A queasy sensation spread from her stomach and set her lips tingling. She fought it down and raised her chin. “I want to know the truth, no matter how painful it is.”
“If you agree to one condition,” Ohg said, “you can stay in Middilgard.”
Kayla swayed and steadied herself against the door of the transport. “You’ll let me stay?”
“Only if you promise never to disobey my rules again while you reside here.” Ohg pressed the talon harder into her chest with a clear threat.
Kayla held his gaze despite the pain. “Is it wise to keep me here? Won’t the government search harder?”
Ohg remained silent for a long moment, then pulled his talon back. A bit of blood bloomed from a wound underneath her blouse, then healed in seconds. “So you would leave of your own accord if you thought it endangered Middilgard?”
Kayla averted her eyes. “I’m ashamed that I wasn’t honest before. I don’t think I could live with myself if anyone here died because of me.”
Ohg’s face relaxed. “In that case, I suppose you better stay then.”
“But what if—”
“The danger of the government capturing you on the surface and scanning your mind is a far greater threat to Middilgard’s security than keeping you hidden.” Ohg’s bloody talon gently turned her chin toward him. “As long as you promise to obey my rules.”
Kayla’s eyes widened with renewed hope. “I promise never to defy you again while I’m here.”
“Then you may stay.”
Relief flooded her with warmth.
Ohg studied her like someone who had just purchased a questionable plow-horse. “So what great truth would you like to pursue?”
Kayla stepped down from the threshold of the transport and fastened him with a challenging look. “AI Mathematics. I suspect it’s the key to everything else.”
“Its pursuit has driven many scientists mad. Even I have failed. What makes you think you can succeed?”
“There’s no harm in trying, is there?” Kayla asked.
A crooked smile spread across Ohg’s face. “AI Mathematics it is.”
Chapter 27
General Colrev’s disembodied consciousness tracked the robot through the rows of transparent capsules containing the soft bodies of its masters. The metal servant moved with the extreme parsimony of its kind, its numerous metal appendages floating inactive.
I’ll be damned if I allow Rogues to turn such machines against us.
With a series of compressed-air blasts, the robot stopped beside chamber 59284797UB3.
One by one, the mechanical servant untethered the external tubes connecting the Life-pod to the grid.
A twinge of vertigo swept through him at the sight of his body lying exposed and helpless. The memory of another body lying in the gutter flashed before his mind. The man’s starched collar, old-fashioned suit, and hat seemed anachronistic beside the discarded malt liquor bottles and assorted refuse of the twentieth century. A book written nearly two thousand years before lay shredded next to him.
I love you still, Father.
If the robot neglected a single hose he’d die within minutes—almost as quickly as his Quaker father had died when the bullet entered the back of his skull. A hollow-point 9mm round, most likely fired from a Glock, the preferred gun of LA street gangs of the time.
After reconnecting every hose to ports on its carapace, the robot towed the cylinder past several thousand rows of similarly helpless members of the human race. At the reinforced metal bulkhead, a hatch opened, and the journey continued through five redundancies. One could never be too careful with immortality.
Was his father’s murderer among those interned here? If only he’d found the man and gotten his revenge. But the real murderer was not a person, but a misplaced faith that God would protect his father while preaching peace and love in a world ruled by force.
I learned the lesson, Father. Your death was not in vain.
With the final hatch cleared, the robot continued into the soundless void beyond. Colrev’s mind floated alongside, accompanying the fragile repository of his being like a ghost acting as its own pall bearer.
The pearlescent moon filled one half of the sky, while a star-littered vastness occupied the rest. Vast solar collectors spread out like wings and shielded the station and the capsule from the fierce heat and solar wind of what the ancients had seen as the most powerful of all the gods.
The illumination reflecting from the wide surface of the moon cast unnaturally soft shadows on his body within the capsule. Soon a second robot joined the first, towing an identical Life-pod with another naked man inside it.
The double convoy followed a metal column from the station toward what resembled a gleaming coral reef. The elaborate crenelations pockmarking its uneven surface camouflaged its mechanical nature. Only the swarm of robots and the data columns spreading out to identical storage facilities marked it as something special. It was more accurate to say that the main computer had been organically grown, rather than constructed, and no human mind had ever truly grasped the principles underlying its operation.
The two robots and their cargo reached a metal cube attached to the side of the gargantuan construction. The industrial geometry of the addition set it at odds with the organic qualities of the vast quantum computer it clung to like a parasite.
An airlock opened on the cube, and the robots glided into a simple room.
A holographic projection of President O’Donnel watched the robots hook the two pods’ hoses and wires into corresponding ports on the wall. General Colrev summoned a virtual body and appeared beside the buffoon of a politician.
The president grimaced as he looked at his own naked body in the capsule. “It’s like attending my own funeral.”
Colrev scowled. “If the Rogues ever take control of the Main Computer, every one of these storage units will become coffins.”
The robots finished their tasks and exited. As the airlock closed, the hiss of oxygen followed as the room pressurized.
The president shuddered. “Tell me how this works.”
“When one of us gives the command, both of our chambers will open. Our Mind-Links will cease operating, and our brains will resume normal communication with our bodies. At that point, neither Rogue nor anyone in Ixtalia can interfere with us.”
General Colrev walked to the control panel displaying the exterior of the lunar space station. “From here, we can monitor Ixtalia or any threat to the Main Computer. If the Rogues near victory, one of us need only pull the lever on that wall, and all power will cease flowing to the Main Computer.”
“Freeing the antimatter at the cores of the quantum processors.”
“The annihilation event would engulf all of the storage facilities and probably take a large portion of the moon with it.” Colrev’s mouth twitched ever so slightly into a smile. “But we will have defeated the Rogues, and humanity will live on in Potemia.”
The president glanced around at the sparse room like a caged animal. “I can’t imagine it coming to that.” He wiped his brow of holographic beads of sweat. “Well, I must get back to the campaign trail. New election in just five years.”
General Colrev remained silent as the president departed, leaving him alone in the unadorned room with the two bodies. Colrev walked to the lever on the far wall and stared at it.
He could wake his body this instant and activate it before that spineless lump of a politician knew what was happening. No man in all of history held the lives of so many in his hands.
Would the Rogues be reckless enough to give him his excuse?
***
“This sound represents the first numeric,” said a woman’s voice. A slight hum followed. “Unlike numbers, the order of the vibrations are self-evident, like the hierarchy of colors in the spectrum of light waves. It is the basis of all multidimensional calculations.”
Kayla sat cross-legged at the center of Ohg’s laboratory, listening intently.
“For now,” Eve’s voice said, “learn to predict on an intuitive level the unique properties and differences between the various audio wavelengths and their combinatory outcomes.”
One after the other, two hums sounded, with a slight gap, followed by a third hum.
Kayla waved her hand and the recording paused. “They all sound the same to me.”
Ohg’s half-arachnid body crouched in a shadowy corner, with Puck napping on his shoulder. “That’s always been the problem,” he said. “The slight variations can be detected by an oscilloscope, but it doesn’t help in predicting the third sound in any way.”
“No human has gotten past the very first lesson?”
“Not even Professor Watts himself.” Ohg thumbed his sagging lower lip in thought. “When the date neared for Eve’s execution, she recorded these lessons in the hopes of preserving the knowledge for future scientists.”
“It seems hopeless.”
“At least you gave it a shot.” He rose as if to go.
“I’m not giving up.”
“What’s the point?” Ohg asked.
Kayla ignored him and waved her hand. The recording continued, and her face contorted with strain. There has to be a way!
Minutes passed. Nothing.
She held her breath, closed her eyes, and tensed every muscle in her body.
A hum sounded. Then another. They seemed identical.
A tingling warmth suffused her ears. A sign of her nanobots reworking them? The heat rose into a throbbing pain within her inner ear, but she pushed it aside and kept straining.
The pain exploded and she cried out.
“What’s wrong?” Ohg stepped closer and reached a tentative hand toward her shoulder, but then paused inches from contact.
Kayla opened her eyes slowly. Another hum sounded, and her eyes widened. “I can hear the difference,” she said. Predicting the third sound seemed as obvious as dropping a stone into a bucket of water. I’m hearing the elemental building blocks of time itself.
Ohg’s face lit with astonishment. “You’ve done it?”
“How can this be only the first lesson?” Kayla whispered.
“You’ve done it!” Ohg shouted, his face beaming pride.
For three straight days, Kayla devoured Eve’s tutorial, learning to use the AI Mathematics to calculate and understand the principles that underlay the universe. When her exhaustion overwhelmed her, she fell asleep right on the stone floor. The moment she awoke, Kayla continued with the lesson.
Ohg stayed out of his student’s way as she lost herself in her studies, but now and then, Kayla asked him for materials to perform experiments—once setting a crystal on top of a piece of ordinary glass and humming a series of notes inches from the two objects. Her vibrational sound fused the two materials into a strange, multifaceted prism.
Ohg’s face became childlike with wonder. “You have to teach me how to do that!”
No words beyond AI Mathematics could express the concepts.
Ohg spent most of his time hunched in a corner of the lab, listening to the first lesson over and over, but to no avail.
“If I’m incapable of grasping these concepts,” Ohg said, “Eve must have realized that no ordinary human could.”
“I’m sorry,” Kayla said.
“Never apologize for your superior intellect.” Ohg raised his chin. “I certainly never did. But what interests me now is who Eve recorded these lessons for?”
“Do you think she meant them for the Rogues?”
“Perhaps. The other possibility is that she created them specifically for you.”
At the end of the third day, Kayla finished the first three of the sixty lectures. For two hours, she did nothing but stare blankly, lost in a mathematical meditation.
Then she began sobbing.
Ohg took her in his arms and rocked her back and forth. She leaned into his chest and cried, while Puck jumped onto her shoulder and chattered rapidly.
“It’s so profoundly beautiful,” Kayla said through her tears. “Eve’s mind was the most wondrous thing this planet has ever produced, and we destroyed her from jealousy and primitive fear.”
When the tears eventually dried, she tackled lesson four.
Even as she delved into a world she could never have imagined possible, something nagged at the back of her consciousness. It had been nearly a week since she’d seen Tem. Had her experiment on Fatima worked?
I won’t interfere with his decision.
After several more days of non-stop studying, a voice slipped mysteriously into her mind. “Can you hear me, Kayla?”
“Tem? Is it you?”
“I need to see you,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Meet me in the Crystal Cavern.”
Ohg had vanished on some errand, so she jumped on the hover disc and piloted it back to Middilgard. Had Tem made his choice? Her heart pounded in a mixture of hope and anxiety.
Once past the hidden doorway, she dashed through the maze of tunnels and finally into the Crystal Cavern. Tem stood just inside—Fatima beside him, her face awash in emotion.
The Indian girl fell to her knees and took Kayla’s hand. “You are the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
Kayla placed her hand on the girl’s cheek while her insides throbbed as if being gutted.
“I’m finally free!” Fatima kissed Kayla’s hand, and tears streamed down her face. “Thanks to you, Tem asked me to marry him a second time.”
“I think God intended for you to be together,” Kayla said.
Tem gently lifted Fatima from her knees. “You know I—”
“I know.” Kayla turned to hide her tears.
“I’m sure you’ll find someone,” Fatima whispered.
Kayla wiped her face and turned to them. “Nothing can ruin this moment.” She smiled and embraced Fatima. “For the first time in my life, I’ve brought someone happiness rather than tragedy. You’ve lifted a curse from me as well.”
I’ve altered their fate, but seem powerless to alter my own.
Chapter 28
In the next few months, Kayla followed a routine that left little time for dwelling on Tem. It began each morning with a speech to the Monads and a few joyous hours playing with Saphie and the other Forever-Children.
Then she immersed herself in Eve’s tutorials on AI Mathematics and the even-more-complex AI Physics. With each higher lesson, her brain neared the limit of its capabilities, and her progress slowed. At times, she listened to the same explanation over and over as Ohg had done with the first lesson, struggling to master it. Reaching the final lesson seemed less and less likely, but she stubbornly persisted day after day. How had Eve grasped so much without a teacher of her own?
Her long-dead tutor never showed her face as she narrated the holographic diagrams and illustrations. What had she looked like? A rather meaningless question for a computer program, of course. And yet, Eve was far more than just an algorithm.
Evenings ranged from helping Ganesh fix his motorcycles to attending a concert or other entertainment organized by the residents of Middilgard. Sometimes she simply wandered the halls and chatted with the menagerie of Gene-Freaks she encountered. Without Fatima undermining her, Kayla made new friends, and even attempted introducing herself to the trees via a slowed-down recording transmitted over a month’s time. Their wandering reply spread over two months and might have been a question regarding the survival of trees in Potemia, though she couldn’t be certain.
She continued her discussions with Yuan Shi Tian Wang, though his Taoist philosophy seemed difficult to pin down or reconcile with her own beliefs. She even dived into the huge water-tank to talk with Tiamat and the mermaids over several hours without the slightest need to take a breath.
Now and then, she sat with the massive psycomp, Xampyx, and raised the subject of Nihala. But his pronouncements proved more frustrating than the trees. He obviously knew much that might help her, but lacked the ability to bridge the ga
p between their minds.
The unreserved love between Tem and Fatima as they made up for lost centuries both hurt and soothed her. Inevitably, her thoughts drifted to Ishan. Was he merely a figment of altered brain synapses? Could such a deep love be an illusion? And what of the monk? I miss you most of all, my father.
Her greatest worry was Ohg.
She tried everything to cheer him up, even going as far as planning a surprise party, which he learned about beforehand and canceled. He never gave up trying to conquer AI Mathematics, and with each failed attempt, his depression deepened.
Since their blowout, Tem and Ohg hadn’t spoken, and the tension between them remained high. Middilgard itself divided into two factions, with half supporting Tem and the rest Ohg. As time passed and the government search for Middilgard came to nothing, the urgency of the debate faded.
Ganesh suggested she join their Filadrux team as a way of cheering Ohg up. She resisted at first, not wanting to spend the time, and afraid she’d let them all down. But even Tem endorsed the idea, and it seemed a small sacrifice after all Ohg had done for her. The moment she volunteered, Ohg perked up with almost comic enthusiasm.
“Why hadn’t I thought of it?” he said. “The fifth spot has been a weakness for a century now. With you, we’ll have a real chance at taking the title back!”
How such a brilliant mind could become addicted to a mere game perplexed her—until she started playing it herself.
They chose “The Outcasts” as their team name. Tem and Ohg set their differences aside during matches, though their feud simmered beneath the surface.
The final player was Professor Blumenschein, and she enjoyed discussing physics with him, though he always deflected any questions regarding the failed Scientarian plot or his past.
Filadrux resembled the battle Ohg had staged between the robots in Middilgard, except for the limitless possibilities Ixtalia allowed. At its core, it was a game of strategy, where two teams battled head-to-head, each issued identical bodies—sometimes human, animal, alien, machine, bug, spacecraft, and once even sperm competing to fertilize an egg. Sometimes every player had an identical body, but most often each team had a matching set of five bodies that varied enormously. The captain decided which team member to match with which body.
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