The Dreaming Stars

by Tim Pratt

  Shall said, I’ve scanned the skies, through all the bodies we have that are capable of looking at the sky just now, and we’re all in the same place. I think it’s the ruler’s hollow palace. That’s not a sky at all – it’s the interior of her world. Those moons are her personal residences.

  “The suffering slime are… the inhabitants of the ruler’s home world?” Callie said.

  It makes sense, Sebastien said. The Axiom love domination over others, and their personal freedom, above all else. Being trapped inside millions of slave bodies, forced to experience those wretched lives, made powerless and subject to the will of another? That’s probably the greatest humiliation the Axiom can imagine. Forced to serve, and to be casually, cruelly tormented? Because the mental capabilities of the Axiom are so far beyond ours, they would likely experience that whole gamut of suffering, all at once, for the entire period of their servitude. It’s only our mental limitations that allow us to focus into a single body this way. For the Axiom, doing this would be like trying to feel just one single cell inside their body, and ignore everything else.

  “You’re telling me our punishment for losing the game of empires is that we have to be the downtrodden proletariat?” Callie said.

  Basically, Sebastien said. We are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse of the teeming shore, the homeless, tempest-tossed–

  We’re the ones who are going to win after all, is what we are, Callie said.

  Chapter 31

  They left Shall in the Dream, because if the teeming masses suddenly became uninhabited, the ruler might notice. Shall had experimented a bit, and theorized that the suffering slime – ugh, the Axiom were awful – could go about their lives independently to some extent, following rote paths, but that they lacked the independent consciousness that other simulated inhabitants of the Dream possessed. The slime could forage for food and sleep and pick through garbage and hide without direction, but unless the overriding mind made them do something else, that was all they’d do, endlessly looping. Shall spread out as much as he could – he could direct a hundred or so bodies at a time – and tried to allay suffering where possible, but it was hopeless. There were toothed machines hunting them down. There were torture chambers. Furnaces. Drowning tanks. Pits full of monsters. Bloodsport. Hungry predators. The ruler’s world was an engine of suffering, by design.

  Callie sat in the canoe, hovering just outside the sphere, and waited for the White Raven to arrive. Her wait wasn’t that long – they must have wormholed away not long after she first entered the station, fortunately. She opened a comms channel as soon as they appeared in the distance and began to approach. “Don’t forget to radio the access code,” she said.

  “Thanks, captain,” Janice said. “What would I do without you? I brushed my teeth with an arc welder the other day. I wish you’d been there to save me from myself.”

  “I suppose you’d like to know where we’ve been,” Stephen said.

  “I’m a little curious. Was someone hurt?”

  “Some people from Owain went looking for the missing surveyors, and their ship broke down, right in the path of the swarm. We went to help them. We have them on board, playing in the Hypnos… and completely unaware of our current location.”

  Callie said, “You did the right thing, except for the part where you didn’t leave me a radio beacon with a message.”

  “We did,” Elena broke in. “The swarm ate it. It’s not our fault. Also I love you.”

  “Must you be romantic over an open channel?” Janice said.

  “How’s it going in there?” Stephen said. “Any luck?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said. “But basically, right now, I need to know: how many drugs do you have?”

  Stephen and Q joined her in the canoe, and they returned to the hub. “We have ample supplies – I stocked up on Ganymede,” Stephen said. “But are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Shall says my idea is sound,” Callie said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “You could spiral deep into your own psyche, and discover dark, transformative truths about yourself?” Q said.

  Callie shrugged. “That sounds fine. There’s nothing in me I’m scared to face.”

  They landed inside the hangar, and the glowing clouds lit their way again.

  Q huddled close to Stephen as they walked. “This is so bizarre,” she said. “This place wasn’t made by humans or Liars. What are the Axiom like? I mean, what do they look like?”

  “The ones here, on the station? No idea. They’re all snugged up in life-support pods. Inside the Dream, they appear in various avatars, but… they’re not pretty, as a whole.” Callie would never admit it, but she did kind of miss her tentacles: that sense of titanic strength had been intoxicating.

  They reached the central hub, and everyone said their hellos and shared the general opinion that Callie’s plan was ridiculous, but marginally better than no plan at all.

  Callie jabbed her finger at Sebastien. “I need you. You’re going to get some autonomy. Don’t screw me over.”

  Sebastien leaned close to her and whispered, “Does our arrangement stand?”

  “Yes. If we win, you get your stupid playground.”

  “Good. I would help anyway, because I am cured, and full of altruism, but I appreciate your willingness to help me in return.”

  “Shut up and take your drugs.”

  Callie, Sebastien, and Ashok made themselves comfortable while Q and Stephen murmured together and discussed appropriate dosages. “Have you ever done anything like this before?” Sebastien asked her.

  “No. I had a little fling with stimulants and focus-enhancing drugs in my younger days, but substances with more recreational or spiritual purposes never appealed to me. My doors of perception are already plenty wide, thanks.”

  “How about you, Ashok?”

  “I have a button I can push that gives me a burst of pure euphoria,” he said. “Thanks to an electrode nestled in just the right spot, deep in my brain. I had to put a governor on it, or else I’d just press it, all day long. That’s enough drugs for me.”

  Sebastien nodded. “I did DMT once in college, and found it… very unsettling. I avoided other psychedelics after that. I suppose a drug like that must seem barbaric to you, Stephen,” he called.

  “Please don’t blaspheme,” Stephen said. “My mother was in the church, and I was named after Saint Stephen Szára, who studied the psychotropic aspects of dimethyltryptamine. Manske and McKenna are venerated by our sect as well. But, yes, compared to the sacraments we have these days, DMT is… it’s a bit like comparing the Spirit of St Louis to the White Raven. This isn’t much like DMT, though.” Stephen held up a small vial that contained perhaps a half ounce of bluish fluid. “It should help with your too-many-bodies problem. It’s the sacrament we use in the rite of separateness-and-merging, when many branches of the church gather together for a single Festival.”

  Q approached Sebastien with the same sort of vial. “Open up. We’ll dose you, then plug you in. The effects come on fast.”

  “Let’s go storm the Bastille,” Sebastien said.

  “I never know what the hell you time refugees are talking about,” Callie said.

  Callie was hit with that all-encompassing pain again, but it seemed muted and distant, somehow – like taking dissociatives for oral surgery. The pain existed, and she could see it, but it didn’t matter much. A warmth spread through her body – her bodies, so many bodies – and then a tingling effervescence that made all her limbs feel buoyant, like she just might float away. She laughed, a pure drunken sound of joy, and heard that laughter emerge from ten thousand throats. She looked around, and saw other faces, of all sorts – furred, scaled, feathered, insectoid, metallic, luminous – and some of those faces were looking at her faces, and it was like standing between two mirrors and seeing herself reflected into infinity.

  That wasn’t all she felt, either. Besides the vast but fini
te curve of her own selves, there were other psyches in there with her. Ashok was in her head. Wonderful Ashok, sweet Ashok, the irrepressible, the exploratory, her partner in adventure. And Shall, her Shall, better than the man he was based on, who would die for her, but who would much rather live for her.

  And Sebastien. She was struck by an overpowering wave of sympathy for Sebastien. He’d lost all the same things Elena had lost, but unlike Elena, he’d gotten nothing in return – certainly not love. He’d suffered at the hands of the Axiom more directly than anyone else, and he continued to suffer. Was he kind of a jerk? Yes, sure, but Callie herself could be abrasive and impatient and uncompromising. Did she deserve to be an outcast for that? Did he? Did anyone?

  The Axiom did. The Axiom were the cold spot in the haunted house, the black hole at the center of the galaxy, the necrotizing spot in the healthy flesh. No. The Axiom were what demons would be if demons were real: creatures intent on torment for torment’s sake. Good. Callie had been afraid the sacraments of the Church of the Ecstatic Divine would make her into a touchy-feely-love-everyone-equally idiot, but it didn’t. It just made her feel connected to other people, and other living things, and if anything, it made her more angry, more boiling over with fury, at anyone who would knowingly cause others to suffer. The sacrament ramped up her empathy, it expanded her perception–

  It allowed her to make ten thousand bodies turn as if they were one. Their separate pains and maladies and injuries all merged and flowed, and she let peace and warmth and belonging spring forth from the center of her, and pass into all of them. She could focus, if she had to, through one set of eyes (or other sensory organs; why was she so focused on sight, when smell and hearing and the vibrations of the air on skin were just as informative, if she paid attention?). Or she could see the vast panoply of the ruler’s world through many bodies at once.

  Ashok was hooting with joy, somewhere in her head. Some of us can fly! he cried.

  Sebastien was in her head, weeping, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, over and over.

  Shall said, Well, you’re definitely all tripping. Do we have a plan here?

  I have ten thousand bodies, Callie thought. How about the rest of you?

  About that, yeah, Ashok said.

  Sebastien?

  I… What? Callie? I didn’t understand, I couldn’t feel it – it’s like if someone says they’re freezing but you don’t feel especially cold, of course you think it can’t be that bad, that probably they just want attention, or else they’re weak, or a whiner, or they love to complain, but really they’re just so cold–

  Shh, she said. It’s OK. You’re warm now. Can you do this? For all the people on Owain?

  I can do this. I have… yes, thousands and thousands.

  Callie smiled with ten thousand bodies, in a hundred different ways: blinkings of eyes, wagging of tails, undulations of tentacles. And Shall can run the rest of them, jump around, put them on paths, have them do the big messy diversions, right?

  That’s right, Callie, Shall said.

  Then long live the revolution, Callie said.

  There were millions of them. Shall sent the masses he controlled against all the ruler’s enforcers, torturers, overseers, and lieutenants. His hordes tore open the jails and the pits, the arenas and factories, the oubliettes and snuff brothels, the drowning pools and experimental domes. Those newly freed ran when they could, or flew, or jumped, or limped, or were carried by their fellows. Every object that could be picked up became a weapon in the revolution… and there were surprisingly few simulated guards to stand against the uprising. The Axiom didn’t believe in the power of the masses. It had taken a different kind of mind to conceive of the collective strength of the tormented and the voiceless.

  Callie, Ashok, and Sebastien focused their thirty thousand on a different outcome: not general mayhem and devastation and disruption, but a targeted strike. Callie had worried that focusing while under the influence of the sacraments – the drugs – would be difficult, but in fact she could look at something with more depth and precision than she ever had before, perceiving more detail, and discovering overlooked nuances. If anything, she risked looking at things too deeply. But Shall was a murmuring voice, guiding them, reminding them, stirring them from the reverie of gazing at ten thousand paws or hands or claws and marveling at the way they moved just because you wanted them to – wasn’t that a kind of magic?

  The ruler lived in twin moons floating at the center of a hollow sphere, but there were ways to get there: teleporting booths, and trams, and huge flying transport ships, because sometimes the ruler entertained in her palace, and sometimes that entertainment required large numbers of the suffering slime to endure some hardship or humiliation. Parts of Callie’s consciousness were already in the palace, acting as servants or weeping in cells, and she coordinated those to throw open the doors and turn off defenses. Many of her bodies were killed by the palace guards for their insubordination, but there were more on the way, pouring in through loading docks, crashing down through skylights, battering down doors, and every body she lost just allowed her to pick up another. There were millions of bodies. They were too many to stop.

  Callie’s and Ashok’s hordes engaged in battles with the vastly better armed forces inside the palace, but the ruler’s people couldn’t stand against the onslaught of thirty thousand enraged peasants. Sebastien’s horde smashed up the communications systems and seized control of the palace’s defenses, cutting off contact to the outside world and destroying the few defenders who tried to rally to their leader’s aid. This was the inner sanctum of the most powerful Axiom in the Dream, after all, and while the hollow moon’s defenses against any outside attacks were probably undefeatable, no Axiom expected this sort of attack from the inside.

  Callie’s horde smashed down the barred and locked doors that guarded the ruler’s private suites, and poured through.

  Callie didn’t have to jump from body to body or shift her attention around any more: she saw everything, all at once, through all her eyes. There were corpses decorating the walls here, in various stages of mutilation and decay. There were implements of death. There were holographic displays of past, grisly triumphs.

  The mantis-like ruler scuttled out of a pile of twigs and dirt the size of a cottage – its bed – wielding a scepter. “So, the suffering slime rises up,” it said – or so Shall translated. “A new gambit, and one I did not expect. There is no tournament now, slime. This will not help you in the game. Is it just revenge, then? I’d thought better of you. Not much better… but a bit.”

  “We have demands.” Callie tried to speak from just one mouth, but she was too spread out now – too dissolved in the sea of bodies – and so a hundred voices shouted it.

  “Do you?” The ruler lifted the scepter, a rod of greasy-looking black topped with a one-eyed skull cast in silver. “I don’t have any demands. But I have a weapon that will kill all of your bodies in a single stroke… except for one. One single cell of suffering slime to contain the vastness of your mind, sibling. And, oh, the fun we’ll have.” The ruler swung the scepter.

  Chapter 32

  Callie said, “Are you done?” through a hundred throats.

  The ruler reared back on its scuttling multitude of legs, then swung the scepter again, hard and downward, more viciously. Then it shook the scepter, like it was a flashlight with a loose connection, and swung again.

  A dozen of the horde darted forward and plucked the scepter from the ruler’s hand, dashing the weapon against the stone-like floor. They seized the ruler’s limbs and began to drag it across the room, toward a disc in the floor that served as an elevator to the lower levels. “Impossible!” the ruler howled.

  “I had bodies in the palace,” Callie said. “I had bodies in this room – those are some of me, in pieces, pinned up on your walls! You think I couldn’t creep in while you were elsewhere and break all your shit? I broke all your shit.” Another ten or twelve of t
he horde crowded onto the silvery disc. “Take us down.”

  “No,” the ruler said.

  Callie tore off one of the ruler’s legs and threw it across the room. The ruler howled. “Did that hurt?” Callie said. One of the horde, with deft fingers on four hands, brandished a set of syringes, then jabbed them into the joints between the ruler’s legs. Callie ripped off another leg, and the ruler screamed until it ran out of breath, and then just gasped. “You’ve been injected with pain enhancers. A favorite technique among your torturers. We gave you a quadruple dose.”

  “This is pointless,” the ruler panted. “You can’t kill me. None of us can kill one another.”

  Callie concentrated hard and sent one body to stare into the blank metal diamond of the ruler’s face. “Kill you? I am the suffering slime. I know as many torments as I have bodies, and I will visit them all on you, if you don’t give in to my demands. You say I can’t kill you. I know. Isn’t it wonderful? No matter what I do to you… you’ll never die.” She reached out – this body had a stump of a paw, wrapped in filthy bandages. Was this that first body, the one she’d found refuge in right after she lost the game? That would be nice.

  She caressed the ruler’s metal face with the dirty bandage, leaving a smear. “You’re one of the best of us. You’ve never finished lower than twelfth place. You’ve been ruler more often than anyone else. This is going to be a new experience for you. Isn’t it wonderful, that after all these billions of years, you can still experience something new?”

  Callie ripped off the ruler’s mask. It wasn’t just something the leader wore – it was attached, somehow, embedded, and when it came free, flesh ripped. The visage underneath was horrific, all squirming meat full of eyes and mandibles.

  “Tell me what you want,” the ruler said.

  The control center was less grisly than the ruler’s private rooms: a round, cozy space, with a console at the center, and various screens and interfaces. The leader hunched over the controls, mouthparts moving, and Shall’s voice translated their words, with occasional pauses as he pondered word choice. “This is absurd. I’ll accept almost anything within the context of the game, the only rule there is to win at all costs, but what you’re asking… You know there’s too much at stake, sibling. We need those processors for the next stage of the simulation. We have to finish testing the efficacy of the… something… tunneler. Quantum tunneler?” The leader turned their head and looked at the horde, in what Callie assumed was a baleful fashion. “Just because I’m leading the project, you want to spoil it? You’re that upset at the prospect of a thousand years of torment? The Dream has made you weak. Or… were you a spy all along? Have you been waiting all this time for an opportunity to disrupt the great work? I knew you were too close with those… ah, rewinders? Those-who-go-back? Something like that. You spineless spy, you treacherous scum, etc., ah, wait, this is interesting – they’re coming, aren’t they? Your old friends. Coming to destroy our work before it can interfere with their plans.”