The Soul Consortium (14 page)

“I cannot find what is not there.”

The shackles release my limbs, and I sense the myriad pinpricks of nanofibers withdrawing from my skull as the WOOM lowers me out of its innards and back to the entrance of the sphere. “I think you already found him.”

“Oh?”

“The aberrations—they’re Keitus Vieta—all of them.”

Qod opens the door and lights the passage for me to leave. “Why do you say that? What did you find out from Dominique Mancini? Her psychic abilities must have been incredible to surpass even
my
calculations.”

I ignore the sarcasm. “I must admit, I’m surprised you hadn’t told me.”

“It may surprise you to know, Salem, that I
don’t
know.”

I smile, hesitating at the exit. Was she prompting this banter simply to distract me from my feelings of loss? It’s her usual tactic on the rare occasions when I experience a traumatic life, yet it disturbs me to think she might actually be telling the truth this time. Perhaps she really doesn’t know. It’s true that as part of some moral code agreed upon many millions of years ago Qod never probes the souls stored in the Consortium. In fact, her only contact with humanity has been with the living, but still, the idea of Keitus Vieta being an unknown to her is a truly unsettling thought.

I turn around, gaze back into the emerald light of the Aberration Sphere. “I just met him again, and in over two hundred and fifty years he looks exactly the same. I don’t know who he is or where he came from, but I remember feeling the same way as both Orson Roth and Dominique Mancini—something about him is just … wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“It’s as if he isn’t really there … but he
is
there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither, but I’m convinced that if I were to live as any one of these souls you’ve moved to this sphere, I would meet Keitus Vieta again.”

“So what would you like to do now?”

I shake my head, look up at the tiny sparkling souls coating the walls, and shudder. If I’m right, and Keitus Vieta has somehow invaded all of these lives, his sleeping presence is completely surrounding me, perhaps even watching me, waiting for me to pick someone new, ready to meet me again. Does he know who I am?

“Salem?”

I jump. “What?”

“What would you like to do?”

The desire to unravel the mystery of this ghost man burns through my mind like cold fire, yet it has been a long time since I experienced my own fear, and as it creeps over me, I know I cannot stay. “I’d like to get out of here. And I don’t want to come back ever again.”

I
am brooding. Seated at the center of the Observation Sphere, staring out at a telescopic view of an embryonic universe, I should not be feeling this way. I used to stay seated in the same position for decades, hardly moving as I watched novas blossom into golden clouds and new craggy moons as they turned about their volcanic planets. Passing eternity together, Qod and I would talk about the lives I lived, reminiscing over the happy events that could never be changed and would happen all over again. Being in the Observation Sphere has always been a joy.

But today I am unable to resist my base instincts; I keep turning in my seat, looking this way and that, expecting to see Keitus Vieta’s wide, unblinking eyes watching me from the stars. Every blue flash is a flicker of light from the jewel in his cane, and every streaming gas cloud morphs into his beckoning finger.

I wish I could draw on Dominique’s optimistic nature and quash this paranoia, but in the last months of her life, her gentle soul was soured by that man’s influence, and the wound for me is still fresh. How long will it be before Keitus Vieta becomes just another memory?

“You’re quiet, Salem.”

“I know.”

“You don’t want to talk?”

“About what?”

“About why you aren’t talking.”

A splash of red erupts to my left as Galaxy Saphian-9g spawns its first star—Livio’s skull bursting against the corner of the table.

“I’m … frightened. And angry.”

“Why? Is this about your quest? Dominique didn’t have the answers you were looking for?”

“No, she didn’t. Her necromancy had something to do with Vieta; it was nothing to do with a genuine ability to speak to the dead. Dominique didn’t understand the technology, but somehow that man was able to store or replicate neural energy and create some kind of … rudimentary gestalt intelligence based on the character patterns of the dead. Dominique could only think of it as witchcraft.”

“Fascinating. It sounds similar to Soul Consortium technology.”

“Perhaps. But this was different. He used trace energy found in objects associated with the victims, not the victims themselves.”

“What sort of energy?”

“I don’t know. He described it as the release of power when something ends prematurely, like a kind of aura generated by living things that discharges into familiar objects when the person dies.”

“That type of energy does not exist. Never has.”

“Like him? Keitus Vieta’s not supposed to exist either, is he?”

We go quiet for a moment, and I stare at a green cluster of spidery clouds erupting below us, zoom in to watch the starlight forming from supermassive balls of gas.

“He is the cause of your fear?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“And that’s why you’re angry.”

“Of course it isn’t.” But it is. I’ve never given up on anything, not ever, but this fear is suffocating me. “I’m angry because … because … Look, it doesn’t matter why. Can’t you just get rid of this anger for me? A light cerebral dampening is all I’ll need.”

“I suppose you want me to remove your fear too?”

“Yes, get rid of that as well.”

“You know I won’t.”

“Why not? Do your pathetic rules even matter anymore? There’s only you and me here. Who’s to say what defines me as a human?”

“You want to argue about this again? I suppose at the very least it will clear the air.”

The anger is swelling into rage, and I get out of the seat, feeling the gravity fields prevent me from falling. “Clear the air? You don’t even breathe air. So what in the name of Tanzini’s robes do you even know about being a human? You don’t! And for that matter, I don’t really breathe air, either. Nobody has needed oxygen for billions of years, so what did that make them? Were they human? Am I?” I stare around at the universe, wishing there was a face I could be screaming at.

“Finished?”

I wave my hand dismissively and slump back in the seat. “Human or not, both of us have emotions.”

“Yours aren’t real,” I mutter.

Qod’s voice softens. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Whether it’s perceived as good or bad, a life has no meaning without emotional content.”

“Then just let me keep the good.”

“Do I need to remind you of the Valhallan colonies?”

I decide not to reply. Qod knows I don’t need to be reminded. Not long before embarking on my search for meaning beyond death, I spent eleven thousand years experiencing the life of a man who lived on Ganaethis, the largest of the Valhallan pleasure planets. They broke away from the ruling powers during mankind’s Seventh Golden Reign and decided to reconfigure their DNA to prevent any negative emotion from influencing their lives.

The results were catastrophic: natural disasters, crime, invasion, and even death could not shake them from their inevitable stagnation. With no possibility of threat to their happiness, there was no passion in their resistance against tribulation, and death followed for almost all of them. The survivors survived, and that was all they did.

“At least we were happy,” I tell her.

“To what end? Is being happy all that matters?”

I considered that question for a long time after that experience and eventually determined it wasn’t. Permanent happiness drives human beings to a tortuous paradox; something deep in the mind rebels, and we cannot endure it. But when the revelation came, it took me to a place of fathomless dissatisfaction. It was the lack of any sane resolution to this problem that drove all my peers and eventually me to this quest—to look for an answer beyond death.

“That’s what I thought,” Qod says. I know she understands my silence. “You need your fear. Without it you won’t do what needs to be done.”

“I won’t go back in there.”

“We’ll see.”

T
he same routine. Back in the Calibration Sphere looking at the same empty slot.

But a different fear this time. I used to be in fear of death, but now I am afraid to be alive. Afraid to venture into any other souls in case I find Keitus Vieta lurking there. Perhaps the answer
is
in that empty slot. Perhaps I should just get it over and done with, tell Qod I’m finally ready to leave this life, and flick the internal switch that will end it all. No more struggling. No more searching. No more Keitus Vieta. Unless he’s waiting for me in the afterlife.

I punch the wall next to the slot and squeeze my eyes shut, but I even see him there, smiling calmly at me from the parts of my mind where haunted memory and grotesque imagination meet. So I open my eyes again, disgusted not only at my indecision but at my cowardice. I used to be a stronger man than this. The man I once was would never have retreated into the false safety of indecision. The old me would have faced Keitus.

A sigh and a nod. I know Qod is watching me. “You’re gloating, aren’t you?”

“I never gloat.” But I can hear it in her voice, even picture the suppressed smirk on her tightly shut nonexistent lips.

“This isn’t amusing. I’m terrified.”

“Elevated blood pressure, increased respiration, muscular tension. I’d say you’re afraid rather than terrified. But what would I know? I’m just a machine.”

Facing the unknown feels more like terror to me. But why? What purpose does this emotion serve? Qod told me I needed it to keep me motivated, but surely there are better, more comfortable ways. And isn’t it my own pride rather than the fear that’s really pushing me forward? Elevated blood pressure and increased respiration too. I have no need of oxygen to keep my cells functioning, so why does my heart insist on continuing its panicked rhythm to pump a redundant fluid through my veins, forcing my lungs to suck in air I no longer really need? All these bodily functions are superfluous, kept only because they help me feel human.

“Open up the Aberration Sphere, Qod. I have to go back there.”

“You’re sure? It was only yesterday you told me you never wanted to even see the place again.”

“I thought you said you don’t gloat.”

“I don’t.”

“So stop gloating and open that sphere.”

T
he walk to the Aberration Sphere seems to take longer than last time, the list of names and the summaries of the lives provided by Qod a lot less inviting—another inconvenient symptom of fear, the debilitating skew of perception leading to the eventual paralysis of will. I have to stay focused on the facts, not my insecurities.

The entrance is wide open, waiting for me to choose a life and see Keitus Vieta again. I still can’t shake the feeling that he is somehow watching me, so I stand and stare, studying the tiny blue lights, wishing I could see the end of each story without actually experiencing them.

“Well? Are you going to choose or not?”

“Yes, but I want to make the right choice, Qod. If I have to face Keitus Vieta again, I’d rather it be the last time.”

“So who is it going to be?”

I pause, thinking again about the small fraction of lives she has offered me out of so many millions from this sphere. “I don’t believe that looking for the soul with the most significant aberration is the right way to approach this.”

“No? Then how would you
like
to approach this?”

“I think we need to find the very first aberration. If we can locate the life that holds it, then surely we can find out where Keitus Vieta came from and who or what he really is. Can you do that? Can you tell me which soul was the first to have an aberration associated with it?”

“Processing … Ah yes. The first aberration showed up in the life of subject 8.47121E+77, Abbot Thamiel Deepseed, the last leader of a technophobic religious order living on Castor’s World.”

“Castor’s World?”

“You remember the Great Cataclysm?”

“I’d rather not.”

“It happened when the Soul Consortium first broke free from the cosmos to escape the Great AI. The resulting energy imbalance caused unparalleled destruction that devastated almost all the star systems sixty light-years from the center of the universe. It took—”

“Yes, yes, I remember it clearly. I was there, remember? Just tell me about the planet.”

“I was just coming to that. Castor’s World was on the border of the catastrophe, the closest planet to the center of the universe still able to support life. After the holocaust, which killed almost everyone living there, the planet remained isolated from the rest of the colonies for thousands of years. The few remaining survivors chose a simple life modeled on Old Earth. They believed salvation would be achieved by embracing the origins of humanity.”

“And you’re sure that’s where I can find the first aberration?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s so long after the time of Orson Roth and Dominique Mancini. How can this monk be the first person to find Keitus Vieta? Are you quite sure about this?”

“Of course.”

“Despite the fact that the Great Cataclysm happens only a few hundred thousand years before the collapse of the universe too?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re completely sure?”

“I’m running out of ways to say yes.”

“But how is it possible?”

I can imagine Qod shrugging as she answers. “Unknown.”

“Fine.” I sigh. “I’ll just have to find the answers for myself, won’t I? So give me the summary on this monk. Apart from the obvious misfortune of meeting Keitus Vieta, what sort of life am I about to get myself into? It doesn’t exactly sound like a very welcoming place.”