by J. N. Chaney
“Okay, this might look like a human being, but it’s not,” Leira said. “It’s a—” She paused, struggling to find a word that fit.
“It’s a Bright,” Dash said. “That’s it. That’s all we need to know.”
“Custodian,” Conover said. “When we were back in the docking bay, you mentioned something about this Bright being unusual.”
“Not this Bright in particular,” Custodian replied. “I can offer nothing of substance regarding how this specific Bright compares to others of the race. The Creators record nothing about them in their databases, presumably because they long predate the Bright.”
“So what makes you say there’s something about this one that’s unusual?” Amy said, wrinkling her nose at the now mostly dismembered body.
“Assuming that this being began as a wholly, or at least mostly organic organism, virtually every major anatomical system has been replaced by some form of technology or artificial material. The sole exception to this is the nervous system.”
“What makes it special?” Dash asked.
“It is organic. In fact, the individual nerve cells, and the various other types of cells that make up the brain, the spinal cord, and the nerves, are all human. They are not augmented in any way. They show exactly the same sorts of metabolic wear, incidental damage, and effects of aging one would expect to find in any other human.”
A long silence followed as everyone pondered the significance of this. Kai finally spoke up.
“Perhaps these Bright have chosen to retain their human nervous systems in order to retain some semblance of their humanity.”
“Yeah, I don’t think caring for humanity and the Bright really go together very well as concepts,” Dash said.
“Oh, believe me, I am not suggesting that they do,” Kai replied. “The Enemy of All Life is just that.” He gave the dissected corpse a contemptuous glare. “Even in their own forms, they eschew the physiology they were born with in favor of mechanisms.” He looked back at Dash. “What I mean is, perhaps the intangible things that define us—thought, expression, creativity, the ability to understand and solve problems—perhaps these things cannot be incorporated into a creature such as this.”
“I don’t know,” Conover said, his tone doubtful. “The Unseen were able to produce some pretty sophisticated AIs. Look at Custodian, Sentinel, or Tybalt. Any of them could easily be humans speaking through a comm.”
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” Amy said. Everyone stopped and looked at her, and she smiled and shrugged. “It’s an old saying for when someone is trying to pretend to be something they’re not.”
“I can assure you the three of us are not secretly organic lifeforms,” Tybalt said. “What a thing to suggest.”
Despite the grim weight of the situation, Dash had to smile. “I think you insulted him.”
Leira rolled her eyes. “Tybalt was created insulted.”
“You are correct,” Kai went on, looking at Conover. “But you are correct about the wrong thing. Yes, it may be possible to create an AI that is a perfect simulation of you, Conover. And, when speaking over a comm, it might be impossible to tell if it is you or not. But it would not be you. If we did this to your body”—he gave the corpse a vague wave—“and then installed that perfect Conover AI in it, it wouldn’t be you, would it?”
Conover pursed his lips then shook his head “No, it wouldn’t. Which means that it wouldn’t be me living on for five hundred years, just a perfect simulation of me.”
“That’s right,” Kai replied. “You would still die within a normal lifespan. If the perfect simulation of you lived five hundred years, or five thousand, it wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
“So they keep their nervous system,” Dash said, picking up the thread. “Which is how they keep, well, themselves.”
Kai nodded. “So this Bright is the same person, though I hesitate to even use the word, who was born five hundred years ago and has lived through, experienced, and remembers the ensuing centuries.”
“Hang on,” Harolyn said, raising a hand. “I’m no medical doctor—hell, I can barely treat a blistered foot—but I don’t think you have to be to know that a human nervous system doesn’t last for five hundred years.” She looked around. “Right?”
Amy crossed her arms. “Custodian, you did say this guy’s—or girl’s, and I mean wow, you’d really get rid of that difference? Anyway, didn’t you say this one’s nervous system showed normal signs of aging?”
“I did,” Custodian replied.
“Okay, so that doesn’t make any sense. How can this Bright have its original nervous system if it’s five hundred years old?”
“Correction. I never said its nervous system was five hundred years old. I said it showed the normal signs of aging,” Custodian said.
Dash felt something like little claws start scratching and scrabbling deep in his gut. He did not like where this was heading.
“So how old is this one’s nervous system?” he asked.
“It exhibits a range of ages, from approximately twenty-five, to approximately forty-five years.”
Leira shook her head. “How does a five-hundred-year-old…?”
Her voice trailed off, then her head snapped up from staring at the corpse, to looking at Dash, eyes wide and hard. At the same time, those little scratching claws became a fist that punched him, hard.
“That’s why they’re taking those ships,” he said. “So they can get their crews and passengers, and—”
“Oh, shit,” Harolyn said. “I mean, shit. They’re harvesting their nerves, the cells, and the like to use for themselves.”
“Because it’s the one part of themselves they couldn’t manufacture,” Conover said.
Dash stared at the corpse, his gut clenching at the realization of what was happening to the humans. The corpse wasn’t done with painful revelations. It had another wallop to deliver. “I think it’s more than that,” he said.
We know you, the sterile, mechanical voice had said, right before the Bright ship’s overloaded reactor exploded. We know how you have lived your pathetic lives…
Dash wished this Bright was alive just so he could kill it. He took a long, slow breath. “They’re doing more than just stealing nerve tissue.”
Leira shook her head. “What do you mean?”
“Memory,” Dash said. “They’re stealing memory. Our memory.”
Sudden horror tightened Leira’s face then rippled through the rest of the assembly. “What?”
“They can’t make nerve tissue, brain cells, that sort of thing,” Dash said. “So they steal it. And, along with it, they steal our memory: who we are, where and how we live, and love, and fight and die. They’ve found a way to steal it, and that’s why they keep taking people.”
“Dash, how could you possibly know that?” Amy asked.
“Something the Bright said, after we grabbed this body, and right before their ship blew up. Sentinel, can you replay that?”
“We know you,” that hateful, empty voice said. “We know how you have lived your pathetic lives.”
“I realize that this is not conclusive, but I happen to agree with Dash’s interpretation,” Sentinel said. “At the very least, it would give the Bright and the Golden valuable insight into the nature of your species.”
“Is there no limit to the depravity of the Enemy?” Kai said.
Dash shook his head. “No. I don’t think there is.”
“Even worse, they will never stop,” Kai added. “Not until they have succeeded and extinguished all life, save for their own twisted parody of it.”
“No,” Dash said. “They won’t.”
“Then we have to stop them,” Leira said into the silence.
“Oh, we need to do more than that,” Dash said. “We have to extinguish them. We have to end them, scour their worlds, obliterate their cities, their ships, everything, until the only thing left is their story—their memory. And we use that as a warning to try
and prevent anything like this from ever happening again.”
“Okay,” Leira said. “Where do we start?”
“Let’s ask Al’Bijea,” Dash said. “Something tells me he wants the same thing.”
10
Dash nodded to Al’Bijea when the Governor’s face appeared on the comm.
“I just read your summary regarding these Bright and the corpse you retrieved,” Al’Bijea said. “It was most succinct and informative—and horrifying.”
“Well, the succinct and informative part isn’t because of me,” Dash said. “The monks we have here, from the Order of the Unseen, they’re the scholars, not me. So due credit to them for that. The horrifying part, though?” He sighed. “Yeah, that’s all on the Bright and, by extension, the Golden.”
“So what do you propose to do, Dash?”
“Well, the first thing we need to do is find the Bright. And that’s why I’m calling you. Remember how you mentioned that there were old stories about ship disappearances near your home system, where the Ring is?”
“Yes. But when I said old stories, I meant it, Dash. The idea of some sort of zone in space near here, where ships frequently vanish, was debunked long ago. It turns out that, statistically, there’s only a very slightly increased chance of a ship going missing in the region we’re talking about, compared to any other section of traveled space. And that could just be statistical uncertainty.”
Dash scratched his nose. “I’m not going to pretend I’ve got some full-fledged theory worked out here. Call it more the feel of the situation.”
“The feel? You mean, a hunch?”
“You know, when you say it like that, you sound just like one of our AIs.”
“I don’t understand.”
Dash smiled and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You must have based this feel of things on something, Dash.”
“Yeah. That abandoned station Leira and I found was built to knock ships out of unSpace that were skimming the edge of the galactic arm. It caught the Wind of Heaven because they seemed to actually be on their way out of the galactic arm, or into its very margins, anyway.”
“Okay.”
“So they were keeping their nasty little trap in a region of space without a lot of traffic. And when ships did go missing out there, people just wrote it off to traveling through a pretty remote region of space.”
Al’Bijea nodded. “All right.”
“Well, when I look at your Ring, you guys have put yourselves on what amounts to another margin of well-traveled space. Beyond you, there just aren’t many inhabited planets—mostly just research outposts, mining operations, and things like your comet harvesting. I mean, it was out there that you found your first big comet, the one that turns out to contain that Golden Dark Metal foundry, right?”
Al’Bijea nodded again. “Yes. It wasn’t very far from here, in fact.”
“Okay, so we’ve assumed that the Bright are working for the Golden. But what if they’re only doing it indirectly? Like, they’ve discovered Golden tech, but maybe not the Golden themselves?”
“Dash, this is all very—”
“Vague, yeah, I know,” Dash said, waving a hand and leaning back in his seat. “Anyway, I just want to try mapping out marginal regions of space with a reputation for ships vanishing and see if it offers us anything useful.” He shrugged. “It might be a waste of time. But right now, our biggest deficiency is what we know about our enemies. They know exactly where we are, here in the Forge, so they’re always able to take the initiative and we always have to react. I want to flip that around.”
“That, I understand, believe me,” Al’Bijea said. “I am no warrior, but I do have a lot of experience in business dealings.” He smiled wryly. “I suspect they share many of the same attributes. So, what are you asking for?”
“Well, you guys roam the remote parts of space a lot, looking for comets to mine. I know you also value your privacy, so you probably keep pretty close tabs on ship movement around your ring world, right?”
“We’re careful, yes.”
“So I’m asking you to send us all of the data you can put together. Anything might be useful. Spatial anomalies, cometary fields, planets you’ve found that aren’t charted, ship movements, anything. Hell, everything. We’re going to combine it with what we’ve got, and anything else we can get, and see if our AIs can tease anything useful out of it.”
Al’Bijea nodded. “I’ll have my people start packaging it all up for you.”
“Thank you, sir. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”
After Al’Bijea had signed off, Dash just sat in the War Room and listened to the faint rumbles and mutters of the Forge, as its thousands—millions?—of systems did what they did. It was a purposeful sound that hinted at vast power ready to be unleashed.
Dash was glad for that readiness and the expansive, insanely advanced tech that embodied it. But he was just as glad for his allies, people like Benzel and Al’Bijea. Custodian and Sentinel might be able to understand the concept of feeling something, but they’d never really get it. They’d always consider it irrational, illogical. Benzel, Al’Bijea, and the others, they did get it. Dash took great comfort in that, having some irrationality and illogic to go along with all that softly grumbling, super-advanced power. The second would let them fight this war, but the first might be what let them win it.
Dash frowned at the star chart Custodian projected into the War Room. More to the point, he frowned at the shaded regions and what seemed like a tangled mess of lines transecting and connecting them.
“Okay, Custodian, pretend I don’t know what I’m looking at. Because I don’t. What is this telling us?”
“This is a compilation of the raw data we used in the analysis. This is from all sources, including the Creators’ archives; the databases aboard the Slipwing, Snow Leopard, and Rockhound; new data gathered by the Archetype, the Swift, and the Silent Fleet; and the data sent to us by the Aquarian Collective.”
“Okay. Still not sure what it’s telling me, though.”
“That is because these are the raw data. Sentinel, Tybalt, and I have devoted considerable computational time and resources to their analysis, using a multitude of statistical reductions and transformations.”
“I believe you. I’m sure your methodology is spot on.” Dash glanced at Leira, who just shrugged and smiled. “What’s the bottom line here?”
The display changed, most of the mess of data vanishing, replaced by a series of lines that snaked through the galactic arm, finally converging toward a region of space near where the arm smeared into the thicker, bulging disk of the galaxy’s core. Dash, Leira, and the others present studied it in silence for a moment. Dash walked around it, taking it in from different perspectives.
He finally crossed his arms. “Okay, this is definitely telling us something. These lines are trajectories?”
“They are trend lines showing the aggregate trajectories of ships reported missing for the past one hundred and forty years, through less densely inhabited and traveled regions of space, and then extrapolated to continue passing through such regions.”
“In other words, the courses of ships you could capture that are less likely to be missed,” Conover said. “Or would take longer to be missed.”
“And the courses you’d need to follow to get in and out of the regions of space where you’re doing the capturing,” Leira said. “While avoiding more populated areas, where you’re more likely to be detected doing it.”
Dash nodded. What they were looking at was a map depicting a monstrous crime. His eyes were inexorably drawn to the region where the lines converged. He pointed at it. “So this seems to be where it all ends up focused. What’s here?”
“As this is much closer to the galactic core, the density of star systems increases. You will note that the lines do not converge to a single point, but into a volume of space that contains nearly eight hundred star systems.”
Amy sighed. “That’s a lot of territory to cover.”
“A lot of territory that’s also a long way away from here,” Conover said, his voice humming with the too-enthusiastic tone he used whenever he was agreeing with Amy. Despite the weighty subject matter, Dash exchanged a bit of a smirk with Leira. Conover’s attraction to Amy was so obvious that Benzel had barely been on the Forge a day before noting it with a grin; the only ones who seemed determined to be oblivious to it were Conover and Amy.
“Anyway, yeah, that’s true,” Dash said. “Eight hundred star systems will take a long time to investigate, even if we send a bunch of probes. Custodian, we can’t narrow that down? Not at all?”
“Each of those lines incorporates the requisite statistical uncertainty, which is a product of the data available to construct them.”
“So, no.”
“No,” Custodian agreed.
“How did you even come up with this?” Leira asked. “I mean, this is a pretty specific way of combining and looking at the data you had, right?”
“This was one of several thousand possible permutations, yes. This was the only one that showed such a clear trend, which is why we have brought it to your attention.”
“There is another trend you should be aware of,” Sentinel put in. “One that is not entirely derived from these data. I have been analyzing our various encounters with the Bright, and I have concluded that there is a hierarchy within them. There appear to be at least two, and possibly several factions within them, based on their use of Golden technology.”
Dash made a huh sound. “Go on.”
“The Bright we have encountered most recently are making more use of Golden technology, based on deep analysis of scans of their ships.” Holo images appeared, depicting the various Bright ships they’d encountered and an analysis of their capabilities. The most recent—the ones Dash and Leira had fought and destroyed, and from which they’d retrieved the Bright corpse—were the most advanced.
