The Vanity of Hope

by G W Langdon

  Teripeli peered over the panel. “The red plant is feeding. The green host is putting up a good fight, but you can tell the parasite has the upper hand by the bright green veins. If the plants are a close match they decay to a lower state of energy—life. The plant that can bear the touch of death the longest emerges the victor and lives on to recover and breed.”

  “But it would’ve used up its energy fighting the other plant.”

  “Which would make it an easy meal for another of its kind—if it existed in the wild.”

  “Cannibalism.” His face contracted in pain. “Why won’t you leave nature alone?”

  “Nature is limited: slow and boring. I accelerate evolution.”

  “Evolution is gradual, careful, and wise. The world changes very slowly.”

  “With my assistant Bengi’s help, I can study generations in a fraction of the time it would take evolution to blindly produce a solution. I’ve enabled the plants to replicate here without the insects of Tilas, otherwise they would’ve become extinct—on Heyre, anyway.”

  “Goodness knows what form they are on Tilas.”

  “Everywhere, evolution is the adaptation to a changing environment. It’s in our nature as explorers to discover how life works, to scratch the surface and see what lies beneath. Molecules, viruses, and bacteria are one giant genetic porridge from which we are free to extract new recipes and make better lives.”

  “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “The Methuselah pill? Humans do not live past one hundred, but you will live ten times that.”

  “I’m trapped within my nature and regardless I have to face the same problems of the mind.”

  “From a medical point of view, minds whether artificial and natural are one and the same product—just ask the knight.”

  “They can never be the same. The human spirit cannot be reduced to neural algorithms.”

  “When I was a practicing doctor, I had many patients come to me complaining they heard voices inside their head. Not the usual thoughts, but actual voices as though someone was talking to them. Bengi would do a full gene diagnosis and…”

  “Bengi was with you on Tilas?”

  “I was always able to prescribe a drug that made the voices go away. Psychosis can be subtle and very real to the sufferer of the affliction, but it has no basis in the physical realm.”

  “Maybe the voices were real, and you killed them?”

  “The voices come from the fear of being alone in a meaningless universe. It’s only natural to crave certainty, but you do see the error in your logic of searching for certainty in a place of ‘mystery,’ conjured up by a subjective imagination. I work in the realm of the real that can be seen and touched, and might I suggest you do the same.”

  “I hear voices sometimes,” he confessed, “but you’re not going to do anything about that. If they’re created by an overactive imagination, that’s fine.”

  “But you don’t believe they are? You play whatever games you want inside your personal House, but every game must end when we leave the stage.”

  “Is that what drives you? You create life to avoid death.”

  “As a doctor, my primary mission is to heal disease and the ultimate healing is to conquer death. Isn’t that what you try to do with your primitive religion? It’s the same fear of death. There, I said it. I’m afraid to die, and so are you. The only difference is I prefer to do something about it. Let me take you down to my laboratory and show you where I do my research. With my way there’s hope.”

  “A vain hope.”

  Teripeli sniggered. “I can see why she likes you. Both of you cling to outrageous worlds that offer nothing real. Oh, the vanity of your hopes.”

  “It is you who are wrong. There is mystery beneath nature that’s beyond you, or Bengi, or anyone else to understand, let alone control and harness. Your quest for immortality is a fool’s road.”

  The eight-foot-tall Purple Lance in the corner cage twisted as they passed and arched its spine.

  The lift descended below ground level and opened into a brightly lit, windowless corridor.

  “Is this where you made the knight? Tom asked, rubbing his bare arms against the cold as they walked. “It must have taken enormous nerve to produce someone so important to her needs.”

  “I established the Genesis matrix platform, the hardest part, and Bengi oversaw the later stages of the incubation and the final neural interface work.”

  The thick side door opened. Rows of small, ceiling lights filled the laboratory with a clear, medical whiteness. Lifting systems hung from the ceiling between the overlapping ventilation tubes.

  “Where’s Bengi?” Tom asked, as he stepped onto the polished, soft-blue floor.

  “Bengi, say hello to our guest.”

  “Hello, Thomas. Nice to put a face to Methuselah. Have you noticed any changes yet?”

  “Where is he?”

  Deep creases formed on Teripeli’s mask. “You preach about the mystery of the universe, yet you know nothing.” He clicked his fingers and walked away. “Bengi, meet Thomas.”

  A lightMatrix appeared by the bench.

  Hot anger warmed his face. He should have known Bengi wouldn’t be true.

  “This is your brain—so far,” Teripeli said as a lightMatrix brain appeared above the operating table.

  “How did you get that?”

  “The skullcap, mainly.”

  “So, that’s what Ba’illi meant when he said the spine works both ways.”

  “I presumed you knew or would have guessed.”

  “It’s not a surprise.”

  “We’re doing this to give you the best shot to succeed at being a great king.”

  “Can you manipulate my thoughts?”

  “Manipulate is a strong way to put it, but yes, I can stop those voices.”

  “You make Ba’illi forget so he can relearn.”

  “Memories are nothing but chemical matrixes stored in neural networks.”

  Tom looked at the shiny stainless drawers, trollies, and cabinets around the room and goosebumps formed on his bare arms as a cold spirit settled upon him. “There’s a darkness in here.”

  Bengi waved to the ceiling and a row of lights blinked on.

  “Not that kind of darkness.”

  “There’s another?”

  “Bad things have happened here. I can smell blood.”

  Teripeli’s nostrils flared. “I can’t smell anything. Maybe I’ve gotten used to it. Blood’s an interesting fluid, don’t you think?”

  “I guess. It would be hard to live without it.”

  “But not impossible. The bioMechs…”

  “Stop! I don’t want to know.”

  Teripeli wrung his hands together. “Let me take you to the Pit and you can see for yourself how I have mastered the strongest, most primitive force in nature.”

  He walked beside Teripeli up a short flight of stairs. The mask hid Teripeli’s face, but his stiff gait and wiry hands told of a long-lived life losing the fight. He put on a good show, keeping his back straight and head up, but beneath the long coat he had the angular strut of a ‘stick man.’

  “I understand your plight, Thomas. You’re caught between a universe you hope has meaning, even if that meaning will forever remain a mystery, and the meaningless world of probability where you count for nothing. Trust me, I only want to help. My experiences have proved we are a complex collection of bits and bobs, ones and zeroes, and nothing more.

  “We inhabit an infinite playground and are on the verge of throwing off the last shackle. Now is not the time to turn back. The Methuselah pill is only the beginning of what you can become. Our destiny is to conquer death and become gods amongst the stars.”

  “I don’t know, anymore. Maybe you’re right.”

  Teripeli opened the door and gestured inside.

  Tom braved a sniff. This was the place at the end of the Nago tunnel he came through with Ba’illi an age ago. In the feeding bay, behind two heavy
gates, melatarins scrapped and climbed over each other to assert their dominance at an Alowak carcass.

  “Taming Nature is more than cosmetic change on the surface,” Teripeli began. “As the centuries and millennia passed we mined deeper into the extraordinary depth of what you simplistically call, ‘Nature.’ The flesh was easy to master, but the inner workings of how genes influenced the brain, and deeper still the mind, took much longer—the results, however, were astounding.”

  He pressed the medallion around his neck and the gates opened.

  “Are you sure about this? That thing could eat a dragon.”

  “Not a full size one, but the pack could. The emperors used melatarins to guard the castle perimeter, much the way we do here, except they were smaller on Tilas.”

  “Their natural size.”

  Teripeli glanced down. “You’ll see.”

  The largest melatarin crept closer. It was forty feet long with crushing jaws and teeth that would tear a Feheri to pieces in several, untroubled chomps. It reared up and displayed the creamy scales under its neck and chest.

  “Its natural instinct would be to attack and eat, but it doesn’t because the color of my coat conveys I’m poisonous.”

  “And me?”

  “I’ve taken care of that. There’s no danger to you, but if it makes you feel safer, stay behind me. But don’t worry.”

  The smaller melatarins slid inside, but no further than the alpha’s hind legs.

  “What do you feed them?”

  “Unwanted animals from the game parks and farms.”

  The alpha’s neck scales shimmered in a deep growl as it lowered its bony back and stalked forward.

  “How much have you fed them, recently?” He backed away. “Are you sure you’re their master?”

  Teripeli held out his arm as he talked to Tom and raised the palm of his hand. “Halt.” The melatarin eased lower. “You see, nothing to worry about.”

  The alpha lunged forward and clamped like a steel trap on Teripeli’s forearm. He pulled away, stabbing with his short sword as he futilely struggled against two tons of reptilian muscle. His elbow joint twisted apart and he fell in a heap. The alpha gulped down the forearm and lowered its head at Tom with a sulking hunger in its yellow eyes. Another deep growl rumbled from its throat and it knocked Teripeli aside.

  “Run, Thomas.”

  He dived through the half-open door and slammed it shut as the melatarin twisted around and smashed its tail against the door. He dared a peek through the small window. The alpha opened its terrifying mouth above Teripeli then reared back, violently shaking its head. It froze in a sudden seizure then collapsed chin first onto the floor. Blood poured from the back of its skull.

  The dank Pit air shimmered as a battle suit uncloaked.

  The knight pulled his long sword from the melatarin’s neck and stepped down its broad snout onto the floor, avoiding the line of blood running into the drain. He swung his sword in wide sweeps at the other melatarins and hurried them into the shadows

  “Next time, I’ll cut your head off and feed it to them,” he said, hauling Teripeli to his feet.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Teripeli said, holding out his arm to keep the dripping blood off his coat. “You wouldn’t dare touch me without her say so and we both know you don’t have what it takes to go through her.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Thomas safe. Stay in your playground laboratory and leave the real work to others.”

  “What would a knight know about such matters? Only she understands my work.”

  Tom ducked from sight as the knight looked his way and pressed his ear to the door.

  “Tell her that,” the knight said. “You’re out of runway, doctor.”

  Queen Lillia waited in the shadows until the knight closed the door and took Tom away. “Perhaps,” she said, “Decay isn’t the Master of Life you suppose it to be.”

  “I don’t understand what went wrong. A melatarin’s never done that before. Why was it after Thomas? I made his poison scent doubly strong.”

  “I was right not to trust you. A servant only ever has one true master.” She tapped his severed arm with her sword. “There’s something on Tilas more powerful than Decay and for the second time it has sought out Thomas.”

  “That’s impossible. It’s just a glitch. I can fix the inconsistency.”

  Two melatarins latched onto the alpha’s tail and dragged it backward to the gates.

  “You don’t understand because you can’t ‘see’ it, but the power is real if that’s the right way to describe something beyond space and time. Have you not wondered why Decay hasn’t come to Heyre and concluded the war?”

  “Decay will come,” Teripeli said, staring at the melatarins swarming over the butchered alpha and tearing off chunks of soft, underbelly flesh.

  “I felt the presence shortly after Thomas landed on Gukre, but it was weaker then, and I wasn’t sure. Today, it reached out across space with a will of unfathomable power.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You are a doctor of the flesh and believe that you will one day solve every mystery, perhaps even find the elixir for immortality. But I believe, and so would Tom if you stopped putting fanciful ideas in his head, there are fundamental forces in the realms beyond any scientific certainty that will be forever out of your reach.”

  “Decay is invincible.”

  “If Decay could leave Tilas, but chooses not to because it’s discovered the source of true immortality then you’d better pray to your god you’re still relevant.”

  “What use would it have for any of us?”

  “Do you trust me?” she asked as she sliced the bloodied coat sleeve off near the shoulder.

  “No. You have your own plans for Thomas. Why do you really want to make him king?”

  “I would ask you the same, except I know what drives your dark heart.”

  “Hold your arm out straight, now.” Her sword flashed and Teripeli’s broken elbow joint dropped onto the floor. “That’ll give the reGen a clean start.”

  Teripeli clasped the stump as blood flowed from the new wound.

  “I hope you have a good supply of neuroBlock,” she said, as a weep of blue coagulants stemmed the blood flow. “By the way, don’t worry about the knight. If you stumble again then I will gladly take your head.”

  “Decay will come to Heyre and then we’ll see whose head is safe. Your double-game won’t go unnoticed.”

  “You utter fool,” she said, as her violet eyes darkened. “You know nothing of the future. Decay cannot be trusted.”

  Chapter 27

  Tom paced the room and assessed the recently delivered dataPod. He had learned so much since coming to the castle, but the peace of mind he sought had become more elusive than ever. His mind, much sharper on Gukre, wearied under the constant flood of new information and with the passing days he remembered less, and less clearly, how his life had been on Earth. It had been less than one biological year since he’d ridden Marco through Alice Holt, but it felt like decades ago. His brain could only hold a finite amount of experiences and it was inevitable if he wanted to keep learning he’d have to trade away personal memories. He cupped his hands around his eyes but couldn’t see through the reflective surface, no matter which angle he tried. He needed to get Sarra back, and soon.

  Queen Lillia entered and placed her hand on the dataPod. “Have you guessed yet?” she asked as the side door released with a quiet suction.

  “Gi LaMon, I hope, but Nu’hieté would be better.”

  “Nu’hieté isn’t safe for you. Trust me, the experience of Gi LaMon will be testing enough. Climb in for a guided tour of Macula Plaza.”

  He stretched out in the bioMemic bed. His gut tightened as the bed molded around his body. “I’ll never master dataPod technology,” he said, dismayed by the closeting panels, rows of stacked colored lights, and screens of enigmatic symbols.

  “Ba’illi will guide you for now, but
you can drive solo after you’ve mastered the basics. Put these on,” she said, taking the goggles off the wall mount. “They’re for your protection.”

  He placed the auto-seal goggles over his eye sockets and a small blue light appeared against the totally white background. “And?”

  “Vera’s integrating your bio signature to the dataPod’s core operating matrix,” she said, sounding so close she could’ve been lying beside him.

  “Green configuration complete,” Vera intoned. “Default settings initiated.”

  “Enjoy the show, Thomas.”

  The side door closed and a flash exploded around the dataPod interior.

  He ran his hand over the buggy’s glass-smooth dashboard. The VR was superior in every way to his trips into Segeth and light years ahead of the stick men. The sparkling Violet gem floating in endless, empty space grew larger in the front screen.

  “That is the protective shield for Gi LaMon,” Ba’illi said, sitting alongside on the padded seat. “Everyone and everything has to pass through the security checkpoints before entering.”

  The apparent size of the protective shield grew larger until it filled the entire horizon and the buggy was an inconsequential speck against the towering entrance walls.

  “The shield is the VR equivalent to one hundred feet of Tylinite. Impregnable. Nothing gets in or out of Gi LaMon without Amie’s authority.”

  The first security checkpoint opened and the buggy sped down a tunnel of rainbow colors blurred together by the buggy’s apparent speed.

  “The light reflection on the buggy is another layer of Amie’s security verification system.”

  The tunnel opened into a super hub of arches the colors of the rainbow from pale red through to deep indigo.

  “This is Grand Central Station,” Ba’illi said, as the buggy passed through the blue light beam of an overhead dome. “We have official clearance to bypass customs, but normally you’d stop for a final check.”

  A customs official hauled a protesting driver from a buggy and threw her into the wall.