by Isaac Hooke
It wasn't over then.
Not yet.
Graol despaired far too easily because of his humanity. He knew this.
He allowed the cold logic of the Satori quadmind to take over, and he jetted to the spreading debris. A tiny portion of the frontal lobe he'd tweezed from Ari's skull remained intact. The specimen was useless without the accompanying hair sample of course, which would be impossible to find in these waters. But he had to try.
He saw something unexpected then.
A single strand remained attached to the gray matter, glued there by coagulated blood.
Graol felt a surge of hope. Finally he had a little of that human abstraction known as "luck."
He gently collected the brain matter in his wispy fingers. The water would eventually unglue the coagulated blood, and he'd lose the essential hair strand if he wasn't careful. Not to mention that the acid in the water was eating away the filament at this very moment. He was glad for once that he had 360-degree vision—the tissue sample would never leave his sight.
Graol jetted inside The Farm and he found himself in a wide, vaulted chamber. Xeviathi in various stages of development were moored to horizontal tracks and kept alive by feeding tubes. The organized ranks reminded Graol a little of the vineyards he'd seen in the human archives. Two satoroids acted as keepers, patrolling the biologicals, paying Graol no heed. On the far end of the room, a sealed iris door allowed direct access to the slave class hibernation ocean, where the fully-grown Xeviathi were eventually deposited.
Graol swam quickly, and the columns of Xeviathi soon gave way to the ranks of humans, whose bodies were tiny in comparison. These were grown specifically for the Species-87A surrogate project. Babies, with umbilicals linked to their bellies, developing inside self-sustaining membranes that were almost exact matches to the pods of the human starship. Which made sense, given that the Satori engineers had based the pods on the human design so that any surrogates grown here could interface with the alien technology. Graol could see the organic wires which made up that interface in the spines of some of the prenatals.
The bodies advanced in age the further he swam, until he arrived at the final group of pods, which contained fully-grown humans.
Graol hastily floated to the console beside the second-to-last body. The interface detected his presence immediately and he initiated control with his mind.
Graol inserted the black cube into an input slot. The display in his mind filled with the contents of the alien microchip and he began uploading a small subset of the data. He'd promised to give The Shell a history of the humans since the crash, and that's what he did, sending up data stolen from the archives of the crashed vessel.
"Receiving..." The Shell projected.
Graol watched as pages of archival information scrolled past in his mind. The Shell was eagerly slurping up this new knowledge.
While The Shell was distracted by the data, Graol initiated the next step.
A metal drawer opened, and he gingerly placed the brain tissue and hair strand inside. Just in time too—the hair strand seemed ready to detach. The drawer retracted, and on the mind display he pulled up another screen, this one of the nucleotides contained within the tissue sample. He manipulated the double helix pattern of DNA, transferring it to an empty carrier virus whose sole purpose was to re-sequence the proteins of the human host.
He replicated forty-five billion copies of the virus, along with an accelerant, together which formed a total volume of five milliliters. He initiated the inject. The robotic syringe pierced the semipermeable membrane of the pod and emptied the five milliliters into the radial vein of the host body's wrist. There was no immediate effect, but the virus was already at work, judging from the flare-ups Graol saw on the mind display. 300 million human cells die and are replaced every minute, so it would be some hours before the final transformation was complete.
Time for the next step.
The black cube was still interfaced. He cordoned off the data points he wished sent to the host's mind, and initiated the transfer. The bits—the 0s and 1s—that comprised the data activated engrams in the host brain. There were over 10 billion of those 0s and 1s, each associated with a neuron. That was the first step, pre-populating the brain with memory and personality and instinct. The actual transference of consciousness would take place automatically when the final engrams involving personality were in place.
It was a one-way process. Her consciousness couldn't be tethered in two places at once. As those bits transferred over to the human brain, they were erased from the source chip. He'd already locked out The Shell to prevent any tampering by the A.I., but power was low on the Vargos, and Graol hoped there would be no interruptions during this crucial transfer.
He watched the progress bar tensely for a few moments. 80%. 90%. 95%.
And then it was done.
Ari would wake up in the host body a few hours from now when he revived her. Thanks to the accelerated carrier virus, she would appear indistinguishable from her previous self, except maybe better nourished.
Still, a part of him wondered if it would really be the same Ari. Was her psyche still tethered to this world? Or had she moved on to a different place?
In the Satori death experiments, the subjects always reported standing before an infinite gate—a Forever Gate. A thin thread linked them to the world of the living, and when their bodies were revived, that thread yanked them back to life.
If Graol succeeded in bringing her back, would she be ripped from that place of limbo and brought back to life, or would he merely be creating an elaborate clone of who she once was, replete with her memories and personality? A living construct that existed independently of the real Ari who had died hours ago?
He supposed he'd never know until he crossed the final Gate himself. He'd done his best, and that's all that mattered. He'd done everything possible to save her. Anyone else would have given up long ago. He'd stored her psyche in a microchip, crossed from one level of existence to the next, and cloned her an entire new body. There wasn't much more he could do now except hope.
Hope.
A human emotion, but a good one.
The Shell rudely interrupted his reflection.
"You have blocked my access to the console," The Shell transmitted. "Why?"
Graol didn't answer.
"My calculations indicate you have sent only 5% of the data on the alien microchip. Where is the remaining 95%?"
Again Graol didn't answer. The Shell would figure it out soon enough on its own. There were sensors stationed throughout the room, embedded in the walls and in the other consoles.
The A.I. was silent for long moments. And then: "You have cloned a specimen of Species-87A. An ingenious idea. Unfortunately the Council will likely have the specimen destroyed. I am awakening the appropriate councilors. You will report to confinement bay 12 while I confer with them on this matter."
Graol turned around.
As expected a satoroid was already there, waiting to take him into custody.
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Graol stared at the broad spike that would impale his gastric cavity and four brains tonight.
The death-dealing instrument was placed on a pedestal in the metallic corridor outside, set there to remind the confinement bay occupants of what their short futures held. It was a simple spike, its sharp point gleaming in brutal anticipation. Scenes of agonized victims and delighted torturers etched its surface. The spike seemed rusted in places, perhaps from years of use—those who crossed The Shell, or disagreed with the will of the Council, did not live long, nor did those who even thought of disagreeing. But the underwater metal didn't rust, so those dark brown marks had to be something else. Maybe stains from the impaled dead who'd shit themselves.
Though Satori didn't really shit, did they? At least, not in the usual sense. Perhaps the stains were from gastric acid, then.
There were more compassionate methods of execution, naturally. Disintegration used to be one of the fa
vorites. Electrocution and stinging, a close second and third, with spacing a far fourth. But the spike was reserved for crimes of high treason. Anyone who crossed the Council was automatically guilty of that.
The light globes flickered and a frigid current kissed Graol's epidermis. The touch brought his focus closer, to the energy bars that sealed him inside the cell, and to the murky water that gave him buoyancy.
Around him, everything was silent.
Silent as death.
It wouldn't be long now.
The Shell had awakened the councilors, and Graol had appeared before them. Because of his apparent sympathy for the humans, Species-87A, they had probed his mind extensively. He concealed much under the mind torture, but not everything, and the councilors learned of his continued love for his human daughter, and his willingness to sacrifice the world for her. He was a danger to the Satori, the councilors concluded, because of his misplaced sympathies. He was to be executed, and the human clone was scheduled to be lobotomized.
As a precaution, the Council also voted in favor of executing all the other Satori involved in the Species-87A surrogate project upon their return, regardless of their outward disposition and previous rank, including Javiol, the Satori who was Jeremy. Fhavolin hadn't been too happy about that.
The satoroid jailer rotored over to the energy bars. Graol almost expected to see some sort of symbol on its metallic torso, but there wasn't one of course.
"Visitor," the satoroid transmitted.
Graol shifted slightly, trying to peer past the edge of the cell. He was melded to the steel wall behind him via his sucker-capped lower appendages.
Fhavolin, leader of the Council, jetted into view, her pear-shaped torso moving in and out like a pumping bellows, her tail whisking, her cilia rippling. Her lower appendages were folded beneath her, and her stinging tentacles trailed along behind, the feathery fingers slack. Twelve eyes watched him from the visible side of her torso.
Graol didn't want to look at Fhavolin. Didn't want to be reminded of what he was. He wished he could just shut his eyes, or turn around, but his lidless, 360-degree vision allowed him no such luxury.
"What's the matter, Graol?" Fhavolin transmitted. "Can't stand the sight of your own race anymore?"
Graol immediately cleared his mind.
Fhavolin's Upper Lens eye-stalks twitched. "You guard yourself well. Would that you had guarded yourself better during the Questioning."
"What do you want?" Graol responded.
"The Shell has informed you of the time of your execution?"
"It has."
Fhavolin relaxed her tentacles, and let all twelve float around her like seaweed. "When I and the other councilors shut out your quadmind and debated your fate, I argued against execution. I told them that you had gone through an incredibly stressful experience. That your sympathies were still with the Satori, not Species-87A. Was I wrong?"
Graol shifted his lower appendages, loosening his suckers so that he climbed the wall until he was slightly above her. Looking down on her. "You all read my mind. Do you doubt your findings? Do you doubt your abilities? You were wrong, Fhavolin. I'm more 87A than Satori now."
"I've never believed that any of the 87A surrogates were beyond saving," Fhavolin said. "Why do you think I spent so much work on you after you returned that first time? I could have left you to The Shell. I could have returned to hibernation. But I stayed. Though you screamed and ranted, I stayed. It took a full month to decondition your mind and undo the brainwashing of the alien simulation. Did the Return therapy truly fail? Did I fail?"
Graol and Fhavolin had been mates a long time ago. Perhaps she had cared for him once, but not anymore, and if Graol had lips he would have grinned smugly. "You did fail, Fhavolin. More than you know. It's probably a good thing the councilors voted to execute the others. Especially Javiol. He's madder than I ever was. To think, you actually wanted to reward him."
Fhavolin clenched her lower appendages. "Do not play this game, Graol. I can still defy the Council. Demonstrate to me that your four-brain is with us, and I will let you go. You will be stripped of your name, rank and class, and your psyche transferred to another body in secret. Your current body will be executed, but you will live on. Prove to me that I was successful with you."
At one point Graol had considered doing that very thing—permanently transferring his psyche not into another Satori, but a human. In the end he'd decided against the action. Humanity might still need him up here.
Graol expanded his torso in contempt. "Prove that you were successful? Did you read my thoughts just now? Can't you see what I am inside? There's nothing Satori left."
"Graol, I just want to—"
"Tell me something," Graol said. "Let's say I let you defy the Council, and allow you to transfer me to another body without their knowledge, as you ask. What happens to the 87A female?"
Fhavolin studied him blankly for a few moments, as if not understanding the question. "She must be de-brained of course."
"Of course." Graol had expected as much. "Why are you so bent on saving me? So you can feel justified in sparing Javiol too when all this is over? Is he your new mate? Or are you just trying to clear your conscience so you feel less guilty about destroying the last remnants of another sentient race?"
Graol searched her mind, and found unguarded images of her and himself together, images accompanied by a Satori emotion that could best be described as contentment. She was showing him what she wanted him to see.
"I still love you, Graol." Fhavolin projected the human word for love in his head, because there was no equivalent in the Satori language. There were words for mate, companion, compassion, even pair-bond, but none for love.
"What do you know of love?" Graol sent the human word right back at her.
"I have played with the 87A surrogates. I understand their emotions well enough to know what it is I feel for you."
Graol remained absolutely motionless. It was a trick, he knew that. She didn't love him.
Manipulation. It was one of the first skills both humans and Satori ever learned. The races were alike in that respect.
He delved deeper in her mind and, using a sudden psychic-force, he pried open one of the locked doors she kept hidden away inside. Her tentacles jerked in surprise. He saw images of her and Javiol engaged in the Satori mating process, which was a little like frantic jellyfish sex.
"He is your new mate, then," Graol said. "Or he was. That's why you wanted to reward him so badly. Wanted to share in the riches, did you? Well, he won't be getting any reward except the spike now."
Fhavolin's algal glow became an outraged scarlet. "Leave it alone, Graol."
"Yes, that's entirely what this is about," Graol said, going for the kill. "You want to convince yourself that Javiol can be saved, don't you? If you can save me, then you can save him too, even if it means going against the will of the Council and hiding his consciousness in a different body. You'll expect him and I to be forever in your debt of course. Maybe you'll put us in the bodies of the other councilors. Your rivals Thason and Maol, perhaps? I almost want to go along with you, just so that it'll come as a complete surprise when, two months down the line, Javiol's new body stings you to death. No, Fhavolin, you don't love me. You weren't successful with your Return deconditioning. You can't save me because there's nothing left to save. And you can't save Javiol. I'm free of the Council and its machinations. I refuse to be your puppet any longer."
Fhavolin's scarlet glow became a calm blue once more. She bobbed in place, swiveling so that her rearmost eyes regarded him. "Good-bye, Graol."
"Will you attend my execution?" Graol said.
Fhavolin straightened her lower appendages, forming what looked like a long, smooth trunk—the Satori body-language equivalent of "no."
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The execution was to take place right there in the confinement bay.
It was to be an automated execution, with no observers but The Shell and its servants.
>
At the designated time, the energy bars flicked off.
Graol attempted to access the wall panel interface with his mind, wanting to turn the energy bars back on, but he couldn't get past the system firewall.
The two satoroid jailers that were to be his executioners came forward and wrapped their steel tentacles around him, obscuring the central quarter of his 360-degree vision. Graol didn't struggle, knowing it would only make matters hard for him.
The robots floated Graol over to the execution spike set on the pedestal. As he got closer, the carvings in the metal became clearer. He saw pictures of Satori pinned like insects on display, bodies deflated from fluid loss, tentacles dangling lifelessly beneath them. Inscribed beneath the pictures were symbols that represented the compressions and pops of the Satori language, words that brought a tingle to Graol's epidermis: "Through me pass the final Gate."
The robots rotored him up and over the spike, and hovered there, waiting for The Shell's command. The top of his body skimmed the ceiling.
"Any last thoughts?" The Shell projected.
"I have more data for you on the planetary flyer, Shell," Graol replied on a whim. "Have your Servants escort me there, and I'll give it to you."
"You have no data at this point that I cannot obtain myself after your death," The Shell answered. "The Council has authorized a full de-braining."
"I'm going to enjoy blasting your neural core to smithereens," Graol said.
The Shell issued an incoherent stream of stuttered tweets. The A.I. equivalent of laughter.
"Enjoy your death, Graol," The Shell said. "I look forward to recording and compartmentalizing all your thoughts and memories. Your life should prove an endless source of interesting datagrams. Not many with your existential quirks exist in this galaxy. I will enjoy reviewing your data for years to come."
The satoroids began the slow, inexorable spiral of death.
