Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 64 - While We Argued

Episode 64

“Why are we considering letting her escape and leaving us behind?” asked the tall man.

The male prisoner group’s simulated environment was sparse compared to the stonemason’s setup, just as the brute had complained about. A minimalistic, sterile lab, white walls, white ceiling; the crucial difference to Linuka’s endless void scenario was the actual walls—and the black rubber floor. A few tall lockers without a clear purpose, and ten metal chairs, all facing the same direction.

“We’re not,” said the brute, “but if the system’s rules have changed indeed, the thought of using the machine upload to escape is worth thinking about.”

“I don’t want to escape as a magiis machine,” said the short man. “I want to escape in my own body.”

“There is no access,” said Rooy. “Neither my console nor your upload ports lead back into our bodies.” He nodded toward the chairs.

That’s why no one was sitting on, or even touching them. The chairs were not a decorative element or provided minimal comfort; they were gateways to the Isonomih consciousness matrix.

“You said you had limited control of the AI core body,” said Linuka.

“They let you turn on and off some nreedz,” said the short man, “but they didn’t let you fly it around.”

“But maybe we could figure out how to.”

“And then what?” asked the tall man.

“Find an external console,” said the brute. “Connect the machine and get us out of here—from the outside.”

A sharp mind with honed survival instincts hid behind the muscular hull and the mean brutality. This man could be an ally as long as their interests perfectly aligned, and a terrible foe the moment they didn’t. Linuka had to persuade him to let her upload, if the chairs were still functional. No one here could handle the native, unfiltered multi-awareness that the Isonomih core would blast into their minds. She wasn’t sure if she could. But she had a chance.

“Exactly,” said Linuka. “I am certain access security is relatively low as no one prepared for anyone to escape from this mind prison.”

“And then you simply interface that machine with a console?” asked the tall man. “You don’t even know how strange it is to do basic stuff in there. I never had access to an external interface.”

“We might not have to. If console design is straightforward, we could access it like the lab people would—with gesture input. Core bodies don’t have arms, but we might be able to move their tool belt manipulators.”

“Might, ha.” The tall man shook his head.

The brute’s gaze burned on Linuka’s face. “You know a lot about Krrut, for a walking organ donor.”

She didn’t blink. “The Shaajis had an Isonomih tutor. I’ve seen it up close many times.”

“Many times? I thought you were in stasis.”

“Not all the time. They required me to keep up with her movements and mannerisms, in case I ever needed to play her for a while. Which I eventually had to.” She waved her hands around. “Leading to my sentence, sending me here.”

The fire of mistrust in the brute’s eyes dimmed, but it would never cease to burn. She shouldn’t get careless, adding too much to her story, so there were fewer facts to check each time she opened her mouth.

“Tool belt arms then,” the brute said, looking at the men. “Who had access to that system before?”

“I did,” said the short man, looking pained. “But I don’t want to go. Nobody has uploaded since—”

“I know,” said the brute, cutting him off. “But you won’t be alone. If the dream state is on, the girl can deal with it. We will pick independent systems, focus on simple tasks each.”

Linuka’s stomach grew heavy. “You want us all to go? At the same time?”

The brute walked to one chair and held on to its backrest. “The setup allows it. I’ve seen them send the women in pairs. You were eager to go, girl. Now we’ll all come with you, no one is left behind.”

“What about the coma guys?” asked the tall man. “Shouldn’t one of us stay behind and watch them? And be here just in case something goes wrong?”

“Suit yourself,” said the brute. “Stay.”

“Why can he stay and I have to go?” asked the short man.

“Because we need you for those manipulator arms. Now find a chair and sit your kyong down. We’re getting out of here.”

***

Just like the system to system transfer bus, uploading one’s computerized mind into an Isonomih was anticlimactic. Sitting down, feeling the body weight on the chair’s seat, followed by a brief spike of nausea and disorientation. There was a console. It didn’t look like one she had ever seen, but every fiber of her uploaded being knew it was a console. She didn’t look at it; she was the console. The outside, the inner workings, all of it. No robes, no feet touching a simulated ground, no girl’s body, no chair, just a clear certainty of ‘I’. She was the machine, and the console was her face.

Struggle shook her. Rooy. She had no idea how she could tell, but it was definitely the stonemason’s mind, rebelling against its—likely—first out-of-body experience. She calmed him. Just like that. Streams of conscious code flowed through the machine mind without effort. There was no ‘how’, only the ‘what’. Desired outcomes manifest. The code that was Linuka understood this world better in a few moments than the flesh-and-blood-and-Uurmi Linuka had understood the so-called real world in a lifetime.

Everyone was here. The men had made it. They were no longer short, or tall, or mean. They were the machine; they were Linuka, and she was them. Hover controls, tool belt access, quantum-electronic exchange, memory buffers.

She could neither see nor hear, but they were moving through the lab. She just knew as the machine awareness permeated her self.

“Give us optics,” coded the brute. It didn’t sound like him or feel like him, but his codified mind was intact, his thoughts distinct, separate from Linuka’s, yet in sync, like lifelong best friends.

She saw. “The lab,” she coded. Surprise ran through the system. “You can see? I thought you were busy with the weird stuff, the hallucinations. Great job keeping the system clean. This is the smoothest ride we ever had.”

Nothing was weird: clear instruction batches, immediate execution, the Isonomih body hovering through the lab without collision, without effort.

The lab. As harmonic as the system and its denizens worked, as chaotic appeared the rooms and hallways their machine body traversed. They had unclamped the socket bottom, leaving the AI core docking station, setting the Isonomih free and sweeping the large room before departing through a wide two-part door. It had opened with a delay, screeching and aching in its frame, as if running on emergency power. As if it hadn’t opened in a long time.

The system’s mood cooled, enthusiastic code ceded. The first room had looked abandoned in a hurry, clean and undamaged, but with open consoles, fallen-over chairs, and a personal satchel left behind. Beyond the door, however, was dust, damage, and debris. The corridors and rooms had signage and wall screens peeled off and ripped; each door was wedged open by crude makeshift tools or showed signs of violence. Everything breakable had been broken.

These labs weren’t fought over or looted. They were mindlessly vandalized.

Hope flooded through the system. “This is it,” coded the consensus of the men. There was no sign left marking this door as different from the others they passed, but this one was closed, and judging by the frantic attempts the short man’s code made to force the door open with the body’s tool belt manipulator, this was what the men were looking for.

Linuka’s body would not be there, or anywhere near, likely not even on this world anymore, but the men, they had a realistic chance to find theirs. Human hulls, much of what we think makes us—us. The closed door was a mixed blessing, as it promised their bodies to have stayed protected from whatever caused the destruction, but it also proved too strong for the small servos in the Isonomih’s tool belt.

“The window.” Exclamation, celebration. They could peek inside, maybe find another way in. Human hulls, but the men were eager to see them, to glance at their mortal shells. Linuka would not be in their way.

The system froze. Code dismissed, looped. The optical sensor pressed against the dusty inner window revealed a reality rejected by the consensus. Yet, the images persisted in their cruel clarity. Fourteen men’s bodies, lying on connector bunks, some still wearing connector caps, while on others, the caps had fallen off their skinless skulls. Dark holes went deep where eyes used to fill sockets. Lab suits turned into dry foil, ripped and broken, barely covering the dusty remains. Some limbs had fallen off their bunks and decayed, detached from the corpses.

They had found what they were looking for. What a curse that could be. Linuka’s immortal body had walked off and left her behind, but the men’s bodies had died long ago, leaving their tortured minds with nothing left they could hope returning to.

The only setting more cruel than Linuka’s overclocked memory segment was the ‘storage’ clock rate setting for these prisoners. It must have been incredibly low. While they had argued, the world around them had turned to dust.

And their mind’s homes along with it.

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