Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5)

by Lee Bond

  Andros gestured expansively with his hands. “We all know the nature of my work, Emile. The Black Clinics are Universally hunted by Trinity’s forces on an hourly basis. It pays to be a difficult … man … to track down.” Andros smiled wryly at the word ‘man’. He’d spent time with men and women who were allegedly the cream of the crop, movers and shakers possessed of the most unique intellects in History, and yet not one of them had ever even guessed that not only was he most definitely not human, he wasn’t even from their Universe.

  The only to suspect anything had been the never-present Spur, Jordan’s precious android AI, and that machine –as beautiful and perfect a precision tool as anything made in the vats- had only bothered to ask if he intended to direct any harm at its master.

  Emile nodded knowingly, winking one boring brown eye as if the two of them were suddenly colluding against Trinity Itself. “The others and I just finished a meeting…”

  Andros held up a hand, cutting the Conglomerate leader short. “If you mean to tell me the goings on at one of your Cabal meetings, please, don’t waste your breath. I quit. I am done.”

  Emile licked his lips and struggled not to bluster. “No one leaves the Dark Age Cabal, Andros. The things we discussed, the plans we laid …”

  “Idle amusements.” Andros shrugged mock-apologetically when he saw the genuine hurt in Voss’ eyes. Truthfully though, the outrage was terribly funny. Deep down inside, once you got past all the blustering and self-importance –not to mention their intention to essentially deify themselves- more than half the so-called ‘Dark Age Cabal’ sincerely believed that they had the best interests of Humanity at heart. They earnestly felt that a machine mind –no matter that It’d been ruling over most of the Universe for more time than Humanity had even been a thing- couldn’t possibly do a better job than men and women.

  It was beyond ludicrous that the misshapen lump of flesh and fretful tendencies quivering on his screens imagined he could do better than Trinity.

  If Emile weren’t on-screen, Andros knew he’d start laughing hard enough to terrify the servitors.

  This time, Emile did lose his temper. “Damn you, Andros, you cannot leave. The others … I … will not allow it. We’ve spent too many years together, made too many plots. You leaving is unacceptable!”

  Andros shifted to get more comfortable. “If it is a matter of security, Emile, I assure you, I have no intention of betraying any of your nefarious plots against the machine mind to anyone, let alone Trinity Itself. That would be suicidal. No, you have nothing to fear from me, dear fellow. Leave me to my own pursuits and I shall do the same in kind.”

  Emile had never personally liked the lax, languid Andros Medellos. The man’s extensive knowledge of genetic manipulation was all that was wrong with Trinityspace these days. You were born how you were born and that was all that could be said on the matter.

  There were days he woke up and wished most fervently that he gazed upon a face more handsome than his own. It’d be the simplest of tasks to transform himself, but did he? No. He did not. Nor would he ever. Some things were better left to chance.

  Sadly, as much as Emile found the golden-hewed man repulsive, there was a factor that none of them could dismiss; with Jordan Bishop losing his mind and disappearing off the face of the earth, they had lost all focus, all drive. The last half-dozen meetings had erupted into petty, mindless bickering and even more pointless posturing over ‘who was better’.

  Well, Jordan was gone and they’d tried getting his daughter on board, sounding her out as cautiously and as carefully as humanly possible. The mere slip of a girl had sent their emissary packing without as much as a by-your-leave, threatening the whole lot of them with some fairly inventive punishments if they ever broached the topic again.

  Andros grew tired of watching Emile trying to think his way through his own thoughts.

  Humans. They had so little idea that so much of what was on their pitiful minds was so loudly displayed on their faces; one of the little touches that he added in for those of his clients who spent a great deal of money to be someone else was a small manipulation of the brain and the muscles of the face, neatly preventing just such a foolish malfunction of self-preservation.

  It was one of the reasons why Andros loathed the human species so; what race would allow something so spectacularly revealing to persist for so long? It was mind-boggling silliness at its finest.

  “Why have you called me, Emile?” Andros demanded, stretching languidly, intentionally displaying himself to the other man. “The cost to run an undetectable comm-signal across stellar distances alone is quite high. Add to the fact that I do not chat with ex-compatriots over what I just had for lunch, and I am growing close to ending this line. As you h … as you say, cut to the chase, will you?”

  Emile blanched at the display. The man knew no decency, or boundaries. “Very well, Andros, at your insistence, I shall cut to the chase. We are in desperate need of your help.”

  The sentiment was so shocking, so completely out of nowhere, that Andros couldn’t control his reaction. He laughed. Loud and hard, so hard that for the first time since falling into the Unreality, since donning the skin of a man he’d killed in a forest, he genuinely understood what it was to be human. The very notion that the pale wriggling men and women of the so-called Dark Age Cabal needed him for their pathetic scheming plots against arguably one of the finest –if most restrictive and mercurial- leaders anyone, anywhere had ever seen was hilarious.

  And to imagine that those men and women of the Cabal had met in one of their heavily shrouded, immensely encrypted virtual chambers solely to discuss him, how best to win him back to the fold as it were, why, that tickled the old lizard to the core.

  They needed him? Oh, that was rich!

  As he howled with laughter, the servitors ringing the walls shuffled nervously. They’d never seen or heard their master behave thusly, and had no conditioned responses. One moved to assist Andros, but was waved away amidst much snorting.

  Andros Medellos, head of the Black Clinic, not-quite-perfect master of the genome, fallen Tr’ss T’aa Nihaaq Str’ss of the Bruushian Dominion, wiped a legitimate tear from his eye and stared at it for a long second, ignoring the venomous look of hatred in Emile Voss’ boring eyes.

  “I should thank you for that, Emile.” Andros rubbed the tear between his fingertips, sniffed the essence of true amusement from them. “I have never laughed like that. Not in my entire lifetime. A wonderful gift.”

  Emile held back the several dozen responses to that odd statement, not to mention the incredibly rude performance of a few moments ago. They should’ve had anyone but him approach the elusive gene-master. While he hadn’t made his displeasure for the other man widely known, neither had Emile done anything to foster friendship or even camaraderie. Doing his best to keep anger from his voice by remembering that all the members of the Cabal felt the same way, half-ruler of the Voss_Uderhell Conglomerate resumed speaking as if nothing had happened.

  “All hilarity aside, Andros, be reasonable.” Emile waited for Andros to focus on the screen; the large man was busy staring at his fingertips like he wanted to lick them clean. When he was certain that he’d be heard, Emile continued. “Without you and Jordan, we are rudderless. We cannot agree on anything, save that we need someone to guide us. That, and that a Dark Age truly does approach. We need a man like you, someone who, if I may be blunt, has done little to form alliances within our little group, as so many of us have. Now is the perfect time to be in the Cabal. When Trinity’s systems begin to fail will be the time to strike. We can supplant the damned machine mind and rise to true power, as is our destiny.”

  Andros rubbed his fingers dry on the couch. “Improbable dreams of Universal power set aside for the time being, Emile, did it ever occur to you that I was part of your Cabal for no other reason than it was something to do? A little amusement on my part?”

  “I … I don’t understand.” Emile stammered. The words coming
out of Andros’ mouth made no sense. “That … that doesn’t … I …”

  The Conglomerate head took a deep breath and resumed, nerves grating on the look of amused permission on Andros’ infuriatingly handsome face. “As controller of the incredibly illegal Black Clinics that you operate, you, out of all of us, face continual pressure and threat from all of Trinity’s forces. It is widely known that the machine mind has been looking for you since you opened your doors, and I imagine that it grows ever more difficult to stay one step ahead of It, even in the nearly infinite of our Universe.”

  Andros nodded, curious to see where Emile was headed. Would the man show actual backbone? Actual spine? As leader of the third most powerful Conglomerate in Trinityspace, it was easy to assume that the fat ugly man had –at one point or another- been vicious and cutthroat enough to crawl his way to the top, but in Cabalistic meetings, it’d always been shrill Annalisa to speak the loudest.

  “Then why,” Emile pounced, “why would you toss away the chance to sit at the head of the ruling table? That’s … foolish. We have a decade or less before the next Dark Age falls. Even now, we devote considerable effort, both money and time into coming up with a plan that will give us what we want. We just need someone … someone to keep us focused on a single goal. Rejoin us, now, and be there. Save yourself, save your Clinics, from falling by the wayside, because I assure you, if you do not, we, the fathers and mothers of the New Universe, will go out of our way to hammer you into dust.”

  Andros clapped slowly, thrusting as much sarcasm into the act as he could. “Is that what you’ve decided to call it? Your reign? The ‘New Universe’?”

  Emile blinked. “I … it’s a working title.” He waved a hand, irritated. “Titles and slogans aren’t the point, Andros. We’ve given you an ultimatum. Be one of us, guide us with your so-called legendary intellect! Provide for us a stability that only one who holds no allegiance to anyone but himself and his own needs to stay clear of Trinity, or … vanish.”

  “The thing I wonder,” Andros scratched at a jowl as he read a progress report from the servitors packing up his belongings, “is if you are even truly capable of understanding what it is you wish to do, when all is said and done.”

  Emile opened his mouth to hotly decry the thinly veiled insult, but Andros pushed on through the man’s incensed expression.

  “You see, Emile, what you and the others, even Jordan, failed to consider is that Trinity Itself has been proctor of Humanity for thirty thousand years. Allow that to sink in for a moment, would you? Ply your own so-called intellect into grasping even an edge of the truth of that. Thirty thousand years, Emile. A singular thinking machine, in control of Humanity’s growth and progress for all that time. It’s weathered more Dark Ages than I suspect we even rightly know. It’s pushed back invasion forces from Offworld species so grim and terrible that were you or I to behold them, our minds would be stripped clean. The Cabal has always willfully –ignorantly- chosen to ignore those, and other, extremely important things. No one man, no one group, can possibly hope to defeat Trinity Itself, Emile. The little we do know about how the machine mind is constructed indicates that unlike the standard AI model in use for the last … forever … is that it is not singular. It is a widespread network of some kind. All attempts to discover just what that truly means has always been met with colossal failure and even more importantly, blowback into all our ventures.

  Can you, the Cabal, with one hundred percent certainty, sit there and tell me that you’ve even got an inkling how to defeat something that may have, what, ‘intelligence outposts’ seeded throughout the vastness of It’s Domain? From any one of which a new Trinity might rise, much like the hydra from ancient mythology! My own personal thoughts on the matter insist that we would need to destroy every single scrap of machinery devoted to It’s capacity. Think man, think! Of the observable Universe, the Cordon contains nearly seventy-five percent of all Galaxies, and of those, Trinity Itself rules with impunity over virtually one hundred percent! Most Offworld species have simply decided to allow It control over their own existences. Those that do not, find themselves … shut off. I have no doubt there are solar systems out there, possibly even galaxies, that are dead, Emile. Dead and empty because they refused to deal with Trinity. Trinity is no fool. I will wager everything I own and will ever own from now until the death of the Universe itself that there are parts of Trinity hidden everywhere, snippets of machine code or what have you, simply waiting for the moment when It needs to reboot Itself from just the sort of attack you imply. Join the Cabal? Destroy Trinity?”

  Andros locked eyes with the grotesque Emile Voss. “I think not. Trinity is the perfect leader. It does not care about the individual. It rarely even cares about the masses. It’s mandate is to see Humanity spread throughout the Universe, and that It is doing and will continue to do and I truly see no reason to stop It. Allow messy biologics, unkempt minds like yours, into such a position of true power? I have proven to all of you time and again that the flesh is weak, the flesh is mutable. Human desire and the passionate love affair you have with corruption is beyond avarice. Join you? Hardly. I would sooner wage war against you myself.”

  With the diatribe over, Emile perhaps began to understand a little better why the other members of the Cabal had all but forced him into being the one to talk with Andros; when the man got worked up –which was rare, for his calm and meditative nature was the stuff of endless gossip- he was a terror to behold. His voice grew deeper, his eyes went –if such a thing were possible- colder still and some had confided that they felt like an animal caught in a predator’s gaze, which was saying quite remarkable about Andros, to affect men and women of power in such a way.

  But not him, no. Emile Voss. He was armored by hate. Rather than cower and accept the man’s spewing arrogance, Emile found himself amused, for Andros Medellos had just dug his own grave.

  Emile frowned a small little frown, and caught just the slightest hint of … doubt? Concern? Some miniscule flicker in Andros’ eyes that betrayed something he was beginning to realize he’d missed.

  “We are sorry to hear you say that, Andros.” And, funnily enough, it was true still, even after the golden-hewed man had made such effort to be so incredibly mocking. “You have a first rate mind, and are ingenious in ways that we see so rarely these days.”

  A warrior’s instinct screamed shrilly in Andros’ ears. He’d missed something, or hadn’t considered something. Emile’s countenance had gone from one of supplication to amusement. What could it be? Andros narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what factors were out there that he might’ve ignored when he should have instead been counting them.

  Nothing. There was nothing. No one knew where he was, not really. Beyond the usual difficulties in tracking a Q-Comm through the various Quantum Tunnel relays he employed, there was the nature of encrypted quantum communications in the first place. On top of that ultra-secure method, Andros himself employed a few devious and unexpected methods to prevent detection; the vast majority of the ‘machines’ he used to control the various things in this technologically dependent Universe were, in fact, biologic.

  It’d taken decades of painstaking research and trial and error to finally discover a way to ‘properly’ meld organic with inorganic; Trinity had done a truly wonderful job of making a true merger between mind and machine an impossibility, but the machine mind had never once considered the possibility of a Bruush taking the time out.

  There was simply no way that Emile Voss or, for that matter, any of the other Cabalistic buffoons, could locate him. Andros smiled. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Emile. My mind is quite made up on the subject.”

  Emile held up a hand, shaking his head. “Oh, no, I quite understand, Andros. You made your point as succinct as possible. I was merely making a statement. It is, however, regrettable that you did make that point.”

  Andros cleared his throat and made a point of checking on the progress down below. The servitors were moving
along at fantastic pace, tearing down and packaging up all that he would need to open another Black Clinic some years down the road. Though, Andros suddenly realized, it might not even come to that. The Unreal Universe was overripe, the Heshii had yet to pluck their fruit, and there were rumblings in his gut that said those extra-dimensional Lords may not have an easy time of it, which might make the reality of another Black Clinic unlikely.

  Still, though, Emile’s attitude was grating on every last nerve the old lizard possessed. Andros shifted forward and fixed his counterpart with a steadfast gaze that had, in its time, made beings so monstrous and powerful twitch in their seats that he rather hoped Emile Voss just dropped dead where he was. Alas, no luck. The wriggling human had no idea who … what he was truly confronting.

  “Out with it, man.” Andros snapped, the timbre in his voice causing his servitors to flinch and soil themselves. “You act as though you have some great secret.”

  “Ah, but I do, Andros.” Emile tipped an invisible hat. Oh, he was so pleased that he could return Andros’ gift of that tedious monologue with one of his own. Just a bit more irritation, though. Just a bit. “I do indeed.”

  Realizing you are being goaded and being able to do anything about it were two entirely different things, and Andros knew this, so he steeled himself as best he could, remembering the times in his most youthful past when he’d been called to the mat by Bruushian Ladies and Lords for failures, using that fear and terror to dampen the rage boiling just beneath the skin. “Out with it then, you pale, wriggling maggot. Tell me what it is you think you know, or have done, or can do. And then I will tell you something that will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

  Emile quirked an eyebrow at ‘pale, wriggling thing’. It had the sound of a much used, much loved phrase, and was so full of scornful arrogance that it left the IndoRussian wondering just what Andros thought of himself. He flicked the wonder away; it didn’t matter, and in a few minutes, the best possible revenge would be theirs.