The Soul Continuum (40 page)

“Oluvia!” I cry. “Where are you?”

But my own call is drowned out by the violent wail of the invisible beast. Could it really be me doing this? Did the wrath of my subconscious return when I activated my catharsis gland to maximum? Am I so full of suppressed resentment and hatred that it should manifest into a force so powerful it can destroy an entire galactic liner? Could I truly do this?

“Mother!”

At first I think it must be someone else. A different child calling out for its parent, but then I remember that Oluvia was the only child on the
Socrates
. It has to be her, and when I look in the direction of the call, I see that it is. A miracle! She is here.

“Oluvia!”

“I came back looking for you,” she shouts. “I didn't want you to leave.”

She is floating little more than a hundred meters from me, arms outspread as she drifts in my direction. All I need to do is wait to catch her. Again the emotions well up so powerfully within me I scarcely know how to react, so I say nothing and simply stretch out my arms, ready to receive her. She shouts something else, but her voice is overpowered by a splintering sound so loud it hurts. Above us our world is disintegrating. A massive crack snakes its way across the skin of New GateLand, but it cannot complete its path. It explodes outward, and through it, the last remaining contents of our once magnificent civilization pour out from the wound. People, buildings, art, industry, pride. Everything. And alongside the deafening howl of escaping heat and oxygen, the other haunting moan harmonizes.

My fingers clasp onto Oluvia's and I pull her to me, holding her to my breast, protecting her from these last terrible
moments. There is nothing left to do now but crunch us both into a tight ball and wait for death. My hope is that we will both resurrect in a genoplant in our home galaxy, but even this I doubt. Whatever destructive power has brought this death upon us is not just exploding the liner and its provinces but somehow blinking them out of existence, and
I fear it will have also annihilated the light-year transmission nodes that lead back to our original home like bread crumbs.

Oluvia's face is pressed hard to my chest, her fingers are claws in my back, and I hear her weeping in terror as we fall upward toward the crack and the waiting icy void.

“Not long now, Oluvia. It will soon be over,” I whisper.

The vastness of space receives us. I know we are not feeling absolute zero yet, and even as we are thrown clear of the protective shell of the province, there are a few seconds of air left. Just enough time for me to activate the protective bubble that every passenger is implanted with. It acts as a life raft providing enough warmth and air for six hours, but there is no hope of rescue out here. None at all.

“I don't want to die,” Oluvia says.

I have no response for her. No words of comfort, but even as I try to think of something to say, the thoughts freeze in my mind. There is a face: a terrible, wrath-filled face, perfectly assembled from the remaining wreckage, gas clouds, and plasma storms. It gazes upon us from the burning heavens, glowering over the broken bubble of our province like a spiteful goddess wanting its wayward subjects to see who had smote them. But this is not just any face. I recognize the eyes. They are Oluvia's eyes! There could be no greater proof of my fallen nature than this manifestation of my guilt. I can no longer deny what my senses reveal, and convulsing with the shock of it, I release Oluvia from my grip. She is limp, unconscious within the bubble. At least she did not get to see her own angel of death at the end.

The titanic eyes turn on me. They are fiery orbs of pure malevolence, a mirror to my madness, snuffing out everything so that there will never be any sign of our existence,
even if another ship were to ever venture here. I want to switch off the catharsis gland completely and go back to machine
emotion where the intensity of feeling is nothing compared to this, but I will not give in to such cowardice. With those eyes focused upon me now, the only remaining morsel of matter at the edge of this new galaxy, it will soon be over. I deserve to feel this. I deserve to suffer.

And with a final burst of defiance I send every last mote of power into my catharsis gland to push it far beyond its capacity: 115 percent. I will feel this. I will feel
everything
before the end.

T
his is not catharsis. This is something else. A merging. Or a mental cloning. Overload? Perhaps. Madness? Yes. I feel nothing now. Even as the impossible melding of fire and darkness consumes me in the final moment of Planck time, where I stand on the brink of white infinity, I know only my own insanity. I am able to reason, able to
think, but I cannot make any sense of this event. Yes. It is a merging. I am sure of that. Something has happened between
me and the child Oluvia Wade. Something unique and profound that I do not understand. The organ, the catharsis gland, did something. Beneath the dance of molecule and atom, we came together as one being, one flesh, one mind, one purpose, one goal, one . . .

L
ife . . . one woman . . . one god . . . one void.

There are no stars or gas clouds, and there is no more destruction. My psyche is finally quiet and the monstrous thing that sent the
Socrates
to oblivion has ceased.

All is white. All is gone. Only I remain adrift in a sea of crisp air, riding a soft and ebbing current, flowing like liquid through an infinite stream, twisting and turning like a dancer in flight, phasing and shifting like a waveform. And then the waves pass, and I have been beached upon a formless shore. For a time there is nothing but the bleached unreality of emptiness, but then, there is sound. At first I think it is a distant gale, like the walls of a vast tornado closing in whilst I wait in its eye, but the sickness of memory reminds me that I have heard this noise before. It is the moan of the entity calling, and to offer substance to my fears, the white fades to roiling coils of thick smoke from which dark orbs filled with slavering jaws push against each other, snapping and yawning wide to devour me. Lightning and thunder crackle and boom, reverberating through the suffocating ether as I fall sidelong into a vast throat, only to be devoured over and over again until suddenly, all is returned to stillness.

But this time it is not white that surrounds me but clinging darkness and a guttural howl to compete with my own desperate scream. But then, as I lose my breath with the effort of it, the moan dissolves into soft words.

“Did you find . . . what you were looking for?”

That voice, I recognize it. It is different, older and deeper
but . . . “Oluvia?”

“You mean Qod, but there is part of Oluvia here, of course.”

“You're here?”

“For now.”

It isn't her. It can't be her. “How did you . . . ?”

“Take your . . . time, Salem. Sixteen minutes, to be exact.”

It is warm in here, and humid, but cold metal fastens my wrists and ankles, and I am grateful for that. Incarceration is too good for me. I do not know who my captors are or why they saw fit to torture me with such visceral imagery and sensation, but to hear Olivia's voice means that at least she is safe. I saved her somehow. Didn't I?

“Release me!” I demand.

“Steady, Salem. I almost lost your life support. The WOOM is . . . difficult to sustain . . . while . . .”

The WOOM. That's where I am. I am Salem Ben.

A long rattling breath escapes me and an unfamiliar
sensation of air passing in and out of my lungs catches me by surprise. As a silicant, breathing was more like continuous filtration than the steady in-out of an organic diaphragm. There is real blood pumping through my veins, too. I am back. Free from the terrible pain of being
Homo unitas
. Memories of Silicant 5's life and Salem's life trickle slowly into my synapses, separating and sorting so that identity
returns and, with the transition, a merciless sense of urgency.
I feel the algorithm pressing upon my will, desperate to send me on to the next step of my quest.

“I'm back, Qod! And yes, this time I
did
find what I was looking for, though I have to admit, I'm not sure what it is, but the algorithm knows. Oluvia, she . . . are you all right?”

“I . . . underestimated the Jagannath, Salem. Every time I adjust the virus, it . . . comes back twice as hard. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes it waits, as if it is trying to catch me off guard.”

“How long do we have?”

“I don't know. It could be days, it could be years. I managed to hold out this long for you, but the entity grows ever more resourceful. What were you saying about Oluvia?”

“She was on board the
Socrates
with Silicant 5, but she came here too, to implant this algorithm. It has to mean something. There has to be a connection.”

The shackles fall away and I am free. I sense Qod is feeling relieved that she can finally let go of me. Ahead, the WOOM lips stretch open wide as if to belch me from its throat, and I step forward, trying to set aside the disturbing images I saw in the neural flush. The metallic tendrils of the Sub-human Sphere pluck me out and drop me clumsily near the entrance.

“Are you sure you're all right?” I ask.

“Distracted. That's all,” Qod says. “I can hold the entity back with greater potency now that I have you here. So . . . Oluvia Wade was on board the
Socrates
?”

“Yes. You didn't know?”

“I . . . know almost everything,” she says, “but I have no reason to recall everything, even if it pertains to me. I've had a very long life, you know, and right now I am . . . finding it hard to focus.”

“Well, if you did happen to recall Oluvia's youth, you would find out more about the origin of the Great AI. I can't say with 100 percent conviction, but I believe the end of Silicant 5's life is where they . . . and you began.”

I am relieved to walk out of the stormy sphere and into the clinically lit passage, but even more so to be making my way toward the Navigation Sphere.

“Nobody knows where the Great AI originated,” she says. “We know that it spawned from the Unitas Communion, but pinpointing the moment it moved from self-awareness to hypersentience is like trying to pinpoint the moment that apes became humans. It was a gradual ascent.”

“No,” I tell her, still marching purposefully on. “It was the merging of Silicant 5 with Oluvia Wade. There was nothing gradual about it. It all happened in the blink of an eye. I don't think Silicant 5 recognized that, but I have the benefit of hindsight. Oluvia's life—as it was—ended at the merging, but I am certain that's what saved them from the Jagannath, though I didn't witness that part of her life. We know she was resurrected in a genoplant back in her home galaxy, probably with fractured memories from that time, but her original body was . . . fused somehow with Silicant 5's. There was a physical and mental bonding. I felt the beginning of it.”

Qod adds, “And the length of Silicant 5's file supports your theory. The additional millions of years must be indicative of the hybrid combination. She may have existed in that condition for thousands of years before eventually being found, rescued, and reintegrated with the Unitas Communion. That would have been the true birth of the Great AI, ending millions of years later when they merged with the older version of Oluvia Wade to become me. What a fascinating origin I have!”

Qod sounds better now, but I wonder if our conversation may soon become just as much of a distraction as my return in the WOOM was.

“Interesting,” continues Qod. “Very interesting. It would explain a great deal.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she says. “Can't you appreciate the symmetry?”

“Of course, yes! The Great AI merging with Queen Oluvia Wade is a repeat of the way Silicant 5 merged with the child version of Oluvia Wade. They remember that Silicant 5 survived the Jagannath when they merged, so perhaps they assumed the same strategy would work again.”

I pass through two sets of doors and an egg-shaped lobby to head into another long passage.

“Did you see the Jagannath in Silicant 5's life?” Qod asks.

“No, not exactly. Something terrible destroyed the
Socrates
, but Silicant 5 was . . . well, she was disturbed, I think. She was hallucinating toward the end. Her emotion
al condition was in a very bad way. Guilt, remorse, fear—all those things played havoc with her imagination. She saw . . .”

Qod gives me a moment. “What did she see?”

“I can't be sure. A lot of what I saw may have been contaminated by the imagery of your own battle during the neural flush. And Silicant 5—she was wracked with false guilt, thinking she was responsible for all the destruction. I think she saw . . . Oluvia. It was like a gigantic face coming out of the stars. She looked horrific, full of hatred. But the strangest thing was that it wasn't the child version of Oluvia she saw; it was the adult, the same Oluvia you showed us in that recording of her coming to implant the algorithm. I think reality got confused for me when she was merging and I was experiencing the neural flush.”

“That's possible, Salem, but I have to ask . . . where are you going?”

“The Navigation Sphere.”

“Really?” Her voice is suspicious. “This is most unusual. You always go straight to the Observation Sphere after living an archived life.”

“Not this time.”

“Why? Is it the algorithm?”

“Yes.”

“I don't like this, Salem.”

“Why not? You . . . or the Oluvia version of you, put the algorithm there. We have to trust her.”

“I know, but—”

“But you don't like not knowing what's going on.”