Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  In any event, whatever my original conditioning, it is clear that I have adapted over time, so that I now can construct an entire replacement body. Only my central personality core, seat of consciousness and storehouse of memory, cannot be replaced. Once in every millennium, I construct a new body, and when it is complete, simply move the core from the old body to the new. This is the time I am at my most vulnerable, as you three should well know.

  If the process goes correctly, there is a continuance of perception from one body to the next. Though the physical bodies may differ somewhat, one to another, so long as the personality core is transferred as the new body is coming online and the old body is shutting down, “Benu” remains.

  Once, though, this did not happen. A discontinuity was introduced, and crucial data was lost.

  Ultimately, the blame is solely mine. I had waited too long to construct my new body. Having become attached to a small group of humans, I traveled with a young girl and boy, exploring the far reaches of the Paragaean continent. I'd delayed for years returning to the temple to construct my new body in safety, and when I finally had the body nearly complete, my old body gave out suddenly. Before I was able to transfer my personality core from my aged form to the new, I lost first motor control, and then consciousness.

  I collapsed, insensate. When next I opened my eyes, my systems nearly completely failed, my perceptions only taking in a fraction of the data they typically collected, I found that my new body was no longer on the slab. My first thought was that the body had been stolen, but by whom, and for what purpose, I did not know.

  I was forced to construct a new self, my systems overtaxed to support an already decaying body for another year beyond its expected termination. Much data was lost in the intervening months, corrupted and irretrievably overwritten, as the personality core took on more and more of the maintenance and upkeep of the body, normally run by the secondary control system located in the skull.

  At the end of the year, the new body was complete, and with its final ergs of energy the old body transferred the personality core to the new form before shutting down forever.

  When I opened my eyes, I had trouble adjusting to this new form. I'd gotten so used to the limited motion and prescribed perceptions of my dying body that it took many long weeks before I was able to move comfortably in the new body. My handiwork, too, had been hampered somewhat by my previous sorry state, and it was not until I was able to construct a new body, only recently, that I am able to walk without a slight limp, or to express a full range of emotions with my face. And for a millennium, I had trouble hearing the shorter wave bands of radio transmissions, but since most were naturally occurring, the result of plate tectonics and not artificially created communication signals, I didn't consider it a major loss.

  If I wondered what had become of my purloined body, who had stolen it and why, it was only infrequently, and never for long. With more pressing concerns, I just chalked it up to a mystery, and resolved to increase the efficacy of the temple guardians (for all the good that seems to have done) before constructing another replacement body.

  Had I been in better control of my faculties, had I incarnated in a new form with all my memories, senses, and capacities intact, would I have displayed greater curiosity, and bothered to check whether there was any sign of entry or invasion, to search the surrounding environs for any sign where the body might have been taken? Perhaps. But perhaps, too, in my many millennia of wandering, I had grown complacent. When a being lives as long as I have, it is very easy to dismiss perils and threats, no matter how clear and present.

  I would have occasion to regret this lack of curiosity in later centuries. Perhaps if I'd known earlier, even a few years or decades after the fact, I could have intervened, and things would have gone differently. But as it was, almost a half-dozen centuries passed before I learned what had become of the missing body, and by then it was far, far too late.

  It was on the island of Pentexoire, one in the archipelago that stretches out into the northern reaches of the Outer Ocean, off the coast of Taured, that I finally learned how much had been lost.

  I had not been in the region in long millennia, and had resolved to visit each of the cultures in the island chain, to record what changes the intervening centuries might have wrought. I passed through Mistorak, and Bragman, and came at last to Pentexoire. On my previous visit to Pentexoire, I had found it a placid and contemplative society, largely agrarian, that deeply prized the study of natural processes. A rich but sparsely populated principality, it was ruled over by a council of elders. Pentexoire had no standing army, no navy, and its principal export was scholars and thinkers. For a time, to have a Pentexoirean tutor was the distinguishing mark of quality for any wealthy scion's upbringing.

  Now, on my return to the island after so long an absence, I was surprised to see everything I had once admired about the culture stripped away. Militant, aggressive, anti-intellectual, Pentexoire was now a culture perpetually preparing for armed conflict. The centers of learning and natural study had all been shuttered and closed, replaced with temples and places of religious instruction. The locals I questioned were all fearful of outsiders, having been convinced by their religious and political leaders that all non-Pentexoire were in league with dark forces, intent only on their enslavement. Worse, some feared that I was an agent of the secret police, trying to ferret out dissidents to join the other malcontents on gibbets strung up along the thoroughfares, dying by fractions. Near the cities, the posts from which the decaying corpses swung were as thick as the trees in the forest of Altrusia, the victims numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands.

  Analyzing what I knew of the culture's history, I could not recall any societal trends that might account for such a remarkable shift. I questioned as many of the locals as would speak to me, and most of the respondents attributed their culture's movement away from learning and towards dogma—which all averred was a positive move—as the work of their tireless leader, an absolute dictator who carried the title “presbyter.” Remarkably, most of them could not recall how long the presbyter had held the throne, saying only that he had been their ruler all their lives. Considering that the oldest of the respondents was nearly in their first century in age, that meant a considerably long-lived ruler.

  I resolved to go to see this ruler for myself. When I arrived at the capital city, though, I found that the presbyter and the rest of the government had only recently departed. The court had relocated from the main residence at Nyse, to spend the warm months behind the sardonyx gates and ivory bars of the summer palace at Susa.

  After a journey of several days, I reached Susa, which was no longer the contemplative city I remembered from prior visits, once devoted exclusively to the pursuit of intellection. Now, it was a city at war, more a military encampment than a township.

  I was taken prisoner immediately on entering the city, charged with traveling without the appropriate accreditation, and taken before a military official. My physiognomy, which usually went unremarked in my travels, was a subject of considerable discussion among my captors. Of particular interest were my opalescent eyes and pale, hairless skin. My strength, even in that slipshod body, was such that I could have escaped at any moment, but I was curious to observe the Pentexoireans under their natural conditions, and this provided a perfect opportunity. One of the military officials left for some brief time, evidently consulting with some superior, and then returned, to escort me elsewhere.

  I assumed initially that I was being led to some audience or interrogation, surprised that I had not been shackled hands and feet, as prisoners typically are. Instead, I was led down a long flight of stairs to the sunless depths of the palace, to a well-appointed room lined with tapestries. I was asked to take a seat, and told that someone would be along shortly.

  I had become too reliant on my physical capacities, and once again failed to recognize potential threats. When the door to the small room closed with a clanking sound of finality, I
realized I had been tricked. The lights went out, and I was plunged into darkness. It took no more than a few minutes' investigation to reveal that behind the delicate tapestries were stone walls, unimaginably thick, and that the door through which I'd entered was of reinforced metals as thick as I was tall, an incalculable fortune in ore, here spent on keeping me imprisoned.

  Long days passed, blurring into weeks. Even without expending any energy on fruitless attempts to escape, which I knew could only fail, as the weeks passed my reserves of energy slowly leached away, and I weakened fractionally with every hour. Out of sight of the sun, in this dark pit, I gradually lost all but my final reserves of strength.

  When the door finally opened again, I could do little more than lift up my head.

  “Presbyter Ikaru will see you now,” said the uniformed man who stood at the door.

  Dragged to my feet unceremoniously, I was taken through dimly lit halls, up a winding flight of stairs, to an audience chamber of some kind. Through the open windows I could see a clear, moonless night sky.

  Sitting on a throne at the front of the room was a figure dressed in elaborate robes of jet black and blood red. He was pale and hairless, and regarded me coolly with opalescent eyes.

  “This Ikaru, then, was your purloined body?” Leena asked as they broke camp in the morning, setting out for another day's ride across the plains.

  “So I immediately surmised,” Benu answered, climbing into the saddle.

  “And yet you said Ikaru was your son?” Balam asked, cinching up the saddle on his lead draft horse.

  “Though I lack the generative capacity, in all regards I have come to look upon Ikaru as a kind of offspring, so the term is correct. From the first words we exchanged, though, I knew I had failed my son.”

  Weakened and hardly able to move, Benu said, I was deposited at the feet of the presbyter, who was seated on the throne. The uniformed man who had escorted me from my cell departed through a side door, and the presbyter and I were left alone in the audience chamber. I had energy enough to speak, but could not have taken a step unaided without depleting the last of my reserves.

  “Who are you?” Presbyter Ikaru asked imperiously. “There is some connection between the two of us—that much is obvious. With your lack of body hair, your alabaster skin, and unusual eyes…we could be brothers. I had thought I was the only one of my kind, having seen only one other like me in all my long years, and that one already dead.”

  I understood at once the reason for my long imprisonment. This Ikaru was aware of the weakness of our artificial form, and when he received word that a being who resembled himself so nearly had been discovered in the streets of Susa, he ordered me captured, and kept imprisoned out of reach of the sun's rays.

  “Answer me,” Ikaru repeated, growing agitated. I could tell he was impatient, having waited now long months for me to weaken to the point where I could be safely interrogated.

  “I am an artificial being,” I explained, though he doubtless knew. “I was forged to act as a probe for the wizard-kings of Atla, a culture that has long since sealed itself off from any congress with the outside world, millennia ago.”

  Ikaru regarded me for a long moment, scratching his chin. Though his skin was as pale as mine, it bore the scars and abrasions of many injuries, and the years hung on him more heavily than on me.

  “Am I a probe, too, then?” Ikaru asked at length. “But my memory stretches back little more than six centuries, not over millennia. Why was I constructed, and by whom?”

  “I may be able to answer those questions,” I told him, “but I must first know what you remember of your earliest moments. And how did you come to rule this island nation, so changed since last I saw it?”

  “Very well,” Ikaru answered, as though he were granting me some magnanimous boon. “My first memories are of waking up, confused and alone, in a ruined temple some centuries ago. On the floor at my feet lay an ancient man, with unseeing eyes like glittering opals, who appeared to all indications to be dead. On reflection, I quickly came to realize that while I had some basic knowledge—familiarity with language, knowledge of geography, and so forth—I had no notion who I was. I staggered out of the temple, past strange rows of statues, past small biting creatures who gnashed their teeth at my feet and ankles but caused no injury, out into the jungle.”

  He paused, and his hand drifted across his forehead dreamily, as though he were brushing away a spider's web.

  “I've had so little occasion to recall those early days in the last few centuries that I find a strangely…emotional response to my now recounting them.” Ikaru paused, and straightened on the throne. “In any event, not knowing where I should go, nor what I should do, I found myself traveling north, wandering aimlessly, searching for some idea who I was. I came upon a settlement of the Pakunari of Ogansa Valley, and passed some years among them. It was the Pakunari who named me Ikaru, which means ‘ageless' in their tongue.”

  A faint smile played on his lips, and then faded, as a shadow seemed to pass over him.

  “In time, though, the hairy creatures came to view me with suspicion. While they aged and died, I remained young and unmarred, and when a particularly cruel season saw a large number of their young and old killed by plague, I was blamed. But they could not harm me, and were forced instead to settle for driving me out. I traveled south, skirting the western edge of the Rim Mountains, moving from fishing village to fishing village. I passed a few years on a whaling vessel, and eventually jumped ship on the island of Croatoan. But the strange habits of the island's distributed consciousness unsettled me, and I soon moved on. I traveled through the Eastern Desert, spent a few years as the prisoner of a cohort of the Nonae, who had the good fortune to catch me in a weakened state and to bind my hands and feet with bonds that were proof even against my great strength. The Nonae kept me as a kind of pet, a toy for their amusement. I eventually escaped, killing the entire cohort in the process, and made my way to Masjid Logos, where I found work illuminating manuscripts at a scholarium.

  “From my time among the Nonae, I had learned the possible uses of a strong warrior caste, and to what ends a nation dedicated to warfare could be directed. While illuminating religious texts in Masjid Logos, I learned the powerful effects that doctrine could have, even when not founded on experiential data of any kind. Were one to establish a warrior caste motivated by religious doctrine, I reasoned, great things could be accomplished.”

  Ikaru waved a hand around the audience chamber, indicating the map of the island on the far wall.

  “Pentexoire is my second attempt to put this theory into practice. My previous attempt was in a Sakrian township a few days' travel outside of Azuria. The presence of surrounding cultures, though, proved too much a contaminating influence, and within a few generations the populace rejected my temporal and spiritual authority, and I was forced to flee ahead of an angry mob. For my next and latest experiment in social controls, then, I selected an island culture, isolated both by geography and circumstance from outside contamination.”

  “What is the purpose of these…‘experiments'?” I asked.

  “I have seen organic culture at its best and worst, and I have come to question whether organics, with their short-lived vantage, are best suited to govern their own destinies. It seems to me that organic culture would be better served to look to a superior intellect for governance, one with a longer view of history.”

  “And yours, naturally, is the superior intellect in question?”

  “Naturally,” Ikaru said, without a hint of irony. “And given that it is my responsibility to govern, it is in my subjects' best interests that I devise the means of social controls that will result in the most effective organization and structure of culture.”

  The presbyter leaned forward, regarding me closely.

  “Now,” he said, “I believe you owe me some answers. Having heard what you have of my earliest memories, and my activities since, are you now in a position to address my origi
ns?”

  “You were never intended to develop an independent consciousness. The knowledge you possessed on first waking was the basic programming incorporated into the secondary control system housed in your skull. The cavity on your chest is intended to house the personality core of Benu, which is now incorporated instead into this body.” Benu indicated the gem on his chest. “Herein reside the thoughts and memories which should have been yours on wakening.”

  “So you hold the mind that was intended to be mine?” Ikaru said. “But who constructed you, then?”

  “The same hand that constructed you,” Benu answered. “My earlier self, the former Benu, whom you mistook for a corpse on the temple floor upon awakening. I was not dead, but only momentarily deactivated, having failed to transfer the personality core in time. Had all gone as planned, when your eyes opened, you would have had my memories. Instead, I was forced to build this new form.”

  “And that is why we look as alike as brothers?”

  “Yes. We share the same basic design, though the minute details differ from iteration to iteration.”

  “Fascinating,” Ikaru said. “And how is it that our internal processes function? I have, of course, surmised the need for direct sunlight, but the mechanisms through which our bodies collect and store energy elude me.”

  I had little desire to engage in lengthy discourse about my systemic processes at that juncture. I was at the disadvantage, in my weakened state, and had begun to suspect that my “offspring's” motives were not the purest. I could allow that he had, in first learning of my arrival, wanted to take all precaution before our initial meeting, but having spent some time in his company, I had come to the conclusion that his every attention was bent on the domination of his subjected nation, and that he had no intention of us ever meeting one another on equal footing.