by Jacob Holo
“Black dragon four, this is frigate Io’s Fury. We are following the Errand at extreme weapons range and are ready to assist.”
“I’m sending a list of high priority targets ascending towards the Errand,” Cat said. “Take them out before they reach the ship. The Errand’s weapons are disabled and we have gained partial control.”
“Targets confirmed, black dragon four. We are accelerating for an attack run now.”
“Also, I want you to blast a few robots off the ship’s hull before they cause trouble. Here are their locations. But don’t punch through the hull! We’re still inside.”
“Targets confirmed, Black Dragon Four. We’ll take care of them.”
“Matriarch, any changes where you are?” Ryu asked.
“Some,” Matriarch said. “The robots and thralls are not making good tactical decisions, but they can still fight. We have a hard battle ahead of us, but for now the advantage is ours.”
Cat stood up. “Well, I think that’s all I can do from here.”
“We should eliminate the remaining gun-spiders and restore control to the engines,” Kaneda said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Ryu said. “You ready?”
“Just give me a moment,” Kaneda said. He looked down at his missing hand, almost expecting it to still be there. “We cut that one pretty close, don’t you think?”
“Well, yeah, but that was the point,” Ryu said. “Because that’s not how we operate. We threw off his guessing game.”
“And gave you the opening you needed,” Kaneda said.
“Still,” Cat said. “I can’t believe you waited as long as you did before cutting us loose.”
“It didn’t really matter if I lived or died,” Kaneda said. “Keeping you alive and getting you here was what mattered. But, I’m glad I didn’t have to die. You did well, Cat.”
“Thanks ... umm ...”
“What is it?”
“Not to be picking or anything ...”
“Yes?”
“Only my friends call me Cat.”
“I see,” Kaneda said. “And what should a brother call you?”
“Uh ...did ... did I hear that right?”
Kaneda couldn’t hold back his grin. “Come on. We still have work to do.”
* * *
Within Heart, Kaneda waited outside Matriarch’s audience chamber with a full platoon of crusaders hand-picked for this honor. Together they would observe his decision and the quantum mind’s fate. They stood in a rigid line on one side of the hall, their armor scarred from days of battle, helmets at their side.
Kaneda glanced across the hall. Dragons, militia commanders, and naval officers kept their distance from the crusaders. They knew what was to come, and many of them didn’t like it, but Matriarch had given and had kept her word. That by itself would count in her favor.
A small crew of technicians in orange jumpers worked on dismantling the small passage to Matriarch’s audience chamber, disabling its security systems to allow weapons inside. The walls around the passage had been removed, revealing layers of coiled machinery. Thick ultrahigh voltage cables supplied it with power.
“How’s the hand?” Ryu asked. He was the only dragon on the “crusader” side of the hall.
Kaneda examined his new hand and flexed the fingers one at a time. It looked comically small coming out of the thick armored wrist. Ryu and Cat had performed some minor repairs to his armor, but it was essentially in the same condition now as when the Io’s Fury picked them up.
“The hand is perfect,” Kaneda said. “Thank you.”
“You can thank Cat when you see her next.”
“Really?”
“She called in the dragon farm doctors to give you a new one.”
“Hmm, I hadn’t expected that,” Kaneda said. He watched the technicians pull out another power field generator and disarm it. “Any news I should know about?”
“The navy picked up the Needle,” Ryu said. “And we think we finally cleared the last robots from the under city ports.”
“That’s good.”
“We still have a few isolated pockets in the city, but they’re mostly robots locked in evasion patterns.”
“What about the outlying cities?”
“North and South Pacifica, New Edo, Third Kyoto, and Port Cold are all complete losses,” Ryu said. “We’ll have to demolish them at range. Several others have been infiltrated, but the militia has the robots and thralls contained. They simply aren’t as dangerous when Caesar can’t control them.”
“And the death toll?”
“It’s getting close to half a million last I checked.”
“I see.”
“So.” Ryu looked him straight in the eye. “Are you still going through with this?”
“Of course.”
“After all you’ve seen? After all we’ve been through?”
“I have to.”
“Do you hate her that much?”
“I don’t know anymore.” Kaneda looked away. “So much of what I believed has turned out to be wrong.”
“Then why go through with it?”
“Because I need to speak to the ... to Matriarch,” Kaneda said. The name sounded strange coming from his lips. How long had it been since he’d called her that?
“Don’t you know what you’ll decide?” Ryu asked.
“No,” Kaneda said, shaking his head. “Despite her good intentions, her plan sounds like more of the same, just farther away from Earth.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Because it’s slavery.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Look at the facts, Ryu. You don’t create anything yourselves. This technology, these advantages of yours did not come from human hands.”
“Yes they did, and her name is Matriarch.”
“That’s not the same.”
“We wouldn’t have won without her.”
“I know. But that doesn’t change the fact you as a people don’t have control. A machine does.”
Three-Part walked over. “The technicians are done, sir. It’s time.”
“Very well. Is everyone connected?”
“Yes, sir. You and the quantum mind will be heard by everyone on Europa. We are also transmitting it live over SolarNet for anyone who wishes to watch.”
“Thank you, Three-Part,” Kaneda said. He shouldered his thermal lance.
“Kaneda?” Ryu asked.
“Yes?”
“Just keep an open mind and hear her out, okay?”
“You have my word.”
Kaneda walked with Three-Part to the entrance. The passage to Matriarch’s audience chamber lay open, its defenses scattered across the tiled floor. A few technicians knelt next to the disabled machinery, watching him.
“Three-Part,” Kaneda said. He stopped in front of the passage.
“Sir.”
“What do you make of our fellow crusaders?”
“They’re confused, sir. They’re relieved by our victory against Caesar, but they don’t know what to make of Matriarch. I think most of them will go with whatever decision you make.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir. You have led us this far, and even though we have been manipulated, you were right about what matters. Quantum minds are a threat to humans everywhere. But is this one a threat? I can’t answer that, and respectfully, I leave that for you to decide. I will support your call either way.”
“Even after I let Caesar use us as pawns?”
“You cannot blame yourself for missing what everyone couldn’t see.”
“I don’t know if most people would agree with that. That’s very charitable of you, but thank you regardless. I’m glad to have your support. Recruiting you was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.”
Three-Part gave him a curt nod. “The crusaders need leadership. They need someone to take what has happened and guide them through to the other side. What is our purpose? Who are our enemies? I don�
�t think anyone but you can do this.”
“Then I will endeavor not to disappoint.”
Kaneda walked into the audience chamber. Dry heat washed over his face. At the far wall, air shimmered around Matriarch’s overworked quantum core. He couldn’t help thinking how differently this confrontation had played out. A few weeks ago, if someone had told him he would walk into the quantum mind’s chamber and hold his fire, he would have called the person a fool. And yet here he was doing just that.
Kaneda stopped in front of Matriarch’s hologram. In the back of his mind, he felt the pressure of an entire world watching his actions and listening to his words.
“Hello, Kaneda,” she said with a bow. Her kimono showed the blackened wreckage of an ancient wooden city from feudal Japan, now damp from newly fallen rain. Slits of sunlight pierced through a dark canopy. Amongst the charred ruins, vivid green stalks tipped with closed flower buds grew at an accelerated rate.
The destruction of the past and the promise of the future, Kaneda thought. We shall see.
“Matriarch,” he said.
“Welcome home,” Matriarch said with a sad smile.
“Let us discuss the future. Your navy has recovered the star drive.” Kaneda took the thermal lance off his shoulder and rested the tip of its barrel on the floor. “Why should I let you have it?”
“You know I seek to safeguard the people of Europa from Caesar,” Matriarch said. “I will take Capitol City and as many willing colonists as it can hold. Together we will find a new world to inhabit far from Caesar’s reach.”
“That much we all understand,” Kaneda said. “I admit I like the idea of humanity expanding beyond the solar system. The farther we expand as a race, the more resilient we become. It makes it easier for at least some of us to weather the chaos of an unpredictable future. But why should I let you go with them?”
“No matter what kind of world we find, the journey and the settling will be difficult. The colonists will need a strong leader.”
“And that leader should be a quantum mind?” Kaneda asked. “I think not.”
“I have always held my people’s interests at heart,” Matriarch said. “Europa has prospered under my rule.”
“You enslave them with trinkets. They didn’t earn the technology and weapons you give them. Do any of ‘your people’ know how they work? Can they duplicate them? No, they rely on you and that gives you power over them.”
“You could say the same for anyone who harbors secrets.”
“But that is precisely the point. You aren’t like anyone else. You aren’t human anymore.”
Matriarch sighed and shook her head. The sky on her kimono closed up, shrouding the burnt city in darkness.
“I’ve often wondered about that,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
A plain wooden chair materialized next to Matriarch. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap.
“Kaneda, I know this may surprise you, but I have often struggled with this same problem. For all the clarity what I am brings, I cannot solve it, and even now I wonder how human I really am. Unlike ...” Her kimono flashed red. “Our enemy ... who abandoned his humanity willingly, I cling to whatever shreds remain.”
Matriarch wiped the sweat from her brow.
“You don’t seem very human to me,” Kaneda said.
“Is it not obvious? I have had children after a fashion. I have a husband, though I understand I cannot fulfill all his needs in my current state. I have done very human things that are unnecessary for a machine, but the question lingers. Did Sakura Kusanagi die the day Matriarch was created? Did her soul go to whatever afterlife awaits us? Or is she still here within me?”
“Hmm ...”
Matriarch glanced over her shoulder at the quantum core. “Look at it. Such a cold thing of science. Is it an empty husk? Or does my soul reside within it? I don’t know, and not knowing weighs heavily on my mind.”
“There is no way you could know.”
Matriarch shook her head. “Ah, but there is one way to know with absolute certainty. This is a secret I have kept from everyone until today. Not even your father knows.”
“You claim to understand what only God may know?”
“Nothing so dramatic,” Matriarch said. “In order to find the answer to such a haunting question ... I must die.”
Kaneda couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He was speechless.
“There is no other way I can answer the question,” Matriarch said. “At some point my life must end. Only through death will I know if I am more than machinery. Only through death will I find out if God is waiting to judge my deeds and, perhaps, accept my soul into heaven.”
“You ... want to die?”
“Not today, if it can be helped,” Matriarch said. “And ‘want’ is perhaps too strong a word. But yes, I have come to accept it as necessary. I have thought about when would be a proper time to allow this mechanical shell to shut down. Perhaps once our new world is settled. I have even considered having children again. Maybe another three to raise in this new world, whatever it may be. After that, I think it would be time. Besides, I couldn’t bear life without your father for long.”
“If what you say is true ...”
“You know it is. We are not that different, you and I,” Matriarch said. “The same great mystery weighs in both our minds. We ask ourselves the same question. How will our actions be judged by God? We’ve both made mistakes, some small, some horribly large, but we’ve both tried to do the right thing. We both hunger to know if what we did was right.”
“Yes, I’ve often wondered.”
Matriarch nodded. “Well, Kaneda. You have heard my arguments. I have done my best to make my intentions clear. Is there anything you wish to ask me?”
“No.”
“I see. Then what is your decision?”
Kaneda picked up the thermal lance and held it lengthwise in his hands. He looked down at it, the decision teetering in his mind. So much of who he was wanted to melt the quantum core to slag, but he held his fire. It came down to one simple thing in his mind, and it was the hardest thing any leader must do.
He had to admit he was wrong. Matriarch wasn’t the monster he’d envisioned all these years. She wasn’t perfect, not even close, but she didn’t have to be. She was a flawed individual with good intentions that sometimes drove her to do bad things. She was ... human.
With a sigh, Kaneda yanked the power cables out and dropped the weapon on the floor.
“Our battle is over,” he said.
Matriarch bowed her head. “Thank you, my son.”
Without another word, Kaneda turned and walked out of the audience chamber.
* * *
The naked sphere of Capitol City floated in orbit, brought there by the first successful test of the star drive on such a scale. Another two months had passed preparing the capitol for its interstellar voyage, and now they were ready. Kaneda watched from the Errand of Mercy. Over a dozen people stood in its new bridge, bathed in bluish light from screens and holographic plots.
“I still can’t believe she convinced over seven million people to make the trip,” Ryu said.
“Maybe people are just used to doing what she says,” Cat said.
“You’re probably right,” Kaneda said.
“You still have a problem with that?” Cat asked.
“A little,” Kaneda said. “Not as much as I used too.”
“It’s not that,” Ryu said. “They trust her. They believe in her vision of a future beyond the solar system.”
“Or they don’t want to have their heads drilled in by Caesar’s robots,” Kaneda said.
Ryu shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, that too.”
“There’s not going to be much of a Europa after this,” Cat said.
“Yeah, I know,” Ryu said. “What is it? Only a million people staying?”
“Just about,” Cat said. “Add in another half million spread over the Jupiter system
.”
“But most who remain are ready to fight Caesar,” Kaneda said. “We have here the nucleus of an army that will surpass both the crusaders and the dragons. And we have the infrastructure to support such a force.”
“Plus our new flagship,” Ryu said. He patted a holographic plot. The image of Capitol City fizzled for a moment.
“Signal from Matriarch,” the comm officer said. “Star drive activation is a go. Final countdown commencing. Ten. Nine. Eight.”
“Here we go,” Ryu whispered.
Cat bit into her thumb.
“Three. Two. One. Activate.”
A layer of ethereal light formed around the capitol. It moved across the city’s spherical surface, forming thick bands and accelerating. The bands whipped around the city, faster and faster until they became a flickering blur. One moment, the city shone like a small sun and the next it vanished.
The bridge was silent except for the hum of ventilation and the low buzz of the holographic plots. Ryu held his breath. Cat chewed on her thumbnail.
“I have a signal from Capitol City!” the comm officer said, grinning ear to ear. “It’s Matriarch!”
The bridge exploded with cheering and clapping. Some people embraced each other, and a few even kissed.
“Yes!” Cat whispered.
“Put it on the speakers!” Ryu said.
“Yes, sir! Matriarch, go ahead! You’re on speaker!”
“Yes, I can hear that,” Matriarch said. “We’re still getting our bearings, but it looks like we’re over a light-month from the solar system as planned. We’re going to run some tests, but the star drive appears to have performed perfectly. I see no reason why our next transit can’t be to Alpha Centauri.”
“That’s great to hear!” Ryu said over the noise. Naomi broke out a squeeze bulb full of sake, took a long sip, and passed it to him. He drank through the straw and handed it to Cat. Three other bulbs were making circuits around the bridge.
When one of the bulbs came to Kaneda, he passed it along without drinking and waited for the excitement to move off the bridge. Instead of joining the others, he selected a holographic plot and pulled up the scout report from the asteroid belt.
Twenty minutes later, Cat and Ryu floated over to him. They were the last three still in the bridge.