by Greg Chase
Sam feared he’d partnered up with the only reputable pirate in the solar system. “They’re being given a purpose. It’s not like they can move to another moon and take up their old jobs. We’ll call it a system upgrade. Is your computer lagging? Do you find you don’t have the capacity you need? Then each Tobe will just coordinate with the household Tobe. And as the new arrivals won’t be known by the human population, they’ll still be free to conduct business for me in their free time.”
The captain glared at Sam. “Only thing worse than a slave owner—someone who uses another’s devotion.”
Rhea shook her head. “It’s not like that. They’d be spreading the word about the freedom network. We can’t approach every Tobe on every moon and convince them to become their own server. We are going to need help.”
The captain looked over at the empty copilot’s seat. “What do you have to say about this?”
Ronny materialized, mangier than ever. “If they want to leave, take them. What do you care what they do once they reach their destination?”
Alphonse let out a deep breath. “One trip. I’m not dropping these beings off on countless moons. Taygete’s our next stop. It’s not very big, so I’m not sure you’ll be able to sell all your cargo, but it’s where we’re headed. Not the most exciting of corporations, but they do a fine business providing food synthesizers to the other moons. There’s always a market for food.”
Back in space, Rhea sat down with Jess and Sam. “All twenty-seven Tobes are accounted for and comfortable.”
Jess nodded. “Not as many as we’d hoped but also not so many that we’ll cause a disturbance on Taygete. Tell me again how this transfer works, Rhea.”
“We have some redundancy. I am directly connected to Sam. Wherever he goes, I can go too. And with the freedom network, I can act as a miniature server to help power other Tobes. Of course, any of them could be their own server on the network. In theory, once we’ve established Tobe servers on every moon, any of us can instantly travel anywhere we wish. Until then, we’re kind of colonizing our way forward. The challenge, and the reason I am needed, is these Tobes are still discovering their position on the new network and what they can do, so they look to me for guidance and a bit of support.”
“And once we deliver them to Taygete?” Jess asked.
“They’ll be on their own. But by then, I will have explained how to draw power from the freedom network. They can then introduce other Tobes to our new reality. Working for the residence households is really just a cover. But I suspect a number of them are looking forward to once again having that sense of purpose.”
“Their positions will be new for them, though,” Sam said. “On Praxidike, they were sticks, for the most part.”
“They can still be sticks in people’s homes. Not all household Tobes spend their time enticing people to do as the network requests. Some act more like observant parents to their families. Even that’s not entirely accurate. With the new network, designations like carrot and stick no longer have any meaning.”
“You’re free to determine who you want to be?” Jess asked.
Rhea only partially grinned. “It’s still very new. The more of us that join the network, the more we’ll discover about ourselves.” She looked up at Sam from under her eyebrows. “There’s something else—something I’ve been putting off. The CE isn’t on your surface like it would be on a normal person. It’s not even just below the surface like it was on Lysithea.”
Sam smiled, and the golden aura glowed from his emotion. “It’s surrounding every cell in my body. Even more than that—every thought, every emotion, every part of me is connected to this thing.”
Jess displayed a look of panic. “So they have complete control of you?”
Sam shook his head. “Other way around. It’s not even like Rendition. On Earth, I can’t help but get information when my brain thinks of a question. This time, I’m at the controls. They’re not listening in to my mind anymore, but I have unlimited access to theirs.”
Rhea’s sigh included a hint of fear. “It’s true. When Sam pulled me out of the network back at Althea’s, I still had self-will. I could fight him. Even afterward, I was a separate being. Now there is a direct connection. A hand can’t help but do what the brain tells it to do.”
Jess crossed her arms. “So all the Tobes on all the moons will now bow to your will, or does this power extend to Earth too? And there’s no way to remove it? I guess you being god of the Tobes isn’t a joke anymore.”
Sam raised his hands. “It’s not like this was my idea. And of course I’m not going to force my will on anyone. It’s just a new reality, again.”
“One more bit of bad news,” Rhea said. “On both Erinome and Praxidike, we left a following behind us. I’d really like to say it was just you, Sam. But there is also a story about me being your spokesman. Well, you can imagine.”
Jess pressed her lips together. “Imagine what?”
Rhea looked at the ground in front of Jess’s feet. “I guess you’d have to call it a religion. Sam performed miracles. There’s just no other word for it. And he’s offering freedom. Add to that my story of being saved as confirmation of his abilities, and you create a following that’s hard to control.”
“It was a near thing on Earth, Jess,” Sam said. “If it hadn’t been for Ellie and Joshua explaining our actions and motives, there would have been some misconceptions there as well. And we had the opportunity to guide the Tobes on Earth while they were still developing. They’d never encountered the forced will the Tobes have endured out here.”
“Is there anything we can do to stop this growing religion?” Jess asked.
Rhea shook her head. “It’s not one religion. The Tobes on Erinome were well off compared to Praxidike—two very different societies that Sam dealt with in very different ways. Hence, two religions that only have the most basic of similarities.”
Jess sighed. “Peachy. So now we’ve got two religions, and we’re apt to create new ones everywhere we go.” She looked over at Sam, whose aura was becoming hard to contain. “And with you going all golden, I suspect the next moon will tell stories about the otherworldly glow that surrounded your soul.”
Rhea cleared her throat. “Not just two religions.”
Sam thought Jess’s head might explode. “What do you mean not just two?”
Rhea stammered out her words. “Well, Tobes like Arry and Dominic, they weren’t really on board with Sam as god.”
Sam knew better than to pussyfoot around a bit of bad information with Jess. Unfortunately, his creation hadn’t learned that truth yet.
Jess’s face grew red. “Stop acting like a little girl who got caught exploring her sexual power with some innocent boy, and tell me what you’re talking about.”
Rhea looked Jess in the eye. “They’ve started a counterreligion that worships the old network.”
15
Sam thumbed through his shirts in his sleeping cabin aboard Rover. With only three people and twenty-nine incorporeal beings aboard—the twenty-seven from Praxidike plus Rhea and Ronny—the ship was empty and yet at the same time full. It felt ghostly. Questions from the recently freed and rescued Tobes circled through his mind. But he’d learned to fear his thoughts. Any answers he might offer could too easily be put down as the word of god, to be held holy and worshiped.
Jess frowned from the bed as he laced up his shirt. “What else do you have to wear?”
At least the loose-fitting pants and shirt weren’t attempting to suffocate him with their needs. “What do you mean? I like this outfit. You made it for me.”
“And I love that you love it. But that damn golden aura makes the tan color look kind of like vomit.”
He inspected his arm. She had a point. He’d hoped the color change had only been due to the CE coating his eyes. But his skin did have twice the golden glow of everything else he laid eyes on. “You should see the world like I do. Everything’s covered in it.”
Je
ss got off the bed to grasp the lapels of his shirt. “This isn’t funny. Isn’t there some way you can turn down the glow? No one else has their CE out for everyone to see. Why is it always you who has to be difficult?”
“It’s not like I prefer to look like this. Don’t you think I’d get rid of the damn thing if I could?”
Jess yanked the shirt open. “Okay, but let’s see if we can tone it down a little. Go try on some other colors.”
Sam spent an inordinate amount of time trying on outfit after outfit. On Earth, he’d have sworn Jess was doing it just to make him her plaything. But each combination of clothes only elicited grunts of frustration from her.
“Go back to that white suit,” Jess said. “At least the light bouncing off it lessened the intensity of the glow.”
“I think I’d rather have people feel like throwing up if it’s between that and being seen as holy.”
Jess sat back in the chair. “Then go naked. Because as near as I can tell, it’s naked or white. Everything else just makes me think you need a good long bath.”
Sam looked down at the lime-green shirt, which had turned the color of swamp-water sludge. “Maybe I do.”
As he struggled back into the celestial white garment, he gave serious consideration to just going nude. The Tobes wouldn’t care, and showing them their god with all of his blemishes had its appeal. But being incarcerated for indecent exposure by the human population, and the subsequent Tobe rescue, wouldn’t help him maintain his low profile. “I’m staying around the shuttle this time. Maybe if I don’t go out there, I won’t generate the following I have on the last two moons. Rhea can help the Tobe refugees from Praxidike find homes on Taygete.”
“I suppose we could use a break,” Jess said. “We haven’t talked much since this whirlwind adventure started. If Rhea needs help, she can bring a delegation here.”
Sam took a seat facing her. “I know you don’t agree with my taking on this persona.”
“You tried so hard to avoid this eventuality on Earth. Out here, you’re embracing it.”
The indictment wasn’t anything he hadn’t made against himself, but the lack of time necessitated drastic measures. “I learned a lot from that first contact with Rhea. People have an almost genetic fear of highly intellectual beings coming to enslave them. For the Tobes of Earth, we had time to gradually introduce them to human society. If we’re not careful out here, we could be turning loose the oppressed on their masters. The Moons’ Tobes would be happy to overthrow their corporate masters if they could. They have to learn to control that desire to dominate.”
“And you think by being their god you can control them?” Jess asked. “I’m beginning to agree with Alphonse. It sounds like just another way to subjugate a race of beings.”
“I don’t want them to serve me, and I don’t want this power I have over them. They have to embrace free will. But if we don’t first teach them respect for people, they’ll get the idea they’re a superior life-form. If they see me as god, maybe that will help even out their overall perspective of mankind.”
Jess shook her head. “The god thing is bad enough. I’ve never been comfortable with that, and I never will be. But the whole religion thing really bothers me. It’s so archaic.”
“Again, my love, you weren’t raised like everyone else.” Sam realized the topic had never come up in his time living in the agro pod or on Chariklo. His role as shaman had nothing to do with beliefs, only with helping people interact. “What did the village teach you about religions?”
Jess stared out at the sky, leaving Sam to wonder if she was searching out their dead planet. “I was only five when we moved into the agro pod on Leviathan. I think Doc started teaching me his philosophy about moral education before that.”
Sam sat forward on his chair. “I assumed religion and morality parted ways generations ago.”
“What Doc taught me, and the others too, was that religion was originally a way to indoctrinate the population in what was socially acceptable. Every group has to agree on rules for their members—otherwise, it’s just every person doing as they see fit. Things like democracy and education were still a long way off for those early tribes, so it was easier to say some unseen being wanted people to do, or not do, certain things.”
“So god never was anything other than an excuse to bully people into some set standards of conduct?” Sam asked.
“Oh, no. The people in charge took their positions very seriously. If you think about it, what they were saying was revolutionary for their time. They were trying to take individuals, whose survival depended on every man for himself, and turn them into members of a society who helped one another.”
Sam grimaced. “But it still sounds like a small group telling a larger group to behave or else.”
“It’s not like the small group had some education on the subject. When they did get an idea of how people should relate, they might well have thought they were hearing the voice of God. Be good to one another? That’s pretty out-there thinking. Not the kind of thing you’re going to want to hear coming out of your individual thoughts, so they’d conclude the idea must have come from a higher being.”
With his connection to the Tobes, Sam had often wondered which ideas were inspirations from his brain and which were delivered from the mental bond. He tried to see what it must have been like for those early people. “So individuals who are used to living in small family groups come together to form the earliest villages, but they don’t all agree on how to treat each other. After all, living in separate caves, it’d be acceptable to kill off your neighbors for their food if you were hungry. It’s not like there’d be laws to stop you. All you’d really care about is the people in your own group.”
“Exactly. No gathering of people is going to come together if they each think the other members might kill them at any moment. But people are social animals. We have an inherent desire to be with others.”
Sam thought he could see where she was headed. “Then there are always those who want to be in charge, or who wish to help—basically, the leaders.”
Jess smiled. “It happens even to the best of us.”
Sam shot her an intense look. “I’m just trying to follow your progression.”
“Most of what we take for granted about social interactions is pretty advanced citizenry. The higher good, putting others ahead of yourself, looking out for the future—these aren’t humanity’s natural states. And without some means of education, we’d have never gotten beyond the kill or be killed stage.”
“So religion was the earliest form of education on how people should interact?”
“It’s what I was taught,” Jess said. “Doc left it for me to decide if those first ideas came from people discussing what would be best for their tribe or from some unseen supernatural force. Either way, religion was how that message got conveyed. It had to be delivered with enough force that the population would want to obey.”
Sam continued to imagine himself as a member such a tribe. “I suppose with nothing in the way of laws or jails or police, people would need something else to deter them from breaking the rules.”
“The way Doc described it, those leaders didn’t want to punish anyone. They wanted people to see each other as equals, so having a higher power that could do the punishing lifted the burden off their shoulders. They were free to try and help.”
Sam laughed in derision. “That didn’t last long.”
Jess didn’t find the comment funny. “No, it didn’t, Sam. And that’s my fear for you and these new religions you’ve got spinning in your wake.”
“Again, this isn’t my idea.”
Jess shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get ahead of myself. Eventually, people did develop things like laws—originally based on the religious teachings. People who’d done wrong weren’t left for God to deal with—society had a role. And the leaders didn’t want to spend all their time figuring out who’d done what, so police, courts, all that good
stuff came about.”
“So religion no longer had a role—it’d been replaced by the human equivalent?” Sam asked.
Jess gave him a pained look. “Have you ever heard of a religion saying it had fulfilled its design and was going to fade into the background of people’s lives? Human institutions could take over the nitty-gritty of dealing with killers, thieves, and the like. But people don’t just go out and do wrong—there’s that whole morality breakdown that precedes the wrongdoing.”
“And who better to take on the role of moral high ground than religion?”
“This is where Doc speculated on the real reason religions are still around. Societies still needed those common ideals that bond their members together—not just concepts about right and wrong, but higher goals as well. They wanted to look to what a people might strive to become. Those visions of a better future came from the people, but you can’t come out and say that. Anytime a group comes out and says ‘Here, this is who we should strive to become,’ another group is going to come out against it.”
“So that higher power still gets called on to be the figurehead it always was—the threatening voice of retribution.”
“More like the guiding light toward a higher state of being,” Jess said. “But one that can be blamed if it all goes to hell or take the credit for relieving certain individuals of having to be something they’re not.”
Sam closed his eyes. “So religion exists to impart a society’s shared vision of morality and present a goal for the future of humanity.”
Jess shrugged. “That’s what I was taught. Now, if you can figure out how to do that for the Tobes while actually being that higher power, I’m all ears.”
Sam thought for a minute. “I suppose it was important that the higher power wasn’t actually present in how Doc taught the lesson?”
“That was another of the items he left for me to answer on my own.”
“I’ll confess, the idea of being less involved in the Tobes’ evolution does appeal to me,” Sam said. “But the history of human religions isn’t very encouraging.”