Under the Shadow of the Plateau: Frontier Forever

by Benjamin Krieger

  The upside-down crowd in the sky disappeared, and the audience fell silent as they turned to stare at the Matron’s projection. From the looks on their faces, it was clear that most of the Dakota were having a hard time processing such a sardonic interpretation of a story that meant so much to them. Jeffery and the Chieftain exchanged a nervous sideways glance, but before either could comment on the implications of Ezae’s speech, Dante jumped back up onto the stone and shouted, “Holy living fuck! She is a robot!”

  Panicked shrieks rang out as Dakota from every tribe clutched their neighbors, for the troublemaker’s words matched their fears. If the machines were actually the ones in charge of the embargo, then the Matron was their warden. None of the crowd wanted to doubt the planet’s steward, who had always taken care of them, and it hurt them to do so. After a minute of terrible discomfort, Ezae sprinted away from mountain’s center and disappeared into the crowd.

  The Chieftain was about to tell Jeffery to go after him, but the Matron’s giant figure retook the stage and said with surprising calm, “Hush my children. Hush... You should have let him finish.” The audience reluctantly quieted, and she whispered loudly over their whimpers. “Ezae, my love, I’m sorry... He asked me if his story might be too much for you, but I told him the Dakota could handle it.”

  The Matron’s image slowly began to shrink and she spoke even more softly. “Please, I know you are frightened. When Ezae first came to me, he was upset too. Like young Dante, he accused me of being a machine, but he had been completely serious. He wept as he told me that I was part of a mirage designed to placate a planet full of slaves, and after carefully considering the reasoning and perspective behind his concerns, I could not deny his logic.”

  Many members of the audience clutched each other tightly but managed to stay quiet.

  “Why did the machines free us? Why did they enslave us in the first place? The truth is, we don’t know. If our usefulness had simply run out, why weren’t we discarded? Why grant us reparations? It is very suspicious... As Ezae so aptly put it, ‘what better way to make your slaves content than to tell them exactly the stories we’ve learned as history?’”

  Light crying resumed, this time accompanied by many angry voices. A majority of the congregation took to their feet, and the Chieftain said hurriedly to Jeffery, “Go find Ezae! I’ll take everyone else back to the edge.”

  But before they could move, the Matron said with the sternest tone she had ever used with tribesmen, “Quiet! Please! I am both saddened and surprised to see you act like this!” The audience froze. “Although his logic was sound, Ezae was wrong! The embargo prohibits me from proving it to you, and I know that’s incredibly convenient, but I am human, and I have seen enough of the universe to tell you that humanity is free. The machines are long gone.”

  Loud discontent rumbled through the crowd, but the Matron talked right over them. “You are right to question the embargo, but there is no way we can know anything with absolute certainty. As we discussed at length tonight, countless wars have been fought over beliefs, often with both sides being wrong. Humanity has struggled with questions of faith and purpose since the very beginning. There were prophecies about Machine Enslavement long before it happened. Old Earth scientists theorized that we are all inside a simulation, and to this day that cannot be disproven. It is our nature to question reality, and it is your choice to believe me or not, but the situation will never change. Things are this way by Nature’s design, and it is what we make of it.”

  Having been indoctrinated with the use of the idiom long ago, the Dakota murmured back halfheartedly, “It is what we make of it.”

  The Matron’s perpetual smile dimmed as a look of concerned understanding crossed her face. “Ezae wasn’t much comforted by that either. I’m going to tell you all something I shouldn’t.” She pursed her lips, because Earth’s Board of Trustees truly would be upset if they heard her say this. “The universe is in shambles. Blind to the technology that has corrupted them, most people don’t even know what it means to be alive. You are pure and free in a way that the rest of mankind cannot even imagine. It must be frightening to live underneath such a thick veil, but rest assured, my children, you are humanity’s pride and joy. The embargo is meant to protect you.”

  The crowd remained silent, making it hard to tell if the traumatic effect of Ezae’s story was fading. Wearing her softest smile, the Matron said with her most delicate voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, please help me thank Ezae, and the rest of tonight’s presenters, for another wonderful lecture.” Still trying to digest the heavy load, many of the Dakota still had tears in their eyes and their applause was lackluster. “For anyone having trouble coping with any of the subject matter we covered tonight, I encourage you to attend study sessions tomorrow. We will be discussing existentialism, which happens to be the topic of the debate scheduled for six months from now, and there are still three presenter slots available. Thank you all for being such an attentive audience. This concludes this evening’s lecture. Sleep well and safe travels.”

  With that, the Matron’s image was replaced with the USi logo, giving them just enough light to organize themselves and start to stoke the fires. It was more than two hours past midnight and normally, everyone would have been eager to sleep but most were too addled to move.

  Wide-eyed, Jeffery turned to the Chieftain and asked, “Well, what do you think she was trying to teach us with that one?”

  “Honestly,” the Chieftain replied, “I have no idea.”

  Chapter Seven

  Matron of Earth

  Back in the privacy of her starside stateroom, the Matron started laughing uncontrollably as soon as the transmission ended. Bulging into a broad smile, her soft wrinkled cheeks quickly began to chafe against the coif wrapped around her head. Normally she found the garment’s snug fit comfortable, but this smile was wider and more earnest than the ones she was accustomed to wearing. Along with the rest of her habit, the headdress signified her elite status within the Naturalist priesthood, but presently, the ensemble’s long flowing robes and featherlight slippers felt restrictive.

  Loosening her collar with two fingers, the Matron pulled off all four layers of her non-compulsory uniform and flung them to the floor. Playfully, she kicked off her socks, then cracked her toes by digging them into the carpet’s thick burgundy fibers. With a labored moan, she stood up from her desk and walked slowly towards her magnificent Earthside window. Many spacecraft used video screens to produce the same effect, but she had insisted on seeing her hard work with her own eyes. Installing the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling pane of transparent plasteel had been one of the first things the Matron had done upon assuming her post as the planet’s steward. Standing just a few meters away, the entirety of her vision was filled with the majesty of the blue-brown-green world below and the star-spangled space surrounding it. Looking down at the glimmering globe, it was easy to forget she was inside a starship. Instead, she imagined herself floating through space like some sort of celestial being.

  Earth didn’t look anything like it had before the Great Expansion. It followed a much longer elliptical pattern around Sol, which had also been rebuilt. The planet itself was considerably larger than the original, and it rotated more slowly, so the days and years were much longer than they had been. It had only two oceans now, each looking like a shiny disc atop either magnetic pole, and a single contiguous continent that looked like a rocky ribbon wrapped around a glassy blue marble. There were still scattered lakes and rivers, but desert covered more of the planet’s surface than it had at any other time in history.

  Even though ten thousand years wasn’t a particularly long tenure considering her position, the Matron had grand plans for the tiny garden planet and had been sowing seeds since day one. Despite her immaculate view, little evidence of her labor was visible from space, but the spoils were coming closer to fruition every day. Only twelve of the original sixteen megacities were still standing, and countless minor cities were h
idden in the vastness of the planet’s open terrain, but the nomadic Tribal Nations were now the bulk of the world’s human population. Earth’s animal hybrids, which were abominations created by gene banks for unnatural purposes, outnumbered the tribesmen a hundred times over, but soon, none of that would matter.

  Cackles of mirth echoed through her chamber as the Matron remembered that little urchin Dante dancing. For him to call her a robot mere hours before Ezae dropped his bombshell of a myth was perfectly ironic. To an extent, it made sense—the native Earthlings were sheltered from the myriad of conspiracy theories circulating the universe that similarly suggested that Machine Enslavement never ended. It was strong testament to how effective the embargo had been at protecting them from that sort of doubt, but given how similar their lifestyle was to those who actually lived through Machine Enslavement, she thought one of them would have come up with the theory on their own already.

  Even though she had intentionally led Ezae to his conclusion, the Matron did not need to feign offense when he accused her of being AI. It could not have been farther from the truth; she had dedicated her life to the pursuit of Natural Order and held a deep disdain even for machine sympathizers. It was the reason she was going to such great lengths to make things better on Earth and abroad. Coming from Dante however, the implication was hilarious, and tears of laughter rolled down her wrinkled face.

  The individual strands by which the Onondaga had woven themselves into the Matron’s plan were all fairly trivial, but they added such rich texture to her divine comedy that she, on several occasions, had to stop and ask herself if she had planned things that way. Geographic serendipity nearly brought the tribe into contact with the first Marshal, which could easily have caused a premature climax, but it didn’t, and then her secret agent captured the boy. There were a few delicate conversations about poacher activity with the Onondaga Chief, but there were similar rumblings amongst all the tribal nations.

  Things had been relatively quiet since then, but just hours before the lecture had begun, one of the tribe’s sweat tents transmitted a series of incredible visions. Dark and sweet expressions of love and loss would fetch a handsome price on the black market for their graphic nature alone, but when Jeffery confirmed that they had been dreamt by the other boy’s twin brother, the Matron permanently resigned them all to her private collection. Dante had accompanied Ezae’s performance quite naturally that evening, and for it all to be from sweet Jeffery’s tribes was wonderful, for she had fond memories of that young man.

  Constantly beaming her grandmotherly smile was a big part of the Matron’s persona with the tribes, but the unfamiliar shape of a more genuine grin was now causing her cheeks to ache. Sustaining that generic loving facade had never been difficult because tending to Earth’s sunburnt children truly was one of her favorite duties, but it had been especially easy that afternoon. When the Dakota sounded so downtrodden in their reply, “It is what we make of it,” it was real pain that darkened her face. Remembering all of the different roles she had played that day, and all of the complex smiles she had used, nearly all of them had come more naturally to her than usual.

  To Kravinov, president of the newly solidified poacher’s union, the Matron had come disguised as a socialite from Moscow. By making an exorbitant recurring purchase agreement, she had helped the burly man solidify his leadership position. He had been polite enough about everything, but with the same sly grin that she used with all poacher scum, she was able to say, with complete honesty, “It will be nice only having to deal with you from now on.”

  On three separate occasions, each with its own disguise, the Matron met with Mister Morton. First, as a hooded stranger from Seoul who wanted a long-term transportation contract for all the animals she would be buying through Kravinov. The smuggler king tried to justify hiking up the price because of some technical mumbo jumbo, not knowing that the Matron was the offworld connection that he was ostensibly blaming. Normally that might have offended her, but because the contract would be instrumental in mobilizing the poacher army, she thanked him graciously.

  Appearing to him next as an underworld trader, the Matron bought enough high-end communication equipment to outfit Kravinov’s men ten times over. Having sold the same merchandise to him a few months ago at a much lower price, she had taken a real bath both times, but currency meant nothing to her. As they transferred control of the containers, Morton sneered maniacally at her, wordlessly bragging about his business acumen, and she smiled twice as wickedly right back at him. He had no idea how much control those devices would soon afford her, and she was looking forward to reprising her role as Wolfchan.

  Then, as an old acquaintance who happened to owe him a favor, the Matron came to Morton with information about the Marshal. The look on his face was somewhere between shitting a brick and riding a rocket to the moon, but he thanked her appropriately. With a conspiratorial glean in her eye, she gave him a supportive nod before ending the call, but repressed glee was part of the reason she was cracking up now. Unpinning her hair, the Earth’s ancient steward giggled like a schoolgirl as her long grey tress brushed against her bare backside.

  The day had brought a multitude of successes, but the dealings with Kravinov, Morton, and the Onondaga were all novelties compared to the birth of Earth’s second Athena-class Marshal. Even though there was nothing more she could do to help, the Matron had scheduled her entire day around monitoring the hospital. The doctor hadn’t died this time, which was good. The Logo’s verification data had all come back clean, and she had departed on the Longcoat right on time. Everything had gone perfectly until her report, when the Marshal referred to herself as ‘we’.

  Representatives from the Marshal program and USi corporate agreed that ‘they’ must be identifying as plural because the doctor’s request to calibrate the LGO had timed out. That obviously wasn’t the case, because the same thing had happened when the first Athena-class Marshal killed her doctor, but the Matron did not correct them. There were a number of bizarre scenarios down the line where having a documented malfunction at the hospital could be useful, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Overall, it was a staggering success, and with excessive congratulations, she reported as much to the Board of Trustees.

  Bringing the Marshals to Earth was an essential part of the Matron’s master plan, and she couldn’t have done it without Minister Jacoby. The esteemed representative from the USi Corps of Engineers was generally in favor of military exemptions, and even though Earth’s Board of Trustees had never considered the Marshal and Peacekeeper programs side by side, Jacoby had always felt as though they had picked the lesser of two options. Both were offshoots of Gort, an Old Earth defense company inspired by a film from that era about a robot that enforced peace with the threat of ultimate violence. Their original idea was to market lethal and automated home security systems, and although they had faced major liability issues with those domestic units, their orbital satellite program ended up landing a major military contract during the Great Expansion and was installed on every new colony.

  Unfortunately, Gort defense grids ended up being one of the main reasons why humanity put up such pitiful resistance during the ever so brief Machine Wars. In a matter of minutes, all across the universe, entire solar systems were turned into slave pens. The bulk of the human population was then held in varying degrees of captivity for an unknown number of generations, until—for reasons that are still widely debated—the machines set everyone free. As far as anyone could tell, the Great Liberation was voluntary, and as reparations, the machines even provided advanced technology to help with recolonization. Nevertheless, there was still a lot of tension between the two races.

  Widespread hatred for machines begat the Naturalist movement, which still had innumerable independent factions with their own ideas about how to ethically repopulate and use technology responsibly. Most Reconstruction Era policies were informed by trauma, and the first few generations had an especially hard time readjusting
to life alongside technology that was indistinguishable from that which had enslaved their ancestors. Even the most conservative historians agreed, however, that if not for the machines’ technological sophistication, the dregs of humanity would have dried up completely.

  There were still thousands of planets that refused to use post-expansion technology, but most of the extreme groups had been eliminated during the Naturalist Wars. As time went on, humanity became once again blinded by the seductive nature of computerization, and most solar systems were now saturated with machines that were beyond human comprehension. Fortunately, founders of the Naturalist movement had the foresight to protect humanity’s homeworld with the Earth Reservation Act. Entrusted to a Board of Trustees administered by United Services incorporated, the Old Earth utility conglomerate that claimed patents over much of the machine reparations technology, Earth became the new Mecca.

  It was meant to be a bastion of hope, where Natural Order could resume without interference. From machinery to genetic complexity, everything planetside was supposed to be relative to that of Old Earth, but economics brought it many allowances over time. Regardless of Naturalist party affiliation, everyone recognized the planet’s unique value, and an overwhelming demand turned anything with even a loose association into a hot commodity. Corporations had fought over contracts to control minutia like weather patterns, and by this point, every blade of grass on Earth had a sponsor. Competition quickly made things like human life totally unaffordable to anyone other than the most powerful industrial conglomerates.