Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 50 - Memory Space 317

Episode 50

Where to even begin?

The main entrance to the central archives of Omech Krreng was a masterpiece of Assembly architecture. A gargantuan hall, much longer than wide, angled walls almost disappearing into lofty heights where a slit of a glass ceiling let in enough starlight to create a functional public environment, but keeping the somber atmosphere of the ritual chamber.

Everything was a ritual for the ruling immortals, including giving access to all the artifacts, all the documents, and all the knowledge that survived the Galacticide. And everything of note that an industrious humanity had produced since.

Linuka’s plan to uncover the Assembly’s secret ended at the main entrance. She didn't know what to do next. Adjacent realities offered no guidance, not even a hint. Her deep inhales did nothing but fill her lungs with fresh air; the enormous inner volume of the building diluted the musk of museum odor which saturated other places of artifact collections.

A lonely island of an information booth, sized to deal with an onslaught of visitors during the part of the local rotation considered ‘day’, was deserted, but had rows of terminals for those who needed directions.

Why not?

Linuka began the trek to the booth. The length of the walk gave visitors a chance to reflect on their place in the Assembly-created universe. Small, slow, and clueless. The Assembly had all the wisdom, and its archives all the answers. Murmurs of other human visitors reverberated the closer she drew to a terminal, the effect being the strongest and loudest in the center of this echo chamber.

The welcome screen touted the availability of all knowledge hoarded here to all citizens of Assembly space, then asked for name and citizenship. Linuka sighed. Accessing the system with her real name would point the Assembly to what she was doing at best, and trigger alarms at worst. She was such a mpets, arriving here with grand plans, ready to tackle the galaxy’s secrets, faltering to come up with a random name to access the magiis system.

“Kii Dzeeny,” she said after the time-out countdown almost reached zero, hoping Private Yots and the Commander would not mind. “Citizen of Aloo Dash.”

The problem was not that there was nothing to find; it was the wealth of data obscuring whatever she was looking for. Linuka stopped gesturing from one useless screen to the next. Categories of entries would not help.

Where would the Assembly keep its pivotal… thing? The building map is what she needed.

‘Deep vault’ sounded promising.

‘Chaperoned access only’ didn’t. What did they keep there? The listings were short compared to the other screens she had seen. Original this, original that. Foundational texts. The oldest surviving instructions on how a re-emerging humanity should be ruled. The holy scriptures of the Assembly. Linuka touched the ‘request access’ field.

***

The woman introducing herself as Snoo Tokp was friendly, but her line of questioning revealed the annoyance of having to accompany a late visitor clad in a vomit-stained robe. The long elevator ride down to the deep began.

“You understand that ‘access’ to the originals does not mean you can remove them from the vault system or touch them. It means you can see them presented through safety glass. Nearby terminals will help you translate the Old Galactic scripture.”

“Iir ooyoo pe theevem,” said Linuka.

“Oh,” said Snoo. “Most visitors can’t read the old language, let alone speak it. Are you a historian?”

Linuka assumed Snoo was. Once they reached the vault, she needed to get rid of the chaperone and wondered if she would faint if she told her she had brushed up her Old Galactic by meeting the actual Honored.

“I work for the Regent’s office of Aloo Dash. Tradition is our… motto.”

“Well,” said Snoo. “I am glad to hear someone keeping the light of civilization shining.”

The elevator stopped, the door slid open, giving access to a wide corridor. Unlike the other hallways in this building, the end of the corridor was visible not too far away. The deep vault was a smaller section for the real valuables.

“Say, Mistress Tokp, do some exhibits down here allow direct streaming access?”

Anything resembling a multi-awareness granting setup would require a neural connector streaming station; simple menu screens and data projections would not cut it for experiencing the multiverse.

“Please call me Snoo,” the woman said with a smile. “And no, we don’t have exhibits like that in the archives, and certainly not down here. Most of the originals are what we call working exhibits. Upon request by the Assembly, we transfer them to the Grand Chamber to be read aloud on special occasions.”

Linuka sighed. Walking in here, asking the tour guide for the top secret Assembly tech? What was she thinking? Multi-awareness was a powerful tool, and it led her here. But now what? Did she grow reliant on her power at the cost of common sense?

“Oh, you look disappointed, my dear,” said Snoo. “But maybe you would enjoy the Aloo Dash room.”

“What’s in there?”

“Nothing specific. The exhibit is the room itself, showcasing all elements of traditional Aloo Dashaad architecture. It is a recent addition.”

Recent? Anything down here listed in the directory was 700 orbits old, or older.

“Sounds interesting,” said Linuka. “Lead the way.”

Snoo stopped at a door nearby. “It’s in here. Take your time to look around, but please don’t touch anything. This is the only room with open items down here.”

“I won’t,” said Linuka, and walked through the opening door. She stopped, aghast. The door closed behind her.

A square floor, a flat ceiling just as tall as the walls were wide. Old Ancestrate cube chamber. Dark gray, semi polished stone walls, radiating cold tradition. A window slit close to the ceiling, a functional light source, but no one could look out—or inside. Privacy mattered, as this was a bedroom.

It was hers.

Her childhood bedroom inside the royal palace, in the part destroyed by rampaging extra-galactics during the war. Meticulously re-created by the Assembly. If this were the secret, what was its point? Her room did not serve any higher purpose than a young Linuka Omga resting in it at night. The bed was missing here.

She shook her head. This was pointless. The room meant nothing to Assembly members or any visitor but her. And her father. The memories flooded in like warm bathwater. This room existed twice. One in the palace. Her mind created the other.

Linuka nearly died in this room. She nearly died in the last bubble universe of her making. There, too, it was her father who saved her. His eyes. His hands. The smell of his favorite breakfast bread. A familiar embrace. Gentle words, unclear, but unmistakable.

Her father. He was here.

The memory of Kel Chaada never dimmed in this reality. Had Linuka’s trap for alien warlord Diin Ṛũl worked as intended, the collapsing fake universe would have taken her father along to a grave of disconnected causality, of meaninglessness across existence, of nothing.

But he didn’t vanish. A painful bond connected her every waking thought to the last conversation they had—fighting, arguing. No goodbyes, but a child’s tantrum leaving her father behind to die.

But he didn’t.

Did he find a way? Did he cling to a world line like a drowning man to a tossed rope?

The room.

Think, Linuka.

Did the Assembly need the room to anchor that connection? Her hands glided over the rock. No memories sparked. It felt rougher to the touch that she remembered, having made forceful contact with these walls more than once during her wild toddler orbits. She looked closer. The semi polish was a facade. The stone block showed many fractures, more, the longer one fixated on it. Linuka checked other wall stones; the same result.

This room was re-created from rubble. It wasn’t a faithful replica. This was her room. The original parts pulled from the palace ruins, painstakingly re-assembled in a vault.

She found the where. Found the what. But the real question left her numb: why?

Why would someone go through all this effort to re-create a causal connection?

Linuka glanced at the left wall from the window. If this was the original room…

Her fingertips running along the large wall stone joints found what she was looking for. The safe room passage. Muscle memory drilled into young Linuka from early childhood found the depressible parts, remembering the sequence.

The stone moved down and sealed with the floor, leaving a child-size opening. Behind it, a sole ceiling light turned on, revealing not an escape tunnel, but a sterile lab room. White walls. A connector chair in the center.

The connection cap looked like the one Linuka had ripped off Cha Dzeeny’s head when she freed him. A multi-awareness setup. Beyond the lab stage, no longer an experiment, the working portal for the Assembly immortals to poke the veil of existence, wrestle away the insight a secretive multiverse kept hidden from most.

Linuka circled the chair, considering how to destroy it.

How did the Assembly make this work? Cha Dzeeny never glimpsed another reality during his orbit-long-feeling ordeal. The first time Linuka had seen equipment like this, it was linked to a neutral consciousness, an agent easing the traversal, a multi-aware ghost.

Her father. He was here.

Linuka sat in the chair, comfortably adjusting to her body. Designed for long sessions. A screen display folded within reach in front of her.

Would you just turn it on? Select a scenario? A user? The few sparse menu screens revealed nothing about who had used this apparatus before. A user log would be too compromising. Did Rige sit in here last? Did Lotnuuk Rrupteemaa?

Most menu items were cryptic, abbreviations or acronyms with numbers.

She stopped scrolling. ‘Memory space 317’.

317.

I initiated the 317th member of the Assembly, the old woman at the Immortality rite had said, your father.

Her hands shook when she put the connector helmet cap on. A deep breath. The perceived pressure on her scalp indicated a good neural connection.

She clenched her fists to calm her fingers. No selections required for streaming quality. A deep breath.

Her right pointer finger reached for the tip of the cone of her entire existence. It tapped ‘Memory space 317’.

Click here for next episode

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