The Life Engineered (8 page)

T
he trip to Olympus, the moon where Hera was installed, was long but quiet. An interesting detail about life as a Capek is the infinite possibilities our internal systems provide. Each of us can sit still for days without moving, focusing solely on whatever project, studies, or even games we might be running within our own minds.

Aurvandil looked like he was meditating, sitting cross-legged, floating in the vacuum of Skinfaxi’s inner bridge, the hands of his long arms resting on his knees, his robotic chin high. What was he contemplating? Or was he communicating with friends and collaborators?

When I wasn’t observing my companions, I spent the long hours reviewing technical information and familiarizing myself with some of the basics of Capek anatomy. It was one thing to have access to the information with little more than a thought, but I needed more. The knowledge had to become a part of me.

Koalemos was restless. Though mostly motionless, he’d often twitch one of his shards or fire his thruster array for no reason. If anyone had reason to fear being ambushed by Anhur, surely it was him. While Skinfaxi and I had escaped narrowly, he had suffered a traumatizing injury from the event.

Skinfaxi was also unusually quiet. Occasionally, he would send me batches of data to help analyze—anomalies in stellar displacements or long-range sensor readings that did not sit well with him, or any possible clue to Anhur’s presence or passage. So far, nothing. If the giant Lucretius was out there, he was being very subtle about it.

It was an incredible relief when we arrived at Olympus unmolested. Seeing Tartarus, the dark gas giant, was unsettling at first, its surface covered in constant storms of green lightning, around which Hera’s home orbited. Thankfully, after completing a thorough sensor sweep of the area from our comfortable position close to the collapsor point, we confirmed that there were no other Capeks roaming around the system.

“Welcome, children,” came Hera’s deep, motherly voice over open channels. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Skinfaxi?” Aurvandil asked so only me and the large Sputnik could hear. “I thought we had agreed not to contact Hera?”

“No worries, brother,” he answered. “It was Proioxis who sent the message, and only to inform Hera of her broken child.”

“Ah,” the elegant Capek replied.

We made our approach to the bright-gray moon of Olympus. It was strangely similar in both size and configuration to Midgard. Even Hera had very few superficial differences to Yggdrassil. Just like my progenitor, she was composed of several large structures, all laid out around a central hub crowned with a tall tower that reached for the heavens.

“Greetings, Mother Hera,” began Aurvandil with much ceremony. “We have on board your son Koalemos. He is in great need of your care. He heroically sacrificed one of his shards to save two of my siblings.”

“Oh, Koalemos . . . The poor little thing. He was never meant for acts of bravery. Bring him to me, my little builder. I will do what I can for him.”

There was infinite tenderness and care in the voice. I was reminded of a human mother fretting over a son with a broken leg after a soccer accident. Such a specific memory . . .

“We also bear dire news,” I added, to which Aurvandil raised a finger to his “lips,” attempting to keep me silent, but I continued. “Your sister, I guess—Yggdrassil—has been destroyed, along with the moon Midgard.”

“I see,” the great Capek answered after a pause. “I feared as much after losing contact with her. You, little one, are her last child, are you not?”

“Yes.” I felt humbled by the attention. When speaking with Yggdrassil, my own progenitor, there was a familiarity and comfort I did not feel with Hera. Instead, there was a majesty to her that demanded reverence.

“I want to hear of her last moments, child. Tell me as I tend to my son’s wounds.”

She sounded so human, her feelings so genuine. I could sense the cracks in her composure as she juggled her emotions. The worry for Koalemos, the loss of Yggdrassil, and the need to maintain her regal demeanor before our group.

“I . . . I managed to save her Nursery. To remove its mnemonic core . . .”

Aurvandil cocked his head at this information, reminding me that we had completely skipped over that particular detail earlier. Concerned with more important things, I ignored the gesture.

“Very clever, child. By doing so, you’ve saved what is most important to a mother: her children.”

Jonathan.

We landed in one of the two large hangars and exited Skinfaxi. The large Sputnik did not bother to deploy a remote, preferring instead to witness events vicariously through us. He made a point of requesting more telepresence drones from our host, a favor she seemed glad to provide.

Koalemos brought his shards over to a corner of the hangar. He moved with uncharacteristic stability, as if guided by an external force—most likely Hera. Once he was in place, a series of tools descended upon him to begin work on repairing him as much as was possible. I couldn’t help but notice that one of the shards was kept apart from the rest, held in place by powerful clamps that restricted its movement.

“Mother Hera,” I said over a closed quancom channel. “The files I was given by Yggdrassil regarding Koalemos list him as a septuanian construct, yet, including the missing shard, there are eight.”

“And you noticed me isolating one just now,” she answered. “That shard is not part of my son. It is an aberration implanted there to manipulate him. I intend to rip the secrets of its origins out of it. I was afraid you and your companions might have been responsible but—”

“Why would we have brought him here to be discovered then?”

“Exactly.”

We walked deeper into the complex, Aurvandil and I, accompanied by the disembodied presences of both Hera and Skinfaxi.

“How long will brave Koalemos’s repairs take, Mother Hera?” asked Aurvandil, who had remained quiet ever since my interruption. Was he mad at me for disobeying him? I wouldn’t think speaking about Yggdrassil’s fate was such a big deal. Hera would have found out eventually.

“Oh, it will take time, my friend. Over a day to be sure. Probably more. I will not bore you with the details, but a large portion of his neural pathways need reconstruction.”

My ego was a little bruised. I had made a conservative estimate of about twelve hours of work, considering the massive capabilities of a Gaia-class Capek, and had been fairly happy with the quality of my work on the little Von Neumann. Apparently, I had overestimated myself. I guess there was only so much to expect from a first try.

“I apologize if my attempts to save him proved insufficient,” I said.

“Do not worry about it,” she said before switching back to a closed channel. “Your work was impeccable, little one. Koalemos will be as close to healed as anyone can make him within six hours.”

“But you just said . . .”

“I have my reasons.”

After a lengthy trek we ended up at the central hub of Hera. I had seen these same machines before, if significantly less intact. Everything was as it had been within Yggdrassil’s heart, but with less burnt pseudo-plastic and torn metal. Passageways were easy to navigate and well lit, eventually leading us to the seat of Hera’s Nursery.

“Here, last child of Yggdrassil. Connect your mother’s Nursery to mine. I will take care of her children as if they were my own.”

I dug up the schematics necessary to do a proper installation of the mnemonic core. It was still a hack job by any measure, but it was sufficient to effect a data transfer. Considering the little block of memory contained the time-frozen information of an entire world’s history, billions of personalities going through hundreds of cycles, the transfer would likely take some time.

As I put the finishing touches on the installation, letting Hera handle the specifics of initiating the actual copy of data, Aurvandil was walking around looking at the intricate mechanisms that made up the awesome creature that was a Gaia-class Capek. It occurred to me that in all likelihood very few Capeks had the opportunity to see this side of their progenitors. Both the technically minded and philosophically inclined would indeed marvel at these sights and what they represented.

“Mother Hera,” I asked, again in private, “is it possible to extract a specific personality from a Nursery?”

“Of course. That is how you, your siblings, and all thirdgeneration Capeks are born. Once you’ve gone through enough cycles that you attain Nirvana, the state of being we consider necessary to adapt to the infinite possibilities of existence as a Capek, then you are plucked from the Nursery. I believe you know the rest.”

“What about a personality that hasn’t reached Nirvana?”

“It can be extracted, but there are too many things that can go wrong, from catastrophic culture shock to personality defects.”

“Oh.”

I became introspective at that point, unsure why I was so obsessed with the idea of the Nursery and somehow getting back in contact with those within. According to Yggdrassil, I and any third-generation Capek alive today had “lived” hundreds of successive lifetimes, reincarnating after each, learning, evolving, and refining our personalities. I had probably met hundreds of thousands of people during those lives, the echoes of their memories becoming the building blocks of who I am. Why would I want to reach in and pluck out a specific one?

It was hard to tell how long I’d been pondering the issue when suddenly a familiar phenomenon snapped me out of my reverie. For a second the weak gravity of the moon of Olympus vanished and in fact reversed a little.

“Faxi?” I said over open channel, my voice pregnant with worry and fear.

“Space fold right above us,” he answered with a measurable amount of alarm.

“Is it Anhur?” I thought I already knew the answer.

“Yes! And Pele, another Lucretius Capek, and three other large Sputniks.”

What was going on? This sounded like a full-fledged invasion fleet. If Pele was anything like Anhur, there was little chance that we’d be able to escape with our lives.

“We cannot stay here,” Aurvandil cut in, his voice commanding and sure. “If our suspicions are correct, then they are here to destroy Hera.”

“We can’t just abandon her!” I protested.

“We won’t.” His answer was confident, giving me hope. “Mother Hera? Please, eject your mnemonic core. We will take you to safety.”

The plan was daring but efficient. We would save what was crucial of Hera—her personalities and memories, along with her Nursery. The essence of her being would go on. We would find a way to build her a new body.

“No.”

“Please, Hera,” Aurvandil begged. “We don’t have much time.”

“I refuse. I will stay and defend myself and my children.”

“Then you leave us no choice,” the elegant Capek announced sadly. “Dagir, can you cut her out so we can take her with us? I’m sure once we reconnect her and rebuild her she will see it was for the best.”

For a moment I did not know what to do. I couldn’t disobey Hera’s wishes, but at the same time I could not bear the loss of another Gaia. Their value to Capek society was too great. Aurvandil was right: she would see reason once things were settled.

I rushed over to where her mnemonic and personality cores were connected and began pulling the necessary systems out. This was a more complex operation than ripping the Nursery from Yggdrassil, but I had to work fast. I did not need Skinfaxi to tell me, but I suspected torpedoes and other large-scale weapons were being fired on us. That was without taking into account whatever methods of internal defense she might be deploying at this very moment. Why couldn’t I go anywhere without it exploding around me?

“Don’t do this, child!” Hera implored in private.

“I’m sorry. I have to,” I answered, more to myself than anyone else.

Before she could plead with me further, I unsheathed my plasma cutter and severed her personality core from the complex’s network. Aurvandil was waiting, ready to take it from me so I could repeat the process on her memory core, which I also handed him.

“Come!” he called urgently as he ran back the way we’d come.

I followed for a moment but quickly turned back, retracing my steps. I grabbed Yggdrassil’s Nursery and yanked it free.

I caught up with Aurvandil just as he was running through the hangar toward Skinfaxi, taking bounding steps in the moon’s low gravity. The enormous roof had opened up, exposing the sky, half empty black space and half Tartarus’s dark clouds. I recognized Anhur’s terrible form, spines and all, hovering overhead. Lower in orbit, a slightly smaller but still enormous creature undulated through the sky, like an immense centipede. Powerful engines propelled the second Lucretius, throwing off long columns of fire from all over its body.

“Pele,” I muttered, awestruck.

I turned back to continue my desperate run toward Skinfaxi. My friend and companion was already moving to pick up Aurvandil as the first of Anhur’s torpedoes impacted the complex. The hangar was hit hard, and I barely saw Skinfaxi run full speed into the elegant Capek he called “brother,” knocking him down like a rag doll before angling upward, pulling out at full thrust through the opening. I couldn’t tell if this had been accidental or not. I’d seen Skinfaxi navigate the crumbling remains of an asteroid at high speed. It didn’t seem that even this sort of impact should have shaken him so.

Massive concussive shocks knocked me into a wall, and I was hard-pressed to keep my grasp on Yggdrassil’s Nursery. Through the clouds of dust and broken debris, I saw a large Sputnik, the one that had been floating outside the domed window of Babylon, hovering next to a shaken but otherwise intact Aurvandil. The tall Capek, still holding on to the components of Hera, looked around and spotted me before climbing on board his accomplice and taking off. Abandoning me.

“Faxi?” I asked, unsure of what was happening.

“Sorry, little buddy, I had to dust off. Things were getting too hot down there.”

I couldn’t argue with him. “What about Koalemos?”

“I’m on board,” the little Capek replied. “Beware, Dagir. Aurvandil is not a friend.”