Chapter 20: Lennox

The Wau opens the mental box and consults the list of themes with answers deemed too brief:

Caliban-1

Stellar Language

David Ilsner

Inverted Babel

S-422421

and other negligible entries. These entries were nonsensical expressions brute-forced by robots from the Dark Unit, to which the LEs had simply replied, “I did not understand your question.”

Let’s examine the list.

Caliban-1 is one of the core issues. A planet of mysteries. But also a planet on the frontline of the current war. What if the war was fought because of something on the planet? Government leaders would have erased this information, even if it meant aggressive intervention using top-tier scientists to manipulate the LE. A lead worth investigating.

Stellar Language. The lack of information might be explainable: the Wau was aware of a human-Xeno agreement protecting this language for religious reasons.

S-422421. “S” stands for “star cluster” or “galaxy.” The S-422 class represents “absent galaxies.” Approximately 800 have been identified to date. They are extremely distant galaxies, requiring one to three weeks of Drift at force 5 or 6 from the SH bubble to reach. These galaxies are inexplicably “invisible.” Their mass has been detected but not their image, as if they were “painted black”: black holes, intermediary debris, or the elusive dark matter—the mystery remains. The HS had conducted costly expeditions, finding nothing. However, once again, if the SH had discovered, say, dark matter and envisioned military use, perhaps it would keep it secret until peacetime.

The “Inverted Babels” represent a peculiar anomaly. Their mystical nature recalls the Transients, but this distinctly human designation overlooks the deeply Xeno aspect inherent to all Transients. Could it be yet another human project? The Wau had come across information—perhaps just a rumor—about a fractal-dimensional ship reportedly under construction somewhere lost in the universe.

Lastly, David Ilsner.

Who are you, David Ilsner, and what did you do to make the HS or Transients want your name erased from history? David appeared to be the most promising and easiest lead to solve in the short term.

No man is an island. It’s always possible to trick the LEs using meta-queries such as, “Who was David Ilsner’s father?” However, this approach carries the risk of stepping into the dangerous territory of forbidden questions.

The Wau closes the list in a mental box. Find a good spy. Condition him here. Perhaps investigate LE alterations. Ah, and refill antimatter—the reserves here are dwindling.

The Wau stands, alert to any noise his counterparts might transmit through the ship’s structure, but everything is silent. The few times he’d participated in council meetings, he’d failed to comprehend the inner thoughts of his brothers in the Order. Did they ever feel lonely? Overwhelmed by their mission? Or did they do nothing at all? After all, there was neither obligation nor agenda within the Order...

The Wau crosses the Entangled Gate again, then discards the Armor. Cass’s hair floats free once more.

She passes through the other Entangled Gate and arrives in her apartment in Lennox, through a sliding opening otherwise leading to a wardrobe. A bedroom, a living room—a discreet, minimalistic place in the most luxurious district of this distant world. Cass dons a subtle suit and moves toward the large bay window.

Lennox is a world overshadowed by the concept of freedom. Not that its citizens are particularly free—society, like a child, often waves around the word describing its immediate need rather than its true nature.

For Lennox is a distant world, one of those remote places like Fang, Ur, or everything beyond Ariel, reachable only by several Drifts from Earth or Prospero, and (officially... ) lacking an Entangled Gate. Originally profoundly uninhabitable: violet lands saturated with potassium, an acidic atmosphere poisoned by a lethal mixture of sulfur and carbon. Xenobiologists claimed they hadn’t found a single living cell (though the more Cass discovered about the HS, the more she felt xenobiologists were corrupt, foolish, or genocidal). Yet, Lennox had one vanity: its rocky surface consisted of large cubic crystals. Flying over it, a traveler would see a pixelated world: cubic mountains flanked by cubic hills or proudly standing cubic grains of sand between cubic rocks. “Potassium crystallization,” said jaded chemists.

The world’s remoteness from the HS bubble but proximity to its star made Lennox ideal for testing an outrageously expensive Transient technology called the terraforming bomb (or, in their words, the seed of life)—a bomb with simple components but whose precise functioning still eluded HS AIs.

The Council designated a temperate zone and released the bomb, the result of five years’ work by a million scientists: a perfect hundred-kilometer disk of soil and atmosphere transformed to sustain human life instantly. Grass sprouted from rock that very evening. Like all Transient artifacts, the result was miraculous.

Yet Lennox’s miracle soon turned scandalous, escalating into a human-Xeno controversy. A new, autonomous city arose, populated by intrusive scientists who began exploring deeper. It turned out the cubic crystals had a structure far more complex than ordinary minerals. They weren’t sentient—no, it was worse: the crystalline structures were the Afterstate of sentient beings who had once inhabited the planet. They had extended and then preserved their consciousness within these structures, into which humanity carelessly stepped. The scandal widened: as humans happily desecrated the graveyard of an ancient mysterious race, other Xeno civilizations, some with atmosphere-adapted bombs, and others finding Lennox’s original atmosphere appealing, settled with equal disregard.

Humanity made half-hearted attempts to dissuade them, but these efforts were deemed illogical, hypocritical, or incomprehensible.

Thus, Lennox became both a shameful chapter in humanity’s colonial emancipation and a unique site for human-Xeno interactions. Apart from Earth, Xenos are numerous within human populations and number in the billions on Prospero.

But these recent cases involved Xenos whose physiology tolerated human living conditions, making them “foreign yet not entirely alien” to humans. Lennox, however, proposed coexistence with radically different beings, including certain advanced societies—an unprecedented opportunity to approach an often-rejected yet intriguing otherness.

Indeed, Lennox hosted a comprehensive university, UniNox, which uniquely within the Human Society (HS), included a psi department accepting Xenos. Here, ethically questionable comparative consciousness experiments were conducted. Freedom, yet again.

This coexistence, which mocked conventional ethics, the planet’s remote location, and especially Lennox’s original sin—blamed by its inhabitants on a government they deemed deaf and blind—had fostered a culture of defiance and liberty. Since Prospero, Lennoxians had gained a reputation as picturesque professionals of indignation.

A hundred kilometers radius was limited space for human enterprise; thus, Lennox expanded vertically, both upward and downward. Titanic Xeno arcologies of similar scale proliferated across the surface. At the top glittered the Prefect’s Palace, an angular architecture striving to distance itself from its original cube-based design.

The deeper one descended, the less governmental authority held sway: security transitioned from police to militias, and eventually to private bodyguards. The underground zone, technically the After of Lennox’s unknown civilization, was officially considered outside the HS by a government eager to disclaim responsibility—but existed nonetheless.

Lennoxian society had turned the Abyss—as it was named—into an experiment in liberty. Thus existed an area called the True Abyss, the lowest and broadest underground level, where freedom was absolute, and no actions could be reproached. Was it an interesting experiment? As Aloysius, a Lennox scholar dear to Cass, had remarked, “We grant absolute freedom to humans hoping they’ll create an unhindered masterpiece that will revolutionize humanity, and instead, we end up with people who take pleasure in strangling puppies.”

Lennox was strategically significant for Cass: it housed both allies and foes useful to her operations. Moreover, despite its distance from the HS, Wau could intervene via the Entangled Gate in case of crisis. Cass exhibited peculiar behavior, living on the margins of society—a suspicious trait on Earth, yet entirely commonplace here.

She grabbed a student backpack and rushed down her building’s stairs, glimpsing the powerful aurora borealis marking the terraforming disk’s edge.

Streets of molten stone and metal; passersby dressed uniquely yet comfortably. Dreamers lying down, watching giant movies projected onto what was the floor of the upper level, a hundred meters above. Thieves. Predators capable of the worst, thinking “what a lovely girl, she’s mine”—before experiencing a psychic cold shower that would eliminate sexual excitement for a month. Xenos clinging to walls like moss, or tentacled walking cones mistakenly devouring someone’s poor fox-terrier amid its owner’s screams.

Elevators existed, but Cass’s transhuman body delighted in exerting itself without mechanical assistance from her Armor: she ascended stairs at speeds unreachable even by augmented humans, under the bored, indifferent gaze of drugged Lennoxians who perceived only a shadow.

Two arcology levels higher, she reached the industrial district, patrolled by massive wheeled drones armed like tanks. This level, privatized by companies indistinguishable from organized cartels and exploiting Lennox’s “freedom loophole” to produce otherwise forbidden goods, served as a security buffer between the Abyss and the administration. This large district was meticulously ordered, contrary to the chaotic construction below: perpendicular streets with checkpoints and factories laid out in vast squares six kilometers on each side.

Cass resumed a normal walking pace. She did not fear the armed drones of private militias but sought to avoid attracting attention. Passing two blocks, she arrived at the antimatter production facility—a polished metal factory gleaming under golden lights, enveloped in multiple spaced glass layers deterring theft through repeated checks. At the entrance, two armed drones, then a checkpoint with a soldier. They had been briefed: deliveries were sometimes conducted by disconcerting figures, such as this vague, older student. Her identity was verified multiple times.

One of the checkpoints was managed by a Xeno—an argent octopus with countless tentacles from a society known as the People of Light. Cass recognized a member from an amphibious community at Gobbo’s southern pole, renowned for cities delicately carved from ice, illuminated to enhance their society’s physical beauty. They occasionally exuded a highly energetic black fluid, thus becoming the subject of illegal trade in the HS.

“A Xeno handling checks?” Cass remarked aloud, more to herself than to him.

“Specist?” replied the being from the People of Light.

“I see human thinking has thoroughly penetrated you,” joked Cass.

“Specist,” concluded the Xeno, gesturing her through after validating her vocal signature.

A psi check followed. The psi was a UniNox intern amusing himself by creating an illusory insect for the accompanying soldier to chase fruitlessly. His psi abilities matched his ethics—weak, Cass mused silently, in a corner of her mind he’d never access. He’d end up in the Abyss.

Inside the factory, an android powered by AI approached her.

Since 2050, AI could convincingly simulate consciousness. With After and personality emulation, intact human psyches could be transferred to electronic brains. These personalities could theoretically inhabit human-like robots and continue their lives—a concept tested for decades.

Eventually, a clear division arose between After and reality—humans in After had no interest in returning, leaving only AIs behind. For religious and ethical reasons, distinguishing between humans and AI became essential. Thus, the ancient science-fiction term “Android” was resurrected, describing humanoid robots clearly identifiable as artificial through their movements, speech, and empty gaze. Politeness dictated that interlocutors be reminded they interacted with a non-human. Consequently, during important trials attended by Transients, they respectfully inhabited androids. Though “After Cyrano” (2710) had ignited public enthusiasm, the general tendency over centuries favored human-only interactions, disinterest toward AIs prevailing.

The AI judged Cass neither by age nor appearance. It didn’t suspect when she unzipped the student backpack, extracting an antimatter container worth millions of thalers, nor when she provided three validation codes matching an anonymous, ultra-wealthy client’s order. Indeed, transporting something costing ten million thalers per gram through a seemingly young, innocent woman struck the AI as a brilliantly subtle protective measure.

Cass exited through checks again. The psi intern intruded into her fabricated personal life. Annoyed by his insolence, she imagined a passionate relationship with two men whose profiles she pulled from his memories. Both mocked the intern mercilessly, calling him pathetic and undignified. Visibly shaken, he averted his eyes as she departed.