CHAPTER 18
I was escorted back down to the observation room the next morning. It was bustling with activity, in stark contrast to the day before. I sat in one of the chairs facing the armored glass window and waited for someone to tell me what to do next. Professor Farseer sat nearby and he was positively giddy. The man was visibly fidgeting with anticipation. He nervously rubbed his hands together and wouldn’t stop talking.
“This is such an honor, such an incredible honor,” he said, excitedly. “She is the chosen Avatar of the Seraph and now I will get to join her!”
“Since we’re both here, I assume that Taranis told the doc to do what Cassandra said?”
“Oh yes. If I’m too reckless, then Arjun is by far too cautious. He doesn’t view the Seraph for what it is. To him, it’s just a thing to study, like a germ under a microscope. The audacity!”
“You’re pretty excited about this, huh?”
“Oh indeed. It’s what I hoped for from the moment we realized it was conscious. I would have taken Cassandra’s place if I could have. To think she was initially reluctant!”
“I think that might have something to do with the fact that the first guy got his brain melted and died, not to mention Dr. Ivery going crazy. Seems like there are a lot of risks to what she’s doing.”
“There are dangers, there’s no denying that,” he admitted. “Still, can you honestly say it isn’t worth the risk? You’re an investigator by trade, surely you have a sense of curiosity. Would that alone not drive you to make the attempt?”
“All things in moderation, Professor, curiosity included. This is as interesting to me as anyone else, I guess, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking to connect my mind to an ancient alien . . . being, life-form, whatever you want to call it. Especially not after what happened to the others who tried.” I pointed to the side my head, “I don’t even have a neural link. I was never excited by the prospect of plugging a computer into my brain.”
“Really?” he asked, eyebrows raised, then frowned. “I understand your point of view, but for me? There is nothing I would not have given for such an opportunity, and at last I will have my chance! I have so many questions, so much I hope to learn in the communion.”
Communion sure was an interesting choice of word. “You’re hoping for immortality, too, then? Can’t say I blame you. I just hope it’s worth it in the end.”
He frowned again. “I assure you it’s not like that,” he said, defensively. “At least, not for me. Xavier has long been the Foundation’s biggest and most generous supporter on Nova Columbia, but he and I don’t . . . well, we don’t necessarily agree on the goals of the project.”
Interesting, I thought. “Is that right? How so? If you don’t mind me asking.”
He hesitated for a moment, then leaned closer to me. “Truth be told, I fear we are being too presumptuous with the Seraph, that perhaps we are daring to ask too much.”
“Fortune favors the bold,” I said.
“Certainly! However, there’s a fine line between boldness and impudence,” he said, voice lowered. “There is much I’m willing to ask of the Seraph, but I worry that Xavier may be crossing the line from asking to demanding. It is not our place to make demands.”
There was reverence in his voice, like a preacher talking about God. “Have you, uh, brought this up with him?” I asked.
“Of course. Xavier thinks I may be projecting my own feelings onto the Seraph, which in and of itself would be an audacious act of hubris. I will admit that sometimes our passions can cloud our judgment, and interpreting the will of such a vast intellect can be difficult.”
“Cassandra compared it to a cat trying to understand the mind of its human owner.”
“A fitting analogy,” the professor said, “but perhaps too generous. Replace the cat with an insect and it may be closer to the truth.”
“Let me ask you something, Professor. Why haven’t you interfaced with the Seraph yourself? Before today, I mean. You don’t seem scared.”
“It’s not a simple as all that,” he said. “I tried such a communion after Cassandra left to recover.”
“Didn’t go so well, hey?”
“It didn’t go at all,” he said, regret in his voice. “I was . . . rejected. In Cassandra’s absence it would accept no others. It has stable synchronicity with her. The connection goes both ways, you know; you touch its mind and it touches yours. There is a very real danger of losing yourself.”
“Is that what happened to Dr. Ivery? She seemed a little . . . off.”
“Indeed, and yes. Until now, Cassandra remained its sole chosen Avatar. The best we could do was witness from afar. As you will see, the observation equipment here allows us to analyze the audiovisual feedback we receive. Much of what it shows us is . . . how shall I put this? Enigmatic. Up for interpretation, if you will. It fell to that young woman alone to decipher the will of the Seraph for us, as she was the only one whose mind it would touch. You understand now why we needed her back so badly.”
“I guess.”
“That changes today, though,” he said. “Today everything changes.”
“What are you going to ask it?”
“There are so many things I’d like to know. I think to begin I’ll tell it how grateful I am for the opportunity, thank it for finding me worthy of sharing its wisdom.”
“Opening with flattery can be a good strategy,” I said.
The heavy door to the test chamber slid open. A technician in a gray-and-orange coverall stepped out and approached us. “Professor Farseer, we’re ready for you now. Please follow me.”
“Splendid!” he said, standing up.
“Good luck in there, Professor,” I said.
The technician turned to me. He was a young man, early thirties at most. “Mr. Novak, over there you’ll find the four observation stations. You’re the only one using them today, so choose any one you like. We will begin in a few minutes.”
“You got it,” I said. As the technician returned to the test chamber and sealed the door behind him, I found the nearest observation station and sat down in it. It was a big, padded, reclining chair, with a bulky VR headset on a stand next to it. I adjusted the chair to my liking but didn’t put the headset on just yet.
Dr. Sarkar was in the test chamber, watching as a pair of technicians strapped the professor into the chair next to Cassandra. He stood out because of his smart visor and his stark white lab coat. The others were dressed in the gray-and-orange coveralls. Aside from a pair of armed security guards by the door, I was now alone in the observation room. I noticed that none of the personnel currently present wore the insignia of the Cosmic Ontological Foundation.
“Five-minute warning,” one of the technicians announced over a loudspeaker. The professor, like Cassandra, was plugged in now, his face concealed by a virtual reality visor. With nothing else to do and no one to talk to, I put my own headset on and settled in. It was a full-face helmet type with a panoramic display. At first there was nothing but darkness and silence. It was so quiet I could hear myself breathing, as the earphones did an excellent job of canceling out all external sounds. Headsets like this were designed to allow you to talk in the simulation without bystanders being able to hear you.
After about a minute the blinked on, white text on a blue background, as the system went through it’s boot-up cycle. That completed, the display read stand by for several minutes, followed up by connected.
Then the panoramic display lit up, filling my field of vision with bright, silver-white light that, as if through a prism, split into an entire spectrum of colors. A timer at the bottom of the screen started counting down from ten minutes. My ears were filled with deep, pulsing reverberations, strange sounds I can’t describe, rising to a crescendo then receding again. It was like an audio playback of natural radio signals from deep space, except a thousand times more complex. Gradually the noise coalesced into a series of discernable patterns, like unearthly music. The longer I listened, the more layers I realized there were to the sounds. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up, and I felt a chill go down my spine.
I was startled when a synthesized rendition of Cassandra’s voice sounded in the earphones. “What you’re hearing are the electromagnetic signals emanating from the Seraph,” she said. She was speaking to me through her neural link, her mind creating an approximation of what she thought her voice should sound like. “It can be translated in a variety of ways, but I’ve found that listening to it is the most impactful. You’re hearing the music of its thoughts, echoes from the depths of its mind. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She was right; it was. It was haunting and ethereal, awe-inspiring and unnerving at the same time. In my imagination I was able to feel its presence.
“We can’t stay connected for too long,” she continued. “The neurological strain can be dangerous. Today, I’m going to ask the Seraph if it remembers how it got here, if it can convey to me what happened, and see if it wants to answer that. Any visual feedback we get will be translated onto your displays. After that, I will ask it if it will tell us why the Seraphim seemingly wiped out the First Antecessor Race.”
The screen went dark for another full minute, and the celestial music faded into the distance. The timer counted down and I wondered if it wanted to answer those particular questions. Asking someone how he died and why he committed genocide might be a touchy subject.
All at once a scene came into focus. I was hundreds of feet in the air, a gray, rocky wasteland laid out before me. The sky was overcast with dark clouds and smoke. I realized then that what I was seeing was from the point of view of the Seraph, and my jaw fell open in awe.
A hole opened in the sky and a horrendous creature poured out of it, a black mass of limbs and spikes. It was as big as the Seraph, with what looked like a single great, red eye. As the first monstrosity landed on the ground, kicking up a huge cloud of dust on its four legs, another appeared, landing next to it. In their unnatural-looking appendages each of the creatures held one of the two Spears.
The Seraph seemed to focus on the first one and, holding one of its forelimbs out before it, produced a blinding beam of white light. In a flash one of the two hideous creatures was hit, blasted apart by the beam, and disintegrated to ash. Its crab claw–like arm incinerated, the Spear fell to the ground, disappearing into the dust and smoke.
The Seraph transitioned its attention to the second creature as it lunged forward with a shrill, piercing scream, moving faster than anything that big should be capable of. It had a grotesque tentacle wrapped around the second Spear and tried to impale the Seraph with it. The ancient being held both its forelimbs up and conjured a transparent barrier, some manner of energy shield, and blocked the attacker’s thrusts.
Seemingly enraged, the black creature shrieked again and stabbed at the Seraph wildly, each blow failing to penetrate the shield. Behind it, three more of the terrifying black creatures materialized, each one an unnatural corpus of limbs, tentacles, and claws, differing in size, shape, and quantity. They all had that same unblinking eye, though, red and angry.
The Seraph was able to push the attacking creature back, send it flailing to the ground in a huge impact. Somehow levitating up into the sky, the Seraph pointed its limbs downward at the toppled creature, brought them together, and obliterated it in another beam of pure white light. When the smoke and dust cleared there was no sign of the creature, just a bowl-shaped crater in the ground.
In a splash of darkness in the sky, one of the hostile creatures appeared in the air, above the Seraph, clutching one of the Spears with its bony limbs. The black mass came down upon the Seraph, its red eye blazing, emitting an ear-piercing, unnatural scream as it fell. I watched, helplessly, as the Seraph tried to raise its shield, but it was too late. The Spear plunged into the Seraph’s carapace. Whatever force was holding it aloft failed and the Seraph fell to the primordial surface of Nova Columbia.
The images were blurrier now. The Seraph managed to stand up as the three huge, black monsters moved in. Shakily raising one forelimb, it produced a third light beam and blasted one of them, vaporizing the creature’s top half. The remainder of it crumbled to dust as it died.
Then the second Spear was plunged deep into the Seraph’s body. It looked down at itself, weakly trying to pull long, black harpoons out of its body, but its strength failed. It fell to its side, impacting the ground in one final eruption of dust and ash. The remaining hostile creatures, their red eyes smoldering as the Seraph’s vision faded to black, screamed in harmonious unison at their victory.
The scene, the memory, whatever it was, ended, and I was again alone in the quiet darkness of the VR headset. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. I was sweating and breathing faster. Even without the direct neural connection, it had felt so vivid, so real.
Before I was ready the display activated again. The first image it showed me was what had to be a member of the alien species we called the First Antecessor Race. It didn’t look exactly like the image of it that Lily had shown me before; its exoskeleton was infused with technological devices, though I could only guess at what they did.
The image rapidly zoomed out, away from the alien, until an image of one of their starships filled the screen. It resembled the ancient hulk discovered in the Trappist-1 system centuries ago, but was intact. It was an ugly monstrosity, vaguely organic in appearance, its exterior covered in lumps and protruding spines. The image continued to zoom out, showing first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of similar ships of different shapes and sizes.
Through these images the Seraph told a fragmented story about the First Antecessor Race. Cassandra had told me that the enemy of the Seraphim was something they called the Void Tyrant. Whatever it was, First Antecessors seemed to worship it as a god. In its name, they crossed the cosmos, wiping out all life before them. It was the unseen enemy that engineered them, indoctrinated them, gave them advanced technology like vacuum-energy engines, and unleashed them on the universe. Countless life-bearing worlds in our galaxy and beyond were burned and rendered lifeless.
Then, as quickly as they had begun, the images ceased and I was once again left in darkness. I’d had about all I could take, and was about to remove the headset, when I heard the facsimile of Cassandra’s voice in my ears again.
“Easy, please listen carefully,” she said. “Neither the Seraph nor Dr. Sarkar are aware of this conversation. It’s just me. I can speak freely, but I don’t have much time. I need your help.”
“What . . . what do you need?” I said, hoping like hell the VR helmet’s sound dampening worked like it was supposed to.
“When the session is over, Professor Farseer will be a devoted, unquestioning acolyte. His mind is receptive to suggestion and the indoctrination is nearly complete.”
“My God, what are you doing to the man?”
“The Seraph is giving him what he desperately wants: a god he can believe in. I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday. What . . . what if everything the Seraph is showing us is all lies? What if Dagny is right, and as soon as we let it go it’ll kill us all?”
“I guess that’s a possibility.”
“We have a plan to set the Seraph free. The professor will help us after this. He will do anything I ask him to do, at least for a while. I just . . . I need to know if I’m doing the right thing, Easy. Dagny is afraid. Everyone else here is manipulating me. The Seraph, as close as I feel to it, could just be manipulating me like it is Professor Farseer. It’s suffering and it will do whatever it can to escape. You’re the only one I can talk to who doesn’t have his own agenda.”
Is this really happening? I wondered. Is it really all going to come down to me? “I’m just a detective, kid, I can’t decide the fate of the world.”
“Easy, please,” Cassandra pleaded. “I’m scared and I’m losing my mind and I don’t know what to do.” I could hear the fear in the synthesized rendition of her voice.
“Okay, okay, just let me think for a moment. Alright, look at it logically. If the Seraph was just lying to you, why hasn’t it been telling you what they want to hear all along? Sure, I’ll give you immortality, just pull the Spear out! Why did it decide to talk to you and not somebody easier to manipulate, like the professor? Why would it have even shown you anything about the destruction of the First Antecessors? Doing that only gave us cause to be afraid of it.”
“That . . . that does make sense,” she said.
“I’m not qualified to analyze an alien mind, but reason and logic still matter. If it was hostile or malevolent, why did it go silent when you were gone instead of just picking the next guy who plugged in? Seems to me that, for whatever reason, it wanted to talk to you, specifically. In a way it put its trust in you, didn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“You’re the only one here who has been able to directly talk to that thing. I know it’s been hard on you, I know it’s affecting your mind, but you’re not crazy. The fact that you’re cognizant enough to ask for advice tells me it hasn’t brainwashed you.”
“So . . . I should trust it?”
“You need to trust your gut, Cassandra. That’s how I do my job and it’s the only thing you can do now. Listen to what your instincts are telling you. What feels like the right thing to do?”
“I . . . I think we should set it free.”
“Are you sure?”
She was quiet for a few seconds. “As sure as I can be.”
“Alright, then. Do what you need to do.”
“Thank you, Easy. Don’t tell Dagny about this, not yet. Just tell her that I love her.”
The communication ended before I could answer. The screen turned blue again, with white text that read session ended. I took the headset off and, with shaking hands, set it aside. Standing up, I walked over to the observation window and watched as the technicians removed Cassandra and the professor from the interface station. Cassandra was unconscious and they gently loaded her onto a gurney.
The professor, on the other hand, was shaky, but managed to stand up on his own. One of the technicians guided him out into the observation room. At the same time, a couple of his COF attendants came in and steadied the old man. I was supposed to ride with him back to the elevator to get out of the pit. “Are you okay, Professor?” I asked.
He was leaning heavily on his assistants now, his coverall soaked with sweat. He looked at me, wide-eyed, and put a hand on my shoulder. “My eyes have been opened, Mr. Novak,” he said, weakly. “Come with us. There is much to do.”