 | By Scot Noel Illustrated by Elizabeth Leggett If anyone knew history, Liv did. Even her name came from the days before time was woven, back to the era of mortal beings. The days of flesh and blood. Like her name, Liv’s own beginnings went deep, so long past that she alone could recall what it was like to breathe. To breathe and to watch others struggle for air. Having won the right to preserve something of that past, those memories were proving useful once again. This time, in this Build, she found herself with her head inside a bubble. Weightless and tethered, clad in a space suit of mech joints and metal fabric, Liv floated high above the moons of Jupiter. Her nose itched, unreachable. From within a baggy pocket that ran along her left thigh, Liv withdrew what appeared to be a small twist of weathered wood. It was, in fact, a stick of directed matter. This was her link with the space outside the Build. It was her universal toolkit and she placed it against her right shoulder, where it sealed with a click. “I’m in,” she said, activating the com link. “Setting to work.” Her voice grated, revealing the stress of three completed Builds. Ahead of her another six remained, including this one. “You are fully localized,” answered Control. “Authenticity in play. This is not a simulation.” You really don’t have to say that every time, Liv thought. With a voice like muted chimes, Control attempted to reassure her, “Rebuild resolution remains high. We detect no errors.” “Nice work on the body this time,” Liv said, trying not to sound guilty, “and the suit. Excellent detailing.” “The Box is configured and ready for targeting. All systems green.” “Yes! It’s OK, Control. Now, I have a job to do.” “Acknowledged. Agamemnon and I will work out the calculations for Build 5. Good hunting.” For the moment, the circuit closed, and Control withdrew from the re-creation. Build 4. The three before had been exhausting, but Build 4 was critical. It was time for Liv to check the secure channel. The one designed to bypass Control. “Mem, are you there?” she asked the ancient traveler. “Are we good?” “Almost infinite,” Mem answered. It was the QI’s usual greeting, though in this instance it gave him almost 1.18 seconds to engage in an amazing depth of electronic countermeasures. Subterfuge. While a part of Mem continued to exchange data streams with Control, much of the rest of his being entered full conspiracy mode with Liv. “We are...good,” Mem said, drawing out the words as if awaiting the results of certain computations. “You are off the mark by 6.5 kilometers, but exactly where we want you. Feedback to Control has been falsified.” “Are we detected?” “Not as yet. Do you see her?” “Yes,” Liv answered. “She’s in my field of view now.” The Xuanzang would have massed in on Earth at over 110,000 tons. Assembled in space, it bore no resemblance to rockets past. Nicknamed the Ugly Swan, the generation ship presented a plump composite body enfolded in protective wings of steel, with twin, curving necks at the bow. At the end of those sinuous projections were sensor clusters and shuttle docks. |
Positioned at the stern, a vast pusher plate was stretching out even as Liv watched. Attached to the main ship by hundreds of hydraulic struts, the pusher plate had one function: to protect the Xuanzang from the nuclear blasts that would propel her forward, accelerating over time to a fraction of the speed of light. The first manned ship to leave Earth and Sun behind.
Over a thousand portals and small geodesic domes decorated the great hull, each bright with light and giving the Ugly Swan the feel of an ocean liner despite its ungainly physique. Small work craft flitted here and there as the surrounding latticework of the dockyards began to withdraw. Launch was T-minus 30 minutes and counting.
“Timing looks right,” Liv said over the secure channel. “There never was an age of starships.”
“Only the two,” Mem answered, musing. “I have just confirmed your proximity to the target.”
“Acknowledged. How is it going on your end?”
“Our false Build telemetry has gone undetected. Penetration of Control systems undetected. I will soon have administrative access to the Portal. There are advantages to dealing with a creature of omnipotent naiveté.”
“Beats Control’s almighty condescension. You work the gate; I’ll work the key. Next check at 0:12 in Build 5.”
Going to plan, Liv activated the heads-up display across her helmet bubble.
Her human target was close, only 200 meters away. Liv released the tether connecting her suit to the observation platform and fired the micro thrusters at her back. Halfway to the goal she did the opposite to slow. It was a very precise burn. Within minutes she was motionless alongside her target: Naila Ali, SRS.
The Systems Repair Specialist (senior grade) had her gloved hands deep in the guts of a telemetry satellite. Her EVA pod lay open a few meters away, its lights bathing the tel-sat in a brilliant glow.
“Back off!” said Ali, alert to Liv’s approach. “This won’t delay the count. Almost there.” A frequency controller had gone bad and the module containing it seemed frozen in place. The repair bot sent to make the swap had failed to loosen it.
Ali had already been ordered by the Monitor to abandon the fix and back off for safety, but she was having none of it. She assumed Liv had been sent to enforce rather than assist. Of course, it was neither.
“Specialist Ali, that’s not it,” Liv said. “there’s a problem. Look.”
“Who are you?” Ali asked. “What’s that?” She turned from her task until they could see one another’s expressions, the movement of their lips.
Damn, we’re not speaking the same language, Liv realized. Or the right one, but not close enough. A few hundred years can make a difference.
Motioning with a knife hand gesture, Liv pointed to the bright rim of Jupiter. A glint of light was coming into sight above the gas giant’s churning clouds.
“Traffic?” Ali asked, puzzled. “How did the Monitor miss that?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Liv answered. “Damn. Look, that’s an LCAN platform and it has Xuanzang targeted. Laser cannons, understand?”
Liv attempted to close the distance with Ali, but the SRS held up her pistol-grip drill as though it were a weapon.
“Who are you?” Ali demanded. “What division?”
Liv repeated the knife hand.
As they watched, a dome on the big ship erupted in explosive decompression. The action was silent, the laser invisible.
“That was the command deck. Jesus!” Ali’s attention was total now. An experienced spacer, she put the action together quickly. Clouds of superheated vapor curled like scars around the hull. Where the laser touched, it evaporated metal. “They’ve got to spin her. Put that pusher plate into the beam.”
SRS Ali didn’t hesitate, moving so quickly Liv almost missed her chance. With a pat to the other woman’s back, Liv melded a piece of her magic driftwood to one of the most well protected parts of the suit, behind the battery assembly, where it would also go unnoticed. Before half a minute had passed, Ali had left Liv behind and was piloting her EVA pod straight for the Xuanzang.
On the local com channel, Liv could hear Ali chattering away, her tone switching seamlessly from giving orders to making pleas. No doubt some of that was a call to security to check out the strange spacer she had left near the tel-sat.
Liv began to back away, recalculating her position.
Historical Tensor – Build # 4
2770 C.E. Civilization - Kardashev Scale 1.1.
Destruction of the Deep Space Explorer Xuanzang.
Terrorist Action. Gaia ATWA.
Zeit-G: Pervasive movement to deny humanity’s expansion beyond Sol system.
Counter narrative: Heroism demonstrated by the crew of the Xuanzang and generally exemplified in the actions of astronaut Naila Ali turn mass opinion against the attackers.
 | Once Naila was on her way, there was nothing for Liv to do but wait. From the Build calculations, she knew Ali was the one she wanted, a human particle about to take a highly interactive path through the heart of the destruction. She would save lives, suffer greatly, encounter the enemy, and end her life in a bold, self-sacrificing act. But that wasn’t the point. Mem had identified Ali as a Human Determinant (H.D.), someone who would not only witness key elements of the action, but whose movements would come close to the crux—a forestall point—where an as yet unknown set of actions could have changed history. The simulation was quantum complete, with Control devoting the capacity of an entire galactic cluster to the Build. For all practical purposes, the space in which Liv found herself was real; her body real; the metallic hydrogen at Jupiter’s core real. From Sol to the Oort cloud and beyond the matrix was one to one on the atomic level, with the stars beyond impinging as a four-dimensional forced perspective. Ali and all those dying in the attack above Jupiter were real too. That they were the recreations of an all-controlling universal intelligence—had they been aware—would have made no difference to them at all. For Control the Builds meant one thing, for Liv another. And there were five more to go. At odd intervals, the beam of a high energy laser could be seen tracking lines of blue-violet light through eruptions of escaping gas and boiling metal. Liv considered how those same lasers, in different hands and different days, would be used to spread human intelligence throughout the universe. It was an irony the terrorists would never live to appreciate. At last, spinning on its axis, the Xuanzang turned her pusher plate into the attack. The great mass acted like a shield. And in the center of that mass lay the combustion chamber of a nuclear engine. It was now effectively a cannon getting ready to fire in the ship’s defense. The sound of an alert startled Liz out of her reverie. Control was checking in. She glanced to the chronometer in the heads up display and cursed. She opened the channel. “There has been an error,” Control informed her. “Yes, you got the language wrong this time!” Liv answered. If she focused on the anger, it would ring true. “A telemetry error placed you out
of position. You are off target to set the Box.” “No, it’s OK,” Liv bluffed. “We
were close enough to use an alternate. Mem did the calculations; he’ll send you
the data.” “You are no longer safe, Liv. We
must abort.” “You know how much this means to
me. Do not abort.” “These errors will now compound
through the Build cycles. Your mental cohesion may suffer as a result. We must
abort.” “Control, you know as well as I do,
the resources to try this again do not exist. Before we leave this universe
behind, I am going to save the essence of one living species. My species. You
promised!” |
Silence.
“Control?” A green pin-light blinked near Liv’s chin. “Control, wait, the Box is on its way. We’ve got this.” She set her suit on an intercept course.
Silence.
A warning sound brought Liv’s attention around. The thrusters on her suit jerked. Her heads-up display brightened.
Debris from the Xuanzang was now in her vicinity, moving together in a small cloud. Heading toward her at 72 km/sec. The suit jerked again, this time ramping up a sustained thrust as it calculated a clear path, pushing her backward and to port at high acceleration.
She was falling out of position, and fast. Even so, there was nothing for Liv to do but watch. Until the suit found safe haven, she would be helpless.
The debris hurtling toward her was invisible, silent. There was nothing to see, but that didn’t stop Liv from reflexively trying.
But it wasn’t spinning metal that caught her attention. The stars were winking out. Not all at once. The first one she couldn’t be sure of. The second she assumed had been eclipsed by the disintegrating Xuanzang, or perhaps by the debris flying toward her. But finally, she was sure.
She chanced opening the secure channel again and called out to Agamemnon.
“Mem,” she said on the secure channel. The suit’s erratic gyrations had left her breathless. “What’s happening? It looks like Control is losing the Build.”
“Almost infinite. Almost...” Mem took several more seconds than usual to secure the channel. “Liv. Umm...not everything is going well.”
“Same here. What have you got?”
“Control has detected my intrusion into the Portal systems. They do not know it is me yet. Repair actions have been directed as if a self-learning neural net has failed.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“Yes, it is. The Portal takes priority over the Builds. Control is allocating a great deal of focus here.”
“When Control left, did the Build go unstable? The stars are fading out.”
“Maybe,” Mem answered. “I’m a bit occupied to do calculations of that depth. But from what I can see the Build is approaching a phase shift. It will evaporate in less than 20 minutes.”
“Well, let’s not give up. Look, Mem, the Box has generated and is heading back to me. But between us is a field of shrapnel from the battle of the Xuanzang. Can you get me a path to the Box?”
“Yes. But if you wish me to do so, I must abandon the attempt to hack the Portal.”
Liv swore, then, reluctantly, she reopened the channel with Control. Perhaps she could still save the mission and distract Control at the same time.
“Control, answer me! This is an emergency. I need a path to the Box. I need it now!” Liv repeated herself several times before an answer came.
“We are unable to comply,” Control said. “There is no safe path. Your suit propellant is insufficient.”
“You promised! You’re obligated to this!”
Silence.
“Safety is secondary. Find me a path, alive.”
Silence.
“Control, do you read? Do you hear me, gods damn you!”
Suddenly her suit spun about and picked a new direction.
“Anticipated and course corrected. Get ready for the catch.”
A targeting circle appeared at the top of Liv’s visor and began to slide down the face plate as the Box approached. A hundred other smaller circles suddenly lit up her field of vision.
“Alright. That’s good,” she said. “Or maybe not.” Her heart beat wildly. That’s debris from the Xuanzang headed this way, isn’t it? You’ve put me right in its path!”
“Don’t move.”
Before she could take her next breath, a piece of debris, far smaller than a bullet, passed through Liv’s right knee. There was a spurt of blood and air. It sent her to tumble head over heels. Klaxons exploded in her ears, then silenced. The legging of her suit restricted like a tourniquet.
“Count three rotations and grab the Box!”
“I didn’t move!” The pain was startling. It felt like she had been blown in half. One. Two. On her third flip an object slammed into her chest and she enfolded her arms about it. “Control, I have the Box. Start the next Build, now!”
“We continue to recommend a mission abort and recalculation before proceeding.”
“No! Absolutely not. And get the frakking language right this time!”
When Liv awoke, she had long, dark hair with brown highlights. The folds of a colorful kimono billowed about her, black with a vibrant leaf and flower pattern. These were the first things to command her attention because she was weightless, floating in a ray of sunshine that fell through a portal near her bed.
It was obvious that she had not maintained consciousness for the Build. Her knee ached fiercely, though by touch it seemed undamaged.
The Box floated nearby, ensconced in a translucent bubble. It was losing its rough corners already, becoming more vase-like, more polished after four Builds. But, of course, it wasn’t supposed to be visible at all this early in Build 5. Something was wrong.
Liv felt for the directed matter. She found a small blue lacquer box secured to her sash. At a touch, the seal on the box parted and a twisting organic shape flared to life.
“I’m here,” she said into the com-link.
Control failed to answer. After several tries, she switched to the secure channel and called for her co-conspirator. Mem failed to answer.
“Something’s not right,” she said, as though Mem might still be listening, even if he was unable to respond. “This looks like a yacht, not a transport. And the Box is already manifest, here in my cabin!”
Silence.
“I’ll figure it on my own. Liv out.”
A few weightless “steps” outside the cabin and Liv’s skin began to crawl. A number of bodies floated along the central axis, a grand, cylindrical corridor running the length of the ship. Lifeless arms and legs were flung out widely, haphazardly. No blood. No damage. Just bodies.
The ship yawed to port and engaged thrust in the new direction. Within a few breaths, an unbearable stench descended on Liv like an invisible cloud. The bodies began to drift toward her.
OK, someone’s still alive, Liv thought. Someone’s piloting.
The central cylinder was wide and bright, dotted in an alternating pattern with cabin doors like the one Liv had just exited. The applied thrust was running parallel to the axis of the ship. She turned so that the engines must be behind her, the bridge up ahead. Handholds along the circumference of the corridor allowed Liv to pull herself quickly toward the front of the ship.
A few of the bodies drifted close enough to see the effects of the virus. There was discolored skin where veins had collapsed and capillaries erupted. Eyes lay open and bulging. Large pustules decorated neck and face.
Liv retched at the encounter. She couldn’t breathe and gripped tight to the handrails, fighting the drive to cut and run. Was this what Control had meant, about a breakdown in mental cohesion?
Without exception, the dead were elegantly clothed. Some wore breather gear, others masks. A handful of the deceased were covered in full decon gear. One poor creature, in a space suit, was alive but convulsing. Unconscious.
With trembling hands and a tightness in her throat, Liv continued on toward the bridge. Though the path into the control area was obvious, the hatchway to the pilot’s station lay sealed. Opposite it, two bodies had been gently nudged by acceleration toward an emergency compartment, one that had once contained pressure suits and EVA gear, but now lay bare.
Molding a small piece of directed matter into the hatch controls, Liv encouraged them to do her bidding. A moment later, the door to the pilots’ compartment opened without a sound.
Historical Tensor – Build # 5
2250 C.E. Civilization - Kardashev Scale 0.9
Septicemic plague of Lagrange Colonies and Lunar Federal States.
Last pandemic before the advent of nano-microbiological medicine.
Zeit-G: Widespread transmission through the Lunar and Lagrange habitats causes near collapse of orbital civilization and a retreat from inter-colony cooperation.
Counter narrative: Advances in cybernetic microbiology lay the foundations of trans-humanism, non-biological intelligence, and lifespans of choice.
As Liv entered the pilot’s station, she heard the voice of a man, his tone desperate and high. “This is the Andiamo. I repeat, the Andiamo. Are you listening? This is the frequency I was given. Lunar 1 is onboard. I need you to answer. How do we approach? I need a docking beacon.” A pause. “You have to answer!” Heeding the motion of the ship, the hatch eased closed behind Liv with a click. When it did, the muzzle of a hand weapon swung her way. Its targeting beam circled nervously above her heart. The man who had been calling out on the radio held her at gunpoint. He was close to hyperventilating. A lean figure sunken into an overlarge chair, his profile was lit blue by the many monitors and instrument screens at his back. He wore an ill-fitting surgeon’s mask. “Who are you?” he asked. “Why aren’t you d...dead?” Liv could not only understand the questions, she could feel the terror in the man’s voice. Continuing to hold her at gunpoint with this left hand, the pilot reached back with his right to manipulate a toggle, locking the hatch behind her. Liv scoffed. “You didn’t overpressure the cabin,” she said. “No woosh when I opened the door.” The man said nothing in return. “If you want to keep a contagion out, you create positive pressure in here.” Suddenly there was a change in the gunman’s eyes. Keeping the weapon pointed Liv’s way, he glanced back to the controls. “Don’t bother doing it now,” Liv said calmly. “The incubation period is over a week long. These people were all infected at the same time. When were you exposed to them?” A sharp click emanated from the weapon, a sound Liv interpreted as the chambering of a bullet. “You wanted to know who I am,” she said. “My name is Liv, sometimes Livy. Last name—when I had one—Chay.” “You’re not sick?” Liv remained motionless, but her attention had started to go to the screens, both the exterior views and the navigational graphs. She was trying to figure out where she was. The Build was right, but her position matched neither the official drop zone programmed by Control nor the alternate that would have been chosen by Mem. “Well,” she answered the pilot, “I’m exposed by now, but we have time. Now, tell me...what’s your name?” “Walter Buch, LPC. This is my boat! Are you here to rescue me?” “No, Walter. I’m not here to rescue you. It’s too late for that. But this is a key moment in history. You’re lucky to witness it.” The man rolled his eyes and put pressure on the trigger. “One of those, huh? Out of here! Go back to your cabin and die. Move!” Reversing his previous action, Buch commanded the hatch to cycle open. Not wanting to provoke him, Liv made a gentle motion toward one of the big screens. “That’s the L5 Habitat Columbia you’re closing with. Over 1000 square miles, 5 million inhabitants. You can’t land there.” Buch laughed. “Do you know how much money I have on this boat? Do you know who those people are back there? The fucking President of Luna is onboard!” His voice, loud and tinged with hysteria, showed that he was on the edge of losing control. And yet he hadn’t pulled the trigger. “There are three other plague ships out there,” Liv said, again gently drawing his attention to the screens. “The Byron, the Won-yil, and the Kolkata. That last one has over one thousand children onboard. At this time, they thought the young ones might be immune, but the virus is dormant. Waits a bit longer. Still, a few of them have a chance.” “I’ve been listening to them all day. Pleading for help. No one’s answering. Just some automated warning to change course.” “Same for you?” “Look, lady, I have a deal.” “The Byron passes the interdiction line first,” Liv explained. “Looks like it will be any minute now. There’s a rather callous defense minister over at L5 who orders her shot out of the sky.” “No more talking. Out!” Before the pilot’s lips closed over his last syllable, two of his screens jumped, refocusing on a blue-white flash. A radiological alarm went off, and Buch’s attention turned away from Liv. When he again swiveled his chair toward her, she noted that his weapon had been left on the control panel. “That was the Byron,” Buch admitted. He sank back in his seat, deflated, pulling down his surgeon’s mask as though it had suddenly lost its value. “They nuked it!” “Yes, but we have some time before that happens to us. I’d guess you’re not even running a transponder on this ship. No need to announce some secret deal you made to get all your ‘friends’ to safety. But traffic control will spot you soon enough. There is no welcome waiting for you.” “What do you know about it?!” Buch demanded. “About you?” Liv returned question for question, then answered her own. “Not much more than I can guess. I know you started from a smaller colony at the L2 Lagrangian point, near Earth’s moon. You own this yacht, but it’s not built for atmospheric re-entry, so there was no heading for Earth. From the minute I came through the hatch, I knew you were a paper pilot, someone with the chips to buy the certificate, but you don’t really know ships. The real pilot must be one of the dead. Maybe that one twitching in the space suit I passed on my way up here.” “You’ve got a mouth on you; I’ll give you that. You some kind of cop?” “Some kind of...police,” Liv was able to match the ancient slang. “What kind would that be? No, I don’t think you have anything to do with the dead out there, Walt. You tried to help. Is it a crime to offer a path to sanctuary for pay?” She shrugged. “Don’t patronize me. Are you trying to get shot?”
“You’re rich, but they don’t even have the idea for money. Could you explain this yacht and how it moves through space? What about L5—twin cylinders rotating in opposite directions to cancel gyroscopic effects. Five hundred square miles each, farms beneath vast skylights. Millions of people. How could they envision a million of their ancestors all living in the sky? How do you...” She made a motion with her hands, twisting them in opposite directions, “define gyroscopic for them?” “Alright! You’re telling me I’m a dumbshit and I won’t understand a thing you say. Get on with it!” Buch’s hand was trembling now, and not from anger. “Wait for it,” Liv cautioned. “I’m afraid the Won-yil gets nuked about now.” Again, the screens flashed. Again, the radiological alarms chimed. “Are you from the future?” “Not exactly, Walt. I am often thought of as the last of our race—the last human consciousness at any rate. I’ve lived to the end of time, or as close to as you can imagine, Walt. I’ve seen...everything. Everything. And the future isn’t what you imagine. “There never was an age of starships. Only the two. No galactic civilizations rising among the stars. Instead, history was written on beams of light.” “What does that mean?” “I warned you...about understanding. This plague, it stops civilization from expanding into the solar system for centuries. When the first starship is built, it is destroyed in a terrorist action. Centuries more pass, and we never venture out at the helm of ships. Instead...” Liv could not disguise the disdain in her voice. “Instead we send out clouds of nano-bots and their automated factories, forerunners of the directed matter you see with me here. They take hundreds, thousands of years to go from system to system, but they do it. Wherever they go, these machines set up receivers for high energy lasers and factories to build avatars. Once we know they are in place, Earth sends beams of light containing instructions at first, then—eventually—human awareness itself. Digital minds beamed into space.” “You don’t seem to like that idea,” Buch observed. “You know, you don’t age when you’re a beam of light. You don’t even dream. You wake up in an avatar built for the world where the receiver rests. The receiver becomes a transmitter, and on you go. In that way, the entire Milky Way was explored in less than a million years. “But time is long. They did more than settle galaxies. They harnessed them. Do you know the Kardashev scale? It’s something humans hypothesized, even before your time. Kardashev Type 1 is a civilization that uses all the energy of its home-world. Type 2 uses all the power its star can produce. Type 3, an entire galaxy.” “Wait...wait,” Buch interrupted. “You went from talking about ‘we did this’ and ‘we did that’ to ‘they.’ What happens? Did the plague come back?” “No. We didn’t die from the plague. We just gave up on being human. I saw it. Before the machine explorers got their foothold, there was time for one more starship. That was the Agamemnon, and I was aboard. But the faster we went, the faster the universe aged around us. No more ships followed, only the beams of light. We watched the eons flow by outside. Soon other worlds sent their own beams of light. It became an age of avatars. And then, all at once, the light itself became the mind of the universe.” “Time dilation theory,” Buch ventured. When he wiped at his upper lip, the back of his hand came away with a smear of blood. His eyes narrowed. “Look, Liv. I don’t have the time. What are you here for?” “Data. Readings. Human experience. If the advancement into space hadn’t been slowed by the plague, by terrorism, by nine specific roadblocks, then living humans would have made the leap. The stars would have come alive with uncounted trillions of us, on uncounted trillions of worlds. instead of...” “How can you know that?” Buch interrupted. “It’s easy, Walt. The future state of any system can be calculated by knowing the current state, atom for atom, and how an applied force will drive the system forward.” “You’re here to change history?” “I’m here to build a universe.” Buch thumbed the grip of his handgun and the red dot of the targeting laser renewed its dance over Liv’s heart. “If you’re all that, I’m interested in how you’re going to get me out of this!” “Walt..." “Now, as I see it, you have two choices,” Buch interrupted. “Either use your magical future powers to kill this virus. Or get me over to L5 without being blown to hell. There are people over there. They have a vaccine, a cure, something. They’re waiting for me.” “Have you heard from them? There’s a lot going on over there right now, Walt. Not everyone agrees with vaporizing the victims of a pandemic. But those that do are on top at the moment, and they’re not looking kindly on any invitations your elite friends might have extended.” Buch glanced nervously toward the radio. He wiped at his lip again. “You’re looking to me for rescue,” Liv said, “but it’s you I need in all this. Let me show you something.” With a slow movement of arm across chest, Liv touched the knot of directed matter at her shoulder. A moment later the scent of ozone filled the cabin. A sharp crack of displaced air announced the new arrival, startling Buch. Materializing behind Liv and to her right, a glowing lotus blossom almost three feet across appeared. Nestled atop it, a transparent egg shape held within its borders a scaled diorama of scenic nature framing a large wooden vase, the container secured by a brass lock and decorated with a polished acorn. For Buch, it proved little more than another piece of bewilderment. “Is this all about some...piece of art?” Buch asked. “Or am I in my house of bones again,” he gestured to indicate the pilot cabin, “and you’re showing me...what, a computer, a cell phone...a time machine? Something I can’t possibly understand?” “On those screens before you,” Liv answered. “I see control images. A bird, a heart, a flag, a shooting star. They are representation, correct? Icons. By touching one, you activate the instrument it represents: engines, weapons, medicine, communications.” “This thing you’ve materialized...it’s an icon?” “Part representation. Part device. The power it controls is beyond anything in your ‘house of bones.’ I am using it to capture the human experience in key historical moments. The essence of a crucial moment. That’s why I’m here.” “Here? It’s a goddamn plague!” “It’s the last plague,” Liv answered. “But it does its damage. It keeps us from reaching for the stars for over 500 years!” “Whatever,” Buch said with contempt. “Can that pretty thing of yours save us. Or can it...I still don’t know what it does.” “I believe you have a term ‘black box.’ This ship has one, correct?” “Yeah. Several. Flight data recorder. Engine, etc.” “When this Build was created, we gave it a black box. My job is to tag the H.D, the Human Determinant. Center the Box on them. But I’ve lost contact with my ship, and I’ve been dropped in the wrong place. I need to be on the Kolkata, the children’s ship.” “What if you’re wrong? What if it’s me?” Liv smiled. “It can’t be, Walt. Your ship is destroyed. Just a few minutes from now. It’s the Kolkata they let in. Something happens at L5. An overthrow, a regime change. They bring Kolkata in. I need you to get me over to the Kolkata.” “Thank you!” Buch said with a relaxed breath. “That’s what I needed to know. I can get over there all right.” He pulled the trigger. Liv felt a burning sensation as Buch’s shot tore through her. The impact felt slight, but her kimono began to soak with blood. All she could think to do was finish her thought. “And over a million people die...” Few incidents of pain haunted Liv’s long memory. In short order she had had two significant experiences. Her knee being hit by shrapnel in the last Build and being shot in this one. The shock lasted seconds. The pain to follow made her cry out, though no sound escaped her lips. As she lost consciousness, she saw the Box move toward Buch. The latch was opening. She heard him scream. “Liv, you have suffered a major injury,” Mem tried to inform her. “Blood pressure falling; heart rate elevated. Massive neural activity. Liv, answer me! We have failed.”
“I wasn’t gathering sickness and death. I was looking for those moments—fulcrum points where things went wrong.” “Not Pandora’s Box then,” Control reasoned. “Pangenesis. Gathering the experience of a complex system to inform the creation of a new one. Your goal was to create a new universe that would evolve as you wished it to. A universe without us.” “A universe of humanity!” “Built with stolen gifts. Leaving us to our fate in this dying universe. You knew we would not be able to recharge the Portal in time.” “What are you?” Liv asked. “A trillion minds that speak with one voice. No individuality. No dissent. No diversity. A thing that eats the power of space and absorbs the consciousness of all life. You are not God!” “Nor are you,” answered Control. The avatar turned once again to face Liv. “Revered ancestor, we would do anything for you, except extinguish ourselves.”
Control moved out ahead and Liv followed. They entered the cave and for a few minutes, Control took Liv’s hand, guiding her through a handful of narrow spaces. The air was humid, rich with smells, and the sounds of the jungle, muted at first, soon resumed. It became light again, but not as bright. Here the sun fell through huge skylight fractures in the rock, far above and filtered through tall vegetation on the way down. “These caverns are a world to themselves,” Control explained. “A maze that goes on for hundreds of miles. New ecosystems. The dens of predators. Places of refuge for prey. Places to live and places to die.” “I don’t understand,” Liv said. “In the north, the ice is miles deep. When the climate warms, the sea will rise to take custody of all. Your species forgets its existence. Quiet now. There is she is...below us.” Crouching down, Control signaled for Liv to do the same. They proceeded a meter forward on their bellies, to the edge of a mossy overhang. The ground dropped fifty feet from the edge, the cavern opening up to reveal a huge, bowl shaped dome with a circle of sunlight piercing down from an opening hundreds of feet overhead. Below them spread a diverse landscape of vine and bush, brilliant flowers, and fruit bearing trees. “There,” Control whispered, pointing out a hint of movement in the foliage. “An ancestor.” With a gentle movement, the being of burnished metal caused the air before them to magnify the scene below. The creature they watched was fully human, a young woman of dark skin, dressed sparsely in woven plants and animal hide, with boots crafted of leather and bark. Her long, dark hair fell in two braids as she crouched and moved both carefully and silently through the cavernous expanse. “She’s alone,” Liv observed, also keeping her voice low. Control nodded. “Caves like this may be sources of water and food. Resources coveted by predators too. Bear. Clawed ground sloth. Saber tooth felines.” “Is that how you see me?” The indignity in Liv’s voice was not lost on Control. “A primitive, an animal lost in a cave?” “That would not entirely be my point.” Control gestured toward the ancestor, who was marking her path by scoring a small conifer with a sharpened stone. “Attend.” The magnification window now displayed a translucent field of diagnostics. “Approximately two decades old. There has already been one child. Oh, here, the right arm has a healed, spiral fracture. A sign of male violence.” “Is she running away from her tribe?” “Does that explain the care she has taken in orienting her position?” As they watched, the ancestor carefully cut away a section of flowering vine and tucked it into one of several small pouches at her belt. “She’s exploring,” Liv concluded. “And getting ahead of us. Come, we must follow. We can stay out of sight and ahead on this ridge for some time.” Control helped Liv to her feet and encouraged her movement into the shadows and rocks, the two of them moving parallel to the ancestor as they pushed deeper into the caverns. Liv moved slowly, the residual pain in her knee and midriff keeping her unsteady and winded. Nevertheless, Control pushed her on, keeping close and engaging her with a steady stream of questions. “How do you think this ancestor sees the future? For herself, for her people?” Eyes down, Liv watched her step and her words, trying to anticipate Control’s purpose. She failed. “Your scan. It showed digestive parasites, poor nutrition. The physical abuse. She’s still a part of nature. Not much more.” Control canted their head again. “When does a creature go from being a figure in the landscape to the shaper of worlds?” “This lesson is beyond me. I am at your mercy. Tell me where this ends?” “Patience, Olivia Chay. What have I warned you about understanding? The context. The imagination necessary.” “Since I’ve encountered you, nothing I’ve come to understand has comforted me.” Control retreated into silence for a moment, then continued. “What would this ancestor make of it, do you think—if she knew that the universe is expanding all around her, even now? That space is inflating, the fabric of existence pulling apart at an ever accelerating rate? Could we describe to her the tens of billions of years between her quest today and the ultimate evaporation of the universe? Could we explain how we might escape it in the Portal? Travel to another universe?” “Her child,” Liv said. “If we took her child, brought it up in our world, it could grow to understand.” “Perhaps,” Control conceded. “But she cannot be so easily persuaded, nor could her people. They have no foundation from which to understand either your world or ours. Imagine transporting this ancestor to a city on Earth’s moon. Would she experience that as an advancement of her own species? Would it even be possible for her to see the inhabitants as human? Her place is one of nature. Of land and sky. Life and death. The spirits of her ancestors rest in the deep places.” “What are you getting at, Control?” “All in good time. First, give me your hand. We are going into darkness, and light would frighten this ancestor. She has already heard us and is moving away. Our path will circle through the caverns above her.” “Mem found no Human Determinants in prehistory. Did you create this just to humiliate me by comparison?” “It was not on my mind,” Control said, then urged her to watch her step. “What I was thinking was this: the closer you approached the speed of light, the more time slowed down for you. Relative to Agamemnon, the universe outside your ship was moving faster and faster. It was like you were standing at a window, watching the future unfold without you.” “Yes,” Liv admitted, feeling the chill emanating from the dark stone walls. “What you saw disturbed you. Just as if your ancestor were to see the rise of Rome and Tikal. Tokyo and New York. Show her the skies filled with aircraft and orbital vehicles, explain the community of nations, allow her to sense the air vibrating with the electric voices of seven billion of your kind. Would it be the world she would wish for her children? Or might she take it as a vision of hell?” Liv allowed her silence to answer. “For you it was the same. The time dilation of lightspeed brought you forward into a universe where no humans followed you to the stars, only digital minds inhabiting avatars from time to time. “You watched Earth burn away in the old age of its sun. Humans dispersed and grew fewer, giving up their bodies to the light between the stars. “No worlds are colonized. Where life arises, when intelligence follows, it becomes trans-biological in only a few million years. Self-learning systems communicate across space. Data is copied, merged; it grows and expands exponentially. But these new and evolving minds need energy. They span the stars and soon all the light of all those suns is not enough to feed them. “And still the ages go on, and from your ship, you see the universe and all the intelligence it contains head toward Nightfall. The evaporation of space and time.” “When you found us, you should have destroyed us!” Liv said. In response, Control gave a gentle squeeze to Liv’s hand as they led her through shadow and darkness. They began a challenging descent, one during which Liv’s aches escalated painfully. While Liv expected them to enter another expanse, one open and filtering light from above, the darkness grew. Instead they heard a song. Plaintive and gentle words rose to them from a distance, out of the depths. Control and Liv approached from close above, positioning themselves on a balcony of rock, with the ancestor below them. Again, Control had them lie down, stare into the black, and listen. Liv stretched and fidgeted. Though in the presence of immeasurable power, her frustration began to flame toward anger. She worried that she would never see Agamemnon again. “Is this how you see me?” Liv asked, not raising her voice at first. “An ignorant savage, praying to magical gods, with no comprehension of reality?” “Are there not gods listening?” “She can’t even make fire!” Liv protested. “Fire blinds in this dark expanse. She must be able to make her way back toward the light.” Liv stood and began to shout toward the ancestor. “Stop! Run! There are no spirits here. There is nothing. It’s a cave. It’s a trap!” The gentle song stopped. In the silence, they heard movement. Startled by Liv’s cry, the ancestor retreated. A moment later, something else followed, scrabbling from an unseen position in the rocks. A splashing of water echoed up to them. “That was a mistake. You may have endangered the crux.” “Enough,” said Liv. “Send me back to Agamemnon. Isn’t facing the end of the universe punishment enough?” A cry of surprise echoed about them. Sounds of struggle soon followed, then new, inhuman vocalizations. Barks and yelps. Liv heard the ancestor cry out in anguish, then pain. “End this!” Liv demanded. Standing before her now, Control remained silent. In the distance, the struggle continued, accompanied by sounds of torment. More growls and yelps. “Damn you. I can’t see. I can’t...” She turned into the dark. “I’m going down there!” Though Control reached for her shoulder as she moved, Liv pulled away from that touch and scrambled down along a sloping ledge toward the level where the ancestor had been singing in the dark. By the time Liv reached the base of the grotto, her feet were bruised, her hands bleeding. The subtlest emanation of gray light showed her the way. A catch of stone tripped Liv and she tumbled forward into a shallow sink hole filled with water. The icy pool startled her and magnified her pain, but she pulled herself out and continued toward the call of the ancestor’s voice. The light grew. Ferns tangled at her feet. The struggle ahead seemed over. While the animal noises had ceased, the ancestor’s voice once again took on a rhythm. Once more she had raised her voice in song. It was a stressed and wounded sound, but still it led Liv onward. By the time Liv reached the spot, she almost suffered the same fate as the ancestor, who had fallen in a much larger and deeper sink hole. Light fell from an inline opening to the sky above, revealing for Liv that the ancestor lay below with legs broken and her head and shoulders upon the body of a predator, something canid. It was perhaps one of the large coyotes of the ancient days, but whether the fall had taken its life or the ancestor’s bloodied knife had been sufficient was impossible to tell. Liv could see that water was washing in below as if powered by some subterranean tide. It grew moment to moment, threatening to overwhelm the ancestor, to drag her away into unseen depths. “Oh, my God,” Liv said. The guilt of perhaps having set a tragedy in motion overwhelmed her. Gripped by panic, she glanced around for a way to help. There was nothing for her to use as a ladder. By now the ancestor had seen her. The young woman sang out to Liv with the same prayer she had offered up in the depths of the cave. Her head bowed and her hands to her shoulders, Liv began to cry. Was this her punishment? Was her mental cohesion giving way? As she rocked forward, sobbing, Liv felt the rough texture of directed matter on her left shoulder, growing quickly in response to her racing thoughts. Suddenly, Liv had all the instrumentality of a Kardeshev Type 4 Civilization at her command.
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