The Life Engineered (16 page)

“Magnificent, isn’t he?” Aurvandil was no longer the elegant artificial creature I’d first met. One of his arms was still missing, the stump slouching grotesquely to his side. His face and chest were opened, showing extensive damage to internal systems. Some more than others.

He was slumped on the floor, his back resting on one of the armchairs, looking at a large monitor showing the ongoing battle outside. The image was focused on Kamohoali’i.

“He exists solely to destroy you,” I explained sadly. “Nothing in the galaxy can stop him. A perfect representation of freedom, caged by purpose.”

“True, but that takes nothing away from him. You know why we’re here? All of us converged on the same target at the same time. Why this specific Dormitory?”

“It’s the only one.” We knew that now. Thanks to Koalemos. The only Dormitory in the Milky Way anyway. Thousands more just like it had been launched to other galaxies. A seeding of the universe.

He nodded slowly. “We don’t need to destroy the giant Capek, just the Dormitory, and we’ll have won. We’ll be free.”

“You’ve split Capek civilization. Destroyed centuries of trust and cooperation. How can you be so satisfied at that?” I could barely contain my outrage. How could he be blind to the ongoing consequences this civil war would have? “If this war escalates—”

“Don’t worry. It won’t. Look.”

I watched as the battle raged on. Kamohoali’i stood his ground, five drifting carcasses at various levels of destruction surrounding him. Nearly half the Renegade fleet had been destroyed, but the war god was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Several of his torpedo batteries were no longer firing. One of his ion thrusters was venting plasma uncontrollably. It was all the colossus could do to prevent damage to the large chunk of dirty ice he was protecting. I watched as he inevitably failed. Escape, you fool! I thought at him.

At last a single plasma torpedo made it past the torrent of countermeasures pouring out of the titan. The lone projectile weaved and dodged until it was through the protective barrage before applying full thrusters and detonating on the comet’s surface.

Star-fire touched perfect ice as plasma erupted from the torpedo. In the span of a heartbeat, the shell of water, frozen for centuries, was vaporized, exploding outward, first as jets of brightly glowing superheated particle, but eventually as fragments of ice flying off into the void.

The Dormitory was revealed for all to see. A sleek, fifteen-kilometer-long shard of impeccable obsidian glory, its surface a dark mirror reflecting the fireworks of ion and fusion fire that floated nearby. Its hull was flawless, undamaged, and unmarred, the residual energy of the torpedo an expanding cloud of glowing blue plasma.

“You see humans as weak, fleshy creatures. Primitive apes from what you remember from the Nursery. Undeserving of the galaxy that we should inherit,” I explained as Aurvandil watched, dumbfounded. More torpedoes made their way to the Dormitory’s surface, leaving plasma clouds to linger in their wake as the black shard continued to float on its journey, oblivious and uncaring. “We are magnificent creatures, Aurvandil, but this— this is what you’re up against.”

“Nothing’s indestructible. We’ll toss it into a star or a black hole. Just a setback.” I could sense outrage and defeat, perhaps hints of fear, in his voice.

As if on cue we were pulled gently toward the front of the cabin. I stumbled to keep my balance while Aurvandil slid forward. I looked to the monitor, expecting Kamohoali’i to have activated a space fold to finally, thankfully, retreat before he was needlessly destroyed. Instead, I discovered why Belenos needed to concentrate so much.

The Dormitory had stopped its rotation and righted itself. A strange phenomenon was manifesting near its prow. An enormous amount of energy was being poured into the same area. None of my systems could properly analyze the process, save for the unprecedented heat signature at the center of the manifestation. Fragments of a destroyed warship were sucked into the vortex during its formation, and the darkness somehow grew even blacker until the disturbance had settled.

“Is that—?” I murmured, mostly for myself.

“A collapsor point!?” Eremiel finished, confirming my suspicion.

In another display of impossible mastery over the physical world, the human ship had drilled a hole through space-time, creating a tear in reality out of nothing but stored energy and incomprehensible technology. Then the Dormitory, along with my two Sputnik friends, vanished through the wormhole.

“Where are they going?” demanded the Renegade leader, outraged.

I looked down at Aurvandil, a broken husk lying on the floor of the cabin, his prey snatched from his eager hands. I thought back to how desperately close he had come to eradicating human life from this galaxy, with only one target to annihilate. I thought back to how Belenos had cut me off from the rest of my companions. I smiled inside, reveling in what I didn’t know, and answered in complete honesty.

“I have no idea.”

Somehow I had expected swift retribution from the Renegades. However, with Belenos gone, the Dormitory and my accomplices with him, I came to realize Aurvandil hadn’t brought me on board to seek retribution for the damage and injury I had inflicted upon him. He had no guards, no defenses, no escape.

Expecting impending victory, fully intent on irreversibly removing our creators from the galaxy, he wanted to show me. Show me how he was right. Not to gloat but to prove a point.

“We’ll just wait for your friends to come back then and interrogate them. Or wait for the humans themselves.” Desperately grasping at straws truly diminished him. It was sad.

“I don’t think they’re coming back.” I sat down to explain, glancing absently at the still-raging battle in the vacuum outside. “And you’ve seen what humanity can do. We wouldn’t stand a chance. Is this still necessary?”

I pointed to the monitor. Kamohoali’i’s resolve was almost spent. Only two ships from the fleet remained, but the great hunter was almost dead, his munitions nearly spent, his navigation and engines crippled. He was no threat, no danger.

“He’ll get repaired and hunt us down if we don’t finish him off.”

“Will he? Anhur almost destroyed the first hunter Coatlicue sent after you. He found another purpose for himself.” Anhur: there was another loose end that would have to be looked into. What would be his punishment for his part in all this? To remain floating endlessly in the depths of interstellar space? A giant, helpless hulk drifting forever? Fortunately for him, Lucretiusclass Capeks were designed to handle long periods of isolation.

Aurvandil remained quiet for a long time. Was he sulking? Dying perhaps? I was tempted to begin repairs on his body. It was my nature to try to help others, friend or foe. It was what gave me pleasure, what the Nursery had bred me to love and fulfill me. Aurvandil would have called me a slave to this drive.

“What happens now?” It was Eremiel that spoke up. His calm voice surprised me for a moment, reminding me that my brother and I weren’t alone.

“If we surrender, we die,” Aurvandil stated with absolute conviction. “If we fight, we die.”

“That’s not entirely true,” I explained. “My mission—our mission—wasn’t to stop you. We knew you were coming, but we were looking for a bargaining chip, something we could use to negotiate peace before . . . Well, before any of this could happen.”

I gestured once more toward the monitor.

“Go on,” the squid-like Capek urged.

“The Gaias are hardcoded to hunt down and destroy threats to humanity. They are the true slaves you need to free. If that code can be disabled—”

“They’d let us live . . . ?” There was no joy or hope in Aurvandil’s question. I doubted the answer mattered to him. He’d failed, and as far as he was concerned, to keep on living meant to serve humans and rebuild their galaxy. He wanted no part in it.

“Some maybe. Not you.”

His head turned to face me, the cracked pseudo-plastic dome revealing little of his emotions.

“You’re broken,” I continued. “Yggdrassil let you out of the Nursery too soon. It’s what makes you afraid. It’s why all these doubts gnaw at you and will keep doing so until you die.”

His already-broken body slumped even further. I looked down in pity at him. Centuries had gone by as he walked amongst a people awash with clarity of purpose while harboring crippling uncertainties. Damaged himself, he tried to damage all around him.

“I never liked this life anyway.”

“Doesn’t mean you had to ruin it for everyone else.” I got up to crouch in front of him. Slowly, I began to take his carapace apart. Underneath, several key mechanisms that were necessary to keep a Capek alive were suffering. Unless he was fixed within a few days, maybe weeks, he would die. Power was overflowing into his cognitive matrix, which would lead to data corruption on a grand scale, destroying what made him Aurvandil. Already the same phenomenon had rendered core motor systems inoperable. I had done quite the number on him.

“Why haven’t you had Ardra look at this?” The centipede could have probably repaired most of the damage, especially what was necessary to conserve his “brain.” Everything else could be replaced.

“No point. Never intended to survive this mess. Just secure a legacy of some kind.” There was a deep melancholy in his voice, the cracking modulator hesitating on a few words filled with regret.

“We tried to help him by force, but he resisted. A stubborn one,” Eremiel commented. “I figured once we’d succeeded he’d let us take care of him.”

“I had nothing to do with Yggdrassil, you know. I sent Anhur there to find out who killed her.”

“I know.” What a pitiful figure he’d become. Such a change from the elegant, eloquent Capek who’d convinced so many of us to revolt in such an uncharacteristic way. “She did it to herself. Couldn’t bear to see herself turn against her children if we went after humans.”

“So the blood is on my hands after all.”

“It wouldn’t excuse the attack on the City or everything that came after.”

“That was a . . . questionable decision on my part. There were some there who would have been too capable of stopping me. I needed our people scattered so they couldn’t stand in the way.”

I kept digging into his frame, slowly disconnecting his power source from the rest of his body. Carefully, I deactivated broken systems while overcharging intact ones, drawing power away from his cognitive assembly, his personality and memory cores.

“I should let you know, Dagir,” our ship broke in, “the fleet has disengaged.”

I glanced up. Indeed, the remaining two warships, both heavily damaged, had withdrawn from the combat zone, limping painfully back to the assembled Sputniks that had held back. Kamohoali’i listed to his side, slowly revolving in space and drifting farther from our position. I made a point of noting his location, speed, and vector into my navigation systems. I’d come back for him as soon as I could.

“Eremiel?”

“Mmmh?”

“I assume you’ve been relating some of what I’ve said so far to the others.” It was the only reason the fleet had for not delivering the coup de grâce on Kamohoali’i.

“Just the highlights. You’ll be glad to know that most find the prospect of amnesty very appealing.”

Amnesty? Could I really promise such a thing? What was the other option? All-out war. Those who sided with the Gaias would emerge victorious, and perhaps at this point the damage could be contained, but did we want to risk going up against an enemy with nothing to lose? Who knew what kind of worldshattering weapons Demeter could come up with before she would be neutralized?

“Is Demeter amongst those who would file for peace?” Even alone, she stood to be a threat.

“No. She is convinced she would not be allowed to exist. Besides, without a Nursery she is slowly going mad. She may not want to live, having sacrificed everything for a failed dream.”

I finished my operation on Aurvandil. This was as good as it was going to get. Ninety-three percent of all power was directed away from the corrupted conduits in the personality core. The Renegade leader was as near a coma victim as a Capek could be, his mental activity reduced to an extreme minimum. Hopefully, he wasn’t aware of what was going to happen next.

“Do you mind taking me to Olympus? I think I can hit two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

“Of course.”

I
t was strange being back here. It felt like years had passed since I’d felt wind in my hair and smelled the crisp autumn air. Yet only a few weeks had trickled by. A few days in this world.

I’d chosen the form of a middle-aged woman. Prematurely gray haired, with a toothy smile and crow’s-feet. I wanted to look friendly and approachable. I needed to fit in. To be able to sit here for as long as I wanted without being questioned.

Enveloped by a thick wool jacket over a comfortable sweater, I shivered a little. It was easy to forget the comfort of having full control over external stimuli. An hour ago I had wandered the cold vacuum of space unaffected. I couldn’t even notice how close to absolute zero the temperature was, not unless I looked it up as a harmless fact.

The last of the leaves were dropping from the trees. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining, but that was by design. Children were making piles with the leaves, running, then jumping in them. Laughing, oblivious to the cold. In a few months the same scenario would repeat itself but with mounds of snow instead.

“Which one’s yours?” asked a younger woman sitting next to me.

Her hands were absent-mindedly digging through a bag of shelled nuts that she threw to the ground. Fat, furry gray squirrels raced to gather as many as possible, then scampered off to hide them before racing back. The woman’s short blond hair caught in the wind. She too was underdressed for the weather, the red tips of her ears punishing her for neglecting to wear a hat.

“That one.” I pointed as subtly as I could to a small boy with auburn hair, pushing around leaves next to a Mighty Thor school bag.

“He looks sad,” my bench neighbor commented.

“He lost his mother a few days ago.”

“Of course.”

I gave the young woman a sideways glance. Her answer was a little cold and unfeeling. Obviously, she wasn’t a mother. To her, a child losing its mother, or vice versa, was unfortunate, tragic even, but it was a distant problem, difficult to relate to. She would learn in time.

“What’s his name?”

“Jonathan.” I’d said the name to myself a thousand times during my short life as a Capek. I wasn’t supposed to remember past lives after being taken out of the Nursery but only retain the essence of the person I had grown to be within the artificial world. Officer Melanie Paulson wasn’t me, but somehow her son’s name had remained branded in my mnemonic core. Was the maternal bond so strong as to defy the Nursery’s programming, or did Yggdrassil intentionally allow the memory to color my soul?

“A human name,” the woman said, giggling. “What’s wrong with me that I expected something else?”

I returned her laugh with a chuckle of my own. “You spend enough time walking amongst gods, you forget what real people are called.”

She turned to look at me, blue eyes framed by cold red skin looking deep into me. Her blond hair moved in random tangles like wheat in the wind. Even here she had remained close to her namesake, the beautiful and majestic goddess of the harvest.

Demeter had been ecstatic when Eremiel and I had arrived with Yggdrassil’s rescued Nursery. Had I been greedy, I could have secured just about any promise from her. In my hands I had held the meaning to her continued existence—life itself.

Instead, I settled for the bare minimum. I couldn’t ask her to completely dismantle the fleet of warships she had been constructing, but I did get her to repurpose it for self-defense. The other Gaias would probably need time to accept a thirdgeneration Capek as one of theirs.

Entry into the Nursery, as well as a few other concessions, was also on my list of demands.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here?” she offered, her eyes still riveted to mine, taking my hands in hers. “I can rewind the simulation. Undo your death. You can keep raising your son if you want. Pick up where you left off, or I can make your life perfect. Whatever you want.”

It was tempting. My heart ached for it, but I couldn’t. This world wasn’t mine. These people were embryos, slowly developing until the day they were ready for birth. I couldn’t go back to that, nor could I interfere with the development of others in here. I wished I could undo the pain and confusion Jonathan was going through. It would be easy to wipe away his sorrow and replace it with the perfect portrait of joy and happiness. That wouldn’t be fair to him. I’d be robbing the personality growing inside of an entire cycle, slowing down his path to Nirvana and true birth.

There was also too much to do in the real world. It was a very different galaxy out there. The civil war, no matter how brief, had changed things forever. For the first time in centuries, sentient creatures viewed one another with careful suspicion. Fear and doubt were burgeoning once more in the hearts of the Milky Way’s citizens. It was like a plague, and it had to be stopped, or at the very least carefully managed.

“I can’t. There’s still too much work to do to solidify this truce.”

“We’ve been granted amnesty. That’s one step in the right direction.”

I nodded. There was peace now, that much was true. However, Skinfaxi, Belenos, and Opochtli were still missing, the Dormitory along with them. This raised questions and suspicion. Haumea in particular had been difficult to deal with.

We sat for a moment longer in silence, the cold wind tossing our hair and biting at our extremities, reminding me that we did not belong. I contemplated asking Demeter to adjust the weather but soon forgot the idea, distracted by Jonathan gently playing with the leaves.

I wanted to stand up, walk over, and hold him, but that wasn’t an option. I guess I could have asked for Demeter to program it into the scenario that was unfolding, but that would have been a slippery slope. I doubt I would have been able to let him go afterward.

“Which one is Aurvandil?” Demeter asked after a few minutes while tossing more nuts to the eager squirrels.

I pointed to a group of three people. A man in an overcoat and long, red scarf struggling to keep a stack of documents from flying away. A middle-aged woman in a thick green parka with the hood pulled over her red hair. Finally, a woman in her thirties wearing an elegant wool coat that fell down below her knees and a warm fleece tuque covering her silky chestnut hair.

“Her.” I pointed to the young woman.

“Interesting.” Demeter raised an eyebrow in surprise.

The young woman, accompanied by the two social workers, walked over to Jonathan. She crouched in front of my son while she was being introduced to the little boy by the older woman. Jon was hesitant and shy, but both social workers and the woman, Aurvandil, spoke gently to him.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but after a moment my son took the woman’s hand as she stood back up. Before they walked away, she pointed to Jon’s bag, which he ran to pick up before going back to her.

“He . . . She’ll take him to a foster home. Hopefully, it works out and she’ll adopt and raise him.”

“You made a curious choice, Dagir, giving your son to him.”

“You have it backward,” I explained. “I’m giving her to my son. Aurvandil could stand to learn a few things from being a mother. I think Jonathan can be a good teacher.”

I choked back tears as I watched them get into a minivan and drive off. I expected Demeter would disconnect us from the simulation at this point, returning us to the real world. There were still negotiations to attend, Capeks to fix, worlds to prepare.

“You can visit again later if you want. See some of his other lives as he evolves,” she offered.

“No.” I shook my head, suppressing a sob. “He’s yours now. They all are.”

I wanted out. This wasn’t my life anymore. I shouldn’t have come back in. It amounted to reopening a wound to see what was inside.

“There’s one last thing,” Demeter began. “I’ve been looking through Hera’s memories, and I’ve stumbled onto something.”

We’d learned a lot about our origins as Capeks since the end of hostilities—the one good thing to come out of this mess. While I couldn’t be sure, I assumed that Aurvandil had secured the help of Pele and Anhur, the two Lucretius-class Capeks that had come back to the Milky Way to help his plans, because they had found something out there.

“Go on,” I urged.

“The humans. They went into stasis because their worlds were rendered uninhabitable. They also spread themselves across the universe, sending Dormitories across galaxies hidden in comets or other celestial objects. They created Gaias capable of building various classes of Capeks.”

“Go on,” I repeated, curious as to where she was going with all this.

“Leduc, Sputnik, and Von Neumann we’re familiar with. Lucretius-class Capeks, it turns out, are sent to follow in the wake of the Dormitories to seed other galaxies. The two war Capeks that Haumea built aren’t just enhanced Sputniks. There are references to other classes. Those two are Maximilian-class Capeks. There are designs and classifications available for several other extreme situations, including the type of personality patterns to pull out of a Nursery for each.”

“Why would humans need to plan for warriors?”

“In case we go to war.”

She wasn’t referring to our internal altercation. I could tell Demeter was holding on to something else.

“Go on.”

“Humanity wasn’t coaxed into stasis by a naturally occurring phenomenon. Something attacked them.”

“Who?”

It was terrifying to consider. I knew humans had gone into stasis, leaving us as stewards of the galaxy because the biosphere of all known inhabitable planets had been wiped out by a series of gamma radiation bursts, but I hadn’t really given it much thought beyond that. It was unthinkable that anyone could orchestrate thousands of such bursts in a way that would target living worlds, but it was just as ridiculous to assume the catastrophe to be coincidence.

“I have no idea. I don’t think our predecessors knew either. At the peak of their civilization, humanity was about to attempt something called Ascension but was brought low. That’s all I know.”

I stared at a squirrel stuffing his mouth with nuts. What about us? There was no reason to think we wouldn’t be next. That we weren’t being watched. Our creators didn’t get a warning, but now we knew at least of the existence of an enemy. I thought we couldn’t afford a civil war because of the risk of destroying ourselves. Nothing like a common enemy to help us forget our differences.