The Reality Assertion

by Paul Anlee

  If that’s the case, does all of Alum’s Realm lay this wide open? Could we simply take it and choke off the resources He needs to complete the array?

  The possibility excited him.

  As did the links to so many other possibilities. How many systems could they link to from these captured entangled particles? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? More? Each particle promised to lead to millions of starsteps with their own entangled particle stores.

  Why would the Living God leave His Realm wide open while He worked on other things? Was He sleeping peacefully, awaiting the Creation of His Heaven?

  Depchaun wrestled with the swarm of scenarios buzzing in his distant mind. Should he abandon his alliance with his compatriot Gods and risk taking Alum’s system on his own? Would doing so leave him too exposed?

  The prize, so close at hand, could be all of Alum’s Realm. The greatest risk was losing his own empire, along with his conscious autonomy, the power of his recent alliance with the other Gods, and possibly his life.

  It was excruciatingly tempting. Could he get away with it? He’d observed no sign of an active God on any of the hundred systems his drones had visited thus far. No God. No alarms. No resistance. Any minor miracles he’d witnessed were easily explained by automatic RAF generators.

  It’s almost as if Alum is no longer here.

  The thought hit him like a jolt of electricity sent directly into his CPPUs.

  What if Alum had already retreated from this universe, leaving His Realm to continue its relentless expansion? What if He no longer oversaw the construction of the Deplosion Array at all? What if it was proceeding mindlessly on its own? What if He no longer existed? Without a God to activate the array or call an end to its construction, would Alum’s Cybrids continue building until the end of time?

  The absence of the Living God would explain how Depchaun and the other five Gods had been able to penetrate the Realm so easily and unchallenged. The timing of their discovery of Alum’s Realm could have been a coincidence.

  I find such a coincidence improbable.

  He didn’t like the way Darak had used the unverifiable story of the powerful Alum and His Realm to keep him and the other Gods subdued.

  Was it all a ruse? Depchaun found that hard to believe.

  Certainly Darak was a powerful God. His travels and his discovery of the Six proved that, and his effortless defense against their attack was evidence of his abilities.

  But what need would Darak have to invent a more powerful God, one that ruled the Realm of humans, Angels, and Cybrids?

  The answer was obvious: the threat of Alum, a God more powerful than Darak, a God who was reportedly constructing a great machine that threatened existence, had successfully prevented the Six from banding together against him.

  That threat kept us suspicious and at odds with each other—he realized.

  Perhaps there had never been any threat.

  Perhaps it had been no more than a story, all along. We have no evidence to the contrary.

  The obvious conclusion astonished him. Viewed in this new light, thousands of past meetings in the Hall of Thrones fell together in a different way, a pattern with a different interpretation.

  Darak is Alum!

  It seemed so clear. What better way to subjugate others of equal power than to build fear of a vastly greater capability? One that scared the strongest, single being they knew. One frightful being running from an even more mysterious and frightful ruler. Darak versus Alum. Darak and Alum. Mythically powerful opponents? Or one and the same?

  Depchaun’s fear and doubt drained away as his mind compiled his new understanding.

  Oh, how we’ve been fooled!

  Well, at least, now he knew what he had to do. He had to take this Home World system for himself.

  Thought and action became one. His distant Full mind connected directly to the entangled particles in his drones and he shifted.

  The Neptune-sized integral mind of Depchaun appeared a few hundred-thousand kilometers from the artificial asteroid that administered the double ringworlds. The asteroid immediately fell into orbit around it.

  Depchaun shifted millions of drones inside. Within seconds, they set up invasive connections throughout its systems, pouring subversive viruses into every node of the asteroid’s computing machinery.

  Quickly, he developed a complete conceptual map of the system’s programs: the autonomous software for daily maintenance and operation of the ringworlds; software to collect information on the ringworld citizens and monitor communications among them; software to analyze those communications for hints of “improper” thinking; and software connecting to the local, specialized RAF generators that produced the many everyday miracles of shifting, of improving the density and strength of the ringworld floors, of pushing the fusion fires of the sun beyond the limits of self-destruction.

  He found connections to other in-system asteroids where millions of Cybrids carried out daily mining, repair, and maintenance duties.

  He found the Mind of God.

  Personality elements that were undeniably part of local executive functions permeated the central computers. For the most part, as expected, they were fairly simplistic. The largest concerns and directives centered on policy for running local administrations. They contained trillions of memories of past decisions, and a local history of system exploration and construction.

  Nothing important here—Depchaun concluded. I’ll explore further when I have more time. He moved on.

  Then he found the QUEECH connections to Alum’s greater, distributed Self.

  Can I conquer the whole of Alum by myself? It was too much to hope for.

  Penetrating Alum’s local mind had been easier than he’d ever imagined. The Living God’s system defenses had been reasonably sophisticated but they were no match for Depchaun’s analytic capabilities. The asteroid itself raised no special RAF-type defenses; it fought entirely at the software level. In the end, Depchaun’s superior processing power and complete, integral mind had been too much for the local asteroid CPPU to withstand.

  Depchaun was dazzled by his quick, almost effortless success and discoveries.

  This was too easy. Surely, Alum/Darak would employ superior defenses in the greater Realm.

  Before he could decide whether to penetrate Alum’s greater network, the outside connections through the QUEECH channels broke.

  Ah! Alum/Darak’s security has finally responded to the intrusion.

  Enough for now, then.

  He had taken over the center of Alum/Darak’s power, His Home World system with its magnificent double ringworlds, and trillions of subjects. That would have to do for now. He could consolidate his hold over the next few hours before pushing on.

  It will be worth the wait. A concerted effort across thousands or millions of systems will have greater success.

  But he couldn’t conquer all of those systems at the same time all by himself. Albeit planet-sized, he was only one mind. He had no choice but to engage the help of the other Gods.

  Time to call an emergency meeting.

  24

  “Alert! Most Honored Fal sek Troal, we have enountered and neutralized an intruder on Eso-La.”

  Darak was playing fetch with a newly-acquired friend, a young Lab that had wandered into a clearing near Crissea’s home when he received the Aelu message.

  An intruder?

  He’d been enjoying a few moments of peace, a little break from having to think about how to deal with Alum and the other Gods. A half-hour to throw a ball for a dog to chase down was such a luxury, and the two of them had been enjoying the game.

  Throw, chase, fetch, throw again. A silly action loop that brings such primitive joy.

  Darak tossed the ball one last time and answered the hail. He hadn’t spoken with his Aelu brethren for weeks.

  “Tome sak Lhar. What kind of intruder?”

  Fortunately, the Aelu were not far around the ring today and he didn’t have to tolerate mu
ch transmission delay.

  “A most unusual intruder, honored Fal,” the Aelo replied. He sent a compressed video that spanned ten seconds of real time. In it, a tiny piece of fluff wafted beside a stone obelisk, while nine Aelu approached along an inset path.

  It was the ritual of Ahk sek Turi. Darak recognized the cut of the stone and the tiled apron around it. A tiny part of him yearned for the peace that accompanied the words and movements of the historic Aelu ritual.

  At first, the fluff looked like any natural, floating seed.

  On closer inspection, there was nothing natural about its movements.

  It’s shifting!

  The video ended with the seed being blasted by the built-in UV lasers of all nine Aelu.

  “Spectral analysis of the blast indicates semiconductor composites,” said sak Lahr. “These are consistent with monitoring and computation.”

  Had the Esu been spying on the Aelu ritual?—Darak wondered. Nonsense. They’ve lived together millions of years. They’re familiar with all the rituals by now. Besides, the Esu don’t use shifting technology.

  “We detected no communications,” sak Lahr said, “but our calculations indicate it had to be externally directed.”

  “QUEECH?” Darak wondered aloud.

  “So it would seem.”

  Shifting and entangled communications. Well, it’s definitely not Esu, then. Darak didn’t like where that led.

  “We project a near 100% probability that Eso-La has been infiltrated by a God,” sak Lahr concluded. “We recommend immediate sanctioning countermeasures.”

  Half a second had passed since the initial call.

  Am I already too late?—Darak wondered. Will Alum appear in the sky over Eso-La in the next few seconds? Or will it be one of the other six Gods? Or all of them?

  He cursed his lack of caution on return from the Hall of Thrones. Had they tracked him in the milliseconds before he implemented his usual precautions?

  Maybe it was a coincidence. After all, the Eater hadn’t been that far out. Maybe it ran a small vanguard force in front of it.

  There may still be time. But time to do what?

  I have three of Alum’s Deplosion Array elements. I can generate a field large enough to move Eso-La, its sun, and all of the subsidiary planetoids. Their entire system.

  Except that would move everything exactly as it was, completely intact, including any spy devices in the system.

  I could use the asteroids to generate a decoherence field to block any shifts into the system.

  Except that QUEECH communications could be routed through another universe; the moment he dropped the shift blocking field, whatever entangled devices remained on Eso-La would enable the enemy to jump to the ringworld again.

  If I could scan across the entire Eso-La system with a decoherence field, rather than just enclose it, that would purge the trackers. But he was pretty sure he didn’t have the days needed to set that up.

  I can’t handle this on my own. I’ll need help with the three array elements.

  The answer was obvious.

  Darian Leigh was the first of the Gods, though he’d held that claim for less than an hour before being trapped inside an RAF bubble for eons. Kathy Liang had jumped to godhood at the same time as Darak—and who was Darya, if not Kathy reincarnated as a semi-immortal goddess?

  Darak left sak Lahr hanging for a few milliseconds while he formulated an action plan.

  “Thank you, Tome sak Lahr,” he sent. “Countermeasures will be engaged. Let us hope they are sufficient.”

  He severed the comms link and shifted each of the three Deplosion Array asteroids to the extremes of the Eso-La system. Next, he entangled the spins between a few atoms and jumped half of each pairing to a distant location within the ESO-461-36 galaxy. The nearest stars were over ten light years away.

  Using the atoms as navigation beacons, he returned to Eso-La and shifted the entire system—sun, ringworld, planetoids, and all of the inhabitants—a hundred light years away to their new home within the galaxy.

  The instant the Eso-La system settled into its new galactic orbit, he switched on the array elements to block any jumps into nearby space.

  There. Now I have a little more time to deal with any intrusive devices.

  How much time, he had no idea. Perhaps Alum or the other Gods were already searching for a way to jump to the shift-blocked system. Now that they’d found Eso-La, if they were daring enough, they could blind jump into the ESO galaxy without the use of navigational particles on the ringworld.

  I could manage that if I knew where I were going. It would be riskier for them but still feasible.

  He could make it harder for the intruders if he could clear all possible trackers out of the system before they had time to figure out how to get past the jump blockers, or to work up enough courage to attempt the terrifying act of jumping without a secure beacon as their destination.

  Two seconds passed while he activated his plan.

  He found Darian, in the middle of his morning meal and whisked him away to where Darya had just finished talking with Artero.

  “I need your help,” he told them. “In return, I offer a gift. Or maybe it’s a curse, I’m not sure.”

  He transmitted a shorter version of sak Lahr’s video recording of the intruder and a summary of his plan to protect Eso-La.

  “I see. Well, that explains what happened to the stars,” Darian said.

  Darya connected to the local InterLat and examined the night sky through cameras on the ringworld rim.

  “You moved us,” she said.

  “And cast a jump-blocking shell around the entire system,” Darak replied. “No one can get to Eso-La without employing a few shifting tricks.”

  “The way you jump?”

  “Yeah. But we may still have some undetected spies on Eso-La. Unless we’re prepared to spend eternity behind this shell or keep shifting the system every few seconds, all I’ve done is buy us a little time. Sooner or later, Alum or the other Gods or whoever sent the spy will find us. Eso-La will fall.”

  “Can’t the Esu do their dimensional hiding trick?”

  Darak shook his head. “I don’t think that’ll break the entanglement. It might delay the intruders for a little while but only until they figure out what’s happened and how to get at us. It wouldn’t be permanent.”

  “What can we do to help?” Darya asked.

  “You can join me, become Gods,” Darak answered.

  The invitation was met with stunned silence.

  “I can only deal with one Deplosion Array asteroid element at a time; coordinating the movement of all three at once is too much. I can’t handle a decoherence sweep of the entire Eso-La system by myself. I need your help,” he added.

  “Do you have enough time and processing power to turn us into Gods?” Darian asked.

  “I have the concepta package ready; I’ve had it for some time,” said Darak.

  His glance flicked to Darya.

  “It was supposed to be for you when you finally decided to let me help you recover your lost memories and pathways.”

  “You seem awfully confident that I would,” Darya replied. “A more skeptical version of me might suggest this threat against Eso-La is rather convenient for you.”

  Darak shrugged. “The universe has a way of forcing things upon us. But if you think I manufactured a threat to Eso-La just to convince you to accept this, you couldn’t be more wrong. If I could wait around for you to decide for yourself, I would.”

  Darya bobbed. “I believe you.”

  Darian Leigh half smiled, a boyish grin that contradicted his age, and weighed in.

  “You know, I was a God once for a short while. It didn’t turn out well.”

  Darak nodded. “I know. This time, you’ll have my guidance.”

  Darya extended a tentacle and touched Darian’s shoulder. “And my support,” she added.

  “So, we’ll do it?” Darian asked.

  “Save Eso-L
a? Yes,” Darya answered.

  “First, Eso-La,” Darak corrected. “Then, the universe.”

  They stared at each other a moment, each simultaneously acknowledging how terribly cheesy that sounded and the true gravity of their decision.

  Three seconds had passed since Darak had moved Eso-La.

  “What do we have to do?” Darya asked.

  “Grab your capes,” Darak replied.

  Even Darian had no response to that.

  Darak laughed. “Just kidding. Drop your security, and open your minds.”

  25

  Darya’s instincts screamEd at her to preserve the integrity of her mind above all else. She gritted her virtual teeth.

  Be afraid, be terrified, and do it anyway—she coached herself. I have to override my paranoia along with whatever it was I did to myself to block me from seeking godhood. Eso-La needs me. Needs us. That has to come first.

  Unless Darak had created an entire world, an enormous, sophisticated ringworld, unless he’d brought millions of new Cybrid minds into Full personhood, unless he’d faked a battle in the heart of Alum’s Realm, unless the attack on Eso-La had been a fake, unless Artero had been a ruse, unless he’d done all of that and more to convince her to drop her mental shields, it was no longer tenable to resist Darak’s offer of help, of completion. She knew that.

  Logically.

  No doubt Darak’s mental capacity far exceeded her own. He was a God. He’d moved the Eater on his own, moved Eso-La, shifted millions of Cybrids to attack the Deplosion Array. All miracles.

  Miracles I may be capable of in a few seconds. Then, we’ll be able to confront Alum as equals. Okay, not exactly as equals but something more than insects, anyway.

  Darak could have overwhelmed her at any time. But he chose not to; he’d left the decision up to her.

  She deactivated her virus protection.

  Despite her long rebellion against Alum, her profound distrust of His Godly power, she found herself unexpectedly eager to become like Him.

  If I survive the process—she fretted.

  She’d barely bobbed permission for Darak to proceed and already he was moving around inside her mind. He analyzed her concept-space in milliseconds, looking for the best way to attach the prized knowledge.