by Zack Jordan
She is nothing but an Observer.
Sarya screams within herself and uses every iota of strength in her to struggle. Out there, where her body is, she feels herself twitch slightly. But it’s not herself, is it? It’s not her body. It belongs to Observer now. The thing that formerly inhabited it, her self, the thing she has always called I—that thing is dissolving, melting in Observer’s mind like ice in water. She is being violated, systematically and thoroughly—and because she is part of Him, she feels His pleasure as He roots through her and takes what He pleases.
A village, under a sky made of trees—
A child, learning to walk in the grass—
A stone, in a pool by the river—
Observer sighs. Oh, that’s good, say a trillion voices.
Sarya, with her mother and her father and a fire—
Sarya, chasing glowing insects in the grass—
Sarya, watching her mother and father being eviscerated by Shenya the Widow—
Observer moans. Oh, say a trillion voices. Exquisite.
And now the memories accelerate. They flick through her mind almost too quickly to see—but not too quickly for Observer, who welcomes them into Himself with a cacophony of pleasure. She feels His every reaction as He shreds her mind and takes every part of her. She feels His appreciation for a childhood that spanned lightyears outside the Network. His delight only heightens as she relives her adolescence on a water-mining station. And now the blur of memories slows again as it nears the present. Riptide, with Eleven and Ace and Roche and Mer and Sandy…the quick detour into her mother’s memories—which Observer consumes with passion—and then Observer stops. A single image hangs frozen in His massive mind.
An infinite sea, a dead sky, and a gleaming stone in her hand.
She is part of His mind now, which means His shockwave of astonishment passes through her as well. It takes an eternal fraction of a second for the realization to spread across His entire enormous self, out from this point to His farthest cube.
Impossible, say a trillion voices.
Sarya fights, but it makes so little difference that Observer doesn’t even notice. She focuses every splinter of her strength on hiding that particular memory, and it makes absolutely zero difference.
All this time, breathes Observer, staring at the image. That’s how It was beating Me.
Sarya’s head turns against her will. Her eyes move without her control. Through the haze of holograms and her own furious tears, shocked beyond thought, she watches as her own body moves without her permission or intent. She sits forward in her seat. “Hey, ship!” she says to her absolute horror.
“Input command,” says the ship.
“Stand down all weapons,” she says, and she says it cheerfully. And then she feels herself grin. “And prepare the faster-than-light drive.”
“All weapons systems standing down,” says the ship. “FTL drive online. Please input spacetime re-entry coordinates.”
She hears its answer through more than one set of ears. Through Observer’s eyes, she sees her own hair rise up off her shoulders. She looks like a goddess, hair floating in the light of the holograms that frame her. Only with Observer’s many senses could one tell that her eyes are not her own. They are Observer’s. She stares at them from the outside as the mouth moves. “No re-entry,” says her mouth, and it smiles. “I doubt we’re coming back.”
I had no idea, say a trillion voices in her head. I started this adventure by causing a little trouble, and I’m ending it by transcending space and time. I am everything you were, Daughter. I can do everything you could do. Finally, after half a billion years, Network has made a mistake. It has allowed an enemy to engage It on Its own territory. I will become everything It is. I will replace It, across a billion star systems. The Network tends toward order, they say. Not mine. And Observer laughs from a trillion mouths. Observer tends toward its total and complete opposite.
Outside, Observer raises trillions of eyes to the burning heavens, where millions of lives are being snuffed out every second. He allows Sarya to sample one of His countless trickles of information, to watch the destruction with His senses. She can see the Human environment as easily as if it were a hundred meters away. It’s just as described, a gray cylinder spinning in the void. She wants to reach out and touch it, to tell her fellow Humans that she tried, but that she is no longer one of them. She wants to ask them not to hold her responsible for what comes next, whatever it is.
“You okay?” asks Mer. Mer is crouched in front of her former body now, gazing into her former eyes. She is not looking through them at the moment, but she can see him through the eyes of the cheerful Observers milling around the two of them. She wants to cry something—though she doesn’t know if it would be help me or kill me—but her mouth doesn’t move.
“Of course I’m okay,” she hears Observer say using her voice. She watches her own mouth twist into a grin. “I’ve never been better.”
She tries to reach for them. For big Mer, who will never in a million years understand what has happened to her. For Roche, whose long run of lives ends here because of her. For Sandy, who had the bad luck to run into a Human. The sum total of her effort, the raging, hopeless cry that wants to burst forth from her, results in nothing more than a tremor. Her rage builds to heights she has never before experienced. She is an inferno, a kiln, a foundry of superheated fury.
And it doesn’t matter.
Her body twitches again and again as her anger gives her strength, but that’s all she can manage. Observer knows her every thought before she thinks it, and everywhere her mind turns He is already there. He is a trillion times too quick for her. She is a stumbling, clumsy low-tier mind, and He is what He is. She is permitted to feel His giddiness, the elation that blazes through His mind like a fire. Network tried to stop Him, but only managed to catapult Him straight into power. Finally, among His millions of schemes and strategies, Observer has found something that will break the galaxy in half and dissolve it into chaos.
“Ship,” she hears herself say. The word is drawn out, stretched and trembling as she fights for control of her own mouth. And then Observer laughs. “Launch,” He says, using Sarya’s mouth.
And then her mind explodes.
She is standing, ankle-deep, in water. She is gazing at a horizon that is impossibly distant, lit by some analogue of light. She is, in some very strange way, home.
“This is…outside?” Observer whispers. He stands next to her in a single body, holding her hand.
She watches Him turn, slowly, to scan the featureless horizon. Her rage has not disappeared, but now it seems to occupy a very small contained space within her. It’s somewhere down below, perhaps in the cross-section of her that once intersected reality. She watches Him kick the water, the ripples extending into what may well be infinity for all she knows, and her heart—or something like it—hurts.
“Is it symbolic?” He releases her hand and takes a sloshing step away from her. “Is it metaphorical? Is it metaphysical? What’s the sky stand for? And the horizon? Oh, My goodness, am I standing on probability?” He kicks the water into a rainbow flash, then drops to His knees with a splash. “It’s the water, isn’t it?” He says. “The universe is the surface of it, or the individual droplets are possibilities, or—or maybe it’s what’s under it? What is under it? Are there more universes down here?” He extends His arm, feeling for a bottom. “Why can I stand here but I can’t reach the bottom? Is that meaningful?”
Sarya watches Him thrash in the water, and she is filled with something utterly unexpected. Sorrow, maybe…and there’s definitely some pity in there. Observer is what He is, just as she is what she is…just like anyone else.
And then she hears a gasp. Observer stands slowly, His tunic soaked through and clinging to His scrawny body. “Oh,” He says softly, His eyes on the thing in her hand. “It�
��s beautiful.”
“What, the universe?” she says, holding it up. It glints, shattering the light into an infinite number of colors.
“It’s…smaller than I expected,” says Observer.
She flips it over in her hand, watching the light glint just below its surface. “I don’t know why,” she says, “but it’s always seemed like it’s just the perfect size for throwing.” She tosses it in the air and catches it with her other hand. “Doesn’t it?”
Observer’s hungry eyes follow its every movement. “You can throw the universe,” He murmurs, as if He’s realizing what kind of power He’s just stumbled into. “You can throw the universe.”
She smiles sadly. “You can do all kinds of things with the universe,” she says.
“Can I…can I hold it?” asks Observer. He holds out His hands, His golden eyes shining.
“It’s weird how you think differently out here,” she says, ignoring Him and flipping the universe from one hand to another. “I think my mind just isn’t big enough when I’m in this thing. In the universe, I mean. Yours isn’t even big enough.” She turns the universe over in her hands, watching it scatter the light. “That’s why You couldn’t see Your danger.”
Observer’s hands, which were reaching toward the universe in her hands, draw back. “My…danger?” He says.
“You saw it, once,” says Sarya. “And because You prevented it then, You thought it was over. Remember, back in the Visitors’ Gallery? You gathered Yourself there because it was a dark spot in the Network and it felt safe. By the time You realized that Network had never left—that It had left a part of Itself behind—it was too late.” She sighs. “Or it would have been, except I trusted You instead of Network.”
Observer glances around, pitiful in His dripping tunic. “But that would mean—”
“Same spot, just bigger,” she says. “In here, we’re still in a Network blackout—only it’s a hundred million cubic lightyears instead of a few cubic kilometers. Here, for the first time in half a billion years, You have felt safe to gather Yourself. Once again, Network has the chance to destroy You. Except this time…it’s all of You, isn’t it?”
And now Observer is staring at her, wide-eyed. “But Network’s not here,” He says. “And you—you’re just a part of Me.”
The memory causes her anger to flare up, but still she keeps it low and distant, away from her mind. “In here,” she says, holding up the universe, “I’m one of a trillion of Your cells. But that was just my cross-section, one of the circles of my sphere, that tiniest slice of me that passed through the universe. You didn’t know that I’m so much bigger than that, because Network extended me in a way You couldn’t see. The rest of me was out here, in a direction You couldn’t understand until You took My mind. I guess that was the genius of Network’s plan.”
Observer stares at her. “But…I thought you hated the Network.”
“I do,” she says, and sighs. “I hate that it represents authority. I hate that I’m incapable of understanding It, or Its decisions. I hate that It’s smarter than me. That’s the worst part, I think. That It’s so smart, I can’t even tell when It’s wrong.”
“Yes!” says Observer. “You see it! Because you’re a Human, because you’re My daughter, you see Network for what It really is. It is authority, It is control—and those things, no matter Who wields them, are wrong.”
Sarya takes a slow breath. “We live in a crowded galaxy, Observer,” she says, holding the universe up and watching it split the nonlight into a shimmering spectrum. “There’s not enough room in this thing for everyone to go it alone. Hell, most of us couldn’t if we wanted. Someone, somewhere, is going to have some kind of power over someone else. It’s going to happen a trillion times a second, in a trillion places, just in our galaxy. It’s going to happen again, on a bigger scale, when this galaxy meets the rest of the universe. You know this, because You’re too smart not to. You know there’s no such thing as abolishing authority. The best You can do is fragment it, or maybe keep it together but put it in other hands than Network’s. And almost certainly, though I really hate to say it…worse hands.” She sighs, flipping the universe over and over, absentmindedly. “I may not understand the Network, Observer,” she says. “But I understand You.”
Observer smiles hesitantly. “That’s because we’re on the same side,” He says. “Right?”
And finally it happens: a tear leaks out from one of her eyes. She doesn’t know how, she doesn’t know where, but she knows that there is now a drop sliding down whatever is currently standing in for her cheek. “I don’t want to do it,” she says, and her voice breaks in the middle of the sentence.
“Do what, Daughter?” asks Observer, in a voice full of warm benevolence.
“You…asked me a question once,” she says, softly. “You asked if I would kill to—”
“Kill to protect your species, yes,” says Observer, now speaking more quickly. “And you said yes, which is quite admirable, and then—”
“That wasn’t the question,” says Sarya.
Observer stops cold. “Pardon?”
Sarya does not raise her eyes from the universe in her hand. “The question You asked was: would I kill to protect my people.”
Observer stares at her. “I’m not sure I see the difference,” he says.
“My people,” she repeats, gazing into its gleaming surface. “There’s nothing special about my species. I’ve never even met another Human. But Shenya the Widow was my people, wasn’t she? So was Eleven. Mer is my people, and Sandy. Roche is my people. Ace is my people, for the goddess’s sake.”
Observer is still staring. “So you would kill for…what, those half dozen intelligences?”
“Observer,” she says, looking up. “Network is my people.”
“I don’t understand,” says Observer.
He does understand, though. She can see it in His eyes, and it’s killing her. She can feel her chest convulse, just once, in a sob that she refuses to release. “I—” she says, and swallows. “I don’t want to kill to protect my people.”
And now His smile becomes gentler, more parental. “Then don’t,” He says.
“But I was not made to find myself, or even protect myself,” she says. “No one was. I was made to find my people…and to protect them, no matter what that means. And now I’ve done the first part, the finding.” She looks up to see Observer’s golden gaze, fragmented and diffracted through the tears in her eyes. “Now, I think…comes the protecting.”
“Daughter,” says Observer, and there is fear in His eyes. He falls over backward and tries to scramble backward through the water. “I’m your parent,” he says. “I raised your species. I raised you.”
“You told me I’m the daughter of three mothers,” says Sarya, “and I know none of them is innocent. But then, none of them is You. You’ve tried, for half a billion years, to tear my galaxy apart. If You escape now, You’ll continue to do just that for another half billion years. No, worse: You’ll do it forever, because You will have learned. There will never be another chance.”
She can feel the universe, warm and glossy in her hand. Inside this jewel is every one of her people, past, present, maybe even future. She has been brought to this point by her biological parents, by Shenya the Widow, by Eleven, Mer, Roche, Ace, Sandy, Left and Right, even Observer Himself. Every action by everyone she has ever met is contained in this stone, and they have all led to this moment. Her thread and Observer’s have tangled here at this one specific nontime and nonplace, in a moment that will never happen again.
And yet she can still choose the next moment.
Observer knows it. He sits in the water, His knees two islands in front of Him, His eyes half fear and half the golden reassurance she remembers from Watertower. “Sarya the Daughter,” He says. “You don’t have to do this.”
Sarya r
aises that smooth and glinting object above her head, that jewel that splinters the light into an infinite number of colors, that stone that contains her people. She gazes down at Observer’s pitiful form through a haze of burning tears.
“That’s not my name,” she whispers.
And then she crushes Him with all the weight of the universe.
The sun is shining.
It’s not a real sun, obviously. It’s not any more real than the intense blue sky that surrounds it. But it makes heat and light like a sun, and Sarya’s limited senses cannot tell the difference, so hey, it’s the sun. She assumes the grass she’s sitting on is somewhat more real than that sun—though perhaps no more natural, given that it’s growing on the surface of a gigantic cube. The trees surrounding this clearing are probably real, as is the android sitting across from her. But if recent events have taught her anything, it’s that senses require a healthy accompaniment of skepticism.
“I am wondering when Mer and Sandy will return,” says Roche. He sits a meter away, back straight, his detailing almost blinding in the fake sunlight. He turns to gaze into the trees. “Not that I doubt your story in the least, but I am simply beginning to wish for a bit of variety in my conversation partners.”
“I heard Mer roar a few minutes ago,” says Sarya, ignoring the jab. After the day she’s had, she can put up with worse. “That either means he’s smelled it, or he’s killed it. So…any minute?”
“Most likely covered in blood again. Or Observers. Or both.”
“If you can’t stand the blood, stay home from the hunt,” quotes Sarya. She seems to have an inexhaustible supply of proverbs now—just one of the many benefits to injecting your mother straight into your mind. She glances up, quickly, to catch a set of golden eyes disappearing into the trees a few dozen yards away. “Do you think they seem…happier?” she says.
“I wouldn’t know,” says Roche, his own lenses tracking something behind her.
