Chapter 48: Resistance

Led by an elite pilot, the Tyger descended in a graceful curve toward Origin. Inside, flanked by an anonymous armed agent and a Gamma Empty Eyes officer who looked as tired as he was dejected, sat Samuel Aloysius, one of the few survivors of the Lennox massacre.

He didn’t remember any of it, for everything had been sealed inside a mental box that would one day reopen-but at the time, he had been working in a wooden room, on a blackboard, with chalk, like in the old days, while an AI took notes, when the Wau entered the room.

The Wau had left deep marks in the light, varnished university floor, due to his weight. But those weren’t the only stains in UniNox: long red streaks of blood from bodies dragged toward makeshift classroom-charnel pits were being scrubbed away with the neutral enthusiasm of maintenance drones. UniNox had been placed under tight surveillance for two weeks-three since the arrival of the Aleph-but the Wau, remarkable as he was, could infiltrate the guards’ psyches and make them believe there were only white and blue butterflies fluttering in the garden when in fact a metal giant passed before their eyes.

Aloysius had dropped his chalk, biting his lip at the noise it made. He murmured:

-”So, you’re back? Are you Cass, or someone else? You know, this isn’t a safe place...”

-”No need to whisper. Even if you shook the guard dogs while shouting that they’re on fire, they wouldn’t hear you,” replied the Wau, positioning himself in front of the desk.

The Wau scanned the diagrams on the wall, and the few easy-to-follow equations.

-”Synthetic beings?”

-”Yes, uh, I probably shouldn’t tell you but ... the Earth command issued a call for proposals ... a call you can’t really say no to, because ... well, they have guns. Uh ... Professor Moa, do you know who that is? Or Spiros? Anyway, you know here at UniNox we cultivate a small sense of defiance ... They came in with their guns and Spiros caused a scandal, and they shot him. In front of us. Not even an After for him, damn it. And he talked about it all the time. That really shook me. Me, I want to live ... Cass may have told you.

-”What is the call for proposals about, Professor?”

-”Are you Cassandra?”

-”Who knows?”

-”You’re saying that to drive me mad, aren’t you?”

-”Just answer my question, please.”

-”Moa ... Moa had a clever idea. We respond to the call with a bomb. A bomb to kill those bastards.”

-”Crude, but interesting. The call for proposals.”

-”Ah, so you’re not on their side. They’ve got a Empty Eye on patrol. He saw it in his mind and they shot him. I know thermal rifles cause no pain when they burn the head, but still. Well, wanting to live, I’m working hard on a proposal.”

He wiped his hands; they were trembling. He was so afraid that his mind had taken refuge in equations, and he had performed wonders.

-”THE CALL FOR PROPOSALS!”

The Wau had shouted, and the professor trembled again.

-”Uh ... they want Androids. Of the same kind used to store Transients or the ones returning from the After. They want a lot ... like, an absurdly high number. We’re talking trillions. The AIs can optimize production, but they’ve asked every university for a disruptive solution. By the Blind Gods, if the Empty Eye can hear us thinking, I’m screwed.”

The Wau looked again at the board in silence.

-”Your idea is interesting. You’re brilliant, Aloysius. Why are you here on Lennox, and not at the MIT complex on Earth, for example?”

-”I thought I’d be left alone here. Far from the HS Council and its twisted ideas.”

-”The turmoil of events always catches up with exceptional individuals. Don’t torture yourself over that Empty Eye, he’s a joke. As for your project, you’re missing a good idea. The kind that will seduce the Aleph. Here it is. You don’t have to make humanoids. The human form may appear pleasant to us, but it’s far from optimal. Look at the Chimera Protea.”

-”If...”

Samuel mumbled, deeply confused. The events had clearly rattled him.

-” ... the Aleph said he wanted humans.”

-”The call for proposals wasn’t written by the Aleph.”

-”I don’t understand-do you want to help the Aleph? You Waus, you’re...”

-”I want you to present the best project. I want you to be selected. Because I have a mission for you. I want you to insert a flaw into this project. There is a resistance being formed, Aloysius. A counterattack will be launched. It will take time. My project is ... I can’t explain it to you, but basically I’m going to hypnotize you. You’ll forget I was ever here, and you’ll have this magical idea of a non-human Android. You’ll be heard and received by the highest authorities. The Aleph will be impressed because you’re a very intelligent man, far more than those intellectually deficient and probably servile bureaucrats around him. He will appoint you head of the project. And at that moment, my hypnosis will lift. You will remember everything. You’ll insert a tiny critical flaw into production and you will be the wind of change when we strike. Do you agree?”

-”Do I have a choice?”

-”Honestly? Yes.”

Aloysius crossed his arms, leaning against the blackboard, partially erasing his diagrams.

-”I might die.”

-”Less likely than most people, according to my sources.”

-”I think I’ll do it.”

-”But you may fear for your life and not go through with it when the time comes.”

-”I don’t know if you’re Cassandra ... but in any case, she told you many things. You must know...”

He stepped out of the room to lead the Wau and his heavy steps to an adjacent office. On a table lay the primitive robot that had housed Proteus, its metal torso melted by the blast of a thermal rifle.

-”UniNox had quite a few Xenos, and they were driven out or killed if they resisted. I refuse to believe in a state-sponsored speciesism, but they told me that some Xenos had to be considered enemies or spies. Not all were killed ... I had kept Proteus, and they believed he was just an AI. But Proteus is a very kind person, incapable of seeing evil ... he started talking with the soldiers. I begged for his life. I explained that he was the only one of his kind, and maybe the key to helping save the entities on Lennox ... but they said he knew too much. Those soldiers ... they’re not psychically manipulated. They’re not afraid of the Aleph. And they killed him anyway. Where are we? When are we? In a police state from the year 2000? Yes, Wau, I’ll be afraid of dying ... but I think deep down, I won’t have the courage, the strength, the logic, and yes, let’s say it, that medieval feeling called hatred, which is now deeply rooted in me, to not act.”

-”Then we are partners,” concluded the Wau simply.

Aloysius had wanted to ask the Wau-before he wiped everything-to pass along a final message to Cassandra, whom he missed terribly in these uncertain and lonely times. But the Wau had already locked away orders, thoughts, and memories in a sophisticated structure of mental boxes.

Those past twenty minutes were a brief half-second absence for Aloysius’ psyche, who now stood before his board with a new idea in mind.

He had formalized everything, and command had asked him to come to Earth to present his plan.

The Tyger landed in a secure zone not far from the HS Council Tower. It had been three hundred years since Aloysius last saw Origin-and it hadn’t changed that much. Perhaps, he thought, the Aleph is one of those unfortunate events that will pull us out of our torpor.

Security checks, elevators. Above all, vast corridors and empty offices. The silence occasionally broken by a furious scream. Sometimes, the silent trace of a death. He was led into the vast open-bay chamber of the former HS Council. A stone throne fit for a Sumerian king, and, more practically, a conference table around which sat the Aleph with silver eyes-a well-built man who appeared human-, the HS president, unsmiling, a few high-ranking officials with tense features, and the director of UniPsi ... a stranger, and unusually, an elderly person. Usually, people transferred to the After before reaching old age.

The Aleph gestured without looking at Aloysius, and the soldier had him sit on a bench near the door before saluting and leaving.

-”Continue,” said the Aleph, with the smooth voice of a tiger.

-”In front of a witness?” asked a senior official, gesturing to Aloysius with a tilt of his chin.

-”I’ll wipe his mind if anything bothers us, but I doubt it.”

-”Very well,” said the director of UniPsi. “It hasn’t reached the media yet, but there are people unhappy with the new regime. Not everyone embraces the project. They’re using militant terminology-they speak of a resistance.”

-”A clever and classic semantic reversal by what are, in truth, nothing more than potential terrorists,” said another official, clearly present only to flatter the Aleph.

The Aleph caught that remark in Aloysius’ thoughts and immediately despised them both-the official and the academic. He wanted to kill them. He clenched his fists.

-”Do they include any of the few military units still at large?” asked another official.

The UniPsi director, weary of constant interruptions, shrugged. What was the point in presenting anything if sycophants were just going to circle the leader? The Aleph turned to the HS president and asked:

-”Do you have an opinion on the matter?”

-”As for the few military units, we’re talking about two dusty admirals who hold little esteem among their peers and two Endymions, incapable of sustaining autonomy for long. They’ll emerge from hiding when they’re exhausted. As for the resistance ... well ... the difference between a dictatorship and a tolerated regime is that the latter gives dissenters the illusion they can speak, be heard. One might imagine tipping into dictatorship: physically eliminating-perhaps ‘humanely,’ by transferring to the After-the dissenters. But history shows that’s rarely effective: opponents emerge naturally. And fear is not a long-term motivator.”

-”That’s not what the Emprise says,” the servile official asserted.

-”The Emprise is a Xeno mishmash where one must pick and choose carefully-something that seems to elude you,” the HS president coldly retorted, visibly unimpressed with having her political acumen challenged. “Humans are not insects. Supra-authoritarian regimes lack stability, because stability results from a sometimes-heated struggle between opponents and supporters. A tolerated regime-some might call it a democracy-allows dissent to be expressed. But ‘allowing expression’ doesn’t mean refraining from manipulating it. My advice, Aleph, is to find a good candidate-a powerful Empty Eye-who will take leadership of the movement. Someone who secretly works for us.”