The Soul Continuum

by Simon West-Bulford

  Ironius reaches for his tie, loosens it, then nods.

  THIRTEEN

  The scene through the Navigation Sphere’s translucent floor is cataclysmic. It looks disturbingly similar to the hallucinations I experienced in the neural flush, but instead of bubbles filled with horrific faces, the heavens are lit by hundreds of spinning balls of light: an army of Consortiums waging war against an unstoppable and invisible enemy. I know Qod must be doing everything she can to protect my Consortium as a priority because this one holds the key to ending the madness.

  A single ray of white light stretches out from our core, ending in a single insignificant spot a million kliks away. In a few minutes it will collapse into a microscopic hypersingularity that, on contact, will catapult all the Consortiums to our remote destination. If we can survive long enough, all we need do is wait, but the speed at which individual Consortiums are being destroyed seems to be increasing, as if the Jagannath senses our goal and is increasing its efforts.

  Millions of years have come and gone since I last saw ionized barriers raised, and even then, their charged energy could be seen only fleetingly when struck by something. Now, however, the barriers of Consortiums about to be destroyed are lit up so brightly they look like exploding suns. No longer are they testing fingers of glowing light. These are massive fronds of energy like writhing tentacles, thrashing around the Consortiums’ spheres, vibrating them so violently that they splinter and collapse in minutes, and as their spheres crumple, vortexes appear with arced tusks of light lined around their circumferences so that they appear as gnashing maws biting down on the doomed structures. One Consortium fires blindly at the enemy, a barrage of quantum missiles, searing green lasers and lightning discharges blasting outward but striking nothing, great spherical waves of poryon energy radiating outward every two seconds to consume the enemy, only to fizzle into ash. Their defiance lasts but a few more fraught moments, and then they are gone, swallowed in eternal darkness.

  “Reminds me of the Shakrimion colonies,” Ironius says grimly.

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Long time ago, yes. Ever seen that planet?”

  “No.”

  “Good for you. I died there. Actually, everyone died there.” He pauses to watch a nanospider crawling away from my right foot, then carefully places a heel on it to crush it. “I was a soldier back then, part of the Black Platoon. Operation Noah’s Flood, they called it. We were twenty thousand strong, sent to end the Meme Plague and cleanse the infected population before they tried to escape the system and spread the disease. It was supposed to be quick and clean. Nobody expected the nanodrones to be infected, but why wouldn’t they be?”

  A bright flare lights Ironius’s face, causing him to blink.

  Soul Consortium seventeen has been consumed by an unknown aggressor.

  “It was night,” Ironius continues, frowning at the scene outside. “We spread out in position, ready to blow the charges and get out of there, but they were ready. We didn’t see them, couldn’t detect them at all, and then snap”—he clicks his fingers—“just like that, the man next to me vaporizes, burnt out of existence. A few seconds later—snap—another one gone, then another and another. It was random and we couldn’t do a damn thing. Whole platoon, taken out in a few hours . . . just like this.”

  I stare out at the battle, shielding my eyes as another Soul Consortium tries in vain to defend itself.

  “Whose life did you live?” I ask.

  He grins without humor. “Nobody’s. That was my life.”

  “Yours? But we’ve lived the same life. I don’t remember—”

  “Maybe you erased the memory, or maybe”—his grin widens—“it’s because I’ve got a dirty secret.”

  I have the feeling Ironius isn’t going to tell me what that is about, and I don’t have time to play his games or think on it. Communication is being patched in from one of the other Consortiums on a general broadcast.

  “All, this is Seventy-Seven. Listen carefully. Shalom has analyzed the Jagannath attack pattern and I have devised a defensive strategy in response. The Jagannath is focusing its greatest efforts on one Consortium at a time; the other attacks are relatively harmless diversions to provide the appearance of continuous and simultaneous assault. It is using a complex but predictable sequence to select its targets. There is a very small window of opportunity before each real attack begins, and our weaponry is completely ineffective, so we should all configure our navigation systems to be ready to jump one klik away the moment it begins focusing on its target. Our counterstrategy won’t last long before it changes the sequence. The next target will be iteration eighty-four. Be ready. If we can—”

  I don’t hear the rest of his words. Directly ahead, the Observation Sphere centers on a single bright spot of white light: a hyperslipstream node generated by our enhanced drive, and with the promise of using it, the algorithm sends a shot of endorphins through me.

  “Control Core, I need to interrupt Seventy-Seven’s broadcast. Patch me in and send the slipstream coordinates to all other Soul Consortiums.”

  Broadcasting. Coordinates sent.

  “Thank you, Seventy-Seven,” I say, “but save your strategy, our slipstream node is ready and we must all go through. All of you, follow my lead. If I am right, we are about to find the source of the Jagannath’s power, and with a combined assault, we could end this.”

  I nod to Ironius. He nods, and I give the command to initiate.

  FOURTEEN

  Some of the Soul Consortiums are still aflame when they come through, some are darkened wrecks, but many are still whole. Now that the algorithm has taken us to this place, our hope rests with the notion that our combined might is enough to deal with whatever it is that feeds the Jagannath’s power, but if our performance so far is any kind of measure, our chances of ending this through an act of force seem remote.

  “Qod,” I say, “are you still with us?”

  More Soul Consortiums shimmer into view, still enveloped by the stormy Jagannath clouds, but I am at least relieved to hear the welcome voice of Qod.

  “Yes, Salem, I’m still with you, but I don’t have long to talk. I believe our sudden relocation has confused the Jagannath attack, and the hyperslipstream bridge is stable, so we can still expect more iterations to come through, but the attack will escalate again soon, I can feel the pressure of it. What do you intend to do now that we’re here?”

  “Improvise. I sense from the algorithm that we’re about to find something critical to the Jagannath’s existence here. Reason with it, disable it, destroy it, bargain with it, whatever it takes. It’s all over otherwise. Everything is.”

  Ironius folds his arms and gazes upward. “Have you detected anything, Qod?”

  “No,” she says, “but we offset the coordinates ten astronomical units from the target.”

  “And can you detect anything at the actual coordinates?” I ask.

  “Nothing, but that’s to be expected,” she says. “I still don’t understand why you’ve come here. This region is the farthest extension of the Outer Phoradian Gulf. If there is anything out this far, it is beyond even my ability to analyze. But . . .”

  She goes silent.

  “Qod?”

  “There is . . . something . . . or . . .”

  I glance at Ironius, he glances back, and I know he is feeling the same sense of discomfort, even fear. If Qod is nervous, then we should all be nervous, but the urgency of the algorithm is pulling at me harder than any of my fears, and I can already see one of the Consortiums glowing brighter as it resists another attack.

  “Take us to the coordinates, Qod. Something has to be there.”

  She says nothing, but the subtle change in perspective of the other Soul Consortiums tells me she has begun the maneuver.

  “What do you expect to find there?” Ironius asks.

  I do not know how to answer. It could be anything. A star, a planet or moon, or some other rogue astral body. It could be s
ome sort of technological behemoth waiting for us, but I cannot shake the feeling it is beyond any of that. My greatest fear is that it is a manifestation of the Jagannath itself and that so far we have only experienced a projection of its power.

  “I don’t know, but I think we are about to find out.”

  Something shifts in the distance, deep in the darkness, but it is less like a thing and more like the absence of a thing. There should be nothing in a Phoradian Gulf. It is a fantastically huge expanse of space where no atoms are present, though I know, from the knowledge I gleaned from Diabolis Evomere, that there are patterns of force and form existing in the so-called void that do not ordinarily interact with the matter and energy we have mastered. But to us, this region is the deep nothingness of the Quantum Abyss, the exact same hellish emptiness I have instinctively dreaded for so long. Not even light exists here. Our cosmos and all its cousins, exploding and dying in different sizes and velocities across the universe like raindrops in a puddle, have expanded so far apart that their light has no hope of reaching their neighbors.

  Out here, we are the only light.

  Against that light, the shadow ahead shrinks away like a sinister wraith. There is something here. Or rather, there is something not here. Perspective and imagination are skewed, and as we get closer I find myself rubbing my eyes, squinting, blinking, and jerking my head to make sense of the visual paradox coming into view. My eyes tell me nothing is there. Yet I know I am seeing . . . something. I feel like a stone statue that has been brought to life, trying to understand what sentience is; each time I think I am understanding a form, something like a churning wind smudges the impression, and a sensation of vertigo forces me to look away. That, and the resurgence of pain—a thing I am still not used to experiencing. Several times I try to look at the thing ahead, until eventually it seems that the very effort of comprehending its form has allowed something like raw fear to invade my skull, penetrating bone and matter, acidic emotion eating through my synapses. Not content with confusing my eyes and bringing pain, it is confusing my sense of hearing, too. A bass vibration like the growl of a dangerous animal surrounds us, growing in volume, increasing in pitch until I clutch my temples, screaming. Beside me, Ironius has dropped to his knees, gripping one of the fallen girders, clenching his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut in futile resistance.

  It takes me several seconds to conquer the mounting agony, and I try to focus on something else, anything else. Our companion Soul Consortiums speed alongside us, following our lead toward our destination, and I redouble my efforts to look at the un-thing ahead, willing my senses into submission, conquering the compulsion to look away.

  Like a root system or some titanic flailing anemone, a nest of serpentine cracks festers in the darkness, complex and writhing at the relatively small epicenter but less intense and slower at the extremities. Like Vieta’s jewel, it emanates indigo light from the cracks. We must have passed some kind of warning barrier, because the initial pain and agonizing sound is gone (or now understood and compensated for by the Control Core) and I stare dumbstruck at the phenomenon, still trying to makes sense of it, not speaking, just observing.

  Ironius steps forward, crosses his arms, and grins. “That, my friend, is another rift.”

  “Correct,” Qod says, “but this one is here by design. The rift we caused in the Promethean Singularity is crude. It was an accident, with very limited access to whatever might exist on the other side. This—whatever it is you brought us to—is a wide-open door.”

  “Another rift?” I say. “But we don’t know how to close it. We haven’t even been able to close the one we created.”

  “Salem!” The sound of an alarmed Qod is enough to send my heart into my mouth.

  “What is it?”

  “Movement. Form. Energy. Everywhere. We’re under attack. Worse . . . than before. We have to get out of here. I can’t . . . sustain . . .”

  “Good,” says Ironius.

  I look at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘good’?”

  “It means the Jagannath is terrified, you imbecile. Why else would it act so desperately? We have to take our stand. It’s why Oluvia Wade sent us here, isn’t it? Why would she just send you here without a way to close it?”

  Ironius gazes at me expectantly, but I have nothing.

  “Well?” he insists. “You have to go in there.”

  “No, Salem.” The voice is Qod’s. “You . . . must not.”

  “Ironius is right,” I tell her. “It’s our only hope. Whatever Oluvia knew, whatever she passed on through that algorithm, is all we have. We have to trust her. What other choice do we have?”

  Qod does not answer.

  FIFTEEN

  My insignificant scout pod—without defense or weaponry—is the only way to reach the rift. Teleportation would have been my preferred method; the journey would have been over in the blink of an eye. No waiting, and none of the fear that accompanies a journey, but the rift defies all attempts at locking local target coordinates. It will take around sixty standard minutes to get there at near light speed, and every five of those means the destruction of another Soul Consortium. My guess is that I am now too insignificant a target for the Jagannath to care about, but that is all it is—a guess. My heart is pounding so hard as my little pod weaves through the clouds of chaos, it is all I can hear, and I cannot decide if I really want to see what is happening around me. One moment I opaque the skin of the pod so that all I can see is a smooth white wall, but the next, I command the skin to be translucent, and the full ugly spectacle of war is visible. Except that this is no war. In war, both sides take casualties. Here, the enemy seems invulnerable.

  After thirty minutes I am five AUs distant from the battle, escaping the perimeter of the carnage, no longer buffeted by the gravitational eddies of collapsing Soul Consortiums and no longer tortured by the sight of them crackling into impotent glowing embers. With my back to the rift, all I see is a stretch of golden mist where my brothers have gathered. In a perverse way, the scene is quite beautiful as I speed away from it. A nova flare here, a splash of light there. Another victim. The emerging patterns of glowing debris remind me of nebula formation, and I have spent so many years delightedly watching those. But nebulas eventually become calm as the elements cool, and I begin to wonder how long this holocaust can continue and how many other Consortiums Seventy-Seven was able to recruit. Did he give others the same task? Could an infinite quantity of Soul Consortiums be arriving here, only to provide a never-ending supply of food for this conflict?

  I turn my back on the war, ashamed that I can find beauty in such destruction and that I am more interested in speculation than the suffering contained in those images. I swivel my seat to look at the rift instead, forcing myself to suffer the vision of it, a sort of penance. I am almost there now, and its scale is terrifying. The center of it is probably no larger than an average gas giant planet, but the myriad extremities flailing outward like the tentacles of a kraken in the final paroxysm of death suggest something much larger. It is like an animal, full of rage and power, its reaching tendrils of unreality thrashing and squirming, and the vertigo is almost unbearable. I consider turning my back on it again, but an awe overtakes me, my mind suddenly bursting wide open into a new paradigm of experience. Whether it is the algorithm or simply a delayed response to the thing before me, I am unable to speculate, but I am reminded of a life I once lived that was polluted by the abuse of mind-modification software designed to enhance emotional response to external stimuli. The man’s last few days were a vile spiral into terror and tears and madness, but before the end, it was like a vision of heaven had caught him.

  It feels much like that now. Gods. Humanity has always needed them, always sought them, and it’s like I have found the kernel of that hardwired instinct. I feel like I have come home, or like I have passed into a state of being that recognizes my eons-long life to be nothing more than the kindling for an inferno in which I am about to be consumed. But
I am not dead. I am more alive than I have ever been, caught in rapture, devoured by an unparalleled consciousness, and as if falling into a waking dream, I am no longer inside my pod.

  Suddenly, the elation is gone. Like a helpless insect lured by the sweet honey smell of a carnivorous plant, still struggling to escape, my mind tries to cling to the exultant feeling that I have transcended the inconsequential existence on the other side of consciousness. But the fantasy slips away, and suddenly I am suspended in deep indigo light, snapped back into the reality of my body, very much aware of its paralysis. There is a presence here, an icy intelligence close but invisible. Something or someone watches me, a million eyes assessing and deliberating as one. I fight to take a breath, instinctively wriggling my fingers and toes against the rigidity of my muscles, and as I choke, I panic, wondering why the Jagannath has decided upon this mode of death.

  But soon the sensation passes, breathing becomes easier, and there is a gentle tug of gravity causing the tips of my toes to brush against something smooth and . . . pleasant. Wet sand! There is wet sand cool against the soles of my bare feet. The rhythm of my breath calms. It matches tempo with the soft whoosh and hiss of waves lapping a beach, and the indigo space surrounding me recedes into familiar landscape. A line of tall white houses skirts the border of grassy plains a mile from shore, and there is a scattering of smooth boulders for the sea foam to froth upon. I can even see gulls circling above them, hunting for scraps. This is Saliel, the last home of Salomi Deya, exactly as I remember it, in perfect detail.

  For the length of an excited heartbeat I think I am home. I think that I have woken from some terrible dream and that I will run to meet three friends on the beach to run and splash and laugh. But then I see the tower. The ominous hulking form of Keitus Vieta glaring down at me from high above, ready to come alive and step on me like a worm. I want to run from it, but I am still paralyzed, forced to look at him. He should not be here invading Salomi’s life, invading mine, but worse still, the statue is Keitus Vieta no more. His form is changing, shifting to become one with the beach, turning to sand. My eyes are helplessly locked to his as the metamorphosis continues, but I am aware that the sand is turning graphite black, becoming more animated, keeping cohesion but writhing, as if each grain has a life of its own. And then I realize these are nanodrones in one of their earliest designs. These are the drones that Salomi’s mother engineered, the ones that were reconfigured to destroy the community.