by Tobias Wade
“The Draiths aren’t like people. We still have no idea what the Queen is capable of,” Sali said.
“If they were so smart, they would have eaten us on the ship when they had a chance.”
“Well excuse me for trying to think through our situation instead of just hoping for the best,” Sali griped. “Take a breather, Ramnus, and give that machete to me.” She pushed past Harris to where Ramnus had stooped to rest, perspiration thick upon his face.
Sali took the machete and vent her frustration upon the dense jungle. She noted that the squirming green vines were actively trying to get out of their way now, often shifting the trees and their attached vegetation in the process. See, even the plants here are smarter than these idiots. She bit her tongue before the thought escaped. There really was something about this world that seemed to have a will of its own though. The ship… the crystal… the Draiths… the vines… they were all connected somehow, all interwoven into something deeper than met the eye.
If Sali was back on Pria, all she’d need to do was plug herself into one of Morolox’s many terminals and lose herself in the cyber worlds. There’s nothing as therapeutic as logging on as a hundred foot giant and stomping her way through the terrified populace of a fantasy land. Hacking a path through the jungle with a machete proved to be a passable substitute, however, and Sali welcomed the physical exertion to distract her from the world she’d left behind.
The twisted branch on that bush could have been the engineer who called the Masks on her instead of just being cool. Thwack, off goes his head. That net of vines was now the judge who permitted her juvenile record to be released to the jury, humiliating her with such a personal and vile rendition of her childhood that only her mother could have written it. Zzzp, split right down the middle. And she didn’t care who that low-hanging moss represented, because it was going to feel great to destroy.
“Sali watch out!” Elden leaped forward to catch her by the forearm before the machete went down again.
She turned on him fiercely, giving him a look that plainly said she wanted to cut something and wasn’t too particular what it was.
“Oh hello, isn’t that the Grand Shaman?” Harris Johnson asked. “What’s that he got himself caught in?”
Hidden beneath the hanging moss, which had been a moment away from being two smaller chunks of moss and good deal of mess, lay the Grand Shaman Ang. His knees were curled to his chest in a fetal position, and his entire body was encapsulated in a transparent orb filled with shimmering golden fluid. A network of veins and arteries extended from the orb and tethered him inside, converging with his own skin in many places and pulsing in a most unpleasant fashion. Indeed, it’s tremendously difficult for anything to pulse pleasantly, but this was a particularly bad case.
“Look, there are more of them!” Elden called, pushing his way through the undergrowth and brushing aside the draping greenery. “And others around the trunk of that tree, nestled between the roots. This looks like the whole village stuck in these… whatever they are. At least the Draiths didn’t eat them.”
“So what if they had?” Amore asked, her nose so incessantly wrinkled with displeasure that it would need to be ironed out if she ever made it back to Pria. “Looks like they got what they deserve. Aren’t these the people you said were trying to sacrifice you?”
“Only a little, dear. They weren’t really that bad after the first head came off.” Elden knelt to poke at the orb and watched it jiggle.
“You know I don’t like it when you contradict me, Elden. Go on then, set them free if you like. Just don’t come running to me if these primitives get out of hand.”
“I don’t think it will be as easy as cutting them free,” Sali said, kneeling alongside Elden. “Look closer. Don’t they look a little… flat to you? Walk around and look at them from this side. They look almost two-dimensional, a bunch of empty juice boxes”
The others followed her instructions and circled the sacks, their expressions ranging from horror to grotesque fascination. It was as if the villagers had been entirely hollowed out, bones and internal organs and all, leaving only their skin to float suspended in the golden liquid. The monstrous sight compelled the onlookers to walk through the field of orbs and view them from a variety of angles. It wasn’t until they passed several that Sali made her next unsettling realization.
“The Grand Shaman was facing us when we first found him, right?” she asked, her voice small and quiet. The others turned to look back, comprehension dawning on them one at a time. “So why is he still facing us now?”
The shaman wasn’t the only one. Each of the floating villagers had slowly turned as the party passed between them. Gradually, sluggishly, as though just slipping free from the precipice of sleep, eyes were opening to stare at the exploreres. What at first appeared to be a trick of the light through the golden fluid was now impossible to deny: beady yellow eyes watched them from each of the shriveled faces.
“Would it bother anyone if I started screaming right now?” Ramnus asked conversationally.
“Permission granted, soldier,” Harris Johnson grunted. “Feels appropriate, given the circumstances.”
If such a sound ever escaped his lips, then the rest of them would never know. A shrill squeaking pervaded the space so throughly that the air itself must have come to life. The light filtering through the branches was engulfed in swooping darkness. The rush of wind and the rustle of thousands of beating wings enveloped them. The Draiths dropped from the shadows of the branches, exploded from the wood of the trunks, and burrowed free from the ground, converging in teaming masses from every direction simultaneously.
The sensation was not dissimilar to what a sheaf of corn must undergo as a swarm of locusts descends upon the field, although of course this must be even worse, as corn is incapable of the level of existential dread which consumed them all.
The Queen and Her Prince
“Now is our chance, Senator,” Tareesh said, typing on his tablet computer as passionately as a mistreated customer composing a scathing review. “Once we take out the Queen, the rest of virus won’t be conscious any longer. That means no more adaptation, no more replication. The remaining bugs will be helpless, unthinking, malformations of code that you can wipe clean at your leisure.”
“Don’t you feel any sympathy for your creation?” Senator Hallum’s avatar stroked its mustache, watching over the boy’s shoulder as he worked in his virtual prison cell. “How does it feel to play God, creating and destroying life at your pleasure?”
“No, sir, I’m not playing anything. I don’t think God is a noun at all,” Tareesh replied without looking up. “I think God is a verb: the process of complexity arising from simplicity. I think God is the tendency for the Universe to organize itself. That’s been going on long before I ever got involved, and will continue long after I’m gone. Anyway if my creator had any sympathy for me then I wouldn’t be in prison right now.”
Hallum didn’t much care for that answer, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why. Instead he asked: “How can you tell if we’re winning? I can’t see anything with all those bright lights.”
“Everything projected on the screen is happening live inside the simulation. We’re watching from the perspective of Amore as the antivirus is channeled through her. As you can see, the Draiths have already killed the local criminal population, and are currently attacking the remaining prisoners.”
A low-resolution blur resolved into rows of needle legs encompassing the screen. The perspective shook violently back and forth for a moment before a blast of light caused the squirming creature into fractals of countless individually squirming parts.
“How long has the virus been flying? And what’s that awful squeaking sound?” Hallum pressed with fascination.
“They’ve continued to grow since they were released into the simulation, but it won’t be enough,” Tareesh asserted. “I now have complete administrative control over this world. Scatter, run, it doesn�
��t matter. I’m going to pop you little pimples.”
Tareesh was enjoying this a little too much, considering he was technically still performing penance for his own crimes. Amore too howled enthusiastically as she danced through the battlefield, leaping over her cowering companions as she flung herself at the teeming insectoids. Senator Hallum wanted to share the same excitement, so why couldn’t he? This was his victory too, his more than anyone’s. None of the villagers had even logged off, so he could still revive their avatars and simply pretend this was another miracle from the Quasi Crystal. The oversight board would leave him alone, the life and death trials would resume, and Hallum could go back to making Pria a better place. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was as savage as the criminals, about to perform a ritual sacrifice in order to build his peace.
“Where’s the Queen?” Hallum asked. “That thing was bigger than the whole Galactic Express. How is she hiding?”
“Cowering underground. The same software I used to purge the virus from my simulation isn’t having any trouble tracking it,” Tareesh replied. His fingers were a blur as he navigated through the administrative control panel with practiced ease. “The Draith is smart enough to realize it can’t survive contact with Amore’s avatar, but it doesn’t seem like it’s figured out how to do anything about it. When the little ones have left us alone, I can use the vines and the roots to drag the Queen above the surface. We’re almost finished now.”
The viewpoint on the screen shook violently. An increasingly filthy red dress splashed around Amore’s feet as she tumbled onto her hands and knees. An unseen turmoil beneath the combatants churned the soil into the frothing of a stormy sea. The Queen’s innumerable long arms ripped upward like trees growing before their eyes. Each of them was locked in a defiant struggle as they wrestled with the vines of the mighty jungle. One by one, the beast’s arms were pinned as roots swam from all directions to join the fight. Amore and the other prisoners scrambled across the violent ground until they reached a peaceful place between the trees. The ground where they’d been standing a moment before bucked and heaved as the monstrous creature was dragged to the surface.
No natural laws could have produced such a terrifying form, so twisted and knotted in upon itself. Countless yellow eyes radiated wild panic as they flashed in all directions like a demonic disco ball. More terrible still was the gagging, squawking cough which emerged from its many beaks.
“Mercy,” the squawking chorus seemed to say. And yet the sound was so malformed, clashing discordantly from so many throats that it was impossible to determine whether if it had only been Hallum’s imagination.
“I’m executing the final operation,” Tareesh said, unfazed. “The trees only need to hold it in place for a little longer until the scan completes.”
“And then it will be gone? Gone for good? You’re sure you don’t have a backup anywhere?”
“Gone for good,” the boy echoed. “You’re lucky to have made a deal with me, Senator. I don’t think anyone else understands the virus well enough to perform this next move. When all is done, you’d better hold up your end of the deal too.”
“Does the Draith feel pain?” Hallum asked suddenly.
Tareesh stared and blinked, seemingly considering this for the first time. “It started out as a model of a living organism before it learned to hack into its own source code. It receives data from its environment, which is experienced as a signal to its central processing. If something is harmful to it, then the experience would have to be negative for the creature to avoid that stimulus in the future. I don’t know what’s really going on in there, but I guess you could call that something like pain.”
“What do you think would have happened if the virus remained in the physical world?”
Tareesh leaned back from the tablet, folding his hands behind his head as he watched the virus scan progress.
“You’re only seeing little changes now: the wings, the claws, the vocal measures. If it realized it did not possess a physical body, then it wouldn’t waste its time with such trivial adaptive measures. If I was in its place, I’d only pursue two adaptations to ensure my survival; I’d increase my own intelligence, and I’d replicate myself as widely as I could.”
“Keep talking. Explain. Could the Draiths become smarter than me?”
“If you’d seen the first ones before I purged my computers at Morolox, then you wouldn’t ask that question. Your biology has only made you as intelligent as you need to survive. Even worse, the contents of your brain are tightly constrained by a strict size limitation, not to mention by how slowly your neurons process information. Do you think your processing power is really that much larger than a monkey? And yet with that small increase, look at how much more we have accomplished than them.”
“So what? Intelligence alone cannot move mountains without a physical body. Why should I fear this technological marvel?”
“One cannot conceive of what one cannot conceive, Senator. Imagine the potential for its intelligence, not limited by finite resources. An awareness that spreads across every processor of every device on Pria, a mind able to think every thought at once, anticipating every human attempt to contain its spread. Imagine an endless supply of energy as it taps into the electrical grid, utilizing Morolox’s nuclear fusion to power its grand plan while your own meat box putters along on the energy it liberated from cheese and crackers. Do you really think you can keep up with it? Do you think it won’t be able to rewrite the code in our vehicles, our factories, or even manipulate a well intentioned man such as yourself to be its physical form?”
Senator Hallum typed a command which prompted his avatar to begin pacing. It would have been more satisfying to move in person, but he had to stay in front of the microphone and this would just have to do.
“You’re assuming the virus had to escape somehow,” Hallum mused. “As long as we’re waiting for the scan to finish, let me paint you a different picture. My simulation is a perfect replication, arising naturally from the same physical laws that have created our own Universe. There’s no reason to believe the virus will ever discover it is inside a simulation at all. Imagine instead a superior intellect that continues to grow and learn, discovering all the secrets of the Universe that have thus far eluded us. I could confront the virus with every obstacle ever to frustrate man, and it would solve the problem for us. Immortality, faster than light travel, manipulating time and space as to raise the lowest rung of humanity into Gods. Is that not a future worth striving for? Think quickly, Tareesh. Before it’s gone forever.”
“Compared to our savage origins, we are already Gods but for the wisdom. No amount of additional power will make us wise.”
“But I could be wise!” Hallum insisted, surprised by his own eagerness. “I could be judicious. I could show restraint. You don’t know what it’s like behind the closed doors in the Senate chambers. It’s all so petty, and wasteful, our own government deliberately thwarting our progress for fear that the next generation will no longer need them.”
“The scan has finished, Senator Hallum. Every infected system file has been located, and the Draith can’t run anymore. I’m going to purge it, and you’re going to set me free. As long as you’re dreaming, let it be that neither of us ever has to see the other again.”
“No. The deal has changed.” Senator Hallum growled suddenly. “Tell Amore not to kill it. Tell me that you will help me control it, and I’ll make sure every one of you walks free. Just think of it, with your technological prowess and my guidance and political connections—what good is curing the criminality of one man at a time, compared with launching the whole of the human race into a golden age of prosperity? Tell Amore to spare your most glorious creation, the pinnacle of your young life, the reason you were born into this world.”
They both stared at the wrestling monstrosity on the screen. It was changing shape and colors before their eyes, flashing complex patterns across its skin like an octopus at a music festival.
Each of the mouths seemed to be speaking in a different language, and every once in awhile a familiar word snuck through before being drowned out by the others.
“You don’t know how much I regret creating Draith in the first place,” Tareesh said.
“Perhaps not, but I do know exactly how much you’ll regret not doing as you’re told now. I have a folder with pictures of everything that might happen to you if you’re having trouble visualizing it. I could only bring so many though, as my printer always runs out of the color red.”
“Amore? Can you hear me?” Tareesh asked tentatively into the microphone.
“What took you so long?” Amore’s voice sounded exasperated from Tareesh’s tablet. “I’ve run out of little Draiths to fry, and the big one is just itching for it.”
“The scan is complete. Burn it out, Amore. Leave nothing remaining.” Tareesh lifted his finger from the microphone button the moment the words left his mouth.
“Amore no!” Hallum shouted to deaf ears.
If Senator Hallum was actually in the room with Tareesh, he would have moved faster. He would have knocked the boy to the floor if he had to, so possessed was he by the alluring vision in his head. Specifying the command on his console to move his avatar took precious seconds though, and even then the movement was jerky and clumsy. Tareesh read the intention easily enough, and handed the tablet to Hallum as searing beams of light lanced across the screen. A tremendous bellow caused the tablet’s speakers to crack and pop, shaking the trees so powerfully that a whirlwind of leaves ripped from the branches to slice through the air.
“It’s gone, Senator. I kept my word, will you?”
Seething, Hallum’s avatar reached for the tablet. He changed his mind midway, slapping the boy hard across the face, causing him to drop the device onto the wooden bench. “You are a selfish, short-sighted, and conceited fool. To think I believed in your genius.”
