The Stars Like Gods Read online

  “Damn. The entire stronghold is a single mind? That’s disturbing to contemplate.”

  “It is. And I don’t know if ‘mind’ is the correct word. I doubt their consciousnesses operate anything like ours do. Maybe it’s more accurate to say a single ‘will’—or to use Jerry’s word, a single ‘purpose’—exists at the stronghold.”

  His brow knotted, wrinkling his nose. “That’s not any less disturbing.”

  She kissed the wrinkle away. “Nope. Now, the ships we saw coming and going of necessity become ‘separate’ Rasu for a time. But their tours are kept brief, with frequent return trips home. What happened with Jerry? The Rasu realize it’s a risk when they send out their shards—their temporary offspring—to roam. They’re forced to keep a tight leash on them, lest they develop their own free will the way Jerry did.”

  “This is what they want to correct using kyoseil. This is why they’re experimenting on our people.”

  “Torturing—why they’re torturing our people.” She quickly smiled to soften the rebuke. “But you’re exactly right. If they can devise a way to maintain control over their shards across great distances and for infinite time? It’s their crown jewel. Their ultimate prize.”

  “It also could be the spark that ignites a Rasu civil war—”

  The door slid open, and Parc and Ryan burst in. “Good, we found you.”

  She eased out of Dashiel’s arms. “Parc, you look better. I read your report, and I am so damn sorry I put you through that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I erased it all. Hope the report helped. So, Ryan and I have been messing around with this kyoseil supradimensional nonsense, and we have an idea.”

  Thank gods. This was more like the Parc she knew. “Okay. Talk to me.”

  He started tromping around the room, while Ryan leaned against the wall by the door and watched Parc with a keen, arguably protective eye. “When I connected with myself, there were these luminescent…strings. Not strings precisely, but it’s the best way to describe them. They flowed in these tendrils between me and the other me, like the rope of an anchor. But they weren’t physical—they weren’t out here in space.” He waved a hand in the air in front of him. “They were in my mind. Or possibly in another dimension. In fact, almost definitely in another dimension.” He gave himself a sharp nod.

  “I thought you said you erased the memory of connecting to your other self?”

  “Well, not all of it. Just the screaming, mostly. I kept the technicals, obviously.”

  “Obviously. And what have you discovered about these not-strings?”

  “Ah, you catch on fast. I went back and figured out how I was seeing them—again, the technicals of it. And, you guessed it, the kyoseil is communicating with each other—or possibly itself—on an extradimensional plane. Bet you didn’t know we could see them communicating, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “We can. I tweaked my ocular settings so I can see them whenever I want, without flaying myself open for the world to see.”

  “Parc….”

  He smirked. “Merely a little gallows humor. But guess what I discovered?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “They don’t solely connect me to my copy. We’re all emitting these strings. All over the fucking place. And they’re connecting to each other, in this immense, intricate web. Kyoseil is interconnected, and this means so are we.”

  Forchelle had hinted around this concept earlier, but after Parc’s disastrous experiment she’d focused the man on the relationship between kyoseil and their own neural architecture. Which in retrospect, had been a bit myopic on her part.

  Parc took her silence for confusion and kept talking. “Ryan—” he gestured to Ryan, who waved casually “—is also broadcasting a rainbow of supradimensional strings. I was able to see his as soon as I adjusted my ocular receptor settings. One of his led to me, or to one of my strings, which also led to one of his.

  “Now, these strings are fainter and weaker than the ones tied to my other self. And they kind of…dead-end at the other person. Because, the kyoseil is so intricately wound into our neutral structure, into our psyche, into our anima, that our passive security protections block the strings from entry.”

  “Dashiel, any chance you can coerce Forchelle into coming back over here?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Who?”

  Maris’ admonitions about First Gen secrecy tied her tongue as she searched for the best way to respond to Parc’s question. “Um…our best kyoseil expert.”

  “Oh. No need, but whatever makes you happy. Back to the story: then Ryan gave me his ID signature and personal access passcode—which, huge trust leap there.”

  Ryan groaned. “I’m probably so screwed for doing that.”

  “Nah, I won’t abuse it. Much. But guess what happened next?”

  She was about to explain how she still had no idea, but Dashiel interjected. “You gained full access to his psyche.”

  “Yes! Nika said you were smart.”

  “Like when we physically connect?” She pressed the fingertips of her hands together to demonstrate.

  “Somewhat similar. But no, not exactly. One, it’s a deeper level of connection. Two, we weren’t touching. I mean, we were, later, but anyway—the point is, we didn’t connect via physical contact. We connected via the kyoseil. It’s talking to each other. Through it, so can we. And not a regular old conversation like you and I are having right now. We can be in each other’s minds, all of us, irrespective of distance. We can pool not just our thoughts but our analytical processes, until they become so vastly much greater than the sum of their parts.”

  “Do we want to?”

  Nika shook her head vehemently. “No. Our entire society is built upon the value of individual life and the right of each person to live theirs their way. I’ve spent the last five years fighting to ensure that pillar of society continues to be respected. I’m not going to finally achieve my goal, only to upend it and transform us into a giant virtual collective.”

  Cameron sighed. “I hear you. But if we want to defeat the Rasu, we might need to be willing to evolve.”

  “We’re constantly evolving.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Adlai nudged his way into the spat. “Surely there’s a middle ground.”

  As soon as she’d heard enough of Parc’s spiel to get a true inkling of what he was suggesting, Nika had ordered Ryan to take Parc to a bar and buy him many drinks. Then she’d called the Advisors together to inform them that it was beginning to appear as if the Rasu were correct—that kyoseil truly could be used to control others.

  Now the conversation had taken a hard-left turn…directly to where Parc had gone with it, truth be told. She hadn’t liked it then, nor did she now.

  Perrin’s words earlier ran through her mind, and she forced herself to step back. She was not the self-appointed bearer of all burdens, nor the maker of all decisions. It was just that when she’d asserted the Asterion people could find a way to defeat the Rasu by working together, she hadn’t meant quite this together.

  Her reluctance dragged down her voice, which she hoped everyone recognized. “Parc believes we can set up these sort of ‘subject-matter psyche hubs.’ He says he can write a defensive layer program to allow interconnections between conscious psyches but keep the participants out of each other’s internal programming and memories. So people can share active thoughts and processes they offer up, but otherwise the interconnection shouldn’t be overly invasive.”

  Cameron nodded eagerly. “That sounds like an excellent compromise.”

  “If we can make it work. I have to admit it could be useful, in theory. We’ve been trawling the entire Dominion for ideas on how to combat the Rasu, and we’ve had some success. But not enough. If people were able to literally pool their mental power and knowledge in pursuit of specific goals, I’ve no doubt they’d make greater strides.”

  Parc’s exact word
s had been ‘we’re fucking immortal organic/synthetic hybrid AIs—we can do better than a fucking suggestion box.’ She didn’t share that with the others. “Still, we have to consider the cost.”

  “The cost if we don’t pursue this avenue is genocide.”

  Nika had no good response to Cameron, and she was grateful when Katherine spoke up, which had to be a first. “We’ve been infusing kyoseil into our bodies and minds for 700,000 years. How did we not know it was capable of this level of interlinking?”

  Her gaze landed on Magnus Forchelle, who’d heretofore sat quietly in the back of the room. He wore a troubled guise beneath the beard, though she didn’t hazard a guess as to whether he was regretting keeping his secret for so long or not keeping it for longer.

  Dashiel sat beside Forchelle; he’d been unexpectedly protective of the man since bringing him into this madness, and he stepped in to answer Katherine’s challenge now.

  “How many substances, whether metal, mineral or organic, do we know of that possess supradimensional qualities? Outside of theoretical cosmology, zero. It’s not a characteristic of substances found in nature, and only through extreme scientific tinkering can we force it to occur artificially. Namely, d-gates and superluminal propulsion. We didn’t know because we didn’t look, and we didn’t look because over a million years of scientific inquiry has taught us that such a characteristic doesn’t exist.”

  “Point taken.” Katherine slouched in her chair.

  Beside her, Adlai shook his head. “I guess kyoseil is even more special than we always believed.”

  Nika crossed her arms over her chest in a deliberately defensive posture. “Jerry intimated that the Rasu believe kyoseil is alive. Maybe not self-aware, but intelligent.”

  “I wish you hadn’t given the prisoner a name. It’s a monster and our enemy.”

  “I have to personalize someone—or thing, if you want to put a fine point on it—if I’m going to negotiate with them. It’s difficult for me to accept, too, but while Jerry is a Rasu, it is not the Rasu. It has its own needs, opinions and desires.”

  Cameron leapt back into the ping-pong conversation. “All right, let’s say kyoseil is somehow intelligent. Why didn’t…I don’t know, why didn’t the kyoseil tell us? Why didn’t we sense it the instant we became conscious?”

  A throat cleared in the back of the room, and every head turned to stare at Forchelle as he stood and stuck his hands in the pockets of his work pants.

  “Whatever else it is or isn’t, it’s a part of us. What we sense is ourselves. The birth of what we consider the Asterion species came about with the addition of kyoseil to our makeup after we settled on Synra. It’s what made the synthesis of organic and synthetic materials work. It’s what made us greater than the sum of our parts.

  “It turns out that on our own, we weren’t nearly as clever as we assumed. We had help. Those parts that went into making Asterions? It wasn’t two separate intelligences, it was three: Anaden, SAI and kyoseil.”

  Everyone fell silent. Nothing like calling into question the basis of your identity as a species to cast a pall over the room. Whether they pursued some style of group minds or not, this was going to change everything. Again.

  Few societies could survive the rapid-fire shocks theirs was currently undergoing, but Nika had to believe they would. Their resilience and adaptability had seen them rise from tatters to thrive for more than half a million years.

  All they had to do was survive the Rasu first.

  Finally, Katherine stood and moved to the front of the room. “So these psyche hubs…how would they work?”

  32

  * * *

  MIRAI

  “I tell you, if I had rounded the corner two seconds later, I would’ve been fire-roasted by the explosion. Extra crispy Gabe seared into the sidewalk. It was that close.”

  Joaquim nodded with enough enthusiasm to show interest and sipped on his beer. He still wasn’t sure whether it had been a good idea to reach out to Gabe Hermes, much less agree to meet him, much less return to Mirai in order to do so. As soon as he’d seen Gabe’s face, Cassidy’s had flashed through his mind in bright, vivid living color. So many memories, and they were all tied up together.

  He glanced at the empty barstool on his left, where her ghost had taken up residence, forever smiling, forever beyond his reach.

  But if he checked himself and imposed the hint of objectivity that time had granted him, he could admit it was genuinely good to see his old friend. It also felt like a necessary step in his recovery, assuming he was having one.

  Gabe took a break from his harrowing tale to finish off his beer, and Joaquim filled the silence. “I wasn’t quite as close to the transit hub as you were when it happened, but even a few blocks away I got knocked around by the explosion. It was a surreal night.” He didn’t, however, elaborate on the horrors that had followed.

  His friend flagged down the service dyne for a refill. “Of course, who knows. It probably would’ve been better to get fire-roasted in the explosion. Now we’re all going to get fire-roasted by these aliens. The Rasu.”

  “Maybe not. It sounds as if the Advisors and the government are working hard on the problem.” He considered feeling guilty about not being one of those working on the problem. But unless the fight with the aliens descended into tactical close-quarters combat, his skills weren’t of much use.

  “But it’s one hells of a problem. You seriously think they’ll be able to protect us from an armada of alien warships?”

  Joaquim opened his mouth to deliver a smart-ass response…then delivered a more accurate one instead. “I think there’s a damn good chance they will, yeah.”

  “Huh. Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

  He kept his expression neutral, but in his mind he chuckled. “Not really, but I’ve met Nika Te—Kirumase a few times. She’s got her shit together.”

  “Nice! I hope you’re right.”

  In the corner of his eye, movement on the sidewalk outside the bar caught Joaquim’s attention. But the sidewalk existed in a state of constant movement, so what about it had truly drawn his notice?

  A man in full combat gear carrying two visible weapons had stopped and faced a squad of Justice dynes trailing behind him; his hand motions and the exaggerated gyrations of his lips indicated he was relaying orders to them. Then he pivoted and continued down the sidewalk to the east at a brisk pace, with the dynes following. When the man had turned this way, Joaquim got a fleeting look at his face.

  He quickly reviewed the half second of visuals frame by frame until….

  Blake Satair.

  The former Justice Advisor was supposed to be rotting in a prison cell. So, what was he doing on the street? Better question: what was he doing armed and commanding a Justice squad?

  No way would Nika have freed him. Maybe she’d been overruled? Was the Advisor/NOIR coalition crumbling? If so, no doubt Satair would be on the wrong side of the split.

  Equally probable: Satair had escaped. A fugitive with vengeance on his mind and hatred in his heart. Joaquim knew a little about what that did to even a fundamentally decent person; he shuddered to think what it would do to a rotten soul like Satair.

  And the man was headed straight for the Mirai One Pavilion.

  “Joaquim? Everything good?”

  “I hate to skip out on you, but I’ve got to run. We’ll do this again some time.”

  He hurried out of the bar in time to see Satair and the Justice squad make a right at the next intersection, all but confirming their destination as the Pavilion.

  Joaquim had his personal Glaser on him and his retractable blade, as well as his internal defensive routines, including the recent arc shock addition and a shield generator. That was it. No tactical jacket, no grenades, no heavy firepower.

  He sent out a group ping as he wove through the crowd toward the intersection.

  Ryan, Ava, Dominic, grab anyone else in your line of sight who can shoot and all the combat
gear you can put your hands on in less than twenty seconds, then meet me at the corner of Gibson and Morgan as fast as you can get there.

  Joaquim? Are you back?

  Clearly, he’s back.

  If he’s not, we’re going to be standing on a street corner twiddling our thumbs like fools.

  Gods how he’d missed this. Everyone, quit fucking about and MOVE!

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  “Yes, I am concerned about opening classified Dominion data servers to group mind conglomerations whose members are completely unvetted and for whom there is no accountability. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.”

  Julien ran a hand through their hair. “You’re not. But the simple fact is, we are out of time. We need solid, actionable ideas now, and we can’t afford to wait for thousands of background checks to complete.”

  “I know. But can we please—”

  A shrill alarm cut Adlai off mid-sentence at the same instant multiple alerts blasted his internal comm system. His eyes scanned the room while he digested the information coming at him. Around half the Advisors were in the room, including all the Justice Advisors and Spencer, as well as seven officers from various divisions.

  He called up the perimeter cams and drew in a sharp breath. At least twenty combat dynes and a complement of drones had reached both the east and west doors. Furtive movement indicated several Asterions were among them, but he couldn’t get a clear view of them.

  “Can I have everyone’s attention? Armed hostiles have breached the building’s perimeter. Spencer, get everyone in this room who isn’t a Justice Advisor or Nika—” or Dashiel, apparently, since his friend had swiftly moved to Nika’s side “—to as safe a location as you can find.”

  Spencer checked his weapons as he moved toward the door. “Yes, sir. Everyone, if you’ll come with me, we need to hurry.”

  Julien was already half out the door. “I’m heading to the east entrance. Security’s already getting ripped apart down there.”