“I—”
“Go to your room!”
Tears welled in Atta’s eyes and she ran off.
“That was a bit harsh….” Atton said.
“She’s about to go through The Choosing, Atton. I don’t need her head filled full of doubts now.”
“That’s strange, because you just filled my head full of doubts.”
“To keep you away from the Null Zone, not to drive you into it.”
Atton shook his head, looking confused. “Good night, Hoff.”
“Good night, Atton.” Be safe, he thought, as he mentally triggered the door shut.
Chapter 6
Atton left his parents’ apartment with a heavy heart and an empty stomach. His mother had taken the news worse than he’d expected, and his stepfather…
Somehow Hoff had taken it even worse than that. He’d acknowledged Atton’s right to choose, but he had also taken a dangerous risk to warn him about Omnius. Atton had tried to stop Hoff, tried to dismiss his suspicions, but Atton had seen the truth shining in his stepfather’s gray eyes. Doubts like his couldn’t be dismissed.
The worst part was, Hoff was right. Omnius really had led his fleet into an ambush, and he’d even allowed the Sythians to attack Avilon before that. Admiral Vee had explained those betrayals at the same time that she’d explained the Resistance was actually run by Omnius as a safe way for the Nulls to oppose him, and as a way to justify supplying Bliss to the unsuspecting masses. The Resistance financed its operations with that performance-enhancing super drug, and Omnius used it to make the Null Zone worse than it should have been in order to accentuate the chaos caused by human freedom.
It was hard to wittingly take part in all of that, but Atton had made a deal. He’d said he would do anything for a chance to be with Ceyla again. Justifying his involvement was easier than he’d expected. For every one person hurt by Bliss, ten more stayed in Etheria because of it. Only complete skriffs would want to live in the Null Zone in spite of all its problems.
Atton reached Hoff’s parking garage and climbed into his air car, a shiny black one-seater he’d nicknamed the Black Arrow. He fired up the engines and cruised out through the hazy blue wall of the garage’s static shields. On his way out, he configured the autopilot to take him down to the Styx. It was time to return the Black Arrow to Admiral Vee’s hangar and start making preparations for his proposal tomorrow.
The autopilot took him into a stream of vertical traffic, and Atton watched as the car dropped past bright and shining monoliths, rooftop parks and fountains, and safe, tree-lined streets elevated high above the Styx. Over a hundred levels blurred by before Atton actually reached the shield wall that separated Etheria from the Null Zone.
The lowest levels of Etheria were much darker due to their distance from the Celestial Wall. Down here buildings and streets still looked pleasant, but not quite as luxurious as those in the upper levels.
The car came to a stop just above the Styx, and then drone-fired grav guns seized his car, preventing him from going anywhere until both he and his vehicle had been scanned. Atton used his ARCs to mentally submit his credentials and his permit to enter the Null Zone. That done, he sat back and waited. The line ahead of him was short, a handful of cars at most, so it wouldn’t take long. Going down was always faster than going up. Ascending from the Null Zone meant one had to Sync first, just in case contact with Nulls had caused changes in Omnius’s behavioral predictions. Atton was one of the few people who knew that system was a ruse. Omnius said he didn’t try to predict Nulls’ behavior; he said he deactivated their Lifelink implants when they became Nulls, but it was all a lie to lull the Nulls into a false sense of security. De-linking was impossible, and there was no way to escape from Omnius. The need for Etherians to Sync upon returning home was just a formality to support the lie that the Null Zone was free.
Bright blue fans of light flickered through Atton’s cockpit, and then the drones manning the grav guns at the border crossing moved his car down through a narrow opening in the Styx. That opening would be sealed completely when it came time for the Uppers to Sync.
Thanks to his special assignment in the Null Zone, Atton wasn’t forced to Sync at the exact same time as everyone else in Etheria. Instead, his Sync occurred whenever he chose to go to sleep, just as it did for all the other Nulls, but without their knowledge.
As soon as Atton was on the other side of the Styx, his autopilot disengaged. Autopilots were mandatory in Etheria to prevent accidents, but in the Null Zone, hands-on flying was just another part of the chaos.
Atton grinned as he gunned the throttle and flipped the car up on its end to make a highly illegal U-turn through a narrow alley between two buildings. Bactcrete walls rushed by in a gray blur. His car’s running lights flashed into apartment windows, startling residents as he streaked by. The acceleration pinned him to the back of his seat. Air roared around his canopy, causing subtle vibrations in the fuselage. Then he shot out the other side of the alley and into a yawning chasm between two long rows of buildings. In the Null Zone the danger was part of the thrill. Nothing like the constant threat of death to make you appreciate life.
Atton dove down into the stream of traffic on level 30 and used air brakes to slow to a more law-abiding speed. The car’s nav system automatically painted lines on his HUD to tell him where the lanes should be.
After half an hour of keeping within those lines and minding his distance from the cars in front of him, Thardris Tower appeared in the distance, a specter of black bactcrete and mirror-plated red windows. Atton took an up-ramp to depart from the main flow of traffic. He followed the simulated street to the level of Admiral Vee’s penthouse. When he was still a few hundred meters from Vee’s hangar, he submitted his clearance code to her security system. A green light turned on and glossy black doors parted, revealing a blue haze of static shields that kept pollution out and warm air in.
The shields sizzled as he slipped inside.
Once he’d landed in the hangar, Atton popped the car’s canopy with a hiss of escaping air and went to announce himself at the admiral’s front door. He used the vidcomm beside the door to call her. A moment later, Admiral Vee’s voice bubbled out, sultry and smooth.
“I wasn’t expecting you so soon, Atton.”
“My visit with my family was cut short.”
“I see. I’ll be down in a moment.”
It was more like five minutes that Atton waited, and by the time the door swished open, he wasn’t in the best of moods.
“Would you like to come in? I haven’t eaten dinner yet,” Vee said, as if she somehow knew he hadn’t had a chance to eat.
Atton was about to refuse when his stomach growled loud enough for both of them to hear. Vee smiled, and Atton nodded.
“Thank you.”
The inside of the Resistance leader’s penthouse apartment was lavish with plush white rugs, and a deep indigo floor that seemed to sparkle like a sea of diamonds in the room’s recessed lighting.
“Let’s go take a seat, shall we?” Valari said, taking him by the arm to lead him through a high-ceilinged foyer with winding stairs. She led him through the living room to a long, white dining table with seating for twelve. Above the table hung a strange light fixture that looked to Atton like a spider. Snaking black legs radiated from a central ball, and at the end of each leg, hovered a glowing orb of light that seemed to radiate from the air itself.
Admiral Vee took her seat at the head of the table, while Atton sat facing a high wall of windows. Those windows gave a startling view of the Null Zone with its shadowy towers and glowing rivers of air traffic. Dozens of stories below the apartment where they sat, lights from towers and traffic alike disappeared into a carpet of inky black mist that concealed the planetary surface. Atton spent a moment admiring the view before a sudden noise drew his attention. Two drones came clanking in from an adjoining room, pushing grav carts laden with food and drinks. One of the two drones began setting places around the
table—three settings, one at each end of the table, and one for him.
“Are you expecting someone else?” Atton asked.
“She’s expecting me,” a deep, resonant voice replied.
Atton turned to see a familiar man come striding in from the foyer. That man was none other than Vladin Thardris, the Grand Overseer of Avilon. Atton hurried to his feet and raised one arm perpendicular from his body, palm angled up to the sky. “Hail Omnius,” he said.
Vladin smiled, but did not return the greeting, a fact which Atton found to be unusually irreverent for Omnius’s right-hand man. “Yes,” was all he said as he sat down at the opposite end of the table from Admiral Vee.
Atton shook his head. “I’m not intruding on anything, am I?” Vee was short for Valari, her last name Thardris. She was the overseer’s daughter.
“Of course not, Atton,” Vee replied. “My father asked me to have you join us when you arrived. He wants to share something important with you.”
Atton accepted that with a nod. “In that case, I’m honored.”
One drone came to attend each of them personally, asking their preferences for dinner. Atton selected a choice cut of steak with sauteed vegetables and an expensive wine. The food was laid out promptly, and drinks were poured. Atton dug in greedily, determined not to miss his second dinner. Peripherally, he noted that while Valari had begun to eat, Vladin didn’t even touch his food. Instead, he nodded to Atton and asked, “What do you know about Omnius?”
He finished chewing before he replied. “He’s the ruler of Avilon and an artificial intelligence—our god for lack of a better description.”
“Is He your god?” Valdin asked, arching an eyebrow at him.
Atton hesitated to reply. “The idea of a god or gods came about to explain where humans came from and why. Omnius didn’t create us; we created him, so true deity is hard to attribute. But he is the most powerful being we are likely to ever encounter, so the attribution is fitting in that sense.”
Vladin looked amused. “How did humans create Omnius?”
Atton recited a piece of Avilonian history. “Thousands of years ago an Avilonian named Neona Markonis hypothesized that the only way to create an intelligence superior to our own would be to somehow increase our own intelligence, so she networked thousands of people together, using digitized copies of their own minds.”
Vladin nodded. “That’s correct. And what happened to Neona Markonis after that?”
Atton frowned and reached for his wine while he considered that. “No one knows.”
“But she was Immortal.”
“It was a long time ago. More than thirty thousand years. Neona could have chosen to die in that time.”
“She could have, but she didn’t,” Vladin said. “She’s still very much alive. In fact, she’s eating dinner with us right now.”
Wine burst from Atton’s lips in a red mist. He turned to Admiral Vee, suddenly seeing her with new eyes. “What? You’re Neona Markonis?”
She smiled. “Surprised?”
“How old are you?”
“Now, now, Atton, don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a woman her age?”
Atton shook his head, awed and frightened at the same time. There had to be a reason they were telling him this. When he turned back to Vladin, he saw the Overseer’s eyes glowing brighter than before. As he watched, that brightness swelled, consuming Vladin’s features. Atton winced and looked away, a sudden suspicion brewing inside his churning gut.
From within that blinding radiance, Vladin spoke, but his voice was different now. It rumbled like thunder, rattling the windows and making the floor tremble. “She created me, Atton. I am Omnius.”
Atton shook his head, dumbstruck. He forced himself to look up into the blinding light, and as he did so, both the light and the man he’d thought of as Vladin Thardris disappeared. Suddenly he understood why the overseer hadn’t hailed Omnius when he’d arrived, and why he hadn’t touched his food. Vladin was Omnius, and he’d never really been there. His presence had been nothing but a projection on Atton’s ARCs.
Turning to Valari—Neona, Atton corrected—he worked some moisture into his mouth, and asked, “The Grand Overseer is Omnius?”
Neona inclined her head to him, still smiling. “You didn’t really think Omnius would allow a human to rule Avilon?”
“Why? Why tell me?”
“Omnius wants you to join us, Atton,” she replied.
“Us who? I thought I was already an Etherian.”
“Us the people Omnius trusts enough to know the truth. His chosen people, Atton, the Celestials.”
Atton’s thoughts skipped to his girlfriend, Ceyla, hopefully soon to be his wife, and he shook his head, wondering how he could choose to become a Null now. They were offering him a place in Omnius’s inner circle. A place of trust. How could he betray that trust by choosing to live apart from Omnius?
“Atton, you’re a part of the Resistance. The Resistance operates inside the Null Zone, nowhere else. That means we’ll need you down here for… well, as long as you’d like to stay, actually. Naturally you won’t be subjected to living in the Null Zone’s more dilapidated depths, and you will never die or age.”
“What if people begin to suspect?”
“To suspect what? If you need to explain your immortality, you’ll tell them that you’re an Etherian who chose to become a Null. There are plenty of those down here. In fact, aren’t you planning to tell your girlfriend exactly that?”
Atton felt his skin crawl with the realization of just how little of his life was actually private. “Yes.”
“So tell her, and tell anyone else you trust enough to know. Tell everyone if you like; it doesn’t really matter. The only secrets you need to keep are the ones that I or Omnius explicitly reveal to you.”
Atton looked down at his food, desperate to escape Neona’s gaze. He stared at his plate with unseeing eyes. He held his knife and fork ready to cut another bite of steak, but his appetite was suddenly gone.
“Why me?” he asked.
“We saw how you responded to Strategian Heston’s doubts. You could have told him the truth. Instead, you denied his suspicions.”
“Because I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”
“Exactly! That’s why we keep the truth to ourselves, isn’t it? To protect people.” Atton looked up to meet Neona’s gaze once more, and she went on, “Not everyone can handle the truth. We know it, but what does that gain us? It’s a burden, not a blessing.”
“So why burden me?” Atton asked, feeling suddenly numb. His gaze drifted out the windows into the glittering sea of lights below.
“Because you can take it,” Neona said. “People like us have to bear the burdens that others can’t. We have to use the wisdom and insight that the truth brings to guide everyone else. We are their guardians, Atton, and Omnius’s truest servants.”
“Celestials,” Atton said.
“Yes.”
Looking up once more, he asked, “So I’m a Celestial now?”
“Not yet, but someday you will be,” Neona said.
Atton frowned, wondering if he had any choice in the matter. “What else am I going to learn?”
“A great many things, Atton. Among others, you’re going to learn the real reason for The Choosing.”
Atton blinked. “It’s not to keep Etherians and Nulls separated?”
“Oh, it is, but not just that. Why do you think they need to be separated in the first place? That’s the question you should be asking.”
“Because Omnius doesn’t predict and control what Nulls will do.”
“But you know that he does. The Nulls aren’t as free as they think.”
“Then why?”
“All will be revealed in good time. For now, eat your food. You must still be hungry.”
Atton nodded and made a show of pushing his food around on his plate. Why would Omnius need to separate the Nulls from Etherians and Celestials? Atton had a ba
d feeling that he wasn’t going to like the answer to that question.
Chapter 7
Strategian Galan Rovik stepped out from under the quantum junction and straight into the high council chamber at the top of Omnius’s Zenith Tower. Galan remembered this place well. Once, not so long ago, he’d sat on the council as an overseer himself.
That was before he’d allowed doubt to consume him and drive him into the Null Zone. Now he was back on the ascendant path, and already a strategian in the Peacekeepers.
Galan turned in a slow circle, looking around the council chamber. Avilon’s overseers should have been there, floating on chairs all around the circumference of the room’s transparent dome, but their chairs were all empty.
“Hello?” he called out.
No answer.
Galan looked up at the speaker’s podium on the catwalk above the quantum junction in the center of the room. Even that was empty. His stomach churned with anxiety. It was a rare event for an Etherian to even be allowed up past the Celestial Wall, let alone to be summoned for an audience with the high council.
But the council wasn’t there.
Galan tried to still his churning stomach by walking up to the edge of the dome and distracting himself with the view. It was breathtaking. The Zenith was the tallest structure on Avilon, reaching over three kilometers above even the lofty heights of the Celestial Wall. From that vantage point, Galan saw rooftop parks stretching out to the horizon in a lush green carpet, gilded by the light of the setting sun. Snaking blue rivers ran through the greenery, cascading from one level of the city to the next. Below even that, the shimmering blue grid of the Celestial Wall lay around the bases of the buildings, giving the impression that the city was submerged under water. Clouds shone in golden ribbons on the horizon. Towers of transpiranium rose against that, silhouetted and glittering in the fading light. Thin lines of traffic and bridges ran between, like silk spun from a giant spider.
Celesta was the most awe-inspiring city of Avilon. Unlike most of Etheria, which was crowded with closely-spaced skyscrapers, Celesta had plenty of wide open spaces, some of which were so wide and so open that completely natural and suburban settings could be simulated on the city’s rooftops. Parts of Celesta boasted artificial mountains, and dense green forests—even lakes and beaches.
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