Jason Sanford - [BCS299 S03]

by Where the World Ends Without Us (html)

  “Is it your grains or you yourself that created this damn plan where I die to save everyone?”

  “I did. If I could find a way to also save you, I’d take it.” Sri Sa pointed toward the biosphere’s doors. “But the grains are waiting for you out there. They want you judged and killed and made an example of. I can’t stop that without risking the lives of everyone else.”

  Alexnya understood Sri Sa’s reasoning, even if she’d fight against it until she died. She hated this damn world where anchors killed day-fellows and believed they were protecting the environment, and day-fellows killed anchors when they could get away with it. Even the grains’ desire to kill Alexnya was to protect what they saw as this world’s natural order. Everyone sacrificed others for what they believed was the greater good.

  But this was still Alexnya’s life. And now that she understood how much Sri Sa loved Colton and how badly she wanted to save these other day-fellows and anchors, maybe there was a way Alexnya could fight back.

  “Why did you attack me at my house?” she asked.

  “I wanted to see how strong you were,” Sri Sa said. “No, not your body. Your heart. It takes a special strength to sacrifice yourself for others.”

  “And the grains out there didn’t detect you?”

  “Like I said, I’m good at tricking the grains into not seeing me.”

  “You must be pretty powerful to pull that off.”

  Sri Sa looked puzzled, not understanding what Alexnya was getting at. But if Sri Sa intended to question Alexnya, she dropped it when they noticed Chakatie and Elder Vácha approaching.

  Neither Chakatie nor Elder Vácha looked happy. Alexnya knew what they wanted.

  “Alex,” Chakatie began, “I know we don’t have the right to ask, but...”

  “Stop. I’ll do it.”

  Chakatie and Elder Vácha looked surprised by Alexnya’s snap decision, as did Sri Sa and the other day-fellows and anchors.

  “I’m not an ass—I won’t risk everyone dying,” Alexnya muttered. She pointed at Sri Sa. “But I also don’t trust you yet. Before I go out there, you have to release everyone from these damn necklaces.”

  “As long as you know I can’t free you,” Sri Sa replied. “For this to work, you have to go out to the festival and face judgment.”

  “I know what I need to do. You just save everyone else first.”

  Sri Sa bowed politely, appearing impressed by Alexnya’s determination.

  But Sri Sa didn’t have a clue. None of them did. Alexnya kept her face calm and blank, giving nothing away.

  They thought she didn’t have a choice.

  But if Sri Sa was as good at hiding herself from the grains as she claimed, Alexnya realized she did indeed have a choice. And maybe a way to not only save herself but also free everyone else.

  Alexnya stood within the biosphere’s entryway, preparing herself for judgment. She breathed deep and stared at the rainbow flows of grains on the doors before her. The glowing colors looked so beautiful that she wouldn’t have minded if the biosphere trapped her forever here between its inner and outer doors.

  She was powered up, refusing to face this at anything but full strength. She tapped her claws against one another, fidgeting to hide her nervousness.

  Chakatie stepped before her and gripped both of Alexnya’s claws with her own hands. “You’ll do fine,” she said with a sad smile. “And I couldn’t be more proud of you if you were my own daughter.”

  Alexnya remembered her mother and father being willing to die to protect her when she was first infected with the grains. She hugged Chakatie.

  True to her word, Sri Sa had destroyed all the necklaces on the anchors and day-fellows when Alexnya stepped into the biosphere’s entryway. Or, as Alexnya had noted, Sri Sa had destroyed every necklace except for hers and Chakatie’s—Alexnya’s because she had to face the judgment festival, and Chakatie’s because she’d decided to share that fate.

  Chakatie’s family had been shocked by her announcement. Wren had grabbed her grandmother’s arm and cried while Pinhaus had begged her to reconsider, his voice actually trembling.

  “No,” Chakatie had announced with a stern voice. “I’ll never ask anyone to do what I won’t do myself.”

  Only Colton hadn’t made a fuss. He’d simply touched his emotions over and over as he hugged Chakatie and said how proud he was to be her grandson.

  Alexnya squeezed Chakatie’s hand tight as they stood at the outer door. She was so happy not to be facing death alone. For the first time, she felt that maybe Chakatie was part of her family.

  They still held hands as the outer doors of the biosphere opened. Before them on the festival grounds stood a thousand anchors, all of them wearing their best clothes and staring at Alexnya and Chakatie with solemn faces. There were also day-fellow crowds gathered behind the anchors to witness the judgment, close enough to see everything but also keeping a respectful and safe distance from the anchors.

  And mixed among both the anchors and day-fellows were the hundreds of glass stele, each showcasing the world’s history.

  The anchors lined both sides of a path leading to the glass stage. Alexnya and Chakatie walked forward through the crowd.

  The moment they stepped onto the stage their red necklaces fell apart and vanished—they’d returned to face judgment, so the necklaces were no longer needed. As Alexnya gazed out over the crowd before her, she realized that when found guilty, her and Chakatie’s deaths would come by being ripped apart by the thousand anchors looking back at her.

  The crowd was incredibly quiet, as if no one wanted to be the first to spoil the silence. Alexnya stood there on the stage, unsure what to do.

  A swirl of grains beside her announced Sri Sa’s arrival.

  “We stand in the middle of history,” Sri Sa said to the crowd, pointing to the historic images and words flowing through the stele around them. “It’s time to add our own judgment to that history!”

  A gasp rose from the gathered anchors as the stele connected with the grains inside their bodies. From the stage Alexnya could see that the day-fellows in the back didn’t have the same reaction since they lacked grains. They instead watched the stele around them, which showed the same images the anchors were having transmitted into their minds.

  Suddenly the stele reached out to Alexnya’s own grains. She saw the sad history of this world. Of humanity savaging the environment, and with it savaging themselves, and only at the last minute creating the grains to try and save something. The nanomachines became the ultimate power and judge over what humans could and could not do with this world.

  But that wasn’t enough. The grains also divided humanity into anchors and day-fellows, with the anchors enforcing the grains’ demands. And if humanity ever again annihilated their planet, the world could still be reborn from the biospheres protecting samples of every environment and species.

  Every species, that was, except for humans. That was the biospheres’ true warning to humanity—that if the world died again, it would be recreated without the very beings who’d caused its destruction.

  As Alexnya connected with this history, she felt herself falling through the horrors of what humans had done to this world along with experiencing the certainty that only the grains could prevent it from happening again. She didn’t agree with this last part—she knew what the grains were capable of. But the history projected into her mind was so powerful it almost obliterated any protest she could make.

  Almost.

  For a moment the grains showed Alexnya and the anchors and day-fellows the peace inside the biosphere as a taste of what the world used to be like.

  “This must all be preserved,” Sri Sa told the crowd in her role as anchor lord. “The grains are eternal! The grains are the way!”

  The images and history Alexnya saw were so overwhelming it would be so easy to give in and agree with Sri Sa’s words. She realized this festival wasn’t about judgment. Instead, it was the grains telling everyone the truth
s they wanted them to believe.

  The next images the grains showed were of Alexnya’s life, from her days growing up in a day-fellow caravan to the grains picking her to be an anchor to her nobly protecting her land’s environment. But then the grains showed Frere-Jones killing people. Showed Frere-Jones ripping the grains from her own son. How that had eventually resulted in Colton growing close to Sri Sa. How Sri Sa’s love for Colton caused her to help the day-fellows kill hundreds of anchors.

  “Alexnya’s land is where these problems started,” Sri Sa announced to the crowd, not mentioning the irony that she was one of the problems the grains wanted to fix. “Even if she did nothing wrong, she is her land’s anchor. She must be judged. You will now start your deliberations.”

  The thousand anchors before the stage began talking among themselves, both speaking and transmitting through the grains’ communication nets. Alexnya felt as if a warm blanket had descended on the crowd, an enveloping miasma of words and data and belief clicking among the anchors as they worked toward her judgment.

  Alexnya looked at Sri Sa, remembering how she continually tricked the grains into not seeing her true self. Alexnya reached out with her grains to the anchors around her and to the grains in the stele themselves. It was hard to access what they were seeing instead of letting the grains’ images flow into her, like swimming against the current of a very powerful river. But she was being judged here—it was her right to know the truth.

  She pushed harder and finally reached into the communications being shared between the grains and anchors and stele. Through their eyes the simulation that was Sri Sa looked different. Every anchor before the stage believed they were seeing an old woman standing beside Alexnya, a recreation of one of the original anchors from thousands of years ago.

  Clever, Alexnya thought, amazed by the level of power it took for Sri Sa to mask her presence by spoofing and subtly changing the communications of so many other grains and anchors.

  Sri Sa glared angrily at Alexnya, having detected her accessing the grains’ communication nets. A buzzing like a million bees fell between Alexnya’s power and the grains as Sri Sa blocked them from hearing anything Alexnya might transmit.

  Sri Sa looked very satisfied, as if she’d smacked down an annoying bug. She leaned over to Alexnya. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “I’m done being used. I’m going to tell the grains who you are.”

  Sri Sa sniffed as if unimpressed. “I thought you were strong enough to sacrifice yourself for others, but I was wrong. You’re just a selfish little child.”

  “There’s no need,” Alexnya protested. She looked around—the anchors were occupied with their deliberations, while Chakatie had closed her eyes in meditation, preparing for death. Now was the time to push Sri Sa on this.

  “Look how you manipulate the grains,” she said. “You could do that for all of us. Instead of staying in the biosphere, everyone could leave and you could hide us from detection.”

  Sri Sa looked uncomfortable. “I considered that. It takes too much power.”

  “Too much power? You’re hacking the grains inside a thousand anchors right now, plus the stele.”

  “You make it sound like it’s easy to do this.”

  Chakatie opened her eyes and stepped over. “What’s wrong?”

  “She’s gotten cold feet,” Sri Sa said dismissively.

  “No,” Alexnya said, “there’s another way. Sri Sa has the power to hide all of us from the grains. Your family wouldn’t have to stay in the biosphere. She might even be able to manipulate the grains so you could return home.”

  Chakatie looked at the anchors around them—they were still deliberating Alexnya’s fate, but a few of them also gazed curiously at the discussion on the stage, wondering what was going on. Alexnya felt Chakatie reach out with her own grains, which were far more powerful than Alexnya’s. But Sri Sa also jammed Chakatie’s attempt.

  “Interesting,” Chakatie said. “Why are you so desperate to block me from accessing the grains?”

  “It’s dangerous,” Sri Sa said. “If the grains learn I’m still alive, they’ll hunt all of us down.”

  “They’re already hunting us down,” Alexnya said. “That’s why we were brought to this damn festival. The only difference is they’re not hunting you—the grains think you’re dead.”

  Sri Sa shoved Alexnya backwards, her strength so overwhelming that Alexnya almost fell off the stage. Chakatie grabbed Alexnya’s arm and pulled her back while Sri Sa stepped before the assembled anchors.

  “What is your decision?” Sri Sa demanded. “We must waste no more time on this.”

  Alexnya felt the crowd’s attention turn back to her. A few of the anchors protested that she was innocent, but their voices were quickly drowned out. Instead, she heard an anchor shout that a day-fellow should never be an anchor. A chorus of other anchors joined in, shouting agreement.

  From the back of the crowd she saw day-fellows beginning to return to their armored wagons. They knew what was coming, and they didn’t want to witness her execution.

  Alexnya cursed—she was so close. She tried again to break through Sri Sa’s jamming, but she couldn’t. Her grains paled in power compared to the rogue grains powering Sri Sa’s entire being.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier about this?” Chakatie asked.

  “If I’d said anything in the biosphere Sri Sa might not have freed your family and the day-fellows—she loves Colton, but I don’t know if she really cares about the rest of us. I thought if I told the grains that she’s still alive she’d have no choice but to help us and hide us from detection. But I can’t break her jamming. My power isn’t strong enough.”

  Chakatie shook her head as if Alexnya was a simple, naïve fool. “I’ve always admired your determination, Alex, but you do so overthink things. Sometimes the best paths are the simplest to follow.”

  Chakatie opened her mouth as if to say something else but closed it with a smile as she tapped her lips with a finger.

  “Are you ready to accept judgment, Alexnya?” Sri Sa called out. “To do what must be done to protect our world?”

  “No, I’m not!” Alexnya yelled so everyone could hear.

  Sri Sa looked puzzled at this. The anchors in the crowd looked unsettled.

  “You can’t say that,” Sri Sa hissed. “The grains need you to die willingly. That’s the whole point of a judgment festival. You accept guilt, you die, people go home reassured that their lives are good and proper.”

  “I’ll pass. But I am going to do something else.”

  “And what is that?” Sri Sa whispered. “Tell the grains I’m still alive? Neither you or Chakatie can cut through my blocking.”

  “Don’t need to.”

  Alexnya shouted Sri Sa’s name. She yelled as loud as she could, using her power to amplify her voice. Sri Sa, Sri Sa echoed off the biosphere and flowed over the thousand gathered anchors, even reaching the day-fellows at the back of the festival grounds.

  “No!” Sri Sa screamed. Alexnya felt Sri Sa reach out to the anchors around them, trying to keep her name from their grains. She couldn’t make the anchors unhear the words, but she desperately tried to block her name from being understood by their grains and, failing that, from being transmitted to the grains in the stele and the greater world.

  But Sri Sa was also manipulating what the grains saw of her through the eyes of a thousand anchors, to say nothing of the stele around them. Alexnya felt Sri Sa’s jamming weaken and her power stretch thin. Alexnya pushed forward through the jamming, trying to connect again to the grains. Chakatie took her hand and joined in, the grains in their bodies synching as they slammed against Sri Sa’s overtaxed power.

  The jamming collapsed as Alexnya and Chakatie told the world that Sri Sa was alive and standing right in front of them.

  “Oh shit,” Sri Sa said, looking out at the thousand anchors before the stage. Realization of who she was slammed into all of them at the same time. For a
moment the grains were shocked. Then they demanded judgment, flooding the minds of the anchors with images of the many crimes committed by Sri Sa. A thousand pairs of eyes glowed an angry rainbow of colors as howls went up from every mouth. Bodies began to grow, ripping apart fancy clothes and shoes and hats, but none of them cared.

  They were this world’s anchors, and the grains demanded justice.

  “Oh shit,” Sri Sa said again.

  “Question for you two,” Alexnya said as more anchors before them transformed. “How good are you at running?”

  Whatever answer Sri Sa and Chakatie gave was lost as a thousand anchors charged the stage.

  Alexnya and Chakatie stood gasping for breath inside the biosphere’s entryway, their bodies bloody and bruised and cut. Chakatie seemed particularly irritated that her yellow bowler hat was gone and her suit hung in shreds from her body. Sri Sa looked out through a peephole at the thousand anchors trying to break down the unbreakable door.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Who knew riots could start that fast.”

  “Well, Chakatie did tell me to be defiant,” Alexnya said.

  Chakatie cursed as she spat out a mouthful of blood. “Yeah, I did. Give me fair warning before you ever do that again.”

  Sri Sa leaned against the outer doors. She’d used a lot of her power fighting the anchors so the three of them could reach the entryway and now was using even more to hack into the grains here to prevent the doors from being forced open. Alexnya could feel the transmissions from Sri Sa’s grains washing over the grains around them, reprogramming them.

  Sri Sa collapsed, her body fading in and out of solidity. “There. I stopped them from getting in. For a while. But now that the grains know I’m in the biosphere they’ll keep trying to break in.”

  Sri Sa’s body shrunk again, now as small as Alexnya was when she wasn’t powered up. Alexnya walked over and squatted next to her.

  “Then we should get the hell out of here,” Alexnya said.

  Sri Sa glared at her. “This is all your damn fault. Colton and I could have been happy in the biosphere.”