It wasn’t often Orpal didn’t trust in mathematics.
“Not long, I hope,” said Archeon.
“Any news yet?” the eyes asked Archeon.
“No, none,” replied Archeon.
They turned into a smaller street, covered overhead, and lit at intervals for only them.
They followed the signs for roughly half an hour – Kyle was counting in his head and thinking thoughts of death, too. Before meeting Orpal Kyle would not have dreamed of thinking of two things at once, but he had come a long way since his youth on Guron.
If the missionaries could see him now.
The signs leading to the oracle changed. It was a sudden change, and Kyle wondered what it meant. The signs were all painted, but as they went further the signs became like neon. Glowing brightly, the lights that they had followed until now petered out, until the only light left was from neon signs blazing oracle for them alone. Multicoloured lights lit their way, and the colours swam gaudily, making Kyle queasy.
It took some time but it wasn’t difficult. They found the Oracle.
Before them, housed in the middle of the street, half in, half out, was the Oracle. The moniker above its head said ‘Oracle 4/5’.
There was a huge sign outside and an old fashioned doorway that lead through. The oracle was old field-level tech, and it was made an oracle by the subtly pulsing energy fields that passed through it, giving the tech the same effect that a human would feel drugs. The oracle pulsed light at them like it was staggering.
It was roughly the size of a coconut.
“I am the oracle. Why have you come?” It said in a bored voice, like it had no expectation from life but an endless list of stupid questions.
“We need to fix this thing together, can you help us?” Kyle said, holding the five pieces of the device in a jumble up for the oracle to see.
“Give it to me.” The oracle huffed.
Kyle stepped forward and put the piece before the machine. The machine whirred and clicked for a time. The pieces jumped around on the air. They span and danced together crazily. First two pieces, then a third, as fast as the eye could follow. Finally, with a sound like a harrumph, the coconut spat the Cascade emitter back onto the floor before it. It landed with an uninteresting clunk.
It was as simple as that. One minute there was a jumble, the next there was a round emitter, with two aerial type fixtures jutting out, the round part roughly the size of two clenched fists.
Kyle gaped for a second. He had expected something more.
”What do we do with it?” asked Archeon, while Kyle was gathering his wits.
“How do we use it?” the Lu asked, speaking through Archeon.
But the oracle could not answer. All it could do was fit squares into circles.
“That, I’m afraid, is not in my remit,” was all it would say.
Kyle held the assembled pieces in his hand. It had taken so long to find all the pieces Kyle had expected something more. More ceremony. But no, the pieces were all together in his hand and no trumpets sounded.
It weighed as much as a rock that was about fist shaped, but was smoother. The pieces, clunky when alone, were smaller when together. Kyle was sure some parts should have come out the other side, impaling themselves, but the pieces fitted. He looked over his shoulder suddenly.
The feeling of being followed grew stronger.
“Well, what do we with do with it?” Kyle shouted at the oracle.
“Not in my remit, “say the oracle, annoyingly. “That’s for you to figure out. Try an ancient. They might know.”
“What?” said Kyle, “you’re joking…” He could only think of three ancients, and he didn’t want to go back there. Ever.
“If it is, it ain’t funny,” said the genogun.
The feeling was screaming at him now, something was terribly wrong.
”Something’s coming, Archeon. We have to get back. It’s just a feeling but something is definitely wrong. Cetee set us up!”
“Get back to Orpal! Orpal’s in trouble.” cried the eyes.
Archeon gestured for Kyle to take the lead.
“Cetee!” said Kyle, and broke into a run. It had taken them ten minutes walking to get here. They were too far away. If Orpal was in trouble they were truly screwed. Kyle ran and Archeon, sasensquatch in form, pounded the street behind him. The Lu jiggled crazily in their housing.
“Orpal, something’s coming, watch out,” the hunter thought to Orpal as he ran.
“I’m alright, Kyle. There’s nothing here. It just feels eerie, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. I sense nothing. You’re just spooked is all.”
“The eyes told us, something’s coming. And I feel it. My feelings are rarely wrong.”
“Eyes smize. There’s nothing wrong. You’re getting worked up for nothing.”
“Hurry,” the eyes said through Archeon.
If Orpal wouldn’t listen they would have to get to him fast.
They were too slow, surely. Kyle berated himself as he ran. He had known something was wrong and he had done nothing about it.
He ran as fast as he could. Archeon trailed behind in its lumbering form. There was time to change, though.
Archeon morphed as he ran.
*
Kyle ran, Archeon floated, they rounded a corner. They were still too far away to do anything. Hold on, hold on, thought Kyle. If I can just get there perhaps together with Archeon we can protect him.
At least give us the chance to fight, thought Kyle.
Orpal was rambling again.
“Orpal, are you alright? Orpal, don’t you think you should shut up? Something’s coming…”
“Our evolution is faster than yours Kyle, remember this.”
“What are you talking about, Orpal? Is someone there?”
“What if evolution were like growing up, a fate of sorts, the outcome determined? What if you could see what kind of adult the child was going to turn into? What if you could change that kid, make them a decent adult, by meddling? Would you do it then? Can you imagine what would happen if you left the youth to figure it for themselves…”
”What are you talking about!” cried Kyle into his eargen, his feet pounding the solar panelled street underfoot, which moved underfoot like a travelator. The faster Kyle’s feet moved the sentient walkway sped up to aid him. It was as though it could sense his urgency.
The feeling persisted, stronger than ever. Something was here, something was wrong.
“I’m talking about evolution…”
“We haven’t the time for a lecture now!” Archeon told Orpal
“If not now then when?”
Then it was upon them. Orpal just about had time to see it coming. It was cruel in that way. Silent death would have been infinitely more preferable.
Orpal saw it emblazoned in the sky as it came down toward him.
“Erm, shit,” said Orpal as he ducked. It was all he had time to say. Even for Orpal as fast as he was the understanding that it was the end came quickly.
Too late for him to do anything about it.
The bolt from the genesis weapon had travelled under space following Orpal, orbited the planet, and finally found its mark. It wasn’t the fastest weapon in the universe but it was the most stubborn.
*
Orpal sat, minding his own business, waiting for the end. He could calculate how painful it would be, but he could not get out of real space in time, not while he was parked.
He calculated all the awful possibilities as it approached.
It was interesting, how close I had come, thought Orpal. It is a shame for it to end like this…he was half way through the thought when a white-hot pain replaced his ordinarily higher functions. The pain took all but .7 milliseconds, during which time Orpal had the time to write his last will and testament, to think about shifting out of this realm, to think about a thousand and one things in the interim that was pure pain and then followed by white hot shards of rigantium plating spinning
across the surface of Torpa.
One second from contact and Orpal was no more.
The Ecentrists could not miss.
Orpal was blown to smithereens.
*
“Zzz” said Kyle’s eargen, and he knew something was terribly wrong.
“Arrrcheon,” he asked, teeth juddering, “what the hell was that?”
“That, my friend, was the sound of electricity fusing matter.”
“Yeah, but what does it mean?”
They rounded the final corner. Archeon had a knot in his throat as he replied with his ordinarily serene voice.
“That was the sound of Orpal dying.”
Kyle and Archeon watch dumbfounded. Where Orpal had sat before was a giant crater. There were pieces of Orpal’s hull embedded in the buildings around it. The force of the blast had made the buildings list inward, and they looked as though they were about to fall down.
The Lu’s eyes said, “that’s not it…wait for it.”
The ground began to tremble.
The aftershock is the real killer.
*
“The test seems to have failed,” said Asroth, looming over Habla’saem. “Orpal’s death alone? That is of little consequence.”
Habla’saem granted the triumvirate a toothless grin.
“Wait for it,” he said.
Then, everything said boom.
*
First the rains came. The electricity stemming from Orpal’s destruction made the planet’s ambient rain fall. The rain fell hard on the solar panel covered planet, and pushed its way into the rock and earth below the solar panels, working its way in between the minute gaps. The rain turned in to a flood. Rock started falling upward. Gravity and magnetism strove to keep a hold on the planet, but the poles no longer knew which way was which. They buckled under the strain of a planet, one without a sentibitor, admittedly. It tried to rise up. Tectonic plates lumbered out of the seas, the land slid underwater. The process took longer than the destruction of Orpal had. Not by much.
The Ecentrists had blow up their entire Enlightened homeworld to test their new weapon.
The Tradition had seen the connectivity between all living things during the first Origin War. Electricity connects us all, they figured. Electricity even ran in planets. Just send a wave. That was all it took. The wiring could be placed anywhere if the electrician knew where to look. Just overload the planet, and boom.
Torpa was exceptional, the perfect test. It conducted…
*
“Ah, forgive my brother’s impatience, seems to be working just fine,” said Baal’em.
*
Torpa - Extinct
Just before space came in Archeon took Kyle in his arms and sheltered him from the worst of the storm. A storm in space is something to behold. Rubble strewn across the solar system took on a new course. Some would fall into the old sun at its core, some of the larger chunks would become comets and meteors, some, many, would join the moons as rings.
Seas boiled instantly and became gaseous clouds where the planet of Torpa used to be. They would be a while to settle but eventually they would become a gaseous ring around the larger moon, the moon itself buckled and swayed as its gravity lynchpin disappeared. The next largest body was a planet called Erid, but it was too far distant to affect the moon. The molten core of Torpa actually solidified and created a new moon, so there would be, when all was settled, three moons in synchronous orbits. The destruction of Torpa took fewer seconds than a minute. It would take eons for the new moon to settle into its path.
Around them, nothing was left. The Ecentrists, those revenants of a god fearing past, had fired through the white hole at them.
The world, thought Archeon looking down, had gone, too.
*
Huna Ecentrists homeship (1/427,100,991 – Ex-sector, sept)
Habla’saem had the last laugh. “My dear Cetee. You were Um’lael’s lover, Harna Gurn’s wife, I cannot imagine that you would be so stupid as to think that this weapon would leave Orpal untouched.”
Cetee crying, watching through a holowindow fifteen light years away as Orpal disintegrated.
“There, there,” said Habla’saem, “my favourite student, “
“You bastard!” she cried. “You’re not Um’lael.”
Habla’saem’s chins wobbled with mirth. “Of course not” he said. “I am brighter than the two of them put together. Harna Gurn and Um’lael Sabreme, my, my you must be a well-read wench.”
Cetee crossed her arms and fumed. There was nothing she could do to him. He was just a hologen. “When I find you I will finish you.”
“When you find me indeed.” Ignoring her, the socioassassin took his hands from folded sleeves (in his shell ship his true form mimicked the gesture) and spread his arms wide to the trinity. He didn’t even need to talk to Cetee if he didn’t want to. She could no more touch him than the Ecentrists could. He was immune. ”Masters, I believe I have delivered the tool, my work here is complete.”
Baal looked down on the hologen image of Habla’saem.
“Then you may leave.”
Habla’saem bowed low before all three and promptly disappeared, leaving Cetee’s rage to boil alone. She turned to face the triumvirate.
They ignored her, too.
The lone shell ship in the docking hold shuddered into life. Just then Cetee remembered the shell ship in the docking bay next to Orpal. She realised the ship was the last chance she had of getting off Huna alive. Clacking on the hard walkway underfoot she ran as fast as she could. Figuring, as she went, that if it was the only ship in the docking bay it must be her tormentor’s ship. She would find him and kill him for what he had done to her. Rage boiled as she ran.
She got there just in time to see the shell, unique class, leave. Roaring in frustration she threw her stilleto after it.
Beneath her, the white hole faded to black.
*
Chapter Fourteen
Building the perfect A.I. proved the greatest boon to our early progenitors. They had to study themselves to the very core in order to understand what it was they wished to create, what it was they wished to share the universe with. In doing so, they came to understand themselves.
(From prolegomenon to ‘Discourse on the Age of Enlightenment’, Harna Gurn, third age of enlightenment)
But we were flawed. So, it follows, must our creation be flawed.
Our curiosity bent, warped and mangled our potential. Coupled with laziness, curiosity kills.
We were smart. We knew the fastest route between two points was a straight line. A couple of humps in the road didn’t really make any significant difference.
Harna Gurn would have it that humans created Archeons. Not directly perhaps. But it is still a straight line. Even if it is a long one.
*
Deep Space
In the depths of space a lone Lore rogue span. Within it held the answer to all creation, one human, one Ecentrist experiment and one immortal. Not the Tradition, nor the Ecentrists, nor the Lore would have a say in the role the emitter would take from here. The Cascade emitter might well be the greatest archeofact of all time, but it wasn’t in the hands of the almighty. It was in the hands of a hunter.
Kyle was awake but wished he wasn’t. There was no way he could see out through Archeon’s wings, which were furled around him. Not that he would want to see out. There was nothing left to see. His arm was still encased within the genogun’s chitinous shell. Since regaining its personality the gun had done nothing but deride him. Its derision was a daily occurrence and now Kyle was stuck with it he almost wished the sentibitor was still on.
“What the hell do we do now?” moaned the greatest hunter of the Suhrtraeti galaxy. Nobody thought to question how old the galaxy actually was, and how many Rhuna class planets were left in it. Had anybody ever bothered to check they would find the answer was a mere fourty-two.
“Stop whining, damn it. If’ I’d known what a sissy you were I’d ha
ve asked to have my sentibitor back as soon as they took it out. I didn’t realise what a pain having your hand around my glans would be,” said the genogun.
“Be thankful I’m not squeezing them now.”
Kyle pushed thoughts of anger from his head with a great deal of difficulty. The gun had a knack for winding him up. It was as though the gun wanted to be fired and knew Kyle would not use it in cold blood, so through taunting it endeavoured to rile its wielder.
“Now, now children,” Archeon said.
“Really,” said the Lu, “You’d think you two were married for all your
bickering.”
“Well,” said Kyle, “what are we going to do? We’re stuck in space, I think you’ll find. While it’s nice being here with you three – don’t get me wrong – I think I’m in danger of starvation, so you’d better do something quickly.”
The Lu could see out but Archeon and Kyle looked inward. The view was far from exciting. The Lu swivelled round in their housing and stared back at Kyle. Getting their own back, no doubt, from all the times Kyle had stared at them like they were the prize display in an archeog. Then, one eye looked out and one looked in. The view from either side didn’t require perspective.
The eye looked into Kyle, but could not see why the man thought there was a god. Funny god if he’d let one of his faithful down this badly. As an immortal the Lu had been in some tight scrapes before, but it had never been abandoned in space like this.
Besides, religion was for Ecentrists.
The Lu hated the Ecentrists and everything they stood for. They preached salvation all the while they took exactly what the wanted from life and held themselves above nature. The Ecentrists called the Lore unnatural, but if nature didn’t imitate the Lu didn’t know what did.
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