The Messenger

by J. N. Chaney

  “Great. Time was the one thing they couldn’t master, huh?”

  “There were many things the Creators could not master. But time is one of them, yes. It appears to be impossible to master it, no matter how sophisticated those attempting to do so are.”

  Dash sank back in the harness. Yeah, this was definitely all too much. And yet, here it was.

  “Okay,” he said, looking back at the image, which had finally caught up to where he actually was and now displayed the Pasture, against the backdrop of the stellar ruin of the Shadowed Nebula. “So I guess the important question now is, where do we go from here?”

  Maybe to warn everybody what was coming? But would they believe it? And what could they possibly do about it? Untethered doubts surged through Dash, unwelcome but necessary.

  The answer, though, was a series of points suddenly mapped out in space, scattered across the galaxy.

  “What are those?”

  “They are locations of components similar to the one you just obtained. Their retrieval will allow the Archetype to advance to its full power and potential,” Sentinel said.

  “So they couldn’t just have it come fully charged, right off the shelf? We have to do a freakin’ scavenger hunt for parts? I mean, yeah, I know, it’s part of understanding and all that. But seriously, considering what’s at stake, why not just make the Archetype so its fully ready and then, you know, add what I need to know into my brain?”

  “I know only the things I know. This is not one of them. It is part of the design of the Creators, but their specific intent is not something about which I would presume to speculate.”

  “Yeah, okay, fine, I get it. You’re just doing your job. I can respect that. But you’ll pardon me if I think your bosses, your Creators, are jerks.”

  No answer followed. The silence made Dash smile.

  “Alright, so where do we go first?”

  “That choice is yours.”

  “Of course it is.” Dash studied the points portrayed across the galaxy. He found he could cause it to rotate and shift, seeing from whatever perspective he wished, just by…well, making it do that. He tried to imagine flying the Slipwing this way—as though it was just an extension of his body. Remarkably, he could, which was itself pretty stunning, because there was no way, just a day or so ago, he could have even started to imagine it.

  And what a day it had been, especially considering it had started with him almost dying.

  “Okay,” he finally said, “let’s go to that one. It’s the closest to where we are now.”

  “Very well,” Sentinel said.

  Dash aimed himself at where he knew the star system was, a few tens of light years away. It would take the Slipwing, using full power on unSpace drive, a day to make that translation. He wondered how long this would take—and if the Archetype included a few amenities, like a galley, or a shower, or even a latrine.

  Only one way to find out.

  Dash launched himself at the distant star system. The Archetype responded, smoothly surging ahead, then vanishing from real space and entering another existence altogether.

  It should have been mind-blowing, Dash knew, but his capacity for having his mind blown was pretty much saturated for now.

  16

  Dash had never seen unSpace before.

  Okay, that wasn’t really true. He’d seen unSpace many times, while simply looking out the Slipwing’s vision ports. But all he’d ever viewed was an absolutely featureless blackness, except for a diffuse, barely-visible patch of light directly ahead that he could easily cover with his thumb at arm’s length. It was, apparently, a glimmer of the interaction between real space and unSpace. As a result, he’d always just assumed that was what unSpace was—a featureless void of darkness with a dim, fuzzy glow in whatever direction you were traveling.

  Seen through the eyes of the Archetype, though, unSpace was both much more and far less complex than that. It was somehow infinitely large, but also a dimensionless point, a singularity, both at once. It was utterly dark, and yet Dash was able to see any distance clearly, which he knew to be a function of the Archetype.

  And there was a texture to unSpace—a faint, restless ripple of whatever components made it up—an endless pulsation of shifting energies that were seen and unseen, at the periphery of his senses. That was the faint, ceaseless ebb and flow of gravitational waves from the matter that made up real space. He knew that detecting those waves, and deciphering their peaks and crests, their interference patterns and eddies, was somehow fundamental to unSpace navigation, but didn’t really understand how. That was a job for the nav computer. Except he could read the story those waves were telling him. Somehow, he could map them back to real space, knowing exactly where he was based solely on those faint gravitational echoes. Then, he could just fly there. It was absolutely astounding. He was freed of the shackles of mere material flesh and was more just a mind race through this bizarre realm of everything and nothing. Frankly it was also a little terrifying. He didn’t even see how his brain could actually recognize any of this. How any mere human brain could. And the fact was, it couldn’t—not without the hyper-advanced help of the Archetype.

  Anyway, he would arrive in his target system soon. Not that time really meant much here in unSpace.

  As for eating, sleeping, and excreting waste, none of those things seemed to matter, either. Probably thanks to his “connection” with the Archetype, they were either things he simply no longer had to do, or they were somehow being done for him. In any case, none of them seemed relevant. Dash simply zoomed through unSpace, as though he was swimming underwater through a very dark lake.

  Some unimportant amount of time later, he arrived. He emerged from unSpace and found himself suddenly back in the star-scape of real space. A dim, ruddy sphere hung not far away. It was a red dwarf, the most long-lived of all stars. A halo ringed it, an asteroid belt of shattered wanderers, probably the remnants of planets destroyed by whatever cataclysm had turned this star into the faint, reddish cinder it was today.

  His destination was one of those asteroids—a middling-sized fragment that otherwise appeared entirely unremarkable. He launched himself toward it. The star’s gravity well assisted his fall toward the asteroids, not that the Archetype seemed to need the help.

  A blast of incandescent energy erupted from the asteroid. Dash managed to dodge it, but it still flashed by close enough that he could feel the discharge as a wash of heat and radiation.

  “What the hell was that?”

  The installation has automated defenses. They are apparently still active.

  “No shit! But isn’t this an Unseen thing? Shouldn’t it be on our side?”

  That would seem reasonable. I have no explanation as to why the defense system would identify you as a threat.

  “You mean it could be a malfunction?”

  It is possible.

  Shit. Dash had become so overwhelmed with the sophistication of Unseen tech that it had never really occurred to him that it could screw up.

  “So what do we do now?”

  You came here for a reason. That reason is still valid.

  “Yeah, but if we have to blow the place up, it kind of makes coming here a little pointless, don’t you think?”

  It would, yes. Accordingly, do not destroy the installation.

  “Wow. Thanks. I never could’ve worked that out on my own.”

  Dash had stopped and now hung motionless in space. Whatever installation was on the asteroid hadn’t fired again; maybe it had been a warning shot?

  Or, since this was all some sort of elaborate scavenger hunt anyway, maybe it was a test. After all, he was apparently supposed to be proving that he was choosing to take on this role as Messenger, and not just bumbling into it, despite the fact that he did feel he had pretty much bumbled into it. The trouble was, it was an Unseen weapon that had fired at him. The raiders he’d fought had been using conventional weapons, particle beams and missiles, available throughout the Galactic
Arm. Compared to the Archetype, they were extraordinarily primitive—like some ancient explosion-driven projective weapon compared to a particle cannon. Sure, they could still hurt the Archetype; enough of them might even be able to destroy it. But an Unseen weapon might be able to just vaporize it in a single shot. He thought at the Archetype’s own dark-lance beam, a weapon the nature of which he still didn’t fully understand, and how it seemed to make matter just go away.

  “Any suggestions?”

  If you get close enough to the installation to be able to distinguish the weapon systems, you should be able to neutralize them.

  “So, just kinda fly on in and hope we don’t get blown to bits on the way?”

  If the Archetype was fully powered up, that would be a risk-free approach.

  “Yeah, and if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.”

  Dash had to smile at the thought of this super-advanced AI parsing that. Apparently, it decided just to ignore it.

  Since the Archetype is not fully powered-up, you will have to decide how much risk you are willing to assume.

  “I’d prefer none, thanks.”

  Okay, so it was obviously up to him. Dash frowned at the distant belt of rocks orbiting the red dwarf. There were a lot of them larger than the one that was his destination, but far more that were smaller, all girdling the dim, red sun like a colossal belt.

  “Okay,” he said, “if we can’t be direct, then let’s do what’s got me out of a lot of scrapes…and into a few, as well, but that’s not important right now. Let’s be sneaky.”

  Dash somersaulted and zoomed away from the red dwarf, then turned and arced along in a wide orbit around it. He had to pour on some speed, needing to move faster than the asteroids in their relatively tight orbit around the star. When he was finally at a point almost exactly on the far side of the red dwarf from the Unseen installation, he turned and raced back sunward, trying to adjust his course along the way. He needed to keep the star between him and the installation.

  And hope the Unseen hadn’t seeded weapons throughout the asteroid belt.

  It appeared they hadn’t though. Dash sped into the fringe of the belt, then turned so he raced down its length, steadily arcing his way around and back toward the other side of the star, where the installation was. It stuck him that this would be a tough flight in the Slipwing, with him having to make constant course corrections to dodge and weave among the tumbling rocks. He could probably do it, but there was a good chance of damage, and it would burn a lot of fuel. In the Archetype, though, he just dove under rocks, soared over top of them, and swung around them in tight turns. Small fragments did slam into the Archetype, vanishing in flashes of kinetic energy and clouds of dust, but the damage was negligible.

  The installation rose over the dull red star. Dash fought to keep himself in the shadow of asteroids as he approached it—one of which disappeared in a dazzling flash as the installation’s weapons opened up. He flung himself sideways, behind another rock; it, too, erupted into vapor and fragments. On and on it went, Dash keeping the biggest fragments he could find between him and those terrifyingly powerful blasts. A few times, he found himself hiding blocked by something little larger than the Archetype itself, making him think of someone trying to hide behind a skinny lamppost or structural beam, and looking awkwardly obvious about it.

  Almost there. Another rock vaporized; this time, part of the beam washed past it and clipped the Archetype. Part of the upper leg boiled away to glowing vapor. Dash yelped and swore and threw himself behind another rock. The wound would heal, but next time it might catch him full-on, crippling him, leaving him exposed.

  He had to end this as soon as possible, as in now.

  Dash readied the dark-lance then gritted his teeth and zoomed into the clear. He saw the snout of the weapon aiming at him, its dome-like enclosure on the surface of the target asteroid rotating fast. He fired the dark-lance, just as the defensive weapon opened up on him.

  Fortunately, he could maneuver; it couldn’t. The dark-lance tore through the dome, causing it to collapse and implode. As it did, he heaved himself to one side, catching only a glancing hit from a portion of the stupendous blast. Part of his right arm vaporized and he gasped and swore again. It would be just his luck to find out there was a second defensive weapon that he hadn’t noticed.

  But there was no more incoming fire. Letting out a slow breath, he resumed his way until he landed on the asteroid near a second dome-like structure. The remains of the big cannon, gun, whatever it was, still glowed red hot against the asteroid’s nearby horizon.

  “Well,” he said, “that was fun.”

  It was successful.

  The AI offered nothing else. He supposed that was as close as it would ever get to complementing him, so he just allowed himself a tired smile and nodded. “Yes it was. It was that.”

  Dash shone his suit lamp ahead of him. A corridor, meticulously straight, extended as far as his light penetrated. Beyond hung a thick curtain of gloom. The Archetype stood outside, so he shuffled the low-grav shuffle as he entered the Unseen installation. It seemed wrong, somehow, to be walking on his own legs, moving his own arms, grasping things with his own hands. It seemed so limited. So awkward. In the Archetype, he could soar through unSpace on the energy of a captive black hole. Here, on his own, his feet felt like two lumps of stone that he had to lift and put down, over and over.

  Dangerous. That was dangerous. It would be easy to get too used to living as the Archetype—never tired, never hungry, more like some sort of god than a man.

  Dangerous, but, seriously, would it be that bad a thing?

  Especially since, upon exiting the Archetype, he had suddenly found himself hungry and thirsty, and needing relieve himself. Fortunately, the vac suit could take care of all those things, as long as he didn’t mind tepid, stale-tasting water, a bland-but-nutritious food paste, and, well, the suit’s waste reclaimer did what it did.

  It seemed like such a letdown.

  “So I just head straight down this corridor?”

  Yes. It descends into the installation, which is located inside this asteroid.

  “How far?”

  Six hundred and seventy-three meters.

  Again, Dash was struck by the fact that the measurement hadn’t been given to him in meters; he actually had no idea what system for measuring things the Unseen used. But that was how his brain had interpreted it. It was just another bizarre reality of the connection he had to the Archetype, which seemed to work perfectly well even when he’d exited it.

  Dash began walking. As soon as he did, he realized he no longer needed to do the shuffle. The installation’s gravity seemed to be exactly one G. He suspected the place’s gravity would always be exactly right for anyone exposed to it.

  Assuming they could get by that automated super-weapon, of course.

  He started down the corridor, the darkness parting before his light ahead of them, then closing back in once again behind him. He glanced back once, saw nothing but impenetrable darkness, and resolved not to do that again. It wasn’t that Dash believed in ghosts, but the darkness could hide a multitude of things he didn’t particularly want to encounter, especially in a place that might be two thousand centuries old.

  The sound of his own breathing echoing in his helmet finally got to him. He needed to hear something, anything. “So,” he said, “what was this place used for? I mean, besides blowing up anything that comes near it, and I guess hiding a power core for a giant robot?”

  The Creators had many facilities, which had many purposes. I have no record regarding what specific purposes this one may have had.

  Dash slowed his pace. “So, wait. You mean you don’t know what I’m walking into here?”

  Not specifically, no.

  He stopped. “So how do I know I’m not heading into something that’s going to blow me up, or incinerate me?” Or eat me, his brain silently and unhelpfully added.

  The Creators were not wantonly destructive or h
armful. Everything they did had a rational purpose. Even the defensive system of this place you encountered was here for a reason.

  Dash sighed and resumed walking. “Well, sure, except that reason somehow came to include destroying the Archetype, and both of us along with it.”

  Again, that was unexpected. It was likely a fault.

  “Yeah, but what if there are other faults? I’m the one walking into this place blind.” Literally, since the way ahead remained profoundly black.

  That is a risk.

  But not one you’re taking on, Dash thought, but decided to change the subject to something less terrifying. “Did you actually know the Unseen? Your Creators? Like, did you actually meet them?”

  They created me.

  “So what were they like?”

  I don’t understand the question.

  “It’s not difficult. I mean, what were they like? Were they high-strung? Laid-back and relaxed? Did they get angry easily? Did they laugh a lot?”

  You are attempting to assign human emotions and reactions to them. That is somewhat fallacious.

  “So are you saying they had no emotions? Nothing like anger or happiness or sadness or whatever at all? That makes them sound like—well, you. No offense, by the way.”

  Offense isn’t relevant. The closest analog to a human emotion I could convey about the Creators is compassion. They sought to preserve sentient races, and those with the potential for sentience, from those who would seek to destroy them.

  “The Golden, you mean.”

  That is correct.

  “Yeah, okay, but they could have been doing that because they wanted to, I don’t know, farm us as food, or use us as slaves someday. What makes you think they actually cared about all of us poor, lesser sentient species?”

  They had no such designs of which I am aware. They sought, rather, to preserve life such as yours because they considered it their mission. They put enormous effort into it and sacrificed much.