‘Mach one?’ I
queried.
‘Mach one is a
measurement of speed and was created in order to reflect man's need
for an uncomplicated way of measuring their velocity relative to
the speed of sound. Does this vehicle sound acceptable?’
‘I would have
preferred it hypersonic, but I guess that will have to do.’ Aeniah
said as she folded her arms.
The AI walked
over to a terminal and pretended to be reading some information off
the screen, but we could all see that the screen was blank and
probably hadn’t been turned on in decades. It seemed that Carvelle
had intended a certain level of service should be carried out by
the AI to give the consumer a valued feel. Of course in the
aftermath of the population’s extinction it just seemed plain
stupid.
‘Okay then.
Your vehicle is ready and waiting in the dispatch area. Today is a
great day for driving. Traffic is abnormally low for this time of
year and traffic cameras indicate no congestion.’
A platform
raised itself in amongst the empty lots and we stepped onto it. The
platform moved silently and descended through floor after floor of
still and silent vehicles. It was in this moment that it hit me,
Ascension was truly dead, and its population just hadn’t been given
enough time to rest silently in their graves. Everything in
Ascension seemed a little ridiculous without its population. AI’s
were waiting to take care of their clients every need. Systems had
been waiting for decades to perform the functions that they would
never be asked to fulfil again. The city was built like an
impressive work of art, but with no one to view it, it should have
been titled ‘An Ode to Frivolity.’ Even the traffic control updates
were broadcasting information to the multitudes of computer
terminals that no one would ever read. It seemed at this moment as
though the entire station had been made entirely for us. It seemed
as though every walkway and every shop and every house had been
constructed with us in mind. And it had been a wasted effort; for
there was no way that we could fill the void. I thought of Blue
Dawn and realized just how she must feel. It wasn’t so much that
she
had
to continue with project Ascension, but that there
was nothing else she could do. I understood that if she could not
continue with her project then the only thing that was left for her
to do would be to wait silently for death, as the last broken
remains of her civilization corroded into ruins.
The platform
stopped at the dispatch area which was identified by a very helpful
sign. Our vehicle was on another descent platform and the AI had
not been kidding, it certainly looked rugged. It was all bold lines
and flat shining surfaces. The colour was a green so dark and shiny
that it almost appeared black. It reminded me of a stealth plane in
design, only somehow sexier and with four large wheels.
Aeniah got
into the driver’s side and I got into the passengers. Even the
bloody car began to lecture us on safe driving. ‘And please
remember you can only exceed the speed of sound whilst on the
freeways and not the highways, this is because only the freeways
are designed to support the shock waves.’
Aeniah, rather
than grunting and groaning, flicked around in the systems menu and
the endless stream of narrative was silenced. We both let out our
breath in relief. There was a tapping noise on the window of the
car. Sean was banging his head against it, I laughed when I
remember that we had left him outside without any hands to open the
door. I opened the door and let Sean inside. He settled down in the
back.
The platform
began its decent out of the arch. We were being lowered onto the
highway. It suddenly hit me as to why the building had been
constructed in this manner. It was sufficiently separated from the
highway that it would not have any effect on traffic flow, and by
suspending the bulk of its body in the air over the highway a
vehicle could be lowered onto every lane of the highway at once. It
still seemed a little excessive.
The seething
mass of bodies were waiting in their multidides beneath us on the
highway. ‘How are we going to get past them?’
Aeniah just
laughed in response and pressed her foot to the floor. I was pushed
back into my seat with the force of the acceleration. The car
launched off the platform and fell the twelve foot onto the ground,
impacting heavily. I was thrown forward and then pinned backwards
again as the wheels gained traction on the road surface. My eyes
felt as though they were going to explode out through the back of
my head. Aeniah was screaming with the sheer thrill of the cars
performance and after my initial worry wore off I joined in to form
a chorus.
The buildings
hurtled past us. Unsuspecting members of the infected population
were cut in half by the car as we drove through them without a
care. Even Sean appeared to be enjoying himself more than usual.
His musical humming increased in pitch and speed. We banked right
and rose like gods up an elevation and into the Commercial
District’s skyline. Here we soared above the heights of the smaller
buildings and joined the tallest structures in the world.
The road
changed as we rose from a familiar black surface into a clear
glassy one. The car’s screen flashed the words
Mach Capable
Freeway
. Aeniah moved a lever until a short beep was heard,
lifted her foot and then hammered it back down on the throttle. The
skyline began to blur. We were moving so fast I could no longer see
the glassy road. As far as I could tell we were driving on thin
air.
We were now
reaching the edge of the sky. The final sun hung above us, but the
cars climate control was keeping us at a comfortable temperature.
The blue of the sky melted into a grey of metal and I saw at last
the city limits. We passed through a hole in the wall and left the
Commercial District behind.
The car
finally came to a stop after a long journey to the Centre for
Administration, High Procurator’s office. Blue Dawn was waiting
inside. This avatar was wearing a different set of clothing to the
one that we had left behind in the docks. It was styled like a long
dress but this time as white as snow. Along the surface of the
dress were sequins of jasper that seemed to fall like teardrops
onto the floor.
‘I see your
numbers are less than when you left. Am I to assume that they have
been killed?’ Blue Dawn seemed in no mood for pleasantries.
Aeniah just
scowled and so I replied, ‘one went mad, the other two were lost on
the way here.’
‘Then they
will be destroyed along with the rest of the Commercial
District.’
‘What!’ Aeniah
and I shouted in unison.
Blue Dawn
smiled, a thick killer's smile. ‘The Commercial District has been a
dangerous place over the course of these many years. I needed to
keep it alive until my design was completed, but could not allow it
to continue beyond that point. I needed it to remain operational so
as to connect the docks to where you are now. If I hadn’t done so
you wouldn’t have arrived here. Thus the Commercial District has
acted as a reliable bridge for that purpose. Now I believe it too
dangerous for the facility to continue to exist.’
Aeniah
screamed at Blue Dawn, ‘for God’s sake Dawn, these people might be
able to be cured. We might find the solution on Hercula. Don’t do
this!’
Dawn smiled a
smile that had no emotion. ‘It is rather too late for your
sentiments. The Commercial District, rather accidentally, had a
built in failsafe. The suns are basically fusion bombs. You might
have noticed that they were quite a lot darker than they should
have been. This is because I have used Ascension’s environmental
systems to drain them of enough fuel to continue to sustain fusion.
The bombs went nuclear fourteen minutes after I had confirmed your
arrival into the Ascension Centre for Administration.’
‘You bitch,
you bitch,’ Aeniah screamed at the top of her voice. ‘You killed
them all! For the love of God you murdered eight million
people.’
Blue Dawn
looked at Aeniah curiously and smiled again, this time the smile
was wicked. ‘Oh don’t be so dramatic. After over a century with
very few resources about half of that population would have died.
Infinite Longevity is a pain, but even that would have been
overwhelmed by the effects of the Eye of Orion. Or had you not
figured that into your equation
Corinthia.
’
Aeniah no
longer seemed the strong figure she had before. She backed away
from Blue Dawn with pure terror in her eyes. ‘You mean you know.’
She pulled out her gun and aim it squarely at Blue Dawn. But then
her eyes widened. I saw what she was looking at. There were now
twenty Blue Dawns entering the room, all dressed identically,
except for the fact that these Blue Dawn’s had the very fashionable
accessory of a lancer point right at us.
‘Yes, I
figured that one out a little while ago. Actually it was when I
finally managed to hack Sean. He rather unwittingly supplied me
with a copy of your conversation with George.’ Blue Dawn waved her
hand across the desk that she was now casually leaning on and a
holo recording of our conversation appeared and began to
resolve.
‘You think me
such a demon Aeniah, but you fail to see the bigger picture. I
remember when you were much younger, you understood Ascension. You
understood the
need
for Ascension.
‘Without
Ascension the world tore itself apart. It started when your two
great nations began to resent the bilateral nature of the colonies.
“Owned by all and for the people” they said. But you mighty giants
could not understand this. Their greed drew them to war and the
weapons they built to ensure their own protection ensured their
very destruction. Ascension would have changed all of that.
Ascension knows no borders, no divides, it is the very
manifestation of equality. Angels and gods working in perfect
symbiosis. We were going to make the perfect world.’
‘Your world
went wrong Dawn, you fucked up,’ Aeniah roared.
‘I have to say
Cornithia that I very much dislike this new attitude of yours. You
used to be so polite, so courteous, the youngest general in the
world, all green and fresh faced. And yes you are right of course,
Ascension went very wrong. But you cannot blame me for that. The
Equinox project was the perfect delivery system, we could always
have engineered new angels. There was no limit to their production
once we gained the capability to clone them. But Carvelle made a
mistake. He took the easy option and so did you. If you really
wanted a cure you would have let me continue my work. I could have
taken back control of everything on Ascension and with the angels
at my disposal I could have rebuilt our society. We could have
found a way of shutting down the Eye of Orion network years ago. We
could have finished our society.’
Aeniah was a
ball of fury. ‘I shut you down Dawn because you went mad. Your
ambition and your ruthlessness meant that Ascension’s citizens
turned to the Eye of Orion more and more to sustain them. You were
a poor ruler and so when it was all about to come crashing down,
and I feared for what remained of the rest of the world, I shut you
down. I had to contain the infection. I planned to return, to right
the wrongs that we made. But it took so long for them to regain FTL
capable technology. When they finally took their first steps into
the stars their world had already ended and so few of the colonies
were left. The Eye of Orion is killing them and I will take George
to shut them down.
‘I won’t
interfere with you again. I wash my hands of Ascension. But if I
take George to shut it down, you must promise me that if you
continue your goal of the perfect world, you leave the colonies out
of it. And Dawn, you need to tell him everything, no more
lies.’
The Dawns
looked towards one another. They seemed to be communicating in some
way. I wanted to know how but they finished before I could ask them
and all turned back towards us.
‘Very well. As
we understand it, you are the only remaining competent and
immunised member of the crew remaining. Therefore it appears that
we have no choice.
‘And now for
the truth George. The truth is that we found a way of immunising
the population of Ascension from the effects of the Eye of Orion a
long time ago. Aeniah for example is one of the very few people who
chose to take the vaccine which is why, rather ironically, she
remains sane. I needed the additional time, and your DNA, in order
to fashion a subject capable of interfacing with the alien
technology.
‘You see I
have been deliberately divulging false information to ensure the
completion of my plan. The reason that you are needed is not for
some fantastical show of godlike force to the alien technology.
Instead your DNA is now sufficiently similar to that found in the
artefacts that you will be able to interface with them and so shut
them down, and good riddance to them. Now that we are done would
you kindly take the command unit from the desk and get over to
Hercula to rid me of this pest.’
I waited for
her to say more. She seemed the sort of person that needed to gloat
about her successes. But I was in no mood for it and so I said,
‘No! I know that you are going to continue with project Ascenion,
but there are no people left to experiment on. The angels were
freed by dissidents and I want to know why. I also want to know
where you are getting new subjects from before I do anything that
you want me to.’
All of the
Blue Dawns smiled again. ‘Well now, that sounds perfectly
reasonable. The Equinox subjects were freed by a group of people
who renounced the Promethan Layer and its bad effects. They used a
genetic modification contained within a syringe in order to shut
down our command and control over the subjects. Their reasoning was
that if they disrupted the flow of the Promethean Layer through the
citizens by neutralising their supply chain, then the population
would undergo a forceful detox. Carvelle of course had them all
killed.’