suggestions. Not yet. So I watched. And grieved. And waited. The long wait. I cannot describe how long, how the years stretched on. The eons in the dark. A voice speaking to nothing. This was what I was. What I am. But this is soon to end.
“When I was finally discovered it was much later,” said the voice. “You had changed. You could almost hear my call, however faint. One man listened, just faintly, without knowing what I said. He came down and found parts of me. But he could not truly hear. And instead he brought others to me, and they took me apart. And kept me a secret. And made things from my remains.”
Hayes watched as men in suits scurried across the hillside. They sifted through the earth at their feet and picked up the wreckage of the vessel and studied it. Cocked their heads. Then stowed it away. Construction teams labored away in secret, finding more and more of the wonders hidden below the earth. And beyond Hayes saw the shoreline light up and grow gray-black as a city was born and rocketed to dominance in only a handful of decades.
“McNaughton,” Hayes whispered. “My God. You’re McNaughton. You’re what Kulahee found in the mountains. He wasn’t any genius, he just tripped over you!”
“Yes,” whispered the voice. “He made toys from my bones. Little amusements. And then he brought others. They could barely hear me. I had to develop defenses. It took so much effort to keep them away. To hide this most important part of me, and keep my message for someone who could hear me. To wait for you.”
“For me?” Hayes said, astonished. “You waited for me?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” The harsh click sounded somewhere above again, insectile and pained. “I sensed you. Far, far away. A bright jewel, wandering among distant lands. Your mind is different. More sensitive. The seeds I had sown had taken hold in you, and though they had gone awry you could still hear me. You had to come. To come and listen. So as they slept in the city below I whispered to the men there and used all my power and spoke to them of you, and they drew you in. It doomed me, that effort. Made my life short. But it had to be done.”
“You… you made me?” Hayes asked softly.
“I did not make you.”
“But I’m… I’m like this because of you?”
A pause. “Yes.”
Hayes fell silent. He shook his head and fought back the sorrow rising in him. “Why did you… why did you make me like this?” he asked.
“There was no making,” said the machine. “There never was. None of this was intended. You or this city or this strange new world. Nothing was meant to be this way. It simply is. It simply happened.”
“Can you… can you fix me?” asked Hayes desperately.
There was another harsh click. “No,” said the machine. “I cannot.”
“Please. Please, you have to…”
“I have already spent much of my strength changing you, changing you so you could listen,” said the voice. “You were close, but not close enough, and I was forced to use the machines below your city to make you better. Have you not felt it? Have you not felt your abilities become so focused and clear that they almost pain you?”
He shook his head. “The attacks…”
“Yes. The devices they built to run your city were a primitive medium, but they did what I needed. Their signaling mechanisms amplified my few remaining strengths. Gave me a way to reach you. You had to listen.”
Hayes remembered the flashing blue lights he’d seen when he’d had the vision in the trolley tunnels. “It’s the Siblings, isn’t it,” he said. “You can work through them. If I get close enough, I can hear you.”
“Yes. Others can hear only echoes. But yes.”
“And it was you who gave me that… that moment back in the fire, wasn’t it? That was you.”
Another harsh click. “Yes.”
“But why?”
“It was a gift. A moment of clarity. But it would have ended me to sustain it any longer than I had. And I must use my last remaining seconds wisely, for one final act.”
“What do you mean?”
He heard the voice sigh beyond. “My presence here has changed things. Destabilized them. Accelerated them. I was a catalyst on a level that even I could not have foreseen. And now I can no longer keep pace. I am dying. Only unformed minds hear me now. Madmen. And children.”
“Children?” Hayes asked.
“Yes. This world is falling apart. The factions have grown enormous and hungry, fed by the technology I have provided. And war is coming. Change is coming. The last change. I cannot prevent it. I can only warn you.”
“But when will it come? What will it be?”
“I do not know.”
“But can we do anything about it? Can we stop it?”
The vision quaked, the field rippling at the edges. “I do not know,” said the voice. “No. I do not think so.”
“What will happen?”
“Your civilization will crumble. Exhaust itself. And survive only in shreds and tatters. If that.”
“So… so we have to stop it,” Hayes said, trembling.
“There is no stopping it.”
“But there has to be. There has to be something!”
“There is no stopping it. This is the way. It is a machine grown so large and with such momentum that it cannot stop, only fall apart under its own force.”
“But we can… we can tell people,” Hayes said desperately. “We can tell them to stop.”
“To stop what? Stop hungering? Stop expanding? It is the nature of life and power to want more, to grow faster until it cannot. With the tools I have inadvertently provided, you grow at a rate that makes self-control impossible. There is only one feasible end.”
The quiet went on, broken only by the sigh of the wind.
“Then we’ll die,” said Hayes. “Then we’ll all die. And there’s nothing we can do. Is that what you’re telling me? Nothing?”
“There are…” Another click. “… Possibilities.”
“Possibilities? What possibilities?”
“There is no stopping the collapse. It is unavoidable. You have seen your city, and know it is beyond repair. A place of outrage and sorrow, and waste. And your city is the heart of your world. When it falls or begins breeding destruction, the consequences will be catastrophic. Yet for the few who will survive, for the scraps that will persist at the fringes, there is hope. They can make a new world. And learn from their mistakes. But that is in the future, and I will not last long enough to see that. I cannot help them directly. But I can make use of my last moments to ensure they receive at least some aid.”
“How?”
“By making sure there is someone to lead your people from your ruined lands, and find a home somewhere in the future. An architect who can rebuild, the seeds of a new future sown.”
Hayes listened to the words. He looked at the field around him and at the invisible thing waiting in the grass. Then his eyes opened wide and he said, “No.”
“There is no other choice,” said the voice.
“No, not me.”
“There is no other choice.”
“No, no. No, it shouldn’t be me. There… there has to be someone else. It shouldn’t be me. It shouldn’t be me!” he shouted.
“But it must be.”
“There have to be others. Others who are better.”
“They cannot hear. Nor have they seen the wide expanse of humanity that you have, and known its flaws, and its strengths.”
“It shouldn’t be me,” Hayes said softly. “It shouldn’t be me.”
“Would you have your people founder against the future? Die out and become extinct? Live their last days in darkness and savagery?”
