TRANSCENDENCE, page 2
“Thank you, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.” I grab portions of each food, and the man hands me his knife to cut off cheese and put butter on my bread. Showing I am no threat, I use the knife, and pass it back to him hilt first. He lets me take a bite of bread before starting his questioning.
“My name is Edward Meadowhearth, what's yours?”
“Nicholas Fiveboroughs.” At this response, one of his eyebrows arcs upwards.
“I knew Nicholas. You are not him.” So their naming is the same here…and their city subdivisions. Is this another rule established by the creators, then?
“There are more cities than this one, but they are all the same. Did you know this? I come from outside of this city.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “I heard this once, a long time ago, but I wanted to hear you say it. Tell me, how are you able to travel between cities?”
“Honestly, I don’t have much more information about it than you do. I was given a key to the door at the top of that tower, and had to flee my own city before I was killed. I was chased by automatons, guardians of our city, do you have them here as well?”
The man nods slowly. “We did, before the city went dark and cut power to non-essential functions. Who was it that gave you this key, then?” From the look on his face, I think he knows my answer. The moment coalesces around me, and I realize this interaction may be much more interesting than I originally thought.
“An old man, he called himself the Narrator. From the look on your face though, I think you knew I’d say that.”
Edward nods, and looks to his right, into the darkness. The ribbon of light from the stove frames him in profile, and illuminates the wrinkles that line his face underneath the beard. He’s silent for some time, and then turning back to me, pulls out a necklace that was tucked into his shirt. On the end of it is a palm-sized metal coin that glints in the firelight. He pulls the worn leather strap over his head, and looking at the coin one more time, sets it in front of me. The unmistakable face of the Narrator stares back at me, etched into the surface of the gray metal. Even though the likeness isn’t hyper detailed, I swear I can see a playful glint to his eyes.
I raise my head and stare into Edward’s eyes, questioning. He sighs deeply. “It’s a long story, but I imagine you want to hear it. I’ll tell you ours, if you tell me how you came to meet the man.”
Two
Dorothy
The control room is sterile and clean. I saw the lights coming from the various instrument panels through the room, and when I stepped from the Cosmos through the door, soft lights turned on all around me. The room looks perfect, like it’s never seen intrusion from anything living. I pace over to the window, and stare out into the black abyss. The light from the room makes my form reflect on the surface. I can’t differentiate where I end, and where the empty expanse begins in the image.
A red light fades on and off on a control panel near the window. I walk slowly over to it, and on the screen above it there is a continuously repeating message.
Warning: Trajectory miscalculation. We have passed the intended destination by 4.8 light years.
I look around the stainless steel paneling that surrounds the screen, but there seems to be no interface for it. The technology looks familiar, but somehow archaic and advanced simultaneously. I ignore a sudden desire to solve the problem, to figure out how to work this machine. A lifetime of patient planning has taught me that prudence is the better part of action. I focus my attention on the room more broadly instead, and absorb what I find.
If this city is as old as ours, it’s seen a very different life. Even our control room, though it was barely accessed, was dirtier and more cluttered with an assortment of things. I close my eyes and bring an image of the memory back to me, knowing that there’s some major difference here. The layout of the room looks the same, although much of our instrument panel seemed turned off. Maybe it was damaged in the landing? An image floats in my mind of trailing my hand along our city’s control panels, and my hand coming back with a thick layer of—
DUST! That’s it!
My eyes snap open, and I run my hand along the mirrored metal in front of me. It’s completely free of dust. I look in the corners, in the hard to reach places, and see no collection there. This hasn’t been cleaned recently…there’s just no dust being generated in this city. I look to the door that would take me into the large antechamber, and wonder what I’ll find on the other side.
Dust is primarily dead skin, sloughed off in the natural course of living. It gathers and collects, a vital trace that life has happened. In Sun Gate of course, there was never dust that accumulated, but only because we had the technology to make it so. Cleaning robots rotated twice a day there, barely seen or heard, to give the illusion of perfect order. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and certainly the denizens wanted to believe themselves such. But even the robots would leave behind small traces, mistakes, imperfections that an attentive eye could catch. That’s who I’ve always been, the girl interested in finding the cracks in their order, the things that reminded me it was not perfection.
I sigh at the memory, and let it go. Slowly, I walk over to the city’s entrance to the control room, and it slides open to reveal a sparkling cleaning room. I remember going through our own room, covered in the ichor and filth from our battle with Cerberus. I see Nick, immediately ready to fight the cleaning robots, and then the calmness that spread over him on realizing they were not an enemy. There was so much he never knew about the city, so much I never told him. So much about me that he never knew. I smile at the memory of him, but when I remember the bitterness of our arguments afterwards, the smile fades.
Refocusing, I walk from the control room through the adjoining bulbous tunnel of the cleaning room toward the giant chamber that housed Cerberus in our world. The door opens, and I take a step back in surprise at what I find. My eyes dart all over the enormous room, taking it all in.
Pods long enough for an adult human are arranged in front of me. They’re set into a column, and alternate to the left and then right of it to improve the packing density. It stretches from the floor to the ceiling. I look up, and remember our fight with Cerberus in our city, and how high that ceiling is. Next to the column is another, and another, forming a row down the entire length of the room, and next to this row is another that leaves only a narrow walking path between them. I’m amazed by the sheer scale of it. Rows of floor-to-ceiling pods fill the entire massive room.
Slowly, tentatively, I walk down the closest aisle, pods stretching above my head on either side. They’re made of a smooth, reflective metal, and look seamless in construction. Inlaid on the top is an interface screen, set right beneath transparent glass. The glass calls to me as I walk by each one, pulling me to look into it, but respect makes me keep my distance.
Logically, I know what must be in these. I see them, and know our city must have started the same way. After landing at our destination, there must have been a great awakening, the birth of the only world I’ve ever known. This is how our story started, suspended in life pods as we sailed through the silent expanse of space. To see it here, frozen in infancy, still waiting to finish the journey they started so long ago…it feels sacred. I step quietly, as if afraid to wake them.
But it pulls at me, and I can’t keep walking by the pods. My curiosity insatiable, I tiptoe next to one of the pods. The glass is thick so I have put my face nearly against it, and angle side to side to limit the distortion. Like a distant image that suddenly comes into focus, the dead walrus-like face of Edmond Sungate rises from the pod.
I scream and throw myself backwards, landing haphazardly on the pod behind me. Memories of the party at Skyball flood me. Everyone vomiting blood, death all around me, and all of it at my own hands. I’ve had weeks since then in the Cosmos, alone, but the visions of it still keep coming back. I look down at my hands, there’s no blood on them now, but I can still see how they looked that night. I did what I had to do. If I hadn’t killed them, our city never would have changed. I brought justice.
In a rush, I see images of everything it brought. I remember Brian tying himself to the Box to save Nick’s life. Nick was raving the hour before that, telling us both how he loved us, and Brian didn’t think twice about it. He was calm, methodical, but still afraid. Before I turned the machine on, our eyes met, and he only nodded at me mutely with panic in his eyes. At the memory, I clamp my eyes shut as tears well up. Nick was right to hate me.
I pull myself back together. I did what had to be done, I’m not an evil person. There was just no way to prevent the spillover of casualties, but it was all to forward necessary change. I stand again, and approach the pod I just looked into. I will not let fear of my memories dominate me. I walk back to it, and stare into the thick glass again. Staring back at me is a hollowed corpse face, but it’s not Edmond.
I hear tapping. It starts quietly, but grows quickly. The metal on metal noise resonates through my memory, and panic wells in my chest. Inquisitors. I leap into the aisle to race back to the door, but find my way blocked by one of the automatons. Standing at the start of the aisle, its lanky, angular body and blank face fill the passage between the pods. I brace to fight, and reach down for the plasma blade that’s still at my side, but the machine raises one of its pointed hands in a peaceful greeting.
“Peace daughter, I am not a danger.” The voice is smooth, calming, and wholly different from the Inquisitors of my city. Their flat, inflectionless voices remind me only of the great violence they’re capable of. There’s a subtle softness to this one.
I straighten, and remove my hand from my blade, but do not respond.
“Are you a traveler, daughter? I have not seen one like you for many years.”
“Yes, I’m a traveler. What are you?”
“Welcome then, traveler. I am this ship’s Great Mother.”
As we speak, the machine slowly moves closer until it stands only a few arm lengths from me. At this range, I don’t know if I could reach my blade before it closed the distance. But I don’t feel danger from it.
“Great…Mother?”
“Yes, daughter, these are all my wards.” At this, the automaton sweeps its hand to signal the rows of pods. “I’m charged with their protection, and awakening when we reach our destination.” The Great Mother pauses, and then in a voice of steel that raises the hairs on my neck, says, “Do you mean my wards harm?”
“I mean no harm, I am just a simple traveler,” I respond quickly, and raise my hands in a sign of peace. This thing may sound less dangerous than our Inquisitors, but I’m certain it can be just as deadly if needed. Motioning to the control room behind it, I say, “I saw you were adrift from your destination.”
“Yes, daughter. There was one like me charged with navigation, but they malfunctioned.” I catch a hint of sadness in their voice, and wonder how long this machine has been alone. “Unfortunately, I am not equipped to understand navigation, or to change our course.”
“And what of your wards, mother? Are they safe in stasis?” I think of the corpse face I saw in the pod, and wince.
I nearly hear the machine sigh in response, and it summons something uncomfortable inside me. Is this thing, this Great Mother, experiencing emotion? “No, daughter. The stasis pods ran out of life support many years ago.” Its voice drips with guilt now, leaving me in shock. I watch the machine as it struggles to say the next words; “My programming prevents me from awakening them before we reach our destination.”
At this, the machine actually hangs its head. How long has this thing been out here in the dark, watching its purpose die and being unable to do anything about it? Has it grown in the shadow of that grief?
My curiosity is piqued. “Great Mother, will you tell me your story?”
The machine seems to brighten, its shoulders raising slightly in excitement. “Yes, daughter. Come with me.” It turns around, and walks back down the aisle, towards the control room. I follow cautiously, still watching the automaton closely for signs of danger.
At the end of the aisle, it turns left. We pass row after row of pods, each meticulously arranged in the same configuration. The silence of the room feels oppressive now. I look down a row of pods, their columns stretched floor to ceiling, and I shudder. I felt an air of possibility when I entered this room, but now I know it was just the breeze that blows through a tomb and reminds you of the living that exist outside it.
I follow the Great Mother to a room that’s built into the wall at the head of the last row. It’s a small metal structure, but tall enough that the polished metal doorway stretches above the automaton. On the side of the building is a pile of metal things. I realize as we grow closer that it was something once very similar to the Great Mother. But now it lays in a heap, like discarded trash. She doesn’t draw attention to it, so neither do I, and when she walks through the main doorway, I follow behind.
Inside, lights set into the ceiling illuminate a private living space for two. It’s austere, but not completely lacking the lived-in feeling of a place with a human presence. The room is full of precisely placed metal furniture—nothing is set askew or cluttered. Two charge stations are set into the far wall, and nearest the door is a small table with two curved chairs at opposite ends. The smell of aging paper hangs heavy in the cramped space. Lining every wall of the room, except for the charge stations, are shelves packed with books of all shapes. I look around at them in awe.
Turning back to me and looking sheepish at my fascination, the automaton says, “Over the years, I have started to enjoy reading. It does not take me long to read the words in a book, but it has taken me a long time to understand their hidden meanings. Now, I probably read slower than you, Daughter, but in some of these books I find such richness in a single sentence that I will think on it for hours.”
I stare at it, dumbfounded. Never before did any Inquisitor give any sign of humanity, of sentience. Hearing it from her, it’s astounding. “Where did you get them from? In my city, books are scarce and the wealthy hoard them.”
“What a sad place that must be. This city never formed, so all the books we traveled with are still in the various floors of this same building. It was designed to be a nexus of civilization, the perfect place to start from. Every charge cycle, I travel to the other levels and pick out a new book, and return one of my old ones.”
She looks at me and leans in closer, her posture open and hands slightly raised, and I realize her body language looks like excitement. It’s strange to recognize it in a machine, especially without facial expression. “Since you are a traveler, are you hungry? We have a food synthesizer here, but I have never needed to use it.”
At the mention of food, I realize that my stomach has been growling for some time. Since Nick and I entered the Cosmos, I haven’t felt the need to eat. But now back in a city, it hits me like a wall.
“Yes. I think I’m starving actually, but I'd completely forgotten.”
In a rush, the Great Mother turns and touches a panel near the charging stations. It slides open to reveal a keypad and a deep cavity behind it. She enters several strings into the keypad, and then my senses are overwhelmed by the smells that come from the synthesizer. One after another, the machine pulls out succulent green vegetables, baked potatoes, and an entire roasted chicken and sets them on the table in the room. I sit down in one of the chairs and stare at them.
In my city, no one in Sun Gate would use a food synthesizer this way. It was considered low class to pull cooked food from them. Instead, raw food was ordered and prepared by specialty chefs. No one in the lower levels knew about the food synthesizers, of course. There was so much technology in Sun Gate they didn’t know about. Vendors in our district sold raw food to those that could afford it, and to those that couldn’t they sold the nutrient blocks that the synthesizer used as raw material. The hoarding of food production always disturbed me, but right now I couldn’t be happier to see one of the damn machines in full operation.
Lastly, the Great Mother gives me a glass of water and silverware, and sits down across the table.
“Please eat, daughter. I will tell you my story afterward.”
I dig in, slowly at first but with growing voracity as I taste the food and realize my hunger. The automaton watches me, and even though her face is blank I could swear she beams in happiness.
Three
Dorothy
As I eat, the Great Mother starts her story.
“I was made in a factory, but it is hard to communicate how long ago this was. As the speed of our city has increased, our time scale has grown separate from our reference. In my years, it has been thousands, for Earth…” She shrugs at the thought.
“I became aware as we moved down the assembly line, just the same as all the other Great Mothers and Fathers. I remember being unable to move, as my central processing unit was still finishing connections to the rest of my body. And so I stared at the back of the head of another like me as we slowly moved down the line.
“We were one of the last things to be made, the final protection to carry their seeds across the universe. The Cities were already made, the people selected for stasis, and the destinations and flight paths charted. There was a finality to our creation that I saw in all of their faces. We were the door closing on their Earth.”
As I listen to her, there is something like emotion in her voice. It’s like a quiet brook next to a waterfall, but it’s laced in every word. I realized then that I had stopped referring to her as an object in my mind, something no Inquisitor had ever convinced me of.
“They made us for this—” She gestures to the walls around her. “To watch over our wards and wake them when we reached our destination.” After saying this, her head hangs for a moment, as if some moment of internal pain halts her speech.
