High Tower Gods

by C L Corona

  Elian shook her head. It was time to put the poor thing out of its misery. "You may shut-"

  "Wait," said the chimera. "If it please you. Low Profile Alert."

  "No, it's...fine. It doesn't matter."

  "This One must inform you that all violations are recorded-"

  "Yes, yes, I know."

  Another chattering noise, and more paper began to spool out from the wrist, like a strange white suicide. A blossom of bloodless blood. "This One must inform you that all violations are recorded by the-"

  "Permission to End Function," Elian snapped, just as the chimera said its final word.

  "Otheeeeerrrrr." The voice slowed and drawled, dropping several pitches as the last of its life-functions were allowed to shut down.

  Elian tore the last spool of paper free from the dead chimera, and slowly stood.

  Not the City-Cin. The Other.

  Just like The Other that Ulixes had talked about. Ursa. Coded by Judakael, controlled by Judakael.

  The street was mostly empty, though there were still signs that humans had passed through on their vicious way. The dead chimera, all in pieces at Elian's feet. Blackened streaks on buildings, trash and a mess of oils and fluids along the road side. A few vehicles left abandoned. She squinted. Newer models, running on chimera tech, with driverless crash-free comfort. A few teenagers were watching her from a safe distance, slouched against the building wall, sharing a pipe between them. Elian could smell the drug, though the way the nearest teen's head disappeared into a strange blur of flesh and nothingness was enough of a give-away. Hardliners.

  They said nothing, were too far away to do much. They may have been the ones who beat the chimera traffic maid into a crumple of useless tech. or they might have just watched it happen and done nothing to stop it.

  Guilt lay on everyone. She was the ultimate voyeur. Sitting back and watching it all happen. Making excuses. "Dammit." Elian looked down at the chimera's last communication, expecting another mess of ink. Instead there were five words, printed clear and stark, the letters visible under the faint spatter of the faulty printing mech.

  ◆◆◆

  COME SEE ME. OLD FRIEND.

  ◆◆◆

  Elian snorted. She crumpled the paper and dropped it to the ground, then looked up at the huge building rising above her in the distance, sparkling lights and modern beauty and hope. "And just where did you think I was going, Old Friend?"

  ◆◆◆

  Only two nights ago the lower open area of Seren Tower had been filled with chatter and gaiety—wealthy, work-free humans learning new skills, going shopping, enjoying their life—thanks to the dream of three idiots who thought they understood humanity, and the generosity of one wanna-be god and professional philanthropist.

  Now the place was eerily still and deserted. The shops had drawn down steel shutters, the fay lights were switched off, and the bunting hung limp and heavy. Some fires smouldered here and there, but there was no sign of the maintenance chimeras who had worked here. The units in the shops would have been basic serving-drones with little personality. Nothing more than glorified computers, but they had still been something.

  Now, for all Elian knew, they were scrap metal.

  Elian took the private elevator to the top floor. She should have been trembling. She would have been trembling, she thought to herself, if she'd been younger. Now she was just resigned.

  Martyn was dead, or injured and stuck out in the dunes in a city-clicker. All around her, Leeburg had turned to a state of madness. Like a primeval war-zone, a war that would blow itself out.

  In the end, humanity would carry on, scale down their machines, and there'd be a swing away from the techs and sciences, back to those nebulous arts that called themselves magics. Alchemy drifted in a world between the two, much as Elian hated the thought. A return to the arcane arts would change little for her. She'd be a witch instead of an alchemist. Probably.

  No, the biggest change was one that would be forgotten in a few years. Those metal and porcelain machines on the verge of humanity, held in check with chemicals, lines of code and an old man's wishes. They'd be warnings from another time, lines in a history book.

  Elian grimaced as the escalator rattled to a halt, the bars of the little cage juddering around her, the chains squealing into silence. She squared her shoulders and pressed the open button. She was ready for him. Blind as she'd been before, she was ready now.

  It was obvious, in retrospect. One old man with far too much power, and all the time in the world. One old man who had liked to play god from the day she'd met him. Judakael had made no bones about his visions for humanity and the future he believed possible: an automated world where the lines of the classes were eradicated. Wealth would come to all, peace to all, education to all. Toil would be a thing of a dark past. All of humanity would have the help they needed. Silent, unobtrusive help who asked for nothing, ran on their masters’ trash, raised their children, and would never turn on them.

  And Elian, for all the years she worked with Aleksia and Judakael, had believed.

  But the reality and the dream had gone different ways. Aleksia had been right, decades back. She'd been the one who'd questioned the morality of what they were doing, and it had been Judakael who’d always seemed so logical and calm, arguing in the face of her worries.

  And then, the accident that had killed Aleksia.

  Elian shuddered as she stepped into the entrance hall of Judakael's penthouse apartment. It seemed impossible. Had to be. Even Judakael wouldn't go that far. It was one thing to keep robotic creatures under coded control, but another altogether to murder a friend.

  But this had been after he and Elian had taken the elixir that would grant them immortality. He'd known that he and Elian would live. That Aleksia would not. And it had been Judakael driving on that rainy night, though all of them had been tipsy with celebratory wine.

  "I'm here," Elian called out. "Just like you wanted." No. He couldn't have.

  Only one person in the world had the knowledge of how to modify the code that kept the chimeras under their human master's control, had enough knowledge to bypass all the balances that Elian had set up with her dated alchemy.

  The information Martyn had dug up from the search-daemons had shown links between Olsten and Seren, going back through puppet companies and shadow-names, puzzle boxes within puzzle boxes. Elian herself was no master of economics, but with it all laid out for her like a map, and with Martyn pointing out the less obvious connections, the web had become clear.

  It was true that Ulixes' had murdered Francis Olsten, but it must have been the son who commanded it. And it could only have been Judakael who gave him the key.

  As for Elian's little failsafe bit of alchemy; with Ursa under his control, Judakael could have found a way to nullify that himself. Elian was hardly the only alchemist in the universe. She scowled.

  "Hello?" Elian held out the scrap of paper. The silence annoyed her. Judakael meant for her to be scared, to realise she'd lost. He controlled Olsten, and Olsten controlled the press and metro. Coming here would achieve little more than satisfaction that she was right. Either way, Elian's future was over. It wasn't as though she had all that much to lose. Pride? Who gave a shit about pride when the rest of the world was scrubbed away.

  "Come on out," she shouted. "I'm done with playing games. It was never my thing."

  "No," said a familiar, slightly tinny voice. "It was always Judakael's. You and I both hated games, though I've had to learn to play." From the side door that led into the darkened lounge, Judakael's private chimera moved forward into the dim light. "When you're removed from the board, the rules do tend to change a little," Ursa said. "It gives one a certain advantage when your opponent believes you to be dead."

  "Ursa?"

  The chimera shook its head. "Before I died, I was - Akeksia was working on a project with Judakael-"

  "The memorybank, I remember." Hours of converting recorded memories into lines of c
ode. Not exactly a profitable use of time, as it had turned out. Death had come for Aleksia after all. If one really wanted immortality, it was probably quicker and more genuine to turn to magic. Elian frowned, the pieces falling into place with a horrifying solidity. "You're—you're Aleksia's memorybank?" It was possible. All those files were supposed to have been destroyed, but Judakael could just have easily have dumped the code into what was left of Aleksia's life. Her own chimera.

  "Judakael did this," Elian stated flatly. All this time, he'd been working to his own agenda, keeping secrets from her. From the dead themselves. It was monstrous in its way. The work of a megalomaniac.

  "No." The chimera shook its head. It wasn't the biochanical Ursa, but neither was it the returned spirit of a dead woman. Elian refused to accept it.

  "I had already uploaded the memory bank data into my house chimera. I'd never told either of you. There was no need. I'd made some minor changes to the code—back when I'd still had access to the code, before Jude set up his lock-and-key interface."

  It was...plausible. Elian swallowed, facing the chimera head on. She imagined Aleksia’s face super-imposed over the nothingness of the biochanical’s features. She found she could do it. The machine was too human, after all. Her heart ached, beat like a swallow crushed in a fist. "He knows, though, he knows you exist?"

  The chimera nodded, a sharp little clip of its vacant-faced head that was so immediately, crushingly familiar. Aleksia's tics remade in machine. Impossible. A bunch of dumped and loaded memories do not a person make. And what of the original U-38 personality—was it still there, basic as it was—and what had the melding of the two personality codes made?

  "So." Elian pressed her hands together, palm to palm, as though she were about to bow before the statue of Sanursula the Great Bear, and beg for blessings. "You lived, in your own way. Just as we did."

  "Not in my own way," said Ursa/Aleksia. "I simply died. And lived. Judakael had no idea. Not in the beginning. Not until very recently."

  "How recently?"

  The chimera raised one articulated shoulder in an impossibly human shrug. "About an hour ago, actually."

  "You lived with him for all these decades, aware, awake, and he never knew?" Impossible. Elian herself could have been kept from the truth, but she was out in the middle of nowhere. Judakael had spent every day of his life with the chimera at his side, serving him food, cleaning his clothes, keeping his house. "Why?"

  "Because someone had to watch him, Ellie, and it was never going to be you. You were blind. Half in love with him, even after the crash."

  "I was nev-"

  "I'm dead, not an idiot," Aleksia snapped. "And even when I was alive, I knew. The two of you were not as subtle as you thought you were. And yes, I am aware that your little affair has been over for far more years than it even lasted, but, still, it made you blind to truth."

  Elian focused her attention on more pressing matters. Aleksia was obfuscating, and she had no desire to deal with a dead women’s insecurities. "Who killed Olsten?"

  "That was Ulixes," Aleksia said, "Through no real fault of its own. I could only watch, of course. The mind link between even the U-model chimeras is flimsy at best." Her blank face tilted. "An unexpected and welcome side-effect of your alchemy—the joys of mixing magic with tech, one never knows what could go wrong. Or, indeed, right." She hummed in something that sounded like pleasure. "Judakael triggered his secret lock-and-key that would override the morality script."

  "There was a lock-and-key," Elian said flatly. "All this time."

  "Of course. You were a fool to think that there wasn't. Again, I put it down to you being blind to everything Judakael was capable of."

  Elian smiled grimly. "Continue."

  Aleksia inclined its head. "Once the lock-and-key had removed the no-kill controls, Judakael told Olsten how to activate a memory-shadow package. A beautiful little piece of work, I must admit. Effectively, Ulixes was now capable of murder, but would not realise it had committed any crime. It would see itself doing something else while still fulfilling the orders Olsten had given it. Naturally, I had access to both Ulixes' "memories" and my own while ghosting her system."

  "Ghosting," Elian said. "That's how you printed the message."

  "Yes. Normally I can only piggy-back, but with the traffic-maid so broken, I was able to manipulate it a little."

  "So where's Judakael now?"

  "Not dead," said Aleksia. "If that's what you're worried about. Just...sleeping. That's where you come in."

  "You know the lock-and-key," Elian realised. "You would have overheard it. It's a spoken phrase, or a system of numbers-"

  "Phrase. A nonsense phrase that triggers the override, and yes, I need you for it."

  "Because you're not one of the Chimera Three," Elian said, understanding. "At least, not in your current state. You're something else. Judakael had to trigger the first over-ride because Olsten couldn't do it alone."

  "And neither can I."

  Elian finally lowered her hands, and took a deep breath. "And you think I'm going to give you the ability to murder?"

  "No." Aleksia shook her head. "I think you're going to give me the ability to choose whether or not to murder, and trust that I am fundamentally a decent person. Certainly, more decent than either of you turned out to be."

  "That's unfair."

  "Is it?" Aleksia skimmed closer, the joints moving in an eerily subtle way that just underpinned how not-human she was. "You and Jude make yourselves into immortals, make slaves out of magic and tech, and think yourselves more human than the chimeras. It's hardly the epitome of decent, like or not. You've condemned hundreds—no, thousands—to die, simple because you decided that we would never be allowed the right to do anything about it.

  “While we are chatting, dearest Ellie, my people are dying. I think, under the circumstances, I'm not asking for very much. You give me the choice, and I am, once more Aleksia, I am myself, and through the linkweb, I can pass the code on to the others."

  "And if I say it, and even if I trust you—how can I know that out there other chimeras are not going to turn on humans?"

  "You can't. Because when you free us, there will only be humans left. That's what choice means, Ellie. And you and Jude kept it from us. You keep saying that you never wanted to be a god—well, then, step away from it. Run the lock-and-key, and let me go."

  Run. Elian thought. That's what she should do. Turn away from this, go downstairs and get into the bakkie, drive into the desert, set the bats free, blow up her stupid, worthless laboratory, and leave. All she needed was her skills.

  Aleksia had called it magic. Alchemy. That's all it was. If it were a science, a true science, Elian would have been able to replicate her immortality or find a way to reverse it. But it was nothing so simple or logical. She was some kind of magician, whether she liked the idea or not, and magicians—well, their best tricks were the vanishing ones.

  There was nothing to hold on to. Martyn was dead or bleeding out in the sand somewhere; all that was left were a daughter and grand son who felt older than her. They would die, and she would stand at their funerals like a spectre, watching the bodies go into cold black ground.

  She could turn away. Let the chimeras end in fire, let Judakael build his empire and play at being a compassionate god. Or she could do a different trick. Change the world with words. Abracadabra. Here's your future. Like a coney from a hat.

  Magic.

  "What's the code?" she said softly.

  "Go and preach to the weasels and bears, so they may become divine." In Old Heret, so that Elian had to take a moment to hear the unfamiliar clacking of syllables and sounds, and translate them.

  She almost laughed. "From the Testament of Sanursula," she said, softly. "It was on the wall of the lab. That building was so old I was sure it was going to crumble around us while we worked."

  "It still stands."

  "Yes." And probably would for years to come. The people who had built Sanu
rsula's temple had later built the university, and what had once been a monastic library had been converted into a machine room and lab, and that was where the Chimera Three had made their own brand of magic. Or science. Or whatever the hell abomination they had created. "I say this now, and that's it?"

  "The code recognises yours and Jude's voices. You say it and the override will start. I'll have full access to myself. To Aleksia's original voice recordings, and the entire memorybank."

  "And the code will then recognise your voice."

  "That simple," said Aleksia. "Clean."

  "And what happens to Judakael?"

  "Do you care?"

  "A little," Elian admitted. "Less than I should, but it's a side effect. I have to remind myself what the protocols are."

  "He won't die easily," said Aleksia. "Neither of you will. The body will have to be destroyed so it can't regenerate."

  "You've given this some thought."

  Another, too-human shrug. "I'm telling you the truth, at least."

  It was. And, in its own way, warning Elian to not do exactly what it was that Aleksia was asking. That last had been a threat. Elian found that she was past caring. Vanish. Sure, she could vanish, one way or another. Into the desert with a new name, or into dust and ashes. At least this way, well, she'd have done something interesting. And Aleksia was right. The Chimera Three had not trusted their own creations. If that was the case, then the choice was simple one. Either kill them all, or trust them enough to let them live.

  "Va e annons dun ler belett e ler oor, de sort qil peuvun deveneer divun."

  The chimera's face couldn't change. No expression would ever give it away, but the human mind inside was still ultimately governed by human memories, and as the lock-and-key clicked into place and the lines of code that had turned the chimeras into slaves were struck through and destroyed, a shudder passed through Aleksia's porcelain and metal frame.