Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  Lori tried to imagine what they must have been like and failed. A race so advanced that they were magic. Whatever they wished, they could have. “Where are they now?” she asked. “Here?”

  “No. And yes. And maybe. That is the impossible question, and it has a lot of answers, not all of them verifiable. You—all of us—would think that such an existence would be the ultimate one, and it probably was for quite a while. They banished fear and want and desire and even death. They probably had a lot of fun, maybe for millions of years, but after a while something we might not imagine happened.”

  “They started losing it?” Campos guessed. “No. They grew bored. Horribly, horribly bored. Have any of you ever played any gambling game? Any game of chance at all?”

  They all nodded. “Of course,” Campos responded. “What would happen if you discovered one day that you couldn’t lose. That you could never lose?”

  “I would settle a lot of old scores and wind up owning the world!” Campos replied.

  But Lori said, “I think I see what you mean. It would get boring. It wouldn’t be any fun anymore. If you can’t lose, then winning is meaningless.”

  “Yes, precisely so. And that’s what happened to them. Life lost all its meaning. There was nothing more to learn, nothing more to do that they hadn’t all done a thousand times, no surprises, no reason for existence anymore.”

  “You mean they killed themselves out of boredom?” Lori was appalled.

  “The ancient records imply that this is indeed what started happening; others went a bit mad, imagining a higher state beyond where they were and believing that they had a way to get there—which also, of course, meant death if they were wrong. It was the first crisis they faced in so long it was beyond their memory, so they got together and tried to figure out why being omnipotent was so empty. They couldn’t believe that a permanent state of ultimate happiness was impossible, since their whole racial effort had been directed for so long at attaining just that, so they came up with the only other answer they could. They figured that they were somehow flawed. That they had evolved incorrectly. And since their experiments showed that they would wind up the same way if they started from scratch, they decided that their whole race had evolved wrongly, that it was impossible to reach that state as the First Race. It sounds crazy, I know, and perhaps it is, but that’s the way they thought. Which of us could understand their thinking? And thus came about their Great Project.”

  “I do not think that I would get so bored,” Campos commented. “Such power!”

  “Perhaps. But we are not they. As I was saying, the Great Project. Even now I don’t think we can even understand it. It is very unclear. It seems, however, that a giant experiment and computer—you know what a computer is? Good!—was built the size of a reasonable planet. On it, 1,560 laboratories, in fact, were built, each containing a unique ecosystem. They took beings from worlds where life had evolved, and they in many cases altered or speeded up the evolution of those races. In some cases, what had once been animals became a thinking and dominant race. In other cases, they made things up from whole cloth, often taking variations of ideas done by others. The idea was to create and test as large and varied a selection of potential master races starting from different worlds and backgrounds, to try and design the one system that would in fact produce the heaven they dreamed of. The laboratory areas, tightly controlled to make them simulate the theoretical planets and systems they’d invented, were divided into two segments. Since about half of all life that had evolved in the universe, including apparently them, was based on carbon, half the world was given over to carbon-based life-forms. The other half, just to be sure, was given over to non-carbon-based forms, like silicon, even pure energy and for forms with alternative atmospheres like ammonia and methane. A great barrier was placed between the two halves so that they could not interact with one another, and the non-carbon-based half had extra barriers guarding against one environment polluting another. The southern half was the carbon-based half. You are carbon-based, as am I, so we are in the south.”

  Lori was fascinated. “You mean this is the laboratory? And the experiment is still going on?”

  “Well, this is the laboratory world, yes, but we think the experiment is long over with. In fact, it is somewhat humbling to realize that someone else got first crack. The last ones to have at it were the bottom of the barrel—still godlike creatures, nonetheless. We here now are, sad to say, among the last created. We call our current state the Last Races, for obvious reasons.”

  “Fifteen hundred and sixty different races?” Lori said as much as asked. “All here? Now? How big is this place, anyway?”

  “Not huge, but big enough. Unfortunately, the translator has limits, one of which is measurement systems. From what I have learned from watching the recordings of prior entries here, I gather we are somewhat close to the same size as your home world.”

  “Huh? On a world the size of Earth, you’ve got 1,560 little worlds? It sounds like a collection of small domes.”

  “No, no, it’s not like that. You will see.”

  “You were talking about those god creatures,” Juan Campos put in. “You never said why they did this thing or what happened to them.” He didn’t like the idea of a whole race of godlike beings looking over his shoulder.

  “Oh, yes. Well, it is unclear what happened, but it is clear that for the experiments to prove that their systems had possibilities, they used themselves.”

  “What?” This was getting too much for Lori to handle. “You mean they became the races they invented?”

  “So it would seem. All but the control group. That one worked on the ‘next phase’ of evolution some thought must exist. They were also supposed to be the guardians to ensure that those who became part of the experiment might be able to back out. After a while, though, it didn’t happen. The control group vanished—nobody knows where or how or why. Some say they found their higher state. Others say they killed themselves attempting it. It is unknown what happened, but one thing was sure: When they left, no pure members of the First Race remained. The First Race had been consumed by retaking on mortality in the course of its experiment. The new races that had proved themselves were moved out to worlds to begin a natural evolution. Only the last series of experiments were left, and because there was no control, they were never shut down even when they were used as the templates for worlds like the one you came from. Nobody left here knew how to get off of this world or how to get to, much less operate, the computer and machinery, so we have been here ever since, maintained by the master computer as we were, free only within the limits of its programming. You are here because all the First Race hex gates all over the universe were left switched on, all with this place as their terminus; there was no one to turn them off.”

  “I see,” Lori said, nodding. But she didn’t see, not totally. How did that explain this Alama, this Mavra Chang?

  “Two ancient terms have come down from those past ages,” the ambassador told them. “The word that appears to refer to this laboratory world seems to translate out, for no discernible reason, as ‘well.’ Thus we refer to this as the Well World. The operating computer that maintains it and us, and possibly a lot more, has the ancient name of the Well of Souls. Very poetic, actually.”

  “You said that most of them left the way we came in,” Juan Campos noted, thinking of what he and his family might do with access to all this. “Then there is a way to get out.”

  “Oh, certainly. You simply have to get into the master computer and give it the proper instructions. That’s obvious. The trouble is, the last race to leave locked the master computer and took the keys with them, as it were. It is likely that the gate you used—a meteor, I believe—was one of the gates used when your world was being prepared and designed for full habitation. A work-gang gate, as it were, parked somewhere after it was no longer needed. Some cosmic catastrophe jolted it out of its orbit, and it came down and snared you and the others. This happens. Some
races, as I have said, who are already spacefaring sorts have accidentally bumped into them, mostly on ancient, deserted worlds once inhabited by the First Race. The gates are locally controlled, and it appears that because the races involved are the recognized designs of the First Race, it can’t tell you apart from them. So it brings you here. And here you will remain for reasons I have already stated.”

  “You said that we were—what did you call it?—Glath something?” Lori said, thinking.

  “Glathriel. Yes. You are different in minor details but basically the same race and clearly of their origin. It is understandable that, stuck here over vast periods of time, differences would fade as evolution produced single uniform races, and that is pretty much the rule in all of the hexes.”

  “Hexes?” Campos prompted.

  “Yes. All of the experimental areas, the ‘nations’ of the Well World now, are hexagonal in shape except at the equator and at the poles. The ones abutting both are of more a wing shape but still manage six sides. The equator, as I said, is an impenetrable barrier. None of us could survive for long in most of the North, and few of those races could survive here. There are a couple of exceptions, but not many. We do some limited trade and contacts through this zone—there is a local hex gate that goes between them— but very little. We haven’t much in common. Each hex also has its own local gate, but it will carry you only to here and then will return you back to your ‘native’ hex when you leave.”

  “Where is ‘here’ exactly in all this?” Lori asked him.

  “South Zone. The south polar region. The ‘cap,’ as it were. You cannot enter this zone except by the local hex gates or the way you arrived. You can leave only through the local gates. This area was once the social control center, transport hub, you name it, of the Great Project. Now it is used essentially as embassies for the various hexes. Not every hex has an ambassador or representative here—some do not socialize much with other races—though about half do, mostly the high-tech hexes and some of the semis.”

  “Huh?”

  “I told you each hex was an artificially created environment in which various conditions were duplicated or enforced to simulate real worlds. Resource- and food-rich worlds would eventually evolve technological civilizations. Those hexes are fully controlled by natural law, and many, like my own, are extremely developed. Others might have a very livable ecosystem but lack the sort of resources that would allow the easy development of a high-tech civilization. In those, some natural laws are, for lack of a better term, deactivated. Those are the semitech hexes, in which things like steam power are allowed, but not more advanced systems. In yet others, those with few resources or particularly harsh environments, survival itself was the primary aim and the races had to be tested on that basis. It was also thought, or so it is surmised, that these hexes might be an attempt to see if a race could attain perfection in a natural state and to explore the idea that machines and high technology might well be the corrupting influence. In these hexes only direct mechanical energy works. Muscle power, water power, and the like, but always in a preindustrial stage. Do not take them lightly. Some of them have developed amazing powers that seem almost like magic to the rest of us, although most are stagnant to a large degree.”

  “The other creatures—they are like you?” Campos asked.

  “Oh, my, no! Only the Kwynn are like the Kwynn. Our land is on the equator west of the Sea of Storms. And yes, there are vast ocean areas and water-breathing races who live here under the same rules. There are 1,560 different races. There are some similarities among these, even some outright mixture of racial traits. A Dillian might be considered a mixture of a draft animal from Glathriel and the dominant Glathrielian race, for example. There are also somewhat similar combinations of my own kind, from cold-blooded to warm, short to tall, and all sorts of mixtures. A few are, well, unique.”

  “You brought up this Glathriel again,” Lori noted. “Why don’t they have an embassy here?”

  “Glathriel was, as you might expect, a high-tech hex,” the Kwynn replied. “It reached a very high level very fast, partly because, it is said, they were so violent and warlike. In ancient times a king arose who decided to expand beyond his hex and conquer other hexes, either enslaving or exterminating the natives to increase his own race. A peaceful nontech agrarian hex that had an abundant supply of food and an extremely fertile land was to be the first target, since Glathriel had become too developed to support its own population and did not have sufficient trade to buy what it needed. This other race, the Ambreza, got wind of the plot and somehow created a kind of gas, harmless to Ambreza, that would interact with the atmosphere in Glathriel and become quickly pervasive. It appears to have altered brain chemistry or some such. In quite a short period of time, before they could even realize what was happening, it reduced the entire Glathrielian population to moron level, barely more than animals. The Ambreza then moved into Glathriel and enjoyed the benefits of high technology, then they rounded up the Glathrielians, perhaps a million of them, and forced them into Ambreza, where they are used as draft animals, tilling the fields under Ambreza plantation supervisors. Of course, the only account we have is the Ambreza one, so we don’t know if the Glathrielians were really that mean or simply outsmarted themselves by forgetting that nontech is not a synonym for ‘stupid,’ ‘ignorant,’ or ‘defenseless.’ ”

  “How horrible! And you said ‘are used.’ You mean they were genetically altered? They remain—moronic?”

  “No, not at all. But they remain a rather primitive bunch, I fear. Apparently, over the generations they achieved a tolerance for the gas, which is actually a derivative of a natural marsh product. The Ambreza retained a fairly good-sized chunk of the place for their plantations bordering on the new Ambreza, and the rest was left to the remaining Glathrielians, who regained their senses over time but never more than a fraction of their previous numbers. Indeed, their population has been stable at about fifteen or twenty thousand for as long as we have valid records. The rest of the hex that the Ambreza didn’t need was allowed to grow wild. Today they live in tribal groups as simple hunter-gatherers and remain very primitive. The Ambreza say that a wild plant they always considered a nuisance proved a mild drug to Glathrielians, who use it quite a lot.

  It has sapped their ambition as well as their fierceness and is at the center of their primitive homegrown religion. A few of the tribes are willing to work on the Ambreza plantations as farm labor, getting good-quality fruits and vegetables for their effort. Most consider the Ambreza devils, although they don’t really know why. They have totally lost their past.”

  Lori could just imagine the Glathrielians. All the

  Amazonians might feel right at home there. “But isn’t there some sense of guilt that these people should be so limited because of crimes by an ancestral group that nobody remembers except in the winner’s legends?” she asked.

  “One might say that,” the ambassador conceded, “but the vast gulf of time also argues for leaving them just that way. We are, after all, the leftovers from the Grand Experiment, no matter what we think of ourselves now; we are not the experiment itself. They are not that much different, and no worse off, than many other races and hexes. Indeed, we have only the Ambreza legends and the fact that when Ambrezans come here, they must leave to Glathriel, not their own hex, to show that there is any truth to it, anyway. After all this time, no one is much worried about it.”

  “Ain’t nobody gonna expose me to a gas that turns me into no animal!” Juan Campos declared. “I won’t let it happen!”

  “Nobody said it would,” the ambassador pointed out.

  “But you said we were Glath—those people! The place used to be ours and is now in the hands of these guys who steal our minds with drugs! I mean, it took the people generations to get used to it. We’re not used to it. We breathe that stuff, and we’re just big hairless apes!”

  “No. It is true that there is a slight danger, but if you were going to Glathriel, yo
u’d emerge not there but in Ambreza. Besides, whoever said you were going to Glathriel? The odds are something like 779 to 1 against it.”

  Even Lori was suddenly confused. “But you said that’s where we’d go!”

  “Uh, yes, if you were Glathrielians. But that is not how it works. After all, our ancestors also used this mechanism to become our ancestors, you see. The computer here things in a careful balance. If a hex becomes overpopulated, then no babies are born until the population levels out. If a hex is underpopulated, it can’t avoid having more children. You are not yet in the census. When you go through the hex gate for the first time, you will be detected by the master computer as a newcomer not in its data base. It will then look at that data base and see where one extra person might fit without disturbing any balances. No one actually comes through a gate as he is. You are broken down and converted into energy, and the blueprint for ‘you’ is sent along with the energy packet. You are then reconstructed at the other end according to that blueprint. When you go through the first time, the computer will decide where you best fit in its system, and it will alter the blueprint. Just as the First Race were converted into their creations, so will you be. Your packet will be reconstructed with a new blueprint. Your mind, your memories, won’t change, but your physical, racial form will. You will become a new creature of a race new to you.”

  “What!” both Lori and Campos exclaimed at much the same time.

  “Yes. And certain—adjustments will be made so that you can survive. For one thing, you will begin at or just beyond the age of adulthood. That varies, of course, but you will be younger certainly. The primary thinking and memory areas of the brain will be retained, so you will still be pretty much the person you are, but the more animal levels of the brain and its functions will be those of the new race, not the one you have now. Thus, you will be able to handle the body comfortably and will not be repulsed by the sight of others. It is an adjustment mechanism, although, to be sure, making the sentient mental adjustment to fully accept what you are and that you will be that way forever is easier for some than for others. The rest you will learn from the natives. They will want to know about you as much as you will want and need to learn from them.”