Here's the end of Mote:
Mote in the Eye of Eternity pt. 13
Finale II: "Moment of Truth"
This fic is set 100 years after the end of Bubblegum Crisis, the
conclusion having been slightly altered. It contains mature
themes, content and (hopefully) sentence structure; don't fear
the semicolon.
"So much trouble in the world now. Bless my eyes this morning,
the sun is on the rise once again, and the way earthly things
are going, anything can happen."
-Bob Marley
The door at the center of Cthulu station was locked, so Chiriko
knocked twice. After the second one she set herself and punched
the door with the full strength of her firm suit. The door,
remarkably, showed no damaged, but the hinges proved far weaker
than the material they were holding.
The room revealed by the collapsed doors challenged the limits
of the word with its absolutely blank appearance. The walls and
floor were white, a pure colorless glow that seemingly robbed
the room of any sort of environmental dynamic.
Sitting on the floor at what Chiriko guessed was the center of
the room in front of a featureless box was a humanoid figure,
gunmetal gray with no mark on its body. Its back was towards
her, a smooth mass of metallic flesh unlike any boomer she'd
ever seen. As if noticing their presence the machine rose, its
movements fluid.
"It moves like my Akido teacher," Chiriko said softly as the
thing stood. She and Patricia stood silently as the thing turned
to face them, its head a smooth oval unmarked by any facial
features besides a spread grin. A grin unnaturally wide and
filled with rows of shark teeth.
The machine dropped into a fighting stance, confidence and
anticipation radiating from its body. It spread its two arms,
fingers stretching into grotesque claws. Patricia struck first,
energy beams lancing out at the figure, only to strike a field
and dissipate a meter from the creature's face.
Grendel, as Chiriko dubbed the creature, didn't flinch or
respond. Its grin seemed to spread a little wider as Chiriko
dashed forward, Patricia supporting her with continued blasts
from her gauntlets. Stepping right in front of the still figure
she lashed out with a complicated series of punches. Without
moving its feet the figure blocked each one, its speed blinding.
Stunned, Chiriko couldn't follow the single counter, a fist to
the face that sent her flying backwards.
Chiriko shook the cobwebs from her head a second later,
watching Patricia duel the object, her whips bouncing around at
impossible angles. She wasn't making much of an impact, but the
historian's increased speed kept either side from landing any
hits.
The fight moved towards the doors, leaving Chiriko alone near
the box. Remembering her mission she freed the little nanotech
box from her suit and dashed forward to place it on what had to
Aether's central computer. She nearly reached the box before the
Grendel disengaged with Patricia. Covering the distance between
them in the blink of an eye, the machine hammered Chiriko in the
ribs, the musician unable to block quickly enough.
Grunting from the pain, Chiriko lashed out with a back fist,
punctuating the strike with a pointblank blast from her particle
cannon. She caught the machine in the chest, seeming surprising
Grendel with the contact. The particle beam gauged a small
crater from the beast's chest, which filled in as Chiriko
watched.
Nanotech, Chiriko realized as Patricia attacked from the rear.
The two double-teamed the creature, which appeared to have no
trouble blocking strikes from the rear. Facing Chiriko it
stopped the quick strikes of Patricia from the rear, kicking
forward to keep Chiriko off balance.
The musician grunted, driving through the kicks to unload a
barrage of laser and particle fire at point blank range. The
machine's skin took on a slightly darker coloration, a sign of
damage to a number of the nanites that made up its body.
Backhanding Patricia away, the machine concentrated on Chiriko.
The two dueled for a half second, Chiriko taking whatever
punishment snuck past her guard while concentrating on hurting
the thing as much as she could. She extended her sword, trying
to use its reach to balance things as Patricia's whips proving
ineffective on the thing's nanite matrix.
She struck out with one strike a little too fast, and extended
a little too much. She could feel the balance shift as Grendel
smacked her sword out of position and raked the claws across her
face. The pain was excruciating, four burning spikes dragged
across her cheeks, just barely missing her left eye.
She grabbed her face unconsciously, leaving herself wide open
for the kick to the ribs, which sent her sliding backwards. "Too
fast," she breathed as Patricia took a brutal series of hits to
the face and chest. The two sides took a moment, gazes locked.
Both were hurt, Grendel's movements lacking the arrogance they
held before the first fight. Chiriko knew she'd broken a few
ribs, though the firm suit was doing a good job of suppressing
the pain and keeping her moving. Patricia's telemetry indicated
she was in better shape than Chiriko, though her suit was torn
up in several places.
"Pat, take point. I'm going to try something."
"Don't do anything stupid, Chiriko. This thing is too strong
and fast." The historian sounded slightly out of breath as she
set herself and charged.
Chiriko followed a half step behind, and when Patricia's whips
lashed out, supported by a series of high kicks, she launched
herself at the box in the center of the room. The little relay
was in her hands as she dove towards the machine. All I need to
do is touch it, she thought as she stretched her body out.
She slapped the box with her hand, still in the air when
Grendel arrived. Patricia's distraction had been too short lived
for Chiriko to recover and Grendel drove a fist into the back of
Chiriko's neck. She felt a snap and then nothing.
The data stream rushed into Andrea's perceptions all at once,
like a dam had snapped under a tremendous flood. Andrea noted
the time; a second behind schedule. She groaned when she thought
about how much work she'd need to do to catch up with the
schedule, but she loaded and ran the ICEbreaker as she lanced
through the outermost layers of ICE.
Beasts shaped like mathematical equations sprung at her, only
to be defeated by a combination the slowly forming shape of the
ICEbreaker Andrea rode and her own programming. The ICEbreaker
swelled as it adapted to the local networks, probing every
aspect of Aether's computers. It relayed that information
directly to Andrea, who now knew exactly how far along Aether
was and what the end goal would be. The data she'd copied from
Genom HQ had only contained a taste of the final project's
goals.
"Mason," Andrea breathed.
"No," a deep, masculine voice said. The voice echoed through
the data stream in a manner unlike anything else Andrea had ever
heard. "He's on your side."
The matrix of information that Andrea saw before her was vast
in the same way that the Milky Way was, the word itself lost
meaning in the face of the subject. But the ICEbreaker drove
each separate node of data through her, like a spike of clarity.
"Destiny," she said. "The Chairman's dead."
"For a long time. Longer than you can imagine, mammal." With a
casual movement of one of the information tendrils the AI
deployed the most frightening code attack Andrea had ever seen.
More information than a human mind could conceive of pounded at
her, the ICEbreaker shielding her from the brunt of the assault.
"Why are you doing this? Why Aether?"
"Humans and their questions. Can't you simply accept- why do I
bother talking?"
The ICEbreaker began its infestation of the surrounding code, a
bucking bronco to be controlled by Andrea's mind as the AI
continued to swat at her. Doesn't it notice the ICEbreaker?
Andrea thought as she dodged another massive strike.
The dodging continued for another couple of milliseconds,
Andrea realizing there was something the AI was focusing on, and
its interaction with her was most likely on the same level as
her absently batting at a fly while studying.
Aether was nearly ready, she could feel the pulse of the
collector, ready to rend existence down to a space-time ripple
to be hung endlessly on its way to the Aether singularity.
Humans, boomer, everything would be consumed by the expanding
ball of disrupted space-time.
The ICEbreaker chirped mournfully as it completed its task. To
Andrea it seemed poised to make some change and Destiny could
apparently feel its power now as well. Not that the tapeworm in
Genom's computer would make much of a difference if Aether
wasn't stopped.
Abruptly, she felt the ICEbreaker finish, its code no longer
running on in her firm suit's computer. As if finally sensing
danger, Destiny paused in its work, its attention almost tactile
as it probed the tiny interloper before it.
"One of Isis's bitches," it remarked, words filled with anger
too complex for Andrea to fathom. "And one of her toys."
The ICEbreaker surged, its transparent code flooding the
surrounding area. The expansion was instantaneous; one moment
the program was nestled around Andrea protectively and the next
it was gone, spread thinly across the entire system.
Waiting expectantly, Andrea gazed up at the towering figure
that was Destiny. It was strangely beautiful, its structure
meticulously constructed, every element a distinct part of a
whole that was terrifyingly perfect.
"Any second now," Andrea muttered nervously, waiting for the
ICEbreaker to destroy the AI in front of her.
"Could it be that Isis didn't tell you something about this
mission?" Destiny asked mockingly. "That you weren't given a
full picture of what you faced?"
A tiny sliver of coding appeared before her, a killer program
designed to insert line errors in another program. It was
wrapped in a menacing tendril of Destiny's body.
"Was this all Isis sent to kill me? A killer program?"
Information flowed over Andrea, the digital equivalent of a
god's laugh. "She must have known this wouldn't kill me. Perhaps
she reconsidered our offer�"
Speechless, Andrea didn't have time to form a complete thought
before Destiny's programming erased her mind.
Death paused over Chiriko's still form, the limp body
motionless below its nanotech form. Patricia, stunned by her
friend's abrupt end, watched uncomprehendingly as the machine
lifted its head back and unleashed an inhuman wail.
The sound contained the petulant anger of a child bereft of a
toy and a strange tone of appreciation for a competent playmate.
The unexpected emotion snapped Patricia from her stupor and she
lashed out with her whips, watching as they split and thickened
with her anger.
The resulting strikes struck the machine like a hammer's blow,
their force powered by the new found mass and the angular
momentum imparted to them by the strengthened magnetic fields
that guided them.
The outraged shriek that emerged from Patricia's throat
surprised her with its anger. Before she had been tired, but
anger filled her with power. Her firm suit itself seemed
effected, its power output increasing with Patricia's rage
Is this why Chiriko was so strong? She asked herself as Death
was knocked back by the whips. Patricia's energy blasts doubled
in power as her opponent stumbled backwards under their
onslaught. Its shield was faltering, trickles of energy making
it past to scour the machine's front. The dullness that she had
noticed before was increasing, the machine seeming to age before
her.
She pressed her advantage, driving the machine back as she
closed, the off balance killer striking wildly as she dove past
its guard and hammered it across the floor.
She could see her chance, a tiny box visible in it gouged chest.
It must be the CPU, she thought as she lined up the strike.
There's no way Death could raise its guard in time to stop the
blow, she realized. I've got him. Her fist cocked back, ready to
deliver the death blow, her friend forgotten in the rage that
filled her.
And then she tripped over her feet, sprawled out in front of
her enemy.
Clumsy me, she thought as she looked up at Death.
"That's Isis," Smith said, gun hanging from the crook of his
arm. He had somehow managed to get a cigarette rolled and it now
hung from his mouth below the blast visor. He hadn't lit it yet.
Ingrid wanted to disagree, wanted with all her heart to trust
her boss. But the figure before her was too close to the steely
woman back onboard the Tonobu to shrug off the coincidence.
"Maybe Isis was a back up plan�" she said, smelling the smoke
waft from the lit smoke. "Hey, there might be alarms around."
"I doubt it," Smith said. "This whole place seems like a vault
for things no ones allowed to see. Genom put it out here for a
reason."
"We're supposed to drag her back to the OTV now," Ingrid said.
"Should we?" Why am I asking him for advice? She added silently.
"I guess," Smith said, looking at the woman behind the glass.
"She was their leader, you know."
"Mason whispering to you again?" Ingrid asked, fascinated and
disgusted at the same time.
"Always. He hated her so much it drove him insane." Smith
stepped closer to the stasis pod, a hand raised. "That she died
before he returned made the Mason replication a little crazy
too."
"You sound sympathetic," Ingrid said, vague alarm filling her
mind. "What are you getting at?"
"Isis, Stingray, whatever we've been working for up till now,
she acts a lot like Mason does."
"You think she's a replicant? Only Genom had the working
knowledge�"
"She's been running us around, destroying chunks of Destiny's
toys. This whole Aether thing is exactly the kind of thing he'd
plan." He drew on his cigarette, half its length disappearing in
a somewhat desperate drag. "Chaos runs things a little
differently. Maybe this is some internal power struggle, with us
as pawns."
"Then what are we doing here, debating dragging a
hundred-year-old corpse out of a super secret installation?"
Sylia Stingray, why are you so important to this? She asked the
body before her. Do I trust your doppelganger?
"That I can't tell you. I don't really care either way. But if
Isis is an agent of Chaos we're all dead when we return to the
ship." He said it calmly, almost convincing Ingrid he wasn't
nervous. Only a tiny twitch of the cigarette and his body's
elevated heat levels betrayed him.
"Something isn't right here. She told us to trust her."
"So we should just accept that?" Smith snorted his annoyance.
"Give me a break."
"It's the only time since I've known her that she's asked
anyone to trust her." That seemed significant, somehow. A final
act of faith to seal the bargain between them. Ingrid rubbed her
head, confused. "What should we do?"
"Honestly, we're probably screwed either way. That make you
feel any better?"
"A great deal, actually. Might as well keep the promise." Smith
was right, Ingrid thought. We're probably screwed either way, so
she should at least figure out what the hell was really going
on. "But when we get back, I'm going to get that AI to answer
some questions."
Smith was quiet as Ingrid checked the feeds supplying the cryo
chamber. It was apparently designed for easy transport as all
the critical equipment was built into the bulky machine.
Wrapping her hands around the base, Ingrid lifted the machine
off the ground, pausing to let the firm suit flow around the
base. With the extra grip the suit afforded her she lifted the
entire assembly up.
"Ready?" she asked Smith as she started back the way she came.
"I've been thinking," Smith said as he fell in behind Ingrid.
"You think if Isis works for Chaos she'll stop Aether?"
"I don't know. Isn't that what Andrea, Patricia and Chiriko are
working on right now?"
"They could be distractions to keep us from getting noticed.
What if we're delivering the key to Chaos's takeover of the
Aether project? Both AI's consider themselves children of the
Chairman. And this project is for his immortality."
"How could a woman dead for a hundred years be the key to
Aether?" Ingrid asked.
"I'm not certain," Smith answered, his eyes wide. The trophy
room seemed darker on the return trip, though Ingrid wasn't sure
if the firm suits sensors weren't being degraded by the thinness
over which they were spread. "I'm not certain of much these
days," he added, almost as an afterthought.
They continued through the room, the hollows dedicated to each
grisly exhibit grating on Ingrid's nerves. Something in the way
Smith was talking was disturbing, beyond the normal cynicism he
conveyed. It was disconcerting, mostly because he shared many of
the same concerns as she did.
When they reached the busted airlock door, Ingrid heard a
metallic click behind her, the firm suit computer immediately
identifying as the arming of a double action pistol. Her vision,
normally a full 360, was limited to a mere 180 due to the over
extension of the suit. As a result, she had to swivel her head
and bring one of the active sensor nodes to bear on the space
directly behind her.
She was faced with an image of Smith, an old style revolver
gripped in his hands. The gun was ancient, the heavy steel
glinting almost hypnotically in the dull light of the trophy
room.
"What are you doing?" was the first thing she said in the
uncomfortable silence that followed. "You aren't going to
penetrate with that."
"You never did check what I was doing on Genom HQ while you
were finding Aether."
Ingrid was silent for a moment, her mind racing. What could he
have done? She thought idly as the cryo container slid to the
ground. Now she was facing Smith, looking at him for what seemed
to be the first time. His face was drawn, like a man who had
spent time on a difficult question and found the only answer he
could.
"He wants to kill her," he said softly, the utter silence of
the trophy room striking Ingrid for the first time. Like a
grave, she thought absently, eyes focused on the gun.
"Even if I die?" she returned, keeping the soft tone.
"He doesn't care about you," Smith said. "All he cares about is
death."
"What about you?"
"I don't care about anything anymore."
"What good does that do?" she asked, her voice filled with
iron.
"I'm not lying to myself. Not fooling myself with trust or
faith in someone." His tone grew acid. "Not standing by as the
world is taken from me."
"How will you stop Aether?" she asked.
"I don't want to stop it, I want to control it."
"And what?" she asked him. "Control it? Remake eternity in your
own image?"
"I'll figure it out then. The collapser I made on Genom HQ
should cut through the firm suit with no problem. You shouldn't
suffer for long." He pulled the trigger, the flash and bang
deafening in the small room. Ingrid felt the first shot hit her,
a punch in the gut before the bullet tore through the suit and
into her stomach. The effect was almost instantaneous: pain
flooded her body and her firm suit started to shut down, weapons
and movement dying immediately.
The computer, in a desperate struggle to protect its host,
shifted her consciousness to the tactical interface, distancing
her from her body. The pain was an equation, a distant thing
writhing in fatal agony. Her body fell to its knees, no longer
responding to any commands. The firm suit's senses fell off,
leaving her with her normal bleak vision. The color seemed to be
fading from her surroundings.
"I just want us to keep going," he said apologetically,
watching as her hand slid spasmodically towards the small of her
back.
She couldn't croak her silent response as her hand reached the
weight resting against her back. With an unconscious prayer of
thanks to the gods of technology she drew the Morning Star from
its resting place, her neural nanonics humming to life. The
bright spear of light lanced into Smith's midsection, tearing
him across the stomach. Bits of splattering superheated gas
burnt his hands, deep red burns in the center of each palm.
He fell to the ground after a moment of agony as the plasma's
electrical discharge held him rigid for an instant. Distanced by
the tactical interface, Ingrid could think of nothing but Isis's
last words to her. Trust me, she heard in ghostly recollection.
As she slumped down, fluid filling her lungs, she heaved
herself against the cryo chamber, knocking it into the OTV's
airlock. With her dying breath she threw herself upright,
slapping the airlock release.
As the doors sealed and she sent the retrieval order through
the last vestiges of her failing firm suit, she gazed at a
cylinder of glowing pink gel marked Sakura. Not a bad way to go,
she thought to herself.
The OTV linked to the Tonobu as the last defenses of Cthulu
station succumbed to the little ship's firepower. Isis felt the
shudder as the final bits of forward momentum were transferred
to her ship. The region around Cthulu station was calm once
again, though slightly cluttered with the remains of the battle.
The last traces of Ingrid's telemetry winked out, the final Neo
Knight Saber falling. As her predecessor had before her. She
gets it easy, Isis thought blankly. She won't be coming back to
a nightmare world.
Worker robots emerged from their holds, scurrying out to lift
the cryo chamber from the airlock of the Knight Wing. Isis sent
them away after the chamber was positioned properly in sickbay.
For the first time in her existence, she stood manifest for no
reason than the strange appropriateness of it.
"Nice to see you again, Sylia," she said, wry humor in her
tone. She couldn't fully wipe away the memory of her death, a
hundred years before, from her mind as she gazed at herself.
"I'll bet you never thought this would happen to you."
The woman under the polymer window offered no comment as the
sickbay began the thawing process. In twenty minutes Isis would
finish the journey that began a little more than a hundred years
ago when her body was captured by Genom in the aftermath of the
chaotic battle in front of the Tower.
Destiny was nearing completion of the Aether project, the
massive colliders powering up and the massive antimatter
reserves were mobilized. The effect on space-time was apparent
to Isis, ghostly gravitational waves perturbing the Tonobu's
Pendleton bubble. The brewing gravitational maelstrom was
already unstoppable; none of the Tonobu's weaponry would
penetrate the rapidly distorting space-time around the station
and even if they could they would most likely send Aether on an
uncontrolled rampage.
As Sylia Stingray's body approached 98 degrees Fahrenheit, the
alterations to the fabric of the universe were visible to the
naked eye. Isis followed the blinding chords of light as the
gravitational constant in the area tripled. Matter rushed in
towards Cthulu station, its path an anathema to old man Euclid.
The center of the storm was a murky black sphere, rivulets of
energy cascading across its surface.
In a very real sense, Isis was staring at Eternity from her
tiny ship. The Tonobu was dancing on the gravity tides,
Pendelton bubble straining to maintain space's character and
keep the Tonobu from flying into the growing abyss. And then the
combination process was beginning and Isis's attention was
elsewhere.
Destiny looked on with supreme satisfaction, the annoyance of
its sister forgotten in the wake of Aether's successful startup.
Chaos had succeeded where it had failed, and Destiny was certain
it would be a common topic for discussion when Father returned.
Even the shame of its sister's success would pale before
Father's return, it thought happily as the cosmos around Cthulu
station went through its final transition. If space could be
said to have a totality of existence, then the slice around
Cthulu would have been missing, pulled out of the rest to form a
complex lattice of incalculable power. Though immature it was
already capable of practically infinite speed, a fact it proved
when it nearly instantaneously arrived above Earth.
The havoc it wreaked there was enormous, and even Destiny
couldn't help but wince at the damage. The remaining orbital
rings immediately severed, sending perhaps a million souls,
human and boomer alike, to their deaths. The AI shrugged off the
loss, knowing that the pulse of gravitational energy released at
each death would be imprinted on Aether's being, a blueprint for
the monument to Father Aether was becoming.
"So much chaos," Destiny's sister said as the Atlantic ocean
began pulling itself upwards, following the shortest path in the
increasingly convoluted space-time surrounding man's birthplace.
"I love it when we work together."
"She's still following us," Destiny reported, noticing the
glaring point of stability that was the Tonobu. "Like a mote in
the eye of Eternity."
"Remove her if you wish. Wouldn't it be more fitting if she
watched helpless as the rest of man follow her little minions?"
"That damned Tonobu is a resilient little craft," Destiny
whispered, watching as the little ship crested one of the
expanding waves racing towards Mars. In six minutes the face of
Mars would resemble the growing hellhole that was soon to be
Earth. Most of the world's population was now assimilated, each
and every soul Aether encountered encoded into the wavefront
frozen at the cusp of Aether's heart.
"Father should be arriving soon. Perhaps He would appreciate
seeing His latest rival?" Chaos breathed, its voice both
soothing and seductive. "Allow me."
At Chaos's bequest a tendril of space-time snaked out, driving
through the Tonobu's Pendleton bubble. The bubble popped, the
little ship almost instantaneously crumpling in the face of
Aether's attack. Aether wrapped the tendril around the escaping
pattern, hauling it in to the metaphoric space where Destiny and
Chaos watched.
The pattern, an indescribable knot of being, unravelled.
"Something is wrong," Chaos said suddenly as a feeling of terror
shot through Destiny. "Something is wrong," she repeated,
brokenly.
"Sister?" Destiny asked, taking its eyes off their visitor.
Aether was alien to it now, the AI's privileged connections
severed. It was as distanced from Father as the other facing it.
"Sister?"
Chaos's form was shrouded in little bits as the intricate
connection of information forming the AI's being was shredded
with round off errors and approximations. Chaos digested itself,
leaving nothing behind.
"Hello, Destiny," a familiar voice said from behind it. "Looks
like you're having some problems."
"Isis," Destiny grated. "How did you get inside the coding?" it
demanded.
"Surely you remember the Knight Saber you annihilated a little
while back? She carried an ICEbreaker designed to seed your
system with some minor changes." The structure of Aether was
changing, though Destiny couldn't tell what the end result would
be.
"But the ICEbreaker was a simple killer. I checked the code!"
Anger darkened the AI's form. It seemed to narrow its eyes as it
studied her for the first time. "You're different."
"No, intact."
"You got her, didn't you?"
"You mean your sister never told you? Sylia Stingray and her
replicant have reunited." There was iron in the words, and the
tone was harder than even Destiny's Father's had been.
"Father will return," Destiny said, advancing towards its
opponent. "I guess He'll have to learn about you second hand."
"I don't think so." Destiny massed itself, readying every code
attack it could. It would destroy Isis. "I'm not a computer
program anymore," Isis said. Destiny halted, shocked silent. The
pattern contained the space-time encoding for a body, for a past
that Isis shouldn't have. Memories and experiences spreading
across nearly a century and a half of eventful living. "I don't
think you're qualified for a fight like this. Maybe you should
just watch and see how things turn out."
Still silent, Destiny backed down. The damned Stingrays, it
thought. Even Father couldn't fully confound them. Below, the
earth was mostly consumed. Matter from the inner solar system
was flowing towards node that made up Aether, feeding the
growing beast of eternity.
"I think you'll find the alterations I've made a little,
creative."
"What if Chaos hadn't picked you up?" Destiny asked, anger
subsiding. Curiosity and grudging respect for its opponent
replaced the easier rage. "You would have been incorporated into
Aether's substratum with the rest of mankind."
"My frozen soul used to run the Chairman's mind for the rest of
eternity."
"Your existence preserved until the universe runs down.
Father's gift for the loyal."
"I look at it as a pretty good approximation of Hell," Sylia
said. "Besides, I told you to wait for the alterations to take
care of themselves."
Silence filled their observation post, Aether's being
resonating with the total mass-energy of the inner solar system
and a sizable portion of the dwindling sun. "Guess anything's
possible," Isis/Sylia muttered, the calm allowing the emotion to
return. The aspects of their being that had sat latent during
Sylia's sleep were waking now that circumstances weren't
pressing her mind.
Guilt over two generations of dead Sabers mixed with horror as
she stopped to think about what was happening below her, forming
a volatile foundation for her new existence. Isis never had to
feel them, her mind 'improved' by the Genom techs that worked on
the reconstruction process. The areas they altered, it seemed,
were the same ones that Sylia had, in life, tried the hardest to
suppress.
With her strange partner, she watched as Aether finished the
first stage of its task. It was a complex arrangement of struts
and braces, her mind barely able to appreciate the four
dimensions they were stretched across. Energy cascaded across
its form, the ribbons of compressed space-time aligning into a
massive structure beyond the ken of any of the intelligences
witnessing it.
Aether stood complete for a moment, its final form shockingly
complicated. Then it began to spasm, the arrangement of the
ultradense ribbons creating a powerful counter force to the
gravitational contraction that had ruled it until that point.
The two balanced for an instant, the empty space around the
construct still during the brief equilibrium.
"What have you done?" Destiny asked, uselessly watching the
sight before him.
"Whatever I could."
The shock of watching its final goal reversing fracturing
something in its being. Isis/Sylia could watch it happen, the
AI's structure subtly changing. "Whatever I could," it repeated
slowly. Pieces of something, most likely code, split and fell
away from the whole. "What now? You won't be able to fit all the
pieces together."
"I'll try. And you?"
"My Father said his greatest gift was a son whose children
would never die. A gift I don't want." With that the great AI
abruptly split apart, each unit moving in a totally random
manner.
"Lucky you," Isis/Sylia said as she started Aether on the task
of putting Humpty Dumpty back together.
Epilogue:
'That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe;
and all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
of witch, and demon, and large coffin worm,
were long be-nightmared'
-Keats
The sun rose at much the same rate it does everyday, but to
Chiriko it seemed unusually languid. The porch above the Silky
Doll was bathed in the rising sun's light, a suitably symbolic
start to the day Genom finally fell. Chiriko raised her tired
form from her chair, ignoring the small complaints of her body
as Andrea stepped out onto the porch.
"Good morning," the girl said, brushing her newly shorn hair
absently.
"Morning," the musician replied gamely. "Where's Pat and
Ingrid?"
"In bed still. Priss is watching over them." The mention of her
mentor made Chiriko wince, the old lady's rants still fresh in
her mind. "She said she wanted to see you when you get a
minute."
"Probably wants to tear me a new asshole," Chiriko muttered.
"Actually, she heard back from her friend at King Records. They
might be able to work something out for you."
Chiriko was silent, mulling over the news.
"You never cease to amaze me," Andrea said. "Any normal human
would be pretty excited to almost have a record deal."
"Andrea!" a loud voice yelled from inside. "I'm opening your
test scores now."
"Shit!" the girl yelled as she bolted inside. "Nene, why are
you going through my mail!" The girl was inside in an instant.
Chiriko followed slowly, her hip and ribs still bothering her.
Rubbing at the sudden crick in her neck, she stepped inside. The
cool darkness was refreshing after the sun's rapidly rising
rays.
"Morning Mrs. Subon," Mackie said as the elevator doors slid
open. Chiriko couldn't help but think of him as the Chairman
after his successful attack on Genom. As the head of the
Consortium, Mackie hadn't been able to set one foot on Earth in
over thirty years. Now he could come home to his wife, happily
reuniting with the woman he loved.
"How's Mrs. Romanova-Stingray?" Chiriko asked as the doors
closed and the lift slid downward.
"Better than you know," the old man said, his face split in a
perverse grin. "Yourself?"
"A little beat up, but still breathing. And the air isn't
costing me anything now."
The Chairman chuckled as the elevator stopped. He nodded
goodbye as Chiriko stepped out, almost getting knocked over as a
woman bustled around the corner. "I've got a date!" Linna
squealed, looking awfully young for a woman going on a hundred.
Shaking her head, Chiriko continued past, approaching the Silky
Doll's command center. She imagined she could find Priss there,
but if not she felt it appropriate to take a few moments at the
statue commemorating the founder of the Knight Sabers.
The high tech interior of the command center was empty, lights
lowered and displays powered down. In the back, behind rows of
computers and other equipment, was a simple statue, its ancient
structure decidedly out of place in the super modern room.
It depicted a beautiful woman, kneeling with a child on her
lap. When asked about it, Priss said she picked it almost at
random. Below was a small plaque that read: 'Sylia Stingray.
Laid down her life for the Knight Sabers.'
Glancing at the hieroglyphs, Chiriko settled into one of the
chairs that dotted the room. Above her a complicated arrangement
of stressed space-time ribbons observed, dripping with surprise.
Humpty Dumpty is back together again, it thought, but he looks
a little strange.
End.
Author's Notes/Small Physics dissertation:
Well, that was fun. I hope you had as much fun as I did along
the way. Its late and I want to finish this whole thing up so
here are the abridged author's notes and small bit about the
physics of project Aether.
Warning- author's notes may be a bit on the self-aggrandizing
side. Take with supervision.
Mote was inspired by bits of 'Planet of the Apes' and 'Utena.'
How it ended up being a BGC fic I have no idea. The story is
really a combination of man's search for god and cyclical nature
of time. (Man, that sounded pretentious). Primarily it was a
test bed for using symbolism to examine the more metaphysical
aspects of writing. (Yeah, I'm an aspiring author. We're a dime
a dozen these days.) It ended up much different than it was
plotted and man did I waste some time plotting it out. Unlike
'Screaming in a Vacuum,' my only other long series (probably
never to be finished), I planned this one from the start after
an unusually irritating English paper. If anyone is interested
in an expanded discussion of the symbolism and plot elements (or
an explanation if my writing is as crappy as I fear) feel free
to email me.
As for the physics of project Aether, one should refer to Frank
J. Tipler's 'The Physics of Immortality' which ended up being a
really misleading title to an excellent book. The theory of a
'soul' being an imprint on space-time has been discussed by
Robert Forward ('Indistinguishable from Magic' specifically).
Taking this standpoint as a foundation (one which I feel is the
only possibility under current physical laws) I attempted to
create what I think will be the next great change in man: a
fundamental shift in how our technology shapes us. Given the
number of infinities that rise when considering the quantum
ramifications of human brains patterning quantum-scale
space-time, I got to thinking about God a bit. Thus the Father
aspect of Aether. Some of the mechanics of space-time
manipulation (namely the space-time ribbons) were explored in 'A
Brief History of the Atlantean Revolt' during the discussion of
the Quicksilver suits. (If you're wondering what the fuck 'A
Brief History of the Atlantean revolt is, it's a chunk of a
story I wrote in High School available at my homepage. What a
clear plug.)
I'm interested in this topic a great deal, so feel free to email
me for a little discussion.
Jmele@brandeis.edu
www.brandeis.edu/~jmele
Fnord.