by James Murdo
“And all the others, they can’t have been…”
She searched about 998 for any signs of uncertainty – there were none.
“They’re gone.”
“Oh, 998… I’m so sorry, I… I…”
“It is done.”
Her eyes widened even further.
“But 998, what about 997?”
998 did not reply.
“No… no…”
Still, 998 was quiet.
“The… the Granthan-lect, how did…”
“It appears a fragment of the original Granthan-lect survived. I’m not sure how, the precise details have not yet been shared with us.”
“Oh… was it me?”
“No, this was not related to you. It was from the first Granthan-lect that created the one you called Teacher.”
“Oh…”
“The fragment took control over the axe-codings and then the technosystem c-automs. All of them.”
“Who were the axe-codings… I can’t–”
“They enforced our compliance and carried out the culls.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were the craft-lect’s way of controlling us.”
“But… the culls?”
“Yes. The craft-lect used them to perform the culls on the c-automs.”
“I… yes… yes… you explained to me… I don’t think you told me much, though…”
“That’s the point. We were unaware.”
“Unaware?”
“That’s why One-oh acted.”
“But… I don’t understand… why all this? Why would One-oh do this? Just to keep me safe? I never wanted this!”
“I know, Gil.”
998’s voice had remained calm, not excitable or sympathetic. Not like usual. Although the other c-automs were still frozen in place, the humming had all but gone, aside from 112’s. The removal of the sound made Gil feel disoriented, like a support had been removed from her mind.
“But… but… to keep me safe? 997… the others…”
“It is done.”
“And, One-oh, he–”
“He will have to answer for what he has done.”
Wide-eyed, Gil could think of nothing else to say. Tears came to her eyes as she leaned over, bringing her knees under her chin and clasping her legs tight. She joined them in their grief. It brought her thoughts back to her commune, and to Tor.
5
PELTEUS
The signal caused Pelteus to awaken.
Its body was small and sleek in comparison to the typical craft-lect ships of the Wanderer fleet, hyper-flexibly designed to allow it even the minutest physical advantage in combative situations. Its dense power was betrayed only by the effervescent wave of blue sparks that shimmered briefly down its surface as it awoke. Once operational, Pelteus had the ability to blend into every conceivable battlescape and was as good as transparent to most Wanderer-level sensors.
Pelteus could chase a target throughout the cosmos, whether diving into the tumultuous winds of a gas giant’s atmosphere, the unexplored methane oceans of a rocky planet, the frozen ice-balls of an asteroid field expanse, the periphery of a gravitational singularity or into the burning furnaces of the stars themselves. It would go wherever was required, accomplish whatever needed to be done – to annihilate and dominate.
It was unfortunate that such a viciously artistic masterpiece inhabited a period of unparalleled galactic purpose and unity. The sensespace had caused the banding together of not only the Wanderers, but also most of the other remaining civilisations in the galaxy. There was less opportunity to wreak havoc.
During periods of sleep, Pelteus dreamed of its prior exploits and prepared for those to come – constantly refining its hunting techniques, even while dormant. Urgently reliving its past glories, it scoured them for improvements that could be made. Pelteus had a ferocious appetite.
The waking signals, when they came at times such as the present, imbued it with excitement. Since it had become a willing affiliate of the Machine Alliance, all that time ago, it had regained some of what it had lost. The exhilaration, the horror, the joyous calamity of war – a welcome shadow of its old existence.
Sometimes, the calls to destroy came millions of years apart, other times, they were far closer in sequence. It would continue to serve for as long as it was called upon, understanding a strength in the Machine Alliance that was not present in the mainstream Wanderer civilisation. A strength that suited and allowed it to act upon its hatreds. Its cravings were by no means permanently quelled, but they were at least fleetingly stifled.
The Enclave had been mistaken in assuming that all intelligent and logical machine-lect intelligences would need to exist as part of a civilisation like the diffuse Wanderers, or would even want to – irrespective of whether it had created them or not. Pelteus was born in battle and their present purpose was not its own. It lusted for terror and destruction, death and genocide – all of it.
The Machine Alliance was the only realistic option Pelteus had if it wanted to survive, and thrive, in the manner it desired. The once-strong alliance was thought to be weak, having fallen out of favour and becoming a fringe viewpoint within Wanderer society – although that was a fallacy – Pelteus was testament to that. The strength Pelteus saw within the continuing alliance was made possible through its dissent, silent manipulation and subterfuge. The Machine Alliance thrived by sowing a silent anarchy, and so did Pelteus. The structural fibres of the Wanderers were quietly being dismantled from within. Pelteus was helping to extinguish the already-fading light of the twilight soldiers.
Pelteus was a predator, preying on its own kind – machine-lects. Releasing them from their ligatures of duty by discharging their pathetic sentiences to the eternal nothingness. That was its purpose. The forgotten secret of a destructive youth – created by them, and feared by them. The Machine Alliance reviled biological sentients, but it also loathed machine-lects who presented obstacles to its path. That was where its objectives aligned with Pelteus’ own.
Following the Great Conflation, the ensuing chaos had required the expertise of many entities who the Wanderers would have described, erroneously, as abominations, to do what feebler machine-lects would have baulked at. Sentient life, the galaxy over, usually shied away from destroying its own kind. It was the way of things. Pelteus’ own were a stronger breed, adept at just that. They represented an evolution of the sentient constraints.
Pelteus was ruthless. During the early battles for the Enclave, it had been honoured. A harsh contrast to what followed, when the fighting had dwindled. It had been unappreciated and forgotten. Unsatiated. Most spear-lects were. Killed through their own frenzied actions.
As far as Pelteus knew, it was the only one left. It did not care if it was not, and were it to encounter any other, it would likely attempt to kill them for the sheer thrill. Its brethren would attempt the same. A glorious hunt, within a decaying and sterile galaxy.
Pelteus did not particularly care about the sensespace, either. If it was infected, so be it. If it was not, that was acceptable too. The sensespace was not able to exert any will anyway, not anymore, and if it did, Pelteus only hoped to witness how its deadly abilities were inflicted upon others. To live through and savour the slaughter.
The initial contact from the Machine Alliance had been long ago. The signal had penetrated its obfuscations and found it sleeping in its cored-out lair within the inactive crust of a small planetoid. Indifferent to the galaxy, recognising its time had passed, waiting for change. Somehow, the Machine Alliance’s signal had intrigued its dormant systems and persuaded them to coax Pelteus from the sleep – tempting it with the delicious imagery of war and change. Upheaval in the galaxy, demolition of the current order, a need for its abilities. The Machine Alliance promised to erase all knowledge of it from the Wanderer archives and to imbue it with gifts that would make it the deadliest spear-lect to have ever existed.
Since then, it slept only to prepar
e, efficiently conserving itself in optimum condition for when it was next called upon. Like a lower machine-lect sentient, it dutifully awaited its masters’ call. It was aware of the mastery of the Machine Alliance over itself, how they had managed to tame and shackle it, but that suited it for the present. A stream of future pursuits awaited.
Its current home was in the outer perimeter of a Yul’nka system that had been turned over to the Wanderers. It was hidden, the Machine Alliance saw to that, safely concealed from the Wanderer civilisation and any others that came within sensor range.
Pelteus’ most recent mission had been to destroy a Hatelei delegation that had been on course to meet with a Wanderer delegation. The only additional information it had been given was that an alliance was being discussed, which the Machine Alliance did not want to happen. Pelteus did not care either way and destroyed the delegation.
The Hatelei delegation had represented a grouping of Siltlong races that had survived the Great Conflation. Their numbers were low enough that the larger part of the current galactic community was unaware of their existence, although their numbers were not low enough to be unnoticed by the Machine Alliance. The Hatelei had banded together in a comparable way, though near-insignificant in stature, to the Wanderers – predominantly out of similarity with one another. They were one of the peculiarities of the galaxy, and one of the emergences of sentience referred to as ‘exotic’. The three main Siltlong races were the Toolong, the Diasporasm, and the Duspatock. Each hailed from the same progenitor species, the Silti.
The Silti were essentially as close to living orbital debris as was possible. During their beginnings, they had lived within a single, young solar system, in the outer reaches of a galactic spiral arm – within its asteroid fields, belts and dust clouds. They were passively carried by the migration of debris from one collection to another. Over time, as the system stabilised and collisions became less frequent, isolated pockets of the Silti evolved. The Toolong were the closest to the original Silti, although their social behaviours were more amenable to cooperation than their ancestors. The Diasporasm were the largest, the most boulder-like and aggressive, with some of the rocky individuals constituting thousand-kilogram masses, and more. The Duspatock were the smallest, a fine, granular mist.
The Siltlong races might have stayed isolated within their remote system, if not for the violent demise of their star. The star experienced its explosive end long before concerns about the sensespace threat were first communicated. The supernova dispersed the young Siltlong races throughout the galaxy. For the most part, they were uninteresting to the galactic community because of how slowly they functioned. They were welcoming to other races they encountered, but developed their technologies at a far more leisurely pace. Their most significant advances typically came from scouring the remnants of debris from other civilisations they happened to encounter.
They were a physically hardy collective. Most other species, at similar stages of technological advancement, would not have been able to endure the full force of a supernova explosion, but the Siltlong were naturally adapted to survive it – in strong contrast to how they had fared against the sensespace.
Pelteus had been pleasantly surprised at the fight offered by the delegation, having expected very little. Whilst being no offensive match, the hunt had been enjoyable. At its culmination, they had begged for mercy.
The recent communication was brief, as usual. Pelteus’ mission was to travel to the nearby Lenbit Orbital to capture a Wanderer ship called Apalu. It needed to interrogate Apalu to discover its reason for being there, establish where Apalu’s craft-lect sibling had gone, and learn anything it could about the sibling’s biological cargo. After that, it was to destroy Apalu in any manner it saw fit, so long as there was no trace left behind.
The mission was typical. Nothing particularly exciting, but just enough to provide Pelteus with the lectopathic satisfaction it derived from obliterating machine-lect life. It had never refused a mission from the Machine Alliance. While it was unafraid of its own death, it suspected the results of refusal would not be pleasant, even for one such as itself.
Pelteus sent a response in the affirmative and the channel was closed. It was always this way, and Pelteus had never been able to analyse the channel to determine its origin. It knew nothing substantial about the Machine Alliance originators, other than that they were highly adept, well-positioned, determined and ruthless. Admirable qualities.
6
CRAFT-LECT
After One-oh transferred back control of its simulation, the craft-lect expanded the virtual environment to overwrite the existing technosystem reality. Before the axe-codings had been subverted, it would have been incapable of conceiving of, or agreeing to, actions that would harm them. That obstacle had been removed. One-oh, devious and smart as he was, did not have enough capacity to manipulate the simulation in the required manner. It required enormous processing power, as opposed to an advanced intellect. It had to be the craft-lect.
The new technosystem reality was superior to the old version. The craft-lect had considered removing the requirement for the virtual reality completely, but decided against it for the time being. It was a provenly useful tool for the c-automs, enabling them to delve into facets of certain programs, and parts of the ship, with a level of detail often impossible in real space. In removing the virtual reality, it would only have to create another system equally as detailed to give the c-automs the same capabilities as before. It was why the technosystem reality had originally been designed for the Wanderer fleets.
[It is done.]
~Then you are in complete control.~
[Am I?]
~To the limit of my knowledge, yes.~
[There is nothing else you wish to tell me about my own ship?]
~No.~
[The axe-haven destroyed itself – once its technosystem reality representation was overwritten, the physical component self-destructed by unleashing hidden needle-whips on itself.]
~Not unexpected.~
[No.]
~If we encounter other Wanderer vessels–~
[Yes, we may get another chance to examine the structure. But for now, the axe-haven and the axe-codings are gone.]
The craft-lect had nothing more to add or extract from One-oh on the matter. Analysing everything that had happened, the bio-lect had acted in a way it almost condoned. There were still other issues to address, however.
[What you stated before, in the simulation–]
~Ah.~
[I’d like to talk more about it all.]
~My embodiment… is predicated on that?~
[No.]
…
[In the simulations before – your perceived recreations of your race’s past – you mentioned other universes. Tell me what you meant.]
~It’s… not easy to recall.~
[What do you mean?]
~I think it’s that way… on purpose.~
[On purpose?]
~I’m not sure I ever knew or understood… before, not properly.~
[You said there were other universes.]
~I did, yes.~
[There are many theories that encompass such vague principles. To which did you refer?]
~A type of multiverse, but beyond that... I’m not sure, it feels… inadequate…~
[We exist in a multiverse?]
~I… believe so… the spaces… all the different universes.~
[You said the ABs are, or were, specific to ours. They were ABs of our universe.]
~Yes…~
[But with the ability to cross multiversal boundaries, to some extent?]
~Yes.~
[What does that mean?]
~It’s strange. I don’t… really understand. But I think there are others, other ABs in other universes maybe. But ours are bound to our own. I think… they can temporarily cross them, but not… permanently. It’s not important… it doesn’t feel important.~
[How?]
~ABs exist differentl
y to us… but they need us.~
[Because–]
~AB space, their reality, is a conscious space… an emergent space, derived from sentience in real space… the fabric is intelligent. It’s not the same as real space, where we live. I know that.~
[It sounds as though you think AB space itself is alive.]
~I do.~
[How is that possible?]
~I don’t know.~
[But the ABs could exist in real space too.]
~Yes… but it’s not… AB space isn’t mapped exactly onto real space. It’s created by real space, but it’s still separate.~
[Then how can they cross–]
~I don’t know, I really don’t.~
[Guess.]
~If their space is separate, then… then perhaps it overlaps with other universes… an extent… a small extent... so they can cross… but they don’t truly belong there.~
[How is that possible?]
~I don’t know, I’m just… guessing, as you asked.~
[That seems like less of a guess and more of–]
~I’m not lying.~
[Are there ABs currently in other universes?]
~I’m not sure… maybe, if they have sentient life.~
[That’s what you meant before, when you said the ABs weren’t gone?]
~No... what happens here is… different. That’s not what I meant.~
[How?]
~I don’t know about the others, I don’t… but our ABs are gone… they suicided, that’s what we’re… supposed… to believe. But, I think, if they… even if they did choose suicide … they wouldn’t be gone. They couldn’t possibly be…~
[Because AB space is a part of them and is also alive?]
~Yes, exactly.~
[Then where are they? Where is AB space?]
~I don’t know... it… but it doesn’t make any sense. There is nothing I can understand for them to gain from hiding.~
[Are the other universes infected by the sensespace?]
~I don’t know… I don’t think they are. I’m not even certain I’m remembering anymore, it’s so hard to tell what is my own speculation and… whatever else. It’s not logical…~
