Against the Unweaving

by D. P. Prior

  “It’s the Dreaming,” Shader said. “Maybe death holds no fear here.”

  Gilbrum shook his head. “We share your fears, but we are bound by what we are. I am sorry I can do no more.” With that, he slipped into the undergrowth and was lost from view.

  Shader’s eyes met Rhiannon’s, but he could read nothing there. Her gaze was hard and empty.

  Shadrak holstered his pistol and pulled his cloak about him, while up ahead, Dave the Slave beckoned with a curling finger.

  With a prayer half-spoken in his mind, Shader stood aside to let Rhiannon walk in front of him, and they followed the hunchback deeper into the mire.

  NOTHING’S PERFECT

  Finally!

  It was happening, after all these centuries. The Unweaving was well and truly underway.

  Sektis Gandaw felt the resistance in his taut face relent. He’d grown so used to its mask-like rigor as to not notice, but now he felt a tug on his cheeks, the curling of his shriveled lips—the exoskeleton’s built-in apothecary hydrated them as necessary, but there was only so much you could do. He imagined warmth suffusing his desiccated flesh like he was sure it once had. Useless sensation, useless emotional response. The sort of thing he had no time for. The sort of thing that would have no place in his universe. But he couldn’t deny it; despite eons of discipline, millennia of damping down the slightest surge of passion, he was satisfied, content, a little elated, even. No doubt deserved, he acknowledged, even as he shut the feeling down with a mental command that triggered the release of equilibrating chemicals via a hundred pinpricks that barely registered, so scarred up and hardened were the injection sites.

  “Finally,” he said out loud this time, wholly approving of the detached monotone that emerged. It had begun. Endless series of meticulous calculations, hundreds of years of hunting for the pieces of Eingana that had been craftily hidden among the people of Earth. Only he could have done it. Only he had the patience, the fortitude, the scrupulous attention to detail that could deconstruct the entire chaotic cosmos, save for his mountain base. Sparing this island of imperfection irked him somewhat, but it was a necessary flaw that would be remedied once his creation had taken root. Once all else was stable, running smoothly, according to his own faultless laws, he planned to move beyond the Perfect Peak and watch as it was the last thing to be unwoven.

  He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, eyes glancing over the algorithms dancing across his desktop screen.

  The numbers and symbols flickering before him were old friends, his children, his collaborators in dismantling and rebuilding. He knew each of them intimately. He’d pared them down, permutated them, checked and revised, checked and revised, every day, every week, every month, year after year after year. No one else could say they’d done that. No scientist, no writer, no artist could ever say that each and every single element of their creation was absolutely perfect, absolutely necessary and fit for purpose. Seeing the patterns of the Unweaving running like this, active and fulfilling their function, was as satisfying as it could get. The figures had moved beyond what they symbolized and now actualized what they stood for, all because he had unraveled the secrets of Eingana, worked out how to harness her power.

  He tensed at the renewed attack of the nagging thought: He hadn’t created the serpent goddess, so his cosmos wouldn’t really be creatio ex nihilo, would it? Of course, he wouldn’t be his own creation, either, would he?

  He thumped down on the desk and then leaned back in his chair as equilibrium was restored. The patterns continued their procession across the screen. All perfect. So perfect.

  Wait, is that an ellipsis out of place?

  Couldn’t be. Impossible. He’d scoured the algorithms with infinitesimal scrutiny, again and again and again. There was no error. Utterly impossible. That was the problem with smiling, with allowing the slightest shred of emotion: it opened a crack on imperfection, on self-doubt. This time, when he smiled, it was willed entirely, a sardonic smirk that put such human thinking back in its place.

  Nevertheless, he had to see.

  He knew the calculations so well that they played through his mind as he left the office and took the elevator down to the control center. Stepping through the sliding doors, he expected to see the glare of plasma screens winding their way up to the top of the conical chamber. His jaw may have actually dropped, and for an instant his mind went blank, scattering the numbers and symbols into confused streams of verbiage.

  “Mephesch!” he yelled into the dark. “Put the screens on!”

  His optics whirred into low-light mode, and he could pick out the motionless forms of the kryeh bent over their monitors, bat-wings clothing them like cloaks. The optics limned them with green, picked out the diminutive shapes of homunculi scurrying about the walkways.

  A hum and a sparkle of amber drew his gaze to the apex, where, high above him, hung the serpent statue from the array of microfilaments that wired it into the heart of the Perfect Peak. There was a sound like a roaring wind, and the statue swelled to ten times its size, its eyes flaring amber, its fangs like lightning. Within moments, the wind dropped to a long drawn-out hiss, and the statue contracted to its normal dimensions, scarcely more than a foot in height. A crackle of amber burst along the filaments, and then all went dead.

  “Bit glitchy, Technocrat.” Mephesch sidled up beside him.

  “What? Glitchy? What, what, what?” Gandaw gasped then winced as a thousand needles jabbed him to restore his euthymia.

  “Nothing to worry about. Shall we?”

  A transporter disk emerged from the floor, and they stepped onto it and let it take them up alongside Eingana.

  Mephesch gave the serpent statue a slap, and its eyes flared once more as the microfilaments pulsed with amber light. Eingana remained petrified but seemingly defiant, festooned within the gossamer effulgence of the web supporting her. “Not quite perfect, but it’ll do.”

  “Not quite what?” Gandaw said.

  “What I mean is—”

  “Then make it perfect! I haven’t labored all these centuries to have some ignorant bloody homunculus botch my power source.”

  Mephesch grimaced and gave a little bow. “The network is perfect, the programming is faultless…”

  “I know, I know,” Gandaw muttered under his breath. “But? Come on, out with it?”

  “I think she’s putting up a fight.”

  “Impossible!”

  The homunculus looked from Gandaw to the serpent statue. “I agree. Theoretically impossible, but sometimes things just can’t be explained.”

  “Rubbish! If there’s something awry, it’s in the science, Mephesch. Understand? You merely ascribe to mystery that which you have not investigated thoroughly enough.”

  Mephesch nodded and cocked his head to one side. “You are right, Technocrat. It is a failing of mine. Only, in this case, the science is your own.”

  “Which tells us what?” Gandaw asked.

  Mephesch was dumb.

  “It tells us—” Gandaw jabbed a finger at him. “—there has been an error in the application, an error that can only have been introduced by one of your people.”

  “But we followed your instructions to the—”

  “Find it, Mephesch. Find it now.”

  Mephesch turned to look at the radiant statue. “Seems to be fine now, Technocrat. Maybe it was a bad connection.”

  Gandaw narrowed his optics, but he had to admit, it did seem to be working again. Did it really matter if there had been a mishap? Surely, if everything was working as it should now, it could still be perfect.

  “What happened to the screens?” He switched his gaze to the walkways, where the kryeh stared at blackness. “Why aren’t they working?”

  “Not enough power,” Mephesch said. “Virtually everything we have is being routed through the statue. We were certain you’d want to hit critical mass as soon as possible.”

  Gandaw let out a hissing sigh through clenched prosthetic teeth. �
��Is that what I said?”

  “Well, uh—”

  “You think it is acceptable to leave power for the elevators, for the lights in my office, indeed for everything but the screens? What is your rationale?”

  The homunculus’s shoulders rose to cover his ears, giving the impression his head was sinking into his torso. “I assumed the screens were now redundant, what with the algorithms being so infallible.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “No, I merely thought that—”

  “Switch them on, Mephesch. Now.” Gandaw’s fingers curled into fists but relaxed once the new infusion of drugs hit his veins.

  “Even if we have to slow things down?”

  “Even if,” Gandaw said. “I’ve waited thousands of years, and I’m not about to rush things now. Come on, I want to see this.”

  The disk took them down to the ground floor once more. Mephesch crossed over to a console and flicked a series of switches. The amber net holding the statue flickered and then stabilized. Red emergency lights lazily blinked into being, bathing the kryeh in a hellish glow. The screen closest to Gandaw flashed on, tuning into a panoramic view of arctic wastes. The rest of the screens followed in rapid succession all around the circumference of the chamber, each showing a different landscape. The awakening continued on the next tier, each lightening screen chasing the next, the chain spiraling up through the levels until, finally, the single overhead screen 55 blinked to life and the Void yawned its terrible mysteries straight down at Gandaw. He looked away, feeling suddenly weak and foolish. When the pinpricks failed to activate, he asserted his will, ordered the chemicals to release. The exoskeleton emitted a whir and a sputter, but nothing happened.

  Empty!

  “I don’t believe it!” Gandaw whined, spinning on his heels. He pulled open his coat, revealing the bandolier of empty vials crossing the front of his exoskeleton. “Piece of shit!”

  He clenched his teeth, calmed himself with the thought that the drones would be right there, filling up his syringes. They should have already been there, actually. In fact, where were they? He caught Mephesch watching him, the flickering light from the monitors casting his eyes in shadow. Gandaw wanted to scream then, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t lose control. Not now, not when the Unweaving was so close; not after so many centuries of equilibrium.

  It was the power, he realized. Mephesch needed to route more power to the drones, otherwise they’d lie dormant. A wave of panic rolled over him. For a moment, he thought his prosthetic heart was skipping beats, but that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? He needed the chemicals. Needed them now. He had to have them.

  “My drugs,” he said to no one in particular.

  Mephesch snapped his fingers, and one of his kin melded with the wall. “We’ll have them for you in a moment, Technocrat.”

  Quick as a flash, the homunculus walked back through the wall clutching a box of refills. Gandaw spread his arms so that the creature could discard the old vials and fit the new. Within seconds, he felt the calming surge of tranquilizers. He was so relieved, he almost thanked the homunculus. Almost, but not quite.

  “So, what’s happening with the Null Sphere?” he asked. The algorithms and the statue should have produced a perfect sphere of nothing by now. His eyes tracked the screens until he located the view of the top of the mountain. It was hard to see anything. At first he thought the screen was dirty, but when he focused his optics, he saw that the summit was wreathed in filthy smoke. “That is meant to be the Null Sphere, is it not?”

  He was dimly aware of Mephesch nodding slowly.

  “Where is it? And what is this… this smog?”

  The Null Sphere should have been plainly visible by now, a pool of oblivion hanging over the Perfect Peak, just like the Void peering down at him from screen 55.

  “Well,” Mephesch said, rubbing his chin. “Uhm…”

  “Is it dispersing? It’s meant to be compacting, increasing in mass. What is happening, Mephesch? It should be building toward critical. What is happening?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” the homunculus said.

  “It’s meant to be nothing, you imbecile!” Gandaw yelled at the screen. “A great ball of nothing getting denser and denser until it explodes with such infinite, perfect, omnipresent, cataclysmic, devastating, sublimely ordered… uggghhhhh!”

  Mephesch gave a polite cough.

  Gandaw’s whole body was corpse-rigid until the exoskeleton made a pincushion of it and the muscles slackened.

  “Yes?” he croaked, the tick-tock of his artificial heart deafeningly loud in his skull.

  “Forgive me for thinking such a thing, Technocrat,” Mephesch said. “But is there any possibility—I know how absurd this must sound—is there any possibility that an imperfection could have crept into the algorithms?”

  The ellipsis!

  The homunculus stepped back, as if he expected to be hit. Gandaw impressed himself, however, with how calm he remained. Of course, it was all down to the drugs, but he’d designed them, so he should take the credit.

  “Route them back to my office, Mephesch. And shut the Unweaving down. There’s no hurry.” He was a patient man, the most patient who’d ever lived. His great work had been eons in the making. What cost could it possibly be to him if he were to labor a few more days?

  “Re-route the algorithms?” Mephesch protested. “But that will take—”

  “Seventy-six hours and thirty-nine seconds precisely.” And then he’d need at least forty-eight hours to comb the data stream to make certain there wasn’t more than one error. For he knew without a shadow of a doubt what the problem was, but he was no hack. With his knowledge of the algorithms, he could go straight to the offending symbol within seconds, but if one flaw had crept in to his tapestry of perfection, was there not just the tiniest possibility of another? What was so galling was that he’d missed it, right up until his triumphant review of the data stream when the process had already commenced. Wasn’t that always the way? You could scrutinize something again and again from every conceivable angle, and then, at the point you put it into action, the gremlins appeared?

  Mephesch pulled the main power lever, and the pulsing mesh around the statue shut down. A crackle ran around the chamber as the main lights blinked on. Gandaw clenched his jaw and zoomed in his optics so he could inspect every last detail of the statue. He’d done the same a thousand times before, but he had to be certain. He was about to break off and head for the elevator, when he thought he glimpsed movement—the slightest shift of its jawline, a glint in one of its eyes? He glared for an instant and then shook his head. He turned on Mephesch to see if he’d seen the same, but the homunculus started, as if he’d been caught daydreaming, the ghost of a grin melting away from his face.

  Gandaw held his gaze for a long, uncomfortable while, but Mephesch had become as inscrutable as stone, his deep-set eyes twinkling in the strobing light from the screens. Finally, the homunculus gave a low bow and set about flicking the switches that would stream the data to Gandaw’s office.

  Not for the first time, Gandaw wondered about the origin of the homunculi. How come, of all the mysteries of the universe that had succumbed to the scalpel of his science, only the Abyss crossing the mouth of the Void and Mephesch’s kin had continued to vex him? Everything had emerged from the same unified field, and so everything could be returned to it, and yet the Abyss, these crafty beings, and the gaping emptiness of the Void itself all seemed to say he’d got it wrong, that he’d missed something. Something very, very important.

  With the steely resolve that the drugs provided, he shut out the voice of doubt. The theory was infallible. All that exists would cease to exist, save for the epicenter of the Unweaving, which was the Perfect Peak itself. That would have to include the Abyss, and if the Void really was nothing, then surely it would simply dissolve like a raindrop in the ocean of nothingness he was about to create. He emitted something like a sigh of relief. The theory still held good. Th
ese little disparities could easily be accounted for, squeezed into the perfect circle of his logic.

  For an instant, his thoughts took on a life of their own, bubbling and echoing with laughter from a dark space he didn’t recognize. He clamped down control in an instant. Had they been his thoughts, some kind of pseudo hallucination, or was it something else? He put the lid on that inquiry, too. He hadn’t come this far to balk at the final hurdle. He was Sektis Gandaw, after all, Supreme Technocrat, perfectly rational, perfectly evolved, and perfectly in control. He did not entertain self-doubt, and he was certainly not prone to superstition. He couldn’t help himself, though, from glancing up at screen 55 and frowning at the mist covering the mouth of the Void. As he peeled his optics away, he saw Mephesch watching him. It was of no matter. Gandaw had a nasty surprise for him and the other homunculi once this was all over: the same one he’d used on those thieving dwarves when they’d come to take the statue from him all those centuries ago. After that, he’d simply have to get rid of the aborted experiments in the roots of the mountain, and he’d have a blank canvas.

  The smile that was curling up his lips of its own accord froze in place. His prosthetic heart thudded, and his skin was pierced by a dozen pinpricks. There was a shadow to his right.

  A chill voice spoke inside his head. “Technocrat.”

  Gandaw suppressed a sigh of relief. He’d forgotten, though, and that was not acceptable. “Malach HaMavet.”

  The Thanatosian stepped back and gave a half-bow.

  Gandaw’s optics ran over him with a begrudging admiration. Not one of his creations, but fit almost perfectly for purpose: gangly limbs for speed and reach, obsidian skin as tough as boiled leather, padded feet for silent stalking, hollow bones and fibrous membranes between his arms and torso that allowed him to glide, and an ovoid cranium packed with senses so enhanced he could scent, hear, see his prey from miles away. And the speech—it was almost a masterstroke. Psionic induction that utilized the same pathways as an auditory hallucination in those it communicated with. The possibilities were endless. A private conversation in a crowded room; plotting, subterfuge, confusion of one’s prey.