‘Thank you. I would be interested.’
‘So now you must start to decide,’ Immanueel said. ‘I will be travelling to the Olyix enclave along with the rest of the history faction to launch our FinalStrike. Are you going to accompany us?’
‘Is there any point?’ Dellian asked. He shrugged. ‘I mean, it sounds like each of you is at least as powerful as Ainsley. What the hell can we contribute? Saints, I don’t get why you even bothered waiting for us.’
‘In terms of warships and weapons, we believe we have the resources to tackle the Olyix directly, thus completing the goal that Ainsley and Emilja set all those years ago. Once the enclave is breached, we need to locate the Salvation of Life and all the other arkships that store human cocoons – a not inconsiderable task, which by necessity will be conducted in an active war zone. Which leaves us with the question of your participation. You have committed yourselves to liberating natural humans from the Olyix, and those in the original Morgan squads have combat experience inside an Olyix vessel. We wished to honour your commitment by inviting you to join us. After all you have endured, we sincerely believed you deserved the chance to contribute to FinalStrike should you so choose. And, of course, we desired to meet the genesis human.’
Yirella was conscious that everyone was glancing at her again. Her cheeks grew warm from the blood rising in them.
As if sie’d sensed her discomfort, Alexandre said: ‘Immanueel, thank you for explaining everything to us. We do have a lot to talk about.’
‘Of course. Please feel free to use this domain to relax in. The facilities are the best we can produce, and, I expect, a welcome change from the life-support sections of your ships. If you require anything, simply use your databud to order it.’
Everyone rose to their feet like a young Immerle estate class dismissed from a lecture. Chairs scraped along the floor; everyone was speaking at once.
Yirella walked over to Immanueel as they stood up. ‘We need to talk,’ she said.
*
In her mind, Yirella envisaged the two of them strolling along one of the gravel paths that wound between the torus domain’s old bald cypress trees, with startled birds flying between the high branches, chirping indignantly at the intrusion. Instead Immanueel led her to a portal across the floor of the hall.
She walked through into a weird hemispherical chamber twenty metres across, with metallic imperial-purple walls that could have been components of a machine – that, or they were inside a nest burrowed into a scrapheap. The strange geometrical protuberances had deep cracks between them – an effect that arched right overhead to the apex. Light came from a multitude of small sparks that slid slowly along the bottom of the cracks in an eternal progression, going nowhere.
‘What is this place?’ she asked. The floor was so smooth she was worried she’d skid across it if she started walking. There was no colour beneath her feet, as if a hologram were stuck in neutral, giving the impression she was standing on the glass lid of an exceptionally deep well shaft.
‘My centrex,’ Immanueel replied.
‘Uh?’
‘Home. I wish us to be friends, or at least form a strong alliance. I believe inviting someone to your residence has a strong significance in your culture?’
‘It does. Did. An invitation to share was a large social force on old Earth, but those were different times. Post-scarcity changed the social implication. However, the custom remains – which is rather sweet. But you know this. I gave you all the records you access.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So if you are corpus, physically distributed across many elements –’ she gestured around extravagantly at the machine rilievo that made up the wall – ‘is this them?’
‘Some, yes.’
‘Okay, I have to ask: Why genesis human?’
‘It offends you?’
‘No. It spikes my curiosity, although I know Ainsley is responsible. I regard him as somewhat eccentric, especially for an AI – or whatever he actually is. He’s more than a genten, but less than human, despite how fast and smart he is.’
‘He described himself thusly to us, too. Smart, but without imagination. That seems to be an intrinsic part of the human soul, if not its very heart.’
‘Don’t go all romantic on me now. Intuition, imagination, impulse; they’re all part of random biochemical interactions in our neural structure.’
‘Indeed. But never really imitated outside a biological brain. However many random factors an artificial mind can generate, it cannot be truly imaginative. The idea for us came from you, not him, did it not?’
‘Yes.’
‘So simply calling you originator, or first mother, or similar, didn’t seem to convey the grandeur of what you did. In a very real sense, Yirella, you created us.’
‘Okay. I guess I can live with it.’
‘It pains us that your value is not fully recognized among your peers. You should be leading the fleet.’
‘Us? Is the whole history faction listening in?’
‘Not so much that as they are attuned to my conversation with you.’
‘But only with a small part of their consciousness, right? An aspect?’
‘Correct.’
‘Do you really need us to come with you to the enclave?’
‘Our FinalStrike can be conducted without you. Of course it can. However, your squads are ideally suited for the task. They will make a genuine contribution.’
‘Closure,’ she said wonderingly. ‘You’re offering us closure.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I’m concerned about throwing the squads into combat inside the enclave. No matter how advanced you are, and how many aspects you bring, the Olyix are equally formidable.’
‘You are correct. Even we cannot offer certainty.’
‘You must have some idea what’s in there. You build your domains on the same principle.’
‘The principles of quantum temporal mechanics that create and sustain the Olyix enclave, yes, we know them. Its internal nature, no. This is what humans have always dreaded . . .’
‘The other.’
‘Indeed. Olyix thought processes are genuinely alien. We can produce guesses at how the inside of the enclave is structured – logical guesses. But we can’t actually know.’
‘And once you do, you have to formulate a
