by Jo Zebedee
“That’s a huge risk.”
Xie Fei shook her head. “Not for nothing am I one of the CC.”
With the rising of beta Hydrii over the ocean horizon, light returned to LilyGrey, and Xie Fei, Hor Namhong and Hu Min stepped out onto the lilypad. Two women, checking connections on a solar array, saw them.
Xie Fei ran forward. “I’ve returned,” she said. “You are Angelique Morschach, I think, and you are…?”
“Benita Kidjo.”
Xie Fei grinned at them. “Today I’m taking back control of the colony. Have you seen Madeleine?”
Benita turned to point at the nearest lilypad. “Imprisoned over there, the last I heard. What are you going to do?”
“Please listen to me and follow my instructions. Tell all your friends and colleagues that I am back. Tell everyone the colony will be directed by the CC before evening tonight. Don’t worry about the new android leader-“
“But-“
“No! We are in charge. Do as I request.”
Both women nodded.
“This is to be a whispering campaign,” Xie Fei concluded. “We muster as human colonists, strong and in control of our future. I have been inside the spherics’ electromagnetic environment, and I have returned. Do you understand?”
Benita Kidjo shrugged. “I understand the implications,” she said.
“Did you talk to them?” Angelique asked.
“I showed them a metaphor,” Xie Fei replied. “I’m hoping they understood what it was all about.”
She said nothing more, leading Hor Namhong and Hu Min to the nearest boat then heading for the adjacent lilypad. It was a matter of an hour to convert more to her cause, find a security officer, convince him of her sincerity, then creep along half-lit corridors to the chamber in which Madeleine was imprisoned.
Madeleine was overjoyed to see her. She wept, saying, “I thought the android would kill off this colony… I thought I’d be killed.”
Xie Fei shook her head. “The android is doing what some androids do, some of the time. What matters is that you and I present ourselves to as many of the colonists as possible. I have a speech to make.”
“Where? When?”
“The heart of the aggravation – the manufacturing lilypad. And soon. Before sundown. Let’s go.”
*
One hundred and ninety three people collected beside the largest solar panel array on the manufacturing lilypad. Two minutes and twenty seconds had passed since Xie Fei and Madeleine had revealed themselves and announced their presence to the crowd. More colonists were boating over from nearby lilypads.
Xie Fei stood on a dais and said, “Fetch the android leader.”
Nobody moved.
“Anybody, fetch it!” Xie Fei shouted.
The noise abated. People stared, uncertain, unhappy. But moments later the android itself appeared from a doorway.
Xie Fei spoke. “The Captains’ Council of LilyGrey is reinstated in myself and Madeleine. I have been inside the electromagnetic environment of the spherics and I have communicated with them. Where is I Fu-en?”
The android did nothing, said nothing, as though it was once more a docile servant. Xie Fei nodded. It was indeed a docile servant.
She pointed to Hor Namhong and said, “Fetch I Fu-en and bring him here. Send messengers to all outlying lilypads. I want every colonist here within the hour.”
Madeleine stepped forward and in her most authoritative voice said, “Sit down, all of you. Bring food and drink. Fetch comfortable seating.”
Slowly, uncertainly, these instructions were followed. Everyone ignored the android, which made not a single move to oppose Xie Fei.
Hu Min said, “How did you know?”
Xie Fei smiled. “No android is conscious. It did what has on occasion happened before. A kind of instinct cut in, as happens in animals, which also are not conscious. It saw a lack of leadership, it felt a political vacuum and moved to make amends. It did what it thought was right, albeit, to our human eyes, in a brutal, you might say power-crazed manner – it knew it was physically strong. And it knew human beings have a history of using such strength to get their way. But I knew the moment I restored order it would return to its standard programming.”
Hu Min nodded. “You’re saying this is what the spherics are like.”
Xie Fei shook her head. “We’ll never know.”
Half an hour later, Xie Fei made her speech to the entire colony.
“We stand here in LilyGrey with all our electromagnetic devices shielded – earthed – so that the manipulations of the spherics can’t affect them. But that of course restricts our lives here, to an extent that we possibly couldn’t survive in the long term. So I asked I Fu-en to construct a device that would simultaneously receive electromagnetic waves on the spherics’ frequency and transmit my brain activity into their environment. I did not know what would happen, and now, as I stand here, I do not know what has happened. But the device allowed me to interface with the spherics. A few days ago I showed them a metaphor of what life here could be like. We shall never live on land, but we could live on the ocean. The spherics do not live in water. Their physical environment, stable over hundreds of millions of years, has long since been inimical to water. And while their bodies are real, their minds are not – by which I mean, their minds, like ours, are abstract. I believe their minds jump from body to body, using sense organs to reacquaint themselves with the real world as necessary. You see, it would be impossible for the spherics individually, and tied perpetually to one body, to live in multiple environments – on top of the pile, deep beneath the pile – and so I believe their minds have evolved to leap electronically from body to body. These bodies, we have noted, are effectively identical, which means the aspect of identity, of uniqueness, that we ourselves take from our physical individuality may not apply to them. But whether they are purely biological, part biological, or entirely the making of the conscious aliens who once lived here, I do not know. Probably we cannot know. My belief however is that they are a technological product, left to evolve after the departure or demise of their alien manufacturers. And so I come to my plan. We are going to take a risk. We are going to unshield everything and resume using electronic – electromagnetic – communications. My belief is that the spherics will on some level understand that we are no threat to their stabilty, that we will live exclusively on the ocean, just as they live exclusively on land.” Xie Fei permitted herself a grin. “We would have almost six times the surface area of Grey over which to expand.”
Madeleine stepped forward and shouted, “What say you all?”
A great chorus of, “Aye!” was her response.
Xie Fei nodded. “Then begin the work of unshielding.”
*
“Did you know it would work?” Madeleine asked Xie Fei, as she, Hor Namhong, Hu Min and I Fu-en drank fruit flavoured water in the CC study.
“Not with certainty,” Xie Fei replied.
“But you suspected?”
Xie Fei nodded. The unshielded electromagnetic devices had not been attacked.
“And the spherics…?”
“We can never know for sure if they are conscious entities. To answer that question is a logical impossibility. People say you can never truly know if another human being is conscious, and that is a classic hypothetical question to ask – is what you see as red what I see as red – but, of course, we all do know, because we know the evolutionary history of human beings and we know the basis for consciousness in biology and evolution. Red is red for everybody. But we have private minds that can only connect with others indirectly. My guess – and it is only a guess – is that the spherics are not conscious, because I suspect they have direct links with one another, as do our androids. But that is only a guess. Time will tell. Perhaps now you will tell me what you think. You have heard all the evidence.”
“Why haven’t humans ever seen the original aliens?” asked I Fu-en.
Xie Fei shrugged. “That is not a question that we can answer. Perhaps they are elsewhere and humans have yet to meet them. Perhaps they did not want to seed local interstellar space with the spherics. Perhaps they left this system and know nothing of spherics. We cannot yet know. But, whatever the truth is, we are here on Grey for the long term.”
“Marooned here,” said Madeleine.
“Not any more,” Xie Fei replied. “This is a viable colony now. This is a home.”
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
EPILOGUE
The Last War by Alex Davis
PROLOGUE- A Birth in the Stars
The Book of Apius
The Temple Rises
Inside Four Walls
The Work of the Earth
First Worship
What Sunup Brings
The Way of the Animexian
Words, Thoughts
The Pages Revealed
Confrontations
Facing Conflict
Aftermath, Consequences
Unravelling
The Gathering
The Last Visit
Versions of the Truth
Speaking to Gods
Support
The Exchange
The Summoning
The Consequences
Regrouping
The Mourning
Beneath the Veil
Opposition
Betrayals
The Second Cataclysm
The First War
The Last War
The Emblae
New Ways
EPILOGUE - The Watcher
A Prospect of War by Ian Sales
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
MONOCHROME
