Thieves on the Long, Dark Road
By Daniel P. Swenson
Text copyright © 2014 by Daniel P. Swenson
Cover art copyright © 2013 by Manthos Lappas
All rights reserved.
"Vent-finder-wanderer," the machines called. "The anomaly has returned."
"I am coming," I responded.
I was a sentry. Awake for the first time in two thousand revolutions, I felt life pulse within this newly-cultured body, infused with my spirit by machines that never blink. Liquid sloshed within my containment suit, aerating my gills. Comforting at the tissue-level, it was a sad reminder of oceans long since boiled into space. I boarded the waiting elevator.
On the surface, I turned away from our red sun, and gazed out through the long-bled sky into the empty black. Not a single star shone forth. Only the accretion disc was visible. A halo of gas and dust spinning dimly around the pinhole we had created, our life's blood, pulling at the teat of space-time's torn fabric. No protostar yet hung there, but in time, a new sun would blaze forth, even as our birth star gave up the last of its light.
My vessel was small, most of its mass devoted to a bubble containing those aspects necessary to preserve my biological essence. I left orbit and moved out-system at high speed.
The anomaly manifested near the pinhole, above the disc, where space-time was rendered foamy by the device at the pinhole's heart. That device long ago implanted by our forebears into reality's inner skin; our last hope, to be defended at all costs.
The anomaly rendered itself fully, and a shadow spun out from the foam, black and anechoic. I bathed the object in various wavelengths, looking for something that would foil the shadow's camouflage. There. The machines fine-tuned the radiation until the object was fully illuminated, an asymmetrical metal flower of fins and spines. A probe of some type, I assumed.
We'd been discovered. A competitor culture? Another thief? I doubted that possibility. It had been so long since we had encountered any others in our expanding universe, all of us accelerating out into the void, traveling our own roads into the dark.
On my visuals, the automaton separated, a smaller piece of itself accelerating towards the pinhole. Remote analysis confirmed its explosive nature. A weapon of some type.
Not having the luxury of further contemplation, I fulfilled my duties as sentry. My vessel had been built to defend. I twitched a mandible palp, and the vessel responded to my command, destroying the weapon with a lance of perturbed particles. Having negated the immediate threat, I dealt with the attacker before it could take further action. The particles sheared it in half, then quarters, and so on. War machines tend to be redundant, and I was trained to leave nothing operative.
Salvage of the probe yielded much data for the machines to ponder. Back on our planet, I remained on the surface and contented myself with watching the disc's slow spin. My heart lifted, anticipating a future world, repopulated, alive; but would I live to see the fruits of our labors?
"Not a probe," the machines revealed to me. "Biological. Sentient." And even stranger, the wreckage had yielded another clue. Metal and tissue all composed of exotic matter, particles with strange spins. Matter from another universe.
"Not possible," I protested. We had chosen the source system for its extremely low probability of developing life. All those millennia upon millennia ago. Back when the device had been activated, and the pinhole's slow pull of matter and energy began to trickle from that n-space to our own.
Nevertheless.
The machines sent me their full report. The vessel had been piloted by an endoskeletal biped of recent origin. Its primitive vessel indicative of a race newly emerged from its home reef, not yet capable of plumbing the infinite depths beyond. Its vessel did not contain useful data, but the machines extrapolated from its design. Its system probably spun not far from the pinhole's origin in that other n-space, its essence being drained away by our device, exotic matter stolen from another universe to fuel our survival. Another vessel was expected, and more after that. The machines predicted a long resistance. Would we not do the same?
"Recommendation?" I asked.
"Defend."
I processed that against my ethical heritage which the machines did not share. Could we persist at the expense of another? No. I delivered my conclusion to the machines. I was not merely a sentry. I held the mantle of my race's self-deliberative legacy. But what of my sisters and I? What of my clutch-guard, Etched-claws-clashing? My own ova-born, Warm-water-clear and Small-tasty-finder?
Another way. There had to be another way. I marched out into the dusty plain surrounding the embarkation center. Distant mountains glowed as our decrepit sun fell below the horizon. Was this to be our fate? Our right to exist supplanted by an upstart race of soft-fleshed air-breathers? Evolved to fight off the merciless predators of our ancient forebears, the primitive root of my brain throbbed, urging me to action. Defend. Destroy. Consume. My blood raced, and I pounded my fore-spikes into the ground until my shell threatened to crack.
Slowly, I calmed. I stood on the plain as the sunset faded into black. Rationality bitterly reasserted itself. We had long since given up our warlike heritage. We had evolved. Perhaps this is only causality, I wondered, feeling the seeping, abyssal cold that had enveloped our world. We could not escape fate. Not if we chose to retain the wisdom earned so painfully across the dark ages of our bloody history. I sagged in my suit, but then I realized perhaps all was not lost. There was still action to take. I would prepare for this death. I would prepare for us all. Walking back, I sent instructions to the machines. We had much to do before the next visitor arrived. I set the machines to digging.
When the next anomaly betrayed its presence near the pinhole, I again rode into space, my vessel having been augmented a hundred times with memory-cored crystal mass. A new visitor condensed fully into our n-space, and I pounced, attaching my own vessel to the new one. Through my bubble, I looked up into that other bubble, visible through much smaller openings. The biped wearing some type of preservative mask, looked up at me and jerked in what I guessed to be surprise, clearly seeing me, all the magnificence of my race's multi-shelled, corporeal lineage. In that moment, ironically, unexpectedly, I felt truly alive. I grinned with all my manifold jaws.
Hello.
At my command, the machines stimulated the space-time foam. Transmission properties went retrograde. We spun back along the tangent, hurled out, as the device shut down, never to be activated again, our planet sailing out forever on the long, dark road.
I found myself in that other n-space. I would not live long here, my biochemistry now alien, incompatible with the physics of this place. I tracked other vessels surrounding me on all sides, and what must be the bipeds' system, planetary orbits askew, a streamer of dust visible, sucked off towards the vacant point where the pinhole had been. I disengaged the biped vessel I had held, as the others launched a swarm of weapons. But I was a sentry still, ready to defend.
With my particle weapon, I detonated most of the weapons, but a few eluded destruction. I turned my hull to take the brunt of the explosions, shielding my precious cargo. As a second salvo closed, I checked the integrity of the crystal mass. Satisfied, I gazed out at a vast ocean of stars. Such a young universe! There would be community. Someone would find us; someone would understand.
Oh my sisters, we shall be remembered.
Even as I began to die, I pointed my vessel at a cluster of stars and with my sisters' spirits held tight, I soared into the light of a thousand thousand suns.
Thanks for reading Thieves on the Long, Dark Road.
I hope you enjoyed it!
If you’d like to read an excerpt from my novel The Farthest City, please turn the page.
Chapter 1 – Four
Izmit was a Digger. Kellen could tell right away from his dirty clothes, broken fingernails, and pale skin. The man sat beside him one day at a ration stall, ordered food, and turned out to the street, whistling softly and watching the crowd. Particles of dirt clung to the hairs on his arms.
In his mind, Kellen sketched. Arms of corded muscle, elbows battered and scratched, dark eyes under a thick brow. Moustache like woven wires.
“Kellen, right?” the Digger said.
Kellen stood and gathered up his things.
“I’m Izmit.”
Kellen nodded, just enough to be polite, and edged back a step. He’d known a Digger before. He knew what they wanted, what they always wanted.
“You’re a Drawer,” Izmit said.
Drawers tended to keep company with those compelled to dig beneath the cities. Kellen no longer encouraged those friendships. He never drew in public. Digger, Lighter, Drawer, Singer. Four fools.
Kellen looked into Izmit’s eyes. “I’m not who you’re looking for.”
“You’re an artist.”
“There are lots of artists around. Check the feed.”
“Not like you,” Izmit said. “I’ve seen you sketching. Even when you don’t have a pen, your fingers move. You barely go out, don’t talk to anyone. What are you hiding?”
Fear pooled in Kellen’s guts. Perhaps Izmit only pretended to be a Digger. Was he with the government?
“I’m not a freak.” Kellen spit out the words like poison, then walked away as fast as he could.
“I know you’re not,” Izmit called out. “Everyone thinks we’re crazy, but we’re not. We’re everyone’s last hope.”
People had turned to listen.
Kellen fled.
#
Despite being rebuffed, Izmit continued to appear whenever Kellen slipped out of his apartment.
Kellen had hidden for five years now. He’d gotten skilled at blending in. Now this interloper had shattered his anonymity. Yet, despite his anxiety, part of him welcomed the intrusion. He’d forgotten what it was like to know someone, even Izmit, who wasn’t much more than a stranger.
His loneliness bubbled to the surface at inconvenient times, driving him out to walk the city where he’d be more likely to run into Izmit. His fear of discovery faded, even as he derided himself. If they see what I am, they’ll catch me, and I’ll be disappeared. Just one more freak no one will miss.
He walked through the city one day out to the Altamaha River. Other than recycled place names, little was left of the original Jesup as it had stood more than two thousand years ago. The New Cities were chine-built. Whereas Jesup nestled in the pines and flats west of the Altamaha, the city of his childhood, Grand-Mère had been all hills and lakes and dark, wet trees. Despite their differences, the two cities were almost identical in their basic layouts. Sometimes he expected to pass by his mother or father, felt them nearby in the home they’d shared, or where it should be, if here were there, which it wasn’t.
Izmit found him sitting along the river bank.
Kellen watched eddies form and dissolve as the brown water slid by. The river smelled of rotten logs and mud. “How are we anyone’s hope?”
Izmit sat on an overhanging root and reached down to crumble damp earth between his fingers.
“We were created by the chines for a time like this, when humanity needs help,” Izmit said. “The Four are the only ones who can call back the chines.”
“No one believes that,” Kellen said, “except the chine cults, and they’re crazy, too. It’s just a myth, a delusion. And the Four who believe it, the ones who think they’re heroes, they get taken away, and they don’t come back.”
Izmit formed a ball of mud in his fingers and hurled it out into the river. “You’re wrong. We’re more than that. We’re here for a purpose. When did the Four first come to light? A hundred and eight years ago. The Butcher of Yunxian. She imprisoned and tortured people for seventeen years. There were protests, assassinations. That’s the first time the Four come up in the records. That’s when the legend began.”
“They killed them,” Kellen said.
Izmit’s eyes lit up with a fervor Kellen had seen before. Cesar had looked at him the same way the last time they’d met. “When did the Four come up next? Twenty-five years ago when the scientists detected asteroid 5261 UV2. Just over a kilometer wide, and the government projected it would strike Earth.”
“My family sheltered in the habs,” Kellen said. “I was only three.”
“I was seven,” Izmit said.
Kellen could see the excitement in Izmit’s eyes, and suddenly he was back with Pearl and Cesar, spinning stories about what they’d do when the chines came back. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He’s the same. He’ll get me in trouble, get me killed. Kellen felt the urge to run away before the craziness caught him up as well, but something kept him there.
“Everyone thought we would all die,” Kellen said.
“And the Four were there then, too.”
“But what good did they do? They were all over the feed, then they started doing crazy stuff. A Lighter electrocuted herself. They arrested a Digger below the habs drilling through a factory floor. And the asteroid missed anyway—they nudged it out of the way. The Four accomplished nothing.”
“Maybe,” Izmit said. “Maybe it got resolved before they could do anything. Or maybe they didn’t want it badly enough. Maybe they really were mentally ill. But I’m not. I’m solid, and I want it. I want to bring the chines back. Don’t you? We need them to return. The Hexi are killing us. You know it, I know it, even if the government won’t admit it. We’re losing this war, but you and I can change that. We can—the Four, we can change everything.”
Kellen wanted to believe it, after all the hiding, the pain. He could see it. He’d no longer be a freak. He could prove it to them, and they would love him again.
#
The next evening, at the agreed-upon time, Izmit knocked on Kellen’s door. Inside, he set down a bulging pack and studied Kellen for a moment. Kellen had on what he usually wore on walks in the fall: a light jacket, pants, and soft-soled shoes.
“It’ll be cold and dirty work,” Izmit said. “You have anything better to wear?”
Kellen went to find a thicker jacket and some old boots.
“Mind if I have some cola?” Izmit asked from the kitchen.
“Help yourself.”
Izmit drank his cola and moved about the small apartment, examining Kellen’s artwork.
Kellen knew he wasn’t like the Drawers people talked about, covering every square centimeter of their homespace with rambling scrawls of chine symbols, circuit diagrams, depictions of the chines themselves like portraits of gods. Some ended up scratching into their own skin, babbling their visions out to anyone who’d stop to listen, until the government came to get them and you never saw them again. Yes, he drew those things, but he was discreet. He drew on paper, painted canvasses, etched metal, carved wood. Framed works hung from his walls, the chine elements hidden in plain sight, blended into other artistic styles and subjects.
“I like this one,” Izmit said pointing to a painting of a bipedal chine standing on a hill, a human baby cradled in its robotic arms.
It was one of his early attempts using oils. The chine’s head bristled with antennae, but otherwise its pose was natural and somehow conveyed the warmth and concern of a mother. It appeared human at first, unless one looked closely.
A distant boom shook the walls, reminding Kellen of the building pressure he felt inside. As the war had progressed, the call had grown more insistent—draw more, paint more. So far he’d managed the impulse, not letting it boil over into mania.
“They seem closer each day,” Kellen said, as some of his newfound courage ebbed. “People say Jesup might fall.”
<
br /> Izmit’s eyes narrowed, and his characteristic energy dimmed. “Not just here. King City, Xicoténcatl, Grand-Mère, and all the other New Cities are under threat now.”
Grand-Mère. Hearing the city’s name cracked open a door. Familiar faces threatened to force their way into Kellen’s mind. “Let’s go,” he said, not wanting to remember.
They set off in the cool night air, taking a path into the heart of the government district. Tall, darkened buildings loomed overhead. They passed through the plaza and down the north gate into the habs. The guards nodded as they entered.
They avoided the broad, central staircase with its sweep of white marble steps, in favor of the escalators on either side. Inside the central apex level, they made their way past refugee citizens out for a late-night walk and rode one of the lesser-used elevators.
They moved past the upper levels, where most people had taken refuge not long after the Hexi arrived in force three years before. They continued down into the lower levels housing the city’s power, sewage, and water utilities, even automated factories. Restricted access, but Izmit had a passcode. Kellen declined to ask from where.
The elevator stopped and opened. Alarmed, Kellen looked at Izmit, who shrugged and gazed at the floor. The elevator closed and continued downward, but Kellen’s adrenalin surge persisted. What happens if they catch us here? We’re not supposed to be here.
As they descended into the earth, Kellen felt a disturbing conspicuousness, as if the walls contained hidden eyes—this was how people like him got caught. He clamped down the lid of his mind, barely restraining his alarm. Despite the fear, a pressure lifted as if his spirit had been unburdened. Go with it, he thought.
The elevator came to a stop and opened onto the lowest level. A soft glow from the walls provided illumination. Drips echoed. Ready to flee or hide, Kellen and Izmit explored. The passageways were built with a precise geometry, but people had managed to clutter the spaces with palettes of supplies, pipes and metal plates, and machinery left by the engineers who kept the city running in the absence of its more skilled makers.