Evolution

by Saunders, Craig

  Orpal actually thought the hunter’s fascination with the physical quaint. Orpal supposed he could encase the eyes instead of the room but the principle was irritating. The interlopers would have to take their chances. Hopefully they would get the point.

  “I know what you’re doing, Orpal.” Kyle shouted, unnecessarily. “You do realise they’re just eyes, right?”

  “Yes, but I don’t like them.”

  “Very reasoned,” muttered Kyle, shaking his head. Orpal was grouchy today. He had been ever since he’d brought the eyes back.

  “We have arrived,” Orpal told him. He let the view speak for itself.

  *

  Chapter Two

  Ore world/Retra/subplate tect Nol Sar. Ecentrist

  The socioassassin arrived. Yet another blasted planet. Swathed in red giant radiation the equatorial realms still burned. Bubbling plains of gas and lava covered them. The electricity of matter fusing flowed into rock. The pulses flowed to a trickle of regular beats and the planet was born.

  Habla’saem landed on the newly solidified northern pole where the Ecentrist had inserted their sentibitor. The sense inhibitor already probed the planetary core, restricting the newly emergent mind, telling it what they wanted it to know. The socioassassin found the use of this torture disturbing. Lies of this magnitude were long present, long before matter learned to move itself. In a few million years, life would evolve, and its sire would be unable to coddle its own creations in turn. Spayed morality, spayed planets – fertility of any kind seemed abhorrent to the Ecentrists. Yet they could not see the births they looked on with no joy each time they created a new consciousness – itself part of their warped cycle. Habla’saem understood – if they were all inhibited like this, from birth, who had been the first?

  That he would rather the Ecentrists die made no difference to him.

  Still, nature would prevail. If the Ecentrists had work for him he could overlook their foibles, such as looking down on every other thing in creation. They, too, would pass in time, whether he had a hand in it or not.

  (The Ecentrists view of social structure was redundant and as a race they had yet to be elevated beyond the third level mathematical caste. By all accounts were in no hurry to get there. Anything that they didn’t know presently the Ecentrists flatly refused to believe and to countenance each new discovery they invented some new method to explain the anomaly using only their ‘accepted’ methods, only their numbers. This new theory would always miraculously appear on the lecture circuits. The Ecentrists had their feet more solidly grounded in this plane, in this reality, than any other species Habla’saem had encountered (albeit by refusing to believe in gravity)…all based on the simple supposition of; beings want to believe.)

  The outside world (the shell could turn transparent, as all matter, if there but not there in equal amounts) looked small and round like a porthole on a sea cruiser. Habla’saem used his eyes first, the sencor second, but could see no sign of the Ecentrists. They were megalomaniacs, without a doubt, but unerringly punctual. Habla’saem thought the sencor was wrong, that there was nothing outside but tathmium rockcropping, or that they had somehow not shown up, a glitch, but then he knew there was no glitch. The sencor wasn’t failing to register one anomally, but blinking ‘3!’ at him; proximity warnings. He panned the view back. Then back a little further, and there; a face in the form.

  The Ecentrists strove to show no natural influence, obstinately believing themselves outside of natural rules. They strove for hard lines unlike those that would occur in nature. They strove for fields and rotating, shifting metals, ever collapsing in on themselves, solidifying and liquefying periodically, individuality in the extreme and from this close looked just like the mountains forming around them.

  The central giant, blotting out the other two immensities on each (shoulder?) spoke in the grumbling shift of tectonic plates mating.

  Habla’saem’s computer interpreted automatically – the giant would not speak to those made of flesh. Habla’saem did not mind at all. In the privacy of his shell he had the Com-K relay their words in their original language, each sound representing an element of the third mathematical language, a ‘patois’ that was easy enough for a man of the socioassassin’s extensive education. It was petty, but pleased Habla’saem greatly. He sat back, invisible to the Ecentrists leading individuality and chuckled softly, his chins wobbling flaccidly against his ribs. He was under no illusion that they would not be logging the information elsewhere and didn’t care in the slightest.

  The robots, however, did. The robots lowered themselves ponderously. The giant at the centre of the three hunched its mountainous girdle forward in a parody of consternation. Scorching white heat was enough to blow the atmocon and the interior became unbearably hot.

  Habla’saem’s composure nearly broke, just for an instant. A cork popped. Fumes dizzied Habla’saem.

  ‘I’m melting!…’ he thought.

  A second later he corrected himself. He’d forgotten what it was to sweat. His sweat was grey from disuse, as if clogged with dust.

  He smiled, spoke to the computer, and the shell rose pointedly into the sky.

  “Stop,” the giant said simply. Habla’saem thought the point made. The Ecentrists outer-skins returned to utterly smooth, mechanical, calm.

  His shell glided lower on the air, only this time it hovered just above the ground.

  “Then speak,” he said in his own language.

  There was a pause, the giant’s mass shifted, only perceivable through the shell’s remarkable sphere/magnification. What looked to be shoulders expanded and encompassed the two companions, raised and secretive. A mountainous huddle.

  The three joined. Three massive heads formed. They spoke as one. Habla’saem peered down his considerable wobbling mass and saw what was dripping there this time was not sweat, but blood, pooling from his ears and onto his previously pristine and purple robe. He reconsidered his earlier decision to assert his authority.

  ‘Com-K, scratch that. Interpret for me, would you?”

  The shell shook. The words came through.

  “Evolution is upon us,” they began.

  (An expensive bottle of Stum was bleeding out its contents onto the concave floor of the shell, running slowly down toward the socioassassin’s feet).

  “First was only instinct most basic. This will always be. But need has passed. Want has passed. Society shifts. It is time society evolved. Again. It is time we brought the next stage.”

  “Well, then that isn’t evolution is it, if we act as a catalyst?” Habla’saem’s looked at a loss, his bisected pupils narrowed in what seemed to the Ecentrists confusion.

  “Be silent and listen!” the three heads boomed as one. Ripples travelled outward from the pool of Stum accumulated at Habla’saem’s pale feet. His skin shook as the liquid rolled.

  “We are gods. Society our creation.”

  “Then?” asked Habla’saem. “How would you change it?”

  “Evolution. We must destroy the old.”

  And in slow, painful terms, the ruling triumvirate of the Ecentrists, named Baal, Baal’em and Asroth, explained.

  *

  Cablas – Tradition Archeog – Deep space. Open exhibit.

  Orpal navigated the sea of gravitron ripples under space and pulled into the docking bubble. Cablas was the Tradition’s pride of fleet, a gigantic travelling museum known as an archeog. The outer surface of the archeog was field-level tech, not obscuring the pre-enlightenment tech within but framing it. The ship itself comprised of three concentric spheres, the metal within an amalgamation of deep and near space matter, melded into a surface that would withstand battery by matter small or large. The size required to house the tech for such a display of power was inconceivable. Kyle watched from the window of his room, his mouth wide open and a small amount of drool waiting in anticipation on his square jaw.

  The spheres (the smallest it seemed was somehow on the outside) were locked together, like
they were born conjoined. In reality each new sphere was joined as an afterthought. Its mass ate of the detritus of each solar system it passed, taking matter from the various asteroid fields where it sat in abundance. Fifth level mathematical castes (the highest) disagreed with the practise, creating their own matter. Where this ship exhibited it was generally considered the price. The Tradition rarely enforced their will on another society, but most never questioned the practice. It wasn’t the sheer enormity of the ship that dissuaded them, but the additional sun that the Tradition brought with them.

  Being an open exhibit the Tradition had opted for deep space, rather than near, as they didn’t want to be seen showing favour with their prized exhibit. Normally, however, the sun entering a system would not allow light distortion through, but block all radiation. Cablas would allow no gravity, no radiation, no magnetism. It would distort the system.

  For obvious reasons, there was no need of outside energy sources.

  Today, there were no ships other than visitors. It was the first day of the exhibit, and Cablas was showing off.

  Seeing another sun enter a solar system tended to put things in perspective for the visitees. The simplest of survival equations sprang to mind. Bigger and stronger, don’t annoy (throughout time, many less intelligent species had become extinct for failing to obey this fundamental rule. Galadans, for example, had learned the hard way. They now lived in deep space, sole inhabitants of flat worlds. They based their military equations on the experience of meeting Cablas sixteen thousand years ago. The equation (expressed in solar terms) was now taught at their flight force pre-school.

  Exerpt, exam board (18,954, Galadan calendar), uril ‘mar galad, Cadet, aged 47 – Q. Upon routine scout mission, sub space, you espy an interloper entering your system, towing a sun. What do you do?

  A. Interlopers towing suns aren’t to be fucked with. Sir.^

  ^Additional note; a simple answer for which full marks were awarded.)

  The sun itself, a redolent dwarf due for death anyway had donated/allied itself to the Tradition’s travelling museum. It was not the only one in their collection. All joined of their own free will. This one, however, exhibited itself purely out of pride. It thought itself, like the other exhibits donated by societies, too important an entity to merely be forgotten.

  It was, thankfully, entirely able to converse with the ship. Old age for a sun could be dull – it was nice to have someone with whom to converse (and, being of old stock, suns leant toward well-mannered conversation). It wasn’t unhappy about being tethered like this, and found it infinitely preferable to the enforced euthanasia, or suicide as some might call it, brought on by the Ecentrist’s sentibitors, which as an after-effect of inhibition never allowed the suns to know their true nature and in their ignorance, die.

  There were no old age shelters for a sun to pass out its days playing scoop kad and gumming bree over drooling conversation.

  Any one of the three spheres that revolved around the dwarf were vast beyond Kyle’s imagining. Each was as large as a world. The outer, smallest, sphere registered at seventy thousand kilometers across. It was befitting the Tradition’s grandeur. Where other races (the Lore in particular) forgot that people looked to them for the future and became embroiled in their own thoughts (forgetting in their burgeoning intellect that sometimes ordinary folk need their intellectual role-models, too), the Tradition gave the universe gravitas. Eons of history and they worshipped it all.

  Kyle didn’t really think about such things (that was why, thought Orpal, we work together, he my hunter, me his chaperone) as theft. Orpal, nonetheless, realised the danger inherent in such a venture. Blame would undoubtedly fall on the Tradition for the loss of the second piece of the emitter and the Ecentrist’s ire would focus on them. Fortunately, Cablas was one of a growing number of Tradition ships that had no human, or Enlightened, crew. The theft would not arouse the ire of the Enlightened, at least. Cablas was an independent, as were many Tradition ships and bots, who believed they were created by humans, but saw no reason to be subservient to them.

  Orpal couldn’t afford to worry about the pursuit. He didn’t think for a minute the Ecentrists would be stupid enough to blame the Tradition for the theft, either. The Ecentrists would not take on the Tradition in its entirety.

  They might not have been as weapon-centric as the Ecentrists, but they were (apparently) the oldest of the robot races, and private. A cabal in their own right. Even the Ecentrists weren’t daft enough to rile them.

  The dwarf encapsulated within the gargantuan field tech and quantum polarity field had been saved by the Tradition from an abandoned Ecentrist’s system many years previously. The Tradition would not lock horns with the Ecentrists, but when they weren’t looking quite happily carried on doing exactly what they felt was right.

  In this case, Orpal tended to agree. The freeing of such a magnificent body from the barbarism of the Ecentrists was a sight he found beautiful. Even one as widely travelled as Orpal (and perhaps because of it) never tired of the inherent beauty, the joy, in those free of their shackles. Each and every sentient lived in such a prison still (namely, time) but to see a sun freed was to see an entity so resplendent even the cage was sucked within.

  Kyle absentmindedly cuffed his drool on the one cloth arm of his ambassadorial robe as Orpal made the preparations for docking.

  The ship’s inner (/third sphere) was transparent, the minute lives visible as Orpal pulled into dock. The field momentarily encompassed the entire ship before snapping back across the breach like a fat bubble sinking to the sea. Fissure sparks crackled along the smooth outside of the ship. Blue incandescence lit the bay briefly before the harsh orange glare of the docking lights flickered on, bathing the bay in a modest glow.

  The hunter cocked his head to one side as he inserted his eargen, pushing unruly flaxen hair aside before brushing it back over his ear. The eargen projected images by converting radio to light waves, which were input directly into Kyle’s cerebral cortex. Radio waves were too easily monitored. Orpal was careful. He transmitted all communications through light, cycling pulses. They had been over this time and time again. Orpal didn’t think this was the time for a reminder. Kyle, who had spent the approach alone, attempting to calm himself in his room (with those eerie eyes, no doubt), had the look of a primitive about him. No knowledge Orpal had tried to impart had prepared the hunter for the sight of the space sea, the ship, and the sun beaming out from within it. He looked in shock.

  Well, Orpal sighed, he’s the best I’ve got.

  “Ready?” he asked gently.

  Kyle’s eyes came back into focus. He looked a little pale.

  “As I’ll ever be. Let me at ‘em.” The hunter tried a brave smile. He looked younger than his years, and slightly bewildered. Orpal had been around a few years longer than the youngster and he had to admit the sight awed him every time. The Tradition shone with a fervour not even the hunter’s god could match.

  “Right then, remember what I said. Stick to the plan and it’ll be fine. I’m with you all the way.”

  “Cold comfort,” Kyle replied, and nodded.

  *

  Chapter Three

  Cablas – Inner sphere

  The ship’s gangplank swooned onto the deck, stabilising as the rotothrustors from beneath the ship kicked in and Orpal cut all non-essential power. Now the ship had docked in new light for the first time, the scars across its otherwise smooth surface became apparent. At a miniscule level nano-tech engineerbits scuttled out and began the arduous (to them – to the human eye the cosmetics would take but a day) process of remarking the hull with scores where they were supposed to be. The microcosms that made up each separate plate re-engaged in diplomatic relations with their neighbouring plates. The nanobot collectives muttered snide remarks and whispered pointed asides at their neighbours as they did each time there was a territorial argument between plate colonies. Closer inspection (no human had ever taken the time to watch them work) revealed
the results of their diplomacy. They removed laser, rock and energy blast scarring and aligned the hull. When they were finished, it would be sleek once again.

  Kyle stepped onto the gangplank and adjusted his eargen. Into the piece he said, “You’ll still be here when I get back, right?”

  “Do you intend to ask the same thing every time you go out, Kyle? Have I let you down yet?”

  “Well, no, not the one time that I’ve relied on you,” replied Kyle as he alighted, putting a boot for the first time on the body of the station, “but it doesn’t hurt to ask, eh?”

  “No, I suppose not,” sighed Orpal.

  “And no playing with my toys,” added Kyle quietly, as the guestgreeter came onto the platform, beaming toothily.

  “Your eyes? Believe me, I want nothing to do with them. I don’t know what you see in them, anyway.”

  “Boom boom,” said Kyle, smiling back at the approaching droid. “It’s not what I see in them, but what they see in me. Now shut up, I’m going to work.”

  “Don’t get lost.”

  The eargen blinked out.

  “Greetings, Jiall Kyle Iris. Cablas welcomes you.”

  “Thank you… I am glad to meet…” he said and spread his arms wide. It was never polite to say ‘you and all your varied components’. Instead, he had developed a complex system of gestures that served for diplomacy where he could not bring himself to lie.

  Kyle walked behind the bot down a wide lit corridor, entirely doorless, arterial. The guestgreeter was a simple field projection, a non-descript replication of Kyle’s race, maturely feminine in form.

  Orpal was fascinated by the ways different species interacted – the way some refused, some imitated. It was a good imitation, but felt hollow to Orpal, who knew there was just a conjurel floating inside the projection.