The Worst of All Possible Worlds

by Alex White

  “Yep. Here’s the new plan,” said Orna, stepping toward the opening. “Sleepy and Zipper will wait for the captain and give medical attention. You, me, and the twins head inside and start working on any security that exists.”

  Nilah nodded as Charger tossed her some extra ammo. She slotted them into Teacup’s loaders, and her HUD reflected the new additions. “And we’re all aware that the entrance might be a cremation chamber, posing as an airlock?”

  Charger checked its own slingers and holstered them to keep its hands free. “Oh yeah. That’s what makes it fun.”

  “We’re willing to try it if you are,” said Alister.

  “Let us worry about the captain out here,” said Malik. “Your team should get to the Wellspring as fast as possible. I don’t think our adversaries understand what’s at this site, but between our presence and the treasure dome…”

  “They’re pretty interested,” Jeannie finished, pulling her tactical gloves a little tighter. “We should go.”

  They stepped to the edge of the airlock.

  When Nilah looked inside, she found four circles engraved into the floor, pairs of feet depicted in each. Teacup scanned for traps, but found nothing even remotely suspicious.

  “I feel like it’s telling us to stand there,” said Orna.

  “I say we oblige, then.” Nilah took one step into the room, then another. No carnage yet.

  “Pile in!” Orna barked, and the twins rushed in behind her.

  Upon containing all four people in Nilah’s party, the chamber came to life, glyphs and beautiful designs traced around its walls in pure light. Streamers of magic raced around them, and the door to the outside world slid shut.

  Motes of energy coalesced to form a rotating array of symbols, and it took a moment for Nilah to recognize them as a timer. Origin Standard characters differed from Galactic Standard. They were overwrought, harder to read. Humanity’s epoch of opulence extended even into their words, and she briefly wondered if they’d had some assistive technology to read the strange letters.

  “I think we’re being scanned,” said Nilah.

  “For what, though?” asked Jeannie. “Diseases?”

  “I doubt there’s anything alive in here,” she replied. “Spells, maybe. Might want to know if we’re alchemists.”

  Three minutes. They waited in silence for the timer to count down, and as it hit thirty seconds, the spells rushing through the space whirled faster.

  Charger’s lenses darted back and forth with each burst of light. “Be ready for anything.”

  “Oh, don’t worry—” Alister began, but the room went red.

  The floor opened up beneath him, sucking him down into a chamber and out of sight.

  “Alister!” cried Jeannie, shortly before getting shunted down a trapdoor of her own.

  “Damn it!” Nilah grasped at the place where Jeannie had been, just missing her.

  Then, with a pleasant chime, the airlock cycled, an interior door irising open to expose a tunnel leading deeper into the installation.

  “Sleepy, come in!” said Orna, rushing to the edge of the interior door to check for hostiles. “We lost Pensive and Spyglass! Sleepy!”

  Charger stopped and looked to Nilah, who tested her own comms to find them completely dead.

  “Whatever we’re doing in here,” she said to Orna, “we’re doing it alone.”

  “Please vacate the quarantine area immediately,” came Jeannie’s voice over a hidden speaker.

  “Spyglass!” said Nilah. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not Spyglass,” came the reply. “I’m the Docent, and it’s my privilege to guide you deeper into the Graveyard of the Poets.”

  Servos ultra-quiet, Teacup crept to the edge of the airlock and peered into the corridor. The omnipresent orichalcum was shot through with chartreuse gemstones the size of Nilah’s head, each of which hummed with a strange, internal light. They reminded her of eidolon crystals, but something about them unnerved her.

  Then Jeannie appeared out of thin air inside the tunnel, striding purposefully toward them with a bright smile on her face. Upon closer approach, however, it fit poorly—like she was being used as a puppet.

  “Hello, Nilah and Orna Brio-Sokol,” she said, throat pulsing unevenly. Her voice slurred, lips unwilling to fully comply with some external force. “I’m the Docent, governing artificial intelligence, and your guide to the Graveyard of the Poets and the heritage of humanity.”

  “Well,” said Orna, “whatever it is knows we got married.”

  “Jeannie?” Nilah took a step toward the swaying form of their friend. “Can you hear me?”

  “The homunculus?” Jeannie’s hands shook at her sides, tendons bulging. A glistening tear rolled from her eye, down one cheek, and into the corner of her mouth. She fought a smile, but whatever force tugged her cheeks upward won out. “Its body will serve me for today, and then we can make one more amenable to your command. This one hasn’t been well-trained.”

  Jeannie’s nostrils flared as she ushered the pair of bots forward. The fear in her eyes didn’t sync up with her mouth. “This one is quite impertinent, really. You should’ve put it down a long time ago.”

  Nilah switched to her private channel with Orna. “This could be an illusion. I don’t trust anything anymore.”

  “I think we should treat it as real,” said Orna.

  “So this AI has Jeannie under its command…”

  “This is an alchemical place,” her wife replied. “Probably safe to assume the twins are sensitive to alchemy because they were made with it.”

  “Yes,” said the possessed woman, and Nilah grimaced. Even on a private channel, the thing in Jeannie’s body could hear her. “Jeannie Ferrier isn’t a person. It’s a powerful tool, and you’ll come to master many just like it. I have accessed its memories of you to better guide you inside.”

  “What’s with the airlock?”

  “It is a challenge of magical intelligence. I will admit four humans every five minutes,” said Jeannie. “If you haven’t claimed the Wellspring by then, others are welcome inside. It is my promise that you have three minutes and thirty-eight seconds of uninterrupted time in the Chapel of the Wellspring. The structure’s orichalcum cage cannot be destroyed or safely teleported into—it’s an anchor between dimensions.”

  “We’d like to, uh… wait for our friends,” said Nilah, ready to draw down on Jeannie if she had to. The thing controlling their crewmate was an Origin-era AI, and Nilah hadn’t forgotten how vicious Ursula had been on the Vogelstrand. The more she saw of Origin’s legacy, the less she liked it.

  “Of course. But you must learn to be more ruthless if you wish to resurrect alchemy.”

  “We’re not here to resurrect alchemy,” said Nilah. “We’re here to destroy it.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Jeannie replied. “There are now a hundred and twenty-two thousand, three hundred sixty-four souls scattered through low orbit and below who might take up that mantle.”

  “I thought you were here to stop the unworthy from getting the stuff,” Nilah said.

  Jeannie’s head bobbed unnaturally as the Docent bowed. “This is the most hidden place in the universe. You stand here, having bested our Conservators. For you to reliably find one of our agents would take complete mastery over the minds of your species—”

  “Or big data,” Nilah corrected. “And a lot of genetic samples. And a couple of experimental neural nets. And, in my case, a subscription fee.”

  “Then you have created a tool beyond the ken of our wisest sages,” said Jeannie, “and have proven yourselves wiser, still. The Wellspring awaits the one who can bear it, and I sense its new master soon.”

  “You’re just going to give it to me because my people were cleverer at hide-and-seek than yours?” Nilah was more than a little annoyed now.

  “Honey, stop trying to convince her to kill us,” said Orna.

  Nilah’s thin smile was obscured by Teacup’s armor. “Lovely
. Can we tell our friends outside to get a move on somehow? We’d like them to join us.”

  A few strands of Jeannie’s red hair slipped free as she nodded too vigorously, desperation in her eyes, but not her dolphin smile. “I’ll connect you to the quarantine chamber now. Your friends are already inside.”

  Ghostly voices emerged from all around them in the golden hallway.

  “Are we sure about this?” came Boots’s shout, distant and growing louder.

  “Well, we’re not staying outside!” was Aisha’s reply, explosions and slinger fire thumping in the background.

  The phantasmal sound of a spell bolt sizzled by Nilah’s ear.

  “Boss! Can you hear me?” she called into their midst.

  Cordell’s voice was faint, but Boots came in loud and clear: “Bastion is here! It’s over the Graveyard! Tangos everywhere! Shut the airlock, Doc! Shut it!”

  The sounds of battle hissed away, and Nilah found the place remarkably quiet, save for the labored breathing of her absent comrades. The sound was so real, she felt as though she could touch them.

  She gestured to get Jeannie’s attention. “Uh, Docent? How much damage can this place withstand?”

  “This place is made of timeless orichalcum,” was Jeannie’s reply. “No amount of force will break it.”

  Nilah wanted to ask how they milled metal like that, but realized she was being a total mechanist and restrained herself.

  “You’ll be safe once you’re inside,” Nilah called out. “Can you lot hear me? The airlock cycle time is about five minutes!”

  “Who is that?” asked Boots. “Who’s talking? Hunter Two? We can’t see you.”

  “We’re already inside,” said Nilah, voice booming through Teacup’s speakers to make herself heard. “Jeannie got taken over by an AI called the Docent, and it’s letting us talk to you through an indestructible door.”

  “You didn’t waste time getting into trouble,” said Boots. “Where’s Alister?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll use him to guide your friends, should you wish to continue onward,” said Jeannie. “Though I believe I will soon have more guests than hosts to accommodate. You’ll want to come with me if you wish to begin the trial.”

  “I said we wanted to wait on our friends!” said Nilah.

  Jeannie’s eyebrow twitched upward, panic in her eyes. “A third party stands outside the quarantine, awaiting a turn. I can show you a projection, if you’d like to confirm it’s a friend as well.”

  “Show me,” said Nilah.

  Dusty light coalesced into the shape of a silver crest of spines, then a helmet, then the full figure of a man in robes. Powerful energies bled from the hems of his regalia, rainbow wisps that danced around his feet as he walked. He looked directly at Nilah, eyes aglow, and she swallowed hard.

  “What? What are you seeing?” asked Boots.

  “It’s Witts,” she replied. “He’s outside.”

  “The exterior shell of this place will withstand alchemy, but I will open the airlock for him, all the same,” said Jeannie. “He gets a try for the Wellspring, too.”

  Cordell broke the stunned silence. “Then you Hunters had better move. If there’s any speed advantage, you take it. We’ll catch up.”

  “We won’t let you down, sir.” Orna gestured for Nilah. “Time to go, babe.”

  “Good luck, Captain,” said Nilah, and they followed the Docent into the eerie emerald depths of the Graveyard.

  “Charger’s sensors are picking up a large cavity ahead,” Orna whispered.

  “Yes, that’s the Chapel of the Wellspring,” said Jeannie, “the place that alchemy was sealed away, and the place you will be tested.”

  “Tested for what?” asked Nilah.

  “To see if you’re worthy to inherit the Wellspring.” It tried to make Jeannie laugh, and it was like someone had jangled her puppet strings.

  “Well that’s horrible,” said Nilah. “What’s the nature of this test?”

  “Creativity and arcane intelligence,” said Jeannie.

  Nilah considered all of the folktales and myths she’d heard over the years, and there was always a penalty for failing a test. It would’ve been better to have Boots there—she always knew the obscure stuff.

  “I take it there’s a violent death if we don’t pass?” asked Nilah.

  “No,” said Jeannie. “This is a thinking problem, so your demise will take weeks.”

  “Oh.”

  The passage widened out, and they stood before an arena of etched glass and stone. Artisans of another age had bejeweled the domed ceiling with twelve stained-glass depictions of flowers, their petals like painted clouds. Orichalcum fused the artworks together at the seams like leading, its telltale beauty dazzling Nilah from on high. The brilliant mosaics spun slowly, like gears, as other illustrations unfolded around them in time. The orbits of the floral masterworks threw coruscating reflections, and plates of molten glass flitted through the air like jellyfish, their jewel-toned insides writhing.

  The flat floor stretched out before Nilah, its surface cut into concentric rows of green glass blocks, shaped into interlocking triangles. Below the glass, a mass of stars twirled slowly, a perfect replica of their universe.

  And in the middle of the room was a wide plinth, larger than the bridge of the Capricious, built from, once again, the most valuable metal in the galaxy. Above it, the Wellspring spun in slow motion, throwing its resplendence across the billions of reflective surfaces. The gargantuan crystal’s radiance had been dazzling in recordings, but in person, it made Nilah’s bones sing.

  “Do you think they overdid it with the orichalcum a bit? There are other colors out there, you know,” Nilah said, stepping to the edge of the arena glass. She peered through its depths at the diamond stars, and Teacup returned a lot of strange readings and power fluctuations beyond her ken.

  “That’s a big crystal,” said Orna, still looking at the Wellspring.

  Nilah looked to their guide. “Is this the test? In this room?”

  Jeannie nodded slowly, movements growing more smooth. Nilah only hoped that didn’t mean her mind was being broken by the AI ravaging her brain.

  “Should you try to leave through the emerald hall, you will be disintegrated,” said Jeannie.

  Glancing back at the exit, just a few meters away, Nilah said, “Well, that’s bloody great, isn’t it? Anything else you want to tell us about your ‘test’?”

  “Enter through the back edge of this triangle,” said the Docent, pointing to the nearest glass block, which had a small rune etched into it. “Then choose the left or right path. You will make sixteen choices, after which, you will either have arrived at the Wellspring—”

  “Or we die?” Nilah guessed.

  “Heavens, no,” Jeannie replied. “There is no consequence for failure. You will merely be deposited here, facing the entrance.”

  “Traps?” asked Nilah.

  “Too mundane,” said Jeannie, head swinging wildly to imitate shaking no.

  “To hell with it, then,” said Orna, stepping out onto the glass. Nothing happened. She turned back to Nilah. “Left or right?”

  “You know I can’t make a bloody decision like that! I’d never forgive myself if there was a trap,” said Nilah.

  “Quit acting like we’re going to survive this and help me,” said Orna.

  Nilah focused Teacup’s scanners onto Charger’s back, tuning them for broad-spectrum input. “Okay. Keep going. I’ll try to warn you if there’s trouble.”

  The second Charger stepped off the tile, it disappeared with a pop, reappearing all the way across the arena floor. Charger looked toward Nilah and tried to walk in her direction—except she vanished once more, popping into a new spot.

  “What the…?” came Orna’s annoyed voice. “What’s happening?”

  “Teleportation,” said Nilah.

  Teacup measured the distance and checked Charger’s acoustic reflections. There s
houldn’t have been anything between Charger and her armor, but there were undeniable kinks in space.

  She regarded the closest triangle, and the problem started to come together. “So let me get this straight… Every time you step off an edge, you teleport? Can’t I teleport to the center?”

  Jeannie gave her a terrible look, blood vessels bulging in her forehead. “If you do not take the path, you may not claim the Wellspring.”

  “That’s not good,” said Nilah.

  “What?” asked Orna. “What’s not good?”

  “We can’t brute force this.”

  “It’s just sixteen choices. Left or right.”

  Nilah traced one of the tiles, then pulled up Teacup’s pattern match to count them: more than sixty-five thousand that she could see.

  “Yes, well, that’s two to the power of sixteen possible paths, one of which is right,” Nilah said, stepping down onto one of the tiles; its edges glowed green like soda-lime glass. “That makes the worst case, if we do one path every minute…”

  Teacup, sensing the need for a time estimate, fed her the answer, and Nilah gulped.

  “Forty-five days,” said Nilah, switching on full telemetry. “Sprint over as many tiles as you can. Record everything.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Orna, yanking Charger’s slinger from its stow point. She took aim over one of the edges. “We shoot along the paths and track the flight to narrow it down.”

  “Wait!” said Nilah, but she’d already loosed a round.

  The flaming bolt hit the edge and flashed along eight different tiles before flying out the opening and ricocheting up the emerald tunnel.

  “The others should be getting out of the airlock right about now—and a wrong answer sends you back to the beginning,” said Nilah. “You want to shoot them?”

  “We’ll never guess right,” said Orna.

  “Yes, well, we can think of something while we run.”

  Boots stood in the quarantine chamber alongside Malik and Aisha. Cordell lay on the ground between them; they’d strapped him to one of Malik’s collapsible stretchers. The device had hoverlifts for easy movement, but it was battery powered with a short life, so for the time being, their captain had to command from the floor.