First Contact

Chapter 965: The Shadows of Twilight

Man plans. God laughs. The Universe howls with laughter.

Nakteti stared up the slope of Mount Meru, up at the ring of clouds that circled the very top of the eight thousand meter tall mountain. She stood at the base, having walked with Surscee, Chuck, and Magnus from the mat-trans. The day was warm, a light breeze cooling the fur and the skin, with streaks of clouds in the blue sky that gave no hint to the storm only hours before.

"How do we get up there, to the City of Souls?" Nakteti asked.

Magnus pointed at a small building. "You can take the tram if you wish," he pointed slightly upward and Nakteti could see a thin white line snaking back and forth up the mountain. "Or you can take the Stairway to Olympus, home of the Ancient Gods."

"Walk?" Nakteti asked.

"I intend to," Magnus said. He touched his forehead with two fingers in a strange, formal motion. "As my ancestors did, to beg the Gods themselves for boons, so shall I walk their path."

"I will join my brother," Surscee said. She smiled. "There will be temptations along the path. Ambrosia, fruit of the Gods. Golden apples, red dates, pomegranates, all such temptations for ones such as Magnus and I."

Nakteti just nodded, her eyes tracing the winding path of white stone. She could see small temples and buildings, columns and statues, along the path.

"May I join you?" Chuck asked.

Surscee smiled. "And walk the path of the immortals and gods? I, for one, would be pleased for you to join us along such a path."

Nakteti realized, with a sinking feeling, that she was going to need to climb the steps.

No matter how many thousand of them there were.

"Well, I guess we should get going," she said. She adjusted her leather belt and patted the pouch at her waist. "The day waits for no man," she quoted.

The others nodded and together they walked toward the white path.

Six hours later Nakteti wished she was dead.

She sat next to the fountain, gasping, her legs burning, her gripping arms aching. They were only just past a vast bridge over a place called the "Cleaver of Despair", stopping at fountains, temples, statues, and more in an area paved with white S-style stones.

"We should spent the night here," Magnus said, moving over and sitting on a bench.

Nakteti hated that he looked fresh and ready to keep going.

"How much further?" she asked.

"We are one third of the way up," Magnus said. "We will have to move slowly further up, as the air will be thinner."

"Maybe masks?" Nakteti suggested.

Magnus shook his head. "Nay. This is a test of muscle and bone. As the Detainee tested our souls, loyalty, and oaths, this path tests your resolve and your strength."

Nakteti managed not to groan and looked at Chuck. "At least it's easy for you."

Chuck shook his head. "No," he said. He waved his hand. "This exists in digital space, overlapping what you interact with. It saps my strength, so to speak, by forcing me to devote processing power to simply lift up one foot and set it down," he gave a tired grin. "Whoever built this coded it well."

Nakteti just shook her head. "Seven inch steps," she said. "The steps are knee high on me."

Magnus smiled. "Your commitment is admirable, Captain."

Nakteti looked up the mountain. "I understand, intellectually, why your people would not put an autowalk path, but right now I wish your people were a bit more lazy."

Magnus laughed.

-----

Nakteti staggered over and half collapsed on the bench. Her chest burned, she kept heaving breaths, feeling like she was unable to get a full breath, like she was slightly suffocating. She was covered in sweat, the thin air making must walking up the steps and along the paths an exhausting effort.

"Day Two, I have realized that somehow my knees hurt," Chuck said, sitting next to her. Nakteti noticed his face was covered in glitter and his normally immaculate clothing looked like it was damp. "Curse the programmers who built this."

Surscee walked by, humming to herself, smiling. She paused at the fountain, watching the fireflies move around it.

"Day Two, I have come to hate my companions," Chuck whispered, leaning over to speak softly to Nakteti.

Nakteti laughed. "Day Two, I have come to the realization that my companions may be some kind of robot."

Surscee laughed, turning to face Chuck and Nakteti. "Our steps are lighter," she smiled.

"How?" Chuck grumped.

"I walk in the footsteps of the Ancients. Of my ancestors. Upon the soil of Lost Atlantis, destroyed in the Mantid Attack. I walk the paths of ancient heroes up the slopes of Mount Meru to Olympus itself," she said. "The joy makes my limbs lighter, fills my chest with sweet resolve," she inhaled deeply, her breasts rising.

"Yeah, they're full of something," Nakteti grumbled.

Surscee laughed again. "You will look back upon this trip with fondness in your twilight years. You will tell your progeny that bravely walked these steps, your head held high. You will forget your exhaustion, the endless toil to take each step, and remember only your victory and the wonder."

Nakteti hung her head and nodded.

"And Lo, did the Traveler climb the steps of Mount Meru, upon Holy Lost Atlantis, a song in her heart, with flashing eyes and tousled hair, her footsteps sure and graceful as she trod each marble step," Magnus said, his voice serious. "Toward her destination, Olympus, home of the Ancient Gods and the site of the wisdom and great works of the ancient Terrans of old."

Nakteti snorted. "Can I fast forward to the part where I'm lying to everyone?" she laughed.

-----

Nakteti sat on the marble bench, statues of Terran women carrying jugs of water bracketing the bench. Surscee was laying on the bench across from her, on the other side of the fountain that showed two naked male Terrans wrestling, fanning herself. Magnus was down on one knee in front of one of the altars, his eyes closed, one hand on the pommel of his grounded sword, his other hand clenched into a fist and pressed against the ground.

Chuck stood by a high stone tablet, at least five meters tall and two meters wide, covered with runes and glyphs that were lit with a glimmering inner light.

"So what is it?" Nakteti asked Chuck.

"More Rosetta Stone," Chuck said. "Pure math, we've moved from advanced math to some really esoteric stuff. Chemistry and metallurgy are mixed in."

He knelt down, running his hands over the threads of glyphs. "Got the recipe for Niven-Skrith right here. Not the manufacturing, but the atomic and strange matter makeup of it."

Nakteti nodded slowly.

Chuck got up and moved to another, putting his hand on it. The glyphs and runes started glowing with a soothing green light.

"More codexes, compression algorithms, stuff on how to read further on tablets and obelisks," he said. He moved over and sat on the bench next to the one Nakteti was sitting on. "They created this path to teach any who climbed it the math and materials they used to create this place," he shook his head, lifting up a 'wineskin' full of code defragger/garbage collection and took a swig, swishing out his mouth. "By the time you reach the top, you could probably build a Niven-Ring or a Doom Tube."

"Could you build this?" Nakteti asked.

Chuck shook his head. "That's math by crazy people. Metallurgy and materials by the insane. Computer coding and science by the mad. I'm Terran and I can barely grasp the concepts."

"That and until you got here, you thought expansion radiation was a disproven junk science theory," Surscee said.

Chuck nodded. "Last tablet had the solid math and strange particle physics for it. Definitive proof along with the way to generate it in order to replicate your testing through empirical evidence."

Nakteti looked up. "Wait, they can generate expansion radiation?"

Chuck nodded. "It's part of how they built this place. Harnessing the expansion radiation pulses. Layering some kind of field between the expansion radiation pulses and the protomatter pulses. The field orders and layers the protomatter into the matter they want," he laughed. "Think of the anomaly as a mass tank and those fields as a nanoforge capable of building these entire layers."

Nakteti rubbed her eyes. "OK, enough science for crazy people," she looked up. "We should get there tomorrow afternoon."

Surscee looked up and nodded. "Yes."

Magnus stood up, moving over and sitting down. "What did I miss?" he asked.

"We should be there tomorrow, past temptation," Surscee said. She looked at the fruit laden trees surrounding the marble decorated clearing. "The red dates tempt me."

Magnus nodded.

Nakteti stared at the fruit trees. "Do you think they really grant immortality?"

Chuck laughed and Nakteti looked at him. He gave a wry, self-mocking smile. "If you had told me that there was fruit that might grant immortality, I'd have recommended you to a mental hospital," he looked at the red date trees. "Now? Well... I can see them in the digital world too. Strange, alluring code that whispers of secrets that perhaps I am not meant to know."

Magnus drew his sword, setting it on his lap, and pulled free a whetstone. "The Gods tempt us. Can we trod the path of Mount Meru without giving into temptation?"

Nakteti sighed. "Yes. The fruit is tempting, but we have our own food and drink."

She looked at the fruit.

"Although it is tempting."

-----

Nakteti came around the corner of the path, leaving the neat rows of the golden fig trees orchards, the tall sweet smelling bushes on either side of the worn marble path, and into a clearing that had statues around the edges, a fountain in the middle, and benches.

Magnus, Surscee, and Chuck were all standing in the clearing, staring up.

Nakteti moved forward, out from under the tress, and looked to see what they were looking at.

She gasped.

Glittering crystal and marble, shining glittering black warsteel. Columns of glittering warsteel held up buildings of marble. Pathways surrounded each building, skybridges connected the buildings. The clouds wisped between the buildings. She could see crystal windows that allowed light into the buildings.

It was a fairy tale construction, buildings of myth and legend, artwork made real.

"Never hath mine eyes beheld such beauty as that of the works of the Ancients," Magnus said softly.

The last set of stairs only wound up about ten meters, going through an archway that was filled with shimmering energy.

Nakteti noted that there was no path on the other side.

"It's kind of funny," Chuck said, sitting down on one of the benches. He pointed at a statue of a naked muscular Terran fighting some kind of giant feline.

"What?" Nakteti asked, sitting down on the bench and taking off her hat so she could fan herself.

"This could have all been done with typical modern construction. Office buildings and the like," Chuck said.

"Nay," Magnus said.

Nakteti turned and looked at him. "Really?"

Chuck frowned. "Why not?"

Magnus waved at where the fountain showed two armored Terran women, their faces severe but caring, pulling a man from the water.

"This is a place where sentient being's immortal souls are entrusted," he said. "Office buildings, arcologies, all of those are soulless constructs, devised to wring the most optimum performance out of those who must toil under the lash of quotas. When this place was built, scarcity was just being overcome, millions toiled each day to enrich the powerful."

Chuck nodded.

"This place is a solemn place, and this architecture reflects that solemn purpose," Magnus said. "A soulless skyraker or arcology would speak of unending toil rather than rebirth and the caring of everlasting souls."

Surscee smiled, stepping up behind her brother and putting her arms around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder from behind.

"To be soulless construction, devised to wring every last erg of toil from the belabored, would destroy that which this is entrusted with," Magnus said. He reached up and patted his sister's head. "Without our souls, mankind is but a rude and violent beast."

Surscee let go and moved over to sit down on a bench, looking up at the buildings. Magnus went and sat down next to Chuck, digging in a pouch at his waist to pull out a handful of dehydrated apricots.

Nakteti mulled over Magnus's words. More than that, but what was behind them.

The Lanaktallan, the Overseers, even her own people, had believed that religion was wasteful, that it did nothing.

But staring up at those buildings, hearing Magnus's words, knowing what the SUDS dealt with, it made sudden sense.

The Terran believe that there had to be something else, something beyond the known universe, beyond life and death, had led them to discover just that.

Unable to find Heaven or measure a soul, they had created both.

You can't mock their belief in life after death when they can actually come back from the dead, she mused. She looked up, thinking over Magnus's words. Soulless architecture would cheapen what is done here.

She sat, staring at the cloud decorated architecture, her chin in her catching hand.

I have seen visions. Visited places in my dreams that held truths of the greater universe. Been marked by my travels in my dreams and visions. Those very visions led me on a path to this place, perhaps the only way to reach this place. How can I discard what others would scoff at when I am surrounded by it?

She sat for a while, contemplating the statue of the Terran man wrestling with the huge fierce feline. Finally, she stood up and brushed the palms of all four hands on her legs.

"To the arch, and what lies beyond," she said.

The others stood up, waiting for her to lead the way.

It was a short walk, less than five hundred meters, along a path bracketed by sweet smelling bushes and statuary.

The arch was of white marble, inlaid with warsteel, gold, silver, platinum, and surprisingly enough, polished iron. The energy field across the middle was opaque pink, with swirls of pale blue, runes and glyphs moving across it.

She didn't pause, merely held her breath as she stepped through it.

It tingled. It burned slightly.

She saw the words pop up on her retinal link, which had been inoperative the entire trip.

ACCESS GRANTED - TIER 3 ASSISTANT SUPERVISOR

Nakteti stopped and stared.

More stairs.

"Of course," she sighed as the others stepped through.

She shifted her belt and started walking up the white marbled stairs, toward the buildings above.

-----

"Where is everyone?" Nakteti asked, looking around the big room. There were work consoles in arcs, each inner arc slightly higher than the one before it. The middle of the rear wall had a platform surrounded by monitors and hologram projectors. The windows let in sunlight, bathing the whole room in comfortable warmth.

She ran a finger over one desk, coming back with a clean fingertip.

Magnus stood up from where he had been examining the carpet in front of the door to the right of the middle of the back wall, shaking his head. "Nobody has trod here in ages."

Chuck stepped back from one of the work stations. "It's locked out. Worse than that, there's a black ICE sitting right inside the I/O port. As soon as I accessed it, that ICE checked my headers and started to stand up," he chuckled. "I basically ran away."

Surscee was staring out the window, watching as one of the huge black squares was rebuffed by a protective field and started to drift away.

Nakteti knew that the slow appearance of the movement belied the fact that square was moving at tens of thousands of miles an hour. It was just the sheer distances involved.

"How, in the name of the Digital Omnimessiah are we supposed to do anything?" Nakteti said, feeling her temper rise up.

There was a tearing noise on the far end of the room, making everyone turn to stare.

The huge beast strode in on clawed feet, ducking slightly to get through the portal. It beat its wings twice before it suddenly melted down into the figure of the Matron of the Damned.

"Not you," Nakteti said, feeling despair.

"Big guy's busy. What?" she asked.

Nakteti looked around. "How are we supposed to help?" she asked. "There's nobody to help. Nobody to tell us what do to! We've spent three days combing these buildings and found nobody, not even a VI that's online, that can give us any information."

The Matron sat down in one of the chairs, taking the time to light a cigarette.

Nakteti struggled with her temper for a moment, forcing it down.

Finally the Matron of the Damned exhaled smoke and stared at Nakteti.

"Your arrogance is astounding," she said.

Nakteti frowned.

"You assume you could just walk in, throw a switch, and everything would be fine? That Terrans would just poof into existence?" she laughed, a wild, mad thing. "Such arrogance makes the universe itself laugh at your folly."

Nakteti reached down and grabbed her thick leather belt, squeezing it where the leather had been compressed so many times it was dented on either side.

"Do you even understand what went wrong?" the Matron asked.

Nakteti shook her head.

"A pulse from the anomaly," Chuck said.

"The Gods laugh at us and foul our plans," Surscee guessed.

Magnus just sat down, digging in his pouch for dried apricots, staying silent.

"Why is it that everyone always assumes that it is one thing, one single point of failure, that caused the problem?" the Matron asked. "A properly robust system never has a single point of failure. That's asking for a good old fashioned ass fucking, so unless you're an ass fucking fan, you never design a system with a single point of failure."

Nakteti wrinkled her nose at the crudeness.

The Matron pointed at the huge squares. "That's just part of it."

Chuck sat down. "Will you tell us? Explain it to us?"

The Matron of the Damned sighed. "Normally, I would not. But Glowing Goody-Two Shoes asked me to help you. Normally, I'm a malicious compliance sort of girl, but then you'd just be wandering around, bitching, right where I can hear you, whining up the place and sniveling down the property values."

She stood up and moved to the windows, putting one hand on the window. She pulled her hand away, leaving a handprint of Terran skin oils on the window before taking a cloth out of her pocket and wiping it away.

With some surprise, Nakteti realized that she wasn't a hologram, a nanite cloud, or a hard light construct like Nakteti had assumed.

"There was a slight warning, when the doubling radiation started," the Matron said. "That let the crew that normally staffs this get to the safety areas and lock down the Thrint Fields," she tapped the window. "Then the explosion happened and the 4th dimensional topographical twisting and merging took place. That kept them on lockdown."

She turned away from the window and walked back to her chair, pausing long enough to tap her ashes in the ashtray she took from her pocket and set on the console.

"Now is when we get the major screwup," the Matron said. "The whole thing propagated through the entire SUDS onion, meaning everyone had to get to the shelters until the 4th Dimensional topography issue was solved and the radiation dropped low enough."

Nakteti nodded. "Right. We've fixed that."

The Matron laughed. "Yes, but the rest of the Onion, the deeper layers, they don't know that yet," she said. "With the Alpha Layer still taking damage from the shield squares, the shield squares being loose so that the anomaly can't be shielded, you have another point of failure."

"Can we fix the shield?" Chuck asked.

The Matron nodded. "I'll show you how. You'll have to supervise it, it'll take a year or so, but it's largely automated," The corner of her mouth twitched with amusement. "Automation protocols when this was built forbid unsupervised robotic systems," she smiled, a cold, cruel thing. "Your people's little Second Android Rebellion that kicked off the Second Biological/Digital War is why that protocol exists," her voice had a slight mocking edge. "You're the avatar of what screwed this shit up, Chuck."

"All right. I'll supervise it," Chuck said, trying to ignore his irritation at being blamed for a war that had happened thousands of years ago.

She smiled, turned to Nakteti and exhaled smoke. "The last one is the big one. It's not exactly a point of failure. It wouldn't be a big deal, except for to you it would be."

Nakteti nodded. "What would that be?"

The Matron smiled. "The main crew, trying to resynch the entire thing?" Her smile got even wider and she giggled slightly, a mad sounding thing.

"Yes?" Surscee asked, her words guarded and careful.

"They have to be in temporal synch with one of the core systems. There is no bypassing that point," the Matron smiled. "That single point of failure that has slowed work down for everyone else. The temporal synch is nearly two thousand to one and only getting worse, but it cannot be cut out, it cannot be bypassed, and the system cannot be activated for outside communication and use until at least the correct systems are in synch with the master timing and security system."

She exhaled smoke again, almost vanishing in the cloud.

"What does it have to be in temporal synch with?" Nakteti asked.

"Are you virgins?" The Matron asked.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Nakteti asked. "What does it need to be in synch with."

"Terra."

"Shit."

Nakteti couldn't tell who said it, hell, she might have.

"BECAUSE YOU'RE FUCKED NOW!" The Matron's laughter was wild and crazed.