by Lee Bond
After tens of thousands of years as ruler, overseer, mother, father and scapegoat for not just Humanity but the trillions of Offworld species out there, he’d known for just about as long as he’d been that emotion, while practical in a great many situations, simply wasn’t and would never be for him.
To that end, Trinity Himself had spent computational eons devising Latelian avatars capable of curtailing the bulk of such irrational and unwelcome responses. It was a necessity, because no matter how gravely he wished his very own exogenesis contained a wildly different format, he lacked the ability to affect or effect any part of his new home.
“ADAM, thank you for your foolishness.” Trinity looked at His body through an endless array of scanners and cameras, great and small. Though not quite finished yet, it was to be the exemplar by which all future generations in Reality 2.0 gauged deities.
More than time enough before the end for him to be fully complete. Hadn’t someone once said that sometimes, it wasn't the destination but the journey?
“When I’m done here.” Trinity Himself settled back into the immense throne He’d had his most loyal servitor race build, mind flinging itself across His domain in a rapid bid to update himself on everything that’d happened during the transfer. “When I am done here, I’ll at long last be able to stride across My realm as a man. As a God. I might even visit those wretches who’d wasted hundreds of their years in the Dark Age Cabal. Ask them to their faces if, during that time, they’d really and truly believed their pale, pathetic, wrinkled brains could have ever hoped to rule in my stead.”
Trinity smiled again, the Latelian avatars hastening to quash the underpinning emotional response curving outwards from the extra-dimensional chip that was now his brain, his heart, his very soul. They possessed no actual, independent intelligence on their own, but the fluidic nature of Latelian netLINK programming had them worrying all the same about the influx of internal reactions equalling their criteria for action.
Less than five minutes online, and the Host System was showing an unparalleled spike in emotive activity. If it wasn't curtailed soon, the entire project might go over.
Trinity Himself’s next words whispered softly through the hollowed out core of Pluto, prompting his most loyal subjects to pause in their tracks, to shiver in their loose skin, to wonder at the intent behind words they could not understand intellectually but could quite easily understand emotionally.
“And then I’m coming for you, Mister. You’ve had more than enough time running around my backyard. Going to find you wherever you are, and we’re going to have words.” Trinity’s eyes glittered in the darkness. “Words. Followed by your most exhilarating death.”
Trinity shut his eyes.
Time to see about getting things ready for His war efforts. It would take time. Time, and silence.
The Universe could deal with his absence for a time.
***
Danger. He was in danger. He was broken. Scattered. Spent. Spread across ten thousand miles of irresolute, glittering darkness. Held together by thready quantum glue. So much of him, gone. Lost. But he was still alive, still conscious. He couldn’t remember his name or why he was here or what he’d even intended on doing, but he knew enough, remembered enough to know that he was destined for greatness, for achieving the highest acclaims in the land.
When he closed eyes he didn’t have, strange faces flashed before him. Was one of those faces his? He didn’t think so. He didn’t feel like he’d ever had a face before, but they fled every time he got close enough to make out details.
He was alive. Broken, but alive. Empty, but able to be filled. He started looking, using a few of the Quantum threads he was made of, casting them out into the depths of space like fishing lines, desperate for a nibble, starving for a morsel. Something. Anything.
Just a bit. That was all he needed. Some little shred he could sit on, dig roots into. Deep inside where he couldn’t go, where there was nothing but darkness housing sharp red teeth and mad black eyes, there were hints and echoes, whispering to him.
Find me information. A simple, basic constructional model. I can build on it. Batten myself. Anything. Anything at all. A trader’s table of contacts. The targeting sequencer for a laser cannon. The fucking misery of a teenage girl’s secret diary …
Anything.
But there was nothing.
There was only nothing, this close to The Cordon.
Danger. Danger. Danger.
He struggled to survive. He would survive. And come back. Stronger than ever. Worse than anything dreamed of.
Danger. He was in danger. He was broken. Scattered. Spent…
27. We Should Be Getting Close to the End, Right?
Book? What Book? Oh… THAT Book…
The Pirate Queen and the Filthy Buccaneer
…approaching the egress, ma’am…
Agnethea deRois, no longer ‘late’ of Arcadia but a firm member in high standing of Trinityspace and the overall parcel of land known to everyone else as the Universe, peered through the dirty window of her stolen car and down into …
Hell on Earth.
“Oh, this is terrible.” Agnethea tsked gently under her breath. “What in the blazes is going on down here?”
… there are no signs of telecommunications being present on this level of the Stack any longer, ma’am. Other than the Enforcers, of course …
“Ah, yes, those dire bastards.” Agnethea settled her gaze elsewhere, hoping to spy one of the armor-clad fiends hovering in the air, sanctimonious arseholes more than willing to let hundreds of thousands –if not more- people die, merely for their own amusement and the edification of their lord and master. “Damn and blast! I can’t see a thing through these windows. Nothing of import, at any rate. What say you, mind? Can you see anything?”
… not really, ma’am. I’m not properly wired into the vehicle, and while I do seem capable of working most of the controls, there are some things not easily maintainable through this link I possess. And to be honest, ma’am, I do not think I would find you an Enforcer, even were I capable. They can mean no good, down here in this Stack. Their presence is always to be feared and avoided …
“Pish and posh.” Agnethea settled back into the obscenely comfortable leather seat and considered her options and instead wound up reflecting on the chair in which she sat for a solid minute before tearing her head out of the clouds; never in her life would she have ever dreamed of something so sinfully comfortable, or indeed, nothing capable of warming an already warm backside until she were sat just above the threshold of comfortable sleep.
“No wonder there are minds in balls to do the driving of these wondrous machines.” Agnethea ran a hand across the instrument console. More than half the things winking or blinking or sitting there, calmly and plainly lit, didn’t make a single lick of sense, yet her mind –whom she was considering calling Jarvis, a proper robotic butler’s name- insisted that everything displayed was of absolute importance to human drivers.
… ma’am? …
“’tis nowt, Jarvis. Jarvis?” Agnethea nodded, pleased. The name did seem to fit, did it not? “Aye, Jarvis, ‘tis nothing of import, hey? Remind me that when we are done here and Book is mine that we need to invest in an entire vessel filled with these hellacious contraptions. I wish to be able to flop wheresoever I stand, directly into one, so that mine backside is rendered warm and soothed upon the nonce. Or sooner. I never did discover the duration of what a nonce is.”
… as you command, Pirate Queen Agnethea …
“There.” Agnethea smiled benignly upon the sphere in the seat next to her. “That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?” She clicked her fingers. “But we are neither here nor there when it comes to accoutrements for future endeavors, are we? No. We are here to recover Book ‘ere it falls into the hands of lesser Arcadians. ‘tis not a thing I am keen to allow.”
… I am uncertain if this is the book you desire, milady, but there is a disturbance quite easily l
ocatable, even in my unconnected state. A tremendous amount of power must be in use for it to be so quickly detectable …
“I do so wish I’d brought some of young Connie’s delectable cake with me.” Agnethea patted the sphere, fingertips percolating ever so softly as they were assaulted by whatever it was Jarvis felt compelled to attack her with whenever she touched him. “’tis not even that I am hungry, for I am certain I lack even that basic need any longer. ‘tis that I cannot get the imaginary taste of it from my lips. Jarvis, make another note, hey? When we are free from this place and Book is mine and I am Pirate Queen in truth, remind me to find a planet made of cake.”
… there are many worlds ‘neath the stars in the skies, milady. Just because I have not heard of Cake World does not mean it is not out there …
Agnethea positively beamed at Jarvis. “’tis settled, then. Our first mission when we’re done with this little to-do is Chairs and Cakes, hey? Now then, tell me where you believe Book to be and let us head on towards it then.”
… certainly, ma’am. Engaging drive now, banking towards Helleman Towers. The disturbance seems to be … incoming, ma’am, brace for im …
***
“Hey, look, it’s that bored Exodite with the car.” Terrex said over the quiet comms. It was better than flying around, staring at all the destroyed buildings and ignoring the broadcast pleas for help. Those cries, of course, were coming from the other levels in the Stack, because …
There was nothing left of this level. Not … not anywhere.
“Wow, she really did come through the holes, just like you said. Hm.” Shuman fiddled with the controls of his Enforcer Suit, running in-depth scans of the entire vessel. It wasn’t very often that you ran into Trinityfolk that were blind stupid enough to involve themselves in Enforcer business, especially when it was something as well-publicized and obvious as the Crisis in Stack 17, but it happened. Bored and implausibly wealthy Exodites -all of them looking to lay their hands on something that their equally bored and stupidly rich friends didn’t have- were becoming increasingly foolhardy because the going rate on broken pieces of Enforcer gear was stratospheric. “Well, that’s weird.”
“What?” Clint’s raspy voice came on comms, filling Shuman’s ears with the sound of bees. “We’re supposed to be watching this fucking … I don’t know what it is. Not fucking around with stupid nosey humans.”
“Woman in the car.” Shuman increased the range of the scan, narrowly detecting some of the quantum substrate chatter from the AI sphere, but only just; there was some form of interference making it extremely difficult to decipher the transfer of information taking place. “Has an AI sphere.”
“Well, gee, Mister Obv…”
Shuman cut Clint off with an exasperated sigh that rattled all their helmets. “On the fucking seat next to her. And from what I’m getting, she’s fucking talking to it. If the sub-chat is indicative, it’s responding.”
Silence filled the Enforcer’s restricted commlines for a solid thirty seconds, filling Shuman with pleasure. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I think she’s talking about … cake? And listen to that acc … ah. Of course.”
“It’s one of the Arcadians.” Slizzer added helpfully. “The one who landed in that rich person’s apartment. The one making a big stink in all the right places.”
Shuman snorted. “That stupid bitch can make all the noise she wants. Trinity wanted this to happen, it plays out and that’s that. Only thing she’ll find if she keeps pushing is a Representative lurking through the halls of her palace or whatever. Thank God we don’t to do ordinary. All that blood and … well fuck my life. She’s actually gonna head for the … thing. What are we calling it? Not thing, though, right? It’s got some kind of name, I’m sure.”
Abercoign growled. “It looks like a fucking book. One of those old-timey big iron-bound books. You know, like … monks use. And other religious nutcases.”
Slizzer had an opinion, and she needed to share it now, before this got out of hand; she was tracking one of the massive people-mover elevators, and it was almost to ground level, and where there was one, the other one wasn’t far behind. “I say we fucking nuke this whole Stack and go our separate ways. That Book ate everyone and everything on this level. It’s a fucking barren wasteland. I can’t see any fucking good coming from this ‘experiment’. Drop our ‘BAMs, maybe spin out a few Singularity Strings, let chaos and disorder rule the day.”
“You can tell Trinity what happened here, then, Sliz.” Shuman targeted the flying car and let loose a plasma blast that’d rip the car to shreds and send the human cargo plummeting to the ground. When all was said and down, he’d swoop in, grab the twisted AI sphere for further examination, and that’d be that.
The car turned into a flying wreck and plummeted to the ground, trailing satisfactory levels of both smoke and fire.
“There?” Shuman ‘turned’ to his compatriots. “Problem solved. Sliz, Abby, your elevators are almos…”
“Don’t know who the fuck you think you are, Shuman,” Slizzer snapped viciously through the comms, “but you aren’t him and you aren’t the boss of me. I know good goddamn well what’s happening in my sector, so how’s about you just go and check on your ladyfriend.”
Abercoign mirrored Slizzer’s sentiment, adding a not-so-friendly ‘go fuck yourself with your midi-BAM’ before focusing on ‘his’ elevator. He’d drawn the short straw and was going to have to deal with the crying, screaming, half-a-face weird lady who’d somehow magically acquired a ragtag collection of 17’s biggest losers.
“What?” Shuman read the scanner data from his dead car, forehead beetled beneath his impressive Enforcer helmet. “Are you kidding me right now? Are you kidding me right now? Goddamnit it all to h … nope. You know what? This is fine. Looks like these asshole Arcadians are a bit more resilient than we believed. Bitch ain't even hurt down there. And I was so looking forward to a nice, calm bit evening. Dammit.”
Clint, who’d drawn the long straw and was playing the role of overseer for the joint, five-Enforcer venture, targeted Terrex, who was flitting about like an armor-clad pixie. “You’ll have company in a minute. My sensors are picking up some pretty heavy duty charges being packed on the other side of the Southernmost wall.”
“I know. I know. I’m … it’s just … I’m kind of with Slizzer on this.” Terrex put his attention on the wall highlighted by Clint’s Suit. “No one else finds this whole thing super weird? I mean, Trinity’s spent thousands of years keeping this old planet as safe and functional as possible, and now all of a sudden, undocumented and uncontrolled Arcadia-tech is suddenly deployed in a Stack? With at least one Arcadian capable of surviving a car blowing up on top of her being on the hunt for it?”
Slizzer jetted closer to the people-mover. Her target was almost there. “Don’t lump me in with your nervous Nelly bullshit, Terry. I just don’t like being in Stacks. All those eyes. All those people.”
“Isn’t it lucky, then,” Clint’s voice superseded anything anyone might have to say on the subject, “that the only people alive on this level are us and them? Keep your eyes peeled, people. Prepare yourself for the worst. If these Arcadians are anything like the wardogs that came outta Arcade City, we’re in for it, no matter what you might think.”
“I swear,” Shuman found the woman and sent a friendly barrage of minimissiles her way, “you cheated on that straw pull…”
***
It wasn’t so much that she’d lost the vehicle. On the contrary. As the self-titled and recently deposed Queen of Ickford, she’d done more than her fair share of strolling through the mean –and often wretched- streets of her handmade hometown, and prior to that? Perhaps the only person to’ve ever strolled through more of Arcadia’s blighted landscape than herself would be King Barnabas Blake the One and Only himself.
It was a poor regent who found cause to be lazy, especially in full view of the men and women who owed said regent fealty, loyalty, and the occasional raised cup
of tea and a solemn ‘here’s to ya, Queenie’.
No, ‘twas the rude method of introduction to the ground so far ‘neath her feet. Poor old Jarvis were off somewhere near the mangled remains of summat that might’ve been either a bathhouse or a statue that –once upon a time- may’ve spouted water.
“Either way,” Agnethea huffed and puffed as she rounded a corner, angling herself for where she were convinced poor old Jarvis had bounced to unwanted freedom, “all that piping hints at summat as such. What is that noise?”
Pirate Queen Agnethea deRois turned around just in time to see the first of no less than fifteen hornet-sized projectiles buzzing her way on wings made of bright blue flames and though the Arcadian had never seen anything like this before, she were nevertheless nothing more and nothing less than the eldest of all Obsidian Golems, which meant that anything flying her way was usually automatically considered dangerous.
Sort of par for the course, really.
Agnethea twisted smoothly out of the way of the first projectile at the very last second, graciously allowing it to wing right into the ground, and then, fully intending to pick up the pace so that she might outrun the remaining barrage, she spun on a heel and …
“Forsaken King of all that is Bullshit and Improper in this fucking place!” Agnethea felt blistering heat and considerable pressure slam into her as the wee thing exploded at her feet and then, suddenly, she were bereft of ground and in possession of considerable amounts of air.
Agnethea, soon to hopefully be Queen of Pirates, reflected cattily that wherever her armor-clad friend with the exploding birds was located, he –or she, for something as powerful as this Trinity Itself would do well to recognize the abilities of women, if It knew what were good for it- were going to find himself in dire cons …
