Betrayals: Two

  

(Extract from Encyclopaedia Galactica Human (Anglic) Revised 299th edition)

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Ascension (n), to ascend (v)
The act of ascension - transition by an entity from any particular mental or toposophic level to a higher level which was incomprehensible to that entity before the ascension. Unlike augmentation, ascension involves crossing one or more singularity barriers.
(n) An ascension – the location of a famous (mass) ascension such as that of The Church of the Eye, Tahoma Prime, Cygnus.
mass ascension – a group of entities ascending together, sometimes a dozen or so, sometimes entire worlds. Often guided by Keterist evangelists or the equivalent.

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Zero

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  In the event only two hundred of the planned thousand Acolytes volunteered to continue with the mass ascension. Wearing their silver skullcaps these few hopefuls, including Auguste and Lesöva, moved in procession toward the massive drum shaped assembly hall in the centre of the Lamp. Gus felt like he was balanced on the tip of a huge precipice, and the ground he was standing on was his accumulated experience and all his life's tribulations made solid.

  In fact he couldn't remember most of the bad, or even the mediocre things in his lifetime; he simply didn't have the memory capacity in his own head. Every couple of years he would have his memories sorted and filed by the Arkab data storage library; if he needed to remember 
anything from the filed memories he had to apply to the powers-that-be to get them back.

  Dammit, that was his life stored in those data banks; his old memories might have been boring, but they were him.

  "How are you feeling?" Lesöva asked him.
He looked at her. Even after seventy years he didn't know her very well. She had always been private, confident. 
  "Why?"
  "I just thought you looked – unhappy. Like you were going to change your mind. Again."

  "No. I mean yes. I am going to change my mind alright; that is the whole object of the exercise, isn't it. Isn't it? Soon as I've gotten ascended I'm going to march into the Library and get all my memories back."

  "They say your priorities change, when it Happens, don't forget." 

Lesöva stared ahead into the vast hall. Two massive mermen framed the doorway, holding swordguns as long as themselves. 
  "I hope those are just for show," she said lightly. 

Gus realised he still had no idea why she wanted to go through with this; he didn't understand her at all. Perhaps afterward he would understand; perhaps it would no longer be important.

  They entered the blue-lit hall, a vast public space at the centre of the Luminaire, the giant lamp which gave light to Rendell Ring. Having no spin the Lamp, the Lamp Station Hotel and Rendell Cable Station were all in zero gravity. 

  The sunlight from the local star, which was called Arkab Prior B, never shone on the inside of the ring; it was rather rich in ultra-violet and would have been painful to look at (for even a second) without specially adapted eyes. Some decades before, Gus had once been the proud owner of such adapted eyes; they were fine until the warranty ran out, then they stopped working almost immediately. 
No surprises there.

  Gus, Lesöva and the other Acolytes moved through the air guided by invisible fog, which tugged them towards the golden figure gleaming in the centre of the hall. When they were distributed evenly around Her, the transingular su-dolphin, the Golden Fluke, the blessed Chwrrii Nashira, Ascension Crusader of the Keter Dominion, welcomed them, and began to vocalise. 

  The golden dolphin had a high, thin, distant voice, reciting strange poetry that was somehow integrated into the ascension process. Entirely incomprehensible to an ordinary human, this poetry would act as a key to unlock the subconscious thought processes of each acolyte, opening them up to the picotechnology in the silver caps they wore. Soon the acolytes would exist mostly in cyberspace, and would hardly need their old bodies at all. 

  As the blessed crusader sang, She danced, swimming in the invisible utility fog that filled the hall and allowed the blessed Chwrrii Nashira to move as if she were swimming in salt water…
Auguste was even aware of a faint briny tang.
But every cubic centimetre of the hall was filled with the sentient, pliable, transparent fluid… even the lungs of the acolytes. No harm could befall them now. 
Lesöva glanced at Gus, and breathed deeply.

  "Had we but enough of that which passes
and where to dwell, 
this, your action of denial
would not be as wrong…"

  The golden dolphin swooped, dived, pirouetted, shimmied backwards. 
The blue light of the hall dimmed, and soon only vague glints of light from the swordguns of the mermen could be seen. 

  " as if colonising far 
We could grow in affection slowly…"

  Somehow the walls seemed to dissolve, and a projection of the giant ring habitat appeared all around them, as if the Luminaire had become transparent. 

  In fascinating detail the clouds and landscape of the two thousand kilometre diameter ring could be clearly seen; then the ring faded too, and became a dull blue band, and the stars of the Civilised 
Galaxy began to appear. Brightest of all was Arkab Prior A, the local companion to Prior B, shining as seen from this distance seventeen times as bright as Luna as seen from Old Earth.

  The sentient fog, which seemed to be an extension of the gleaming dolphin, was whispering into Gus's ears and entering his mind through the silver cap… 
Watching the dance, he was beginning to see the patterns in the chaos of the dance and swirling fog-
(bifurcate- merge- bifurcate- bifurcate-)
and in the stars - 
(each one was labelled, weighed, subjected to political and aesthetic analysis)
and the half spoken poetry -
(which was ancient human poetry translated into the noun-less dolphin tongue, then back again, becoming something quite different).

  "… when we die,
at last away from striving,
can we be alone, but 
there is no loving there."

  Like a cryptographic code, the sounds emitted by the golden Fluke were interwoven by the nano and picodevices that now pumped through Gus's brain, and he felt the poem and saw the stars and all their history and politics with every bone and muscle in his body.

  Visible as a marker, but invisible as a star, Sol was indicated in Gus's expanding consciousness as three hundred and eighty light years distant, complete with links to its history and philosophies… 

  Almost occupying Sol's location was the star Arkab Posterior, about halfway between Sol and Gus's home system of Arkab Prior. This was a simple line-of-sight association with no astronomical or political significance. Posterior was a backwater star of little importance occupied by rogue artificial intelligences that had escaped from Sol thousands of years before. 

  The constellation Orion was visible too, as it is from most places in the settled worlds, although ancient Earthmen would not recognise it from this angle; in the other direction were Antares and Shaula, and the clouds of the distant, unobtainable heart of the Galaxy.

  Yes, the old astronomy implant still worked, Gus thought. Perhaps after the… change, I will be able to cope with all that complexity without getting confused and lost. 





  Gus had been a light spacecraft pilot for a few decades, helping to build the giant rotating hoop worlds of the Necklace, and knew the stars of his own sky pretty well. This knowledge had been useful many times in the past when trying to orient himself in his tiny working craft, although the artificial brain of the craft itself was almost always far more aware of the orientation than he was.

  Few other stars in the sky were recognisable as familiar from the skies of Old Earth. Gus recalled his abortive trip to the old Solar neighbourhood, and his memories were as overpoweringly clear as 
everything else within his mind's reach. 

  Crawling over his skin the moving tattoos reflected the stars, with text labels for the distance and luminosity and allegiance and arity… 

  Gus looked down, and laughed, and understood.

  "Now let us sport us while we may; 
and strive we strongly, gathered tightly; "

  The dolphin swam far behind him, out of sight, but then he felt Her come back with new senses greater than sight. 

  And freeze in the fog-filled air directly behind him.

  "And tear— 
And - tear—"

  Lesöva stirred from her rapture, and focused on the middle of Gus's back, where the starry pattern had been replaced by a single strange symbol. 
Gus saw her own tattoos, which had been displaying the translated Coy Mistress text, melt away and a neutral grid emerge in its place. 
Try as he might, he could not call to mind a clear image of the symbol- no, symbols- emerging on the skin of his back and neck. 
 
  Chwrrii Nashira could see the signs, though, and sculled back and forth, head tilted this way and that, reading, reading-
Just as the poem stirred recognition in the acolytes' prepared minds, something seemed to stir recognition in the vast mind of the Keterist. 
  Gus saw the two Zennorians struggling to aim their swordguns, but they could not move against the utility fog, which now was stiff as pitch.

  Only the golden Fluke could move, and She twisted and writhed as the sigils and signs that streamed over Gus's body grew in complexity and menace. Now the symbols covered his body in front as well, and he looked down, only his eyes moving against the pitchy fog. 
  Nothing he had ever seen before prepared him for the characters he could see on his chest and arms, fingers and hands. Half there, changing, rotating like diagrams in projection, meant for a mind two levels above his own.

  He screamed as the dolphin rubbed Herself helplessly against his body, trying to touch, to feel, to absorb the dreaded messages.

  "Lesöva—help me--"

  At long last, whole seconds after the ordeal began, the independent immune systems in the fog broke through the subversion, and the air around the golden dolphin filled with long glass spears and pikes, which shot into and through Gus's body and impaled him like a specimen insect, killing him instantly.




  --Well that last was a bit over the top wasn't it? We nearly lost him. 

  --What, the pierce response?  She replied.  I'm afraid that was automatic, the only thing that worked. Beyond our control.

  The Librarian of the Arkab Prior B Necklace, the Lady Ur-Ner-Geb, stood in virtual space above a holographic representation of the body of Auguste Gienah; his body had been patched with emergency life support nano, and despite the forty holes that ran from front to back of his head and abdomen he was alive and healthy, although inactive and unconscious.
 Assisting Her in this investigation was a high definition copy of the liaison officer from the nearby system of Arkab Prior A, Negentropy Alliance Bailiff 49. He adopted a featureless black avatar, in contrast to her plain human appearance.

  --You know we have had to revive the Fluke as well; she is shipping back out to Ain Soph Aur for therapy, He said.

  --As you can plainly see, the Scrabo plebhu had no Prior knowledge of the subversion, quipped the Librarian.

  --Please try to avoid facile double meanings, cousin Librarian; the Keterists are taking this very seriously indeed. That is why they have requested hat I be allowed to assist you in this investigation. 
Now, as I understand the situation, when the acolytes were accepted into the ascension process six tendays ago they all had total picoscale scans and clean results.
After the recent chemocracker attack, but before the mass ascension event all the acolytes were checked for inclusions and extras again. None of them had any new devices or inclusions compared to the last time they were screened. No chemicals, no new programs in their tricky tattoo skins. Nothing new.

  --So it was more advanced than the best scans of the Keterists, eh?
I would suggest a subtractive code, with apparently innocent data activated by removal of certain portions. Very tricky, and getting more and more common, I'm afraid.

-  -Indeed. Now it is up to us to find what was taken away, and how. 

  --My intuition tells me that will only be the start of our problem.
We need to journey deeper into this fellow's past. I will arrange for his deep memories to be extracted and correlated as far as possible; he should be able to give us a clue as to who infected him with this ingenious weapon.

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