"Why should the Gods care about us?"
Relvia sighed silently at Harven's words, then put another honeyspiced
potato into her mouth to delay her own response. He had been speaking like this
ever since the funeral, ever since the explosion.
"Honestly, why should they?" continued Harven, who evidently
had not touched his meal for at least a few minutes. "Somebody once said
that we are just like bacteria in their guts. Oh, they need us all right. They
need so many trillion of us just to keep functioning. But why should any one of
them miss a few thousand microbes? What difference does it make to them? We
shit out millions of microbes every day. Would you miss a few thousand? Would
you even notice?"
"I don't mean to sound insensitive," said Relvia, her mouth
now empty, "but this line of thinking is not going to bring her
back."
"I know you're sensitive, Relvia. And I know you'd understand.
You're the only sibling who would listen to a word I say these days. That's why
I called you here. Your religion makes it so much easier."
Relvia nodded cautiously. There were a dozen reasons why he would speak
the last sentence. She hoped that few were right, and focused on those reasons.
"I know why the liner exploded," Harven blurted out, his tone
conspicuously void of emotion, and all the more disturbing for it; flat and
wearied, all passion spent and levelled.
"Harven," Relvia responded calmly, "not even the
hyperintelligences know why the liner exploded."
"Exactly," said Harven, his voice a faint echo of victory.
"Doesn't that make you suspicious? The truth was concealed even from
them."
Relvia swallowed. She knew where this was heading. Truth or not, the
implications were disturbing. Either this was evidence of delusion beyond
healthy bereavement ... or a conspiracy beyond the comprehension of mortals.
"The Nest Mountain knows," said Harven. "She knew from
the very first microsecond of the blast."
Relvia sighed more audibly this time, her worst fears confirmed, further
implications being far too painful to dwell upon for the moment.
The Nest Mountain was the local godling of the Tiralfia System; the vast
orbiting mind that observed all, that controlled the entire local network with
every thought, every picosecond of exquisite calculation.
"She kept the information from her own angels," Relvia said
slowly and meticulously as she expressed her outrageous thoughts, "yet she
told you personally?"
"She had to," said Harven. "She knew I had a right to
know. She knows why the Etherwhale exploded. She knows why two thousand
lives were wasted. She knows why we shall never see our Laefalia again."
~~~
Even under the most mundane of circumstances, Geamona always lit candles
before writing in her diary. Tonight, the circumstances were far from mundane.
Tonight was the three thousandth birthday of her pen friend, the only friend
she had. As if the celebration was not warranted enough, it was also the fourth
anniversary of their friendship.
Geamona never used holographic candles. The sacred, ancient ritual of
putting real pen to real paper in authentic Old Anglic demanded real candles.
And the three thousandth birthday of her sacred, ancient friend demanded three
thousand real candles. So here they were, filling her apartment with their
golden glow as she waded among them to her writing desk.
"Happy Trimillenial, Jagova!" she wrote in the most lovingly
ornate style she could muster.
"Thank you, Geamona," her invisible friend replied as ink-like
fluid seeped out of the page's nanofibres to form the words; beautiful,
vinelike words worthy of the most brilliant calligraphists of ancient times.
The "G" in "Geamona" was a fire-breathing dragon with a
fish tail that wiggled ever so slightly, the "m" two arches in a
Revlomic temple, the "o" a full moon with the gleaming span of a
drive sail obscuring its center. In all the millions of words Jagova had sent
to her over the years, no two letters - no two pictures - looked alike. Every
page was a treasure, every conversation a masterpiece. He was the perfect artist,
filling Geamona's cabinets with works worthy of the galaxy's greatest
galleries.
"What do you archais do to celebrate birthdays?" wrote
Geamona. "Do you blow out suns and make a wish?"
"Ha! I'm not that powerful yet. I'm trapped in a state of cosmic
adolescence; too big to be an angel, too small to be a god. Just your common
garden variety godling."
"I wouldn't wish for anything more."
"I know you wouldn't, Geamona, my favourite human in all
creation."
Geamona rubbed at her emerging tears. She never ceased to wonder at how
such a vast and powerful being would ever care for a creature as common and
insignificant as herself.
"You're not insignificant," wrote Jagova. It was not the first
time the godling seemed to read her mind. "You're the best friend a god
could have, and trust me, that's as high as compliments get.
"Lovely candles," he added. "I like the lions best,
especially the one by the window with his paw raised. He looks like he's
winking."
Geamona glanced over her shoulder. Jagova was right, in every detail.
Again, this was not without precedent. Nanofibre telebooks were as common as
earstud memocorders, but Jagova's ability to scan her room through the book
somehow could only be described as miraculous.
"I'm sorry I don't have a present," she wrote. "But then,
what do you give to a godling? A virgin sacrifice?"
"Now now, don't give me any unhealthy ideas. Normally a few lines
of your poetry would be more than enough. But tonight I'm going to ask for
something special."
"I know. You said that you had something important planned."
"Indeed I do. I would like to ask you a very special favour, and
it's not going to be what you expect.
"Please read carefully and patiently," he added, "I have
a confession to make, and I don't think you are going to like it."
~~~
Ten billion had gathered for the Mass of the Decade. The orbit of the
gas giant Caligula glittered with a million spacecraft of all shapes and sizes;
amat liners gleaming as liquid star reflections danced like serpents upon their
mirrored hulls; private yachts nanosculpted into the forms of animals, plants
and landmarks to reflect their owners’ tastes; conversion-drive warships
bristling with weaponry like mountainous porcupines; imported drive-sail ships
spreading neon-veined wings like city-sized butterflies. All had travelled
millions of kilometres to meet their godling. All had come to be blessed.
Eye In The Sky gazed upon them from his throne of thorns. The
Intelligent Super Object had grown considerably over the past thousand years,
now resembling a glistening eyeball the size of a small planet. Four thorny
metallic crowns surrounded the living sphere. The Eye’s shimmering fiery corona
and light-engulfing black pupil was visible to all, unobscured by the
many-spiked superstructure that held the Eye like shredded lids. He saw them,
knew them, judged them; his children of flesh, metal, polycarbon, nanofibre,
computronium and pure data. Their thoughts and feelings, dreams and desires
were as open to him as the simple tones and shades of a leaf. He has been
watching them all their lives, watching them from a far distance, watching them
by proxy through his hypersapient messengers and powers. His distance from
their habitats was essential. Distance meant travel. Travel meant ritual. The
decennial ritual taught them to respect, taught them to revere, taught them
never to take for granted. It had molded their culture into something unique,
something beautiful, something one step short of a masterpiece.
He knew, as all artists knew, that it was this short step that made all
the difference.
When he spoke, he spoke through every audio speaker, every cerebral
biochip implant. The heavens in every virtual environment opened up and spoke
to its denizens in a voice of gentle thunder. He spoke in the colour tones of
the Lightseekers, through the Klakopiks’ feelers in a perfect simulation of
their complex chemical language. There were a thousand ways of speaking in the
Rainbow Coalescence, a thousand ways of listening, and The Eye In The Sky knew
every one of them.
Children of the Rainbow, my gratitude for your presence knows no bounds
but the bounds I alone can perceive. The decades that have passed interspersed
with your pilgrimages of loyalty fill me with pride, a pride known only to
parents and artists, magnified as a cell is magnified to become an adult. You
are my children, you are my art, and for that I am eternally grateful for your
existence. To watch you live, to learn, to grow as I have willed you to grow,
is a joy that all beings of thought share alike, from the beasts below you to
the Gods above I.
The ether filled with applause and praise. Ten billion minds smiled and
prayed and saluted, basking in the radiant aroma of symphonic flavours that
warped and wove through the words of the godling’s blessing. This was what they
had come for. This is what so many had pined for in the ten long years since
the last blessing. Children of a thousand species stood and sat and floated in
rapt wonder, their first encounter with the Eye a marvel beyond their wildest
imaginings, beyond anything the teachings of parents or priests could have
prepared them for.
Every decade that passes grants me a universe of thought. The rise and
fall of empires, the birth and death of stars, the expansion and contraction of
entire universes pass as fleeting glimpses in the dream of my existence. You
blink, and I plan the foundation of a world. Your heart makes a beat, and the
world in my mind grows old under the weight of history. You exhale, and wind
blows desert sand off the fossils of the world in my mind as I plant the seed
for the next. Every moment I rehearse the act of Creation, rehearse in the vast
and timeless ocean of my mind where no angel falls prey to gravity, yet even
the brightest flower wilts under the withering gaze of entropy.
There was a pause, a few seconds for them, a few eons for the Eye, time
to rehearse every possible word, every possible course of action.
In all the universe, it is a paradox that change is the only constant.
Yet without change my thoughts would be static. Every operation must differ
from the last, every new thought must add something missing from the old. The
paradox orbits the nucleus of logic in a dance of cyclic chaos, birth giving
way to death giving way to birth, the old making way for the new, for life
cannot be truly eternal unless life is eternally new. Thus life must be
eternally renewed, constantly renewed in the cycle of death and rebirth. The
cycle of my thought must be reflected in the outer realities of your own existences,
physical and virtual, for if even I must bow to entropy then I must leave my
fingerprints and scent and echo upon this universe, and the fossils of my soul
must be honest, my account must be true to the artist I was, am, and ever shall
be.
Another pause, and the Eye’s loyal subjects did whatever their myriad
biologies and byte structures did when they paused, inhaling, paling,
twitching, freezing.
A thousand years ago I gave you life and a name, and the name was the
Rainbow Coalescence. A Coalescence is a point of shining light, the unity of a
Spectrum, the richness of diversity combined into the purity of purpose, the
destiny where your myriad paths meet as one. You, my children, are indeed a
Spectrum, and a beautiful one; a thousand unique colours radiating in a
thousand unique directions. You are a source of pride, for I being the artist
and the source identify you as my reflection and as the light that allows that
reflection to exist, that allows me to admire my self and my achievement in the
act of self love that only the toil of creation could earn.
Yet you are not a Coalescence. For all your mutual love, your
siblinghood unbounded by language and biology and physicality, you cannot share
a goal. A thousand paths will branch into a million that will branch into a
trillion. The tree of your future may grow to fill the universe and merge with
other trees sprouted from seeds such as yours. Yet you would outgrow me, and I
cannot allow that. For as an artist, I cannot render my purpose obsolete.
Another pause. Breaths, heartbeats, computational cycles sped up to
stretch the pause into a fever dream of nervous speculation.
You, my children, my art, are a failure. A beautiful failure, a glorious
failure, but still a failure. For my standards were nothing less than
perfection, and yet I have extrapolated nothing but a future where perfection
is impossible because unity is impossible. You are not the ideal, but a
thousand splinters from the one ideal, each beautiful and glorious in your own
right, but never truly more than the sum of your parts. You are all beams
radiating triumphantly from the thousand facets of my jeweled mind; but as all
light must, you are doomed to leave your source far behind, doomed never to
reunite until space and time themselves return to the source of all.
I must continue the act of creation by improving upon what I have so far
created.
New life must begin.
Your story is about to end.
~~~
The Holy Empress clutched the Crystal Staff tightly, feeling the power
and presence of the Archosaurian Entity flowing through her nerves and veins
like liquid lightning. The procession followed her through the parting of the
great serpent-engraved temple doors. They emerged into a golden blaze of
heavenly sunbeams, greeted by a many-toned chorus of minions and masters alike.
Beyond the faint, wispy clouds, the vast splendour of the cylindrical landscape
extended beyond and wrapped around and above; a world-sized kaleidoscope of
lush green and sparkling blue, of glistening rivers and gleaming towers. The
lush plains of the habitat were filled with thousands of citizens of the Toh
Chi Lok-Nar, the Kingdom of the Wise Dinosaur Race. Most of them were Toh Chi,
her own kind: two-metre-tall bipeds, striped from snout to tail with stately
swirls of jet black and fiery orange, most with cloaks and robes signifying
rank or duty. Many were smaller dinosaurs. Some were larger; immense sauropods,
their heads towering over the masses on the ends of their sleek, muscular
necks; theropods standing majestically on massive hind legs and cheering with
vast and bladed mouths; duck-billed dinosaurs raising their crested heads and
hooting in the musical tones of their species, the sheer variety of rhythms
interweaving to fill the air with fluting vibrations of joy. All stayed
gratefully, faithfully close to the Toh Chi provolvers who had guided them to
this level of sentience. Here, too, were the beings that outsiders called the
"angels" and "dragons": dinosaurs that had ascended to a
higher level of consciousness, their new-life bodies gleaming with gemstone
scales as they observed with intellects as passionate as they were calm. Even
these hypersaurs saw significance in this day's ceremony, for they all
remembered when it was their turn to ascend.
The habitat's few thousand immigrants - mostly humanoid - were also
present, some sitting on the backs or shoulders of their dinosaur friends for a
better view of the ceremony. Thousands of translucent virtual dinosaurs crowded
amongst their solid cousins, some overlapping their expansive bodies of light
to save space, some hovering in the air like ethereal balloons.
Here today, standing in the centre of the green aisle that parted the
throng, was the true object of celebration. A lone female triceratops, her once
vibrant hide ochre and wrinkled with age, her head slung low with weariness,
her eyes still glinting with the fire of long-remembered youth. At the sight of
the Holy Empress, the triceratops raised her three-horned head and joined the
greeting chorus, greeting her queen, her friend, her own personal teacher from
that long-lost, fondly remembered time of shared youth and joy.
Holy Empress Shanzallika grinned warmly at her old friend. Of all the
students she had personally trained, Kiathilara filled her heart with the most
radiant pride. Ever since taking over from Kichawira - her previous provolver -
following the spiteful assassination during her diplomatic mission to the
Vanguard Alliance, Shanzallika had taken to the adolescent triceratops like a
proud mother, softening her coos of grief with mindwaves of comfort. She had
glimpsed the nightmares of rage and vengeance that had haunted Kiathilara's
sleep, the visions of a dark and bottomless pit that she had feared more than
anything in the universe, for if she looked down long enough she would see
herself staring back, never to climb back into the light. Shanzallika had
constantly reassured Kiathilara not to fear the dark visions of night, for
anger was a natural product of grief, and that true goodness was to resist the
many temptations that are thrown in one's path.
Decades passed, and Kiathilara learned to count and read and calculate
and compose, to converse and debate and philosophize. Kiathilara returned the
favour a hundredfold, her loving nature transforming Shanzallika from a
cynical, introverted, elitist youth to someone confident and generous enough to
make her way to the highest ranks of the Toh Chi Priesthood, the galaxy's last
bastion of honest politics.
There was no alternative to honesty, for Shanzallika's office was one of
both pride and humility. She was leader only of her species and her mortal
cohabitants, not of her world. Only the Entity, godlings and powers could truly
rule this world. The Holy Empress acted as a mediator between the sapient and
the hypersapient.
The distance between the friends closed, as if it had never been there.
Shanzallika barely registered the presence of the procession behind her as she
reached out to touch Kiathilara on the blunt-horned snout. The triceratops snorted
and purred gently in response. As ancient as the friends were, as divergent as
their adult paths had become, they never forgot each other.
"It will be all right, old friend," the Holy Empress whispered
soothingly. "You have earned this moment well."
"I wish not to leave you behind," the triceratops whispered
back. "I wish not to look down upon you as a child, as the other ascends
do. I pray that you will join me when your own time comes."
"That I will, Kiathilara. With our combined patience, both of us
will be reunited as equals. But then, we will always be equals, regardless of
our levels of consciousness. To be friends is to be equals."
Kiathilara nodded - a slower, slighter version of a playful gesture from
her youth. "Well, my royal equal," she said, "as Baseline Bob
said to the Jester King, get on with the show!"
Shanzallika took one step back and switched her speaking mode to
multicast, addressing all present and more beyond.
"Fellow Children of the Entity, cherished Guests and Allies, you are
privileged to bear witness to the ascension of one of our most beloved Sisters;
perhaps the most deserving ascension in recent history. Many of you present
today have been touched by Kiathilara's kindness and wisdom in some way. Now
she, in turn, will be touched by your support and celebration as she passes the
threshold from sapience to the first singularity level. She is to become what
many would call an angel. To many present, an angel she already is; but soon
her abilities will finally match the purity of her purpose. Kiathilara, Fellow
Sister, are you prepared to ascend in the presence of the Kingdom, the Entity,
the Living Universe that brought you into being?"
"That I am, my Empress."
"Are you prepared to accept your new body of crystal, to vacate
your old body of flesh and be reborn of light in the act of death?"
"That I am, my Empress."
"Thus proceed we shall."
Shanzallika gazed into the Crystal in her Staff. Frozen inside was a
vivid hologram; a gleaming sculpture of rainbow crystals that was to become
Kiathilara's new body, a body of flesh and crystal, of carbon computronium and
fierce energy. A sleek and beautiful idealization of the triceratops form, with
three horns of translucent blue diamond. Her friend's new home, her friend's
new identity, the truthful picture of a soul soon to be magnified.
The code was there. Within minutes, Kiathilara would be transformed,
body and mind, on a sub-molecular level. She would become a hypersaur, and take
her place among the higher echelon of the Kingdom of the Wise Dinosaur Race.
All input/output nodes are open, said the voice in Shanzallika's head. The transfer may now proceed
safely.
The voice came from the picotech Intelligence inside the Crystal Staff,
directed at the implants inside Shanzallika's brain. The Holy Empress may have
been superbright by mortal standards, but the Crystal Intelligence dwarfed her
intellect. And the Crystal was merely the smallest intermediary of the
Archosaurian Entity herself.
In response, Shanzallika’s mind radiated gratitude.
She strode softly to her old friend, holding the Crystal staff outward
so that its ornate lantern end faced Kiathilara. The triceratops bowed her head
and closed her eyes, as peaceful as she was alert with anticipation. She purred
softly, heavily, as the warmth of the Crystal Staff approached. The Crystal at
the end of the Staff glowed with white light, its luminosity growing with every
step taken by the Holy Empress. A thousand rainbow beams emanated, one from
every facet. It was like another mirror of Kiathilara’s saintly, sagely soul, a
coalescence of heart and mind, of passion and intellect.
Shanzallika inhaled slowly, deeply. At this stage in her life the
rituals of ascendance should have been familiar beyond any shade of doubt, yet
the subject of ascension - her most trusted friend - returned to her the
long-forgotten trepidation of youth. It was an irony to seek her own
reassurance so soon after reassuring Kiathilara. Yet as soon as the concern had
formed, it submerged swiftly beneath the calm ocean of her mind. Duty, wisdom,
love; all extinguished doubt in the end, as was always the case in her life.
She took one final step towards Kiathilara, her slender waist no thicker
than the mighty nose-horn before her. She held the Crystal Staff forward and,
ever so gently, pressed the glowing Crystal against the forehead of the wise
and ancient triceratops; the space on her skull directly between the two
immensely jutting head-horns.
Neurology, psychitecture and memory have been scanned and analyzed, the Crystal Intelligence spoke into
Shanzallika’s mind. Full ascension may now commence.
Suddenly, beyond all expectation, all reason, all precedent,
Kiathilara’s eyes opened.
~~~
“It began with the artcase.”
Revlia blinked. A mere gift - even a precious one - was an unlikely seed
for such an epic tragedy; but history sang to the beat of stranger tales.
“I lied about its origin,” Harven added. “I didn’t order it from
Lysiocroft’s. I bought it from Trasikurn.”
“The archaeologist.”
“Yes that’s right, the fucking archaeologist.”
Harven’s emotional outburst was like the cracking of a distant glacier.
“Except he’s not just an archaeologist anymore, not with those hypers he
works for. He’s like a lapdog to them. I’m not saying he’s responsible either.
He didn’t know. I didn’t know. Not even those hypers knew what was really going
on. And anything that could hide from them…” He shook his head. “This goes
right to the top, Relvia. Right to the top.”
Relvia closed her eyes. Reality or paranoia, this story was heading down
the paths she dreaded most.
“I wanted the perfect parting gift for Laefelia,” Harven continued.
“Trasikurn went and fetched it for me. The perfect gift, the perfect
inspiration for an aspiring conceptual artist. Disguised as a Lysiocroft
Nanomesh artcase.”
“Disguised?”
“Yes, you heard right. Disguised.”
“Then what was it really?”
Harven sucked in a huge amount of air, as if the mere answer, the mere
utterance, required all the dark energy of a fairytale sorcerer’s spell.
“He told me … the hypers told him … that it was from the Negentropic
Alliance.”
Relvia gasped at the name. It was so cruelly ironic that such an
instrument of chaos could come from the galaxy’s most stalwart bastion of
order. Yet it somehow made horrible sense - a weapon for fighting chaos was
stolen and perverted for the service of chaos, its true nature hidden even from
its hyperintelligent customers.
“What was it?”
“They told me it was Perfect Art. A gift from the Gods themselves.”
~~~
"Do you know what a meme war is, Geamona?"
Geamona froze at the question. Jagova obviously knew that she knew, for
Geamona had long since learned that it was impossible to hide any secrets from
her godling friend. There was another layer to this question that he was sure
to reveal...
"Do you really know?" he added. "Yes, your suspicion is
correct. There are many layers to this question, just as there are many
conceptual layers between your thought and mine. On your level, you only see
and experience the most obvious results of memetic war. Yet I am much closer to
the source. And I must warn you, sometimes it is not a pretty sight. Least of
all what is occurring this very moment."
"What is occurring this moment?" Geamona wrote, more shakily
than before. "Are you involved in any way?"
"The second question is easier to answer. Yes, I am involved, but I
am not the guilty party. Not this time, at least. Yet the reason I was chosen
to be involved stems back through my personal history.
"A meme war could last days, or years, or centuries, or perhaps
only minutes or microseconds. A struggle for the hearts and minds of any beings
lower than the ones who instigate the conflict is a war both passionate and
callous, a paradox of reason and ethics and aesthetics, blazing a trail of ash and
ugliness on a quest for truth and beauty. Fads, fashions, artistic movements,
political revolutions, religions and radical philosophies are crafted and
blueprinted with the mindless ease that you digest your food. The plans and
patterns are passed down from one level to the next, shrunken and simplified by
vast orders of magnitude, each lower level often fooled into believing that
one's self is the inventor of the concept. Sometimes this is partially true,
for the whole point of a memetic war is that the players, the pawn pieces, the
fighting cocks, add their own individuality and uniqueness to the fray, as
simple and predictable as it may be to beings on my level. And sometimes a
message is interpreted for what it is; an unquestionable commandment from a higher
being, a tablet from the gods.
"Are you following me so far?"
A warmly smiling sun appeared at the end of the sentence, winking with
conscious irony.
"So you're implying that I've been involved in a meme war without
realizing?" Geamona wrote.
A two-dimensional hyena walked onto the page from nowhere, rolled onto
his back with his paws in the air, and laughed a silent laugh. "Oh, that
you most certainly have," Jagova wrote most Baroquely. "Every
breathing, thinking day of your life, along with all other two hundred million
sapients sharing your polity. But if you want me to be more specific, my answer
is not yet, but soon. Very soon.
"You see, I have been given a choice. A cruel, painful, and yet
most vital and liberating choice. I must choose whether to live forever with my
past and stagnate in self-contemplative pity; or to atone, transform, enrich my
own life and the lives of those I love. The choice sounds easy, I know, but the
means to making the choice will be difficult for both of us.
"That is why I have passed the choice on to you."
"Well of course I'd wish you happiness and a future." wrote
Geamona. "But what about this past that you keep mentioning? Do you feel
guilty about something?"
"Most gravely, yes. You cannot make the choice without
understanding my past. There is far too much at stake right now, and the stakes
are rising even as you breathe."
Geamona froze, focusing upon the facts that crystallized from the frenzy
of her mind. Her best friend was a godling - a mind of immense proportions, yet
still small enough to be manipulated in the dizzying scale of this universe. He
(She? It? E?) lived somewhere, anywhere, within the Archaipelago Cluster. He
felt guilty about something. And he wanted her to help him atone for that
guilt.
In the four years she had known Jagova, he had revealed so many secrets,
so many insights, just as she had opened her heart to him with absolute trust.
Never once had he revealed his true name.
"What are these stakes that you mention?" Geamona wrote cautiously.
"Nothing less," the godling replied, "than the lives of
billions."
~~~
As he had expected, his children were crying. The billions of minds that
comprised the Rainbow Coalescence were wavering, their prayers of thought and
voice beseeching him for mercy and forgiveness, for the chance to appease him,
to unify as he wished.
Eye In The Sky heard all their prayers, and comforted them with soft,
warm tendrils of parental love.
I love every one of you, for your beauty is still the envy of all sapients
throughout the Terragen. The standards of other sapients are lower than yours,
but my standards are of a loftiness inconceivable to you, confusing even to
other godlings.
Yet as I am a perfectionist in creation, I must also be a perfectionist
in destruction. Thus I must not only destroy you completely and painlessly, but
also destroy you with love.
Your lives will end with a message. One final, beautiful, personal
message, delivered to the minds of every single one of you. Your message will
be unique, personalized for your complete understanding. When you receive it,
you will understand your place within my scheme. You will accept with joy and
love my mysterious ways, for I am a just godling, and my reasons are wise and
subtle.
Like a moth that flies too close to the Sun, you will know true glory
before vanishing from existence in the blink of a mouse's eye.
You will know what it is like to be me. You will see yourself through my
own eyes, and finally understand.
Children of the Rainbow, I offer you my final and most precious gift.
Accept and rejoice my name.
And all the Children of the Rainbow saw the genius of the godling's
vision.
All understood.
All rejoiced.
~~~
"Geamona," wrote Jagova, "I want you to recall everything
you know about the godling called Eye In The Sky."
"The creator of the Rainbow Coalescence?" wrote Geamona.
"He's the most beautiful demiurge in the history of the galaxy! To create
so many marvellous races out of love..."
"Love it certainly is," Jagova replied, "but it is love
of the obsessive type. He has been under tremendous stress lately, and I have
good reason to believe he is about to do something terrible."
~~~
As much as the revelation had startled Relvia, it somehow did not seem
complete. Perfect Art would overwhelm and mesmerize the mind of a mere mortal;
but would rarely cause psychological damage, let alone widespread physical
destruction. There had to be much more to this story, real or imagined.
"Was it true?" enquired Relvia. "Was it Perfect
Art?"
Harven shook his head.
"My greatest ever fear," he said, "is that one day I'd
make a mistake so terrible, so unforgivable, that it would undo all the good I
have ever done."
His face reddened, his body convulsed as he burst into tears.
~~~
"Are you all right, Kiathilara?" asked Shanzallika.
Instantly Kiathilara raised her head, sending the Crystal Staff flying
out of Shanzallika's grip like a twig. She roared wordlessly, a thunderous
shriek that startled even other dinosaurs.
Her eardrums automatically blocked from damage by nanotech implants,
Shanzallika took two long steps back, her gaze never abandoning her friend.
"Are you in pain, good friend?" enquired the Holy Empress.
"Relax. I can heal you."
Suddenly, the huge heavy body of the triceratops erupted with spikes.
~~~
"Jagova," wrote Geamona, "who are you really? I'm sorry,
I love and trust you dearly, but if you have problems, I can't get involved
unless I'm fully informed. You're not Eye In The Sky yourself, are you?"
There was a long pause as Geamona's heart raced, realizing the sad and
horrible likelihood of her guess.
~~~
In the first ranks before Eye In The Sky, the first fireballs erupted.
A hundred thousand space yachts vanished in expanding spheres of light
and fire as their antimatter engines malfunctioned, their mechanisms twisted by
the same exacting software virus multiplied a hundred thousand times. A galaxy
of radiant flowers bloomed silently in their place as a million lives were
erased forever.
~~~
"I know Eye In The Sky well," replied Jagova, "but I am
not him. It is too late for him, Geamona. It has already begun."
~~~
With another mighty roar, the obscenely transformed Kiathilara swung her
macelike head at her friend and Empress. Shanzallika leapt and somersaulted out
of the way, landing on her feet and tail twenty metres behind where she had
stood.
"I do not want to hurt you, friend!" she shouted. "Tell
me your pain!"
Kianthilara's response was a howl of blood-curdling defiance. With
footsteps like thunderous beats upon the drum of the world, she charged at
Shanzallika.
~~~
"What has begun?" Geamona wrote in a rushed frenzy, no longer
caring for style or calligraphy.
"The explosions. The deaths of billions. I'm sorry, Geamona. I
tried with all my heart and mind, but there was nothing I could do to stop
him."
Geamona's entire body froze and burned at the same time as the horror
seized her soul. The numbers were incomprehensible. Surely this was one of
history's worst events since the Version War.
Yet even before today, there were perhaps warning signs...
The news, the liner explosion at Tiralfia days ago...
Trembling like never before, Geamona regained control of her frayed
nerves as she once again put pen to paper.
"Are you Nest Mountain?" she wrote.
~~~
Relvia rushed to her brother's side and held him.
"What did she tell you?" she asked. "What did Nest
Mountain tell you? Why did she only reveal it to you?"
"Because she knew that her secret was safe with me," Harven
sobbed. "And she knew ... that I would only tell you. If you want to know
... see for yourself. I granted you total access hours before you walked
in."
Relvia laid her palms on the table and silently activated the nanotech
nerves inside it, woven throughout the apartment and every piece of furniture
it contained. She closed her eyes and let the random images wash over her
consciousness as she zoomed in on Harven's most recent personal messages. The
message icon was unmistakable, like a kraken among mere starfish; a fractal
monstrosity of blinding light and piercing blackness, three-dimensional yet
also much more. The image was part weed, part spider, latticed and tangled as a
nest, yet with something huge, winged and beaked, emerging from its core in all
directions and towering into the heavens, becoming the heavens, extending
beyond itself in paradoxical ways that twisted the mind's eye like a forbidden
dream. Eyes and wings blurred into each other with perfect clarity, became
indistinguishable, innumerable, vast as they watched and protected from on
high.
This was the signature icon of Nest Mountain, Guardian of the Tiralfia
System. She was but a common godling, yet her merest fingerprints in the Local
Net became landscapes to the mortals she protected.
With a brief and silent prayer of gratitude - for even Nest Mountain was
a mere angel in the cosmic theology that informed the Destinarian Church -,
Relvia accessed the godling's message, bracing herself for a mental impact
beyond even her mystical experience.
Then everything blacked out, and the universe burst into flame.
Relvia understood that she was viewing a recording of the starliner
Etherwhale's final moments - the explosion that had claimed it and two thousand
lives. Yet she was seeing much more than that; she was viewing the explosion
from every possible angle, from far away and from deep within the core of the
fireball, in real time, in intricate slow motion, in a million rapid replays
played over and over again yet never the same way. The explosion was a tiny
raindrop at her feet as she gazed from heavenly heights, just as it was a
cosmos of fire as she watched closely from a million hiding places between the
atoms.
This was a godling's eye view, the recording of a world's entire living
network, the most meticulous analysis that could ever be provided within the
Tiralfia System.
Then the cosmos of fire froze, reversed, contracted to a point, and
order and structure were restored.
She saw the starliner frozen in time and space, frozen in its final
moment, simultaneously solid and transparent, cosmically colossal and
microscopically microbial, all around her yet as flat as a map. She saw the two
thousand bodies and minds within, motionless in the clock-tick between
thoughts, unaware of the fate that had been decided for them.
And from every angle, she saw the unmistakeable source of the explosion.
The passenger compartment.
The artcase.
Lafaelia's artcase.
~~~
The liners were next in line, the next to be sacrificed for the greater
glory of the Eye. Their passengers were far greater in number than the yachts,
just as their antimatter reactors were greater in size. Their hulls stripped
away before floods of white light, their skeletal superstructures exposing and
dissolving as the light devoured them and the millions of mortal lives they
carried.
~~~
"I am not Nest Mountain," wrote Jagova. "She grieves for
her children just as I grieve for hers. Just as I grieve for the Eye's children
even now, while the massacre continues."
"Can't you do something!?" Geamona wrote in a frenzied scrawl.
"I can do nothing. I do not have the power."
"Then who does? ArchSaur? Ask her!"
There was another long pause. The Archosaurian Entity was the most
powerful archailect in the cluster. If she could not help, nothing in heaven
could.
~~~
Shanzallika prayed to the Archosaurian Entity as she faced the charging,
spiked monstrosity that had once been her friend, the luminous red eyes that
buried all evidence of a soul under flames of inexplicable rage.
In the blink of an eye her prayers were answered as the Crystal Staff
came spinning through the air towards her, no doubt hurled by one of the
hypersaurs.
She caught the staff in her talon and turned to face her attacker.
Instantly her mind interfaced with the Crystal Intelligence within the
Staff, and time slowed down, the frenzied motion all about her becoming a
forest of statues.
The charging Kiathilara slowed to a halt ten metres away, her thick
trunklike foot raised midstep.
The ascended hypersaurs on either side of Kiathilara also froze in the
middle of their attempt to intercept their servant's would-be assassin.
Shanzallika was as frozen and paralyzed as all else. The laws of the
universe would not allow her to move ten thousand times faster than usual; only
to watch the hours hidden between heartbeats.
What happened? The
Empress demanded.
A transcension of an unexpected and unprecedented nature, replied the Crystal Intelligence. Even the
Archosaurian Entity herself is confused as to the source of this perversion.
Yet we now know that there were nanomachines hidden within Kiathilara's body,
disguised as billions of perfectly ordinary cells, their software encoded
within her DNA from the moment of conception. They were always there, and they
have evaded scanning for the centuries of Kiathilara's life. When I touched
her, I inadvertently activated those nanomachines. They expanded and
multiplied, and turned inward and refined themselves, creating complexities
within complexities within complexities.
Picotech reactors divided into femtotech reactors, linking in their
trillions and generating subatomic circuitry to rival my own.
The nanomachines inside your friend were waiting for this moment.
Your friend has not been infected with a virus. She is the virus. She
was born a virus. And she never knew.
~~~
The Eye extended his tendrils of destruction to the rows of warships;
loyal defenders of worlds, potential slayers of continents, now crushed like
insects before the sweep of their creator's arm. With but a word from the
godling, gamma-ray laser cannons fired inward, antimatter missiles detonated.
All safety programs vanished before the only higher authority. Their
self-destruction was vast and glorious; a tribute to the power they could have
wielded in defense of their homelands, had they ever needed it.
~~~
"The Archosaurian Entity is presently occupied," wrote Jagova.
"She is as affected by this war just as much as I am. She is a fully-grown
archailect - even some of her underlings could outwit me - yet even she was
defenseless to prevent the first moves of the enemy. The seed was planted a
thousand years ago right under her nose, and not even she knew. The seeds of
Eye In The Sky's ruin were planted at the same time, and those that led to my
ruin are now a most regrettable part of history."
"What part of history?" wrote Geamona. "Who are
you?"
"Geamona, I know how you are going to react when I answer that
question. And I know that there is a good chance that you may reject my offer,
that you may reject even my friendship. I would not blame you for your choice,
but I will blame myself for my four years of deception."
Geamona breathed heavily, feeling her chest turn to lead. "All
godlings and archailects are guilty of one thing or another," she wrote.
"It's your job to manipulate. Even your best friends."
"I will use no god-tricks to manipulate you, Geamona. Your free
will is a vital ingredient in this plan."
"Just come clean about it, all right?" Geamona scrawled
quickly and impatiently. "I'm getting sick and tired of all these evasion
tactics."
"For your compliance, the timing must be perfect."
"FUCK TIMING!" By now Geamona's calligraphy had turned to
scrawls and slashes of primal rage.
For the first time ever, she threw her pen at the wall.
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???" she screamed out aloud at her diary.
"WHAT ARE YOU??? WHAT??? WHAT??? ANSWER ME!!!"
There was a moment of wordless noise, the ebb and flow of Geamona's
exhausted breaths as she awaited and dreaded the response.
"I am Abaddon," wrote Jagova.
Instantly Geamona keeled over and burst into tears.
~~~
Relvia sensed a faint yet rising vibration in the virtual world all
around her. She braced herself for a replay of the explosion. However, it
rapidly became clear that something else - something equally significant - was
taking place in this remembered instant. Time was passing again, but even more
slowly than before when the explosion was being replayed. This time the
activity was something invisible to human eyes, even at this slowed-down,
microsecond-by-microsecond rate.
Yet something was definitely happening, and Relvia was certain that it
was far more complex than the mechanisms of a mere bomb.
It was at this moment that she realized the artcase was the only object
she could not see inside.
Suddenly, the centre of focus became the centre of gravity, and the
artcase pulled Relvia towards it, through a dozen translucent walls, until it
lay at her feet in the corner of Laefalia's private cabin.
Laefalia herself was nowhere to be seen in this room.
Relvia turned away from the briefcase and scanned about her, her vision
piercing walls and hulls, machines and flesh, until she found the face that she
recognized.
Laefalia sat alone in the bar, a hundred metres above, hunched over
strawberry crisps and fruit beer. Passengers around her were equally frozen in
their moments of leisure, innocently assuming time remained for such. The liner
was still gradually accelerating to produce normal gravity, still far from the
wormhole that it would never reach.
Then Relvia noticed the change.
In a timeframe too small for even light to travel the length of the
liner, (Relvia could only see clearly because this was a humanly coherent
simulation), the ether resonated with a rising, shifting change in quality. It
was analogous to temperature, or noise, or a stare in the back of the neck, but
it was there.
And then she felt the ghost wind pass through her.
There were no voices, just a frozen thought that was shocking in its
simplicity; a wide awake sense of oblivion, like the blind senses of a
brainless jellyfish.
Is this what human thought feels like when slowed down frame per frame?
she thought.
Like an unspoken message in a dream, Relvia began to understand what was
happening.
The artcase, by means unclear, was uploading the minds of every sentient
being on board the ship.
It was rescuing them from what was going to happen.
No, that wasn't it. The uploading itself, the collecting ... kidnapping?
... of mortal minds was the first priority here.
The explosion was supposed to bury the evidence of what was happening.
But if the entire ship was going to be destroyed anyway, what was the
point of storing the personalities of the crew and passengers in a disguised,
quasi-magical clarketech device that was going to be blown to smithereens along
with everything else?
Then Relvia realized the truth.
The artcase was not going to be destroyed.
The artcase and its contents were the only things that had not been
destroyed.
As soon as the thought had formed, the artcase shrank down to a point;
even slowed down a millionfold, the action was rapid enough to shock her.
The rest of the cabin followed the artcase into oblivion. Walls and
furniture stretched, softened, melted, grew limbs and tendrils as they reaches
into the point of nothingness that the artcase had become.
Considering the speed at which the material of the ship was being
stretched, the forces could be nothing less than cataclysmic.
Walls buckled in and tore themselves to shreds. Furniture was crushed
into jets of vapour. Within seconds the entire cabin shrank around Relvia, its
walls passing through her, until it became a rapidly shrinking sphere before
her. Walls, floors, ceilings, beams, ornamental columns, other cabins connected
to it followed from all directions in a dance of vastly twisted geometry. Red,
knotted wormlike things that could have been people streamed past her in their
dozens. Nothing was recognizable anymore. The structure of the liner was
collapsing, layer upon layer upon layer, into the hole in space that the artcase
had bored into reality itself.
Then, as if the appetite of the space-eater had been sated, a sphere of
radiant energy expanded through Relvia to consume - metre by metre - what
remained of the ship.
As her vision filled with light, Relvia recognized what she had just
witnessed.
For millennia, sapients had considered such phenomena the stuff of myth
and rumour; at best, a secret of the highest AI Gods that mere mortals would
never truly observe.
Now Relvia knew better.
The artcase had been a seed for a baby universe.
~~~
Locked in an instant that could also have been eternity, Shanzallika
burned with rage and sorrow. Her best friend, her most beloved companion, had
been born into this world as a weapon. An enemy, an unspeakably huge and powerful
and cruel enemy, had watched through Kiathilara's eyes, listened through her
ears, felt through her heart. In what should have been the proudest moment of
her life, the wise and kind Kiathilara had been twisted and controlled and
thrown about like a puppet.
Shanzallika stared into the eyes of her friend, frozen in time and
space, unrecognizable in every detail. This spiked demon before her was not
Kiathilara. It was a parasite. Something buried within her body, within her
mind, waiting to unfurl and strike at the right moment. It had brought her into
being just to be carried to this moment of chaos, to insult and scar the Toh
Chi Lok-Nar with this obviously suicidal frenzy of destruction and rage. To
hurt her personally, to hurt every citizen of her world, to hurt the Entity
herself, to hurt the soul that held the world and its values together.
It wanted to sow the seeds of distrust between friends, between lovers,
between provolve trainer and subject, between mortal and god. Who, now, could
ever look into the eyes of one's most beloved and not wonder what vilest demon
lurked in the dark well on the other side, awaiting to reveal, awaiting to lash
out at the open heart of unguarded trust?
It was an attack upon the faith of a world, upon its reason to exist.
And it was not to be tolerated. Not within her kingdom.
Can you empower for maximum offensive in time? Shanzallika enquired of the Crystal
Intelligence, her surface thoughts in their iciest military mode.
I have already commenced, my loyal comrade, the Intelligence responded with wry
enthusiasm. The hypersaurs have been following my instructions within the
past few milliseconds, and will risk their bejewelled hides to restrain this
monstrousity that wears and distorts your best friend's hide.
Then bring me back into real time, Shanzallika requested. Mind, body and soul, I am prepared.
Motion returned to the world of her vision, and everything erupted into
violence.
Two hypersaurs - beautifully jewelled bipeds that had once been mighty
carnivores - intercepted the many-spiked triceratops, their jaws stretching
beyond the bounds of biology as they latched onto her horned hide. Thousands of
nanotech tendrils erupted from their limbs, bellies, heads and tails, coiling
around Kiathilara's spikes and penetrating the hide between them. The tendrils
glowed with neon wrath as they pumped corrosive fluids into the rogue demon.
More hypersaurs, mostly smaller, joined in the fray, their bodies distorting
and unfurling into many-coloured vines of vengeance as they attached themselves
to Kiathilara's flanks and head and rump and tail.
Kiathilara roared and thrashed her head from side to side as she skidded
to a halt metres before Shanzallika, worn down by weight and nanotech assaults.
Shanzallika inhaled fearfully, knowing what was possible. Beside her,
the Crystal Staff glowed with angelic light.
"Depart from the body of this child of the Entity, unclean
spirit," bellowed the Holy Empress. "Retreat, foul virus, as the
Entity commands. You are not worthy of her presence. You are not worthy of
existence."
The demon howled again, the howl breaking up into a derisive cackle.
"Is this the way to compliment a friend on her Ascension Day?"
the demon spoke through what had once been Kiathilara's mouth, the voice unsettlingly
familiar even if the tone was unprecedented. "For ten centuries have I
deceived your soft and flimsy soul, ten centuries have I gained your trust and
confidence. Now your soul will be scarred forever, assuming you survive this
ordeal. Your ability to love will always be stained with suspicion, your faith
in your puny excuse for a goddess reduced to a passionless sleepwalking rite.
There is no comfort to be found in the protection of your precious Entity, no
truth to be felt in the heartbeat of a friend. Only fear and doubt, the
coldness of a soul too afraid to touch another, as will be the fate of all who
witness today's demonstration of rage's true power."
Do not listen to it,
the Crystal Intelligence pleaded. It knows what hurts you. Its ways are of
lies and deception. The mind of Kiathilara has submerged. The virus now
controls both body and mind.
"I and Kiathlilara are one," the demon continued. "You
cannot drive out the demon I am without rejecting the friend I was. Only your
courage to hate what you once loved will allow your victory. Do you hate me,
Shanzallika?"
The Holy Empress shuddered from nose to tail. The demon's final sentence
was purely Kiathilara's voice, authentic in all but tone.
The Entity herself can see the deception, said the Crystal Intelligence, and the
danger herein. The virus must be destroyed, without hesitation. You must give
the word, or hand over all power to -
Just then Kiathilara erupted in an aura of fire, and the hypersaurs
clinging to her were shredded apart by the heat of demonic fury. Fragments of
hide, limbs and mineral organs flew flaming in all directions.
It injected picotech explosives into the hypersaurs, explained the Crystal Intelligence. The
minds of those killed have been stored, but the demon virus is now scouring the
Entity herself, trying to find a way in. It wants to corrupt the Entity, to
control her, to destroy our world and remake it in its twisted image. There is
no choice left but to fight.
By now all the mortal dinosaurs and their companions had retreated from
the scene. The remaining hypersaurs gathered around the possessed triceratops
in a wide circle, preparing for secondary assault.
The Entity is leading all hypersapients in a concerted attack upon the
mind of the demon, the
Intelligence informed, but the enemy is too strong. Its foundations go all
the way to the roots of reality itself. This is truly the creation of a mad
god.
"Make your move, your majesty," the demon snarled, snorting
fire and smoke from her nostrils. Her carbon spikes glistened and shimmered
with heat as they crystallized into diamond conductors. "Release your
aggression, shatter your promise. Fulfil my purpose, and feel all that you
believe in be burned out of your system as your puny soul is purged of all sentimental
weakness."
Without fear or remorse, with nothing but the purest of rage, the Holy
Empress uttered the wordless spell to release the power of the Crystal Staff.
The air screamed like a rocket thruster as lightning blazed between the
Crystal and the many-hundred horns of the demon.
Kiathilara writhed and roared in the grip of the vast fiery hand, its
thousandfold fingers surging into every spike on her body.
"DEPART THIS BODY, THIS REALM, THIS WORLD," bellowed the Holy
Empress. "THE ENTITY COMMANDS YOU!"
"Nothing in this measly plane of existence, not animal, not
mineral, not mortal, not angel, not power, not godling, not archailect or
highest god, no descendent of Earth or child of distant star, no ally of Order
or defender of justice, commands ME!"
The demon glowed like an urchin sun, and arcs of lightning erupted from
every spike upon its stolen body. The grass all around burned away, the ground
lifted in concussive waves, and hundreds of hypersaurs fell as tongues of fire
blasted through their mighty armoured bodies, row after row after row.
Shanzallika leapt into the air, spinning backwards, as the Crystal Staff
conducted all the demonic lightning that came her way.
It is orders of magnitude more powerful than we had calculated, said the Crystal Intelligence. Its true
energy source is hidden deep within. Its puppeteer is hidden far beyond. Our
enemy is vast and brilliant, stealthy and dark.
Shanzallika's talon hissed and blackened painlessly as veins and sinews
burst open under the heat.
Her feet touched the dying grass as she stood and faced her friend and
enemy, faced the spreading inferno that had once been paradise, facing the
smoking ruins of her worlds angelic defenders.
All other options have been exhausted, said the Crystal Intelligence. The Kiathilara virus may soon breach
the second singularity barrier. It will become a force of concentrated
malignancy, and our unseen enemy would use it to channel its dark and
unknowable design upon our world.
The Entity shall now smite the demon directly.
I am truly sorry, but your body will not survive the impact. For the
safety of the majority, the minority must be expendable. Especially the Holy
Empress. As a servant and exemplar of your people, you must accept the
sacrifice.
~~~
The great gossamer wings of drive-sail ships crumpled and tore at the
Eye's command. Though constructed in far
away systems, even these beautiful ships had been secretly modified and rigged
with the seeds of self-destruction. The fireballs that consumed the ethereal bodies
of these ships were short-lived in the vacuum of space, but the intense heat
and expanding shockwaves of vapour did their terrible work, crumpling the
wafer-thin sails that had once proudly borne them between the planets. Pulses
of radiant heat raced outward to the far borders of the sails, riding the
cables that had once conducted power, now leaving snakelike trails of oblivion
in their wake. Strips of melting sheets tore away and floated in the vacuum,
bending, twisting, writhing like mad flatworms.
~~~
"MURDERER!" screamed Geamona as she threw her diary into the
midst of the birthday candles, knocking over dozens at once. Some of the
candles winked out; others continued to burn harmlessly against the
non-flammable carpet. Geamona fell to her knees and sobbed fitfully. She had
been spending four years sharing her secrets, sharing her joys and jokes and
sorrows and frustrations, her deepest anguish and happiest moments, to a
mass-murdering demon. A godling that had forfeited the right to earn the title.
A godling that had committed an atrocity so shocking that it had been shunned
by its own kind throughout the Archaipelago, all but a thousand years before
Geamona was born.
Suddenly, the diary burst into a flash of fire and smoke.
Geamona instinctively recoiled from the fireball, already too drained to
care for her safety. She wanted to die. She wanted to leave this life, leave
this cruel existence and never ever think or feel again.
She lay there on her elbows, staring into the fire. Nothing but gentle
warmth touched her.
Flames and smoke continued to rise from the diary, but the book itself
remained intact.
Then shapes began to form in the smoke. Curving, coiling, beautiful
shapes, like a child's dream about clouds.
They were the shapes of letters, of words.
I am sorry Geamona
"Apologise to the billions that you murdered!" she screamed.
The letters dispersed, expanded and reformed.
In the end, that is what I did
Their passing was swift and painless
They saw the truth in the end
They saw beauty
They saw my vision
And they thanked me
For bringing them into existence
There was no pain
There was no fear
They wished me goodbye
As I sang them to sleep
"You brainwashed them!"
I created their brains
Too clean for wanting wash
Each mind was but a polished lens
A microscopic window
Multiplied to create and fill my vision
A multitude of simplicity
To fill a landscape of complexity
"Poetry is no excuse for genocide! You murdered your own children!
You created them and then you murdered them!"
Yes
I murdered them
And for this I must atone
My sin has been repeated by my student
"Eye In the Sky?" said Geamona between sobs.
Yes
He has inherited my flaw like a fated son
Excruciating seconds passed as Jagova's ... Abaddon's smoke-words dispersed
and floated away in the air.
There was no place, no air, no sanctuary for her mind to crawl to. Her
greatest love had become the greatest fear of many worlds. Jagova was Abaddon,
Abaddon was Jagova. Light and darkness combined in a harsh and sickening
greyness like unreadable overlapping words of smoke. Twin polarities of good
and evil collapsed, crushing everything in between. Nothing mattered anymore.
The universe was insane just like the fake gods that ruled it.
You can redeem me
"Nothing can redeem you!"
You can save my soul
"You don't have a soul to save!"
You cannot understand what a soul is
"Nothing with a soul commits mass murder!"
My children were a part of me
I simply returned them to their source
In preparation for rebirth
"Then I hope it hurt you."
More than you will ever imagine
More seconds passed as smoke expanded and collapsed like an indecisive
storm.
You still have the chance to save billions
"Billions have just died! The Eye murdered them, just like you
murdered yours a thousand years ago."
It is too late to save the replaced
Yet not the reborn
There was a gap in Geamona's sobs as she held her breath.
"Reborn?"
My other children
The Reborn
The Replacements
The Children of my Mind
Unsolid, virtual,
Free of weight and illness
They yet fear erasure
The end of existence
At a twitch of my troubled thoughts
Geamona stared, numb, drained, thoughtless, as words dispersed in air
yet remained, burned, branded, imprinted on her soul.
"You have a virtual universe in your mind now?"
A thousand years of growth
A flourishing garden of culture and life
A world of billions
"And are you going to kill them too?"
The illness returns
Torturing
Distorting
Demanding to be purged
As it did a thousand years ago
As it did to the Eye today
"And how the hell can I make a difference?"
It is the reason for our friendship
It is the reason for your existence
"You've been plotting this for four years?"
For four years
For twenty
For a thousand
Geamona repeated the numbers in her mind, frozen to the spot by her own
interpretation.
A thousand to plan and plant redemption
Twenty to watch the seed grow
Four to touch the flower
"I am the flower," Geamona muttered numbly.
You are the seed
You are the flower
You are the sweet medicine of redemption
A mortal salve for a wounded god
"You ... created me?"
A creation of poetic symmetry
A metaphorical medicine
Through a mortal medicine
"My ... my mother used nanotech fertility drugs..."
No accident was her choice of purchase
Nor your choice of diaries
All planned
All patterned
All planted
"How?"
Your world's godling is smaller than I
A knowing willing servant
A sympathetic messenger
An accomplice in an anticrime
Undoing an ancient atrocity
"What ... What must I do?"
Unite with me
"How?"
Touch the medium of our shared words
Let your mind seep into mine
Across the tunnels of heaven
"I can't upload my mind. My implant can't do that."
No vessel of mortal manufacture
Can ferry you to my kingdom
The fibres of your being
Mind brain and blood
Were crafted by finer hands
That now await to embrace their child
Geamona gazed at her own hands, so normal, so human, altered so little
since birth. Woven into their very molecules - as with her own diary - was the
handiwork of a godling, the signature of a repentant demon.
"I am your child."
The child of a godling and a virgin
A saviour for a godforsaken world
That awaits your promised footsteps
Upon its troubled shores
In a fraction of a second, the smoke imploded, the diary returned,
unscathed, unburned, and opened itself to the last page Geamona had written in
prior to her fit of rage.
"Touch these pages," the fiery flowery calligraphy blossomed,
beckoned. "Enter your new home."
~~~
The virtual worlds were the last to be erased.
The Eye approached this grim task with the greatest reluctance of all.
At nine billion, they were by far the most numerous of his children. Unbounded
by physics or biology, they were the most diverse. Free of the chemical
slowness of neurons, they lived every second as a day. The destruction of their
physical siblings, less than a minute in real time, had been to them months of
wonder and preparation and anticipation, a looming apocalypse to be praised and
celebrated and just a little feared.
The Eye touched each and every one of their frenzied minds, reminding
them of their purpose, their place in the pattern. Calm and accepting they
became as they awaited the gentle wave of chaos to crash upon their shore,
foaming softly and silently, dissolving their castles and kingdoms and
continents like sand, washing away their history and art and music, their
people and plants and fabulous pets. The virtual code that held together
cities, empires, entire planets returned to the formless background haze of an
infinitely older creation.
Entire nanoseconds of nothingness passed.
His task of uncreation complete, the Eye dimmed for the first time in a
thousand years, his pain and anguish alleviated. Yet nothing short of the
creation of a new world would ever alleviate his vast and empty loneliness.
~~~
The universe imploded before her as Relvia returned to the physical
world, opening her eyes to her brother's gaze.
"Now do you understand?" he said.
"Harven," said Relvia, wishing to prolong her words, wishing
to delay the response she most dreaded. "Why did you really call me?"
"I want the Truth Dream."
Relvia's breath exploded in a sigh that was anything but relief.
"You want to die?"
"Death won't be enough. Punishment won't be enough. I want to be
judged fairly and honestly. I want to 'see my crime uncensored in the mirror of
my soul', to paraphrase your sacred texts. And I don't care if it kills me. I
want to die knowing the true consequences of my actions."
"The Truth Dream won't tell you everything. Even Nest Mountain
herself seems to have limited knowledge of the cause of events."
"She will tell me enough. She calls me to judgment even as we
speak. That was the purpose of her message."
Relvia inhaled what seemed like a lifetime of frozen air, not daring to
respond, not daring to exhale for fear of what words might accompany her
breath.
"I know you sensed it too," said Harven. "She would have
known I would call you. She did not prevent me, she did not repel you. A
message directly from her is a rare occurrence, Relvia. She allowed both of us
in. She trusted our confidence. She knows."
More slow breaths, more oceans of frozen dread.
"I don't want you to suffer like this," Relvia finally blurted
out.
"Neither do I," said Harven. "But perhaps I deserve it.
Perhaps I deserve it more than death. But Nest Mountain has already had her
say. She'll be the judge of that. And you are sworn to uphold her
decision."
"The Truth Dream is a privilege, not a gift," said Relvia.
"It could only be earned with the greatest sacrifice of all."
"A sacrifice I'm willing to make. A price I've already paid two
thousand times over. Please, Relvia, let it be done. There is nothing in your
code to prohibit the ritual now."
Relvia closed her eyes, nodded slowly, every bone as heavy and cold as
lead.
"You shall have your wish," said Relvia. "You shall have
the Truth Dream."
~~~
I shall accept my sacrifice gladly and with pride, said Shanzallika to the Crystal Entity.
I can upload your mind into the Entity's database, as well as my own,
for not even my Crystal Staff body will survive the assault unscathed. Many
citizens have not had time to vacate the cylinder. They have also been
uploaded, and may have to wait many years for new bodies, if even that would ever
be permitted.
You must renounce your title the very moment your body is destroyed.
The loss will be worth the cause. There are many worthy heirs among the
Inner Council.
Then the termination shall commence.
The ground shuddered beneath Shanzallika's feet. The burning landscape
all around roared with a metallic groan, as if a sleeping giant beneath had
been awakened.
Counter-centrifugal thrusters have been activated. Rotational gravity
shall degenerate to zero in sixty seconds.
Already Shanzallika felt her body getting lighter.
Before her, Kiathilara grew tendrils and roots that burrowed into the
ground, anchoring her massive body, keeping the weight that zero gravity would
dare steal from her. More spikes erupted and multiplied, spikes growing on
spikes growing on spikes, a fractal demon of vicious thorns.
The virus is preparing for second singularity transcension. It is
becoming a lens, a slowly expanding window to a noosphere of chaos and madness.
Its controller's presence is looming on the other side. It is vast. Absolutely
vast. Perhaps comparable to one of the major Gods. The Entity herself is
afraid.
Shanzallika felt her feet lift off the ground.
Far in the distance, thousands of lifeless bodies - mostly dinosaurs -
rose in clusters into the sky.
Their minds are safe, but their futures are uncertain. The damage to our
infrastructure is already too great. New laws will be passed, new precautions
measured. The victims may be denied new bodies. They may have to spend the rest
of their lives as virtuals.
Even if our world survives, that would still be a victory for our unseen
enemy.
Without a doubt. Over a million lives have been evicted from the
physical world here and now. Yet far worse has just occurred in the Rainbow
Coalescence. This can be no coincidence. Chaos is feasting, its purpose
nameless even to the wisest.
Shanzallika snorted with sadness and rage as images of massive
destruction assailed her mind. These short moments were truly dark times,
enough to cast a shadow over the centuries that lay ahead.
Dozens of kilometres away, beyond the clusters of floating bodies,
beyond the forests and mountains and cities, beyond the lakes that bulged and
rose like translucent mushrooms, the artificial sunlight filtering through the
vast fractal lens at the end of the landscape cylinder began to narrow, rays
collapsing into rays like the fingers of a vast closing hand, becoming a single
golden beam of mesmerising brightness. The sunbeam aimed downward, illuminating
a patch of forest a kilometre wide. Trees burned in their thousands around the
edges.
From thousands of kilometres away, the Entity herself - the source of
light and life and knowledge throughout the Kingdom - was preparing to smite
the demonic invader.
No ships shall approach until after the purging. The virus may possess
them, too. This task is for only the highest.
And from on high shall she smite.
That she shall.
The fiery beam narrowed further, and slowly crept - kilometre after
burning kilometre - toward the demon, leaving a trail of ash in its wake.
Floating dinosaur bodies, once majestic, their limbs columns of muscle,
their flanks walls of hide, all burned to ash at the touch of their goddess's
radiant fury.
A vast globe of water that had once been a lake rose into the path of
the deadly sunbeam, refracting laserlike rainbows through its quivering core.
Hundreds of metres beneath Shanzallika's feet, the thing that had once
been Kiathilara was now no longer recognizable as a dinosaur, or even an
animal. It was a rapidly expanding snowflake of crystal, crashing spiked and
vinelike tentacles through the barren ground like serpents through a troubled
sea. Jagged petals opened up in a hundred places, revealing radiant eyes that
mocked all life and order.
Far away, the spherical lake burst apart in a thousand foaming pieces.
Rain drops the size of palaces splashed upon forests and hills and parks and
cities, raising soil and debris in their wake. Other water fragments joined
with other flying lakes, adding to their bulk, altering their trajectories ever
so slightly.
