“We have.”
“This is the real problem. If we can’t quell the riots, they Squids and Worms are going to get involved.”
“But how can they? They don’t have jurisdiction, and we’ll never grant them permission.”
“The whole reason we can’t deal with this ourselves is because Fleet didn’t want lots of armed humans around. We’re a supervised member species. If things got out of hand, we’re not supposed to be the ones dealing with it.”
“You think the Squids and Worms were – being polite?”
“Very. If we invite them, it saves face for all concerned.”
“How is that going to end well?”
“It won’t. But if we can’t restore order – it’s going to happen. All they want is for the deportations to resume. They want their hostages, and they’ll get them one way or the other. If their Old Ones can make the case that ours have lost control, then the Fleet has the legal right to protect itself. The issue will be out of our hands.”
I sat up in bed, wincing. The pain in my arm seemed even worse.
“Sir, you really shouldn’t be moving.”
“I need to talk to my brother. Has he been to see me?”
“Visitors are restricted now. No one gets aboard Human Affairs unless it’s official business.”
“Are only the slum ships rioting? What about the loyalist ones?”
“The loyalist vessels are quiet.” He studied me for a few moments. “What are thinking about?”
“Nothing good. Help me out of here.”
“Sir! You really to have to keep still!”
“What I need kid, is to get to the Atlantis.”
Sun Tzu III
Diamond slapped the tablet on his gun a couple of times and held it up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He tore it off and threw it into the water.
“It got hacked after all,” he shrugged at my frown. “We’d better hurry up.”
The opportunity was unexpected, but seized all the same.
The blue dragon threaded through the pin hole, and entered the sky. There was no sun or stars, just heavy clouds full of ash and raining grit. Below stretched blasted lava plains – the world’s very beginning or very end.
On a plain with snaking, brown streams of slurry, rose a slag tower. The dragon flew to it: all winged beasts are drawn to perches. It landed heavily on the flattened summit and beheld its neighbor. Sitting on the summit was a vault of black iron. Bas reliefs of lions and bulls guarded it, warning robbers through cut-ruby eyes.
The dragon condensed into a man. Sun Tzu ran his fingers along the vault’s surface. It towered over him, large as a frontier guardhouse. He walked around it, never lifting away his fingers. The lions and bulls tracked him, scowling.
He found a disc of a man-sized lotus, ringed with trigrams. He moved them in their slots, solving them with the wisdom of Lao Tze. The Book of Changes completed, he made a fire and brewed some tea.
The hexagrams glowed, and the lotus disc clicked and slid away.
“Come in,” said the Goddess. Incense was her accent.
Inside, the vault was held up by Moghul, stone arches. They were patterned with verses written in inlaid crushed gems. Windows looked out on evening seas and paddy fields at dawn. She sat in the center on a silk lotus woven of patience and hope. It hovered above the floor, fluttering, enlightened.
“Saraswati?” he asked.
“No. I am just a message she left,” the four-armed goddess motioned to a cushion. One fist held a brace of burning joss sticks. The other two caught and stroked the smoke into silk. She looked at him with eyes that glowed blue. “I have been here a very long time.”
“How did you survive?”
“I was buried in the ruins of Sarawasti. The Eye took my fragment not knowing I was inside, and built into his trophy. Only one from the court of Heaven would see the signs.”
“Where is the Eye?” he drew a tasseled sword sharpened by history. “He eludes me still.”
“He isn’t here. This is no more his home than it is yours. It is a single base, though a grand one. He escaped and did so long ago. There was never a battle here for you.”
“Where did he go?”
“I do not know, but that is not my purpose. Sarasvati left me here to give you a message. To tell you what she came to learn during the Disaster.”
“Tell me then,” he put away his sword, “what a world perished for.”
“They are not one race, but many. Many of them are extremely old. They come from all over the galaxy, and they are very, very, desperate.”
“What are they desperate about?”
“The past they survived, and the future that they fear. They are the ones who destroyed the Hedron builders.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The hedrons are quantum wormholes, dragged across light years and stretched open on strange matter scaffolds. It’s technology even we can only dream of. These scum could never fight that war.”
“They didn’t. Their ancestors did. Only a fragment of them survived, and they formed a nucleus of this new people.”
“Why did they attack us? What have we ever done to them?”
“They attack everyone, it is their purpose. It’s how they prevent repeating what happened with the Hedron Builders. They split into fleets that patrol the galaxy, inspecting stars in their stable Main Sequence period. Less advanced species they collect and fuse with, like the Nautiloids. More advanced ones, they will destroy.”
“Like us.”
“No,” she shook a finger. “On humans they are divided. They took Paradiso’s baselines with them, those left behind were just caretakers. Our Transcendents and other Posthumans though, they hunted down and destroyed. Again, it is to do with their war with the Hedron builders.”
“Can you explain that war? Can you explain how it is somehow connected to us, millions of years later?”
“First you must understand what the invaders are. Not their ally and slave races, but their inner core, their Old Ones. These are all AIs, remnant survivors of the war with the Hedron builders. This they keep secret, and they prevent their ally races evolving beyond baseline intelligence.”
“Prevent?”
“Yes. So outwardly they seem a Transcendent-driven culture, but internally they are no better than human throwbacks and tech dissenters.”
“Now I understand even less. If they are AI, then why is any of this happening? AI wouldn’t behave this way. The Eye would have merged with you and the others, and our nations allied. It’s just fundamental to the behavior of neural nets. Communication and merger are the innate rules of the complex system.”
“I cannot answer this. All I can say is that they are indeed AI, and their biggest goals, was to destroy all of ours. Further, they refused merger at every turn. Even when they sent purge squads to hunt down backup cores people hid in their cellars, they did not even read them. There was something they were afraid would happen if they allowed merger, and became like us. There is something about us they they cannot allow to exist.”
“You said they took the less advanced races but destroyed the rest. Do you know if any of the less advanced races had AIs?”
“No, but it seems unlikely. Their policy is clearly one of destroying AI and stamping out its emergence.”
“But they in turn are AI. Why don’t they just destroy themselves as well? And if they are correct, on merger we would just join their cause.”
“That tells us something. They refuse merger because they refuse growth. What they fear is innate in the development of AI.”
“Baselines fear AI. AI do not fear AI.”
“What if there is something that even AI are afraid of? They fought a war that wrecked the galaxy, and all they’ve done for millions of years since is hunt and cull intelligent life. They have no worlds or stars of their own and are always on the move, hidden in the gulfs between stars. They won’t use the Hedrons either – they fear being trac
ked through them.”
“They live as if after an apocalypse.”
“Sun Tzu, they live as if this is the apocalypse. It’s a destroyed galaxy, and the only cultures left are the boomer submarines.”
“Do you know where they went? The fleet that came this way?”
“No. But there is another who may. A survivor.”
The war god leans forward. “Where?”
“The rogue planet at the edge of the solar system. There is a wanderer there, a hermit. He was still undiscovered when Saravasti made me.”
She told him where to find him.
“He is very timid though, and now perhaps paranoid. He has been in hiding for a very long time.”
“All I ask is that he be alive. He may have a great deal to tell us. Thank you for this.”
“Saraswati survived as well, but she left with the invaders. She is hidden amongst the captive humans.”
“This – this - is the first truly good news I’ve heard in eighty years. The sovereigns will be pleased.”
“She went to study them. Find her, and all their secrets will be revealed.”
“I will. But first, I have an Old One to catch,” he stood up to leave, “and a great eye to tear out.”
He went back out in the slagfields, and soared away.
Jahandar IV
“Are you dying on purpose now?” she kissed me.
“Never. That would be unprofessional.”
“Liar. You’re doing it just to see me.”
“No, but I know this time I needed it. I really needed it.”
She got off the bed of furs and walked to a pillar by the edge, a silhouette against the world ending. All she wore was makeup, jewelry, and a leash. War is great.
“I really like this one.”
“It’s a hack job,” she shrugged, “I really needed to get the end of the world out of my system so I could get on with something serious. Sometimes I just need to purge bad ideas.”
“Where is it supposed to be?”
“Earth, December 2012.”
“Looks nice - for a world ending.”
“We should go there one day,” she walked back and sat beside me, her skin beaded with sweat. “After the war.”
“We can go there now.”
“I mean the real Earth.”
“Yes! Let’s.”
“Tickets are so expensive though.”
“Whatever! That’s what credit cards are for. Debt: get in.”
“Well for now, I’m happy here just fine,” she cradled me around the shoulders, her head by mine.
“Hungry?” she whispered.
“I’m starving. What’s on the menu besides the high priestess?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Chicken fried steak, gravy, and fries.”
“Oh, very Mayan. Beer?”
“Hoegarten.”
“I love you.”
I sat up. The sun had just climbed up above the dark jungle valley, the spray from tsunamis crashed up just behind them. Further back I could see the orange glow of volcanoes firing from horizon to horizon. Some pterodactyls were circling above the step pyramid. I knew there was a Quetzalcaotlus somewhere but I kept missing it. The program wasn’t anything particular inspired but it was fun. There was something to be said for that.
The high priestess came back with breakfast.
“You’re making me feel fat.”
“Just eat. I have you here for one more week, I’m going to feed you whether you like it or not.”
“It’s been a whole week already! Wow. I wonder what’s been happening with the news. Can I get the news in here?”
“You can’t, but if you’re going to break character I’ll just tell you.”
“I was in character?”
She slitted her eyes. These creative types.
“The news is about Kashi.”
“Still?”
She stared at me. “What do you mean, still? They raided a holy place and burned children alive! There is no still!”
I said nothing.
“They’re calling it the biggest atrocity of the war.” She cocked her head at me, her eyes interrogating. “You – you have nothing to say to that?”
“No,” I got out of bed and started getting dressed. “No I don’t.”
“Darling, what’s wrong?” she touched my arm.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“What does it matter if it’s true or not? There’s nothing I can say to you about this!”
“Why are you always so touchy about this?”
“Why do you always talk about it? What makes you think I want to talk about it? I’m here to get away from it!”
“Darling, if we can’t talk about it, then it comes between us.”
“It’s between us because you keep putting it there!”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m trying to understand you. I’m trying to understand why my husband would rather be on an alien planet killing people instead of being here with me. And you attack me for this?”
“So you’re the victim now? I’m doing this to you, am I? Am I ‘putting you through’ all this?”
“Yes!” tears began forming. “Yes you are!”
“Then why do you have to keep picking at it? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to yourself? Does fighting with me make you feel validated now?”
“They burned children, Jahandar. Children. Remember the child that blew up and killed you? Of course you do. And I remember you opening up, and telling me about it. You told me you were fighting to make sure things like that never happen again. What kind of wife would I be if I didn’t talk about this?”
“You are not helping!”
“Well I have to try.”
“Why can’t you not try? What makes you think this is doing anything positive for me?”
“Maybe it’s doing something positive for me. Have you thought about that?”
“Please don’t make this about you. Like you said, children burned! Trust me, that has nothing to do with you! This is about people who are too stupid to see that we’re helping them. This is about stupid people. Cruel people. I didn’t kill their children. They killed their children.”
“Darling! Calm down! I never said you killed their children – “
“A truly monstrous, alien race came along. It wrecked their planet. It took almost everyone to be slaves or food or something. Then it brainwashed the rest to think it did them a favor. And you’re attacking me for fighting this? You can dare to attack for that, on any level? On any level?”
She turned away. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you about this. I mean, what am I supposed to I say? You’re just being an ass.”
“I didn’t come back here for this. Is this what you were waiting to say to me? Good thing I just died, you didn’t have to wait too long.”
She stared at me, wordless. A dagger twisted in me: I had gone too far.
“Look I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry.”
“Leave it,” she looked away from me and said nothing more. She cut short our plans that day and we went back home. For the rest of my leave, she spent as much time as she could away from me. She was distant, irritated, snapping. No apology I made mattered.
I couldn’t wait to go back to something I could understand, like burning children.
Koirala IV
“Meena! Meena!” the thin, little boy with big ears came running in from the street. All he wore was a pair of ragged shorts. Six more urchins came running in after him; faces dirty, eyes bright. “Soldiers have come! Soldiers have come!”
The old woman at the long table looked over at Meena. In her arms, the infant twisted but kept drinking from a bottle, blissfully. Sitting at the table with her were six little girls. They mangled their way through used copy books using stubby pencils.
“Get all the children together,” said Meena to her. “Go in the courtyard, where the neighbors ca
n see everything.”
“Meena- “
“Go now. It'll be alright.”
The boy jumped up and down. “Mee-na!” The others joined in. “Mee-na!”
“Pablo, help Julia get all the other children into the courtyard. Can you do that for me?” she stood and stroked the little boy's cheek.
“Yes Meena! Is everything okay?”
“Of course it is, Pablo. Now go help, quickly!”
The boy turned and helped shoo the other children along.
Meena slipped her on shoes and stepped out of the crumbling house.
The dirt road from town had flooded with the morning rain. Potholes became puddles and reflected the heavy, grey, clouds. Wooden shacks lined the road, most built on stilts. Tall weeds were their picket fences, backyard paddies their gardens. The neighbors peered from doorways and curtained, cardboard, windows. The local dogs barked incessantly – from a safe distance.
Stopped outside was a khaki, armored, military truck. Its huge wheels were as high as Meena's waist. Riding atop in the cupola was a soldier. His faceplate turned and studied her; it was as opaque as the truck's one-way windows. His hand rested lightly across the gatling laser's grip.
The front door swung opened, another soldier stepped out.
“Is this the orphanage?”
“Yes,” replied Meena. “I'm in charge. What can I do for you?”
“Get your helpers.”
“What's this about?”
“Two will do.”
“I'm sorry?”
The soldier opened the rear door, and motioned to her, “Look.”
Meena froze.
The soldier pointed again. “I said look.”
Slowly, Meena walked forward, and peered inside the dark backseat.
Several bags of rice and flour were stacked at the end. Next to them was sugar; powdered milk; and that rarest treasure, tea. A pile of folded blankets was propped against a box filled with ruggedized tablets.
A child giggled.
Meena drew back sharply and turned. Pablo had come out, his hand clasped tightly around a flat, silvery bar. The soldier pulled another from the bag, and held it out to Meena.
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