The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3)

by A. G. Riddle

  CHAPTER 38

  Ares barely recognized the world he had brought his dying people to and helped build. It was clean and sparkling but crowded, its people angry. They lined the streets, pushing, shoving, holding signs and shouting.

  “Serpentine Restrictions = Slavery”

  “Evolution = Freedom”

  “Ares is the True Serpent”

  At the council chamber, a group of imbeciles detailed the plight of Ares’ beloved world. Intellectual discrimination had segmented Atlantean society, fracturing it into two factions: intellectuals and laborers. The intellectuals represented nearly 80% of the entire population, and as best Ares could tell, spent their days making things with their minds: art, inventions, research, and activities Ares didn’t understand and didn’t care to ask about. The remaining 20% of the population, the laborers, made their living with their hands, and they were tired of it, tired of the subsidized wages and welfare state that kept them in a perpetual second-class existence.

  The core of the issue was that education had reached the limits of how much it could elevate raw intelligence. On both sides, the two classes realized that intellectuals would always be intellectuals, and so would their children, and likewise for laborers. Marriage between the classes had become increasingly rare as no intellectuals dared risk their descendants slipping into the lower class, never to return.

  The economic and social rift had grown increasingly tense. Accommodations and deals had been made, keeping the peace. But compromise had finally failed, and violence had become the laborers’ only means of negotiation.

  The screen detailed the labor faction’s growing unrest, the escalation from protests to riots, to random attacks, to organized terrorism that claimed thousands of lives.

  Ares turned the problem over in his mind, barely listening to Nomos, the chairman of the council. “The crux of the issue is our police force.”

  “What about it?” Ares asked.

  “We haven’t had one for three hundred years. There’s simply been very little crime, and citizen enforcement, coupled with mass surveillance, has meant that any perpetrators were always apprehended. This is different. These people are willing to lay down their lives for their cause—to ensure that their children don’t suffer as they have.”

  Another councilman spoke up. “The bigger issue is that the new police force will have to be drawn from the laborers—and we could never trust them. They could overthrow the government and completely take over. And I think that’s what we’re all scared of, even if I’m the only one willing to say it.”

  Silence followed.

  Finally, Nomos spoke. “Ares, the solution we’ve come to, that we’ve awoken you to… consult on, is relaxing the Serpentine Restrictions.”

  Ares failed to suppress his anger. “Those laws were created for a reason—to save us from ourselves.”

  Nomos held up a hand. “We’re only considering slight relaxations in two of the three restrictions: removing the ban on genetic engineering—just once, for a single treatment to bring the laborers to intellectual parity. Secondly, we would lift the ban on robotics, allowing simple service droids to handle all physical labor. These changes will create a single sustainable society—”

  Ares stood. “If you fools open the box of genetic engineering and robotics on this world, you guarantee that we become a Serpentine world at some point—without even being invaded. It’s inevitable. This is how the Serpentine blight emerged in the first place. We’ll be repeating our predecessors’ mistakes. I won’t stand for it. Put me back to sleep, or better yet, allow me the true death. I can’t watch this.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Our problem is very simple,” Ares said. “Twenty percent of our people are killing the rest. They’ve got to go.”

  Ares looked around at his army in training. If the beacon weren’t floating in orbit, hiding his world’s light from the universe beyond, they would be the laughing stock of the cosmos.

  The council had been right: recruiting a security force from the labor class was certain folly. Ares had settled for intellectuals who might fit the bill: models—chiseled, muscular, and well-trained at the art of looking fearless regardless of their actual ability; dancers and acrobats—they moved with grace and precision but couldn’t fight to save their lives; and athletes—they had great aim and comfort in raging crowds but would no doubt melt when people started dying.

  Ares watched them train. An army they were not and never would be. But with their uniforms and practiced movements, they looked the part, and that was all he needed.

  Ares longed for the days of the expeditionary fleet, but it had been yet another casualty of the Serpentine Restrictions. Space exploration could lead to unknown dangers, or the greatest risk of all: rediscovery by the Serpentine Army.

  The thought of it reminded him of his own role in the mission that had led to the end: his capture of a sentinel sphere that opened a break in the line, allowing the great serpent to flow across and port to the Atlanteans’ first homeworld. He would never see that mistake repeated.

  The Atlantean dream was a single society on a single world, safe behind the beacon and the immense sentinel army that formed a wall in space around it; an Atlantean world of peace and plenty, stretching into eternity. The dream was built on forsaking three temptations: the easy labor of robotics, the false advancement of genetic engineering, and the fascination of deep space exploration.

  Ares realized Nomos was at his side, but he said nothing, hoping the moron would reciprocate. As usual, Ares was disappointed.

  “They look more like an army every day,” Nomos said, further lowering Ares’ opinion of his intelligence.

  “Yes, they’ll play their role nicely.”

  Ares didn’t know when the next attack would come, but it didn’t much matter. The future was a foregone conclusion for him, an equation working its way to a known end.

  He rarely slept, and when sleep did come, it was fitful. He sat at the desk in the apartment they had given him, flipping through the letters his wife had written him, watching videos of her, and replaying endless scenarios in his mind, debating about how things might have been different. But the truth was that he had simply played his role, as many had before him and would after him. The avatar had been right. Ares knew it now. Ares wondered how many worlds he had seen rise and fall. A thousand? A million? More?

  The avatar had advocated a simple existence, living by a shared code. Ares imagined that on those worlds, every citizen was an intellectual and a laborer, and every life was respected. They had it right.

  Ares mused at his own words back then: We’re going to fight.

  But there had been no great enemy to fight, only a few helpless victims. There had been no harrowing threat at their door, bonding his people together. The Serpentine Army had never come, and in the absence of a threat, his people had lost the very will to fight. In fact, confronted with the first taste of violence in thousands of years, their solution had been to dig him out of hibernation: a fossil of an almost forgotten past, back to vanquish the barbarian threat.

  No, they didn’t want to fight. This was the dark side of the human reality: with no conflict, no challenge, the fire within winks out and without the flame, society stagnates, slipping into a slow decline. There was only one solution to his world’s problems: cutting out the cancer.

  Ares dreaded it. But it was a conflict, a challenge, a reason for him to exist. He wondered if it was the only thing keeping him alive.

  He walked to the window and marveled at the city they had built—one of thousands that covered almost every inch of the globe. They were meticulously planned. Unlike the cities of the old world he had grown up on, these metropolises blended nature with steel and glass in a canvas of art and function.

  From his 147th floor apartment, Ares looked down at the green and brown forests, fields, and gardens that covered the tops of the buildings. Below the tops, catwalks connected the buildings like a spider web. P
eople and pods moved across the catwalks, like a colony of insects snaking through a maze of metal and glass that twinkled, every light regulated to optimize beauty and function. Massive greenhouses topped some buildings, the lush plant life illuminated by the grow lights and city lights at night.

  How could a civilization so advanced be so flawed—all the way down to its very core?

  Across the city, explosions erupted. Catwalks shook and fell. Buildings crumbled.

  Entire swaths were bathed in flame and smoke spread across, blotting out the canvas of light, glass, and steel.

  The door behind Ares opened. “Blasts in sectors four and six, General.”

  Ares dressed quickly and marched at the head of his newly formed army. He stopped just shy of the battle zone. Another blast went up, and a wave of screams and fleeing citizens coursed toward them.

  The soldier beside Ares cleared his throat and spoke quietly. “Should we begin, sir?”

  “No. Let it go for a while. Let’s show the world the type of people we’re fighting.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Kate was sore and drenched with sweat when she woke up, but the worst hurt wasn’t from her body. Every movement was a struggle, as if her body were made of lead. She dragged herself out of bed and pulled her clothes on.

  Outside her room, the mood among the others wasn’t much different. For the first time since she had met him, Kate saw true sadness in Milo. He stared constantly at the floor. Paul and Mary seemed overwhelmed, much the way they had been after their desperate run up the mountain in Morocco, when they had first seen the Alpha Lander a few days ago.

  Seeing the three of them actually changed Kate, steeled her. They needed her. She needed to be strong for them, and knowing that gave her a new sense of strength.

  “This isn’t over,” she began. “I have a plan.”

  “You do?” Paul asked, probably not intending to sound so surprised.

  “I do.” Kate led them out of the common area into the ship’s bridge. She activated the screen and panned the image to the view outside: the ruins of a burned out city. “I said before that we can’t go outside. I saw this world in one of the Atlantean scientist’s memories. She landed here—in this ship, and then ventured out. I think she was killed here by some group that guarded the planet. She could have been resurrected. That could be one of the reasons Janus erased the memory, and possibly why viewing it made me…”

  “Sick,” Milo said, fear in his voice. “You can’t, Dr. Kate.”

  “I have to.” Kate adjusted the screen to show the atmosphere where the beacon had entered, the streak of white the only remaining evidence. “With the beacon gone, we are trapped here. That’s the bad news. But we have a few options. This lander’s communications array is still intact. And it’s still fully operational—we can lift off and get into orbit.”

  “How far can we travel?” Paul asked.

  “Not far, unfortunately. The lander has no ability to generate a wormhole, no hyperspace travel ability. But we could send a communication—try to get help. With the beacon gone, this world is exposed.”

  “And apparently well-guarded,” Paul said. “At least in the past.”

  “Exactly,” Kate said. “And that’s where I’m going to start. There’s an adaptive research lab on this ship, just like the Alpha Lander. I used the portable data core to retrieve all the memories Janus wanted to keep from his partner. I’m going to look for any clues as to what this world is, who’s guarding it, and how we might be able to get help.” She motioned to Paul and Mary. “I’ve programmed these terminals to teach you the Atlantean systems. It won’t take you long to learn—David and Milo got up to speed in less than a few days.” That hadn’t come out the way Kate intended, but she pressed on. “When you can work the ship, I want you to start comparing the two signals—the one Mary received on Earth and the one from the Serpentine battlefield. That’s our other hope: figuring out what it is.”

  “What about me?” Milo asked.

  “You’re going to help me. You’ll monitor my vitals while I’m in the resurrection chamber. If anything goes wrong, you’re to get Paul and help him navigate the ship’s medical systems.”

  Milo shook his head. “I don’t like this. David wouldn’t like this.”

  “David and I talked right before… we came here. After seeing the Serpentine battlefield, he realized our situation was dire, that we had to take chances to have any hope. This is one of the chances. The other is the signal. This is our plan.”

  Kate led Milo out of the bridge, and although the teenager didn’t protest further, she could tell he dreaded what might result from Kate’s trip into the giant yellow vat similar to the one he and David had found her in several days ago. Putting on a brave face had prepared Kate for entering the vat once again, but once inside, standing in the virtual train station, staring at the board that was now full with a complete listing of all the Atlantean scientist’s memories, fear started to set in. What would happen inside the memories? What would it do to her outside? She had no choice.

  She selected the first memory, the earliest entry Janus had deleted, and loaded it.

  The train station disappeared, and she stood in a science lab. Janus stood before her, talking excitedly and pointing to a projection of a world on the wall. The wall of windows on her left revealed a vast city, twinkling in the night. A network of catwalks connected the buildings, and the city teemed with life. Momentarily, Kate was captivated by it, but the feeling faded quickly. In its place, comprehension rose. She instinctively knew where she was: the new Atlantean homeworld. She knew things about herself. Her job. Her desires. This memory was different. In the others, Kate had possessed some control over her thoughts, though the actions were those of the scientist. Not so here.

  Here she had complete access to the Atlantean scientist’s thoughts, and they joined her own, crowding them out. Kate was gone, simply a spectator, seeing, feeling, and reliving the Atlantean scientist’s past. The woman’s name was Isis, and her life began unfolding, out of Kate’s control. Kate’s last thought was wondering what would happen to her when Isis died in the memory, as Kate knew she had on Earth thirteen thousand years ago.

  Janus clicked through the images of the worlds again. “All these worlds hold hominid life.”

  “Or did,” Isis shot back.

  “True, these surveys are as old as the exodus, but assuming there haven’t been any population collapses, these worlds still hold human life. In fact, some could have grown into advanced civilizations or even evolved in ways we can’t imagine. Think about it. For an evolutionary geneticist, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  Janus paused for effect. “There’s no one I would rather have by my side, Isis.”

  She turned from him and faced the window that looked out onto the city. “I appreciate that, Janus. And it’s an incredible opportunity, but it’s hard for me to trek off into space when our world is in this kind of shape.”

  “I know your feelings on the labor debate.”

  “The equality debate,” Isis corrected.

  “Quite right,” Janus said, nodding. “The equality debate,” he said, repeating the mantra of the labor supporters, the words he and the other pro-intellectuals never uttered in private.

  When Isis said nothing, he pressed on. “The equality debate will work itself out with or without us. We can make history, advance the Atlantean cause. We’re calling it the Origin Project.”

  “It’ll never get past the Serpentine Restrictions.”

  “That may change.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Just rumors but there’s talk of relaxing the restrictions to resolve the labor revolt.” He quickly corrected himself. “Equality debate.”

  “Interesting.”

  “All the pieces are in place, Isis. We’re already retrofitting the survey fleet.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am. I know the ships are old—”

  “An
d they haven’t been used since they mapped the new sentinel line just after the exodus.”

  “They’ll do just fine. We’ve tested them. And in time, we could build new ones.”

  Isis shook her head, still uncertain.

  “Can we talk tomorrow, after your speech in the forum?”

  “Sure.”

  In truth, Isis had found Janus’ proposal fascinating. It was the opportunity of a lifetime; that much was true. But turning her back on the equality debate that raged on their world was unconscionable to her.

  She thought about her speech the next day—the research she would present that she hoped would turn the tide in the great debate, altering the course of their society. The stakes were high, and she could already feel her nerves as she exited the building onto the skyway. She loved moving between the buildings at night. The glass corridors gave the sense of flying over the city, and sometimes she couldn’t help but stare out as she walked.

  In the distance, a plume of fire rose, and a split-second later, a building sank, then another. Skyways in the distance released, and the web of walkways seemed to ripple as the cascade of explosions rolled toward her like a wave. The ground loomed over a thousand feet below her.

  She glanced between the entrance and exit. She was closer to the end, and she bound toward it, her feet pounding the floor. The building ahead shook, and the walkway swayed, the floor cracked, and tiles from the ceiling rained down.

  She held her arms up, covering her head as she cleared the skyway. The building’s lifts were inoperable, and Isis crammed into the stairwells, flowing with the masses trying desperately to escape.

  At the bottom floor, masked, armed troops corralled them into a dark holding area, occasionally shouting for them to move faster and pushing anyone who got out of line.

  When the trickle of people ended, one of their captors stepped forward and said, “You are no longer citizens. You are no longer members of the elite who perpetuate the intellectual feudalism that has oppressed us for thousands of years. You are instruments; tools of the revolution. You will be given a number. You are now a hostage of the equality movement.”