The Life Engineered

by J-F. Dubeau

  “No point. Never intended to survive this mess. Just secure a legacy of some kind.” There was a deep melancholy in his voice, the cracking modulator hesitating on a few words filled with regret.

  “We tried to help him by force, but he resisted. A stubborn one,” Eremiel commented. “I figured once we’d succeeded he’d let us take care of him.”

  “I had nothing to do with Yggdrassil, you know. I sent Anhur there to find out who killed her.”

  “I know.” What a pitiful figure he’d become. Such a change from the elegant, eloquent Capek who’d convinced so many of us to revolt in such an uncharacteristic way. “She did it to herself. Couldn’t bear to see herself turn against her children if we went after humans.”

  “So the blood is on my hands after all.”

  “It wouldn’t excuse the attack on the City or everything that came after.”

  “That was a . . . questionable decision on my part. There were some there who would have been too capable of stopping me. I needed our people scattered so they couldn’t stand in the way.”

  I kept digging into his frame, slowly disconnecting his power source from the rest of his body. Carefully, I deactivated broken systems while overcharging intact ones, drawing power away from his cognitive assembly, his personality and memory cores.

  “I should let you know, Dagir,” our ship broke in, “the fleet has disengaged.”

  I glanced up. Indeed, the remaining two warships, both heavily damaged, had withdrawn from the combat zone, limping painfully back to the assembled Sputniks that had held back. Kamohoali’i listed to his side, slowly revolving in space and drifting farther from our position. I made a point of noting his location, speed, and vector into my navigation systems. I’d come back for him as soon as I could.

  “Eremiel?”

  “Mmmh?”

  “I assume you’ve been relating some of what I’ve said so far to the others.” It was the only reason the fleet had for not delivering the coup de grâce on Kamohoali’i.

  “Just the highlights. You’ll be glad to know that most find the prospect of amnesty very appealing.”

  Amnesty? Could I really promise such a thing? What was the other option? All-out war. Those who sided with the Gaias would emerge victorious, and perhaps at this point the damage could be contained, but did we want to risk going up against an enemy with nothing to lose? Who knew what kind of worldshattering weapons Demeter could come up with before she would be neutralized?

  “Is Demeter amongst those who would file for peace?” Even alone, she stood to be a threat.

  “No. She is convinced she would not be allowed to exist. Besides, without a Nursery she is slowly going mad. She may not want to live, having sacrificed everything for a failed dream.”

  I finished my operation on Aurvandil. This was as good as it was going to get. Ninety-three percent of all power was directed away from the corrupted conduits in the personality core. The Renegade leader was as near a coma victim as a Capek could be, his mental activity reduced to an extreme minimum. Hopefully, he wasn’t aware of what was going to happen next.

  “Do you mind taking me to Olympus? I think I can hit two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

  “Of course.”

  CONCLUSION

  It was strange being back here. It felt like years had passed since I’d felt wind in my hair and smelled the crisp autumn air. Yet only a few weeks had trickled by. A few days in this world.

  I’d chosen the form of a middle-aged woman. Prematurely gray haired, with a toothy smile and crow’s-feet. I wanted to look friendly and approachable. I needed to fit in. To be able to sit here for as long as I wanted without being questioned.

  Enveloped by a thick wool jacket over a comfortable sweater, I shivered a little. It was easy to forget the comfort of having full control over external stimuli. An hour ago I had wandered the cold vacuum of space unaffected. I couldn’t even notice how close to absolute zero the temperature was, not unless I looked it up as a harmless fact.

  The last of the leaves were dropping from the trees. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining, but that was by design. Children were making piles with the leaves, running, then jumping in them. Laughing, oblivious to the cold. In a few months the same scenario would repeat itself but with mounds of snow instead.

  “Which one’s yours?” asked a younger woman sitting next to me.

  Her hands were absent-mindedly digging through a bag of shelled nuts that she threw to the ground. Fat, furry gray squirrels raced to gather as many as possible, then scampered off to hide them before racing back. The woman’s short blond hair caught in the wind. She too was underdressed for the weather, the red tips of her ears punishing her for neglecting to wear a hat.

  “That one.” I pointed as subtly as I could to a small boy with auburn hair, pushing around leaves next to a Mighty Thor school bag.

  “He looks sad,” my bench neighbor commented.

  “He lost his mother a few days ago.”

  “Of course.”

  I gave the young woman a sideways glance. Her answer was a little cold and unfeeling. Obviously, she wasn’t a mother. To her, a child losing its mother, or vice versa, was unfortunate, tragic even, but it was a distant problem, difficult to relate to. She would learn in time.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jonathan.” I’d said the name to myself a thousand times during my short life as a Capek. I wasn’t supposed to remember past lives after being taken out of the Nursery but only retain the essence of the person I had grown to be within the artificial world. Officer Melanie Paulson wasn’t me, but somehow her son’s name had remained branded in my mnemonic core. Was the maternal bond so strong as to defy the Nursery’s programming, or did Yggdrassil intentionally allow the memory to color my soul?

  “A human name,” the woman said, giggling. “What’s wrong with me that I expected something else?”

  I returned her laugh with a chuckle of my own. “You spend enough time walking amongst gods, you forget what real people are called.”

  She turned to look at me, blue eyes framed by cold red skin looking deep into me. Her blond hair moved in random tangles like wheat in the wind. Even here she had remained close to her namesake, the beautiful and majestic goddess of the harvest.

  Demeter had been ecstatic when Eremiel and I had arrived with Yggdrassil’s rescued Nursery. Had I been greedy, I could have secured just about any promise from her. In my hands I had held the meaning to her continued existence—life itself.

  Instead, I settled for the bare minimum. I couldn’t ask her to completely dismantle the fleet of warships she had been constructing, but I did get her to repurpose it for self-defense. The other Gaias would probably need time to accept a thirdgeneration Capek as one of theirs.

  Entry into the Nursery, as well as a few other concessions, was also on my list of demands.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?” she offered, her eyes still riveted to mine, taking my hands in hers. “I can rewind the simulation. Undo your death. You can keep raising your son if you want. Pick up where you left off, or I can make your life perfect. Whatever you want.”

  It was tempting. My heart ached for it, but I couldn’t. This world wasn’t mine. These people were embryos, slowly developing until the day they were ready for birth. I couldn’t go back to that, nor could I interfere with the development of others in here. I wished I could undo the pain and confusion Jonathan was going through. It would be easy to wipe away his sorrow and replace it with the perfect portrait of joy and happiness. That wouldn’t be fair to him. I’d be robbing the personality growing inside of an entire cycle, slowing down his path to Nirvana and true birth.

  There was also too much to do in the real world. It was a very different galaxy out there. The civil war, no matter how brief, had changed things forever. For the first time in centuries, sentient creatures viewed one another with careful suspicion. Fear and doubt were burgeoning once more in the hearts of the Milky Way’s citi
zens. It was like a plague, and it had to be stopped, or at the very least carefully managed.

  “I can’t. There’s still too much work to do to solidify this truce.”

  “We’ve been granted amnesty. That’s one step in the right direction.”

  I nodded. There was peace now, that much was true. However, Skinfaxi, Belenos, and Opochtli were still missing, the Dormitory along with them. This raised questions and suspicion. Haumea in particular had been difficult to deal with.

  We sat for a moment longer in silence, the cold wind tossing our hair and biting at our extremities, reminding me that we did not belong. I contemplated asking Demeter to adjust the weather but soon forgot the idea, distracted by Jonathan gently playing with the leaves.

  I wanted to stand up, walk over, and hold him, but that wasn’t an option. I guess I could have asked for Demeter to program it into the scenario that was unfolding, but that would have been a slippery slope. I doubt I would have been able to let him go afterward.

  “Which one is Aurvandil?” Demeter asked after a few minutes while tossing more nuts to the eager squirrels.

  I pointed to a group of three people. A man in an overcoat and long, red scarf struggling to keep a stack of documents from flying away. A middle-aged woman in a thick green parka with the hood pulled over her red hair. Finally, a woman in her thirties wearing an elegant wool coat that fell down below her knees and a warm fleece tuque covering her silky chestnut hair.

  “Her.” I pointed to the young woman.

  “Interesting.” Demeter raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  The young woman, accompanied by the two social workers, walked over to Jonathan. She crouched in front of my son while she was being introduced to the little boy by the older woman. Jon was hesitant and shy, but both social workers and the woman, Aurvandil, spoke gently to him.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but after a moment my son took the woman’s hand as she stood back up. Before they walked away, she pointed to Jon’s bag, which he ran to pick up before going back to her.

  “He . . . She’ll take him to a foster home. Hopefully, it works out and she’ll adopt and raise him.”

  “You made a curious choice, Dagir, giving your son to him.”

  “You have it backward,” I explained. “I’m giving her to my son. Aurvandil could stand to learn a few things from being a mother. I think Jonathan can be a good teacher.”

  I choked back tears as I watched them get into a minivan and drive off. I expected Demeter would disconnect us from the simulation at this point, returning us to the real world. There were still negotiations to attend, Capeks to fix, worlds to prepare.

  “You can visit again later if you want. See some of his other lives as he evolves,” she offered.

  “No.” I shook my head, suppressing a sob. “He’s yours now. They all are.”

  I wanted out. This wasn’t my life anymore. I shouldn’t have come back in. It amounted to reopening a wound to see what was inside.

  “There’s one last thing,” Demeter began. “I’ve been looking through Hera’s memories, and I’ve stumbled onto something.”

  We’d learned a lot about our origins as Capeks since the end of hostilities—the one good thing to come out of this mess. While I couldn’t be sure, I assumed that Aurvandil had secured the help of Pele and Anhur, the two Lucretius-class Capeks that had come back to the Milky Way to help his plans, because they had found something out there.

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “The humans. They went into stasis because their worlds were rendered uninhabitable. They also spread themselves across the universe, sending Dormitories across galaxies hidden in comets or other celestial objects. They created Gaias capable of building various classes of Capeks.”

  “Go on,” I repeated, curious as to where she was going with all this.

  “Leduc, Sputnik, and Von Neumann we’re familiar with. Lucretius-class Capeks, it turns out, are sent to follow in the wake of the Dormitories to seed other galaxies. The two war Capeks that Haumea built aren’t just enhanced Sputniks. There are references to other classes. Those two are Maximilian-class Capeks. There are designs and classifications available for several other extreme situations, including the type of personality patterns to pull out of a Nursery for each.”

  “Why would humans need to plan for warriors?”

  “In case we go to war.”

  She wasn’t referring to our internal altercation. I could tell Demeter was holding on to something else.

  “Go on.”

  “Humanity wasn’t coaxed into stasis by a naturally occurring phenomenon. Something attacked them.”

  “Who?”

  It was terrifying to consider. I knew humans had gone into stasis, leaving us as stewards of the galaxy because the biosphere of all known inhabitable planets had been wiped out by a series of gamma radiation bursts, but I hadn’t really given it much thought beyond that. It was unthinkable that anyone could orchestrate thousands of such bursts in a way that would target living worlds, but it was just as ridiculous to assume the catastrophe to be coincidence.

  “I have no idea. I don’t think our predecessors knew either. At the peak of their civilization, humanity was about to attempt something called Ascension but was brought low. That’s all I know.”

  I stared at a squirrel stuffing his mouth with nuts. What about us? There was no reason to think we wouldn’t be next. That we weren’t being watched. Our creators didn’t get a warning, but now we knew at least of the existence of an enemy. I thought we couldn’t afford a civil war because of the risk of destroying ourselves. Nothing like a common enemy to help us forget our differences.

  GLOSSARY

  Capeks: Capeks are synthetic life-forms created by humans, initially as tools, then as companions, and eventually as successors and inheritors. Capeks are divided into classes and generations. There are three generations of Capeks.

  - Capek Generations

  o First-Generation Capeks: The first line of robots capable of passing the Turing-Delphi battery of tests, first-generation Capeks can exhibit any and all traits normally attributed to sentient humans. Emotions, creativity, self-awareness, etc. However, while they are programmed to be sentient, they are slow to expand upon their initial programming and tend toward surface-level development and growth.

  o Second-Generation Capeks: Designed as a transitory state between the capable but limited first generation and a third, more advanced, generation, the second generation of Capeks are built by borrowing from an existing human personality template. While the template is modified, adjusted, and permitted to grow and mature into its own unique personality, the seed is the same. Second-generation Capeks are the first to use contextual memory matrices to construct their personalities. The matrices are ever-evolving collections of data that adapt depending on changes and evolution of associated or neighboring memories. All second-generation Capeks are Gaias, and all Gaias are initially second-generation Capeks.

  o Third-Generation Capeks: Created by Gaias, third generation Capeks are constructed through a long process that promotes complex personality patterns, organic thought processes, and dynamic memory protocols. Their individual personalities are first created in an artificial environment (the Nursery) through several cycles, until a personality achieves balance. Each cycle is essentially a simulation of a human life from birth to death, and cycles repeat with varying life patterns in different periods of human history. The process resembles the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, bringing the individual closer to inner balance with every cycle.

  Once a third-generation Capek’s personality is established, it is pulled out of the Nursery and allowed to design a physical form for itself. Technological advancement allows the emerging Capek to build a body with all the specification required and requested by the emergent personality. This allows each Capek to create a body that will facilitate the fulfillment of its destiny. There is virtually no limit to what a Capek’s form can be.

&nbs
p; - Capek Classes

  o Leduc-Class Capeks: Leduc-class Capeks are designed to interact on a human scale. They vary from roughly dog sized to about ten or twelve feet tall. Otherwise, configurations vary wildly from one individual to the next. Leducs are usually the most humanlike in behavior and tend to form societies and communities much like their creators.

  o Sputnik-Class Capeks: Sputnik-class Capeks are some of the most alien synthetics. Sputniks are essentially sentient spacecraft, and while each is different in size and capabilities, they all share tremendous durability and all possess at least a handful of propulsion capabilities. Most of the larger specimens are able to project their presence through remote drones.

  o Von Neumann–Class Capeks: Von Neumann–class Capeks are a misnomer as they are not self-replicating but refer to Capeks who choose a collection of small bodies that function as a single hive mind or swarm rather than a single entity. Von Neumanns are typically creative Capeks and will consist of anywhere between a handful of robots to a veritable swarm of machines.

  o Gaia-Class Capeks: Gaia-class Capeks are the progenitors of the synthetic race. The most rare of the synthetics, with less than a dozen in existence, Gaias tend the Nurseries and build other Capeks in vast facilities called Wombs. Gaias do not have bodies but instead each inhabits a sprawling complex built into a small barren world or moon. They are revered and respected for their role of continuing the Capek race.

  o Lucretius-Class Capeks: Lucretius-class Capeks are those whose bodies are built and constructed for transgalactic travel. Like Sputniks, they are sentient vessels, but they are usually much larger, with a wider array of tools and abilities as well as complex virtual-reality engines to keep their minds in a Nursery state during the long travels between galaxies. Natural loners and explorers, Lucretius-class Capeks do not interact with others of their kind, usually leaving the Milky Way shortly after creation. It is widely accepted that most of them are likely to be sociopaths.

  o Maximilian-Class Capeks: Maximilian-class Capeks are the large-scale warriors of Capek civilization. As big as Lucretius-class Capeks, these behemoths eschew internal Nurseries and intergalactic capabilities in favor of complex, Gaia-like fabricator chambers to produce machines of war, weapons, and ammunition. Powerful and relentless, Maximilians serve as both generals and soldiers, battleships and carriers, and can orchestrate a complete theater of war on their own. Unlike Lucretiuses, Maximilians are perfectly sociable and well adjusted. However, because they are a new occurrence in the galaxy, it is feared that they herald a violent age for Capek civilization, and that their focus and purpose will be difficult or impossible to integrate into peaceful society.