Noumenon Infinity

by Marina J. Lostetter

  It couldn’t be the original builders, could it? Many people had speculated on whether or not they still existed—were a damn Ultra Civilization.

  Could they have come here to stop the humans from taking action against the Web? Had they finally deigned to show their ugly faces now that their exterminator was under threat?

  What threat? We don’t even know what to do with the thing if we catch it.

  But how would an Ultra Civilization know they were there? Was this some kind of latent trap, held secretly in an SD until some unwitting, space-faring race wandered into the system?

  The image on the forward monitors shifted, as did Joanna. Her stance remained tight, but she raised her head, lifted her chin, as though daring a new confrontation to emerge.

  As space shimmered, the skin of the bubble pulling back and eventually tearing, a new excitement took Nwosu. It was an SD bubble popping. Disintegrating into normal space to reveal . . .

  Ships. Three in all, emerging—rising from the darkness. Two of them like rough and tumble asteroids, one bulky and spined like a beetle.

  He knew those ships, everyone did.

  Elation battled with fear and sadness in his chest, and he clutched at his breastbone. “How did they find us so soon?”

  He’d asked his ancestors every night to carry these ships across the galaxy safely. To see that, one day, they arrived outside his airlocks. He wanted, desperately, for an iteration of his line to oversee the reunion.

  Joanna lost her hard edge, she seemed more baffled than he was, more shocked to see the spacecraft. “It’s the Nataré group,” she gasped. “It’s Noumenon Ultra.”

  They’d left a beacon in the center of what was once LQ Pyx’s gravity well, hoping that, one day, Convoy Seven-Point-Five would find it and understand what happened. Many, including Mira’s previous captain, had feared this new development would mean they’d never see their sister convoy again. After all, they could leave the coordinates of the first system in their sights, but what about the system after that? And the system after that?

  Of course, the prayer had been that there would be no later systems to run to, no Stellar Murderer to hunt.

  They’d been so wrong on that account.

  “But we left the beacon only moments before we dove,” Nwosu said. “The only way they could have found us so quickly was if . . .”

  “If they were already on the way back to us when we activated the Web,” Joanna said.

  “Even then, they . . . their arrival was so close, nearly on top of us. They couldn’t have been traveling in the same SD. They had to be using a new one.”

  The captain and first officer shared a wide-eyed look.

  “Signal them,” Nwosu directed.

  “Already on it, sir,” said the communications officer. “Utilizing ship-to-ship frequencies in use when the convoy split.”

  “Good, good.”

  “They’re responding,” the officer said, his excitement barely contained. “Would you like it on a private channel, with a headset, or—?”

  “No need. Put it on speaker.”

  “This is Mira, Captain Nwosu on duty,” the officer announced to their counterpart across the distance.

  “Noumenon Infinitum, this is Noumenon Ultra,” came a crackly voice on the other end.

  The swell of realization—that this was really happening, their brethren had really returned—crested through the bridge and burst in an outpouring of cheers. Their contact’s next words were swallowed in a tidal wave of hoots and hollers.

  “Settle!” Joanna commanded. “Settle down!”

  “This is Captain Nwosu,” he announced. “Who am I speaking with?”

  “Noumenon Ultra.”

  “But who specifically? Which captain or crew member?”

  “All of us.”

  Nwosu furrowed his brow, brought one hand up to brush a pensive finger at the corner of his chapped lips.

  The voice sounded strange. Like they had a bad connection. Noumenon Infinitum had long ago upgraded its communications systems—mostly to ensure a better connection to the autons working on the Web, but the effects had trickled down throughout the entire convoy. Was it simply that the old channels were more prone to static and breakage? Was the distance between the ships, with no communications buoy to boost the signal, creating a weakened connection?

  “But who am I addressing, directly? Who are you?”

  “Noumenon Ultra.”

  Captain Nwosu gave Joanna a sideways glance, asking silently, Does this seem strange to you?

  She answered with the slightest of shrugs.

  “Well, Noumenon Ultra, we’d like to extend an invitation for some of your crew members to come aboard. I’m happy to accommodate up to a dozen at this time, to make sure that our decontamination processes aren’t stretched too thin.” Convoy Seven had spent a thousand years working on the Web. Convoy Seven-Point-Five, having spent much of that time traveling in SD from point to point on the Nataré map, would have experienced far fewer incidents, but all the same: a hundred years alone was plenty for viral and bacterial evolution to diverge.

  “One body shall come aboard.”

  “If that is your wish.” It was fair for them to be cautious. The beacon had to have been a shock, the message disturbing. Though the two convoys had truly only been out of communication for a short amount of time, Nwosu could appreciate their hesitancy.

  Still, one seemed an odd choice.

  “We will be ready in an hour. Please send over the individual’s specs as soon as you’ve designated a visitor. We want to have the proper dosage amounts prepared for—”

  “The body will have no exposed biological materials.”

  “Fine, fine. Do you still have the capacity to dock with Hippocrates?”

  “Our shuttles are in order.”

  “Then that is where we will receive your envoy.”

  It was strange how suddenly an entire crew’s mood could shift. The flow of today’s emotional story was nearly the opposite of what it had been the day they’d turned on the Web. This morning had begun bleak, but now there was a fervent chatter, excitement, hope.

  The deCON specialists on Hippocrates worked with an urgency Nwosu had never seen. There were smiles—work was a happy occasion again. No one’s work had been a thing of joy for a long while now.

  He and Joanna waited nervously outside of the designated umbilical airlock. The head specialist and her team attached a portable hazmat cleaning shower to the airlock’s exterior door, ready to douse the crew member as soon as they emerged.

  Wearing a pressure suit was a good call, Nwosu decided. It made the deCON process shorter, meant their reunion could happen sooner.

  Joanna scrolled through a list of clone lines on her tablet—Seven-Point-Five’s manifest—staring at the same thousand names over and over, barely reading them as they flicked by on her tablet. A deep furrow dug between her brows, and her eyes were so fixed on the screen, Nwosu hoped she wasn’t putting too much strain on them.

  It could be anyone, he told her silently. The answer isn’t going to leap off that list.

  A far-off thump and a strangled hiss marked the arrival of the shuttle. Nwosu thumbed at his mouth. He knew he played with his lips too much when he was nervous, but it was a habit he’d never been able to throw, no matter how many times a Joanna—both his mentor and his apprentice—called him on it.

  A shape moved in the small bay beyond. Through the plastic and the layers of portholes, he could only make out something dark-colored headed their way.

  Carefully, he smoothed down his uniform and pressed open his collar, unveiling his single Revealer stitching. His line had earned it by delivering the convoy safely back to the Web, by steering the fleet straight and true.

  He used to wonder if he should remove the triangle, after the Web abandoned them. Once, he’d taken a seam ripper to it, unraveled one edge. But he’d immediately regretted it. He did his best to repair the patch on his own, too ashamed to
bring it to the supplies division on Bottomless II. He called to his ancestors, looked deep inside himself, down his line, and begged for forgiveness.

  The concept of Revealing and Revelation, which had been a cornerstone of their society these many centuries, was on shaky ground. How could there be destiny—cosmic divinity—in the mission, knowing what they knew about the Web? Surly it had all been folly, some said. Surely it was simply hubris.

  But Nwosu felt his faith bolstered by this reunion. He was acutely aware that, after today, his line would likely receive a second mark.

  He faltered for a moment, the concept sinking in.

  He would likely be named a Revealer. Maybe twice over, should the concept be reinvigorated and the original convoy reunited.

  It was unlikely the Noumenon Ultra crew had encountered the truth of Revealing on their own. He was excited to introduce them to the divine concept.

  “Captain?” Joanna asked. “Are you all right?”

  He realized he was breathing harshly through his mouth. This event suddenly felt less joyous and more momentous. It was a crux in his line—a crux he could have never predicted. “I’m fine,” he said, voice shaking. He smoothed his uniform once more. “Fine.”

  There was pressure now. It had been there from the moment they made contact—both convoys needed this to go smoothly, wanted what was best. But now . . . now it felt different.

  “Can you ask for the astronomers to send me an update on the Web’s possible next location at the top of the hour?”

  “They might not have anything of use ye . . . Yes, sir.” If Joanna was anything, it was loyal. Dedicated. She hardly ever wavered, ever questioned. At times, it seemed like she had more discipline in her little finger than the rest of the convoy possessed as a whole.

  As far as Nwosu was concerned, her line was the best choice for fleet command anyone had ever made.

  One airlock repressurized; the initial scans had been made. I.C.C. would analyze the visitor and determine what kind of measures were needed in the next airlock. But the visitor moved through the second stage with such speed, Nwosu frowned.

  “I.C.C.?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “I didn’t see any chemical discharge. Is deCON functioning properly?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “But there was no surface blast, no UV bleach.”

  “That is because the surface is already free of dust and particles.”

  The next door slid aside. Their visitor was almost to the shower.

  “The suit’s already been cleaned?”

  “There is no suit, Captain. The individual boarding Hippocrates is—”

  The final door slid back. Nwosu and I.C.C. named it together.

  “An auton.”

  The auton was much like the ones they’d used in construction of the Web, but possessed unique modifications. Most autons were simple puppets. Human-shaped tools. They had sleek, hard bodies and blank, faceless, featureless, interestless skulls protecting the meaty partial-brains that functioned as the onboard computer.

  But this auton had a face. Purely digital, like an avatar of old. It was gray, and somewhat cartoonish, with eyes that were too big and a mouth that was too simple, an inert nose, and eyebrows that seemed to have a total of three settings.

  “Hello,” it said in the same static-filled tones Nwosu noted earlier. This was why the voice had sounded strange: it wasn’t emanating from a person. The realization sent a small shiver up his spine. Autons were puppets, not ambassadors. Why would someone have used an auton to answer their hails?

  When the auton spoke, the mouth moved, and though it appeared to shape itself around the sounds, there was no depth, no tongue. It was . . . off-putting.

  They’d scrubbed its surface in the shower, just to be sure, though I.C.C. insisted the auton was clean.

  Now it gleamed, its armor-like exterior smooth, scratch-free. Their own autons bore scars from all kinds of construction accidents. If those were weathered soldiers, this was a pampered tool of privilege.

  It stood before them like its cousins, stiff, waiting for orders. When not speaking, its face was neutral, still.

  “Hello,” Nwosu answered. “Might I know the name of your operator?”

  “I represent everyone, and so should be considered no one.”

  “Once you are assured that our convoy is safe, will crew come aboard?”

  “No. Everyone is sleeping. I make a dream of this for them.” It opened its arms wide, as though encompassing all it could see. “I make a dream of you.”

  “I see,” he said, though he did not. “I.C.C., I’m not speaking to an AI, am I?”

  “The auton calling itself ‘No One’ does not appear to have any greater capacity for independent thought than those we possess. I believe it is still a proxy for an individual.”

  Joanna typed something on her tablet, and Nwosu glanced over her shoulder. “What are you writing?”

  “I have to log the visitor,” she said frankly.

  “‘Noah’? You’re calling it Noah?”

  “I’m not calling it No One. If Odysseus taught us anything, it’s that that’s a bad idea.”

  “I agree,” said I.C.C.

  “Are you amenable to the title ‘Noah’?” Nwosu asked.

  “Yes, we are. Why did you not heed our warning?”

  The captain was taken aback. “What warning?”

  “Before Noumenon Ultra deviated from its path, causing the two Enigma Machines to lose contact, we warned Noumenon Infinitum to cease construction. Why did you not listen? It is the reason we abandoned our mission to aid in aborting yours.”

  A sick sense of vertigo swelled inside Nwosu. He’d felt such a swamp of illness before—it was a kind of undoable regret. The squeezing, nauseating, maddening sense that you’ve done something wrong that can never be fixed, that will change your life for the worse forever.

  It was like tar in his belly—gumming up his insides and weighing on his bones.

  “We received no such warning,” he said softly, his tongue tasting mealy in his mouth. Did they know? No, no. If Noumenon Ultra knew the Web was sinister, if they could have stopped this . . .

  “What did you try to warn us about?”

  “The grand war between the Nataré.”

  Nwosu knew there would be questions, knew his fellow convoy leaders deserved to hear the entire story as much as he did. So he called an emergency meeting of the board, and was unsurprised when I.C.C. announced that half the members were already standing outside the situation room, waiting for his summons.

  The assigned security team had difficulty steering the auton—Noah—through Mira’s throngs. So many people had stopped to stare, had come pouring out of their places of work, out of their quarters just to see. Mostly, the halls were filled with boisterous chatter, but a few people wept. They seemed to take this reunion as Nwosu did—as an auspicious sign. Whether the two crews had been steered toward one another by the vibrations of their lines, or by sad chance, it didn’t matter. It still meant something, even if it only meant something in the moment.

  Once in a while, a hand shot out of the crowd to graze the auton’s chassis—most often out of reverence, but a few children mimicked their parents in play.

  By the time the party reached the situation room, Noah’s once-spotless exterior now bore handprint upon handprint, like the subtlest dabs of war paint.

  The board itself was not without its awed members. Nwosu nodded to Vega Hansen and Min-Seo Park, who he knew had a special stake in this reunion. They nodded back. The rest of the board parted to make way for the auton, marveling at its familiarity and strangeness.

  Everyone piled inside after, but no one took up their usual seats at the long table. They watched as the auton skirted the marble, dragging the very tip of its robotic fingers across the surface, as though it could feel the cool slickness of the slab.

  When Nwosu urged them to sit, the board did so hesitantly. There was no place for the v
isitor, but it didn’t seem to mind.

  Noah didn’t take long to reiterate what it had already told the captain.

  “We found evidence of a great interstellar war between factions of Nataré.” Noah’s expression was appropriately, if cartoonishly, grave. “We still have an incomplete picture of the social climate that led to the conflict. But we have clues.

  “At our third stop, we discovered a second megastructure. It is very unlike the Web. Instead of a sphere, it is more of a diamond, with nearly solid sides. Many blast marks decorated its body.” The auton drew its hands over its chest, as though in illustration. “There was damage. Holes. We sent autons into the holes. They never returned. We called this structure ‘the Void,’ sibling of ‘the Web.’”

  Noah’s speech patterns were so bizarre, it was difficult to accept that a human had to be controlling it. Could language have really changed that much in the years they were separated? Did he sound strange to Noah’s user?

  They expected their societies to diverge, but it felt like Ultra had changed much more quickly than could have been reasonably expected.

  “There also, a second Nest. But mostly obliterated. Then we found an outpost. War outpost. With documents of destruction and chaos.” Noah covered its head, crouched down, as though ducking a bombardment. “We still do not know if war began because of the structures, or if the structures were simply utilized during the war.

  “We found two more megastructures. Broken, still. By the Nataré, we think. But we are also certain the Nataré built, as you did.

  “We found no definitive evidence of Nataré extinction. Or even, a definitive end to the war. Though, much destruction. Much, much destruction . . .”

  Noah turned its back on the board, grew silent. Nwosu was about to prompt it, to make sure it hadn’t gone into sleep mode, when it whirled. “Nataré may be diminished, but still alive. If so, we don’t know what they do. Do they still build? Do they decommission instead? We don’t know.

  “When we knew the Web should not be completed without better understanding of these questions, of Nataré history, we abandoned our mission. We sent you a warning. We ran to your aid. But our worst nightmare, very worst, is now real, for you did not receive our warning. We never made it to map’s end, our ultimate goal . . .” It sounded pained, sad. The inherent failure was a great personal disappointment to Noah’s operator, clearly.