by Drew Cordell
Marwin closed the door, wheeled me over to his side of the desk, and placed a metal orb on the ground. A bright blue light ignited on the surface, and a strange bubble material formed a sphere on the ground a few feet in diameter. It shimmered like a bubble of soap, but had a dark, grainy texture underneath the outer sheen. Smiling, Marwin took a pen from my desk and dropped it on the stone floor outside of the bubble where it clattered away with a crack. Picking it up from the ground, he dropped it into the sphere where it hit the ground silently.
“Marvelous tech,” he said as he pushed me into the bubble. It strained against my face before allowing me to pass inside and reforming. The inside of the bubble, for whatever reason, smelled like lemon. Marwin entered the bubble and sat in the chair across from me.
“Now we can talk in private. We’ve got to assume that Infinitum is always listening. If it overhears anything, we will lose what faint sliver of hope we have for defeating it. Now—”
“Is Caeldra alive?” I blurted, unable to control myself.
“I spoke with Edgar three days ago. She is alive and well, though the Champions are struggling for survival right now. She’s not safe, but then again, none of us are.”
Relief flooded my body. If Marwin was telling the truth, then Infinitum had lied. I had to believe Caeldra was still alive, but I also had to stay objective and get answers from Marwin. “How do you know the Champions?”
“I’ve been working with the Champions for a couple of years now. Only the Council knows of my affiliation, and it’s a rather indirect one, I’m afraid. I learned of the Guild during a run to bust a smuggling ring. Edgar was at the scene, and he convinced me to go grab a coffee. Truth be told, I lost sight of Absolute Knowledge when I began my work in the Slums. It isn’t right how those people are treated as products while we live in such luxury. The luxury is nice, grant you, but I wanted to do whatever I could to make a difference. Edgar and I established a mutual trust over time and set up a remote conference in which I joined the Guild’s rank in official capacity. It’s a delicate position, mind you, especially since I’m an Inquisitor.”
“Name the Council members, please,” I said.
He named them and smiled in admiration at my guarded attitude.
“Now, I know Mary is pissed at you, but you can’t tell her anything other than you’re working with a group that wants to destroy Infinitum. If she learns the names of anyone else in the Guild or the location of Mindshift, everything could be lost. Infinitum may have cut support to the Slums, but it can’t annihilate the level completely until it finds Mindshift. You somehow protected that information when you were in the chair, so we owe you a great debt in saving many lives.”
“I don’t know what I did or how I did it, I was just trying to stay alive—to get Mary out of there.”
“You learned well in your training with Caeldra and Edgar, but you’ve got a lot to improve on if Infinitum decides to attack again with a physical form. Once you’ve recovered from your injuries, I will continue your combat training. I’ll personally see to it your house is fitted with an armory and you’ve got armor like my own available. I’m also going to see about recruiting you as a deputy under me, so you’ll be able to carry a weapon in public.”
“Do we have a plan? How can we help the Slums?” I asked.
Marwin frowned. “We’re just trying to do some damage control at this point. If we can continue to fight back against Infinitum and hide Mindshift, then it can’t nuke the Slums and do more harm elsewhere. Speaking of which, do you know where it is?” he asked.
I did remember, but I didn’t want to tell him. Caeldra knew as well as I did and surely would have told Edgar. I decided to face the question head on. “Caeldra would have told Edgar where it was; she knew as well,” I responded, careful with my words. His question felt off, like a trap.
“She did tell him; Edgar just hasn’t told me. We aren’t saying anything that would compromise sensitive information over comms. Infinitum doesn’t have the infrastructure to send bots into the Undercity, so the Guild is safe for the time being.”
I frowned, but there seemed to be truth in everything he said. “The last we heard it was being transported to the Guild by a Scavenger Guild convoy. We assumed we were betrayed for the reward and that’s how you found us. That’s all I know.”
“They did sell us your position, but claimed you didn’t have any gear with you. I guess they assumed you’d be dead, and by shipping your gear to the Guild Hall, they’d prove they were loyal and not responsible for the abduction.”
“That makes sense,” I said, the pieces starting to fall into place. “So what can we do here to help the Slums?”
“We’ll try to keep you and Mary safe and look for opportunities to disrupt Infinitum as we go. We need to earn Adrihel’s favor and try to sway his decisions, but he can’t know the truth yet. If he learns about Infinitum, then Infinitum will fight back harder than we could ever imagine. If Infinitum knows it’s going to lose, it’s going to take us all down with it and no one will win.”
“What if we shut down the Omniscience Engine, or at least try to slow it down?” I asked, dragging my finger across the sticky surface of the noise-cancelling bubble and admiring the strange tech.
“That’s not really an option right now. If we shut it down, Infinitum could destroy the Mids and Slums with the reactors which would act like nuclear bombs. The entire human population would be reduced to a few thousand. I also don’t think it would sit idly by while we shut it down. There’s a lengthy process that requires a unanimous decision from all the houses. As for slowing it down, Infinitum has already deemed the Absolute Knowledge project far enough along to justify millions of deaths, so we need to sit tight and gain favor with Adrihel. We’re just stalling at this point and trying to give the Champions time to recover Mindshift and devise a new plan.”
I couldn’t think of a single advantage we had over Infinitum other than I had something it didn’t—something it wanted.
“My hope is you’re prepared in case I need to send you to the Slums to relay information we discover here. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but it might be essential in the future. In any case, I’ll do whatever I can to protect you and Mary. I’ve already given her a Nanotech module that is concealed on her new hand; I’ve got yours with me as well. Since you lost your arm, you’ll have a bit more coverage in terms of what you can generate and how much damage you can withstand. Nanotech is still illegal here, and we need you to blend in, so it’s only going to be on your arm where the tech can mask its presence.”
He took out a Nanotech module and small USB 6.0 chip. The module latched onto my arm and digitized, blending into the metal of my prosthetic. He used a small tool kit to open the latch housing the chips on my arm and inserted a microchip into one of the empty slots. I felt a jolt of energy through the arm as it loaded the software.
“Is it connected?” I asked.
“Give it a go and try to make something,” he said as he closed the small hatch on the bottom of my arm. “We’ll adjust the sensitivity if needed, but it should match the settings of your prosthetic.”
I focused my mind and large blades formed on my fingers. I used the edge on one of them to shave a few hairs off my human arm. Nanotech formed some damn sharp blades. I refocused and created a climbing hook, and then a sword. It was a lot different from the Nanotech I was used to and couldn’t move past my robotic arm. Still, it would be much more useful and provide extra protection should I need it.
“If you get shot at, then it’s going to draw the shots to the Nanotech like steel to a magnet; that module is more potent than the stuff you’re used to. For the most part, it will only draw shots that would hit you anyway, but it might pull a few that had no business hitting you in the first place. It isn’t as durable, but it will recharge itself from your cybernetic battery if the power gets low. The downside is that if you blow your module, then you won’t have much power left to control your prostheti
c so try not to do that.”
“How long will it last?” I asked, rotating my hand and appraising the fascinating tech.
“A long time if you don’t get shot. Ten or fifteen hits otherwise, varying with weapon caliber, of course. It won’t do any good against bullets or kinetic blasts, but Olympus moved away from that tech a long time ago.”
“Thanks, Marwin.”
“Oh, and you may carry this,” he said as he gave me a small holstered gun.
I drew the weapon and was shocked to see it wasn’t a gun at all. It was a small electric stunner that looked like it’d be questionable protection against a can of soup. I gawked at the miserable device.
“It can knock out an unshielded Golem class robot if you can believe it. Against anything non-robotic, it’s a piece of crap and you’d be better off throwing it at them,” he said.
Shrugging, I attached the small holster to my belt and pulled my shirt over the pitiful stun gun. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Anyway, let’s try to limit our conversations as much as possible until things come up. Infinitum is probably too smart to fall for my parlor trick again, so we need to be careful. The more we talk, the more antsy it will get. We don’t want to stir up trouble we don’t need until we’re certain it’s worth the risk. Obviously, at dinner tonight, we’re not to talk about anything other than the accepted facts of what happened. I’ve prepared a brief for you that you need to study. Again, be careful what you say to Mary. Try to fix things, but don’t put her in any more danger than she’s already in.” He slipped me a piece of paper, the report from the attack.
“All right. Thanks, Marwin,” I said as I took the paper. “I remember you saying I was generating Paragon Thoughts every time I see colors and shapes. You also said they’re coordinates in space and time. What does that mean?”
Marwin sighed. “I can’t begin to even comprehend the mechanics of how it all works, but Paragon Thoughts act as a beacon for the Omniscience Engine. When a Paragon Thought is established, the system is able to decode a specific signal of unknown origin coming from a location in space defined in the Paragon Thought. We don’t know where the signals come from, but they bring huge technological innovation and drive the project forward. They also include instructions of data to broadcast on the same frequency, specific packets of information. It’s all automated, and while the engineers who are working on the project know the basics of what’s happening, they can’t see exactly what’s getting sent out or any of the code that is running to make it all work. The Omniscience Engine is completely autonomous now, and the engineers only work on repairing infrastructure and evaluating project results to send to Adrihel and his staff.”
“Can we interpret the data in these signals?”
“No, the Omniscience Engine is the only thing that can decode them. We wouldn’t even know it broadcast information back if it weren’t for the satellites we had to build to communicate with our towers here in Olympus.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What could it be communicating with? Is there even anything out there?”
“I have no idea, Jake. I’m not entirely sure the Omniscience Engine believes in aliens either. What I do know, is that aside from the satellites and exchange of unknown information, the Omniscience Engine hasn’t put any emphasis on space exploration. It’s as if it thinks it can achieve Absolute Knowledge on Earth, or knows the entire project is impossible. We also have no idea where the signals are coming from.”
Marwin paused, looking shaken. “Infinitum is very real, you know that now as well as I do. I’ve known about Infinitum for years after it confronted me before a mission in the Slums, but I didn’t think it had a physical form. It told me it would kill my daughter if I told anyone,” Marwin stammered. “I lost my daughter and my wife in an airship crash several years back. They say it was an accident—spontaneous engine failure, but I know the truth. I knew your father, and he led Edgar to me in the first place. Your father was a brilliant man, and he was part of the reason why I decided I wanted to make a difference—why I wanted to live in a better world. I’ve been working against Infinitum ever since.”
“Wow. I’m so sorry, Marwin,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. I didn’t say anything about my father, not sure if I should mention the robot that had claimed to be him or not.
“It was a long time ago. What matters is we have some time to catch our breath and try to figure out how we are going to be ready for Infinitum because it will be back. I’m also somewhat Unbound like yourself, but I don’t possess your mental affinity. I certainly don’t have the ability to generate Paragon Thoughts from thin air like you. If Infinitum somehow gains the ability to synthesize Paragon Thoughts, it won’t have any reason to keep anyone alive. In Infinitum’s eyes, we’re both an asset and liability that needs to be managed. If it can synthesize Paragon Thoughts by itself, then we’re all dead.”
“Do you know of anyone else who can do what I do?”
“No; however, the way you describe it does sound like something Master Aarlen described observing from his mentor. It’s not possible for you to talk to Master Aarlen right now, but it might be something we work toward in the future. If anyone can help you, it would be him. We’ve spoken too long already. I know there is still so much to talk about, but we need to be careful. We’ll speak again soon, Jake.”
Marwin deactivated the sphere and took a final swig of his modified coffee. I finished off my mug with a grimace; neither of us had touched the crackers.
“Thank you for the coffee. It was rather strong,” he said as he gave me a wink.
Marwin left and Bracken walked alongside me as I wheeled myself toward the main living room, questions still reeling through my head.
“I’m afraid you’ve got another guest. She arrived without announcement. Given her status, I thought it unwise to turn her away seeing as though we’ve got nothing else scheduled until this evening,” Bracken said, caution in his voice.
“Who?” I asked, but I already saw her waiting on one of the couches, smiling at me.
Baroness Jexus Brae stood as she saw me and started walking over. She was wearing dark gray jeans and a bright, low-cut blouse that wasn’t suitable for winter. I assumed she had taken off her coat.
Giving her my best smile, I wheeled myself over to greet her.
“Baron Ashton,” she said as she walked over and kissed me on the cheek. I started to try to get up, but she motioned for me to stop and took her seat again.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Baroness?” I asked.
“I just wanted to check on you. I’m so grateful you are healing well. Bracken tells me you will be on your feet soon,” she said as she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I also have reason to believe the official report of what occurred at the Omniscience Engine Facility wasn’t entirely accurate. I don’t think someone from the Slums could get to Olympus then hack the most advanced computer network ever built.”
Marwin’s official report of what had happened was still in my pocket. I hadn’t read it yet, so I needed to be careful. I kept a straight face and appraised her, avoiding the temptation of glancing down her shirt. “I’m afraid I don’t remember much. My injuries have made the memories blurry,” I responded.
“Of course, but don’t you think it was a little strange that someone from the Slums would be able to develop technology Infinitum only recently discovered?” she asked.
I felt my face go slack with the mention of the name. “Excuse me?” I asked.
“I just don’t think it’s likely someone in the Slums developed technology that the Omniscience Engine recently developed,” she said, giving me a puzzling look.
“Did you say Infinitum?” I asked. My head was swimming. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and the room felt hot.
“No? What is that?” she asked. “Are you feeling well, Baron?”
I wasn’t. I was dizzy and despite the fact I was sitting in my wheelchair, I felt like I was going to fall
at any moment. The room seemed to be spinning.
A sudden lurch in my stomach warned me I was about vomit, and I frantically dove out of the chair and landed on my stomach on the ground facing away from Jex. I couldn’t hold it any longer and vomited on the floor, reliving the tight tension in my stomach and easing some of the dizziness I felt. Jex was yelling, and Bracken and the medical robots rushed to my side to help me up.
“Alcohol,” one of the robots said. “He’ll be all right, but you need to keep him from drinking while he’s on his meds,” the robot told Bracken.
I looked back and forth between Bracken, the robots, and Jex who were all staring at me. Jex wore a look of startled curiosity, the robots looked like robots, and Bracken looked furious.
“You drank alcohol? I thought you two were drinking coffee!” Bracken shouted with rage in his voice. The blank look on my face must have given it away. “Inquisitor Zaris will be getting quite the earful when I see him later,” Bracken fumed. “Coffee mixed with alcohol? Really, Baron Ashton?”
Jex was smiling now. “Now, Bracken, I’m sure you have tried something equally questionable in your youth. Marwin’s tastes are a bit odd, however,” she added, stifling a giggle. “I wouldn’t blame the young Baron for this one; this has Baron Zaris’ name written all over it.”
The anger faded from Bracken’s face. The medical robots helped me back into the chair and some of the house robots headed over to clean the mess. The robot wheeled me to one of the bathrooms in the hall so I could rinse out my mouth and wash my face before returning to Bracken and Jex.
“No more alcohol until you’re off your medicine, Baron. I suppose it was an oversight to leave it within reach in your study with your current condition, so I’m just as much to blame. Still, you need to be more cautious,” Bracken said.
He was right. The effects of the two substances didn’t agree at all, and I had been careless to mention Infinitum’s name, still unsure whether or not Jex had specifically referenced it.
