by B. J. Keeton
Damien huffed, but he couldn’t deny what Squalt said. He hadn’t always been the technology-hating Gramps who Ceril had grown up with.
“Someone has to be wearing the mantle of the Untouchable and leading them, which means that anything you created once upon a time will help us find them. Plus, we do not believe there is any better agent to make those connections than Ceril.”
“Where is he?” Damien demanded. He spread his hands out on the desk, his fingers splayed. He rested his weight on his hands, and the nanites in his blood reacted automatically to the anger rising in him. Pools of blackness formed beneath his hands.
“Jaronya.” Squalt’s mouth barely moved as he spoke.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I'll be damned, Saryn. It worked.”
“Well, yes,” Saryn said. She recalled her nanite sleeve and brushed herself clean of the purple dust she had gathered in her tuck-and-roll landing. “Why did you doubt me?”
“Mainly because you just had me jump into a hole where I couldn't see the ground and expected me to Conjure a parachute on my way down.”
“Details,” she said. “Where do you think Ceril is? See any sign of him?”
“I don't see a whole lot of anything, Saryn.”
The young woman sighed. “Then get out a light, Chuckie.”
“Yeah,” he said and began to dig through his pack. He found a small flashlight and clipped it to his shoulder. “You should have one of these, too.”
She found it in her bag and clipped it on her shoulder. “Now, do you see any sign of him?”
“I’d place my bets on that.” Chuckie pointed to the pile of rubble in the middle of the room.
“What?”
Chuckie continued to point. Saryn saw what he was indicating and rushed toward rubble pile yelling, “Ceril! Can you hear us? Ternia? You there? Are you hurt?”
She was still waiting on an answer when Chuckie moved over to her and began inspecting the rubble itself. It did not take him long to notice a single stone lying a little too far away from the pile. He noticed the opening its absence left in the debris. He dropped to his stomach and shined his light into the opening.
“Ceril!” he shouted into the opening. “Boss?”
Saryn moved to stand over him and asked, “Do you see him?”
Chuckie stood. “Nah,” he said as he dusted himself. “He's not in there, alive or dead. If he was, then he got out and started walking.”
“Why do you say that?” Saryn asked.
“Well, first of all because he’s not here. We saw him fall in that hole.” Chuckie pointed up. “Which means, in my estimation at least, he went somewhere else.”
“Oh,” Saryn said. “Where?”
Chuckie shined his light around. “I don't see any tracks. The dust isn't thick enough here to leave any.” He pointed at the tiled floor. “What do you make of all these symbols on the ground? Where are we, Saryn?”
She knelt to get a closer look. She traced some of the tiles with her fingertips and noted that they were smooth, despite their textured appearance. She shrugged. “Ceril's the one who would know better than I would. I don’t recognize anything from Yagh, though, which may mean they're different than the ones on that tower up there.” She tossed her head upward.
Chuckie nodded and shifted his weight, making sure that his shoulder light was still mounted firmly. “So what's the plan?”
She stood. “I suppose we should find Ceril.”
“But we don't know where he went. Shouldn’t we just wait here for him to come back through?”
“And if he finds a way out instead of doubling back? What then?”
Chuckie looked at her in the harsh light. “Gotcha.” He looked around. “So which way do we go?”
Saryn hesitated. She took a couple of steps in one direction, stopped, and then said, “I don't know. If you say there are no tracks, I don't think there will be any way to know for sure which way Ceril went. So we have to pick one and go with it. And hope we chose the right way.”
“You know this is going to make us miss our audience, right? With that priest guy?”
She closed her eyes. “Yeah. I know. There's nothing we can do about it, though.”
“We can hope the priest is forgiving. That’s kind of what they do, right?”
“On Erlon, at least. I’m not so sure if that’s the case here. I think our best bet is that we convince him that we actually are their messiahs somehow and don't deserve to be killed.”
“There's always that,” Chuckie said. “So which way? You pick.”
Saryn shuffled her light around. “I think there's a wall over there. We can follow it.” She moved toward the wall. “We can follow this and see where it leads us.”
“You got it, New Boss,” Chuckie said and moved in front of Saryn. “I’ll take point. Gotta protect you from any danger out there, you know.”
Saryn rolled her eyes and followed him into the darkness.
***
“I don't know,” Ceril said, leaning back in the chair.
“I am not sure I follow. You are in the Archive, which is a designated research facility. Your authorization and identity as a Charon has been verified. How do you not know your purpose for coming?”
Ceril was silent. He watched the hologram. It reminded him in many ways of the elevator attendants at Ennd's. The technomages had installed and left behind computerized personalities to make interacting with academy systems feel more organic. None of the systems at Ennd's had visual representations, though. They were voice-only. If this were a technomage facility of some kind, it was a lot more advanced than anything he was used to.
As Ceril watched the hologram, he began to be unnerved. He thought it was because he knew that it was a holographic representation of a person instead of being an actual person. Aside from the periodic flickering, he was unable to find any discernible differences between the image in front of him and a real human. There was no glowing aura that generally indicated holograms. Ceril could not find a point of origin for the projection, even though he looked all around for any projectors that traced the image's movements. For all intents and purposes, the hologram was a perfect representation of a person.
It even blinked and breathed. As it waited for Ceril to answer, he could see its chest rising and falling. That really bothered Ceril.
Despite his technologically spare upbringing, Ceril was used to technology, especially since coming on board the Inkwell Sigil, but the familiarity of the holographic man and his simulated life were almost too much for him.
When he was finally ready to speak to the unnatural man, he said, “I need to know where my authorization came from.”
“You are authorized under order number PX1-767.”
“Which means?”
“That you have complete access to any information contained within the Archive.”
“Who initiated the order that gave my authentication?” Ceril asked. He was beginning to get irritated at the machine's doubletalk and evasion of his questions.
“The order has been standing since the Archive's completion and subsequent initialization. There was no individual responsible for the order.”
“Of course there wasn't,” Ceril said.
“May I answer another question?” the hologram asked.
“What are you called?”
“I am the Archive.”
Ceril pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. “What is the purpose of this Archive?”
“This facility was created to collect and store all information pertinent to the Charonic Archive.”
“Like a history? Or just a database?”
“The history of the Charonic order is contained within the database.”
“Can you summarize it for me?” Ceril asked.
“I can, Charon. However, I warn you that even in its synopsized format, the information you are requesting would take approximately four hundred thirteen years to present with simultaneous visual and auditory informat
ion. I suggest against it.”
“So do I,” Ceril said. “What exactly happened just now?”
“I answered your question.”
“No, not that. When the lights came on. I know this place is the Archive, but was it shut down?”
“The Archive has not been accessed for many years. Protocols indicate that when not in use, the Archive be put to minimal power consumption.”
“Did you record my entry?”
“Yes,” the Archive said. “Your entry was designated an intrusion initially, which is why the Archive system did not activate for you. Your presence in the research chamber, however, prompted authorization that could not be performed without returning the system to a functioning state.”
“Okay,” Ceril said as he leaned forward on the desk. “The ground kind of fell away while I was walking. I had no idea this Archive was here.”
“Interesting,” said the Archive.
“What can you tell me about the city above us?”
“Meshin was constructed above the Archive to protect it and served as the Charons’ capitol on Jaronya. The city was the last to fall in the Charons’ civil war. The Archive has not been accessed since the city fell. I am afraid that the Archive's data is incomplete because the recording towers were destroyed during the war.”
Ceril listened intently. A war between Charons? Neither Roman nor anyone else had ever even mentioned that. “What can you tell me about the people who live in the city now?”
“I’m sorry; the data you requested is unavailable. Please refine your search parameters or understand that the Archive's information is limited on that subject.”
His brow furrowed, and he said, “Do you have any information about a culture of winged men living in Jaronya today?”
“I am sorry. The Archive does not have any information on that subject. The last known inhabitants of Meshin were killed in a biological attack that destroyed any organic material it came into contact with. There were no subsequent attempts at settling in the city.”
“Well, someone's living there now,” Ceril said. “Big purple men with wings who call themselves Jaronya.”
The hologram responded in an uneven—and disturbingly human—voice. “I do not doubt your information, Charon. Please understand the Archive's ability to collect information is limited without the relay towers. Any information that would have been processed after their destruction has been impossible even to collect.”
Ceril nodded. The broken story the Jaronya had told him earlier lined up pretty well with what the Archive said. The guard had mentioned there was infighting between cities, whereas the Archive said there was all-out war between factions in the Charons.
“What can you tell me about the writing on the buildings outside?”
“The engravings on the highest buildings of Meshin were meant as guideposts for Charonic civilization. They were written in a language all Charons would understand, devised from the syntax and symbology from the order’s home Instance. When Meshin was created, its primary function was to protect the Archive. Its secondary function was to point the way to enlightenment. The inscriptions on the buildings were tools used by Charons to instruct new initiates of their order in understanding the importance of knowledge and remembrance.”
“That explains some things,” Ceril said. “The Jaronya—the winged people I mentioned—I think they believe the Charons who built you are their Ancestors. They think the inscriptions are some kind of scripture left behind for them.”
“That is not an entirely untrue interpretation,” said the Archive. “It would also indicate that eventual settlement of the warzone was possible. That is good news.”
“I still don’t like it,” Ceril said. “Anyway, how much time has passed since my intrusion was detected?”
“Three hours and fourteen minutes.”
Well, that’s that, Ceril thought. I missed the meeting. Here’s hoping that Saryn and Chuckie didn't. “Do you have a map of this facility?”
Rather than responding, the Archive gestured toward the desk in front of Ceril. The top rippled momentarily, and a device no larger than his personal tablet appeared. A grid of light green lines overlaid a simple schematic on a purple background.
“Thank you,” Ceril said.
He looked at the tablet. It might take him some practice to figure out its controls. He touched and swirled his finger across the tablet, understanding none of the actual writing on it, but recognizing the symbols—they were from Erlon, but they were arranged like those on the tower and followed no rules Ceril understood. He scrolled until he found a section of the map highlighted yellow.
“What's this?” he asked, indicating the yellow section.
“That is where your intrusion was detected,” the hologram said.
Ceril scrolled some more and noticed two green dots. “And those?” he asked, pointing.
“Those are two life signs that entered through the same opening you did. They register as human. Are they Charons?”
Ceril wanted to say no, they couldn’t be, but his heart dropped. Saryn and Chuckie had apparently not made their meeting, either. “Yes. They're Charons, too. I think…those dots are my friends. Are they okay?”
“Internal sensors indicate that neither sustained injury from the fall.”
“Good, thank you,” Ceril said. “What's the quickest way to get to them?”
“The most efficient means of your meeting would involve routing their path to this chamber rather than you seeking them on foot.”
“You can do that?” Ceril asked, amazed.
“The structure of the Archive is comprised of Charonic nanotechnology. The facility can shift on a molecular level in order to allow streamlined functionality. There is often no need for the function; however, since you and the other Charons are the only life-signs in the facility, no loss of efficiency will occur.”
Ceril boggled in silence for a moment. “Absolutely, then. Do it. Route them here. How long will it take them to get here?”
“The most time efficient path will require roughly thirty-five minutes to complete.”
“Do it, then.”
“Yes, Charon.”
Ceril leaned back. He had about half an hour before his friends would arrive, and he had access to a database of ancient knowledge no one even knew existed. He could relax and wait for them to find him, but where was the fun in that? He asked the hologram, “May I have unrestricted access to the database?”
“You do, Charon. Your authorization is unlimited.”
Ceril would have to find out about that sometime. He didn’t like that he seemed to be at the top of some sort of hierarchy he didn't know existed. And if all this had been buried even half as long as the Archive made him think, there was no way for him to have been given access. It didn't make any sense, but that didn't mean that he wasn't going to take advantage of it.
He had a job to do. He had a mission. And he still had friends out there on the surface that he hadn't seen or heard from in days. “Archive,” he said.
“Yes, Charon.”
“Do you have any surface sensors at all left?”
“I am sorry, Charon. This facility is only equipped with functioning internal sensors.”
Ceril thought about the Archive’s phrasing. “This facility?” Ceril asked.
“Yes, Charon,” said the hologram.
“Are there other facilities like this on Jaronya?” he used the Instance's name purposely.
“Yes, Charon. Each major city on Jaronya was equipped with a recording station and minor Archive. This facility was the largest.”
“Do you have any data suggesting that any of the minor Archives survived the war?”
“I am sorry, Charon,” the hologram said. “There is no indication of their survival. The facilities were not networked and there are no external sensors linking the structures.”
Ceril nodded. He was moving in a direction at least. He now knew that there were other places in the Instance
where there might be information on the connection to Erlon, and on how he might get back to Ennd's. He had time to dig in for some surface-level research before Saryn and Chuckie got back. Once they rendezvoused, they would have to work out a plan for meeting with the high priest. Then they could get back to the actual work of their mission: finding a way back to Erlon, finding this Untouchable guy. Seeing Gramps again.
His actual mission had almost slipped Ceril’s mind. He had been a little preoccupied lately.
“I need a manual input device, Archive,” Ceril said.
“Yes, Charon.” As the hologram responded, a keypad appeared on the desk in front of him. As it formed, a projection of a screen requesting input appeared, too, floating in the air a few inches above the desk. “Is there anything else?”
“Not at the moment. I am going to do a little browsing through the database, if that's all right. I prefer to do it manually instead of verbally.”
“Yes, Charon.”
“Alert me when my friends are near, please.”
“Yes, Charon,” the hologram repeated.
“Is the output interactive?”
“Yes, Charon.”
“I don’t want you to monitor me,” Ceril said. “Anything I do through this device is private and not to be tracked.” If he had unlimited access to the database, he might have control of it, too.
“Yes, Charon.”
Ceril leaned back and began typing. He would occasionally swipe at the holographic display in front of him. He was finally back in his element. He knew research, even if he did not know one hundred percent of the symbols that made up the data in the Archive. Finally, something on this mission felt like it was going his way, like he could control it. Ceril continued to work, letting himself fall into the Archive so that he could ignore the artificial man standing silent and unmoving in front of the desk.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“You’re lying,” Damien said.
“Jaronya was what you called your little playground, am I right?”
Damien was silent, but the nanites pooling under his hands began to edge forward along the desk toward Squalt. If the headmaster noticed, he made no indication.
