Engineman

by Eric Brown

  The lights, he asked. What are they?

  — What do you think they are, Ralph?

  Mirren thought: Beings who have passed on? The life-forces of everyone who has ever existed? ,

  Bobby was a while before answering, as if contemplating his reply. His golden light raced through the cobalt radiance of the continuum. Mirren followed patiently.

  — They are not beings, though I suppose they could be described as life-forces. When one transcends, one begins existence in this realm in much the state you are in now, but one soon leaves this stage and joins with all else, melding with the fundamental fabric of the continuum. These lights, these sparks, however, remain. They are no longer individual beings, but carriers of pure information, experience, history, knowledge, memory; in these particles of energy are contained the history of the universe, and everything that has ever existed as a dynamic, living force within it.

  So... the light I am following is not really Bobby?

  Mirren felt Bobby’s amusement. — No, not as such. I am everywhere, united, one with the continuum; however, the light you follow was me, it still could be said to be me, my essence, my history, experience, memories... it is the essence ‘I’ access when I wish to join with another essence and experience existence as, say, a sundiver in the far galaxy you know as NGC-5194, or experience the life of an amoeba on Mars... This realm makes possible a universal understanding, permits every essence the ability to access every other essence. It takes time, of course; there are trillions of trillions of essences of everything that has ever existed in the long history of the universe, but the comprehensive understanding of everything is the goal of every essence in this realm. After all, what is the purpose of existence, but the transmission and reception of information, in whatever form that information might take?

  It seemed mere seconds since they had departed the crowded energy field. Now, as Mirren followed the light that had been his brother and attempted to absorb what he had been told, the blue expanse through which they were travelling once again became populous—with a scattering of essences at first, then more and more, until the blue radiance disappeared and it seemed that the very medium they were passing through consisted of nothing but such essences, vessels, as. Bobby had said, of pure information, storehouses of every fact that had ever been.

  — These essences tend to remain in the region of the continuum which corresponds to the sector of space where they existed in real-time. Thus, the essences you first encountered were those of our galaxy, humans, aliens, animals, plant-life specific to the Milky Way.

  — The essences here, Bobby went on, once lived out their lives in Andromeda. I will now access one, attempt to transmit to you my ability to experience life far away, long ago. Pick a light, Ralph.

  Mirren cast about him. That one—the magenta beacon describing a helix around the slowly rising orange light...

  No sooner had the thought been thought, then the light that was Bobby swooped upon the magenta beacon. Their union produced a small explosion, and then Mirren made out two lights. Bobby’s golden comet joined with the pulsing magenta life-force. They spun, embraced in mutual attraction, the helix they described becoming tighter, faster.

  — Come closer, Ralph.

  Mirren propelled himself closer to the rotating binaries, felt himself attracted—and in a sudden rush he experienced a dizzying overload of information: he knew, in an instant, what it was to be a one thousand tonne gastropod floating in the methane sea of a vast gas giant orbiting a sun going nova. He experienced the creature’s emotions, accessed its memories, understood the complex society in which it functioned; for as long as he maintained the contact, he was the creature. He could skip through its life, like fast-forwarding a disc, experience its birth, then live through the pain of its death as it was ripped apart by the blast from the exploding sun, and then he was one with the creature’s joy as it transcended...

  Then Bobby parted company with the pulsing magenta beacon and swirled around Mirren. — Did you feel it, did you experience its pain, and then its rapture as it transcended?

  Mirren was hardly able to respond, which was response enough.

  — Come, Bobby commanded, and led the way through the sparsely populated region of blue light between the real-time galaxies, towards the massed essences that existed in the continuum’s analogue of their home galaxy.

  — Do you begin to apprehend the magnificence of this ultimate state, Ralph? Can you understand that the concerns and preoccupations of the humans who still exist as such are petty, trivial, beside the vaulting ambitions of the beings we become?

  Of course!

  — And yet, Bobby said, something melancholy in his tone, the concerns of the human race are bringing about, albeit unwittingly, the gradual annihilation of this realm. Until now we have existed without threat, free to access and experience the totality of everything.

  As he followed his brother’s golden comet from the barren interstellar gulf towards the teeming pointillism of life-forces, he wondered how humankind might pose any threat to the continuum.

  They passed through the sector where the sparks of light were as tightly-packed as atoms, and came to a margin where the blue of the underlying continuum could be seen between the dancing life-forces. As they continued, the last of the lights passed beyond them, so that soon they were travelling through an expanse of blue radiance even emptier than the last one Mirren had experienced.

  Are we going to another galaxy? he asked.

  — We are still in what corresponds to the Milky Way, Bobby told him. — In fact, this area corresponds to the Rim of our galaxy.

  Ahead, or below, or at any rate in the direction Mirren was moving, he perceived a fading of the blue of the continuum. At the same time, as he flew towards and then into the sky blue field, he became aware of an aura of hostility, a sudden iciness which chilled his essence to its very core. Before him, the comet which was Bobby lost its golden glow and its darting vitality.

  — Look, Bobby thought at last.

  Before them, in the distance, Mirren made out a vast area of what could only be described as anti-energy, black and lifeless. It was growing—even as he hovered, observing, the circumference of the vast amorphous cloud bloated outwards, expanding in great billowing explosions like ink in water, eating up the pale blue of the continuum around it.

  — Come, Bobby commanded, and flew ever closer to the cloud.

  Mirren balked, hanging back. He recalled what Ghaine had told him about facing terror, and understood that what was before them was the source of that terror.

  — Follow me, Bobby exhorted. — Until you have fully experienced what is happening here, you will be unable to appreciate the true wonder and worth of the continuum.

  Mirren hurried to his brother’s side, so as not to be alone before the relentless approach of the negative force. Side by side they hovered closer to a great rearing, blooming tumour composed of the very absence of everything that made the continuum what it was: light, life, vitality... They hovered like two mayflies before a thunderhead, their very presence taunting the awful immensity of the invader.

  On the edge of the continuum, where the black cloud impinged, Mirren perceived what looked like lengths of rope, or roots, leached of colour, lifeless.

  — The fabric of the continuum itself, Bobby explained. — The matter which absorbs us upon transcendence, which stores our essences and makes us one. It is dead, killed by this force.

  From behind them, Mirren saw a dense flight of united life-forces, like a swarm of hornets or a well-drilled squadron of fighter planes: they swooped, dived at the swelling tumour of cloud and vanished within it, causing the cloud to writhe, to momentarily cease its advance. Then it swelled again, moving ever outwards in its insatiable appetite for more energy.

  — They think that by attacking it like this, they might defeat it, but all they succeed in doing is halting its progress for mere seconds, and sacrificing themselves.

  A lobe of cl
oud erupted suddenly, almost swallowing them up. In that second, as they fled to a safe distance, Mirren knew true terror. The very core of his being was shaken as he perceived the heart of the cloud in its essence, looked into it and experienced only a terrible absence.

  What is it? he cried at his brother as they retreated. On all sides, the fabric of the continuum squirmed and writhed as the cloud reached and rendered dead all before it.

  — This is not the only one, Bobby reported. — Across this sector of the continuum over two thousand of these monstrosities continue to grow, feeding without cessation on the energy of the realm.

  But what is it? Mirren screamed.

  — It is entropy, Ralph. In time, if it and the others like it are allowed to expand, they will infect the whole continuum. Then, all life as we know it in its higher form will cease to exist. In the physical realm, life will be born, only to face the terrible extinction of absolute death.

  — The continuum, Ralph, exists as an eternal mass of light and energy, comprised of vital forces that are the transcended essences of every being that has ever lived and died. The continuum is everlasting, a phenomenon that does not know or suffer the ravages wrought in normal space and time by entropy; the heat death of the universe, the gradual falling apart of the structure of reality.

  — Or, rather, the continuum did not suffer entropy...

  But what is causing this? Mirren asked.

  — The interfaces, Ralph. The continuum did not suffer entropy until the first of the interfaces was opened. You see, knowledge of the nada-continuum allowed the scientists working on the interfaces to tap into the vast reserves of energy within the continuum. With this almost limitless supply of power, they annihilated space between the planets and successfully created the portals through which matter could pass instantly from one world to the next. When deactivated, the mechanical systems of the interfaces recharged themselves by leaching energy from the continuum: but the process was not just one way, Ralph. From the two thousand-plus separate interfaces around the Expansion, entropy seeps from the universe which humanity inhabits and spreads throughout the nada-continuum.

  — You see before you the consequence of the interfaces. This is just one; there are many thousands more, and every further second they exist, they bring annihilation to the continuum. Now do you understand why it is so vital that the interfaces be shut down? You understand why the mission must succeed; to evacuate the Effectuators and their attendants so that the people of the free universe can come to understand the terrible cost of humankind’s folly...

  As he spoke, a billow of the giant cloud belched towards them, bringing death further into the continuum. Again, a flight of lights made the ultimate sacrifice, bringing about only a temporary cessation of the monster’s irrevocable advance.

  — They, the life-forces who give themselves, are manifested as the ‘ghosts’ which sometimes appear around interface portals in the physical universe, and I suppose ‘ghosts’ is an appropriate definition of these doomed souls. Come, look, all around us the cloud advances.

  He was right. Mirren saw that, like an incoming tide, the cloud had edged around them on every side. They sped back the way they had come, the cloud giving chase as if intent on swallowing them. Mirren surged forward after his brother, aware of the dark cloud closing in. As he struggled to save himself, he felt the energy bleed from him, his vitality strangulated by proximity of the decay which abounded and multiplied. He had looked upon energy everlasting in that sector of the continuum so far uncontaminated—here, by contrast, he experienced the ultimate malignancy of death, or rather non-life, and realised that what was all the more frightening was the fact that it was spreading, insatiable, intent on conquering the realm of light, stopping only when the entirety of the continuum was defeated, a lifeless, moribund, burned-out ash of its former self.

  His essence was filled with the terror of total oblivion, such as he had never experienced in his human form, an oblivion that, in its hostility to life was the epitome of all that was diabolical.

  He screamed...

  ... And was still screaming when the encompassing darkness faded, and he found himself in the restricted confines of his physical form.

  He was sitting up, and Ghaine was kneeling before him, grasping his hands. Mirren ceased his shouting, worked to regain his breath. “It... it was-” Words could not describe the horror of the experience, the residual sense of desolation that lingered in him still.

  For the first time, Mirren became aware of a distant rumble, a shudder that shook the Sublime.

  Ghaine responded to his alarmed expression. “The militia have been attacking us for the past thirty minutes,” he said. “They cannot know precisely where we are, just approximately. They are levelling the mountainside. Many of the Temple’s upper chambers have been destroyed, but we are deep within the mountain. With luck-”

  “How long have I been under?” Mirren asked.

  “Almost two hours.”

  “Then we should be phasing-out!”

  “There are difficulties,” said the Lho. “Your men are working hard, but they have encountered problems.”

  An explosion, seemingly directly overhead, rent the air and shook the ‘ship. A fall of rock crashed against the astrodome. It cracked with a sound like splitting ice. The Sublime yawed, pitching Mirren and Ghaine across the floor. Shards of plastex rained down; a triangular section of dome fell, narrowly missing an Effectuator.

  “We’ve got to get them out of here,” Mirren said. “If the ‘ship phases-out now we’ll all asphyxiate.”

  “Where to?” Ghaine asked, climbing to his feet and helping Mirren up.

  “There’s a chamber on the deck below this one. They’ll be safe there. We can seal the dome at the airlock.”

  Ghaine spoke to the attendants; already they were lifting the stretchers, making their way unsteadily across the dome to the sliding door of the elevator as the barrage continued and the Sublime rocked beneath the onslaught.

  Mirren opened the elevator, helped load three Effectuators and their attendants. He sent them down to the next level, willing the attendants to hurry and vacate the cage. More explosions crashed overhead. Rock rained down on the dome and the body of the ‘ship.

  The elevator emptied. He stabbed the command for it to return, and when the door slid open he hauled aboard the three remaining Effectuators. This time he and the rest of the Lho rode down with them, squashed together as the booth rocked back and forth. The door opened on the central chamber and he ensured that the Effectuators were safely housed.

  He took the down-chute to the engine-room, holding onto the rail as the Sublime pitched like a sea-going ship in a storm.

  The engine-room was full of Disciples gathered around the flux-tank and the co-pilot’s command web. Mirren staggered across to the tank. “Who’s in there?”

  Dan Leferve turned, smiled tightly. “Bobby.”

  “Why the hell aren’t we phasing?”

  Dan indicated through the viewscreen. Mirren stumbled across to the screen. Beyond, in the chamber, two Enginewomen and an Engineman worked frantically at a bank of computers, occasionally looking up and across at the Sublime as if willing it to disappear. The lights illuminating the tableau flickered, for a few seconds going off altogether. Mirren held his breath until the light stuttered back on, picking out the three figures still at their posts. Another explosion shook the chamber. It seemed only a matter of time before the technicians were lost beneath the falling debris.

  He heard Miguelino, in his command web, yelling out the phase-out sequence for perhaps the third time in as many minutes, an edge of desperation in his voice.

  Mirren was aware of someone by his side—Ella Hunter. The ‘ship bucked. He held her to prevent her from falling. Outside, the floor of the chamber began to break up; the surface erupted, throwing up great slabs of rock as unsteady as ice-floes. Still the technicians battled on.

  “They don’t stand a chance!” Ella cried.

/>   “They’re going to a greater thing,” Mirren told her.

  She looked at him, fear in her eyes. “I hope you’re right,” she whispered.

  “I know I’m right,” Mirren said.

  The Sublime slid sideways as the ground beneath it subsided. The technicians fell into the darkness. Mirren and Ella were dashed against the screen. They fetched up against the padded recess, holding onto each other as if their lives depended on it. A low-pitched hum sounded through the ‘ship. Mirren prayed that the blackness outside would vanish for just one second, to indicate that phase-out was under way.