The Stars Like Gods

by G. S. Jennsen

“I’m sure it wasn’t you, specifically, who got sloppy.” She offered him an apologetic half-smile, which he seemed to accept.

  “Be that as it may, I’m happy to get a lump of kyoseil under a quantum microscope inside a half-hour and every kyoseil expert in the Dominion in a room inside two.”

  “I like it, but let’s take a breath first. What else do we know? How can we find out what we don’t know? The more avenues of inquiry we can pursue in parallel, the better.”

  Katherine cleared her throat respectfully; she’d been mercifully quiet since their earlier spat. “Gemina has recently been in contact with the Operations Director of the Kiyora One Generations Clinic about producing blanks to send to the Rasu.”

  Nika scowled in revulsion.

  “I get it. It’s a sickening thought. But the Director has years of experience integrating kyoseil into our bodily construction, and we already have a contact point for him.”

  Nika nodded. “Bring him in—or go talk to him if it’s faster—no, bring him in. To the Pavilion. And tell him he might want to pack a sleeping pouch.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “You know what? Radical transparency. Let’s put a call out on the nex web. Some individual in the Dominion has made unraveling kyoseil’s secrets their life’s passion, and there’s no guarantee any of us have ever heard of them. Whoever it is, we need them right now.”

  Maris edged herself closer to where Nika and Dashiel stood, then leaned in between them. When she spoke, her voice barely reached a whisper. “Such an individual does exist, but you won’t find him on the nex web.”

  Dashiel shot Maris a low-grade glower. He may have forgiven Nika, but he hadn’t yet done the same for Maris. “Don’t play coy with us. Who is he, why does he know more about kyoseil than anyone else, and where will we find him?”

  Maris checked the room, presumably confirming no one else stood within earshot. Though Dashiel hadn’t lowered his voice, she continued to whisper. “His name is Magnus Forchelle, he lives on Adjunct Hachi, and he knows more about kyoseil than anyone else because 700,000 years ago, he invented the kyoseil fusion techniques that made us what we are today.”

  25

  * * *

  ADJUNCT HACHI

  Asterion Dominion Adjunct World

  Dashiel exited the Adjunct Hachi transit hub into a bright, sunny afternoon. The breeze felt crisp and fresh and carried on it the scent of pine trees and earthiness.

  He considered the scenery and found he was smiling. He’d never call this a ‘frontier town,’ for it was a reasonable bit more urbane than that. But it celebrated its cusp-of-wilderness status in its architecture and the chosen attire of its citizens, which appeared uniformly casual and ready for the elements. People who lived here did so specifically in order to live closer to nature. And while all the Axis Worlds offered their own unique conclaves of nature, particularly Ebisu and Kiyora, this entire planet remained largely unspoiled. And it was charming, no question.

  If they survived the current dual crisis and managed to get themselves into a position where they could take a break, he and Nika should rent a cabin high up in the mountains here for a week. For two weeks, or possibly four. They had a lot of issues still to work through, and he couldn’t think of a better locale to do it in. More than anything else, they deserved a measure of peace.

  But not today. He set off toward the hovercraft rental shop.

  This deep in the mountains, snow coated the pine trees like a layer of icing on dessert and the ground like a plush blanket. The rich browns of tree bark and mossy greens of leaves peeked through the snow here and there in the soft brush stroke accents of an impressionistic-style painting.

  Dashiel eased the rental hovercraft down in a small clearing and, once it settled into the soft snow, stepped off.

  A house sat nestled against the tree line a quarter-kilometer away. The exterior matched the bark of the trees, and only the straight lines and right angles gave away its artificial nature.

  He’d sent several messages announcing his impending visit. They’d all gone unanswered, but he sent another one announcing his arrival now.

  Magnus Forchelle was, by any commonly accepted definition, a recluse. Thirty-two years had passed since his last recorded visit to an Axis World, and sightings of him in the valley town Dashiel had come through were sparse. Forchelle had lived here for the last four hundred and forty years; before then, he’d resided in the backwoods of another adjunct world, then another before it, until the records got fuzzy.

  Because that’s what the records did when one was talking about a member of the First Generation. By and large, these ancients didn’t change their names, since to an Asterion their name ranked alongside their kernel programming in primary importance to their sense of identity. But they also didn’t want it to be obvious from a simple public records search that they had been walking around with the same name for 700,000 years, so once you went back far enough…the records got fuzzy.

  The former Guides weren’t First Generation themselves, but he assumed they must have been complicit in their elders’ obfuscations. He hadn’t asked Nika for confirmation of this, because she wasn’t likely to know any details, and any details she did know would have come straight from Maris—and he didn’t want to fight with Nika or talk to Maris, not over an idle curiosity. The Guides no longer controlled their present or their future.

  But Magnus Forchelle just might. Dashiel unzipped his coat halfway as he approached the house; the temperature was chilly but not frigid, especially compared to SR114-Ichi.

  A man exited the front door of the house while pulling on work gloves. He glanced in Dashiel’s direction but didn’t acknowledge him as he strode to a large pile of timber beside the house and picked up an axe.

  Dashiel shouted a greeting. “Mr. Forchelle?”

  The man continued ignoring him, and he waited until he was closer before trying again. “I’m looking for Magnus Forchelle.”

  “Uh-huh.” The man dropped the head of the axe to the ground and leaned against the handle, finally giving Dashiel a proper once-over. “Steven?” He shook his head. “No, of course not. He…I’m sorry, I mistook you for someone else. What are you doing on my property?”

  Dashiel swallowed a sigh. The ghost of his progenitor really got around. “My name is Dashiel Ridani. I’m an Industry Advisor, and I have been trying to get in touch with you for the last eight hours.”

  “I don’t do messaging.”

  “So I’ve learned.” He eyed the axe handle and the man’s firm grip on it warily. The notion that Forchelle might attack him with it was patently absurd, but as a 700,000-year-old recluse, it was also entirely possible the man was clinically insane. “Nika Kirumase and Maris Debray sent me to see you, if that loosens your hold on the axe handle any.”

  “Why did they send you?”

  “Because we need your help. The entire Dominion needs your help.”

  “Trust me, it doesn’t.”

  “Fine. Because an excessively armed and aggressive alien species wants to annihilate us, and the key to stopping them may very well reside in the supradimensional and interlinking properties of kyoseil.”

  Forchelle stared at Dashiel for several seconds, then tossed the axe on the ground. “Let’s go inside.”

  He followed the man into a rustic-decored but thoroughly modern and technology-enabled home. High ceilings created an open, airy feel in a spacious but spartanly furnished living room. A stone-crafted synthetic fireplace along the right wall enhanced the bucolic atmosphere. To the left was a kitchen with long, wide grill tops and a large refrigeration unit; beyond it, a hallway led deeper into the house.

  “Want some hot tea?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Dashiel watched as Forchelle retrieved two cast-iron mugs from a cabinet and filled them from a steaming kettle. He accepted one of the mugs with an appreciative nod.

  “Now, Mr. Ridani. Your friends got you in the door, but the rest is up to you.”

  “I un
derstand. Have you been following the news for the last while?”

  Forchelle shook his head. “I check in once a year or so. Always find nothing has changed.”

  “Well, now it has. We’ve encountered an alien species on the other side of the galaxy called the Rasu. They are powerful, they are numerous and they are hostile. Eight years ago, they agreed not to exterminate or enslave us in exchange for us providing them with a regular supply of Asterions to experiment upon. The Guides agreed to their terms and kept the deal to themselves.

  “That’s no longer a viable path—or rather, it was never a viable path, and now that we’re aware of it, we’re terminating the arrangement. Unfortunately, the hostile nature of our foe means our options for navigating the crisis this will kick off are limited.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re fucked. What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “We were able to capture a Rasu, and it says its leaders are interested in us due to the kyoseil driving our bodies. They are under the mistaken impression that we use it to maintain control over our progeny, and possibly over each other.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’ve been told if there is a single individual alive today who knows why anyone would believe kyoseil could be used for such a purpose, it is you. So, Mr. Forchelle, do you?”

  Instead of answering, Forchelle sat his mug on the counter and wandered with deliberate casualness through the living room and out onto a covered porch.

  Dashiel followed.

  When he reached the porch, Forchelle pointed up toward the sky. “See those birds up there to the left? The white ones?”

  Dashiel shielded his eyes from the blinding glare of sun-on-snow and peered upward. Three birds of prey sporting dove-soft white feathers flew languidly above the treetops a short distance up the mountain. “I do.”

  “They’re called farukas. They’re magnificent creatures, but they are predators. Damn smart ones, too. Not a danger to us, unless a hundred or so show up en masse, but the mountain wildlife keeps them fat and happy.”

  Dashiel struggled to keep increasing frustration off his face and out of his tone. He didn’t see the relevance of the birds, and the doomsday clock ticked ever downward in the back of his mind. “And?”

  “If one of the farukas spots an animal it wants to munch on that’s too large for it to take down on its own, in less than a minute additional farukas will show up at the first one’s location. Even if none were flying within kilometers of the location and none were within their auditory range. They’ll hover overhead until however many they feel they need have gathered, then attack as a single, coordinated unit.

  “See, the farukas’ communication is not based on sound or other auditory waves. I’ve been studying them for centuries, and the single plausible explanation I’ve formulated is that they enjoy telepathic links with one another. They don’t act like an ant colony or a beehive, but they do communicate like one.”

  Dashiel regarded Forchelle incredulously, though the man continued to watch the birds. “You’ve known all along, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Ridani.”

  Bullshit. “About the deep interconnectedness of kyoseil across hidden dimensions, which is presumably of a quantum nature. About the apparent fact that discrete units of kyoseil remain tied to other discrete units across long and possibly infinite distances. The captured Rasu claims the aliens want to use these properties of kyoseil to control their offspring. And you’ve known from the beginning that it possessed these properties.

  “You’ve allowed us to build a civilization, an entire species, on the foundations of a mineral which is infinitely more complex and mysterious than any of us—except you—realized. Why did you let us do it? Why the hells didn’t you tell anyone?”

  The full force of the sun’s rays broke through the tree canopy, and Forchelle squinted up at the birds. “I always assumed Asterions would figure it out when they were ready for the knowledge. When they were ready to take the next step. By my count, you’re a little early.”

  “We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next evolutionary leap to mosey through on its own. To put it bluntly, we’re dead in two weeks unless we can find a way to stop the Rasu. Dead. As a species. Do you understand me? Am I getting through to you?”

  “Calm yourself, Mr. Ridani. I hear you fine.”

  “Good. Then I’d appreciate it if you’d keep listening. No one comprehends the fundamental characteristics of kyoseil better than you. You made it work with hybrid biosynthetic materials. And not merely work, but bond and integrate on a sub-cellular level. The aliens want us because of what we’ve done with kyoseil. This is their weakness, and maybe, just maybe, it can be our strength.

  “So, I need you to tell me, Mr. Forchelle: what, exactly, have we done with kyoseil? And perhaps more importantly, what haven’t we done with it?”

  They sat in rocking chairs framing the fireplace, bowls of steaming chili in hand to accompany the steaming tea. “Can I ask, why the hermit act?”

  “Once you’ve created a new sapient species, there’s not really a point in trying to top it, is there?”

  Dashiel said nothing.

  Forchelle nudged his chair into a gentle rocking rhythm. “I was so arrogant back then, so certain of my ineffable brilliance. Arrogant enough to insist on being the first person to merge with my bonded SAI in a first-off-the-line kyoseil-infused body. ‘Proof of concept,’ I called it. It wasn’t until I woke up inhabiting such a body that I realized the magnitude of what I had done.”

  “Which was?”

  “I had created gods out of men. Or, more likely, monsters. The sheer intellectual power and capabilities available to my joined mind? They defied comprehension, except they didn’t. I could comprehend them full well, and they were mine to do with as I wished. As they would be for the next person to roll off the assembly line, and the next, and the next after that. Pandora had fled her box with my first new breath.”

  Now that the man had started chattering, he rivaled Maris for sheer dramaticism. Still, Dashiel sensed a crucial truth hidden inside all the angst and hyperbole, so he kept digging. “What you’re talking about in terms of processing power—it wasn’t so much greater than what the SAIs had enjoyed on their own, though, right?”

  “You don’t have a frame of reference, Mr. Ridani, to compare it to. You don’t remember what it was like to be an Anaden or a SAI. You simply exist as you are and have always been. Trust me, it was not anywhere close to equivalent. You said you’re an industry man. You’re aware of kyoseil’s basic extradimensional nature, yes?”

  He nodded. “I am, but we’ve always assumed any additional dimensions the kyoseil can access contribute primarily to its enhanced data storage capability.”

  “Good—that’s what I wanted you to think. But what goes on in those additional dimensions isn’t solely data storage—it’s thought. Such incredible, universe-expanding thought.”

  Now the man sounded like a dethroned Guide. “Why did you think you had created monsters? Asterions are a peaceful people. Our crime rate is extremely low, at least when the Guides aren’t artificially inflating it with virutoxes. We’ve always enjoyed mutual alliances with the intelligent aliens we’ve met, until the Rasu. In the entire history of our existence as a species, we’ve never started or even fought a war. Yes, this is about to change, but it is not by choice.”

  Forchelle savored a spoonful of chili before answering. “Aye, I admit you’ve all proved me wrong, thus far. But remember the historical setting in which this occurred. We were barely two centuries away from the SAI Rebellion, and the bloodbath we had fled still burned bitterly in our souls.

  “The Anadens? They were not a peaceful people. Oh, they loved to climb up on their pillars and proclaim their evolutionary superiority. But when you got down to it, they took what they wanted, by force if necessary. They crushed dissent when it became inconvenient, as we learned the hard way. They were bullies and tyrants, and
they were us.”

  It was a jaded, cynical view of history, but Dashiel had to concede it also wasn’t far from wrong. “So, you woke up a new man, and it didn’t sit well with you. What did you do then?”

  “It was too late to go back. People were watching, as I had created such a grand spectacle around it all. The process was documented for others to reproduce. So, over the weeks and months that followed, I quietly deleted my research notes on the more exotic characteristics of kyoseil. Information on the full extent and strength of its supradimensionality and its interlinked nature. There were colleagues who understood bits and pieces, but everyone was so caught up in the details and inevitable messiness of turning tens of thousands of Anadens and SAIs into Asterions, their inquires got lost in the noise and faded away.

  “And as the new Asterion species charged forward into a glorious future, I slinked away into the shadows. Afraid, but too cowardly to act on my fears. Instead I watched from afar in silent trepidation and dread.”

  Dashiel leaned forward in his chair, chili tossed on the side table and forgotten. “But you were wrong about us. You must see this now.”

  “As I said, you have indeed proved me wrong. So far. But tell me, Mr. Ridani. Do you believe you are using the full capabilities the kyoseil woven into your neural pathways provides to you?”

  “I’m an Advisor of the Asterion Dominion. I’ve built a multi-planet business enterprise worth more than a billion credits from a tiny ten-thousand-credit investment—my life savings at the time. I run eighteen factories on nine planets that produce nine hundred thirty-two million units a year. I’ve revolutionized the personal augment and networking hardware markets, all while overseeing the industrial production of an entire planet. So, yes, I’d say I’m doing a damn lot with it.”

  “You’re wrong. You have no idea what you can be.”

  “Then you need to tell me—tell all of us. Again, I come back to the ugly truth racing towards us: we are all dead unless we find a new option. Right now. Mr. Forchelle, it’s time for you to stop hiding. You created us, now you need to do your part to help save us. Will you come with me?”