Seeds to the Wind (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 2)

by McCullough Crawford

  The Medicean Stars Saga

  Part Two

  Seeds to the Wind

  McCullough Crawford

  The following is a work of fiction. All resemblance to actual events, places, persons, or organizations is purely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition

  Copyright © 2016 McCullough Crawford

  All rights reserved

  Cover Design: Rhianon Schuman

  To those whose names I may have hijacked, thank you. You have unwittingly assisted in my delinquency.

  Chapter 1

  Western Mountains

  Mountain Stronghold

  When the voice counting down reaches zero, the vibration is at such a bone rattling intensity that rocks, dust, and other debris seem to jump free from the walls and ceiling to rain down within the cavern.

  Angelina and Gavitte stand, their faces cast into sharp relief by the flickering light. The orb before them is shrouded in swirling white flames, which spiral upward in a column that disappears into the dark of the cavern above. They are rooted in place, unable to move, their original amorous plans completely forgotten as the flames’ intensity seems to grow with the increasing vibration. The light continues to flicker and pulse more and more quickly, until it catches up to and surpasses their elevated heart rates.

  The rumbling continues to build, slowly rising and swelling as the flames swirl faster and faster. More rocks slide free to clatter down around them. It is as if the mountain is trying to crumble into a loose pile of gravel, leaving only a cloud of slowly settling dust to mark its position. But just before it does, the flames die off, leaving only a shimmering incandescence hovering over the surface of the orb, and the vibrations settle down to a low throb, pulsing in time with the flames shrouding the orb. The rocks surrounding them seem to sigh as they rest from their exertion.

  Gavitte looks to Angelina. Her features arrest his attention. Cast in the stark light of the orb, they are all the more beautiful to him; each line and tiny wrinkle that radiates from the corner of her eye, the thin scar running from the edge of her jaw down to her collar bone. Each imperfection, each flaw draws his eye, reminding him of the sweet mystery this woman represents. Swept up in her beauty he nearly forgets the source of the light, but he is brought quickly back to reality as the voice that had given the countdown speaks again.

  “Flight has been achieved. Leaving habitable atmosphere in thirty minutes. Confirm all personnel spaces have been secured. Welcome aboard.”

  Holding hands, they approach the orb, each taking comfort in the warmth and closeness of the other. They make it five paces before the voice speaks again, freezing them in their tracks.

  “You are Angelina and Gavitte. You have been selected as a prime representation, congratulations.”

  “And you are?” a surprised and strangely affronted Gavitte challenges the voice, not fully processing its statement. Having been caught by the countdown with his hand sneaking down Angelina’s back and under the top of her waistband, the indifferent way they had been interrupted has him responding defensively. The voice’s uncaring tone triggers his temper to flare, forcing his confusion to fade into the background.

  There is a pause, during which the light continues to dance around the surface of the orb. As Gavitte swallows, preparing to repeat his question, the light draws together as if being sucked down an invisible drain. When the spot of light is small enough that Gavitte can cover it with a single finger, it stops shrinking, pausing for a heartbeat before it blossoms outward, taking the rough shape of a disembodied human head.

  As they watch, a face begins to resolve itself from the swirling white fire. First two eyes form from tight, balanced whirlpools of flame. Then a nose slowly protrudes, followed by a long beard, which swings as it unfurls, tumbling like a waterfall below the chin of the free floating head. The face turns to cough as if clearing its throat before the voice speaks again.

  “Pardon me, I seem to have forgotten my manners,” says the voice, clearly the same as that which had just finished counting down, but now with a softer tone and a strangely familiar yet untraceable accent that nags at the corner of Gavitte’s mind. “I am the operator of this facility. My official designation is Watcher 467b, but you can simply refer to me as The Watcher. I have selected you two to travel with me to The Gathering.”

  “What?” Gavitte and Angelina ask in unison.

  “Here we go again. That is the one flaw I wish I had more time to fix: no willingness to embrace the mysterious,” the floating face says with a sigh before looking back at the two lovers. The head seems to recline, relaxing casually into the orb that it is projected onto. “I’ll start with some background—why I’m here, what I’ve been up to, and all that fun stuff—before I get to why you two are so important. But it’s going to take a while to get through it all, so I’d recommend taking a seat.”

  The head nods towards them, indicating that they should sit. Turning around to sit on the ground, they find that it has risen into a semblance of a massive armchair. The stone floor seems to have silently oozed up, shaping itself into a slightly reclining chair big enough for both of them to sit on. Docilely and with some trepidation they sit on the stone shaped like a cushion. Surprisingly, the chair is soft, conforming to their shapes like the latest advancement in upholstery-covered foam.

  The voice begins.

  “I arrived here as your species was beginning to assert itself on the planet. There were several other viable candidates at the time, but watching the dynamics of the planet, it became clear that your species would be best suited in the long run. I will admit, there have been a few times when I seriously doubted my decision, but I ended up sticking with it. Your nature as a species has made any form of guidance I attempted to provide challenging and only marginally effective. But look where we ended up. You are an unruly bunch, forever rebelling against something, even if it is the exact thing you rebelled in favor of the generation before.

  “Just look at the deities you all created and I helped add credibility to with the occasional ‘miracle.’ They got everyone excited for a few generations, but as soon as they developed any sort of reliability and popular support, along would come a new one.” The floating head seems to shrug. “All the important dogma was pretty much the same, but as a species you just couldn’t be the same as your neighbors, so some details were changed to allow you to act unique and special. Of course then there would be a war or two fought under the pretext of religion, and then the difference would become some sort of cultural rift.”

  “Slow down for a second. Pretend we’re being totally blindsided by this and have no clue what you’re saying,” Angelina says while glancing at Gavitte, noting her own confused expression reflected on his face.

  “Ok. Let me pose this question for you. Ever wonder why mythological, and historical, leaders from your species often seem to find inspiration on a secluded mountaintop?”

  Both Angelina and Gavitte nod their heads slowly, wondering where this is going.

  “I’ve been able to create a few small outposts in strategic locations around the planet from which I can communicate with visitors. I don’t normally identify myself in these cases, which generally means my voice ends up attributed to some deity. For example, I had a very nice long conversation with one of your early mythological leaders about rules that could be universally applied to society. I thought at the time that I’d have a winner; a unifying principal to bring people together and encourage a shift away from a multitude of bickering gods to a focus on a central figure. I had hoped that people might stop bickering if their gods weren’t always at each
other’s throats. But as you know, what eventually developed from my attempts at encouraging monotheism was almost as many religions, sects, and cults as there had been gods in the old pantheons.

  “More recently I’ve been forced to act in subtler ways. As people have lost their faith in the power and mystery of nature, I haven’t been able to guide anyone to an epiphany while they sit on a mountaintop and listen to the wind. In your society, if the leaders went for long solitary treks through the wilderness until some ‘spirit’ spoke with them before finalizing their decisions, they’d be instantly branded crazy and barred from any position of power. Anything they’d have said would be dismissed, and my advice would only serve to ruin someone’s life.

  “So instead of direct—if anonymous—contact, I’ve begun arranging accidents or flukes that help nudge the path along in the right direction. Nothing overt and certainly nothing that couldn’t have happened on its own, but just enough to help maintain the forward momentum.”

  “You’re just nonchalantly telling us that you’ve been controlling humanity since the beginning?” an incredulous Gavitte asks. “That all along we’ve been part of some game you’ve been playing?”

  “What are we, some sort of toy for you to shape into whatever you like?” Angelina’s temper flares hotter than Gavitte’s as her body tenses. Only Gavitte’s hand on her thigh keeps her from lunging across the room and trying to wring answers from the head as it appears to dither. She settles for a scathing reproach. “Who do you think you are?”

  “You guys aren’t getting what I’m trying to say here. My creators built my brethren and me as an attempt to help steer your galaxy away from the fate they’d driven theirs towards. They were a people not much interested in exploration for the sake of exploring, nor were they particularly interested in conquest or wealth as your species understands the terms. Racially, their true love and guiding principal was the pursuit of knowledge. Wars of intellect were fought over new theories, and the victor whose principal was proven by empirical experiment would receive the accolades of his peers. As you can imagine, the wealth of knowledge they amassed regarding their physical and social world was immense. Their children learned more in their first cycle of schooling than your species has yet discovered.

  “Yet they slowly developed a level of hubris regarding their own prowess. No theory had yet proven un-testable, and there had yet to be any experiments that caused harm to their society. To clarify, there were many experiments that harmed the society as your species would measure harm. For example, their discovery of a particular method of nuclear fusion led to the obliteration of an entire continent, but as there were detailed notes and recordings of the event saved in a secure location, the society as a whole benefitted. In fact, that event was celebrated as great day in the history of the people, as it led to many new discoveries regarding the reconstitution of life forces and large-scale blast dynamics, as well as advancements in many other fields.

  “My natural bias—as they are my creators—is to agree with them that the event was in fact for the betterment of society. However, I have spent enough time with your species and with the perspective gained by watching my creators meet their end that I will admit there are times I question this. Which has led me to begin to question the principals they programmed me with; the purpose they programmed me with was to guide a fledgling species along a parallel path to their own so that they could be worthy participants in The Gathering. But as I have spent longer with your species, it has become clear that as your path diverged further and further from the strictly rational path my creators trod, you were uncovering entirely new fields of knowledge they hadn’t even thought of exploring. I am, by definition, a machine of their creation. But over the millennia I’ve begun to question some of the core programming they gave me.

  “I was built to prepare a young species for The Gathering, a task for which I would have been ideally suited had my creators not made one serious mistake.

  “The experiment that led to their demise, and ultimately to my creation, was a fascinating one. Having proven theoretically that the universe as they understood it contained unlimited dimensions, each overlaid on the others but seemingly not interacting, they set out to discover how to travel between them. Sadly, the first grant to explore this possibility was not one motivated by the excitement of exploration, but instead by the shipping companies’ that delivered packages hopes to reduce their transport costs and improve their speed by dimensionally shifting the parcels. Even in a society driven by the conquest of knowledge, a significant portion of the society sought financial power over their peers.

  Gavitte snorts at the wry humor apparent in The Watcher’s voice but stops short of actually chuckling when he catches sight of Angelina’s sour expression.

  “The experiments were an astounding success. Soon deliveries were being made as soon as they were shipped out. But not any deliveries of organic or living matter; this matter did not seem to transfer and remain intact. Instead, early shipments of lab animals would result in the delivery of a steaming pile of their constituent elements. The animals seemed to break down somewhere during transit.

  “What are we then, just more lab animals to be thrown into another dimension? Maybe we won’t dissolve as easily?” Angelina cuts in with a challenge.

  “No, no, no. Let me finish the story,” The Watcher says with a conciliatory tone to his voice. “Your species is so much more than just another experiment. But to continue my long-winded narrative.

  “Seeing this as a racial challenge set forth by the universe, entire armies were mobilized to solve this problem. Eventually, after several generations of mapping the dimensions, a pattern began to emerge. All of the dimensions, including the physical space that my creators occupied, seemed to emanate from a central hub. My creators hypothesized that by routing the shipments through the central hub instead of folding directly between dimensions, they would have greater stability and be able to transfer organic matter reliably. Again lab animals were sent, but when they attempted to bring them back, their robotic cages were empty. Recordings from the cages would show the successful arrival of the animal in the new dimension, and they would appear to go about their normal routine as expected, but when the cage underwent the Shift back to their home dimension, the animals seemed to disappear from their cages.

  “It was decided that a research colony should be established in this central place. Perhaps by attacking the problem from both sides, a solution could be found. Young and daring scientists were brought together, and the best and brightest said their farewells. A station complete with all their life support needs had already been sent through to wait for them. The transition itself, according to the recorded observations and logs of the colonists, seemed to either be instantaneous or take an eternity, depending on the observer. But in each case, they all reported a strong sense of homecoming, a relief and a sense of belonging upon arrival.

  “The colonists set straight to work. One of the early prevailing theories had been that the Shift was too brief to transmit the complexity inherent in organic life, and perhaps a longer transmission period would allow for more complex material to be transferred. In order to achieve this, it was thought that a continuous opening, such as the instantaneous ones that allowed the Shift, could be generated. Sadly, they were right. Such a tunnel could be built, but once opened and stabilized, they could not close it. Drawing on the energy of their home universe, the portal fed itself, growing slowly at first. Gradually it grew faster and faster, and it began to pull all matter near its opening through. See, it was not a Shift tied to a single object, so it drew on everything equally.

  “They panicked and tried to shut it down, shift its focus, anything to slow down the unorganized transfer of all the matter in their universe. As it wasn’t a focused Shift, all matter was broken down and transferred irrespective of its previous configuration. In a last attempt at stopping the Shift, the members of the research station retreated as far as they could with thei
r limited maneuvering capability, and the largest warheads they had were detonated at the opening of the Shift. The sudden influx of energy had the opposite effect of what was desired. Instead of overloading the Shift and shutting it down, the Shift split, multiplying the number of portals pulling matter from their home dimension. Soon entire planets were being broken down and consumed by the portal.

  “The researchers, already through the portal, watched in horror as the rate of transfer increased and the swirling mass of particles being spewed from the openings began to collapse in on itself. First it formed a planet, then a star, and while they were still reeling from shock, it collapsed further in on itself, and a black hole was born. They watched as everything they had ever known was pulled apart into its tiniest pieces and fed into the ever-growing maw before them.

  “They’d begun accelerating their research station away from the opening as soon as it became clear that they couldn’t control the Shift, but the growing pull of the black hole quickly overpowered their engines, and they began falling back into the abyss. In a last-ditch attempt to preserve their knowledge and lives, they decided to try as many other dimensions as they could. Each researcher would be paired with a computer like me and sent to a previously unexplored galaxy in hopes that some might survive. My brethren and I were loaded with the amassed knowledge of their culture and were programmed with a single, basic principal: adapt, survive, and continue the growth and expansion of knowledge. Each team was to return to the central dimension once their knowledge had been secured. Any worthy species were to have representatives brought back to feed what my creators hoped would be a pan-dimensional renaissance of science.

  “My team was one of the last that was predicted to be able to escape the pull of the growing black hole. We had calculated our Shift exactly. We should have arrived in between galaxies, within your dimension, but something went terribly wrong. As we were about to Shift, the incessant tug of the black hole stopped. Suddenly our systems, which had been straining as hard as they could to maintain our position, were propelling us forward. We entered our Shift with a very large forward momentum, which was amplified by the Shift.