by Rupert Segar
“Are you sure this is the right place?” asked Zeeann.
Asclepius turned to face his daughter.
“Absolutely, when the convulsion comes, this world will be at the epicentre. The final battle will be fought here.”
^+++^
Telling the story of Zeeann’s journey to Fair Isles is difficult because time for her was not linear. The pregnant woman’s voyage only took two months, yet she and her father travelled more than one hundred years into the past before being catapulted 80 years forward in time. Telling the story in chronological order, as seen by an outside observer, makes little sense. The first event would be the creation of a wormhole fifteen light years away from Fair Isles. A day later a missile impacted on the Isle of Hope but there was no explosion. Instead, the projectile buried itself while an on board generator erected a subtle force field. Roughly 80 years later, the next major landmark was the arrival of Zeeann and Asclepius on the island. Roughly twenty-one years later, according the clocks of the wider galaxy, the most significant junction in the timeline was their departure from Chimera 6, the world they called Last Haven and the planet Humans called Devastation. Their initial destination was the graveyard of the automated portal builders, the mighty machines that mined entire solar systems to create a galaxy wide network of gateways. The portal builders had caused the approaching firestorm. Zeeann and her father used the very same machines to twist their timeline in an attempt to avert the catastrophe.
Thus, the story is better told from Zeeann’s viewpoint and we begin in the cavern containing the Pool of Lights. This was the day when Zeeann and her father disappeared from Chimera 6. Zeeann dismissed the nuns on duty. Despite their objections, the Oracle insisted that she and her father were to be left alone in the rocky cavern. Asclepius passed his fingers over the edge of one of the pools.
“Yes, the coordinated are here,” he said as a vertical grey whirlpool formed just metres away.
“Are you sure we have to do this, father.”
“You have no choice,” said Asclepius, smiling at his daughter. “In your three wombs, you carry our salvation. But the convulsion is only months away at most. How can three embryos have any effect? We need time for your children to grow and reach their full potential. Come, the portal is ready.”
Hand in hand, father and daughter entered the grey gateway. They had to walk along the misty pathway for two minutes before stepping out of a doorway in the shuttle. The vessel had been hidden on the far side of the planet when imperial warships were in orbit.
Asclepius put down his bag and rummaged through it. He produced a glowing cylinder the size of a small tea plate. Walking towards the front of the shuttle with arms and hands out, the alien man sensed the machine intelligence behind the plastiform wall.
“Art told me that the shuttles can only be piloted by the pods, Father.”
“We are Creators. I know we have been shown to be fallible by these Humans, but we are the masters here.”
Asclepius placed the glowing cylinder on the wall and it attached itself with a clunk. Lights rippled across the circular face. The elderly alien knelt down and placed his wide forehead against the cylinder and placed his hands flat on the wall on either side.
“Preparing for take-off,” said a mechanical voice. “Full inertial dampening is in place. Nevertheless, please use the force field restrains.”
Asclepius and Zeeann strapped themselves in.
“Full vision, please,” said Asclepius. “Have you sent my message to the Ship?”
“Message sent and acknowledged,” said the AI, now piloting the shuttle under Asclepius’ control.
A vid screen on the opposite wall showed a number of perspectives. The window that caught Asclepius’ attention was the view of the Ship and the portal. The alien vessel ignored the shuttle as Asclepius and Zeeann cruised past and entered the portal.
+
There are only seven gateways between Chimera 6 and the portal builders’ graveyard. The shuttle emerged only hours later into a solar system based around a brown dwarf sun. 100 million kilometres out, the gloomy lack of light amplified the tired despair which surrounded the abandoned fleet of moon sized machines. The shuttle came to a relative halt in front of one of the behemoth contraptions, like a gnat in front of a blue whale from ancient Earth. On board the shuttle, the elderly Creator knelt in front of the pulsating cylinder for more than an hour, but with no result.
“I believe our signals are being received but the builder does not respond to our hails,” said the mechanical voice of the AI in the shuttle.
“It has been too long, an aeon too long,” said Zeeann to her father.
“We will try the next builder,” said Asclepius, patiently.
On the twelfth attempt, one of the gigantic vessels responded. It came back to life in a dramatic fashion. Vast lights illuminated every face of the cuboid. Sensors pulsed out and kilometre wide beams of light swivelled across the tracts of empty space and focused on the minute shuttle. The tiny vessel was hauled aboard the builder.
Asclepius spent a week talking to the entity that controlled the moon sized machine. The control room opened to the visitors but all the circuits were protected against interference, even from a Creator like Asclepius. The only way to get the machine to do what he wanted was through discussion and reasoned argument.
The builder insisted, that having completed the galaxy wide network of gateways, the standing imperative was to remain orbiting the brown dwarf awaiting fresh instructions. Asclepius said he had new orders but the machine intelligence countered that he did not have the code words to give him the authority to change its imperatives. Asclepius spent a day playing guessing games with the entity in the forlorn hope of finding the code.
In the end, it was Zeeann who changed her father’s approach. She urged him to tell the entity why they needed its help. Asclepius spent three days telling the builder the long and involved story. His narrative was continually interrupted as the entity demanded further explanation about Humans, the omniocular and entropic predictions, the nature of the forthcoming disaster, and the role of the portals in causing the calamity in the first place. Finally, Asclepius came to the story of Art and Zeeann and the joining of the two races. A soft beam of sparkling light played over the pregnant woman. After a few seconds the entity spoke.
“Zeeann, your three foeti are well and developing with both Human and Creator characteristics but how these microscopic organisms can change galactic history is beyond my ability to calculate.”
“That’s why you need to take us into the past,” said Zeeann. “My children need time to grow and develop before the cataclysm arrives."
“I will consider what you and Asclepius have said. I will need to confer with others in the builder fleet. This may take a little time.”
Father and daughter waited for three days. The control room and the corridors linking it to the space bay where the shuttle was moored remained lit and heated. Although the massive world shaking machine had been designed to work autonomously, there were a series of bedrooms and bathrooms, corridor after corridor of them. The two rooms that opened for them were luxuriously furnished in a style that Zeeann and her father found loud and unnecessary. Looking at the perfumes on the bathroom shelf, the drinks dispenser in the bedroom and the multi-coloured cushions on the beds, Zeeann was appalled at the decadence.
“These machines were built and furnished in a different age,” said Asclepius. “Before the doom was discovered that made our ancestors flee, our people were known for their gaiety. Creators always stuck to strict codes and moralities but they allowed themselves every indulgence.”
Zeeann was delighted to find a 3-D vid screen with an old library crystal. She knew most of the plays and poems; they were the classics of her culture. However, she was fascinated by the newsvids she found on a supplementary index. Viewing the stories from a 700 year old library showed her how wrong Creators had been about Humans. Newscast after newscast blamed the Humans
for the approaching disaster. Government officials, academics and religious leaders all condemned the Human’s creation and wartime release of the Great Plague. Only a few of those interviewed advocated helping Humanity. The majority called for the Human race to be shunned and isolated. Many blamed previous governments for withdrawing in the face of Human expansion. Zeeann was more appalled by the xenophobia that those ancient Creators betrayed. Humans were vermin, evil and cruel. Their societies were malformed and not worth saving. Zeeann’s reaction to what she saw and heard was initially one of outrage. Then she recalled her views before she had met Art. Zeeann felt ashamed.
“Not all Creators were isolationist bigots,” said Asclepius. “Many of us worked tirelessly to improve the lot of Humanity. We may have the ulterior motive of making the galaxy safer but still we did good deeds.”
“But I was one of those bigots,” said Zeeann, with tears streaming down her face.
Asclepius looked at his daughter and wondered if her half-Human pregnancy was beginning to upset her emotional stability.
“You have more than redeemed yourself,” he said. “You have done what your mother could not. You will be the holy mother of our salvation.”
As Asclepius spoke those words, the lights in the cabin began to pulse.
“Asclepius and Zeeann, please attend in the control room,” said the mechanical voice of the entity.
Rings of light pulsed down the corridor showing them which way to go. Both Asclepius and Zeeann knew that such signposting was completely unnecessary. Every Creator knew exactly where he or she was and had the ability to memorise the most complex maps at a glance.
So why is the builder doing this? thought Zeeann, sending her question to her father.
Asclepius did something very human in return, he winked.
On entering the control room, both Creators were surprised to see a holographic figure standing behind the control panel. The figure gestured theatrically and the lights stopped pulsating. Coming closer, Zeeann saw the projection was a cross between a Human and a Creator. The tall black and grey form had a slightly narrower version of Zeeann’s face: the eyes wear a bit smaller and closer together. Instead of straight hair tied back like hers, the hologram had dreadlocks of the type Art wore when she had last seen him. The shoulders were just as broad as hers but so was the chest. The entity had chosen to be a powerful and determined looking male.
“I hope my appearance does not unsettle you,” said the holographic humanoid. “It is a tribute to you, Zeeann, and the children you bear.”
“Does that mean you are going to help us?” said Zeeann.
Before the entity could reply, Asclepius, interrupted.
“Tell me entity, all the cabins on board, did you carry the Human colonists back to Ancient Greece?”
“Yes, I had the honour of doing just that,” said the figure that was half Human, half Creator. “The individuals who travelled back in time with me were some of the noblest creatures I had ever met.”
“Then why, when I told you our story, did you keep interrupting asking for more details about Humans? You knew the facts already,” said Asclepius.
“Because I wanted to be sure you shared my good opinion of Humanity.”
“Entity, now you know that we are not bigots,” said Zeeann almost becoming exasperated. “Can you, please, tell us if you are going to help?”
“We are all going to help. The entire fleet is already at work,” said the entity, as a giant vidscreen lit up. There were multiple images of the giant machines gorging on comets, asteroids, moons and smaller planetoids.
“I apologise for making you wait but I had to convince my colleges that they could trust you and, by implication, how vital their participation was. You see, even we machines grow weary and lazy after thousands of years of inactivity.”
“And now, if we are successful, you will face even more waiting,” said Zeeann
“Saving the galaxy will be more than enough compensation.”
+
Asclepius spent weeks going over his plans with the builder while the fleet hoovered up the solar system. The science of portal building contained mathematics that some Humans would recognise as quantum mechanics or string theory but it was even more complex. The Creator race had spent generation after generation trying to discover a theory of everything that could consolidate the science of the infinitesimally small with the theories of relativity and gravity. Eventually, they had given up, but not before developing a highly complex set of interlocking theorems that gave them partial control of time travel.
While Asclepius slaved over the figures with the builder, Zeeann spent hours watching the solar system being dismantled. The builder set up a holotable in her cabin so she could be comfortable while the destruction progressed. Zeeann was transfixed as six behemoth builder ships scooped up the atmosphere of a gas giant. They whirled around the planet sucking plumes of methane, hydrogen and methane into their craws, where the gasses were compressed into solids and held in a gravity bottle. Eventually the solid core of the planet was exposed. The holotable told her it had 15 times the mass of her own home world. As one, the six giant, planet breakers aimed their ion canon at the core. After several hours of intense bombardment, the core exploded into fragments. The six behemoths widened their jaws and resumed their dance, chewing up the rocky remains.
Zeeann wondered if she should be watching such violent destruction. She already felt a primitive telepathic link with the foeti growing within her. She turned off the holotable and began to meditate. Although she tried to turn her mind away from the obliteration going on all around, her consciousness reached out. Her spatial sense could feel the mass of the solar system being gathered to one spot near a planet. After the new wormhole had been created, all that would be left of this system would be the nondescript sun and that single planet. Zeeann could not but grieve over the extent of the annihilation. Every world and planetoid had the possibility of bringing forth life. This solar system was being reduced to a single place where life might prosper, another desert planet like her home world.
Zeeann let the grief wash through her as the outside world faded away. Then she felt a kick, then another and a third. Her babies were signalling their presence. She realised that she had been pregnant for thirty days, a crucial juncture for developing foetuses. Creator women normally gave birth after 120 days. It was an evolutionary trait: with large heads and wide shoulders, delivery beyond four human months was dangerous for both the child and the mother. Zeeann was a quarter of the way through her pregnancy. At this stage, the tiny foetuses should have discernible brains, brains that could communicate. These were the telepathic kicks she could feel.
That evening, when Asclepius joined her, the elderly Creator was bone tired after a day of following an intricate skein of numbers from one theorem to the next. On entering the cabin, he could hardly speak. His mind radiated a fuzz of exhaustion as his mind continued to turn over the figures he had weighed during the day.
“The children are singing,” said Zeeann with a radiant smile.
Almost at once, Asclepius’ mind stopped whirring and focused on Zeeann. He knelt on the floor beside the bed and put his hands on her swollen belly. He remained very still for minute after minute. Occasionally, he would make comments like “they are beautiful,” “they are aware of each other and are happy to be siblings” or “you would not think they were half-human.”
“Father,” said Zeeann at the last comment. “Having human qualities is not a fault.”
“Indeed not, daughter, it is the meld of our two races that promises salvation. All I was saying is that their telepathic voices are as strong as any I have heard.”
“Father, I believe many Humans are telepathic. Art certainly had potential capabilities.”
“He certainly managed to hide his mind from you, the Oracle.”
“Only at first, father. He opened up completely in the Pool of Conjunction.”
Asclepius put his hands on her bel
ly once more.
“If your children have his best qualities along with yours, they will be special indeed.”
“Father, they will be special come what may.”
+++
The solar system that had been the grave yard for the builder behemoths for millennia had now been nearly emptied. The single remaining planet had been shifted to an orbit closer to the brown dwarf. The world would never be habitable by any intelligent species. A few primitive lifeforms might cling to the planet’s thermal vents or survive under damp rocks in the equatorial valleys.
For the moment the planet orbited the magnetic field which contained most of the mass of the rest of the system. Even the brown dwarf sun waltzed in a dance as the gargantuan mass twirled about. Eighteen builder behemoths kept the gathered matter in check. Their giant generators kept the magnetic bottle sealed while the gravity engines squeezed from all sides. Kilometre by kilometre, the sphere of condensed matter was contracting. Atom wave beams disrupted the normal forces that kept the fundamental particles apart. Protons behaved like neutrons and began packing closer and closer. Electrons clustered together with impossible probability. The entire ball of writhing mass was now smaller than a medium size moon. It was on the verge of an irreversible cascade.
In the control room, Zeeann and Asclepius watched the final moments of the transition. Several clocks were counting down, some at different rates from the others. The biggest digital display was hanging above the holotable. The entity swept his shadowy hands over the control board as if it was the hologram rather than the entity supervising events.
“We are moments away from forming an event horizon,” said the tall grey figure with dreadlocks, looking more like some old shaman that an AI.
“What about the orientation of the black hole’s spin?” asked Asclepius.
“Entirely within the parameters,” said the entity.
