The Chaos Sutra

by Gregg Vann

  {I can feel it now, Augustus. A great emptiness… Room to think}

  Dyson disconnected the cables and released the clamps on the new soul chamber, lifting it up from the workbench. “Are you still able to communicate, Brother Miso?” he asked. The monk waited patiently for a few moments, but was met with silence.

  “Is something wrong?” Ryll asked him.

  “I don't believe so, no. According to the readouts on the chamber, everything’s fine. There’s an atypical amount of memory usage, to be sure. But given the circumstances, that isn't too surprising. Brother Miso probably can’t get control of the new unit's speaker system. Not yet, anyway. But we'll know how things went soon enough, once we connect him to the body.”

  Ryll grabbed a black robe from a wall locker near the door and followed Brother Dyson out of the room, walking down the corridor to another of the ship's small chambers. The room contained equipment for the vessel’s navigation array and was wholly unremarkable—except for the android body crafted from highly polished metal, strapped up against one of the walls in a mesh restraining harness. Dyson stepped up to the android and handed Miso’s soul chamber over to Ryll, and then he depressed a hidden button on the torso and it sprang open, revealing the complex inner workings. Brother Dyson reached inside and spread the metal rib cage apart, exposing a pair of thick clamps mounted to a recessed housing, fitted deep within the chest. The old monk pried each of them open and then took a step back, satisfied with his work.

  “It’s ready,” he told Brother Ryll.

  Dyson reclaimed the soul chamber and pushed it into the waiting chest cavity, pressing it solidly into the internal framework purpose-built to house and protect it. The android body detected the insertion and automatically locked the chamber down, and then it fastened all of the necessary power, control, and sensory attachments to the device. Brother Dyson checked to make sure all of the connections were correct and functional, and then he closed the rib cage and the body sealed itself up. A thin ridge tracing the midline—running straight down the center of the sternum—melded seamlessly back into the chest, leaving no hint of the procedure in its gleaming, flawless surface. Brother Dyson leaned back and looked the machine over.

  The android presented roughly the same shape and size as a human body, but its metallic skin was smooth and impossibly shiny—and contained no orifices of any kind. The head also differed notably in that it was an inverted ovoid, lacking any eyes, nose, or even a mouth—not so much as tiny pinholes where ears were positioned on humans. But despite the appearance, Brother Dyson knew that all of the android’s senses worked flawlessly, and were far more acute than any un-augmented human could ever hope to enjoy. The two monks stared at the complex machine expectantly, but it remained motionless, inert and lifeless.

  “Brother Miso?” Dyson said, hoping to elicit a reaction.

  For nearly a minute, there was no response—nothing at all. And Dyson began to fear that something had gone gravely wrong. But then a single finger spasmed, followed by the android’s hand twisting sideways—then waving front to back in languid motions. And then both hands started to open and close repeatedly, as if testing the movement.

  Miso was alive.

  {I am here, Augustus. The return of sensory input was…disconcerting, but I’m fine now. If you would be so kind as to remove these restraints, I would like to try walking}

  “Of course,” Dyson replied.

  With Brother Ryll’s assistance, he quickly unsnapped and pulled away the mesh, freeing the android body. Miso stumbled forward and they caught him.

  “Easy, Brother,” Dyson admonished his old friend. “Easy. It will take time for you to acclimate to this new body. You must be patient. This is one of our Series 10 atonement models, and it is quite sophisticated.”

  {I’ve been patient for two hundred years, Brother. It is time to live again}

  “I understand.” Dyson grabbed the black robe from Brother Ryll and handed it to Miso.

  {An atonement robe?}

  “Temporary garb,” Dyson assured him. “Like your body. You will of course receive the proper vestments once we return to Bodhi Prime.”

  {It’s of no consequence, Augustus. And in many ways, quite appropriate}

  Miso pulled the robe on and fastened it, and then he leaned forward to take a small step. Dyson and Ryll remained at his side, ready to assist. Miso took two more wobbling strides before halting to stand up straight.

  {I must admit that I’m unsure of my mind-state at the moment, as well as my locomotion. I may need a few minutes alone to process this…change}

  “Of course, Brother,” Dyson replied sincerely. “Don’t tax yourself. You’ve had quite an ordeal. There will be time enough later to catch up.” Dyson gestured toward the door. “If you will follow Brother Ryll here, there are simple sleeping quarters on board where you can rest for awhile and get accustomed to functioning in that form. There is also a terminal in the room you can use to begin reviewing some of the history you’ve missed. I never rescinded your credentials, so your old identification codes still grant full access to everything. Your clearances are matched only by my own. I will contact Bodhi Prime and let them know what’s happened. I also need to follow up on a few ongoing matters…some very serious, I’m afraid. But when I’m finished, I’ll check in on you to see how you’re faring. Brother Ryll will be at your complete disposal during my absence. And please, Brother Miso, do take your time. Everything is fine now. There is no need to rush.”

  {I will practice patience. Thank you, old friend}

  Miso raised a hand in front of his face and examined it closely. His black sleeve slid down to the elbow, exposing his forearm. The metal finish shimmered as Miso rotated his arm, and intermittent sparkles of light reflected off its chrome-like surface.

  {Yes. Perhaps it would be best if I took some time to adapt to this situation}

  “Excellent,” Dyson responded. “Then I’ll see you in a little while.” He placed his hand on Miso’s arm in what he hoped was a kindly gesture of reassurance. “Your travails are over, Brother. And everything will be fine now. It feels very good to be taking you home.”

  {Home? Ah yes, Bodhi Prime. After so long… It will be interesting}

  Dyson stood aside and let Brother Ryll lead Miso out of the room. As he watched them walk down the corridor together—Ryll poised to help if Miso lost his footing—a strange sensation overcame the old monk. His friend seemed different, somehow. Oh, it was truly Brother Miso. Of that, Dyson had no doubt. But he wasn’t the same person who had set out on a voyage of self-discovery, all those years ago.

  Well of course he’s changed, Dyson chided himself. Miso had spent two hundred years frozen solid inside of a mountain. He was trapped on a distant planet—all alone—for two centuries. An experience like that would change anyone.

  It was a miracle Brother Miso was still sane.

  Chapter Seven

  Tien feigned to the left with practiced precision but Zrea read it perfectly, darting in to slash down the side of Tien’s torso with one of his daggers. The assassin left a deep, nine-inch incision behind as he twisted sideways to arrest his forward momentum, and then both men spun away cleanly to begin circling again. Tien felt blood oozing out from the new wound, soaking through his clothing.

  “I think that blade I put in your shoulder may have pierced a lung, Tien. You seem to be having some difficulty breathing.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve been stabbed,” Tien replied in a measured tone. “It’s not even the first time that I’ve been stabbed in a lung.”

  “No. I imagine not. But sti—” Zrea lunged forward with a direct thrust, hoping to catch his opponent by surprise, but Tien sidestepped it and smashed the assassin’s face with his elbow. He swept a leg behind Zrea next and sent him to the floor, but the Udek caught one of Tien’s arms as he fell, slicing it open from the elbow to the wrist. Tien tried snatching the dagger from Zrea’s hand but he missed—his grip slippery from the steady fl
ow of blood spilling down over his palm. Before Tien could pursue any advantage, Zrea hopped back up into an attack posture, adjusting his mask where Tien had dislodged it with the elbow strike.

  “Not bad, Tien. Not bad at all, especially for someone in your condition. It’s good to see that living among the Obas hasn’t made you soft.”

  “Fortunately,” Tien replied, “Special Corp keeps sending me sparring partners.”

  “So I’ve heard. But you must understand, Chancellor Stenth took your betrayal hard. He saw it as a personal insult, Tien, and I suspect he won’t be satisfied until you’re dead and gone. This seems as good a day as any to make his wish come true, don’t you think?” Zrea rubbed his face where Tien struck him. Nothing was broken, but it was a close thing. “And I have to admit, I’m developing my own, personal reasons for wanting you dead.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll both be disappointed when this is all over.”

  As the pair continued circling Tien evaluated his condition, coming to some unpleasant, yet unavoidable conclusions. Zrea was right: Tien was getting weaker, and he was hurt far worse than he was letting on. Tien was bleeding internally from the dagger lodged in his shoulder, and externally from the blows Zrea had managed to land during the fight—a combination of deep cuts and shallow stabbing wounds. The cumulative effect of those injuries was becoming more pronounced by the minute.

  Tien understood that in his condition, his best play was to cat and mouse Zrea until the Obas showed up to help. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he could remain conscious long enough for that to happen. Tien already detected the faint onset of dizziness, threatening to interfere with his balance. His thinking was also growing muddled, becoming difficult and imprecise. As those problems progressed, they would amplify into fatal encumbrances, causing Tien to not only lose this fight, but his life.

  Zrea was good, very good. And he was also uninjured. But worst of all, he was armed, and Zrea knew how to use those knives well. Unlike the other assassins sent by the Corp, Zrea was a credit to his training. Still, Tien felt certain he could best the operative under normal circumstances. But after the unexpected ambush and injury, and in these conditions, he’d have to get those weapons away from Zrea, no matter what the cost, or Tien had zero chance of surviving the encounter. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but desperation is the uncontested father of insanity. Kiro Tien was a desperate man, so now seemed the perfect time for an insane gambit.

  Zrea tried a feint this time, appearing to lunge off to the left. But instead, he spun around in a complete circle and brought both daggers straight down. Tien saw his chance and leapt in close, slamming his own chest up against Zrea’s. He then braced himself as the assassin redirected his attack, using the overhead strikes to drive both daggers into Tien’s back. Tien pushed himself away again, stumbling back too quickly for Zrea to reclaim his weapons.

  The assassin smirked. “Was that worth it, Tien? I may be out of weapons, but now you have three daggers sticking out of you.”

  Tien didn’t bother to reply; he knew exactly what he’d done. He had used his body as a pincushion to disarm his opponent, forcing the assassin to strike Tien where he wanted. He could survive two daggers in the flanks of his back, away from any vital organs. Well…temporarily, at least. But as Tien weakened further Zrea would have been able to get in through his defenses. He could have stabbed Tien in the head, or the center of his chest—maybe even slit his throat.

  And any one of those wounds would have been instantly fatal.

  Satisfaction emanated from Zrea’s face as he took inventory of his opponent’s injuries. He watched as Tien shifted around unsteadily on his feet, a sizable pool of blood forming below him on the stone floor. “No more attempts to goad me, Tien? No boasts? Ah, I suppose you’re too tired for banter now. That is quite a bit of blood. By the looks of things, I’d say you only have a couple of minutes left until you lose consciousness. Probably not even that. But as tempting as it is to just stand here and watch you die, I can’t afford to wait around. We may have company soon.”

  Zrea ran straight at him. He slapped aside Tien’s meager defenses and grabbed the dagger lodged in his shoulder. Zrea enjoyed the loud screams echoing through the cavern as he roughly spun and twisted the handle, gouging a large hole in Tien’s flesh before yanking the dagger out. Zrea head-butted Tien and he collapsed to the ground, one of his arms landing outstretched on a wedge-shaped rock, sitting on the cave floor. Zrea lifted a heavy boot and stomped down hard—snapping Tien’s forearm in half, and pushing the jagged, broken bones out through the skin. Tien’s hand and the lower portion of his forearm sagged to the ground, still loosely attached by torn skin and shredded muscle tissue. But the gleaming white bones of the upper part still lay on the rock, wrapped in ruptured ligaments and pulpy gore, all of it coated with a thin layer of blood.

  “Thank you for returning my weapon,” Zrea said callously, holding the dagger up for Tien to see. “This should help speed things along.”

  Zrea lunged down to stab Tien in the face, eager to end the fight, but his target was already in motion. Tien deflected the attack with his good arm, spinning Zrea’s body off to the side, and then he continued his rotation upward. Tien shoved the fractured bones of his forearm through the back of Zrea’s neck—slicing straight up through the assassin’s spine, and exiting from the top of his head in an explosion of blood and brain matter.

  The blow killed Zrea instantly.

  The dagger slipped from the assassin’s hand and clanged to the floor, and then Tien kicked the body away, screaming as he pulled his bent and splintered bones from Zrea’s skull. What remained of his arm was now covered in the stickily blood and gore of both men, and Tien realized that he didn’t have long before he passed out. He heaved himself over Zrea’s corpse and began painfully crawling toward the breeding pool, leaving a smeared trail of blood in his wake.

  Tien felt a small sense of relief as he slid down into the pool, feet first, resting his head on the gentle slope of the artificial beach. The water around him began to change color as blood ran out from his multitude of wounds, and Tien heard the monitoring alarms mounted on the walls go off, sending an emergency signal for assistance. He knew the Obas would send someone immediately to investigate the source of contamination, and to protect the eggs scattered beneath the calm surface of the breeding pool. Tien just hoped they got there in time to save his life as well. He closed his eyes and the darkness swallowed his senses. Then Kiro Tien drifted off to sleep.

  Reliving tortured dreams of violence and death.

  Chapter Eight

  Brother Dyson switched off the data terminal when Miso entered the room, Ryll following closely behind him, just as directed.

  “Ah,” Dyson said. “Your timing is perfect. I was just finishing up before coming to see you. Please, have a seat, Brother, and we’ll talk.”

  {That isn’t necessary, Augustus. This body doesn’t experience fatigue. But I’m sure you already know that. And I’m quickly mastering the nuances of controlling this form, so standing is no longer a concern. But if it will make you feel more comfortable…}

  “It will,” Brother Dyson confessed. “These last few weeks have been tiring. Very tiring, indeed.”

  {Then why haven’t you taken a new body yet? You are well into old age}

  As Miso slid into a chair on the opposite side of the small table, Brother Dyson did his best to ignore the mechanical timbre of the android’s words. He was frustrated because the machine in front of him was quite capable of mimicking normal speech, with just a few minor adjustments. But in their haste to depart Bodhi Prime they’d only brought the equipment deemed absolutely necessary to rescue their lost comrade, and the expanded communications package hadn’t made the cut. It wouldn’t have been Miso’s real voice, of course, but at least it would have been human.

  Dyson stared at the android for a long moment, struggling to recall his friend’s true voice. But after so many years, the memory of it had
become diluted in his mind, the distinct sounds lost alongside so many other tangential details from those earlier days. Brother Dyson viewed this natural erosion as the price one paid for living so long, and an acceptable, minor inconvenience when weighed against the benefits of immortality.

  “I will take a new body soon enough, old friend. But I’m far too busy at the moment. There’s always so much to do—people who need my help, and the never-ending duties of the monastery. But I will schedule it. Hopefully at a time of my own choosing, and not when my health finally demands it.”

  {I remember my own tenure as one of the original masters, so I understand those responsibilities better than most}

  Dyson favored Miso with a weary smile. “That was a very long time ago, eh, Brother? So… Have you had an opportunity to read up on what you’ve missed during your absence?”

  {Only matters regarding the monastery} Miso replied. {Yet so much of that touched on the galaxy at large. I was surprised to learn a collection of monks could wield such wealth and power}

  “It wasn’t something we sought out,” Brother Dyson said. “It was thrust upon us. After you left on your sabbatical, word got out about the transference breakthrough. Every race in the galaxy demanded it, some even threatening violence. Our safety was compromised…our very existence put at risk. And the only way I could devise to protect the Order was to delve into the affairs of the other races—pitting them against one another as needed, and carefully forging alliances based on access to the new technology.”

  {But you’ve gone much further than that. Haven’t you, Brother? Interfering in things that have little, if anything, to do with Bodhi Prime. Bending others to your will as you tried to control all of creation}

  “All of crea—? My strategy was to build a defense, Brother Miso. Nothing more. Don’t you see? We were weak, and vulnerable. If I hadn't bound the other races to us—found a way to stop them from taking what they wanted by force—the monastery would have been leveled, and our number murdered. The Order of Buddha's Light would be nothing more than a distant memory now.”