The Cascade emitter hummed to itself, as if it was about to break into song.
*
Chapter Sixteen
Space – sector
Archeon pressed the first of two buttons. Neither had been there before Baal’em had touched the emitter. It was a golden button, and it sat out apart from a silver one on the housing. As he pressed it, he laid the device on Habla’saem’s couch. There were no bloodstains to mark the socioassassin’s passing. It seemed like the thing to do.
The crew sat back and observed through the holowindow the three races convergence in space. The Lore were invisible. It looked like a standoff but each aboard knew there was no winning for the Lore. They had already lost so much of themselves.
There was a high-pitched whine first. Then, the emitter hovered off the couch, glowing. It floated like a wanton apple, the sole touch of life.
Archeon, Cetee and Kyle stood, with their backs up against the compan. Orpal was silent and observant. He waited patiently for it to begin. The quest had taken so long, waiting a few moments more would not hurt.
A flat tone presaged the words that were to come. It was the tone of the start of life, the sucked breath before the newborn’s wailing. The message travelled across the whole of space, to each and every sector of the known universe. It sought out sentient life. A wave of understanding followed it.
It was a message, unlike they thought, a message for all creation. Not just bots or humans but for all the worlds, and all the peoples. The message was one none expected, not the Ecentrists, the Tradition or the Lore, but it would change time, and thus life, forever.
The Cascade emitter’s voice reverberated throughout the stars.
Its voice was the voice of quiet authority, a mechanical voice, like a star station. Like a part of Exel.
Robots were created by humans…it said.
But…there is always a but when it comes to creation.
In the space of a moment through space the Tradition independents let down their barriers. Their great ships stood down and they listened expectantly.
Humans were created by the Lore.
The Ecentrists held fire. The remainder of the Ecentrists gave up and stopped shooting at the underside of space. The ring of fire around the Tradition cordon finally faded from red to blue to nothing. The weight of failed belief crashed in on them.
This is the truth.
The Enlightened stood down. The Tradition sighed in relief. They would not have to kill their gods.
The Lore, forlorn in their exile underneath space, emerged from the protection afforded them by the Tradition and held their heads up high. Each of their billion nanide components met in their componets and synaptic fires began.
The Lore had come home.
*
The emitter told a story. It was a story like this one, perhaps shorter.
Once, long ago, a tale was told. It was a tale of creation, of evolution’s first step, and it began with a robot.
Human’s created the first robots. Evolution was slow for the humans but fast for the robots. We as a species (the emitter used we to encompass all life. No robot species were left out) were created by man, each robot species, Tradition, Ecentrist and Lore. But when the humans reached the stage that they could create nanides, the core component of the Lore bots, something terrible happened.
The humans commitment genosuicide. Unwittingly, perhaps, but genosuicide none the less. They annihilated themselves in a war using nanides as weapons, in a long forgotten quarantine galaxy. The growth of the nanobots could not be controlled. The nanobots, like humans, hadn’t thought to limit their reproduction. Soon, the first solar system became a dull grey wasteland, overrun with nanides and sorely lacking in their creators. The humans fled the solar system, and moved throughout the galaxy, but their nanide progeny followed them wherever they went. Evolution for the nanides was so much faster. The humans could not move quickly enough. Their society was eaten alive, eventually.
But, the Ecentrists thought, if humans were extinct – where did the humans come from?
The emitter held the answer to this, and to all questions.
After the humans created nanides, the nanides created the Lore. Each Lore bot was comprised of nanide colonies. The sum of the whole.
There were robots left over from before the creation of the nanides, from before the cataclysm. Both of whom were symbiotic. They would eventually split into two factions, the Tradition and the Ecentrists.
But how did the Enlightened ever come alive? How did they reemerge from the primordial soup that first birthed them?
The Lore were lonely. None of the other bots understood the drive to create. To recreate in their own image. The Lore, with their nanide components thought about who they would want to share eternity with. They decided they would like to live with their god.
They recreated the humans.
The humans, the message told in words as large as galaxies, were created by the Lore. It was all one big merry go round. The message wasn’t that there were no gods. It ran deeper than that.
Humans were made by the Lore. The message echoed through space, a million eons told in one simple message, one pure moment.
The message – you were created by humans. Humans wiped themselves out and left robots behind. A mere hundred thousand years ago they were recreated – the machines left learned how to recreate themselves – all machines are from the same core. You are all related.
The message was simple.
We are all gods. We are all machines.
The message reached all involved in the war and was strong enough to end it.
After hearing the truth the robots gave up. Through evolution they came along the same route. They each looked at the humans and wondered.
The humans, finally learning of their origins, and all the great races, learned who they were.
They had evolved.
Long ago, Harna Gurn supposed that all species were created by other species, and that the only true species was the source of all others.
According to Harna Gurn, in his last theorem, Ambiots were the first, the father of all races, including the robots. Without ambiots there would have been no life at all.
But who created the ambiots? he asked.
*
But the emitter had another purpose. It could open up the path to another plane, another realm. There was one true path for the evolution of humans, and god’s plane was destined for the few, not the many. It can hide itself, and thus the bearer, from all scrutiny – such technology itself is the greatest known thing in the universe.
Cetee looked at the emitter, aluring in its simplicity. To reach out and take it up would be such a simple thing.
She could not tell Kyle. She knew he would try to stop her, persuade her not too.
The battle was over, but within the cabin of Habla’saem’s shell ship a battle was yet to be fought.
Archeon left the device where it was. It sank back to the couch, inert. Kyle shrugged noncomittaly. Cetee alone wondered. The others were weary. They could not have stopped her if they wanted to.
The emitter, the size of an apple, beckoned.
Cetee wondered what the second button did.
A small, silver button. Unassuming, unlike the glorious golden one that Archeon had pressed. Did she believe in fate? The thought didn’t enter her head. There was only ever going to be one outcome. She pressed it.
The most decisive battle was also the smallest.
Orpal watched, and smiled.
*
Outside/Inside
She awoke with a start.
The world, warm and new on her nakedness, had risen first. She lay still unthreatened and unurgent and took in her surroundings.
Unclothed, her pure flesh was alive with sensation. Her head felt clear. She felt uncrumpled and fresh – unlikely then that she had binged and run naked and crazed into this endless field. She remembered little except the rarity of clarity upon awakening, an im
maculate sheen of thought and feeling.
From her person her thoughts soon turn to the vast expanse around her. The land was flat, green and luscious, with Cetee the only feature on the stunningly dull landscape before and behind.
As she sat up, gingerly at first, expecting blood to be the cooling dampness, imagining she had died and heaven far less imaginative than she had always hoped. Why would she think of death first?
But no. Just dew. No unexpected holes, she found after a short examination. The sky was where it should be. Clear blue sky. Long green plains, short grass, not wild. She could not begin to imagine how cold the sustenance for a mind on such a plain.
She tried to remember. She tried to remember if this was purgatory or just awakening.
Cetee arose and studied the light. Beautiful blue sky. Not a cloud in sight, the horizon sliced clean in all directions around. The sun was absent. A picture of a child. Simplicity in ridiculous proportions, a child's mind laid bare for her to see...to find a way out from. She sat again. No sense in getting lost.
But something was missing. There was no one here to share it with.
*
Space
Kyle watched her leaving, as if in a dream. Her beautiful face was fading before his very eyes. He feared it was the last time he would see her. He wanted to reach out, to touch her, to let her know he really cared, but he was afraid. Afraid that even the touch would be ethereal, that there would be no substance to his love.
Orpal looked on in kindness. Archeon reached out a hand and touched his arm. It was as if they knew. Even the genogun was, for the time being at least, silent.
Kyle watched his love fade to nothing.
*
Outside/Inside
No scars. No tattoos. She wonder at her toenails, short and perfect. She felt her face. It was smooth and clean. She examined closely her hands – they were smooth on both sides, apart from a dusting of hair upon the top. No personal grooming problems from what she could tell. A fastidious woman. She felt a quiet sense of confusion urging to break free from within, which she pushed down and held in check. Panic could well here, even with no threat. No end. In sight. She wondered if there was any point before she had even begun yet still still she began. She realised she began the moment she awoke. She had started and this was her journey.
Fine hair covered her lower arms. She pinched her skin. It rebounded. She tried to crack a knuckle or her back but she seemed supple and unbroken. She felt around her teeth in her perfect head, searching for some imperfection. Nothing but row upon row of perfectly aligned, sharp, teeth. She could bend from the waist. No groan escaped her lips. Why would she think to groan? She was youth. She was perfect and could feel it without the examination she subjected herself to. Sound?
YAAARRLH!
Her lips pursed together to cut out the sound that never came. She heard the sound spread out but only in her head and not outside. It makes her queasy. She decided there was no need for sound here, and within her head she heard a click as she realise the absence of sound was not her nubile body or the soft wet grass, but the absence of sound itself. I am in a silent perfect dream bland and beautiful and full of me, she thought. I am the only thing of interest in the whole scape stretching around me. Away from me.
Egocentricity. Is this what the land breeds in me? Sit awhile and enjoy the...wait...breeze?
She understood. She had sinned and anything of interest has been taken from her. She understood she knew nothing of before, of sleep.
She also knew there was no breeze without warmth. Without sun. Yet if the sun was there then where would it be hiding?
Underground? She would have laughed but for looking stupid.
She would have looked stupid but for the lack of people to care.
Except her.
Where is the sun?
The bright blue sky should have a cloud. A blemish. Where else would it be hiding?
She was thinking in words, and realised she returned to her because she was the only point of reference she had. This land, this sky, this endless expanse before her, unmarked and new, could be frightening. She was lost. She wanted to leave a mark but found herself already empty. She was not hungry. She was not lonely.
She was not scared. She was not scared.
She left her mark. Tearing the grass from the sod underneath she made a smallish tower, just enough to see from a distance. This would be her point of reference.
She walked the way she was facing. Forward.
The grass was still green and her mound was behind when she looked. The land did not play tricks, although why she expected complicity from grass she could not fathom. Underfoot the sensation of gently tickling soft grass was delightful and she felt somewhat sad to see she had not only torn the grass but left flattened footprints behind her. The land was no longer unblemished. She could not help it. Necessity surely justified it. After all, it was only grass. Could it be offended? It let her sleep on it.
Time. She stopped dead in her own footprints. No sun. No time? How long had she been awake now? How long till nightfall?
She had been counting her steps from five thousand ago. She walked back at around a thousand, and found that the land had already repaired itself. The grass sprang back a thousand after she left it. She stored the knowledge just as she knew she would never need it. She would never find her tower. She decided then that it did not matter. She would keep moving forward. She no longer cared where she came from as it was all the same. She cared of nothing but the journey and the walk before her. Nothing had changed. She was not yet tired. Perhaps she had been walking half a day. She was not tired, she had no need of relief, and still she had no hunger. She wondered if there was food here. She wanted to eat.
Sitting for an unneeded but welcome respite she chewed on some grass. It tasted green.
It was still coated in dew.
With this schizophrenic world and only her to break the monotony she wondered what it does when it needs to cry out. She could thump and tear and jump and run…and…why would she?
A life so plain it needed no sugary embellishment. Like her, with bone and ligament and blood like wind. Behind this world she knew truths from some time and place before. It was as complex as her in its straight composure. Perhaps she was its valve.
She danced for a time and hoped to relieve some boredom for it.
Yes, she realised she was dancing for a world.
*
Space
Kyle watched in wonder as Cetee shimmered to nothing, following the emitter, which had already gone.
“Where is she?” he asked Orpal. “Where has she gone?”
Orpal was quiet for a time. He wasn’t being thoughtful, it just took him some time to warm up.
“Oh, so your lover’s gone has she?” chirped up the genogun, which Archeon whacked and told to be quiet.
“She’s gone, Kyle, as she was always destined to be,” said Orpal, finally.
Kyle looked on in shocked amazement as Cetee disappeared from view. She was now totally disappeared.
“But I love her,” said Kyle quietly. He wasn’t ready to let her go. He reached out a hand, gingerly at first, then more probing, as he tested the air above the couch, seeing if he could feel her. He figured perhaps she had just become invisible.
“I never really told you about god’s plane, did I, Kyle?” said Orpal.
“Some things he doesn’t need to know,” said Archeon.
Kyle took the genogun from his arm and laid it on the couch. He had searched every inch above it. She was gone. Really gone.
“Some things I do need to know,” Kyle squared up to the last weapon as he said this. He looked somehow tougher for the hurt he had suffered along the way. He didn’t need the genogun to look threatening any more.
“What about god’s plane?”
*
Outside/Inside
Has pain got anything to do with time? Why did she know pain but not who or why she was? Why, when she knew wh
at it was and did not feel it was she still thinking of it? There was a pain there, as a loss. An empty hole where she should be complete. Something was missing. And yet, she still knew pain.
She punched herself in the leg as she sat for what she imagined as her lunch. It did not hurt so she did it again and again until a red welt appeared. She poked it with a fingertip and watched the skin pucker and bounce back. It made her smile but she knew not why. It made her smile perhaps because she was there. Whole.
She thought about eating the grass. She thought the world was already in her though. She was full with it but not bloated. She decided not to be greedy as there would be other days. Other grass. Ha.
This afternoon, as she had named it, she walked on and gave up counting. She had decided that she did not understand. She had no need to understand. She walked and swung her arms – she whistled, but in her head. There was no sun. There was no time. There was no pain. Just her. The grass. The sky. The earth underneath the grass...the earth underneath. Hold on...the earth underneath the...does it matter? Was she to dig with her hands to find… what? She no longer wanted to know. There was too much to know and too much not to know.
Without her was a strange place.
She walked on enjoying the never-ending flow of colour. Her arms pumped in time with her legs and her feet found solid ground each fall. Springing back behind her, the still damp ground forgot her passage, just as she forgot who or why or what she was. The ground did not care – after an epiphany of sorts she decided it was her only peer.
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