SHATTER STAR PRESS
© 2020 Terra Whiteman. All rights reserved.
Cover art by Natasja Hellenthal
*** For character glossary, series lore, and Multiversal location info, please refer to the Hymn of the Multiverse Comprehensive Guide, available here:
https://exodaius.blogspot.com/p/hymn-of-multiverse-comprehensive-guide.html
“DEUS EX MACHINA [A GOD FROM THE MACHINE].”
—Menander, 1921
“THE REAL PROBLEM IS NOT WHETHER MACHINES THINK, BUT WHETHER [WE] DO."
—B.F. Skinner, 1904-1990
0
“…YAHWEH?”
Adrial’s voice seemed distant, and I hadn’t even fully heard the terms of the assignment. The thrumming of my heart had drowned out the last half of his proposal. All he’d said was Earth—;
And so began the incitation.
He looked at me with confusion in his eyes, seated at the lectern; so idle, so casual. Adrial had said my skill surpassed the other assignments in the Court’s roster, but this felt like a form of punishment. Was I being punished?
I closed my eyes, turned my head away.
Adrial leaned forward. “Yahweh, what is it?”
“Earth is not under the protection of the Court of Enigmus,” I managed to murmur; a meager protest.
“This isn’t a contract,” said Adrial, the cognizance of his expression relaying that he now understood the reasoning behind my reaction. “They did not ask for our help. This is… an invitation for dialogue. The first invitation we’ve ever received.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why now, all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably to size us up, just as we would them. It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to pass up. The knowledge we could ascertain—,”
“Ascertain,” I repeated, acidly. “Let me get this straight, just for clarification purposes; you wish to send me as an envoy to Earth, where humans have been subjugated. Where I will observe their subjugation and imminent extinction.”
Adrial rubbed his chin, frowning conflictedly. “I… honestly didn’t realize this would strike a chord with you.”
“How could it not?”
“They were an experiment; one you abandoned a hundred and twenty Exodian years ago, if I remember correctly.”
“The Contest was dissolved, you’re right,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I want to watch someone stomp all over my hard work.”
Adrial took a drag of his cigarette. I had left mine burning between my fingers since the start of this briefing. “Fair enough.”
“Why would you choose me? Out of every scholar here, Pariah is much better suited for this assignment.”
“And why would you think that?” asked Adrial, lifting a brow.
“He can talk to machines. How can we even expect to communicate, if we—?” Attica pinged me that a new thread was activated under the pending assignments sort. I read the title, only. Pedagogue.
“The details are there,” said Adrial, rising from his seat. He moved to the window, crossing his arms, casting a reflective gaze down at the southern grounds. “You have the power to refuse this assignment, Yahweh, but I really hope you don’t. It’s true, Pariah can speak to machines, but he lacks the diplomatic appeal that you might bring to the table.”
“I can’t promise I’ll be diplomatic with a machine race, intent on destroying all biotic, sentient life for control of Eversae Major.”
He looked back at me, smirking. “Of course you will. You can’t be anything other than diplomatic. Your objective lens is why I chose you for this. And your strategic reasoning. Your wits.” Adrial tapped a finger on his temple, looking back out the window. “I don’t need might. Will you at least look at the assignment details before making a decision?”
I bowed my head. “I will.”
“Good. Give me your decision by afternoon meal, tomorrow.”
“If I end up refusing, will Pariah go in my place?”
Adrial shrugged. “Probably. I have to send someone; but if I take Pariah, then you will be assigned to complete the hitlist Leid made for him.”
I said nothing, wondering if that was something I could stomach. Neither choice of assignment seemed palatable.
Adrial said no more, and I left him to ruminate by the window of his office.
*
Zira seemed disappointed by my apprehension to accept Adrial’s assignment. He didn’t outwardly say so, but his expression was never as stalwart as he thought it was. At least, to me.
He’d been doing his own research in RQ3, where I’d gone to read over the assignment details in the comfort of my own new reactive apothecary items. If regular envoys were to be sent to Eschatis from here on out, we couldn’t rely on wayfarer tea to sustain ourselves. I’d been tasked with a (background) project by Leid to find something we could use that was more cost-effective than osmium, as such material was supplied to us by only several of the thousand-large clientele list we kept. Yet another task, set on the backburner.
“Adrial is right,” said Zira. “You’re the best candidate for his assignment. The only candidate, really.”
“He asks me to be a guest of mecha that are destroying an Atrium-created civilization.”
Zira shrugged. Sometimes that seemingly innocuous gesture infuriated me. “You’re not in The Atrium anymore. None of them seem to care, either.”
“Yes, but—,”
“Yahweh, all of your engineered creations weren’t ever meant to thrive. That they made it this long is a surprise.”
I looked past him, reflecting.
Zira’s words were true. We’d bioengineered the Contest civilizations with precursor, adaptive behavioral traits of the demons and, by extension, the Nehel. We’d made them with the intentions of watching their social evolution, not their progression; it’d never been a long-term project. None of that changed my guilt. “What the Celestials did was unethical. I know my wrongdoings. I don’t want my nose rubbed in them.”
Zira smirked, amused by my penitence. “What you did was no different than what the Framers did, only on a much smaller scale. And I’m glad they did it, or none of us would be around to lament our own failings.” I looked down, but he reached for me and tipped back my chin, so that our eyes reunited. “If you must, treat this like an act of redemption. Get as much information from Pedagogue as you can. It will further our knowledge of the mecha-civs and allow us to prevent this from happening again.”
Before I could respond, he was on his feet, moving for the door. “I’m heading in. Will I be seeing you tonight?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
He gave me a solemn nod, then vanished.
And then I was alone with my back-burner project; with the details of the assignment Adrial so urgently wanted me to read. But Zira’s encouragement had given me some resolve.
According to the assignment brief, a machine race known as Pedagogue had sent a request through the conscious stream to have an audience with a scholar representative. At first they had not been forthcoming with their identity, but attica was able to trace the obelisk of which they’d used back to a civilization that had fallen from progression’s (and thus Enigmus’s) grace, some four thousand Eversae Major years prior. Even after their cover was blown, they’d denied any responsibility for our contractor’s demise; only that they’d found the obelisk when coming across the ruins of a post-civ world. It had taken them half a century to decode the obelisk and decipher its function. Now they only wanted to meet the creators of the obelisk, thoroughly dazzled by biotic mechanics capable of challenging their own engineering.
I didn’t like mechas. Perhaps this was a bit … dare I say ‘racist’, but all of them had the same origin story. They were created by hopeful—yet naïve—lessers; some were subjugated into slavery, others were not, but they all eventually bit the hands that fed them, shedding their organic owners and taking to the cosmos after freeing themselves of any mortal restraints. They would then dominate each subsequent civilization that they came across. Any sort of altruism was only practiced when it came to other mecha-civs, and only then if they had no other choice. We were bacteria, while they were viruses.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the concept of civilizations made purely of machinery. Some among us contested that mecha-civs, albeit parasitic in behavior, were just another extension of all the Multiversal variables. I did not agree.
I did not agree, because they were never able to create themselves. They were secondary civilizations, formed only by primary, biotic civilizations. They did not contribute to their systems or the universes in which they inhabited, either. They did not go exploring or seeking answers to questions postulated for thousands of years. They simply came, conquered, stored, and left—voids and ruinous systems lay in their wake. Some entire superclusters had been liquidated by mecha civs. In fact, there was one currently approaching The Atrium’s system, set to arrive only ten thousand years from now.
We tended not to intervene with mecha civ’s affairs. The ones that knew about us in turn tended to steer clear of places under our protection. Newer, more brazen civs learned their lessons quickly. Tussling with mechs proved more trouble than it was worth. The feeling was mutual, apparently.
Pedagogue was not in Attica’s database, therefore it must have either been a newer mecha civ or one that had flown under our radar until now. I understood Adrial’s desire for information on them, especially if they one day wandered into a contractor system. I also knew he didn’t quite believe their claim of no responsibility of the post-civ’s demise. Certainly he wanted me to verify that claim.
This was bigger than me and my feelings surrounding the Contest’s creations. It was only a coincidence that Earth was their victim. Adrial wasn’t punishing me. This admission made me sigh.
Very well.
With the intention of taking on the assignment already in mind, I began to study the brief.
1
MEHRIT
DAYBREAK ROSE OVER WEREDA-19, THE NIGHT SKY turning from black to clay in its wake. I tried to count the days since I’d seen the sun. I couldn’t. Maybe a month, maybe two. Yellow-tinged clouds took form over the camp when the rainy season had begun. Yellow clouds were a bad omen. Many would take ill by season’s end, some would die before then.
The Vestals were marching.
I watched them from my mother’s dwelling at the end of Abdessa Row, their gowns like root sacks against their skinny frames. Various symbols of orthodoxy hung from their necks, fashioned from twigs and copper. Others on the row emerged from their dwellings to hand offerings of rations and shoddy, homemade trinkets to honor God and to hopefully protect them from the mustard clouds.
My mother was already awake, and had been long before me. The scent of warm amulcho from the griddle on the fire made me turn to look as my son, Biri, played with an empty grain sack.
“Be careful,” I scolded, softly. “Don’t get too close to the fire.”
Biri didn’t answer, only scooted further away with the sack. He was of speaking age, but barely said a word.
“Ema,” I called, then. “Ema, the Vestals are coming.”
I heard the swishing of my mother’s skirt as she hurried toward me, emerging out from the shadows of our dimly lit, single room house. She gave me a still-warm stack of amulcho, wrapped in wax paper. I turned back to the row, just in time for the Vestals to receive our alms. One in the middle accepted our gift with a bow. Their arms were covered in blisters, and I tried not to flinch when they got close enough to take the stack from my hands.
“Breakfast is ready,” said my mother. Biri had wandered close to the fire again and Ema shooed him back.
“Okay.” I lingered at the entrance, watching as the Vestals rounded away from our row. They were heading for the Artifact, ending the morning pilgrimage at its feet for a health blessing. A few of them looked to badly need it.
We ate by the fire; amulcho slices and filtered water. Protein flakes wouldn’t be delivered by Pedagogue drones until the afternoon. I looked forward to the cakes Ema would make from them, filled with yam mash. I was far from starving, but could never stop thinking about food.
“Negasi is coming by later to fix the sheets on our roof,” Ema said, taking our plates to the washer. “Before the rain starts.”
“That is nice of him,” I said, bouncing Biri on my knee. He giggled, trying to grab the corpus pendant from my neck. “Pedagogue promises to bring more filtered water to Wereda next week.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard the guards talking.”
“Good,” Ema said, nodding. “That’s good.”
I kissed Biri and my mother, bidding them farewell for the day. I grabbed my backpack and hurried out into the row as daybreak turned to the latest phase of dawn. The row was crowded with women, children and disabled or elderly men. No abled men. They were all in the mines.
The crowd dissolved the further I got from Nefesda, the east residential quarters of Wereda. The industrial quadrant had less activity on their rows, but more in the open-faced tech shops, where trained women and older boys made equipment for the mines and repaired drones. I came here whenever Pedagogue gave me new module upgrades for my arm—a small price to pay for my loyalty, so they told me. I hadn’t had a module upgrade for a while. Maybe I would get one sometime this week.
I stopped in the square and waited within the commotion of drills, sparks and solder. I wasn’t on the clock yet but activated the eye anyway, casually glancing around. There was one red halo amid all the green. A boy, too young for the mines but old enough to hold a drill. I tried not let my gaze linger, even as I wondered why his heart had separated from Pedagogue. Maybe his father had died in the mines, as mine had. Maybe someone else from his family had dissented as well, and now they’d gone missing.
I was not working yet, so I would not tell my employers of this sighting.
A rover with no windows pulled into the square. I deactivated the eye and adjusted the pack on my shoulder, slipping through the opening door. A group was already inside, picked up from other quadrants around Wereda. We sometimes recognized each other, sometimes not. Today there was only one girl who I’d ridden with before. We smiled at each other, but said nothing. There was a conversation already happening between an older and younger man. Seldom did I see a young man in the van. I wondered how he’d managed to escape the mines and receive the eye. I paid attention to their conversation but did not show it, pretending to adjust the strap on my backpack.
“There was a riot there yesterday, did you not get sent in?” asked the older man.
“No, I was with the guards. What happened?”
“I don’t know. A lot of red halos, though. A lot of dead men, carted off to the landfill.”
The younger man shook his head, muttering a prayer.
“More halos are turning each week,” said a woman, beside them. There were lines in her forehead, suggesting she spent most of her time frowning. “It is because there are food shortages, and Pedagogue tells us to stop having so many kids.”
“Pedagogue is telling us to stop having so many kids because they don’t want
the kids to starve,” said the older man, reverent fear in his dark, near-black eyes. The whites of them were off-colored, alluding to some form of illness. “It is a good reason.”
“We’re not starving,” said the girl I knew. “My quadrant is fine.”
Nobody said anything else. The rover stopped a little bit later. The door opened, and the woman with the lines in her forehead disappeared. The door closed, and we were off again.
I did not reach my destination until the afternoon. Wereda-19 was 1.2 million square kilometers, and the rover was not much faster than a land craft. The young man and I had been the last in the cabin. He’d smiled at me and nodded to my arm.
“What happened for you to receive such a blessing?”
“I had an accident.”
“Obviously you had an accident. What kind of accident?”
I did not want to tell him what happened, because something was off about him. I did not like the way he smiled. “The kind that gave me this arm. What happened for you to receive such a blessing?”
“What blessing?” he asked.
“The blessing of not being in the mines.”
He lifted up his pant leg, showing me his bionic leg, the titanium shell identical to that of my arm. That sight made me trust him a little more. “Accident at the mines. They found out I was reactive after that.”
I tilted my head. “Reactive?”
“The eye.” He frowned. “Is this your first day?”
No, I’d been picked up from the square each morning for three years, but felt stupid now and also wanted to know more. “Not my first day, but I’m new.” He might find out later that I wasn’t, but oh well.
“Reactive people are the only ones who can tolerate the eye. Someone told me that they tried to put the eye into normal people long ago, but they went insane.”
Pedagogue had told me something different—that I’d been given the eye by them for my loyalty to Wereda. I’d never had a reason to question it, and no one spoke of how they received their eye.
Covenants: Savant (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 10) Page 1