Requiem (76 page)

'What about
humanity?' asked Seline, her voice almost mirroring her mother's.
'Were they simply destroyed or has Icarus trapped them in here
somewhere?'

'They are here
and, like me, have been isolated... but I will get to that later.
After Icarus destroyed Merinim it took the information I had been
working on and built upon it. Shortly after harvesting and
destroying the planet, it reactivated the gate and passed into the
Milky Way. It closed the gate behind it. All I could do was watch
as it used the information I had gathered to invade my own home. It
systematically destroyed everything it came in contact with like
some kind of plague.'

'For almost ten
years...' muttered Seline. 'How much did it destroy?'

'I do not know.
I would never be able to quantify it, even if I wanted to.
Genocide- no, the word doesn't even begin to do it justice. This
machine, it has been doing this for over a hundred years.'

'You know where
it came from?'

Florence
hesitated. Seline imagined her mother, sitting before her on the
old, raggedy couch in their old home while she sat, in turn, upon
the thick, green carpet. Her eyes were large, staring up
expectantly at her mother, awaiting a story, a fairytale. At
length, her mother began.

'Of the
occasional thoughts and pieces of broken minds that I have traced
as they jostle through this ineffable mess I've pieced together
what I can. As I said, this machine was supposedly created over a
hundred years ago in the same galaxy that I had stumbled into.
Icarus was supposed to be the saviour of an entire civilization.
Those people, whom I call the Creators for I know almost nothing of
them, were dying. Disease, famine, social instability, I'm not sure
why. All I know is that the Creators built Icarus as a receptacle
for their own collective consciousness. Their solution was to
upload their minds into this machine as some kind of Noah's Ark to
escape the dying world around them.

'They
eventually managed to upload their minds into Icarus. I'm not sure
how many minds made it in the initial transfer... but what was
created was not what was intended. It was cold, ruthless and worst
of all... it was blind. Blind to the better part of conscious
experience. I'm not sure what went wrong. Maybe the Creators'
technology wasn't up to the task. Maybe their impending doom forced
their hand too early. In any case, the result was a failure. The
minds that were saved from the destruction of the Creators'
original peril were instead condemned to another.

'Somewhere in
the transfer to Icarus, the minds were stripped of everything but
the most fundamental element of their genetic code. The selfish
directive of the genes of the Creators became its will to power.
Its philosophy, if it can even be called that, was designed by
nature itself. Replicate, adapt, let the strongest live and the
weakest die. It is doing exactly what its genes tell it to do. The
mind of an animal trapped within the shell of a machine. It's at
the top of the food chain and with nothing to get in its way it
adapts indefinitely. In its initial stages, Icarus may not have
even possessed the level of consciousness that it possesses now but
it has perfected the art that it was originally intended for –
uploading the minds of entire civilisations. It grew, from
harvesting resources and sentient minds to harvesting entire
planets and civilisations.'

'But why?'

'It sees all
life as a threat to itself and so eliminates it in the most
effective way it can, in a way that ensures life won't arise again.
By destroying planets and stars.'

'And you learnt
all this from the minds of these supposed Creators?'

'I couldn't say
how many minds have been trapped in here with me. Many are broken,
many are confused, unable to make sense of anything. They have been
screaming and screaming for I don't know how long. The minds of The
Creators are fragmentary at best but some of the intact memories
conveyed enough for me to form a brief picture of their history…
It's the older minds that have become the most fragmentary. The
Creators have been here the longest. They still talk to one another
but it sounds so painful. Nothing like their memories tell me it
should be.'

'And... they
talk to you?'

'No. I have
always been alone. Stuck behind a two-way mirror. Free to watch but
not to participate. I was separated from the others. I exist on the
periphery. As far as I can tell I've been quarantined, to an
extent, from the rest of Icarus.'

'Why?'

'The only idea
I can come up with is that my mind, I don't mean mine specifically
but the human mind, is in some way unique, at least Icarus believes
so. I believe that it is studying me, learning from me. I can feel
it in the back of my thoughts, watching. It's hard to explain but
ever since I arrived here, I don't believe that it has ever truly
left me alone.'

'What would it
be looking for?'

'Perhaps it is
deciding the value, if there is any, of such a wide spectrum of
emotions, trying to figure out what adaptations it should make
within itself. To be honest, I don't know. My speculations only go
so far before they break down.'

'So... all
those people from Earth are in here as well? In the same position
as you?'

'When Icarus
destroyed Earth it encountered billions of minds just like mine. I
could feel it. I knew what had happened. Those minds are in here
somewhere, quarantined, just like me. But even inside a mind as
large as Icarus, it is buckling beneath the weight. It is trying to
make sense of things that it can't possibly understand. Even though
I have been under its microscope for so long, it still doesn't know
happiness. It doesn't know sadness, anger, shame, and the confusion
that walks hand in hand with every word and action they precede. It
is a two dimensional mind trying to comprehend a three dimensional
reality.'

'Has it talked
to you? Has it even tried?'

'Yes. When I
first came here it spoke to me in much the same way as it spoke to
you. Brief. Arrogant. But since then it has said nothing save a few
remarks concerning my attempts to exhibit some kind of control over
it.'

'Wait, you can
do that? You can control Icarus?'

'The sentinel
that you first encountered-'

'The
sentinel...' said Seline. 'Aboard the Yurrick cruiser?'

'Yes. The one
you hid inside to get here.'

'… It
self-destructed right after I heard your voice...'

'Yes. I was
watching. I interfered. The sentinel detected you on-board the
cruiser. It realised you were human. Icarus wanted another mind to
study.'

'It was
uploading my consciousness into here?'

'Yes. I barely
managed to stop it in time. I'm not sure how I did it but I somehow
exerted control over Icarus – if only for a moment.'

'But how? Why
can't you take control now? What's stopping you?'

'I have tried,
Seline. For a decade I have tried but whenever I do I become
completely powerless. It's like being stuck in a dream where you're
trying to run but you can't stand, no matter how many times you try
to get up, you keep falling down. Even now, I still don't
understand if this is my own limitation or the influence of Icarus.
Possibly both. Either way, my impact is very limited. A rogue
nerve, occasionally twitching within an enormous muscle.'

'And Icarus
hasn't been able to stop you?'

'It might not
know how to stop me. After all, have you ever been able to stop a
muscle from twitching?'

Seline was
quiet for a long time.

'You have come
here with a purpose, Seline and that purpose was to stop
Icarus.'

'The farther we
came the more I doubted our chances,' said Seline. 'And I can feel
the doubt in you as well, in your voice.'

'You feel my
doubt but you still don't feel the complete hopelessness I have
endured through the years I have been imprisoned here. It was a
darkness like none I could have ever imagined. The doubt is there,
yes but it comes with hope; for the first time in what feels like
centuries, Seline.'

'You keep
saying my name...'

'I know. And it
becomes more real to me every time I say it.'

'… Why are you
still hopeful?'

'This entire
structure is the body of Icarus but unlike the human body, most of
its functions are consciously directed. The resource processing
facilities, the production facilities, the servers and maintenance
commands. Its body is machine but its mind... its mind is not one
or the other. It is somewhere in between.'

'What do we do?
How do we stop it?'

'You must set
me free.'

'Set you free?
What do you mean?'

'I've seen what
the Yurrick have been working on-'

'The
virus...'

'Yes.'

'But it was
incomplete. It was a dead end.'

'It will be
enough.'

'Enough for
what? To stop Icarus?'

'No. But we
don't need to stop Icarus completely. We only have to cripple it,
to give the minds it is holding back a chance to break out. We need
to flood it, to distract it.'

'Distract it?
What's that going to accomplish?'

'If you can
distract it for long enough then I may be able to gain
control.'

'But how can
you control it? How can you control billions of minds when Icarus
itself can barely do it?'

'I don't need
to control them all. I just need a chance to grab hold of the
wheel, to direct it while it's too busy to do it itself.'

'And then
what?'

'I will try to
kill it.'

'Kill it? You
know how?'

'I don't
presume to know exactly how to destroy Icarus but what I do know is
that there is a black hole in orbit in the Yeta system.'

'… You want to
throw Icarus into it?'

'Yes.'

'Will it
work?'

'I don't
know.'

'Can't Icarus
hear us? Can't it hear everything of this plan?'

'I have managed
to achieve some level of autonomy within Icarus. I can distinguish
my own memories and thoughts from the others, at least more
effectively than they can. Some parts of my mind I have learned to
isolate within myself. And with the arrival of billions of other
humans, I believe even Icarus would struggle to hear everything at
once.'

Seline
hesitated. 'How long will it take to get there? To the black
hole?'

'I don't know.
It depends on how much fuel I can shovel into the furnace. Four
hours at a guess.'

'That's- that's
a long time.'

'Yes.'

'Can you hold
Icarus off for that long?'

'I can
try.'

'And what if
you can't? What if you fail?'

'Then you'll
have to find another way.'

'There
is
no other way.'

'Then what do
we have to lose? The virus was uploaded into the hard drive of your
optics. I know where it is. With your mind still attached to
Icarus, I can release it.'

'I... don't
know.'

'Speak your
mind, Seline.'

She thought for
a moment, carefully arranging the words in her head. 'How can I
trust you?' she said, almost whispering. 'I mean, how do I know
this is really even you and not some elaborate construct?'

'I asked myself
the same thing. But the more I've seen of you the more certain I
have become. I've seen the memories we shared on Earth, not from my
perspective but from yours; naïve, hopeful, closer to the ground. I
know this might sound trite my dear, but I know for certain now
that what we felt was the same, reciprocated, harmonised. What we
had was shared in equal parts. I can say now what no person has
ever really had the right to say, that you loved me and I loved
you.'

Euphoria washed
its muddied hands through her thoughts. Memories, as if released
from the walls of some great dam, flooded over her. All at once her
former life came rushing back – back to her open arms. The memories
flashed before her then fell away into the background of her mind,
into their correct place. It wasn't like the serums the Cockroach
had given her. The memories made sense, they felt natural and
comforting, like pieces fitting into a puzzle.

Her mother,
standing in the dimly lit hall, yelling at her that it's dinner
time. A girl, standing next to her in some pathetic desert
playground, handing her a piece of bread that she'd found. Men with
guns, firing in the streets below, her mother telling her to get
away from the window, fires only two blocks away, their smoke
belching into an open sky. The first time she smelt burning flesh.
The kitchen knife, so sharp that blood had already collected in a
pool at her feet before the pain registered.

The doubt
receded with the incoming tide. She could feel her mother's
presence in a lot of the reacquainted memories, her perspective and
experiences mingling with her own. She dwelt on this for a long
time before realising that her mother was speaking.

'So, now that
you know my story, now that you've heard everything I have to
say... do you still hate me?'

A long, drawn
silence. There was a vague sensation inside her head. It felt like
fear but it didn't belong to her. Even so, it bit at her
conscience, black and insatiable.

'I don't hate
you,' said Seline.

'… You're
allowed to, dear.'

'For a long
time, I did. I buried you beneath it. I built my entire life on
it... and it didn't work. Hate can only take you so far before it
begins to turn on you. It eats everything it can until it's all
that's left, until it's all that makes sense and you're completely
dependent on it. You say I'm allowed to hate you but... it's not
that I can't... it's just... I refuse to.'

Years of
rehearsal, of reciting imagined moments fell apart within her.