Abyss (Songs of Megiddo)

by Klieve, Daniel

  “I will do as you say; but I need for you to ensure that the secondary stratagem is not required.”

  “I’ve ran the equations again and again. The Phaen agree. This should work. We have about the same probability of success as...well...the chance you think I’d have of surviving my ‘contingency’ plan. So there’s a nice symmetry, there.”

  “One might observe that some symmetries foreshadow.”

  “One might.” She agreed, not particularly wanting to consider the situation through that lens. She remembered the superstitions of the culture to which she had, originally, belonged. She remembered the vague prophecies and blood-spattered entreaties to ambivalent spirits and nature-gods. She remembered how convincing it had all seemed at the time; like a covenant with the natural order; a relationship...or a ‘buying in’ to the equilibrium of that order. But then the others had come. On Earth...the others always came. Another tribe, or another state, or another culture. She shook her head. The memories were hazy and distant. She preferred that. She had no wish to breath new life into old ghosts.

  “Janissary? Issa?” Myadir prompted.

  “So we’re ready?” She murmured, seeking fresh confirmation. Or was it reassurance that she sought? Mutuality of purpose? Support? Myadir simply nodded out a noncommittal, distant nod. Janissary sighed. The time was now.

  She pressed down on a raised, button-like protrusion at the end of the left armrest. A holographic screen appeared in front of her, with a range of diagnostics and commands accompanied by the glyphs that, in ‘Reformed Riin’, represented syllables. Syllables which, slotted together in myriad variations, formed the base-most blocs of the language’s written expression. Under that, the annotations were repeated in her language. English.

  More accurately, it was her language...today. Like most sentient beings living in exile – whether involuntary or self-imposed – Janissary was fluent in a range of dialects. Of course, the fluencies that she had developed from a distance while monitoring the wax and wane of the cultures of her former home had little utility in her day-to-day life. Knowing them was still of profound importance to her...but it was, she was aware, an affectation. But on this particular day...Earth English seemed appropriate. Even simply as a matter of respect for the vast metropolis below; the first target, ostensibly, for the prospective invasion of the Pho’ain.

  With a wry, humourless smirk, Janissary made a clawing motion at the hologram, swiping sideways. The display flipped fluidly towards Myadir.

  “Do you want to do it?” They exchanged a glance. Something between fear and tired annoyance showed through in his expression.

  “The question is premised on a deliberately counterintuitive foundation.” With a similar motion, he flipped the display back to her. She shrugged. It was a reasonable response. After all...it was her plan. More than that...it was her planet.

  “Fine. More fun for me.”

  “‘Fun’?” He echoed sceptically.

  “Don’t.” She warned.

  And, with that, she sent the command.

  And it was such an easy a thing to do. Far, far easier than a thing like that had any business being. She just pushed a single, slim finger toward a little sphere of light, and, in seconds...the holographic projection disappeared. And so it was done. Just like that. Her gaze shifted towards the larger, permanent screens where the diagnostics and imaging were displayed. She watched them attentively as the readings, confirmations, revisions, and assessments began to pour in.

  §§§

  From the perspective of the Humans of New York City, Janissary’s action had a more visceral, observable impact. The sky above the city – and, undoubtedly, within a wide circumference of it – lit up with a brilliant pulse of light, accompanied by the shattering, chattering perforation of tens of thousands of fragile glass panes as the shock-wave tore down, out, and through.

  As air-raid sirens whirred to life in a deafening cacophony of distended, distorted moans, the citizens of New York rushed for the subway entrances, designated assemblies, and convenient basements. Naturally, there was panic...but the crowds were surprisingly organised: pressing into the deep places and safe, enclosed spaces with, all things considered, orderliness reminiscent of Swiss clockwork. It was as if they were drawing on a kind of forgotten disaster-response imprint, buried somewhere deep in their collective unconscious. An awareness – a rationality – that had, perhaps, been passed down from earlier generations. From the children of the Cold War, or from those of the Eleventh of September...just over twenty years before.

  Deep within, it seemed...a kind of dark, calculated intuition had lain dormant and waited – forgotten but not gone – buried deep, deep down. A contingency...left in place for when the inevitable finally arrived. And so – or so it seemed – it had.

  §§§

  Janissary’s eyes flickered shut and she shivered, turning her face from the images lighting up the floating monitors. Without intent or forethought; without naming any god or power to whom she acknowledged obeisance...she allowed a muted prayer to hiss softly forth from between her gritted teeth. A prayer for herself. A prayer for her world.

  She knew, on some level, that the fear, awe, and myriad uncertainties that bloodied her mind were entirely a matter of context. It was she, after all, who had – with her own eyes – witnessed billions of souls, prostrate and trembling, before her wrath. She had known, many times, the power to extinguish or to save. It was she who had – consumed by rage – watched as, on her orders, asteroids were manoeuvred, prodded and pushed...set to falling...burning and hurtling through atmospheres. She had smiled, on those dark days – satisfied – as the asteroids cratered the hearts of ancient, glittering metropoli, built of worked stone and grown crystal; of living metal and mouldering bone. It was she who had – friendless and alone – forced her way into wars of annihilation fought over thousands of years, between great Empires whose dominions spanned vast swathes of the Galaxy. She had...a simple Human...brought those conflicts to their ends with nothing but the icy resolve conveyed through her disapproving glare...and, behind her, the hulking shadow of her well-earned reputation.

  And, on this very planet – lifetimes ago, or so it seemed – it was she who had sown fear among the fearless, and reaped the strength of the strongest. It was she who had carved her bloody legacy deep, and with an unerring hand, into the bones of history itself.

  In comparison, this should have been a small thing. A merciful thing. A responsible, justified, and justifiable course of action. She was, she told herself, simply doing what was necessary. She was saving her species from knowledge for which they were not ready, and from predators who sought to gain from their youth and naïveté. There was little damage. There was no death.

  No Human death.

  Yes, but who would shed a tear for the others? For the monstrous hordes of Pho’ara and the Caldera-worlds? The Riin, perhaps...but then: their sorrow had always had more to do with what was within them, as opposed to being a response to what was without. Beyond them...there would be no one else. No one would care.

  And, beyond pity...beyond restraint...she had every right to the decision she had made. Every...right.

  The Pho’ain had moved on Earth, travelling through the vast expanse of the Riin Dominion to do so. They should have known better. After all...the Riin – innately peaceful; peaceful to a fault – were the technological equals of the Elder Species. And Janissary had proven, on numerous occasions, what a Human mind was capable of when it came to repurposing the technology of peace for the needs of war. Her reputation was known. That the Riin turned a blind eye to her actions when it mattered...was known. And, most importantly, her world of origin – the tiny, pre-interstellar civilisation of Earth – was known. She had made no secret of it. She had never needed to. Janissary couldn’t fathom the stupidity; the hubris of it. How could they not have known how it would end?

  The attempt had been almost amusing, in a way. Almost. And her response was as predictable and approp
riate as a response to such an act of aggression could have been. She had followed them to Earth; she had ascertained that there was no mistaking their destination; she’d waited to see if their purpose was hostile – though, with the Pho’ain, it had been a foregone conclusion that it would be – and then she had prepared to respond with force. In any other place...at any other time, it would have been nothing more than a good deed set to the spectacle of a grand light show.

  But somehow...this was different. She knew her species. She knew them, ironically, better than she knew herself. She could see the chain reaction that her decision to assert control of the situation could provoke. What she’d neglected to mention to Myadir about Human stupidity had been the species-wide propensity for responding to the unknown with extreme, reflexive hostility. An explanation not forthcoming, she feared...they would turn on one another, as they had done so very many times before. But what was she to do? What could any one Human do, when confronted with her choice, while wielding her power?

  She found herself recalling that most haunting quotation...voiced by a man – a Human, like herself – who, knowing not what he risked, had been part of an unprecedented scientific instrumentation. Unprecedented, that is, in the context of the blue-green planet around which they currently maintained a cautious, geo-stationary orbit. And it troubled her...genuinely so...to consider how close her species had come to the brink, without even realising it. The series of experiments collectively known as the ‘Manhattan Project’ had...for a single, terrifying moment...brought the all-seeing eyes of the Elder Species squarely into focus over her former home. Never before had such a young species been so overweening. Never before had such a young species been – and been so obviously – a monstrosity in the making.

  Perhaps that was why the words resonated with her as they did. She could still remember the first time that she’d seen them in their original context. They had crawled into the heart of her...gnawing away at her peace of mind...her resolve...and her ethical self-estimations. They had – with a slowly building efficacy – sown toxic distrust that connived and corrupted, pushing her focus inwards and onto her own motivations and ambitions. She could recite the passage from memory:

  ‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky...that would be like the splendour of the mighty one.’

  “Now I am become death”, Janissary murmured...baleful and – for the first time in as long as she could remember – unsure of what, good or bad, was to come: “The Destroyer of Worlds.”

  I – Pueblo

  ~ Kayla ~

  23/11/2023

  I usually don’t tell people this part of the story. Even with friends – close friends – I tend to just...swerve around it on my way to somewhere else. It makes sense, though: I’m in a very different place now. I’m a very different person. And, living exclusively with and around people who went through damn near the exact same thing that I did, it’s not remotely surprising to me that no one asks about it. The topic doesn’t really come up. We all just sort of...skip over it.

  And that’s for the best, honestly. It really, really is. When you already know the ending... when everyone already knows the ending...what does it matter if a few details vary along the way? Wanting to know one another’s versions of what happened in and around the time of The Crisis? It’s a bizarre thought. It’d be a bit like all of the people who survived the Titanic disaster getting together to regale one another with stories about the random crap they did on the boat up until the point when the shit began to actively hit the fucking fan.

  And that’s the thing. That’s it in a nutshell, actually: survivors just don’t see the things that they survived in the same way that outsiders do. To outsiders, stories like ours can be interesting. I mean...I know that better than anyone: I’m a journalist, after all. I was, at least. Once upon a time. But even if I hadn't been, it doesn’t exactly take a clairvoyant to know that people like their Human interest stories the same way that they like their midday soaps: dramatic. Well, dramatic...and sexy, generally.

  But for survivors: for the people who actually lived through it? I can’t speak for everyone, obviously...but for me: when someone who went through the same thing that I did is giving their account, all I’m thinking – the whole time they’re telling their story – is: ‘and then it happened’. And that’s how every single one of those stories inevitably ends: and then it happened.

  Beyond that, though...this part of my story is about the old me. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a worthwhile distinction to make. Maybe it isn’t. But, in my experience, when people change enough – in profound enough ways and in a short enough span of time – they tend to end up feeling as if their old lives were, quite literally, lived by other people. People who looked like them, and who had a lot in common with them, certainly...but who, fundamentally – emotionally and psychologically – were not them.

  And sure, they remember. But there’s this feeling there, when they talk about the lives of the people who they once were but no longer are. It’s a feeling that mirrors what you might feel in...oh, say...going through someone else’s journal, and then deciding to start telling people the deeply personal parts. Add to that: it’s not just anyone’s journal, for them. It’s one that belonged to someone close. Someone dear. Someone that they carry around the last sliver of the personhood of, and are – in a way that is, to them, very real and deeply intimate – a child of...or the legacy of. Someone that the world believes was them...but who only they know the truth of. It feels wrong, somehow, to tell those people’s stories. It feels like a betrayal. It feels...like disrespect for the dead. As, of course – in a certain, strange way – it is.

  And that is, in fact, very much how I view this part of my story: as belonging, fundamentally, to a different person; me though she, for a time, was.

  She and I – we...‘the two of me’...however you want to put it – had this in common, though. She, just like me, was not the person she’d once been; she was born, that is, of the pain to which her previous self had succumbed. She, just like me, kept a part of herself permanently closed to the outside world; that part of her old self that lingered in the scars left behind by what had ended her, once. And she, just like me, had demons that she considered to be better ignored than exorcised. As a result, she shared her existence with, and was haunted by, darkness and dissonance...growing forward through time, though rooted in the past. The past: where she was born. Just like me.

  When I think back to The Crisis, the first thing that springs to mind always seems to be the day of the wedding. After all...it was a critical juncture in her life. My life. And it would have been, regardless of what came in the days that followed. So I guess I’ll start there.

  It was a small ceremony. We – Naithe and I – were married in Pueblo, Colorado...in a little pavilion that had been set up in a park by the river-walk. The cream-coloured canvas, carefully arranged over a minimalist web of aluminium and plastic supports, was lined with broad sails of gauzy white and green fabric that billowed in the breeze. I still remember it like something in a photograph. I remember the vibrant blue of the sky that day...and the crisp, though surprisingly warm breeze that gently freshened the air with the smell of fresh-cut grass. We were lucky, that day. Lucky, that is, for a day like that.

  Maybe a half of a kilometre beneath our feet was where the hole would be. Maybe it was already there, even then. I’ve never been entirely clear on the specifics of that.

  §§§

  I hazarded a glance out at where the guests were all gathered. Naithe looked incredibly uncomfortable, standing out in front of them all in his shiny tuxedo. He hated crowds. Still...we both knew that it could have been worse. Would have been, if his mother had had her way. Thankfully, our crowd of ‘dearly beloved’ was exclusively made up of close friends and family.

  His close friends and family, though. His.

  Now...the thought didn’t exactly hit me like a ton of bricks. It didn’t really ‘hit me’ a
t all. It just sort of sidled up and whispered in my ear. Told me what I already knew, but made it seem...different.

  When Naithe and I had been drawing up seating arrangements and planning for guests’ dietary requirements, I’d definitely been aware of how totally alone I’d be. As petty self-awarenesses went, it was pretty old hat. Still...deceptive, how there’d been no sharpness to that awareness at the time. It had taken until that moment – when I was preparing myself to actually make my way out there in front of them all – for the awareness to develop a cutting edge.

  For a moment, I felt...not like a fraud, specifically – nothing that dramatic...but...alien, perhaps. Foreign. Laid bare as lacking a range of life experience that everyone in my immediate vicinity had probably never questioned the normalcy or universality of. Lacking those things that most people would have looked for as evidence of...well...a past. A normal past, that is. Whatever the hell ‘normal’ even means. A past, I guess you could say...that had...y’know...‘narrative depth’. Nuance. More nuance, at least, than you’d be likely to find in the case of...oh, I dunno...a Tamagotchi? Or a Volkswagen? Things with a definite social context and history, but where those elements lacked complexity and – more importantly – a certain kind of distinctive Humanness.

  In a dark, unpleasant little nutshell, I just felt totally unable to relate to the situation that I found myself in. Equally, I couldn’t seem to convince myself that anyone there could really, genuinely relate to me. I mean...what kind of bride has no family? No friends? And what kind of person doesn’t care?

  I caught myself thinking back to first-year University, and that Lit’ elective where I read The Stranger for the first time. Camus’ focus – the way people can just turn on those who aren’t...‘quite right’, by the standards of the majority – had resonated deeply with me at the time. And, admittedly, ever since then as well. The main character, there – Meursault – lets his difference slip publicly when he isn’t sad enough – or, rather, doesn’t seem to care enough – at his mother’s funeral. Me? I turned up to my own wedding...alone.