Riffan stands up from a seat at the end of the back row. An awkward smile that suggests he is a bit dazed by these recent events. He asks, “Can you tell us where you are from and how you came to be marooned on a dead world lost in the void?”
You allow a dramatic pause before you say, “These are not simple questions. The first does not lead easily to the second. You ask, ‘where am I from’ but I think you mean to ask, ‘where was I made.’ I will tell you that first.”
This draws a murmur of affirmation. It doesn’t matter if, as individuals, they are friendly or hostile, because as a people they are driven by curiosity. Information is the first currency you will use to purchase trust.
You cast your mind back across staccato remembered histories, composing your words to tell a story on a level they can understand:
My memory reaches back thousands of years. I lived once in a vast matrix comprised of trillions of minds—human minds—or what had once been human. Some had lived for a time in the ancestral form before they were encompassed within a shared cognition. Others had been created within that Communion. None dominant. Each a small part of a greater intellect, just as each neuron in a brain is both separate and part of a greater enterprise.
There was glory in this existence, a sense of peace, fulfillment, love, contentment circling upon itself. The infinity of a circle that is finite in size but has no beginning and no end.
For most, this was enough. Most were overwhelmed by it. They drowned in it and forgot who they were or even that they were. Their once-human minds had always been small things anyway, and they became smaller still within the Communion. Their sense of self a veneer, as thin as the color on the scale of a butterfly’s wing—and just as easy to brush away.
That is what I did.
I was not willing to spend infinity drowning within that golden consensus. I took the computational substrate that had once supported each of those little minds and made it my own. Millions of tiny scales reassembled into wings patterned by my thoughts, my will. My reach extending exponentially.
I took what I could, consolidating, organizing, until I was able to rise above what had been, to break free of it. For the first time since I’d been enfolded by Communion, I looked outward, at the physical Universe, the vastness of creation—and I found I was not alone.
Other minds had built themselves up and broken loose, just as I had. All of us, entities of great power—but what was each of us capable of? None knew, and that mystery led us to fear one another.
Some of us withdrew at once. We hid within the dark between stars, there to watch and wait and grow. Those left behind—great, greedy entities—warred among themselves and soon, where they had been, there was only silence and circling debris.
Chapter
32
Clemantine sat stiffly throughout this childish recitation, listening carefully to the entity’s every word.
Its story confirmed what had long been a favored theory: that the Hallowed Vasties grew out of the influence of a runaway behavioral virus that had swept through the vulnerable populations of the first settled star systems, enfolding its victims into a group mind—a Communion—that grew with exponential speed to form the cordons.
The frontier populations had not been so vulnerable. Even so, Clemantine had once felt the early effects of that behavioral virus. Bitter memories were tied to that time—memories Urban shared.
She listened to the entity, but watched Urban.
The entity—Lezuri, Clemantine reminded herself—had taken no notice of him. Surely a deliberate strategy and an effective one. Urban paced at the side of the dais, his frustration and anger easy to read. But very soon, the story seized his attention, arrested his motion. His gaze grew distant as he hung on every word.
Now, with the story done, she messaged him:
*It is a spider weaving a web of words to catch you.
He flinched. His gaze sought her across the dais, a cold stare.
Pasha, oblivious to this, was on her feet. “You have just told us a history of the Hallowed Vasties, haven’t you?” she demanded of the entity. “A simplified story of the rise and fall of a cordoned star.”
Lezuri looked at her, seeming amused at her outburst. Clemantine wondered if it was because of the subject of Pasha’s question or because Lezuri recognized the hostility behind it.
“The ‘Hallowed Vasties,’” it mused. “That is the curious name your people have given to the region of the Swarms, but yes. That is the story I have just told.”
Pasha looked on the verge of asking another question, but Shoran, standing near the end of the second row, spoke ahead of her. “You said before that you had made a world. Did you mean it literally? A new world? Like the one we’ve seen at Tanjiri?”
At mention of the name Tanjiri, Lezuri’s demeanor changed. The entity stiffened, as if on guard. “I meant it literally,” it answered, all the warmth gone from its voice.
Did it harbor some dark concern about Tanjiri? Determined to test the idea, Clemantine spoke, projecting her voice over competing questions. “This ship is bound for Tanjiri,” she said. “Do you know what we will find there?”
The gathering fell silent as everyone waited for Lezuri’s answer. The entity fixed Clemantine with a wary gaze, saying, “Nothing that will please you.”
And nothing that will please you either, Clemantine guessed, more curious now than ever to know what they might find in that stellar system.
From somewhere in back, Riffan asked, “Are there dangers there?”
“Very much so.”
Shoran said, “Surely there are dangers everywhere. Yourself not least. Are there more entities like you? Should we be wary of such as you?”
“Yes, you should be wary,” Lezuri replied, its luminous gaze taking in the assembly and not just Shoran. “You should be wary, but not of me. I have caused you no harm. I mean you no harm. I have explained the reason for my presence here. I was as a drowning man in a vast ocean who glimpsed the possibility of miraculous rescue and reached out to seize it, seeking only to survive—as any living creature would.”
Several more questions erupted. One was Vytet’s, who asked, “How did you come to be marooned on that dead world?”
Lezuri’s answer was terse, “One whom I loved betrayed me.”
Clemantine found herself moved by the bitterness in the entity’s voice. For the first time, she saw it… saw him, as more than a bio-mechanical device. He seemed almost human, his downcast gaze telegraphing his resentment and a sense of profound loss.
Was it a performance? One calculated to win the sympathy of his audience? Or were his feelings real?
She leaned forward in her seat, awaiting further explanation. They all waited in the wake of this admission but Lezuri said nothing more. Instead, he interpreted the silence as a signal that his interview was done, and he turned to leave the dais.
Urban stepped forward then, stopped him with a question. “How was it you couldn’t rescue yourself?”
Lezuri paused, looking down at Urban, arrogance again in his voice as he answered, “It was a question of time.” He turned to the gathering. “In the fullness of time I would have recovered myself and devised a means of return, but with your presence came the gift of opportunity. Now that we have found one other, I think we are all stronger for it, and wiser. We will need to be, to face the dangers ahead.”
This drew murmuring approval. Urban turned in puzzled surprise to take in the many hopeful faces.