Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 63 - Observer Relevance
- Bert-Oliver Boehmer
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
The brute’s fingers clawed deep into Linuka’s shoulder. What looked like a casual gesture became a painful interrogation.
“I’ll ask again, girl: Is that true? Are you of the Aloo Dash royal house?”
Prisoners, violent men, not understanding what happened to them and their prison, looking for a way out. Any way out. As a person of power, an influential figure, Linuka could play only one role in their limited scheme: a hostage, at the receiving end of a futile let-us-out-or-else scenario. It was doomed to fail, and she would become a physical target of their frustrations, making the brute’s clawing grip gentle by comparison.
“Yes… “ she said. “And no.”
The sharp, electrical sting made her shriek. Something tore below her collarbone, and no Uurmi was going to fix it.
“Try again. And make it make sense this time.”
“I’m Linuka Omga’s clone.”
Surprise had a predictable effect on human physiology. The hand remained on her tingling shoulder, but the pressure relented.
What had lawyer Deegb called it?
“I was a contingency clone for the Shaajis of Aloo Dash. A collection of body parts and organs as backup, ready to be cut apart when needed.”
She looked at his hand. “You think you tearing into my shoulder scares me, big man? You think anything in here could be worse than what was awaiting me out there? I have never been as safe as inside this magiis place.”
“That’s a load of nreedz,” said the shortest man. “Cloning is illegal.”
Linuka chuckled. “Do you really think people like the Omgas are bound by rules? The law?”
“Wasn’t Linuka Omga immortal?” asked the tall man, still holding her arms from behind, but less tightly. “Why would she need a clone for parts?”
“Immortality,” said Linuka, “is overrated. Sure, you never get sick, but if your arm gets ripped off or your liver smashed in, you’ll need a quick replacement. And that was me.”
“Did that ever happen?” She could feel the tall man’s stare again. “If we’d pull down these robes, would we see long, ugly scars?”
“No, you wouldn’t. I’m not sure if I was the only clone, or if the Shaajis ever had accidents requiring part transfers. I only know that nothing could repair her when she died.”
The brute pulled his hand off her shoulder, took a step back, considering her with a new kind of glance.
“Linuka Omga is dead?”
“Of course she’s dead. The palace on Dziilaa Sok got destroyed by the Dark Ones. Nobody survived their beam weapons, immortal or not.” She nodded toward the stonemason. “Ask him.”
Rooy seemed clever; now he could prove it. The brute did not fully release him, but gave him air to speak.
“I was called to the palace ruins to lend my expertise for a possible reconstruction, but there was nothing but fine-grained rubble and dust. I don’t think anyone could’ve survived that.”
Thank you, Rooy!
“Then they got me out of stasis,” said Linuka, “and trained me just enough so I could hand over the throne to that little girl, Vriishany.”
The brute squinted. “She a clone, too?”
“Of course not.” Her mother would be proud of her. Even smelly old Lotnuuk Rrupteemaa would have to admit that this was some good lying.
“Quite the story,” said the short man.
She smiled at him. “Really? You think if I’d be the Shaajis of Aloo Dash they’d grab me off the street and upload me into some magii mind prison? I’d be sitting with some Assembly Members at a nice banquet near the Grand Chamber.”
The brute released Rooy, who sent Linuka a glance of unfathomed disbelief mixed with warm gratefulness. The heavy man turned back to Linuka.
“Why are you here, then?”
“I had played my role. Transferred power the way the Assembly wanted. They kept me in stasis until someone figured out I was of no use anymore. They discarded me in here.”
Stances straightened, shoulders dropped, grimaces returned to faces. Faces of men realizing what that could mean for them. So far the story held. The next step was a gamble.
“Sorry,” said Linuka, “if that’s bad news for you, because I’m not going to get out of here.”
“At least you won’t get far,” said the short man.
Linuka didn’t have to get far. Any step would be progress.
“What do you mean by ‘not far’?” she asked.
The brute gave the short man an icy stare. The experiments. Rooy had mentioned them first, but also claimed he was not here to be experimented on. Cha Dzeeny had talked about them with disdain in his voice. The prisoners were test subjects. Would these procedures take them somewhere, transfer them out of the system?
The short man looked at his feet, avoiding eye contact with the brute and Linuka both.
“It’s not like they’re still running, anyway.”
“Running what?” asked Linuka. “The procedures they sent you instructors for?”
The men looked at the brute. Even Rooy did. They had something to say, but feared violent reprisals if they spoke up. They were ready to crack, but wouldn’t open without a wedge, driven deep into their shield of fears.
“Maybe that’s what they wanted me for in here,” said Linuka. “They could’ve killed me. But they kept going on about… observer reliability.”
“Observer relevance.” There was no threat in the brute’s voice, no mocking, just clean facts.
He nodded to the tall man, who relinquished what had remained of his grip on Linuka’s arms.
She exhaled. Hopefully, no one recognized it as a deep sigh of relief. Her precise body control had left with her Uurmi. She’d have to think her way out of this. Think and talk, lying, measuring reactions, adjusting the narrative. She wondered if Lotnuuk Rrupteemaa had ever been in a situation like this, and then simply stuck with the deceiving habit.
None of them was simply a prisoner. All these men’s world lines had touched something the Assembly wanted. Her story implied she was on board the same vessel, being dragged to the same destination; now she only needed to know where that was.
The brute eyed her as if trying to read those thoughts. Maybe he did.
“They upload us into a machine. Let us control it, at least a little. Internal settings, diagnostics, stuff like that. The women…”
The women all vanished, had Rooy said.
“… they made them dream. Or something. Let the machine hallucinate some nreedz—weird scenarios.”
“The women didn’t like it much,” said the tall man.
“Was it a system similar to this? You use one of those transfer buses to get there?” asked Linuka.
“No,” said the brute. “When I said machine, I meant machine. Outside of this. One of those AI magiipak who sit in the Assembly.”
“Cursed Krrut,” said the short man.
An old insult for the civilization originating from beyond the Krrut Fyez galactic arm structure.
“The system is connected to an Isonomih,” said Linuka.
Designed to upload human consciousness into an AI core. The Assembly built the Isonomih bodies right here on Omech Chaa, and then pushed human minds into their quantum matrix, the original design concept of controlled multi-awareness.
The women didn’t dream; they became multi-aware. Linuka had known the Assembly clawed closer to glimpsing into the future, but she had underestimated their brutal practicality.
They didn’t bother to understand the nano replicons and teach their subjects how to focus on splitting realities. No, they didn’t want to make anyone powerful. They jammed minds into controllable machines, force-feeding them endless realities.
She looked back at the brute. “Show me how to upload.”
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