Originator

by Joel Shepherd

  The defensive block of buildings before the control tower breached. Sandy skipped and ducked down hallways, crashed out another window to bounce across a low roof, then jumped for a higher window as shots hit the wall beside her. The far window now showed the tower, just a low thing, barely twenty floors but with glassy sides and a mid-level garden alcove directly opposite. Sandy took a risk and leaped, and was immediately hit by tracking fire from below, multiple rounds through the right-side armour as she covered her head with one arm and tracked with the other, finding two of them on the street corner and felling both before she fell twisting into the grass and seating on the tower’s garden.

  She rolled and scrambled back to the edge, scanning as fast as she could for other targets, knowing that exposed like this she couldn’t see everything . . . but there was nothing, and Jane came crashing through a nearby window and chose instead to hit a window meters to Sandy’s left and disappear within. Sandy pulled back and ran, kicked through a glass door, and slid into a corridor junction, but it was empty. Up the corridor and there in an open-plan office to one side, amidst an odd arrangement of ergonomic chairs and midair displays, Jane was picking herself up awkwardly.

  “Jane!” Jane came staggering toward her, armour breached in several places, particularly on her right side. Sandy caught her, but Jane gestured her to move.

  “Upstairs,” she said breathlessly. “Looks like the control point, laser coms to all points.”

  Sandy took the stairs, not game to try the elevators when the Talee could commandeer building systems. She leaped up one flight at a time, kicking off walls on the way up with force enough to fracture concrete and bend the steel railings. Smart to booby trap the upper floors, she thought, and paused with two levels to go to take her nearly empty mag off her rifle and throw it a flight ahead. The explosion rocked the stairs, showering all below with debris and blinding smoke. It made perfect cover as she continued, shot the first Talee through the stairwell doors above, flipped another grenade around that corner and went low into the chaos of its explosion.

  Moving fast through that chaos she came to new reinforced doors, entrance to a secure room, now with two more bodies at the base. She ramped up her armour’s power to max and put a fist into the middle gap. Then she pulled, received fire from the far side, stuck her rifle’s grenade launcher into the gap, and fired with the charge set to airburst. Rammed the door the rest of the way open and went in low.

  Stairs and a spiral climb. At the top, a 360-degree view of the cavern city, ringed with a bank of displays and chairs. Amidst them, three Talee, all unarmed, all terrified and hiding as best they could. It was impossibly exposed, but being the highest point in the city, no sniper had a view down onto their floor. The cavern walls and ceiling were higher, of course, but those looked mostly smooth . . . save for the lighting setup on the ceiling, which was quite close from here. But sniper line of sight went both ways, and anyone getting up there would find the accuracy at this end was superior. Internal chronometer told her barely five minutes had passed since she and Jane had begun moving this way. Three hundred meters, perhaps eight urban blocks, never reaching street level, through heavy defences, and all without tacnet. She and Jane together were impossibly lethal. No wonder Taluq had not even considered the possibility that she’d turn him down. What could she possibly have in common with organic humanity anyway?

  Jane crashed up the stairs behind and hit the base of a display terminal back first, reaching for first aid in her webbing. Blood was seeping through, which was never a good sign with GIs, given how much less they bled.

  “Bad?” Sandy asked her, staring across the displays and controls.

  “Yep,” said Jane, shooting spray foam into the twin holes in her right-side armour to stop the bleeding. “Went straight through.” Meaning whatever hit her was very high calibre, to breach both armour and synthetic muscles. Which meant internal injuries. “Can you break into this system?”

  Sandy knew it was hopeless even as she looked at it. The three Talee cowering behind terminals weren’t going to be any help, not sharing any language. The controls would be similarly alien in language and design.

  “I’ll have to wireless it,” she said. “If I can activate their coms, I can send a signal to Fleet, they can come and find us, get the organic Talee what they’re looking for.”

  “You make uplink contact here, they’ll hack you faster than you can blink,” Jane retorted.

  “Gotta risk it. I’ve got Cai’s protections, I’m the most network-advanced of the two of us. . . .”

  “Cai’s protections are a patch. They’re not going to stand up to Talee systems in their backyard.”

  “Got a better idea?”

  “Yes, I’ll do it,” said Jane.

  “You’re not as good at it as me. . . .”

  “No, but if they blow my killswitch you’ll learn something, possibly you’ll even learn enough to avoid them the next time.”

  “No.” A shot went through the tower glass, heavy calibre, spraying them with fragments. “You’re not using yourself as bait just because you found religion and want to atone for your sins.”

  “You give me too much credit,” said Jane, popping a painkiller against her wrist and blinking hard against the pupil dilation. “I suggest it because it’s the only way to do it.”

  “Your life’s worth as much as mine, Jane!” Sandy almost surprised herself by how much she meant it. She hadn’t realised she did mean it until she said it.

  Jane smiled crookedly, checking her weapon and her remaining torso rotation with the injury. “Sure,” she said. “But Danya, Svetlana, and Kiril make four. Do your maths.”

  Sandy stared at her with dawning panic. Another round hit a terminal and sent pieces spinning across the control room. Pretty soon someone would decide it was better to destroy this place than risk the humans accessing its coms. “Jane, you can’t . . .”

  “Just shut up and do it!” Jane snarled with sudden temper. Their eyes met. “Okay, sis?”

  Sandy smiled weakly. “Sure, sis.” Jane nodded once and closed her eyes. Sandy took a deep breath and felt the rush of external code establish a space around her . . .

  . . . and with a snap of sudden pain, the control room disappeared.

  She stood in a city. It was an alien city, with nice architecture. Lots of glass and steel and greenery, with cubist spaces and differentiated levels. Like a much larger version of the Pantalan underground city.

  The streets were full of Talee. They walked on the sidewalks and sat eating food in a garden square, as road traffic hummed around them and air traffic whined by on overhead skylanes. It was not so different from Tanusha, save that the sun held an orangish tint and washed the tower glass with more red light than her eyes were accustomed to filtering. There were displays that might have been advertising, and lots of strange, scrawling script that changed into shapes and pictures. As though the Talee used a writing script that was conceptually 3D. Intriguing possibility that was. Could it be connected to a dual-brain psychology?

  Talee crossed the street about her, and she realised she was standing on a traffic island in the middle of a road. Obviously this was VR. She wondered if Jane were here, or somewhere else, and what the hell was going on. It didn’t feel like defensive VR. Defensive VR trapped users in smaller spaces, closed loops that limited external access. Or that limited the ability to kill oneself in VR, which usually broke the trap.

  She turned, and on the pavement across the road saw Cai. He wore human clothes, jeans and a jacket, as she’d seen him wear in Tanusha. And he was looking at her.

  At a break in the traffic she jogged across the road and stopped before him. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hello, Cassandra,” said Cai quite calmly. “What do you think of the city?”

  “Um . . . it’s nice. Where are we? The Talee homeworld?”

  Cai nodded. “Yes. One of many cities, much like Earth. Billions of people. A little over three thousand years ago, befo
re the second Catastrophe.”

  Sandy nodded slowly, looking around. “Well, the problem, Cai, is that one of us is dead. Or possibly both. I’m not entirely sure right now.”

  Cai smiled. “That would be me,” he admitted. “I gave you a lot of systems to boost your defences when you finally ran into my people. This is one of those systems.”

  “Ah,” said Sandy. Now it made sense, the rapid engagement of the program, before she could even be sure an uplink had been made. “We’re in deep immersion?”

  “Yes, time is passing quite slowly. About a ten-to-one ratio, I think, depending on variables. And this version of me is a simulation, of course. But quite a good one, if I do say so myself.” He gestured to the streets around them. “This is the best reconstruction my people have of this city, based on what they found when they first landed, having survived by hiding on Pantala.”

  “How are you running VR?” Sandy asked, as they strolled slowly along the sidewalk. “It takes a massive system to run this.”

  “Oh, this VR is always loaded on Talee systems somewhere. I happen to know it’s loaded on the systems of our Pantalan base. This is a capture program. I’ve inserted you into our mainframes through this VR.”

  Sandy blinked at him. “Why? I mean, if we’re here, you’d have to know that negotiations between your people and mine haven’t gone well.”

  Cai nodded. “I told them as much. They didn’t listen. You see, Cassandra, they really don’t respect human opinion as much as they pretend. And psychologically I am certainly human.” They edged past some running Talee children, cute and shouting, with big eyes and crazy enthusiasm just like human children. Sandy stared in amazement. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. And certainly I have sympathy for my people’s position against the organics. But I told them that you would not, and they did not believe me. Or they thought that you could be persuaded. Or forced.”

  “They have no idea what organised violence really looks like, do they?” Sandy said sombrely. “Maybe Talee did once, but today’s synthetic Talee are a monoculture. They’ve no history of warfare, probably they disdain the topic. They understand the technology, but they’ve no institutional memory of warfare like humans have. They never knew how far out of their depth they were, with us.”

  Cai nodded. “I tried to warn them of that, too. They thought humans too little advanced to pose a threat. It’s snobbery, really. And from what we know of Talee history, Talee have never really fought as much as humans. Which seems a little odd, given it is Talee and not humans that destroyed themselves. Many Talee are in denial about their nature, I fear, even to this day.”

  “It makes perfect sense to me,” said Sandy. “You need training to handle violence. Not all who have that training will use it wisely, but more than those without training. Violence is most destructive when utilised by those who know nothing about it, because they won’t know when to stop. Mind you, that might just be me justifying my own existence.”

  “Humans are frighteningly alien to Talee, Cassandra.” They paused at an intersection, where a large park emerged from between the towers. The orange sun shone with a reddish tinge of native leaves, a whole variety of flowers and shapes. “But technology and synthetic snobbery blinded my people to just how alien and frightening. Your internal diversity is staggering. You live in constant internal conflict, violent or nonviolent, and you internalise these conflicts within your institutions. “I tried to warn them. Aiwallawai technologies in human hands frighten Talee, but they failed to appreciate that proposing to elevate synthetic humanity above organic humanity would terrify you just as much. Talee society can tolerate internal divisions and hierarchies without conflict. They may yet manage to convince organic Talee to accept synthetic dominance in some things, once the current disturbance has died down. Everything is rationalised somehow. Humans don’t tolerate such things—they fight, and they equalise. Violence rarely seems worth it, to a Talee. Humans think it’s always worth it, where freedom or equality are in question.”

  “You make it sound like a good thing,” said Sandy.

  Cai made a face. “From my first conscious moment, I hoped to find the answers to who I am. Thanks in part to you, I did find some answers. Humanity’s constant conflict creates balance. Talee herd too much in fear of conflict. Add a psychological hitch, aiwallawai, and this imbalance becomes a bubble, which eventually bursts.” He gazed up, as a light appeared on the far horizon beyond the towers. “With catastrophic results.”

  The light grew abruptly brighter, then pierced the sky from upper levels to lower in barely a second. The flash became a wave, orange and red, and white in the inside, expanding at incredible speed. About them, Talee turned to stare and then to scream. Parents gathered up children, while others ran, or embraced, or fell to their knees as though in prayer. Sandy felt her eyes fill with tears. Then the shockwave hit them, and all the world disappeared.

  And slowly resolved itself once more. She was standing in a forest, thick with trees and running vines. Strange animals whooped and sang, and birds flittered amongst the branches. But here amidst the trees to her right she could still make out the edge of a building foundation, a raised ridge where a tower had once stood. The same tower, in fact, that she had just been standing beside. Farther to her left, she could see a similar ridge, where the opposing line of buildings had stood. Amidst the leaves and dirt at her feet, the rubber sole of a shoe, impossibly old and torn from several thousand years of wear.

  “This is how it looks today,” said Cai, standing nearby. “The organics are repopulating some old cities, but not this one. This was a capital, and these ruins are preserved, for study and for heritage. In order to learn from the past, we first must preserve it and observe its consequences.”

  “You’re showing me this as . . . what?” asked Sandy. “A warning?”

  “Always a warning,” Cai agreed. “How do we handle modernity? Humanity struggled through its various technologies. Industrialisation and modern weapons caused enormous calamities in your twentieth century. Then in later centuries, similar calamities from nano-tech, then bio, and now synthetic replication. Even your political upheavals are technologically driven; new wealth and industries create imbalances, which create political divisions, which can create wars. Beware your new home, Callay, and the power it accrues. Be sure to share it around, or similar divisions will follow.”

  Sandy nodded. “I know. I’ve warned of it many times, with GIs in the Federal institutions most of all.”

  “And one key technology, misused first by Talee, can cause group insanity. Our consciousness is what makes us modern, but our modernity inevitably reworks that very consciousness. Where does that cycle end? Someone must control it, we must rule our technologies, and not let them rule us.”

  “Cai,” said Sandy quite firmly. “You lost. The Talee lost. They had their chance, but they’re victims of their own mistakes. I see them now attempting to make similar mistakes with humans. If someone is going to get on top of this problem, it’s not going to be the Talee. It’ll be us. But we have to be allowed the space to do it on our terms and in our way. We’ll bring the Talee along with us if we can, but if not, I won’t allow Talee smugness to stand in our way. I have the greatest sympathy for the Talee. I’d like us to be friends. But to be completely honest, I don’t see that Talee have anything to be smug about.” She looked around at the forest.

  Cai smiled. “I know. They made a number of synthetic human gobetweens, like me. I’ve implanted their names and faces in your augmented memory; the files will unlock shortly.”

  Sandy was surprised. “Really?”

  “Interacting with humans, I’ve come to understand myself. My creators may not see it, but I too think that your way may be best. Had I lived, I may have committed all the way to your cause. But I know that others like me feel the same. Approach them carefully and do not misuse what I give you.”

  Sandy nodded. “I won’t. GIs like that could be our greatest allies.”

/>   “And could elevate the fear of Federal Intelligence and their like to yet-unseen highs.”

  “That’s inevitable now. Cai. I’m sorry you won’t be there to see it. You’ll be remembered.”

  Another smile. “I appreciate the sentiment . . . only I really don’t appreciate the sentiment, because this is only a simulation. But the real Cai would, I’m sure. This program will activate base coms, the Pantalan base is linked into human global networks. A signal will be sent.”

  “Thank you. Cai, Taluq said others. Other intelligent life.” She had no confidence that a simulation program could give her an answer, but she had to ask. “We’ve only found Talee. Are there others?”

  “Five,” said Cai. Sandy stared. Unable to think of anything to say. “The locations you should look and the regions of space you should not progress beyond, I’ve also locked into your memory augments. In the next phase of human expansion, once you move beyond this current calamity, you will encounter them. Three are benign but interesting, one is rather too friendly for their own good, and the last is rather frightening. But you will do your own assessment, in turn. After all, many Talee find humans rather frightening. Now more than ever.”

  “They should,” Sandy agreed. “But only if they screw us around.”

  Cai inclined his head. “Point well taken. The program has accessed base coms, I’ll send that signal now. Good-bye, Cassandra.”

  “Good-bye, Cai. And thank you.”

  When League marines burst into the underground city, they found it largely deserted, the Talee population fleeing into deeper catacombs rather than fight the human force that descended upon them. At the base of the central tower, its glass top shattered and burning, they found FSA spec ops Commander Cassandra Kresnov, with a badly wounded but still living high-designation GI whom she called only Jane. In the middle floors of the tower they later found evidence of heavy close-range combat, numerous dead synthetic Talee, and traces of gas where desperate Talee had finally resorted to trying to flush her out by other means.