The Sovereign Road

by Aaron Calhoun

  The mass paused a few moments, then added: It pains me each time I give him hurt. But the time is soon coming when my strength will be boundless and his at its nadir. Do you understand, Creature of the Under-of-things? For if you do not, there is naught else I can teach. Now go, if you can, for even now I feel the pain building within me, and I must soon release the energies which I have held back these few moments.

  Garin looked down for a moment, deep in thought. Within his mind he could feel concepts orbiting each other like moons; complete in themselves, yet unattached. Then, unexpectedly, a moment of insight came. In his mind he saw the image of a great space, the space of all possible symmetries, the space in which the great ‘hedron turned. He saw that space circumscribed by the power of the Exofuge, ever collapsing inward under its own weight. He saw that space supported and sustained in balance by an opposing force that held up the great arch of the Exofuge like Atlas lifting the sky upon his shoulders. All sense of danger forgotten, Garin stepped out from the protecting cage of spikes, walked to the edge of the Exofuge’s back, and looked down through the Xaocosmic Border in wonder.

  Below him hung the great ‘hedron in all its marvelous complexity, a great gleaming jewel set amidst a shimmering cagework of spun crystal. The last tattered shrouds of cerulean mist clung doggedly to the jewel as if trying to prevent some final revelation, but only for a moment. Then the mist was blown away in a mighty rush of wind and fire, and Garin saw for the first time the blazing heart of the Great ‘hedron, the essential unity that gave it form and being. Armed with this new understanding, he turned upward again and saw clearly what the boiling mass that hung above him was: a primal force, on the same level as the Chromoclast and the Exofuge, whose task it once was to keep the ‘hedron from collapsing, a force now so grossly swollen under the weight of its own power that every movement it made threatened the symmetries themselves. As he contemplated this, Garin saw in his mind’s eye a wall of bilious green light sweep across the worlds below, erasing everything in its wake, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  “You,” said Garin, “you are the one behind the entropy clouds.”

  “No!” the mass thundered, its form engorged with power. “You are responsible, you and all those like you. My power was but the force you chose to corrupt! Now go! Your time here has ended.”

  Then the mass roared in pain, and a deluge of green fire rained down upon the world.

  “Come,” called Kyr urgently. “The Exofuge can protect you no longer.”

  Garin swiftly leapt from the Exofuge’s back toward Kyr. For a moment he fell, and then landed on a hard surface. Garin looked down in surprise, and saw that a pavement of stars and blackness had formed beneath him. A deep rumble sounded behind him. Garin glanced back and saw the Exofuge dive beneath the Xaocosmic border as it fled from the dissolving fire. Turning back to Kyr, he began to run.

  The pair raced down the road as destruction fell around them. Soon they reached a place where the road curved sharply downward, diving steeply beneath the Xaocosmic Border. Garin hesitated for a moment, yet, urged by Kyr, took a deep breath and plunged over the brink. Despite its change in orientation, the road still seemed level to him. Rather, it was the world about him that seemed to have shifted. They continued to run, passing the outer peaks of the ‘hedron and the crystalline lattice in which the Perichorr and First-of-the-Bound dwelled, until at last they reached its blazing core and Garin felt the world around them begin to fall away.

  “Take my hand,” said Kyr. “Grasp it tightly! We must soon pass through the shadow.”

  A few more steps and the ‘hedron of Materia fell away completely, a dim sphere of crystal on the mountain of stars and blackness that held the worlds.

  Chapter 13: Rumors of Holocaust

  Trielle lay in her bed, feigning sleep. Though her door was closed, a faint haze of light filtered beneath it, accompanied by the faint buzz of subsiding conversation. She was growing impatient.

  Trielle had arrived at home several hours ago and had patiently joined in evening conversation, waiting for an opportunity to slip off and review her new treasury of information. It had been difficult. After the initial niceties, the conversation quickly turned toward Garin’s disappearance. For the fourth night her parents asked if she knew anything more, and, from the strained look on their faces, she did not think they entirely believed her denials. In an effort to redirect the conversation Trielle had asked about the status of Vai. Unfortunately the news her father brought had only troubled her more. Apparently a stellar reignition was planned in seven days time. She had asked how much gravitic power such an event would take, and it had taken a herculean effort of will to mask her concern when she heard the number. Even more worrisome was the brief flash of fear she had seen in her father’s eyes.

  Abruptly the lights beyond her door dimmed and the sounds of conversation ceased. Beneath the covers, Trielle clasped her infochryst tightly in her hands.

  Just a few more minutes.

  She waited until she was sure that her parents were asleep, then she drew the infochryst out from beneath the bedsheets and activated it. Within moments the device had drawn a holographic web of information in the air above her bed, a catalogue of the data she had acquired at the Arx Memoria. Bringing up a query frame, she whispered the name of Anthron Rashavey.

  The information web abruptly expanded as the infochryst pinpointed the object of her search. A few seconds later and the data she sought hung in the air before her: six augmented text files. The first two titles were quite abstract in nature and she did not know what to make of them, but the third immediately captured her attention.

  Speculations on the Use and Cosmologic Consequences of Applied Gravitic Manipulation.

  Trielle smiled and opened the file. Her eyes widened in bewilderment as she read the first sentence.

  For centuries now, preparations have been made for the coming inevitable war with the Dar Ekklesia, and yet the beginning of this necessary conflict has been delayed due to the travel and signaling advantages of the Anastasis’ multidimensional biology. In addition, our sympathizers are outnumbered one thousand to one by the Alapsari.

  War? thought Trielle. What war? And who are the Alapsari and Anastasi?

  Puzzled, she read onward.

  Yet now this gross imbalance has been finally neutralized by new developments in applied vacuum engineering and the consequent creation of a prototype gravitic manipulation ring by Ronath Larid of D’zenohor.

  The manuscript continued on, describing the function of the prototypical laridian ring system in some detail. Having already deduced much of this during her time in the Arx Memoria, she rapidly skimmed the material until she reached a section titled Possible Consequences of Long-term Use.

  Even now, as we ready ourselves for the initial skirmishes, copies of this prototype are being crafted around the galaxy in the greatest of secrecy by Conclave sympathizers. Yet we must ask ourselves what the possible costs may be of this great advance. Larid’s ring is currently hailed as a near perpetual motion machine, capable of generating any degree of gravitic disturbance with an easily replenished seed charge, but this is far from the case. As I have demonstrated, each use of a ring imposes an artificial separation between virtual bosonic and fermionic fields. While much attention has been given to the fermionic fields, virtually none has been given to the bosonic components. Instead, they are simply treated as exhaust, with the assumption that field dilution by normal spacetime will neutralize any untoward effects. Given the vastness of the Galaxy, and their expected lightspeed dispersion rates, this is not an unreasonable hypothesis. Unfortunately, it is also false.

  Trielle took a deep breath. This is what she had been searching for.

  Over the past months I have conducted a number of experiments to investigate the nature and dissipation of unopposed virtual bosonic fields, and have found that this value is a gross overestimate. At its highest, I place the true rate at 0.25 the speed of light. My c
urrent hypothesis is that this phenomenon is due to a residual stochastic attraction between the separated fermionic and bosonic field components. Given the relatively low energy density of the bosonic field, this phenomenon in and of itself is not a huge obstacle to the limited use of Larid’s rings. It does, however, place an upper bound on the amount of field separation that can be safely induced in a limited volume of space.

  At its worst, unrestricted use of this technology could generate fields of sufficient magnitude to effectively separate that volume of space from the rest of the cosmos by creating circumferential regions in which ω<-1, accelerating spatial expansion past the speed of light. To complicate matters, continued use of gravitic technology within that volume would cause rapid accumulation of additional virtual bosonic fields, eventually decomposing any and all matter within it via a phantom energy effect. Should this occur, the trapped bubble of normal space could be stabilized somewhat by the largely fermionic particle output of any enclosed stars, but this effect would only last as long as the stellar output remained above a critical threshold estimated at 4.2x1031 fermions/sec/cubic light minute of enclosed space. Fortunately, the level of ring usage needed to create this effect is extreme, far above what would typically be generated by routine uses.

  Trielle looked away from the manuscript as a hard knot formed in her stomach. Though the mathematical terms were unfamiliar, it was easy to see the connection between Rashavey’s description of unrestricted bosonic flux and the entropy clouds. A cold shiver ran down her back, and she suddenly became very tired.

  Kyr had been right.

  Still, she could not escape the sense that there was more to this that she currently understood. Rashavey had not expected this crucial tipping point to be reached by routine laridian ring use, so what had caused it? The references to war also puzzled her. After all, Rashavey had lived only a millennium ago, and the last wars recorded in her textbooks had been several millennia before that. Then a strange, unsettling thought rose in her mind. Touching the manuscript file’s holographic icon, Trielle instructed the infochryst to display the date of the file’s creation. Within seconds several dates appeared in the air. The first, 9,600 D.E., meant nothing to her, but the one below it, 11,700 A.D., did. The ancient dating system was still taught in schools that catered mostly to humans, even thought it had long been supplanted by one beginning with the founding of the Conclave. Trielle stared at the number in bewilderment.

  Something is wrong here…

  Gesturing to the infochryst, Trielle called up the current date and instructed the system to display it in both modern and archaic formats. When the date appeared it was as she remembered it: 5,361 I.C. (Inauguration of the Conclave). Translated into the ancient system, the date was approximately 15,000,002,314 A.D.

  Trielle’s brow furrowed.

  If Rashavey lived a millennium ago…

  There was no need to perform the calculation; by any measure the difference was immense. Filled with a growing sense of dread, Trielle closed the file and opened one of the others, quickly accessing its creation date.

  11,650 A.D.

  With a haste bordering on panic, she instructed the infochryst to list all new files by the date of their creation. Though the numbers varied, practically all were dated to the 11th and 12th millenia A.D., one hundred thousand times younger than they should be. Trielle closed her eyes, trying in vain to clear her thoughts. The age discrepancy was troubling enough, but there was something more here that she could not put her finger on, something more crucial than the sheer difference in timescale. Then her eyes snapped open and she gasped in sudden understanding.

  Vai! It’s supposed to be an ancient star. But if this is true, then it should be fairly young, not senile. It shouldn’t have burned out at all!

  A quick search on the aging patterns of main sequence stars confirmed her suspicion, and a wave of nausea swept through her as she considered the implications of all she had learned. Much of what she thought she knew about the history of the Conclave was false, a construct designed to hide the true origins of the threats that faced them.

  Trielle contemplated the sheer magnitude of the deception. Such a lie would have required the alteration of records on an interplanetary scale as well as the consent of every living member of the Conclave. And even if this were possible, some must surely have passed on the true history if only to be sure that the lie was maintained throughout the rest of society. Then she recalled the uncharacteristic look of fear that flashed across her father’s face as he discussed the upcoming stellar reignition, and the horrible realization of what that look meant gripped her heart like a fist of iron.

  Filled with exhaustion, Trielle began to deactivate her infochryst, but then hesitated as a single anomalous file caught her attention. It was the only new file on her infochryst that dated from the current year. Puzzled, Trielle scrutinized the file more closely, and saw that it had apparently been created only hours ago. She touched the file and it opened to reveal seven simple lines of text.

  Trielle, by now you have discovered, or are about to discover, some long concealed truths. If you truly wish to pursue this path, you must travel to En-Ka-Re. Seek Tserimed on the fourth moon of Galed if you wish to know the way.

  I will be waiting for you.

  Anacrysis

  After reading it several more times, Trielle finally switched off the infochryst and placed it on the table beside her bed. The message had reignited a spark of hope within her, but it was a hope shot through with uncertainty. Where, or what, was En-Ka-Re? Finding the answer might take some time, and if what Rashavey had written was true then time was a commodity she had very little of. If the stellar reignition occurred as planned, they could be facing the worst entropy storm in history.

  Chapter 14: Black Communion

  In a vaulted cavern miles beneath the Omegahedron, the Entrope brooded upon a throne of black diamond. Despite the satisfying chaos produced by the death of Vai, a vague sense of unease veiled his thoughts. Even the prospect of greater destruction during the coming reignition attempt did little to soothe him. Over and over, his lips formed the same rambling series of syllables, a mantra intended to push away the intrusive emotion and fill him again with the sharp bliss of meaninglessness. The strategy was typically effective, but today the mantra seemed unable to penetrate his troubled mind. Instead, it flitted about the windows of his consciousness like an insect; clearly present, but unable to enter.

  A brief spasm of pain assaulted his muscles and he snapped back to full alertness. Grimacing, he grasped his bone staff and arose, descending the dais on which his throne stood to the floor of the cavern.

  Scoured out by magma aeons before, this cave system had been used by the Entrope and his predecessors since the founding of the Conclave. They appeared on no official records, although rumors of their existence occasionally circulated among the lesser officials. The chamber of the throne was the largest of the caverns. Its walls were forged of black basalt and its floor was rent by yawning chasms from which sulphurous vapors wafted, the final exhalations of the once mighty flames of Latis’s core. A path paved with red marble and flanked by plasma torches ran the short distance between the dais and the nearest of these chasms, ending in a narrrow span that arched over the abyss into the darkness beyond. The torched flickered with furtive green light, casting venomous shadows across the cavern like a scene from a nighmare.

  The Entrope strode down the path, each step sending electric jolts of pain up into his spine. His memories stretched back to the foundation of the Conclave, but, curiously, he did not know his age, though he could tell from the way this body responded that the time for renewal would soon be upon him.

  He crossed the bridge and came to a divide in the path. Briefly he looked down the rightward fork and traced the path as it spiraled outward to the edge of another abyss, crossed it in a shadowed arc, and disappeared into a tunnel in the far rock wall. At its terminus lay the Chamber of Rebirth, where even now the body
of his successor floated in biosuspensive fluid. Cloned from a DNA sample taken from his original body millennia ago, the unstructured neurons in its brain were even now being reshaped into an exact replica of his by the ceaseless ministrations of the Irkallan Infochryst. When his time came to die, a last cerebral transfer would be made and his successor would awake with his thoughts and memories. He often wondered, in unguarded moments, if it would truly be him, his consciousness, in the new body after the moment of rebirth. And, as always, the conclusion was the same.

  It did not matter.

  There was no consciousness, and therefore the question had no meaning. If his neural patterns were successfully duplicated, allowing the new Entrope to continue the work assigned to him at the Conclave’s founding, then nothing else was relevant. Despite this, the Entrope secretly hoped that this would be the last incarnation, that he, in his current body, would be the last man present in the heart of the maelstrom as the entropy clouds dissolved the last remnants of the dying cosmos. It was an honor promised to the final Entrope alone. Then he remembered wishing for the same thing in his previous body, and a thin, almost absurd, smile parted his thin lips. But the smile was soon effaced as the unease he had felt earlier surged within him again. He would find no solace in the Chamber of Rebirth. His face grim, the Entrope turned and shuffled down the leftward path.