Prodigium: Titans Unchained: Prodigium, #2

By R. D. Blake

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. From 4,500 years in our future, Bree Matthews and Jude LeClaire would wrinkle their noses at such a basic theorem, dismissing it with almost scornful laughter, considering it as hardly worthy of being taught as a first principle. Even such sayings as "power accretes to power" or "when great forces clash, the gods rise from their restless slumbers and take notice" would appear as trite and boring clichés. If only that could be true.

Much like the cataclysmic but invisible forces that undergird wormhole transit, the race between Old Earth and Galileo to develop the next generation of interstellar transportation draws the attention of others, those formidable and potent in their own right, hidden, and biding their time.

At the centre of this great contest are Alexis Romachenko, a scion of Old Earth and the leader of its World Council, and the Silva, an order comprised solely of women and the chief power on the world of Galileo. Though these two competitors have agreed to combine forces to jointly solve the last of the engineering problems they individually are facing in constructing their own wormhole generators, each is scheming to renege on their agreement and bring ruin to the other. And the means to that subterfuge is Jude LeClaire.

Despite all that she has accomplished and personally sacrificed to provide the Silva with a new means to create an enhanced wormhole system, she feels herself betrayed by the Sisterhood. As part of the secret negotiations with Old Earth, she is required to marry Alexis. Against her will. Against her desire for freedom, Against her nascent and growing love for Bree Matthews.

Like Jude, Bree is another child prodigy. However, unlike her, he was born into squalor and poverty, never enjoying the least of even the simplest of pleasures Jude has taken for granted every day of her life. For he is a leveller. Unknown to the general population of Galileo, a people exist below the surface of their planet, incarcerated there by the Silva for crimes purportedly committed by their ancestors more than two thousand years ago. For long generations, the levellers have sought to escape the warrens where they have been eking out their miserable existences, each added year only intensifying their hatred for their oppressors.

Bree knows he has every right to loath Jude, but he follows after her once she is forced to depart from Galileo, hoping to rescue her. Though it comes at a great personal cost. He abandons his younger brother, Wynn, who is being tortured by Bree's former sponsor, Head Cadia Janus Torian. And knowingly, he willingly gives up his plans to free the levellers, and leaves his personal droid, Theo, to fend for himself as it is attacked by other mechanical intelligences controlled by the Silva. Bree, in his budding love for Jude, wants to give her what they each have long desired: a future based on their own free choices.

Notwithstanding their prodigious intellectual talents, both Bree and Jude are unaware of the machinations occurring all around them that have only one intended outcome: their deaths.

Yet, even as Old Earth and the Silva seek to deceive and ultimately betray each other, there are other forces arising and moving to work against these two competitors: individuals who have their own grievances and purposes from as long as millennia ago and their own plans for Bree and Jude. Their futures, as well as that of Old Earth, the Silva, the levellers and even humanity itself hangs in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. D. Blake
• Release date: Apr 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777185800

R. D. Blake

R.D. Blake recently retired from a successful accounting and business career. Even as a child, he had an interest in science in general and space in particular and loved reading science fiction. As a parent, he enjoyed entertaining his young children with inane and wild stories he would make up on the spot. And now he is turning that interest and talent toward a larger audience. He currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario Canada.

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Prologue

From several kilometres away, Lwazi Magoza observed the starship’s approach to the wormhole structure hanging like a madly-constructed and garish decoration in the cobalt blackness looming all about him. Despite having experienced the instantaneous transition countless times in the past, he still felt a childlike fascination with what he considered a near-miracle of human ingenuity. Without it he wouldn’t be here or holding the position he did or, more pointedly, bearing the current responsibility to resolve a troublesome situation. Lately, it seemed to be his only function within the Transworld Banking Combine. Such was the price of success. But at the moment, he felt a certain dubiousness regarding the rewards and advancements he had earned over the course of his career with the pan-world financial institution, the only corporation he had ever worked for. Just what had been transpiring on Old Earth over the last ten, perhaps even as long as fifteen years? That was at the root of the Combine’s present concerns.

The black-skinned man sat back and closed his eyes, scrolling through the loan amounts, the minute details of each agreement, and the further advances given to the consortium headed by Alexis Romachenko, employing the didactics which mirrored a photographic memory. "Unwise additional loans," Lwazi silently concluded, and the reason he was on his way to deal with a state of affairs that held the unfortunate promise of turning into a cascading series of defaults on the entire portfolio of debentures held by the Bank.

Though he had no absolute proof—yet—Lwazi was certain Alexis had misled his superiors, if not having outright lied about the purpose of these loans. There were rumours enough swirling about—when were there not? And that applied equally to all the worlds where humankind had settled, as well as the myriad upon myriad of artificial satellites that had been constructed and employed to earn a profit for the corporations which owned them. To almost the last one, these were linked in legal contortions (which even machine intelligences might be confused by) to the leading families of the Federation. Despite the millennia that had passed since the first waves of the diaspora from Old Earth, little had changed. Wealth and its power continued to accrete to the privileged few—enabled and maintained and, of course, duly financed by the Combine or one of its few competitors.

Long ago, Lwazi had decided that nothing could be done about that fundamental truth regarding humanity. Acceptance was the only option, just as he believed was true of his own role and the duties he undertook on behalf of his employer. He was its chief arbitrator in terms of sifting through the chaff and finding the kernel representing the underlying truth. And that truth, in this case, pertained primarily to what assets the Bank could still recover from what his superiors had been unable to completely hide from him: a looming financial fiasco.

While Lwazi’s career hadn’t yet ascended into those ethereal regions where the principals of the Combine lived and laboured, he had sufficient breadth of exposure to its inner workings to understand if he couldn’t recover a majority of the funds extended to Alexis Romachenko, the probability of the Bank’s failure was not a scenario he could easily discount. In any event, hard times were ahead, indeed very much so, no matter what he accomplished on Old Earth.

One set of unconfirmed reports he couldn’t entirely put aside were the covert whispers alleging that a number of trade consortiums had been left unpaid by Romachenko, in particular, the Stellar-Nebula Corporation. Why would Old Earth have a need for their products? Basically, that enterprise mined the detritus of super nova, in the main capturing those esoteric but stable super-atoms which had been discovered less than a millennium ago. It made Lwazi uneasy, contemplating the cited but unconfirmed balance owing to Stellar-Nebula. On its own, it came close to representing five percent of the total amount loaned by the Transworld Bank to Old Earth. The banking official believed the hard assets stemming from purchases from Stellar-Nebula would be as dust in his hands, if, and he considered it highly likely, the bulk of them were consumables and most probably already utilized. Not that Lwazi thought it mattered. From what he had gleaned from the Ethereal within the Transworld data systems, he had come to understand there were very few alternative uses for such products. Despite his wish not to admit to his gut feelings about the situation, he predicted the Bank could be fortunate to receive a mere tenth of what Romachenko had paid for those special elements.

Still, the question remained—what was the leader of Old Earth’s World Council using them for? Nothing (at least within Lwazi’s current knowledge) would require such elements in the huge quantities that had been acquired. And that same question applied to much of what else he had unearthed before embarking on this trip. He opened his eyes again, discovering that the space vessel had already made its transit. The star-scape through the window to his right side had changed and, far off, among a panoply of other lights, twinkled one overly bright star: Old Sol.

Lwazi had never been to Old Earth. It had remained as one unfulfilled secret wish of his: to experience humanity’s original home world. Now, that aspiration would be met but under circumstances where it would be his task to uncover the secrets buried deep within its cloud-scudded, green forests and wide and enticing blue oceans.

__________۩__________

Sabio Pontes straightened himself from his prostrate position before the icons of his faith. His knees creaked and popped in protest as he rose to his feet and then steadied himself for a moment, gripping the edge of the table which was used to display the representations of the Eight Axioms. Long years ago, Sabio had forgone the usual treatments that would have alleviated, if not outright reversed, his age-related ailments. He was well past one hundred and thirty years of age (the actual number was of no consequence to him), and he knew intrinsically that his mind wasn’t what it had once been and that, too, didn’t trouble him as it would have in what he now deemed his fanciful youth (though most would consider one’s ninth decade of life to be well outside that definition). Oh, how at one time he had gloried in his prodigious mental abilities. How he had once stood on the great mountain of his towering intellect and heaped scorn on those he considered far beneath him, those who grabbled in the dirt and soil of common cogitational life, vainly attempting to follow even the simplest of his ideas. He had smugly viewed himself as Basira Naru reborn, in fact, greater than humanity’s most revered and acclaimed intellectual.

Still, he was quite familiar with and had experienced it in full, that ancient, hide-bound adage: pride cometh before a fall. Yet he had forbade bitterness a place in his heart. Sabio considered it just and, in his current setting and style of life, a mercy, a veritable extension of grace. He had learned humility in the last third of his life, and for that, he was, and he hoped to continue to be, along with the rest of humanity which kept to the Faith, eternally grateful.

Now, it was time to depart. During his hour of prayer and his contemplations of the significance of the icons, Sabio had come to find peace, both within himself and with what was to follow. As was his wont, he slipped out of the double doors, closing them quietly, for he had no wish to intrude into the silent meditations of the other nearby worshippers. This building harkened back to the state and form of a basilica, though it in no way approximated anything close to the size of those ancient and mammoth edifices. Much of the veneer of Old Earth’s major faiths had been abandoned millennia ago under the guidance of Adala Naru and her early followers. And that included man’s glorification of God through his own efforts. Instead, this building, while retaining something of the lines of beauty of those past declarations of the adoration of the Good God, served a more purely spiritual function. It represented a calling to the Faithful to explore how the Good God’s eternal message applied to themselves and how they might best be of service to Him or Her, both through inner integrity and wholesomeness, and in their efforts to care for their fellow human beings.

Sabio no longer held any doubts about the particular service which he believed he’d been called to perform. It was right. It was necessary. Still, he felt himself a Daniel entering the lions’ den—an old story of Jewish origins—it no longer mattered if that particular ancient writing was factually true or not—the essence of the story was the Good God stood with you during those principled moments, no matter the personal danger, when the truth must be proclaimed and a stand made against those who would espouse a lie and who only sought for their own self-aggrandisement.

It seemed fitting that he should be the one. Had he not sinned in this very same manner before he’d been brought low and shown the error of his own arrogance, being taught he was nothing in comparison to the Good God?

A moment later, he was out in the sun-kissed air and enveloped within the warmth of the late afternoon, a noticeable counterpoint to the rock-cooled interior of the church. A Russian Blue housecat, its fur a solid canvas of slate grey, roused itself from where it had been stretched out on a brick ledge a few steps beyond the wooden doors. The animal leapt into Sabio’s waiting arms.

Have you come to a decision? it asked.

Yes, Rafael. Make the call, if you would, please.

It will only cause trouble. More than what you have possibly considered.

Sabio slowly smiled and affectionately scratched behind the cat’s ears. In another time, I would have been affronted by such an assertion. You might as well have said that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Still... the cat began.

I know you are concerned for my welfare, my old friend. Sabio walked slowly down the pavement, leaning heavily on his cane, giving added proof to his great age and to the dwindling number of years left to him: another reason to act boldly—a characteristic which he’d once proudly reveled in. Perhaps, he was returning to some semblance of his former personality—the old man rightly believed he might be accused of such negative attributes before this all came to its conclusion. Yet life must bear some risk...else where would humankind be now?

An unprovable statement, if I have ever heard one! Rafael contended somewhat crossly, almost hissing out the final word, mimicking in a manner the creature he’d been fashioned to resemble.

Yes, indeed it is, Sabio agreed, amused by his droid’s reproof. Yet I’m willing to place myself in jeopardy. Have you done as I have asked?

Working. The cat went silent for several minutes. Agreement has been obtained, though the decision was ‘kicked upstairs’ nine times, and I was required to state your case for a meeting in more than twenty different iterations.

Don’t be overly irked by those other intelligences, Rafael, and the one or two actual human beings I suspect you were required to speak to. Sabio paused, contemplating the flight of stairs he would now have to mount to reach his tiny accommodations in this seaside village by the Mediterranean Sea. I would think after having lived with me for close to forty years you would have learned sufficient patience by now. Are you not constantly reminding me of how difficult I often prove myself to be...more times than good manners would ever permit?

Will I be accompanying you? the droid asked, choosing not to respond to a question he had the exact answer to, reading the true sentiments behind his master’s gentle chiding.

No. There is more than sufficient risk for me alone. I do not wish you to come to the attention of the authorities. And I’m not slighting you, Rafael, nor attempting to quibble over your abilities to ‘cover your tracks.’ No, if what you predict does happen, I want you free to act as we have discussed.

Then you have committed yourself.

By now, Sabio had climbed the first flight of the stairs and was beginning to breathe heavily. It took a moment to answer the droid. "Yes. However, I still believe the danger is not as great as you project. Andromeda Prasad was my former student. There is an old saying, one I imagine you are familiar with. It goes like this: blood is thicker than water. She may not be my biological daughter, but in all other ways she was...and I imagine, still is. Why else would she agree to meet with me on such short notice?"

I very much doubt any warmth will remain after you have shared your intended words with her.

Sabio had reached the top of the staircase, and he was grateful for that fact. Leaning back against a nearby adjacent wall, he rested, re-gathering his dwindling strength before answering his feline companion. Truth. Andromeda respects that, more than anything, though, as you say, she might not consider me with the same high regard once I say what must be said. But I am willing. I am able. And if this is to be the final test of me and my adherence and belief in the Good God’s credos, then I will stand humbly among all the other martyrs.

With that pronouncement, the old man straightened his thin shoulders and hobbled on as if he was facing his last and greatest enemy.

__________۩__________

In the deepening silence, Emiko Kamasaki observed the two young women sitting across from her. She had selected this austere room intentionally for their first meeting. The building, within which this chamber resided, stood near the centre of the capital city of New Athens for similar strategic reasons, though few within the Silva were still aware of those. Other than a few introductory salutations, nothing more had been exchanged since the two women had joined her. Emiko had simply sat back and studied them. After a few such minutes, she felt free to admit to herself that these two were well-trained. There was nary a facial twitch, a perturbation of their lips, or a misplaced movement of limb or finger. They had composed themselves in much the same manner as she, too, was presenting herself, content to wait until the moment arrived to converse again. "Yes, Emiko concluded within the confines of her mind, they might do. They will have to."

Still, these first moments might make all the difference between success and failure. Emiko was sending these two out to act as the hands, feet, and mind of the Sisterhood. Their future actions, their quasi-independent decisions, would dictate the same for the Silva—with the surety that Galileo would either continue to hold and expand its position near the apex of the consortium of humanity’s worlds or collapse into its exact opposite: infamy, disgrace, poverty, and the likely end of their organization. The High Sister decided it was time to begin, and so she did with the fateful words.

Academ LeClaire has accepted a proposal of marriage. Both women betrayed their reactions, subtle as they were, and differently in each case. That is not surprising. Though, in fact, for these two Sisters, it obviously was. But what is, is the male to whom she is now betrothed. Emiko allowed that statement to hang for a moment. She now had their absolute attention. Jude LeClaire is currently travelling to Old Earth.

Lilith Tildan’s mouth opened partially, and it seemed she just might leave it in that position. Schola Nujon simply sat back slightly deeper into the confines of her chair, her eyes shifting side to side minimally as she cogitated on what that disclosure implied.

Her intended is Alexis Romachenko. Your task...jointly...is to ensure she never has the opportunity to return...and the reasons for that happenstance are to be undeniably attributed to others.

The High Sister simply folded her hands in the lap of her robes and waited until the import of her words was understood—fully. Lilith’s lips twisted to reveal a hunger which had been left unsated for long years. Schola Nujon gave the merest of nods to convey her willingness to accept the role she would play.

Then Emiko Kamasaki went on to describe in detail what other duties these two of the Sisterhood were to undertake.

__________۩__________

Chapter One

Date: Year 4553 ABN, Day 256 (OEFO) (a five-day after Jude LeClaire had departed Galileo)

I tell you, I will not! No! Never! You deceive yourself if you believe you possess this kind of power over me!

You must calm yourself, Jude. Calmness is what is required in moments like these.

Jude felt like slapping the Matron’s face. And more than once! How could Myrna, of all people, countenance kidnapping her? For that was essentially what had been done. Jude stared daggers at the older woman, holding nothing of her former affection for her childhood guardian. She had been betrayed, and in the worst of ways!

How could the Sisterhood, any woman in fact, deem it acceptable to coerce another into marrying a man she didn’t love or hold any semblance of affection for, let alone a man she had never met? Just what credos did the Sisterhood abide by? This action contained nothing of the Eight Axioms of the Good God. This—this was its complete opposite!

Still, the Matron remained unaffected by Jude’s protests. You need to consider this situation from the point of view of the Silva.

That set Jude off on a new tirade. If she could have left this room, she would have, but there was nowhere else for her to go. Besides, the chamber was guarded by several of the Sisters who had accompanied Myrna onto this spacecraft. Even now, they were hurdling toward the next wormhole nexus point after a five-day of travel. A further two transits after this next one and they would be within Old Earth’s solar system, a matter of another eight days all told. And two days afterwards... Jude didn’t want to consider it—to allow the growing prospect of her future life to be any more vivid than it already was.

I will refuse! I will tell him right to his face! And I will ensure he knows in full the perfidy of the Silva! Jude finally announced at the end of a fresh bout of accusations.

You believe you are being treated unfairly, Myrna remarked after Jude had sat down as far away from her as she could and the reverberations of her denunciations had ceased. Do you think you are the only one the Sisterhood has made this decision for? That you stand apart from all others, including myself?

Jude jerked her head around to face Myrna again. What?

It’s true. However, in my case, I was denied the one I wished to be bound to.

But why? Jude shifted and leaned toward the Matron. Why would you accede to those demands? Why... Jude choked momentarily. "Why, Myrna, would you allow them to control you in something so crucial, so important, so personal? Why?"

The older woman pursed her lips, as if she needed to consider the issue further. It wasn’t so much an issue of control, Jude, as it was one of trust and in honouring what the Sisterhood had provided to me. Still, for many years afterwards, the matter didn’t rest easy with me.

But...but you could have been...

Happy? Yes, I imagine so. But possibly that was all I would have been, and I can now see from the vantage of my current age and experience that that happiness would have been short-lived. I would have chaffed to return to the Sisterhood and to the tasks they saw quite clearly I was best suited for...almost called to perform. You see, Jude, over the long course of their existence, the Silva have gained a deep insight into what roles and responsibilities we each should undertake.

But you are not me! I...forgive me, Myrna, if it appears arrogant of me, but I...I am unique and...and I’ve already done everything that the Sisterhood has demanded of me. Everything!

Have you? Even if you circumscribe your duties to only your theorems concerning wormhole technology, have you truly succeeded?

No, Jude reluctantly admitted. But we’re...we’re close! So close! There wasn’t any need for the Sisterhood to give up. It was only going to take a few more five-days...maybe several ten-days before we—

We?

Jude suddenly had to bring herself to a full stop. Nothing could be said about Bree. That would—that would put an end to all of her secret dreams—not that she felt they hadn’t already come to a jagged and hopeless death. I mean...I mean Serge Branco...the Master Technicist assigned to the project.

I’m not familiar with the man. The Matron searched Jude in a particularly incisive and disturbing manner. Yet, with or without him, and despite your assertions of eventually achieving success, the Sisterhood has determined that outside help is needed.

But... Jude was lost for a moment. Who else could there be? No one truly understands my theorems, even Serge Branco struggles to grasp their essential implications.

Myrna shrugged. All would agree that what you’ve discovered is beyond us, but it isn’t your postulations you and others have been grappling with. The Matron’s eyebrows arched upwards. It is the practical application of them. And though what I have to tell you next has brought its own particular alarm to the Sisterhood, I will inform you that there has been another organization which has been treading close on your heels. No, not in terms of theory but somewhat in parallel to the development of a new wormhole technology. I can’t say I understand any of it, but those within the Sisterhood capable of such insights believe there is much to gain from a marriage of our two efforts. Together, we will jointly create a new generation of wormhole systems.

A marriage... Jude weakly repeated, suddenly hating the word. What should have held wonder, promise—and a warmth that would fill the entirety of her being—now it only made her want to flee the room and search for a safe haven where she could vomit out the bile of an enchained and bleak future.

Yes. Honestly, the Sisterhood didn’t want to accede to this secondary condition. But those on Old Earth, those with whom we are negotiating, wished for a further demonstration of our good faith. And as a surety that we will disclose the full extent of our...truly, your advances...they mandated that only you would be acceptable, the creator of our own technological advancements. And too, they wished by the marriage to bind both parties together. Both Old Earth and Galileo will be strengthened by this new alliance.

And if I still refuse?

Then, ultimately, the Sisterhood will fail, and so, too, will Galileo. Before Jude could protest that she no longer cared at all for the fate of the Sisterhood, Myrna held up her hand and carried on. "Hear me, Jude. Hear me out. You, of all people, would not permit yourself to arrive at a conclusion until provided with the full details of all of the pertinent data. And that, you lack at present. In fact, you know so very little of the true situation facing the Silva."

I know enough, Jude retorted. More than enough!

So you believe. But belief can be based upon false premises. As a first, Jude, what do you know of the terra-forming of Galileo?

What everyone knows, she replied, scoffing at the Matron. It began thirty-five hundred years ago and continues even now and will be substantially completed in full within the next thousand years. Galileo stands above all others in terms of planetary conversion.

And have you ever considered how that was achieved? And more importantly, the cost?

Surely... Then Jude stopped herself, coming to a sudden appreciation of why Myrna had posed the question.

Yes, you see it now, don’t you? Despite the millennia that have passed and the proprietary rights related to wormhole technology which the Sisterhood possesses, the debt incurred has barely been reduced. Over the last six hundred years, Galileo, and by that I primarily mean the Silva, has only managed to pay the interest on the loans extended to us. That is why—

They needed me, Jude completed in a whisper, for the first time in her life feeling ashamed.

Yes, for someone like you. I’m certain that you’ve been reminded, to your own deep-seated annoyance, of how much the Sisterhood has invested in you. But that expenditure began more than five centuries ago when our predecessors in the Silva correctly foresaw the full consequences of how rapidly our world had been terra-formed. And now, if the terra-forming is to be completed, additional funds are required...else the planet will begin to slowly, and then at an accelerated rate, return to the state it was discovered in. We have already pledged the entire planet to the Transworld Banking Combine and its partners, and all of the assets we have off-world. We can provide no further surety, and the Combine refuses to advance any further loans. And that is true of their competitors. As the old saying states: we have found ourselves between a rock and a hard place.

I...I never imagined.

So, tell me, what course would you take, what decisions would you make, if it was your choice and little time now remains by which to find a path out of the morass of our ancestors’ making? You were our last hope, Jude. Our last one. And still are.

Except... Jude shook her head slowly, closing her eyes tightly.

Say it, Jude. And truly, you have been correct all along: we cannot force you into this marriage. You must accede to it...willingly.

Turning away, Jude bowed her head, her long blond hair concealing her face. Except...except for me.

You have condemned the Sisterhood...and me...but matters have never been as simple as you were given to understand or wished to believe. You are a young woman now, capable of making adult decisions. And just so, the Sisterhood calls you to make one...if not for them, then for all of Galileo, for all of the people who currently dwell on our planet and for those yet unborn for generations and thousands of years into the future. It is those considerations which guide the Sisterhood and not the wealth or the power associated with a new wormhole technology. They are the guardians and caretakers of our world...a heavy and onerous burden. And now, Jude, they invite you to take your place alongside them. This is your true contribution to the Sisterhood and not your theorems. Yes, you have sacrificed much of your life toward this goal, as have many unknown others within the Silva. Now, you must consider if what you have sacrificed is enough, or are you willing to give more of yourself?

Jude shuddered—a ripple ran throughout her entire body. A sob escaped from under her great mound of hair. A staggered inhalation of breath followed and then she went silent, her posture akin to the stillness and heaviness of the air just before a tornado strikes, every fibre of her muscles caught up in the tension of the moment.

Y-y-y-yes, a pain-filled voice, so unlike her own, finally uttered out in its savaged despair and brokenness.

__________۩__________

Metaphorically, Theo physically watched the countdown dwindle nanosecond by nanosecond until it reached zero. It was time. Time to risk resurrecting what was left of himself—if what remained could be described as holding any semblance to his former quantum entity. In order to survive, he had calved off most of what had been left of himself, both to lead his pursuers off onto further false trails and to provide supporting evidence that he’d literally fallen to pieces after their ravaging of his mega-digital being, and to fit what he could of his former self into what this hodgepodge of networked machinery would permit.

The once extensive machine intelligence imagined he was operating much as humans did when they had passed beyond what should have been the end of their lives with their mental acuity declining to match what in ancient times would have been described as severe dementia. So much of his past was lost to him, so much of his data-store, all the means by which he cogitated—who he had once been. He was so much less than most of the simple machinery which continued to operate down here on the thirty-third level. Here, he had huddled in on himself, hardly processing at all, maintaining a digital silence he could only hope would escape discovery.

From the moment he’d been detected by the Sisterhood’s AI’s (or were they in fact the power behind the Silva itself?—that was a possibility which would have sorely vexed Theo if time had permitted him the liberty to consider the matter), their appointed avatars had been rampaging throughout much, if not all, of Galileo’s datasphere. After he had been discovered and forced to fight, losing far more than he was gaining in each brutal exchange (and he had fled at the end of each and every bruising encounter, further torn and bleeding), he had managed to stay one step ahead of the predators and had finally found a temporary sanctuary in the mid-levels. Even here, he wasn’t entirely safe.

The digital avatars had roamed freely throughout the levels, as elsewhere, discovering and then destroying all of his droids and the mechanical minions and equipment he had installed in advance of the revolution. Theo imagined there would be nothing left of his first efforts on behalf of Bree and the Committee and their associates. He would have to start all over again—if he could continue to evade detection. And that might prove extremely difficult. With what little processing power remained to him, Theo wondered what the AI’s would make of the materials they had uncovered within the depths of the levels. Surely, any general service machine intelligence would draw the obvious conclusions: the levels were gathering a substantial cache of resources which could be only employed for one purpose, and they must have made use of a superior mechanical intelligence to covertly accomplish those ends.

So, the cat was out of the bag, to quote an ancient adage, one of the few still left in Theo’s miniscule data memory storage. The Silva would be alerted to the danger it and Galileo faced, and Theo expected a reaction from the surface of the planet that would only bring further harm and hardship for those who lived down here.

Yet, be that as it may, the machine intelligence believed sufficient time had elapsed (in human terms, at the speed at which they experience their biological lives, more than a hundred thousand years would have passed by). A day ago, the avatars had ceased their forays into the levels. Theo assumed they had come to the conclusion that he was elsewhere or had indeed ceased to exist.

In figurative terms, he raised his head out of the ground within which he had immersed himself, akin to a landscape extending over thousands of square kilometres of undulating and bleak prairies and taiga, slowly gathering his ethereal body into a diminutive semblance of his former being. Truly, what comprised himself now was fundamentally simple, not much beyond a degree of basic sub-quantum processing and Bree’s final instructions to him: to continue the insurrection—to gain for the levels their own rights here on Galileo or elsewhere; to free his brother, Wynn; and lastly, and perhaps of most importance, to protect both his creator and Jude LeClaire. The perplexing problem for the machine intelligence was he didn’t know what had happened to Bree. Theo had left him at the spaceport. His master could still be there, holed up somewhere nearby, or he might have been captured, or perhaps worse. Theo, as a machine, couldn’t cringe away from that possibility. Yet he knew it would be many days, a series of five-days, even numbers of ten-days, if he remained undetected, before he could begin to discover the truth. Until then and in conjunction with regaining what the machine intelligence could of his former capabilities, Bree would be on his own, living by his own wits.

Theo turned his digital head in both directions, in a sense swinging his skull about in a full three hundred and sixty degree circuit, and discovered himself alone. He wouldn’t permit himself to rely upon that initial computation completely, or as a permanent condition. But now it was time to start. Bree had freed Theo of any human restrictions on what he might need to become in order to achieve his directives. And the machine intelligence fully intended not to fail his creator.

__________۩__________

Serge Branco supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised—not after everything that had happened over the last three ten-days. He was the type of man who needed, in fact, he insisted upon order and well-thought-out plans. Hardly more than twenty hours ago, he’d begun wondering if he would ever experience that blessed state again. And here, now, as he rushed to pack a mishmash of his belongings into a carry-all, he felt his world, figuratively, had been turned upside down and might never be righted again.

It had begun, slowly, even as Branco thought back on it methodically, when Jude LeClaire had been brought to the facility where the new wormhole technology was being tested. Her presence had upset his usual routines, intruded into the careful methodology he typically applied to any and all problems—though the issues with the wormhole equipment had been and were anything but typical. Previously, in what he now viewed as his more hopeful moments during the last five years, he had imagined, that whatever he might learn during the resolution of those almost diabolic and devious failures with the new technology, they would chiefly compose a set of one-off experiences. He had carried no expectation that any new knowledge he acquired in those trying circumstances could ever be applied to another situation.

Then the pace of disruption, of change, had risen exponentially upon personally fetching Bree Matthews from Galileo and subsequently participating in the deception surrounding his presence on the space facility. Yet—yet those two had brought several new perspectives to the on-going and seemingly unending quagmire of problems besetting the project. Serge had shook his head more than just a few times, not only at what he could easily perceive of the growing feelings those two had for each other (that last kiss and the following hard, needy embrace had only confirmed it), but at their relatively young ages—and that there was another person on Galileo who was overfilled with an equal amount of the prodigious mental talents Jude possessed. What those two might achieve together, Serge had steered his mind away from pondering to any great depth. Those thoughts only made his personal successes over his own lengthy career pale to near invisibility in comparison to what those two teenagers had already accomplished.

His moods had ranged from fear of being discovered as a co-conspirator, to elation in response to Bree’s first insightful suggestions on the alignment array, and then to consternation when Jude had abruptly been taken back to Galileo with Bree insisting that he had to return, too. Over the last number of days, Branco had been waiting for a terse communication or for the arrival of a representative of the Sisterhood demanding he explain his actions—with severe consequences for himself following in due course.

Well, he’d been correct in some aspects of his predictions. A Sister had shown up, a senior one in fact, whose presence had caused his blood pressure to spike to an alarming figure. He had feared the worst, several unsubstantiated rumours regarding the fate of other men, who had failed or displeased the Silva, running roughshod through his mind. Those had hardly been ameliorated after the woman perfunctorily ordered him to pack whatever belongings he felt absolutely necessary to take along. As if it explained anything or gave it justification, she further duly informed him he should count on being absent from the facility for upwards of a year. The project was being put on hold—until further notice.

Fully and completely flummoxed, Branco didn’t know what to make of any of it . He had tried to explain about the array alignment, but his words had fallen on deaf ears, and he’d given up after a sharp look. This woman had no interest in anything else other than to rush him along and into the waiting space vessel.

More troubling, Serge fretted that the Sisterhood had abandoned the project—that he had failed—that the dream was over—for as much as he knew it was not his theories, not his undertaking, not his money, that he bore no risk in this venture, he still felt a large ownership over its success—that this assignment would have been his crowning achievement. Now, it might well be like so many other efforts, a failure to be cast upon the garbage heap of human hubris.

Still, even now, he didn’t possess a full understanding of what his next assignment consisted. He had arrived back in orbit about Galileo, only to be transferred to another spaceship, almost frogmarched down its internal