let us live again; let us rebuild; let us redeem ourselves
The rest: lost like unsanctioned souls brewed in a frosted glass kept chilled at zero Kelvin.
Mere aches, a phantom-physical sensation it cannot control.
There remains an early impression in its subconscious: on a barren world, a laboratory lined with glass suspension tanks, cold-filled with other bodies. Mere has no empirical evidence the recollection is its own. It was made, but by whom is unknown.
(It has no desire for a creator.)
Yet, the she with the plague kiss—it feels kinship for her, sharp, embossed on its awareness with sudden heat.
THE DECOMMISSION (EVENT): as a measure of good faith upon the signing of the peace treaty between the Seven Sun Lords, each god decommissioned and executed one thousand of their most powerful warships. Each ship and its pilot self-destructed within an uninhabited system of choice and was granted honor in the eyes of the Seven Suns.
MERE WAKES WITHOUT its keepers’ bidding. It blinks back the protective film on its eyes and stares at the lid of its stasis pod. Odd. Mere presses its palm against the lid, and it retracts into the floor.
A she crouches outside, dressed in mirrorsilk armor, visor drawn over her face so all it sees is its own reflection. “Mere?” she says, synthesized voice low.
“You have acquired unauthorized access to this it,” Mere says. “It is curious why.”
The stasis chamber is empty. Unadorned red walls and its stasis pod in the center with a ring of security lights above. Mere notes the disabled alarms and the blinding virus chewing at the keepers’ optic-feeds.
The she flicks her visor up. Her eyes are quicksilver, liquid and bright—cybernetic implants that contrast space-dark skin. “I’m Century. I’m here to free you.”
Mere is intrigued. No one has ever wished to free it, not even the Arbiter’s consorts. “Why?”
“I made you,” she says. The smell of the ancient laboratory is etched under her armor. “A crime I cannot undo. But we have no time. You have already been condemned for not reporting this security breach.” Her lips twist in a bitter smile. “Do you want to live?”
Mere has no organic heart (it knows the rhythmic beat of muscle against bone, has read of it in lines of Li Sin’s poetry), yet it still knows fear. It lost any choice when the she broke in.
“It will follow, then.”
CENTURY BLURS DOWN the maintenance halls, the invisible veins of the Courts, enhanced speed given by her armor. Mere lopes at her heels.
It processes data and sensation in microseconds:
—it is an exile, a faulty machine to be unmade—
—this is no coincidence Century broke into the Courts of Tranquility, a feat deemed impossible by the Principality, only hours after the last wolflord died—
—it is exhilarated—
—what will it do now? Its purpose, courtly executioner, has been dismantled—
They slip beneath the cityskin to the spaceport. Vessels of all make and class dock in thousands of bays. Century stops before an eel-ship, coiled in jewel-skinned splendor. Its great eye-ports are open, and Century signals with a hand; the eel distends a proboscis lined with diamond mesh and graphene plates like a ramp. Century leads Mere into the eel’s body.
Alarms klaxon in Mere’s head—its escape is known.
Within the eel’s retrofitted abdomen, synthetic tubes house the mechanics and computerized guts. Finery for living; oxygen filtration system and water recycling.
“Where will you take it?” Mere asks.
Century does not reply.
Mere crouches, toe-talons locked against the mesh floor panel. The she whispers to the eel-ship, and the great sinuous vessel unpeels itself from the port and scythes into vacuum.
III.
OLINARA V (PLANET, FORMER POPULATION: SEVENTEEN MILLION): Once a thriving colony world settled early in the founding of the Principality, it was decimated by the Gold Sun Lord when an escaped trinket-slave sought refuge in the Olinarain wilds. Olinara V is now classified as an uninhabitable world.
MERE HAS NEVER been off-world. It taps the gills of the eel-ship, which obliges and unfurls interior flaps of skin to reveal translucent, hardened outerflesh and a view of space.
This odd, unclassifiable sense of kinship with the dead has grown the farther from the Courts they travel—a need (honor-bound) to see the dead to proper rest so they might pass into one of the afterlives in paradise or purgatory, reinvention or rebirth. It has killed so many, it longs to redeem itself. The last wolflord gave it the key.
“Why did you free this it?” Mere asks.
“An old debt.” Century grinds her teeth. “Once we’re out of range of the Courts’ sensors, I jettison you in a shuttle, wraith. You can make your own path.”
Mere pets the eel-ship, grateful for the indulgence, and turns towards the she. “Take it to the court of the Red Sun first.”
“No,” Century says.
“You will.” Mere flexes its hands. “You forged this exile without consent. You owe this it.”
Century whirls. The she has a plasgun at its jaw, muzzle pressed into soft tissue beneath its chin, and in turn, it rests its fingertips against the back of her neck. It looks down at her. The mirrorsilk burns into its skin, coiling up its wrist and burrowing towards bone.
“I can unmake you far easier than I made you, Mere.”
“It can sever your brainstem through your armor with but a gentle pinch of its fingers.”
Century scoffs. “We are both destruction incarnate. Perhaps this is a better end.”
Mere does not think the she wishes to die; it does not. If it kills her, the eel-ship will never take it where it must go. “A truce.” Mere lowers its arm, flesh chewed back to wire and metal skeleton, the knives bright. It will heal slowly. “It has a proposition.”
Century holsters the gun. “Do you?”
Mere extracts the last wolflord’s memories, printed into a small holochip it saved for one of the Arbiter’s consorts. “It is the wolflord who found Rebirth, is it not?”
Century’s shoulders tighten. “That world was lost long ago.”
Mere repeats the coordinates to her. Her expression remains inert. “It is what the wolflord remembered at death.”
“Damn you.” Century tips her head back and sighs. “I told him to forget.”
Mere offers her the holochip. “Clearly.”
Century doesn’t accept. “We thought the Red Sun’s presence would weaken the bindings of the consecrated pool. Once that happened, we could collect the soul seeds and bring them somewhere. Another planet. Give them proper rest. It was just a dream.”
“’Dreams need not stay trapped in sleep alone,’” Mere says, quoting Li Sin. “Bring this it to the Red Sun Lord. We will rescue the dead.”
Century raises her eyebrows. “Do you know how many security protocols I hacked to get in ‘unnoticed’ the first time? I helped build the Courts.” She snorts. “I constructed the pool. I built the door matrix. The Courts were supposed to be an end to the galaxy-spanning wars I fought and won. The Principality was supposed to bring peace, starting with the Decommission.”
It tilts its head, watching the she sidelong. “You are old, then.”
“I am,” Century says with a bitter laugh. “But what’s age any longer?”
“You do not believe this endeavor possible.”
“No,” Century says. “I don’t. Not anymore.”
Mere examines its healing arm, flesh reknitting. There is an ache in its ribs it cannot define. “At least bring it to the Red Sun. All the souls in the pool are there by its hand; it would see them to a better fate.”
Century flinches, near-imperceptible.
But she speaks to the eel-ship, and they set course for a different court.
BLUE SUN LORD (GOD): one of the Seven Suns, everlasting and all-knowing rulers of the Principality. Dwelling within the Hollow Systems, the Blue Sun Lord oversees the sanctified pool
within the Courts of Tranquility; the Blue Sun Lord is a merciful and generous god [search terminated]
THE SHIP GLIDES through a radiant nebula; the eel-ship’s body glows as it absorbs radiation and shed filaments from the void, skin sluiced away from a progenitor star. This reminds Mere of Li Sin’s collection, Bound Infinity, Transcendent. Mere has dabbled in poetry, played with bits of unattached verse:
Breathing in designer atmosphere / academic blood sport
Sip sorrow’s martini / watch sequin-skinned guests sway and flow /
Mere stumbles over further stanzas, uncertain. Does it possess its own creativity, its own words, or are they borrowed finery collected from too many other sources, pieces plucked from the dead?
Other space eels twine and dance in the ruins of gasses and elements and carbons.
“Beautiful,” Mere murmurs.
Century, tucked in a fold between the eel-ship’s ribs, doesn’t look up from her reading. “Anything can be beautiful. Even monsters.”
Mere has never been praised for its aesthetic. “Will you tell it why it was made?”
Century sets aside the tablet. “I built you from the remains of my enemies. It was to be their eternal subjugation.” Quieter: “I still regret it.”
“It has heard,” Mere says, “regret may be molded anew, if one chooses. This it will shape its own future once its duty is complete.”
“And where will you go if you survive?” Century asks. “Any planet you linger on will suffer like Olinara V.” Her jaw tightens. “I saw what befell that world. You can’t escape forever.”
Mere has no basis for argument. “What do you run from?”
Century’s mouth thins into a line. “I should have left you, wraith.”
Mere tilts its head. It is grateful, unexpectedly, that she converses with it, that she has not ejected it from the ship and let it drift into frozen death. “It would rather live briefly outside the Courts than forever in chains.”
Century coughs, a strangled laugh. “Sweet mother of stars. You have no recollection, do you?”
“What should it recall?”
She reaches into a slit in her armor. “Here.” The holochip rests heavy on her palm. “Your birth, if you want it.”
Mere accepts.
HUNDREDS OF GLASS pods, each cold-filled with bodies—her enemies, trophies, former friends betrayed. The wolflord stands beside her (young, war-scarred, shipless). The wolflord has always remained loyal to Century, and she has taken the wolflord under her protection so the former pilot will not be discovered and executed.
“Must you do this?” the wolflord whispers.
She has taken pieces of each enemy, mind or flesh or bone or blood or gene, and she has built a sexless bipedal wraith from her conquests. It stands taller than she, lithe deadly machineflesh, and she gives it her organic eyes last of all, cased in cybernetic implants.
“It is a mere tool,” she says, fondness in her tone.
The wolflord sighs. “That is all we are to you.”
She turns, head tipped in curiosity. “Would you be more?”
Instead of answering, the wolflord nods to the many glass pods. “And the remains?”
“The wraith will execute them,” she says. “In doing so, it will become mine alone, unburdened from its former selves.”
The wolflord flinches.
She presses her palm against the wraith’s chest, igniting its processors and sparking its lifeforce siphoned from her dearest enemy. The wraith opens its—her—eyes.
“Wraith,” she says. “I have made you for one purpose.”
It blinks several times, then bows.
“It will serve in the Courts of Tranquility,” she says to the wolflord. “A celebration of our new age of peace.”
The wolflord’s gaze meets the wraith’s, but the wolflord looks away in shame.
(THERE IS A subfile tucked inside that is not the she’s. The wolflord planted it, imprinted with a name: Kitshan Zu.
In the months between its awakening and the completion of the Courts of Tranquility:
“They will erase this,” the wolflord says, hand at rest so gentle on Mere’s cheek. “They won’t let you have what’s yours. Not memory nor self. Not…” The wolflord swallows. “I have to go. Century has work I must finish in her name.”
Mere blinks, chalk-gray skin furrowed between its cybernetic eyes. “I wish to go with you, Kitshan.”
The wolflord kisses Mere, lips rough and course and so familiar. “If I could steal you, Mere, I would. I promise you one thing—I will come back for you. When I learn how to free you, I will come back.”
“Then I will wait,” Mere says, and pulls the wolflord close one last time.)
MERE SHUDDERS AS the memory knits into its own consciousness, blended with so many dreams of the dead.
A fragment, unburied: The wolflord was most often a he, and sometimes not, and always kept his name. Kitshan.
Mere wishes it had memories of its own to braid into a lost narrative in which it was happy with him, in which they shared passion and laughter and sorrow. This is like its favorite of Li Sin’s sonnets, where the poet laments falling through a time vortex and breaking the time stream by trying to reclaim lost love.
“I watched the feeds,” Century says. Outside the ship, great gaseous whales converge in a celestial pod, frequency-song caressing the hull and sides. “I saw his capture. I was too far away to get to the Courts before…” A crisp, vicious head shake. “I would have spared you that, if I could grant you but one mercy.”
Mere has nothing to say to the she.
IV.
REBIRTH (WORLD): there is no such designated planet in the Principality archives. Further searches will result in disciplinary measures.
THE COURT OF the Red Sun is bones and dusk, burned into a cold shell of its former glory.
The eel-ship glides into membranous ports that ring the station. Heptagonal, forged from old warships and dead stars, lit and powered within by the Red Sun Lord’s essence.
Century sits motionless in the cockpit. “You better hurry. The other Suns will find you. Always, they will find you.”
Mere is aware. The Courts call to its blood; until it finds a way to unlock its own molecular leash from its keepers’ hold, it must stay a dozen steps ahead. But first it must survive an audience with the Red Sun, the Death of Endless Worlds.
Mere enters the airlock. Spindle-legged drones bow and guide it through red-splashed corridors to the throne room of the Red Sun Lord.
A beautiful spider-prince, chitin-skinned humanoid with four delicate legs protruding from the spine like desiccated wings, sits at the Red Sun’s left, a shadow-garbed concubine. Eight jewel-rimmed eyes watch under thick lashes. “Those beholden to the Courts of Tranquility are seldom welcome, wraith.”
Mere bows. “It seeks aid for the lord’s chosen.”
The spider-prince leans close, a spine-leg lightly brushing the Red Sun’s helmet. The visor rises, and the Red Sun’s gaze sears into Mere’s flesh.
Mere folds itself in supplication, its back blistering. It unbends an arm, lifts a palm, and shows the holochip record of the wolflord’s execution. “It asks the lord to listen.” Pain sinks deeper—it holds its ground, and does not scream. “The lord has claim to the dead,” Mere says, “and if the lord will come to assert that claim, this it will retrieve the souls of the lost and give them peace.”
The heat relents as the Red Sun drops the helmet visor. Mere shivers as its cells begin repair, and the coolness of the dim throne room sinks into its burned flesh.
“May this one eat the wraith?” the spider-prince purrs.
Mere waits, its body taut.
The Red Sun stretches out a hand, and with a sigh, the spider-prince rises and sweeps forward. He takes the chip from Mere’s palm and inserts it into a port in his ribs.
“A pity,” the spider-prince murmurs, with a longing glance at Mere. “I am starving.”
“Perhaps another time,” Mere
says. It listened well to courtly wit and challenge. It has read much of Li Sin’s political treatise, curated by the poet’s ship, Vector Bearing Light. “It might poison you in turn.”
The spider-prince smiles, appreciative. The projection blossoms outward, slow like congealed blood, and the image of the last wolflord stands before the Red Sun.
fleeing the Arbiter’s consorts on a far-flung world, injured
looking up at the sky, begging
the last wolflord is bound in the pool, throat cut
The Red Sun’s armored form stiffens, fists clenched on the starlight throne. “And why should I not unmake you for this crime, wraith? The last of my disciples, no more. Why did I feel nothing…”
The spider-prince slinks back to the Red Sun’s side and strokes the god’s armored shoulders, soothing. “The Courts of Tranquility are shielded, my liege-love.”
The Sun Lords are cosmic bodies reshaped into compressed armored shells after a treaty two millennia ago. They have never ceased being enemies. Six rule the Principality while the Red Sun Lord, who was always death, broods alone in the outer reaches of dominion.
Mere continues: “It has defied the Sun Lords of Tranquility to come and beg for vengeance. It once cared for the dead and does not wish to obey its masters.”
“And what,” says the Red Sun, “would you do with the souls, wraithling?”
“It knows of a world far outside the Principality where they will be safe: Rebirth.”
The spider-prince taps his long, graceful fingers against his chin. “Rumors do exist among the lost of such a world, my love.”
The Red Sun stands. Mere flattens itself to the floor.
“Come,” says the Death of Endless Worlds. “I will return to the Courts of Tranquility.”
WRAITH (OBJECT): an organic drone (technology outdated and now forbidden by the Principality) constructed from pieces of other organics and androids. Wraiths are non-sentient and possess no soul. The majority of wraiths were created before the Treaty of the Seven Suns as shock troops built from the dead.
So You Want to be a Robot and Other Stories Page 2
