The Myth of the Maker

by Bruce R Cordell

  Jason walked past the Xenobiology Foundry where his ace-in-the-hole waited with the infinite patience of ice. The kray had helped him before. That aid had come at a price. The kray were not sentient in the same way humans were. He’d only make a new deal with them as a last resort. The creatures were not of Ardeyn; they were of the Strange, and all too real for Jason’s liking. They scared him.

  Thankfully, the era of fear and quisling bargains was over. Earth had called! Someone was replicating Sanders’s work, trying to wring more computer cycles out of quantum inflation. They didn’t have what they needed to make a solid or even lasting connection to the Strange. But that’s where Jason’s carefully devised flash drive came in.

  If everything worked as he’d devised, his dreams were on the cusp of–

  His elation faltered. The two dozen massive crystal screens in the Contact Foundry, each manned by red homunculi on high catwalks, were dark, or showed only static. Eta, his lieutenant in charge of Contact, was fiddling at the open face of a massive piece of engineering. Eta called it the Baryonic Interferometer Transport Relay, or “BITER” for short.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Eta looked up. “What’s it look like?”

  Jason balled his hands into fists. He took a deep breath. “Don’t test me, clone.”

  Eta’s eyes widened. Simultaneously, he heard a surprised breath from the other homunculi in the chamber.

  Eta’s expression flattened in a way familiar to Jason. His translucent lieutenants were most like himself. They hated to be called out as clones. It was their unspoken rule.

  At that moment, Jason didn’t give a rat’s ass. But he didn’t have time for theatrics. To smooth things over, he lied, “Listen, sorry about that. Mea culpa, all right? Just tell me what happened to our connection with Banks and Paldridge.”

  Eta fumed. Jason wondered if the homunculus was stupid enough to jeopardize everything himselves had been working for, over a slight. If so, Jason was ready to make an example.

  “The entanglement remains,” said Eta after swallowing his anger. “We haven’t lost the connection. Timescales remain conjoined.”

  “Thank the Maker for that. If we’d lost it…” Well, he didn’t have to imagine that dismal hell. “And the status of the courier? And of the trove?” The trove was a repurposed Ring – the Ring of Desire – holding the flash drive. Apparently, War and Desire had had a thing, back in the Age of Myth, before Jason’s time. His memory, or rather, War’s memory, suggested that Desire had enjoyed an unhealthy influence over War. Or in other words, Desire had wrapped War around her little finger more than once. Which was why Jason was glad to consign the Ring of Desire to Earth. With Desire out of the picture in Ardeyn, he removed one more potential complication to his plans. Besides, Rings seemed to be about the only physical objects, besides his own copies, able to make the transition.

  Eta shook his head. “We detected the printing event. As we suspected, uplink fidelity was barely sufficient to make the transfer. Even hardened to withstand it, the homunculi barely integrated.”

  “Did the courier make the handoff? Do Banks and Paldridge have what they need?”

  “The courier lost cohesion after printing. He either spontaneously dissolved, or something took exception to his appearance. But” – Eta held up his hand, seeing Jason’s imminent interruption – “I’ve confirmed that the trove made the transfer intact.”

  “Excellent,” he replied, relief like a weight falling from his shoulders.

  Even if Liza Banks and Paldridge did nothing with the courier’s gift, Jason had hidden autorun code on the flash drive. It would automatically install itself if inserted into any USB port, and then begin uploading onto hundreds of torrent sites, as well as other sites computer geeks favored. Sooner or later, someone would find Jason’s instructions on building a better computer, and implement them.

  It shouldn’t take long, either way. Banks was already moving in the right direction, half-assed as it was. Virtual-particle printing in the baryonic world required specified coordinates in space-time, and even more importantly, a connection made first from outside the network. All the computational power of the primeval dark energy network couldn’t change that.

  When what he’d coded on the trove was implemented into hardware running the proper software on Earth, a pure locational signal would stir the Strange. And like the planetovores who’d been attracted to their first intrusion, Jason would be waiting. He’d swarm up that link before the kray or anything else out of the dark energy network could do so. He would establish a new node of control, fling wide the doors to the Maker’s Hall, and become the god of Ardeyn he should’ve been all along. Until he remade it something else. Or, he might just leave while the getting was good, and let Ardeyn rot. It was tempting.

  “You’re smiling,” Gamma said, though the clone’s face also wore a wolfish grin, as did Eta’s. Jason laughed. They all laughed. It was all still possible, indeed.

  “Soon, my brothers,” he said, feeling magnanimous, “We’ll be one again, a gestalt mind with limitless power. We’ll be War!”

  Most of himselves cheered. He wondered if some of them were worried he’d abandon them all and go to Earth. Probably. They were partly him, so they knew his secret urges, too.

  Turning his back on the mastery the Maker’s Hall would grant him, even if he did return to Earth, was going to be difficult. He knew himself. What if he could retain the power of War, or even of the Maker, on Earth? How crazy would that be? Here, it hardly mattered what he did among the kingdoms of make-believe. But back home, actual people would see. Real people. Frankly, he was surprised he hadn’t fully committed to taking power in the universe of normal matter before. Sure, he’d considered it, wondering if he had the balls to try. Now that things seemed to be going his way, he was decided. He’d go for it. Why should he leave all his advantages gained in Ardeyn behind?

  “And after we make Ardeyn ours, we’ll have Earth for dessert!” Jason shouted. Louder cheering. He yelled, too, giving the V for victory sign–

  “Don’t you feel even a little bit guilty?” said Delta, the one clone who hadn’t cheered. “Earth was our home.”

  Jason didn’t want to ruin the moment, so he didn’t kill Delta. Instead he said, “Look at it this way. It’s going to happen, sooner or later, even if we do nothing. Eventually, someone else on Earth will rediscover the right energy domains, either with a quantum computing advance, or when the Large Hadron Collider achieves high enough energy. Every sentient species in the universe that doesn’t kill itself some other way eventually trips the trap. It’s destiny. At least we are human. The children of Earth should be the ones to reap the rewards of the Strange, not some emergent AI intelligence or alien parasite. Unlike what normally happens in this rat-eat-rat cosmos.”

  “Sounds as if you’ve been practicing that in a mirror.”

  Jason shook his head. “No. Well, yeah. But that doesn’t make it untrue. I’m being proactive. For all its size, Ardeyn can’t stand up to what lies beyond the Borderlands. We’ve been lucky so far, but luck doesn’t last forever. The kray are bottom feeders compared to what else swims farther out. And the kray almost killed us all without half trying, even when the Maker and all the Incarnations were still kicking!”

  Jason realized he was yelling. Damn it. The homunculus had put him on the defensive. He balled his hands into fists.

  “You doth protest too much, methinks,” said Delta.

  “That’s it,” said Jason. He clapped the clone on the forehead. Delta didn’t realize what he was doing before it was too late. Jason knew, because he could feel Delta’s mind as it came apart, when the portion of their shared soulcode merged. The body dropped to the floor, moldering to dust in seconds.

  Jason met the stares of the others. No further comments were offered.

  The advantage of heading an organization made up of your own clones was knowing them so well. An occasional demonstration of where the balance of power
lay was required for someone of his particular temperament. But, shit, now he was down a lieutenant. At least Delta had been assigned to the Pit Reactor, not one of the more critical Foundries.

  All he had to do was wait and let the flash drive that’d been printed on Earth do its work. No need to accelerate the process by involving the kray, thankfully. Each additional piece of lore gained from his alien “friends” robbed Jason of more independence. And given that he was an Incarnation, one of the manifestations of the Seven Rules that kept Ardeyn safe, making deals with the kray probably weakened Ardeyn’s defenses, too. But without the kray’s initial aid, he would never have managed to kill the Maker in the first place, and more recently, learned how to build BITER.

  He nodded to himself. The kray expected Jason to continue asking for help. They expected they would be the ones calling the shots eventually, not Jason. Not that the kray thought and planned in the way people did, but whatever.

  A chime rang through the chamber. Jason didn’t immediately realize where the sound originated, or its significance.

  Surprise blossomed on Gamma’s face. The clone pointed at Jason.

  Jason looked down at his chest. His cracked Ring glowed red like an ember kicked out of the fire. The noise of the tolling chime was dying away, but had obviously originated from the loop of metal.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered. Lines from an old Earth movie slithered into his brain: When our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.

  Except it wasn’t unthinkable. Unlikely, but there it was. That fucker Carter had hidden a sleeper somewhere in the cloud. A sleeper who was waking up.

  In Ardeyn, or lost in the infinity past the Borderlands, or maybe even on Earth itself, Carter Morrison – also known as Carter Strange – was back.

  5: Resurrection

  Carter Morrison

  A line burned across darkness. My eyes stung like I’d touched them with hot sauce still on my fingers. Blinking eased that sensation, but the bright splinter in the blackness remained. Craning my head around, I tried to make out where I was lying. The glow was just enough to illuminate the walls of a smallish room. The floor beneath me was stone-hard and cold. Cement, maybe? Felt like it. I was…

  I was apparently having a nap in a self-storage unit. The light leaked in from under the single closed garage door. Why the hell was I sleeping in a storage unit? And, holy shit, where were my clothes? Had I been drinking?

  A couple of plastic bins were stacked along the wall. A tarp-draped car filled most of the space. I could just make out a dark bulb in a fixture overhead. The smell of oil and dust filled my nose and throat, and I sneezed.

  Pushing myself into a sitting position, something furry crushed under my left palm before I could snatch my hand back. Ugh! Dead mouse? I didn’t want to know.

  Waking up and not remembering where you are can be sort of pleasant, as long as it doesn’t last for more than a few seconds. Which is why I felt the opposite of worry-free. The last thing I remembered was…

  Nothing came. “Oh, crap.” My voice was hoarse with disuse. Movies where people were slipped memory-wiping roofies – those I suddenly recalled. Had that happened? I didn’t remember being at a party, but then again, I suppose I wouldn’t.

  My legs were like two dead stumps, I discovered, when I tried to stand. Luckily, the dusty tarp hiding the car was close enough to collapse on.

  I waited a few seconds, then stamped experimentally, leaning on the car for support. Numbness gave way to a fire of pins and needles. I groaned, but continued my stamping, shuffling dance until I trusted myself enough to reach for the dangling cord.

  The bulb washed the room in bleach-white light. Squinting, I checked out the two bins. The top one was labeled with black marker on masking tape with my name, Carter Morrison. It contained a full change of clothing, including underwear, shoes, a pullover, and navy blue pea coat. I didn’t recognize any of the articles, but they were all my size. How considerate of my kidnappers. Though I didn’t want to think about why they’d stripped me in the first place.

  The other bin held a couple of protein bars, a bottle of water, key and a fob, and a cell phone. The cell was dead of course, but my oh-so-thoughtful abductors had dropped me in a storage unit with an outlet, charger already plugged in. I did what was apparently expected of me, and connected the phone.

  While the mobile charged, I checked myself for stitches or incisions, in case I’d fallen afoul of organ thieves. Those stories were probably just urban legends, but when you find yourself undressed and clueless in a storage unit, you have to examine your assumptions.

  No obvious signs of medical interventions, which relieved that particular anxiety. So I dressed. Eventually, the pieces would fall into place, one way or the other, I hoped. Until then, I needed to keep moving forward. It was that, or have a freakout. Maybe I’d save panic for later.

  The sweater was fleece, and I zipped the collar up tight. It was cold in the tiny garage. I couldn’t have been lying on the cement for long, or I would’ve frozen to death.

  The shoes were brand new Doc Martens, my favorite. Which meant my kidnappers knew my tastes. I filed that away for later consideration as I slipped them over my feet. They’d take a little breaking in, but–

  A poster was tacked to the closed garage door. Beneath an image of someone riding a winged fantasy beast across the stars was a message:

  ARDEYN

  Land of the Curse

  Releases May 20th

  Preorder your copy today!

  Relief flowed through me like a cooling summer breeze. I remembered that poster! Oh yes. I nodded at the advertisement like the old friend it was. Jason, Mel, Bradley, and I spent three difficult years creating the code base for Ardeyn. Ordering the promotional posters had been putting the cart way before the horse. On the other hand, we’d purposely left the year off the release date, because we weren’t complete idiots. Someone thought they were being funny by slapping the poster in here with me. I wonder who?

  If the game had launched, things would’ve finally come together for me. For starters, I’d have been sipping lattes in a palatial bedroom looking out on a fabulous view of the Cascades, instead of waking up witless in a glorified garage.

  But Ardeyn had run into corporate inertia. Funding shortfalls saw to the game’s death before its debut, despite everything I could do.

  At least, that was how I told the story to everyone else. To myself, I couldn’t lie. Ultimately, it came down to my own knack for pulling failure out of the jaws of success. Ardeyn was one more debacle in a long string of fuck-ups. My ego had brought Ardeyn to the precipice – where I refused to give up the least iota of control of “my baby” to anyone else. And that was that.

  Without jobs and a failed MMORPG on our resumes, it was easy for Peter Sanders to reel us back into the academic careers we’d abandoned for our game. In fact, it was Sanders’s paper on recursion–

  It all came back to me then. We’d been mapped onto an alien network, mapped so completely that our minds transferred. Maybe even our souls. Except I’d clawed my way back out of the system. I’d… severed the connections our left-behind bodies retained. The memory made my stomach taut and I gagged.

  After murdering my friends, I’d dropped a copy of Ardeyn, Land of the Curse into the primordial network by imposing the rigid rules the game represented into the unformatted chaos. I’d hoped to hedge out the planetovores that’d already gotten Earth’s scent. Maybe even sever the connection completely.

  Then like a harebrained idiot, I’d tried to go back into that strange stratum and find my friends to see if I could save them.

  After that, I recalled nothing. Had I found my friends or even reconnected? My mind was as empty of memory as a cloudless sky.

  It was as if no time had passed at all. Until I woke up shivering on cement wondering about the state of my kidneys.

  “Motherfucker,” I muttered. I approached the Arde
yn release poster. One edge was peeled back. I lifted it, and saw a message I’d never seen before scrawled on the back:

  Find Bradley. He’ll tell you what you need to know.

  The message was signed by me. The signature looked careful, like the way I sometimes did when I wanted my name to be at least halfway legible. But I knew, viscerally and completely, that I had not written that message, signed it, or for that matter, prepared this storage unit-bunker for myself as the presence of the poster implied. How I was so sure, I don’t know, but I was certain about that, if nothing else.

  But if not me, then who? And why?

  The freakout I’d promised myself earlier clawed up the base of my spine. Fear of the unknown had always been my downfall. I was a planner. Goal-oriented, my high school counselor had said. My post-doctoral adviser had agreed, even when I left the PhD program code a game. But here was the Unknown with a capital U, staring me down in my own handwriting. How could I plan for something I couldn’t even comprehend?

  My hands, suddenly trembling and nerveless, let go of the poster. The edge settled back until it was flush with the wall once more.

  6: Paranoia

  Katherine Manners

  “Subs didn’t have conning towers in World War II,” said the woman at the table next to Kate’s.

  “Are you crazy?” replied a man sporting massive sunglasses. “I just watched a show on the History Channel. Great Ships. It was practically a–”

  Kate adjusted her ear plugs to drown out the conversation. The same opinionated crew gathered every morning at Canyon Street Roasters. She didn’t like sitting too close. They guffawed every time a watered-down dirty joke was offered, which interrupted her flow. The coffee bar staff didn’t hassle her about spending a few hours a day on their Wi-Fi, but it wasn’t the quietest of places.