“I’ll be coming to you, if that’s OK?” he said to the flickering holo. Her head nodded, but he could not make out anything her lips said.
“I’ll be there in a half hour at the outside,” he said to the image, before walking out of the room. A trio of robots fell in beside him as he walked down the hall. Exiting through the main entrance, he walked across the large room to a bank of lifts. A robot preceded him, protecting him like a child. He stepped in and shot upwards quickly, as the following robots stepped in behind. He hoped the system never malfunctioned while he was in it, or he might find himself sandwiched between a stationary robot and one approaching at high speed from below.
Three kilometers up and the lift pushed him out into another large room, the lobby of an old corporate office. The first robot stood guard. Numbers two and three came up right behind him and fanned out through the room. A door on the far wall opened and a dozen robots filed out, forming up around Watcher in a protective cover. He knew the rest would join as he got to the administrators office.
It was all a walk from here, down the long corridor that had been a main promenade for office workers in ages past. Restaurants, workout rooms, shops and recreation centers opened along the way. The Donut had once been the corporate headquarters for the hundred biggest conglomerates in the old Galactic Empire, as well as tens of thousands of smaller operations. Once this promenade had swarmed with sentient creatures of dozens of species, at all hours of the artificially imposed twenty-four hour business cycle.
More robots fell in along the way, most of them heavily armed with assault rifles of the latest design. He would have liked to take a couple of heavy combat models with him as well, but that might have spooked Pandora. And the gates he would take were not big enough for them anyway.
After a long walk he entered another large lobby, this one for the governmental offices of this section of the Donut. Through a couple of large offices, looking as if they had been recently cleaned and readied for the next shift. They had been cleaned, Watcher knew, and well maintained, as was everything on the station. Almost as if they hadn’t been deserted for over a thousand years.
A coded thought opened the door to the luxurious office of the regional administrator. Only the station governor’s office was better appointed, and of course the guest offices for VIPs from the Imperial Government. The corner of the huge desk opened at a touch, as his long finger pushed the button coded to respond only to his living fingerprint. A heavy panel slid open, revealing the mirrored surface of a wormhole gate. This was much smaller than those in the transit corridors. Only three meters by two. A couple of dozen robots entered as he looked at the gate, ensuring that everything was functioning properly.
A squad of robots jumped through the gate, disappearing in small flashes of light as they instantaneously traversed space. One came back through, signaling that all was well before jumping through again. Watcher stepped into the gate, feeling an instant of disorientation, his foot stepping out onto the floor of the gate confluence room. He quickly stepped out of the way as the rest of the robots came through behind him one by one.
The room was filled with gates. Most were not coded to prevent any specific being from using them. That was taken care of by restricting the access at the administrators’ offices. His gate was, and no one could get to his region through this secret system without his approval. He knew there were a couple he could not use, locked out against the use of anyone but their long dead users. But he found the one for the Hustedean region Pandi had occupied, indicator lights showing it was open. Maybe she hadn’t learned about all of the control she had through her regional link? Maybe she would soon learn about the private gate system and shut her opening down.
At a signal the squad of scouting robots went through the gate. Again one came back to give the all clear. Watcher stepped through, followed by his reinforced platoon. This office was much like the last one, only the furnishings different to accommodate the different physiologies of the Husteds.
As he stepped from the office complex a group of Hustedean shaped robots stepped through dozens of doors into the lobby, their weapons leveled at Watcher’s units. His robots pointed their weapons back at the others. Watcher knew that his robots would be gunned down quickly in an uneven firefight.
“We mean you no harm,” said one of the robots. “The mistress wishes for us to escort you to her. Your own robots will of course wait here.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“You are free to go back from whence you came,” said the robot. “We will insure that you leave, before coding the gate to not allow your return.”
She’s learning fast, thought Watcher, nodding in approval.
“OK. I’ll come along.” He sent a thought through his computer link, ordering his own minions to come and get him if he didn’t send a signal at regular intervals. Then he followed the lead robots, as a couple of dozen of the remainder fell in around him. The rest maintained their positions, making sure that Watcher’s robots didn’t try to follow.
Chapter 16
It takes a thousand years to build an Empire, only to watch it fall overnight. Such is the sorrow that is thankfully unknown to the builders of Empire.
Treatise on the First Galactic Empire
Pandi watched the replay of the memory banks once again, fascination with the macabre gluing her eyes to the display. The robots rampaged through the Hustedean part of the station, smaller versions of the combat models she had fought earlier. The defending robots didn’t have a chance, as the warrior bots destroyed them in droves, before turning their weapons on the screaming, fleeing beings they encountered. Hustedeans fell everywhere in crumpled bleeding clumps. The robots went for head shots of any they had dropped, making sure. Making sure that nothing lived.
Soldiers entered the scene, Hustedeans and humans dressed in the same kind of battle armor she had taken from the armory, carrying assault rifles, grenade launchers and heavier weapons. A firefight ensued, sentients and robots blasting away at each other. The sentients took a toll, actually winning on a number for number basis. But more of the robots appeared, thousands more. Pandi knew this scene was being repeated all over the station. Millions were dying every minute, billions per hour. A slaughter, and the defenders of the humans were beginning to lose ground.
Again the scene switched, to one of the great wormhole gate corridors. Robots and humans battled back and forth across the corridor, filling the floor with bodies and piles of broken robots. Humans and other aliens came through the gates, orienting themselves for a moment as they made room for the next arrivals, and then wading into the melee. The holo advanced time, indicating that over an hour had gone by. The piles of bodies covered the floors, benches and planters. But no more reinforcements were coming through the gates, and the robots were still massing in the corridor.
They started lining up in front of the gates, jumping through in groups. Assaulting the worlds and stations those gates were linked to. It seemed like endless numbers marched through. Enough to topple the Galactic civilization.
Again the holo advanced. Service robots worked through the station, picking up bodies and the remains of robots. Many of the bodies were thrown into disposal chutes, to end up in the organic reconstruction tanks of the station. Others were tossed out airlocks, to fall into orbits around the black hole, eventually to enter the event horizon and disappear from the universe. Still others were tossed into the wormhole gates.
As if they never existed, she thought. And the robots came back through some of the wormhole gates. Some were deactivated, others left open, as the legions of robots walked to storage rooms and huge armories, shutting themselves down until called again by their master.
The view switched up to one of the large screens along the upper edge of the wormhole corridor. To a face expanded on that screen, laughing maniacally at the destruction it had witnessed. Vengeance, aptly named as he looked at the death and chaos he had wrought. His eyes seemed to look
into hers, almost as if he were looking across the millennium to one he knew would eventually come to unravel his secret. The holo switched off, as the information from the computer continued to flood into her mind.
One being, she thought, had been responsible for toppling the entire civilization. One paranoid being, more concerned about himself than the trillions of sentients he had destroyed outright, or the trillions of others who had died when the basis of their culture, their survival, had perished.
“Where was Watcher during all of this?” she asked.
“The being known as Watcher was not available at this time,” said the computer. “Whereabouts unknown.”
Whereabouts unknown? His whereabouts were always unknown. From this beginning, only one of them seemed to occupy the station at any one time. But her research had shown that Watcher couldn’t possibly be a multiple personality. At least in any way she could comprehend.
“Show me information on mind uploading and the process of augmenting memory through it,” she ordered. The first tendrils of information were just entering her mind when she was interrupted.
“Watcher is in the vestibule outside,” said one of her robots, part of her interior guard. “Do you wish to see him now?”
“OK,” she said as she shut down the link. “Go ahead and send him in.”
A couple of robots preceded Watcher into the room. Pandi looked him over thoroughly. His scent drifted to her, raising desire. But she had already decided the scent could be faked. His eyes made her decision. Not the cruel eyes of the being she had seen on the holo. Not the cruel eyes of his brother. She felt her emotions sweep over her at the proximity of her only friend in this nightmare future.
Pandi flew into his arms, hugging him tightly as tears came to her eyes.
“I’m so happy to see you,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “I’m sorry about the security, but I had to make sure this wasn’t a trick of your brother.”
“He has been the bane of my existence,” said Watcher, stroking her hair. “For as long as I can remember.”
“He’s been the bane of trillions,” she replied, her own hands going to his smooth face. How could he be so good, she thought, while his brother was so evil? What did the scientists do to Vengeance, to make him so different from Watcher? And why wasn’t Vengeance mentioned in the Watcher files? Was he so secret that even his existence was covered up, until he became all too real to Galactic civilization?
“What have you found out about him?”
“Only that he was responsible for the fall of the civilization that created this marvelous station.”
“Vengeance?” said Watcher. “How?”
“What do you really know of this creature?” asked Pandi. “Besides being your exact physical duplicate?”
“I didn’t even know he existed,” said Watcher, releasing her and walking across the room, his hands stroking his temples. “Until I woke up and found the station deserted.”
“And you had these blackouts before the station, was deserted?”
“Yes,” said the Watcher, turning to look at her face. His lips were tight, eyes half closed. “But nothing was ever mentioned of a brother, or a clone. I didn’t find out about him until much later, years after the station was emptied.”
“Does your head hurt?” asked Pandi, concerned for the health of her friend. For such a perfect specimen, engineered to such strong tolerances, he seemed to have his problems with health.
“It always hurts when I think about my brother. It’s as if the very idea of him sickens me. Like I have been conditioned to avoid thinking of our link.”
“There may be something to that,” said Pandi. “How did you find out about him?”
“I searched the station for years, both physically and through the computer, trying to find out just what had happened to everybody. And I was created to be emotionally healthy. At least that is what I was told by the scientists who worked with me.”
“That seems to jive with the records I have seen so far. At least the first couple of versions of you were not emotionally stable. And they also had problems with your memory system.”
“I was lonely,” he continued, tears starting to bead up in his eyes. “I was conditioned to want the company of sentient beings. I was able to make do with the computer, most of the time, but no matter how well it was programmed it could not take the place of a living companion.”
“And you searched for years?” she said, trying to direct him back to the subject at hand.
“Yes, and never found any trace of the other inhabitants. But things did change. Orders of mine were countermanded, and when I asked the computer what had happened it could not, or would not, tell me. And the duration of the black outs increased. I thought I was going mad, until I learned of his existence.”
“And how did you learn, of his, existence?”
“He left a message. Running over and over again on a screen that he had programmed in a place I was sure to visit. The facility in which I was created.
“He told me who he was, my brother, though not as weak as I. He also told me that he had minions, living beings to help him. Many had been sent to other worlds, but would come back from time to time through the gates.”
“And you believed him,” said Pandi, shaking her head in sorrow. “You rigged the security system to alert you whenever someone came through one of the still active gates, so you could destroy them before they became a threat. And enforced your own exile.”
“That is correct,” he said, tears running down his cheeks. “I didn’t want to kill, but the paranoia he had implanted in my mind took hold, and I felt threatened by all intruders.”
“While he killed those who came through when he was awake.”
Pandi walked to the far wall as she sorted her thoughts. Her mind alerted the robots to be ready. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the near future, but it was not likely to be pleasant.
“Why did you allow me to live?” she said, turning back to face him, noting the locations of her bodyguards. “Why me after all the thousands you must have killed? It couldn’t have been love at first sight. Not when I was wrapped up in that coffin of a space suit.”
“You came through the gate from the past,” he answered, his eyes pleading with her. “The ship that had continued through subspace, on the backward track of time for thousands of years. I didn’t think he would have sent an agent to that dead end. For what purpose?
“And besides,” he said, his hands reaching toward her, “I was so lonely. And I did fall in love with you, after I had seen you. After I had seen the way you handled yourself against the security forces I did not control.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just loneliness,” she said, backing away from him. “I was the first safe woman you had seen. Or at least you had convinced yourself of it. And your lonely mind wanted someone to love.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That was not it at all. At least not after the first day. After I learned to know you. To spend time with you.”
And I was his first love, she thought. For all of his intellect, his long life, with all of his superior abilities, he was still an adolescent at heart. Looking for love, the only sane being on this entire huge artifact.
“Why are the two of you not allowed to interact?” she asked, embarrassed for him helping her to change the subject. “Why must you go into a black out for him to appear? And why is he never around when you are?”
“I wish I could tell you,” he groaned, his hands reaching for his head as he sank to his knees. “I wish I knew myself. Why does it hurt so much to think about this?”
“It always hurts when you think about the connection between you and Vengeance?”
“But not this much,” he said through clenched teeth. “It feels like my brain is being torn apart. Stop it,” he screamed. The robots began to move toward him, before Pandi waved them back. Guilt at letting this happen to him warred with the necessity of it. She had to know. He
had to know. And it only seemed that by forcing the issue could she ever know for sure.
“You and Vengeance are never on the station at the same time,” she continued, as if she were ignoring his pain. “One of you is either off the station or is unconscious while the other roams, awake and alert. Your paths never cross. What synchronizes these events?”
“I don’t know,” he screamed, his hands pounding his temples. “Please stop. Something is wrong with me. It feels like my mind is being pulled apart.”
Probably not far from the truth, she thought, if her suspicions were correct. Something had to be coordinating the events that allowed them to never meet. Something that had something to gain by keeping the two personalities separate.
“You know what I found, Watcher?” she asked, moving closer to him, kneeling down to his front as she looked into his pain scrunched eyes. “I found what had destroyed the people on the station. I found what had destroyed the Galactic civilization that had stretched so proudly across the stars for a hundred generations. It was one selfish being.”
“I don’t want to hear anymore,” Watcher yelled at the top of his lungs. “I can’t stand it. Stop it.”
“Vengeance destroyed the people of the station. The whole of Galactic civilization destroyed by one man, using the potential of this station to interact with all of the civilized planets.”
“No,” yelled Watcher, his arm swinging out in a backhand that struck the woman in the face, knocking her away. The robots started to move in, but again she stopped them with a wave and a thought.
“Why are the two of you so different, Watcher?” she asked, thinking that the better part of valor would be to keep a little distance between them, especially if she were right. If she were wrong, she would apologize to him, and allow her guilt to eat at her for months. She didn’t like causing this kind of pain, but she needed to know.
“Why does he have all the darker traits, while you hold the lighter? Why do you have no memory of him as an independent being, until the time he needed to exist?”
The Deep Dark Well Page 22