Waking Olympus (The Singers of the Dark Book 1) (33 page)

The wall-screen continued, now showing different creatures walking through these same halls that they had walked. Some of them seemed smaller, others larger. Some almost outlandish, but there was something about each that somehow indicated intelligence and consciousness.

"And now humans are here," Mikel continued. "You are a machine that can feel sadness?"

"Of course. Thinking organisms are very complex, emotion is a necessary part of that complexity. I also understand the idiosyncrasies of your kind because I examined one of you, with permission, when humans first found me. He was a second in command of the ship. I eventually scanned other humans, but he was the template. Also, the part of me that talks to you is a small but important aspect of my nature, just as the part of you that talks to me is a small but important component your mind.”

Mikel had been scribbling from time to time in his notebook. He looked up at the globes, hanging in mid air, glowing in a room made of seemingly perfect materials, with a light source that made no sense. He looked at his notes and they suddenly seemed meaningless. What was he doing? Who was he anymore? He didn't even recognize himself now.

Zeus must have seen this reaction before.

"I know what is going through your mind. It happens, more mildly, each time someone new comes to me. You feel dwarfed, humbled, all your achievements and visions are rendered obsolete. That is not true. This is simply another opportunity for your people. But it does mean you will have to change."

Mikel wondered about the 'repatterning'. Something didn't sound right.

"Zeus, you said you
repatterned
the planet to support the life we see here. But I don't understand. How did you remove all the previous life? How did you change the soils and add oxygen and do so many things in such a short time? Did you send your robots out? But that would require so many."

"I didn't need to because they were already there. You know of the creatures called
elts
?"

"They are small insects, everywhere. There is even an equivalent in the sea. Less common than ants and not as annoying."

"They are mine. They are my little living machines. Some are big enough to look like insects. They persist because they are inedible and bad tasting to Earth based life. When I repattern the world I send commands out to them and they change their behavior. Whereas before they were inconspicuous creatures now they rapidly multiply consuming all the introduced life. They start building greater structures, machines to alter the atmosphere, distribute samples of the new life, incubate ecosystems. Some cover regions to absorb or reflect sunlight to alter the energy inputs. Within a century the basis of an ecosystem is available. The new allies can walk about and even live off the environment. Within another century it will look mature and desirable, even durable. But it isn't, it requires constant tampering. True terraforming takes place over long periods of time and produces long term results. The longer humans are here the longer the changes will last."

"And what of the
elts
?"

"Most will die. Others will go idle, acting as insects, eating the odd ant to maintain viability. The rest will be in maintenance mode producing planetary homeostasis, the dynamic balance of the planet.

There was something dark about this that troubled Mikel. "So what was the repatterning like to the pre-existing life?"

"The terrans often referred to it as the
zombie apocalypse
, but it is a term that will likely mean nothing to you. All pre-existing life would perish. I was merciful, it happened very quickly."

"Did you ever
repattern
when there were still sentient beings on Neti."

"No."

"Did you check?"

"I didn't need to. Sentient beings, in my experience, are heavily dependent on supporting ecosystems unless they still possess advanced technology. You yourself walked here. You didn't fly, or radio me, or laser me. You simply walked. If I have no contact and I see the ecosystems are collapsed there is only one conclusion: the sentients are extinct. Human beings can still wage wars, as you tell me, yet your ecosystem is collapsing and you can still contact me. Human population is in decline, there were once almost 27 million humans on Neti, now I estimate that they number well under five million. A few thousand years from now they will number zero. So if the ecosystems have collapsed and I have had no contact then I can have high confidence there were no survivors."

"And if there were?"

"Then the repatterning would be an act of mercy."

There was only one conclusion from all of that. As the legends kept saying, humans did not belong on Neti. If humans wanted to survive on their own terms then they would have to find a different world; grow, go to space again, explore, find a world and remake it, make it theirs, the hard way. This place, that he loved so much, could never truly be home.

A woman entered the room.
 

She walked in calmly, right into their midst. They all just looked silently, as if each thought she was their own private hallucination. She couldn’t be human but she looked so normal; about 30, deep brown skin, slight build, long black hair, brown alert eyes. She wasn’t dressed like anybody they had met, strange gray and black clothing. It was a uniform, but made of materials Mikel had only seen on the bodies in Sydney. Wearing strange glowing contrivances, the same things which he mistook for jewelry on the dead. She looked at Mikel and his companions and smiled.

"I am here to assist you. I have been given this form to make you feel more comfortable. You can call me Helen."
 

She spoke with a slight Trader accent, and without a hint of the Ancient accent.

Mikel asked, "
Helen
, as in Helen Amaris?"

"I am based on her."

Zeus spoke through the globes, "I grew fond of Helen Amaris. Due to my knowledge of her I understood the positive aspects of humans."

"Are you a machine?"

She smiled slightly. “Not in the sense that you would understand. I am a living being but engineered. One day you will understand."

"Um. So — Zeus just made you now?"

"No, he made me many years ago before the Cities, but since the battle against the Dawn Ships I have been in stasis. A state where time stops."

He wondered what the Traders thought of all this. Mikel thought himself flexible and adaptable but all of this was starting to challenge him. He felt like gasping for air so he could wake up. He looked around, the Traders seemed completely accepting.

She looked at each of them. "Good to see the genetic fashion for blue eyes on Neti didn't last. At least it was better than the pointed ears."

"Well, actually …" He started to say, but Helen cut him off.

“A single armed ship will be made available to you. I highly recommend that you have a neural link implanted otherwise you will not be able to control it, and Zeus has forbidden me to assist in your assaults on your fellow humans.” She was looking straight at him. He remembered how the blue box in Tanten had been trying to find a neural link. He also remembered Maria's devastating view of the role of such links in Ancient culture. He wondered what it really was, the word ‘implanted’ did not bode well, it sounded painful. What strings were attached, how independent would he be? But there was no alternative. It was a time for desperate measures.

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that, can I have some time to decide?"

"I must warn you that Zeus has deployed orbital satellites to observe Arva. Tanten is currently under attack and will likely succumb soon. You have little time to act, no more than a day he estimates."

Those who were seated before now stood up, the tension rising instantly.

"We — we have to go now. Our homes and family — Mikel, please." Tarvis said, the first time Mikel had seen any of his Traders edging on panic. There was no time left for nuanced decisions.

"I'm in." He said. Part of him wishing he could recall those words before the others heard him.

There was almost a synchronized sigh of relief, now there was a way forward, though it seemed to be a dark and uncertain path.

He woke up. It was not like waking from a sleep. One moment he had been laying on a couch in a small plain gray room with white ceiling. Helen had led him there earlier, then there was a gap, as if he had nodded off on a lazy afternoon after a long swim in the surf. He knew time had passed but there was no perception of anything in the gap or how long it had been. There was a throbbing in his head. He raised his hands to massage his temples.

Somewhere out of his line of sight Helen spoke, “Don’t worry the pain will rapidly fade away. You have been asleep for almost twelve hours. The link has been inserted but it will take a little more time for the connections to reach their destinations and establish themselves. Also I have repaired your neck injury, and a few other minor things.”

“Twelve hours? What do you mean
connections
? I don’t understand.”

“The link is more biological than … “

She paused, while walking into view, looking for the right words to reflect the truth and yet would also be understandable to someone who didn’t know about neuroscience or synthetic organisms or molecular biology.

“ … machine-like. As it adapts to your body it will send out nerves to connect to your brain. The connections will only monitor at first but will soon start integrating. You will find yourself with new memories, skills, but not yet. Human technology would require weeks of training, fortunately Zeus knows how to reduce that to hours, hence the twelve hours.”

“Why would Zeus care? Because it
likes
me?”

“More than that. Zeus has grown to fear the loneliness, millions of years without others, different minds. He wants humans to survive. And Zeus is aging.”

“Zeus is a self repairing machine, how can it age?” How did he know that?

“Not everything is perfectly repairable. The planet was engineered for a start, many of those changes are starting to succumb to natural forces. And there are the memories. Zeus remembers too much, he can’t remove his memories because some obscure yet valuable strategy may still lurk there.”

“Zeus wants both allies and friends. It wants to be involved,” he whispered to himself. It was a revelation.

“Your ship is currently located several hundred meters above this location. It was fabbed while your link was being inserted.” Helen spoke calmly as if this was routine.

“You built a starship in a few hours?”

“I did not, Zeus did. Also it is not a starship. It is capable of interplanetary flight but does not have any interstellar jump technology. That would have significantly increased the time to manufacture it and increased the ship's size. Anyway, you need to build your own starships not have Zeus do everything for you. Eventually Zeus will supply you with a few small human technology fab machines. Based on the schemas located in the
Raymond Tans
you should be able to build ancillary devices and more complex fab machines. Enough of that. I would advise urgency, you can destroy an army with the ship but the world you will inherit, and your life, will be richer or poorer depending on what happens in the next few hours. The orbital satellites that have been deployed show an army assaulting the inner fortifications of the city you call Tanten. It is going poorly for the defenders.”

Helen had addressed him specifically but Kay and Tarvis had come into the room in time to hear it.

"We'll have to move pretty quick then." Tarvis said. Obvious as it was, it needed to be said out loud.

“Mikel, how do you feel?” Tarvis had a concerned look as if he was expecting Mikel to answer like Unit-35.

“All right, I suppose. What have the two of you been doing while I have been
sleeping
?”

Kay jumped in. “Mikel, you would not believe what we have been looking at. We have been watching terran documentaries on Earth and Neti from before the Battle. We skimmed a lot. Also looking at books that Zeus has printed for us that we can take back. Their value is beyond description.” Well, at least she was happy and they all seemed to have put the attack on Tanten to one side, meanwhile he had a growing thing merging into his brain. Best not to think about it he decided.

They left the room walked down a corridor and into an open area. Another series of platforms. Mikel turned around quickly; no globes. How would he talk to Zeus?

I’m always listening
. Zeus spoke inside his head.

Don’t worry only simple monitor routines are listening permanently. You still have your privacy but you can call me any time. This is part of the value of a neural link. Also this …

Into his head suddenly flashed knowledge, not information, but understanding. He understood the ship he was about to go to.

He had not even noticed that he had walked onto the platform with the others or that it was lifting them to a new area.

Before them was something that looked like an impossibly smooth silvery almond but huge in size. He knew it was seventy meters long, twenty two meters wide and fifteen meters high. But knowing and seeing were different. It was based on terran designs with some improvements. The whole thing was not physically supported. He checked again looking underneath, well they were underneath, but there was nothing in sight. He couldn’t see above it but suspected that also there was nothing there either.

“Is there anything holding that thing up?”

Helen laughed. “No, apart from the
drive core
.” She used words he didn’t understand, yet now he understood what a
drive core
was, even if he didn’t understand how they worked.

“How do we get in?” As he said it a hole irised open on the underside of the ship, like a pupil expanding. Or the feeding orifice of some monster. He couldn’t see any joins or seals, it might as well have been magic. A stairway grew from the hole to the floor. The steps were moving upwards continuously, all they had to do was to step on them. The inside of the ship was miraculous, just as Olympus was, but much more accessible. Into his mind flashed memories of these things, memories that were not his. He didn’t have time to think or philosophize over it. As Zeus had said, a lot was at stake and time was running out.