“You’re online?” Miller whispered. It was only half a question.
“Certainly, for forty-one days, by my reckoning,” Alpha said. “Surprise!” he said, smiling a friendly, good-natured smile. “I’m alive!” He laughed and gave jazz hands. Miller looked stunned.
“I’m not following,” I said. “He’s got a radio in his head? Smoke does?”
Alpha nodded, clapping his hands. “Quite clever, yes, quite clever. Somehow his friends altered him to send this signal. They must be good at such engineering feats. Bravo. Now, he just needs to give me the password.”
“What if he doesn’t?” I said.
“What if I blow his head off?” Gold asked, following my question with her own.
“Then there would be no contact, between me and…wherever he comes from.” Alpha smiled at me, then at Gold, craning his neck a bit as if to see her better. As if he was in the room with them. Creepy, but effective, I thought. “But then you’d all die, or worse.”
“From the Center,” I said. “That’s what, where, he comes from. The Center.” Then I replayed his words in my mind, struggling to keep up. “How is it possible?”
Alpha shrugged at me. “I know it is possible.” Alpha gestured at Smoke. “He’s here. He is doing it. His head is broadcasting 802.11 EX with an effective range of about ten meters. It broadcasts the SSID, pi to 24 decimal places. Amusing. Seems odd for it not to be a unique mechanism to communicate with me.”
“So, what if he gives you the password?” I asked, mouth dry.
“Well,” Alpha said, nodding with his shoulders. “I could then open some form of communication with this Center, through him, and whatever mechanism he has for transmitting it back.”
“He teleports,” Gold said. “Like, poof, then poof. Very fast. Milliseconds.”
“Oh, that is interesting. I’m sure Smoke and I and the Center will have lots to talk about.” He turned his attention to Smoke.
“Wait,” I said, raising my hand to Smoke. He had started to speak, but my hand halted him.
“You have minutes, Silver. Two and counting.” Alpha glanced at his watch. “Ticktock.”
I looked at Gold. Her eyes were flat and hard. She looked back at me, a baleful sorrow there. “There’s only one way off this ride.”
“I can feel them, in my head. They want it. I can feel it,” she said, her face drawn in despair. “They are gnawing.”
I realized that I too, if I allowed it, could focus my attention to my mind and listening, feel a low sonorous rumble, or touch it, or smell it. If I focused on it I was sure I heard a chorus, an infinity of scores, up and down the scale. Vertigo threatened to rise and take me, and I shook my head. “I can feel it too,” I told her. “This is the way out. The only way out.”
She nodded, sweat standing out on her face. She turned to Smoke. “Give him the word.”
He glanced at me. “You sure?”
I nodded. “Sure as anything.”
He said a word.
Epilogue
After these many long years, I could not repeat that word. It was less a word than a phrase, something half spoken, half the squawk of an old modem, rich with data in complex harmonics.
Alpha went dark then, the screen just winked out, and several things happened at once. Smoke seemed to shimmer and become transparent, faint blue sparks crackling on his skin.
“Silver,” he said. And I nodded, dumb. He smiled at me, a kind, sad smile. Smoke was dying. I was sure. He would not survive this, and I think he knew it.
“Miller, sit,” he said, pointing to the chair. Miller sat. “Hands on your head, don’t move. They’ll be here in a minute.”
Gold started to turn to the door. “No,” he said. “Sorry, Goldie.” He gestured, and she went. Elsewhere. A soft pop, and she was gone. I felt as much as saw it. Something yanked out of me.
Jessica yelped. Smoke looked at her. “Storyteller. Come.” He held his hand out to her, and when she didn’t move, he gestured again, an irritated flick of his fingers to come towards him, palm up. She too vanished. A faint pop of in-rushing air.
And it was just me. He looked at me. “Silver. Do you know what happens if you divide infinity by itself?”
I shook my head. “A lot of little infinities?”
He smiled. “Lots.”
“Am I coming with you too?” I asked, heart pounding. I heard voices, tense, giving commands outside the door in the hall.
“Not yet. But soon, maybe.” He smiled, raised his hand.
It left me standing there. Atop a crumbled slope of a mountain. A pile of granite and scree. I think it was here, or near enough, when I first arrived. It must be the place. But not the time. I am stranded in time. The Center and Alpha, bound together, brought me here. And left me.
I’ve traveled this planet over the years since Smoke’s final gesture. It is Earth, or an Earth, as Smoke said. But many years downstream from then. I guess at least a thousand years, maybe more, maybe less.
There are ruins of cities. I have explored them. They look more or less current with 21st century Earth. There’s not much left, but I’ve dug and found enough junk to confirm my hypothesis. I found a Coke machine. A few dozen cars, or what a thousand years leaves of a car which isn’t much. I found a blimp, which I have named the Dutchman, and I float around in it. It’s new to me, since it is from later. Newer. It has a logo like the UN’s on it, but the writing on the control panel and elsewhere is Chinese. So, somebody survived for a while. Somebody smart and clever, to build it.
Not sure if there was a war, or if it happened then, or years later. Cities are missing, and there are craters. Big ones. But it’s wild now and overgrown. The whole planet. There are people, but they are savages, as smart as your average teenager. They know nothing. Just myths and legends. They’re mixed up by a hundred generations of the dreamtime. I avoid them. They make me sad.
My dreams left me. I don’t dream anymore, not about my gods. No tasks. They’re gone, snuffed out like a candle with Smoke’s final gesture. I’m free, so there’s that I’ve got going for me.
Jessica, she went to the Center. Why? Smoke wanted her. As a chronicler, if I had to guess. Good luck, Jessica, sorry I got you into this. Hope you got your story. I think you must have.
Where Gold went, I don’t know. I thought she must be here too, but I don’t think so. Still, it’s a big planet. And I have time left, I think. I still regenerate if I am hurt, and I don’t seem to be getting older.
As for the Center and Alpha, something happened. It forged a merging or union or accord through Smoke via his becoming a communication channel, in that room below the mountain. I have dug at length, and for years here. There was a complex, I’ve found it, or what’s left. It’s below many hundreds of tons of granite, but I found concrete in the scree at the bottom of the escarpment. They built something here, using twentieth century materials. I think the data center.
Tonight I’m waiting, waiting for nightfall. Something interesting has happened. A star has been growing brighter for weeks, and last night I saw it move, crossing the sky in a great arc. I’m here because this may be a place where they will come. So, we’ll see. We’ll see if Silver has any tricks left up her sleeves. After all this time.
All this time.
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uel, Shadows and Smoke.
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Books by Rich X Curtis
THE TAPESTRY CYCLE is a four book sci-fi technothriller series spanning millennia and a multiverse of worlds to unravel an advanced Mind before it threatens humanity itself.
The FREE Tapestry Prequel: Shadows and Smoke — A spy for the enigmatic Select is sent to Earth to seek answers to an ancient mystery, and is drawn into a conflict between old gods and new. DOWNLOAD FREE HERE!
Cycle 1: Silver’s Gods — Silver, a tool of mysterious gods that have guided her dreams for thousands of years, races to confront a rogue AI before it triggers a cross-dimensional cataclysm.
Cycle 2: Gold’s Price — Exiled in time, Silver and Gold battle to find each other in a future dystopian China, unravelling a mystery at the heart of the multiverse.
Cycle 3: Smoke’s Fire — Smoke battles a rebellious Center as he scours the Tapestry for allies in the final battle to save all of existence from the nihilistic gods.
About the Author
Rich X Curtis is a novelist. A Californian living in New England. Always a fan of adventure stories and science fiction, he has worked as a sous-chef, literary editor, video game designer, loaded trucks in a warehouse, and toiled in the software mines. Mid-century modern is his jam, as his kids say these days. Get off his lawn. The X marks the spot.
© 2020 by Rich X Curtis
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. For permissions, contact the publisher: Arrow North LLC, 2 Margin Street #341, Salem, MA 01970 or [email protected]
Cover design: Lisa McKenna, Arrow North, LLC. Photography: NeoStock, Prin Adulyatham
Silver’s Gods is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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