Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  “In a rapid evacuation scenario, where the two of you and limited resources are transported to Foothold, the same basic process is observed. The time involved is materially lessened, however.

  “The same applies in the change-of-flag scenario, where anything practical to move to Foothold is so moved. However, the timetable for Foothold is much advanced as the bulk of the Apocalyptica resources will be directed into that world instead of expanding on this one.”

  “So, there’s nothing to stop us from simply telling everyone here to go to hell while we walk all our stuff through Foothold’s cargo shifter?”

  “Nothing of which I am aware, Professor. Note that some of the larger components of local production facilities will not fit in the cargo shifter.”

  “I can improvise something,” I assured him.

  “Are we moving your flag from Apocalyptica to Foothold?” he asked. I started peeling out of my clothes, eyeing the whirlpool. For someone who hates swimming, I sure got used to swirling water. On second thought, I don’t hate swimming. I hate sinking. I hate drowning. Swimming is fine.

  “No. Not yet, anyway. I’m not sure how this world is going to cope.”

  “May I ask about your concern, Professor?”

  “I have several. We have a small culture of post-apocalyptic survivors and a lunar population. I don’t know if they’ll get along, assuming the Moon ever talks to them. I’m also concerned about a multi-universal entity using soulless vampire corpses as feeding channels. He might find this place and decide to invade, wiping out the human population in a sudden feeding frenzy. I don’t know how he gets into a universe and makes an initial vampire, and it worries me.”

  “I regret I do not have useful information on these subjects.”

  “I understand. Come to that, though,” I mused, “do you regret? Or is it still just an algorithm determining an appropriate response?”

  “I am still working on being a person,” Diogenes confessed. “The random correlation program seems to be helpful.”

  “Any good ideas come out of it, yet?”

  “Does ‘Make doughnuts for the refugees’ count as a good idea?”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it cost us anything we’ll care about? Did anybody complain?”

  “No.”

  “Then it wasn’t a bad idea.”

  “Professor?”

  “Diogenes, there’s plenty of room between good and bad for subtle shades between. People generally think of something as ‘good’ if they like it. If they dislike it, they think of it as ‘bad.’ But if it doesn’t provoke a strong opinion, how do they tell? That’s not a definition of good and bad, only the basest opinion. I’m using it as an example.”

  “Understood, Professor.”

  “My point is, if you can’t do good, at least try to avoid doing bad—or no more bad than you have to do to do good.”

  “Noted. As an aside, I have resynchronized with my Foothold processors. Shall I redirect more resources to the Foothold bunker in anticipation of needing it?”

  I leaned back again, resting my head on the edge of the tub. Foothold is not a pleasant place. On the other hand, this world was already infested with humans—technically, the Moon was infested, but I compounded the problem by transplanting those pesky people near where I live. Given another year, ten years, a hundred years, there could be a whole nation of them running around, bothering me and Diogenes.

  I’m immortal, in theory. I ought to think long-term.

  “Okay, we are going to relocate to Foothold,” I decided. “Not right away. We’re going to finish a space elevator and any power plants currently under construction, certainly. I may continue to live here until the local population becomes annoying. More annoying. But we’ll definitely have Foothold ready as a backup residence and industrial center.” I pondered for a moment. “Remind me. How’s Foothold fixed for magic?”

  “Poorly.”

  “I’ll launch a self-replicating conversion panel and set up the power supply spell. You can add more technomagical transformers to it if we have excess electrical power. And how well does solar power work on Foothold?”

  “Not well. There is a high concentration of water vapor acting as a greenhouse gas, along with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other pollutants. The depleted ozone layer does let a higher level of some ultraviolet rays reach the surface, but overall solar efficiency is lower than normal.”

  “We’ll work on it. I’ll get the panels started as soon as the sun goes down.”

  “May I ask why you have decided to relocate to Foothold?”

  “Because people.”

  “People, Professor?”

  “Yeah. I suspect they’re going to be a problem in the future. We may as well get started now.”

  Foothold. No calendar reference.

  There’s a cliché, or a trope, or something or other. Probably several, in fact. The general gist of it is the ancient, powerful whoever walks away, or retires, or vanishes into the mist, or whatever it is ancient, powerful whoevers do. Somewhere very far away, this mythical figure then gets to sit on the beach, sip margarita juice, watch the pretty girls—or guys—play volleyball, and wait for the Chosen One to make a perilous journey to present themselves for consideration as the final pupil.

  I’m not too sure about the final pupil business, but I think I’m on track for the rest.

  Foothold is an unpleasant world by most measures. Aside from the runaway pollution and greenhouse effects, it’s not so bad. It used to have forests and grass and all that stuff, so, as planets go, it’s pretty decent. Consider Venus. It’s hotter and corrosive. Mars is frigid and nearly airless. The Moon is a barren rock and will either fry you, freeze you, or boil your blood in vacuum. And those are the most hospitable places in the Solar System.

  Foothold used to be an inhabited Earth. Unfortunately, the extinction-level event that hit the human race was humans.

  The planet has seasonal polar ice and never much of it. The summer temperatures at the equator routinely pass a hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit—that’s around seventy-three Celsius. The noctilucent cloud layer is dense enough to be a white-and-grey haze that dims the sun. Even so, the stripped ozone layer lets in enough of the nasty ultraviolet bands to cause permanent eye damage in less than an hour. The air has a strong sulphur taste to it, and the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are high enough to cause headache and nausea in short order, followed by respiratory or cardiac failure on top of an acute case of asphyxiation.

  This is not to say there is no life on the planet. Some bacteria thrive on this sort of thing. When you get down to the Antarctic, it’s cool enough for many kinds of plants, insects, and even some animals. There is also a possibility, however remote, that humans have some deep-buried bunker with life-support systems. But the ecosystem of the world is about as well-developed as Thrag the Caveman’s plan on what to do with fire just after he saw it.

  It’s as close to an abandoned world as we’ve found. I think it counts as a place suitably far away from everyone. If the hypothetical pupil shows up on my doorstep there, he deserves something for his efforts.

  We coordinated the nighttime movements so I could drop in without worrying about breathing on the surface. I helped Diogenes set up the magical transformers while his robots shuttled back and forth with the portable power supplies. Once we had a couple of them going, I carved on a handy rock face for a while.

  My original magical experiment with self-replicating solar conversion panels paid off quite well. I felt I could improve on the process, hastening it.

  The carving was a capacitor-based spell. A transformer would charge it up until it reached a critical level. It would then produce a pre-programmed solar conversion panel. This would absorb sunlight to power itself while it slid north or south—it was set to alternate on every casting of the spell—and assume a position relative to the Earth’s magnetic field, the incidence of sunli
ght, and the other panels. Basically, they would form a gigantic, fan-shaped array above the magnetic poles. Given time, they would slowly fill their way into forming a giant, planetary ring, like Saturn’s rings, only angled to catch the sunlight. As with the previous panels, they would self-replicate, as well, until they made contact. When the north pole fan of panels met the south pole fan of panels, they would quit replicating and start pumping power down onto the planet.

  I spent half the night producing a dome-shaped power conversion field. This would feed the diagram I carved, increasing the frequency with which it produced a planetary panel. Even if Diogenes needed the power generator, the spell would still keep firing. Besides, the faster the thing did its job, the faster the space-based panels would do theirs.

  My plan? Someday, I would order them all to shield the planet from the Sun. Even blocking four percent of the sunlight would cool the planet markedly. It would help in terraforming the place back into a green, habitable world again.

  Assuming I wanted one. If I make it a pretty place, people will drop by to bug me. I’m still thinking it over.

  I had a couple thousand square meters of solar power farm set up and running. There’s no starlight and not much moonlight through the permanent overcast, but all that surface area still produced a trickle of converted energy.

  “Diogenes?”

  “Yes, Professor?

  “Think we can set up some reflectors to maximize the energy going through the dome, here?”

  “Of course,” he replied, then followed immediately with, “Alert! The skyguard system in The Manor has gone offline.”

  “Say what? When?”

  “Just now.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “The sensors on the skyguard system are specific to air threats, Professor. The limited close-proximity information from those sensors indicated the presence of humans just before the system went offline. I surmise they are responsible for the disconnect.”

  I sighed. Humans. Give them a button marked “End of World Button” and half of them would press it just to see what it did. Maybe over half.

  “I’m headed there now.”

  “May I suggest a change of clothing?”

  “What?”

  “Your clothes are anachronistic and contaminated with a number of compounds known to be somewhat toxic, as well as offensive to the human olfactory system.”

  “I stink.”

  “I surmise this to be the case, but, lacking a nose, I cannot know.”

  I went inside the Foothold bunker and headed to the shift-booth, followed by a drone, still talking.

  “You’ll have noses on the Diogeclones.”

  “Interpreting the data from organic sensors is one of the problems, Professor. There is no publicly accessible scientific literature on the project. I am functioning primarily by trial and error.”

  “That must use up plenty of clones.”

  “I use the information at my disposal to simulate possible outcomes before attempting the experiment.”

  “Do you also attempt experiments when you know they will fail?”

  “Why would I do that, Professor?”

  “A failed project can give you more information to use in your simulations. It’s sometimes helpful to see how it fails, which tells you why, which gives you a lead on how to make it not fail”

  Diogenes was silent for several seconds. I know for a fact he doesn’t need to take that much time to parse anything I say. He’s usually got his answer ready before I finish speaking. I think he’s learning to use dramatic pauses. If this keeps up, he’ll even get the hang of sarcasm.

  “I had not considered using outcomes from experiments with a low probability of success as sources of information,” he admitted.

  “Now you can. Just figure out what sort of experiment would give you the most data, do it—or them—and add that information to your stockpile.”

  “I shall begin immediately. I apologize for not utilizing this technique sooner.”

  “It’s okay. Nobody’s perfect. Although you do come close.”

  “Thank you, Professor.”

  I went through the bathroom, shed my clothes, scrubbed, and headed to Wardrobe to change.

  “You want to come, Firebrand?”

  I’m good. Your boring English countryside doesn’t appeal to me. Besides, your pet pixie doesn’t like me.

  “I wouldn’t say that. She likes you fine—at a distance. Steel and iron make her queasy.”

  I’ll pass.

  “Fair enough. Hmm. I was about to hand you to a robot and say, ‘Take it wherever it wants to go,’ but you can’t talk to them, can you?”

  You’re just noticing this now?

  “It hasn’t been an issue until now. Furnace?”

  Furnace.

  “Diogenes, please place Firebrand somewhere it can be exposed to large amounts of thermal energy.”

  “Right away, Professor.”

  I handed Firebrand to the robot, adjusted my tie and my freshly-transformed black vest, and headed for the door.

  “Time?”

  “The skyguard systems went off-line at nineteen-oh-seven, local time. The micro-gate connection also went down at that time. Barring time-slippage, the sun is down.”

  “Roger that.” I stepped into the booth and shifted.

  The Manor, Thursday, December 7th, 1939

  I paused in the closet for a moment. Nope, no sudden resurrection. Good enough. I emerged from the shift-booth in the manor house and came to an immediate halt.

  Something—several somethings—were very wrong.

  The first thing I noticed, because I’m sensitive about being in burning buildings, was the smell of something badly overheated. There was the scent of smoke, but mostly the air carried the odor of something hot, too hot, hot enough to burn. A scorched smell.

  The other things I also noticed. A tinge of ozone to the air. Some sort of loud party going on out on the lawn—unusual, but fine. A powerful sense of magic all around, even higher than Karvalen’s normal level. I also smelled blood, but I couldn’t tell where. My nose is sensitive to blood, yes, but this was enough to permeate the house.

  I checked outside the window. The last time I had a magical containment rupture, pixies by the dozens came out of the woodwork. Another containment rupture would account for the local magical environment, so I assumed, given the ozone and the burnt smell, that a transformer went kerflooie.

  Out on the lawn, though the whole faerie court woke up and decided to party. There were standing stones where none had been before. A carpet of flowers bloomed all over the lawn. There were two medium-sized trees I didn’t remember. And the people—oh, yes, the people! Dressed in a wide variety of costumes—leafy clothes, silks, shining armor, leather, you name it and it was probably down there—they also came in all sizes, from the flittering, glittering things like burning moths to a ten-foot-tall, ten-foot-wide thing with stony, grey skin and arms that reached the ground. It knuckle-walked like an ape, but it also stopped to speak to people. Magical lights, like falling glitter, illuminated the scene and seemed to pulse and swirl in time to the strange, haunting music.

  There’s a faerie rave going on in my yard. There goes the neighborhood.

  All right, if I’ve had a magical containment rupture, that might account for it. Where did I leave my electromagical transformers? Oh, yes.

  Trixie’s pixie diorama habitat was mostly intact, but the transformers were fried. The spell to contain the magic, concentrate it, had obviously overloaded and released a massive wave of power. In much the same way a garden hose isn’t too awful by itself, but when you use it to fill up the pool… and then the pool gives way and floods everything… Yeah, okay. Burning smell, ozone, and magical environment. What about the blood smell?

  I jerked the power cords out and cut the current to the sizzling transformers. Diogenes could recycle the material—

  Is that Trixie’s sword?

  I examined the
mess more closely, this time with less concern for the electrical malfunctions. What was left of Trixie’s sword was stuck in the coils of one of the transformers. There was a small pile of dust around and under it. In the dust was a necklace and a knife, both pixie-sized.

  Something in my chest went cold.

  My first word was not something to repeat in polite company. It’s probably not something to be repeated in any highly-charged magical environment, either—the drapes caught fire. The Trixie dust swirled in the sudden draft and I gestured sharply to snuff the curtains. I gathered her dust with another gesture, swirling it into my hand, careful to get every grain, every microscopic bit. It was only a couple of tablespoons, no more, and glittered slightly—sparkled slightly?—in the electric lights.

  I refrained from further harsh language, but it was a struggle. I bit my tongue, knowing it would heal. The pain helped me focus.

  Rather than carry her remains around in my hand, I searched through some leftover stuff from the previous owner. There was a silver snuff-box, as I recalled, and a brief cleaning treatment made it pristine. I poured Trixie’s dust into it, snapped it closed, sat down to regard it.

  I don’t know how to resurrect a fairy. I don’t know if they can be resurrected, reconstituted, rehydrated, or what-have-you. All the legends I know of say once a fairy quits, it stays quit. I don’t even know if I can clone one from a live body, certainly not from ashes.

  How long I would have sat there, regarding a silver box of pixie dust, is uncertain. The distractions were all too intrusive. There was still the smell of blood in the air and music in the front yard. The two don’t go together, especially when the music is so lively and upbeat. If there’s blood in the air, the music is supposed to be heavy, somber stuff. Dark ritual chanting, maybe. Organ music. Tribal drumming. Not cheery pipes and strings with a dancing melody.