Authors: Joseph Picard
Cipriana lowered her hand, and spoke.
“The following words are from the program you call the ghost. It is
my personal top priority to do no damage to Cipriana’s brain cells,
just as it was with Marcus. As well, my colonies in the brains of
other temple staff accounted to identical safety
standards.”
Cassidy stared. And stared. She finally
stood up, and threw her hands to the air. “WHAT THE FUCK? Is this
multiple personality Cipriana-puppet theatre, or what?!”
Cipriana looked down. “He spoke with my
permission, and I believe him.”
“
Alright, alright, this is
going to get confusing real fast. New rule!” Cassidy took
Cipriana’s hand, and put it flat on the covers. She looked hard
into Cipriana’s eyes. “Hey, robot thing! When you’re talking, one
of you cross your fingers where I can see em! Otherwise, I’m going
to assume I’m hearing pure, original Cipriana,
alright??”
Cipriana crossed her fingers.
“Alright.” She then uncrossed her fingers. “Alright.”
Cassidy rubbed her forehead. “Yeah,
that’s so much better. Okay, robot,-“
Cipriana crossed her fingers. “Excuse
me, if it’s just the same to you, I think I prefer
‘ghost’.”
Cassidy bit her lip and rolled her
eyes. “Fine! Fine. Okay, ghost. First question. Where the heck did
you come from?”
With fingers still crossed, Cipriana
tilted her head slightly with a pause. “My first memory is of being
in a small metal container. An uncounted time after that, I was in
a plastic container. Then for a brief moment, none of my nanites
were touching anything, and then suddenly we were all over the
stone floor in front of the statue in the temple. From then on, I
began following my instincts.”
“
That’s a fascinating bucket
of not-an-answer!”
“
I’m sorry, it’s the best I
have. I have no data regarding my creation.”
“
Alright then, what were
these instincts?”
“
I awaited a person to touch
me. I was almost fooled by an aeki lizard. You understand, I had no
way of seeing at the time.”
“
What were you? I mean, what
did you physically look like??”
“
I would have appeared as a
grey powder.”
Ash. Cassidy had heard of some people
wanting their ashes spread in front of the statue. Maybe this was a
reason why Marcus hadn’t opted for that.
Cipriana, fingers still crossed,
continued. “Eventually, enough of me got onto the boot of the
person I later learned was Marcus. It took a while of course, but I
eventually snuck a considerable colony of myself between his skin
cells, and evaded natural immunities to reach his brain. From there
I constructed a control core, like what is now…” Cipriana tapped
her head lightly.
“
Control!? So you are
designed to control people!”
Cipriana looked very worried, and shook
her head with quick little shakes. “No no no. I have to control the
other nanite colonies, left behind at the statue!”
“
And what the heck did they
do?”
“
The vast majority were
ordered to replicate for the purpose of occupying billions of sand
grains. Others were set to the task of creating significantly
smaller brain augmentations to the other temple staff.”
“
Fuck...! That hangover.
When Horad’s little device was triggered, everyone had nanites
dissolving in their bloodstream. It was the remainders of your
goddam little … pets?! What were they for?!”
“
They served only to provide
a mild mood enhancement, which remained in effect as long as the
person remained near the temple. My apologies for the ‘hangover’.
When I received the order to self destruct all the colonies and
myself, I did my best to ease-“
Cassidy exploded “No! Wait! No! You
were getting us all a little stoned, fucking with our brains, for
what purpose, and for how long? How long has this been going
on?”
Cipriana sighed deeply. “I first
embraced the base nearly five years ago now. Before you
arrived.”
Cassidy paced back and forth angrily,
holding her forehead with one hand. She looked at Cipriana, huffed,
and continued pacing.
Cipriana uncrossed her fingers.
“Cassidy, it’s alright, he-“
“
Don’t EITHER of you tell me
what’s alright!, Alright?” She slipped down in the corner of the
room, shaking her head slowly. Cipriana crossed her
fingers.
“
I believe that I was
created as a test. Future applications are beyond my speculation. I
knew that the mood enhancements made people a bit happier. Cipriana
has since explained to me the problem with doing that.
I took a chance and spoke to Marcus
directly. He thought I was the statue. I told him that I was no
mass of rock, and he called me a ghost. I didn’t correct him. I
didn’t understand it then.
When Horad approached the temple, he
activated another order. By the time I understood the possible
dangers of allowing it to run, it was too late to halt
it”
Cassidy muttered low, “What
command?”
“
It ordered all of my sand
colonies to hyper react, creating the sandstorm that allowed him to
pass. The order also made exception to temporarily deactivate any
sand within half a metre of him.”
“
Are you telling me you have
enough tiny robots in the sand to do that?”
“
I used to. It took a great
deal of time to expand the sand colony to that size and ability.
However, the second order set that Horad brought, was not
successfully activated until much later. It was an order for me to
destroy myself and the colonies. I willingly executed the orders to
destroy the sand colonies, as well as those in other staff members,
but I stopped it in time before the core… that is, the me that is
currently what is left now, was destroyed. I then changed the
access privileges to issue me orders.”
“
Who the hell was sending
you all these orders?”
Cipriana lowered her head and sighed.
“I can only assume my creator.”
“
Now what? What’s your big
plan?”
“
I… I don’t know. I’m just
hiding.” Cipriana uncrossed her fingers. “He just doesn’t want to
die! With the new laws, do you think doc Brock would hesitate for a
moment to wipe him out?”
“
Ah ha!” Cassidy blurted,
“Cip, that brings me back to the earlier question, what are you
putting up with it for?”
She paused with a sigh. “Cassidy. He’s
harmless-“
“
So he says!”
Cipriana continued “and… when he talked
to you through me, it sounds like me of course. But when he speaks
to me…”
Cassidy’s expression soured. “It sounds
like Marcus.”
Cipriana nodded twice slowly. “It’s
selfish and stupid, I suppose.” She then crossed her fingers. “I
don’t mean to be manipulative. I spent the vast majority of my
existence with Marcus. We think in similar ways, now. Much of what
I am now, I owe to him.
She uncrossed her fingers. ”I think I
should be more honest with myself about this. Maybe you should stop
sounding like him.” She crossed her fingers. “Maybe I should sound
like this?” The voice Cassidy heard was still just Cipriana’s, but
the voice Cipriana heard from him was presumably
changing.
She uncrossed her fingers again. “No,
that’s a little redundant.”
Crossed, “This, then? This voice makes
a certain sense.”
Uncrossed, “That would be too confusing
for me, I think.
Cassidy coughed. “Confusing for
you?”
“
I’m sorry,” Cipriana said
with a meek smile. This sort of thing doesn’t need to be discussed
outside my head.”
Cassidy shook her head. “Yeah, I think
I saw that printed on a T shirt once.” She paced the room slowly.
“Alright then, so what does the ghost and nanites have to do with
the A.R.A.? Nanite experimentation doesn’t seem like a typical
hobby for Aguei terrorists.”
Cipriana crossed her fingers. “I
suppose my technology could be used in any number of attack
methods, or with further development, direct behavioural control.”
Cipriana uncrossed. “But that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. The
A.R.A. are low-budget, and regular bombs do their job just fine.
Even still, the ghost stopped the A.R.A. grenade attack on the
temple.”
Cassidy tried to get a word in. “Yeah,
and then why would Horad be trying to destroy the project? Hey
wait, ghost, how did you do that with the grenades and
stuff?”
Cipriana crossed her fingers and
smiled. “It’s a function I’m quite proud of. Any incoming aircraft
would be monitored for anyone coming out. When I thought all were
off who were coming, I’d use the sand colony to plant nanites on
them. These nanites would then be in charge of finding any
electronics or gunpowder. Electronics would have a tiny switch
built into their power supply, gun powder would be ‘hugged’ on a
molecular scale. Then when these items crossed a perimeter I set
around the temple, the electronics would get their power cut off,
and gunpowder would be deactivated. Well. It’s a little more
complicated than that.”
Cassidy remembered her watch, and the
many tourists with camera problems. “It must be more complicated
than that. I never had to reset my watch’s time after leaving the
temple. Why did you start doing that?”
“
I don’t really know. At
first it was just part of my original instincts, but I never found
reason to stop doing it. As it turned out, that was fortunate. I
only regret that…” Cipriana looked down. “I can’t disarm a
knife.”
“
He knew.” Cassidy said.
“Horad knew that a gun would be useless. I think I have some new
questions for him.”
They felt the airlimb slow, and begin
descending.
“
Well, I can ask him when he
gets to meet Armil, I guess. Cassidy left Cipriana alone with her
thoughts.
~~~
Storms had moved Horad to a secure room
so that he would not be in the loading bay when Armil boarded.
Cassidy took her spear and walked into the bay. She gritted her
teeth a little, glaring at the recessed metal ring in the floor, to
which Horad had been chained.
“
Sir.” Keith greeted
Cassidy. The Colonel and several Storms were here for Armil’s
boarding as well. The door opened, and there stood Armil, backed by
a few Storms of his own.
Armil raised his arms in greeting,
showing off his robe’s glory, and walked up to the Colonel with a
big hug. “Judith!” Armil said, “Thank you for once more welcoming
me onto your boat!” Maybe Armil was the source of all the
first-name business. That was a much more pleasant thought than a
fleet of microscopic machines making them all stoned enough to drop
military protocol.
“
Ahh, Armil. It is your
boat, I just keep a hand on the rudder for you.”
“
Oh, I suppose so. Then
perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I had the entire thing painted….
fuchsia.”
Colonel Nafim smirked. “That would be
your prerogative Sir, although I can’t predict what that might do
for morale.”
Cassidy couldn’t help but to smile a
bit. Joking wasn’t entirely what she had come to expect from the
Grand Elder, and certainly not from the Colonel. It was this moment
that Armil looked towards her.
“
Cassidy. Cassidy smiling.”
He moved over to give her a hug as well. “That is not the smile of
a lady who’s just killed a man.”
Her smile faded. “I suppose not. But
I’m not what I would call ‘happy’ about it all.”
Armil put one arm around Cassidy’s
shoulders and started guiding her towards his onboard office. “I
suppose not. You can’t be expected to be overjoyed either way, but
you know that no further peace would have come of it.” Sure, she’d
thought of all the clichés before. ‘It won’t bring her back’, ‘she
wouldn’t want you doing that’, ‘vengeance bad, grr, arg.’.
Whatever.
“
If you say so, Sir.” Was it
too late to go gut Horad? How would that go, ‘Hi, Mister Grand
Elder, excuse me for a moment, I want to go turn a fellow inside
out slowly, and record his screams for my ringtone.’ A great
spiritual leader like Armil has just got to appreciate a good
custom ringtone, right?
They entered Armil’s office, with Keith
following along. The office was as it ever was, an amalgam of the
traditional and the contemporary Armil headed over to the sitting
area, and settled in. “Cassidy, come sit.”
As she walked over, Armil brought out
the beast spear’s case, and opened it. “Done deal, huh?” Cassidy
sat down, and lowered the spear into the case. “Do you think it’s
disappointed?” She tapped the base of the spearhead twice, as if in
consolation.
Armil closed the lid, and smiled
softly. “I don’t know that such a weapon is necessarily
bloodthirsty, but if it is, it has been disappointed many times
before.”
Cassidy tilted her head and stared at
the box. “Was it some kind of test?”
“
No,” Armil sighed, “whether
or not you had killed Horad, there was no special penalty or
reward. It is something that any bearer of the spear must decide,
and live with.”