Godlike Machines

by Johnathan Strahan

  Officer Gluis uttered a restrained but clearly audible guffaw.

  “Hello, E. C.,” said Supervisor Nemke, taking the woman’s hand and shaking it firmly. “You’ll have to excuse young Donaldan, here. He’s new. I’ve taken the opportunity to introduce him to the realities of our work.”

  “Of course. How better?” Her manner was guarded but not hostile. I felt a feather-light touch on my faked credentials. She was searching my details as smoothly as any Guild operative. Donaldan Shea Lough: security officer in the mines of Gevira, of no interest to anyone.

  “You pronounce that. .. Lou? Luff?”

  “Low,” I answered, regaining my feet, embarrassed and furious at myself.

  “My name is Cotton. E. C. Cotton. Would you care to show me the body?”

  I did so, able to take my eyes off her face only while presenting her with the container’s morbid contents. Glancing between them, I confirmed my initial impression.

  They were the same. E. C. Cotton and the woman in the container were identical. One wasn’t the clone of the other, however; the match was far too precise to allow for either possibility. Neither was the corpse a manufactured doppelganger of the living version, since even my brief scan proved that the body had once been perfectly vital. The only remaining possibility was impossible—logically, sensibly, patently—but fitted with rumours I had previously regarded as being too strange to be true.

  While I stared at her, reassessing all my former opinions, Cotton knelt down to repeat the examination I had performed. She came to the same conclusion.

  “Without a doubt, it’s me,” she said. “No sign of foul play. Have you hacked into the dump?”

  “I thought we’d leave that to you, E. C. It’s your property, after all.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She leaned over the corpse and pressed two fingers to the bone behind its right ear. I was close enough to feel the warmth of her living body but found no opportunity to eavesdrop on the data transaction. She, like the corpse, was protected.

  “It’s empty,” she said. “The memory has been erased.”

  “Completely?” Supervisor Nemke looked disappointed.

  “I’m afraid so.” Cotton stepped back, wiped her hand on the thigh of her fieldsuit, and glanced at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, newbie. Don’t worry about it. Things like this happen all the time down here.”

  That she could be so nonchalant about it was perhaps the strangest thing of all. “Why is that, precisely?”

  “We’d all like to know the answer to that question. You’ll forget you asked, one day.”

  Not me, I swore—and I renew that pledge to you now, Master Catterson, never to become like those who live in this place, inured to all that is fearsome or fantastic. No matter how many conundrums we encounter, the insoluble is not something to be shrugged off lightly or, worse, turned into a joke.

  Gluis, smirking, wandered off to talk to the perimeter detail.

  “We’re analyzing the surveillance records of this area,” Nemke said as though this were a perfectly ordinary murder scene. “Someone must’ve placed the body here. We’ll find out who it was and—”

  “What, track them in the mines?”

  “We’ll do our best, E. C.”

  “I won’t hold my breath. In the meantime, you have my authority to dispose of the body as you see fit. Autopsy it, recycle it, donate it to science—I don’t care. I have no use for it, and no next of kin.”

  The perimeter detail snickered at something Gluis said, and I studiously ignored them. E. C. Cotton interested me more. There was something decidedly odd about her, something beyond the fact that she was simultaneously alive and dead, like some kind of Schrodinger experiment.

  Her own body lay before her, tangling her timeline in ways that boggled the mind and subtly unravelled her insouciance. Confronted with the dire certainty of her death, her self-control was predictably less than perfect. Instead of fear or grief, however, I sensed excitement. Anticipation. Challenge.

  “I want you to know I’m sorry,” Supervisor Nemke was saying in a sober voice.

  Cotton didn’t shrug aside the hand Nemke had placed on her upper arm. “Thank you. I’m glad you called me here. If I’d never known—”

  A cry of alarm cut her off. Our heads turned. The security detail had bunched as one around a fallen figure. Red blood splashed between outstretched fingers. The sight was shocking, even at a fatal crime scene. Cries for help drew people from all directions.

  Nemke pushed into the huddle. I followed, almost slipping in a crimson pool that spread fast as I approached. Cotton was beside me, her face ashen.

  The body at our feet was bruised and burst like an overripe fruit. His features were barely recognizable as male. I averted my eyes, keen both to isolate the cause of his death and to hide my revulsion,. What had killed him was not immediately apparent. If it struck again-

  “Good god,” Nemke said. She had bent down and wiped the gore from the dead man’s name badge, revealing his identity.

  Rudi Gluis.

  I felt as though I had been punched in the gut. Just a second ago, Gluis had been within meters of me, mocking me, and now he was dead, killed by persons or forces unknown. The universe rarely dispenses such immediate and well-deserved justice, so I was forced to look elsewhere for an explanation.

  The thought formed in my mind the very moment someone put it into words.

  “The Director.”

  Others took up the rumour, passing it from mouth to ear like a curse.

  My heart beat even more rapidly, if that was possible. At long last I had witnessed the work of the mine’s most deadly inhabitant.

  The list of anomalies attributed to the Geviran mines grows longer every day of my infiltration. To the staffing irregularities, the outrageous energy imbalance, the curious mineral flows, and the problems with keeping any coherent kind of calendar, we can now add a corpse whose very existence ties time in a Gordian knot.

  Of them all, however, the Director is of the most immediate import to those who live here, reminding all of their fragile position between toil and terrible fate.

  I have already collated the rumours circulating regarding its activities, many of them borne out by records purloined from the security mainframe. The pertinent points, as they returned to me at that moment, are that the Director appears rarely in the upper levels of the mine, but does so with increasing frequency as one proceeds deeper. It comes invisibly, leaving no physical record of its existence. It strikes between image frames like a ghost, killing or kidnapping its victims with chilling ease-as it killed Gluis, while his comrades laughed at my expense. The Director’s victims share no obvious connections or traits. The bodies of those taken have never been found. Its weapons and methodologies are unknown and perhaps unknowable. Its very presence is anathema to reason—yet it stays, and humanity lives alongside it, willing to accept its toll in exchange for the riches the mines bring.

  The Gevirans know as little about the Director’s origins as the Guild. If it is otherwise, they are careful to keep such knowledge from me. That lack of knowledge only makes their fear far greater. Panic is concealed beneath a veil of civilization, but the slightest twitch sets it free. One has only to see the wildness in their eyes each time the Director strikes to know how delicate the pretence is. Even I, a stranger to their world and set apart from their troubles, was briefly swept up in the moment. It could have taken any of us, I thought. It could have taken me.

  Nemke woke the entire sector and called in reinforcements from outside. E. C. Cotton’s cryptic corpse was forgotten along with the woman herself during the post mortem examination of Gluis’s wounds, and in that time she slipped our attention. We were all shaken, even I who had liked Gluis not at all and been strongly disliked in return. I am abashed to admit, Master Catterson, that more than an hour passed before I thought to ask after Cotton’s whereabouts.

  “I let her go,” Nemke said.

  “You
did what?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? I know her; we all know her. She worked here for a period, before you arrived. Looking for someone, I think, but didn’t find him, so she moved on.”

  I could barely conceal my dismay. The Director had struck for the first time in my presence just moments after E. C. Cotton arrived. Was it too much to speculate that the two things were connected? That she was the key to this confluence of mysteries was a possibility I could not ignore.

  “Where did she go?”

  “Topside. She had that look they all get, when they’ve been searching down deep—”

  “I mean just now. Did she go back up?”

  “I presume so. It’s none of our business what she does. People handle things like this differently. Some go off the rails, but she seemed—Donaldan, where are you going? We need you here!”

  I had turned my back on her and was pushing through the secure perimeter. Her cries fell behind me. I ignored, too, her subsequent requests to return to duty. Let her think I was running out of weakness, or perhaps fear, using Cotton as an excuse to flee from the Director’s handiwork. I knew otherwise.

  First I called at security HQ, where I uploaded Cotton’s personnel records into my memory dump. Even at a quick glance, they seemed inauthentic. Her full name, true or otherwise, was listed as Emmaline Celeste Cotton, and details were sketchy prior to her arrival on this level. She was 34 years old, the same approximate age as her corpse—a fact that only exacerbated the puzzle. If the body was genuine—as it appeared to be—and some twist in time had delivered it to her in advance of her actual demise, why was she unconcerned about the small amount of time remaining to her? The haste with which she had hurried off struck me as at odds with human nature—unless the body had already told her everything she needed to know, and set her off on errands unknown.

  I downloaded the audiovisual record of the body’s placement, intending to analyze this later, since surely the means of its arrival in our jurisdiction would provide a clue. Once I had that data, I traced Cotton’s movements through the mine to determine where she had got to. Hoping against hope that she had not already reached the surface, I followed her recorded image along its path through this habitat to the next. She was heading for the elevators in sector eight.

  By then I was on the move too, not stopping to fabricate an explanation for the staff at HQ. If they wondered why I was disobeying Supervisor Nemke’s orders, they said nothing. These were bridges, I decided, that I could mend on my return, for at that moment, my orders were clear: to follow the mystery for the glory of the Great Ship and the Guild. It would be a lie of omission not to add that being shamed by my pratfall in front of my erstwhile colleagues was also an incentive.

  E. C. Cotton had already left the elevator cluster by the time I arrived. With utmost haste, I determined which shaft she had taken. To my surprise, she had not gone up at all, but down-down the sole shaft connecting the upper levels to the lower. Wherever she was heading, it wasn’t back to the surface.

  I commandeered the next carriage from a gaggle of young miners heading coreward to pursue their fortunes. It was imperative that I be able to think without their distracting babble. As the carriage disengaged from the habitats, I felt a clear sense of vertigo, even though the floor beneath my feet was absolutely steady. My first visit to the lower levels wasn’t supposed to be like this. I hoped that the rumours I have been gathering for you, Master Catterson, would prepare me for what lay ahead.

  The drop lasted several minutes. In that time, I reviewed the audiovisual record. The container had not been in position as recently as a day earlier, so I jumped forward in increments of one hour to a point where it was extant, and then scrolled back. People came and went, going about the business of the mine. Some of them I recognized; others wore full-body fieldsuits with semi-opaque pressure masks covering their faces. It was one such who placed the container for Officer Gluis to discover 13 hours later, so I knew my hope of an easy answer was ill-conceived.

  The captured image was of a slender male displaying no identification, physical or electronic. His fieldsuit was different to the ones worn by miners on that level, but not so different as to attract attention. Moving calmly into view from the camera’s left, he slid the container into position and made certain it was secure, then walked just as casually out of the frame. As he disappeared, I caught a faint profile of his face through the semi-transparent mask. It was barely a glimpse, but something about it struck me as familiar. I cannot say what, exactly, and I analyze the records now with increasing perplexity. There is barely a hint of cheek and nothing more than an outline of a nose. I wonder if I am reaching at something that does not exist. How could I know the face of this mysterious man? What are the odds against such a happenstance? Nevertheless, I present the blurry image to you, Master, in the hope that you will decipher what I cannot.

  The carriage moved beneath me, the first sensation I had registered during the journey. A short time later, the doors opened. I stepped out into a very different space. Instead of cramped, dimly-lit corridors and an ever-present tang of recycled air, this level was bright to my eyes. I squinted for a moment, noting white walls, vaulted ceilings, and gleaming observation blisters set into the floor, smelling people instead of industry, and taking stock of those nearby as best I could. There were miners, officials in unfamiliar blue uniforms, and even a child walking hand-in-hand with an adult. (A child! I could barely believe my eyes. What madman would bring an infant into a mine?) Standing not four meters from me, gazing down through one of the bulging blisters, was the woman I sought.

  Emmaline Celeste Cotton looked up as I approached, and said, “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  I had no answer for her, not immediately. My attention was caught by the downward view through the blister. It showed an endless sea of lava upon which bobbed islands of semi-molten stone. Green flames licked and danced like djinns, dodged by graceful flitter-craft and ignored by sturdier extraction platforms. The habitat in which I stood hung not 100 meters above the hellish ocean, but the floor was hardly warm, and the ambient temperature perfectly comfortable. Were the environmental controls to fail, I had no doubt that we would be burned to ash in a second.

  No one but Cotton and I so much as glanced through the blisters. To them, I supposed, the view was commonplace. The human mind learns to accept all manner of wonder, if it is presented every day. The same goes for horror, as the miners’ coexistence with the Director proves beyond doubt.

  With some effort, I brought my attention to the matter at hand. “You were expecting someone.’’

  She nodded. Her eyes were light brown, I noted for the first time, and they hid a calculating mind. “Why are you here, Donaldan Lough?”

  “You left a crime scene, your own body—”

  “The truth, now. You’re not like the others. Why are you the only one to come after me, and not them?”

  You will comprehend, Master, the care with which I chose my next words.

  “None of the others seem to give a damn. You saw them. To Gluis, your body was nothing but a joke to frighten newbies—and look what happened to him. Nemke’s well-meaning but a plodder. No one’s asking the questions that need to be answered.”

  “So you’re curious.”

  “I am curious,” I said, “to know why you are going down rather than up, to your death rather than away from it.”

  She examined me as closely as I was examining her. What she saw helped her come to a decision. Although I was not privy to her reasoning, I believe I conveyed only muddled trustworthiness, and that was sufficient.

  “I’m not going any further down,” she said. “I’m going sideways.”

  “To where? There’s only one entrance to the mines.”

  “Look behind you, Donnie Boy.”

  I did as she instructed, half-anticipating that she would strike me or attempt to flee the moment my back was turned. She did neither.

  Set into the wall behind me I saw the entra
nce to the elevator shaft down which I had just descended. The gaggle of miners I had disenfranchised emerged from it at that moment, casting me dark looks but finding the observation blisters entirely more interesting. What I had not noticed-distracted in a similar fashion—was a second entrance next to the first, identical in design but with no matching counterpart on the level above.

  I crossed to it in a dozen easy strides. (It occurred to me later that I had felt lighter on this level, but that is only to be expected so much closer to the center of the planet.) The door did not open for me, despite my security credentials, and displayed no information regarding its destination.

  “Where does this lead?” I confronted Cotton right there, in front of the closed sliding doors. “Tell me.”

  “I already did. Sideways.” She raised an empty hand. “If you like, I’ll show you.”

  I tripped over the thought that she wanted to take my hand, as a lover might. Then I realized that she wished only to communicate via the receptors in her skin, the same receptors by which she had accessed her corpse’s memory dump.

  I tightened my firewalls and raised my hand in return.

  The moment our fingers touched, three strings of alphanumeric symbols appeared in my mind.

  rmei68q9ve42izms7tj

  5ek38eoqwjup40dwgg5

  TRELAYNE

  They meant nothing to me.

  “To get through that door,” she said, “you need access codes. I had one, but it was cancelled nine weeks ago. I’ve been stuck here ever since.”

  The implication was simple enough to follow: these 19-digit strings were examples of the codes she needed. “Where did you get these from?”

  “My body,” she said, with a defiant smile. “The dump was erased, but only because I wiped it clean.”

  “You lied, then. Why?”