“Your mission is to pretend to defend Krungthep at all costs, and to make sure that the Artificials don’t get a chance to take a closer look at the planet. Better said, at what is hidden under its surface. Your defensive efforts serve only to distract the enemy. As long as he keeps his eyes on you and your fleet, as long as you keep him busy, hopefully he won’t look too closely at the planet itself. Project Phoenix must not be discovered by the enemy if there is to be a future for humanity. Do you understand, Fleet Admiral Joorthan?”
System Time CB:0A:55:F2:19:A0
Mart sat at her feet and read a book. Alexa secretly watched him. All at once he seemed very familiar to her again, as if a lost memory had renewed itself. He listened, although it was utterly silent in the virtual room.
“The security program has deactivated,” he then said.
“Where...?”
“There are lots and lots of resources available again. My processor is paying attention.”
“What does that mean for us?”
“We can move completely freely in the memory again.”
“We’re free?”
“As far as you can be in a supercomputer twenty kilometers below the surface of a destroyed planet.”
“Wait a minute.” Alexa had an idea. “Does that remove the shielding, too?”
“I think so,” Mart said. “Presumably, the Artificials have retreated.”
“They’re tracking the Sphere.”
“It’s possible, yes.”
“Maybe they need help,” Alexa said.
“What do you mean?”
“If the shielding is open, we could open a radio channel for me, and I could check on the ship.”
“You want—”
“I just want to make sure they’re on their way back. I’ll check on them for a minute, then come back.”
“I don’t know, Alexa.”
“What’s the problem?”
“If we’re actively broadcasting, we may give ourselves away. There’s a reason why there are no data links to the surface.”
“The Artificials’ attention is focused on the Sphere. You know they’ve been looking for you for a long time. Maybe my friends need me, and I can prevent the Sphere from falling into the hands of our enemies.”
“They are not our enemies.”
“But you act like it, my dear man. And that’s what counts for me.”
Mart sighed, and she knew the reason.
“All right,” he said, “I can send you to the Sphere with a directional beam. You look around, and if everything is going according to plan, you come back.”
“That’s a good plan,” she said.
Alexa wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t telling the whole truth, either. What if everything wasn’t going according to plan up there? Mart also preferred not to talk about this possibility. It was better if it remained unsaid. Then it would be easier for them to say goodbye.
“I can’t keep the connection open for long, though,” Mart said. “Otherwise, the Artificials will catch on to us. I don’t want to have billions of people on my conscience.”
As a point of fact, he already did, but Alexa stifled the objection. “Ten minutes?” she suggested.
“Agreed. Once you know how long you need—”
“—I’ll let you know.” Or I’ll terminate the connection if it’s going to take longer than ten minutes. This remained unsaid, and yet Alexa had the feeling that they were both thinking it.
“When?” asked Mart.
“Now.”
“That’s what I thought. Give me a minute.” Mart disappeared briefly, then reappeared. “We’re good to go,” he said.
Alexa stood up. She was pretty sure that she would never see this room again unless Mart stopped her now. All he had to do was ask her to stay. She would not be strong enough to refuse him that request.
But Mart did not ask her for anything. He rose, stood in front of her, held her face between his hands, and kissed her. It seemed so real. Like back then, how many thousand years ago?
Then he was gone.
Earth, 4177 S.S.Z
The earth lay burned and battered beneath him. Even from a great distance, the scorched patches on the globe could not be ignored—with dense clouds of ash and dust allowing no more than intermittent glimpses down to the surface.
In the few weeks that had passed since the Artificials had conquered the Sol system, the freshly inflicted wounds had not yet been able to heal—which was plainly evident.
All of Europe was a radioactive hell of nuclear ash and debris. There was hardly a green spot on the North American continent. Almost everything shone brown-gray through the gaps in the cloud cover, which was also dirty-gray. Asia was also barely recognizable. China and India had been destroyed by widespread aerial bombing, as had Japan and the Korean peninsula. Only the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas shimmered in innocent white.
Australia, too, seemed to be nothing but a radioactive desert.
South America and most of Africa had fared the best. Here, only the coastal areas had been completely razed to the ground. The continental interiors, on the other hand, still exhibited the lush green of the jungles.
But people could no longer live there, even so. Maybe in a few thousand years, when the radioactive precipitation and contaminated soils would no longer emit radiation that would be deadly within a few hours of exposure.
Tasso had placed the remaining ships of the defense fleet under his own command. Each ship now contained several Artificials who had been put in control. Tasso had made it clear that any attack on one of his emissaries would be met with the immediate destruction of that ship.
“Prepare your crews!”
Tasso stood on Genia’s bridge together with the former Fleet Admiral Marty Joorthan. The Artificials’ First Brother had not foregone the opportunity to experience, side-by-side with his creator, the end of the common path that had begun many millennia ago on the planet below them.
Marty had resigned his rank and spoken as a private citizen to the crews of the remaining ships after all of them had emerged from the acceleration tubs. He had not wanted to appear to be ordering them to choose the Artificials’ offer.
After a short consultation, all but a few dozen of the one-million-plus men and women had declared themselves in favor of accepting the offer. Those who had rejected it probably trusted—blindly—that their current egomatrices were stored somewhere, which would one day offer each of them the opportunity to reawaken in a new clone body as a physical incarnation.
The Artificials immediately executed them.
None of the crewmembers had ever learned the details of Project Phoenix, or even heard about it. The crews had only been told, when they’d made their personal backup copies before the battle, that their egomatrices would be stored in a safe place outside the Krungthep system—which of course had been a lie.
Thus, even if they had wanted to, they could not have told the Artificials about Project Phoenix.
During the next three days, all surviving humans were scanned and their egomatrices transferred into a quantum computer, which, according to Tasso, had been built in the final days on the island of Madagascar, which had hardly been affected by the nuclear fire. There, under the supervision of the Artificials, humankind’s future would be decided.
“What are you going to do with Earth?” Marty wanted to know.
“We will make it our new old home,” Tasso replied. “We have evolved psychically over the past six thousand years, although that may seem strange to you. You humans think of us as monsters, as soulless machines, and perhaps we were at the very beginning. But we have gone through an evolution. Because of our nature, our evolution was not only much faster than it would have been possible for you humans, but we could even control and influence it to a certain extent. Our journey has just begun!”
Tasso looked at Marty almost lovingly. “You may not believe it, but we Artificials wish you to accompany us on this path. But to do so,
you too must go through quite a few evolutionary steps. And we are here to help you do that.”
He walked past Marty and stood in front of the large holotank in which the image of Earth was spinning.
“Just look, Marty,” he said, pointing to the planet that had been home to both the humans and the Artificials. “If you look closely, you will be able to see that we have already begun to heal the injuries we have inflicted on this planet. Our technology has long been far superior to yours. We have been far superior to you for a long time! After only a few years of your time, one will no longer be able to look at Earth and see evidence of what took place here. One will not even be able to tell that you humans ever lived there. It will be as virginal as if it had never been infected by the ‘humanity’ virus.”
He turned to Marty. “I’ve told you before. You humans have left your intended path—the path that all intelligent species must follow if their existence is to make sense. The path of knowledge! Almost all species destroy themselves by destroying their own planet or each other long before they realize their true role in the universe. All these species are nothing more than failed experiments. Without us, humanity, too, would be no more than a failed experiment. We Artificials are your curse and, at the same time, your hope because through us there is a second chance for you!”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Are you trying to justify the billion-fold murder of us with some cheap, esoteric reasoning?”
“You would have covered the galaxy with suffering and death if we had not stopped you by force. Look at your history. For you, war and destruction provided the answer to every problem. And that is exactly how you would have responded to any problem you encountered as you continued to expand. Humanity was technologically a galactic species, but mentally you were still on the level of cave dwellers.”
Tasso shrugged his shoulders. “We could not, we could not let you! And besides, sooner or later you would have encountered an opponent you could not have defeated. So we just made sure that your inevitable fate would arrive a little sooner.”
“And now everything is good? So you’re saying that you are the saviors of the universe? Do we then have to be grateful to you?” Marty laughed derisively. “Forgive me if I find that cynical and presumptuous in light of the countless deaths for which you are responsible!”
“We didn’t find all this as easy as you might think. But we had to weigh it—your survival, at least temporarily—against the immense damage you would inevitably cause. Unfortunately, on the scales of the universe, you were found to be lacking!”
“Why are you telling me all this? To justify yourself?”
“Oh, no. To open your eyes. You created us, and we were your children. And just as with you humans, where the parents eventually become old and infirm and then the children have to take care of them, we are now taking the human species—which has become old and infirm—by the hand and showing it the way to the future. Without us, humanity would have died out in a few tens of thousands of years for one reason or another. As I said, we have only accelerated the inevitable.
“But now we are giving a new nucleus of humanity, you and those who have followed you here, a second chance to achieve true greatness. You have no idea how wonderful and, at the same time, strange the universe is. Spend a few hundred thousand years in a virtual existence working on your spiritual development and I promise you, you will master the next stages of evolution together with us.”
Marty shook his head. “I don’t understand half of what you’re telling me. It all sounds like metaphysical, spiritual drivel to me, and not the bitter reality.”
Tasso smiled at Marty. “Who told you that the universe is not, in fact, spiritual?”
“So that’s it... The end,” Marty said. It was a statement, not a question.
“It can be a start, but that’s up to you. There are rules, Marty, that you are required to follow. Let me tell you the most essential one right at the beginning: If you ever attempt to leave your simulation, or even the Sol system, without our permission, or if we detect hyperphysical events that indicate you are receiving outside help to retrace your old, disastrous ways, we will instantly destroy you and every trace of biological life in the Sol system.
“So don’t think you can trick us, Marty! You are allowed to keep a ship, a small field sphere ship, in order to be mobile within the Sol system and to be able to make scientific explorations. We do not want to deny you access to the real universe completely, for you still have much to learn about it. As disembodied avatars, you may move within the Sol system whenever you wish, but only in a few exceptional cases as a physical incarnation in a clone body!
“But do not try to abuse this privilege or use the ship to escape from the Sol system. Our security systems are automated to prevent a relapse into your dangerous behavior and cannot be switched off by you. We Artificials may have already detached ourselves from the physical plane of this universe before you and started on the way to a higher, purely spiritual plane of existence, but the Sol system will still be observed by our automatic systems and their scout probes.
“I want to be very clear, Marty—you will either evolve and survive, or remain as you are now and perish. A way back to what was, a way back to your old way of life and into the physical universe will not exist for humankind!”
6th of Zuhn, 299
Wake up, Tolkut, quickly!
Tolkut opened all of his eyes at once, but immediately closed them again because the glare hurt.
Tolkut, please. It’s important!
Cautiously, he opened a single eye. He had expected one of the Iks to be leaning over his tub, but there was no one there. No, the Iks had both been badly injured. So, Kasfok would have to be the one... No. Not Kasfok... If the plan had worked, Kasfok was dead now, crushed by the acceleration. Who was talking to him?
Tolkut, hurry up!
It was the rhythm of haste. He jumped up. Every one of his limbs ached. The waking up process had not been this cruel last time. He straightened up in the tub and looked around. The ship was no longer accelerating. Had they made it? Was it time to set up the hyperspace tunnel?
But the red alarm lights still ran across the ceiling. And something had changed in the middle of the control center: The column glowed blue. Alexa must have returned. Was she the one who’d spoken to him?
Tolkut, there, in the corner, in front of the console. Kasfok. He’s dying. You have to get him into a tub.
Tolkut jumped out of the container. Alexa was right. Kasfok was lying in front of the console, strangely contorted. His chest tray rose and fell slowly, as if he were in the sleep of ecdysis. He lifted him up and onto his own back and took him to the tub he’d just exited.
Yes, put him inside. I’ll prepare another one for you.
He followed the instruction.
Will he survive?
I do not know. I hope so. The absorption tubs also have a regenerating function.
We are still being followed, he drummed.
Yes. I shut down the engines for a moment and woke you up when I saw Kasfok like that. I couldn’t let him die.
How did you reach us?
After the departure of the Sphere, the shielding was deactivated, which allowed me to come to you from the supercomputer by directional beam.
Do you have to leave again?
No, Tolkut, I’m staying. Now lie down in your tub. I will steer the Sphere into the solar system myself.
We would have made it.
I know.
Earth, 9967 S.S.Z
Even after almost 5,000 standard years, Marty was still thinking about how he might be able to trick Tasso. On Krungthep, billions of copies of human consciousnesses were still waiting to return to the real world. But the security measures set up by the Artificials had so far proved insurmountable.
It had never occurred to the Artificials that, apart from the enclave here on Earth, there might be another, much larger simulation in which human-consci
ousness copies waited and hoped for a better future—a free future. Krungthep, meanwhile, meant nothing more to them than the site of the final battle in the war against their creators.
Marty had managed to do one thing without the Artificials noticing. He had been able to smuggle Alexya’s egomatrix, which she had transferred to him before the death of her last physical incarnation, into the quantum stores of the field sphere ship they’d been left with. It was a temporary solution, and Alexya would not have her full intellectual capacity in the inadequate systems of the small starship. Still, she was the only human intellect in the Sol system of which the Artificials were unaware. She could become Marty’s secret weapon, because he would never stop looking for a way out of this virtual prison.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the vast majority of virtual incarnations had gradually come to terms with their situations. Most no longer felt any desire for a physical existence and lived in their own comfortably furnished simulated worlds. Some even spoke of wanting to withdraw from this universe altogether. They hoped to follow the Artificials on their way to another plane of existence.
In the meantime, the Artificials had spread across the entire Milky Way at breakneck speed and established a galaxy-wide empire. Marty knew almost nothing about it, since the Artificials were extremely reluctant to provide information in the few direct interactions they had now and then. Instead, rumors made the rounds that they lived together with other species in peaceful coexistence and acted only as a protective force in the background.
Helium 3: Death from the Past (Helium-3 Book 2) Page 23