The Sovereign Road

by Aaron Calhoun

  Garin did not think these things lightly. It had begun two years ago during the same Sidereal Philosophy class Trielle has just endured today. Yet, unlike Trielle, this class had meshed perfectly with his newly awakened in philosophical reasoning, only to present his mind with what he had now come to believe was a fundamental contradiction.

  As was custom across the Conclave, the Three Axioms were taught with almost religious intensity; their necessity for proper societal function emphasized, their self-evident truth proclaimed. All held to them as fundamental, and in this Garin had been no different. Still, he had wanted reassurance that principles this basic was believed for good reason, and he clearly remembered the feeling of barely contained satisfaction that has filled him as the first lecture began. Perhaps how he would truly begin to understand.

  But it was not to be. As their initial explanation had been advanced, Garin could not help but see them as self-referential and hence fundamentally flawed. He vividly recalled the dull tension that had gripped his chest as the implications of his reasoning became apparent. He remembered leaving the class in a daze, his heart pounding as he struggled to enclose that understanding behind impregnable walls.

  After all, he had reasoned, the meaning of the Three Axioms are not the material of my everyday life, so why should these doubts affect me so strongly. What did they change, really?

  His initial attempts to quell his concerns had been successful, but as the year had progressed the walls he had built in his mind were systematically undermined by the very class intended to strengthen his faith in Conclave philosophy. As class after class passed, each painstakingly building the ideologic groundwork on which the Conclave was founded, he was forced to come to terms with the truth. Society was founded on the Axioms, the Axioms made no sense to him, therefore society made no sense to him. In vain he had hidden behind the last option left to him; the absurdity of the opposite view. After all, if matter did not give rise to consciousness and consciousness meaning, then that implied meaning had an independent existence alongside the material world, that there were deeper things in this universe than the mere interplay of matter and energy. Then the dreams came, and that last bastion had begun to crumble like a castle rampart under cannon fire.

  “What man, Garin?” asked his mother lightly.

  Garin took a deep breath, but before he could formulate a response, Trielle had already started.

  “There was an old man near the Arx, older than anyone I’d ever seen. He stopped Garin for a moment to talk to him and then ran off.”

  Garin’s father narrowed his eyes in bewilderment. “Old age was conquered millennia ago,” he started. “Are you sure…”

  “Of course,” responded Trielle

  “Maybe he was a Selphidian,” responded his mother. “They come from an ice-world near the Conclave rim. Their skin can become quite wrinkled during the adolescent years.”

  “Yes,” said his father, “many of them do have similar skin pigmentation to humans from Latis.”

  “No,” said Trielle firmly, “He was human! But his age is unimportant, what I wanted to…”

  “He was a Selphidian,” blurted Garin even as he focused his eyes on Trielle, trying to freeze her words in midair with the sheer force of his gaze. “I’d never seen a Selphidian before,” he continued with forced calm. “But I remember reading about their race in class. I think that is what he was.”

  Trielle’s mouth remained open for a moment, then it finally closed as she accepted defeat.

  The meal ended and Garin quickly ran off to his bedroom, giving a vague schoolwork related excuse for his quick departure. Only after he reached the relative safety of his bedroom did he let his guard down and begin to process the events of the day. Truthfully, he had no idea who the old man was, only that somehow he had known about Garin’s dreams.

  They had first started several months ago, unearthly visions of a ruined city, a worn map, and a road that seemed to be made of the sky itself. He had initially forgotten them as he had done with so many dreams before, but this one had returned with maddening persistence almost as if if were demanding his focused attention. There was something about this dream, some strange clarity that made it seem almost more than real, which made a final dismissal impossible. Beneath it all, he could not shake the thought that if meaning somehow really was independent of matter, what better way could there be for that meaning to make itself clear than in dreams? Or, he reasoned, he could simply be going mad. It was this internal conflict, between a self-diagnosis of nascent insanity and the outlandish, but logically possible, chance that he was encountering something real, that had led to his recent moodiness and withdrawal. Still, the possibility that some deeper reality was somehow involved here had remained that, a bare possibility, until today.

  “The story the world told itself? The dying of the light?”

  Garin murmured aloud the words that the old man had spoken, turning them over in his mind as he did so in an attempt to extract what meaning he could. A chill shivered though his body, accompanied by a strange sense of dread.

  The old man had to know about the dreams, didn’t he? How else could he have known about the road?

  Chapter 3: The Dying of the Light

  Trielle sighed as the Sidereal Philosophy instructor droned on interminably about the metaphysical principles that lay behind the War of Unification, a series of interplanetary battles that marked the birth pangs of the Conclave.

  The morning had started off well enough with a sequence of lectures on the native biology of Latis its relationship to structural aesthetics. Trielle’s initial mild interest had grown into a deep fascination as she considered the millennia of biogeologic engineering that had been required to grow the city of Scintillus from the native silicon-based plantlife of Latis.

  Found in the canyons of pre-human Latis, the organisms had originally looked like tall, thin spires of diamond-hard crystal that rose from the mist-shroudd depths like a forest of spears. Their metabolism was simple; chemical differentials between the gaseous composition of the canyon mists and the atmosphere above allowed the organisms to generate substantial electrical potentials along its length. The organisms then shunted this energy downward into their root structures via a complex web of electrically conductive tubules. The roots used this energy to draw raw materials needed for growth from the soil by a process not unlike the electrolysis of water or salt. The first generation of humans to colonize this world quickly saw the potential of this somewhat unique biogeological arrangement, and after substantial engineering efforts had been able to reconfigure the base lifeform into one that grew to gargantuan size according to fixed blueprints imposed while young. Soon Latis had been filled with a countless cities of towering crystal skyscrapers, each a self-repairing organism capable of living for centuries if not millennia. A few more minor biological alterations had granted access to the organisms’ internal electroneural tubules, providing cheap electrical energy for the planet.

  “Trielle!”

  The sharp sound of her name snapped Trielle to attention.

  “Yes,” she responded, trying her best to recall the instructor’s last point.

  “I have asked you asked several times now about Xigris Nought of Axilar and, until this last attempt, you had elected not to respond. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with this historic figure?”

  Trielle could hear the tittering of her classmates behind her, a curious polyphony of sounds given their substantially differing physiognomies. Fortunately this was a subject on which she had some knowledge. Her propensity to daydream during sidereal philosophy had, on occasion, lead to embarrassment. It would not do so today.

  “My apologies,” she said formally. “Yes I am familiar with him. Xigris Nought was a high-ranking member of the Puginihilist School. Believing, as he did, that all reality is fundamentally based in conflict and combat, he felt there was no inherent value to the joining of differing worlds in any kind of harmonious whole.”

  “Cor
rect thus far,” said the instructor with the hint of a smile. “Now, if you could inform us of the role he played in the assimilation of the Rodalan Hegemony, we would be grateful.”

  “Of course,” she responded. “At first the initial Heirophants of the Conclave felt the Puginihilists to be a threat to their overall effort. After all, why would a group that based their entire understanding of the cosmos on conflict desire to assist their efforts at interplanetary unification. But when they turned their sights to the Rodalan Hegemony, Xigris’ usefulness became apparent, as it seemed that the Rodalans shared a nearly identical philosophy.”

  “But how would this help?” asked the instructor dramatically, now warming visibly to the dialogue. “Surely life philosophies built entirely on conflict can create no lasting peace.”

  “While it does seem counterintuitive at first,” admitted Trielle, “His interactions with the Rodalans proved transformative to his outlook, significantly widening the scope of his philosophy. Xigris was able to create a psychological bridge between the Rodalans’ combat-driven worldview and the Conclave’s efforts by recasting the Conclave’s vision in terms of a large-scale conflict; one larger than he, or the Rodalans, had ever before considered. Essentially he realized that to extract meaning from a meaningless universe is the ultimate form of combat, and that the struggle between forms of life is nothing when compared to the struggle between life itself and entropy. It was this understanding that convinced the Rodalans”

  “Excellent,” said the instructor, “and also true in a most profound sense. Every day of our life is a battle to conquer the random forces of the world around us with our own will, desires, and truths.”

  Trielle feigned attentiveness as the instructor continued his monologue, only allowing herself to slip back into her daydream when he began to question another student. Class ended a few subjective moments later.

  ***

  When she arrived at the hanging garden Garin was already waiting for her, seated in the sunlight-drenched grasses near the edge of the balcony. His face was drawn in a grim frown that was uncharacteristic, even for him.

  “You’re early,” she said.

  “I didn’t have gravitics today,” he responded.

  “Oh, I forgot.”

  Trielle frowned. She could never keep track of his schedule.

  “Today was Paleoaesthetics,” he replied

  She nodded in response, now understanding the origin of his dour expression. Only a few, rare individuals truly enjoyed Paleoaesthetics.

  Trielle began to speak when a sudden change in the ambient light made her catch her breath. Puzzled, she glanced about, expecting to see the swiftly fading shadow of a cloud that had passed between them and the suns. But the same shadow hung about everything. No matter where she looked the light was trembling and dimming, its once-brilliant quality becoming somehow tenuous and strained.

  “Trielle,” shouted Garin in alarm, his arm raised toward the heavens. “Look.”

  Trielle looked skyward, expecting to see a fleet of etherships or some other rare sight, but the sky was empty of flying craft. Instead her eyes widened in horror as she watched the once fiery orb of Vai, greatest of the three last stars of the universe, flicker, darken, and die.

  ***

  Garin sighed as he landed the ether chariot at the family’s monolith.

  The trip from the Arx Scientia to the Kinetorium had taken far longer than usual, the road obstructed by a swollen crowd of citizens in varying degrees of shock and panic. All eyes were focused skyward, as if none could believe that one of the three had been extinguished. At one point he caught a glimpse of the old man, but when he looked again he could see no sign of him.

  The Kinetorium itself had been no better, with ether chariots and skyriders launching in frantic patterns that the laridian containment fields could barely accommodate. Erratic discharges of ungrounded gravitic potential flashed between the ships and the dome like sheet lightning, several of the larger ones striking with such force that it had seemed a near miracle the structure was not breached. When they had finally pushed their way through to their chariot Garin had sped off with as much velocity as possible, anxious to leave the turmoil behind. But when they reached the far side of Latis an even greater shock awaited them. The once-twilit sky now shimmered with a faint but unmistakable tinge of bilious green. A quick gasp from Trielle told him that she had seen it too.

  With trembling hands, Garin landed the ether chariot and rushed to the transit shaft with Trielle close behind. A few seconds later they reached the central living area and found their mother staring, white-faced, at the glassy cylinder of the monolith’s core infochryst, its primary information processing unit. Wordlessly, Garin and Trielle joined her on the divan.

  Within the holographic matrix of the infochryst Vasya and Verduun burned with supernal light, their surfaces ablaze with arcing prominences. Compared to their brilliance Vai looked like a rotten fruit, its cooling photosphere the mottled reddish-violet color of a bruise. Occasionally a dim red flare, the exhaust of now-extinguished fusion fires, burst from the surface of the star like the final exhalations of a corpse. The image of Vai was surrounded by a halo of constantly shifting data that displayed each stellar parameter in real time. Garin scrutinized the endless parade of figures, bringing what scientific knowledge he had to bear in a vain attempt to make some sense of them. It was a problem beyond his abilities.

  “The Gravitic College believes it to be a spontaneous inversion of the radiative-core boundary,” said a somber voice from the edge of the room, and Garin turned to see his father, still dressed in his robes of office.

  “An inversion?” asked his mother? “Can it be corrected with a core agitation?”

  “Possibly,” Gedron said after a moment’s thought. “But the metallic plasma density at the interface may be high enough at the inversion’s base to cancel the effect. Still, we have devoted all of out infochrysts to the computation.”

  “Did you see the sky, Father?” asked Trielle anxiously. “It seemed greener to me…”

  “Yes Trielle,” said Gedron. “The entropy clouds have advanced.” He did not speak further, but turned to the infochryst and gestured. The image within blurred, shifting from the core of the Conclave system to its outer fringe. The entropy clouds seethed with unnatural fury, their surfaces a shifting storm of nacreous green. Great filaments of acidic light erupted from them like the tentacles of a gaseous alien beast, tearing effortlessly through a cluster of gas giants, reducing them to a drifting cloud of disintegrating rocks and furiously churning vapor. And far away, deeply embedded in the shifting curtains, the deep black eyes of the Voidstars hung like gates into the final abyss.

  Trielle hesitated for a moment, the asked in a quiet voice, “what about the End? Does this change the time table?”

  “I… I don’t know,” said Gedron, “but I think we have to assume the worst. The date of final dissolution is likely much closer now that we thought, but it’s hard to tell by how much. After all, Verduun and Vasya still shine. After the failure of Vai, though, I worry that we may not know as much as we think we do. But right now there are more immediate issues. This is by far the worst entropy storm I have ever witnessed. When Vai’s radiation pressure failed, there was nothing to hold the clouds back.”

  He paused for a moment, a look of immense sadness on his face.

  “We lost eighty-two worlds,” he finally whispered. “Thirty-two inhabited.”

  Beneath the image a scrolling list appeared of those planets that had been consumed by the storms. Garin could see the color drain from Trielle’s face. She had good friends on several of those worlds.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be with you all right now,” said Gedron after a moment’s silence. “I need to speak with the Photocanth and Chromatocron about how we should proceed.” Unsurprised, Garin continued to stare at the infochryst as the data detailing the magnitude of the tragedy rolled onward.

  Garin had never been close to his
father. One of the five ruling members of the Conclave of Worlds’ core technocracy, Gedron Donar has risen from relatively obscure beginnings on Carthos, one of the many human controlled conclave worlds, to the heights of power through determination, focus, and a preternatural understanding of the laridian rings used to generate and manipulate gravitic fields. The story of his ascent was well known among the youth of the Conclave, and was frequently used by instructors, teachers, and mentors to motivate their charges to greater effort. And yet, this determination had often meant long hours at the Arx Scientia, and later at the Omegahedron, the political heart of the Conclave, time not spent with Garin and Trielle. It was not that Garin did not love his father, but without that shared time and the memories that could have sprung from it his love often took on the crystalline fixity of a mathematical theorem, a truth that was known in the mind, but did not make the vital descent to the heart.

  After what seemed an eternity, Garin’s mother finally made the sign of cessation and the torrent of information pouring from the infochryst ceased. The family passed the next several hours in silence, each afraid to speak for fear that what composure they had would be lost.

  For once I don’t have to pretend to be in a good mood, thought Garin wryly, but even that internal attempt at levity failed to dull the impact of the tragedy he had just witnessed.

  After the evening meal Garin excused himself and retired to his room. There his thoughts drifted back to the old man and his cryptic words. In the light of Vai’s demise, both the old man’s words and his dreams had begun to take on new meaning. After all, if the death of a star did not count as the dying of the light Garin did not know what would. He thought back to his dream, picturing in his mind the three last stars that hung above the shining road as they one by one burned out.

  How long do Vasya and Verduun have?

  An icy chill shivered through his flesh, and he realized that, whatever the nature of the connection between the old man, his dreams, and the stars, there may not be much time left to sort it out.