Astral material was leaking out of both her eyes and her nose. Her skin started extruding drops of the stuff. Her skin—even the nail beds on her feet—was dotted with it. Scarlett swiped at her nose with her arm, saw the silver stuff and made a face.
Someone began shouting something, far away. It took Julie a minute to realize it was coming through the air vents. But at least people are coming here.
Scarlett’s head moved stiffly as she took in the room. Her eyes fastened on Ms. Jance’s headless body first. Then she saw the robots. She looked at the head at the base of the chair, the ruined door at the bottom of the operating theater, and, lastly, Julie herself.
“Questions?” asked Ms. Jance’s head.
Scarlett’s mouth fell open. She stared at Ms. Jance’s head for a long time. At last she said, “So, so many questions.” Scarlett pulled the sheet off her legs with a series of jerky, uncoordinated movements. She swung her legs over the side, her bare skin pulling off the vinyl surface with an obscene, gaseous noise. The table nearly collapsed under her, and it took her a moment to stand upright.
Something started banging outside the theatre. Julie hoped saner minds were trying to break into this madhouse.
“I mean, okay, maybe it makes sense that I’d wake up in my original body, about to get autopsied,” said Scarlett. “And with my luck it just had to be by Pax’s mom. But a headless lady? And robots? Jesus Christ. I’m not ready for robots.” Scarlett tried to take a step forward, and her knee buckled. “Ugh. This body’s no good. What the hell did you guys do with it?”
“It’s been dead,” said Ms. Jance. “It is decaying.”
Julie still couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“No shit,” said Scarlett. “Fine. I didn’t like it much anyway.”
Silvery material poured out of the girl, out of her pores, her ears, her nostrils. She leaned forward and began puking buckets of the stuff onto the floor. The material, surprisingly, didn’t splash or scatter, but built up in a kind of mound in front of her.
The gush from her head slowed and then stopped, and Scarlett collapsed to the floor. Her skin was still streaming a few beads of silvery material. Her belly humped up and then fell as a mass of more silvery material slid out from under her legs: she’d shit herself.
All the astral material flowed together. It stretched upward and formed into the shape of a girl. At first it was a miniature form, only a meter high. But it grew, reshaping and expanding though it had no extra material to work with, until it was a full-sized, silvery, girl-shaped doll. The way the overhead fluorescent lights swirled on its skin turned Julie’s stomach.
The silver thing walked over to Ms. Jance’s fallen head and picked it up, balancing it on its palm. With Scarlett’s voice, it asked “And… uh… who the fuck are you?”
Ms. Jance’s lips twitched, briefly showing a dimple on one dark cheek. “Martha Jance. I work for the U.S. Government, for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“Research for the military. Sci-fi stuff.”
The doll smiled at her. It might look like some kind of alien, but it still stood like a seventeen-year-old girl, one hip stuck out and not standing up straight. “Right. Of course. Why not? It’s a sci-fi kind of world.” The silver head slid smoothly back and forth, examining the room. “I take it these robots are yours? Some kind of artificial intelligence thing?”
With its elbow braced on its stomach, and the head balanced on its palm, the Scarlett-doll looked like an amateur declaiming a passage from Hamlet. Only poor Yorick was talking back.
“Yes,” said Ms. Jance. “Out of our control at the moment. It stated that it intends to destroy the human race, and then it shut down—apparently to escape capture, if those sounds I’m hearing are what I think.”
Scarlett’s head cocked, listening to the sounds in the hall through ears that weren’t there yet. “Figures.” Scarlett tilted the head upside down, inspecting the neck. It, too, was leaking silvery fluid, far more than it had previously. She flipped the head back upright and walked over to the torso strapped to the computer chair. “Right. Now, if I put your head back on this body—yours, I presume—”
“I would find that most amenable.”
“Heh. AP English much?”
Ms. Jance rolled an eye from behind Scarlett’s arm. “Stanford 2010, magna cum laude in English.”
“So you’re not one of the engineers. Uh, communications, HR, or technical writer?”
Ms. Jance sighed. “Communications. For my sins.”
Great, thought Julie, half-hysterically. The fate of the world is in the hands of two liberal arts majors.
The silver figure positioned the head in the air over the stump of the neck, out of alignment, not even bothering to line up the spinal cord, let alone the major veins and arteries.
“Wait!” the word escaped Julie’s mouth before she could stop it. The silver, featureless head turned toward her. Julie felt bile and fear rising in her throat and swallowed both. “Wait.”
“For what?” Scarlett’s voice asked. “So you can take her blood pressure?”
Before she could answer, Ms. Jance said, “She thinks I’m being controlled by the astral beings. That I’ve been replaced and am a mere simulation of myself. She cut my head off to disable me.”
Scarlett grinned broadly. “Oh my God, Mrs. Black.” This monster was mocking her. “Are you kidding me? Analog to digital. CDs to MP3 players. Paper books to ebooks. You’re just going to let her head sit around on the floor because you can’t deal with a format change? It’s still her. It’s not like she even needs the body. It’s the silvery part that’s her.”
“Just wait!” Julie said. “I know your personality was copied from an idiotic, overemotional teenager, but if you could just—”
Scarlett’s eyes would have rolled, if she had any. “It’s… just… a… head!” she said and put it firmly on the stump of Ms. Jance’s neck. Crooked.
The place Pax went was not on the astral plane, as it had been before. Terry wouldn’t go there. Not with Lana already gone ahead to report what he had done. Not with whatever the hell Terry was planning unfinished. No, Terry needed a place to hide that was still on Earth and not in the physical realm. He needed a place where almost no one could find him.
So Pax sent his spirit inward and found the pacha Terry had built inside Pax’s own mind. Pax’s spirit floated through the darkness that was his inner being. Around him, tens of millions of memories floated, waiting to be plucked and used. Everything from his childhood to the fight with the monster was there. Pax let it all drift by, searching for the one that wasn’t his…
There.
Got you, asshole.
Pax stepped into the pacha and found himself standing in the midst of a mountain valley, surrounded by plants and dripping water. The sky above was gray and the clouds were roiling. But all of it seemed slightly wrong, as if each piece was only real when it was focused on and then faded into half-life when Pax’s eyes turned away.
My mind, asshole, Pax thought. He frowned, and the mountain valley disappeared, leaving blank space. Everything you do is a lie, so stop jerking my chain.
“Terry!” he called. “Terkun’shuks’pai! I know you’re here. Come out!”
A man fell out of a thin slice of nothing and landed in a heap in front of Pax. Pax barely recognized the man. He was wearing Terry’s pseudo-Japanese fighter’s outfit and had a bald head, but that’s where the similarity ended. His head was covered with patchy black-and-gray stubble, and there were patches where the hair hadn’t been shaved evenly. There were ingrown hairs on the back of his head. The knuckles on his hands bulged like an old man’s, with dirt under the nails and scabs across the back of his right hand. Like he’d been punching something withou
t gloves.
And he stank. Not just “had a long day” sweat-stink, or even the stink of someone who’d pissed himself, but the kind of stink that smelled like it had been around so long that it had fermented. A rotten cheese kind of stink.
The guy raised his head. It was Terry. What Terry would have looked like if he were actually human instead of just good at building imaginary human bodies.
Long-healed broken nose, hair growing out of his nostrils, eyebrows that grew off in crazy directions and were splotched unevenly with gray. Vomit stains on his robes, and dirt and blood on his knees. One earlobe bigger than the other. Crooked teeth, a split lip. Stubble growing thick and dark in spots, thin and gray in others. Wrinkles. Dark circles under his eyes.
“Scarlett really worked you over, didn’t she?” said Pax. “Serves you right.”
Terry picked himself off the ground and tried to stand upright, to resume some of his old posture. His body wouldn’t do it. His back stayed hunched and he had to crane his neck up to look Pax in the eye.
“Terry. The invaders. Are they real?” Terry didn’t say anything. Pax’s teeth ground together in frustration. “You tell me how to find them so I can find out whether they’re real or just more of your bullshit.”
Pax didn’t add that he was going to kill Terry afterward.
Pax banished it. It was his head. Terry wasn’t going to fill it with images of a fake Japanese countryside that probably had never existed.
“I can’t,” said Terry, his voice shaking. “I have to show you—”
“Nice try,” Pax said. “Just talk. Or else.”
Terry reached out a hand and laid it on Pax’s arm. “This is faster,” he said, and he poured his thoughts into Pax.
Earth was my destiny.
When astrals are first created by our progenitors, we are often almost identical copies, but without their memories and experience. Experience is held to be sacred—only the most monstrous would even consider taking a memory or an experience from another, although we have the ability to do so. We believe our memories hold the essence of our individuality; it is the closest thing we have to the concept of a “soul.” Only species that have an element of genetic randomness in their reproductive system, as do the species of Earth, can have the idea of a soul, that is, the belief that there is something innately individual about themselves. The only real individuality we astrals have is in our memories.
We respect our elders, not because they are wise or share our genetic line, but because they have more memories. Yet youth and inexperience are valued, too. At the beginnings of our existences, our progenitors often assign us problems they found unsolvable, in the hope that their progeny will succeed where they could not.
My progenitor was Ush’shuks’pai. He discovered the Earth near the dawn of your species.
When Ush’shuks’pai traveled here, it was a kind of paradise, with relative harmony between all species. Predators and prey still existed. But predators would sacrifice themselves if they saw not enough prey was available, for the good of their packs. And the prey would do the same, when they had not enough grass to eat. It was no heaven, the way your culture imagines it, but it was more balanced. Microscopic life carried genes across species to mutual benefit rather than killing or making its hosts ill. Competition among and between species did not extend to destroying the environment. Evolution was slower then, and energies more restrained. It was not a planet of great genetic or technological innovation; it was a slow, relatively unproductive backwater.
Ush’shuks’pai ascertained the potential for humanity to access the astral plane, if they continued to evolve. It was something that would take many millions of years.
But.
Ush’shuks’pai thought that perhaps a few minor alterations might increase the tendencies of a few species toward increased innovation. He was hoping to accelerate the development of humanity toward the stars, on both the physical and astral planes.
He succeeded, all too well.
Across the entire planet, he greatly shortened the average lifespan of almost every living thing, as well as made the nature of life on the planet more violent, more prone to draw negative energy toward itself. Evolution sped up, as did humanity’s technological innovations. Earth was a hothouse, a Petri dish under a heat lamp.
He didn’t realize what he had done until later.
He was young.
I don’t say this to justify his actions. He destroyed a paradise and released evil upon it. Later, he regretted his actions. He saw what he had done had prevented humanity—as well as every other possible primary race on the planet—from ever gaining the ability to become citizens on the astral plane. They might reach the stars, but that was all.
He tried to undo what he had done but was prevented by the Council, who did not believe him. When Ush’shuks’pai spoke out against the Council, he was deemed to be insane and locked up.
None of this I knew at first.
I was created against my progenitor’s will, with the hope that I would take his place and find a way to undo the damage he had done. Desperation, and a surfeit of memory of failures past, had made the Council blind.
Many years ago, they sent me to Earth to study my progenitor’s work. Another young astral, Akllana’chikni’pai, was sent with me to study the cultures and spiritual makeup of the planet; her progenitor had been an eminent cultural and spiritual assessor before being nominated to the Council. We were to train and teach and nurture each other, our talents coming into bloom beside each other’s, a rich garden that would help save the astral plane from starvation. The White City would endure, with our help.
They told us nothing we did not need to know.
When we arrived, I became enraptured by the study of the way the spirits and genetics of Earth life were intertwined. I saw the destructiveness my progenitor had wrought and thought I could fix it: give you longer lives and more peace. I dove into my examination of your world, ignoring everything else.
Akllana’chikni’pai became imprisoned within the undying corpse of a young girl, trapped by the spiritual powers of the humans I was so busy studying. A thousand years later, more or less, I remembered her existence and went to find her. On the astral plane, time has a distant quality; one takes as much time as one needs. So, when we travel to the physical planes, events crowd up on us. Time slips through our fingers.
I brought Akllana’chikni’pai back from her tomb, and we returned to the astral plane. My work had not been finished, and the Council was unhappy with us both. Better, they said, for me to have left her there another thousand years, if it meant I finished my work.
By then, I had no intention of finishing it; I realized I could not undo the damage to life on Earth. Humanity was spiraling out of control and would cause more harm than good to the astral planes. Yet I still loved this world.
I began putting plans in motion to cut Earth off from the astral plane, to make it… well, to make it a kind of pacha of my own, a paradise where I could be free of distractions and obligations. I intended to be worshipped as a god, in exchange for eventually finding a way to return life to its more balanced origins.
Then I met you.
Despite the damage to your body, your soul was closer to the original spirits of the Earth than anything else I had seen. But it was also damaged in places, nearly ruined. I worked to study you and to heal you at the same time, with mixed success. I had not felt such hope in over a thousand years.
And at the same time, I was despairing.
The Earth was being flooded with negative energy. Where had it come from? I told myself it was a byproduct of the damage to your spirits. But that energy did not come from nowhere. It came from a hole in the spiritual plane, a rift as fateful as the damage to your spirit.
The nature of the universe is such that it has its ow
n spirit, its own kind of life. It comes into being; it grows; it reproduces; it ages; it calcifies; it becomes weak; predatory universes consume it and bring forth new universes of their own.
Our universe, as we are able to measure its existence, is young. It is only barely coming of age; it has not yet begun to reproduce. Even on the astral plane, with our looser sense of time, we count the age of the universe as almost beyond understanding. Yet it is barely an adolescent.
It is sick, Pax. And it was Ush’shuks’pai who made it so.
My progenitor’s action pulled open a hole in the spiritual plane, wounding the universe, creating a weak point in its immune system’s defenses, where other universes can infect and damage it.
The monster I created… is a test.
It came from another galaxy, one where a minor rift developed in the universe. The species nearest it was advanced enough that it destroyed the invaders, sealed the rift, and then started spreading spacefaring seedpods that, when they came near the invaders, would reproduce rapidly, gather the resources needed to fight the invaders, and destroy them.
I do not know how to defeat the monster I have created; I do not know how to communicate with it. I only know it will evolve rapidly and launch itself into space and fight the invaders if we cannot.
The rift here is larger, the forces more prepared. I doubt my monster will win against them. Yet I must try.
When the invaders come, they will appear alien and dark and evil. But soon they will put on fair faces and pretend to bring gifts, as they did in the other galaxy. You will find them beyond the orbit of the moon. Some of them are already here; more are coming through as we speak.
I have done monstrous things, Pax, things that would cause me to be destroyed if the Council knew. But even so, I was never able to find a way to defeat what is coming. And I was, forgive me, never able to convince the Council the threat was real.