The Worst of All Possible Worlds

by Alex White

  Nilah nodded, feeling a bit sick herself. It was a betrayal to drag the twins deeper into the ship, but they were only a few dozen meters from their objective. She traced her mechanist’s mark and placed her palm to the control panel, connecting to the core of the vehicle.

  No sooner had she relayed her wishes to the computer than a pair of injectors snapped out of the wall and dosed the twins. They had just enough time to register surprise before passing out. Nilah found the levers to move their seats and converted them to beds with a full monitoring setup. It wasn’t quite as good as the med bay on board the Capricious, but it was close.

  “Sorry, darlings,” she whispered, securing Alister’s chest strap. “Captain’s orders.”

  Once they were both squared away, Nilah straightened up. Her companions were obviously displeased with the situation, but neither woman had anything to say about it.

  “Let’s get rolling,” said Boots, pushing past to get to the cockpit, and Nilah followed without a word.

  They continued onward into engineering, where the fleshy vines hung thick from the ceiling. Periodically, a long tendril would be in the Devil’s way, and it would recoil to prevent vaporization. Nilah thought it unlikely that the vines were protecting themselves, but rather, conserving their resources to wait for the right time to strike.

  “There,” said Boots. “Beyond that doorway is the central power unit for the ship. That’s where the AI was located in the Mostafa Journal.”

  “If you’d like to connect me to the ship’s AI,” said the Devil, “I can subdue it with my advanced suite of cyberattack tools.”

  Nilah balked. “You’re the only thing keeping us alive. No bloody way am I connecting you to this ship.”

  She melted the last set of doors and rolled through. On the Mostafa Journal, the engineering deck had seemed reasonable, if a little large. In person, it was like driving into the center of the most majestic cathedral in Old Town Aior. The architecture, though stained and dusted by time, was soaring and hopeful, indicative of the Expansion Era. The ship had been designed by a civilization with an embarrassment of riches and unity of purpose. It would’ve inspired Nilah, had she not seen what riches and purpose had done to Carré.

  “Look at that,” said Boots, pointing out some of the gilding on one of the nearest columns.

  The imagers zoomed in at her request. There were farmers carrying massive clay pots, ancient humans setting fires, and depictions of the first monetary trades—all wrought from gleaming gold. Matte lines of white duraplast were worked into the statuary, breaking up the arrangement like fine bone dishware. Scarred frescoes of shimmering paint illustrated the starting points of civilization, things like government, agriculture, and currency.

  “A bit weird choice in artwork, though,” said Nilah.

  “I think… they’re emergency manuals,” said Boots. “In case the colony experiences an age of illiteracy, they can reboot with these. There are the basic cultural memes here.”

  Nilah squinted at the artworks. “They arrived on a computerized ship, Boots. They’re not going to forget how to read.”

  “Colonies are supposed to last forever. Could be famines, demagogues, radicalization to anti-literate values, genetic failure…” Boots listed them off on her fingers. “You never know what might cause an apocalyptic event, but there are always going to be some survivors on the other side, and they’ll need to rebuild.”

  “Still, seems a tad strange for an engine room.”

  “I think this was supposed to be the seat of government after the ship landed. Clear out all of the equipment, and you have a court. A seat of law is civ step one,” said Boots, pointing up at some of the panels. “See those tabards on the ceiling there? Those are proto-Standard heraldry for the founding families of this mission. The Clarkesfall Landers used a variant when they set up that colony.”

  “Yeah,” Orna piped up from the back, “this is exciting and all, but those features didn’t save the colony, so they weren’t that good. Can we get back to the mission?”

  Nilah mouthed the word “sorry” at Boots, who waved it off. There was wonder in the older woman’s eyes, and she hated that they wouldn’t have time to indulge it. Given the marvels contained in engineering, she was getting excited to see the Vogelstrand’s main reactor control.

  They rolled through a massive archway, and the sight stole Nilah’s breath.

  Instead of beautiful frescoes, they found a thousand pairs of dangling legs, wrapped in a tangle of vines like heartberries from a nettle bush. The heads were obscured by darkness, but dead hands hung by their sides, fingers twitching like skittering spiders.

  “I think we can assume,” said Nilah, scarcely able to stop herself from retching, “that the ship moved most of the bodies over here after Witts stole that shard thing. How are these plants still alive? No food, no sunlight…”

  “The reactor core,” said Boots. “It’s supposed to passively keep the ship powered for thousands of years. Again, in case of civilizational collapse, it’s going to be somewhat autonomous. Maybe they’re… feeding from it.”

  The ship’s ancient projectors whirred to life outside the Devil. Shivering light became the outline of a nude woman, skin like oil slick, holding a spear, sitting atop a dais in the center of the room. She clutched the weapon close to herself, head hung low, and her silver hair fell across muscular shoulders. On the ground beside her lay a man’s severed head, eyes frozen open by the death blow. Both of the illusions stuttered and pixelated under the failing light of ancient tech.

  Nilah looked to Boots, who grimaced.

  “I never know what to say for a first impression,” Boots whispered.

  Tapping the exterior loudspeaker, Nilah said, “Hello. I’m Nilah.”

  Boots swatted her hand from the button. “‘I’m Nilah’?”

  “You didn’t have any better ideas!” Nilah hissed.

  “Hello, Nilah,” said the projection, not looking up. “I am Ursula, failed and undying.”

  “Oh, uh, sorry to hear that,” said Nilah, looking to Boots, who gestured for her to keep going. “We’re hunting the man who stole the shard of the, uh, dead art from you.”

  Ursula’s eyes locked onto them at the mention of a shard. “So you can take it for yourselves?”

  “Hey, lady,” said Boots, leaning over to talk into the mic, “before two weeks ago, I didn’t even know this ship or the shard existed. We’re not here because we want your forbidden knowledge. We’re here because we need to kill a guy.”

  Ursula stood and pounded her spear’s shaft against the deck, where the projectors rendered a weak lightning show that might’ve been impressive in another era. She held her hand over the severed head, and it jumped up into her reach, where she seized it by the hair. “State your full identities.”

  “Any reason to lie?” asked Boots, and Nilah shook her head no.

  “I’m Nilah Brio, and this is Boots Elsworth. We’re part of a crew that’s been hunting Henrick Witts for two years.”

  The statue’s eyes widened, flashing the same blue as the spear. Was it processing something? “From the Capricious.”

  Nilah gaped. “Uh, yes, ma’am. That’s correct. Might I ask how you’ve heard of us?”

  “Your civilization loves the sound of its own voice. It drowns the stars, choking out cosmic glory with its myriad transmissions,” said Ursula. “When I first landed here, it was quiet, but now space is so loud. I have followed the stories of your exploits with great interest.”

  “Because you wanted to see if we could kill Witts after he robbed you?”

  Ursula smiled. “No. I wanted to see how long it would take you to die. I am impressed at your longevity, but you will never strike down Henrick Witts. It is sad, though”—and the smile disappeared—“because you have brought alchemy before me. You have knowledge of it, and so must die.”

  The Devil popped up a few convenient targeting messages on the readouts, pointing out vital spots in the ship’s struct
ure. It was tempting to pull the trigger on the central server cluster when Ursula threatened her, but Nilah restrained herself. They hadn’t gotten any usable intel from the place yet.

  “We did what now?” asked Nilah.

  Shadows fell across Ursula’s face. “Your vessel. Something inside stinks of the forbidden art.”

  Nilah muted her mic. “The twins?”

  “I’m guessing,” said Boots. “Keep it talking.”

  “If you’re going to put us down,” said Nilah, “may we at least die satisfied?”

  “A last meal?” asked the woman.

  “Knowledge,” said Nilah.

  “The purest quest… I am not cruel,” said Ursula. “If answers would comfort you, I shall share what I may.”

  “Why can’t Henrick Witts be killed?” asked Nilah. “He’s only a human, right?”

  Ursula lowered her head and raised the man’s. He opened his mouth, speaking with a reedy voice. “He possesses the forbidden art, the unbreakable and dead, the unconquered, the crucible of realities, the poet’s pen. Henrick Witts is the Inheritor of Alchemy and the Pretender of Origin.”

  Boots rubbed the bridge of her nose. “So he can turn lead into gold. Big whoop. Why can’t he be killed?”

  The male head shook no, an unnerving gesture, since it had no neck muscles. “A glyph is but an instance, a single letter in the language of the firmament. Alchemy is the code of glyphs, the program upon which our reality is written. His mind is unlocked! Liberated! Glorious! He cannot die! All glory to the masters!”

  Ursula tossed the raving head into the shadows, where it bounced once before dissolving into pixels. She then turned to face the Devil once more. “No creature has the strength to oppose Henrick Witts. No military, no civilization, least of all a band of smugglers in a pale imitation of a warship. That is why you should rest easy when it is time for you to join me in death.”

  Nilah keyed a charge into the jump drive. It wasn’t time to go, but she wouldn’t be taking any chances. “Why are you doing this? Killing everyone who knows your secret?”

  Ursula turned her back to them and conjured a swirl of stars overhead, churning them into a spiral galaxy with her spear. “Because it falls to me to protect the legacy of humankind. When humanity first ascended from its cradle into the heavens, alchemy was but another tool at its disposal. Few understood it. Fewer still could master even its basic tenets.”

  The stars lengthened from points into lines, and the view zoomed in upon them until they were impossibly tall structures in the mist of a distant world. Was it a picture of Origin?

  “Alchemy can bend the rules for a single instance, or all of them. It could boil a pot of water or change the boiling point of all water in the universe, instantly killing most carbon-based life. Casting a spell is simply running a program—alchemy is writing a program. Humans, armed with the poet’s pen, began taking the fate of the universe into their own hands in the pursuit of greater glory and riches. They created a single jump gate and reflected it into thousands of points across the galaxy. They erected edifices on Origin to woo the senses, impossible geometry to baffle and amaze. They chased wealth, and with each passing day, they grew closer and closer to annihilation.”

  The buildings began to fold and shift, contorting into intricate shapes. Nilah tried to untangle them, but they were an unsolvable puzzle to her. Ursula directed their view upward, to where a battle raged in the darkness of space.

  “It was too great a weapon, a panacea, a salvation… there was always a reason to break its quarantine. None could be trusted with alchemy—so the great masters of Origin declared it illegal. A civil war split humanity.”

  Hundreds of ships twisted through facets in the fabric of the galaxy, firing at one another with prismatic weapons. Thousands of lines of light bent and diffracted across myriad possibilities as they searched out each other’s weaknesses. Time was broken, and entire crews would be snuffed out in an explosion, only to re-form and continue the fight from another plane. Nilah couldn’t begin to parse the intricacies.

  “The masters of Origin devised a ritual to seal alchemy away, fusing it into a crystal we call the Wellspring. They hunted the remaining practitioners to the ends of the galaxy.”

  On the projection above them, six figures in robes surrounded a pleading man. They raised their palms to him, and dozens of glyphs wove into a cage around the victim. His skin bubbled and broke, spilling magical energies like quicksilver, which congealed into a small gemstone. There was little left of the man after the robed wizards finished their spell. One of them held the crystal aloft, where it floated up and melted into an enormous, glassy spike.

  “What happened to the planet?” asked Boots. “What happened to Origin?”

  Ursula’s projection walked around the dais, her spear’s tip trailing ribbons of light as she twirled it anxiously. “Origin and alchemy were one and the same. Their society had come to depend upon miracles that were rotten to the core, all in pursuit of laziness. Their integration with the forbidden art was complete, and they couldn’t be salvaged.”

  “What happened to Origin?” Boots repeated, blanching.

  Ursula waved her hands over the projection, which melted into the sphere of Origin, blue and healthy with green landmasses and streaks of white clouds. “The masters launched five primitive colonies through the jump gates, their citizens specially selected to become the future of the human race, then they terminated all life. The planet itself was hidden—the final act of the masters before they turned the ritual on themselves.”

  “What the hell did she just say?” Orna called from the back.

  “Then Clarkesfall…” said Boots. “My homeworld… was the second time someone used alchemy to exterminate a planet.”

  Nilah took her eyes from Ursula’s staticky projection to regard her friend. Boots’s breathing came more rapidly, and her sallow complexion heated to a nearly beet red. If she didn’t get control of the situation soon, Boots might tell the Devil to start shooting; it probably wouldn’t stop until everything was in pieces, so it was best if they could keep Ursula talking and get some answers.

  The metallic woman’s impassive gaze flashed in time with her computations. “The death of Origin was necessary to preserve all life in the galaxy.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” said Nilah, and Boots jolted from her anger to nod in agreement. “It’s the same excuse that Henrick Witts used to justify genocide.”

  “One solution is not appropriate for all cases.”

  Nilah muted the mic.

  “All right, let’s keep our cool,” she said, pressing down on the air like she was tamping down Boots’s temper.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” said Boots, unmuting the Devil’s mic, and she almost looked like she was going to maintain her even keel… but her lips curled at the last second. “Your stupid masters should’ve destroyed the crystal! How many worlds are going to have to pay this price, huh? When does it become unacceptable? You have a comm on this ship. You could’ve warned everyone about the danger Witts was becoming, but instead, you’re playing with your spear down here in the darkness. You look like a statue, and you’re about as useful as one, you overgrown pigeon toilet!”

  Ursula cocked an eyebrow at the outburst, but if she was offended, Nilah couldn’t sense it. “Just as we must never destroy the last samples of diseases, alchemy must remain hidden away. Individual humans cannot factor into the goals of a great society.”

  “And societies are only great when they care about individuals, so I guess we’re done here,” said Boots, and the Devil re-highlighted all the weak points in eager anticipation of the coming dustup.

  The bodies lining the ceiling shivered like willow branches in the wind, and Ursula’s eyes went red. “Then you are satisfied and ready to die?”

  “Wait!” said Nilah. “You said Origin launched five colonies. We know those names from stories, and Vogelstrand isn’t one of them. What was your purpose?”

  Ursula’s
sardonic smile chilled Nilah’s heart. The AI took some delight in describing death. “Alchemists are vile, selfish people, and some of them were unable to part with their…‘heritage.’ They failed to respect the sacrifices made to preserve life and stole a piece of the Wellspring crystal from its vault. They fled to the stars, hoping to start a colony in secret—plotting the day when they would take praxis over the galaxy. This is their ship. I am not the Vogelstrand.” She pointed her spear at the severed head in the corner. “That was. I am a virus, and had the distinct pleasure of using the crystal shard to excise this tumor from the galaxy.”

  She beckoned to them. “Now come to me. We do not need to make this painful.”

  The rear compartment door opened up, bringing a fresh wave of sick stench, and Orna poked her head through.

  “Please tell me you’re done talking, because I’m ready to jack this lady for all of her data.”

  “And how do you plan to do that from inside the tank?” asked Nilah, and Orna stared at her until she understood they’d be going outside.

  “Aw, bollocks.”

  “I hate this plan,” said Nilah. “You have Charger. Teacup is up on the surface.”

  “What was she going to do?” asked Orna. “Hang on to the side while we jumped? It’s theoretically possible, but—”

  “My best-in-class jump bubble is large enough to accommodate your battle armor on the roof, Supreme Being,” said the Devil. “You wouldn’t want to ride inside it, of course, as the radiation of the Flow would cause a condition known as Thanogenic Telomere Disorder, sometimes called ‘Water Ballooning,’ as it is known to—”

  Nilah smacked the console. “Why didn’t you tell us we could bring Teacup?”

  “You didn’t ask,” said the Devil.

  “It doesn’t matter, because she’s not here. I need you to hack while I cover you. You’re the security expert,” said Orna.