Arz: Helium Sonata — Part 2

This is the second part of an ongoing science fiction series

Data flowed over every surface as the protoverse spun up, an artefact of those times she assumed. As lucid clarity diffused across the surface a strange and altogether beautiful scene emerged. City streets scrolled past, hurrying to place themselves, figures emerged from clouds of data, each a loving embodiment of memories millennia old. Under her feet pavement stones of unknown texture and type solidified, a fake sense of gravity asserting itself with a tug. Overhead buildings reached for the aurora drenched sky above, greens and mauves dancing across the sky in a helium sonata of old. Traversing the sky, her eyes filled with strato-tugs, arial conveyors, and a myriad other designs foreign. Yes, that was the right word foreign, for even the signs and evoked conversation felt strange to her eyes and ears. Not wrong, just unfamiliar. Her gaze took in the vista to the horizon, and seeing the data feet knew that it likely encompassed a whole planet’s worth of creation.

A delicate ping resonated across her mind as the protoverse finally coalesced into its own internal harmony. Whoever designed it had a keen eye for detail likely millennia in the making. She let out an amused snort realing she felt a twinge of jealousy. Her own vertical ‘verse was practical and prosaic, a mere escape from the world to a small and cozy space; this was something else entirely, a place to live and experience the world.

Yet, something felt off, familiar in ways that made her uneasy. Looking back at the sky, she cast her eye over the constellations. “Della, map over the star map from over the library circa four thousand Terran years prior.”

Her AI obliged, fading the vivid world and overlaying stars. No match, and even as she spun it forward and backwards there was no alignment. Odd. “Okay, run alignment to all known UET planets.”

Further dimming as Della drew on Syrianna for computational power. Constellation charts flashed across the sky, forwards and backwards attempting to locate the world around them. Forty, fifty, seventy. Minutes dragged into an hour, and then on the eighty seventh an overlocked clicked into place. Not perfect, ninety six percent.

Della cleared her memory banks of all other data, “Cygni Secundus, otherwise known as…”

“Demeter.” She caught herself from gasping, her mind racing to take it in. “Are you sure? There is no sign of the Baleful Eye.”

Della dutifully reran the calculations, this time running them forward to the present day. There was no mistake. This was Demeter during the second age, or at least this person’s approximation of it. And they had no way of temporally verifying this due to the time lock on this period.

Time flowed around her, some things looping, other things progressing at an organic pace. Now she understood. For all her time stationed on Demeter during her training the Baleful Eye nebula was always present in the sky, a red thing of awe and history, as defining to her culture as the Unifier and his creed.

“Unifier!” Was all she could finally say.

More people flowed on by, no-one interrupting her study of the sky and city beyond. Finally, Della emerged in virtual form, taking the shape of an Eltarsian to better navigate the streets. This orangutan form allow the AI to clamber and drift across the landscape in playful shapes, most likely to distract her from the sense of melancholy tinging each longing glance. She appreciated the gesture, nodding graciously as Della swung round a lamppost in a fluid motion.

“This just gets all the more curious. Nothing on present day Demeter maps at all onto this city judging from the readings you are giving me.”

Della stopped and pointed upwards. “Won’t surprise me if all this got buried when the Arz Explorators returned during the Great March outwards.” Landing on a nearby shelter, the AI showed a topographic scan. “It does roughly correlate to an outlying suburb of Jimena, though those hills in the distance are flatter in our time.”

Dismissing the overlap, she took a deep breath and contemplated it all. Yes, this was a cosmic coincidence that she stumbled upon a protoverse housing her adopted home world, though given this was the nineth one they had accessed since their return to the ship it could just be that this person simply loved the planet.

Sighing, she pointed off in the distance. “Okay, lets go find our mystery architect and see what they have to say for themselves.”

As with all protoverses the mind at the centre of them was a beacon to all who entered, a lighthouse in the data if you cared to look. It did not take a KriegenHex to know how to navigate such spaces, though her training helped cut through the noise. Even though they were in compressed time, she did not want to linger too long, so with a swift gesture of her hand she spalled the ‘verse forward until she reached the owner’s location.

Of all the places this was not what she expected. Rather than some grand apartment filled with luxury and treasures it was discrete, tucked away halfway up a hill with workers apartments. Humble, and easy to hide from anyone unaware of how ‘verses worked. This spoke more to her than the sky above, clearly indicating the owner was risk averse.

“Della, scan for security features, I don’t want to trip any alarms or cause a wipe.”

Seconds ticked by and the AI roamed the parameter checking every inch faster than her eye could perceive. In the meantime she checked the base code, looking for digital fingerprints and algorithmic notes. Whoever composed this ‘verse was a maestro, the code was neat, elegant, and above all creative. It sung a bespoke melody, a sonata of hope and forlorn longing for a time long past, and the more she tuned into the code the more it welled up inside her.

“Stop!”

The voice caught both off guard.

“Please, stop! Otherwise the code might wrap you up too!”

She looked around, and seeing a young Ashvrin jolted back to the visual world. “Okay, why would the code entangle me?”

As with all Ashvrin she could not tell if it was a seeder or flower, though its singular eye imploring her not to continue. “Look, whoever you are you clearly come from beyond the code, so…” It waved for her to follow, “… please, its been a long time since I had any real company.”

Della swung down, landing at her side, which cause the Ashvrin to smile. “Ah, I have not seen one of you in forever.” It reached over and patted the AI on the head, physically ruffling the digital fur, causing Della to purr. “Very good approximation, you must tell me how you did it.”

Following them inside, they both entered a spacious interior belying the humble nature of the outside. She took into the contents, an amalgamation of many cultures and worlds, small and large pieces tastefully arranged within. This person clearly had an eye for design, as not a single thing felt cluttered or out of place. Pointing off into a corner they ushered her over to a sofa where a table set with tea awaited.

“I saw you enter my sphere, so set the table accordingly.” Their voice changed timbre, their shape morphing into an Ashvrin flower form, lithe and delicate, their clothes shifting to a more feminine attire. “Please call me Kalin, though I have had other names. I was unsure of your intent, though reading your code you are more curious than a threat.”

They sat, and Della also shifted into an Ashvrin form, this time a more masculine seeder with a workaday outfit. This brought a smile to Kalin’s thin lips, their light purple skin flushing with a blush. “Your AI is funny, almost as if it knows how to set me at ease.”

Looking across at Della, she rolled her eyes briefly, knowing full well that the AI was as likely to start flirting as it was to take in the conversation. “Don’t mind Della, it has a sense of humour.” She paused, taking a proffered cup of fragrant tea. “I am Sjelby, a KreigenHex serving with the UET Navy.”

A blank look passed over Kalin’s eye, and they ruffled their hair in bemusement. “Excuse me for not knowing what either of those are, I’ve been in here for an awful long time it would seem.” Their accent appeared to shift, “though judging by your code it would seem the Unifier has been busy”.

This time she understood the dialect, a colloquial one from present day Demeter more akin to her own. “So, you can read code as well as you compose it I see.”

A playful smile, and they took a long sip from their cup, enjoying the moment. “This world is an artefact from a time neither of us have seen, designed to pique the interest of visitors as it is for me to drift in and around.” They waved a hand over the interior. “We used to share our worlds, you know, before power became scarce. You are the first in such a long time, and, well…”

With a quiet chink they placed the cup back on the saucer. A sadness spun outwards, palpable in the code as well as the room. “Each item is memento mori for a person I cherished, now lost to the dust beyond. Time has not been kind to…”

Della spun a virtual finger and the whole projection paused, data artefacts accumulating at the edges. Kalin froze mid motion, their code in aspic. “I have been going over the base code and something feels off, artificial.” In a blur of movement Della rearranged the fragments, teasing apart code and logic routines, before snapping their fingers. “Yes, there we go.”

Fragments crystalised around them, deconstructing the room, rematerializing as something far more abstract and disjointed, then sum of many worlds and ideas fudged into a single space. In a glittering shower of light and code the ‘verse shattered, rebuilt, shattered and recompiled outside the window, until the only thing left was a room no bigger than her cabin. Seated on a bunk on the opposite side an Ashvrin flower lay asleep on a mattress, a faint outline of code covering her with protective binds.

A panicked disembodied voice cried out, a guardian AI, the entire external world was the security. “Stay back!”

Fear latched onto her very source code, dread creeping up her soul, a morbid horror at what might come, existential sorrow consuming her very being, as if the world universe was about to rip itself apart and there was nothing she could do…

“Enough!”

Della asserted itself, and the rising terror evaporated as quickly as it had come.

“We mean you know harm.” The AI materialised as an Ashvrin child, palms open. “We are here to save you.”

Intrusive thoughts raced through her, a torrent of questions and fears, the composer attempting to answer a millennia of doubt and panic in a single moment. How can we trust them, they just want to erase us like the last intruders, they will wipe us all, we have lost so much, they come from the March, they came for us all…”

It was overwhelming, and she dropped to her knees. Opening her connection to Syrianna, she drew on all her stored memories, a clarity of life that only the great machine could store. “Here, this is me, us, I share it willingly.”

A voracious hunger overtook her, devouring every scrap she shared in a blink, her entire life thus far fuel for this bridge she was attempting to build. Every detail public and private was there, except the classified stuff, every love, every loss, all the time accumulate in service to the UET, and all the time she spent on Demeter. This last morsal she offered up as coda, played to perfection.

This sent the composer off into series of long buried memories, their entire existence shared with her, a tsunami of lives integrated as power levels dropped. Fourth age hopes and dreams, of a Unifier called to bring hope to a benighted galaxy, only for those on this world to see betrayal and ashen skies as they rejected the cannon and creed. It was not a schism, it was a rejection of one path to enlightenment, and for it their world was swept clean. She had been right in her assumption, but never more had she been filled with such sorrow, for it set her path with only one possible outcome.

Plaintively the voice spoke, “Please! Get to know her! Don’t wipe this out, I beg you!

Della shook her head, they both knew what their standing orders were. Schismatics were to be purged, they had no choice. All this beauty, all this life, it would have to be wiped in the name of the Unifier.

Just as she was about to give the command, the voice awoke the sleeping flower, forcing her to look the woman in the eye. The woman spoke, “All I ask is you remember me in your base code.”

It was not a command, it was a rewriting of everything she knew. With a violent ripping apart and restitching of her memories Sjelby felt both the erase of the ‘verse and a shovelling of the entire history of this people into her Syrianna niche. Overwhelmed, even with all her skills she could not undo the guardian AI’s violation of her core code. Agonising seconds past as the world burned down around her, until it was cinders and base logic. All gone.

Except she knew it wasn’t. In the back of her mind she felt it there, locked away, out of reach, waiting.

“Lochart to Actual, purge complete. Ready for the next one.”