"The Centers of Old Empires" is story #2 in a short fiction series called Hemegohm's Tendril which expands the narrative begun in the science fiction novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism (story #1 located here). A fractured tale of the multiverse, the story begins in the year 2167. Simon Shadow has been abandoned in an escape pod, cruelly dumped in a distant, unknown solar system by the United Galactic Marine Corps. As the hours pass, Simon slowly realizes his survival is tied to an ominous set of choices...
"We don’t have to be believers to have religious experiences. But to understand such experiences, we must understand those who believe. Yet sadly, we will never understand such people, let alone ourselves." These words were excised from the Golden Shimmer. In 2167, Simon Shadow found himself confronted by a fundamentalist system gone rabid. His response? Hide within the disease itself—become just another symptom of the World Order's will to control. While much has been written about the man’s alleged misdeeds, his time on Reetar must now be reexamined, for many of his insights into the colonial experience were mysteriously hidden from the public, and I don’t think he was ever aware of this fact. These passages, while not destroyed, had simply been relegated to an invisible chapter of the document, never to reach the printed page. When I purchased the master digital file from Snappy Pamphlet (a small media shop in Reetar Colony), I had no idea that it would contain unreleased content. Mixed within a maze of swearing and irrational statements, I managed to find the words quoted above. I see no reason for their omission, since they seem to be the key to everything the man stood for during his time in Reetar Colony, fighting a losing battle not only against the Unholy Mass, but also against his addiction to Tigris, and the strange manipulations of the United Galactic Marine Corps. I've traced the removal of this written material to an artificial intelligence system embedded in the printing press itself. As I probed deeper into the origins of this AI, I realized it was part of a standard suite of tools used on hundreds of League of Human Expansion member worlds. With the current level of outcry against the World Order and its Machines, this is telling in the extreme. As of this writing, Simon Shadow is still missing.
From the preface of The Dark Death and Life of Simon Shadow: How the Common Man Will Defeat the World Order.
By Horim Fildsbel, Aerolithic Press, first edition, 2180.
No habitable worlds—but one. The words hovered in the cramped space of the escape pod. It was a small planet—designated Emcast—and it was mostly covered with saltwater; only one percent of its surface was marred by solid ground, and its atmosphere was violent and primordial. The thought of splashing down there was alluring, but the journey would take months, and as I discovered a few hours after finding myself here, the escape pod wasn't intended for long-term habitation, nor was it a viable water craft in any case. It was maddening.
Positionally, I was two hundred thousand light years from the nearest human colony. I was actually beyond the Wildervoid, further out than most humans had ever been, even via wormhole transposition. But why? What kind of statement was this? Why had the United Galactic Marine Corps dumped me here? They had, at times, indicated an appreciation for what happened on the planet Reetar, but they had a weird way of showing it. Pre-trial they loved me, yet during the trial itself, they'd simply handed me over to the prosecution. Post-trial their love returned, in the seductive form of Ren Pello. She'd done her best to bisect my past from my future, to cloud my recollections of Mia Derlen, and to some degree it had worked. Visions of Ren's naked body were still vivid in my mind. I never could have anticipated our intimacy would end the way it did—her soldiers dragging me into an escape pod. Then as I drifted away, Commander Brinkson called me, saluted me, thanked me. For what? The transmission ceased, and I watched as the U.G.M.C. Hardheart vanished into the black. My eyes were locked on that region of space for hours, waiting for them to reverse course, to break the pattern. Love, hate, love, hate, love—but the pattern held. Hate. They weren't coming back. I was alone, and that was that.
The fear became stronger with every passing minute. I felt hungry. The storage lockers were empty except for a few remnants of my past—artifacts tied to a distant, dead life. A rucksack, a worn photo of Mia, and surprisingly, my old tin of Tigris, purchased on Reetar so long ago.
Throughout the first few hours, my thoughts drifted—forwards and backwards, all the way back to Earth, to Anthony Rodengo and a woman I'd once known called Miro. My hands and mind crawled the interior surfaces of the pod, seeking an escape that didn't involve a prolonged combination of starvation, dehydration, and asphyxiation. I found one, but it involved the set of explosive hatch bolts and the endless void beyond. I'd once participated in escape pod training when I was enlisted, but I'd been abusing a time-accelerating hallucinogen through the whole of it. An ironic blunder, perhaps; but every recruit had handled the nauseating tedium—two days spinning in Sol's asteroid belt—in the very same way. None of us ever thought we'd be in a situation like this.
I fell in and out of sleep, still convinced the Hardheart would return. Surprisingly, I dreamed—fitful fantasies riddled with hopeful plots and unlikely outcomes. The most promising revealed that Ren Pello had used the escape pod to hide me while the U.G.M.C. prepared a cover story about my death during an escape attempt. Ren then picked me up, granting me a new identity, a new life. The variations were subtle, but they all shared the same ending: I woke up. As day two began, I found myself frenetically exploring the pod's computer system. I paged through menu after menu, as if something would change, as if some new form of hope would manifest, but I found nothing. I decided I needed a new perspective. I needed to get outside the pod without killing myself, so I grabbed my tin of Tigris. It felt light, and inside, there was only a single packet. I could feel the crystalline nugget inside. This was the work of Ren Pello; leaving a single dose was either kind or cruel, but it was hard to tell which. As the tablet rolled into my palm, the sight of it brought back a flood of memories from Reetar Colony. It was so familiar, so comforting, and so terrifying. Ren had claimed the spiders were parasites; that Tigris generated a tether to their habitat in some higher dimension. These creatures—real or imaginary—had been running across the surfaces of my life since I first tried the drug, and now I wondered if they might offer a path to a third escape route.
The tablet dissolved instantly, flavorless. My resistance was still high, so nothing notable happened, but within minutes the light from Empurios, the star at the center of the system, changed briefly above me. Something was passing across the portal in the hatch. I saw a spider's leg, mottled, reflective, graceful and terrifying—the largest I'd ever experienced.
I continued to explore the pod's systems, trying to stay calm, worried that the Tigris was a mistake. Menu after menu. Function after function. Diagnostics. Checks. Summaries. I fixated on the Space-time Systems logo, tapped it. A customary marketing blurb. A smaller spider emerged from the wording, and it scurried quickly, stopped, vanished as usual, leaving a single red dot behind. An assemblage of pixels, stuck between two sentences. I enlarged the display. It was a paragraph related to the escape pod's design. It read:
...thus, how the apparently miraculous design of your escape pod appeared can be traced directly to the intervention of an advanced machine intelligence developed exclusively by Space-time Systems.
The red dot hovered above the 'h' in how. Convinced it was merely an illusion, I left the section and continued on, jumping around the menus, but the dot was still there when I returned. I magnified the section until all I could see was that circular expanse. I touched it, and the display shifted to a new menu at normal magnification, one previously hidden. It contained only a single control surface, tied to something called a quantumgenic suspension system—or QS. There was nothing to configure. The system was either engaged or dormant. The overview was vague, but it conveyed just enough to terrify: an exotic energy source, a negation of quantum uncertainty, and a method of tracking my every particle—both position and velocity—without disturbing either. The patent was still pending, but the system allowed a level of determinism that had proved highly successful in dropping people out of time. It was intended solely for use in the most dire of battle sphere situations. When I pressed that button, I would transform myself into an ageless quantum artifact. Upon rescue, my life would pick up where it had been suspended. Disturbingly, the mechanics of such rescue were not explained.
No habitable worlds—but one—and it was beyond my reach. That was my reality, and time was passing. I thought of the U.G.M.C.'s alternating pattern of love and hate. Was the QS system a manifestation of their love for me? A thousand trillion trillion particles—me—were going to cease their association unless I trusted this device to keep track of every last one of them.
I stared into Mia's photograph—into her eyes. Why had Ren returned this photograph? Why not a picture of herself, instead? I thought of moments with Mia, intermixed with visions of a sand storm on Reetar, a dark hallucinatory night in Gloomdred's tower, Hrainey Wendiff drunk, passed out on his garage couch, and Qaggaq, the mysterious friend who'd once saved my life. I knew there would be no rescue this time.
I waved my hand across the QS control surface. The red button pulsed, asking for confirmation. I decided the pattern had been broken, after all. There would be no love. What I was about to do was hatred heaped upon hatred, and I was tired of my situation. The system indicated I should lay back. I took one last look at Mia. Above me, I saw only a shining black eye—that Tigris spider of immense size, staring through the hatch portal.
The padding around my body expanded, rooting me in place.
A sudden droning, chaotic and random, filled my ears.
I felt the thinness of Mia's photograph in my hand.
I closed my eyes.
The ocean world Emcast is widely known as the "aquamarine gem" of the Empyrean solar system. On the cliffs of a small island, surrounded by an endless sea, the Temple of Shimmerism sends its lighted spires rising into dark skies.
I watch the sea from the central tower—called the Great Spire. The surface below remains eerily tranquil, even as great pods of segmented creatures slip past, their black eyes staring forward into the dark clarity of the water.
I don't know long I've been here. Time itself is tangled. I have many memories of the sea—different epochs, characterized by endless storms, the water churning, boiling, lashing at the island's rocky perimeter.
The Temple is fed by water power, in combination with nonnative energies I don't understand. Scientists and theoreticians live here with me. Some are circumstantial time-travelers—late-22nd century thinkers and physicists who'd faced death at the hands of incurable diseases, but who'd been preserved via quantumgenic suspension, and eventually cured. The others are clear products of the 23rd century, former workers in the business of space-time.
I don't know what year it is.
My dead religion's sacred book, The Golden Shimmer, is here. The people in this place have recovered it, researched it. The Temple contains the largest collection of copies still in existence. I am filled with dread. My book represents misfortune. The monks of the Shimmerite Order tell me not to worry. They wear strange hooded jumpsuits which can shift form, as if the fabric itself were sentient, or somehow intricately tuned to the individual wearer. One of the monks—she calls herself Juplin Ordel, daughter of Jakren—has changed the structure and transparency of her clothing before my eyes. She is strangely beautiful and interested in me, but I don't respond the way I should. I am confused. I don't understand how I arrived here.
I stand at the top of the Great Spire.
I stare at the dark sea, a photograph in my right hand.
Mia stares at me. Dual suns shine brightly upon her face. Worried I might lose her, I slide the photograph into my wet suit and spur my wavetrain forward, waiting for another massive surge of water from below. Hrainey Wendiff is here. My dead friend, killed by Unholy Mass thugs, riding his own wavetrain, a can of beer rising and falling gracefully in his hand. A column of water surges in the distance.
"Drive in or ride?" Hrainey calls out.
I find myself driving forward in answer.
Our wavetrains gain speed as we whip up the rising wall of water, a dizzying feeling wracking our guts as we plunge over the top and ride down the far side, plunging into the depths, rising gracefully. Hrainey and I cross paths, bobbing, and I catch the man's huge grin. It had always defined him, in some easy way, but I don't think I ever saw it when we lived together in Reetar Colony.
We ride the froth, rotating our wavetrains to give ourselves a better view of the depths. Below us is the great aperture in the seafloor, nearly a kilometer down, where the surface ocean transitions into Reetar's famed underground sea; the Gorla live there, hidden in their submerged cities of incredible complexity. Part of me wonders if Qaggaq is watching me, as he so often did in the past.
I shake my head, shedding water, pulling up next to Hrainey. Our spheres bump, rebound, stabilize.
"You're a dead man," I state.
Hrainey lets the words sink between us. He gazes around and then kicks his wavetrain forward, back to where we'd been before. I follow him.
"Next wave in two," he calls, opening another beer. "You want one?"
"You're dead."
Hrainey takes a deep drink, irritated. He pulls his wavetrain closer to mine.
"Let's link," he says.
I rotate, the bright Reetar suns blazing in the sky. My glasses darken. Hrainey and I link our wavetrains.
"Now for the come down," he says. "The come down."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean this: I tell it to you like it really is and you accept it. And then we ride this next wave together."
I feel a chill. The man's dead. The Reetar police found his body, but a thought crosses my mind.
"You didn't—you didn't fake dying, did you?" I ask. "Just to get away from me? From Shimmerism?"
Hrainey smiles. "Simon, imagine for a minute that you and I aren't sitting here in a couple of wavetrains. Imagine instead that we're sitting in some old piece of shit row boat. Something made of wood, maybe."
"Sure," I say.
"Good, so think about this. There's a chance you might fall through the bottom of that boat."
"What do you mean?"
"Basic quantum mechanics. The chance is small, but you could drop right through solid matter. Through the wood—into the ocean."
I laugh. "Hrainey Wendiff doesn't talk like this."
"Hey, I wasn't as dumb as you thought."
"So you are dead?"
"This is the come down, Simon," and here he lets out a mighty belch, the kind that once echoed through his garage in Reetar Colony. "And like I said, it could happen. You could pass right through the bottom of the boat. The key is waiting long enough for it to happen."
"What are you talking about?"
Hrainey detaches his wavetrain. "Maybe we ride this one apart," he says, skimming ahead.
I watch him go, content to let him ride it alone, but then he pulls around, speeding back, gliding close.
"Simon, I may be dead," he says, "but where does that leave you?"
"That question makes no sense. I'm lost."
"I know. But how long have you been lost? You see my meaning? How long have you been waiting? And is there enough time left?"
The next tsunami arrives, and Hrainey turns into it. I feel myself rise and fall as the great mound of water passes me by.
Hrainey's words seem too heavy. I hold them in my mind, but their weight is unbearable. I worry they will sink me, pulling me head first to the bottom.
I look around.
I see sunlight and the endless Reetar sea, and Hrainey Wendiff, my dead friend, is gone.
I gaze upon an ocean which seems made of gold.
An immense reflective lattice ripples along its surface. A distant sun is setting. I can see lights far above the horizon—the broadcast towers and the great elevator of Endemon, the capital city on Tigris IV, in the Tigris solar system.
My shuttle skims over the waves.
A massive hurricane rages beyond my window. The leading edge of the storm is breaking up against the man-made barriers that surround Endemon.
I fly closer.
The vast crag of rock at the city's center–called Last Exit–shows itself, emerges from the gloom. It is dotted with points of light.
The shuttle begins to slow, hammered by wind and rain.
I peer ahead.
I'm on approach and the docking sequence begins.
Life begins to move. My life.
The planet Tigris is alive.
I step from the shuttle into the terminal, and my first impulse is to blend into the crowd–to walk once more in a tight maze of infinitely navigable flesh, like back on Earth, before the explosion in the Cafeterium at Space-time Systems. I feel at ease.
But I feel responsible. For all of this.
Tigris IV is a confluence, a merger of what's left of the Great Experiment and of what came after, the Tigris drug culture.
I catch a cab and point it toward the heart of Endemon, to the great cradle of stone in the shadow of Last Exit, where Meinolf Gloomdred has set up his new church.
Why did I follow him here? What will I do when I find him?
My eyes are overwhelmed. Virtual light pervades the roadways, filling the cab's interior with bewildering imagery. I know it's just advertising, but I open all the ports on my skin-plant anyway, recording as much of it as I can. A message from Mia might come in any form–even hidden in the swarming virtual light of Tigris IV. My filters lock onto Gloomdred, mid-sermon:
Young flies, heed the bells. Come to your fate. I am the Unholy Mass, and you are my children...
I feel responsible for his presence here. He came because of me. I realize I'm not ready to confront him. I need to hear from Mia first. I need to know what she thinks of it all.
I return home.
I'm convinced that Mia is in Endemon–that she's still alive.
From my apartment's balcony, the view of Last Exit is hazy. I like it that way. Long ago, they'd discovered the Tihoc plant–the source of Tigris–in a chamber at the heart of the mountain. Now the galaxy's lost and damned march into that same cavern, only to be drowned in advertising.
I feel cold.
My jumpsuit and cloak are both too thin for a rain-soaked night in Endemon. The fabric shifts form, heating slightly.
I sit down, summoning my terminus. A subtle panel of light floats before me.
“Search all of Endemon for references to Mia Derlen. Compile a master list.”
The terminus hangs. The display glitches and then clears.
How long would you like to wait? it asks.
"Just use the data from the cab ride."
My skin-plant vibrates. Again, the glitch.
How long would you wait?
I feel as if I remember something, but it slips away. In the kitchen, a soft tone. My tea is ready. I don't remember making it. It's a local blend, spiked with an inert form of Tigris. The scent is so familiar, as if it were a color, or something physical.
I feel a sudden awareness of the other side–of the Hemegohm.
Back on the balcony, the monolithic expanse of Endemon's lights and homes and lives seems to grow larger.
The terminus asks Would you wait for me?
The display fades. At its center, a glowing letter 'M' flutters from existence.
I am surrounded by self-illuminating information. A vast plane stretches out before me, grid-like, pulsing with memories. A bloated, red-hued galaxy hangs alone in the dark emptiness of the sky, but it's structure is more akin to wreckage–the remnants of two galaxies post-collision; strands of orphaned suns trail outward, flung from the gravitational haven they once called home, lost and destined to die alone.
I ask "Where am I?"
She answers "I don't know."
I don't see her, but I know she's here. But who is she? There is something familiar about her. "Can I see you?"
There is no answer, but I feel a hand on my shoulder. It startles me, and I turn.
Her fingers are fading away. She begins to elongate, moving backwards, stretching away into the distance, like a series of photographs. Instances in time, each unique.
"Mia?"
The forms are refracting now, splitting, generating a branching structure. I follow, focusing on the regressive phantom at the base of it all. At times it changes gender, each female instance generating new branches that seem to reverse course, into the future as I move into the past.
Finally, the base form stops, allowing me to come closer. Her features are suffused with light, but I recognize her. Behind me is a vast tree of descent, a familial expanse I will never know.
"Ren?"
She's dressed in a way I never had the chance to see. Regular clothes, different–no longer military in any sense. She smiles at me, holding an infant. The countless specters trace back through time to her–to this one tiny girl. I realize she's my daughter. I can't move, and mother and child wane simultaneously.
A voice says "I'm waiting for you."
Mia's voice.
I sense the Hemegohm once more, but I am alone. The expanse vanishes, leaving only the distant galaxy, fading in a sea of darkness.
The universe is aging, accelerating into oblivion.
I stare into my food, unable to avert my eyes.
I am cold.
The Space-time Systems Cafeterium is crowded.
Two executives pass me, silent. I know them. Can't place their names, but I know them. I used to work on their floor. They shouldn't be here.
I am no longer hungry. I feel nothing but contempt for the food in my tray. Balanced nutrition. Food translated into color. Color without taste.
The next Lunch Wave piles up beyond the great main doors.
My palms are cold. My gut feels nerved up. Under my right thumb I see a photograph. The edge is partially submerged in my food. Mia stares at me.
Mia.
Mia Derlen.
I witnessed her death.
I'm confused, so I access the Space-time Systems directory, searching for her. Information overwhelms my senses but I quickly find a reference. She's not full-time, but she's done contract work in the colonization program. She's assigned to a planet called Reetar, out past Vega.
I open a message: "I'll be there soon," I say. "I miss you."
I hear trays of food crash to the floor.
Someone is yelling, but I miss what is said. More trays crash, splashing. I can't think of anything else to say to Mia, so I send the message and clear the display.
I hear a strange chorus: guards, crying out for someone to stop.
I adjust my grip on the tray, moving the edge of Mia's photo from the food. My thumb and forefinger are sluggish, as if they aren't my own. I sense a presence. A bare forearm crushes into my chest and my tray spins away. Movement slows. I know this man. I once worked for this man. Bill? Bill Wexler? Tigris spiders cling to his brow. His face bleeds; my food splashes across it and he becomes a monster.
I am on my back, sliding down the surface of an empty table as it collapses, tilts, dumps me to the floor. I am grasping, trying to regain control. The photograph of Mia slips, as if it had never really been there.
I try to find it, to keep my eyes on it.
People run.
I reach out–but my hand is crushed under foot.
The ground moves.
A shock wave. Searing heat. Fire.
I am lost in a swell of debris–tables, chairs, other people–but the photograph of Mia is miraculously close.
Again, I reach out. I stare at her–at my own hand as it catches fire. The flame leaps from my fingers and I cry out.
Time slows.
Mia Derlen glows brightly, smolders, and vanishes.
I think, I'll be there soon.
I close my eyes.
The Centers of Old Empires © 2011 by James Kracht.
All rights reserved.
