by Ryu Mitsuse
Beyond, he found a translucent portal made of high-density crystalline silicon. He melted the hinges with his maser and gave it a push. The light metallic screen he found beyond was easily removed.
Inside he discovered a narrow space that was less like a room and more like the engine access bay of a small spacecraft. The room was filled with countless pipes and electrical lines large and small running this way and that, burying the walls and covering the ceiling. A cylindrical console protruded from the center of the floor. The console was connected to several dozen electrical filaments that stretched out to where an atmospheric adjustment unit was spinning its emergency self-cooling fan at full speed. It seemed that by opening a hole in the door, Siddhārtha had dealt a fatal blow to the ecology of the compartment.
A large, organic lump sat in the light from Siddhārtha’s projector, giving off a smell like warm, raw meat. Siddhārtha trained his projector on it, hunching over to get a better look. He could make out a round head on the lump, connected directly to swollen shoulders, and incongruously short arms and legs protruding from a thick torso. In the brilliant light, the thing’s exposed skin was light brown in color.
“Are you the occupant of this compartment?” Siddhārtha asked, leaning forward, not really expecting an answer. The organism was quivering irregularly, its breath growing thinner and quicker. Apparently, even the desperate countermeasures taken by its life support system were not enough to prevent the compartment’s occupant from heading toward a swift death.
Siddhārtha straightened up and was about to leave when he noticed a pipe roughly five centimeters in diameter extending from either side of the organism to small holes in the sidewalls of the compartment. The pipe was not attached, but rather was an extension of the organism’s body itself.
He touched one, detecting a slight pulse and the trickling of liquid inside.
Siddhārtha removed the tantalum steel cover from another of his discharge panels and pressed its sharp edge to one side of the pipe until it broke. The organism began to spasm wildly, flopping around inside the confines of the compartment. Siddhārtha looked closer to see that the pipe’s interior was divided into three compartments. Out of one sprayed a translucent liquid that wet Siddhārtha from his elbow to his chest. Another of the compartments held what were clearly nerve bundles, sheathed in a soft, gelatinous protein that was now being pushed out to drip onto the floor by the organism’s internal pressure. The final compartment seemed to be a blood vessel. Deep green liquid oozed from the crushed opening where Siddhārtha had cut the pipe in two.
Out of curiosity, he slashed through the other half of the pipe, finding it identical to the first.
The organism shook two or three more times before it stopped moving altogether.
“Perhaps it’s dead.”
Siddhārtha exited through the destroyed hatch back out into the hallway. Outside, he peered in both directions through the darkness, hearing nothing. He flipped the switch on his light projector, sweeping away the gloom around him, finding nothing but the same deathlike stillness he had found upon his first arrival to this place.
No, wait, I can hear something!
Siddhārtha directed all of his nerves to his ears, listening through the silence around him. Something like a breeze was coming from the depths of the darkness on one side. He raised the power going to his supplementary processors, broadening his range of hearing. The sound rose high, then went low, swirling around Siddhārtha like the crashing of waves.
What is that?
Siddhārtha began to advance quietly down the corridor, looking for the source of the sound. Yet the faint trembling in the air seemed to come from above him at one moment, only to sound as though it was emanating from below a moment later. He went right down the corridor and felt the trembling come from the left. Continually, the noise shifted so that he could not determine its source. With a sudden clarity, Siddhārtha realized he was the target of a powerful enmity. He extinguished his projector, put his back to the wall, and attempted to conceal his own presence.
Rage made tangible and viscous as tar crept closer, an unseen wrinkle in the fabric of space around him. He could feel the rage emanating from a vast number of points surrounding him in every direction—at least one hundred million, he guessed. It was coming from the compartments—the agony and death suffered by one rapidly spreading to all, becoming a virulent wrath.
Here, suffering and death are shared equally!
He ran down the dark hallway.
This was no city.
It was a hive.
Outside, cold rain fell without ceasing. The sky seemed close enough to touch, and gray clouds hung low, no more than one hundred meters off the ground. With each gust of wind, the rain fell harder.
The light metal roof was brown in places and spotted, and the rain leaked through. Fragments of reinforced glass covered the floor, where the rainwater formed rivulets soaking down into the ground. Not a single spot remained dry. The cold rain penetrated through Siddhārtha’s clothes to his body.
Beneath the slanted roof, several figures huddled beneath carbonic-vinyl tarps. The frigid rain splashed, rattling as it sprinkled onto the spread vinyl. Empty, desperate eyes looked out from underneath, following Siddhārtha.
As far as he could see, there was not a single home here worthy of the name. The rooms were warped, the walls half fallen, the streets were rivers that lacked even proper drainage ditches. What’s going on here?
Siddhārtha stopped, feeling six pairs of eyes from six round heads staring at him.
“I would not imagine this city to be so poor that its residents could not afford to build homes for themselves,” Siddhārtha muttered to himself.
He looked back toward the giant cylindrical obelisk that towered behind him. This was the center of the city, this was everything.
“Do you know what that is?” asked a voice from the shelter, and a thin arm extended from beneath the vinyl sheet to point toward the giant cylinder.
“I do indeed.”
“More than three thousand years it’s been since they locked themselves up in there. What were we who were left behind supposed to do? We would rebuild our city, if anyone knew how.”
Siddhārtha wondered what use a people unable to build with their own hands would have of a city in the first place, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
“Why did only they move into the cylinder?” he asked at length.
Another of the round heads answered him. “They say that was the n-n-nah er . . . natural progression of development.”
“Natural progression?”
Do they mean to suggest that turning their society into a giant hive was a natural, necessary progression for a city?
“Why did you not follow them in?”
Beneath the vinyl sheets, the people exchanged glances before one of them responded, “Because they are human.”
As one, the round heads nodded in agreement.
The rain blew sideways between the posts holding up their ramshackle roof. An orphaned panel of lightweight siding came tumbling along, driven by the wind. It fell into a puddle and sent up a fine spray of water like smoke. Beyond the falling rain, the giant cylinder stood like a cutout silhouette against a screen in a shadow play.
“As our natural environment worsened, humanity adapted by developing into a new communal body, with individual compartments for shells to house each individual. The simple act of forming the communal body was an excellent strategy for ensuring our survival. However, an environment that necessitates such an act will ultimately fall to ruin. In order to stay that destruction, a more high-level strategy becomes necessary. Thus were all citizens reduced to simple code, protected from all change.”
“But that is neither evolution nor development.”
“Where do these things lead? Only to destruction.”
Siddhārtha nodded. “Who are you, really?”
The hoist above his head was quiet for a time, then it spoke, spitti
ng out the words.
“I am God. More precisely, I am what the inhabitants of the city used to call God.”
Siddhārtha thought he detected a hint of lament in the crab’s voice.
“I see. For a god, you have a very peculiar shape.”
The god on the sliding rail seemed to laugh at that. “Is there a preordained shape or role for a god? No, for it is a fact that depending on the world in which they manifest, gods take on many forms. They may be benevolent beings, made of kindness and mercy, or a high-tech machine or an incubator. They can even take the form of a financial organization.”
“Are all ses-beta developments performed by gods, or indirectly via their influence?”
“Pardon?”
“Did a man named Jesus of Nazareth come here?”
“Beats me. What is this ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ of whom you speak?”
Siddhārtha shrugged. “He was the coordinator of the ses-beta development on Earth. I want to know who put him in that position, who gives him his orders,” Siddhārtha said, feeling with some certainty that this director was none other than the god hanging over his head. “What is your name?”
“ZEN-ZEN.”
Siddhārtha muttered the word to himself, feeling its shape in his mouth. “I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is hiding somewhere on Astarta 50,” he said, realizing that he had yet to find a single trace of his enemy here.
“Could it be that this man whom you seek belongs to the Planetary Development Committee? If that is the case, then leave the city and go north. I have heard that the building of the Planetary Development Committee lies upon a small plain surrounded by hills.”
Siddhārtha turned and walked back down the long dark hallway, hearing the words at his back. All ways in this city were barred to him, but one of them must lead to Shi.
The three obelisks had broken just above their bases and lay flat across the stones. Several of the buildings around the plaza joined them on the ground amid piles of rubble. Fragments of shattered concrete and dust rose in a giant umbrella cloud over the city. Aquamarine laser light still coursed across the top of the crowd that ran like fleeting shadows toward safety. Incredible explosions and gouts of flame rose upward, the sparks flowing like a river into the sky.
Siddhārtha had found his way back to the chamber of the leader. The leader stood like a statue, trailing a long shadow in the dim light. Siddhārtha wondered if he had even moved since his last visit.
“Leader. I believe I now understand the rebellion. And the cause of this city’s downfall.”
The leader slowly turned to face him. “You must have met God.”
“Yes. He said his name was ZEN-ZEN.”
“A great God, yes. Yet not even he could save this city from destruction.”
“Oh? As I see it, ZEN-ZEN has abandoned you.”
The leader chuckled, dark shadows playing across his face. “It is only natural. God was not ours to begin with.” With a sudden surge of emotion playing across his features, the leader advanced to stand in front of Siddhārtha. “Yet is it not we who support the city now? Are we not the engine of this city’s economy? Are we not her true citizens?”
That may be, Siddhārtha admitted to himself, but it would have little meaning to Shi. Shi was not interested in the people who felled the obelisks in the plaza, but only in the people who slept eternally, reduced to single data cards deep within the city.
“I’m afraid you have been abandoned, just like those who squat out in the rain.”
The Leader looked toward him, his eyes focusing on a great distance. “It seems that our time in history will not come for a long while yet.”
Siddhārtha left in silence.
Red flames reflected across the skin of the ionocraft where it sat abandoned beside the building. Two figures stood in the shadow of a protruding section of wall.
“So you met the god in the deep.” Asura smiled, flames near her feet casting a flickering light on the lower half of her face.
“How did you know?”
“I can know things through your mind and through your eyes,” Asura said with a laugh, though it was unclear whether she spoke truth or not. “Which is how I have learned that the Planetary Development Committee is to the north, on a small plain surrounded by mountains.”
With the three aboard, the ionocraft slid above the smoke from the blazes in the city, heading toward the dark canopy above.
Outside, the vast silvery surface reflected the outline of the small pale yellow sun like a halo.
“Think those are the mountains?” Siddhārtha asked, pointing toward the ring of mountains on the horizon.
Ahead of them and on the horizon to either side rose dark mountains.
“What will we find on the other side?” Orionae wondered out loud.
“The Planetary Development Committee.”
“Those who act upon Shi’s directive?”
“The very same.”
“So is this thing called Shi also upon that plain?”
“Who knows?” Siddhārtha muttered.
“Both Atlas the Seventh and the Poseidonis the Fifth were as large as small mountains,” Orionae said.
“You’ve met them?”
“They said they came from the land of our ancestors, Atlanta. They tried experimental methods for forming their kingdom and were quite successful. The success of their experiments in Atlantis were to inform other planetary developmental efforts.”
“Atlanta, land of ancestors . . .” Asura muttered.
“Where is this place?” Siddhārtha asked.
“Siddhārtha, it’s—” Asura paused, crinkling her nose and looking up at the tiny sun. “It’s clear that the helio-ses-beta development attempted on the third planet of the Ai System was a failure.”
“As it was here on Astarta 50.”
Siddhārtha and Asura exchanged glances.
“So the Planetary Development Committee was unable to carry out Shi’s directive.”
“Humanity advanced into the stars, taking their wars and their incessant economic crises and their population problem, yet they could not dominate the Milky Way. They couldn’t even revive a once green land that had fallen to desert.”
Siddhārtha felt his chest tighten as though he were about to weep. “It seems to me,” he said after a moment, “that since the very beginning, humanity has been walking upon a path toward destruction. Everywhere is disease and disaster, death and conflict. These things have always been part of civilization, right by man’s side. I wonder if any human, anywhere, has truly been at peace from the bottom of their heart.”
Asura looked up at the rapidly approaching black shadow of the mountains and said nothing.
The small, pale yellow sun was about to slip closer toward the distant horizon, its weak rays striking out horizontally in bands of light across the land below them. They were passing over another flat surface, apparently an ancient seabed that was now completely dry. They had left the silver shield covering the valley far behind to glitter in the distance like a glacier. Beneath that, organisms that had long since given up being organisms continued their frail attempts to stave off their own doom. A civilization whose story of destruction had begun after history had already ended.
To the north, there is a fence.
A sign upon it reads:
“When the star crosses, the sky will burn.
And there will be great sorrow.”
The bottom third of the pale yellow sun had already slipped below the horizon when they crossed the high ridgeline and gazed down on a flat, smooth, steep-sided plateau. The plateau was nearly perfectly square, roughly two kilometers to a side; it had the appearance of an island that had once risen from the foaming waves of an ancient sea that had long ago dried up. The side that faced the setting sun sparkled reddish brown, while the far side cast a long shadow across the basin beyond. A flat, semitranslucent structure sat near the center of the plateau, its appearance suggesting that it had been built by stacking
enormous calcite crystals.
The three flew across the basin, descending onto a rocky shelf within sight of the building. The sun had now set halfway, and deep indigo crept across the sky from the opposite direction. It was extremely cold—so cold that the three feared their hearts would freeze. All was silent; the dim sun glittered in the chill.
“Do you think this is the Planetary Development Committee’s headquarters?” Siddhārtha asked.
If it is, then why is it so quiet?
Even from a distance, they could look through the semitranslucent material of the structure to see many rooms dividing it into compartments of indeterminate use. A row of six columns stood in a large hall toward the middle of the structure, and another hall that held a large flat table appeared to be some kind of conference room. There was also a wide staircase, its edges tracing complicated lines as it rose through the structure.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s inside.”
The weak rays of the setting sun passed directly through the vast, empty building’s interior. Nothing moved.
One of the large doors at the main entrance had been pulled off its hinges; it lay just inside the wide, slanting entry hall. Cold air ripped through the opening, scattering thick brown dust in a fan pattern beyond the doorway.
The three entered in single file, stepping over the fallen door. Their feet sent up plumes of fine dust with every step.
“It’s been a terribly long time since anyone used this place,” Siddhārtha said.
Several thousand years, he judged from the appearance of everything on the ground floor. Hallways extended from either side of the entry hall. These connected in turn to the many smaller rooms the companions had seen from the outside. In each of the small rooms, they discovered powerful gravitational barrier generators, now inactive and quietly decaying.
“Sandstorms must have damaged the place,” Asura said, her eyes taking in the signs of severe abrasion on the exterior wall. The whole structure had probably once been perfectly transparent. “What’s that?” she added, pointing toward a large metal bowl-shaped object lying at an angle just outside the far end of the building. Metallic panels and tangled wires were scattered over the ground beside it. “Looks like a parabolic antenna.”