She had felt invincible moments before. But that feeling had drained from her abruptly as she looked around at the first floor of the Needle. Every surface was made of a shiny black material she didn't recognize.
Up until that moment, Keti had been nothing more than a voice in the Empress' head and a sort of distortion in the air near her, so the Empress watched in awe as what appeared to be her twin descended through the ceiling about twenty feet away.
The girl looked just like her. She had her face turned downward with her arms stretched above her head.
She hadn't made a sound when her feet had touched the ground, her hands absently drifting to her sides.
Almost as if she'd just noticed someone else was in the room, the girl's face had risen to look at the Empress. Her eyes had the same ring of black eyeshadow that the Empress was traditionally given, even the same pink outline.
In an otherwise perfect reflection of the Empress' own face, the eyes were gone. Not missing, but completely, totally black.
“Do you know why I've made you mine?”
The Empress had, oddly, felt no fear. “Because,” she'd ventured, “I look like you.”
“Your energy,” the goddess had said as explanation. “It's what brought me back.”
The Empress had looked down at herself but seen nothing special.
“You can't see it, young one, but your energy is like no human has ever had before. It's beautiful enough that its formation brought me to it. It brought me back.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“I was gone. Now I'm here.” Keti had offered her a hand. “I will make you perfect.”
The Empress had walked to her and taken it without hesitation. Inwardly, she had been hurt by the implication that she wasn't already perfect.
“Isn't that why I'm here?” she had thought.
Her musing had been interrupted by Keti's voice.
“Come,” she'd beckoned. “Sit on your throne.”
The Empress enjoyed the sense of ceremony that accompanied everything she did. She'd been thrilled to see that Keti meant to continue it.
As Keti had stepped (or rather floated) aside, a tall, thin throne had become visible. She'd been positive that the throne hadn't been there a moment before.
It was the perfect size for her to sit on. As she'd approached it, Keti had stared straight forward with her chin held high.
The Empress had allowed herself to fall backwards onto the throne rather childishly.
Silence.
Keti had remained facing the entrance; her body hadn't moved a millimeter as the Empress had looked up at her expectantly.
Are you alive? she'd thought.
She had suddenly felt Keti's presence all around her; not just in the room, or the Needle, but inhabiting every molecule of... she wasn't sure. Her mind couldn't handle the sheer amount of sensory input that flooded her consciousness.
She'd lost awareness of her own existence in physical form, her field of vision beginning to dance with pulses of color being drawn into tightly-spaced geometric shapes that, she began to see, made up the environment around her.
The pillars, the throne, the floor, a window that she hazily thought wasn't there before: all of it was built out of these infinitesimal lines and shapes that endlessly ate the amazing colors in the air.
In fact, the air was made of those colors. Prisms wrapped around prisms, curving them into peaks and valleys that were drawn inexorably to the nearest surface.
The Empress had wondered to herself, Then what do you look like, Keti?
With great effort, she had turned her head to look next to herself.
Keti had been facing her, still using the Empress's own emotionless face as a mask. The eyes were no longer black voids, but clearly were solid matter.
As the Empress had watched, paralyzed by wonder, the goddess's eyes had exerted some mysterious influence on the matrix of the room. Ripples had emanated from the corners of the room, rising in size and intensity, and flowing around the darkness where Keti's eyes should be.
The light in the room flickered, faded, seemed to retreat from the corners of the Empress' vision and flee to Keti's face.
The Empress felt faint. Her vision was getting dark. Keti still stared at her, saying nothing, but it didn't matter because a loud hiss filled her ears. She couldn't fathom what was happening to her.
Instead of hurting, it had made her feel more and more removed from a state where pain existed.
Keti was opening her mouth now in apparent disbelief. She had moved her hands with great care to either side of the Empress' face.
The rush of energy beating against the Empress's mind overwhelmed her, leaving her slumped in her throne. Her eyelids had involuntarily fluttered and closed.
When she opened them, she was looking out a transparent wall at a rusty orange sky; far below, the plaza was dotted with Keti's worshippers.
“Be thankful that I allow your mind to be closed,” Keti said softly from where she stood a few feet away. “Though it would please me to hold it open and watch your energy transform... until you burnt out.”
The Empress had rolled her eyes and muttered, “Creepy.”
Chapter Six
The auditorium was silent, except for the measured breathing of the crowd.
Keti’s eyes took in the whole crowd at once, though her head didn't move. Was she appraising them? Testing their obedience? None of them were brave enough to meet her eyes or break the silence.
“I anticipate,” the voice of Keti began, “that this Assembly will be no less sensational to your minds than the first.
“You have performed your part adequately since I presented myself to you. To expect more of your kind would be foolish. Foolishness is not a trait I exhibit.”
Unsure whether to laugh, most of the Citizens had smiled encouragingly.
“The Empress will be left to deal with your bewilderment soon enough. To maintain the brevity of this Assembly I will eliminate the need for your more obvious questions.
“Do not ask why I ‘came back’ or how ‘old’ I am. You could not understand, nor even begin to fathom, much as a fish can not be taught how its ocean formed.
“I do not care for the ceremonies you have designed in my honor. If I cared to have statues of myself built, I would build them so that they might be perfect to me. Your hands could never create, or replicate, perfection.
“It is also the same with the religion you have built around me.” She wrinkled her brow in, possibly, amusement. “You believe your simple, ugly minds hold the potential to design something worthy of a goddess? Do you?”
Their heads remained bowed.
“Yes. You hang your heads in shame because you are lower than dirt to me. In the days before I made your planet... but wait, it is not yours, is it? It is mine to do with as I please.
“In the days before I arranged this planet to my liking, you thought yourselves to be gods of it. How proud you were to feel so much more evolved than the other animals here. How you worshipped yourselves for erecting skyscrapers, for pondering the ‘big questions’ that your supposedly great species had not answered sufficiently!”
She leaned back and observed their discomfort. The few who peeked up at her were frightened anew by the sight of the Empress' youthful body incongruously acting so inhuman.
Keti folded her hands under her chin.
“I see nothing, nothing but energy. Your faces, your clothing, the lifeless monuments you build are wasted on me. Each of you has an energy, and I see what you are.
“You, by contrast, have brains which poorly interpret stimuli collected by simple organs. You then call this interpretation reality. The sky is blue. That girl in row 3 is ugly. And so on.
“My existence, no matter how you proclaim your awe of it, is an affront to you. I provide unwanted perspective on your significance. Look at how easily I destroyed so very much of humanity's work. The few who I spared now transfer their reverence from their own kind to
me.
“I am Keti. I am a goddess. I do not need a name or a title, for I exist beyond your words. If I exist at all.”
She left them time to consider this before continuing.
“Are your minds dreaming right now? Is ‘now’ happening? Are your brains correctly assembling the things your eyes and ears capture? You can not know, yet you are ever ready to accept your perceptions as absolutes.
“Oh, how I loathe you. The Empress exudes an energy which shines all the brighter in contrast to the canvas your small society provides as backdrop.
“Until her energy summoned me to consciousness, to this place, not one of you saw in her the rarity and beauty that would be apparent to a being as advanced as you think yourselves to be.
“You will continue worshipping me, and continue going to your temples to pray for my intercession, but it will not change a thing. It will make you feel hope or pride or humility, but the nature of this world will not be changed by it.
“I am no more or less present in these temples than I am in your toilets. To recall an earlier metaphor, the ocean is no less present in any one place; inches below its surface, its water flows. Inches from its bottom, the water is there as well. To come to temples and pray to me, you are like fish saying ‘The ocean is happier when I am here than if I move a mile east.’
“Remember this: you can, and will, analyze my every word, but you will still not know the truth. I am forced to speak in whatever words are most efficient for conveying an approximation of the universe which you can comprehend. I am forced to mislead you because words can not convey, and you can not understand, what you wish to know.”
In the silence that followed, a faint melody began to play, but they couldn't tell from where. Its volume rose and, bewilderingly, made it apparent to them that they were hearing the song in their heads.
They began to notice that below the melody, a muffled sound gradually became clearer: a girl's voice saying the same words over and over without pause. It had captivated their attention.
EmmmmiiiyyyyhrrrrrrrrryyyyyyymmmmheeeeeeeremmmiiiyyyheeeeeeeeereyyyyyyyyammmmmheeerrrrrrmmiiiyyyhheeeerAmIhereIamhereAmIhereIamhere
AM I HERE?
I AM HERE.
It startled them from a daze they hadn't realized they'd fallen into.
On stage, the Empress watched expectantly. Maybe it was just in contrast to Keti's unsettling eyes and demeanor, but the Empress looked guardedly pleased to be with them.
She was. The first Assembly had been so new an experience that she had felt a disconnect from the people she spoke to. She was the Empress and they were merely Citizens.
Leading up to this Assembly, she had felt a private anticipation; she wanted to have conversations with other people. Like a normal girl, she thought, knowing it would displease Keti but thinking it anyway.
She wanted to believe she was one of them, and was no better than them, but it was hard. In her most private thoughts, she reproached herself for feeling superior to the Citizens. For she did feel a fundamental superiority. The goddess herself said that she was above a state of humanness, and there was no doubting Keti.
The Empress's conscience hadn't allowed her to give in to the idea that she was intrinsically better than anyone, despite this.
The fog had thinned considerably. Out of an arm of her throne the Empress pulled a pad. Her eyes scanned its surface for a moment. Whatever glimmer of mirth they imagined they had seen on her face had disappeared momentarily as she concentrated.
“Ah. I don't know which one of these questions to answer first. There are a lot asking why we're here.” She fought an urge to smile when she used the word ‘we.’ She was part of that ‘we,’ and it was intoxicating.
That's so sad, she thought.
“I guess because... the goddess is bored? She says she's tired of the religion you made for her.” With a small laugh, she added, “Don't blame me for that.”
The faces in the front rows seemed caught off guard by her frivolous attitude. The transition from Keti's unblinking candor to the Empress' comparatively warm demeanor was a shock.
She sat up a little straighter and continued. “She decided to give you a chance to learn what you could from her because, up until now, you've been left to guess what she wanted. That, and I've been in the Needle so long that I was going crazy without human contact. For some reason she's been indulging me lately.”
The audience's faces softened at her words. It was surprising to them that the Empress, technically a girl in her early twenties, would act like it. They had assumed that Keti had transformed her into something beyond human.
The pad in her hand surged with new questions. She considered them solemnly. “How can I overlook the billions of lives that Keti ended when she came here? Okay, and do I feel responsible?” She sighed inaudibly.
“I don't have any choice, do I?” she asked seriously, looking directly into the crowd. “I don't understand it, and it's horrible, but I didn't make that happen.” Her voice got defensive. “I was a little girl when it happened. Since then, I haven't been able to have a life.
“While bots were doing your jobs, leaving you free to enjoy life, I was locked in the Needle. You didn't seem too upset with Keti once you saw that she'd taken all the responsibility out of your lives.”
Her eyes pierced the darkness of the auditorium.
“So please don't blame me. Don't criticize me for things that I didn't want. At least the outlanders' whole lifestyle is based on protesting what Keti did.”
“You,” she said with a note of hostility that made her resemble Keti, “you just want to enjoy all the good things she gave us and blame someone else for the bad.”
Her shoulders dropped. “Anyway... next question. Does Keti want to be worshipped at all? I think she wants recognition but she's irritated by matters like you memorizing prayers and poems to recite. She knows that there's no meaning behind the words anymore when you say them.
“The best thing you can do is go to the temple a couple times a month and honor her in your thoughts. Nothing long or boring.”
Another onslaught of text rushed down the pad in her hand.
“You want to know what Keti says is right and wrong?” She looked down at her lap and searched for the words.
“I don't know how to tell you this; she doesn't care. Our society is fine how it is. It'll never be good enough for her, but you aren't doing anything she cares enough about to punish you for. That I know of.
“I've never heard her talk about sin. She judges people for being simple, and annoying her by not being more intelligent, but I really can't remember a time when Keti was offended because something was immoral.
“We're not worth getting mad at, in Keti's eyes. She doesn't care if someone gets killed, or says awful things about her.
“That's why I don't know how to answer the question about me being okay with her murdering most of the people on Earth. You know when you use antibacterial soap to kill germs? That's what it means to her to kill billions of us. I think it's sick, but those of you who call it The Cleansing weren't far off from how Keti sees it.
“She laughs at me for taking all of this so serious. Really. If she had destroyed all life on Earth, which she says she could have done, the universe would go on all the same.”
She waited for them to process her words before she moved on. The mood in the room had swung from apprehension to fear to relief to uncertainty. No sooner had the Empress's surprising normalcy relieved the tension from Keti's disdain than the levity of her words restored it.
“Well. Now all your questions are about morals. What should you do? I guess just do what you've been doing. If Keti didn't punish you before, why would she start now?
“I can't stress it enough that she doesn't care about the morality of what you do. These Assemblies happened because she got tired of listening to you ask.
“Maybe not. Keti doesn't explain much to me.” She shrugged her shoulders for their benefit. “Keti announces th
ings without saying why they happen. If she's saying it, then it doesn't need to be explained. It's meant to be.”
The Empress layed the pad on her lap and clasped her hands together. “Look. I've had a lot of time to watch what goes on outside the Temple, and think about it. You're not living your lives to get a good grade when you finish. You're living how you do because you want to enjoy life without feeling bad about how you did it.
“Right and wrong are things that you've defined. If it's hurtful or it makes you feel ashamed, it's wrong. If it helps someone else or makes you feel good, it's right. It's more complicated than that, I know, but none of that has any meaning to Keti.
“Your morality is a personal thing that... really?” The Empress rolled her eyes comically, causing a ripple of laughter. She had glanced down at the pad and seen peoples' reactions.
“I won't embarrass you by reading your question, but I'll answer it. Kind of.” Another murmur of laughter from the crowd.
“One time when Keti was trying to make a point... because all she does is lecture me... she told me that there was a boy who had prayed to her five days in a row to ask her to give him some sign that she'd forgiven him for saying ‘Keti is stupid’ or whatever.
“She was disgusted. Well, she's not much for emotions but you get the idea. She thought it was... stupid. I know, I need a new word. She said, ‘Take note of humanity's defining traits. Even the youngest of your species have the implicit belief that their actions are in some way supremely important.’”
Smiles broke out on the faces in the front rows, the only ones lit up enough for her to see. The Empress was the only person who felt that they could safely do impressions of Keti's humorless responses.
“I asked her if she was going to give him the sign he was asking for. She said no, why would she? I said she could do it to make him stop praying about it. She asked me what I wanted her to do.
“I told her, ‘I don't know, maybe make the word Forgiven appear on his wall.’ I can't say for sure if she did it, but it wouldn't have hurt.”
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