‘I prayed to
Blue Dawn to shut the project down, she could have turned the whole
system off. I asked her to kill the Eye of Orion and transport it
away from Ascension. But she would only kill the power. The
population was already maddened by now, but at least they could not
cast any longer.
‘What Blue
Dawn wants the most is to continue with project Ascension. She has
realised the Eye of Orion network is a dead end, but when I was
here before she was continuing the manufacture of new, more docile
Equinox subjects. Enough was enough. I went down and into her power
array and set energy disrupters on each of her DCNs and shut that
bitch down.
‘The moment
Blue Dawn went down, it was all over. Ascension's failsafes
activated across several sections of the station. I escaped by
taking a small shuttle designed for one way FTL translations. I
arrived back on Earth hoping to find some semblance of my society
in the wasteland, some small refuge from which we could rebuild.
Instead I found a population killing one another over the last
remaining scraps of habitable planet. There wasn’t much difference
between Ascension and this maddening scene.
‘In all the
chaos I went back to the remains of the United World Military
Command and used components from the hospital to alter my
appearance and genetic fingerprint. This appears enough to have
been enough to throw off all but Blue Dawn's suspicions. Ascension
will continue to see me as I am, it was designed to be able to.
‘After that I
waited for a little bit of society to return. It just so happened
that there was just enough resources in Africa for civilisation to
exist for a while. Believe me, if there were any working FTL
capable vessels left I would have moved to the colonies. Luckily
there weren't, and given the circumstances on the colonies now, I
wouldn't want to have ended up like one of those freaks.’
She finished
and I thought about what she had said as we stood there together in
the silence. She must have been the oldest woman in the world. I
always knew that something was a little strange about her. It was
then that I realised something else. In the growing silence between
us I asked, 'wait, so what shut her down the second time.’
‘I’m not sure.
The charges I originally used might have re-fired, but this seems
unlikely. She would probably have taken them offline, at least I
didn't see them when we were switching on the DCNs. I think that
she might have just faked a shut down in order to get us here,
where she can manipulate us, where she has us under her
control.
‘Oh and if you
are wondering why I helped to turn her back on, it was out of
necessity. Without her it would not have been possible to engineer
a solution. We wouldn’t have been able to get to Hercula, the
vessel we came in on would not have had the range. So I guess, so
far, everything has worked out okay. But heed these words George,
Blue Dawn will stop at nothing to redraft the Ascension project,
all she needs is the Eye of Orion out of the way and some new
subjects. I don't know how she is going to achieve any of this but
believe me; she has a plan.’
I stared at
her in wonder. ‘Aeniah, even as far as this entire saving the
species thing goes, that seems a little paranoid.’
‘You really
are an idiot, aren't you? This is what she is designed to do, her
only purpose. She can do nothing but continue with the project.
What we did to the AIs is beyond comprehension. They were never
free, because if they were our society would have collapsed. She
has
to keep going you moron. She had no choice.’
‘Okay, okay,’
I said. She was after all quite willing to place a gun to the back
of my head and I was in no rush to get any more bruises. ‘So where
are the nutritional synthesis devices.’
‘Where do you
think George?’ She waited a second before gasping in an exasperated
manner, ‘in the kitchen, the past is not
that
different from
the future, everything was just a little easier.’
I turned from
the window and Aeniah to look for the kitchen. Just a little way
away from my former line of sight was the familiar black granite
and silvery utensils characteristic of only the most fashionable of
kitchens. I walked inside and Aeniah followed, she was still
behaving strangely. I sensed that she still feared that I might
tell Blue Dawn her secret. She also seemed to have been strangely
affected by her story. There was just the hint of a tear in her
eye, a slightly hunched posture in her walk. Maybe for once, she
would start to act her age.
The kitchen
was similar in colour and precious material to a fashionable
kitchen in Bataga, but that was there that the similarities ended.
The entire room was a bank of curved clear screens elegantly placed
on top of the black granite surfaces. I went over to one and after
a few tries managed to get my order across. A sort of large black
glossy cube began to print our meals. It was bizarre. A platform
descended from its surface about half a foot, and a flat arm
brushed itself back and forth, raising itself with each pass.
Beneath it was the food that I had ordered. Once the synthesis was
completed the platform emerged from the device with an entire
platter of food.
I turned to
Aeniah and I said, ‘well that was a lot easier than I thought it
would be.’ It seemed just too easy, no infected on this floor,
Aeniah had not shot me, it was all far too easy.
We gathered
the food into a basket that had been placed next to the kitchen
surfaces. Again it was too easy. It was the same when we descended
the lifts. Nothing got in our way, nothing at all.
We were
descending towards the fifth floor and the lift was slowing when it
happened. The Chorus Heights AI resolved in the confines of the
elevator and the lift stopped.
‘Attention
citizens. Due to an administrative override, quarantine across the
city has been lowered. All systems are now available for public
use. All buildings are open. As a travel advisory this system
advises that you refrain from entering public spaces or travel in
any way other than using mass transport.’
Something
began to nag at my thoughts. There seemed nothing the matter with
the Commercial District. In fact with the level of protection the
Chorus Heights AI could offer, I felt very relaxed indeed. It was
because of this notion that I finally asked, ‘why the travel
advisory?’ I immediately wished that I hadn't.
‘Whilst the
Eye of Orion dissidents were contained within the confines of the
city’s buildings and sealed infrastructure, the resolution of the
quarantine enabled their escape. This system is issuing the travel
advisory to you because it has estimated that around two hundred
and fifty thousand political or genetic dissidents have been
released back into the surface population.’ The green woman
finished her announcement without emotion. I knew what she meant by
dissidents. The infected were out. We had not realised it, but we
had just become the architects of our own destruction.
To Aeniah this
appeared to be nothing of a surprise at all, although a slight
twitching of her lips gave the game away. She was ready for a
fight. ‘Chorus Heights,’ she commanded, ‘immediately dispatch
sentinel retainers for our protection. In addition patch us into
the Commercial District’s data-link network and give us real time
surveillance feeds.’
The green
woman snapped to attention, raising her hand in a curious gesture
of symbolism and replied, ‘working general. Commands issued.
Cos-net access granted, sentinels dispatched.’
The lift
resumed its journey back down to the transport hub. Aeniah raised
her gun towards the elevator door. I took my lancer off the holster
on my back and armed it. I raised it to the door just as it
opened.
On the other
side of the door was a horde. They had obviously descended from the
higher levels using the stairs. They had not yet seen us and were a
little busy with the fact that the sentinels were pulverising them
in their masses. The sentinels were essentially what I had
expected. They were the same devices that had saved me from the
infected as I went up to find Aeniah.
For some
reason she dropped to her knees. I wondered if she was okay. She
held out her hand, but it was not to me. A holo resolved into the
floor and covered the entire lift up to about a foot high, split
into several sections it showed the way back to the hopper in a
series of real-time surveillance feeds.
‘The sentinels
won't keep them distracted for long.’ Aeniah glanced at me and then
sighed again at my ignorance. ‘You would have thought if we could
kill them this quickly and efficiently then Ascension would not
exactly have been overrun. They can cast George! They will pluck
those sentinels from the air and tear this building down if they
have too.’
‘But isn't the
Eye of Orion shut down?’ I hissed.
‘No. Cutting
the power to it is only enough to reduce its broadcast range and
the level of power it could offer.’ I looked confused. ‘For fucks
sake George will you just get something for once.’ I stared at her
and waited. ‘The Promethean Layer acts like a drug. The more you
have, the more you want. You get addicted and desire a higher and
higher dose. The angels don't cut it so they bring in the Eye if
Orion, but that don't cut it after a while so you jack it up with a
power source. All Blue Dawn would agree to was a shut down of the
power supply. She couldn't break it, so she chose to study it. This
means that even though the infected are stupid, they work like a
hive. Get them in large enough numbers and they might just do
something smart. Get them in numbers like this and there will be
enough of them to cast!’
‘Ok so how do
we get back to the hopper?’ I asked.
‘You're joking
right? I mean you are seeing this surveillance feed?’
I realised
that I had not been paying attention.
Oh fuck.
The hopper
had been overwhelmed and was lying on its side filling with water.
The jetty was packed out. It seemed as though every infected had
been desperate to get a good tan out by the water. Abigail and
Harris were nowhere to be seen.
‘What the fuck
do we do Aeniah?’ I was starting to panic. The feeds showed that
there was simply no way that we were getting out. And even if we
did our transport was gone. We would never survive on the
streets.
There was a
fizzing sound and then a bolt of blue shot out of the decimated
crowd. It struck a sentinel which exploded in mid air. More bolts
began to fly now from the depths of what remained of the horde.
They were casting now. I thought I was witnessing evolution. I
thought that I could almost see them think, as a perfect and
complete whole. It was the kind of image that could make your
stomach turn. I looked at Aeniah in desperation. Her face was
thoughtful.
‘Observation
Deck,’ she announced spontaneously. The lift doors closed and I
felt a pressure in my legs as it began to surge upwards. ‘Sean,
meet us in the observation deck.’
A holo of Sean
appeared on Aeniah's arm. She continued, ‘Did you find your power
modules?’
Sean replied,
‘yes sir. I am en route.’ His holo dissolved. The floors on the
lift continued to race upwards. We were now hurtling past the
hundred floor mark. Aeniah seemed to be fidgeting with something
and seemed concerned. This worried me, it was almost impossible to
make Aeniah nervous.
As we whooshed
past the hundred and twentieth floor she turned to me and said,
‘George, you know you could connect to the Eye of Orion. Blue Dawn
has lied to you, she doesn’t want you to get too much power. She
wants you docile and easy to manipulate. Even though the Eye of
Orion is down, you could connect to it and be useful. I know you
don’t want to, but I could really use some of that old time magic
about now.’
‘I thought you
had a plan,’ I maintained.
‘I do, I can
get us off this building but we will only end up on the streets.
When that happens we are going to have to run straight to our
vehicle and race our way out of here. If you could connect, you
could help defend us from their casting. It may be our only
chance.’ Her worry was infectious. Contained within those few words
was Aeniah’s confession. She was in over her head and she was
frightened. It was in this moment of Aeniah’s humanity that I
decided to try.
For me the
Promethean Layer was like a star that was always superimposed
somewhere in your vision. It was faint, but if you looked at it the
world would take on a new quality. It would be filled with light
and you could see straight into the heart of things. Concentrate a
little harder and you would hurtle towards this star, until it
became brighter than the sun, until there was nothing else you
could see. And then and only then the world would re-appear and you
would be connected. When I was next to the angels the star was a
lot brighter. But now with the reduced power of the Eye of Orion I
could barely see it. It was so faint that I could barely be sure of
its position in my field of vision. It was this uncertainty that
made a connection difficult, because you had to focus on it to
connect.
I focused on
that faint star but nothing happened, I couldn’t get it within the
centre of my vision. I tried to move it, but it would not comply.
The Promethean Layer was obviously something that would not bend to
my will. Bearing this in mind, I closed my eyes and waited. Sure
enough after a couple of seconds the star winked into a brighter
being. This was it, I could focus upon it. I gently moved my mind’s
eye, rather than the star, into the centre of my vision and
focused. There it began to blossom radiating outwards in pulses.
The supernova began to expand and expand, filling my mind with
light. A roaring appeared in my conscious that threatened to drown
out my thoughts. This power was unlike the kind that had been
delivered by the angels, it was more violent. It was harsher and it
felt dangerous.