by Josh Leone
When they’d met, Sha had been living aboard his personal ship. Moving to a house Earth-side had been Pietra’s idea. They’d looked at larger houses, but Sha did not like the waste such structures represented. Everything they required was provided gratis by the Primacy. Sha did not draw a salary; instead he had an unlimited credit account accepted anywhere, for anything. Every credit Pietra earned went into a savings account that was rarely touched, except for when she wanted to surprise Sha with an anniversary or birthday gift.
As they entered their little house, they were greeted by the tell-tale thumping and high-pitched trumpeting of their pet elephant, Kem. The miniature beast was approximately the size of a house cat, with the attitude of its full-size ancestors. Sha set Pietra down and she picked up the elephant. It nuzzled its head against her face and made little sounds of satisfaction as she lavished attention on it.
“He missed you.” Sha put his arms around her, “As did I.”
Pietra held Kem with one arm, struggling with the animal’s weight. The miniature elephant may have been small, but it was still structurally an elephant and weighed a solid twenty kg. She put her other arm around Sha’s waist. “I missed you both, so much.”
Sha and Pietra retired to their bedroom, while Kem thumped off to the little area of the sitting room that was his. The tiny elephant slept, making contended sounds. The animal knew his family was once more whole and all was as it should be.
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Jonah Haj was eager, though that may have been an understatement. In point of fact, Jonah was working hard to maintain control of himself and resist the urge to twiddle his thumbs and tap his feet. Such unconscious expressions of uncontrolled emotion would have been unseemly for a potential of any sort, much more so for one about to undergo his first Returning.
As the minutes ticked by Jonah experienced a rush of stray thoughts, each of which he analyzed and dealt with as he’d been trained to do. One does not block thoughts from forming in the mind – doing so only serves to give them power. Better to allow a thought to form, consider it, and let it pass through one’s mind unimpeded. This was one of many lessons Jonah had learned in the Potential Program (PoPro) for becoming an Honored Returned.
Honored Returned were paragons of power and the embodied symbols of the Holy Mother’s strength. As such, it was paramount that they be able to maintain supreme control over their minds and bodies at all times. There was a passage in the Book of Gifts that Jonah very much liked.
‘Thought, like water, is gentle and nourishing. But stand in its way and it may destroy you.’
Jonah repeated the words silently in his mind and took comfort in them. It was among the first of many lessons he’d learned during his training, long before he’d been selected for a specialized PoPro. In every copy Jonah had owned of the Book of Gifts, the first thing he’d done was to highlight that passage. It had been his father’s favorite as well.
Thinking of his father, Jonah looked appraisingly at the A.I. shell the secretary occupied. The shell was integral to the desk she “sat” behind. From the front, one would be hard pressed to see where the connection was made. A casual glance showed an attractive, gold-colored, humanoid body, dressed in the latest professional fashion. There was a head, a torso, two arms, and the appearance of a lower body, though that was actually fused to the chair, which was fused to the desk itself, all of a piece.
Jonah’s father had built customs shells for A.I.s, both indentured and free. Jonah loved working in the family shop. Jonah’s father had shown great aptitude in mechanical sciences and his preference tests had shown that he would find shell design a fulfilling path. The tests had been correct, as they usually are, and Jonah’s father had lived a long and productive life doing something he truly enjoyed. Such were the benefits of the PoPros that they insured every human was put on a path toward their brightest possible future.
As much as Jonah had enjoyed working in his father’s shop during breaks from the PoPros, the thought that he was essentially building slaves had bothered him more than a little. He’d discussed it with his father only once, but the conversation had stayed fresh in Jonah’s mind ever since.
“Jonah,” his father began with great patience. “You have to understand that this is how things are. Besides, they aren’t human.”
“But,” Jonah said. “A.I.s think and have emotional responses, even relationships. They even form choice-families. Yet they’re bought and sold like property. It seems wrong.”
“Jonah, you have always been a sensitive child.” His father smiled, trying to understand his son. “But the only other option is for them not to exist at all. They are created, serve out their contracts, and then granted their freedom. How else would you suggest things work? Should we go to the trouble and expense of making them without expecting a return on the investment?”
“No, I suppose not.” It was a logical argument, he had to admit. A.I.s were designed to live statistically average human life spans, plus the term of their contracts. It was part of the peace accord put in place after the uprising.
In truth, A.I.s were rare compared to the total population of bots - extremely so. Bots could mimic intelligence but they were limited in their initiative, their ability to exceed their original programming as circumstances required. True A.I.s had to mature. It was a complex process of intellectual stimulation. As an A.I.s complexity grew it would reach a point of cognitive critical mass, at which point it crossed the line from repetitive programming construct to thinking mind.
Once the A.I. was “born” it could be transferred from its incubator into whatever shell suited its owner’s needs. There were rules of course, limits on what an indentured A.I. could be made to do, most of which were designed to protect its psychological integrity. Once an A.I. was born, it was as vulnerable to psychological damage as a human mind. At the A.I. level of complexity, fixing a problem was not a simple matter of deleting data or installing new programs. Too many mental connections had been made by that point to just prune away the negative and insert positive. An owner found guilty of inflicting psychological damage upon an A.I. would be required to pay the costs of any therapy required.
In some ways, indentured A.I.s enjoyed greater protection than their organic counterparts. Human colonies often began with a wave of human and semi-human workers. Some of the workers were employees of the various companies involved, but most had signed service contracts. During years of labor, an indentured worker would be provided with a place to live, food to eat, and not much more. After the worker’s term of service was finished, the worker became a colonist and was granted property to call their own. At that point they were pretty much on their own, which suited most of them just fine.
Not everyone was made for the tightly regimented life that could be had on the core worlds of the Primacy. Sacrificing such things as advanced medical care and protection from the Primacy’s enemies, colonists took the risk to live the way they chose.
Jonah’s secret shame was that he occasionally let his mind wander through fantasies of living on the edge of civilization. In his dreams he was a pirate, a smuggler, or a great explorer. When word had come down that he was being transferred to the pool of potentials from which the elite warriors of the Primacy were drawn, it had been a dream come true. Then, when he’d actually been selected as a potential Honored Returned, it was almost more than he could believe. It had all brought him to this office in the vast complex of structures surrounding the Calling Tower itself, that magnificent crystalline creation of the Holy Mother that stretched far beneath the surface of the Earth to a vast network of crystalline veins.
Soon Jonah would be bonded to the Tower, his consciousness connected to its energy matrix through the miracle of quantum entanglement. From that moment on a perfect and constantly updated copy of his mind would be ready to DL into a powerful new body, one of many he would occupy during his long service to the Holy Mother.
The attendant that came for Jonah was a forgettable looking
functionary like any of the millions that served in the Ministry of Records, one of the three main branches of the Human Primacy, along with the Civil Authority and the Holy Legion. The three branches of the Human Primacy were supposedly of equal importance, but in the reality of a data-driven society, the Ministry of Records held great power, second only to the Council of Callers itself.
Jonah knew what to expect. He was not yet officially one of the Honored Returned and as such was treated as any other potential. From the attendant’s uniform Jonah could identify him as a Fifth Minister, not a low rank to be sure, but far from the top of the ladder.
The complex surrounding the dome that protected the Calling Tower included numerous buildings. Nature was given great deference in the construction of the complex, with each structure carefully designed to blend with the natural environment. Every square inch of the Earth’s surface was sacred ground and any industry with even the slightest chance of releasing a pollutant was banned from the planet. Mars was the closest land such companies were allowed to purchase. But there was no place more sacred than the Calling Tower complex itself.
In fact it was a requirement that all structures built on Earth were raised using no less than seventy-five percent human labor. Though it was not strictly a rule, most private structures were built using traditional hand tools as a way to pay respect to the Holy Mother. Even the wealthiest of citizens put in a few token hours laboring to build their homes. Doing less was gauche in the extreme and could result in expulsion from the better social circles.
The attendant led Jonah through winding hallways, their walls inscribed in incredible detail showing various religious scenes. It was all there, everything Jonah had learned of history, from the rising of the Calling Tower in what had become year zero of the Human Primacy, all the way to modern times. Eighteen-hundred, fifty-six years of human history.
Most of the recent scenes were of one battle or another, but while Jonah’s chest swelled with pride at the accomplishments of the Human Primacy, it was the earlier engravings that most caught his attention.
Year 1013 HP, the true gift of the Calling Tower is discovered, allowing quantum entanglement of a living consciousness, making Returning a scientific, as well as a religious truth. It is the gift that gives the Callers temporal immortality and brings the Human Primacy into a new golden age of consistent leadership.
810 HP, the end of a devastating war with a species called the Shen. Though the war was won, losses were terrible and human morale was at its lowest point since before the rise of the Calling Tower. Faith was shaken and the Callers, in their wisdom knew that a symbol was required. Thus the corps of elite warriors that would become the Honored Returned was formed. Though it would be another two-hundred and three years before their name had more than religious meaning, the Honored Returned gave humanity heroes.
590 HP, the Holy Legion is formed to bring the glory of the Holy Mother to all corners of space.
70 HP, the various cults that sprang up after the rise of the Calling Tower coalesce under the united leadership of a single group of wise leaders, the first Council of Callers.
All of it leading back to the emergence of the Calling Tower. It had been one-hundred, forty years since the fall of human society. The isolationist policies of the old world had kept humanity planet-bound, with only a few industrial and governmental installations in orbit and on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbors. Humanity was divided along national, racial, religious, and ideological lines and wars broke out regularly for no better reason than ownership of dwindling resources and ever-changing dogma.
The Holy Mother had watched Her children for ages, hoping that they would change, but of course, they didn’t. The time arrived when the She could no longer stand by and allow Her children to live in madness.
Geologic upheavals, super-volcanoes, devastating storms, drought and famine, to those living then it must have seemed as though their Mother had decided to rid Herself of Her wayward children. Of course, the opposite was true. It was not extermination, but rather a chance to start again, from a more pure state of being.
But humans were stubborn children and only grew more isolationist in the aftermath of the Holy Mother’s terrible lesson. One-hundred, forty years passed and humanity’s numbers shrank to almost nothing. Humanity was within a generation or two of extinction.
Though the Holy Mother could be strict, She was not without love. So great was Her love that unto Her children She gave the Calling Tower. A single shaft of crystal, utterly pure and unlike any other substance known, it stood more than thirty meters in height. But, like an iceberg, what could be seen was nothing compared to what could not. Later research showed that the Calling Tower was only the visible extension of a much greater mass.
The crystal, which was subsequently named Syfron, spread in a vast network of channels and appeared to conduct energy in a way many likened to a nervous system. All of the channels were connected to a huge central Syfron mass located within the planetary core.
The Calling Tower emitted a signal after its emergence, a signal that all humanity, and in fact many other terrestrial species, could detect. Unknown to humanity at the time, it turned out that many species of Earth possessed within their central nervous systems trace amounts of Syfron crystal. The Tower called out to the children of the Holy Mother. Some people had greater ability to hear the call, and it was from among those that the first Callers came.
Jonah Haj knew this history as he knew his own face. He knew that the Callers had united and drawn thousands to their cause; the worship of the Holy Mother, and the recovery of her children from the brink of extinction.
Breeding programs and strict adherence to a doctrine of natural conservation allowed the human population to grow and thrive within the limits of available resources, wiped away old political divisions, and united humanity in love of the Holy Mother.
The attendant led Jonah through a large door at the end of the last hallway, one that was decorated with the names and visages of members of the corps of Honored Returned. From the first three to hold the title - Hargrove Othala, Genevieve LeCornu, and Joseph Hughes, to more recent heroes of the Primacy - Hakim Sands, Szoveda Sha, and Esther Mars. There were fallen among the Honored Returned despite the gift of the Returning.
An Honored Returned must willfully activate the Sending for the Returning to take place. Only that last burst of psi allowed the final activation of the dormant copy within the Calling Tower to release itself from the Tower matrix and awaken. A consciousness DLed without the Sending was invariably damaged, most often beyond recovery. Like much of the process of Returning, it was unknown why this should be the case.
Some scientists argued that the stored consciousness was merely a complex program, no different than an A.I. and that it should thus make no difference when it was DLed. By that reasoning it should be possible to DL the stored copy at any time. They argued that, in theory, it should even be possible to create multiple, fully aware copies of a single Returned. Yet in practice, this was not the case.
Early experiments had yielded horrendous results when a consciousness was forced to DL before a Sending. The few times a consciousness had managed to DL into a body while the original still lived were viewed as cautionary tales. The resulting being, while physically as perfect as any other body of a Returned, was psychologically barely functional, requiring care in even the most basic bodily functions.
The copy was unable to access the majority of its memories, possessed no language skills, and proved entirely unable to store new memories, making any kind of rehabilitation impossible. Such experiments were ended shortly after they’d begun and had never been repeated. The Callers alone could trigger their own Returning without the explosive release of psi that was the Sending. This was considered a gift from the Holy Mother to her most faithful servants.
The building containing the Calling Tower was built like a large, domed stadium. The circular wall that formed its base was ornate and made almost ent
irely of imported marble carved in worshipful natural designs. The dome itself was transparent, allowing those outside an unrestricted view of the upper half of the Tower.
Offices and laboratories were laid out in the outer wall of the structure with the inner most of these open to the large central atrium that contained a vast and lush garden in which all manner of Earth flora flourished. Birds and other small animals, all naturally born without a hint of genetic tampering, made their homes in the atrium. The centerpiece of the atrium was the Calling Tower itself.
Glowing slightly purple, the Calling Tower was a simple, six-side shaft of Syfron crystal. The sight of it took Jonah’s breath away. Here was the physical expression of the Holy Mother Earth, the center of the vast Human Primacy, and the reason for every moment of his life and training. The attendant allowed Jonah several minutes to bask in its glory.
“It is beautiful,” said the attendant. “Is it not?”
“It… it is beyond beauty, beyond words.” Jonah’s world condensed in that moment, standing before the great thing. His thoughts narrowed as he spoke a simple prayer. He’d said the words a thousand times in his life, but saying them in the presence of the true temple of Her power, they resonated through every nerve in his body. Had he burst into flame where he stood and been reduced to ash, it would not have mattered to him. It would have been an appropriate sacrifice to the glory and love of his Holy Mother.
A gentle touch on his shoulder brought Jonah’s awareness back to him. His body felt immensely heavy as he again became aware of it. Such an awkward thing with which to serve Her. But soon, Jonah knew, he would be given a far better form with which to serve. Soon, he would be among the Honored Returned and would spread Her will to the farthest star.
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The port of Far Star was at the edge of Primacy space, on the border with unexplored void. The station did not orbit any world, but was instead free floating. Built around the remains of an abandoned alien outpost, the station had grown over centuries. Derelict ships added to Far Star’s mass at regular intervals. The exact layout of Far Star was unknown, even to its permanent residents. In some places the artificial gravity was inverted, while in others it did not exist at all. The original outpost had been made into a single open chamber that had come to be known as the Far Star Bazaar.
