Chaos Cipher (31 page)

The two
orbiting vessels joined the central leader and stayed within a
synchronised spin like two pale moons circling their barycentre.
And he beheld them unflinchingly, unfeelingly, regarding the
unidentified vessels with indifferent analytical eyes. Adamoss
stepped up to the glass once more and sequenced a new communication
signal. It was coded into computer language, his other duplicates
working hard to scan and check the vessels and they synergised
their work efforts and began to broadcast an entirely different
message.

Images began
to display onto the screen before Adamoss, images of human
Archivology; the flicker of a billion book titles and texts and
journals in hundreds of different languages, a compendium of
archived human knowledge and art since the dawn of civilisation.
The Greek philosophers, the history of antiquity, of holism, of
Babylonia. The first recorded black and white videos, the farcical
comedies of Chaplin and the launch of NASA’s Apollo missions and
then later The Solar Alliance’s construction of saltus-carousels.
From the symphonies of the greatest musical compositions, and the
expanse of documented human culture since the industrial era, of
modernity and civilisation, of rock n’ roll and revolution, of
warfare and assassination, the stars and constellations and atomic
energy, political speeches, of conquest, of ingenuity and the
design of the first walking automaton; Asimo, to the birth of
Adamoss himself. Images of religions, symbols, of equations in
maths and geometry, from the first moon colony of Epicurus to the
Martian missions aired online as a popular reality show, to the
first laser-fusion reactor to online for societal use; a whole wake
of war and discovery and development and economy and government and
leadership and power and enlightenment. It covered the creation of
the Atominii, of the black hole programs, of the quanti-magnus
designs, to Willow Kruger’s Gravmex theory.

The very last
image was of man and woman side by side, and the stellar position
of Earth.

‘
If you are
not of this world,’ said Adamoss, ‘know we have been searching for
others for a very long time. For humanity, this is an important
reach; the knowledge that we are not alone presents to us a sense
of meaning. Together may we write a new chapter in Archivology. I
welcome you to our humble planet.’

Then, in deep
amaranth pulses, paling and glowing like hot coal embers lumped in
a soft wind, the contours of the three Xenotechs were alight,
lining an intricate net of alien symbols across the surfaces, like
cuneiform proverbs marked in fire across the ossified spikes of
their chrome shells. The two satellite orbs stopped wheeling and
positioned themselves into a horizontal flank. Glowing brighter
now, the Xenotechs broke synchronicity and fired like missiles into
the defenceless provisions ship. Adamoss followed the trajectory
with his perfect eyes, his many heads watching below their feet
emotionlessly as the first Xenotech cruised beneath them somewhere
into the axels of the centrifuge, smashing the delicate spokes like
a cannonball slamming through the body of a whale. Violent
vibrations then thundered through the structure. Pale plasma fires
sawed through the engine rooms and the second Xenotech whirled
around the side of the Hephaestus One like a Catherine wheel. Their
shapes changed from a teardrop radiolarian analogue, and peeled
open to form a quadruped vessel, and it coiled its limbs tightly
around the Hephaestus’ particle fuel containers and pulled away the
antimatter fuel cells and swallowed the containers enclosed into
its teardrop shape again, flying away with them like some cosmic
magpie.

The third and
final Xenotech fired from its position. Adamoss recorded every
moment and experienced the quantic neuromission live on Earth as he
did in space. The giant alien vessel crashed into the Hephaestus
One’s provision riggings and shattered the ship and its android
crew into a billion fragments. And as the matter-antimatter fusion
cores ruptured a bright atomic flare inflated through the void and
swallowed over two hundred miles of it in a second; an engulfing
solar flare with enough power to cast a momentary daylight on
Neptune’s clouds, a fierce ball of fire from which only the three
menacing Xenotech emerged, wheeling in their destructive orbit as
they drew ever closer to their next target.

-23-

M
alik Serat stared at his own image
with prudent expectancy and forced a loathing smile. He’d watched
his thick, jet black hair grow back in moments as the bio-salons
engaged the active growth hormones and sped up the process. The
micro-mechanical nano fibres, anchoring into the roots of his head,
drew out the long individual hairs in an electro glow. They buried
into the follicles and, like the endless handkerchief trick, drew
out the hairs as though they’d been buried into his scalp this
whole time. Malik was unsure when the fibres first buried into his
head, but it was as though it had all simply transformed into hair,
gradually blackening. Without even the snip of scissors the
micro-mechanical fibres and had even cared to style it. Out in
space hair was a real issue sometimes, especially in the
micro-gravity. Some of the Chrononauts preferred to wear head caps,
but hair was burned off during sterilisation before the cryonic
sleep anyway.

But the
bio-salons at the Serat residence provided him the hair he’d not
had since he first embarked on the Erebus. It was enriching to feel
like himself again, to feel the long threads reaching down to his
shoulders.

Before
returning to the penthouse, he could hear the familiarities of
classical music, the dulcet sounds so sweet he had not heard them
in what felt like a life time. And it was Beethoven’s ninth, Ode to
Joy, which was now softly seducing his ears. When he stepped back
into the open space, Vance and Filipe were waiting. Filipe was sat
on a large piece of furniture, his right arm stretched out over its
back while he tasted the luxurious wines on offer. Vance stood
beneath the huge taxidermy shark mount, and was now on his third
glass of wine.

Malik
swaggered in, hands by his sides, regarding his brother with a pale
and lingering glare, suspicious and curious.

‘
Ahhh, wine,’
Vance spoke sedulously, ‘in vino veritas.’ And he held out a
partially filled glass of wine to Malik.

Through
strands of his long black hair Malik glowered at the wine, snatched
it from Vance and drank back the liquid in a single gulp. Vance
smiled at his brother’s avarice for inebriation, and Malik
swallowed and threw the glass shattering across the marble
floor.

Vance
scowled, but was prepared to forgive Malik’s truculence. He had
much to catch up on, and since his three hundred years of absence
in misadventures had clearly inspired madness it was time to slowly
get his brother accustomed to his place in this new
world.

‘
Same old
Malik,’ said Vance jovially, slipping one hand into his jacket
pocket. ‘Tasty, isn’t it? The wine? They bottled this product on
the last human transaction in State-Capitalism. The investment made
just sixteen cents.’ Vance paused reflectively. ‘Anyway, it’s
refreshing to see you back to your old self again. Come and tell me
some truths, Malik. I am, however, trying to work out now which one
of us is technically the eldest. Quite a bit of time travel you’ve
done, Malik. You’re older than my fine wines.’

Malik smiled
boastfully; sure he’d sensed just the faintest degree of
envy.

‘
Those
tablets I gave you,’ said Vance, his eyes and nose twitching ever
so slightly ‘they’ll suppress the madness from which you’re
suffering. Eventually you won’t need them at all.’

‘
Oh that is
delightfully good news,’ Malik overstated, rubbing his hands
together with a smug grin. ‘You bearded old fuck! I am legitimately
surprised you’re still alive.’

‘
Ah yes,’
Vance said with grizzly mirth. ‘Alive for sure. Physically at
least. I had my heart regrown twice before the clinical practices
of genetic therapy were at last perfected.’

‘
Yet despite
all the fervours of technological finesse you still have the old…’
and Malik started to twitch and distort his face teasingly. ‘…the
old nervous habit.’

Vance was not
amused. Stoically he rose above it.

‘
There are
limits to everything,’ he said. ‘Most inordinately wealthy
hardlanders upload their consciousness to an Avatar like Adamoss or
a Titan five. But I think there is something inauthentic about all
that. I am a Serat. I wish always to be one, in blood
renewed.’

‘
How?’ Malik
growled. ‘How have you done all this? How is it that you have
ascended to not only an elite and powerful business magnate, but
kept your identity anonymous?’

‘
Well,’ he
said with a proud smile. ‘That is a bit of a story old
boy.’

‘
So fill me
in Vance,’ Malik demanded. ‘What happened to the world? I left this
place in civil war. I was told we were building a utopia after the
Erebus launch. Wasn’t that the point of The First Horizon? Wasn’t
that the point of Neo Transformation and eco-cyber
equilibrium?’

‘
No you
fool,’ Vance laughed, nose momentarily scrunching into a twitch
that might have been missed if you blinked. ‘The paradigm shift was
a power grab, a designed disaster. If you believed that the
powerful were ever going to concede to the demands of a garden
revolution then I have to say I’m very disappointed in you
Malik.’

Filipe supped
his wine and listened heedfully as Malik followed his brother to
stand with him by the antique Bogányi piano.

‘
So…peace.’
Said Malik. ‘Was it always a dream?’

Vance cast
his eyes to the host Nexus server and silenced the background music
and the room fell to an irritable calm.

‘
Peace,’ said
Vance. ‘Can you hear that? Peace and quiet. The great nocturne.
Nothing. No life, not a sound. This is peace. Where there is life,
I’m afraid, there is always conflict. Where there is life there is
activity, and tension I think is the human spirit. Why else would
the military industrial complex have been such a resounding success
were it not for the conflict within the spirit of men? We love to
be heroes, to fight. We fight today only to keep the stability of
the Atominii going.’

‘
Then explain
to me,’ Malik started, ‘why are acts of altruism carried out
without conceding anything in return?’

‘
Because some
people are weak,’ said Vance. ‘Everything is done for something,
perhaps some individuals seek attention, and others seek to help
people because they think such people can be of benefit to them. I
assure you nothing is ever done without some personal motive. The
Nexus is our heavenly calling, a simulation to help us understand
ourselves and the true fabric of reality, to enforce
neuro-commerce, digital objectivism and for the pneumatans to
create their digital God.’

‘
And what
about my mission?’ Malik said pugnaciously. ‘The Erebus! It was
supposed to unite the human race not divide it. You’re just going
to let all our efforts slip through the annals of history to the
detritus of lost memory?’

‘
What, the
Erebus? Her journey to find the ultimate hiding place of God? The
enthusiasm of fringe rationalism? The journey to know all things?
From the deepest oceans to the darkest of dead stars, do you still
believe in all that myth? It’s all astro-glory Malik! There’s
nothing out there. Inner space holds the real answer to who we are.
Inner space will save the wise spiritually and digitally, the
immaterial as the new commodity. Nobody expected you’d even return
to all this, let alone find anything out there of value we didn’t
already know about. You, my brother, are subject to an ideology of
our youth. I tried to warn you. But you had conviction in your
vision...you had belief and our parent’s support. And I saw where
the world was going back then. I saw China getting stirred by
America’s greed, I saw the people, helpless, calling the words
revolution and falling on their own swords. I saw governments,
lobbyists and corporations all losing control of the land as
grassroots cooperatives seized on an eco-revolution.’ And Vance
started to laugh, ‘and those tenacious gene-freaks. And I chose not
the follies of fame nor the caprice of finance, but the absolutions
of power.’

Vance supped
a little of the rich red liquid and planted the glass back on the
piano top.

‘
This is the
result of peace...human self-interest, division in preservation.’
Vance added. ‘But the division will soon end. At last we’ll have
unity. Titans together in one space, controlled perfectly via
regulated technological design, by the great Adamoss AI who is as
we speak learning far more about reality than the human noosphere
can account for. Our minds melded in the Nexus to a reality that we
can fully control, without sickness, without disease. While you
were gone Malik, it was I who revolutionised the world anew, not
the people, not those leftists and anarchists. I was the real
progressive.’

Vance moved
his legs around to the Bogányi piano’s pedals confidently as he
postured on his achievements.