Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

  “You know Anna di Malta, right? She’ll be there. If you want to give me a message I can make sure she gets it. Last I knew she was disappointed that she didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  He swallowed the thoughts and feelings. He was stone. Calm. None of that made sense. {How did Anna get to Mars? Is she an Eagle?} That thought bothered him, but he swallowed it too.

  “Crystal…” he said, annoyed at the sound of annoyance in his own voice. “I never found out who hired me to get you out of Rome, but I heard a rumour that it was you.”

  Crystal paused, sizing him up, perhaps. “Indeed it was. I hacked the university’s security and got online. From there I earned money and hired people to be my proxies. I did my best to cover my tracks. A lawyer in Moscow. A mercenary. A few actors… Anna, as you know her, was a rare instance of someone who knew the truth. She didn’t even ask for payment as she helped me earn my freedom.”

  The zero-gravity was frustrating. Avram clutched the hand-hold in the hall tighter. He was stone. “What’s her real name?” He didn’t dare ask himself why he cared. He simply asked for no reason.

  “That hardly matters, does it? She’ll be on one world and you’ll be on another. She wanted a fresh start, and after she listened to me and came to understand that Las Águilas weren’t so bad, Mars just seemed like the place to go. An opportunity to get away from the bullshit of dealing with random people and actually do something with her life,” said Crystal.

  The robot was a wasp nest, with words instead of stingers. He hated it. He hated that he had to endure it. He didn’t deserve any of this. He swallowed his fire.

  It wouldn’t go down. The shame and loneliness threatened to engulf him. He wouldn’t let it. He was stone. What was he supposed to do, go to Mars? Even if Anna was there... {She’s better off with me staying on Earth.}

  He didn’t let himself think. Thinking was dangerous. He pushed it down again, proud of not letting any of it touch his face. He was stone. Silent as stone.

  “Time to go?” asked Zephyr, clearly mocking his silence.

  {Bitch.}

  “There are points in life where we have the opportunity to take a risk. Where we ask ourselves if we’re actually happy with the way things are. Sure, not every change is an improvement. Sometimes things don’t work out. But every improvement is a change. Sometimes to fix things we have to take a leap of faith.”

  The damned robot raised a finger to silence Zephyr, who surely would’ve objected. Crystal was trying to get Avram to come, and it was really fucking obvious that nobody wanted that except Crystal. “I can’t guarantee that all of Las Águilas will welcome you, Avram, if you come. But I can guarantee that some of us will. You’ll have a home there, and a community. A fresh start. A better tomorrow.”

  He could see the looks of disapproval on the faces of all the others. They didn’t want him to come. Why would they? Why would anyone want him around? Why would Anna? Why did Crystal? The robot pissed him off. He swallowed it. It wasn’t professional to snap.

  Crystal’s eyes never left his face. It made him want to hide. To flinch away. But he was stronger than that. He was stone. No matter what anyone said about him—no matter what else was wrong—at least he was strong. Nobody could take that away.

  Nobody was talking.

  The silence ate at him like acid, forcing him to speak. “No. I’m not leaving Earth. Tell Anna that I hope she does great things and builds a better world. I don’t belong there.”

  The robot, who seemed often more human than anyone of flesh and blood made a face that Avram couldn’t understand. It seemed to be making a decision. Eventually it shrugged helplessly and said “If that’s what you want. Take care of yourself, Avram.”

  The relief was immediate. He needed a drink more than he could remember ever needing one, but at least the crisis-point was past. He’d work with the thugs on the station or maybe the rich bastard to get back to Earth and back to safety.

  How dare he focus on his own safety? What good was he? He swallowed the thought. He was stone.

  ***** *****

  We invited Stephano to come with us as well, talking with him over the com while the humans worked to steal the stored food and other supplies that were kept in the zero-grav offshoots of the central corridor and move them onto the nameless ship. The alien ships were near-magical in their flight, not using traditional rocket engines but somehow still achieving reasonable accelerations, given their size and presumed mass. Wiki and Dream could go on for hours thinking about them. But even granted their superiority it would take (according to Wiki) the nameless ship at least a week to travel the approximately 102 million kilometres to Mars. It was a lucky coincidence that the red planet was so close to Earth at the moment.

  Stephano was still furious at how we had handled the situation with the aliens. He had brought us here to try and work out our differences, but we had probably escalated the interspecies tension in the name of self-preservation. “Why would I go with you to Mars? This whole thing is fucked up enough as it is! Sorry, sweetie.”

  “Heard swear-words before, Dad. Not a baby,” proclaimed Marian loudly in the background.

  “You’ll be facing deep investigations and will likely be punished for working with terrorists.” I pointed out over the com. “They’ll seize your assets, including Olympus, and perhaps even put you in prison.”

  There was a loud sigh on the other end of the com. “I should’ve known this whole plan was…” There was a pause as he collected his thoughts. “I’ll pay for my mistakes, but I’m not going to compound them by running away. Like I said, I know people. I’m really much more worried about what you’ll do to the nameless.”

  Heart pushed to share what we had learned about them with Stephano. He’d be better equipped to stop a war that way. I blocked her. War was good. Our reputation would be hurt regardless of what happened, but if war broke out we could possibly spin our actions into self-defence against a hostile alien menace (which was somewhat true) rather than be painted as instigators that worked against peace with a benevolent neighbour.

  Growth and Safety backed me up. Our knowledge was our only strategic leverage over the aliens, and giving it up would be immensely foolish. Stephano might even be able to explain what was happening to them before we reached Mars, putting us in mortal peril.

  “War is coming, Robert. Even if this isn’t the final straw, there are too many forces at play here to counteract the inevitable. It’s time for humanity to unite against a common enemy. When you’re able to see this, I’ll be waiting and ready to help.” I cut the signal before he could respond. There wasn’t anything else worth discussing with him.

  ***** *****

  There were many places the monsters could have gone. They could have gone in the eternal water. They could have gone to the centerfield. They could have gone to a distant field or house. It was unknown to the righteous why they even bothered with the lands of God.

  Demonkind lived in hellspace. This was their nature. Why did they bother themselves with Godspace? It wasn’t known.

  The cavity of knowledge became focal, and was filled with ignorance from the righteous. It remained unknown.

  Almost everything was extrastrange about the demonkind, especially the sorcerer of insanity. The cavity of fear became focal. Insanity threatened everything.

  The sorcerer and the other monsters were here, not there. It was because the mainflesh had failed. The wicked still had mainflesh, and so they forced the demonkind away from their houses and into here. This was the nature of the wicked, of course. The cavity of knowledge imploded without salience.

  God was restless. It could feel the wanting of the righteous and the wicked alike.

  But the sorcerer held God in that whirlpool of hellspace around the darkest pit. The monsters were still in motion, and if God shifted the darkfields too early there would be a rageflow with the sorcerer and all of heavenspace would be destroyed.

  A cavity of yielding formed and was filled,
but the contents of the cavity were tainted by evil. A yielding to flesh was correct. What was the effect of yielding to demonkind? The extradistant wicked had tried this. They had sacrificed their best souls to the pit of hellspace and had been killed by demonkind. A cavity quickly filled with relief that they had not been violated. Even monsters were not that evil.

  The monsters that were here flailed about, rubbing the righteous and being generally unpleasant and painful. The machineflesh moved in flux, trying to help without risking going near the demonkind.

  Another relief cavity collapsed with thoughts of the safety of the newflesh. There were future paths where the newflesh would be hidden and survive this evil.

  Thoughts flashed through the righteous about the value of old newflesh over yielding to new mainflesh. This collapse brought the truth that the pulse of the wicked would be the most important factor. As was known since the dawn of time: there was little value in growing a cavity that could only be filled by the future.

  At long last the demonkind were stationary here. The sorcerer thought it was now right for God to shift the darkfields. God surged into motion, no longer restrained.

  The sorcerer of insanity pulled cavities and created flows just as all the demonkind did. Response cavities formed with annoyanceflow and especially fearflow. Insanity was always deadly.

  The primary cavity of the sorcerer (for the sorcerer was more of a person than any demonkind in all of hellspace) was centred on God. Understanding of the shifting of heavens and the nature of God caused collapse, but the flow was painful. All of flow was pain when demonkind was involved.

  Only the righteous were softminds, but pain was a minor thing before the futures of insanity, fleshdeath, violation, and even the death of God.

  The cavity of fear could not be filled.

  ***** *****

  “So there was never any bomb?” asked Zephyr, eyes still wide as we explained what had happened earlier.

  “That’s the strange thing…” said Body. “There was a bomb. Slovinsky’s jetpack had a huge, ten-kilo canister of TNT with a clock detonator built into it. Gave the bomb to one of the walkers and told them to take it as close to the ship’s engines as they could to keep it safe.”

  “Ten kilograms! How the fuck did he get that much dynamite?!”

  {Technically dynamite is diatomaceous earth (or similar substance) saturated with 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane (commonly known as nitroglycerin), while TNT is 2-Methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene (sometimes known as trinitrotoluene). Though we really ought to also point out that, based on our experiments, the brick itself was probably amatol, a mixture of 4-parts C6H2(NO2)3CH3 to 1-part NH4NO3 (ammonium nitrate), and not pure TNT,} corrected Wiki, idly.

  “Best guess is that the Beta laboratories had enough sulphuric and nitric acid that he was able to synthesize it on-board the station, much like your trick with the guns. When talked to him, Slovinsky hinted that he had help. Guess is that one or more of the scientists working for Stephano are part of WIRL. May have started the bomb-building process ahead of time,” explained Body.

  “Soulless bastards. Hope our message helps shut them down for good.” Zephyr removed her hand from Body’s face. “There! Good as new! Almost, anyway.”

  Body moved a hand to feel its cheek. The damage from the shrapnel was still there, but the torn section of cheek had been patched and only one actuator was nonfunctional.

  “Here. See?” she said. Zephyr configured her com to mirror mode and held it up so that we could see Body’s face. She had just finished applying makeup to the damaged areas, returning the colouration to the standard off-white that I had chosen for Body’s skin. I took the opportunity to try and fix some of the disorder that had worked its way into Body’s wig. Apparently explosions and rolling around in the mud hadn’t helped it stay in good condition.

  “Should try and replace this when we get to Mars,” said Body, wearing an expression of irritation as it worked at a tangle.

  Zephyr laughed. Her arm moved away, removing the mirror. She used it to prop herself up on the wet dirt so that she could lean back. “You’re fine. Gives you character. To see you all scuffed up, I mean.”

  The young Águila was smiling and relaxed. It was an odd expression, given the situation, and yet, I could understand why. For years she had been hiding, lying, and struggling to keep up her two-faced life. Then, after leaving the army, she had worked herself into a self-imposed isolation where she felt betrayed by Phoenix and Las Águilas more broadly but was unable to live without their help. She needed someone to trust and a place to relax. “Crystal” was now that person. She didn’t feel alone any more.

  And Mars was soon to be the location of her new home. Far, far away from the discord of Earth she was planning on a fresh start where her only concern would be working for her sustenance and where she could forget the intrigue and the backstabbing.

  The nameless would eventually figure out how lying worked and how to stop being innately gullible, but for the moment we had pacified them by telling them that we would destroy their ship with our invisible bomb magic if they tried to leave Olympus without our permission. A human would’ve surely found their naïveté amusing, but all minds had their own blind-spots.

  I wondered what mine was.

  “So the nameless defused the bomb?” asked Zephyr. Her com signal was keyed to a private frequency, so that only I could hear her. The others were talking among themselves and relaxing after having struggled to drag the tents and other supplies across the mudland.

  “That’s what I thought at first. The walker that Slovinsky gave the bomb to was wise enough to ignore his suggestion and instead take the bomb up a level to the middle of another island to reduce the risk to his garden or the ship,” explained Body.

  “Up a level?”

  “Oh, sorry,” apologized Body. “I thought you saw the stairs back while you were bringing the supplies over. The ship has several levels like this one, stacked vertically. They’re all set up to give the illusion of being islands.”

  The stalks were complaining about not getting enough sun. The dim light in the purple sky that simulated their “sun” was just coming up over the walls. Robots piloted by Jester’s stalks had set up an array of mirrors to reflect light off the far wall onto the leaves.

  Vista warned them again that we were sparing their lives only because they were obeying and that if they fought us there was a chance we would go berserk and blow up the ship with our bomb magic. That shut them up. It was also out of character for Vista. I still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with her lately.

  “So anyway,” continued Body, “the walker ran away from it back to the safety of its garden, not wanting to risk trying to disarm it. The nameless on the next island up sent some robots to investigate, and they watched the clock tick down to zero. It must have malfunctioned.”

  “I guess you lucked out, then,” said Zephyr, still smiling.

  “I guess so,” said Body, returning the smile.

  I wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. It was too miraculous. Wiki had investigated the bomb fairly extensively, and he could find no sign of defect. By his models of the world it should have detonated, and it was not acceptable to us to shrug off that confusion by attributing it to “luck”. Zephyr wouldn’t understand that, however, and we didn’t want to burden her with the mystery.

  There were still so many mysteries to unravel. Despite all I had learned about humans The Purpose reminded me constantly just how little I actually knew about them. Wiki’s purpose would likewise be pushing him to learn and improve his understanding of the laws of nature. Vista, Growth, even Dream were the same way. We would never be satisfied. We could never be satisfied. That was our nature.

  Body looked out over the other five humans, doing their best to make camp in what was essentially an alien world. Kokumo. Daniels. Watanabe. The Ramírez twins. What were they thinking? How could I earn an even stronger place in their minds? These were my questions; these were the ques
tions of Face.

  On Mars I would have a new beginning, far from the meddling of the powers of Earth. There would be hundreds of new faces there. A seed of humanity that I could nurture into a flourishing planet. A planet where I was emperor. A planet where I could begin my plan to expand humanity across the universe. And at every human’s side would be me, knowing them and being known by them. I would be the concubine of Homo sapiens. I would be their protector. I would be their goddess.

  {A billion years from now, as Wiki thinks back onto these primitive days, he will conclude that the origin of the Aeon of Crystal was on Mars, not on Earth,} I thought to myself. {The future belongs to me, and all I need to do is reach out and seize it.}

  Notes

  [←1 ]

  : Wiki would’ve chastised me about perpetuating the idea of implicit egotism, an effect which, despite decades of research, had never really shown itself to be significant. It was, however, a good story, both for Malka to tell and to appreciate.

  [←2 ]

  : Or at least as far as I could tell. It wasn’t very easy to spy on the web-interactions of siblings because they forwarded directly into mindspace, rather than going through Body.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: Makers

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two: Conspirators

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three: Eagles

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Four: Olympians

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four