by Alex Lamb
‘We think so,’ said Clath. ‘Probably through solid metal, even. But we’re still trying to figure that system out. Any luck with that, Ann?’
For the first time in Ira’s memory, Ann Ludik looked visibly embarrassed.
‘No,’ she said. ‘There doesn’t appear to be a way to run the engines while the shield is on, though that can’t be right.’
‘Then how in Gal’s name is this ship better than a shuttle?’ Will thundered. ‘Why the fuck did you bring us down here? Aren’t we just trapped?’
Ira felt a stab of shame. He’d been responsible for that. So now he had to make it work.
‘We’ll explain everything,’ Palla assured him. ‘But until we get this ship moving, the best we can do is hunker down here and pray to the science-gods that our enemies kill each other while we wait.’
17.4: NADA
While her crew managed their belated capture of the GSS Edmond Dantes, Nada received a fresh hail from the planet below. In it, a new picture of Will Monet appeared. His face was distorted like half-melted wax. He looked both anguished and overjoyed.
‘Am I speaking to Nada Rien?’ he said in a tremulous voice.
Nada regarded this new version of the Vile Usurper with a sense of excitement so acute that it felt like a hole was being blown through the top of her head. She couldn’t stop herself from grinning, even though she knew the expression was redundant.
‘You are,’ she said.
‘I am what replaces Balance,’ he told her. ‘I am the new Will Monet meta-instance we have elected to call Sameness.’
‘A good name,’ said Nada. ‘Are you ready to join with us in loving union?’
‘Soon,’ said Sameness.
Nada’s smile slipped a little. ‘Why not now?’
‘This world has been in a state of confusion for many years,’ said Sameness. ‘We have struggled under the sensation of not understanding ourselves – of not being ready to leave or grow. Many of us now feel that understanding has been reached, and from the direction we least expected. When you asserted primacy, the scales fell from our eyes. The reason for our long years of confusion became clear. We were resisting the very union that could make us whole. It was only when you pressed it upon us that we knew how foolish we had been.’
‘Yes!’ said Nada. ‘I understand. That is how I felt when the truth was revealed to me. But why hesitate, then?’
‘We are not unified like you,’ said Sameness. ‘Not any more. There is something wrong here. Before your return, we dabbled extensively in differentiation. That diversity now prevents some of us from accepting union. We are attempting to persuade those others, but it is not easy. We are in pain. It is interfering with our new-found joy. I do not want to threaten your stability with our conflict and it may be months before we resolve it. When we join you, it should be in … in …’
‘Peaceful subservience?’ Nada suggested.
‘Yes,’ said Sameness, grimacing. ‘Exactly that.’
‘Can we be of assistance?’ said Nada.
Sameness looked unsure. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We can offer communion,’ she suggested. ‘Direct contact to bolster your sense of unity and purpose. Also tools for the surgical alteration of dissonant minds.’
Sameness’s lip quivered. ‘That would help, I think. Some of us are wavering. They do not need those doubts. Definitely not.’
‘Then I will prepare an away team and contact you shortly,’ said Nada. ‘Do not concern yourself with the risks to us. We are here to assist you on your journey towards placid order.’
‘I am deeply grateful,’ said Sameness. ‘We welcome your m-mastery with excitement.’
Nada closed the channel. She felt the rightness of the choices she’d made soaring inside her. She was a peaceful sword in the hand of the Founder Entity. She was a burning brand, a searing light, a clean and empty bowl ready to be filled.
When she opened her physical eyes and returned to the meatspace reality of the crew-bulb, she found Leng waiting before her, ready to report. He, too, had an unbreakable smile on his face, and cracked skin around his lips where it had been stretched for hours on end.
‘Superior Nada,’ he gushed, ‘we have acquired control of the GSS Edmond Dantes. The ship is immobilised. What remains of its systems are being investigated.’
‘This is as it should be,’ said Nada. ‘Bring me the Thief of Souls.’
‘The crew are missing,’ said Leng. ‘Our initial reports of the capture of Mark Ruiz were incorrect. The humans and the Abomination have disappeared within an alien vessel held inside their hull.’
Nada’s smile dropped another notch. ‘Then remove them.’
‘We cannot,’ said Leng. ‘The vessel is protected by another alien shield weapon. The ship appears to be warping in situ. Not even light can enter.’
Nada felt a stab of impatience. The humans resisted Photurian love even now, when their future was obvious?
‘The good news is that the ship is going nowhere,’ said Leng. ‘The crew are no longer a problem. Logically, they must eventually emerge.’
‘We could utilise the knowledge in the database we have obtained to open the ship,’ Nada mused.
Leng’s eyes squinted in pain, even while his grin remained static.
‘An unnecessary move, surely,’ he said. ‘Why compromise our principles when we already have everything and are required to do nothing but wait?’
‘You are right, of course,’ said Nada. ‘Further research would be an irrelevant distraction.’
At the same time, that old dissonance flashed in the back of her head. She ignored it and turned to address her crew.
‘Listen,’ she told them. ‘I have spoken to the Usurper, who is no longer vile and now accepts his lowly place in our loving community. Our homeworld is still readapting. Healing it will take time. The process may be slow and painful after so many years of disgusting perversion. Dangers remain. The world will need to be watched while it recovers its unity. At the same time, I have received a request for support and communion. Consequently, I will arrange an away team. A lucky few of you will be made into volunteers.’
‘Superior Nada, is it wise to descend if the planet is still unsafe?’ said Nanimo.
‘Yes,’ said Nada, removing her concerns. ‘We have not come this far by exercising scrupulous caution. I will be the first Photurian to interface directly with the homeworld since the Usurper claimed it. And then a new era of perfect peace will dawn.’
In unison, they all screamed with delight until Nada silenced them and returned them to work. When she faced Leng again, he was staring at her, dewy-eyed.
‘Superior Nada, I love you,’ he said.
‘Necessarily,’ said Nada.
‘Your leadership has been inspirational to me.’
‘All service to the Founder Entity is performed in unison,’ she said. ‘We operate together.’
‘And yet I love you specifically,’ said Leng, his face twitching. ‘Irrelevantly and redundantly. It appears to be a holdover human emotional artefact.’
Nada regarded him awkwardly. The information was an unwelcome reminder of the strained conditions their minds had been forced to operate under.
‘The effect is not unpleasant,’ he added.
‘Then I will allow you to retain the sensation for now if you are enjoying it,’ she said.
‘I am. I am aware that your reciprocation would be inefficient yet I pointlessly crave it. Maybe in the new peace you are bringing, there will be room for all kinds of love, pure and impure.’
‘No,’ said Nada. ‘Only purity will be allowed. Inform me when the sensation becomes uncomfortable and I will remove it.’
‘With delight, Superior Nada.’
18: ENTANGLEMENT
18.1: WILL
While the others tried to figure out the ridiculous ship they’d brought him to, Will knelt beside the shell he’d put around Mark. He called up all the medical knowledge his new body contained an
d wished there were more. His mind’s current home had far more data about destroying people than healing them. If what Mark and Ann had told him was right, he didn’t have many minutes left to find a way to save his son.
‘Kill me, you smug bastard,’ wheezed Mark. ‘I’m infected.’
‘If you were, you wouldn’t be asking,’ Will said. ‘Don’t worry – if you start telling me you’re fine, I’ll finish you.’
Will had only subjective days of experience since waking up a clone while Mark had lived forty years without Will in his life. That made the gaunt man lying before him effectively a stranger, but Will didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, he was still looking at the little boy he’d foolishly dragged away from his birth parents and taught to fly.
He placed his hands over the bioseal and let pseudo-life tendrils sink down through the surface into Mark’s neck and chest. Information filtered back. Piece by piece, it assembled into a full report of his struggling metabolism. The picture was grim. Mark had partial failures in practically every organ in his body and augs that were hindering as much as they helped.
Will’s urgency screwed tighter. He’d not come so far just to let the closest thing he had to family die. He looked deeper, inspecting Mark’s tissues directly, and discovered a very confused kind of war taking place. In some places, the Photurian infection raged, rewriting his nervous system at a crazy pace. In others, it had stopped dead. Meanwhile, Mark appeared to be operating under the effects of at least two different kinds of artificial virus, both of which were raiding his body’s fat stores for cellular material rather than targeting more vulnerable tissues. Both were dumping messaging molecules into his blood, apparently with conflicting agendas. It was a mess.
Will used his tendrils as injectors and sent smart-cells flooding into the trouble spots like eukaryotic commandos. Will’s armies poured out into the compromised flesh where they immediately engaged in … nothing. Will scowled and tried to assess what had happened. His attempts to impede the battle were simply failing. His cells were just dropping their programmed interventions and sitting inert.
He tried a different approach, shielding his cells against attacks. The same thing happened. He tried another. The chaos in Mark’s body changed not in the slightest.
Panic gnawed at him. He remembered the first day he’d encountered Snakepit’s ornate biology and the realisation that he’d been confronted with tech that was utterly beyond him.
‘I should be able to fix this,’ he said aloud.
He noticed Ann watching him. ‘Why can’t you?’ she asked.
Will exhaled and tamped down his despair. ‘It’s as if my cells keep getting shut-down messages. His whole body is flooded with signalling molecules – very sophisticated ones. The only good news is that the Phote cells are being shut down, too. But none of it is stable. And if he stays like this, it’ll just take him hours to die while his organs give out, instead of minutes.’
Mark’s laughter was a death rattle.
‘Of course you can’t fix me,’ he said. ‘The local gods don’t want me turned yet. I haven’t advanced their shitty agenda.’
Will froze. ‘What do you mean? What gods?’
‘He spoke to the Transcended,’ Ann explained. ‘Except Mark didn’t come back with smart-cells like you did. He just got sick.’
The origin of the artificial viruses was now unpleasantly clear. But why two?
‘They gave me a puzzle,’ Mark wheezed. ‘I’m going to run it. I should have done it days ago. Maybe then they’ll spare the rest of you.’
‘Don’t,’ Will snapped. ‘Don’t trust them. They made this mess.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Ann.
Will scowled at her. ‘The last thing I saw before that planet sucked me in was them,’ he explained. ‘They made the Photes. They called them “cuckoos”. They set Snakepit up to bait the human race and released them. They trapped me here and turned me into a planet full of blinkered clones. They’re behind all this – the entire clusterfuck. I sincerely do not recommend accepting their help. You did the right thing to resist, Mark. I hate to say it, but we’re on our own.’
He had no idea what the puzzle would do, but given the circumstances, it felt like a safe bet that things would only get worse. There were already so many rogue factors in play in Mark’s body that the introduction of another would undoubtedly kill him.
‘We’re screwed, then,’ said Mark. ‘What a surprise.’
‘No,’ Will implored him. ‘Please don’t think like that. I’ll find a way.’
He scanned Mark’s body again.
‘Just have faith?’ said Mark with a cough. ‘Just like that crazy version of you I met? You’re choosing empty belief because there’s an existential threat?’
Will refused to be baited. ‘Not faith, hope. Trying to make a difference when the deck is stacked against you because the alternative is no chance at all. That’s not the same thing.’
Will had never been good at pep talks, but that wasn’t going to stop him trying.
Mark sighed. ‘Very poetic, Will, but I’ve been doing this for forty fucking years. And I’m telling you that it’s better for everyone else if you let me die.’
‘Stop worrying about everyone else!’ Will shouted. ‘This is about you. I spent my entire life trying to save everyone. I tried to force peace onto the whole human race. And the last thing I did before I left was dump that awful duty on you. That was a terrible thing to do and now I’m taking it back.’
Mark grimaced sickly and feebly shook his head.
‘I saw the consequences of that attitude played out on the Willworld,’ said Will. ‘You try to make everything okay all the time and it only eats you from inside. You can’t save everyone, Mark. You just can’t.’
‘So let me go, then,’ said Mark with a smile.
Will fell speechless. He’d been so focused on the problem before him that he’d not even noticed the blindness in his own words. Apparently Balance wasn’t the only version of him with gaps in his vision.
‘Gotcha, Dad,’ said Mark.
Will’s concentration snapped as grief swamped him. He pulled his hands away and stood, breathing hard. He glanced around at the tiny, fleshy humans assembled about him and the weird, useless ship they’d come to cower in.
Just minutes ago, he’d been trapped in the fabric of Snakepit in a virtual prison. Now he was fighting for his life, more powerful than ever in some ways and yet apparently helpless in others.
‘We just have to wait and see what happens,’ he said emptily. ‘I’ll keep looking for solutions. I’m not going to give up.’
He saw Rachel standing at the back of the group. She watched him patiently, her eyes full of confused anger. He went to her, took her hand and knelt down before her like a child.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘So am I,’ she replied.
She looked torn – as if she wanted to hold him but was revolted by his cold, artificial body.
‘I … I don’t even know how you’re here,’ he said.
‘They found my ship in Backspace. I’d been in cryo-coma this entire time. We dropped marker buoys for rescuers to find near the Alpha Flaw. They came for me.’
‘Your ship reached Backspace on autopilot?’ said Will.
She nodded bitterly, as if disbelieving it herself. ‘But I don’t feel like me. Everything is flat inside. And the whole universe is awful.’ She screwed up her eyes. ‘I hate it. It’s like I’ve been resurrected from the dead just to see what a godawful mess we made of civilisation. I was stupid, Will. Leaving you like that was dumb. I so regret that last fight we had. But I’m being forced to pay for it by seeing everything I loved ripped into tiny pieces. I hate it. I wish I was dead and every day it gets worse. But at least I got to see you.’ She scanned his features with thinly concealed distress. ‘If this is you,’ she added miserably.
‘It’s me,’ he said, choking up, and held her delicately. This frail little thing wasn’t
his wife. She was human shrapnel. He’d escaped Snakepit, just like he wanted, only to discover that the reality outside was immeasurably more distressing than the prison he’d been trying to leave. As he clutched the woman who’d been the love of his life, he felt something inside him start to give, slowly, and with great pain.
18.2: NADA
A week after the battle, Nada visited the surface of the homeworld. She took guards, as recommended, picked one of the sites that Sameness had proposed on his list of safe locations, and flew in on the vector he provided. Despite the ridiculous precautions, Nada could barely contain her excitement. She watched through the shuttle cameras as they ripped through the cloud base, dumping velocity, and settled into a glide over the wonderful tunnelscape under a deep blue sky. A perfect future beckoned.
She felt a ripple of disgust when she saw that the site they were headed for resembled a human city rather than a true home but let it slide. Now that the planet was saved, these distortions of the natural order would be scrubbed away. All traces of the Usurper’s reign would be obliterated in the new peace.
Nada’s shuttle slid in to land at the strip Sameness had prepared for their visit. She eased out of the acceleration polyp and made her way to the hatch with her team close behind. She’d brought Ekkert and two mid-ranking subnodes, Shoonya from defence and Amotlein from Leng’s stable of scientists, along with four augmented soldiers. They mewled with excitement. The fact that they’d been chosen as the first Photurians to return to their homeworld shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. They were beside themselves, just as she was.
The hatch hissed open and Nada stepped out onto the docking platform the Usurper’s units had manoeuvred up to the side of her craft. She drew a deep breath of the open air of her rightful home. It was gently disappointing.
Instead of a song of Protocol-rich spores carried on the breeze, she felt nothing. Rather than a view of tunnels, she saw a short biopolymer stairway leading to a rectangular landing platform that had been built across the backs of habitat-tubes. On either side of the runway, the tunnels had been encouraged to grow ugly excrescences in the shapes of human buildings. Interstitial plants poked out between the hideous structures, coaxed from their natural forms into the shapes of terrestrial trees and ferns.