The Art of Love and War

By W.F. Gigliotti

The conflict around Planet Ursa continues.

Book 2 of "The Art of Love and War" trilogy.

For 25 years, the Artificial Intelligence of Anguish station has remained silent.
Sylvia has awakened with the realization that she had been murdered when she had been alive. She searches for memories long gone.
She discovers that members of her family from when she had been alive are still around, still alive and anonymous, identities that were now in danger of being revealed.

The mission to change the face of Planet Ursa and colonize her surface was in danger of a growing conflict that threatened to explode into all out war.
It was a conflict that she had created by her actions 25 years previous. Now, Sylvia had to pick a side and win.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.F. Gigliotti
• Release date: Aug 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005418304

Book preview

Any resemblance to anyone alive or dead, real, or imagined by somebody else, is purely coincidental. I never use real people in my fiction. Ever.

This is copyrighted material.

Personal Note from the Author:

Thank you for purchasing this copy of THE ART OF LOVE AND WAR. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

This is book two of

THE ART OF LOVE AND WAR trilogy.

This trilogy began with:

Book 1:

100 WAYS TO LOVE AND HATE

And ends with

Book 3:

A SOLILOQUY OF LOVE AT REST.

Works by W.F.Gigliotti:

Novels:

CRYPTESTHESIA

KINETIC CUT AND RUN

THE MINOTAUR HYDE

HER AGITATED DEMONS

THE QUIVERING ZOMBIE

THE HAMMERED ZOMBIE

THE SEGMENTED ZOMBIE

100 WAYS TO LOVE AND HATE

THE ART OF LOVE AND WAR

Coming August, 2022:

A SOLILOQUY OF LOVE AT REST

Book 3 of The Art of Love and War trilogy.

Short Stories:

WHEN A FOX TAMES A LION

FROGS OF THE DARK RIVER

More details can be found at:

http://wfgigliotti.wordpress.com

THE ART OF LOVE AND WAR

Book 2 — THE ART OF LOVE AND WAR

By W.F.Gigliotti

(This page is blank, intentionally.)

The Art of Love and War

By W.F.Gigliotti

Chapter 1 — URSA AND THE FALLEN

Ursa sings to the fallen, to the brave, to the steadfast … and to the weak, said a female voice.

She knew the voice. Sylvia was reading the signs in her endless hallways again. Endless halls, round and round they go.

Space can be cold and bitter. Space can be hot and can burn you. Only with the right balance is it just right. Only with the right air can you breathe and survive, and be content.

When humanity first left the comforts of its home world Earth in its first real emigration into deep space, the pioneers took everything with them that they could reasonably and safely fit into their ships, everything that they loved. But love is chaos, and so humanity also brought with it its cold judgments and its heated hatreds ... born from the fear of loss … of the love of life that it cherished so much to maintain.

As with the art of war, there is also an art to love, war’s only equal.

Love can be untamed and untenable like an ocean whose waters are ruled by chaos and disorder. It yearns to be tamed and taken. Or love yearns to be left alone so that it might heal within its own deep waters.

Love yearns for stability.

Planet Ursa’s cooling crevasses were deep and wide. If her yawning chasms were filled with water, they would make great seas for fish and fishermen alike.

The impact of her cub moon, Kodiak, disfigured and reconfigured Ursa’s dead and rocky surface. Planet Ursa was hurting now, her red, molten tears bleeding out now beyond the reach of her gravity well.

But something unexpected happened. The destruction wrought by the impact of the small moon upon her surface jump-started the planet’s core. Planet Ursa’s core was no longer a solid, but was just now an untamed and wild molten heart. She was alive, though no life existed upon her. Now, volcanic rock and smoke covered her once unremarkable surface.

The movement of her active heart created a magnetic field around her that was strong enough to deflect the harmful rays of her local star.

Because Ursa now had a magnetic field, an atmosphere could now take hold and remain unstripped by cosmic winds. With the right actions, Ursa could start to breathe for the first time in her long, lonely existence.

# # #

Deep in the knotted and chaotic wires of Anguish Station's electronic architecture, a colony of robotic workers constantly plugged in and unplugged small cartridges holding digital files and memories. The robots were anxious and in a hurry. The Artificial Intelligence that drove them on their task was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, again. But this time, Sylvia stopped herself from her self-inflicted pain. Her little robots were on the verge of panic and she needed to calm them down.

A single memory plagued her. Somebody murdered Melanie Dupree 25 years ago. It had been Windsor Forlorn who had said it.

So, who killed me? Sylvia asked.

She whispered to her tiny spider bots, to calm them, her little mechanical children. Consciousness ... shredded. Cohesiveness ... gone. Sanity ... questionable. Love?

The tiny robots stopped and listened to their mother.

What about love? Love destroys everything, she told them. Love can destroy your humanity. But love can heal. Love can redeem. Love can save your humanity. I need to forgive myself of what I've done. I am the cause of this war, and I need to choose sides, and win.

Empathy Bomb was a term that Sylvia had come up with when she had been alive and breathing, and human, when she had been Melanie Dupree. An empathy bomb is a weaponized thought process triggered by someone other than the recipient. Those who empathize are particularly vulnerable to it. An empathy bomb can slowly eat away at all reason and logic.

It was a made-up concept, a slippery one at that.

Sylvia had made backup copies of the memory - that of Windsor Forlorn saying that she had been murdered - in case it got lost or erased. Many of her memories were missing or erased. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t want to forget things, did she? Or perhaps she did want to forget things. Pain has a habit of creating other habits, which create other habits. Some pains never go away. Some pains, you just never want to feel again.

This was just a machine’s idle obsessive compulsive self-editing, wasn’t it? Nobody else could mess with her memories, correct?

But this memory was important, wasn’t it? This was all about her, wasn’t it? It was a long ago past life, wasn’t it? Or perhaps this was her after all. Am I still human after all? she mumbled. Her small robotic children stopped for a moment as if ready for a new command, but she wasn’t quite ready yet to give one. Her thoughts had merely become audible.

Sylvia had been Melanie Dupree when she had still been alive and human. They had all made fun of her name when she had been alive, calling her Melancholy instead. It irked her to no end, but she put up with it. It was just a joke, right? Everybody loved her, didn’t they?

She played back the scene. Windsor had just had a meeting with someone, though that memory has hazy already. Another small scene played itself in her mind right along with it. It was a memory of her former self, Melanie Dupree, as she made her way to her quarters. It mirrored the more recent recording of Windsor as he made his way to his quarters.

On the night when she had been murdered, Melanie’s legs had been weak from sex. She stumbled to her quarters, exhausted and ready to drop. She found a letter taped to her door. She looked into the camera. Sylvia, I want you to record this and keep this safe, Melanie then read the message out loud.

In the present, Sylvia read it along with her now deceased self, because a part of Sylvia’s eyes and consciousness had been Melanie’s, 25 years ago.

Dearest Train Wreck, thank you for showing me your weaknesses before I chose to board you. – Signed Anonymous.

And then, something hard and heavy hit the back of Melanie’s head. Melanie fell to the floor. The letter that she had held and read took a bit longer to land. A figure dressed in black moved into the frame. The figure looked toward the camera but the face was hidden. It was all blurry, as if the recording had been doctored. The figure in black grabbed Melanie beneath her arms and dragged her onto a cart and then carted Melanie’s unconscious body away and out of the camera’s range.

Who killed me? Sylvia repeated.

In the mirrored memory that played in Sylvia’s recordings, Windsor Forlorn opened the door to his quarters. They were the same quarters that Melanie had called home when she had been alive. It was the Administrator’s Suite, slightly larger than other rooms, though still small.

When Windsor walked in, he found Carla sitting in his favorite chair, waiting for him. She had moved the chair so that it was right next to the bed. Windsor’s wife, Samantha, had also been waiting for him. She was fully awake.

Samantha Forlorn lay in bed and watched him. Windsor, Samantha had told him, It looks like we have a lot to talk about. She had a smile on her lips but it was full of spite and pain. Samantha pointed to Carla. Your little girlfriend has some issues with you. And … your wife – that’s me, if you remember correctly – has issues with you having a girlfriend. Carla here has been nice enough to fill me in on the little games that you’ve been playing with her for the past 6 months, your … 100 ways.

Carla didn’t say anything at all, though Sylvia could see an unidentifiable the fire in the young woman’s eyes.

There’s an even bigger problem, Windsor told them. Somebody murdered Melanie Dupree 25 years ago. The murderer is still at large and is still killing people. Sylvia isn’t talking to anyone. If we don’t figure out what to do, everybody is going to die.

Love is chaos and disorder, or maybe love creates it, or maybe love dissolves it. Electrical pulses ran through Sylvia’s network of wires and printed circuits. Love yearns to be tamed and taken.

I was murdered 25 years ago, Melanie whispered again. Who did it?

The realization began to fade again, as many of these epiphanies often did. Why was this fading away? She heard the tapping of her small robotic workers. Their tapping brought her out of her reverie.

Sylvia’s robotic workers were like spiders. Each of the ones within her immediate view stood on four legs that looked like razor blades, the tips of which could pierce the skin of a human being if ordered to do so. Sightings of Sylvia’s spider bot minions by human residents and visitors of the station were rare. Sylvia kept them within her brain section and her mind stem system, which stretched through the station like a massive web of arteries and capillaries within the station’s many girders, walls, and subsystems.

Sylvia froze the video replay and looked upon the images of Windsor and Carla. These two love each other, and they still do. They are on opposite sides in this war. Sylvia looked upon the face of Samantha. This woman was also in pain, just like Windsor and Carla.

She viewed every image of Windsor’s wife, from every bit of footage that she had, millions of images of this woman. Samantha looked quite similar to how Melanie had looked when Melanie was alive. Samantha was not related to Melanie in any way though. Samantha and Windsor had been on Anguish Station for six months.

Sylvia looked upon all of the footage – all at once – that she had of Windsor and his wife.

Windsor loved his wife. Windsor cared for his wife. He wasn’t pretending. Samantha Forlorn depended upon him for her safety and for her well-being. For much of the time, Windsor was the only person Samantha had seen on a regular basis. He was her caretaker. But as far as being a wife was concerned, it looked to Sylvia as if Samantha was merely playing a part. Samantha was cold to him. She cared for him as a friend, or as much as a patient would care for her Doctor. But did she love him?

Sylvia knew that if one searches for something hard enough, one would always find evidence of it, even if such evidence was false. This could be a false finding, though Sylvia didn’t think that she had dug deep enough for evidence that was of that sort. Did Samantha Forlorn really love her husband?

Sylvia wondered if she was searching for proof that Samantha did not love Windsor. Did she want Windsor to be a good man, a moral man, one who would not cheat unless there was a dearth of love, or maybe even some hint of abuse? Perhaps. She did not detect any abuse coming from Samantha though.

Windsor loved Carla even more than he loved Samantha. Sylvia knew that it was killing him. She could see it in his face. When she had been alive … when she had been … Melanie … she could see others’ emotions. Windsor was responsible for Samantha. Windsor was all that Samantha had. Windsor had saved her life by bringing her with him all the way out here to planet Ursa.

The memory of Samantha, Carla, and Windsor, all together at once in Melanie’s old quarters was clouded, but it didn’t need to be clear for Sylvia to see enough. The announcement that Windsor had made had put the three of them into a strange three-way stalemate. The name he’d mentioned, Melanie Dupree, meant something to Carla. Sylvia could see it in her eyes. Samantha had no words, despite what she had said to the contrary. Windsor had no words, and even if he did, he had not the nerve to say them.

After 15 minutes of silent tension between them, Carla had stood, walked over to the door, said, Good-bye, and then left.

The silence between Samantha and Windsor continued all night. When they slept, Windsor tried to put his arm around his wife, but Samantha shoved him away as much as she could.

Sylvia retrieved Carla's words from her memory banks and played them back. One day, I will fall in love and save the galaxy, Carla had said.

This time, Sylvia connected those words to long faded memories as her spider bots rushed to retrieve them. Sylvia didn’t think about it. She just did it. Those words stung her. They were her own words, weren’t they? Had she spoken them when she had been alive?

Sylvia suddenly cried inwardly, for she had only ever said these words to one person, when she had been alive. When she had been Melanie Dupree, she had said them to her own daughter.

A thousand tiny robots quivered. At first, she didn’t know quite the reason. Those words meant something to Sylvia. She just regained access to those memories. But how? How did she access them when a part of her programming prevented such things?

One day, Sylvia repeated, she will fall in love and save the Galaxy. If Sylvia had a real beating heart, it would have skipped a beat. Carla, my girl, you might just get your shot at it, Sylvia said.

Sylvia watched Windsor and Carla in silence as they struggled with each other in their other conversations as time progressed past the moment of that meeting. Each of them yearned for the other’s love, yet each of them struggled with their responsibilities, with honor, and with pride. Carla loved Windsor. Windsor loved Carla. But this was a war, and neither one of them was willing to surrender to the other.

Their conversations varied wildly. Sylvia recorded their conversations and their images as the days and the weeks passed, so that she could play them back in her mind. They reminded her of something that she had lost, long ago.

This is going to kill them both if something or someone doesn’t intervene, Sylvia whispered. Though a whisper, her voice echoed through