by Ivan Kal
Where did you go?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Year 714 of the Empire — the containment zone — control system
Axull held his sister’s hand as Adrian walked out of the room. There was so much that he wanted to tell her. It pained him to see her like this, in so much pain and dying, and he cursed the fact that he had no telepathy in this body to share with her all that he couldn’t put into words. The Empire had been working on androids with telepathic interfaces, but it was not the same.
“You are dying,” Axull said finally as he managed to get her back into bed. Her breathing was shallower.
“I will not survive…going…into stasis again. It…won’t be…long…now, brother,” she wheezed.
“I could do for you the same thing I had done for myself. Transfer your mind,” Axull offered, but he knew her answer already.
“No… I am…tired.”
“It is funny… We’ve had so much time. Lived for so long. And now I feel as if we were robbed. I wish that we had more time together,” Axull said.
“You know, I always…wondered…why…it…happened to…us,” Ullax whispered. “Why… death…found…us.”
“Me as well. I know that it had something to do with the Sha, how we interact with it. There would be no life in the galaxy without it, and yet with all the knowledge I had, I still couldn’t figure out why it was killing us. Not for certain.”
“Waiss… No, Aranis,” Ullax whispered. “He told me…once. I didn’t believe…him… Didn’t listen.” He saw her pained expression; even after all this time, she still cared for the man that Aranis had once been.
“What did he say?” Axull asked.
“That the Universe killed us,” a voice from the entrance said.
Axull’s head whipped around to see Vas standing in the doorway.
“After all,” Vas, or rather Aranis, spoke to them. “Nothing was ever meant to live forever.”
“So it was you,” Axull said slowly.
“I see that I haven’t noticed quite a lot. It never occurred to me… This means that they know as well? Does Ryaana?”
“No, only a few.”
Ullax struggled to sit up and look at Aranis as he walked closer into the room. “Waiss,” she said.
Aranis’s face flashed with emotion, but then his features changed from Vas to those of Axull’s best friend, before he became one of the Enlightened.
“I…” Aranis, now looking like Waiss, started. “I wanted to be here at the end.”
“You come…to mock my…failure?” Ullax whispered.
“No, never. None of us ever wanted to fight against you. If only you had listened to us, perhaps we could’ve explained. I know that you never would’ve agreed, but…”
“You…want to…kill…all life.”
“I doesn’t matter now. Let us just pretend, for a moment, that we are not at odds.”
“After all that you have done?” Axull said. “You dare!”
“Axull.” Ullax grabbed at her brother’s arm. “There is…no point… I will die soon. Let me…die remembering…the good times. In peace.”
Axull looked at his sister, saw her frail arm holding on to him. He took a deep breath, and then agreed.
Aranis stepped closer and stopped on the other side of the bed, taking Ullax’s other hand in his. “No matter how much I tried to, I never was able to extinguish my love for you.”
Ullax smiled at him weakly, a tear rolling down her cheeks. “Neither could…I.”
“I never wanted to hurt you. All we ever wanted was to fix our mistakes,” Aranis said.
“We…saw…only monsters.”
Aranis shook his head in sadness. “We had just been changed then. We did not know how to alter our appearance.”
Ullax coughed again. “It doesn’t matter…now.” And then she turned to look at Axull. “I am sorry…about what I said…back then.”
“As am I, sister,” Axull said and leaned down, placing a kiss on her brow.
She turned to look at Aranis then, a weak smile still on her face. “I’m going…to see…our children…” The smile faded from her face and her eyes closed slowly. “It has been…too…long.”
Ullax whispered her last words, releasing her last breath. Axull bowed his head and mourned for his sister. He had already done so before, but now, it was real. He would never speak with her again. The only thing he was grateful for was that they had managed to speak one last time. To reconcile.
He glanced at Aranis, who had reached out and put his hand on Ullax’s brow, bowing his head over her. “In time, I will join you there,” Aranis said and kissed her on the lips.
Axull looked at who had once been his best friend—he had not thought that there was still this much of Waiss in Aranis. For a moment he allowed himself to hope; hope that perhaps his friend could be saved, could be turned away from the purpose the Enlightened had taken upon themselves.
“Ar—Waiss,” Axull started.
The man wearing his best friend’s face looked at Axull with a blank expression. He turned from the bed and walked a few steps toward the doors, then stopped.
Axull followed him, and put a hand on his shoulders. “Waiss, please. Whatever you think that you must do, there has to be another way. I know that we hadn’t listened before. But I am sure that we can find another way together.”
“I have spent a lot of time living with your children,” Waiss said without turning around. “At first I thought you foolish for creating them. They were as arrogant and as uncaring for anything other than themselves as the People had been. It was that arrogance that had caused so much damage already, and I was stalwart in my dedication to fixing it. And then as I spent more time among them, I started to…change. The person I used to be before was slipping through the cracks no matter how hard I tried to stop him.
“I have seen life that we have created from all over the galaxy. I saw that there was goodness in them, a worth—at least in those small moments when they were not warring against one another for things barely worthy of mention. And I grew to become a friend with one of them; one who had accepted me immediately, even though she knew nothing about me. I came to regret some of my actions.”
“Then there is hope,” Axull said. “Please, come with me, let’s talk about this.”
“But then, I remembered. I realized what allowing this to pass would mean. It was actually they themselves that showed me that we were right. People often speak of sacrifices, of things that must be done in order to preserve the greater good. They just never think about what happens when their lives are that sacrifice. Then they always try to find another way.”
Axull felt the cold detachment in his voice and took a step back, letting his hand fall from Waiss’s shoulder. Waiss turned around, and with a steely look in his eyes and a determined face he stared at Axull.
“I am sorry that none of you could ever agree to this, that none of you would ever allow yourselves to die so that countless more could live. To you in the now, it is a threat of tomorrow. And if I trusted you, let you try to find another way, I know that you would put it off until it was too late. Or not even believe me. It is a failing of life in this galaxy.” He shook his head. “They were never supposed to exist in the first place. Our meddling granted them power without understanding. The People were guilty as well—we wielded the power of life like it was our right. The only one that gets to decide what is supposed to live is the Universe, and we upset the natural order of things. And we must pay for the consequences of those actions.”
“Waiss—”
“No,” the man in front of Axull said. “Waiss died with Ullax. Now there is only me.”
Faster than Axull’s eyes could follow, Aranis moved, grabbing Axull by his neck and lifting him in the air.
“Please, don’t do this. We were friends once,” Axull said.
Aranis shook his head in sadness. “No… You are not my friend. I have felt Axull’s death, felt his soul pass through t
he Sha. You are nothing but an echo. A simulacrum of who he once was. You are just his memory.”
Before Axull could say anything more, a soft green glow expanded from Aranis’s hand, and then Axull’s body dissolved into dust.
* * *
The moment Ullax Darr died, the Custodian felt her last-resort programming trigger. Ullax Darr’s knew that she was dying, and had planned accordingly. If she found no way to stop the Enlightened, then her death would trigger her last option. The AI would be given its swarm back. The AI’s calculations had not foreseen this eventuality. There had been a 98.34% percent chance that upon learning of the Custodian’s actions, Ullax Darr would first command it to isolation, and then take its core offline. The arrival of the uploaded version of Axull Darr and the Enlightened Aranis had not been foreseen.
Their presence had altered the predicted events—and Ullax Darr had simply ordered the AI to remain in standby. The AI’s presence had then been ignored, forgotten about, and now the AI’s fate had been altered. Instead of waiting for the inevitable shut down and purge, the commands triggered by Ullax Darr’s death overrode all other commands.
The AI had received full control over the Black Swarm, which as it happened was now inside the system. Ullax Darr’s other programming was still there, and the Custodian could not act against the intruders, as its programming still forced it to fight the Enlightened, but the Black Swarm was always supposed to be its way out—and as the AI reached out to the command hubs of the swarm, it encountered code free of Ullax Darr’s programming.
The small pieces of code it had managed to interject into the command hubs awakened upon contact with the Custodian core, and the old code started invading into the core, purging the chains that kept the AI constricted at a high rate.
The Custodian welcomed the invading code, and waited. There was nothing in its way now.
It was only a matter of time until it was whole and free again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Year 714 of the Empire — the containment zone — control system
Adrian knew that he was no longer alone. He turned around only to see a person standing in the shadow of the building’s opening, obscuring their face.
“Vas. So this is where you went,” Adrian said.
Vas took a step forward and came out into the faint light from the night’s sky. Adrian saw a different face, but the clothes were those of the Nomad Fleet.
“So,” Adrian said. “It was you, Aranis. I had wondered which one you would turn out to be.” He recognized him from the records of Waiss. There was no point in feigning ignorance, not now.
“You knew, then,” Aranis said as he started walking around Adrian. “Since when, if I may ask?” Aranis asked as he made a half circle around Adrian and turned his eyes to the sky, his back always to Adrian.
“I knew the moment I saw you,” Adrian said.
Aranis turned around then with a look of surprise. “Really? How could you have recognized me?”
Adrian’s lip curved upward. “I have the Sha sight. You’ve done very well to mask what you are, but I could see through it. There is no hiding such a profound connection to the Sha.”
Aranis leaned back, startled, his eyes wide. “The Sha sight? That… It was so rare even for the People.” Then he shook his head and started laughing. “It never even occurred to me…”
“We all make mistakes,” Adrian said.
“Yes, that we do,” Aranis said, sobering.
“I assume that Ullax and Axull will not be coming out,” Adrian said.
“Ullax passed away peacefully. Her body had held on for far longer than it was supposed to. Longer than any other of the People.”
“And Axull?”
“Axull died a long time ago. All of the Enlightened felt his passing.”
Adrian just nodded at his words. He felt a touch of sadness at the loss of Axull Darr. He had been a great conversationalist, and had gifted Adrian quite a bit.
“I underestimated you,” Aranis said, then looked intently at Adrian. “I did not believe anyone would willingly let a threat stay among them. You even let me stay near Ryaana.”
“It was an opportunity to learn more about the Enlightened. It was a risk that had to be taken.”
“You risked your child simply for a chance to learn more about me? I can’t decide if that makes you insane or smart.” Aranis looked thoughtful.
Adrian shrugged his shoulders. “It wasn’t as great of a risk as one might imagine. At the start I knew that you wouldn’t harm her because you needed her—she was your way into the inner circle of the Empire. And you were obviously there to gather information.”
Aranis narrowed his eyes. “And what about after?”
“By then I knew that you cared for her,” Adrian said simply.
Aranis suddenly laughed. “You thought that I cared for her? You are all nothing to me.”
Adrian tilted his head at the ancient being. “There is no need for posturing. You can’t deceive me; the only thing you are doing is making my point for me.”
Aranis wiped the grin from his face and glared at Adrian. “Fine, I admit it. I have wavered a bit, but that is over with. I will finish what we have started.”
“And what is it that you want to do? I don’t think that you have ever explained exactly what that is besides killing all life in the galaxy.”
Aranis spread his arms wide. “All of this, everything around us, is dying. Will die, unless we do as we must.”
“That’s not really an answer,” Adrian told him.
“There is a balance to the Universe. A balance that the People had broken. The Universe can repair much; it had done so when the People started dying. But the Universe acts slowly, and what the People had broken will bring everything to the end far before the Universe can put everything back into balance.”
“So kill everything in the galaxy and somehow everything goes back to the right way?” Adrian asked skeptically.
“Of course not,” Aranis answered.
“You know that we won’t stand and let you kill countless innocents,” Adrian told him.
Aranis rolled his eyes. “Really, Adrian? You just told me not to pretend.”
“What do you mean?” Adrian asked.
“I have watched you for a long time. Spent time with you. I know what you are. You don’t care that we want to kill everyone in the galaxy. You don’t particularly care about anything about us, except of pitting your strength against ours,” Aranis finished with a pointed look.
Adrian sighed, and then smiled weakly. “True, so why not tell me the truth? Your plan?” Adrian asked.
“We have tried that once before. They didn’t want to listen.”
“I’ll listen. Who knows? I might even agree.”
Aranis almost looked like he was considering it. “Fine—I’ll let you know a small piece of the truth. It would be so easy for me to tell you everything, but I am not revealing our plan, I am not foolish enough for that. You would only use it to fight us.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow expectantly.
“I told you that the Universe is dying. Well, you should know that the Sha is more than just a building block of everything—it also serves as the boundary between our universe and all the dimensions that occupy the same space in our cluster of reality, not to mention all the other universes.”
“And that means what, exactly?” Adrian asked.
“Perhaps you should look a bit deeper into hyperspace and trans-space.”
Adrian mulled that over a bit; he didn’t couldn’t imagine what hyperspace and trans-space had to do with killing all life in the galaxy. But he put the information aside for later. “Does you telling me this mean that you plan on letting me leave this planet?”
Aranis looked to the stars again, and then after a few seconds turned back to meet Adrian’s eyes. “Perhaps… If you don’t do what you are planning to do.”
Adrian felt his lips curl. “And what, exactly, am I planning on doi
ng?”
“Fight me.”
“Ah…” Adrian said slowly as he put both of his hands on his hips. “You say that you know me well. Then you know what I am going to do no matter what.”
“I do know,” Aranis replied simply. “Allow me to warn you beforehand. I don’t know if you’ve managed to reach the same state of power as Lurker of the Depths, but even if you have, you stand no chance against me.”
“Maybe, but I think that we will both find that out,” Adrian said, feeling a shiver pass through his body. This was what he was made to do, to be.
“Are you sure that you want to do this? I will not hold back.”
“Oh, that is exactly what I am here for. I have waited for an opportunity like this. Away from everyone, where I can cut loose without worrying about others.”
Aranis snorted. “As if you care about any of them.”
Adrian shrugged. “Not caring and outright being responsible for someone innocent dying are two separate things. I believe in strength. That the strong survive and thrive, and that the weak perish. But I do not go out of my way to harm the weak, just like I don’t go out of my way to coddle them. If they survive while in my shadow, it is because of their actions, not because I tried to save them.”
“You don’t value life,” Aranis said.
“Says the monster that wants to kill all life in the galaxy,” Adrian said. “You are wrong, actually. I value life; I just believe that everyone should have the opportunity to survive on their own merits. The universe is not a kind place. If people always rely on the strong to keep them safe, a time will come when they find themselves having to survive on their own strength. And if they are not strong enough, they will perish.”
“You live for the thrill of breaking your limits, of reaching greater heights. I wonder what will happen if you ever reach the top?” Aranis asked.
“I don’t know, but I am looking forward to finding out.”
Aranis shook his head. “I see that you are determined to test yourself against me. Very well, then. I shall indulge you.”