The sun was low behind the clifftops, and the sky had turned the same washed indigo it had been the previous night by the time they reached a field of debris, made up of crumbled bits of the city. The slope became treacherous, slowing them to the point that the rain clouds began to gain ground, and the cracks in the landscape reached the edges of the sinkhole, still spreading like spiderwebs. They could hear the unmistakable hiss of the nano rain, now at full strength, dissolving everything it came into contact with.
Novik continued to lead the way. Jaysn had interspersed himself in the middle, next to Solvig and between Clarc and the leader. There seemed to be a passable truce between the two, but he felt uneasy about Clarc’s temper, as well as her willingness to display it.
They half-trotted/half-stumbled the last few dozen meters, finally arriving on a plateau where the black, non-reflective city crashed through the green lushness of the valley and shattered. The lattice tower stretched from an artificial cloud high above them downward, like a thread pulled through cloth, and ended at a point just inside the cave’s darkness. From their vantage point, they could see the control podium and departure platform. Both were lit up and pulsing with power, almost a perfect copy of the room they had encountered earlier in the city.
Jaysn stopped momentarily in front of one of the collapsed sections of wall and put one hand on it. The air wasn’t right. It was getting thinner in all the wrong ways. He knew the sensation and the desaturated mirage effect around him all too well. “Lev,” he said, as he reached the opening in the black wall that led back into the city and found himself suddenly gasping, “something’s wrong with the air down here.”
“I hadn’t counted on this,” Novik said. “The city environment is leaking into the valley. The CO2 and argon from that atmosphere are collecting in higher concentrations in this sinkhole. You were able to breathe it when your bodies were augmented for the city environment. Now that your biology is adapted for the valley, it can’t handle the higher concentrations anymore.”
Clarc threw up her hands. “Great, so what do we do?’
“Go back. Get above the top of the cave opening. The air should be better there. I will go ahead and summon the disk. You should have just enough time to cross over and board before the narcosis is too severe. Once we get altitude, the oxygen-rich, higher elevations should clear your heads reasonably quickly.”
Jaysn nodded in agreement. He and the others watched from above the open entrance as Novik continued to make his way down and crossed over to the dais. After a few minutes, he walked back over to the cave entrance. “It’s active, but it isn’t responding to me.”
Solvig, watching above steepled fingers, slowly stood up. “The interface requires a living mind and nervous system. You need to let me do it.”
Jaysn regarded her. “Bad idea.”
“The only idea,” she shook her head. “I’m the only one of us who knows how to summon the transport platform.”
“Yes, and it almost fried your brain last time,” Clarc said.
“I know, but you heard the Overseer when it spoke to us in the woods. It didn’t understand us then. It does now. It will work. I know it.”
Jaysn held up a finger. “Let me do it. It had an easier time reading me. We’re apparently connected somehow.”
“Worse idea,” Clarc said. Tilting her head toward Solvig and making a face that told him to drop the idea.
“Fine,” Jaysn said, grabbing Solvig by the shoulders to make sure she was focused. “You’re going to need to keep your focus. It’s going to feel like you’re getting progressively more and more drunk. You’re only going to have a few minutes before you completely lose coherence. You need to keep ‘summon the transport’ at the front of your attention. Keep repeating it over and over if necessary.”
Solvig nodded and resisted the urge to breathe too deeply to establish her focus. She closed her eyes, let out one slow exhale, and then darted down the hill towards Novik at the cave entrance.
“Why didn’t you want me to go?” Jaysn asked as soon as Solvig was out of earshot.
“You haven’t noticed? She’s different ever since she interfaced with that thing.”
“Of course, I noticed. I also noticed the Overseer said she almost made stifado out of her brain by trying to consume all his knowledge at once. I was there, I tend to agree with that assessment.”
Clarc shook her head. “You’re the one Ravenhold specifically wanted to be here. I don’t know if hooking your brain up to that machine and also potentially lobotomizing yourself is their plan or the opposite of their plan, but I don’t see a win for us either way if you end up like her, or worse.”
“You’re saying Anita is expendable.”
Clarc shrugged. “I’m saying you’re the only one of us who may not be.”
Solvig made the crossing to the dias in just under a minute and a half. Novik was waiting for her. “You’re certain you want to risk this, Dr. Solvig?”
“That rain front is minutes away, Dr. Novik. There isn’t time to argue this,” she said, accidentally taking a huge lungful of air as she leaped onto the platform and grabbed the dais the way she had the last time, taking three huge lungfuls of air and climbing over the debris and onto the platform. Golden tendrils of light grew from the console like vines, encircling her before coming to rest on her spine and head. Seconds later, her eyes were dilated, and a calm smile was spreading over her face.
“Hello again.”
“Dr. Solvig,” Novik reminded, “We need you to focus.” He gently placed one appendage on her shoulder, trying to ground her. Behind him, Jaysn and Clarc stood ready to sprint down to the platform.
The console brightened.
“No, we’re trying to reach you. We just need to talk to you. We want to help, but we can’t let you just destroy all of the humanoids and the entire valley…”
There was silence, and her smile immediately vanished.
“Oh, I see. I understand.”
“Dr. Solvig. The transport.” The slightest hint of nervousness crept into Novik’s voice.
Clarc slowly stepped forward. “I really don’t like the looks of this.” Jaysn moved behind her.
Solvig’s voice changed. Becoming slightly deeper and more slurred. “This is amazing. How did you do it? What are you?”
“Dr. Solvig, this is not the mission.” Novik’s voice was raised now.
Solvig tensed, and her eyes turned from wonder to fear. “What are they?” There was a pause, and she began shaking in terror.
“Anita! We’re not here to conduct research! Summon the transport, now!” Novik yelled.
“So, alone.” She began weeping.
Novik grabbed her with both arms and began shaking her. “Anita!”
She turned and looked at him. There was the slightest hint of recognition. She shook her head to clear it. “Summon the transport, summon the transport, right …” she gasped. The platform immediately lit up around them as Solvig collapsed into Novik’s servo arms.
“That’s our cue, go!” Jaysn said, pushing Clarc, who broke into a sprint and dexterously navigated the terrain twice as fast as he was able. He passed through the argon haze, doing his best to keep up. His brain was already beginning to feel like he’d just stood up too fast after a bottle of particularly bad wine. He saw the golden disk slowly lift off the ground just as Clarc leaped onto it and immediately turned to assist Jaysn. She swore. He was still ten paces back and slowing.
“Move your ass, Katsaros!” she screamed, then lay down on her stomach and extended her arms out to help him.
With an exasperated grunt, Jaysn picked up the pace, lungs on fire as they starved for oxygen. At the last minute, he held his hand out and made a half-hearted leap at Clarc, who caught him by the wrist with both hands.
He dangled under her grip for what seemed like an eternity as the ground beneath them slowly slid away. As they entered the helix tower, Novik gently lowered Solvig to a sitting position and walked over to the edge next to Clarc and effortlessly pulled Jaysn up. He stared up at the sky as they broke through the top of the cave into full daylight and allowed himself to start breathing again to try to clear his head. Clarc rolled over onto her back and moaned a half-hearted celebration. Solvig rubbed her temples and looked out at the valley.
“Anita, are you okay?” Jaysn asked.
“I saw it all,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.
Clarc shot her a look. “Saw all of what?”
“The simulation. The architecture. I understand it now. We were right. They modeled their entire solar system and built the machine to run it as a simulation. It’s not just data, it’s continuity down to the atom.”
“Continuity?” Novik asked.
“I saw … Reclamation. A shadow. Civilizations blinking out overnight. Entire biospheres erased without a trace. Nature effortlessly resetting. The Overseer showed me everything. This isn’t a lab experiment or a zoo. They built a lifeboat.”
“Who did?” Clarc asked.
“A very old, very advanced race. Not scientists or warriors as we know them. They were beyond that. They were thinkers and artists, observers and commentators, though their science was far beyond anything we could dream of. Their technology built all this for them. Everything in a light year scanned and modeled from gas giants down to the smallest microbe.”
There was another trumpet-like blast of thunder from the valley below. The tower flickered abruptly, and for an instant, they felt the disk begin to fall. Seconds later, the energy steadied itself again, and they resumed their course as if nothing had happened.
“I think somebody wired this one up wrong. It appears to have a short,” Jaysn said, running his hand through his hair in relief. He glanced out over the valley receding below them, with no handrails anywhere on the disk, and decided to change the subject. “To … hide in? From what?”
Solvig paused, searching for the right word. “The reclamation. It’s ancient. Not … alive … not machine … but intelligence. It scours the galaxy, looking for markers… signs of intelligence. Then it … removes them. It doesn’t conquer or enslave. It simply erases and resets. They knew they were next.”
“So, they built this to hide in,” Clarc said, making the connection at last. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Anita paused, looking for a better answer. “They … never came.”
Novik, Carc, and Jaysn exchanged glasses.
“The Overseer waited. The simulation went on without them,” Solvig continued. “It was too perfect, though. It reproduced even the most minor cosmic events.” She nodded at the valley below them.
“The comet strike,” Novik completed the thought.
“If they had been here, it would have been trivial for them to capture and mine for resources.”
Novik held up an arm. “The Overseer, as the keeper of the simulation, wasn’t empowered to interfere with the course of nature, so the comet struck. Tore out a large section of the city. Over millions of years, the water and microbial life reshaped the impact crater, formed a biosphere, and even gave birth to complex, multicellular life.
Clarc’s eyes widened. “The humanoids. They weren’t an intended part of the simulation. They were the result of nature, perfectly simulated. They weren’t the Overseer’s slaves.”
Solvig shook her head. “He influenced them. He needed them to help rebuild the city because he could not directly intervene. They were a loophole.”
“What exactly is he?” Novik asked.
Beneath them, the valley had lost its contrast, passing into mist. The nearly perfect geometric rectangles of the cloud layer hovered above them, looming closer every second, stretching kilometers in the distance.
“He’s alone,” Solvig whispered. “He’s … alive. He’s not the creator of this. He’s more … custodian. He’s doing his duty … he’s waited … he’s grieved … alone … for hundreds of millions of years now. Just … waiting.”
“For his people to arrive,” Jaysn said.
“Yes.”
