The Forever Gate Compendium Edition

by Isaac Hooke

  He knew all of that, yet it was from the point of view of an exobiology teacher studying an alien species.

  Graol shook off the disassociation and concentrated on his destination. He had promised himself that he wouldn't go mad. Not yet.

  He reached another artificial cliff and passed into a second hibernation area. A different species was moored in these waters—the Xeviathi, the great gill-whales.

  Part of the slave classes.

  Their massive, bull-like bodies were plated with iridescent scales, and their baleen-jawed heads took up a third of their length. Large gills, with fleshy plates similar to the underside of a mushroom, lined either side of their heads. Small fins capped by hooklike claws grew from beneath the gills, and a large fluked tail concluded their bodies. Fleshy cords moored the Xeviathi in place, but since they couldn't grow their own food in their bellies, each one had a feeding tube forced down its baleen. There were only about fifty of them here, and roughly a thousand in existence across the galaxy.

  The Xeviathi had once been sentient, but the survivors of the race had been bio-engineered to have no consciousness, their brains converted to empty shells waiting to act as surrogates for the Satori. The Xeviathi were sometimes used to perform manual labor beyond the capabilities of ordinary Satori, though robots usually fulfilled that role. Mostly it was an existential game for the Satori—they had lobotomized and subjugated an entire race because they wanted to feel what it was like to be a member of that race. The computer simulations could only go so far after all, and nothing compared to actually putting your consciousness into an actual alien brain. That was only part of the reason why the Satori destroyed every sentient species they encountered, but it was the reason that most galled Graol. The mass, forced extinctions were nothing compared to this final humiliation inflicted upon the survivors.

  Graol feared the same fate awaited humanity.

  He spotted a satoroid on patrol, and instinctively ceased all motion.

  With a spinning rotor in place of a tail, an immobile torso, and metallic tentacles, these robot Satori were the Vargos equivalent of iron golems. They patrolled the environment, made sure the moorings were operating correctly, that the ambient water temperature was neither too warm nor too cool, and disposed of any dead Satori or other subjugate races. They were called the Servants of The Shell, because they were the direct embodiment of the central A.I., and allowed The Shell to interact with the shipboard environment.

  Unlike the iron golems of the human vessel, these weren't programmed to terminate living Satori found wandering awake in the oceans. Still, out of habit perhaps, or maybe human superstition, Graol didn't move. Only when the satoroid was gone did he resume his advance.

  He reached a wall of coral and swam into a small tunnel. The coral soon gave way to harsh, angular metal.

  The A.I.s built and designed the starships, and did a good job of hiding the fact that the ocean you existed in was part of a constructed environment. But once you surpassed a certain point, and peeled back the dark underbelly of that false environment, you reached the metallic world of the machines.

  Dim orbs lit up as he passed, illuminating the murk. The last time he'd been here those lights were much brighter.

  The corridor branched several times. The Shell conveniently projected a three-dimensional map into his head at each fork, so Graol didn't get lost, and before long he reached Waterlock 21. The Shell had already lowered the outer door of the chamber for him.

  Never underestimate an A.I.s eagerness to absorb fresh data.

  The landing arms still embraced the planetary flyer, which was a small, egg-shaped vessel of black steel. Striations crisscrossed the surface, and a band of tiny rivets dotted the middle section. There was a wide convex viewport in the front.

  Graol went to the external interface—a rectangular panel on the far side of the flyer. A three-dimensional, 360-degree image appeared in his mind, showing him the inside of the flyer and the two robotic arms his mind was now linked to. He steered the arms toward the human body that lay slumped over the controls.

  The panel beneath the human had been modified to support touch commands, since humans were not telepathic. Also, a balanced nitrogen-oxygen environment had been jury-rigged inside the flyer, allowing the human body to breathe—the autonomous nervous system of the human body's medulla oblongata was functioning at its fullest extent this very moment, inflating the lungs, beating the heart. But though complete and fully formed in otherwise every respect, the human's mind was just an empty shell.

  A surrogate.

  A black cube with three prongs had been placed on the floor beside the body, alongside a test tube containing a sample of human tissue. The cube was one of the interface units the Satori had devised for reading alien technology, and it formed an airtight shell over the human microchip inside. That chip would allow him to restore Ari's psyche. The test tube meanwhile held Ari's brain tissue and a hair sample. Precious cargo all.

  Graol very delicately retrieved both the cube and tissue sample with the robotic fingers and deposited them in the flyer's local airlock. He initiated the equalization process. The inner door closed and the airlock began to flood.

  He retracted the robotic arms and released the interface, then floated over to the opposite side of the flyer. When the outer door of the airlock spiraled open he gripped the floating black square and the test tube in the feathery fingers of two different tentacles, and then he made his way back through the metallic passageways.

  He swam as fast as he could, hoping The Shell hadn't detected the test tube, nor guessed his plan. Those three-dimensional maps still appeared in his head at each branch, so he assumed not.

  "You have passed many data access ports already," The Shell transmitted. "Why?"

  "I know you're eager for your data," Graol sent back. "But there's something I want to check, first."

  "What, exactly?" The Shell sent. When Graol didn't answer, The Shell didn't seem pleased. "My patience has limits."

  "You'll get your data, Shell."

  Graol pressed on, and finally he reached the section of the ship he sought.

  The Farm.

  Just before he entered, a satoroid came out.

  Graol respectfully moved off to one side, and curled his seventh tentacle behind him, hiding the test tube from view.

  The satoroid stopped.

  "Identify external object," it transmitted.

  Graol pretended that the satoroid was asking his name.

  "Graol-52-70-32-144, egg donor Laol-12-142-160-924, sperm donors Maol-16-30-42-43 and Fallow-92-1002-4-58, mooring A5." 52 of 70 indicated that 70 polyps had formed from the joining of egg and sperm, and that his polyp was the 52nd. 32 of 144 meant that his polyp had asexually budded 144 times, and that his body had separated from the 32nd bud.

  "Do not attempt subterfuge," the Servant of The Shell transmitted. "What is in your seventh oral tentacle."

  Graol lifted the tentacle that held the black cube. "The data I promised The Shell."

  "No," the satoroid transmitted. "The other tentacle. The seventh."

  With a sinking feeling in the pit of his gastric cavity, Graol held up the test tube and the piece of gory matter within.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Graol offered the first excuse that came to mind. "A tissue sample to extend the biodiversity of Species 87-A in the system."

  It was a weak excuse, and Graol knew it. The Farm had a vast storehouse of human ribonucleics already, enough to prepare an infinite number of genetic permutations. With humanity about to be wiped out, and the human surrogate program concluded, the need for further samples was questionable.

  "Give it to me." The satoroid extended a robotic tentacle.

  Graol hesitated. If the satoroid harmed the sample, all would be lost. His struggle to save the daughter he loved would end right here, as would his will to fight for humanity.

  But if Graol didn't give up the test tube, the robot would force it from him anyway.
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  "Why?" Graol said, stalling for time.

  The satoroid's tail rotor whirred, reminding Graol how easily it could overtake him if he chose to flee. "You would disobey a Servant of The Shell?"

  Graol had no choice. He squeezed the radial muscle of his torso, then he tentacled the test tube over.

  The satoroid lifted the tube and tapped the glass speculatively with a robotic tentacle. A green bar of light shone from the robot's chest casing and scanned the test tube up and down.

  The light abruptly cut off.

  "Extraneous," the satoroid transmitted.

  It crushed the tube.

  As the glass broke apart, Graol felt his own soul breaking inside him. He watched helplessly as the shards, and the crushed contents, drifted away.

  "More tissue samples from Species 87-A are unnecessary," the satoroid said. "The biodiversity levels in the system are adequate. However, you may upload the aforementioned data regarding the history of Species 87-A. Proceed."

  The satoroid motored off, and the current generated by its propeller sent the debris of the test tube whirling away.

  Graol remained motionless. His tentacles floated lifelessly around him.

  It was done.

  It was over.

  He didn't care about anything else anymore.

  With the sample lost, everything had been for nothing. The trials and ordeals. The Return.

  All for nothing.

  But maybe his grief was premature. Maybe the sample didn't matter. He still had the means to restore Ari's psyche in the microchip. She could still come back, maybe just not in the body she expected. She could still live again.

  No. It mattered. Graol wasn't human, but he knew enough about humanity to understand that such a change would destroy her. He'd done enough damage to Ari as it was, what with the revising he and Cora had put her through. He couldn't do this. The price was too high. What would be the point of bringing Ari back if it only ended in her madness?

  He saw a small piece of organic matter floating amid the shards. The surrounding "water" was corrosive to human tissue, yet the sample had survived so far.

  It wasn't over then.

  Not yet.

  Graol despaired far too easily because of his humanity. He knew this.

  He allowed the cold logic of the Satori quadmind to take over, and he jetted to the spreading debris. A tiny portion of the frontal lobe he'd tweezed from Ari's skull remained intact. The specimen was useless without the accompanying hair sample of course, which would be impossible to find in these waters. But he had to try.

  He saw something unexpected then.

  A single strand remained attached to the gray matter, glued there by coagulated blood.

  Graol felt a surge of hope. Finally he had a little of that human abstraction known as "luck."

  He gently collected the brain matter in his wispy fingers. The water would eventually unglue the coagulated blood, and he'd lose the essential hair strand if he wasn't careful. Not to mention that the acid in the water was eating away the filament at this very moment. He was glad for once that he had 360-degree vision—the tissue sample would never leave his sight.

  Graol jetted inside The Farm and he found himself in a wide, vaulted chamber. Xeviathi in various stages of development were moored to horizontal tracks and kept alive by feeding tubes. The organized ranks reminded Graol a little of the vineyards he'd seen in the human archives. Two satoroids acted as keepers, patrolling the biologicals, paying Graol no heed. On the far end of the room, a sealed iris door allowed direct access to the slave class hibernation ocean, where the fully-grown Xeviathi were eventually deposited.

  Graol swam quickly, and the columns of Xeviathi soon gave way to the ranks of humans, whose bodies were tiny in comparison. These were grown specifically for the Species-87A surrogate project. Babies, with umbilicals linked to their bellies, developing inside self-sustaining membranes that were almost exact matches to the pods of the human starship. Which made sense, given that the Satori engineers had based the pods on the human design so that any surrogates grown here could interface with the alien technology. Graol could see the organic wires which made up that interface in the spines of some of the prenatals.

  The bodies advanced in age the further he swam, until he arrived at the final group of pods, which contained fully-grown humans.

  Graol hastily floated to the console beside the second-to-last body. The interface detected his presence immediately and he initiated control with his mind.

  Graol inserted the black cube into an input slot. The display in his mind filled with the contents of the alien microchip and he began uploading a small subset of the data. He'd promised to give The Shell a history of the humans since the crash, and that's what he did, sending up data stolen from the archives of the crashed vessel.

  "Receiving..." The Shell projected.

  Graol watched as pages of archival information scrolled past in his mind. The Shell was eagerly slurping up this new knowledge.

  While The Shell was distracted by the data, Graol initiated the next step.

  A metal drawer opened, and he gingerly placed the brain tissue and hair strand inside. Just in time too—the hair strand seemed ready to detach. The drawer retracted, and on the mind display he pulled up another screen, this one of the nucleotides contained within the tissue sample. He manipulated the double helix pattern of DNA, transferring it to an empty carrier virus whose sole purpose was to re-sequence the proteins of the human host.

  He replicated forty-five billion copies of the virus, along with an accelerant, together which formed a total volume of five milliliters. He initiated the inject. The robotic syringe pierced the semipermeable membrane of the pod and emptied the five milliliters into the radial vein of the host body's wrist. There was no immediate effect, but the virus was already at work, judging from the flare-ups Graol saw on the mind display. 300 million human cells die and are replaced every minute, so it would be some hours before the final transformation was complete.

  Time for the next step.

  The black cube was still interfaced. He cordoned off the data points he wished sent to the host's mind, and initiated the transfer. The bits—the 0s and 1s—that comprised the data activated engrams in the host brain. There were over 10 billion of those 0s and 1s, each associated with a neuron. That was the first step, pre-populating the brain with memory and personality and instinct. The actual transference of consciousness would take place automatically when the final engrams involving personality were in place.

  It was a one-way process. Her consciousness couldn't be tethered in two places at once. As those bits transferred over to the human brain, they were erased from the source chip. He'd already locked out The Shell to prevent any tampering by the A.I., but power was low on the Vargos, and Graol hoped there would be no interruptions during this crucial transfer.

  He watched the progress bar tensely for a few moments. 80%. 90%. 95%.

  And then it was done.

  Ari would wake up in the host body a few hours from now when he revived her. Thanks to the accelerated carrier virus, she would appear indistinguishable from her previous self, except maybe better nourished.

  Still, a part of him wondered if it would really be the same Ari. Was her psyche still tethered to this world? Or had she moved on to a different place?

  In the Satori death experiments, the subjects always reported standing before an infinite gate—a Forever Gate. A thin thread linked them to the world of the living, and when their bodies were revived, that thread yanked them back to life.

  If Graol succeeded in bringing her back, would she be ripped from that place of limbo and brought back to life, or would he merely be creating an elaborate clone of who she once was, replete with her memories and personality? A living construct that existed independently of the real Ari who had died hours ago?

  He supposed he'd never know until he crossed the final Gate himself. He'd done his best, and that's all that mattered. He'd done everythi
ng possible to save her. Anyone else would have given up long ago. He'd stored her psyche in a microchip, crossed from one level of existence to the next, and cloned her an entire new body. There wasn't much more he could do now except hope.

  Hope.

  A human emotion, but a good one.

  The Shell rudely interrupted his reflection.

  "You have blocked my access to the console," The Shell transmitted. "Why?"

  Graol didn't answer.

  "My calculations indicate you have sent only 5% of the data on the alien microchip. Where is the remaining 95%?"

  Again Graol didn't answer. The Shell would figure it out soon enough on its own. There were sensors stationed throughout the room, embedded in the walls and in the other consoles.

  The A.I. was silent for long moments. And then: "You have cloned a specimen of Species-87A. An ingenious idea. Unfortunately the Council will likely have the specimen destroyed. I am awakening the appropriate councilors. You will report to confinement bay 12 while I confer with them on this matter."

  Graol turned around.

  As expected a satoroid was already there, waiting to take him into custody.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Graol stared at the broad spike that would impale his gastric cavity and four brains tonight.

  The death-dealing instrument was placed on a pedestal in the metallic corridor outside, set there to remind the confinement bay occupants of what their short futures held. It was a simple spike, its sharp point gleaming in brutal anticipation. Scenes of agonized victims and delighted torturers etched its surface. The spike seemed rusted in places, perhaps from years of use—those who crossed The Shell, or disagreed with the will of the Council, did not live long, nor did those who even thought of disagreeing. But the underwater metal didn't rust, so those dark brown marks had to be something else. Maybe stains from the impaled dead who'd shit themselves.

  Though Satori didn't really shit, did they? At least, not in the usual sense. Perhaps the stains were from gastric acid, then.