Natty rapped his fingers along the stretched fabric of the bean bag and groaned. Something told him any answers he could give Leon were just going to escalate things further.
“You do realize that all strategic decisions regarding military maneuvers go through me? It’s not the President who orders us to war in this little society of ours, it’s me.” Leon wasn’t given to sounding so tyrannical or ego-crazed, Natty thought. He must have felt he had the right to force the point, in any case.
Natty took another deep breath and sighed, staring out at the stars for now. They were his guiding lights, but were there enough of them in all of the cosmos to lead him where he was going? Finally, he returned his gaze to Leon. “I had a little talk with the Nautilus.”
Leon must have been used to Natty’s indirect answers that sounded initially like complete dodges, because he decided to roll with it. “You spoke with a supersentience? How did that go?”
Natty smiled nervously and massaged the back of his neck. “I told her we were all wrong, me, you, Solo, everyone. We each understood our importance to the greater whole, our place in it but that it wasn’t enough. We needed to interact more; she with us and we with her. I guess she took the talk to heart because up until then, she showed no signs of emerging from her coma.”
“And out of that increased interaction,” Leon said, his eyes leaving Natty, “came our escape from the enemy’s supersentience? She found the power of mind she needed, getting inside our heads more, tying together the insights as she needed.” He was putting two and two together for himself. Leon returned his eyes to him. “So how did she do it? How did she pull off the escape?”
“I don’t know. I’ve asked and haven’t gotten anything,” Natty replied. “I suppose you have too, in your own fashion, by way of the Theta Team and their more direct linkages with all aspects of the ship. I can only assume she wanted you and I to talk first, felt it necessary to coax us out of our shells.”
Natty’s eyes wandered as he looked inwardly to see if this might indeed be what was going on. “Or, maybe she felt we already had the answers, and wanted us to center ourselves, push past all the noise in our heads to that calm space where we could hear our higher selves talking.”
Leon snorted. “So, how do you think we escaped a trap Houdini himself couldn’t have gotten out of?”
Natty let the meditation room they were in, designed to promote the kind of intuitive insights leaders needed to lead, continue to work its magic on him, hoping for an answer to pop into his mind. That all started with another deep breath which he sighed out. “My guess is our get-out-of-jail-free card worked. I had always intended to hand over the space-warping technology of the clam ship that passed through the star gate, only to crash on this side of it. I thought if the stage 4 civilization looking to gain multiverse access—starting by invading our universe first—albeit by rather aggressive means—could take advantage of it, they might back down.”
“The fact that the Nautilus crashed in the first place suggests to me that they rejected the offer.”
“Yes, I’m inclined to agree.” Natty was squeezing the back of his neck even harder. “But what if the Nautilus applied the same logic I tried on her to them? If they truly want to emerge as a Stage 5 civilization with multiverse access—meaning access to any and all parallel universes, not just ours—then they needed a less hostile way of doing so. Otherwise they’d continue to receive pushback until they ran into a stage 5 civilization that just wasn’t going to stand for their shit. And then it would be game over, possibly with no chance at a rematch.”
“Possibly, that rhetoric, combined with your peace offering did the trick,” Leon said, his eyes going to the floor. “The gift of warping space takes the pressure off of them temporarily, so they can continue to expand their mind power. If I remember your explanation of stage four from earlier, such a civilization would have sucked up all the available energy for expansion an entire universe has to offer. That could leave them pretty desperate without some kind of out. With the stopgap measure you gave them, they can hope to come up with the multifarious strategies they might need to broker a peace accord with civilizations from other universes no less adverse to getting their toes stepped on.” Leon found himself nodding, suggesting that they might have kicked this ball into the end zone.
Leon thought about it some more, making sure the matter was settled once and for all in his head. “What put you on to the idea that a stage 4 civilization was trying to hack its way into our universe in the first place?”
“A number of things, not the least of which was Solo’s revelation that Agemir’s Gaia-like supersentience had been hacked. His thinking was that it didn’t make much sense for a supersentience to destroy anything, as that which you destroy, you cannot continue to study. He feels supersentients function by a kind of transcendental logic. While that theory is highly controversial, and not likely to be correct in all instances, I’m inclined to agree.”
When Leon had no further comebacks, Natty asked, looking heavenward, “Well, Nauty—you naughty, naughty girl—are we getting warm yet?”
“You have deduced correctly,” the Nautilus replied. Her voice sounded out of phase to Natty, and then he realized—she was talking in concert with all her other supersentiences. If so, that spoke well for the “society of mind” or “fourth brain” in action that Natty had hoped to entice all of them to partake of more.
Leon, initially startled to get a response out of the Nautilus at all, quickly followed with, “Why did we not progress to the second star gate instead of turning around?”
No response was forthcoming from the Nautilus.
“I think I can answer that one,” Natty said. “We’re closer to a Stage 1 civilization aboard the Nautilus than anything they’ve reached on Earth, which is currently at stage zero. Hell, we may well have much of the foundation laid for a stage two civilization aboard this ship. But the Singularity—an era of mind-blowing technological breakthroughs tumbling heads over heels of one another—was not meant to be contained in a bottle. It cannot reach its true potential unless all sentient life on Earth shares in it. That means that in a very real way, our minds still aren’t ready to go through that gate; our mind power isn’t up to the task. Developmentally, some day, but…”
“So, how then are we to prepare the Earth against supersentiences that have progressed to Stage 1, 2, 3, 4 and beyond?” Leon asked, the urgency once again riding his voice like a tsunami hitting shore with him caught on a surfboard prepared to ride out a much smaller wave.
“I don’t know, Leon, but we have to crawl before we can walk. And with the focus now on improving the social dynamic aboard the Nautilus, we will at least be learning to crawl.”
Leon stiffened. “Not good enough.”
Natty broke eye contact again. “You know, Leon, we share more in common than either of us cares to admit, right? One of those things being never knowing when to leave well enough alone.”
“I was going to remind you that we still have that artifact on the moon to contend with, and its very loaded message of what it was designed for—to propel the Earth out to another location, out of harm’s way of an invading higher stage civilization we can’t repel—to buy us time.” Leon’s tone suggested he was already reading the tea leaves from the expression on Natty’s face, and his overall tone. “But maybe I don’t have to.”
“I took the liberties of… Remember, Leon, I did this in an era that predated this one—this one of increased reliance on the fourth brain—and the proper accompanying social dynamic… which might have evolved the two of us to where we could actually sit down to talk this out first.”
Leon tensed, understandably; he’d dug so hard into his beanbag with his fingernails that it was now bleeding little pellets from ten different locations at once.
“When we departed Earth, I left a clone team behind, of all of us. I expected mission creep from day one, that we’d soar into space and find not answers to the mystery behind
that artifact on the moon so much as more questions that would need their own investigative teams to look into. And in the meantime, someone had to mind the shop back at home.”
“I remember discussing leaving a clone team behind, yes,” Leon said, his weight shifting in his seat, “to make sure that the technology we partake of here bleeds out into the entire populace, and doesn’t remain solely in the hands of the rich; a kind of insurance that we’d evolve into a more egalitarian age, and not a more oppressive, NSA-mind-control one.”
“Yes, well, rest assured that clone team was created. But it wasn’t the only one.”
“Yes, I know. I recall another one was tasked with combatting eco-terror around the world, not just what we witnessed in the Amazon Jungle,” Leon said, relaxing more. He sounded increasingly confident that Natty had simply forgotten communicating these ideas to him previously, so whatever shock value they had then had since been absorbed.
Leon let go of his death grip on the beanbag. Paradoxically that just caused more of the beanbag’s insides to bleed out faster.
“Yet another cloned team is dedicated solely to studying the artifact on the moon and to perfect the art of planet moving,” Natty explained, “to ensure that we can continue to jump solar systems and galaxies if need be. That way we can stay hidden long enough to buy us time to regroup before or after any attack from a superior civilization, whatever stage in their technological unfolding they may be in.”
“Planet Movers?” Leon was still trying to get comfortable with the idea in his head; Natty could tell from how the words rolled off his tongue, with the same sound of a tire popping.
“There are other clone teams I left behind, tasked with other missions,” Natty said, “but you should probably sit with this revelation a while before you invite a brain aneurism.”
“Yeah, I’m with you on that one,” Leon said, looking progressively more sunken in on himself as the bean bag continued to bleed out, lowering him even further toward the floor. Finally, he stood and brushed the beads off him, took a few steps toward the door before turning around. “Well, maybe just one more revelation. Maybe I can use all the growing self-importance to mend my shattered psyche.”
“There’s another team tasked with hunting down other artifacts. It stands to reason that the one on the moon might not be the only one.”
“Artifact Hunters?”
Natty squirmed in his bean bag. “Ahem, that moniker has been reserved for the clone team tasked with the same endeavor—only, like us, they’re canvassing all of the cosmos; they are not based solely on earth. The ones based solely on Earth… Well, they’re tasked with investigating the forbidden zones.”
“The Forbidden Zones?”
“Yes, the areas the military, and the black ops agencies of various countries have cordoned off to make sure no one accesses these regions. I’m guessing they have something to hide, and it may be more than just artifacts.”
Leon’s jaw was hanging open.
Natty wondered if he should take advantage of the opening. “Not to kick a guy when he’s down but…”
“The star gate… You may have turned us around, but you sent a clone team on to track down the other star gates and go through them, however many they may be.”
“I’m thinking seven.”
“Why seven?” Leon’s voice sounded like a piano wire about to break.
“Have you heard of the seven gates of heaven?” Leon’s face paled. “Could they be star gates like this one, meant instead to keep stage 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 civilizations apart from one another? To see that everyone graduates the classroom of life to be one with the All, and not just the first mover—the first to make it to stage 7?”
Leon had broken out into a cold sweat. The beads of perspiration dotted his exposed surfaces like an armadillo’s bumps, similarly armoring him against any more revelations.
“It’s possible the clone team can pass through the gate, even if we failed to,” Natty continued, “but if it did, it would have to assimilate to a stage 1 civilization, and then a stage 2 and so on with the passage through each successive gate. You think it’s worth the journey?”
Leon answered him but no words came, so he cleared his throat and tried again, “Hell, yeah!”
Natty smiled. “Yeah, me too. I just wasn’t going to break it to you right away. I thought you’d be heartbroken we weren’t that team.”
Leon smiled ruefully. “In a way I suppose I am, but I’m not as hungry for enlightenment and to be one with the All, as for discovery. You forget what got me into this: crooked people like Truman pulling their Machiavellian schemes, trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, mine and those of my special forces teams included. This me, with my history, would much rather chase after all the ones who would rather keep us at a stage 0 civilization forever.”
Leon sighed. “I assume you tweaked the backstories of each of the clones to give them sufficient incentive to go on the missions they’re assigned to.”
Natty smiled ruefully. “Doesn’t take as much tweaking as you might think.”
Leon’s face grew pensive. “No, I don’t suppose it would.” Leon thought about it some more. “My reservations aside, it would be cool to know what it’s like to live in a stage one civilization, a stage two, and so on. I suppose from the perspective I have in this timeline, I’ll have to settle for the brief glimpses in my dreams, the psychic communiqués from the other Leons reaching out across time for answers no one timeline can answer.”
Leon, standing and towering over Natty, nonetheless looked cut down to size.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Natty said. “Still one more clone team will be tasked with following up on that communiqué you received from the White Indian. It will be their mission to find the lost keys for the star gate that will restore those lost civilizations on so many worlds.”
Leon took a deep breath. “Out of curiosity, I can see how it would be easy enough for the Nautilus to clone its crew, but how, exactly, does she clone herself so readily? The last answer you gave me on the subject sounded tentative at best. Maybe, if we looked into that question more closely, we could better safeguard her ability to self-replicate.”
Natty’s lips spread in a half-hearted smile and his eyes went to the floor. Should he come clean? When Natty raised his eyes to Leon again, he said, “You’re right, of course. The truth is I don’t really know how to proceed. Until she’s more forthcoming… If I had to guess, I’d say another piece of the puzzle regarding how she clones herself comes in the form of the probabilistic worlds she inhabits, contemplating so many timelines at once. Whereas our brains can only collapse us into one timeline at a time—the one we choose to believe in the most, the one we accept as circumscribing the nature of our reality—she can collapse herself into several timelines at once that she feels most attached to.”
“And all the other versions of her that exist in all the other timelines…?”
“I imagine there’s a certain amount of quantum entanglement that exists for some of those timelines as well. But most will involve her through no conscious choice of her own. She would exist in them more on account of the nature of how the multiverse works—with or without her conscious participation or approval.”
“I preferred your stem cell theory of how she self-replicates, easier to get my mind around.”
“Yes, well, I mention this alternative to set your mind at ease; if she has more than one way to safeguard her cloning process, she will be that much more unassailable when under attack. And your question, by the way, goes to the heart of how we can help her to find more ways to get around any effort to thwart her self-replication process.”
“Yeah, that’s enough self-importance for now,” Leon said, sounding dazed, no doubt trying to contemplate all the different versions of him out there on crisis-aversion missions on an epic scale.
“Sweet dreams.”
Leon staggered toward the spot in the floor that had a slide-back panel that retreated
to expose a drop-down stairwell to the rest of the ship. That panel was already sliding back for him, the Nautilus reading his mind.
Leon never made it. He collapsed face down on the carpet. Out cold.
Natty smirked. “The bigger they are…”
FIFTY
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
Theseus barged through the sliding doors to Solo’s private chamber with the force of rolling thunder. Solo took one look at him and his eyes went up and then ping-ponged from one side to the other.
“Is that what passes for an eye roll with you creepy-looking lizard guys?” Theseus asked.
“We creepy-looking lizard guys? Trust me, no one beats Theta Team for creepy.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Solo manifested a multidimensional sword out of thin air in his hand—in truth the hilt had been attached to his waist, but the blade didn’t manifest until the handle was gripped firmly. With one swipe of the blade, he lobbed off Theseus’s head. Theseus’s head rolled on the ground until it ran out of inertial energy; then, it grew spider legs and ran back to the body to reattach itself. “What about now? Can you appreciate your creep-factor, or not yet?” Solo asked as Theseus regrouped, stretching out the kinks in his neck.
Theseus shook his head slowly at Solo. “And you think we’re weird?” He glanced at the sword. “A multidimensional blade that can take apart anything in 3-D just by forcing other dimensions upon it. Cool. Can I keep that?”
“Knock yourself out.” Solo threw him the sword. Theseus gripped it snugly to make the blade materialize then took a couple satisfying swipes at nothing in particular. “Now, is there some reason you’re intruding on my quality alone time?”
Theseus tried to communicate dumb amazement with just an expression, but he wasn’t sure how well Solo could read his body language either. “Didn’t you get the memo? We’re supposed to interact more.”
The Star Gate Page 54
