The Enlightened’s evolution to a star-faring race had been a relatively quick one. Like most other star-faring races they had evolved together with their symbiotic robots, esconced within their fantastic interstellar ships. Interplanetary travel was for lowly races, interstellar travel for the Enlightened had only taken ten thousand years or so to achieve. To create ships that could travel such vast distances they had to import the heavier elements into the relatively new system. The system’s evolution was actually slower than its peoples.
The heavier elements were more stable, the unstable elements having arrived on the outskirts when they were young and frisky, to have the fight kicked out of them by the fear that hanging on the edge of a galaxy gave them.
Every surface, even the massive towers from which their ships flew, reflected light out into the solar system, the radiation from their large and old sun given just enough of a boost to itself create new life on the nearest planet, in sychronous orbit, the density of the planet having changed its neighbour’s orbit around the sun, pulling it close and never letting go.
The space around Torpa was unblemished by satellites. They bounced satelitte signals from the atmosphere, so upon approach there was nothing for the crew to see but the shining world below them. Even its moons were coated by the material. They threw sunlight back at Torpa so that no part of the world was ever dark.
It was a remarkable world. Kyle, Archeon and Orpal were however so weary as to be wordless.
Orpal orbited. A moon waxed. Shortly afterward, it waned. Orpal prepared for entry.
*
Despite Orpal’s best efforts the emitter remained resolutely dismantled. Archeon at least knew how it felt.
Archeon, in pieces, was slowly and painstakingly reassembled by Kyle, under the tutelage of Orpal.
“Now mind where you’re putting that,” said Archeon’s upper housing.
“Mind I put it anywhere, you ungrateful clod,” said Kyle.
“Now, now,” said Orpal, “there’s no need for anyone to get shirty.”
Kyle had changed into a lounge robe on the journey, and now the long cuff hung in Archeon’s instentials.
“Watch that, young hunter,” said the old war hero. “Pretty serious scrape that time, eh, Orpal?” it said to its old friend.
“When you were in the war I bet you had worse than this,” there was a clunk as Kyle fitted the Lu’s eye housing back into Archeon’s chest cavity.
“When I was in the war…”
“When I was in the war, when I was in the war…you do go on, can’t you just keep quiet, out of gratitude, like, and give me some peace?” said the genogun.
“Now young fellow, I’m sure you’ve been taught to respect your elders,”
“That’s not strictly true,” said Kyle, brushing some of Archeon’s scuff from his sleeve. He felt it only right that that he stick up for his weapon.
“Watch that, mind yourself!” warned Archeon, watching his innards being manhandled by the clumsy hunter.
“Careful now boy,” added the eyes.
“I’m surprised, I must say at how kindly you’re taking this,” Kyle said to the eyes, speaking through Archeon. “I thought you’d be somewhat miffed at the whole me killing you thing.”
“Nonsense,” said the genogun, “there’s more to the Lu than meets the eye. Ahem.” They added.
Clunk.
“There,” said Kyle, last piece. “Now, how do you feel?”
Archeon, embarrassed at his base shape, immediately morphed. “Much better, thank you.”
The eyes, housed in Archeon’s chest, added, “yes, much better now we’re mobile.”
They were all on form. Now fully sentient the gun counted as one of the crew. Each one of them was ready to go. Leaving Cetee behind had rightly upset the crew – you never leave a woman behind. They were ready for some therapy.
“Right then, time to go for the oracle…Torpa here we come.”
The eyes had told them earlier, and in no uncertain terms that the only way to ever get the emitter assembled was to visit one of the five extant oracles. Oracles were all machines and had been assembled, for want of a better word, millennia ago. If you had a question about tech, the oracle was the place to go. There was also one on Torpa. Being as Torpa was the closest planet, and entirely run by either Tradition robots who were subjugated, willingly, to the Enlightened, or the Enlightened themselves, it was Torpa that Orpal had chosen. There were other oracles, but this one was by far the easiest to reach.
“I miss her though,” said Kyle forlornly. He had been pining since Cetee had been left behind.
“Really,” said Kyle’s gun, “you’re such a soft shite.”
*
Harna Gurn proselytised later in his long career. At the height of his powers he was without peer. Shortly before his death he had become a bitter man. Some thought this bitterness was directed at his last student, whom it was rumour had a secret liason with Harna Gurn’s young wife. But most of his bitterness was directed at a universe that he felt was too slow to listen to reason. Small wars continued throughout his lifetime and bad feeling left over from the first origin war persisted. No matter how resolutely Harna tried to sway hearts and minds in the intellectual domains the real world remained cold blooded.
Torpa was one of his cases in point. He tried to teach people a newer, more diverse, theory of evolution, but all but the Lore seemed indifferent to the wisdom of Harna Gurn’s words. He preached that evolution was the same for all species, but the Ecentrists refused to believe that the humans had any role to play in their evolution, while the Enlightened refused to believe that the Tradition bots who were symbiotic or subjugated to them had any role to play in their evolution. As Harna Gurn would have it, different races evolved on that world, Torpa, after machines. This he cried from any pulpit available.
They, the robots and humans, couldn’t interbreed, but it had affected the evolution of those species which emerged after the advent of machines. They had different abilities, different mechanisms to defend where it was necessary, to interact where able – language, mental abilities – some could communicate directly with machines – it was this discovery that led them to the idea that machines were sentient and should rightly be considered a species as they too were subject to the laws of the physical universe.
Enlightenment took the Enlightened hundreds of thousands of years. Torpa was upgraded by machines in 1654 years.
It proved Harna Gurn’s theory over again. Evolution for machines came so much faster. In fact, so much so, there could never be co-evolution with machines unless they were limited. The Ecentrists were the closest to humans on an evolutionary scale.
(Adapted from Harna Gurn’s seminal sermon ‘Man, Machine and God’)
This message you can be assured did not sit well with the Ecentrists. But then, Harna Gurn had never been on their Christmas list.
*
Torpa – Turinon
On Torpa there was no sinking involved. Orpal, with some difficulty, negotiated the upper levels of Turinon’s high street, the crucible of a shopping arena that spanned four quadrants of Torpa’s capital city. After much huffing and puffing, Orpal landed smack bang in the middle of the high street on the Enlightened’s homeworld.
Ordinarily, such a landing would have caused understandable outrage among the citizens of Torpa, but the whole place was deserted. No matter where Orpal looked, he could find no sign of life. The only remnant of life of Torpa was the symbiotic bots of the Tradition, serving despite their symbiots absence. The Enlightened had all gone to play.
War was a growth industry all of a sudden. There had been no real wars since the first great origin war. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. The Enlightened had left en masse to witness the great war. Pastimes were myriad for the Enlightened but war had been denied to them for centuries. It was, after all, a great spectator sport. Even children could enjoy it. It was fun for all the family.
Turinon itself, despite the
absence of its denizens, was a magnificent city. All that glitters was metaphorically speaking gold. Each solar panel reflecting the old suns light back into the atmosphere glowed with an extraordinary golden light. Even nighttime was golden on Torpa (they had landed at precisely mid-day, and the planet was in its full reflective glory).
There were the occasional signs of tech life. Tradition bots were sporadically cleaning or maintaining Enlightened homes and businesses. The high street would have usually been full of shoppers and bots going about their normal day-to-day lives. But there was no sign of anything.
The Enlightened did not work. Some spent their time on the lecture circuits, which could at a stretch be counted as work, but most spent their leisure time at play. As a consequence the whole of the city was given over to genteel pastimes and there were no humans working anywhere. Since the advent of robot tech (nobody knew precisely when this had come about) there was no need for anyone to work. Leisure activities took up the whole of the Enlightened’s time, and the run of the mill everyday activities were performed by the Tradition’s bots.
Kyle stood beside the hatch. Today he wore no armour, Torpa’s atmosphere having been perfectly designed for humanoid life forms. Archeon, who could adapt to any environment, followed behind. Orpal was in contact through eargens. The Lu and the genogun could not be connected directly to Orpal, but they were adequately vocal on their own.
The crew, without Orpal, stepped out into shadow, the tall buildings hiding the lower part of the street from the sun. Lower down, in shadows where the sun did not reach, everything was matt or covered with neon, the city was either a dull shade of black or brightly lit. There were no half measures here.
The city’s less reputable denizens gravitated naturally to the darker areas. The city was wholly empty today, but on an ordinary day the area Orpal had landed in would be rife with footpads and pickpockets. Had he had any hubcaps they would have been long gone.
“Where is everyone?” asked Kyle.
“They’ve left to fight the Lore,” replied the Lu, speaking as usual through Archeon. Kyle could tell it was the Lu speaking and not the last weapon because Archeon’s voice took on grandiose tones when the immortal spoke. “They all left to see the spectacular in the city ships. The outskirts of the city, had you taken time to look on the way down, are barren. Their great ships usually park there, but the whole of the planet’s ships are in space, waiting for the battle to unfold. The Enlightened love nothing better than a good war to watch. A nasty side effect of being addicted to the news.”
“And they think they’re so much better than us,” said the genogun snootily.
The Enlightened had their own entertainments, but a war was something that happened, if they were lucky, only once in a generation. Enlightened generations were generally long lived, it being usual for one to live to a thousand years old. Nowhere near as long lived as the robot races, but still long enough to make war a rarity.
Any rarity drew the curious, and the Enlightened were more curious than most. The whole planet had left to partake in the splendour of war. They would watch their student classes with great pride.
Walking around the city of Turinon, the capital of Torpa, was eerily disconcerting. Kyle kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to see someone sneaking up on him, but there was nothing there to see.
He could have been sure there was something following him.
*
While Kyle followed his navicom and Orpal’s directions, Orpal tried in vain to piece together the emitter. He didn’t have the archeofact – that was being carried by Kyle – but he did have perfect 3D representations of each piece of the emitter, which he played with on his hologen unit. The fact that the eyes saw nothing for it but to consult an oracle did not weigh heavily on Orpal’s mind. Orpal, who lived in a world of figures and physics, refused to accept the eyes as an authority on anything. The fact that they were immortal made no difference to him.
The eyes were unnatural and that was all there was to it.
There seemed to be no hope for it though, without outside assistance they would never be able to complete the whole.
Orpal gazed at it in wonder. Its level was so low it upset Orpal that he couldn’t do it. It was such a simple level of tech, manually assembled, but like a puzzle. Any configuration that Orpal tried availed him nothing.
There was nothing for it. Orpal finally gave up. It was as the Lu suggested; they needed an Oracle.
They couldn’t use the device. They had no idea how to use it anyway. Time was running short for the Lore. Archeon had assured them the eyes said it would all become clear when they spoke to the oracle…
What the Oracle could do, Orpal couldn’t imagine. If the immortal Lu had run up against a dead end, he couldn’t imagine the Oracle would be able to help. But the situation was desperate. The thief had abandoned them, even if she had switched the emitter and freed them from the Ecentrists clutches he could never forgive her. Kyle would not forgive her either. Surely he would rather cut out his own eyes rather than see her again.
The young hurt far more readily than the old.
In the deserted city, Kyle should have taken some comfort. At least they had road signs. They followed one emblazoned with ‘Oracle’, turning left down a solar tree lined avenue.
There, they happened upon the first inhabitant. A local traffic bot. It was of the Tradition and spent its time solo, in the middle of the street, directing nothing. The traffic bot was a simple construction and only a second level mathematical caste, but it was also programmed for directions. As the approached it blinked out a sequence, preprogrammed, to direct the traffic that wasn’t there. Nobody had thought to give it a second task to do, and it was at a loose end.
They accosted it, and asked it where exactly they were supposed to go.
It blinked more rapidly at them, as though it were confused.
“Where’s this bloody oracle?” Kyle asked.
The bot waved one white glove at the building behind them. Heading across the top of the building said ‘Oracle’
Orpal replied, “Try looking there.”
“Where?” said the eyes,
“There,” said the Tradition bot, with a long-suffering sigh. “Just below where it says ‘Oracle’.” Just because it was a simple construct didn’t mean that the ability to feel boredom wasn’t hardwired in.
“Oh,” said Archeon.
“Ah,” said Kyle.
“Where is everyone?” asked Archeon, still pointing himself at the scared bot.
No answer was forthcoming. It was only a second level bot, and directions were as much as it could handle.
They looked around the deserted street. There was nothing of interest there, apart from shop fronts and entertainment buildings. Kyle walked up to the door slowly, as if expecting something to jump out from the other side. He could not get used to the idea that the whole planet had been abandoned. Surely someone had stayed behind. But no, no matter where he looked there was nothing. Archeon shrugged at him, as if to say ‘search me’.
There was nothing for it. They had to keep moving on.
“Orpal, are you still there?”
“Still here,” replied Orpal.
“Right then, we’re going in.”
They opened the door.
*
Torpa – Turinon/Oracle 4/5
They entered the hall labled ‘Oracle’.
Orpal began prattling in Kyle’s eargen. It was like some nervous disorder, thought Kyle. Orpal could not leave a perfectly good silence unfilled.
“There’s a game on Liandra where they play with evolution. They built a huge cage, the size of this city, and filled it with protoplasm. They injected it with life giving salts, allowed it to learn. Players, once life had taken hold on an accelerated curve, would enter the arena. The beauty of the game was, the creatures would evolve, dependant upon their surroundings, in effect the game was truly different, the adversaries intelligent, each time it was playe
d. But one day the creatures evolved too far for their creator’s liking. They escaped. Their accelerated learning allowed them to evolve faster than their hunters, and they took over the whole system. And now the Liandra system belongs to them. Poetic justice, is it not? I’m sure there’s a moral there, but as with all moral stories, your understanding of them depends on what your creators taught you to believe…”
“I’ve missed your rambling Orpal. What is it? Are you being scanned?”
“No no, I’m just feeling like a bit of a loose wheel. I can’t do anything here, I just wanted someone to talk to.”
“You talk all you want, old friend,” said Archeon. “Truth be told, this place is giving me the willies.”
They turned down a massive alleyway and followed the signs for the oracle. Kyle’s head swept this way and that, feeling eerily like someone was looking over his shoulder. Archeon had assumed the form of a sasensquatch, and should anyone attack Kyle they would have to get through Archeon’s gigantic form first. From behind he was safe, although he still felt hunted. It was a most disconcerting feeling.
His wide eyes scanned all sides and he even craned his head upwards to see if there was anything chasing him, or ahead of him, but there was nothing. At each new corner down the high hallway he expected to find a gargoyle grinning wickedly at him, but there was nothing there. It was as if the whole place had upped and left. Despite nothing happening to affirm Kyle’s fears he still felt like something was hunting him down, just out of sight at the edges of his vision.
Orpal felt the same. Something was coming, he was sure of it. He shifted uneasily on his landing feet, as though trying to crane his head around and look behind him. His proximity indicator was still blank. There was nothing on this planet but a few second level bots and the oracle and his crew. He didn’t believe the proximity indicator though.
Evolution Page 20