by J. N. Chaney
Dash stared at the rod a moment, wondering what to do with it, or if removing it from its rocky casing had been the whole point of this.
No. Wait.
He lowered the rod to a point on the Archetype’s thigh. There was a receptacle for it there. He knew that.
Gently, he worked the rod into the receptacle. It took a couple of tries, mainly because he kept getting distracted by the reality he was trying to do this with a hand the size of a small ship. Only when he pushed that aside and just focused on himself doing it, did it slip into place. The metal around it began to flow, the opening into which he’d placed it shrinking, until it was gone and the rod was fully implanted.
A surge of power rolled through the Archetype. The rod had not only allowed for a more efficient distribution of power from the mech’s kugelblitz source, but it also generated power on its own. So, a rod a meter long that put out as much power as a fusion plant was now in his command, and he had to plan accordingly. It wasn’t every day you had nearly limitless power in the palm of your proverbial giant, metallic hand.
An instant later, the image of the Pasture that had been Dash’s perspective pretty much ever since he’d dug the Archetype out of its icy storage changed to something new.
It was the galaxy, seen from afar. But it wasn’t some conceptual image which, since no known race had ever left the galaxy for such an external view, was all that anyone had ever seen. Dash knew this was the actual Milky Way Galaxy, seen from very far away.
As he watched, the history of the galaxy began to unfold before him, and it was nothing like anything anyone had ever even imagined.
“This is the galaxy as it is, but in truth, Messenger—this is only the beginning.”
The image of the galaxy suddenly expanded. Dash realized it wasn’t just zooming in; he was experiencing some sort of travel, apparently through real space, but travel that somehow ignored or bypassed the restrictions imposed on, say, the speed of light. It had something to do with…
“The Dark Between? What’s that?” asked Dash.
“On the boundary between what you call real space and unSpace is a realm of existence that incorporates the fundamental nature of both. The Creators—the Unseen, to you—occupied and traveled through this realm. They were therefore freed of the constraints imposed by both of the adjacent realities.”
“So they could stay in real space—kind of, anyway—but also be in unSpace? So they could travel as fast as they wanted? They didn’t have to…accelerate? Worry about inertia?” asked Dash.
“Essentially correct, at least in a very cursory way,” Sentinel said.
“I see,” he said.
The Archetype didn’t respond to that, but it didn’t have to. Dash could only marvel. Marvel was the only word for the whole concept and what it implied. Even then, he could only fit a small amount of that inside his brain. It was all too big. Too much. The only thing that really stood out was the Fade on the Slipwing. In some way, he realized, it must be riding this Dark Between, but in an extraordinarily crude way, wobbling and ploughing through it, rather than actually entering what was, apparently, an entirely different reality. Compared to this, the Fade might as well have been a child’s plaything.
He gave up and turned his attention back to the image of the galaxy. He plunged into the heart of it, skimming the edge of the event horizon of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s core, then zooming into one of the spiral arms. Just that brief experience would probably keep scientists who studied that sort of thing going for an entire lifetime.
The rate of passage slowed. Individual stars resolved from blurs of light whipping past.
The image came to a stop. Around him, colossal bursts of energy erupted, as though stars suddenly flared and faded. A few stars actually exploded, titanic blasts that left glowing nebulae in their aftermath. For a while, Dash could only stare at it all, wondering what it meant.
“Oh, hang on, Sentinel. This is a war, isn’t it?”
“It is. The Unseen did battle against the Golden, seeking to preserve the vestiges of life that occur on many planets.”
“The Golden? Okay, who the hell are they?”
In answer, the image shifted, showing an inset—a bipedal humanoid probably about five feet tall, whose skin—golden, of course—rippled and flowed as it moved, like some fluid polymer. It took Dash only a moment to realize it was artificial- a constructed life-form.
“That’s a Golden? Who made them?”
“That is unknown. All that is clear is that they were created, then they destroyed their creators to assert their own dominance.”
Dash couldn’t help but notice a glimmer of distaste. The idea of destroying one’s creator seemed to not sit well with the AI, in any case.
“Their loyalty programming obviously didn’t get enough quality control testing. So what, exactly, are they trying to do that the Unseen are trying to stop?” Dash asked.
“The Golden seek to destroy life throughout the galaxy. It is not entirely clear as to why they have chosen such a path, but they only target specific forms, such as technologically advanced civilizations.”
“Oh.” Dash narrowed his eyes.
Sentinel continued, her voice growing more serious. “The Golden are ultimately the only threat that matters. Only the Messenger can stand against them,” the AI told him. “Only you can do what must be done.”
“What must be done?” Dash repeated. “What do you mean?”
“The war you are witnessing happened two hundred thousand years ago. The Unseen were largely destroyed in a final conflict. A few survived, but their whereabouts are unknown.”
“And the Golden?” asked Dash.
“They return to exert their influence and exterminate all advanced life from the galaxy every two hundred thousand years, approximately. The Unseen discovered this cycle and were determined to end it, using the Archetype to fight against them. The Messenger was intended to end this cycle once and for all, but such a fate was not to be.”
Dash stared at the flashing, exploding stars. Just stared, while he tried to wrap his mind around this new bit of information about the war he was watching. “This is going to happen again? Like soon?”
“Potentially. Nothing is certain, Dash. But that is the logical extrapolation.”
Dash tried to imagine the galaxy caught up in a war between these two hyper-advanced races, the Unseen and the Golden—a war in which the stars themselves had been weaponized. How could anything that wasn’t itself a hyper-advanced race even begin to think about surviving that? “So what happened to the Unseen?”
“I do not know the details of their demise, but the data suggests they were unable to prevent their extinction,” said the AI.
“You mean the Golden succeeded,” suggested Dash. “All life was eradicated.”
“Not all,” said Sentinel. “Only advanced civilizations with the capacity for space travel or those who developed advanced forms of renewable energy.”
“So you mean any underdeveloped civilizations were left alone?” asked Dash.
“That is correct,” said Sentinel. “Humanity, for example, had not developed far enough for the Golden to regard them as anything more than primitive, so they left them alone. The war itself, however, was quite catastrophic.”
The flashes of searing energy, of gamma-ray bursts turned into colossal beams, destroying whole star systems, of stars erupting into unimaginably powerful blasts of x-rays and plasma, began to slow and diminish. Eventually, it stopped altogether. Apparently, the war was over.
Dash whistled. “Okay, so I’m no astrophysicist or whatever, but how come, when we look at things, like two hundred thousand light years away, we don’t see some sign of this? Shouldn’t we be able to witness this happening due to the time it takes for light to travel?”
“This galaxy is approximately fifty thousand light years in diameter,” Sentinel said. “The light from these events long ago passed into intergalactic space.”
; “Oh. Good point. So what we see is the aftermath, like nebulae. The Shadow Nebula was caused by the war I guess, right?”
“That is correct. It is, in fact, the volume of space most affected by the culminating battle.”
“Well, I’ll have to thank the Unseen for this machine, not that I’ll get to meet them. Oh, hey, you let me see one of those Golden. How about an Unseen? Can I see one?” Dash asked. “Or are they Unseeable?”
“I acknowledge your attempt at humor,” Sentinel said dryly.
“Tough room,” Dash said, but he stopped as a new image appeared. It looked like a lanky, bipedal dog.
“That’s an Unseen?” Dash asked.
“It is the form of the Creators, yes.”
Dash wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Probably something huge. Or with an enormous brain. Or made of light, or a swarm of nanobots—something, anyway, that wasn’t a lanky, bipedal dog.
He almost chuckled at the absurdity of it, until he remembered these lanky, bipedal dogs had constructed the Archetype, and the Lens, and the Ribbon, and all of the Pasture, and probably all sorts of tech he hadn’t even encountered. Moreover, they lived and traveled through an entire reality that existed on the membrane separating real space and unSpace.
Sure, they might look like lanky, bipedal dogs, but from a human perspective, he might as well be looking at a god.
Dash bit the inside of his lip. “Okay, so I’m guessing that the Golden have gone back into this Darkness Between.”
“Correct.”
“And you said a few of the Unseen survived,” added Dash. “Any idea where they are?”
“I was not active during the final conflict, so I cannot definitively state--”
“Right, but where do you think they’d go?” interjected Dash.
“The Kingsports,” finished Sentinel.
“And those are?”
“Vast fortresses, so silent and dark they simply cannot be detected. They exist in real space, outposts of the Unseen, from which they can monitor what is happening.”
Dash nodded. “Okay, so if they’re still here, in real space, in these Kingsports, why all this complicated stuff about the Pasture, and the Messenger, and the Archetype, and finding these components? Why don’t they just lurk until they’re needed again, and then come out shooting?”
“I do not know,” said the AI. “Remember what I have said, Messenger. The Unseen were on the brink of total extinction. They could have been completely destroyed. It has been two hundred thousand years, which means that anything could have happened to them. We simply lack the data to hypothesize on their fate.”
That slammed Dash’s thoughts to a halt. It was the first time the Archetype hadn’t known something, or caused him to know it. Dash found the fact of it being ignorant of something so obviously important profoundly chilling.
“So what about the Golden? Are they still out there, somewhere in real space, in their own Kingsport type of fortress?”
“Again, I do not know. I do not believe the Creators, the Unseen, knew exactly where the Golden originated or where they waited between the different cycles of destruction. They were unable to discern where the Golden came from, or where they would return to.”
“That’s too bad,” said Dash. He considered all of this. Based on what he knew, the Unseen were masters of warfare, despite being a race that wasn’t particularly warlike. They’d obviously been forced to become militant in order to protect the galaxy from the Golden. That was actually both pretty noble and a bit disheartening. But it hadn’t stopped them from throwing themselves into the task, developing weapons like the Lens and fighting machines like the Archetype to do what was necessary.
The Golden were another matter. They remained elusive, launching their attacks from long range, focusing on the complete decimation of entire civilizations, a particular focused placed on their enemy’s technology. It probably came from their own origins, being machines themselves. That seemed to be why the Archetype, the Lens, and Ribbon all required organic interaction to work. If an organic pilot was required, then the machine could never be used against its creators.
“So, to sum this up, it’s been two hundred thousand years since the last cycle of the Golden’s assault on sentient life. These cycles happen about every two hundred thousand years, which means we might be due for another one any day now.” He paused. “And these always involve the Golden attacking and wiping out all sentient life with advanced technology.”
“Well said,” commended the AI.
“Only this time,” Dash went on, “we might not have the Unseen to help us, except for this machine they’ve created. But even if it’s only a hundred years off, which, you gotta admit, is a pretty small margin of two thousand centuries, then this will all happen long after I’m dead. That makes me being the Messenger pretty pointless, doesn’t it?”
“That would logically follow,” said Sentinel. “However, based on the Unseen’s understanding of the Golden, their return is quite precise. For example, they were able to accurately predict the Golden’s arrival to that of a single year’s time.”
“That’s pretty spot on,” muttered Dash. “Regardless, the bottom line is that there’s a war coming, sometime in the future, but probably soon.”
“Again, logical.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question of what happens next,” said Dash.
“That is because there is no answer that could be absolutely correct. The future is unknowable, even to the Creators. There are too many variables, too many factors to do more than offer conjecture. But, as you have stated, a reasonable conjecture, based on what we know, is that there will soon be another war. We do not know if the Unseen will return with the Golden, but it seems unlikely, which means the fate of the galaxy will depend upon those of you who still remain.”
“Great, so the Unseen couldn’t master everything,” said Dash, wishing that he’d been given something more to go on. “There were gaps in their knowledge.”
“There were many things the Creators could not master, time being one of them. It appears to be impossible to see all outcomes, which is why their destruction could not be prevented.”
Dash sank back in the harness. “Okay,” he said, looking back at the image, which had finally caught up to where he actually was and now displayed the Pasture, against the backdrop of the stellar ruin of the Shadow Nebula. “So I guess the important question now is, where do we go from here?”
Maybe to warn everybody what was coming? But would they believe it? And what could they possibly do about it? Untethered doubts surged through Dash, unwelcome but necessary.
The answer, though, was a series of points suddenly mapped out in space, scattered across the galaxy.
“What are those?” he asked.
“They are locations of components similar to the one you just obtained. Their retrieval will allow the Archetype to advance to its full power and potential,” Sentinel said.
“So they couldn’t just have it come fully charged, right off the shelf? We have to do a freakin’ scavenger hunt for parts? I mean, yeah, I know, it’s part of understanding, but seriously, considering what’s at stake, why not just make the Archetype so it’s fully ready and then, you know, add what I need to know into my brain?”
“As I understand it, the Creators were unable to build the components in time. The forges were built on an automated system, but the process for each of these devices took several decades. Many were simply not ready by the time the Golden attacked, and so they have remained where they were formed.”
“Alright, so where do we go first?” asked Dash. “I’ve already been away from my people for too long. I need to know if they made it out.” The thought had been in the back of his mind for a while now and he found himself itching to complete this little hunt. Once he was at full power, he should be able to get back to them, right? He had to.
“That choice is yours. As to your people, I’m afraid this is not information I have. My a
pologies.”
“I guess you can’t know everything.” Dash studied the points portrayed across the galaxy. He found he could cause it to rotate and shift, seeing from whatever perspective he wished, just by…well, making it do that. He tried to imagine flying the Slipwing this way—as though it was just an extension of his body. Remarkably, he could, which was itself pretty stunning, because there was no way, just a day or so ago, he could have even started to imagine it.
And what a day it had been, especially considering it had started with him almost dying.
“Okay,” he finally said, “let’s go to that one. It’s the closest to where we are now.”
“Very well,” Sentinel said.
Dash aimed himself at where he knew the star system was, a few tens of light years away. It would take the Slipwing, using full power on unSpace drive, a day to make that translation. He wondered how long this would take—and if the Archetype included a few amenities, like a galley, or a shower, or even a latrine.
Only one way to find out.
Dash launched himself at the distant star system. The Archetype responded, smoothly surging ahead, then vanishing from real space and entering another existence altogether.
It should have been mind-blowing, Dash knew, but his capacity for having his mind blown was pretty much saturated for now.
16
Dash had never seen unSpace before.
Okay, that wasn’t really true. He’d seen unSpace many times, while simply looking out the Slipwing’s vision ports. But all he’d ever viewed was an absolutely featureless blackness, except for a diffuse, barely-visible patch of light directly ahead that he could easily cover with his thumb at arm’s length. It was, apparently, a glimmer of the interaction between real space and unSpace. As a result, he’d always just assumed that was what unSpace was—a featureless void of darkness with a dim, fuzzy glow in whatever direction you were traveling.
Seen through the eyes of the Archetype, though, unSpace was both much more and far less complex than that. It was somehow infinitely large, but also a dimensionless point, a singularity, both at once. It was utterly dark, and yet Dash was able to see any distance clearly, which he knew to be a function of the Archetype.