They drew samples from both prisoners, and after confirmation, injected the male with a drug to induce natural-seeming death. He was no longer useful. The female, though, they impregnated - and after they stimulated the technophage in her blood, and she miscarried, they impregnated her again. Technophage stimulation terminated the pregnancy at all significant stages of development, and they euthanized the prisoner when their results seemed conclusive.
Venshi seemed to feel these two prisoners in particular deserved it, but what exactly had they done? Those memories had blurred with age, growing knotted and gnarled like scars.
From then on, they tested only vat-grown human subjects from the same stock. Children grew and floated in blue-hued glass cylinders, growing faster than any normal child should. And at each stage in development, until puberty, the technophage killed them if it was overstimulated.
The one vat-grown infant that did reach puberty was killed in the vat, and all the bodies were melted down and discarded as biological waste. Finally, after two years of monstrous testing, Venshi and her colleagues were ready to share their work with the world.
They revelled, drank, and cheered the apocalypse, a bacchanal interwoven and brightened by Venshi’s thrilled fantasies of curing everything wrong in the world. Science, technology, civilization, literature. All the tools humans used to alienate themselves from their nature and each other, from the planet, from the dispassionate ebb and flow of all the species in the world.
But no plans were perfect, and Venshi and her friends knew this. So, with an achingly profound self-pity that only roused Ada’s disgust, they let their bodies die and moved their minds into human-shaped golems, vowing to each other to do spread across the planet and do everything they could to prevent civilization from rising again. To keep humans in their natural place.
They pushed the button.
Panic and chaos shredded the cities of the world. A generation of children was cracked and boiled by their own blood. Billions died in the mayhem. Armistice notwithstanding, colonial fleets began shooting down any ships from Earth that approached the colonies - but soon the colonies, too, fell silent. Venshi was certain the technophage had reached them, either by ship or by the Shade laboratory’s promised assistance. Humans everywhere would learn their place in the natural order, no longer perverting the world around them in the service of their own greed and twisted power fantasies. Those beyond Earth would learn, the hard way, that Earth was where humans belonged.
And for over a thousand years Venshi crushed anyone who got too curious about the ancients, destroyed any archives she came across, and set herself up as a spiritual guide, someone whose vast knowledge of the world and the gods couldn’t help but make the more foolish trust her. And all the way, her satisfaction grew and grew. This was what humans were meant to be - small bands living off the wilds. There was more to be done yet - destroy the watchers, the geneforges, the outers, the gifts - but time itself was already doing these for her.
Ada pulled out of the memories, shaking and sweating, her spine tense with rage.
She carefully laid down the orb of golem code on the counter. Deep breaths. One, two, three, four.
Diving into these memories was difficult, but she felt it had to be done. Venshi was dead, and her memories were helping Ada piece together the mysteries of the gifts and the technophage. Still, if there were a way to bring the monstrous creature back to life and punish her anew, Ada would gladly have done it.
“Are you okay?”
She turned around to look at the brown-furred outer she was sharing this room with. Her name was Arshak, and she called herself a doctor - an outer’s medic, from what Ada gathered, though they used tools rather than a gift for their craft. Ada had asked her to watch over her as she perused the memories. She had had unpleasant experiences the first few times.
She sighed. “She was a terrible person. Worse than me, if you can believe that.”
Arshak bobbed her head, ears twitching. “I certainly can.” She held out something in her four-fingered hand. “The nanite manipulator.”
Ada stared at the device for a moment before remembering she had asked for it. “Oh, gods, right. Thank you.”
She took the device and turned to her test subjects - two vials of human blood.
Gods, the sight of it reminded her of more than a few things in Venshi’s ancient laboratory. But while Venshi had sought to chain, Ada sought to liberate. This was different - nobody was going to die here. She hoped.
“Why does this thing keep disappearing? I’ve been using it for days.”
Arshak bobbed her head. “We use it too, for disease treatments.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have gifts.”
“We do not, but we have self-replicating vats of treatment nanites for certain ailments.”
Ada nodded, silently pitying the outers that they could grow ill at all. Maybe, one day, she could solve that too.
Staring into those vials prompted familiar memories, a dying child the unlucky donor and a scavenged relic her spyglass into the blood. The outers had similar machines for their own purposes, and here she was again, looking at tiny little pieces of technology inside human blood. Hers and a donor’s, in this case Tanos.
After much fruitless staring and sketching and consultation with Arshak, Ada had found the really interesting difference between herself and the technophage-infected humans. It was as Venshi had said - Ada’s immunosupplement, whatever it did, looked a little bit different than anyone else’s, in very consistent and specific ways. There was something heftier about it, an extra something on one side. She didn’t know what that bit could possibly do, nor did Arshak, but it was the only difference.
They had yet to test that hypothesis, until now.
Arshak was watching her, idly making notes on a small, glowing rectangle. “What are you going to do?”
She raised an eyebrow at the outer. “We’ve talked about this. Put that one gift into this other blood, and see what happens.”
“I know, but it helps me keep the records. What do we expect to happen?”
Ada shrugged. “It’ll kill the technophage. I’m living proof of it, after all - it’ll just be nice to see it with my own eyes.”
“Or those of the machine.”
“Eyeballs are machines of another kind; it’s all the same to me. Come take a look.”
Arshak nodded, keeping the glowing device in her hand and stepping a little closer.
The manipulator let Ada pluck gifts out of liquids with a simple switch, ignoring the rest of the blood. She watched on the magnifying screen as the tiny little shapes disappeared from her sample, torn out as though by a powerful gust of wind. The manipulator sorted the different gifts into separate compartments along its length, and Ada was able to choose her immunity gift and release alone it into the other sample. Then she moved the target sample under the viewer, and watched the carnage.
Ada’s gift did not idly float next to the technophage, like everyone else’s did. Instead it drifted towards them and locked on, briefly struggling with the technophage before cracking the weapon into small pieces, and then breaking those smaller pieces down further until they dissolved from view. It was quick, efficient, and remarkably undramatic.
So that was that. Thus was Ada immune to the greatest scourge of human history.
“That was… well, I expected something else.” She couldn’t say what, though, and she was left with a feeling of consternation.
The doctor’s ears perked up. “Ada, this is excellent! Now that we have confirmed the source of your immunity, we could use your nanites to develop a cure.”
Ada rubbed her arm unconsciously, not certain how much blood she was willing to spill for this. “And do what, bring it to every single person on Earth and inject it into them?”
Arshak frowned. “We could start locally -”
“How would we even do that? Do you have the machinery for that?”
She paused, ears twitching.
“I do not think so. We certainly cannot manufacture new nanites, that machinery was too complex. All we have are self-replicating supplies. But with some work -”
“I can use code to modify gifts.” Ada flexed her hands. “At least Venshi thought so. I might be able to figure out how to modify someone else’s gifts, make them immune as well. That seems like the best bet.”
The alien doctor nodded, her green, slit-pupiled eyes darting around the room. “Yes - yes, that might be best. You are a coder, after all, and we… we will not be around much longer to help you with any other approach.”
Yes, that.
Ada stared at the samples, feeling weighed down by this entire planet and all its backwards-sliding history. Was it so simple? Could she whip up code and, just like that, light the fire of a new civilization in the ashes of the old? Would it be so easy to make everyone... like her?
She shifted uneasily, staring at the samples.
She had always been different, special - gifted in ways others were not. To share that gift with the world was clearly the right thing to do - for herself, for humanity - but where would that leave her? Just one among millions, no different from the rest aside from a few coded tattoos on her back. Anybody with a willing machine could do that, too.
She bit down on that feeling and crushed it. She would cross that bridge when she came to it - and come to it she must. Right now, it was more important to figure what kind of code could free someone from the technophage. Then she’d have to find someone to t est it on, and then…
Fix everyone else on the planet. Somehow.
She sighed, turning away from the samples. “I need to think about the code. I can’t just stare at the screen all day.”
Arshak patted her cordially on the back. “Very well. This is promising, Ada - we will carry word of your progress to your fellows, if we can find them.”
“If there are any left. You have to wonder why they never returned to Earth.”
The outer turned her eyes away. “Do not give up hope. If you will excuse me, I would like to go check on the progress of the incoming ship.”
“Sure, of course.”
Arshak left her alone in the room, machines whose purpose was beyond Ada’s ken packed up against the walls like a barricade. Somewhere, hopefully, she would find the code she needed, but who would she test it on? If Ada was going to start removing the technophage from anyone, she should start with people she could trust. People who could be relied upon, and who would do the right thing if she herself ever died or lost her way.
She pulled out the locator stone she had given Isavel and stared at it for a moment. It was pointing north and slightly west - Isavel must be on the island already, looking for that ghost walker. That was faster than expected; she hoped Sam’s information had been accurate.
Sighing, Ada stood up and left the room, the floor, the building. She stepped out of the medics’ complex into the bustling heart of Campus, diving into a sea of sounds and sights and smells. The outers’ city was truly bustling now, as never had been before. The streets were packed, the aroma of cooked meat reached beckoned her towards grills, shouting and chanting and cheering filled her ears like the lively bubbling of a stream.
Messages from the colonial ship were short and curt, but that didn’t seem to worry anyone. Of course, Ada was fairly certain Kseresh and the others hadn’t shared the details with anybody at all - the common outers only knew someone was coming for them. That everything was going to get better. They had little reason to worry.
They were not especially musical, but Ada had learned they loved to put on plays. At least three shows were running in the city square at once, and hundreds of outers, adults and children alike, watched and cheered. Tales from the old homeworld, reenacted here on Earth by these long-forgotten children of Mir, were for once spun and woven of wonder and bombast instead of longing.
The stories were filled with magical animals, creatures from Mir, but the actors dressed in the hides of Earth’s own denizens for lack of better props. The children pointed and shouted, but the younger ones had yet to understand that the skins were a replacement for something lost. They cheered the names they knew instead, the animals that were real to them - wolves and cougars, ravens and eagles. Only the older ones had learned they were supposed to look past the real to remember the forgotten, but in doing so their delight seemed tempered as well.
Ada stood by as one of the plays unfolded, a tale of a man whose father died fighting some great beast - played with a wolf pelt, but supposedly not a wolf. The son set out to avenge his father’s death and battled a beast in the woods, but after many stalemates, some investigation, and the animal’s highly improbable ability to speak, the two of them learned they were in fact both orphaned sons. Their fathers had killed each other in the woods, and now they were both alone. And so they swore a pact of brotherhood, and the actors explained this was the traditional tale of the domestication of something called a rhask. Ada had never heard of such a creature; there may well have never been any on Earth.
“Ada?”
The disgruntled sound in Sam’s voice caught her attention even as the word startled her, and she turned around to see Sam and Tanos standing in front of her, their arms crossed and an unusual distance between them. She couldn’t immediately figured out what they might be upset about. “What? What’s going on?”
“Tanos is being an idiot.”
“She’s nuts.”
Ada’s mind went blank, her eyes darting to the sides in search of an escape. This didn’t sound like the kind of thing she wanted to get involved with, but Sam spoke before she could think of a reason to flee. “Ada, you want to help these outers, right?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. What does that have to do with… whatever you two are bickering about?”
“It’s simple.” Sam’s glance at Tanos suggested it was anything but. “Isavel’s people are coming here for us. They’re hunting ghosts. We need to leave, Ada, to give the outers a chance.”
Tanos shook his head. “It’s suicide.”
“It’s pragmatism! We’ve all died before, anyway.”
“Wait, hold on a second.” Ada looked around. There weren’t many ghosts about now that the outers were being so lively, but she still saw a few here and there, their curiosity piqued by all the activity. “What would leaving accomplish? The humans won’t know you’ve left.”
“We should go to them. Fight them, turn ourselves over, whatever.”
There was something frantic and impatient in Sam’s face, but Ada had no idea how any of this fit together in the ghost’s mind. “Fight them? Sam, at this point they probably outnumber you ten to one. If everything goes according to plan we can get the outers out of here, and I’ll take the ghosts away on the Chengdu . Whoever wants to come.”
“And go where?”
Ada had been wondering that herself, but it was a question she was determined to deal with later. When it became necessary. For now she was content to let it simmer at the back of her mind. “It really doesn’t matter - we’ll figure it out.”
“Will you? Because nobody wants to let ghosts live, Ada. Where are you going to bring us that we won’t have to at the very least lie about ourselves to keep safe?”
She stared at Sam’s crossed arms, and at Tanos’ confused eyes staring off into space, as though he were trying to calculate the best solution to what Sam was saying. She threw up her arms. “So what? Lie about yourselves. Look, I don’t -”
Sam stamped her foot. “Ada, we can help . We can matter .”
“You can get yourselves killed.” Tanos was shaking his head.
“We don’t need anyone to die - Isavel is going to delay -”
“How do you know that? Ada, you can trust her word all you want, but how do you know she’ll be able to slow anything down? She’s just one person.” Sam thrust her chin out. “Where’s that rock? The one you use to know where she is.”
Ada thought back to the last time she had seen it, h
ow it had seemed to be pointing inland. Faster than she had expected. Was the army really already on the island? “ She’s on the island somewhere, but we don’t know where the army is.”
“So they are getting closer faster than we expected.”
Ada shook her head. She knew Isavel was working on it. “We don’t know that! This only tells you direction.”
“Sam, they’re going to come for Campus whether you stay or leave.” Tanos sounded exasperated. “They don’t care.”
Ada looked away from them at the ziggurat, wondering what would happen if the army really did reach them first. Before the alien ship. Would they be able to defend the city? What options did they have? If the army approached from inland, she wouldn’t be able to easily bombard them with the Chengdu like she had the bridge - there was too much tree and hill cover for the Chengdu ’s shallow firing arcs. They would need to defend the city the old-fashioned way. They’d need people on the walls. “Sam, if you want to help - and I assume you’re speaking for some of the other ghosts too - then you need to stay in the city.”
Tanos was nodding, but Sam remained frustrated. “What, so we can draw the enemy here?”
Ada shook her head. “You’re not the only problem they have. You realise they know me , right? A lot of them hate me, and knowing that I was involved with the ghosts… They’ll come for me.”
“So you need to leave, too. Ada, the outers don’t have anything to do with any of this -”
Ada knew they had nothing to do with any of this. She knew they were leaving. She knew they would be gone in less than two weeks, that they would disappear from her life. She knew she was on the verge of being almost completely alone again. “I’m not going anywhere, Sam. And I don’t think you get it - we put the outers in danger, but we can’t undo that just by leaving. Besides, why do you suddenly care so much?”
“It’s the other ghosts. They’ve been talking.” Tanos was staring at Sam. “They’re getting all weird, and it’s getting to her head.”
“It’s not weird, it’s - Ada, it’s tiring.” Sam sighed. “This is literally the last place we can go. But we’ve died before, some of us more than once, and we know now that Elysium is fixed. Making some ridiculous last stand at everybody else’s expense is childish.”
Second Contact Page 12
