Ragnarok 03 - Resonance (10 page)

EIGHTEEN

NULAPEIRON, 2604-2605 AD

Realspace, where every one of the countless points of light-against-darkness may be a distant star, an even more distant galaxy, a cluster or an ancient supercluster beyond a cosmic void. The photons that convey this information have travelled for up to thirteen point seven billion years without experiencing the passing of a moment – it is only those photons that reach non-vacuum media, such as human-built windows, that slow down and experience the march of time.

Here floats an Earth like world, large for its type, its purple-grey continents strewn with clouds, showing no sign – save for some near-deserted orbitals – of the humans carving out a new society in strata below the cheerless surface. They call it Nulapeiron, the name implying boundlessness, with a paradoxical irony typical of the human culture's designers, for the dwellings are subterranean.

And now a golden ship appears, banded with cobalt blue, polished and magnificent.

We're here.

Another new world, my love.

Yes.

Rhianna Chiang disengages from her ship, wanting to review her briefing material before descending to the surface; and it is that decision which will account for the deciseconds-long delay reacting to movement on the periphery of her ship's senses.

In a tenth of a second, everything can change.

Shortly, she will discover that.

Before the disaster occurs, she will have time to display only a first-facet projection of her briefing material:

LANGUAGES
: Plentiful.

In the four centuries that Nulapeiron has been inhabited, deliberate design has prevented single-language monopolies (cf.
Whorf Sapir hypothesis
and the
Web Mand'rin Catastrophe
) from jeopardising cognitive
Weltanschauung
diversity. Only
one
of the major language groups is fully artificial, the
others
deriving from recognised Terran antecedents.

ECOSYSTEM
: Constrained.

In the lower strata, light and oxygen are provided by force-evolved
fluorofungus
, which is plentiful. The foundation of habitable-area ecology is imported autotrophic bacteria; in a real sense, the planet's native lifeforms exist outside the human
demesnes
and
realms
, especially upon the surface.

ARCHITECTURE
: Deliberate.

The aristocracy's subterranean palaces in the upper strata are a far cry from the habitation tunnels of the lower strata. Note that various
leitmotifs
are global, cf. the use of simple hangings to form walls and doorways in dormitory tunnels, contrasted with the wall membranes of well-to-do dwellings; likewise the use of
fluorofungus
compared to
soft-luminescence smartmarble
.

EDUCATION
: Encouraged.

Despite the deliberate creation of an aristocracy (justified by the
Founding Lords
with reference to the controversial
emergent élites doctrine
as being inevitable therefore requiring optimisation), education is available in the poorer (lower) strata, while educational content is monitored and censored. The use of logotropes as femtoscopic drug-like treatments form an approach in contrast to that of the
Fulgor education system
designed by
LuxPrime
, and may (among the aristocracy at least) surpass it.

ARISTOCRACY
: Powerful.

While the power structures are amenable to normal
sociological deconstruction
, note that the
soi-disant
Logic Lords
and Ladies almost invariably possess superior intellects by virtue of their intensive training in the all-purpose academic discipline of
logosophy
.

Ethico cognitive modelling by Admiralty analysts notes that the presence of repressive social elements, including
slavery
, occasional employment of
cyborgs
and a pitiless
legal system
, may be overlooked by future historians if the integration of all academic disciplines (including philosophy-as-science) in
logosophy
matures as promised.

There are three points of movement. The moment is now.

Ships.

What—?

Zajinet ships.

All briefing notes are forgotten as Rhianna slams downward into emergency trance, the kind that produces physical after-effects due to shocking suddenness, irrelevant unless the Pilot survives; but these vessels are closing fast, and ship-and-Rhianna experience a hull-tingling resonance of powered-up weapon systems: the attack is imminent and movement is necessary
now.

They corkscrew away but something tears into their left wing –
bastards!
– as their own weapons come online, pulsing with build-up –
there
– and they cut loose with their beams, Rhianna-and-ship; and the first of the attackers explodes –
die, you fucker
– but the others are swerving and two more beams lance towards them, and the second hits –
damn damn damn
– as ship and Rhianna fling themselves through another evasion, firing at another of the Zajinets and hitting it –
good –
and then the last –
all dead
– but not before more pain blossoms in their hull and then they are—

I love you.

I've always loved you.

—falling.

Rhianna has killed the Zajinets, and they have killed her.

She screams as reality explodes and a fragment is flung
away – the fragment that is her – tearing her mind so that the smartgel and extruding stubby wings mean nothing, because everything is over.

It happened so very, very fast . . .

Dying now.

But that is not the tragedy.

‘—be all right if we—'

Fragments impinge on the awareness that was human, that was Pilot once.

Man, bearded.

Images like shards.

Hurts . . .

Pain. Oceanic pain.

Beads of computation in sequences, in threads, in damaged processes.

Diagnostic:
livelock-free – achieved.

Such agony, the negentropy of working things out, of logic activated.

Diagnostic:
deadlock-free – achieved.

Reality flickers.

‘Activating you now.'

Steadies.

‘I am Duke Avernon.' The bearded man produces acoustic vibration to be parsed and rendered into semantic-analytic components for matching. ‘You're alive again.'

Tonal analysis estimates likelihood of irony at 27 per cent.

‘It's been a standard year since the crash, Pilot.'

Self model indicates send-signal capacity is 30:70 vision:speech.

Ambulatory capacity equals zero.

Tracking facial analytic vectors now. Mood-model reference Avernon constructed.

Smile arc Δθ ≈ 11.7˚

Intent.Interpretation = tactic::rapport attempt.

‘I don't know your name, Pilot,' Duke Avernon continues. ‘What is it? You can speak, by the way.'

OutstreamConnection.status = 100 per cent confirmed

Internal.Ident.Label = Rhianna_Chiang

Internal.Ident.Label.status = unsatisfactory

‘I've had to reconstruct . . . Well, everything, Pilot. But this is life, trust me. Now tell me your name.'

The thing that was Rhianna Chiang tests its output channel.

‘Nnnname . . .'

‘All right, if you need time. Let me show you what you look like. Here's a mirror holo.'

ImageField.hasAttribute(contains face) = true

Eye-like mouth-like components present OK.

Remainder is [Adjectival.Query(Topology.Similar) =
splayed
]; attitude is vertical.

‘Ah, so I won't need to reinitialise you this time. Very good.'

It is no longer Rhianna; no longer Pilot; no longer human, the construct embedded in the wall.

Self.Status =

Self.Status =

Self.Status =

timeouttimeouttimeouttimeou—

ThreadEndInterrupt

Self.Status = pending

‘My.'

Let n:Name = Concept.heuristicMatch(‘one who knows')

‘Name.'

Result n = null

Retry n = Concept.heuristicMatch(‘one who knows', RadixContext.ancestor_languages)

‘Is . . .'

Internal.Ident.setLabel(n)

Self.Status = activated

‘ . . .Kenna.'

Two thousand eight hundred milliseconds pass.

‘Repeat that, please.'

SpeechBuffer.replay( )

‘My. Name. Is. Kenna.'

NINETEEN

LUNA, 601000 AD

Kenna sat between the empty high-backed seat reserved for Ulfr – unoccupied these past hundred millennia – and the one occupied by Sharp, his crystalline antlers shimmering with reflected light. Before them hung a many-dimensioned strategy model, which from time to time they altered, and returned to meditating on. Meanwhile, at the far end of the hall, Roger and Gavriela were wielding refined crystal blades, testing new designs, their cuts leaving glimmers of gamma radiation in the vacuum.

Only zero-point energy could affect the darkness directly, but there were many aspects to warfare, and more than one kind of enemy.

It was an ordinary lunar day, until the moment a sapphire blue glow began to manifest near the geometric centre of the hall. Kenna dismissed the model and strode forward, while Roger and Gavriela stood with blades ready. Sharp remained where he was.

A crystal humanoid stepped out of the light.

No one moved.

The newcomer's face rippled in something like a smile.

—Fascinating. I'm so glad I returned to the old solar system. Nearly passed right by, you know
.

Once upon a time, this base had been hidden. Now its great buttresses and many balconies glinted against the lunar landscape. Being open necessarily meant being defensible, and so their fortress was; but Kenna believed the stranger was no enemy.

—Greetings, sir. My name is Kenna
.

—And greetings to yourself. How very interesting. You have modern forms, not too different from my own, yet you are individually very old, every one of you. Archaic, even
.

Call it a form of first contact.

For so long, they had cast their plans and made their preparations without dealing with wider humanity and their descendants. Ragnarökkr could, if necessary, be fought in the future using only resources from the past and the things that Kenna and the others constructed; but what if they could find allies among the newer peoples?

She was about to say as much when the newcomer added:

—Ancestral humans and Haxigoji. Brachiating primates. And you still use names?

Kenna felt something akin to a stab of rage, immediately deconstructed and brought under control. This New Man sneered out of fear, his superiority an illusion. The blades, she thought, made him uneasy.

—If you had a name, sir, what would it be?

The man stared at the shields and weapons decorating the hall, then back at her.

—Why, then. Call me Magni
.

Kenna bowed her head. He had processed the linguistic/cultural history implied by her name very fast indeed, given how ancient that knowledge was: the tongue known as
Norræna
was over half a million years dead.

—Welcome, good Magni. You understand why we prepare to fight?

To his pacifist eyes, she suspected, these were disturbingly martial surroundings. Surely, though, Magni and his contemporaries knew what was coming eventually.

—I understand why, Lady Kenna, in half a million years, it would be a good idea to have fled this galaxy. You've achieved modern bodies. Why not travel, and see the cosmos?

—You know why. If people always flee, eventually every galaxy will fall
.

Magni shrugged in a very human way.

—Everything dies finally. We've already left the homeworld behind
.

—Yes, you have
.

Magni looked surprised, correctly reading the undertones in her words.

—And you're making use of it?

—Did you think an army could consist of four individuals?
Kenna smiled.
We will be billions when the time is right. And welcoming to our allies
.

For nearly six hundred millennia, she had been refining logosophical models, and there were some she could have deployed now as a form of persuasive rhetoric: those that showed how evolutionary strategies based on fleeing invariably led to an impoverished state, and finally extinction. But Magni would dismiss them as relevant only to others, not to his refined self.

—I really don't think so
.

Magni raised his hand, a languid salute to Roger, Gavriela and Sharp, then spun on one heel, turning the gesture into a geometric rotation cloaked with sapphire light. For a second it glowed; then the light and Magni were gone.

Roger was the first to comment.

—If that's how the children turned out, I'm not impressed
.

—They've tried communicating with the darkness
. Gavriela was looking where Magni had stood.
You can tell they've tried and failed
.

Sharp's antlers swung as he shook his head: once a purely human gesture, now natural for him as well.

—Tried and died, I think
.

It confirmed what they had predicted. But there was more to think about: the advances of contemporary humanity, apparently negated by fatalism, to judge by Magni's rejection of fighting at Ragnarökkr. After a moment, Gavriela gestured towards Ulfr's empty seat.

—Being civilised is not what's going to save us. The further back you go, the truer the warrior
.

—We can't force his return
. Kenna raised her palms.
You know that
.

Roger and Sharp commented together, a form of resonance occurring ever more frequently as the millennia passed:

—Our preparations are the same, regardless
.

—They are indeed
. Kenna inclined her head.

—So I'll check the body halls
. Roger's face looked like diamond.
It's time to speed up the growth
.

—It is that
, agreed Kenna.

Roger teleported out of the hall.