THE MASTER’S HOUSE – ZACHARY ELDREDGE
Word Count: 8600
Genre: Science Fiction
Sub-Genre: Solar system, psychological
Story Synopsis: My story is about a future where, when the alien occupiers left, they left behind an infrastructure that can only be operated by performing mental rituals of submission to their vanished empire. Chandra is a Station Administrator who becomes frustrated with the restrictions this places after a fatal accident on her station caused by the system not recognizing human life as valuable.
Chandra placed her hand onto the wall panel and pictured:
-a throne room, silver and gold
-herself prostrate before a
- being with flabby grey skin, eight feet tall, looking out with a pair of compound eyes and a sneer of cold command.
Within the Omnarch’s arms we find safety and order. Without, we find chaos and danger. I arrive to do my duty as a loyal servant of the Omnarch, of the Imperial Council, of their appointed Governor, and of any legally designated lord they provide to me.
The panel, previously glowing a cool blue, flipped to orange and made a pleasant tone. The wall before her, which seemed a slate-solid metal a moment before, parted like a curtain, and Chandra walked into her office. She gazed out the window at the clouds of Jupiter below and squinted at the horizon. She thought she saw one of the gas mining platforms coming into view, although the last time she thought that it turned out to be Metis, a small moon.
“Computer,” Chandra said, taking her seat behind a desk that was lighting up with a diagram of the system and tracked ships, “Read messages.” An electronic hum started, which the computer always made when actively engaged. The Omnarchy had placed a very high value on privacy for their Administrators, and many of their systems were incapable of operating invisibly. Chandra inherited that privilege as the caretaker Administrator who represented legitimate authority on this station, even if the Omnarchy was long gone.
The voice that answered seemed to come from the entire room at once: “This morning, three messages are available. Message one. Update on arrival timeline for supplies and personnel carrier outbound from Mars. Message two. Training requirements reminder from System Council for Interim Governance. Message three. Security alert for Tinia Engineering Station.” Chandra relaxed. No emergency messages. The arrival timeline would have been marked as high-priority if it was a serious update; the training requirements were just annual busywork. The security alert, however, was potentially interesting. “Read message on security alert,” she ordered.
“This message has been marked for secure delivery and cannot be read aloud,” the computer explained, “Delivery is authorized only via mental challenges to loyalty-verified individuals.”
“Lovely,” said Chandra. The computer would not, thankfully, dock her loyalty for sarcasm on this point. The Omnarchy had not really understood sarcasm and humans had never been eager to explain it. Now that they were gone, it was an open question as to whether humans would get another chance anytime soon. “Unstow interface; I’m guessing the Mantra of Security is required?”
“Affirmative,” replied the station computer. The solid screen of the desk shimmered and became liquid. A half-globe of the liquid metal emerged before Chandra, who placed her hand onto it and began to focus her mind on the three elements and three sentences that made up the Mantra of Security:
a horde of shapes in shadow, lashing out toward her
an unbroken circle on the ground, glowing red, keeping outsiders at bay
herself standing in the center of the circle, unflinching as enemies test the border
I protect the Omnarchy, and the Omnarch protects me, through diligence, vigilance, and uncompromising strength. In this way the galaxy is made safe for such inferior beings as myself. From within the Omnarchy, I need fear nothing but the loss of its protection.
Imprint accepted, Chandra felt, rather than heard, from the computer. In accepting the mental imprint, the computer was acknowledging to Chandra that her loyalty to the Omnarchy had been correctly presented, that it matched previous imprints from her, and that she had been authorized to access this resource. Written language does a poor job of representing what Chandra experienced next. Mental upload is a gestalt process, without the same one-after-the-other experience of reading or speaking. Rather, all at once, Chandra perceived the security report as a synthesized whole.
SECURITY REPORT – TINIA ENGINEERING STATION – Week of August 24th, 2175 CE
SCIG patrols in the Jovian system report minor criminal activity only. One ship which refused to acknowledge orbital flight control signals was destroyed prior to its entry into Jovian space. Investigation into the ship’s point of origin and likely intentions is ongoing.
Tarquin Station remains in weapons-capable mode and is expected to maintain normal operational status with the exception of a lockdown drill from 05:00:00 – 05:30:00 system standard. During this time the gunship Omnarch’s Hand will be responsible for primary Jovian security authorization. At the conclusion of the lockdown drill Jovian command authority will transfer back to Councilmember William Arrist on Tarquin Station.
All pretty routine, then. None of Chandra’s major authorizations flowed through the security command, so there was little impact to her from this lockdown drill. Chandra had the computer lower the mental interface and proceeded about her actual duties, reviewing the reports of ships in repair dock. Most of these were unmanned surveillance or exploration drones which had suffered micrometeor damage. Every now and then a mining or transport ship would pass through, which at least allowed some gossip to come in.
Chandra had been on this station as Administrator for nearly two years now, with only occasional trips back to Earth. She’d relished the chance to come so far out, and she’d worked hard to get here. Working past the Belt as an Administrator meant years of memorizing the Mantras associated with the various authorities and functions the Omnarchy had used to manage their infrastructure. The actual set of images and words themselves were not that complicated. What was difficult was engendering the precise mental impression that the machines were looking for.
As she settled into a set of repair reports and inventories of existing supplies, Chandra was interrupted by a tall, dark-skinned man who stood just outside the threshold of her office and bowed his head. This was the traditional way to indicate a desire for an audience with a Omnarchy official, and survived out here despite no Omnarchy official having been seen for thirty years. “Ian,” she said, “come in. You don’t have to do that.”
“Apologies, ma’am,” the man replied, as he walked in and the curtain-like structure of the door closed behind him. “There’s not really anywhere to knock.” Ian was Chandra’s Operations Deputy, and had been on the station longer than most people had been in space at all.
“What brings you all the way to the top of the station?” Chandra asked. Tinia Station was pyramid-shaped, with her office near the top relative to the artificial gravity.
“I wanted to let you know,” he said, “We just received a request to dock from an Earth ship, the Morocco. They’ve got some kind of compressor failure and are losing O2. They say they’re totally compatible and there will be no issue…”
“…but you want me to try to ready the computer for the shock to the system.” Chandra said, and Ian nodded in reply. “Have we really never had an Earth ship on Tinia?”
Ian scratched his head. “Well, not never, but it’s been years. You have to remember nearly every Earth ship is not really rated for travel past the Belt. More than 99% of all traffic out here is old Omnarchy hardware. That’s changing now that Earth actually has some of the production facilities, but it’s slow.”
“Which means we will have to do more and more work to convince the computer it isn’t being boarded by a hostile forces, that the ships we’re trying to dock with and repair are friendly allies to the Omnarchy.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, ma’am.” Ian began looking down again.
“I’m not. As far as we’re aware the Omnarchy didn’t really have friendly allies. Doesn’t.” Chandra sighed. “Worst case scenario, we could probably get some sort of special authorization from the System Council – there might be some special authority they were delegated when the Omnarchy pulled out we could use.”
Ian spoke slowly, picking his words. “Speaking as station operations staff, the Council is sometimes slow to respond to such requests.”
“Yeah, well,” Chandra waved his words out of the air, “If they don’t want the few long-range ships we actually make getting blown out of the sky, they’ll figure something out.”
Ian smiled. “You mean one of the few ships Earth makes. The Council has plenty of ships already. The ship wants to dock at 0430 station time tomorrow. Should I approve them?”
Chandra blinked. “What? Of course. You said they’re leaking oxygen. They’ll never make it to Mars.”
Ian nodded. “Right, of course. Still, I wanted to get your sign off, considering the circumstances. I’ll go make sure the repair crews are ready,”
“Alright,” Chandra said, “I’ll let you know if it looks like we should expect any issues.” As Ian walked out of the room, Chandra began to call up the computer interface. She flipped through, mentally, the types of operations she could try to convince the computer a ship not built by the Omnarchy ought to benefit from the bounty of their illustrious repair station. There was no Mantra of Charity or Mercy. The closest she could think of was the Mantra of Truce – although the English word “truce” did not quite cover the actual concept, which was more accurately, “negotiations for accepting surrender from a subject.” As a notion, it should cover well enough the need to accommodate an “alien” presence.
“Computer,” Chandra said, “Prepare interface for new mental input command.” She started to summon the Mantra of Truce up in her mind:
a defeated humanoid creature, enveloped in shadow, on its knees
a scepter of authority, glowing with golden light
herself pointing it at the humanoid with smug benevolence
The essence of nobility is to submit to one’s superiors to accept submission of one’s inferiors. The defeated enemy, by receiving that acceptance, is ennobled. I prepare myself to accept their submission.
After this, she began to weave in her mind the specific procedures the computer would need to follow to open itself up for this “defeated enemy.”
#
Chandra woke up at 0425 station time the next day. She wasn’t on duty, but she wanted to at least be awake if anything went wrong. Fifteen minutes later, nothing had happened. If the computer hadn’t raised an alarm by this point in the docking process, it probably wouldn’t, and she was beginning to contemplate letting herself drift back to sleep. Suddenly, her room’s intercom panel began emitting a strobe light and a shrill tone – top-priority, critical message. She leapt out of bed and with a few strides across her spartan quarters, hit the panel. “Administrator,” she said, her training keeping the panic out of her voice.
“Chandra,” Ian’s voice came over the intercom, the hurry overwhelming his usual slow cadence, “we need you to report to automedical unit one.”
“Was there an accident while docking the ship?”
“No, the ship docked fine, someone was hurt on the way here. We have an injured crew member and the automed won’t treat him.”
“I’m on my way,” she said, halfway through donning enough of her uniform that she wouldn’t distract from the emergency. She ran out her room, in one of the upper-middle tiers of the station and made it to an elevator. She didn’t have time for voice, and jammed her palm onto the mental interface, willing it to take her to Medical. Thankfully this request did not require a Mantra – even the Omnarchy had recognized that a request to go to Medical might not be the best time for automated loyalty checking.
When she got to the room, she encountered the usual automedical devices – the bed, the surgical arms, the arm cuff that could deliver a vast array of medicines. To their credit, the Omnarchy had outfitted it all for human treatment during their occupation. None of the machines seemed to be doing anything. The man who lay on the bed was wheezing and looked towards her, unable to speak. Beside him was Ian and a tall woman in a jumpsuit, her hair buzzed short the way people preferred when their job involved regular spacewalks. Stitched into her uniform was the name Li, and her lapel displayed a star insignia.
“Administrator Chandra Taikovsky. You’re the captain of the Morocco?” Chandra asked, receiving a nod from the woman. “What’s wrong with him? Why isn’t the bed engaged? Is there a mechanical issue?”
The captain replied with the direct clip of someone used to giving reports, “Crewman Shepherd sustained CO2 poisoning on the way here due to excessive time in enclosed spaces in our engineering section. Began convulsions and we suspect some organ damage.” Her tone softened as she added, “If he hadn’t kept the engines running, we wouldn’t have made it.”
Ian interrupted, “Ma’am, the bed works fine. It’s not engaged because this man is not registered as a citizen.”
“What?” Chandra said, baffled. “Not at birth, not getting medical care at any point?” During the occupation, all sentients, human or otherwise, would have been registered as citizens at birth. This registration would have been recognized by any computerized system the Omnarchy installed, with attendant rights and responsibilities. The authorization to make new citizens was now delegated to System Council and through them, their representatives on Earth.
Captain Li responded, “Crewman Shepherd is twenty-two, no medical history to speak of. Born in one of the first hospitals built after they pulled out. Only real employment is on board our ship which, Administrator, obviously doesn’t check.”
Chandra bit her lip in thought. This man needed to be enrolled. “Station Administrators are not delegated any citizenship authority,” she said.
“System Council will not be able to get someone who has that authority out here in time.” Li was not letting herself show sentiment, but her fierce brown eyes had a pleading in them.
Chandra started nervously twisting her fingers through her strewn-about hair – in the rush of the alarm she hadn’t had time to put in her typical tight bun. “I can try to do it as an emergency. The codes do have ‘exigent circumstances’ provisions. Computer, interface.” A glass orb emerged from behind the automedical bed. Chandra approached it and placed her hand against its cool surface. Before she began, she remembered that this was, in effect, a christening –“what’s his full name?”
Li responded, “Craig Shepherd.”
Chandra opened her mind to the device while making her thoughts rigid, summoning up the discipline the vaunted, vanished masters demanded. Willing the Mantra of Induction, she thought of:
looking out through compound eyes, a clawlike hand with four fingers reaching down to rest on the head of
a bald humanoid, dressed in a plain white robe, kneeling before her, its hands on
a gleaming tablet of polished crystal, the text glinting in the light
To the civilized world I add a new subject of the Omnarch, Craig Shepherd. His loyalty will be assured, and he will work to our mutual glory. One more is added to the universal state.
She felt a pushback, a reaction from the computer that felt like it had taken offense. She had never done this part before – the Mantra of Emergency. She thought of:
a cave crumbling all around her
surging floodwaters up to her knees, threatening to overwhelm her
a presence in the dark, readying to strike
Terrible danger confronts the Omnarch’s servants. Harm to the state and to its citizens is imminent. Only the awesome power of my lords, power I am unfit to wield, could prevent it.
Chandra then began to communicate, to try to hold whole in her mind, the situation at hand – a man was dying, he wished to pledge citizenship, no authority was nearby, only granting the induction would save him.
A pause happened in that mental space, the vastness of the artificial intelligence examining her like a human might watch an animal, seeing what it will do next. In a blink, she felt the negative reaction return. In another blink, the offense became something worse – anger, or perhaps disgust.
“Ah!” Chandra yelped as she was kicked out of the interface, her hand jerking back from the interface orb with an electric shock. Ian and Captain Li were looking at her with clear concern, but before she could explain anything about what happened, the lights in the station went dark.
“Ma’am?” Ian said, “That seems bad.”
Station lights came back on in a dingy orange none of them had ever seen except during fire and vacuum breach drills. The station loudspeakers began to blare the alarm that hadn’t rung during the docking process. “Alert to all station staff and residents. Unauthorized attempt to exceed control delegations has been detected. Reverting to stationwide autonomous operation until legitimate authority is restored. Safety protocols will be assured for all citizens; panic is unnecessary and counterproductive. Return to quarters and await orders from loyal and lawful authorities.”
The Captain looked at both of them, “What the hell is it doing?”
Chandra realized she had begun breathing very quickly, and tried to control it, responding, “The computer has decided that I am untrustworthy – I guess for requesting an emergency authorization it didn’t agree with. That announcement means I’m being locked out and the station is going to skeleton functions. It also means that my directives are likely to be rescin—oh, God. Captain, are your people still on the Morocco?”
The captain blinked. “Most of them – some senior staff probably started to coordinate the repairs – why?”
“You’re a Omnarchy computer. You’re extremely paranoid. The Administrator who just yesterday issued an unusual directive to accept an ‘enemy’ ship under truce and provide it with station resources has now been labeled disloyal.”
“Is it safe on the station? If they think you’ve been subverted?” Li asked, pulling out a handheld radio.
“It should be—the protocols are lockdown-in-place. Omnarchy AIs don’t do self-destruct.”
Li turned around to speak into the communicator. “Attention all crew members, full evacuation of the Morocco, abandon ship. Repeat, full evacuation of the Morocco, abandon ship.” She turned to Ian, “Can you do anything to cripple the defenses?”
Ian nodded. “If we go now we might be able to cut off the power grid to those levels.” Ian, Li, and Chandra ran out into the hallway and tried to summon an elevator, but the panel controls refused to display any type of screen, only a soft red light.
Ian, “Ma’am, there’s an interface here, right? Can you get an elevator?”
Chandra shook her head. “It shocked me out last time. If I try anything else it’ll put me into a coma.” She heard Li repeating her evacuation order and trying to coordinate with her officers. Chandra moved to the electrical box a few meters down from the elevator, “Help me open this up – we might be able to get a manual clearance to go down the shaft.” As she and Ian began to open the panel, a small, crablike creature came from elsewhere in the hallway. It was chrome-colored, half a meter tall, and its six legs supported a symmetrical, hexagonal body. Two arms with strange, constantly shifting devices at their tips.
Ian paused and looked at the creature as it skittered towards them. “Maintenance bot. Shouldn’t be triggered by us starting to open the panel – we haven’t damaged any systems.”
The bot reached the pair of them and swiveled its arms toward them. A small, tinny voice emerged, “Administrator Chandra Taikovsky?” it said, in its most quizzical tone.
Chandra saw not much choice but to answer. “Yes?”
“Positive ID confirmed,” the bot said, almost chipperly. “Pacification commencing.”
“Wait, wha—” Chandra said, before being interrupted by a pulse that emerged from one of the drone’s arms. An acrid smell flooded her nostrils as everything went black.
#
Chandra came to consciousness with everything still black. This was disorienting, but she eventually realized her eyes were closed, which could easily be corrected even if her eyelids were odly heavy. Opening them she found herself facing straight upwards at a slate-grey ceiling. She tried to move her limbs and found them sluggish, as if her brain and body had not yet come back into sync. After a few minutes she mustered the strength to turn herself on her side. She was covered by a light blanket, and her head was resting on a pillow. A bed. She thought a little further about being in a bed. There were several things about being in a bed that she felt were important to note to herself. First, she was probably not dead since she’d been able to turn over. Second, her brief testing movements with her limbs confirmed she was not tied down, which also seemed like a positive. Third, she had apparently been asleep, since that was what she usually did in beds. This makes sense, since the drone had – and as soon as she remembered the drone, it all came together, and Chandra recalled where she had been prior to being in a bed.
Chandra made the much larger effort required to lift her body up into a sit, pulling her legs off the side of the bed. She looked out at her surroundings. The room’s flat, slate grey walls and strips of lighting where the walls met the ceiling meant this was probably a Omnarchy facility. There were Earth architects who kept mimicking the style, but not many, and they didn’t have these materials. The bed, the small dresser, empty workstation – these were the furnishings of basic quarters on a Omnarchy station. Perhaps she was still on Tinia. However – and Chandra would not have tried to defend this to another person with any specificity – it smelled wrong. All stations, with their atmospheres constructed to support as many humanoid species as possible, had this ever-present whiff of ozone. On Tinia, though, she’d always thought there was another undertone – almost a citrus. It being a different station still left her with dozens of other Omnarchy facilities she could be on.
At a certain point, Chandra decided to chance an awkward conversation and spoke up. “Computer,” she said, hesitating a bit until she heard the soft bong that indicated the machine was indeed listening, “please identify this facility and current orbital position. And give station time.”
The computer spoke back, “Tarquin Station. Current orbital position: trailing orbit five thousand kilometers behind Sol Gateway in Jovian orbit. Station time is 1247.” Chandra winced a bit – the computer voice, although as blandly polite as ever, summoned up her memories of the intense offense it took during her last mental link. Still, it had answered her questions, which was a good sign. It was possible to be blacklisted from the Omnarchy networks entirely; the affected person became not just a non-citizen but an anti-citizen, to be opposed and expelled from the body politic like a splinter. Chandra remembered an article she’d read about people like that who had set up an off-grid community in Madagascar. It did not appeal to her. While she was pondering the implications of receiving an answer, the computer added, “Your state of consciousness has been reported to Station Administration. You have been scheduled for debriefing.”
Chandra reached her arm up to her temple and rubbed. The initial grogginess was subsiding, but it was being replaced with a full-body pins-and-needles sensation. Station Administration on Tarquin Station would not be the type of Administration she had managed. Tarquin Station was the closest facility to the Gateway, the Omnarchy’s defunct interstellar bridge. It had been a landing point, center of their occupying government, and last point of exit during their retreat. If or when the Gateway was ever re-established, it would be humanity’s stepping-stone to the stars.
Chandra looked around and tried to prepare herself for what was coming, but there was little to do. She was dressed in a plain white jumpsuit – someone had changed her while she was passed out. She had no personal effects, as far as she could tell. The desk nearby was just a desk, inert. She could ask the computer for details on what had happened while she was asleep, but the thought put a pit in her stomach. All she could do was sit in this empty dormitory, think, and try to ignore the pins-and-needles feeling.
After fifteen minutes of this, the door alert chime rang. Chandra held up two fingers pressed together and swiped them, a gesture the computer would interpret as “open.” The wall parted like a curtain and a man walked in. He wore green robes, with long sleeves and a collar that was trimmed in gold matching his blond hair which sat in a bun on the top of his head. “Chandra Taikovsky,” he said, as if it was hello, “I am glad to see you are awake. I am Councilman Will Arrist.”
“I, uh, I know that. Thank you.”
“You seem flustered. May I?” he said, gesturing at the chair in front of the bare desk. He sat down before she replied. “I am guessing you did not expect me to be the debrief team.”
“No. No, uh, sir?”
“Not necessary. How are you feeling?”
Chandra had not yet really regained her balance. “It was a tough wake-up, but I—I guess I’m fine now.” The pit in her stomach clenched on her heart anew, and she asked the question she’d been putting off: “The…the Morocco?”
Will sighed. “Shortly after you were knocked out, the Morocco was forcibly ejected from dock. Automated defenses on Tinia Station destroyed it as soon as it was far enough not to pose a debris hazard. Thirty-two of the forty crew members were still aboard.”
Chandra closed her eyes and laid down on her back again. She breathed in, and then back out. She did it again, more slowly, trying to focus on the breath. Thirty-two. “And…Crewman Shepherd?”
“Succumbed to organ damage due to carbon dioxide poisoning not long afterwards. Tinia Station was insistent that you be delivered to higher authority and we collected you about twelve hours later.” Will stood back up and strode across the room, farther away from the bed. Facing away from her, in a more casual voice, he said, “Administrator Taikovsky – do you understand the mistake you made?”
“I tried to perform an emergency authorization that the computer did not accept.”
Arrist shook his head and turned back. “No. That’s the last action you took, but it wasn’t the mistake, really. You decided to attempt an emergency authorization, which requires you to attest imminent danger to the Omnarchy and to its subjects. You did this trying to save someone who was not a subject. The very nature of the request was contradictory, and as a result you triggered a full system lockout and got your authority rescinded. This was an extraordinarily stupid thing to do, and it reflects badly not just on you but on your teachers and the entire Administrator corps.”
“Wait,” Chandra sat back up, “That’s not fair. I was trying to save a life. No human is a ‘subject of the Omnarchy.’ For all we know, nobody is – whatever the political crisis was that made them pull out of the system could have killed them off by now.”
Will just stared at her. “Do they really not check for that kind of naivete before they certify you for service? You know who has a pretty firm grasp on the difference between subjects and non-subjects of the Omnarchy? The station you were appointed to run and manage, which just killed thirty-two people and destroyed one of the vanishingly few Earth-made long-range spacecraft. Your job as Administrator was not just to sign reports and keep logs. Your job was to manage a very delicate inheritance and to understand how the system works, how it thinks, and what it needs to keep working. Instead, you broke it, and people got killed.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let him die for not having his paperwork in order?”
“Yes!” Will stepped closer to her, hissing. “Yes, absolutely. If you’d done that, I would have one more ship and one more experienced crew in this system, moving critical materials back to Earth. I would have a working repair station, and not a paranoid weapons platform that I’ll have to offer hazard pay to someone to try to deal with its new complexes. Computer, interface.” The councilman walked over to the computer panel, his robes flowing about him, and placed his hand on it. One of the walls became a screen, displaying a live feed of an immense slate-grey ring, slowly spinning. Glints of light hinted at an array of grooves, resembling a flowing script, that ran along the structure in a twisting, incomprehensible pattern. “Do you know what this is?”
“The Sol Gateway?”
“What does it do?” Will asked with the tone one would use with a very small child.
“The Omnarchy used it to access other star systems. It used to host some kind of stable wormhole, I don’t think we ever really underst—”
“Wrong again, Administrator. Right now, it does absolutely nothing. Right now, it looks pretty and if you get the right angle you can take a picture of the Great Red Spot through it, which is even prettier. What it might do, one day, if we’re very lucky and very good at what we do, is pull us out of the mud. Look around you. Look at the artificial intelligences, look at the mental interfaces, look at the materials that act like stone, metal, or liquid depending on what’s needed. We know very little about galactic civilization – the Omnarchy weren’t exactly handing out tourist visas – but this is the level it works on. We are living on scraps right now. If we want to be anything other than a cosmic backwater, we have to get it working again.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything I did,” Chandra said.
“The last Omnarchy ship holding the last Omnarchy Governor docked right here on this station. They pulled the handful of humans that they had any respect for into the AI core and delegated all system authority to them as the first System Council. Then, they issued one last command to the Gateway and flew through it, and it shut behind them and never worked again. Our only hope for real advancement is to get it to reopen. That’s not going to happen if the systemwide AI network thinks we’re going to use it to stage a rebellion.”
Chandra was sitting all the way up now, with little trace of her old sluggishness. “The Gateway hasn’t opened in thirty years. You think that because I made a mistake with an authorization, that’s what’s keeping it shut?”
“I have no idea what’s keeping it shut,” Will replied, spreading out his arms and turning his palms upward. “That’s the point. We have to prioritize the trust and working relationship we have – with the ships, with the stations, and, yes, eventually, with the Gateway. The Omnarchy could have had it self-destruct. They didn’t. It is clearly meant to open to us again someday.”
“What if they only meant to use it when they were ready to reassert control? Or what if we open it and the Omnarchy is right back on the other side? Or someone else?” Chandra was nearly shouting at this point. “Our introduction to that ‘galactic civilization’ you keep talking about was fifty years of occupation. Maybe if we’re very good boys and girls and are careful not to value human life too much, they’ll start it back up as a reward!”
Will turned away from her again, staring at the image of the Gateway. He spoke in a low mutter, dropping his lecturing posture. “There might be worse things.” He turned back to her, and adopted a measured, cold tone. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are, as of now, no longer an Administrator. You probably figured that out. All your accesses and delegated authorities have been revoked. ‘The Disaster of Tinia Station’ is going to become a standard part of the Administrator curriculum going forward, and hopefully nobody makes your mistake again. Sometime in the next few days you’ll ship back to the inner planets. You can do Earth or Mars, I don’t much care. If you’re very lucky, you might be able to get a job teaching Mantras to teenagers preparing for entrance exams. I would advise you to offer discounts.”
Chandra looked at him, her eyes blazing. “You really are doing a great job as ‘Interim Governance.’ You might as well still be a slave.”
Will touched the panel again, opening the curtain-door-wall. “Better to serve in heaven,” he said, and as it snapped shut behind him Chandra was once again alone.
#
Chandra lay in her bed. They had still not given her anything to do, not even an entertainment tablet. The computer would read news feeds to her, but too many of them were about her, and she had no desire to listen to it. It was being reported that an “unknown Administrator error” had led to the destruction of an Earth-made ship in the Jovian system. One prominent group of talking heads saw this, generally, as an example of the incompetence of the System Council. The remnants of national powers on Earth had never really sat comfortably with the “successor” government, but the Omnarchy weapons in Earth orbit– most of which were pointed downwards – had convinced most to recognize their inherited authority. Another cluster of pundits, however, saw the accident as an example of the danger of relying on Earth-manufactured ships at all, and suggested that the Outer Planets ought to remain strictly Council space for the foreseeable future. It all exhausted her, and none of it seemed like it would have helped the crew of the Morocco.
Chandra consigned herself to lying back, closing her eyes, pretending to sleep but not fooling herself. Suddenly, her door alert went off again. Chandra sat up and swiped in the air. Ian walked in, wearing an operations uniform.
“Ian!” she said, “I had no idea you were here.” She felt relieved to see someone she had worked with for so long, someone who hopefully still qualified as a friend.
“Yes, ma’am. Tinia is getting a total crew rotation, so I’ve been reassigned here for now.” He pulled out the lapel on his uniform, showing off the insignia for Tarquin Station. “Deputy Chief for Information Technology.”
“I think you can drop the ‘ma’am.’ I’m not an Administrator for anything anymore. Or ever again, I think.”
“Well,” Ian said, scratching the back of his head, “Can’t say I’m surprised. No offense. They need to make an example of someone.”
“Do you think – do you think I did the right thing?” Chandra tried not to look pleading. She didn’t want pity.
Ian looked away from her. “From a technical perspective – if you’re asking me as your Operations Deputy – I guess I can only say no. The stations are particular about policing the line between the Omnarchy and outsiders, and you were already pushing the line by docking with the Earth ship. However,” Ian said, locking eyes with Chandra, “from a moral perspective? As a friend? You took a risk to save a life. It didn’t go well, but that doesn’t have to be the point.”
“Will Tinia Station really be a long-term issue now?” Chandra asked.
Ian shrugged. “Who can say? Like I said, very few ships from Earth really make it out past the Belt, and even fewer dock on stations. We don’t have experience with that line I mentioned you were pushing. System Council is talking about keeping Earth ships closer to home for the next few years to avoid putting anything ‘threatening’ in Gateway space.”
“Mm.” Chandra thought about this as a solution. “So Earth ships stay inside the Belt to keep the Omnarchy’s mechanical remnants nice and calm. The next ship that does venture out will be an anomaly and get treated as one.” It was a tidy solution and distressingly self-reinforcing. “Did you think this is what you’d be doing out here? Trying to keep humanity bottled up?”
Ian frowned. “No, but I never really wanted to be out here, to be honest.”
“Really?” Chandra had never heard this before – it was a rare sentiment in space. “You didn’t want to come to Jupiter?”
“No,” Ian said, “I always wanted to be on a planetside engineering crew. Infrastructure, ship construction, maybe terraforming even. I liked the idea of building something from scratch.”
“How’d you end up an Omnarchy tech?”
Ian sat down, put his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands, and put his chin down onto them. “I was a great student. Good aptitude, quick study, teachers liked to call me ‘tenacious.’ Even before they pulled out I was on a fast track. Later, when I took the occupational exams, I went for engineering. I qualified and then some. Did a bit too well, I guess, and I got a visit. Someone from Council came and explained they wanted to put me out past the Belt. That we needed our greatest minds focused on the real problems, the tech none of us understood. Said it was my duty to get us back out among the stars. Then he started talking about my parents, my siblings, how he could bump them to the front of the line for goods and medical disbursement, how Council could get them special authorizations if they needed anything. So now, here I am.” He quit pacing and looked at Chandra. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve liked working with you. But I don’t see anything on these stations I built or earned. Just babysat.”
Chandra looked at the wall, where the image of the inert, silent Gateway remained where Jarrist had brought it up. She wondered how many brilliant people had a story like that. “I don’t remember the occupation. Too young. When I was older, still a kid, I was fascinated by all these great machines, just floating out there. I wanted to be on the stations, or the ships. I used to imagine I’d be the one who really unlocked it all, that I’d discover some secret code that made everything work. We’d figure out how to activate the full scope of manufacturing, or we’d discover a secret knowledge trove hidden past Pluto that held all their secrets, and we’d finally get utopia, world peace, whatever. I know it’s dumb, but that’s what I used to imagine.”
“I guess you lose that kind of thing growing up,” Ian said.
“Ritual debasement ten times a day doesn’t help,” Chandra replied. “Ian, did you mean what you said? About being my friend?”
Ian looked surprised. “Well, it’s been – I mean, I’ve worked with you for years. We haven’t been exactly chummy, but. I respect you. I respect what you tried to do.”
Chandra bit her lip before taking the plunge. “I have an idea. It might not work, and it might be better if it doesn’t. But I think we need to try.”
#
Twenty-five minutes later, Chandra and Ian were walking down a white hallway that led into the central region of Tarquin Station. Rather than the pyramid-shaped structure that Tinia adopted, Tarquin was composed of three spheres, bound together in a ring and also connected to a single central hub. They walked briskly, passing by a few maintenance crews moving out to the outer rings, nodding at them as they passed.
"Slow down, ma--slow down," Ian whispered after one crew went by. “You’ll look suspicious.”
“Fine, fine.” Chandra said, “You’re sure you have the clearance you need?”
“You said you wanted to get to the AI core. You’ll get there.” The door was built of interlocking squares, matching the clean white of the surroundings. The hallways moving from the outer ring to the inner core had no off-branches, no side rooms except some emergency equipment booths ever few tens of meters. It made for a disorienting blank space. Finally, the hallway reached a controlled access door, with cameras and a hand interface. Ian stepped forward and put his hand on the glass, closing his eyes. “Deputy Chief for Infotech and, uh, an independent consultant,” he said aloud. Chandra took a deep breath, but no alarm came. Bright lines appeared, cutting the door into interlocking squares, which then receded to the side like a snake shedding its skin. The two of them walked in.
If the hallway leading here was austere, this inner area suddenly seemed to explode into a honeycomb of hallways, access tunnels, passages. “How do you know where we’re going?” Chandra said, “You’ve only been stationed here a couple days.”
Ian snorted. “You know how to sweet-talk the machines. I know how to actually clamber around inside them. Please try not to touch anything.” He ducked into a small hallway, such that he needed to bend slightly. Chandra followed him, her head just barely not grazing the top. “This would have been a crawlspace for the Omnarchy crews,” Ian said. He led the two of them through several intersections, passing pipes and computer terminals, until they finally reached an area where someone had added a yellow sticker that said “AI Core” in large letters on the outside of the open doorway.
The room inside, although its walls were the same slate-grey that the Omnarchy preferred throughout their stations, was dazzling. Seven- or eight-foot-tall crystal structures of red, green, and white – some appearing like obelisks, some like pine trees, and some like mountain ranges – filled the room, with access paths weaving between them. Chandra was awed. She had seen an AI core before, but never one this large or complicated. “How old is this station? To have grown so much…”
Ian paused and took in the view, although with a little more professional distance, as he replied, “This is one of the first things the Omnarchy built, same time as the Gateway. The crystals were seeded even before the surrender of the old United Nations. Come on, we should be able to find the right panel…this way.”
Suddenly, a voice sounded behind them. “Hold up there – station security.” The man who called from across the room was wearing lightweight red armor, sewn into his clothes in plates. At his side was a pistol, but he hadn’t drawn it. He began to walk towards them, having to weave his way through the crystals to do so. “Restricted area. Can I see authorization?”
“Certainly,” said Ian, pulling a card out from his belt. “I’m the new AI deputy. Ian Davis.”
The man took Ian’s card and pulled out a small cylindrical object. He pointed it at Ian’s card and flipped a switch, and a holographic image projected into the air in front of him. He inspected the image, and then handed the card back to Ian. “Nice to meet you, deputy. Mind explaining what you’re doing with the ex-Administrator?”
Chandra tried to look calm. The “independent contractor” lie wouldn’t take them any further, obviously. She thought about forcing a smile but realized nobody expected her to be anything but unhappy right now. “I’ve been asked to make a statement to the central core,” she found herself saying. “To see if it eases the tension with Tinia Station.”
Ian shot her a look. They hadn’t planned that one. “Right. I’m escorting her.”
The security guard frowned. “And you have to do that here? Not through a regular terminal?”
“Well, standard terminals accept very limited types of input. Mantras and pre-coded operations. Here,” Ian gestured with his credential card, “we can make freeform input. Sometimes necessary when you want to do something off-script.”
“Alright,” the security guard said. “That’s your department. But we didn’t log this as a planned visit, so I’m going to have to radio this up.” He touched his finger to his ears and his eyes lost focus as he stared off into the distance. Then, after just a few seconds, he snapped back. “Too much interference with all these cores. I’ll be right back. Wait here, please, in case I need to ask you any more questions.” He left the room.
As soon as he was plausibly out of earshot, his armor disappearing behind a jagged crystal, Chandra hissed, “What do we do now? He’s got us.”
Ian said. “Right. So we have forty-five seconds. Let’s make it count.” He ducked around a tower that looked like a cylinder of stained glass and laid down on the ground, pulling out a small tool that resembled a soldering iron. Chandra saw a spark spit from the crystal, and then Ian pointed at a hemisphere protruding from it at eye-level. “There you go. Governor-level directive station. I’ve shorted out the identity verification, but that absolutely will not hold for any length of time. You get one shot.”
Chandra took a deep breath, placed her hand on the hemisphere, twisted her mind to the precise angle, and pictured:
a blizzard of ships from dozens of worlds, coming and going through the Gateway
a city street, lined with trees, every passer-by smiling at each other, a song on the air
a child running across a grassy field, giggling, with a twilit night sky behind her, the stars just starting to come out
The people of this system deserve full and flourishing lives without the Omnarchy. We will care for each other outside its strangling grasp. We look you in the eye without fear.
Chandra felt the same pause she had felt on Tinia Station. She felt, again, an automatic revulsion from the computer, although this time her counterpart in the mental link was far larger. She felt confusion, total, frenzied confusion. She opened her eyes to find herself in total darkness, only soft glows emerging from the circuitry inside of the crystals. After a few seconds, red emergency lights lit up the room while many of the crystal cores went dim.
A voice came over the stationwide intercom. “Attention all station staff and residents. A catastrophic failure of delegated authority has occurred. Reverting to systemwide autonomous operation per anti-sedition protocols until legitimate authority is restored. Safety protocols will be assured for all citizens; panic is unnecessary and counterproductive. Return to quarters and await orders from loyal and lawful authorities.”
Chandra looked at Ian, who looked back at her, wide-eyed. Before either of them could let off a we did it, the young security guard returned with his gun drawn. “Hands!” he yelled, and they immediately raised theirs above their heads. “What did you do?”
“It’s ok,” Chandra said, in her best soothing tone. “You can put the gun down. We’re all going to be alright.”
“That’s not what I asked!” the man said, twitching as he looked over his shoulder. There were sounds of motion in nearby corridors. “What did you DO?”
“Just a small change; nobody is going to get hurt. This interface, at this point, was where the last Governor made their withdrawal orders. I injected a new image into that set of commands, and the computer scrapped the whole set of delegations.”
The guard furrowed his brow. “Enough crazy talk. Come with me.” He led them at gunpoint through the maintenance tunnels, where crews were streaming into the AI core. Once they made it far enough out, he touched his earpiece briefly. His eyes slipped out of focus for a split-second, and then he said, “Keep going” and motioned forward with his gun.
“Where?” Ian asked.
“Did I say talk? So don’t. Keep going.” The guard pushed them down the long blank white hallway out to the main ring, where people had largely retreated to private quarters and offices. They passed several hastily-constructed checkpoints, where they were quickly waved through. Finally, they made it back to the quarters where Chandra had first been confined. The guard, once they stepped through the door, shut it behind them and left them alone. They stood there, in silence, not sure what to say to one another.
It wasn’t long before the door reopened and Councilmember Arrist stormed in, wearing his robes. His brow was sweaty and he spoke with a machine-gun cadence. “I hope to God that little brief I got from the jarhead out there isn’t accurate. Neither of you have any clue what you just did.”
“With respect, sir.” Ian began, “I think I used my authority to help someone circumvent system security, falsify their identity, and disturb the proper functioning of vital infrastructure. Treason against the Omnarchy, for sure. Personally, I’m hoping they don’t show up to press charges.”
Arrist growled, “Get out.” Ian looked at Chandra, who nodded, and then he left. The door closed behind him as Arrist turned to her. “I’ve lost any authority beyond the station itself, which is currently refusing to do anything beyond maintain life support and do basic traffic control. I still have comms. Across the system it’s a total crapshoot. Nobody has weapons. Mining is mostly a no. Are you insane?”
Chandra took a deep breath. “The network assumes the Governor went rogue. Major military-economic functions have been disabled to stop Omnarchy resources from being used in service of the rebellion. Stations and ships will revert to minimal capabilities. Weapons will go offline. Individual stations might go differently – there isn’t really going to be a unified command structure since the Governor’s authority has been canceled, unless the Omnarchy re-establishes one. We are going to need to start living for ourselves.”
“So you are insane. You just set us back centuries. It’ll probably take us a hundred years to get asteroid mining up to a quarter of what it was thirty minutes ago. You just turned a civilization worth of inherited assets into scrap metal and glass. You just -- ” And Will froze.
“…just what?” Chandra said. She was ready for the rant, but the Councilmember wasn’t known to lose his tongue. Realizing he was staring at something behind her, she turned to look.
The feed of the Gateway was still on her wall from Arrist’s first visit. The grooves along its rim were beginning to light up, as a fiery blue began to spread down the cursive lines. They split and reconnected, playing across the ring, and when the surface of the ring was half-covered in the whorls and spirals, a sudden flash went off in the precise center. Suddenly the ring wasn’t hollow at all, but filled with a blue-purple pattern, a beautiful, inhuman iris.
“It’s open.” Will said, stunned.
“Oh,” Chandra said, realizing, “The Governor was the one who closed it…” They both stood there, gaping. About a minute after the process began, a sound played over the room’s intercom, a low gong sound.
The voice of the computer cut into their trance: “Attention, Administrator Arrist. Comms subsystem reports a message has been received on interstellar channels. Translation subroutines are ready for interpretation.” It paused and then, a little too quickly for anyone to respond, said, “Comms reports two messages have been received on in—comms reports thr—”
“Play…play them as they arrive.” Arrist said, his jaw still open. “Play them here.”
A symphony began.
“Hail and salutations! This is the Arcturus Gateway, under the jurisdiction of the Blessed Collective of Rin…”
“Greetings to newly activated Gateway, we are transmitting from the Pleiades Democracy, inquiring with peaceful intentions…”
“Tucanae Trade Corporation Commerce Hub 345 calling, is that a new star in the sky? Please respond on….”
…
Zachary Goff-Eldredge is a recovering physicist who lives in Washington, D.C., where he oscillates between optimism and pessimism about the future of humanity.