The Myth of the Maker

by Bruce R Cordell

  Paldridge started. He said in a hesitant voice, “Uh, yes. Everything looks to be in order. Preliminarily, of course. I’ll have to download and read through the specs. I imagine we’ll want some modifications, based on what I find.”

  Jason wasn’t looking at Paldridge. His eyes, fixed on Carter’s bleeding form, grew wider every second. He suddenly screamed over Paldridge’s ramble, “I knew it! Fucking Carter Strange, back in the flesh.”

  “He got shot,” Liza offered, obviously unhappy at the admission.

  “Really?” said Jason. “I doubt that’ll keep him down for long. Or another one just like him, if this one croaks off. Thank the Maker I prepared for this contingency. Banks, put on the ring. Quick!”

  “What? Why?” she said, confusion and perhaps a bit of caution in her voice. “What would that accomplish?” She glanced down at Carter, eyes narrowing. Kate imagined the woman was reviewing what she’d heard of Carter’s story.

  But she held out her hand to Dr Paldridge, who relinquished the ring to her waiting palm. Liza held it up before her, gazing through the circle of the band.

  “Put it on,” Jason repeated. “It’s not as elegant as I’d planned, but that’s why I talked to the kray.”

  Liza said, “Cray? The supercomputer company? You promised no dealing behind my back, Mr Cole!”

  Jason cocked his head, then chuckled. “No, never mind. You’re still my first choice for business partner, Ms Banks. I need you to put on the ring because in order to unlock the flash drive, the ring needs a biometric signature.” He grinned, unconvincingly, Kate thought. If Kate’d been the one holding the ring, she would’ve thrown it.

  “Fine,” said Liza. But she didn’t put on the ring. Instead she hastened to where Raul was quietly taking in events from the comfort of his restraints.

  “Hey!” Raul protested, leaning away as far as he could as Liza brandished the ring at him. “Stay back. If you’re proposing, I don’t accept!”

  Liza spun Raul’s chair around. After a bit of finger wrestling with the cuffed man, she forced the ring over the first knuckle of one of his fingers.

  Raul stiffened as if the ring was electrified.

  Kate launched herself to her feet. But the cold steel barrel of a gun in her side checked her mad dash.

  “What’s happening to him?” Kate yelled at the monitor.

  “That ring is very special. Here in Ardeyn, it was once one of seven. Now it’s merely a bridge. A way to make connections. That’s what Desire promises, after all.” He laughed. “So I’m using it to come across to see you,” said Jason. Then static washed away the image.

  Raul convulsed. He screamed. His head snapped back, and his eyes lit with pale blue fire.

  Everyone in the room flinched back.

  Raul slowly relaxed. He lowered his regard until he fixed Liza Banks with a burning gaze lit with evolving fractal sparks. He said, in Jason’s voice, “It’s a cliché, but true: if you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

  13: Possession

  Jason Cole

  The pudgy computer scientist and Liza Banks inched away from Jason, almost trampling Carter, who blinked stupidly on the carpet. A circle of blood swelled by slow inches beneath him. And it was Carter. Jason could scarcely believe it. He’d been Jason’s bogeyman for decades… Now look at him. Shot and dying, and Jason hadn’t lifted a finger to put him there. It was bittersweet, how much he missed what they’d once been, and how much he’d come to hate and fear him later. Now he was about to expire.

  Carter was obviously far less dangerous than the gunman, who couldn’t decide if he should be pointing his weapon at Jason, or at a red-haired woman wearing a coal-black business suit–

  The woman is Kate Manners, whispered a voice in his head. Then, Who are you? What’s going on with–

  Jason viciously suppressed the voice. The vessel knew things Jason didn’t, but allowing it any autonomy would risk compromising his own control. It wasn’t like he really knew what he was doing. The most recent aid he’d begged from the kray allowed him to make this crossing, but that didn’t mean he understood how it worked. Thanks to the kray ambassador’s entropic seed, he was “installed” in a human mind, but he didn’t know for how long and just what his abilities were, if any.

  Liza Banks should have been the vessel. But she hadn’t put the ring from Ardeyn on her own finger, damn her, and now his hands were tied. Literally.

  “Banks,” he said, directing his gaze at BDR’s CEO. “Untie me. Before Carter gets back on his feet.”

  Banks stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. Which wasn’t far from the truth, he supposed.

  “Raul?” said the woman his vessel had named as Kate Manners.

  Jason ignored her. His initiative was crumbling; he had to get out of the bindings–

  Raul surged with renewed fervor to throw Jason out. Jason had expected the vessel to remain stunned and uncomprehending while Jason rode him. But Raul wasn’t having it. Keeping control of the body, and more importantly, the mind, was like trying to stand still in a hurricane.

  Focus, Jason told himself. He visualized Raul as a tiny point of light, and his own control as an evening darkness. The light pulsed and flitted, but Jason finally caught it. It just required concentration. Then he flooded the vessel’s bloodstream with adrenaline. The man’s muscle fibers contracted with more than normal strength. Ligaments and fibers screamed. But the restraints, actually only a sweater someone had found to tie Raul down, tore with a snarl.

  Jason stood, tossing aside the shredded polyester. He said, “Now then, as I was saying–”

  The gunman turned tail and banged out through the office door. His footfalls receded in the corridor.

  “That makes things easier,” Jason said, a grin stretching the corners of his mouth. “I would’ve been pissed if my triumphant return was interrupted by a mook with a .45.” No one knew Jason’s limitations, and if he played his cards right, they never would.

  Liza grabbed Dr Paldridge’s shoulder, but her eyes never left Jason. She said, “Do something!”

  “Um,” said Paldridge.

  Jason cracked his knuckles. “You can’t put me back in a bottle, Ms Banks. But don’t worry, I’m not staying long. Nor am I welching on our deal. I still owe you the secret to true quantum calculation. The time congruence between Ardeyn and Earth will slip if we don’t fashion a stronger anchor. If that happens, you get nothing.”

  “Time congruence?” repeated Banks. She looked at Paldridge. The pudgy man opened and closed his mouth like a carp out of water.

  “Never mind.” Jason removed the ring and gave it a once-over. It was like Desire, yet unlike. It was no longer a Ring here on Earth. But it’d made the transition, and survived it, unlike his own clone. Jason twisted the translucent jewel to reveal the USB plug.

  “Hold it! Don’t move, Raul!” came the voice his vessel instinctively responded to: Kate Manners. Jason glanced up. Sure enough, Kate had brought a gun of her own to the party.

  “I’m not Raul,” he said.

  “Jason, then,” Kate replied. “I tried to help you before, when you were sick. In the server room. And you repay me by, by…” She shrugged, but the gun barrel remained trained on him. “… hijacking my friend?”

  “Whoever you helped, it wasn’t me,” Jason said. “It was just an instance. Disposable.”

  “An instance?”

  “Like a computer program running in multiple partitions simultaneously,” Jason said. “Or you can think of the version of me you met before as a clone.” Jason sang out, to the tune of I Think We’re Alone Now, “I think I’m a clone now. There’s always more of me running arou-ound.”

  No one laughed. He blinked. Why’d he done that? He was supposed to be scaring these people, not serenading them.

  “Ooo-kay,” said Kate. “So, you’re a clone, too, right?”

  “No, I’m the original. My mind’s entangled and translated here, not duplicated. The clone you
met was Zeta, one of my lieutenants. Just between you and me, Zeta was always a bit too wishy-washy. Clones sometimes amplify my own most disagreeable traits. Happens like that sometimes.”

  Raul’s inner voice said, Chatty fellow, aren’t you?

  He was oddly talkative, Jason thought. What had gotten into him? He rubbed his eyes. Maybe he was just hungry. Or Raul was. Either way, he decided the very next thing on his plate would be to order pizza. Pizza! His mouth watered at the thought of melting cheese, crisp garlic crust, and juicy slices of pepperoni. Right after–

  “I helped your, um, clone when it needed a hand,” said Kate, interrupting his train of thought. “Help me now – let go of my friend Raul.”

  Jason regarded Kate. Despite the gun she held on him, he liked talking to her. It was exhilarating. He hadn’t really talked to another human being other than himselves for… he couldn’t remember the last time. The kray certainly didn’t count. Being cut off from Earth and living as a shadow of a broken Incarnation in Ardeyn for two hundred and some years had a way of changing a man. Maybe his aims had become too skewed, too fixed on revenge. Maybe–

  The vessel’s mind leaped for control, and knocked Jason aside. “Kate!” Raul said, “Shoot me! In the leg. Shock this hijo de perra out of my head!”

  Jason reasserted control, forcing Raul back into silence, though not completely so. Raul was proving far more adept at resisting possession than should’ve been possible. Was Jason’s erratic behavior – singing about clones, for fuck’s sake – due to Raul’s struggles? If so, then it wasn’t going to stop until Jason vacated.

  That give him an idea. Jason put up his hands and said, “No, hold on, don’t shoot me, I’m back in control. Jason’s gone!” How much he sounded like Raul, Jason wasn’t sure. He’d heard the man’s Mexican accent when he’d briefly reasserted control, and tried to duplicate it. An accent like that would be easy to overdo. But he only had to fool the woman for a few seconds.

  Kate lowered her gun a fraction. “Raul?”

  “Yes,” Jason agreed. “And I know what to do.” He leaned forward and slammed the USB stick into Liza Banks’s laptop.

  “Hey!” yelped Kate and Dr Paldridge almost simultaneously.

  Kate continued, “You said that thing was crawling with malware! How do you know Banks’s computer is isolated from the web?”

  “I’m counting on the opposite,” Jason replied. Glee stretched a circus clown grin across his stolen face.

  Kate’s gun snapped back into position. “Take it out,” she ordered. “Now!”

  Jason laughed. “Autorun code activated the moment I inserted the drive. It’s too late! Shoot me if you want, kill your friend in the process, I don’t care. I’ll just skip town, so to speak. Meanwhile, the information I want to release is already self-propagating!”

  Liza Banks said, “Wait, what? That wasn’t the deal. Only Paldridge and my people at the institute were supposed to get that!”

  “You and your friends have everything you need, Liza,” said Jason. “Which is a head start. You’ll get there first. Probably. Stable qbit chip production is something I can’t rely on just one outlet for. If your institute friends fumble it, I’m screwed. So you have, at most, a few months before the worm I uploaded becomes active, after it’s spent ninety days or so propagating all over the net. After that, who knows how many people will be able to make quantum computers according to this particular specification? I only need one to succeed.”

  And bridge the gap into the Strange, he didn’t say. Once a translation gate connected Earth and Ardeyn, he could bootstrap that into a matter gate – a gate that would allow him to return to Earth in the full glory and majesty of an Incarnation. Or maybe even as the Maker, if all his plans came–

  “Jason,” a voice whispered, this one not in his head. It was Carter! The man was sitting up, looking at him. “Don’t do it. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but do you really want to destroy your home? Do you really want to end the human race?”

  Jason felt a moment of guilt, but anger washed that away. “Carter, I just want to say, fuck you. You’ve had this coming for a couple of hundred years, my time. From the perspective of War, whose Ring you gave me, you’ve actually had it coming for thousands of years! So let me assure you: revenge is sweet.”

  Carter said, his voice weak, “You know what’s out there, in the dark energy network. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I want to be War again. You don’t know what it’s like… I want to be War without a master – the Maker – to call me to heel.”

  “But the dark energy–”

  “Call the network what we decided on: it’s the Strange. Just like what people in Ardeyn started calling you. Carter Strange, the Maker.”

  Carter only looked confused.

  Could it be? Did the dying man before him have no memory of becoming the Maker? Fuck! Jason wasn’t really getting his revenge. At least not directly. The disappointment was so palpable he almost felt slapped. Was this just a copy of Carter, one who hadn’t fucked him over by trapping him in Ardeyn?

  That’s when Raul’s mind struck again, stronger than ever. Jason’s control slipped.

  Ardeyn isn’t the only world seeded in the Strange, whispered Raul’s silent voice. Other recursions exist. One is older than even humans. It’s where I’m from. Ardeyn isn’t alone in the dark energy network. And we won’t let you destroy what we’ve spent so long cultivating. With that came a mental jolt filled with images of an alien world the like of which Jason had never imagined.

  “I don’t understand,” said Jason, or tried to. Instead, he lost his grip on Raul’s struggling psyche. Entangled particles yanked him away, back down into the primeval network.

  14: Emigration

  Carter Morrison

  “Jesus, I’m shot,” I said, for the second or possibly twelfth time. The horrifying sensation of hot blood pouring down my back from the exit wound was worse than the excruciating burning below my collarbone. I was absolutely going to die. I knew it like Stephen King knows what lurks under the bed.

  Kate yelled at the pudgy scientist, pointing with her gun barrel, “You! Help Carter. Put pressure on his wound.”

  Paldridge took a couple of hesitant steps toward me.

  Banks announced, “I’m calling the police.”

  Kate’s aim shifted a few millimeters, putting the CEO in her sights. “Don’t, or we’ll have two gunshot wounds to deal with,” Kate said.

  Banks swallowed, eyes fixed on Kate’s unwavering pistol, and stayed where she was, wringing her hands and scowling. How’d this woman get caught up in Jason’s crazy scheme?

  Kate shifted her attention to the guy Jason had puppeted. Raul? Grayness around the edges of my thoughts made it hard to think. Paldridge distracted me from hearing what Kate told him because he started tearing strips from his lab coat and tying them around my wound.

  “You’re going to be all right,” he said.

  “I don’t know what ‘all right’ means to you, but this isn’t it,” I said. Even to my own ears, my voice was tremulous.

  Kate led Raul over to where I was slumped. He was surprisingly unfazed by everything and even assisted Paldridge in completing my field dressing. Kate kept her eye on Banks.

  When they finished wrapping me, I felt weaker than ever, but at least the jacket slowed the bleeding. On the other hand, blood was already soaking the bandages. The creeping redness coincided with a cold feeling in my stomach, inching larger every minute, turning me to ice…

  “I’m going to pass out,” I said, deciding at the last second to keep the conviction of my imminent death to myself. “So we need to figure out some stuff before that.”

  Kate’s brow furrowed. “And we need a drink. Anyone but me need a drink? I mean…” Her eyes scanned down to my upper chest. “Sorry.” The PI’s face colored slightly.

  “Raul, give me the ring,” I said, “the one Ms Banks gave you.”

  Raul started, then hastily remo
ved the band. He glanced back over to the laptop on Banks’s desk. “The USB end is still plugged in. You want that too?”

  “It’s already done its damage,” I said, “but yeah, I need the whole thing.”

  Raul moved to the laptop as Kate said, “You’re going to the hospital, nothing else. Based on the amount of blood that’s already come out of you, I’m surprised you’re not already dead. Banks is right about one thing, anyway; we’ve got to call 911.”

  Manners wasn’t wrong about the blood. Someone who’d lost as much as I had shouldn’t be walking and talking. Maybe this printed version of me was tougher than Carter 1.0? Intriguing idea. But even if true, me 2.0 had shown himself not to be bulletproof.

  “So, someone was in my head…” Raul poked at his temple. “Know anything ’bout that, amigo?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Kate can fill you in with the whole story, but short and sweet: dark energy is a sea swarming with hungry sharks. When someone switches on a truly quantum computer, it’s like dumping a bucket of chum over the side of your inflatable life raft. It’s only a matter of time before something hungry swims up.”

  Raul nodded in recognition. “Yeah. That’s about right.” What an odd reaction.

  Paldridge said, “What? That makes no sense. He’s jabbering. Unless–”

  Raul punched the scientist. Paldridge stumbled backward, yelping in surprise. His heels caught a carpet edge. He fell on his butt, and glared up at Raul, rubbing his face. But he shut up.

  The gray haze thickened across my vision. I was just about out of time. “The ring!” I croaked.

  “Here,” said Raul. He clicked the two parts of the ring together and pressed it into my palm.

  I examined it. It was eerily familiar, like something I’d glimpsed in a dream once. But I couldn’t place it. According to Kate Manners, the band had printed to Earth along with Jason’s first envoy. Which meant it was an artifact of Ardeyn. It was made of baryonic matter, but it was entangled with a world beneath the world.