The Immortal Game (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  Those words came from his mother…

  Rook suddenly sees here there, carrying more food and water belowground to Dad’s shelter, stockpiling as much as she can on the eve of her son’s enlistment. She didn’t know about his enlistment yet. She didn’t know that, as she was asking him to help her take the rice down below and organize the canned foods, he had already decided. Rook sees her plainly now across the gulf of time…sweating…fretting…hurrying…pushing locks of hair out of her eyes and wringing her hands, worrying that she forgot something…

  “Mom, calm down,” he told her. “Take it easy. You’re stressing so much you’re gonna have another panic attack.”

  “We can’t forget anything. I still don’t think we have enough water—”

  “Mom, we’ve got plenty.”

  “What if they come here? What if it’s like the other worlds? We may have to stay dug in for a long time.”

  “We’ve got plenty alre—”

  “Every little bit helps us last a little longer,” she told him.

  She was doing what a mother did, digging in and preparing the nest, getting a place ready for the family to wait out the storm. She meant to dig in. Her son opted to make a stand. When he told her that, and then explained his recruitment into the ASCA and ISF programs, there was an argument. “Mom, look, it only makes sense. I mean, I could be a real asset. I studied astronomy and astrophysics at school for years—”

  “You dropped out!”

  “I know, I know, but I did really well in the simulators and I think that…Mom, I could be a help! Pilots have to understand space, stars, and the…the…cosmic mechanics in order to be a good fighter pilot—”

  “You’re going to be a fighter pilot?”

  “That’s the plan—”

  “Oh, God, it was bad enough I thought you were going to be a mechanic…or…or…or some kind of intel specialist, but a damned fighter pilot! Are you insane, son? Have you absolutely lost your mind?”

  She was wroth with him, and called his father in to give him a talking to. Dad was just coming home from another grocery run, still intent on stockpiling. The son had looked at the father, and something had been communicated. Mom thought her husband would reason with their son, but Dad…

  He knew, Rook thinks, walking towards the cave entrance. He can see the look on his father’s face when he stepped through the screen door, and saw his wife’s face, saw the tears, and perceived the argument that was going on. He knew already. He knew what the fuss was about. He knew what I decided.

  Kali grumbles again, this time a bit more insistently, pushing away the past and bringing him back to the here and now. Rook looks to his left, and sees the Ianeth staring at him. For a moment he can scarcely believe he’s looking at an alien. He was just back on the farm, where no such weirdness existed…

  Bishop is still staring at him.

  Rook sighs and waves him on. “You take the lead, since you know this place.” Also because my eyes have a comparatively narrow view of the electromagnetic spectrum next to yours, he thinks, switching on his visor’s night-vision. It gets the job done, bathing everything in a monochromatic green while his HUD highlights trouble areas along the ground—at least, it tries to, his sensors are getting lots of interference from the environment.

  Bishop just nods. No affirmative this time. He walks ahead, moving with as much grace as he did aboard the Sidewinder, which is more than can be said for Rook.

  Despite the relative order that was created by this runway, the surface of Kali is rocky and uneven, with crumbling bits of rock, and sudden pits concealed by sheets of ash that have collected, most of it probably from Thor’s Anvil off to his left, about a hundred klicks to what he’s dubbed the “east.” As he makes his way along the runway, which has a slight incline, Rook glances away to the immense volcano. A magnificent bolt of purple lightning lances through the clouds raging all around it. A second later, he hears the booming thunder. Beneath his feet, Kali shakes.

  She doesn’t want us here.

  The thought scares him by how much he believes it. He believes it on both a primal and logical level. As scientists long proclaimed, the universe by and large was always trying to kill us. The vacuum of space would have intruded on Earth long ago if not for certain factors being lined up perfectly. Most planets aren’t habitable; most of them don’t even have stable orbits. Less than three percent of a gas cloud makes the all-important star for life to grow—that’s extremely inefficient star formation. Climate changes happen too frequently and erratically on most planets for life to get a “footing” and start the evolutionary chain. The list of problems goes on: galaxy orbits lead them inevitably towards deadly supernovae, most solar systems are a shooting gallery of asteroids and comets, and most places in the universe will kill life instantly due to extreme heat, cold, and radiation. Even our home world wasn’t as habitable as most of us thought—more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface was completely uninhabitable by human life.

  Then the Cerebs came, Rook thinks. Even life is deadly to life. No, the universe is not hospitable. It is not kind. It is not accommodating. We were lucky to live as long as we did. He watches Thor’s Anvil send out another purple lance. The ground trembles beneath him. He looks up at the supremely black, churning clouds, and sees glimpses of stars through parts in those clouds. Only the strongest survive here.

  Rook has a sudden recollection. Watching a holocumentary in the living room with his dad, one about lions in the Serengeti or something, and then the narrator said something about how in nature, it was a contest, a survival of the fittest. He asked his father how, if that was true, had humans had survived so long in the world with animals like bears and lions.

  “Because,” Dad said, touching his temple. “In Nature, fitness also has to do with your wits. It’s not just the body, it’s how you use what you’ve got.”

  Still looking up at the sky, Rook thinks about how far he’s come, and for a minute he visualizes those giant orbs high above the planet, those almost-completed Ianeth battle stations, just sitting there. He wishes they had been completed…

  Manage your resources. Those were among the last words Badger ever said to him. Badger’s dead now—he’s with us—but the words still live on without having to be spoken again. Rook ponders that last bit of wisdom. Manage your resources. He gazes up at the sky a moment longer.

  The Turk, he thinks.

  It’s still nagging at him, a stray thought that his mind is working on without him knowing it, a plan with real merit…

  “Is something wrong?” That was Bishop, now forty or so steps ahead of him. The alien is stopped and waiting on him.

  Rook shakes his head. “No. I’m good.”

  “You were lost in thought again. That isn’t good.”

  “It isn’t?” he says, catching up.

  “No. You were already having difficulties keeping your mind straight in the asteroid field. You’ve shown progress since then, you need to maintain that progress.”

  Another flash of lightning, another roll of thunder. His visor automatically compensates for the light, so that he isn’t blinded in his night-vision setting. “Maybe not,” he says. Beneath his feet, Kali grumbles. “Maybe sometimes we need to get lost in the past. You know, to remember where we came from?”

  “You have problems remembering? You came from Earth. Don’t you recall?”

  Rook looks at his partner, and though he’s certain that he’s indeed speaking with another sentient being, he is reminded that he is absolutely the last human left in the universe. “Yeah,” he chuckles. “I recall.” The cave opening is a hundred yards away. “Check radio channels in case we get separated inside, and set transmitters to filter RF ambient.”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  The planet continues to grumble as they pick their way across. They pass through ash and darkness and step through the immense maw, which is big enough to fly a jumbo jet through. As they do so, a stronger quake rattles the surface, and
it’s easy for Rook to imagine they’ve stepped into the mouth of the beast.

  4

  Now we travel a vein between the material and immaterial, skating off the membrane that separates the two universes until we emerge back at Four Point. The immense space station glimmers, and hangs in the Deep like a figurine suspended in ice. It doesn’t look like much from afar, but as we get closer we see details emerge. Each of its four arms is actually sectioned off into four smaller arms, for a total of sixteen sub-arms. We can see that the station is hollow at its center, with the exception of a few small shuttles hovering around the outside. It is lit only by ambient starlight.

  Now, a shadow falls, and Four Point doesn’t even have that.

  We look behind us. It’s almost startling how quickly the fleet crept up on us. Four ships forming a perfect diamond, with the Supreme Conductor’s flagship out front. There is a ceaseless datafeed flowing from Four Point to the Conductor, and we may follow that electromagnetic wave now. We pass through numerous security redundancies, once again causing only the most minor of power fluctuations, scarcely even detectable—when the philosopher Ryle spoke of the “ghost in the machine” to settle Descartes’ mind-body dualism, he probably didn’t know his argument had these applications.

  We return to the bridge, where the Conductor is ordering the fleet to coast in easily. The luminals begin to drift apart. They’re already extending umbilical tubes—each starship docks with a separate arm of Four Point.

  As the Conductor imbibes the datafeed and assigns each piece of data to the corresponding corner of his mind, he looks over the hologram representation of Four Point. The station looks brand new, as though it were built yesterday. Once, this section of space was only good as a pit stop for refueling and some maintenance. Then it was converted into a mining colony: a rich asteroid field was once very close by, but after two hundred years very little remains.

  A series of renovations, planned precisely down through the ages, has brought it to this point—indeed, hollow sections were purposely placed there over a thousand years ago and left primed, in anticipation of upgrades. Upgrades that wouldn’t be technologically possible for hundreds of years, but which the Council extrapolated upon and successfully predicted would be possible. There is nothing the Calculators, the Architects, or the Engineers miss.

  Almost nothing, the Conductor considers, as his multi-lensed eyes range across the various displays. He considers the Event Anomaly. The Phantom File isn’t what reminds him of it. Indeed, the Phantom File doesn’t even present itself. No, what brings it all to mind is the Council’s insistence on this “great matter.”

  They are troubled by him. But why? I can understand why I might be intrigued—it’s in the Conductor’s nature to wonder, and to eventually be maddened by such pondering—but it is the job of the Council of Elders to stay focused on our great race’s continued existence. Resource management is their prime directive, and that has nothing to do with hunting down the last of a wasteful species.

  As thorough as Calculators can be when trying to wipe a slate clean, what they are demanding of the Supreme Conductor in this case is beyond thorough, it is bordering on an obsession.

  Then, his species’ knack for supreme reason reasserts itself. The Conductor understands that if it wasn’t for the Calculators being so thorough, their race could not have come this far. If not for their keen accounting, they could not have won every battle. Without their obsessive nature, the Empire Everlasting could not have vanquished its enemies.

  It is the Calculators that give us the Sight, so that we all may see deeply into our future, and know that our place in the universe is eternally assured.

  That knowledge fills him with a moment of pride. We are reminded that the Cerebrals are techno-organic—just now, we are finally getting to know that organic side, for pride, while kept carefully in check in Cereb culture, is still something that any organic species must continually experience if it is to accomplish anything. Pride in a job well done. Pride in doing one’s part in the preservation of one’s species. In fact, their pride is so great that it actually causes conflict: Why did he sacrifice his resources? the Conductor wonders, suddenly pulling up the Phantom File to review what happened during the Event Anomaly.

  The Phantom had so many resources tied to those two large asteroids, and yet he destroyed them both. And for what? A small victory? The smallest of victories, to be sure, he thinks. Hollow and meaningless, for there can be no preservation of his species, nothing else to live for, nothing real to accomplish.

  Or…perhaps there is?

  The Conductor runs through other mysteries that currently surround the Event Anomaly. For instance, the ease with which the Phantom managed to blast skirmishers to pieces, most of the time without missing a single shot. How did he do that? What…what…sorcery was that? The notion of “sorcery” comes from his files concerning human culture—magic does not sit well with a mind so cemented into a datafeed. As a Conductor, though, it is his job to find failure with the fleet. How did he manage it? How? Was it a problem with our skirmishers’ systems? Did he find some weakness and exploit it? How? How could he know of a weakness so crippling and yet our Calculators missed it?

  A wave comes through. One of the Observers has flagged an incoming message. “Sir, incoming message from High Command. Priority Four.” The most urgent of messages.

  The Conductor makes no physical motion that he understands, but steps away and sends his acknowledgement via the stream. “I will take it in my chamber.”

  Thirty steps over to the main lift. The magnetic shield opens for him as he approaches the lift, then reactivates once he’s inside. Up seven levels, passing tactical organization, managed almost entirely by the Tacticians, all of whom were plugged into the feed and sending him endless updates. When the Conductor steps off the lift, he immediately dials back his connection to the datafeed by many powers, just enough so that he’s in touch with main operations, then steps through a short corridor and into his chambers. He removes his environment suit slowly—Cerebral bodies are so sensitive to change—and he sits on a bland-feeling cushion and sticks the sound nullifiers in his ears.

  The message from High Command is brief. It orders him to make contact at once. He shuts his eyes and does so, and, projected onto the back of his outermost ocular lens, a collection of military leaders is spread out before him. There is the High Engineer, the High Architect, the High Researcher, the High Observer, and the High Coordinator. There are many Calculators present, of course, all looking straight ahead and fixated on him, although their minds were undoubtedly occupied with countless other tasks as well.

  These are the greatest, most current, most efficient and purified representatives of the Empire. Drones given single purpose and with pride intensified to levels no human ever knew. Their drive is matched only by one another, their goals never wavering, and thus they speak with only one voice. Twelve vigintillion nodes singing in terrifying synchronicity. This harmonic perfection is known as the Command Collective.

  The Conductor speaks via the endless stream. “My Betters, I obey you always.”

  When the Command Collective speaks, there is no pause, no time to consider formalities, only the matter of the Tally: the endless business of ensuring preservation. There is no audible “voice” either, but we may slip inside the Conductor’s mind and understand it. But…oh, God, perhaps we were wrong to try! The voices…the haunting unison is so complete it sends chills even through ghosts. A trillion security checks and firewalls and “hand-shake” programs are met.

  Then, the Collective speaks. “Supreme Conductor, we understand you have arrived at Four Point station. Is this information accurate?”

  “It is, My Betters.”

  “Then you are to send out parties of skirmishers,” says the Collective. “They are to sweep the immediate area and begin investigations into the whereabouts of the Phantom.”

  A nanosecond of concern, manifesting itself as an imperceptible twin
ge on his brow. “It was my understanding that we weren’t yet sure that it was the Phantom who left the black-carbon trail. It might’ve been any number of past civilizations that once traversed this—”

  “We will not take chances. It is our Decision that this discovery should be treated as though the Phantom’s trail has already been verified.”

  The Conductor considers that for another nanosecond. Any and all Decisions made by High Command are never questioned. “I understand, My Betters.” For the moment, he keep’s any doubts concerning the Decision to himself. “But my fleet has only just started with refueling and resupply protocols.”

  “Once you have replenished, you will not wait for confirmation of the trail. You will proceed as though you have already had it confirmed.”

  “I will, My Betters.”

  “You will treat this trail as the Phantom’s trail,” the Collective basically repeats. They are most insistent that this bit of programming not be misunderstood.

  “I will, My Betters.”

  “As per the Phantom File, you will report any and all anomalies you experience along the way, including but not exclusive to those that bear similarity to the Event Anomaly.”

  “Of course, My Betters.”

  “Continue with replenishment. Track down the Phantom and finish our subtraction of the human threat. That is all.”

  Finish…the subtraction? Is that all we were to them? A minor problem to be subtracted? Of course, we knew this all along, but having it confirmed in such an offhanded way…it’s like the Collective was just reminding him to take out the trash. Such a low opinion they have (had?) of us. Such a low, low opinion…

  The conversation is over in a matter of seconds. When it is, the Supreme Conductor sits alone, consolidating and compartmentalizing data. His mind isn’t on the subtraction. His mind is on the part concerning the need to report any and all anomalies, including “those that bear similarity to the Event Anomaly.” Do you mean our first defeat? he thinks now, for he is free to think that now. Is that the “Event Anomaly” to which you refer?