The Wandering World

by B C Woodruff

  “I will support you with whatever you feel you need to do.” Jules let out a puff of purple air. It wasn’t nicotine-laced. It was essentially vapour at this point, but the sensation still helped stave off real addictions to harder pharmaceuticals like mood stabilizers.

  Miranda smiled, thinking of her daughter across the stretch of space, content that they were going to spend that dream-future together. She couldn’t have known what was looming around the corner.

  Outside the effective radar range of the Cloudrunner, the freelancer mining ship attached itself to the station’s starboard cast line. War was not so far away after all.

  “I’ll start to draw up the –” Jules was cut off by an impact somewhere far away but close enough that he was thrown across the floor, tumbling through debris and bodies blown in from the hallway. Buckling as its suspensor fields failed, the Aarth-Clan’s sole habitat plummeted through the sulfur clouds. Sirens blazed. Screams were muffled. Thrusters fired.

  The lights flickered out and the smell Miranda had been so eager to escape swam through her nostrils and clogged her throat. She would never have the chance to learn about her daughter. She would never get to bring more lives into the world or watch them grow. Down they went, like a ship of old Earth caught in a great tempest. As a thousand souls winked out of existence, Miranda realized something – that no matter what faction claimed responsibility for her death, and no matter how the Commission responded, Venus would always win in the end.

  THE WANDERING WORLD

  “Sereh would have appreciated this. It’s a shame she decided to retire. I ask myself, though, would she be capable of laughing in the face of this one? You know, like she always claimed she could. Would she have been able to look over True Law 12.3B and know what to do here? If we had listened to her more closely... would he have found a loophole to apply? Gods be damned, it’s almost ironic, really.” He waited. “Hello? What, no pithy comment this time?” A symphony of crickets would not have been uncalled for. Or perhaps a tumbleweed rounding the corner and making its way across the blue-tinted floor. He imagined the march of a chirping chorus accompanied by the gentle brush of a tumbleweed, the strains of an impossible orchestra echoing slightly as it processed out of the Emergence Chamber.

  None of that happened. Auxiliary-Ceras was speaking to himself, figuratively and literally, what with his Primary on the other end ensuring that the transfer was a clean, uncontaminated one. For most people this may have seemed unusual, but for Ceras, both versions of him, it was well within his understanding of ‘normal’.

  The version of himself that manifested here was not surprised, then, that the hyperfeed remained quiet. “We’re good, aren’t we?” the Auxiliary-Ceras sighed, wondering if his Primary had somehow taken offense at his need for reassurance.

  While it was not surprise that he felt, it was certainly a species of disappointment. There aren’t many occasions when you can find out what you really think of yourself. But the Council didn’t care much for those types of conversations. And time was running out.

  “What I am trying to say is that we are in a predicament that leaves very little room for error.” The Crusade ship, having received its orders the moment Aux-Ceras had been born, had already set a course and was en route to the destination now. Its ferromorphic hull had seamlessly exchanged the insignia of the Continuous Realms, which carried its share of political baggage, for the red and gold ensign of Kilgore, Ceras’ home sector and one with a neutral standing toward the parties in question.

  His trip, deemed a priority for interspatial politics, meant he was allowed to use the DeepString to skip the years of travel that conventional craft would require. This came at considerable expense to the Council but ensured an audience in mere hours, Earth Standard Time (EST), with the opposition’s arbiter – a renegade whose reckless defiance, if the rumors were true, could threaten civilization itself.

  It was, however you cared to look at the situation, in the best interest of the Realms to resolve the issue quickly and with as little wasted energy, beyond this specific allowance, as possible. The Council’s most trusted agents could not be ignored. Although the specifics varied in each report, something was about to happen, and nothing had served the Realms better over the millennia than vigilance.

  Somewhere, back near Old Earth, Ceras Prime had probably been excused from the DeepString transfer centre. He was probably on his way to have dinner or something, trying to keep from doing too many things so as to keep his mind relatively clear for a clean reintegration later on.

  Again, standard procedure for the use of Parallels like Aux-Ceras. When the assignment was completed to the satisfaction of the Council, they would only need to clip the DeepString on the Auxiliary's end. Then, this consciousness would be carried back across the curvature of space, flowing within the Span.

  In a short while, this incarnation of Ceras would be subsumed into the dominant Primary along with all memory of its journey – and the fewer experiences the Primary had in the meantime, the less of a hassle it would be to sort out and integrate the Auxiliary memories.

  Utilizing the DeepString, however, required payment. Orchestrated with careful consideration and mathematical precision elsewhere in the Realms to offset the cost that supraluminal travel would otherwise incur. A payment in energy. A convenience tax. The principles underpinning the exchange were quite sound and understood – but also, without special permission from the True Justice himself, quite illegal. With punishment in the form of permanent death.

  After all, relativity would demand balance. Every civilization had different ways of settling the tab, as it were. The Ghora simply refused to decelerate outside of dense dark matter fields, although early enthusiasm for the technique had severely depleted the clouds of their home sector, guaranteeing that all but the most important craft made one-way trips. The vanguard wardrones of the Drathi turned FTL equalization into a weapon, typically destroying a gas giant or two to send gravitational shockwaves (and rogue moons) through their enemies’ solar systems. And the generation ships of the Lauphrey were designed with such unimaginable redundancy that 90% of the craft’s mass (crew included) could be subsumed into energy with negligible impact on spaceworthiness or the colonists’ genetic diversity. But these were all localized phenomena limited by the crass demands of conventional spacecraft design. Only the Continuous Realms and its closest allies could use the Span to its fullest potential. All that an agent of the Realms needed to travel within the Span was the sanction of the True Justice, cooperation from the Bank, and a friendly ship with a DeepString transceiver and matter synth on the other end. That, and a healthy enthusiasm for sending a copy of one’s consciousness across the vacuum of space.

  The Continuous Bank had plotted the equalizing event for this specific trip somewhere near the edge of the Eastern Arm Expanse, nearest to where the Span touches the Shatter. Uninhabited by any starfaring race, unsuited for sublight travel – in short, astronomically insignificant. It had been chosen through an n-dimensional flowchart of Commissioned Powers and due process, and all the legal and philosophical terms that helped reconcile humanity with the esoteric principles of Alt-Physics. It was a process that had been written into the Amendment. Any use of the DeepString was meticulously documented.

  The reach of the True Justice was so complete, and DeepString technology so closely guarded, that vanishingly few made the journey without his personal approval. It was difficult, despite the Realms’ vast computational resources dedicated to calculating the cost of DeepString use, to accurately predict how much the universe would ask for in exchange for tricking it into doing the impossible.

  You can’t really negotiate with the universe.

  Yes, it is complicated. Yes, it is strange. It is a whole slew of other things more troubling than that. There is little doubt that even a carefully moderated panel of the technicians, scientists, and bankers responsible for Aux-Ceras’ two-way trip across the Span could even begin to provide a comprehensive ex
planation for how or why the process worked.

  But there it is. It works! So, on rare occasions like this one, the leader of the Continuous Realms of Humanity, the True Justice, made... alterations to the areas within the Span and voila here he was, halfway across the galaxy, setting up meetings between those who demanded True Justice and those who insisted on rejecting it.

  Moments before Aux-Ceras came into being, a perfect copy of Ceras’ consciousness emerged from the DeepString pathways to be compiled and mapped onto a mass of polyform gel in a matter synth tube. Guided by an additional packet of biomorphic data, it took shape and, for all intents and purposes, became the same person as the Ceras back at the Council’s Precinct deep within the Shroud. Of course, there were compromises. Polyform gel could only emulate biology, and didn’t hold up to close medical scrutiny. But since this was far from a first contact situation, the Council agreed that it would have a negligible effect on his mission.

  After Ceras’ new window into the universe woke up, it was entangled through the DeepString with his Primary. It’s not that they could connect or communicate. Rather, it ensured that if calamity were to arise, this twin consciousness would be pulled across the veil that suffuses the galaxy, the Span, and like a neuron firing from one edge of a grand brain to a specific point far and away – far and away – with experiences and information intact, back to the original mind.

  The alternative was multiplicity. Although certain civilizations had no qualms about permanently duplicating a human consciousness, the Continuous Realms believed that however rare the process was, and however far afield a copy might go, this so-called anabranch must return in time or risk violating the sanctity of the self.

  But in the meantime, this new Ceras was lying to the universe, and It didn’t take kindly to those who messed around with Its established regulations, parameters, and realities – especially those who thumbed their noses at the speed of light so brazenly. Universal relativistic forces, the silent wardens of the space between stars and atoms alike, would be after him regardless of the Bank’s efforts to pay the debt using some other reference point. But they would leave him alone if his sins against causality were resolved quickly...

  Otherwise: what does it look like when the universe tries to balance the equation itself? Present-day citizens of the Continuous Realms needed only look to the Eastern Arm of the galaxy to see what could happen to those who exploited phenomena they barely understood.

  Ceras had to be fast or his rejection of universal law would be expunged, which meant him, of course, along with anything or anyone in the vicinity during the ‘correction’.

  Luckily, that sort of thing didn’t happen often. There would be signs as the bill came due.

  But not much time to rectify the situation before:

  Boom!

  That’s why the Bank was founded, after all: to account for humanity messing around with forces that they had some but not complete control over.

  If a spontaneous and unmediated equalization event destroyed Aux-Ceras, the consequences for his Primary would be grave.

  Being removed from reality, according to those who have watched it happen, does not look particularly painless.

  People tend to scream.

  So there you have it: Ceras had to resolve the conflict quickly or risk the wrath of the universe.

  There were less egocentric reasons to get it resolved quickly, too. No one wanted to deal with another Long War, or to worry about the consequences of forbidden breakthroughs in FTL technology. But even so, it seemed likely that such technologies had been developed, and as unified as the Realms claimed to be, it was likewise possible that some of the further colonies had imagined a world beyond the Council’s reach. If the secrets of the Span couldn’t be controlled, diplomats like Ceras could at least try to keep fingers, talons, and pseudopods off the big red button.

  Ceras had considered plenty of this in his lifetime.

  Aux-Ceras massaged his recently formed throat and stretched out his muscles before settling into the captain’s chair...

  = WE HAVE ARRIVED, Ceras. =

  The onboard intelligence that had calculated the last leg of his voyage had been given a deep and masculine voice. Unlike the one that had sent him here, which had been downright seductive.

  Yet both had acted with perfect precision. The ship he had just appeared on had nearly arrived.

  Umber, the Sunless World. It wasn’t the only of its kind, so far as the Continuous Realms understood it. Indeed, many travelers had chosen to explore the uncharted frontiers the universe from the surface of free-floating worlds like Umber. Some of these so-called rogue planets had long ago lost their host star, while others were deliberately untethered by intrepid adventurers seeking the freedom that only the space beyond the Span could offer.

  Yet unlike many of the civilizations within the Span that had openly defied the will of the Council, Umber had kept the exact nature of its sedition secret – and Continuous Laws applied only to objective reality, not rumor and innuendo.

  Aux-Ceras needed to discover the truth.

  After some silent negotiations between his ship and Umber’s orbital network concluded, a direct line opened to his host, Deridan Maxwell, Master of Umber. “Welcome to our world, Arbiter Ceras. We appreciate that you have taken the time to join us and that the True Justice recognizes the importance of dialogue between our two worlds. I welcome you follow our escort wing to the landing area in the capital. It should join you shortly.”

  “I am humbled to be here, Host and Master; I am sure that your home will be a welcome change from the political theatre of the Continuous Realms. I hope we can find a quick and mutually beneficial resolution to our dispute.”

  “Likewise. Yet, we shall also see. May I ask you a favor before you complete the landing protocols?”

  “Please.”

  “I am familiar with the Crusade starship class, Arbiter Ceras, and would ask that you power down the ship’s core prior to entering our gravitational field. It is, as you might understand, in both our interests that there be trust built prior to your arrival. We have no reason to believe your word, nor have we any reason to acknowledge the authority of the Continuous Realms, if there isn’t some transparency on your side.”

  Not many still understood the principles underlying the millennia-old Crusade, and this surprise turn could make his mission more difficult. Nevertheless, Aux-Ceras was quite prepared to change his tactics; he wouldn’t have been much of a negotiator otherwise.

  “Of course, Host and Master. This will be done.”

  While he waited for the escort to arrive, Ceras made a tour of the old Crusade ship. It had long ago traveled the length that he had cheated, towing behind it the Span, the synthetic quantum web that lesser civilizations called a corruption of spacetime, but all acknowledged as one of the galaxy’s great wonders. It was but one of countless more that had spread across the galaxy as fast as conventional engines allowed.

  It was their fate to travel on their paths forever and ever. But after the Long War, all such ships were stopped in place – to be used only to facilitate border negotiations, but never again to emit the energy to spread the Span further.

  The ship had spent its adolescence here, nestled in a Lagrange point around a distant, foreign star. It would be easy to believe that a hundred thousand years had lapped at its heels. And yet it waited. At the edge of the Continuous Realms, awaiting orders from those who might call upon it one day.

  If you had a sense of the compromises a self-aware ship needed to make over the millennia to maintain itself, you would have likely said that it looked its age. Ceras had been just a boy when the last fleet of Crusade ships were sent off on their journeys, in a time before the twilight of the Long War. Before the survivors witnessed the signing and establishment of True Law, the abolition of Span expansion, and the Council’s 500-year moratorium on DeepString development and use.

  Oh, if only you had been there, friends, and witnessed the Co
llapse – the annihilation of the Eastern Arm of the Way Galaxy (what only the most hidebound historians call the Milky Way) – you would understand why the price for using the technology was so high.

  You would understand why it inspired such fear. And why such sacrifices were made to control it.

  The screams of those in the Shatter, that vast, impossible grave, would, if they could, travel the space between stars.

  It was not always used for such evil, of course. Most of Ceras’ family had been in DeepString transit when that happened, cruising out to the Eastern Frontier where the Realms had yet to make its presence known.

  A place without war. A place free from their terrible ambition and their “True Justice”. They are remembered only as victims of the Shatter now. And in the uncounted centuries since, he had forgotten the look of their faces and the sound of their voices. But not the pain of their loss. That has, like a scar, marked him for all of time.

  He had been lucky, in contrast, to have been drafted to work in gestalt form with the other experts whose minds the Continuous believed would serve in unravelling the Last Great Mystery.

  Now, so long after the end of the Long War, the answer still remains out of reach.

  By any reasonable standard, the Crusade ship had long since exceeded its allotted lifespan. That it still functioned at all was a testament to the onboard intelligence’s talent for self-preservation, which it had honed to a razor’s edge over the centuries. If raw elements could talk, Ceras might have had some very enlightening conversations. But they remained silent, and the ship volunteered little about its past.

  Yet a being is more than the sum of its parts, and through years of need and plenty, the Central Intelligence had matured – if not decayed – into something altogether different. Its sinister-sounding vocal circuits only told a fraction of the tale.