Abel scoffed. “You speak as if you murdered someone.”
I said nothing, only looked back at him. The smile on his face quickly faded.
“…You murdered someone?”
“Abel, I—,”
“Who? Mehrit, who did you murder?”
I only stood there, every muscle in my body tense. I couldn’t speak, or move. I focused on my breath, until I was able to cradle my face in my hands. “Have they activated your Eye yet?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I will link us together. I can’t tell you with words. You’ll think I’m crazy. I don’t even know what I did. All I can do is show you.” I lowered my hands and looked back at him. Now he was tense as well, steeling himself for whatever he was about to see.
Abel nodded. “Alright, okay.”
“Are you ready?”
He closed his eyes, took a few breaths, then nodded.
I did the same, centering myself. My Eye reached outward, finding his own. Somewhere in the middle, we embraced. It felt like a physical hug—warm, comforting. I was saddened that this feeling wouldn’t last long.
No, not long at all.
*
The silence had lasted too long. I felt like screaming.
We sat across each other, atop the blanket on the floor. Our laps contained bowls of breakfast, but neither of us had taken a bite. Abel sat stoic, his dark complexion more pallor than usual. I understood; I really did. It was a lot to take in, what he’d seen. I only wanted him to say something, anything.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, breaking the silence, pleadingly.
Abel bowed his head. “That doesn’t matter. Mehrit, you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because…” He paused, looking down at my bionic arm. “You’ve become something more powerful than anything in this camp. Don’t you see? You’ve become more powerful than them.”
Pedagogue, he’d meant.
“They haven’t come after you because they don’t know what to do,” Abel went on. There was a gleam in his dark eyes now. It seemed manic.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Those guards that were in the room with you,” he began. “Did you notice what they were made of?”
“I was more focused on all the dead people.” I could have relived the memory, but would rather not. Three times was enough already.
“The artifact. The ore. You broke them into bits and pieces, Mehrit. You turned them into weapons.” Abel discarded the bowl, untouched, and stood. “Don’t you see? Whatever Pedagogue can do, so can you.” He laughed, and I started, growing uneasy by his energy. “You just proved they are not the instruments of God. That we are not helping them create paradise. We are indentured to them. The ore is for them.”
“For what? What do they need it for? What even are they?”
Abel shrugged. “Does it matter? They’re not what they said. That’s enough for me.”
“But… they’ve built this place for us to live,” I said. “Without them, we wouldn’t be alive right now.”
“We’re only alive because we’re useful to them,” Abel said with a scowl. He looked at me like I’d just betrayed him. “That argument is tiresome. I’d rather be dead than a slave. Because isn’t that what we are?”
I said nothing, placing my bowl aside. I was no longer hungry, either.
Abel looked toward the curtain, and cursed. “My shift has started. Stay here and hide until I come back. I’ll take you to the resistance tonight.” He laughed softly, clasped his hands together, and murmured a prayer. “You are a miracle, you know that? You will be the instrument that takes all of this down.”
I only watched him, wary.
“Stay here,” he repeated, and then disappeared out into the chaotic row.
My eyes stayed on the curtain long after he’d left. I was confused, torn. I’d misunderstood my Eye’s initial warning about Abel. It wasn’t that I couldn’t trust him, it was that his interests were not my own. I did not want to be the instrument that ‘takes all of this down’. I didn’t want any of this.
What was the end goal of Abel’s resistance? Destroy the camp, destroy Pedagogue; go back to the way it’d been before. Wars, tribes, or maybe just immediate death.
Being dead was better than being a slave.
I was not sure if I agreed with that. I had no right to make such a decision, and neither did he. I was not a boy, I had never been in the mines, but…
Biri, Ema.
I missed them so much. It was no longer certain that staying away would guarantee their safety. If Abel was right, then they were safer with me. In a way I was happy that I’d confessed my sins to Abel, as he’d given me a reason to be brave.
Pedagogue is afraid of you, he’d said. Speculation at best, but it gave me enough courage to risk a journey back to Nascent.
I forced down my cold flake-porridge, then ate Abel’s abandoned bowl as well. After rinsing out the bowls and placing them into the sink—a small act of charity, compared to the betrayal I was about to commit—I snatched my backpack, preparing to leave.
But then, I stopped.
Something had caught my eye, formerly hidden by my pack.
A loose stone in the floor.
I knelt, lifting up the stone. A book lay beneath it. I’d never seen a book before, outside of Vestal Congregation. This book was old, like theirs. I suddenly remembered the sound of turning pages before falling asleep last night. I’d thought it was a dream.
I reached in and picked up the book, handling it like it was the most delicate thing in the world. I opened the book and flipped through some pages. It was not in Dyova, as my language had never been given a written form. There was no reason to read anymore. But it was in something somewhat similar. Similar enough that I could recognize several characters and passages—they’d been written on walls and murals within the Holy Houses.
This was a bible, so it must have been written in ancient Amharic. Had Abel stolen it from the Vestals? My eyes left the book and lingered on the curtain. Everything inside of me said I needed to take the book, but stealing was a sin.
Was it still a sin if the book was stolen already?
I shoved the bible into my pack, guilt-ridden. Not only was I abandoning Abel, but also stealing his (presumably) most prized possession. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. I’d like to think I would; and when I did, I promised to return it.
*
Getting out of Reascent was surprisingly easy. My biggest fear was that I’d run into Abel, tasked with hunting down the baby-killer in the neighborhood. There were other Eyes; I’d passed dozens, but none of them even so much as looked in my direction. I was completely unveiled, and no one cared. No one even seemed to recognize me.
I was relieved, but cautious. It was just as Abel had said.
No one knew. But why?
Nascent was eerily quiet, compared to the riot of its neighboring sector. It was mid-morning when I stepped onto my row. Disheveled, sweat-stained, without my frock. I’d been gone for a day and a half. What would Ema say? This wasn’t something I could hide from her any longer. I would take her and Biri somewhere—I didn’t know where, just away.
Regrettably, Abel and the resistance might have been my only choice after all. I didn’t like his ideas, but maybe I could change them. Make him see.
My thoughts of a semi-hopeful future dwindled as I realized just how quiet it was on the row. Mid-morning was usually a bustling period. Neighbors took the time to congregate and gossip of news, children played in the yards. But not today. Puzzled, I slowed and looked over the neighborhood. And then I saw them.
In entranceways.
Through windows.
Pairs of watchful eyes followed me down the row. No one said a thing. Not even a wave. I knew all these people; it was chilling.
My pace quickened down the row, now fearing for my family’s safety. Something had happened, I kn
ew. “Please,” I whispered to myself. “Please, please, please.”
There, at the foot of the entrance to my dwelling, was an ‘X’ marked with red paint. It was still partially wet. I knelt, running a trembling finger across it, wondering if I’d have the strength to return to my feet. I’d seen this mark before. It was reserved for sinners, the kind who threw babies in rubbish bins. We would also mark the houses of those who had been deemed pariahs for treason against Pedagogue and God’s vision for paradise. And now it’d come full circle.
That was why no one would speak to me. I was marked; I’d done something, they thought.
Still knelt, I looked at our door, wavering. I was terrified of what was inside. I shakily returned to a stand, pushing open the door like one might knowing death awaited them on the threshold. My eye, in a desperate attempt to salvage my psyche, urged me not to go in. It made my arm stiff, like an invisible force tugging me away from the door. I ignored it.
There was nothing inside. Our dwelling was dark and empty. All of our belongings were where we’d left them. There were pans on the stove; cold, congealed flakes lay half-cooked within one.
This had happened yesterday, judging by the state of the kitchen. Spices for cakes were still on the counter, and Ema only made cakes like that at dinner. They had taken her and Biri sometime before then. They.
Tears welled in my eyes as I knelt beside Biri’s stuffed toy, abandoned on the floor near the hammock. I picked it up and hugged it, no longer able to constrain the tears that poured down my face. I imagined them being taken by Eyes into transport drones, never to be seen again, Biri reaching for Ema, crying and calling out for me.
A part of me died inside just then; I felt it wither and rot, and all the sadness was replaced by numbness as I sat still in the cold darkness, realizing how alone I was. How I’d let everyone down. How I should have come right home yesterday.
Exhausted, both physically and mentally, I collapsed against the hammock post, my pack slipping from my shoulder and onto the stone floor. I sat there, lightless, staring ahead with Biri’s toy still clutched against my breast. If Pedagogue stormed through the door now, I wouldn’t fight.
Take me, too.
There was no point anymore.
Yes, I would wait, however long it took—not long, I imagined, as my neighbors would swiftly alert residential Eyes of my return.
I crossed my legs with Biri’s toy in my lap, arranged the same way that he’d sat and played with my hair each night after dinner. I reached into my pack and fetched Abel’s bible. Although I really couldn’t read it, there were pictures, and I recognized some characters from weekly Congregation. There was nothing better with which to pass the time as I awaited my inevitable persecution.
Flipping through the holy book, I stopped on an illustration of God’s court. Angels. Decorated in armor and carrying spears, their white and gold wings spread in anticipation of defending Heaven. Paradise.
But it was all a lie.
There was no Paradise, was there?
10
YAHWEH
THERE WAS A SANDSTORM CHURNING ON THE HORIZON, irradiated dust fogging the sky with murky, brown and orange film. The wind was warm, toxic. I cast my gaze on Wereda from my perch on the cliff face, the edifices no bigger than dots at such a height. On the other side of my field of vision were the old ruins of a glorious, high-tech city that had fallen. Quite a stark and foreboding contrast in scenery.
I’d listened, with increasing anxiety, as Savant had revealed more about the changes in which the nanotech made on human physiology. What I’d witnessed in that spire only several hours ago was the second case of a human being able to manipulate that precious, hybridized material in the same fashion as Pedagogue. I’d also been informed of the deaths at the Artifact a few days prior. Judging from the body count alone, this mutation didn’t bode well for either party.
For now, all I could do was analyze the samples Savant had given me in an attempt to figure out how this had occurred. In a way I found this process pointless, because even if the reason was identified, the damage was already done. Likewise, I understood their insistence to investigate, as precautionary methods during future resource excavations could prevent this from ever happening again.
I’d found solitude at the cliffs from which I’d begun this envoy, removed from the increasingly darkening atmosphere of the Wereda-19 Nerve-Center. I sat cross-legged on the ledge, visor down, laying genetic sequences of red and green humans against each other in attica, trying to find a discrepancy.
There were many discrepancies. Too many. I could not pin-point any actual distinctions because there were so many deviations between genes, that they might as well have been entirely different sub-species. With centuries of radiation exposure and now alien nano-tech infiltration, such changes weren’t a head-scratching matter. Unfortunately, there would be no way that I could clearly distinguish what switched green to red with just two samples alone. I needed more. Perhaps hundreds, and I really didn’t want to absorb hundreds of nano-tech tainted samples.
With a sigh, I pushed away the thread and deactivated my visor, then stared morosely at the desolate landscape. I’d gone into this mission a little too optimistic.
Zira, I called.
He didn’t respond at first, and I listened to the wind.
—Go ahead.
How are you?
—…I’m alive. Is everything alright?
No.
—I’m sorry.
It’s alright. I just wanted to hear your voice for a second.
Zira scoffed. Don’t know why. I’m not exactly considered a mood-enhancer around here.
I smiled, even though he couldn’t see. Are you still on Sort?
—Of course. Where else would I be?
Could you pass me to Leid?
—Yeah, one second.
I waited, chewing my inner cheek. If Qaira couldn’t help me, there was a chance Leid could. Her existence wasn’t strictly bound by the universal laws of which the rest of us were forced to adhere. It wasn’t custom that two scholars intervene on the same project, but at this point I was out of options. Either give up on the genetic investigation entirely, or concede to a bit of cooperation.
Yahweh, greeted Leid not a moment later, her voice leaving tingles down my spine. Whenever she telepathized, the receiver felt this type of effect. Yet another trait that separated her from us.
I am about to make a rather large update to my thread, I began, along with some DNA evidence that I haven’t yet been able to untangle. I need you to read the update and look at the sequences I’ve submitted.
—Okay, and then?
And then we need to speak privately.
*
“Let’s take a moment to discuss ethics.”
My proposal was met with silence. Savant only sat there and looked ahead, at the vacant seat across the table. It had taken a different form now, one that resembled a heavily-armored guard. I didn’t fully understand the meaning behind the switch, but perhaps pandering to my empathy was no longer worth the effort.
Savant’s silence was returned with my own. I was not seated at the table, instead leant against the wall near the central spire entrance.
It had been half a day since I’d tried, and failed, to identify a specific reason for the humans’ sudden evolution from naïve subordinate to potential contender. Since then, and with help from Leid, I’d been able to collect over five hundred additional samples. My noble was gracious enough to absorb them herself, not at all frightened of the risks. Pedagogue had swiftly handed them over from varying sector medical facilities across Wereda; if anything, they were extremely accommodating. As attica analyzed the samples for comparisons and patterns in the background, it was time to proceed with our conscripted goal.
“I am waiting for you to continue,” Savant said finally, the nanoport at the center of the table alit with yellow light, signifying an audience.
“If I am able to find the reason behind
these mutations, it will not contribute to an immediate solution to your current predicament.”
“Yes,” said Savant.
Its answer threw me off kilter; not quite a proper response to my statement. I tilted my head.
Savant slowly looked at me. “The information you gather will determine how we act during a similar situation in the future. It is useful data, nonetheless.”
“Data is only half your solution,” I pointed out. “Ethics is the other half.”
Savant hesitated, the nanoport flickering. “Moral principles that govern organic sentient behavior and activity.”
I crossed my arms. “I know the definition, thank you.”
“We do not have the capacity to act in accordance to ethics. Our actions lie in probabilities of outcomes, based on data received.”
“And the probability of Pedagogue being able to cohabitate with sentient organic life, without any consideration to said life’s ethical beliefs, is slim. Zero percent, most likely. Do you understand the point I’m trying to make?”
“I understand the point, Yahweh. But we are not organic sentient life. We do not have internal chemistries that alter reality and logic. An ethical system is based on a population of individuals. We are not individuals.”
I conceded. “Fair enough. But you are an advanced expert system, capable of learning and adapting to observations in order to optimize your directives. You may not be able to change the directives, but you can change the methods of which you conduct them.”
Savant went quiet for a little while, the nanoport continuing to flicker in repetition, reminding me of a signal duration code. I checked the status of attica’s diagnostics. Still going.
“We find it… incongruous,” said Savant.
“You find what incongruous?” I asked.
“Organic sentient life is an inefficient method of existence. But without such life, we would not exist.”
It was my turn to fall silent, reflective. I had designed humans as flawed, highly prone to moral principles for a specific reason. Not every form of organic sentient life was such a mess, but all of them established a moral system of sorts. Cohabitation of individuals demanded it. “Your universe created organic sentient life. They are the product of the universe trying to know itself through perceived reality. If organic sentient life operated in the same way as machine sentience, then you wouldn’t be here. No one would have dreamed or aspired to make you at all.”
Covenants: Savant (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 10) Page 11
