The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3) (27 page)

From the escape pod, David watched the forcefields in the beacon at the Serpentine battlefield flicker and dissolve. The atmosphere vented to space in a burst that sent the beacon crashing into the debris field. The pieces tumbled and collided as they settled into empty pockets in the field. David felt the mass of the field pulling his own escape pod, and he knew his body would soon be a permanent fixture here.

He thought about Kate. How would she spend her last days? He had only one wish: to see her again, if only for a second. His last vision of her ran through his mind: her standing in front of the screen, explaining some science thing he could barely understand. What were his last words to her? “Lock the door.” He smiled. It was somehow extremely fitting. Their last interaction had been like most of their time together. Time was a precious thing. Now both of theirs was short, measured in hours.

He realized something then: that he had actually been scared of living without her. Knowing he wouldn’t have to face that provided a strange sense of calm.

Above the debris field, a rift opened, like a jagged blue and white rip in the black fabric of space. A single ship slipped out and quickly moved across the debris field, making a direct path for David’s escape pod.

Had the destruction of the beacon enabled the ship to see what was happening here, realize he was stranded?

As the ship grew closer, David could make out an insignia on the front: a ring. No, a serpent swallowing its tail.

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Dorian lay on the floor, sweat pouring off of him. The last memory had been the worst. But he couldn’t stop. He was close. He felt it. The ship—the ark—was the same Ares had buried under Antarctica. Had the Serpentine Army found the Atlanteans again? Were they the great enemy Ares feared?

Dorian walked into the enormous factory and looked at the lines that produced sentinels by the thousands. Or had the sentinels betrayed him?

Dorian ate and steeled himself to see the final truth.

In the days after the ark had landed on the new Atlantean homeworld, Ares’ people had confirmed everything the avatar had said. The reborn who emerged from the resurrection vessel had been filled with purpose and fire, a unity Ares had never seen before. They were one people with one purpose: the fall of the Serpentine Army. They had dedicated every ounce of their energy to it. And the technology on the ark and sentinels had provided the rest.

Around the ark, first settlements, then cities, then civilization had risen. The cornerstone of their laws derived from the avatar’s story, his warning about the dangers of runaway technology. Ares had rejected the avatar’s demands, but he knew his people would be foolish to ignore the truth: an advanced civilization with no limits on technology would always grow into a Serpentine world, whether assimilated or not. The anti-Serpentine laws banned any innovation that could lead to a singularity, and the battle against uncontrollable technology became a shared mantra.

At the ratification ceremony, Ares stood on a stage, shouting to the crowd, “We are the greatest enemy we face. The serpent lurks inside of us. We must guard against ourselves as we guard against our enemy beyond the sentinel line.”

The memories came in flashes after that. Ares stood on a ship in orbit, staring at a sentinel construction facility that floated beyond the new Atlantean homeworld. “We need more.”

He stood in another factory, staring at a new sentinel assembly line which stretched so far into space he couldn’t see the end.

“More.”

The memories flowed by. Other factories. New sentinels. The pace of innovation slowing. Him standing in a room, pleading his case for more research and technology staff. But he himself didn’t believe it anymore. His own fire was gone. Using the time dilation and healing properties of the tubes, he had leap-frogged through the ages, to a point when the automated mining ships and robotic factories were producing more sentinels than the Atlanteans could even count.

The members of the exodus, who had been reborn in the tubes, had all lived long lives, opting like Ares to use the tubes to return to optimum health. But they were all gone, having long-since lost the will to go on. Some had made it to their eight hundredth birthday, a few to their thousandth, but ultimately, all but him had met the true death, far out of range of the resurrection tubes, never to return.

He found himself utterly alone, the last of the founders, the last of his kind, the tribe that had seen the carnage of the Serpentine Army firsthand, the hardworking citizens who had built their new world.

For millennia after the fall of the old world, vigils were held every year at the ark. Then the ceremonies came every ten years, every century, and finally, they stopped.

Each time Ares awoke from his tube to attend the council meetings, he felt more like a stranger in his own world. His people had settled into a life of leisure and comfort, focusing on art, science, and entertainment. The sentinel factories were all empty, left to be tended by the robots. The Serpentine threat had turned into the proverbial boogeyman, a scary nighttime tale that might not even be true.

He was regarded as a relic, a figurehead from a dark chapter in the distant past, an era of intense paranoia and war-mongering.

He had announced to the council that he would meet the true death, and they had reluctantly agreed.

The betrayal came in the form of a public announcement the following day: the council had voted to archive him, honoring his service and forever remembering the sacrifice he and the other members of the exodus had made.

Guards had appeared at his residence, news cameras crowding behind them.

People lined the path to the ark shrine, children and adults alike maneuvering to get a glimpse of him. The inscription in the stone facade read,
Here lies our last soldier
.

Ares stopped before the threshold and spoke to the chairman of the council. “Every man deserves the right to die.”

“Legends never die.”

He wanted to reach out and wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze. Instead, he walked inside, down the corridors he had first seen the day of the fall of the old world and stepped into a tube.

The time dilation saved him the agony of the flow of time, but nothing could treat the emptiness and solitude Ares felt.

Figures appeared at the entrance to the vast chamber and ran to his tube.

Ares stepped out and followed them without a word. Perhaps they had reconsidered. Hope—an almost foreign feeling, rose inside him.

They exited the shrine that held the ark and walked silently into the night. A city unlike any Ares had ever seen loomed in the distance. Skyscrapers reached into the clouds, catwalks crossed between them, and holographic ads marched through the night sky like demons dancing in front of the moon.

A blast severed a catwalk. Another reached between the buildings, setting fire to both. The fire leapt from tower to tower, desperately trying to outrun the fire suppression systems. Another blast went up.

“What is this?” Ares asked.

“We have a new enemy, General.”

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Ares barely recognized the world he had brought his dying people to and helped build. It was clean and sparkling but crowded, its people angry. They lined the streets, pushing, shoving, holding signs and shouting.

“Serpentine Restrictions = Slavery”

“Evolution = Freedom”

“Ares is the True Serpent”

At the council chamber, a group of imbeciles detailed the plight of Ares’ beloved world. Intellectual discrimination had segmented Atlantean society, fracturing it into two factions: intellectuals and laborers. The intellectuals represented nearly 80% of the entire population, and as best Ares could tell, spent their days making things with their minds: art, inventions, research, and activities Ares didn’t understand and didn’t care to ask about. The remaining 20% of the population, the laborers, made their living with their hands, and they were tired of it, tired of the subsidized wages and welfare state that kept them in a perpetual second-class existence.

The core of the issue was that education had reached the limits of how much it could elevate raw intelligence. On both sides, the two classes realized that intellectuals would always be intellectuals, and so would their children, and likewise for laborers. Marriage between the classes had become increasingly rare as no intellectuals dared risk their descendants slipping into the lower class, never to return.

The economic and social rift had grown increasingly tense. Accommodations and deals had been made, keeping the peace. But compromise had finally failed, and violence had become the laborers’ only means of negotiation.

The screen detailed the labor faction’s growing unrest, the escalation from protests to riots, to random attacks, to organized terrorism that claimed thousands of lives.

Ares turned the problem over in his mind, barely listening to Nomos, the chairman of the council. “The crux of the issue is our police force.”

“What about it?” Ares asked.

“We haven’t had one for three hundred years. There’s simply been very little crime, and citizen enforcement, coupled with mass surveillance, has meant that any perpetrators were always apprehended. This is different. These people are willing to lay down their lives for their cause—to ensure that their children don’t suffer as they have.”

Another councilman spoke up. “The bigger issue is that the new police force will have to be drawn from the laborers—and we could never trust them. They could overthrow the government and completely take over. And I think that’s what we’re all scared of, even if I’m the only one willing to say it.”

Silence followed.

Finally, Nomos spoke. “Ares, the solution we’ve come to, that we’ve awoken you to… consult on, is relaxing the Serpentine Restrictions.”

Ares failed to suppress his anger. “Those laws were created for a reason—to save us from ourselves.”

Nomos held up a hand. “We’re only considering slight relaxations in two of the three restrictions: removing the ban on genetic engineering—just once, for a single treatment to bring the laborers to intellectual parity. Secondly, we would lift the ban on robotics, allowing simple service droids to handle all physical labor. These changes will create a single sustainable society—”

Ares stood. “If you fools open the box of genetic engineering and robotics on this world, you guarantee that we become a Serpentine world at some point—without even being invaded. It’s inevitable. This is how the Serpentine blight emerged in the first place. We’ll be repeating our predecessors’ mistakes. I won’t stand for it. Put me back to sleep, or better yet, allow me the true death. I can’t watch this.”

“What would you do?”

“Our problem is very simple,” Ares said. “Twenty percent of our people are killing the rest. They’ve got to go.”

Ares looked around at his army in training. If the beacon weren’t floating in orbit, hiding his world’s light from the universe beyond, they would be the laughing stock of the cosmos.

The council had been right: recruiting a security force from the labor class was certain folly. Ares had settled for intellectuals who might fit the bill: models—chiseled, muscular, and well-trained at the art of looking fearless regardless of their actual ability; dancers and acrobats—they moved with grace and precision but couldn’t fight to save their lives; and athletes—they had great aim and comfort in raging crowds but would no doubt melt when people started dying.

Ares watched them train. An army they were not and never would be. But with their uniforms and practiced movements, they looked the part, and that was all he needed.

Ares longed for the days of the expeditionary fleet, but it had been yet another casualty of the Serpentine Restrictions. Space exploration could lead to unknown dangers, or the greatest risk of all: rediscovery by the Serpentine Army.

The thought of it reminded him of his own role in the mission that had led to the end: his capture of a sentinel sphere that opened a break in the line, allowing the great serpent to flow across and port to the Atlanteans’ first homeworld. He would never see that mistake repeated.