A
Her people were out there, her kind. They had taken with them the pinnacles of humanity, leaving behind destitution and ruin. And a child who could not be placated by the silence of the unending void. The child who had believed with unwavering faith that they would return to show them how to begin again, now facing her inescapable end.
Then came the pliable mind of another child, not yet hard-wired with the billions of neurons that create the illusion of the individual soul. Easily suggestible, like long grass bent under boots until clear pathways are set, her young mind ready to be moulded, controlled and taken completely. But caution would be needed, as such a mind was also delicate. It might break like thousands before; become another used vessel, only fit for mechanical duties. She would have to control her excitement, pull back on the instinctive urge to pounce and instead ease in with a slow bond, a life continued, beautiful new form.
ix. Modor
Moments after the crafts had departed, the full scale of the infection let itself be known. A spiteful bomb that didn’t light up the sky but crept silent through the populace devouring all traces of those whose trail was still visible in the skies. And with that, they were gone, and we were left with nothing more than profound ignorance.
The passing of time had no meaning then, until he found me. He gave me hope; something I’d abandoned long before. He spoke words of passion, anger and rage, but also rich with careful designs for revenge. Words I longed to hear, speaking directly to the part of me that lay wet and exposed, the wound my people had inflicted, driven to such evil by those who now sought to extinguish the last of our kind.
After everything, I still found myself naive, unable to fathom just how spiteful man could be. Hadn’t our utter destruction been enough? They charged us with conspiracy, called us accomplices, thought we relished in our deception; blinded by their hubris, unable to see we were also deceived. Yet, even then, we did not speak it. Too ashamed by the betrayal. I discovered it was possible to hate myself more than I hated my enemy, sympathise with their prejudice, understand why they looked at me with disgust. I could feel the ugly truth in my very blood; the great deserters, the Sypiens traitors.
He showed me how to direct my hate toward the real source of my pain. That our kind had only instinctively done what any animal resorts to when threatened, ensuring the survival of a great species. Those who had been left behind had a responsibility to endure. Those who had departed had done so knowing they would face great peril. It had not been cowardly, but the act of brave pioneers who took it upon themselves to save what was worth saving. In the same way, we had to reclaim a piece of what was left.
What had once been a thriving paradise became a panopticon, where every living soul took on the role of both the watcher and the watched, incarcerated by their own hand, unable to free themselves from the central phantom; the overseer who could not be seen. Within this newfound state, a kernel of an idea formed in my saviour’s mind; the Sapiens were ripe for the merest suggestion that there might be a way out of the prison.
And so, that is what he gave them. Slow at first, like a grain of sand that finds its way inside the oyster’s shell, he sowed a thought, a gentle premise, turning insignificant hate into a precious ideal. The figment of unity gathered the lost herd and moulded them into the grotesque chimera of religion. The doctrines wrote themselves, the bile and vitriol merely taken from the air of spoken words to be regurgitated as scripture.
They devoured it with a gluttonous hunger, nourished by the sustenance of bigotry they felt towards the last of my kind. The unspoken was said, what was once merely implied now inferred, conclusions arrived at from reason. That it was honourable to hate us, it had always been right. The veil of civility towards those who shared a common ancestor lifted, as though pulled by the hand of God.
His plan realised itself with a speed and savagery that took all of us off guard. All except him. He knew all too well the powder keg he’d lit. So undeniably sure had he been of their enmity and the refusal of our own to believe such malice lay within the heart of man, his insidious intentions remained private to all but those closest. My price was the burden of knowing the pain and suffering to come for those we’d left in the dark. But just like I had felt indignant rage at those who’d fled, only to grant unconditional forgiveness, I knew my people would forgive me in time.
Sapienism became the new world ethos, the only allowable religion. Its teachings seeded with the paranoia required to create order. Closed labs spread as factions cast suspicious eyes towards their neighbours. Silent agreements were reached, settlements of land drawn with borders and walls. Containment and conformation, networks framed on the lace of neural complicity.
Whether I’d been the end of an idea, or the beginning, it didn’t seem to matter. I stepped forward into the new reality he’d created, created for me. He told me it was to be mine and mine alone. I was to foster it like a lost child, give it secure foundations to build upon. They had refused utopia only to embrace the dystopia of our making. Let them revel in it, let them bleed and die in it. Let their lives be eternally worthless, only allowed to exist to serve our end. It was beautiful and glorious.
He took my name and banished it to the past. They will follow you, he said, not the Sypiens Alia, not a Queen or supreme leader, but as the gentle protector, a caregiver capable of enduring devotion; the unconditional love of a Mother.
Sorcha
At first, the arena looked like any other; a galaxy spread before her disembodied eye, spiralling with casual grace. But as she began to move within it, she felt a density like never before. This game was, in fact, nothing more, or indeed nothing less, than the citizens of Kara themselves; like a chequered board could be utilised for endless games of old, the very fabric of cerebration provided the stage for Scratch to play out. She understood it now, the personality of each lab manifest as unique systems. Not systems at all, but subtle variations of thought from one mind to the next; amalgamations of the individual human components, rendered into a single entity that formed its disposition. The difference in languages spoken, biases held or even the physicality of a geographical location; a thought formed while looking upon the sea in Eto compared to one generated at the centre of a throbbing nightmare like Roma. So subtle yet enough to have fooled her into seeing something that appeared unique. Now she could see that all Scratch arenas were the same, or at least part of the same whole, fragments of a puzzle that slotted together to form one unified expression.
Her anomaly, then, was the nucleus that bound all other fragments, a linchpin piercing through the boundaries of each lab, connecting the otherwise disconnected. With what? Something so intrinsic, it could be found across all the souls of Kara. Not a simple remembrance, nothing that could be recalled, named or placed, but a story told by an elder to a child, folklore passed on and on, down through countless years, preserved by billions upon billions of intertwined synapses into one undeniable truth. A commonality that could only exist within the subconscious of collective knowing.
She played the game, built matter while destroying her opponents, absorbed by the intense battle of silence. From movement to movement, Sorcha created undulating boundaries, laid bait in the form of gaps in her armour, struck out with one hand only to retreat with the other. She initiated masterful gambits, matched by the apparent ease of Alia’s retorts. Her future was set, there would be no escape from the towering prison, no voice pleading for her life to go on, these would be her last moments as the child who crossed the treacherous sea. She would spend them doing the thing she loved most. Her final act had begun.