outer walls of the building. I glanced around briefly, taking it all in, before walking up to the information kiosk to locate Magistrate Sev’s office.

  A quick search revealed my destination, represented by a glowing blue dot on the eighth floor. The kiosk directed me to the nearest lift area, and I walked over to one of the waiting avarock platforms and rode it into the air.

  I saw people racing around on every level as I rose past them, mimicking determined ants as they darted from room to room to accomplish their tasks. The platform came to a gentle stop in front of Sev’s office and I stepped off of it. Then I passed straight through the open door. He looked up from his desk as I walked into the room.

  “Have a seat, monk. I’ve been expecting you.”

  I searched for any animosity in his voice and found none. “Of course,” I said.

  He dropped a dataslate onto the desk and leaned back. “As I explained to the Bodhi, there is nothing for you to do here. Fallon Gent killed my daughter. And I killed him. There’s no debt to be paid, and nothing to atone for. The murderer is dead and my daughter reborn—a new life entirely.”

  Sev leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the desk. “It’s over, monk. Done. Go back to Bodhi Prime and tell your monks to let this go.”

  “Gent is not dead, Magistrate. He lives on…in me. You must allow me to help Idra—to make amends. So that when I’m done here I can be reborn. The same man, but better.”

  Sev grinned for a moment but then his face turned serious. It was the same grave countenance I saw right before he killed me. “That’s what they tell you, monk. But you are merely a pawn—a tool, fed and programmed lies.”

  I shook my head. “I understand your confusion, Magistrate. It’s not unusual. Many people don’t comprehend the process.”

  Sev slapped the desk with his hand, startling me to attention. “You don’t comprehend the process. You believe you’re Fallon Gent, but you’re not. You are you—an individual. A separate entity.”

  Sev sensed my skepticism, my face betraying the dogma so deeply ingrained in my programming. He responded by lowering his voice, the calmer tone giving more weight to the words themselves.

  “As you are probably aware, many of the defectors from Bodhi Prime resettled here, on Volas. We debriefed each and every one of them before bringing the scientists into our own program. And as magistrate, I was involved in studying all of the intelligence we gathered. We looked at the monk’s methods from every angle, trying to emulate them—searching for the secrets to their success. Because we’d hoped to incorporate any discoveries we made into our own program.”

  He picked up the dataslate and began tapping on the screen, navigating encrypted sub-menus until he found what he was looking for. Then Sev handed the device to me.

  “See for yourself, monk. It is all a lie.”

  “What’s a lie?”

  “You. All of the cyborgs. You are sentient. Individual and alive. The monks suppress your discrete development, and try to keep you from becoming self-aware. They make you straddle an impossibly thin wire between two personalities, and then push you through a maelstrom of emotional trauma, hoping that you won't fall off. Every time your own persona tries to assert itself, a fail-safe engages to restore your compliance—to reinforce the falsehood. Your Shepherd Personality doesn’t just keep Gent in check, it suppresses you as well.”

  Sev looked at me with pity in his eyes. “You live your life as a slave, monk. And when your usefulness is over, you are murdered.”

  “Impossible,” I protested. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It works exactly like that. They don’t change the person you carry—make them better or holy. They merge them with your own independent consciousness, complete with all of the sadness and guilt from your penance. They make a composite neural net and place it in the clone. And they do it by killing you.”

  No. How could the monks do something like that? They wouldn’t…would they?

  But I knew Sev was right as soon as the words left his lips. For the first time, I recognized the memory gaps and forced behavior for what they really were. They had been suppressing my own personality, ever since my initial awakening on Bodhi Prime—intentionally retarding my full development. Somehow, I’d known the truth since Blenej. The Operational Matrix was me.

  I existed.

  But who was I?

  A new version of Gent? No…not him. I could see it more clearly now. His matrix powered my sentience, but it wasn’t me. Without it, I couldn’t live. But it wasn’t me.

  “You understand,” Sev said.

  “Yes,” I replied, placing the dataslate back on his desk. The files in it backed his claims, and they also explained my own experiences. It all made sense now.

  “The Bodhi say I’ve lived longer than any other atonement monk,” I continued. “Long enough, I think, for my own personality to assert itself.”

  “That does seem likely,” Sev agreed.

  For the first time in my brief existence, I didn’t know what to do. I no longer had a purpose.

  What do I do now?

  My thoughts and confusion were shoved aside by an incoming transmission, picked up by my short-range internal communications system.

  {Brother Gent. This is Brother Dyson. You are ill and malfunctioning, so I’ve come to repair you. I am currently in orbit aboard the Udek warship, Greal 5U. Please return to your own ship immediately, and then depart Volas to dock with us. There is no need to involve the Volasi}

  Befo
re I could tell Sev about the message, he received a communication from the Volasi military, notifying him about the ship in orbit.

  “It seems that your order wants you back,” he said. “They’ve requested that we turn you over to them, and are using the Udek as a club to make sure we comply.”

  “It appears so,” I replied somberly.

  Sev stood up and walked around to the front of the desk, coming to a stop in front of me. “What are your intentions, monk? I don’t have to tell you that we have no way of resisting the Udek—or reason to do so, for that matter. However, under Volasi law, you are free to do as you choose.”

  He leaned back against the desk. “We won’t defend you. But we won’t hand you over either.”

  “I will go to them,” I replied. “What else can I do? I never made any plans for an actual life—it was never even a consideration. Where would I go? What would I do?”

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” Sev said. “The Udek depend on your order for their cloning needs, so they are inclined to do as the monks ask to maintain that privilege.”

  I nodded and got up to leave. But before I did, I had a final question. “I know it’s none of my business, and I understand if you don’t want to answer, but how is she?”

  Sev stared down at the floor for a moment and then looked back up. Not at me, but out into the open atrium. “She is like a little girl again, but trapped inside an adult body. It is…difficult. The doctors have a current brain scan—taken only two days before her death, when she was treated for a diving injury.”

  “I remember.”

  “But we can only restore portions of her personality, monk. Idra will never be the same.”

  Although it wasn’t Sev’s intention, his statement cut me deeply. His sorrow compounded my own, and sent me into an even deeper pit of despair and doubt. But there, in that bleak nadir, an idea was born.

  “Maybe she can be,” I said.

  “Wha…how?”

  “By using me. Rip me apart and find out the secrets of the monks’ techniques. And then use that knowledge—even my parts, if necessary—to bring Idra back.”