This woman was crazy, but I would not turn her company down. The idea of not walking the road alone was nothing short of a relief. “What is your name?”
She frowned, skeptical. “I thought you’d have sensed it by now.”
“I do not invade other people’s privacy, unless I have to.”
“Sekhat,” she said. “You’re Mehrit. I invaded your privacy. And there is a death warrant out for you, so every Eye knows who you are.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think they’re interested in me anymore.”
“You’re probably right,” said Sekhat.
We began our journey, and I was no longer afraid of the dark. Conversation was kept casual and light. She didn’t ask about what I’d shown her yesterday at the Oscent sector gate, and I was happy for that. Instead Sekhat told me about her sisters and mother at home, and her brother who had gone to the mines two years ago. She had never met her father.
An hour into our trek, Sekhat collapsed on the road. She choked and seized, until the shimmer faded from her body. It took a while for her to die; I knelt beside her until the life faded from her eyes, her lungs taking a final heave. And then I was alone again.
I put my face into my hands and sobbed.
*
The world was bleary when I reached Pedagogue’s sector. It felt as if I’d been walking forever. My heart thumped violently in my chest, a pressure in my throat made it difficult to breathe. At first I thought the silhouettes of spires in the sky were hallucinations, but my fears faded when I saw the shimmering network coursing through their buildings. The pressure in my throat faded more with each step toward the facility gates.
The sky was turning dark gray, tinged with pink over the horizon as the ever-hidden sun began to rise. I was hungry, tired, and my steps had turned to staggers by the time I reached the end of the row. My mind often wandered to the image of Sekhat, lying dead somewhere far behind me.
I fell forward, clinging onto the gate in an attempt to steady myself. It didn’t work, as my hand under-reached, and I fell hard on my knees with a gasp.
Again, I thought of Sekhat. Her sprawled image was replaced with Biri’s, face-down on the row amid clouds of poisonous fumes; an arm outstretched, still holding his favorite toy.
I did not want to see the truth.
I did not want to recognize that I no longer felt the shimmer behind me, only in front.
Acknowledging any of this would force me to forfeit what I had come here to accomplish. No, I would not believe.
There were no guards protecting the gate. The unmanned opening led to the meandering paths I’d traversed last time I was here. I found the vacancy—the silence—suspicious.
And as if something had read my mind, the areas surrounding the gate entrance began to shift and mold, turned clay-like. Tendrils emerged from its once solid state, spanning from side to side, weaving a web that filled in more with each passing second. They were sealing the gate.
They knew I was here.
My wrist came alive with orange light, quickly brightening to yellow. It pulsed, each throb sending shocks up my new, prosthetic arm. The shimmer in the gate argued with the shimmer inside me, the light in my wrist spoke to them, demanding passage.
Let me in.
The shimmer in the gate ordered the shimmer within me to cease all functions. They refused. A battle of will commenced, until my own body began to turn on me and the pressure in my throat and chest returned. My vision blurred, and I’d had enough.
With an angry scream I pounded my fist on the gate’s newly formed seal. It splintered away, leaving a crevice large enough for me to slide through. I dove into the facility grounds, panting on hands and knees. I looked up and saw the sea of pulsing lights, same as my wrist, across the outer walls of the towers ahead. They were speaking to each other. Warning each other. Trying to ‘turn me off’. My own light kept that from happening, although I did not know for how much longer.
With this in mind I dragged myself to my feet and headed for the only place I knew around here. The interrogation tower. Insect-drones swarmed me along the way, no longer tasked with delivering sacks of protein flakes to Wereda. Some I ducked, others I managed to disarm and turn into heaps of smoldering black, metallic clumps that rained from the sky. I did not leave the path unscathed, my right leg and shoulder stinging from gashes made by the drones’ carrier-pincers.
At the fork, I froze.
A bright light caught my attention from a spire without a door, on the other path that I had never taken. There were lights all around me, but this one shined brighter than the rest. The familiar thrum of drones approached from above, and I half-staggered, half-jogged toward the illuminated tower.
I saw a shadow move away from the entrance, receding further inside. Someone had been watching me.
14
YAHWEH
“THE DECISION HAS TO BE YOURS,” I announced, after waiting a full minute for Savant to spring back to life. The nanoports flickered like oil lamps, dimmer than usual. On the return trip, I’d caught a glimpse of the fires now ravaging most of the camp. Screams of terror intermingled with those of triumph, all rising in the wake of Wereda’s destruction. The night sky was coated in a hazy red glow, simulating sunrise.
After thousands of years, along with a plethora of mutations, humans were still so messy. And it’d been the Celestials’ doing; we’d made sure to cap them at a specific tier of progression, forever ceilinged by their polarizing belief systems and compulsive, selfish desires. Exhibit A.
“We will make the wrong decision,” cautioned Savant. “We do not know enough about the humans, and our probabilities will be scaled to our benefit, not theirs.”
“Then that’s what happens,” I said. “There is a certain measure of futility that comes with choices when unknown variables are involved.” Before Savant could respond, I blurted out, “I was wrong.”
Savant sat silent, still. They were not used to asking questions, yet waited for me to explain myself nonetheless.
“I used to think we were different,” I confessed. “I thought because you were created from organic sentience, that you were somehow less than us. I’d only been shown examples of machine sentience at their worst, but now I realize that organic and machine sentience differ only by what they’re made of, and how they think.”
Silence, still. I didn’t care.
“You’re driven by binary code, while we are driven by genetic code. As an expert system you are capable of learning from your mistakes, while we…” I looked toward the ruinous landscape beyond the nerve-center. I thought of The Atrium, the Ezekiel in flames. “Sometimes, we never learn. We are simply beings in our own right, responding to our environment in an unforgiving cosmos—;”
“I am sorry to interrupt,” said Savant, “but our analysis of the current situation is complete. Disabling the nano-probe in the camp has the highest probability of preventing further damage to our resources. It also has the highest probability of quickly euthanizing the humans.”
I crossed my arms, attention trained on the imploding camp. “Alright, then.”
“We are disabling the probe now.”
I watched the camp, waiting for something to happen. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen, if anything at all. A sudden strong exhale left my lips, and I realized I’d been holding my breath.
A minute went by. Two. Three. My auditory senses no longer detected shouts. I listened harder. No, nothing, only the roaring flames.
This whole time, it’d been that easy for Pedagogue to erase the only life left on Earth, like pulling the plug from a grid. That hit me harder than what I’d been prepared to handle. And then I was numb—the Celestials’ last creations gone, another memento from the days of our Contest rendered to Multiversal history. I just stood there and watched.
What did it mean, that I didn’t particularly care?
There was no sadness inside of me, only guilt for the absence of sadness.
My internal con
flict was interrupted when Savant appeared beside me. I actually jumped, because it’d been days since they had even left the chair.
“There is a problem,” they said.
“A problem?”
“The deactivation of the probe should have deactivated any nanoport functions within the camp as well. There is one port still active.”
“Which one?” I asked, boggled.
“We are unable to communicate with the particles of that port. They have separated themselves from us.”
I had no idea what any of this meant. “I thought you said the probe was the commanding port for the camp.”
“It is. Was.” Savant hesitated, almost to a maddening degree. “The port we are detecting now is a new port. And it is approaching us.”
***
Mehrit—;
There was nothing inside the tower but an open room, with flickering lights arranged in rings around the walls. A table and two chairs were situated in the center, another strange cylinder light flashing faster than the rest. The shimmer was everywhere, appearing like veins along the room as if it were a living, breathing creature. They had built this place out of the same material as the Artifact. The same material that we’d toiled over in the mines.
We were building Paradise for them, not us.
I spotted the Pedagogue guard, statuesque, in the only shadowy section at the back of the room. It was looking directly at me, but made no attempt to move. I studied the scenery for a second more—why were there two chairs?
“Where is my son?” I demanded, my voice trembling with both anger and exhaustion. “Where is my mother?”
The guard said nothing.
“Where?!” I screamed. “Where have you taken them? What have you done to them?”
My aggression seemed to trigger the room. The walls shifted as my shimmer assaulted theirs. Even the guard’s body began to crack.
“Please,” said a voice behind me. “Don’t.”
I spun, surprised. The voice was not mechanical like the guards I’d previously encountered. It was real—smooth, light, male.
And what I saw before me was impossible. It was a … man, if I could call him that. His skin was the color of bleached clay, his hair the same. His ears were pointed, and one of his eyes was hidden by a black strip of fabric. The visible one was so blue that it shined like an azure jewel. He was in all black, a strange orange symbol alit on the right side of his chest. He seemed young, perhaps my age.
“What… who…?” I mumbled, the sight of him having taken me completely off-guard.
“Refrain from violence,” was all he said. His Dyova was perfect, but he was definitely not from Wereda. “We do not wish you harm.”
“You wished everyone harm. Everyone is dead. Everyone but me,” I said through my teeth, eyes welling up with tears. “What have you done to me? Why am I still alive? How can I do the things that I’ve done?”
Neither of them spoke.
“Where is my son?” I demanded again, looking between them. “You took my family. Where are they?”
“You already know the answer,” said the guard. “You have spoken it.”
Everyone is dead. Everyone but me.
An explosion of emotions erupted, then. Relief that Biri and Ema were no longer suffering, anger that they were killed while being completely innocent, despair that I had not been able to save them in time. I sobbed and laughed, lowering my head.
“We are sorry,” said the guard. “We made many mistakes. Too many to fix. We had no choice.”
“You used us!” I shouted. “There was no Paradise, there was no salvation! We were your slaves!”
“We were not trying to enslave you. We were creating a habitable place for your—”
The emotions in me boiled over, and I lost all control. Before the guard could finish, it was fractured into a million jagged pieces that were sent flying across the room. The pale man was hit with many, but he only staggered a few feet backward. Then, he straightened. I saw blood staining his suit. A piece of the guard had gone through his neck. The wound began to close before my very eyes.
I stood there, stunned.
He stood there, emotionless. His body had only briefly shimmered, though long enough for me to get flashes of his thoughts. I saw a flying ship. A place with a red sky. I learned his name.
Yahweh.
The name of our God.
This was our God.
As if he’d known of my discovery, long, white wings suddenly released from his back, clapping the air. He was just like the pictures in Abel’s bible. I started to tremble.
“So it was true,” I whispered. “These are your machines.”
“No,” he said. “They’re not.”
I charged forward, my vision blurry with tears. He stepped back, startled, and I gripped his coat, staring up at him in fury and disbelief.
“Why did you do this?” I cried. “How could you do this to us?”
Something shifted in his stony demeanor. He said nothing, only gazing sadly down at me.
“You made us! For what? To die, like this?”
He gripped the back of my neck, hard enough for me to squeak and release him. God then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “There’s more to this than you can ever imagine. Please, calm down.”
His fingers dug in, and I felt pins and needles shoot down my spine.
This is the end, I thought, staring into his single, blue eye. And then my legs gave out and I crumpled at his feet, the world fading to black thereafter.
***
Yahweh—;
I smoothed my coat and exhaled, looking down at the unconscious human who’d been so brave and hopeless that she’d screamed in her alleged God’s face. One of her arms were made of the Pedagogue material, a yellow light blinking steadily on the inside of her wrist. She had been the moving port, having somehow evolved to receive Pedagogue’s nanotech and manipulate their resources.
At the other side of the room, Savant was trying to reconstruct itself. It was a lengthy process, and the table was eventually cannibalized to complete this reformation, as some of its original shell had been destroyed—or, lodged inside my body, of which I’d absorbed. Lovely.
Once complete, Savant slowly made their way toward us. “We will euthanize her now.”
“No,” I said quickly.
Savant’s head turned toward me. They said nothing. If a machine could be confused, this was the perfect time.
“She’s the last human on Earth,” I murmured. “She’s survived your probe deactivation and thrives without it.”
“She has a port on her arm.”
“Exactly,” I said. “She doesn’t need your help to survive.”
“She almost destroyed this spire,” said Savant. “And when we excavate the rest of our resources, she will not survive the geological affects.”
I glanced at Savant, then back at the human. I couldn’t make my host understand why I felt it so necessary to preserve her. I could barely understand it myself. I needed a logical reason, and spent the ensuing moments scrambling for one.
“She is not completely human,” I argued. “She is half Pedagogue now.”
“She is not half Pedagogue. Her nano resists us.”
“What if it didn’t?” I asked. “She resists you because she’s angry. Rightfully so. You processed her son and mother into powdered food. You’ve let them believe a lie for so long that when she learned the truth, it was too much to handle. But…” I paused, thoughtfully. “She may also play a key role in achieving your main directive.”
“I do not understand.”
“You will,” I promised, heading for the exit. “I need to consult my court. I’ll return shortly. Do not euthanize her while I’m gone.”
Savant looked down at the human. “If she wakes up while you are not here—,”
“She won’t. I made sure of that.”
15
MEHRIT
THE INTERROGATION ROOM LOOKED JUST HOW I’D left it.
Broken windows, bloodstains—even a body they’d missed in the corner, rotting and stinking everything up. I had come to in a chair, unrestrained and very devasted to find that the dinner I’d been sharing with Ema and Biri around our stove had only been a dream. My neck and shoulders ached so badly that I couldn’t turn my head to either side. As memories of the present slowly sank in, my body slumped further into the seat.
Why was I still alive?
“I’m sorry I had to hurt you,” said a voice at the door.
It was the angel, Yahweh, standing on the interrogation room threshold. His expression was neutral, calm even. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
How was I feeling? That question was almost amusing. I didn’t know how to answer it, so I only stared. Once he realized I wasn’t going to say anything, he sighed and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. A pointless act, as there were no windows. He took a seat across from me, folding his hands on the table. Our God was so very much like us; I was nearly convinced this wasn’t real at all.
“You are the last human on Earth,” he declared, regarding me with a cool expression. His gaze drifted to my shimmer-prosthetic. “But you’re not exactly human anymore, are you?”
“I don’t want to be here, without my mother and son,” I said. “I know I’ve done terrible things, but if I repent, could you grant me passage into Paradise?”
Yahweh seemed taken aback, and then uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, taking a while to respond. “I have a counter-offer, because you are more important to me alive.”
“If I accept whatever offer,” I said, weakly, “then can that be my penance? Will I be able to see my son and mother after that?”
Yahweh sighed again, lowering his head. “Paradise does not exist. It’s a fabrication of your religion, something that gives you an incentive to follow the rules. Something that gives you hope. An afterlife does sound wonderful, doesn’t it? And… perhaps there is a kind of one, but not one in which I have any dominion over.” He returned his gaze on me, stoic. “I don’t think you will ever see your son and mother again, I’m sorry. And if you die, I don’t think you will travel anywhere else.”
Covenants: Savant (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 10) Page 14