The Fourth Sage (The Circularity Saga) (50 page)

"You kn-kn-know what you h-h-have here, Ty, r-r-right?"

"I think I do, yes."

"A w-w-worm hole."

"I know."

"That's c-c-crazy!"

"I know!"

"I'll t-t-take this one," Jeremiah says.

Tevis hugs him as if she never wants to let him go.

"I love you so much," she says. "Always remember it."

"I will," he says, as he sits on the board under the sphere.

Seth is next. Then Sam.

"Thank you," he says, when Tevis embraces him.

"Your future shines so bright, I can see it," she says.

I'll take the next one,
Aries hears Max think when they reach the next one.

"I wish I could come with you," Aries says.

Me too,
he replies.
But I'll see you on the other side.

"Yes," Aries replies.

When they stand in front of the pod, and after Max has said his good-byes to the others, Aries doesn't quite know what to do. She looks at him.

You know, there's something I wanted to do when I first saw you,
she hears him say in her thoughts.
But then, there was this other stuff going on, you know, like saving the world and such that I didn't—

She kisses him. On the mouth. When she realizes what she’s doing, it's too late. And when she wants to pull away, he gently holds her face in his hands. His lips are soft but she can feel that he hasn't done this before, either. When he lets go, he looks at her.

I didn't see that one coming,
she hears him think.

"You didn't?" she says. "I did."

Good!

She smiles at him. Then she leaves the small building and catches up with the others.

"I'll let you take this one," Amber says. "I'll have to open the door anyway."

"Okay," Aries says. "I won't sit down until you're inside and ready."

They embrace.

"I'm not sure what's going to happen," Amber says. "But we'll have to trust that whatever’s about to take control knows where we're supposed to go."

"I'm sure it will," Aries replies.

"I'll go with you," Tevis says to Amber.

After they say their good-byes, Amber and Tevis walk toward the next building. The vibrations of the machine are down to a minimum. The center is now nothing but a sphere of white light. From there the light extends, in a single beam, straight up.

"This is it," Aries says.

"Yup. That's it," Kiire replies. He stretches out his arm and Born-of-Night jumps on it. He strokes her chest feathers and she lets out a scream.

"She likes you," Aries says. "And thanks for the ham."

Kiire smiles. "My pleasure," he says. "You take care of yourself, Aries Egan, D."

"You too," she says. "I'm gonna miss you."

"So will I," he says as he hugs her.

They watch as Amber and Tevis disappear into the next building. Kiire lets go and steps back. Ty takes Aries’s shoulders.

"I hope I taught you enough," he says. "Enough to prepare you for what's out there."

"You did good," she says. "If all else fails, I can always get work as an electrician."

"I can write you a letter of recommendation."

They both smile.

"I love you," she says. "So much."

"I love you too, sweetie," he replies, and kisses her cheeks. "Now go. Otherwise I'll change my mind and make you stay here."

"That wouldn't be so bad," she says.

"Go," he says gently. "Go. Save a world, will ya?"

Aries enters the building, sits on the narrow board. She pushes on it a little to test its strength.

You think it will hold us?
she hears Born-of-Night think, as the hawk lands on her shoulder.

Funny,
she replies.
Now what do we do?

We'll wait—

Above her, the walls surrounding the sphere retract until she has an open field of vision before her. She sees the other structures as their walls retract also.

I'm scared,
she thinks, as the sphere floats gently up. The others, the ones she can see, float up as well. They pass the machine. From here she can see the extent of the number of androids lying on the ground. There must be tens of thousands of them. Now the sphere moves closer to the light beam in the center. She can see Max's pod slightly above her. He waves down to her. It seems as if time slows down when they move through the first lock and upward. They pass the second and third lock and from there float through the Forgotten Floors.

They pass the prison and the water treatment section. And then she sees them. They stand at the railings waving their arms, shouting words Aries can't hear. Some of them embrace each other, pat each other’s backs. First she sees only workers, but then there are others. They must be from the other tiers. They line the railings, some overcome by emotion and relief.

Then the pressure on her abdomen increases. It is as if a great force takes hold of her. When she looks up, she sees the sphere become transparent until it disappears completely and all she sees are individual strings of light rushing by, faster and faster. The lights change colors, go from white to red and orange and back. Through the light strings she sees what look like stars, formations of stars and stardust in colors of blue and deep red.

Aries feels as if she extends outward and into space, becoming part of a vast universe within an infinite number of universes.
A stream of stars,
she thinks, and before she can remember where she’s heard this, she loses consciousness and blackness engulfs her.

//begin upload**file44LK.11-2:kiire_understaad/aries_and_the_eight/final_entry4.009//

It has been five years since Aries left—Aries, Sam, Seth, Mila, Jeremiah, Amber, Max, and C.J. And Born-of-Night. It all happened so fast, I wish I’d had time to speak to them. A little more time. Throughout the chaos that followed, many wished that the old order was still in place. But that is, I assume, a trait we all possess. Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved, weak, and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are set free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. Many cowered in fear for a long time. But eventually, we began to feel human again.

After Ty's wounds had healed, his first order of business was to take down all the cameras in the building. He oversaw it personally and he was present when they were disassembled. Then he came up with a plan to use the crystallite plates we found in the lakes of the cave and install them inside the core, transforming the beam from the machine into energy. Free energy. A few months before he died last year, he was the one turning on the switch that would transfer the power from the crystallite plates and transformer units to the rest of the building. Nobody would ever have to worry about energy again.

I was present when some of Tevis's children were reunited with their families. I wish Aries could have been there to witness it. I hope she knows what she has done, what this means to them. Tevis has turned the Forgotten Floors into a school for the gifted. Some of the kids who were with her, like Tuari and others, have stayed with her. She insisted on continuing down there, even though there were other spaces available, mostly in Tier Six.

Once the servers had been reset, we began calculations on the energy output of the machine. The numbers were off the charts. It seems as if the machine in its current state can draw energy through the wormhole in perpetuity. Nobody knows where it's coming from yet, but for now it seems we'll have enough. More than enough. And another thing happened when Aries activated the machine—the others followed. Deep below the other four buildings, we found (except for some minor differences) the same setup as in ours. Since Aries and the others have used the light beam and the pods to travel to another place in the known or maybe even unknown galaxy, nobody has used it.

A while ago, we began to send probes to the outside, the area surrounding the high-rises. When the machine was activated, most of the androids' core control centers were destroyed. For a while, we tried to build new ones but the project was eventually laid aside. But something happened to the ones who weren't affected by the electromagnetic pulse, something I still cannot explain to this day. They became aware. They became conscious—first of themselves, then of their surroundings. Some of them volunteered to go outside, to take samples of the soil, air, and water, and document everything. Not only did we find that the outside is habitable, the water drinkable, and the soil clean, we also found a compound at the edge of the city that had been inhabited by the board members of
SELKom
for the last twenty years.

There are still far more questions than answers. One of them is where the wormhole leads. What's on the other side? We have not found any other guide stones and we're not sure if we can and should use the beam to travel without them. But we're on our way to figuring everything out.

Why am I writing all this? I thought there should be a document. For future generations. They should know what happened. You deserve to know what happened. So you can watch the signs. You see cameras being installed anywhere in the name of safety? You see power slowly shifting from the people to individuals or certain groups? You see schools and whole educational systems disintegrating before your eyes? Be watchful, my friend. And be ready. Always be ready.

//end of final upload**file44LK.11-2:kiire_understaad/notes/aries_and_the_eight/log4.0059//

The End

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The Fourth Sage
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Thank You

Throughout the process of writing this book I have become indebted to many people. Without them this would not have been even remotely possible. But before I get to that, I need to make a confession. We writers are thieves. Thieves in the night. Thieves without honor. We steal from others, from better, from far better writers. I stole from writers I admire. Okay, you might call it inspiration, or borrowing. But let's be blunt. I have used other writers' amazing imagery, fascinating plot points, characters, and more than my fair share of incredible twists and turns, and somehow cloaked them in different outfits so they could make my story better. For example, I "borrowed" from my favorite author of all time—the brilliant and lovely Robin Hobb and her
Farseer
books, which have stayed with me for the last twenty years. I have blatantly absorbed every little ounce of Aaron Sorkin's writing. And even though the story you are about to read was conceived before I knew his books, I'm pretty sure I stole from Hugh Howey and his
Wool
series. How could I not? They are absolutely brilliant. So thank you, fellow authors, for inspiring me to take from you and to shamelessly say, "This needs to be in here—somehow, someway. It's just too good not to be."

Allow me to thank you, Chloe Mosbacher, for your fierce and inspired drawing of Aries Egan, before I even got to know her. Your illustration gave me the strength and the guts to write down her story and go through with it. It was so good, in fact, that Jason Gurley used it as a template for his inspired cover. Thank you, Layla Mosbacher, for plainly and simply being a younger version of Aries and for lending your name to Born-of-Night. Thank you, Amy Mosbacher, for telling me countless times that you couldn't wait for this one to be done so you could finally read it. I would like to thank the children that made it into the book as characters. Mila, Tuari, Amber, Max, and others whose names have been changed to serve the story (Christian, you are an older Kiire for sure, and you, Vroni, very much remind me of Tevis). You have all been a continuous inspiration. This is your story.