by Paul Anlee
“Where are we?”
“This is the local Integration Lab.”
“Where? I don’t see any lab.” Stralasi was familiar with clean rooms and stainless steel work surfaces where technicians tested food quality.
Darak laughed and waved his hand, indicating the flourishing life around them. “This! The entire hollowed out asteroid. It’s all one giant laboratory for examining how well various genetic modifications work before the organisms are shipped to the planet’s surface.”
Stralasi looked perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“I imagine this must be a lot for you to take in. Listen, we’re walking on the inner surface of a completely hollowed-out asteroid, which is spinning in order to provide a semblance of gravity to the garden inside. This side of the garden is completely Standard Life.”
He waved to indicate the opposite arc of the chamber. “The far side is a replica of life that existed on Gargus 718.5 before Alumston was founded. Between here and there is a gradient, a mixture of the two life forms. The purpose of this entire structure is to test the modifications they make to plants and animals, and help them to best adapt to the environment on the planet.”
“What do you mean, modifications?”
“Well, Gargus 718.5’s native life is quite different from Standard Life, isn’t it?”
“Yes, completely.”
“A Standard Life animal would not fare very well there. It wouldn’t be able to eat local vegetation or hunt what few small native animals remain. Standard plants would be ill-equipped to deal with the unfamiliar mixture of elements. So they have altered the genes—what you might think of as the life force—of various Standard Life organisms, in the lab facilities on this asteroid in order to outcompete the native Gargus 718.5 life in its own environment.”
“Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?” Stralasi asked, annoyed.
“The Cybrids. They are quite skilled at many things besides fixing other machinery.”
“Why would Alum have provided such a beautiful place for Cybrids of the Da’ark, when his own people struggle to expand His Realm on the surface of so many inhospitable planets?”
Darak sighed wistfully, as he took in the view. “That’s a very good question. When we first left Origin, we lived for generations in habitats just like this one and like the Machine Shop asteroid that we just came from. Living inside asteroids seems to have fallen out of favor among humans more recently.”
“What do you mean, ‘When we first left Origin’? Were you there? Do you claim to be immortal like Our Lord?”
“No. Nothing like immortal,” replied Darak. “I mean, the collective ‘we.’ When we humans, The People, left Origin, we shared these hollowed-out habitats in the Origin solar system with the Cybrids for a time. Eventually, we found other planets to inhabit. Humans colonized them, while the Cybrids stayed in the asteroids to tend the gardens, make things, and fix things. Eventually, people simply forgot there ever was a time when they shared space with the Cybrids. And now, it would seem, you’ve forgotten about them being anything but an enemy.”
“The People and the Cybrids lived together at one time?” Stralasi was incredulous.
“Yes. Over time, they came to be segregated by their different preferred environments. Humans require light, air, water, and food. Cybrids were better suited to exploring and exploiting other asteroids in the vacuum of space, without the inconvenience of gravity to impair their graceful cruising or oxygen to corrode their mechanisms.
“Both groups enjoyed garden asteroids like this one when it came time to rest. It might surprise you to know that even Cybrids appreciate a park like this.”
“But they’re just machines,” protested Stralasi.
“They’re much more human than you think.”
Stralasi looked doubtful. “They don’t look very human.”
“Not externally, no,” replied Darak. “But their brains are based on the structure of the human brain. Their thoughts are very human, and they think of themselves as thoroughly human.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“We’ll visit their ‘inworld’ in a while; you may change your mind.” Brother Stralasi frowned. I doubt that very much—he muttered under his breath.
The men passed from the covered path into dazzling artificial daylight. The Good Brother's head was still swimming from Darak’s lecture on Alum’s economic system. And now, this claim that Cybrids and The People were on equal footing in the eyes of the Lord? He rubbed his eyes wearily, trying his best to unlearn a lifetime of prejudices and falsehoods.
He lowered his hands. A Cybrid was standing no more than a few meters away. The machine appeared to be playing in the dirt. Its tentacles flew. First, creating a half dozen little furrows, pouring a little liquid into each track, poking small seedlings into the soil, and covering their roots with more soil and a firm pat. Its other tentacles extended the furrows ahead of the Cybrid’s hovering body.
Stralasi turned to Darak and whispered, “Doesn’t it see us? Why hasn’t it challenged our presence?”
Darak laughed. “For a master of meditation, you aren’t very relaxed, are you? There’s no need to worry, or to whisper. The Cybrid’s visual, auditory, and electromagnetic sensors all detect us. I have interfered with its internal processing and instructed it not to pay any attention to us. It sees us but will ignore us. We’re perfectly safe.” Something caught his attention at the far side of the field. “Ah, there’s what I was looking for. Come with me; let’s take a closer look at the heart of the operation.”
They made their way across a field of manicured grass and stopped at the entrance of a small but busy structure. They waited for the next Cybrid to pass through the archway and fell in behind it. Darak practically bounded down the ramp and into the brightly lit corridor. Stralasi followed cautiously, reluctant to leave the luxuriant growth of the garden behind. To the monk's dismay, they were soon completely underground. He didn’t have long to sulk, though.
Off the main corridor, a group of softly lit caverns nestled many more tidily potted seedlings. Some of the rooms were separated from the corridor by glass doors through which Stralasi spotted colorful birds and a host of animals ranging from small herbivores to large feline predators, all roaming freely.
As they made their way along the corridor, Darak occasionally entered a habitat to caress the shoots and leaves, or tapped on glass doors to attract the attention of animals inside. For the most part, the animals were content in their activities and took no notice of the two men passing by.
They followed the Cybrid into a room filled with incomprehensible scientific instruments that buzzed, blipped, and blinked. The Cybrid floated peacefully in front of the instruments, its tentacles tucked inside its spherical shell.
Stralasi could discern no activity in the chamber and wondered what its purpose could be. “This is all very interesting, I’m sure, but the garden was much prettier.”
“Ah. You do not see it as the Cybrid sees it. Just a moment, please. I’ll adjust the feed to your lattice.”
“Wait! Don’t…,” started Stralasi and then he felt a short, sharp pain in his head. His hands shot up in reflex, and he opened his mouth to holler. But as fast as the pain had hit him, it was over. He dropped his hands back to his side and scowled at his traveling companion.
“Well, you wouldn’t have been able to experience this properly if I hadn’t done that,” Darak explained. “Now, I’ll connect you to the Cybrid’s sensory overlay.”
What Stralasi had perceived as a still and unexciting room was now bursting with color and activity. The monk was rendered speechless. Throughout the chamber, multi-hued data presentations blossomed above the mysterious instruments.
The two-meter Cybrid now appeared translucent to him. Encapsulated within its ghostly sphere was the somewhat more solid image of a young woman in a flowing white lab robe. Her appearance and attire were identical to that of an Alumit technician in any of the Fo
undation ceraffices throughout Alum’s Realm.
The woman was engrossed in a variety of data screens floating in front of her. The array of letters, numbers, and images were unrecognizable to Brother Stralasi. She deftly scanned, shuffled, rearranged, and transferred data between various screens, sometimes opening or closing views, shifting or magnifying the displays for closer examination.
She turned to the two men. “May I help you?” she asked, with no hint of surprise that two strangers had wandered into her lab.
Stralasi’s eyes filled with panic—We've been noticed!
Darak, as usual, was unperturbed. The Shard/demon smiled politely and answered the apparition, “Yes, Dr. Weiss. Would you be so kind as to give us a beginner’s overview of the work you do here?”
“Gladly. We are performing selected modifications on the glycolytic pathways of the standard bovine gut microbiome to improve the processing efficiency of Bacteroidetes compared to Firmicutes. I’m sure you are aware that a preponderance of Firmicute microbes has been shown to increase rumen energy harvesting and increase the lipid content of the resulting milk. Standard Bacteroidetes are particularly inefficient at processing the Gargus 718.5 plant wall cellulose-like material and so Firmicutes dominate the Standard Bovine microbiome.
“In this panel, we are modeling predicted improvements in the cellulase, while here we represent a vector to seamlessly replace the endogenous encoding DNA.” She paused to allow the two men an opportunity for questions before she continued.
Darak noticed the thoroughly befuddled Stralasi. “I’m sorry; that must have sounded like complete gibberish to you. I really should have stopped her sooner. My apologies. It has been so long since I’ve heard any real scientific talk. I admit I got caught up enjoying the sound of the words as they rolled off this young scientist’s tongue.”
“Dr. Weiss, my humble apology,” he said and bowed deeply in the direction of her spectral image. “Would you mind repeating that a few tech levels lower so my friend can derive some inkling of the work you do?”
She returned his bow with a smile and an accommodating nod. “Certainly.” She turned her attention to Brother Stralasi. “Basically, these bacteria in the gut of the cow digest grass. The grass of Gargus 718.5 is slightly different than Standard grass, so some of the microbes can’t digest it very well. That creates more fat in the cow’s milk than we’d normally like, so we’re working on adjusting the genome—”
“—the, um… Life Force,” Darak suggested.
“Yes, the Life Force,” Dr. Weiss allowed. “We are adjusting the basic Life Force of this microbe so it can better digest the grasses of Gargus 718.5 and produce healthier milk.”
Brother Stralasi nodded, whether in understanding or approval was not entirely clear.
“Thank you, Dr. Weiss.” Darak shifted his focus to a nearby display. “Would you mind telling us what we’re looking at here?”
“This screen shows several proposed molecular modifications to the cellulase enzyme, the enzyme that digests the grass. We are modeling the overall efficiency of the enzyme to give us several single, double, or triple amino acid change possibilities.” She raised a lower screen to eye level. “These show the DNA—I mean Life Force—changes required and the resulting vector…” Dr. Weiss faltered and looked to Darak for help.
“The Life Force modification method?” he suggested.
“Yes, the Life Force modification method,” she concluded. “Next,” she waved a series of panels from her far right side into the forefront, “we have a series of mathematical models to figure out how a herd of cows with these Life Force modifications might fare with combinations of Standard and native grasses.”
Stralasi saw nothing but rapidly changing rows and columns of numbers and wavering lines on a chart. He stifled a yawn that was not lost on Darak.
“Thank you, Dr. Weiss,” Darak said. “Brother Stralasi and I must be going now, but we’ve enjoyed your tour immensely.”
Dr. Weiss acknowledged Darak’s thanks and turned back to her screens, hands and fingers flying over the data. The screens and the young scientist disappeared, and the ghostly sphere returned to its more solid state.
“I see you are getting tired,” Darak said to Stralasi. “Not surprising. It’s been a full day for you.”
Stralasi nodded, reminded of the many wonders and adventures of the day. “That’s an understatement. We’ve faced down an Angel, flown through empty space, explored a Cybrid machine shop and, now, toured an integration lab.
“I’ve learned that almost everything I believed about the workings of the Realm, about the relationship between the People and the Cybrids, has all been a lie. That it’s an intricate system contrived to match the needs of humans and machines. It relies on The Living God to hold it all together, but it’s also been amazingly successful, with a history of tens of millions of years of relative peace and stability. And yet, for some unfathomable reason, you want to see it destroyed. I can’t decide if you are mad, or truly a demon.”
Darak absorbed the synopsis and critique without reacting. “I know what you need,” he said enthusiastically, “a little entertainment. I think there’s a recharge port right around the corner.” He pulled Stralasi into a smaller chamber with a Cybrid-sized hemispherical depression in one wall. “You’ll want these,” he said, indicating a pair of cushions on the floor along the wall. Still confused, an exhausted Stralasi plunked himself down on one of the cushions and leaned against the wall.
“What now?”
“Now, we go inworld,” replied Darak and the room around them dissolved.
15
In the next instant, Brother Stralasi found himself sitting on a bench facing some kind of playing field.
“Oh, good! The game hasn’t started yet,” announced Darak. “I think you're familiar with the basics. It’s called football, or in some countries, soccer.” Stralasi looked blankly at the other man. “Players from two teams kick a ball with the intent of shooting it into a goal, which is protected by a netminder. Does that ring any bells?”
“Oh, you mean footnets!”
“Exactly, soccer,” responded Darak. “Well in the Cybrid inworld it’s played a little differently.”
“What’s an inworld?” Stralasi interrupted the oncoming stream of information, trying to catch up.
“Didn’t I explain that already?” answered Darak. “The work life of a Cybrid is mostly fulfilling, but even they need some recreation and entertainment, psychologically if not physically. Their inworld is like the entertainment you access via your lattice, but here it's carried to a much greater extreme.
“Like your own lattice, this one projects words, images, and other information directly into the Cybrid mind. But this one is infinitely more interactive and detailed. It can place the Cybrids into virtual situations, like this ball game, for instance, and then convey totally convincing sensations such as related sights, sounds, tastes, smells, tactile experiences—all of the senses, really. Think of it like a waking dream. Everything that happens is very real to the participants, but it all takes place in the virtual electronic universe instead of in the real physical one.”
“I see,” Stralasi said. He had experienced inSense entertainment before; it was common throughout the Realm. But that was strictly passive. There was no way to participate in the viewing.
It doesn’t look like any footnets field I’ve ever played on—thought Stralasi. It was a half-kilometer long, for one thing, and he could count at least a dozen field segments floating at different elevations and spaced randomly over parts of the main field. Oddly, they didn’t cast any shadows below. Some trick of the lighting–he guessed.
Even stranger, some of the field segments were upside down. The wall across from their seats was also covered with grass and marked with playing field lines. A vertical field of its own? His eyes followed the field upward. The entire complex was covered by an inverted field on the roof. He and Darak were separated from the main grassy areas by a g
reenish haze that rose all the way to the ceiling. Looking closer, he could see faint white markings. He could only surmise that it might be another playing field like the opposite wall, somehow made clear so they could watch the game.
“What’s with all these painted vertical, upside down, and floating areas?” Brother wondered aloud.
“The inworld allows for a certain amount of adjusting of natural laws. Every green surface you see is a part of the playing surface.”
“You’re pulling my leg. That’s impossible,” he said.
“More impossible than any of the other strange things you’ve seen today?”
“Okay, so look up there,” Stralasi pointed to an inverted patch of grassy field hovering about fifty meters over mid-field. “I can see how someone might bounce a ball off that bit of grass up there, but there’s no way anyone could stand on that.”
Darak shrugged. “Well, they do. Each of those bits of playing surface, including the walls and ceiling, has its own independent gravity field, making the green side ‘down’, no matter their apparent orientation. I told you the game was different here.”
Answering Stralasi’s skeptical look, he continued, “All players can play on any green surface. It adds to the overall challenge of the game because attacks can come from any direction. Also, the trajectory of a kicked ball is altered in flight by the gravitational pulls of adjacent patches of grass. That makes it challenging to calculate, even for a Cybrid mind. Do you see those pylons placed randomly around the field?”
He pointed out a series of floating yellow cone shapes. “Those emit an individual attractor, repulsor, or neutral field but with a much smaller range than the adjacent playing fields. Any ball that passes within five meters of one of those cones will be influenced by whatever randomly cycling gravitational field the pylon happens to be emitting.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I asked Dr. Weiss while she was explaining her work.”
“I didn’t hear anything about footnets back there. I'm sure I would've remembered that.”
