“What are they?” he asked.
“They are bioelectric entities,” said the chronologist. “And each one is unique. An individual.”
“Individual? Like a person?”
“The spheres contain electrical signals similar to brain activity. Each one is a consciousness in its pure energy state. I believe . . . these are the Architects.”
Liam gazed around, upward, below, at the rows and rows. There had to be millions, maybe billions. “These are the beings that built this place? What happened to their bodies?”
“I do not know if they ever had bodies.”
“But those buildings outside, on all of the arms . . .”
“I cannot account for it,” said the chronologist. “These spheres are all connected to a massive processing system.”
“So, are they alive or not?”
“That would depend on your definition. I think, based on the energy patterns, that they believe that they are.”
“I don’t get it.”
A voice came from the doorway: “They’re alive and well.”
Liam turned to find Captain Barrie, the rifle-like Dark Star weapon leveled at Liam and the chronologist. He stepped inside and ran his fingers over the nearest spheres, their energy spidering out to meet his touch. “Sentient beings, happily going about their lives in a simulation that accurately depicts a four-dimensional reality.” He motioned to the chronologist. “She finally let you in here, I see.”
“Fascinating,” said the chronologist. “So the Architects chose to upload their consciousness into a virtual simulation, perhaps to achieve a kind of immortality.”
“Oh, these aren’t the Architects,” said Barrie.
Liam’s heart hammered; he was shaking all over now. He gazed at the weapon in Barrie’s hand, as he stood blocking the only door out. “Who are they?” he asked.
“That’s what I’m here to show you.” He was smiling, a cold, knowing grin so full of energy, of satisfaction, that Liam felt certain it was the first true expression he’d seen on Barrie’s face the entire time they’d been here.
And he was not on their side.
Barrie stepped closer to Liam and the chronologist, the rifle still trained on them, and made a horizontal waving motion with his free hand. A pedestal slid up from the center of the platform on which they stood. It rose to waist height, made of smoky glass, lights flicking through its circuitry. Barrie bounced his hand on the air above it. The entire platform vibrated and began to lower itself down the center of the cylinder. They passed hundreds, thousands of rows of blue spheres.
“Where are we going?” said Liam, gulping breaths.
“Back in time,” said Barrie.
Liam felt like his heart had crawled up into his throat. “Do you know where my parents are?”
Barrie’s smile widened. “So you’ve caught on, eh? Don’t worry, they’re fine.”
Liam crossed his arms, trying not to shake. “They’re not on Earth, are they?”
“You’ll see.”
“How is it that you can operate this machinery?” said the chronologist. “That you were given access to this chamber?”
“Dark Star reveals its truths when she believes we are ready to know them.”
She. Liam had heard Barrie say it before, but he’d thought it was just the parlance of talking about a ship. Yet now . . . “You’ve talked to her, haven’t you?”
Barrie cocked his head. “Not like you have.”
He knows. He’s known all along. Liam’s insides wound so tight he could barely breathe. He wanted more than anything to run, to slip out of time and reverse direction, get out of here, but what good would that do? This moment would still be here, standing between him and knowing where his parents were, what all this really was. And yet he felt sure now that those answers were bigger and more terrible than he’d ever imagined.
Barrie waved the gun at Liam. “Now stop interrupting with all your questions and look around—enjoy the show.”
They descended, passing row after row of sparking crystals. Liam could barely stay steady on his feet, his gaze darting from Barrie and the weapon to the mesmerizing sparks of light. Thoughts spun around in his head like a dust devil. If his parents were not on Earth, if, as JEFF seemed to say, there was no new Earth, and if the captain in fact knew where they were and what all this was, it not only meant that he had been lying to them at nearly every turn . . . but that Iris had been too.
His nerves screamed. A dizzy feeling in his head. The lights in the spheres around them seemed to be buzzing more excitedly against their borders, almost like they sensed him, could feel his panic, like they were trying to communicate with him, or perhaps even trying to break free.
“We’re not the first to find Dark Star,” said Barrie, his face aglow in the wavering blue light. “These beings you see here were the most recent to arrive before us. They discovered this place a few billion years ago.”
“Who are they?” Liam asked, his voice hoarse, barely above a whisper.
“Can’t say I know what they would have called themselves. Dark Star refers to them by the universe they arrived here from. In this case, iteration 73.”
All at once, they passed a break in the rows of spheres, a band of smoky glass-and-light circuitry. A moment later, the spheres began again, but these were different: smaller, it seemed. And the lights dimmer inside, less active—in many cases there was just a still, glowing dot. It looked as though, here and there, the insides of the crystal walls were blotchy with stains, almost like mildew. And some of the spheres were completely dark.
“These beings came from iteration 57,” said Barrie. “Three hundred billion years ago. Well before our universe even existed. Their universe is long since dead, and as you can see, they are dying out now as well.”
Liam tried to control his shaking. In the dim light, these older spheres looked almost ghostly. It felt as if they were descending deeper into a tomb.
They lowered perhaps another hundred meters and passed through another gap. Another set of crystal spheres began. These were almost completely dark, their insides filmy. Here and there, the faintest light, barely flickering. A few last souls, hanging on.
“This race is from iteration 41, almost a trillion years ago. Eventually, what begin as tiny data corruptions ultimately become fatal. But it’s also a question of resources. The power needed to maintain these beings can be better utilized on the newer, more promising candidates.”
“Where are my parents?” Liam said, barely above a whisper. Something about what Barrie had just said caused a spike of pure white fear to shoot through him, and yet he couldn’t quite wrap his brain around why, the idea like a loud buzzing static in his brain. . . .
Barrie didn’t seem to hear him, or just ignored him, and continued. “She winds them down gradually, and I believe they’re at peace. Living in four dimensions, they’ve had a knowledge of their past and future all along, and so when they finally arrive at their death, they accept it.”
“But it is not a true future,” said the chronologist. “It is manufactured, isn’t that correct? There is no probability, no free will, only a program. A fabrication.”
“I suppose that’s true, but not to them. In their reality, there is more truth, more awareness, than they ever had access to in their limited physical lives.”
“Doesn’t that mean they’re being lied to?” said Liam. “Told something is real when it’s not?”
“How do you know what’s real?” Barrie said. “Your senses, your feelings? What’s to say those are accurate, that you’re not just seeing what your brain wants you to see? Or what some higher intelligence wants your brain to see?” He spread his arms. “Can we even be sure any of this is real?”
Liam wobbled on his feet, wishing there was something to lean against. My future isn’t real. What about these surroundings right now? “Isn’t it?” he croaked.
“Yes,” said the chronologist. “This is reality.” And yet Liam saw that he c
onsulted his crystal as he said it.
“Spoken with true conviction,” Barrie said dryly.
The spheres ended again. This time, the walls opened up around them, and for a moment there was darkness, lit only by those spheres above. The platform started to slow, then settled to a stop flush with a smooth floor that stretched away from them into a vast space in all directions, again, seemingly far larger than the walls of the cylinder should have been able to contain.
“Welcome to the heart of Dark Star,” said Barrie.
Liam saw banks and clusters of equipment here and there, cast in islands of amber light that had no direct source. Deep, pure black shadows lurked in between.
As the platform came to a stop, it disturbed a thick coating of very fine dust on the floor. Its hum cycled down, and there was a silence here that seemed more still, somehow more infinite, than Liam had ever known. The air was warm, heavy. Liam felt like, if he stood still long enough, the heat and silence would suffocate him.
To one side was a large field of narrow structures that resembled stasis pods, yet they were made of a sleeker, smoke-colored metal. A set of a dozen or so pods in the front row were lit in that amber glow. Behind that, rows and rows stretched back into darkness. Liam could not tell if there were hundreds, or thousands, or even more than that, in the dimness. Those front few pods had open lids, yellowish glass curves that yawned up to the side. Tubes hung down to them from the ceiling. There were mechanisms up there, in the shadows above the pods. Complex-looking armatures and gears. The sight of it all chilled Liam, the open pod lids almost beckoning.
“This way.” Barrie stepped off the platform in the opposite direction of the pod-like structures. He waved the rifle, motioning Liam and the chronologist toward a line of lights in the murky distance, like ovals standing on their ends.
Liam looked back over his shoulder. “What’s in those pods back there?”
“This way first.”
“But—”
Barrie leveled the rifle. “Let’s not pretend, shall we? I can carry you there if you’d like. It makes no difference to me.”
Liam swallowed, metallic. The shivering uncontrollable. He felt like all of his will, his hope, was draining out of him. He looked at the chronologist, trying to meet his eyes. Couldn’t he stop this somehow, incapacitate Barrie if he wanted? But the chronologist simply brushed past him in the direction Barrie had indicated.
Liam fell into step beside him. Gulping breaths, heart pounding like it might just explode. Trying to understand what he was seeing, those spheres, the minds of beings who had come here in the past . . . but it all made a buzzing noise in his head, and a persistent warning, nearly screaming in his every nerve ending: Get out get out get out—
And yet at the same time he felt a gnawing terror, a certainty that it was too late, for him, for his parents, for everyone. Something inevitable was happening here. And it’s my own fault, he thought coldly. No, not really. He hadn’t known, couldn’t have known. . . .
They trudged through the darkness. Liam sensed that this space wasn’t measured in the normal three dimensions. They were moving through more than just a physical space; perhaps even the layout he was seeing was simply the best his mind could do to make sense of this room—it’s a laboratory, he thought, or perhaps . . . a lair.
“It took me a while to truly understand the grand design,” said Barrie, his tone almost dreamlike. “Ever since she came to me, so long ago. I was a young boy like yourself. It has taken decades of focus, of discipline and belief, to make the journey all the way to this moment. I am in awe of you, Liam, being able to achieve that at such a young age.”
“I was just trying to save my family, and friends, and . . .”
“Were you, though? Or were you following her call, whether you would have admitted it or not?”
A memory flashed in Liam’s mind of the very first time he’d used the chronologist’s watch on Mars. He had seen the future where they died in the turbine explosion. As he had traveled past that moment, past even his own death, he had felt an urge: Farther. Farther. To know the answers, all the answers. And in a way, that urge was a part of what had led him here. What had pushed him to explore with the watch. Even when he’d been using it just to comfort himself, like traveling back to Mars, hadn’t he also been searching? . . . Hadn’t he, in some way, been just like Barrie?
“We’re almost there now.”
His footsteps made little clouds in the thick dust on the floor. It was gray, and deathly quiet, but his next step crunched on something. Now a flash of movement a meter away. Something crawled briefly to the surface of the dust before burrowing away. It looked almost like a cockroach, but longer, flatter, and jet black.
“Trillions of years,” said Barrie from behind them, “creating universes and waiting. Perfecting its attempts to achieve its true goal.”
JEFF’s words flashed in Liam’s mind: Whatever the goals and intentions of the Architects were, that may no longer be what Dark Star wants.
“Stop here.” Barrie stepped in front of Liam and the chronologist. Liam saw a line of cylindrical enclosures made of clear crystal, about six feet in height and four feet in diameter. They floated just above the floor, glowing in pure white light, and inside each there seemed to be a suspended figure. . . .
A body.
“Iteration 41,” said Barrie, pointing to the first crystal case, in which floated a squat being with a long, narrow head, multiple arms and legs—it was hard to tell which were which—and skin that looked like the plates of an insect’s shell. Its eyes were open, and glowing, opaque, with a pale blue light similar to the spheres above.
“57.” The next cylinder contained an impossibly thin being with no arms and a body that seemed to be all one thin, triangular head. Its three legs were folded awkwardly in on themselves to fit in the enclosure. It had leathery skin and a ring of large black eyes that also glowed.
“73.” This third one looked somewhat humanoid. It had long arms and short, squat legs, and wore a leathery suit with boots and gloves and controls as if it was made for space travel. A furry covering instead of just skin. A mouth with square, humanlike teeth. No ears. Eyes shining blue and opaque like the others.
“Are they alive, too?” As he asked, something skittered over Liam’s boot. He saw the tail of another of those insect-like creatures slithering into the dust.
“Even more so,” said Barrie. “This is where the prototype is taken to be analyzed and finalized.”
“Prototype?” said the chronologist.
“The very best example of the species, the most worthy representative of his or her iteration. The one who found this place, who led their people here. The one who, once finalization is complete, is given eternal access to the highest reality possible.” As Barrie said this, he motioned to the fourth pool of light.
An empty crystal cylinder.
Liam’s shuddering had become overwhelming, his fingers tingling with numbness, his heart trying to rip free from his chest. Tears slipped down his cheeks.
“You’re the one, Liam,” said Barrie. “The prototype of iteration 89.”
“I didn’t . . . where are my parents . . .”
“Think of it as a reward,” said Barrie, “for making the journey. For believing in the grand design, for yearning for the highest possible awareness. I have to say, I’m jealous.” He motioned to the chronologist. “From the moment I first saw your colleague, back in my youth on Earth, I dreamed that it would be me. When we found the portal, I truly believed it was me, and yet, I can be content with playing my role. And she has agreed to provide for me as well.”
Liam now noticed a second empty, lit cylinder, just beyond the one that was meant for—Me. It’s meant for me.
He stepped back. “I want to leave. I want to find my parents and I want to go.”
Barrie frowned. “Don’t you understand what I’m showing you?”
He did. Or he didn’t. Either way, shaking, sweating, barely able t
o breathe—
“She’ll give you what you wanted, Liam, just like she told you she would. No more worries, no more doubt. All that uncertainty . . . vanished. You’ll see everything, the universes and their possibilities, and when we ascend, we’ll be beyond time completely, on the shores of something we can scarcely imagine. Something beyond our very ideas of gods and creation, of physics and laws.”
“But you said it’s a program,” said Liam. “It isn’t real.”
“The simulation is for the rest of them, not for you and me. Humanity will take its place inside the housings like you saw on the way down here. But you and I will get to join her here in the mainframe. We will finally reach the higher dimensions and fully experience all of reality.”
Barrie motioned to the other three crystal cases and their floating inhabitants. “None of these beings were quite enough. Each one better than the last, but their brains couldn’t quite give her what she needed. You though, Liam, us, we can. With our minds, she can truly ascend.”
“You are saying that Dark Star has been building universes so that those universes will foster unique forms of life,” said the chronologist, “and then those life-forms will find their way here.”
“Don’t forget the stars it uses as power sources,” said Barrie. “It is a dual-purpose system. But yes, you’re correct, though we’re not talking about just any life-forms. Only the most powerful beings can make it here.”
“It’s been waiting for us?” said Liam. “But . . . we’re not the most powerful beings in the universe. There’s the Styrlax, who gave the Telphons that ship. There’s him.” He pointed to the chronologist.
“In this case, what I mean by power is potential. The human brain, Liam. It has more capacity than those of any other beings. Or any of these that have arrived here previously.” Barrie motioned to the other creatures in the cases. “We simply haven’t developed the consciousness, the awareness, to fully utilize our own potential. Our planet gave birth to our anatomy, but its environment also limited our perception of time and space, of the reality around us. Yet in terms of raw processing power, there’s never been anything as powerful as the human brain, in the history of our universe or any other. And when you want to attain access to the higher dimensions, what you need is power. Not power like energy, exactly. Computational power. Think of the potential of eleven billion human brains, all connected—every dendrite fully utilized, every synapse firing at maximum. With that power, Liam, Dark Star could finally unlock the totality of dimensional awareness and finally see the truth.”
The Shores Beyond Time Page 25