The Soul Consortium (32 page)

I scream and laugh at the same time as the hooked nails stab through my chest, clawing, ripping, twisting, tearing.

“I said restrain her. Now!”

Four more crows flap around my head, pecking and stabbing before they each stretch their necks and splay their wings to become more of the raven-eyed reapers. Then, as they close in and the hoods envelop my head, I feel the merciful welcome of unconsciousness.

Time passes. Vague images of claws and carrion faces splinter between the periods of empty waiting. Then the white light.

A
t last, the bleached white of death disintegrates into the darkness of the WOOM interior. I’m still Oluvia Wade, but I recognize the neural flush as I escaped the terrors of her last episode of life, and I know I must actually be someone else. But who?

When I was Oluvia, my calculations told me that the transition out of a subject’s life should take sixteen minutes twelve seconds, and at least five of those pass before a sense of true identity returns. I think four have passed; the warmth of recognition is beginning its work. A vague awareness tells me I am very fond of whoever I really am. I like me. That’s encouraging. But it’s more than that—there is passion. I … love whoever I am.

Salem Ben! I am Salem Ben.

With memory flooding back, the full joy and horror of the revelation crowds my thoughts and forces a deep gasp of breath. I never wanted to let him go. Could never face the possibility that I may never win his love. And now, I’m him. And he never loved me. Is that a blessing or a curse?

I try to look at my hands but they won’t move, and a flash of crucifixion invades my thoughts before I remember it as one of Oluvia’s last experiences.

The wet slit exit of the WOOM opens. Tiny red stars sparkle through the yawning gap reminding me that I dared to enter the life of a restricted soul. At least ten more minutes before I will be whole again. Ten more minutes before the last essence of Oluvia Wade’s identity is gone.

But I don’t even remember how I …
she
died. I grasp for her last memories of confusion and dream, realize now how her brain responded to the trauma of completing an immersion without the neural flush. To experience the merging of two distinctly different lives at the same time, especially the tortured days of Kilkaine Nostranum, would have sent me …
her
spiraling into madness. Without a stable brain map to transplant into a new body, Orbane and the others would have had no choice but to end her life to end her suffering.

I take another deep breath as the WOOM reconfigures my synapses, restoring the recent memories of Salem Ben to my consciousness. But what about that life? Seeing myself through Oluvia’s eyes reminds me of the man I once was. I have spent millennia drifting from soul to soul diluting my own personality to the point where I hardly know who I am anymore. Was I really that man? Of course, I know I was, and somehow I am going to have to get that man back. If not for me, for the memory of Oluvia Wade.

I examine the tiny red lights as the machine draws me out of the WOOM and releases me from my shackles. It’s a relief to be in familiar surroundings again, even if the Restricted Sphere does not have the same colors of the spheres to which I had previously grown accustomed. A few more minutes remain before my memory as Salem Ben is fully restored, but I do know one thing: entering the Restricted Sphere to experience Oluvia’s life wasn’t for my entertainment. I needed her knowledge.

Vieta. Keitus Vieta! And with the remembrance of that name, the fear burns back into my mind as if each letter had been written there with a hot blade. I remember now. The aberrations. That was why I ventured into Oluvia’s life: to find out how the soul files work, because something about Keitus Vieta’s manifestation was terribly wrong. Two separate data sources, both of which should be faultless, working in harmony, are not. Somehow the algorithms that spliced the two files together had to make sense of the discrepancy, and if Keitus Vieta existed in one set of data but not the other, the result would be strange indeed. It would certainly explain the unnerving emotional responses of the people who had met him.

I remember Orson Roth’s comparison to the blind spot in the eye. The idea was not far from the truth. What if one eye saw something and the other did not? How would the brain interpret such a thing?

So Vieta exists in either the Codex or the recorded data, not both. But which? If he is some sort of entity that has infiltrated one set of data, then where did he come from? And did he infest the Codex or the recorded data? How would I find out?

But something else is wrong too. Something is missing. Something else usually happens when I awake from …

Qod!

I was too engrossed in my musings to realize that the AI had not made her usual welcoming comments as I woke from the dream of another life. Where is she?

“Qod?”

Only the gentle shush and wheeze of servos reply as the WOOM reconfigures itself. But how strange it would be to hear her voice again, the ghost of Oluvia Wade.

“Qod, where are you?”

Still there is no answer. Perhaps she is running through diagnostics or attending to something important, but my instincts tell me something is very wrong. She could never be silent. She doesn’t know how. So, either she is choosing not to speak to me, or she has left. Both ideas seem unpalatable.

Fear, cold and sudden, enfolds me as I leave the sphere to make my way, almost running, through the conduit that leads to the Observation Sphere. “Qod?”

Where could she be? How can a self-sustaining artificial intelligence—almost omnipotent, almost omniscient—that has existed for billions of years not be here? She’s everywhere.

“Qod! Why don’t you answer? Where are you?”

Again, no reply.

“Control, respond.”

A flat machine voice answers: Soul Consortium Control Core processor is functional.

“Where is Qod?”

Unknown.

I stop in front of the archway leading to the Observation Sphere, afraid to step through. Entering without Qod’s presence seems intimidating, as if there is nothing to shield me from the distant powers of the universe that are laid bare in there. I miss her already. “Unknown? Did she … leave?”

Unknown.

“Well, when was she last here?”

Qod was last active within the Soul Consortium two hundred and thirty years ago.

Relatively recently. “Do you know what happened to her?”

Unknown.

The word sinks into me, bringing with it a painful finality and an aching frailty. With Qod, the unknown is always knowable. Even those sacred details she guarded so vigilantly within the Codex, the lives of every soul the universe would ever create, could be known through those algorithms. But through some embedded trait given to her by Oluvia Wade and perhaps to save my own sanity too, she would never go there. If only she had allowed it. We may have known the future and foreseen this day.

The doors slide open, and I freeze when I see inside the sphere.

There in the haze of a red cloud waits Keitus Vieta.

K
eitus Vieta is nothing more than a projection. The small man hunched before me holding his black cane with the shining blue jewel is an image; the tiny, transparent numerics flickering in the air just above him confirms it.

“Control, explain this projection.”

The projection is a live data stream focused on the Soul Consortium aberration defined as Keitus Vieta. This projection is located in the Observation Sphere. It is—

“Yes, yes, I know what it
is.
What’s it
doing
here? Who did this and why?”

Purpose unknown. The Quasi-Organic Deity was studying the aberration.

“Qod? How? Why?”

Unknown.

“Did Qod leave a message?”

Unknown.

“Did she file any notes in connection with Keitus Vieta?”

Annotations have been created as a Keitus Vieta file.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this when I first asked about Qod?”

You did not request information on Keitus Vieta.

I pause, staring at the image: an older version of Brother Sunny, much older even than the man I knew from the lives of Orson Roth and Dominique Mancini. There is very little background image to see exactly where he is, but it looks dark and ravaged, a rocky desert in a gloomy, bruise-red hue. His shrunken, bald head is lit by the pulsating blue of his cane, and there is a madness in his swollen eyes, an eagerness fermented by the aeons of time. And then he looks directly at me.

Cold shock as we make eye contact. Can he really see me?

The old man’s lips quiver into a mocking smile, forming soundless words. I can read them, almost hear them. “Give her back, Salem. I am waiting.”

I turn, walk away without a word, not caring what he meant, numb horror driving me out of the Observation Sphere.

I
stand in the passage outside the Observation Sphere. Prickly fear is spreading through my mind, clogging my thoughts like an infestation of weeds. There is no question now—Keitus Vieta is real, not just a data aberration. And he knows who I am.

If Vieta is real, that means he was picked up by the subatomic recorders, which means that out of the two data sets, the
Codex
is wrong. But how could it be wrong? Was the data tampered with? Perhaps Qod found all the answers before she disappeared. Perhaps the notes will explain everything.

“Control, relay Qod’s annotations to me, stream speed sixteen, please.”

Confirmed. Beginning stream now.

Unwilling to remain so close to the Observation Sphere and the image of Vieta, I walk back along the passage

toward the Soul Spheres as the equivalent of Qod’s research diary trickles into my mind.

Day 1: Data Analysis Batch 001.001: No aberration.

Day 1: Data Analysis Batch 001.002: No aberration.

Day 1: Data Analysis Batch 001.003: No aberration.

“Pause. Restart data stream from the first aberration detection.”

Day 19: Data Analysis Batch 412.071: Aberration found. I found one! Code mismatch. Transferring Subject 8.47121E+77 to Aberration Sphere. Transfer complete. Commence new subject … No. Salem wants to know more about these aberrations. Commence reexamination of subject 8.47121E+77. Analyze Codex code. Analyze quantum recorder data. Compare. Analyze and translate as human cerebral mapping. Begin search for references to aberration. No … that’s a protocol violation. Scrutiny of the dead is forbidden. Reassess protocol validation. No. Reassess. No. Reassess. No. Reassess. Salem is my highest priority. Yes, Salem is all that matters.

Validated.

Analyze and translate to human cerebral mapping. Begin search for first references to aberration in human memories. Reconfigure data analysis for subject 8.47121E+77.

Subject name Abbot Thamiel Deepseed.

Reference found. Aberration found.

Extrapolating source. Processing …

Divergence source = Promethean Singularity. The heart.

“Pause. I need time to think. I need to understand what Qod was seeing. There’s something about Prometheus that’s important. Something I have to remember. Something I was told once. What was it?”

Unknown.

I ignore Control’s response as my mind races through a series of facts and revelations. Qod found out the problems started at the Promethean Singularity. And the Singularity was the key to the creation of the Codex. Not only that but the Singularity is the very heart of the universe—the route by which Oluvia Wade took the Soul Consortium to escape the never ending cycles of the universe and the Great AI.

But there’s more I need to remember. Memories from Plantagenet Soome’s life are surfacing. Sunny, the monk with an uncommon talent for understanding the Codex, recognized the aberration long before I did. He actually referred to me, Salem Ben, by name. And with his last words as Soome tried to kill Keitus Vieta, Sunny tried to reach me.

“Only … he … can save everything … only Salem Ben. He … must… remember… must remember… Prometheus … Cataclysm … Wade.”
That’s what Sunny said.

So, what about the Cataclysm? The Cataclysm happened when the Soul Consortium ripped through the Singularity, but how does that help?

What else did Sunny want me to remember? A picture he painted. Yes. The man in the bubble with the lance through his heart. And the Consortium moon on the end of the lance. Yes, the first pieces of the puzzle are coming together. The man is Prometheus. Sunny’s picture was an impression of the Soul Consortium bursting through the heart of Prometheus to breach the bubble, so the bubble must represent the universe. There was one more thing in the picture—a whirlpool where the lance pierced the bubble, sucking matter back through the hole into the bubble. The Cataclysm? Yes, the terrible effect of the Consortium breaking free from the universe, but I need more.

“Control, continue the stream.”

Day 19: Data Analysis Batch 412.071 continued: Foreign matter detected emerging from Promethean Singularity. Unable to identify atomic configuration. Deconstruct and analyze. Atoms undetected. Electrons undetected. Quarks undetected. Demi-praxons undetected. Conclusion: foreign energy form. Does not conform to universal physics. Searching for linked anomaly …

Set parameters: Promethean Singularity. Deviation from Codex data predictions.

Batch 000.000.000.000.000.001-Cycle 2: Meisian 0:003 anomaly detected: Delay in quark formation.

“Control, pause. So Qod detected a slight anomaly at the formation of the universe’s second cycle?”

Confirmed.

“I think I remember this. Qod and Oluvia were setting up the quantum recorders at the birth of the second cycle, and they couldn’t understand why there was a delay. Do we know now?”

Unknown.

“Do you know if Qod found out?”

Unknown.

“How surprising. Continue.”

Batch 000.000.000.000.000.001 continued: Analyzing cause of quark formation delay. Requirements for quark formation: Particles: 0-5-G, 0-7-Q, 4-4-K. Analyzing quantity of particles present. Anomaly detected. Fifteen trillion particles present less than at cycle 1. Analyzing cause of particle loss. Searching for common factors. Exact particle quantity match found: Soul Consortium.