The Farthest City

by Daniel P Swenson

  Kellen watched to see if this new chine would come to rest on one of the yellow squares. Instead, it approached to within a few meters.

  “We-sh-lem-m-m-cht,” it said, followed by more noises Kellen guessed might be language. He thought he heard words in the sounds. This went on for several minutes. The sounds changed noticeably from guttural to singsong, sibilant to a humming drone changing pitch like a throaty bee.

  “What does it want?” Abby asked.

  Kellen was about to conclude this chine was even more dysfunctional than the other two when it spoke.

  “Yes,” the chine said. “Hello?”

  It spread its appendages wide in a gesture of some kind.

  Kellen stepped back.

  “Hello,” Izmit said, looking expectant, as if he had been waiting for something like this.

  “Ah, this language is quite old. Sorry for my delay. I had to try many,” the chine said. “Were you biological?”

  “Yes, we are,” Abby said.

  “Hhhzzzmmm,” it said, its voice becoming richer and more melodious. Was it customizing its voice for them, even as they conversed?

  “We’re from Earth,” Izmit said.

  Abby smiled.

  Kellen thought it sounded funny, too. But they were.

  “Ah, Earth,” the chine said.

  It felt so good to be addressed by someone from this world. Some of the overwhelming strangeness subsided in the face of this little bit of normalcy. They were lost, but perhaps this chine was the answer.

  “We need help,” Kellen said.

  “I can help.”

  “Who are you?” Izmit asked.

  “I am named Chronicler, ex-representative, 136th citizen of the Six Star Array, City of the Six Suns. I can tell you more later, but first we must leave.”

  Kellen and the others looked at each other.

  “Can we trust it?” Kellen whispered.

  “It’s the first chine to speak to us,” Abby said. “And it seems friendly.”

  “We don’t know this place.” Izmit gestured all around them. “We don’t know anyone here. We don’t even know where here is. We need to learn more, and this guy seems like a good start.”

  We don’t know you, either, Kellen thought.

  Chronicler looked agitated, swiveling around to survey their surroundings. The first two chines departed and others arrived. Kellen recalled their run-in with the chine cultists. Was this more of the same? Someone trying to extract something from them? Still, what else could they do? Would any other chine be more trustworthy?

  “Okay,” Kellen said. “Let’s go with him for now.”

  “Him?” Abby asked.

  “Saying it doesn’t seem polite…”

  Abby raised an eyebrow.

  “Lead on, Chronicler,” Izmit said, forestalling further debate.

  The chine led them out of the courtyard and down a different street. They proceeded up a scattered slope of many-sized cubes, a staircase. Up and up they went. Out of the corner of his eye, something sped by, moving fast up a chine track. It was one of the sphere-forms they’d seen in the street. As they continued climbing, more chines passed them by, most going up, a few down. An eight-legged crawler bigger than a dog strode by.

  Wherever we’re going, it must be a popular place, Kellen thought.

  Between the looming structures overhead, something far above caught the rays of the sun and sent them flashing into Kellen’s eyes. At last, the end of the staircase came into view. The streets below seemed incredibly small and far away. With a touch of dizziness, he climbed past the final step.

  “Behold the City of the Six Suns,” Chronicler said.

  Kellen had difficulty processing what he saw. They were now above the dense forest of skyscrapers, but the landscape refused to jibe with his concept of physical reality. Around them, the city stretched out to a misty horizon, but it was not a city he could reconcile with his memories of Jesup, or of Grand-Mère, or of any city he’d ever seen pictures of. As if they stood in the bottom of a wide valley, the buildings pushed up higher and higher the farther away he looked. In the distance, on either side, the buildings seemed to tilt toward him, as if they had been rolled up, as if the land itself had curved. He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

  From this new vantage point, Kellen could better see the structure he’d glimpsed earlier. Far overhead, it shone with reflected light. He thought it was, impossibly, a second city far above, a celestial mirror city spanning the sky, its reflective surfaces breaking sunlight into dazzling beams that lit up the landscape beneath in shifting zones of illumination. And the sun, where was the sun? Luminous bands stretched along the sky. He counted three of these. There was no sun, yet light was everywhere.

  “Look,” Abby whispered, pointing ahead.

  A shadow loomed over the horizon. He’d taken it for mountains or a high cloud front. It was shock enough the world had curved and imposed a reflection of itself in the sky, but the land in that direction had turned on its side, as if it had not just been bent, but broken and set straight as a wall. It made no sense, but his eyes told him it was so.

  Between that distant wall of the world and where he stood, in that middle distance, the sky was full of moving objects, some flying, some moving along cables. One passed overhead with a hum that penetrated deep into his bones. Some kind of vehicle. He made a mental comparison to the fliers the Army had used back in Jesup. This was many times larger.

  He noticed cables coming off the roof upon which they stood and chines moving along them far away. Chines coupled or decoupled to and from cables rising from adjacent roofs toward the mirror city in the sky. The cables intersected, forming a sort of web. One vehicle in particular descended along a cable and settled on the roof a few meters away.

  Kellen and the others stepped back. It resembled a car he’d seen once, with curves of metal and plastic, but this vehicle was all curves, no wheels. It unfolded to reveal its passengers, startling Kellen. Slightly bigger than a cat, each one composed of a series of spheres, they proceeded out of the vehicle, engaged their gears into a track, and sped off in a line, across the roof and over the edge.

  The vehicle burbled at them, and Chronicler waved them forward. Was this thing a chine as well, or an ordinary machine like they’d had back on Earth? Was everything intelligent here?

  “This conveyance is for us,” Chronicler said. “Quickly. We’ve been observed in this place too long.”

  Chronicler entered the vehicle first, its body attaching and conforming to a slot-like depression. Kellen had expected seats, but there didn’t appear to be any. He pulled himself in and settled uncomfortably into another depression next to Chronicler. Izmit and Abby came in after him.

  “Not much for comfort, are they?” Izmit said.

  Kellen wasn’t sure if Abby even heard him. She seemed engrossed in the vehicle, her eyes opening wide as it re-folded with them inside. Kellen barely felt any movement during its reconfiguration. It was an eerie feeling, as if they’d been enfolded in the wings of some immense bird.

  Kellen looked out the window as the roof fell away below them. Other vehicles moved up and down cables. Flying chines zipped between the cables on errands of their own. The vehicle slowed.

  “We’re not moving anymore,” Abby said.

  Vehicles continued to move past on adjacent cables, giving Kellen the illusion of their own movement, but Abby was right.

  “What’s going on?” Izmit asked Chronicler.

  Kellen and Abby turned to their new guide. The chine gave no sign it had heard them.

  “I think it’s checking something in virt,” Abby said.

  Their vehicle began to move again, then jerked sideways. They’d switched to a new cable and were moving at a different angle, no longer up. As they accelerated, the broken edge of the land loomed closer, a far-off shadow filling the sky.

  “You’ve been noticed,” Chronicler said, back with them again. “We’ve only a little time. Each of you must accept i
ndenture to me. It’s the only way out of this.”

  “Out of what?” Kellen asked, growing more concerned by the second.

  “To legally exist in the Array, one must have citizenship. When you came here, you had no citizenship. I had intended to take you to friends of mine who could provide identities. But now you’ve been discovered. Someone must have reported you. We’ve no time. You must accept a contract of indenture. If you don’t, the Arbiter will put you on trial.”

  “Like indentured servants?” Izmit asked, his voice rising. “Why would we want to become indentured?”

  “No, no, it would be just for contractual purposes. Until we could obtain citizenship for all of you.”

  Kellen looked at Abby. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Do you still trust it?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  Outside the windows to Kellen’s left, a band of light hung in the sky. On his right, the sky was dark until another parallel band of light began. Ahead of them, the shadow had resolved into a giant disc engraved with structures arranged along radii. Each radius was composed of parallel stacks of structures beginning halfway from the disc’s center. Between the radii were circular openings much larger than their vehicle. His brain struggled to assemble a coherent picture of this new world until it clicked. They were in a vast urban cylinder, a construct dwarfing anything human engineers had ever attempted.

  “Please sign the contract.” Chronicler proffered a card, one end branched into several miniature connectors. “It’s the only way to keep you safe.”

  Kellen wasn’t sure he would ever feel safe again.

  Chronicler offered the card to each of them in turn, but no one accepted it.

  As the disc loomed ahead, the parallel stacks of the nearest radius took on three dimensions. A long row of vertically arranged balconies. And the balconies were occupied. Their cable ran ahead to one balcony in particular. Their vehicle decelerated smoothly as they approached.

  “There’s a crowd waiting for us,” Izmit said.

  “They’re here to see you sentenced,” Chronicler said. “They want to see someone recycled.”

  Abby frowned. “Why would they want to see that?”

  It wasn’t a comforting thought. Where was the chine utopia he’d always imagined?

  “Chines, like humans, have moral diversity. There are always those consumed by fear and hate. While your kind are revered by many as our forebears, humans have become linked, in the minds of some, to Firstborn whom the Precautionists threw down. To the idea of evolution and discovery and change. Change they fear most of all, that they may end up obsolete and washed away by time.” It held out the card. “This is your last chance to avoid their judgment.”

  They touched down before Kellen could give Chronicler’s words further thought. From this new perspective, Kellen could now see straight out along the cylinder’s axis. The land curved about it, the vast city rolled up like a sheet of paper. Kellen aimed what he hoped was a reassuring look at Abby as he exited the vehicle.

  An enormous, multi-armed, crab-like chine looked down at them with its sensor array. One outsized limb shaped like a gun barrel pointed directly at them. The air around the muzzle blurred, heat coming off it in waves.

  Kellen glanced away from that ominous chine and studied its smaller companion. This chine resembled flying somes he’d seen. Its head, if that’s what it was, consisted of a smooth, metallic oblong held aloft on a thin neck. Kellen could see his distorted reflection in what he thought might be its mirrored face. The body was metallic and tapered downward in a complicated mechanism of lustrous plates affixed to rods and cogs. Perched on that mechanism, its some extended backward, terminating in ribbons of bright metal folded fan-like, rising and falling with a steady periodicity.

  Just beyond stood the crowd. Kellen tried to make sense of the gathered chines, but there were too many. Their somes blended together into a chattering, warbling, jeering mass of chinery.

  “Let me introduce myself,” the smaller chine said, advancing to within a few meters of them, its cogs clicking. “I am Arbiter for District 401 and 224,401,273rd citizen of the Six Star Array, City of the Six Suns.”

  Its huge companion waved its weaponized limb at the crowd, which backed away. The noise from the spectators diminished.

  “I greet you on behalf of the Precautionist Council for the City of the Six Suns. I’m here to investigate an allegation of criminal conduct. Please transmit citizen registration codes.”

  Kellen struggled to come up with a response, but nothing came to him. Izmit and Abby seemed similarly befuddled.

  “Name, please. What self-identification do you use in formal settings?”

  “Kellen Beaudin.”

  “No Kellen Beaudin is listed in the Rolls of Citizenry. If you are not a citizen, please provide indenture contract and administrator identification. Fabrication history and validation number also, please.”

  Kellen wasn’t a citizen. He wasn’t indentured. This is your last chance, Chronicler had said. “I don’t have that,” Kellen said feeling as if flood waters lapped at his feet, soon to rise and drown him.

  He glanced at Abby and Izmit. Both seemed at a loss. Chronicler betrayed nothing. Kellen wasn’t sure, but the Arbiter seemed to be getting impatient. Its fan began to undulate at a faster rate. Did chines even have body language? Did they get upset? Impatient? He had no idea.

  “You agree you have no citizen status, nor any contract of indenture?” Arbiter said.

  Perhaps he wasn’t being evasive enough. He’d never been good at lying, even when it would have saved him a lot of trouble. Kellen turned to Chronicler with an imploring look.

  “I must now convene a jury for your trial,” Arbiter said.

  Screens appeared hanging in the air. Kellen counted fifteen. Each one displayed video of a chine.

  “Trial?” Izmit asked voice rising in pitch. “What have we done?”

  “How did you arrive in the city? Were you fabricated here or elsewhere?” Arbiter asked.

  “We came from beneath your city.” Abby pointed back the way they’d come. “We’re from Earth, but we don’t know how we got here.”

  “You don’t know? Is your memory deficient?”

  “We really don’t know,” Kellen said.

  “But we want to be here,” Izmit added. Abby looked at him sharply, but he kept talking. “We’ve been trying to get here our whole lives.”

  “Who created you?” Arbiter asked.

  Kellen looked at the others. From their blank looks, they were equally confused.

  “Our parents,” Izmit said.

  “And who are they?”

  “Ahmad and Pinar Yilmaz,” said Izmit.

  Kellen named his parents and Abby hers.

  “None of these are on the Rolls of Citizenry,” Arbiter told them. “You maintain you are from Earth?”

  “Yes,” Kellen said.

  Noise rose from the crowd. Electronic multilingual burblings, sounds Kellen couldn’t fathom, but he doubted they meant well.

  “Travel to and from Earth was terminated more than two centuries ago. Yet you state you have traveled here illegally from Earth. Jury note the admission. Clearly they are either insane or criminal, unless this is a hoax, which would also be criminal.”

  “So noted,” the jury said.

  “Since you’ve been here, what have you done?” Arbiter asked.

  “Nothing,” Kellen said. “We came up from below and walked to a courtyard.”

  “To the revitalization center, yes. And then you proceeded to hijack an ascender.”

  “What? No!” said Kellen. The accusations set off alarm bells. Hijack. Criminal. Insane. He tried to imagine where the questions were heading, but it was becoming difficult to think clearly. “We boarded the ascender for transport, but we didn’t hijack anything.”

  “Was your intent to commit terrorist acts in the city?”

  “No,” Izmit said. “That’s crazy.”

&nb
sp; “Are you impersonating humans as a hate campaign against the retro-biological minority?”

  “The retro-what?” Abby said. “We don’t even know what that means.”

  “You’ll now be scanned for any weapons,” Arbiter said. “Recycler.”

  The crab-like chine stepped forward and pointed one of its smaller appendages at Kellen. The appendage opened into a flower-like structure. Minutes passed as it scanned Kellen, then the others. The irony of their situation stuck in Kellen’s throat, threatening to choke him. They’d come so far, only to be as distrusted as they’d been on Earth. He’d assumed chines would be fair, logical, and just. In his dreams, they’d always welcomed him. The sense of betrayal was suffocating.

  Recycler withdrew its scanner. “Negative result.”

  “No evidence of criminal intent detected,” Arbiter said, facing the jurors. “Aside from their illegal status, the anonymous accusations appear to have little merit.” It then turned to Chronicler. “And you, citizen. What is your self-identifier? What is your involvement with these unregistered individuals?”

  “I also am unregistered,” Chronicler said. “You may refer to me as Sutodore-8.”

  Chronicler’s words deepened Kellen’s confusion. If Chronicler was also unregistered, how would indenturing themselves to it have made any difference?

  Arbiter paused. The jurors murmured in their screens.

  “Another unusual identification,” Arbiter said. “You admit to unregistered status?”

  “Yes.”

  “So noted. The jury will now deliberate.”

  Kellen traded glances with the others, but he didn’t dare speak. A sense of unreality crept over him, and he fought the urge to laugh. Were they really being tried by a jury of chines in an artificial world?

  “Verdict received,” the Arbiter said. “Kellen Beaudin, Abigail Tau, Izmit Yilmaz, and Sutodore-8, as illegal beings, you are hereby exiled. I now place you in the custody of this recycler to carry out your sentence.”