“That’s insane!” Callum protested. “Even if the universe was cyclical, and due to collapse, that won’t happen for billions of years. I don’t care how bloody good your technology is; you can’t keep a brain alive for that long.”
“The Olyix’s journey will not take them billions of years,” Jessika said wearily. “Their enclave is an extremely sophisticated manipulation of space-time; minutes pass inside it, while the millennia flow by outside. It is what makes them so difficult to fight.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Kandara asked. “To get us to join you in some kind of galactic war? A counter-crusade?”
“No, you are on your own. I do not know where the Neána are, or even if they still exist. My people fled the Olyix eons ago; there is no knowing how far they have gone now. I know some part of them remains in this galaxy, for that is where I came from. But we were never given any knowledge of them, in case we were captured. My colleagues and I have discussed this many times. We assumed the logical thing for the Neána would be to leave this galaxy altogether. It may be that they just left automated stations behind, alert for new species so they can send guides like me.”
Kandara looked over at Yuri. “Do you believe her?”
He glanced down at the pale alien flesh inside Feriton’s skull. “I believe they caught Feriton when he was on his spy mission. That means Ainsley was right all along. I don’t know what they’ll do, if they’ll elevate us like Jessika claims, or just nuke us back to the Stone Age. But I accept the Olyix are not our friends.”
Kandara nodded. “I agree—until anything better comes along.” Her targeting laser switched off, and she lowered her arm as the flesh resealed over the weapon. “I’m watching you,” she told Jessika.
If it bothered Jessika, she didn’t show it. “If any of you have received Kcell implants, I would advise you to have them surgically removed immediately,” she said. “They can alter and multiply faster than any tumor; that’s why they were given to you. And the Salvation of Life now has confirmation humans have been warned by the Neána. I’m sorry, but that isn’t good. They will begin your elevation.”
“Yeah? How?” Alik demanded. “I’d like to see them try. The Salvation’s a big-ass ship, for sure, but it’s only one, all by itself. And Alpha Defense has a shitload of real evil weapons.”
“I told you,” Jessika said, “the Salvation of Life contains the entrance to a wormhole that leads back to the Olyix enclave. They will send an armada of their deliverance-class ships through to elevate you. In simple terms, that’s a planetary invasion force.”
“Je-zus fucking wept!” Alik snarled. He turned to confront Yuri. “We have to go. Now! We have to get back to the portal and warn Alpha Defense.”
“We certainly do,” Yuri said.
“How the fuck are you so calm about this?”
Smiling, Yuri took a dark ten-centimeter disk from his pocket and placed it on the floor. “Thread it,” he said loudly.
Callum peered at the disk’s eerily black surface and grinned. “I taught you well.”
Yuri gave him the finger as a slim rectangular portal slid up from the disk.
“You son of a bitch,” Alik grunted.
A wider rectangle was threading out. Callum and Loi deployed the short legs on its back, readying it to thread a full-size portal door. “Old times,” Callum said.
“No,” Jessika told him. “They are over. Forever.”
“Ainsley and Emilja are going to love talking to you,” he told her.
“Good. I have a lot to tell them.”
JIO-FERITON QUINT
THE SALVATION OF LIFE, JUNE 26, 2204
The Olyix do not have pain. We eradicated it from our new bodies when we elevated to them at the beginning of our pilgrimage to the End of the Universe.
But our human body, Jio-Feriton, experienced a ferocious spike of pain impulses as the female alien’s axe blade smashed into our skull. We were attuned to human thought routines, enabling our responses and reactions to emulate original Feriton Kayne without arousing suspicion.
The nerve signals from the blade cutting into our strange Jio-Feriton flesh and bone was interpreted correctly. It was agony.
Our remaining four Olyix bodies temporarily lost control of their limb function. We wanted to cry, but we had no tear ducts. We wanted to scream, but we had no vocal cords. We wanted—we yearned—for the pain to end. That was swiftly granted.
Our Jio-Feriton body died. Its mindfunction vanished from our entangled essence. We had experienced single mindfunction loss hundreds of times before as we replaced an old body within the quint, but never like this. The rest of our bodies were almost paralyzed from the shock. We have no coping mechanism for such an experience. We have no endorphin override. Feriton’s legacy was an immediate craving for both these very human things.
Slowly, we regained equilibrium. Our thoughts first turned to replacing our Jio-Feriton body, to become full quint again. This was accompanied by regret at the loss we had just suffered. Regret is alien. Therefore we learned that absorbing alien thoughts to perform a subterfuge is dangerous; it detracts from our purity. We will not undertake such a task again.
We have no need to.
The Salvation of Life’s onemind queried us, its serene essence curious at our eccentric outburst of chaotic thoughts. “Explain the occurrence,” it asked.
“We are now four Jio. Our Jio-Feriton body was killed.”
“How?”
“The suspect human, Jessika Mye, inserted an axe into Jio-Feriton’s head, causing immediate fatal damage.”
“Why?”
“We must have said something to betray Feriton was Olyix. We determine this would be our statement that the fourth chamber was a biochamber containing holy relics. If Jessika Mye knew this to be incorrect, she would know Feriton Kayne had been compromised. In order to know that, she would have to be Neána.”
“They are here,” the Salvation of Life said in disapproval. “Therefore Soćko is also Neána.”
“Yes. He ruined the transport ship’s onemind and crashed it out of the wormhole.”
“The humans now know our purpose.”
“They do.”
“We cannot lose the humans to the sedition of the Neána. Humans are vibrant and beautiful. The God at the End of Time will love them. It will love us for carrying them with us.”
“Yes,” we agreed.
The Salvation of Life’s onemind opened itself to all its Olyix. “We will now begin the human elevation.”
The end of Salvation
The story will continue in volume two
of the Salvation Sequence,
Salvation Lost.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
SOL SYSTEM AND HUMAN TERRAFORMED WORLDS
YURI ALSTER Connexion Corporation security chief
CALLUM HEPBURN Emergency Detoxification team leader
SAVI CHAUDHRI Connexion security undercover agent
MOSHI LYANE Team deputy
ALANA KEATES Detoxification team
COLIN WALTERS Detoxification team
RAINA JACEK Detoxification team, IT (ex-hactivist)
HENRY ORME Detoxification team
DOKAL “DOK” TORRES Connexion lawyer
AINSLEY BALDUNIO ZANGARI Connexion founder and CEO
POI LI Connexion head of security
JESSIKA MYE Yuri’s assistant
FERITON KAYNE Connexion, exos
olar security division
ALIK MONDAY FBI, senior special detective
KANDARA MARTINEZ Dark-ops mercenary
EMILJA JURICH Utopial movement founder
JARU NIYOM Utopial movement founder
LOI Yuri’s assistant and technology advisor
ELDLUND Callum’s advisor
AKKAR Ecowarrior
GWENDOLINE Ainsley’s (unacknowledged) granddaughter
HORATIO SEYMORE Gwendoline’s boyfriend
LUCIUS SOĆKO Connexion security squad captain
CANCER Dark-ops mercenary
SALOVITZ Detective, NYPD
KRAVIS LORENZO NY lawyer
ROSE LORENZO NY socialite
JAVID-LEE BOSHBURG NY gang boss
RAYNER GROGAN NY gang boss
KRUSE Akitha Home Security Bureau
TYLE Home Security Bureau
OISTAD Home Security Bureau
NAHUEL Buddhist monk, 2199 ecumenical delegation
JULOSS
Immerle Estate Boys
DELLIAN
ORELLT
FALAR
JANC
URET
XANTE
RELLO
COLIAN
Immerle Estate Girls
YIRELLA
TILLIANA
ELLICI
Immerle Estate Adults
ALEXANDRE year tutor
JENNER principal
URANTI munc-tech
KENELM Captain of the Morgan
TIMELINE
1901…Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio message across Atlantic Ocean.
1945…First nuclear explosion (above ground).
1963…Limited Test Ban Treaty signed, prohibiting atmospheric nuclear bomb tests.
2002…Neána cluster, near 31 Aquilae, detects electromagnetic pulse(s) from atomic bomb explosions on Earth.
2005…Neána launch sublight mission to Earth.
2041…First commercial laser fusion plant opens in Texas.
2045…First commercial food printers introduced.
2047…The US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency reveals artificial atomic bonding generator—the so-called force field.
2049…US Congress passes act to create Homeland Shield Department, charged with building force fields around every city.
2050…China forms Red Army’s City Protection Regiment, begins construction of Beijing shield.
2050…Saudi kingdom installs mass food-print factories. Twenty percent of the kingdom’s remaining crude oil allocated for food printing.
2050…Russia starts National People’s Defense Force; its shield generator project starts with Moscow.
2052…European Federation creates UDA (Urban Defense Agency)—builds force fields over major European cities.
2062…November: Kellan Rindstrom demonstrates quantum spatial entanglement (QSE) at CERN.
2063…January: Ainsley Baldunio Zangari founds Connexion.
2063…April: Connexion twins portal doors between Los Angeles and New York, charges ten dollars to go between cities.
2063…Global stock market crash, car companies lose up to ninety percent of their share value. Shipping, rail, and airline stocks fall. Aerospace stocks rally as space entrepreneur companies announce ambitious asteroid development plans.
2063…November: Space-X flies a QSE portal into LEO on a Falcon-10, providing open orbit access. Commencement of large-scale commercial space development.
2066…Astro-X Corporation’s mission to Vesta. Establishment of Vesta colony.
2066–2073…Thirty-nine national and commercial colony/development missions to asteroids (the Second California Rush—so called because of the number of American tech company CEOs involved). Large number of World Court injunctions filed by developing nations and left-wing groups against exploitation of exo-resources by for-profit companies.
2066…Connexion Corp merges with emergent European, Japanese, and Australian public transit portal companies to form conglomerate. Major cities now portal networked. Noncommercial vehicle use declining rapidly.
2067…Globally, thirty cities now protected by shields, two hundred more under construction. Start of decline of conventional military forces. Phased air force and navy Reduction Treaty signed at UN by majority of governments. Armies reconfigured as counter-insurgency paramilitary regiments—numbers cut substantially.
2068…Seven corporations established at Vesta. Astro-X completes its Libertyville habitat colony. Houses 3,000 people.
2069…First solar powerwell portal dropped into sun by China National Sunpower Corporation. Five-kilometer-long magnetohydrodynamics chambers built at Vesta, positioned on large asteroids, outside Neptune orbit.
2070…Armstrong resort dome assembled on Moon. Similar resorts under construction on Mars, Ganymede, and Titan.
2071…All major cities on Earth linked by Connexion stations—except North Korea.
2071…UN treaty forbidding nonequitable exo-resource exploitation. Any asteroid or planetary minerals mined for use by commercial companies must be equally distributed among all nations on Earth. US, China, and Russia refuse to sign. European Federation awards treaty Principal Acknowledgment status; starts to draw up its own nonexploitation regulations, where “excess profits” of asteroid development companies will be channelled into Federation foreign aid agencies.
Commercial asteroid development companies reregister in non-signatory countries.
2075…Seventeen self-sustaining habitats built in asteroid belt. Construction of Newholm starts at Vesta (by Libertyville)—fifty kilometers long, fifteen kilometers in diameter. Takes three years to form, two years to complete biosphere.
2075…Fifty-five percent of Earth’s energy now comes from solar powerwells. Decommissioning of nuclear power stations begins, radioactive material flung into trans-Neptune space via portals.
2076…Increasing number of asteroid developments become self-sustaining and Earth-exclusionary. Start of habitat independence movement.
2077…Interstellar-X launches first starship, Orion, propelled by QSE portal solar plasma rocket. Destination Alpha Centauri. Achieves .72 light speed.
2078…March: Global tax agreement signed by all governments on Earth, abolishing tax havens.
2078…August: Nine space habitats declare themselves low-tax societies.
2078…November: First Progressive Conclave gathers at Nuzima habitat; fifteen billionaires sign Utopial pact to bring post-scarcity civilization to humanity. Each launches asteroid colony expansion, with an economy based on AI-managed self-replication industrial base.
2079…China National Interstellar Administration launches starship Yang Liwei. Destination: Trappist 1. Achieves .82 light speed.
2081…All Earth’s energy supplied by solar powerwells. Connexion largest energy customer.
2082…Major national currencies now backed by kilowatt hours. Global de facto currency is wattdollar.
2082…Interstellar-X–led General Starflight Accord signed between all starfaring organizations (capable of building
starships) and governments, ensuring open access to new stars and no duplicated star missions.
2082–2100…Twenty-five portal-rocket starships launched from Sol to nearby stars.
2083…Orion arrives at Alpha Centauri. Psychroplanet discovered 2.8 AU from star, named Zagreus. Too expensive/difficult to terraform. Eleven government missions transfer into Centauri system and establish asteroid manufacturing bases, along with eight independent asteroid companies. Construction of multiple portal starships at Centauri system begins.
2084–2085…Twenty-three starships launched from Centauri.
2084…Last car factory on Earth (in China) shuts down. Connexion hub network serves ninety-two percent of human population, including space habitats.
2085…Utopials launch starship Elysium.
2086…Alpha Centauri asteroid manufacturing stations abandoned. Small joint-venture solar rocket plasma monitoring station maintained in orbit around the star, providing drive plasma for the starships.
2096…Chinese starship Tranage arrives Tau Ceti, exoplanet discovered.
2099…Chinese begin terraforming of Tau Ceti exoplanet, named Mao.
2107…US starship Discovery arrives Eta Cassiopeiae. Exoplanet discovered.
2110…US begins terraforming Eta Cassiopeiae exoplanet, named New Washington.