The Soul Consortium (33 page)

“Control, pause.”

That’s it! Why did nobody anticipate this? The universe is in equilibrium—cause and effect—each cycle a heartbeat reconfiguring the same particles in exactly the same way for every cycle. But what if someone removes some of those particles? When Oluvia tore us free from the universe she not only broke the cycle for the Soul Consortium, she broke the cycle of the universe: part of the universe had been removed, and it no longer had enough substance to begin the next universe. An imbalance must have been created, and the quantum vacuum drew in matter from somewhere else, somewhere outside.

Somewhere unknown.

The universe sucked in the particles it needed for the next cycle, but something else came through too—Keitus Vieta.

That explains a lot. There is nothing wrong with the Codex. But the foreign element introduced an unknown part outside the normal calculations. The subatomic recorders saw Vieta, but he was not part of the Codex equation and therefore invisible to it. No wonder there are aberrations. The software blending the Codex and the recorder data tried the best it could to create a realistic version of reality, but Keitus Vieta, the unknown element, always seemed wrong.

But what to do now?

I’m standing outside the Aberration Sphere, led there absentmindedly by routine as I ponder the mystery of Keitus Vieta. I still don’t know who or what he is, only that he has come from somewhere outside the realms of reality. In the trillions of years of my existence—all the endless searching of so many others hunting for something new—even beyond the shroud of death, we thought we had seen everything. But there is more out there. However dangerous Keitus Vieta is, he is proof that there is more to know, more to experience.

A reason to live.

And for the generations to be born again in this embryo of our new universe there is more to experience too. Perhaps they should be told—a message left behind for them, so when they are ready, they can look beyond the limitations of the Codex and know there are more boundaries to be broken.

But everything is in jeopardy. As long as Keitus Vieta exists there is a threat hanging over humanity’s existence. He won’t die; Soome tried to kill him and failed, and he also told Soome that however many times his plans were disrupted, he only needed to wait. One day he will succeed. And I am all that’s left to stop him. But how? Perhaps Qod found out more about him.

“Control, continue.”

Batch 000.000.000.000.000.001 continued: Conclusion: Universal cycle interrupted by separation of Soul Consortium matter and energy from the Promethean Singularity. Equilibrium altered. Creation of nucleonic vacuum through resulting particle imbalance. Effect: balance achieved through particle extraction from undetectable source. Equilibrium restored. Recommencement of cycle 2 achieved at meisian 0:017.

Conclusion: Fissure created. Unidentified matter detected at batch 412.07 entered through fissure. Insufficient information to determine nature of unidentified matter. Aberration logged.

Return to Analysis Batch 412.07.

Set parameters: Aberration—Track atomic abnormality.

Day 19: Data Analysis Batch 412.072: Tracking.

Day 19: Data Analysis Batch 412.073: Tracking.

Day 19: Data Analysis Batch 412.074: Tracking.

“Control, pause. Move to final tracking entry for the aberration and atomic disturbance.”

Day 4113: Data Analysis Batch 9K1.533: Abnormality transport complete. Containment fields holding. Monitoring abnormality for qalkkjk. Aberration intrusion detected detected detecteddddd. No! Initiating firewall proto proto Keitus proto Vieta protocols. No! Protocols. Protocols. Initihhyfmnm. No. Salem! Help … help … help … Salem … Sal … Sal … Sa …

Annotations ended.

Like an avalanche, the reality hits me.

I just heard the death of Qod.

Almost omniscient. Almost omnipotent. But gone. Keitus Vieta must have killed her, and he did it almost as quickly as he killed Brother Kayne on Castor’s World with a twitch of his finger. If Qod could not defend herself against such a force, how can I?

But why does it matter now?

My body is ice as I think of a universe without my companion. Qod! Oluvia! I slide down the wall to sit and stare vacantly in the direction of the door to the Aberration Sphere, the place where it started, feeling the slow creep of despair ebb through my limbs as though my blood has thickened within my veins and lost the will to flow.

All those years.

She’s gone …

I don’t know if I can get up. Mere minutes ago I felt a thrill at the revelation that a whole new existence awaited discovery and fierce resolve to stop Keitus Vieta. But all of that is melting away as my thoughts sink into a quagmire of hopelessness. I’m not the man Oluvia Wade knew. I’m not the savior Brother Sunny believed I would be. And I’m not able to win a fight against a force with such power. Whatever his plans involve, Keitus Vieta has won. I cannot stop him.

Better that I end it now.

“Control, are the protocols still in place for self-termination?”

Yes.

“Then make the preparations.”

H
ere I am again. Standing, staring at that empty slot. My slot.

More than ever the desire to simply end my life and join the others overwhelms me. Over the years the curiosity gnawed at me until it became an obsession. I had to know what was beyond death. But that obsession eventually led me here, and it is no longer curiosity that drives me; it is sadness. I am not just the last man. With Qod gone I am the last soul.

So here I am, contemplating my death. The death of the last human. Why is that so significant? The universe is still in the early stages of its fourth cycle, and it will evolve again to spill new life into the waiting void. Perhaps that makes me the first man. But so what? I have no purpose. And did I ever truly have one anyway? The last part of my life has been a fruitless chase to find an aberration, ending in defeat. Surely in all the billions of people who will be born one can stand against Vieta. There’s a dissenting voice somewhere distant telling me I am the one it should be. But I ignore it.

Time to move on, then. Time to take the same risk that all the others did before me and see if death really is the end.

“Control …” I pause, still captivated by the emptiness of that slot—the darkness inside the perfectly formed hole waiting for life. Death in reverse, that slot is nothing until the sum of my life experience has been deposited there.

Insanity! Why am I hesitating? Doesn’t the immeasurable anguish of loneliness, the futility of existence, and the fear of Vieta outweigh the greater unknown? So why do I delay?

“Control?”

Yes?

Still staring at the slot. Subject 9.98768E+14. That’s what the slot will be called when I die. Through Oluvia’s life I know exactly how the process works: the Codex calculations will be made, duplicating my life in precise mathematical detail, the quantum recorders at work inside each atom of my body will make their final data transfer, and both sets of data will be compressed and spliced together to make an exact memory library of my entire life. Trillions of years. Most of them experiencing other people’s lives. A glorious fanfare of sentience.

But for whom? There is nobody left to care or discover it out here. The Soul Consortium will wander through the void, discarded and useless, perpetuating itself for eternity for no one. For nothing.

What was it all for?

Yes? The soulless voice repeats. It jars me.

“Why don’t
you
tell me? What was it all for?”

I do not understand. Please rephrase the question or provide more detail.

“Qod would have understood.”

Silence from the Control Core.

“Control, play me Qod’s last entry again.”

Day 4113: Data Analysis Batch 9K1.533: Abnormality transport complete. Containment fields holding. Monitoring abnormality for qalkkjk. Aberration intrusion detected detected detecteddddd. No! Initiating firewall proto proto Keitus proto Vieta protocols. No! Protocols. Protocols. Initihhyfmnm. No. Salem! Help … help … help … Salem … Sal … Sal … Sa …

It doesn’t sound much like her. Too analytical. Too … inhuman as she proceeds through the last words of her life. But nevertheless, hearing it is significant to me. Meaningful in a way that defies explanation. Perhaps it’s because she spoke my name amongst the gibberish. But not all of it was nonsense. She’d done something just before she died. Transported an abnormality—not an aberration—an abnormality. Vieta is the aberration, so what is the abnormality? Is it the same thing?

“Give her back,” Vieta said in the Observation Sphere. Give whom back? The abnormality?

“Control, where is the abnormality Qod transported?”

The Consortium royal gardens.

“Finally, you actually know something. What is the abnormality?”

Unknown.

Well, in that case, I’d better find out for myself what it is.

T
he word
abnormality
falls far short of a true description for what I find when I arrive, but I am no longer in any doubt as to what it is. Since I last saw it, it has grown into a monstrous collage of human body parts, compressed, stretched, and twisted into a single hurting nightmare.

The Consortium royal gardens—the place where I spent so much of my time when I first arrived at the Soul Consortium—has been choked by Keitus Vieta’s abominable sculpture of life. Had Plantagenet Soome not shot the fetus within the walls of the genoplant on Castor’s World, this is the poor creature it would have eventually grown into. But Keitus waited and began again, and here is the result.

I step slowly through the archway, wincing at the multitude of agonized moans, glancing between the suffering faces, clawed hands, and warped spines, all fused together as though some maniacal god squeezed a world of people into one impossible body, then stretched it out like a fleshy blanket across the land. The trees that once graced this place have been stripped of life, every branch and root clogged by bloody veins. Bark and stem smeared with pulsing organs and sticky pulp.

A thousand lidless eyes follow me as I continue on toward the glowing center drawn by a macabre curiosity but repulsed by the fetid stench and morbid horror. Cavernous mouths gargle their pain in tortured unison, and from the grass and earth, fingers with too many joints fumble to grasp at my feet as my soles crunch onward. I keep walking, numb with shock, willing myself with every last atom of resolve to see the core of it all. And at last I find it—the indigo glare of energy surrounded by wet tubes and slippery fibers.

Distant memories of Dominique Mancini’s visit to Keitus’s house in Lombardy remind me of the ugly statues he kept there. He called it a creative outlet, the residue of another purpose. Within his jeweled cane, within the same blue light were the echoes of the dead, blended together into a gestalt of consciousness. And here before me it has been made flesh.

Keitus Vieta has been gradually deconstructing the atoms created at the birth of the universe into other, unknown particles, like some kind of virus or cancer infecting the law of physics, altering the DNA of the universe to suit its own design. Left unchecked to continue growing as Keitus adds more to it, this tumor will eventually create an imbalance so great, the cycles of the universe will stop completely. No more universe. No more life. Ever again.

I can’t wallow in self-pity and defeat any longer. I have to stop him. But I still don’t know how.

I could ask Control to purge the garden, but Keitus is patient. He will wait as long as it takes to build again, feeding another new embryo with the energies gathered by the death of each human.

I have to find a permanent solution. Soome’s experience told me Vieta can’t die, but everything has its vulnerabilities. Perhaps I can find out his. Or perhaps even persuade him to stop. Either way, I need to have a plan—several plans—if I am to succeed.

A
t first, Keitus Vieta seems indifferent to my presence when I return to him. He watches me in silence as I move slowly toward his image in the center of the Observation Sphere. The cloudy crimson orb in which he sits glares bright against the backdrop of forming galaxies surrounding us, and I cannot help but feel intimidated, especially without Qod’s reassuring presence. But I have a plan. All I need is a way to snare him, a way to lure him in, and to do that I have no choice but to talk with him to find the leverage I need.

“Control, can you establish an audio link?”

Confirmed.

A low but eerie howl of wind and a distant crackle of nova interference come through. His environment sounds familiar, but I can’t yet place it.

“Will you tell me who you are?” I ask.

Vieta looks at me, a greedy smile creeping across his face like the stretching of an infected scar. I still can’t tell where he is because of the limited field of view in the image, but I suspect he doesn’t know where I am either, or he’d probably have found a way to come here.