“Don’t you?”
Garin’s face darkened, his thoughts momentarily focused elsewhere.
“Maybe not,” he finally answered. “After all, here we are a couple of hundred years away from the end of existence, and what, in the end, do they tell us about ourselves, about the world, or about that existence? Next to nothing!”
As Garin opened his mouth to continue, Trielle inwardly rejoiced.
He’s finally going to tell me something real!
Then a sound behind her caught her attention and a quick flick of her eyes revealed a group of instructors approaching from the Arx Scientia. She did not know what Garin would say next, but whatever it was would certainly be on the verge of heresy, if not outrightly so.
Though no law formally criminalized disbelief in the fundamental axioms, none were needed. Since birth, each citizen had been told the history of the Conclave of Worlds, of the endless wars and interplanetary conflicts that had raged as the aging universe shrank around them. All knew that the adoption of the Axioms had finally ended the chaos. And now, with no real future left in which to formulate a better alternative, each citizen held onto those foundational beliefs with a strength bordering on fanaticism. To question them was to move to the margins of the great stream of thought that sustained their society. To deny them completely was to cut yourself off from the rest of the world in the time it mattered most to hang on. Though Trielle herself had often felt them to be questionable, she knew it was all they had.
“Garin,” she interrupted,” I just have to tell you about this Ixian I met the other day…”
Her voice, filled with trivial events from the past week, continued as if on autopilot even as her mind tracked the progress of the instructors. Only when they were far ahead, safely out of earshot, did Trielle stop her meaningless chatter.
Please Garin, she cried inwardly, say what you were intending to! Let me in!
But Garin remained silent. The inner door he had been about to open was now firmly locked.
Trielle let out a faint sign of frustration, even as she resigned herself to reality. She had done the right thing.
The road ahead continued to curve forward in a grand sweep that embraced the Arx Scientia’s sister structure, the Arx Memoria, before diving into the bustling heart of Scintillus. Similar in size and shape, the chief difference between the two towers was the Arx Memoria’s brilliant ruby red color, a rich contrast to the Arx Scientia’s transparent purity. Within its crystalline bulk floor after floor of libraries stretched upward to the edge of space itself, the repository of the collected wisdom of the Conclave. Trielle was a scientist at heart, and the thought of access to that grand collection of knowledge almost made her chest ache with anticipation.
One more year, she said to herself, just one more year.
Great crowds thronged about the Arx Memoria’s base, and the pair slowed down considerably as they deftly weaved through the masses. The crowds quickly became too thick to penetrate side by side, and Garin, the taller of the two, took the lead. Silence hung between them now, any words sure to be lost in the chaos. Trielle hoped that once they reached the Kinetorium and started the journey home Garin would open up again. As the crowds thinned Trielle quickened her pace, then caught herself in time to avoid crashing into Garin, who had stopped several feet ahead of her.
“Garin, what…” she began in puzzlement.
Her voice trailed off as she realized that he was paying her no attention. Instead, his gaze was fixed on a man sitting crosslegged on the pavement ahead of them. He was dressed in worn robes, tattered and stained with grime. His skin was wrinkled, shriveled even, and his hair was a peculiar grayish white. Bewilderment crossed Trielle’s face.
She had never seen age before.
In ages long past, the ravages of time had been banished by genetic manipulation, and the toll time could take on a body had long since been forgotten. Death was still unavoidable, but now individuals functioned as they did at their prime right until the last moment, the body shutting down and disintegrating in one painless, swift motion. Trielle could not dismiss the possibility that a group of individuals may have chosen to experience aging as a part of their own personal stories, perhaps to mimic and understand the aging universe. But if this was the case, it was a decision far beyond Trielle’s comprehension. Feeling suddenly ashamed for staring, Trielle grabbed Garin’s arm in an effort to pull him away but he shrugged her off. Feeling momentarily annoyed she reached forward again but then stopped as she noticed the old man’s eyes.
Dark pools shone within his wrinkled face, deep midnight wells that seemed to fall backward into some strange internal universe. Their blackness glinted momentarily with reflected light, and for a moment Trielle thought that stars burned in their depths. The old man’s gaze was focused on Garin, who stood there as motionless as if he had been turned to marble. Suddenly the old man stood up, and Trielle stepped back in momentary fright as a wrinkled hand shot out from beneath the soiled robe and gripped Garin’s shoulder with surprising force.
“Answer me young one, if you can,” said the old man in a deep voice that belied his frail appearance. “For aeons, men have told themselves stories about the world, but what is the story that the world tells itself?”
Garin opened his mouth as if to answer, but no sound came forth.
“Do not pretend that you do not know what I speak of,” said the old man sternly, “Seek the road, young one, seek the road at the dying of the light.” With that, the old man released his grasp and fled into the crowd.
For a long time Garin stood motionless, and when he at last turned toward Trielle, his face was pale and bloodless.
“Come on Trielle,” he said in a quavering voice, “Let’s go home.” Then he turned from her and set off hastily down the road.
Trielle’s mind was exploding with a thousand questions. How did that man know Garin? And what was that he had said about a road? But as Garin’s pace accelerated it was all Trielle could do to keep up, and she did not have the breath to ask any of them.
Chapter 2: Seeds of Doubt
The Kinetorium was a vast sphere of ceramic and green glass that hung jewel-like amidst the spires and roads of central Scintillus. Compared to the soaring structures around it, the building appeared small and unassuming. But that impression was far from correct, for the Kinetorium was the city’s transportation hub.
Few of the Scintillus’ daytime inhabitants actually dwelt within the city itself, and for those myriads who did not, the Kinetorium was vital. The very air surrounding the structure shimmered, energized by the countless distortions of space generated by the vehicles and transit portals within. Day and night, great streams of citizens continually flowed through its gates in great faceless waves. Trielle and Garin joined one of those surges, sliding into the crowd with practiced ease. Trielle had hoped that, once they slowed down, Garin might attempt to explain something of his reaction at the Arx Memoria. But those hopes were dashed as Garin continued to stare off ahead, his face an impassive mask. Frustrated, Trielle forced her way in front of him and stared him down.
“Garin,” she began, “what was going on back there? I mean, I know that man’s behavior was odd, but yours was inexplicable!”
Garin stiffened. His eyes softened slightly, and he gave Trielle a brief glance as he answered.
“I… I know it was. I can’t even explain it myself.”
“Try,” urged Trielle. “Please try.”
Garin sighed. “Have you ever felt that you were on the verge of learning something, Trielle? Something that, if it was true, would contradict everything you ever knew? Only, you were sure that it wasn’t.”
Trielle nodded, more out of encouragement than understanding.
“Well,” continued Garin, “did you ever wonder what would happen if, all of a sudden, you found out that it might just be true after all?”
Trielle’s mind spun, her thoughts shattering into a thousand bright fragments as she tried to comp
rehend what Garin had said. Her eyes darted to his face, pleading for more.
“I don’t understand, Garin. I want to, but you need to give me more. What might be true?”
But Garin only sighed, his eyes again becoming hard and unreadable, his expression quelling the potential for further conversation.
“Never mind Trielle. Don’t worry about it.”
By now the ponderous movements of the crowd had brought them to a circular gate of white stone set in the equator of the Kinetorium, and they passed through into the space within. Inside, all remaining illusion of smallness was banished by the sheer scope of its contents. Tier upon tier of glassy walkways ringed the inside of its walls. From these, great translucent piers covered by a chaotic veneer of vehicles jutted into the center, ending a little over halfway in. The heart of the Kinetorium was occupied with a second sphere, its color a deep, impenetrable black. Within its shielded interior, twelve titanic laridian rings continuously distorted the fabric of space.
Named after Ronath Larid, a celebrated physicist from the bygone era of the Conclave’s founding, these rings permitted the almost effortless manipulation of gravitational force, allowing ships to ride waves of timespace at superluminal velocity, wormholes to be called from the ether, and planets to be held in stable orbits at whim. These twelve were among the largest, and each served as an anchor for one of the twelve key timespace transit corridors of the Conclave. Each corridor ended in the Kinetorium of a distant world, from which another network of corridors then branched. It was said that nearly any world in the Conclave could be reached by seven corridors or less, although Trielle had never tested this for herself. In any event it did not matter today. The corridors were not their destination.
The inner walls of the Kinetorium were constructed of the same brilliant green glass as those outside, reinforced at regular intervals with great arches of wrought brass that soared between the walkways like the buttresses of a gothic cathedral. Each arch was inlaid with great cabochons of milky white imagnite, an artificial substance impervious to gravitic discharge. Although striking in appearance, Trielle knew that the arches were for far more than show, for they concealed a secondary network of laridian rings that, although less impressive than the transit rings in the center, were no less important. Each of the vehicles within was equipped with a set of smaller portable rings, giving them the capacity to generate their own small corridors for quick transit. But such capacities, when used by many vehicles in a confined area, carried the potential for larger scale disruptions to local gravitational geometry. It was this that this lesser ring network countered, stabilizing the local structure of space and preventing unavoidable gravitic discharges from spilling into the public spaces outside.
The pair soon reached a glass capsule that carried them several stories upward, at last depositing them on one of the piers. A quick walk brought them to their vehicle.
As a child, Trielle had always been impressed by the large, decorative crafts of their neighbors. But as she grew that love for the ostentatious has been replaced with a quieter, more earnest interest in the machines themselves, and as Trielle and Garin mounted their ether chariot, she could not help but admire it.
Twin wings of milky white swept backward from an imagnite steering platform large enough for four adult passengers. The front of the platform was guarded by a crystalline balustrade in which the controls of the vehicle were set. The craft had no walls or roof, for upon activation the Chariot instantly surrounded its occupants with a focused gravitic sphere that protected far better than any physical shielding. To the rear were fixed a series of laridian rings that provided the motive force for the chariot’s metric drive, capable of accelerating the craft to near-lightspeed in moments and able to open a local wormhole in less time than that.
No, thought Trielle with more than a flash of pride, it’s certainly not the flashiest chariot, but it could get us halfway across the Conclave before these other ones even start up.
With a few deft motions Garin activated the chariot, and the craft slowly rose from the pier. The air around them distorted momentarily as the gravitic shield formed, finally settling into a persistent blue shimmer thinner than a molecule but harder than granite. The ether chariot continued to rise, joining the great cloud of outgoing craft. The ascent seemed endless, but at last they crossed the shifting lights that marked the edge of the transit zone. It was there that the containment fields were focused, allowing for safe local wormhole creation.
Trielle stared through the shield, gazing at the constant shifting flicker of vessels appearing and disappearing, one crystallizing as if from the air itself even as another vanished like salt in warm water.
“Trielle,” said Garin. “Ready to go?”
Trielle nodded, gripping the balustrade firmly as she did so.
Garin’s hands flew across the controls, and a few seconds later Trielle heard the faint unmistakeable whine of the drive rings accelerating. There was a flash of brilliant blue, and a churning maelstrom of distortion surrounded the chariot. Then they were swallowed up by a dark cloud rimmed with silver, falling into an endless mirrored void. A few moments later the void shattered and the chariot emerged above the dim landscape of Latis’ nightside. Tidally locked in its orbit about the three suns, most residents worked in the perpetual day of Scintillus or another lightside city, but lived in the soft twilight that prevailed on the far side of the planet.
“Almost home,” said Trielle.
The ground beneath was uneven, in some places forming tall mesas, in others sinking down in mist shrouded valleys. Atop each mesa stood crystalline monoliths arranged in patterned whorls, each ablaze with a myriad of pinprick lights. Streets of silver stretched between the monoliths, running between the mesas atop arching spans. The entire scene was lit a soft ice blue by the countless worlds that drifted overhead in the vastness of space, each gleaming with the reflected light of the Three.
As their chariot descended toward the monolith that they called home, Trielle risked a last glance upward. Her eyes quickly scanned the space between the worlds, searching for any sign of the entropy clouds inevitable advance, but the sky was a clear, twilit violet. Only a barely visible greenish flash seen once at the edge of perception marked the frontier.
***
“So does that make sense Trielle?”
“I think so,” she said slowly, “but I still don’t see where the rings get the energy to split the fields.”
Garin sat in silence as Trielle engaged in spirited debate with their father about some basic aspects of gravitic science. Always the more technically minded of the two, Trielle had wanted to be an engineer for as long as the both of them could remember. This suited their parents quite well. After all, his father was the current High Gravitist, one of the five ruling hierophants of the Conclave, and his mother was chief gravitational wave analyst for the Large Neutronium Antenna, the chief device used to measure the spatiotemporal activity of the three suns and of the entropy clouds. Both knew the importance of their work and enjoyed what they did immensely. Garin was thankful for this, although sometimes it seemed to him that their dedication had sometimes left Trielle and him to fend for themselves as children.
“It comes from the zero-point field itself, at least most of it does,” his father continued, “Although you’re right to notice that there’s always a certain startup cost. If you look at the mathematics, though, you can see that the deficit averages out over the bulk of the surrounding continuum fairly quickly. Think of it as generating its own fuel.”
Garin watched as Trielle frowned.
“You always say look at the mathematics. I won’t get to learn that for three more years.”
“Well, I could always teach you some after dinner.”
Unlike Trielle, Garin had never found the sciences at all intriguing. It was not for lack of trying. As early as he could remember the subtle pressure to excel in the sciences has been a part of his family. Never overt, he could see now that it
came more from his parents’ enthusiasm for their chosen field than any real desire on their part to direct their children’s lives. But the hidden tug of their expectations, though innocent, nevertheless pulled at him like the gravitation they studied and controlled. As a child he had sometimes wished that he could generate interest at will, half-believing that it could somehow strengthen their family bonds. Now, as a young adult, he had all but given up on this, preferring instead the subtle reasoning of philosophy and its finely reasoned arguments on the nature of existence as a whole. It was this path that had lead to his current predicament.
“So how were your classes,” said his mother, jolting Garin out of his reverie.
“They were alright,” he replied without
“Fine?” said Trielle with mild shock, “since when is your instructor catastrophically remoldeling the lecture hall fine.”
All eyes were on him now, a situation he desperately wanted to avoid.
“Ah… I may have exaggerated a bit,” he mumbled.
But Trielle was evidently not about to give up.
“Alright, well what about that old man who stooped us outside of Arx Memoria?”
Garin’s face flushed, then drained of its color.
Why couldn’t she just leave that alone!
Garin knew his sister’s concerns, saw them in her face day after day. Many times he tried to speak to her about the burden he carried, a few times almost succeeding. But each time there was something, some interruption, some unwanted presence or unforeseen event that broke off the thread of conversation. Each time, when the interruption passed, he had started to speak only to find his confidence gone. He longed to open up, but, unlike the laridian rings his father had just been discussing, the startup costs of the conversation were simply too great. After all, how do you share with your family the growing conviction that everything your life was based on was a lie?
The Sovereign Road Page 2