The Soul Continuum (45 page)

“They took the jewel from the aberration. The humans tampered with it but were not yet ready for us.”

And now more discovery pours into my mind. It was not enough that life should be born as something new. There would be a tipping point, a moment at which the waters of our womb would break and we would be ready for the true birth. The Transcendents—those who set this universe in motion—have been waiting patiently for a sign that life is ready. Seeded within the very core of the quantum foam in which all matter and energy spawned was the call for our rite of passage. Humanity would see into the deep places of the atom, understand the call, and signal its readiness. But we had stumbled upon it too early. Keitus Vieta's jewel was the catalyst, a premature signal triggered by Arken-Bright's experimentation.

I stare down at Edith's writhing form. Her jaw and eyes stretch open, impossibly wide, and snakelike strands of electricity spill from her mouth to spread across the floor. She speaks but with the same voice as Withering's corpse. “They were all killed,” she says, “but not by the aberration they call Keitus Vieta. Something else did this. Something prevented us from hearing the call. Move to the next sequence. We must understand the threat.”

The air comes alive with arcs of electricity as the next phase of the dream approaches, and I wait for the next revelation, still mulling over the significance of what was just said. If neither this entity nor Keitus Vieta was responsible for the deaths at Borealis University, who or what killed
them? They called it the Jagannath, but the name means nothing other than to ascribe a title to some distantly known power. If the Jagannath does exist, it is not the entity—
these Transcendents—that holds me in its grip now.

Before I am able to consider Arken-Bright's life any further, a bright flash startles me. Through a curtain of searing blue light, the
Socrates
roars overhead, and like a snowflake caught in its wake, I hurtle toward the doomed liner. I pass through its hull like a ghost and find myself viewing a darkened cube through the eyes of Silicant 5. It is the moment when she first hears the inexplicable quantum moan, the same call triggered by Arken-Bright, and I realize now that the way her catharsis gland tampered with its own atomic structure was what triggered the signal.

As if woken by the sound, the child Oluvia climbs off her mattress to stand in front of me. She is crawling with nanodrones and her eyes are gone, replaced by blinding furnaces.

As I see Oluvia Wade now, while more data is dredged from my mind, the truth of the Transcendents' plan becomes clearer to me, obvious even. It was not Oluvia Wade who planted the algorithm in my mind. It may have been her body, but it was not her mind. Just as Keitus Vieta possessed the body of a monk when he came from the other side, so too did the entity possess Oluvia Wade's body. The battle between Keitus Vieta and Qod was what eventually drew their attention to the fact that something was wrong. Vieta had been careful until then, choosing to find death rather than cause it to gather the energy he needed. But an atomic disturbance on such a vast scale was easily noticed when Qod was forced to hide from him. Vieta brought her back briefly in her original human form. She was nothing more than a hostage to him, an offer of exchange to Salem Ben
for the return of his daughter, and shortly after that Qod left Oluvia's body to return to her incorporeal state. The empty shell of her body was left behind—an ideal opportunity
for the Transcendents to come through. They wanted to repair the damaged universe and restore balance.

But there was a problem. The possession of Oluvia's body would not hold. They had no inkling of Qod. They had no knowledge of the virus she created to prevent anything else like Keitus Vieta from coming through. And so the entity, disguised as Oluvia Wade, could not survive in our universe for longer than a few minutes. One more resurrection would be necessary, redirecting the signal to the closest genoplant—my Soul Consortium—so that Oluvia's body would be resurrected there, and there was just enough time to pass on its investigative mission to someone who was not impacted by the virus. Me. It had to do it surreptitiously so that I would not resist, and Oluvia's form would likely elicit Qod's trust if the algorithmic implantation was discovered.

It worked. We have been expertly played.

The child Oluvia facing me speaks. “This one called herself Silicant 5. She recognized the call, but the humans were still not ready. Silicant 5 believed she was responsible for their deaths. She was not.” The child Oluvia tilts her head as if confused or frustrated. “The aggressor is unknown, but the method of destruction is identical to the previous sequence and to their current plight. Subatomic nanodrone manipulation. It used their star and the hull of
the ship. We need more information. We must determine the source of this attack from the being they call the Jagannath.
It may also be the cause of humanity's stagnation.”

Subatomic nanodrone manipulation! The atom is the true battleground. Our universe is not a perfect place. The irresistible force of evolution has left its mark at both macro and micro levels, creating inevitable redundancies of exotic particles that never interact with the physical world that life has come to experience. Human technology has
made use of these redundancies, Qod most of all. She created
quantum recorders to enable the mapping of the entire cosmos and even succeeded in engineering the quantum virus to protect us, but something else has interfered. Something else has learned to manipulate for its own ends everything that Qod has engineered.

The child Oluvia is gone and all I see now is the destruction
of the
Socrates
. One small spark of light remains, shooting like a comet toward the destination planet, its pilot desperate to escape the oncoming storm. In a moment he or she will fail and Oluvia's foster parents will be gone. Only Silicant 5 will remain, shielding the child for as long as she can before the end. Somehow, some way, I know that both of them survive the incident. Oluvia will be redirected to a genoplant, where she will be resurrected and go on to become one of the most notable figures of history, and Silicant 5 will be rescued after a very long time by the Unitas Communion. They will go on to become the Great AI.

Only a void remains now and the Transcendents' multilayered voice.

“This one's task is incomplete. We need more. The entity this one calls Qod still resists us and we cannot break through. We must find the source of human stagnation and the aggressive force with which it now fights. We must possess this one, enhance the algorithm, and send it
back. We will see through its eyes and learn all that we can. Qod must not be aware of our presence and must also be convinced of closure, or it will find a way to resist the algorithm.”

I feel a rush of energy and then sudden and certain death.

Cellular generation complete.

Circulatory systems stimulated.

Neural transfer complete.

Subject 9.98768E+14 resurrection successful.

As if emerging from a thick wall of mud, I stagger forward. My vision blurs, adjusting to bright white light and the bustling shadows of humanoid forms ahead of me. The deep thrumming of power in the room rattles in my ears as new and tiny ossicles form. Volume fluctuates then settles and my flesh tingles as hands reach to pull me out of the genoplant. For a moment my head throbs and my lungs ache. Nanodrones make final adjustments to mech-cells that govern my nervous system, and with a quick twist of my neck and clenching of my fists to test my muscles, strength quickly returns. I am lucid again.

“Salem! Is that you?”

“Qod?” I call back. “It's such a relief to hear your voice.”

“Are you all right?”

“I think so. Are we still under attack?”

My feelings of relief quickly fade when Qod doesn't answer and I am surrounded by a host of gray-robed Salem Bens with grim faces that confirm the news is not good. Among them stands Shalom with his metallic implants. He is shivering and looks haggard. There are dark rings around his eyes dulling the fire there, and he is bleeding from the edges of the graftings melded to his arms, face, and ribs, as if his body is rejecting the implants. Demetri is here too, reunited with his nanodrones, and Seventy-Seven steps forward in front of them to greet me, but there is no sign of Ironius.

The Control Core's metallic voice shatters the silence.

Soul Consortium iteration ninety-seven has been consumed by an unknown aggressor.

“As you can hear, the Jagannath is still attacking, Salem, yes. It's not going well for us, so please don't distract Qod any further,” says Seventy-Seven. “We've lost scores of Consortiums while you were in the rift. The strategy is already starting to fail and there are only a few of us left. Most of us have been resurrected in your genoplant, but soon there won't be enough of us left to . . .” He sighs deeply and shakes his head as his gaze falls to the floor.

“I hope Oluvia's algorithm gave you what you needed,” Demetri says.

I want to tell them that it wasn't Oluvia who planted the algorithm and that the Transcendents behind the rift are not responsible for the attack, but instead I say, “It did, yes, but we have to act quickly. I know how to stop this.”

Seventy-Seven's gaze quickly lifts from the floor, new hope rising in his eyes. “You do? It worked? What happened in there?”

I wonder how much I will be allowed to say.

“The rift is actually a quantum node of sorts,” I tell him. “It's like a hyperdata storage facility for the universe—a nervous system, if you will—and I learned a lot there.”

“How did you interface with it?” Demetri asks.

“The algorithm. It did all the work. Follow me to the Navigation Sphere.”

I take a fresh robe offered to me by Seventy-Seven and push past them as I put it on, making my way with strong
strides out of the genoplant, but inwardly I don't feel confident. I feel like Salomi Deya all over again. This is me talking, my thoughts and feelings verbalized, but there is another
part of me trapped by the reconstructed algorithm, not able to share everything I have learned. Something vast and unknowable crawls inside the secret places of my mind. and I no longer know if I am truly me or if I am something else made to feel and act like me. I feel real, but I have already been manipulated once. Then something occurs to me: if I doubt my own will, then this is surely evidence that something of the real me must still exist, however subdued. This is master and slave. I am allowed to think and act according to my own volition as long as my prime consideration is to fulfill the will of the entity that now inhabits me.

The others follow close behind, asking questions as I continue on, but it is only Shalom who concerns me. I see him from the corner of my eye, struggling to keep up, grimacing with each step, and I realize why my attention is centered on him. My recollection of Salomi Deya's life has relevance to me, too, and I stop halfway down the passage. Seventy-Seven almost falls into me.

“Shalom, what happened to you?” I ask.

He looks at me, questioning the relevance of my query. “My implants are failing,” he says. “They are trying to eat into my body. I don't know why.”

“Nanodrones,” I tell him. “We're under attack from nanodrones.”

“Nanodrones!” Seventy-Seven looks shocked. “But the Jagannath—”

“—is using our technology against us,” I say. “It's not possessing a body like Keitus Vieta did; it's possessing our technology. It did so with the
Socrates
and it's doing exactly the same to us.” I look at Shalom. “And that's why your implants are failing you.”

“Then why isn't Demetri affected?” Seventy-Seven asks.

“My nanodrones are isolated,” Demetri says. “There are thousands of different strains of nanodrones. If Three is right, then the Jagannath only needs to possess one strain, the strain the Soul Consortium uses to run its subsystems. Are we talking about the Great AI? Were they possessed by the Jagannath when they left our universe?”

“It's a distinct possibility,” I tell him. “But I doubt it. When the Great AI returned, they destroyed entire galaxies. It's a far cry from the limited destruction our enemy has demonstrated here.”

“But Qod's virus is what has limited that destruction,” Demetri says.

I nod, but something tells me this is not true, and I think back to my earlier conversation with Qod. She speculated that the Great AI wanted to merge with Oluvia to replicate what they originally achieved through the child Oluvia Wade when Silicant 5 rescued her from the
Socrates
. The Transcendents talked of stagnation, and I wonder if the Great AI discovered them. If the Great AI was deemed part of humanity's stagnation, they might have tried to protect themselves by attempting to merge with humanity in the form of Qod to attempt evolution and, therefore, escape judgment. I feel a surge within me, the algorithm or whatever has possessed me acknowledging this, but I refrain from sharing.

Soul Consortium iteration forty-one has been consumed by an unknown aggressor.

“We can speculate later,” I tell the others. “Right now, we have to eliminate this threat . . . Qod?”

“Yes, Salem, I have been listening. I have run a scan and I can confirm what you say is true. The Jagannath was very thorough in masking its tracks. I have detected abnormal behavior in all the Soul Consortiums' nanodrones. Essentially, we've been fighting our own systems without even realizing it. But Salem, I have no solution to—”

“I do.” I resume my strides, continuing toward the Navigation Sphere. “This will be a two-stage operation. We're going to shut down the rift and then we're going to shut down the Jagannath.”

“How?”

“Salomi Deya.”