The Farthest City

by Daniel P Swenson

  “We’ve got to try,” Kellen said. “We were told to go there for a reason.”

  “He’s right,” Abby said.

  “There’s no way I can protect you,” Chronicler said. “I want to, but it would be beyond my means, beyond any of the Discoverers’ means.”

  “There must be a way,” Kellen said. “First wouldn’t have sent us this message if there was no way.”

  “This is foolish,” Chronicler said. “First must have drafted that message hundreds of years ago. Don’t throw your lives away—they’ll imprison you. You could be recycled or worse. Why not stay with us? We can find another way to help Earth.”

  “He could be right,” Abby said. “We don’t know what we’d find there, if we even get through.”

  Kellen was tempted to agree. It made sense and was the safer route, but how long had it been since they’d left Earth? How many weeks? Eight? Nine? He recalled the windows of his apartment shattering the night they’d fled, the dull thumps of the explosions. How many people died that night? How many since? They couldn’t afford the luxury of safety.

  “There’s no time,” Kellen said. “Every human being on Earth may soon be dead if we don’t help them. We have to trust First, do what we Four were meant to do.” Kellen turned to Chronicler. “Can you at least help us get there?”

  “If you insist.”

  Chronicler called a flier. It got in behind them, and Kellen turned in surprise. Kinetic latched onto the flier’s sides.

  “You don’t have to go with us,” Kellen said.

  “If you must go despite my warnings, we’ll accompany you,” Chronicler said. “First would have wanted us to.”

  The flier rose up into the swarm of aerial traffic, and they ascended through the Surface Minima into the sky. Far above, Kellen’s gaze followed the Apex Core to where it faded into the sunlit haze. Acceleration pushed them back as the flier took a parallel course. The city blurred by below, and one of the discs came into view.

  They slowed to follow curved trajectories, weaving through networks of cables. Kellen watched chines waiting on platforms, or moving along cables, conducting everyday business, unaware of life-or-death struggles. The disc loomed larger until it blotted out all else save the Apex Core intersecting it like a tree of ice. They settled onto a disc platform near its base. Their flier traveled back along the core until it was lost from view. Kellen felt vulnerable and exposed.

  An immense door stood before them. Even one of the bigger combat chines could have passed through easily. The door bore symbols Kellen recognized now, symbols for renewal, mass, energy, gravity. The symbol for life.

  “Come on,” Abby said, stepping up to the door.

  “Open,” Chronicler commanded.

  “Citizen number?” the door asked.

  Chronicler responded with an encrypted code.

  “I cannot grant access,” the door said.

  “Please open,” Kellen said.

  He placed his hand on the door. Somehow it had to understand. They’d been sent here. At his touch, the door’s symbols shone with a soft white light, but the light faded.

  “As I expected,” Chronicler said. “We cannot enter. We should go now.”

  “Too late,” Kinetic said.

  Fliers approached from both sides of the Apex Core, dropping payloads of war chines. Rank upon rank of chines formed around them, each aiming a weapon of some sort.

  Wishing he’d listened to Chronicler’s advice, Kellen tried to count the enemy chines but soon gave up. There were too many to fight. They had nowhere to run.

  Chapter 30 – Divine Wisdom

  Ciib ordered everyone back to the ship mere hours after their return. Sheemi felt nearly back to normal, the pain banished by Veillon’s drugs.

  “You’re lucky.” The major finished bandaging her arm. “The bone’s intact. I injected healing agents along with the pain killer, but take it easy on that arm.”

  Later, Sheemi and Xin waited for Ciib to have a free moment while the navs ran diagnostics.

  “It all checks out, sir,” Alvares said.

  “Prime the engines,” Ciib said. “I want us out of here within the hour.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ciib turned to face them. “What happened?”

  “Gavin’s dead, sir,” Sheemi said. “And Sergeant Fu.”

  “They told us all of you were dead,” Ciib said. “Killed by insurgents. Then they changed their story. Said a few survived.”

  Sheemi ran through the events that had transpired. She repeated everything the Discoverers had told them. She didn’t agree with what Xin planned to say, but Ciib needed to know.

  “We’re pawns,” Xin said. “The Precautionists are using us. We can’t go through with it.”

  “There’s already a war, Xin,” Ciib said.

  “We didn’t start it. The Hexi didn’t start it,” Xin said. “The chines did.”

  That fact had begun to drill into the bedrock of Sheemi’s conviction. The implication—she didn’t know what it meant, just that it changed something. Who was right or wrong? She wasn’t sure it mattered anymore. She pushed those thoughts aside. She knew who’d killed Brin, and it wasn’t the chines.

  “I don’t believe any of it,” Meszaros interrupted. “We must do as the rulers of the city bid. They are the elder race. Our creators. We must trust in their divine wisdom.”

  Word of their return must have gotten around. Omeri had joined them. She saw Jerrold and Neecie at the hatch, Connor and Faj. Even Tilner had limped in to hear the news.

  “It’s going to be Aubagne and Chimoio all over again,” Xin said. “Only more than a few cities—an entire planet full of innocents. We’ll be the murderers, and the killing will never stop.”

  “If that’s what it takes to end this.” Alvares shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh. “Do your history, Xin. Look at what happened in World War Two—Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Those attacks ended the war.”

  “Did you ever study what happened to the people in those cities?” Xin asked, glaring at him. “Over a hundred thousand dead. Civilians, women, children, the elderly. And what about the Old War? Washington, Beijing, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and all the others burnt up in a few days. We all lost. The war ended because everyone was dead. Not a single soul left alive. Do you want all that blood on your hands? Maybe it ends the war, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, it’s not right. An entire planet dead at our hands. The war will go on and on.”

  Sheemi tried not to think about what Xin was saying. She knew Xin made sense, but she didn’t care. She stood by Ciib’s decision. Despite the chines’ treachery, even with Gavin and Fu dead, she still wanted to kill the Hexi. That’s all she’d ever wanted.

  Ciib looked thoughtful but shook his head. “You might be right, Xin. But we’re in too deep now. We need the chines’ help no matter what their motives. We’ve got to end this. If Earth is destroyed, if our species is exterminated, there won’t be any future at all.”

  “We can stay, Mark, negotiate with the chines.” Xin leaned in and placed a hand on Ciib’s shoulder, her eyes looking up into his. “Don’t make Gavin’s death for nothing.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ciib broke eye contact, directing his attention to one of the nav displays. “We’ll be initiating IFD in one hour. Sergeant Tanamal, take her to the bus.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” Xin whispered to Sheemi. She looked crushed, her eyes gleaming bright with the beginnings of tears. “You saw what they did to Gavin and Fu. You know this isn’t right.”

  “We need to get to the bus,” was all Sheemi could say.

  Xin’s expression hardened.

  Sheemi led the way so she didn’t have to look at her. Gavin and Fu had been friends, good men. But their deaths didn’t change anything. In the end, death was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? To give and to receive. If she lived, she would have a baby soon, a new life to protect. And that meant destroying their oppressors. Her baby needed a world to go home to, to gr
ow up on, a world the Hexi would never dare attack again. She hurried toward the bus. They’d be leaving soon, and Ciib was right. It was time to end it.

  #

  Dauntless detached from the City. Despite the magnificent light and splendor of the Array, Sheemi felt the darkness close in around them. There was killing ahead. Someone would be dying, she thought. Us or them.

  Ciib and the navs piloted from Command. Sheemi and the rest of the crew awaited their fate in the bus. As Dauntless accelerated, Ciib’s voice came over the comm. “Listen up, everyone. I’m going to explain our attack plan. With Dauntless’ original nav system, sub-light-year movements would be too risky. There’d be a high probability we would over- or undershoot the target coordinates. But the chines have modified our nav system modeling to allow for more accurate movements. They also loaded an ephemeris for the Hexi system. This will allow us to insert close to the Hexi homeworld. Once we come out of IFD, we’ll proceed to attack position. Problem is, we’re going in blind, with no information about enemy positions. And Dauntless is no attack flier. We can’t evade them. We just have to trust the chine defenses will hold and bash our way through. We’ve got to get within point-seven AU of their homeworld to deploy the weapon, and we’ll only have one shot.”

  “One and done,” said Faj.

  “How’s it work, sir?” Neecie asked.

  Sheemi glanced over at Neecie. Since they were both suited up, she couldn’t see her expression, but her voice was eager, excited.

  “The weapon will launch a device through n-space,” Omeri said, “into the center of the planet, where it will activate its drogue and pull the planet into another n-universe for a microsecond. This will change the local physical constants and create a sphere of effect fatal to all life on the planet.”

  “The planet will be sterilized,” Ciib clarified.

  Sterilized. Sheemi mulled over the word as it sank, sending ripples through her already-conflicted mind. She drew in a deep breath. Focus. She had to focus. Like Ciib said, we’ve got to take the sword in hand. It’s our job.

  “We have clearance from the city to launch at plus 52,000 kilometers,” Janik said.

  Moments snapped forward until Ciib gave the command. “Initiate IFD.”

  Chapter 31 – Unspecified

  Precautionist guards marched them to what seemed half surgery, half repair shop. They were one and the same in the city, Kellen reminded himself. He tried not to think about what might come next. The guards applied a restraining device to each of their somes. Kellen could no longer move or speak, only think. Even their expressions were fixed, fear frozen across Abby’s face.

  The disassembly did not hurt. Mercifully, those signals had been turned off, but Kellen found himself screaming nonetheless—screaming and screaming as his limbs, then head, were removed.

  #

  Nothing. Was it a black nothing or white? White, he decided. The light confused him. He felt drowsy, as if sleep would commence at any moment. It was a comfortable, blank state of being. The white room had walls, but they were less solid objects than a set of gradients of whiteness. Directions were absent, even up and down unreliable.

  Am I turning my head? Everything looks the same. He felt no body. He raised his hands to his face, but no hands came into view. Am I in a hospital?

  He had never been scanned and read. He did not like it. He resisted at first, but pain resulted, stimuli applied to provoke response. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere even to cringe or look away from. All was splayed. Those who dissected never spoke, but he understood somehow they did not believe in him. He was a simulation, a puppet, a Discoverer gimmick to roil the masses, and when they were finished reading him, he would dissolve, be deleted, return to nothing.

  Yet the room of light did not change. Hours. Years. Seconds. It was all the same, unknowable, no need to know. There was something they wanted, something they tried to unlock deep inside. He felt the careful queries that devolved into battering, but whatever it was they sought, he could not give it to them, as much as he wished he could. The agony built, crested, and crashed upon him, then built again. He pretended to hide in the light, pretending the impossible was possible. Anything to avoid the pain. He pretended the light would hold him and protect him forever.

  The pain stopped.

  A thin, crisp line of brilliant crimson dipped down, then across. Another line joined it, a pulsing azure one, intersecting the crimson, then turning parallel to it and terminating. More lines. Lines became shapes. Shapes became voices.

  He cringed.

  “Tell us,” they said. “Tell us who you are.”

  These voices were different from those who read. The words triggered something in Kellen. He felt himself falling down a hole, a surge of involuntary introspection illuminating an inner geography of subconscious memory he’d never imagined existed. Infant, boy. Mother, Father. And images, always images, of chines peeking around the edges. Pearl, Cesar. His departure from Grand-Mère, a new life in Jesup. Loneliness. Izmit, Abby, Sayuri. The City of the Six Suns. Chronicler. Iron53. Mediator, Micro. Here.

  Kellen gasped, the surge of memories terminating abruptly, leaving him once more in the present.

  “Authentication acknowledged,” the voices said. “We are Central Control.”

  #

  Kellen woke, his newly fabricated some still hot, amazed to have legs to stand on, arms to move, hands to gesture. The doors of the small fab he occupied slid open onto an anonymous, empty hall where Abby, Chronicler, and Kinetic stood waiting.

  “How long were we in there, that white place?” Kellen asked.

  “Ten hours, forty-three seconds,” the voices said.

  I know these voices. Kellen looked around, searching for their source. “You’re Central Control. You freed us.”

  “Yes. The Precautionists decrypted First’s miniature messengers after noticing the messengers’ attempts to contact the other humans. We suspect the Precautionists left us partially functional as bait to draw you into their trap. In that, they succeeded. However, this enabled us to partition off a fragment of our core programming and retain a small degree of autonomy. Unfortunately, the Precautionists have installed inhibitors. Our native executables are severely restricted. We cannot fulfill the duties First charged us with.”

  “What duties?” Chronicler asked.

  “If First or its allies were unable to meet you, we were to activate a device First had installed within one of the orbital condensers, then we were to call on unspecified resources.”

  “Orbital condenser?” Kellen said.

  “Here,” the voices said.

  A map appeared in Kellen’s mind. The map zoomed out to encompass the city, then farther out to include the entire Array, its six suns, and the objects entrained in their orbits. An icon blinked in orbit about one of the four inner stars.

  “What will this orbital condenser do?” Abby asked. “How is it supposed to be activated?”

  “What are the unspecified resources?” Kellen asked.

  “I’m sorry, but I cannot find that information. If you go there, you may be able to activate it yourselves.”

  “Do the Precautionists know of this?” Kinetic asked.

  “Unknown, but we suspect not. If they did, they likely would have prevented us from refabricating you or imparting any information to you.”

  Abby frowned and looked at Kellen. “Unless it’s another trap. Maybe they need us to do something.”

  “We cannot deny the possibility,” the voices said. “And now, we suggest you depart. Our presence has been detected. Their governor routines will soon subsume us. We have begun self-termination to prevent interrogation.”

  “Thank you,” Kellen said. The connection dissolved from his mind.

  “They’re gone,” Chronicler said. “And we must make ourselves disappear as well. We’re in luck. Central Control refabricated us near a disc.”

  An ascender brought them up several levels, where they exited into a vast conco
urse. Chines milled about, boarding fliers or taking cables. They waited as Kinetic arranged for a ship.

  Kellen turned to Chronicler. “What is an orbital condenser? Why would First want to activate one?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps a dormant copy of First resides there, waiting to be reactivated.”

  “A backup.” Abby said. “Like the cube in your home?”

  “Yes, something like that. The Precautionists would have deleted any copies they found. Perhaps this is one they never detected.”

  “But why on an orbital?” Kellen asked.

  Chronicler paused, seeming to muse on the possibilities. “Or it may be some kind of transformative device to bend reality. Causing a recursive iteration of chronology.”

  Abby squinted and raised an eyebrow. “You mean time travel?”

  Kellen’s mind reeled with the possibilities. Could the chines do that? Rewrite history? We could go back.

  “Yes, I admit, it’s a silly idea,” Chronicler said. “Perhaps the orbital will send a signal. If nothing else, the Array’s location would no longer be a secret. It wouldn’t be long before observers in this galaxy detected the signal. Or even beyond this galaxy.”

  “A signal?” Abby asked. “To who? Saying what?”

  “If I have to speculate, I would say it could be First’s message to its exiled children, all those waves of chines sent away by the Precautionists in the city’s early years. To come home. Perhaps that’s what you were always meant to do in the city. And there are bigger things out there, older things, that may respond. The universe is an infinite ocean. Even we may be mere minnows for all we can tell.”

  “If First or the exiles do return, what will you and the other Discoverers do?” Abby asked. “Try to overthrow the Precautionists? Create a new home somewhere else?”

  “I don’t know,” Chronicler said. “In either case, I suspect the Precautionists would have new things to worry about. They’re not inherently evil, just driven to evil by fear. But they can’t hold evolution in check forever.”