The Reality Assertion

by Paul Anlee

  The recordings only confirmed what he already knew.

  We were winning. Clearly winning.

  He watched as half of the battlefield went dark.

  Who is indiscriminately destroying Cybrids and Angels alike?

  15

  “Cybrids!” Alum raged as He stormed among the stars.

  “My own constructions! My own People fighting against me! Again! Blasphemous traitors!”

  “Not all of your People, my Lord. Not the Angels. Not me,” Trillian assured Him. In the presence of such fury, it was difficult to collect his thoughts well enough to speak coherent phrases.

  This was the first time he’d been invited inside the great galactic disk, the home of the miniature universe floating in the center of Alum’s Hall. That alone was a lot to take in. Caught in a state of stammering trepidation and awe, he was torn between drinking in the majestic starscape before him and assuaging Alum’s ire.

  The Living God wheeled and pointed a silencing finger.

  “Not all People? That’s hardly any better,” Alum snarled. “Millions of ordinary Cybrids have been modified into formidable fighters against Me. Against the Realm. How could I not know about this? Did the Aelu make them? Or do I have a rebel force working against Me from within?”

  He kicked a beach-ball sized star and watched it spin out of its system, leaving a trail of gaseous ejecta behind. He brushed the embers from His shoe and looked up to see Trillian’s open-mouthed stare.

  “Don’t worry. There’s no life in this system,” He huffed.

  Trillian closed his mouth and cleared his throat. That’s right. No big deal. He was just walking with God through a galaxy of planets and stars that were somehow, quite impossibly, smaller than the two of them and yet so detailed, so solid, that they had to be real entities, not representations. He forced his attention back to Alum’s last questions.

  “There was no sign of Aelu at any of the battlefields or near any of the targeted array elements, my Lord,” he said. “And the attack patterns don’t match those in the Aelu War archives. That would seem to suggest these treacherous Cybrids acted of their own volition.”

  “Well, wherever they came from, someone shifted them into the vicinity of the asteroids,” Alum said.

  “And shifted them back out again when it became apparent they were losing the battle to your mighty Archangels, my Lord.”

  Alum permitted himself a hint of an appreciative smile.

  “Yes, the Archangels performed well, didn’t they? We would’ve destroyed the enemy completely had they not been shifted out of our reach.”

  Trillian raised a questioning eyebrow. “The entangled-dust trackers were unable to follow them?”

  Alum’s smile tightened into a grimace.

  “Whoever shifted the Cybrids must have scanned for entangled particles. I caught a glimpse of a location a few light days away, but by the time the Archangels had arrived, there was nobody there. They must have erected a jump-blocking field to nullify the tracking dust.”

  “Pity.” Trillian waited for Alum to continue.

  The Living God clasped hands behind his back and resumed His pacing amid the floating stars of His mono-galactic microverse.

  “They managed to destroy over eighty thousand array elements before we chased them away. We counted upwards of a million enemy combatants.”

  “That in itself is a clue, isn’t it? Who could make so many specialized Cybrids in such a short time?”

  “Indeed, and so soon after the Cybrid suicide attack on the array. I’m certain a concepta virus was used to subvert loyal Cybrids in that action. But we ramped up our CPPU security immediately after to prevent further infiltrations. No, this is something new. Something different.”

  “The Cybrid weaponry equaled that of the Angels’,” Trillian pointed out.

  “Not equal,” Alum corrected. “Better. Were it not for the Archangels, I would have had to intervene directly.”

  “Why did You not show Your might directly, my Lord?” Trillian winced at his own brazenness. The words had tumbled out before he could stop them.

  Alum scowled and ignored the question.

  “Someone out there is able to shift large distances independent of the starstep system. Much farther than I would’ve thought possible. Or maybe they used the cover of the suicidal Cybrid attack to plant entangled particles in the vicinity of the array elements. Or maybe they set it all up millennia ago. I don’t know. Maybe they found a way to shift without entangled guides at all.”

  Alum stopped, surprised by His own speculation.

  Jump such distances without entangled particles to navigate? Was that possible?

  He put one of His planet-sized processors to work on the problem. The equations around the idea were dangerous. It seemed preposterous but not entirely out of the question, hypothetically speaking.

  Wasn’t there something back near the origin of shifting, some distant memory I shared with the mind of My “father” about that? He set a smaller, local submind to prowl through eons of memories for a correlation.

  “The Aelu shift technology was no more capable than our own,” Trillian noted.

  Alum stroked His chin absentmindedly.

  “True,” He replied. “Except for the larger jumps in and out, the other Cybrid shifts looked no more capable than those of Angel Gabriel.”

  “But You destroyed that abomination, my Lord. Could these be the remnants of an army he was building?”

  “If not him, perhaps an ally,” Alum mused.

  “What ally could build a million fighting Cybrids without us finding out about it?” Trillian asked. “Who could shift that number in and out of battle like that? Who except the Aelu could be capable of such a thing?”

  “Who, indeed?” Alum echoed, and stopped pacing.

  Are there others like Me, other Gods among the stars?—He wondered.

  It was a twist on the ancient Fermi paradox. When He was only a boy, humans had already been pondering it for decades: why, if other life in the universe existed, had it never been detected?

  Many reasons had been proposed. Perhaps technological civilizations didn’t survive their ability to invent civilization-destroying nuclear weapons. Or perhaps intelligence at a level sufficient to develop advanced technologies was rare in the universe. Perhaps, life itself was uncommon.

  Or is it that life is plentiful enough but general intelligence is not as advantageous as one might think?

  The Realm had encountered no more than a handful of technologically-advanced civilizations. So far, only one had been anywhere near as advanced as humans: the Aelu. But He never gave up looking for others.

  Could one of His exploration rafts have bumped up against another life form on the edge of the Realm? A life form with capabilities similar to His own? Was there someone else like Him out there who could manipulate the building blocks of the universe?

  He’d always known that such power in the hands of another could threaten the Realm, threaten His Plan to bring Heaven to the entire universe. Threaten Him.

  He set a third submind to work on contacting all of His exploration rafts exploring the stars and galaxies. Had any of them encountered something new? Had any gone missing? Could any have been subverted to the service of another?

  He began an inventory of the communication logs, to make sure no one had identified the entangled particles carried in one of His ships and traced it back to the Realm.

  To encounter another God in the universe!

  It was a chilling prospect.

  I should be joyous but the notion that I may need to fight such a being to defend my Divine Plan is distressing. I am so close, now. So close!

  His brow furrowed. “We’ll need to replace the destroyed array elements, and build the final contingent. And we’ll need to build more Archangels.”

  He commandeered another ten million Cybrids from the Realm’s Maintenance and Manufacturing asteroid bases and sent them out to the Deplosion Array.

&nb
sp; The next attack may require My direct intervention and, for that, I’ll need to be closer. It’s time to move most of My Self from here to Sagittarius A*.

  If this is to be a battle of Gods, so be it!

  16

  “Get rid of that thing,” Darya spat. “I can’t stand to look at it anymore.”

  The Archangel rotating slowly in the air before them no longer glowed dull burgundy, but its leathery wings and talon-tipped digits still tugged at some deep, ancestral sense of fear and repulsion.

  “I know it looks demonic,” Darak said, “but I think Alum designed them as some kind of terrifying version of the Angels, an Archangel, so to speak. He talked about some such idea, long ago.”

  Despite being securely suspended, and even though Darak assured them that its power supply had been deactivated, the beast reeked of danger.

  Timothy and Mary floated on the opposite side of the creature, inspecting it with somewhat more objectivity. Timothy extended a diagnostic tentacle to scan the horns with a spectroscopic laser. Mary probed the beast with low-energy X-rays and mapped the details of its surface in visible light.

  “It’s ugly, that’s for sure,” Mary reported.

  The calcified scowl on its horned face hinted at a lack of regard for any life but its own and its Master’s, and the horizontal-slit pupils in its lifeless eyes seemed…wrong.

  Twenty meters away, Crissea stood beside Brother Stralasi and Darak on a small chunk of scrubland enclosed by a protective bubble of air. Her Familiar floated a few meters away. The Esu woman held the monk’s hand in her own, their fingers tightly entwined and seeking the reassurance of fleshly contact.

  Darian Leigh stood at the edge of the bubble, curiously poking at the invisible wall that separated them from the deep vacuum of outer space. His eyes occasionally flicked back to Alum’s hideous construct but remained otherwise fascinated by the dusty stars in the distant core of the ESO galaxy.

  “Ugly? Yes, I suppose it is,” Darak said, “and inherently frightening to the human psyche. I wonder whether Alum was anticipating that the majority of His foes would originate from within the Realm, or if this creation is more reflective of His own sense of the terrifying.

  “To the Aelu, the physical appearance of this thing would be meaningless, no scarier than a kitten. In any case, this one is harmless enough now.”

  “Regardless, I don’t like looking at it,” Darya replied. “What purpose does it serve to display it in front of us like this?”

  Darak met her challenging stare with one of his own. “I want you to realize why physical battle with Alum is pointless. He can manufacture as many of these as He needs to protect the Deplosion Array from attack.”

  “Yet, we were winning,” Timothy said. “If we improve our outer armor and energy absorption capabilities, we could do it. We could finish this.”

  Darak raised an eyebrow. “You mean, tweak them enough to withstand the infinitely-condensed, exotic-matter plasma from inside a black hole?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “Why not? Alum found a way to sink some entangled matter into that same black hole,” Darya pointed out. “That means something must be able to withstand it.”

  Darak considered the idea. “It’s one thing to shift some entangled neutrinos across the event horizon when you don’t care about anything but their basic quantum state,” he answered. “It’s quite another to maintain the integrity of atoms and molecules when black-hole plasma is sprayed across them.”

  “Why not shift the plasma right back into the black hole?” she suggested.

  “Once I take that level of direct involvement, Alum will too,” Darak replied. “At that point, fighting between Cybrids and Angels or..,” he jutted his chin toward the floating monstrosity, “even Archangels, becomes a moot point.”

  Darya’s condescension escaped in an audible sniff. “You seem pretty sure of yourself, for someone who couldn’t help us defeat a few of these creatures.”

  Stralasi tightened his grip on Crissea’s hand. She squeezed back, caught his eye, and shook her head. Don’t get involved.

  “It was bad enough that I shifted your people in and out,” Darak said. “That alone gave Alum enough clues about what kind of opponent He’s facing. That’s more than I’m happy with.”

  Mary winced. She was painfully aware of what could happen when an enemy understood too much about you. She had barely survived her encounters with Trillian.

  “Maybe he’s right, Darya,” she said softly. “Maybe we should find another approach.”

  “No, he’s not right,” Darya shot back. “Not about this. Alum’s threat to the universe is embodied in that Deplosion Array. As it stands, He can only mess with the Realm, not all of reality.

  “It’s awful that He exerts absolute power over all humans, Cybrids, and Angels. If we don’t destroy that array, He’s going to destroy the entire universe. All of existence. Everything.”

  “Darya’s right,” Darak replied, surprising everyone with his abrupt shift.

  Brother Stralasi held his breath.

  “But so is Mary,” Darak finished.

  The Good Brother exhaled, and Darak flashed a fleeting, wry smile at his travelling companion, acknowledging his astute anticipation of his position.

  “I’ve known Alum longer than any of you,” Darak continued. “I’ve worked with Him and plotted against Him for millions of years. Tens of millions.

  “He’s many things: Living God, dictator, benevolent leader, guide. And He hasn’t completely outgrown the human beliefs He developed even before His birth. He fears the unknown, detests uncertainty, loves the stable and predictable. He’s lost His way a little but He means well and He’s not beyond reason. He may be the most powerful of the Gods, but I believe He’ll still listen if presented with a better way.”

  Darya snorted. “Talk? That’s your great solution? Talk to Alum? Explain the folly of the destruction of the entire universe? Why would you think someone who could conceive of such wickedness might be open to argument?”

  “He may be...what?” Mary interjected before Darak could respond. “What do you mean, the most powerful of the Gods?”

  Darak hesitated, allowing the others to review their records of the last few seconds of conversation. A sheepish grin tugged at his mouth.

  “I’m glad you caught that. It’s true. In my travels around the universe, I’ve discovered others like Alum. Six others, so far.”

  “Six!” Stralasi couldn’t help himself. So many Gods! The idea of other Realms each ruled by their own Supreme Being was too much to contemplate.

  “And all wanting to remake the universe to suit their own egos, no doubt,” Darya added.

  Darak held up a preemptory finger, “Surprisingly, no.”

  “No?”

  “No. That particular dream belongs only to Alum. The other six are isolated from each other and all seem to be content to rule as local deities.”

  “For now,” Darya added.

  “Do they know about each other?” Crissea asked, attempting to keep the conversation from devolving into an unproductive cynical track. “More importantly, do the others know about Alum and His so-called Divine Plan?”

  “Yes, to both,” Darak replied, “but no one except me knows the location of each of the others.”

  “Of course not,” Darya said.

  Darak sighed. “That was a necessary part of them agreeing to speak to each other at all. You wouldn’t believe how paranoid almighty beings can be of others with similar capabilities. They won’t reveal their locations or even their species to one another. They insist on communicating only through me.”

  The almighty weren’t the only suspicious entities. “How convenient that they trust you so much. How did you accomplish that? Pray, tell!” Darya invited.

  “By being both nonthreatening and unassailable,” Darak replied.

  “When I first revealed myself to each of them, believe me, they attacked me with all they had at
their disposal. I resisted, but never retaliated. When they tired of trying to destroy or remove me from the universe, we talked.”

  “So why are you afraid to attempt the same with Alum?”

  Darak frowned. “Alum is older and more powerful than any of the others.”

  As if remembering something, he chuckled and shook his head. “With the possible exception of Raytansoh, that is, but he’s such an enigma that speculation is difficult.”

  “Why haven’t you approached Alum with this information?” Stralasi asked. “I would think that such knowledge might cause Him to change His Divine Plan.”

  “If He suspected there were competing entities, I think He’d accelerate His Plan,” Darak replied.

  “What are we doing here, then? Why don’t we join with these other Gods? I mean, if our interests are aligned and they are content to limit their power to their own Realms, we should ask them to help us,” Darya suggested.

  Timothy left his examination of the Archangel and joined the others. “Balancing interests,” he answered. “Aligned or opposing, they are impossible to maintain. Impossible to break,” he stated.

  All attention turned toward him.

  “Care to explain?” Darya asked.

  “Yes. I’ve made a study of the history of warfare in the Realm, particularly of the Aelu Wars. With Mary’s help, of course.” He used his attitude jets to emulate a polite bob in her direction.

  “In my studies,” he continued, “there were a number of smaller battles in which neither side had a numeric advantage, weaponry was roughly equal, and Alum was in no position to intervene directly. My analysis of such engagements shows weeks of jockeying for position by both sides, with neither gaining final advantage.

  “After a while, strategies repeat themselves of necessity. Any moves outside of established parameters upset the balance to such a degree that the first to transgress would lose the entire battle.”

  “How were the stalemates resolved?” Darya asked, curious despite her wish to get back to arguing with Darak about the Gods.

  “They weren’t resolved,” Timothy answered, “not as a result of the battles. In the end, one side or the other merely did a coordinated shift away from the engagement. The balance couldn’t be maintained indefinitely, and it couldn’t be broken without throwing one’s interests into a losing slide.”