Scott Davis
Oscar watched her. The airlock hadn’t cycled. She just appeared. She wended among the Saguaro of the desert section’s path, a road runner leaping out of her way. If it felt unnatural to her to change angles as she walked, her manner told nothing of it. It had taken Oscar months to adapt to cylinder living, what with the lakes overhead, birds flipping upside down as they landed on the ceiling, or so it seemed—all the weirdness when centrifugal force substitutes for gravity.
The evening cooled. The light tube centered in the cylinder simulated dusk. A deer drinking at a pond, at eleven o’clock to his six, lifted her head, ears flicking, alert to the woman below. She made no sound and although the sandy desert path she had trod traveled up the side from his vantage point, he saw no footprints. Her reflection moved among the water lilies as the small arched bridge took her to his side of the stream, in the Continental climate area. Hair in ringlets, nutmeg complexion and lush features were all classic Early Empire, as was her dress in pearlescent neutral. Her athletic build and stately carriage hinted at power held in reserve.
He would have gone inside his faux-rustic cabin soon, made a check of ship’s systems from the controls there, and settled in for the night serenaded by crickets. But he stood as she arrived. Was she another manifestation of Pi, the creature he was fleeing? His back became damp despite the evening chill. He tried to quell his shaking hands and legs. His heart pounded in his chest.
“I strove to create no disturbance in your autonomic systems,” she said, her voice preternaturally calm. Up close, she was made of thousands of sparkles. Within them, her body was empty. Uncertain, but with automatic courtesy, he extended his hand, unsteady as it was as though she could take it. He gasped his surprise, feeling her return grip. It hummed with energy. “My name is Oscar and yours might be?”
“You call me Andromeda.”
“What?” Grayness began taking over the ship. The lake above roiled. The realization jolted Oscar. “He knows.” It hadn’t taken long for Pi to find out, and act.
“Yes, we haven’t much time,” Andromeda said. The porch groaned. The normally circulating air grew to a violent wind that could only be a hull breach. Deer were dragged, sheep bleated piteously as they slid out of control, flailing toward widening holes. Birds screamed, then shot out to the tumbling stars. Each animal’s plight stabbed at Oscar’s heart. He knew each one, naming them like Adam, and for all he knew, they were the last of their many kinds, the legacy of Earth lost.
“Come with me,” she said.
“You don’t understand—” Oscar wanted to say more, but he was out of air. The landscape around him turned white with frost. A membrane billowed around him. His ears popped. He could breathe again. She remained outside the pocket of air, unbothered by the vacuum. With the strokes of a swimmer she towed him away from his stricken ship.
They emerged into open space, his dissolving ship fading into the distance. Oscar fell to the side of the bubble, pushed by acceleration as they approached the skeleton of another ship. The forming ship also accelerated to them, then matched their velocity. A passenger section grew a skin while he watched. An airlock formed. She entered it, pulled him inside and closed the hatch. His bubble lost rigidity. She opened it. His ears popped. Fresh air. The airlock shuddered then slammed them against the side that wasn’t there moments ago.
“We need to get forward.” Andromeda opened the inner door. They started climbing, but had to pause to brace against the freezing handrails as the ship lurched again. Strong air currents pushed their heads back and rippled their clothing, then stopped. Oscar’s eardrums crackled. Air nozzles hissed. A bright beam sliced diagonally through the ship just missing them. Oscar yelped. Andromeda, in the lead, jumped back. White fluid seeped and dried in the gash. How much more could this ship take? Was it even fully formed? The rungs felt cold as space, and threatened to tear away flesh every time Oscar held on tight, then tried to climb again.
As fast as panic could power him, Oscar climbed, though he couldn’t keep up with Andromeda. By the time he reached the bridge, she was already strapped into an acceleration couch and operating the helm controls. He followed suit, expecting main engine thrust any second. The small of his back spasmed from the icy press of its unyielding surface. The vessel may have looked like a Later Empire liner, with its bridge styled like a leaping snow leopard, but those ships only gave the impression of power and speed. They never had this kind of acceleration. Oscar’s vision narrowed to the stars ahead. Dots swam in the closing tunnel. Then the pressure on Oscar’s chest eased. The ship’s holos didn’t show any letup in the acceleration, but some kind of compensation must have kicked in.
His heart still thudded long after the attack. “Thanks. A lot of effort just for me.”
“It took a little while to gather enough construction materials. I never would have made it fast enough myself. My friend helped. You can relax now.”
“Who are you?”
Andromeda smiled. “Just who I said I am. I thought you wouldn’t be so surprised. After all, you know about him.” She jerked her head in the direction of Oscar’s lost ship.
Andromeda spun the tactical holo to an aft view. “See, he’s far behind us.”
Oscar asked, “How can we escape him under light speed?”
“We’re folding space in front, quite a dense crinkle—”
“Where do you get the energy for that!”
“I can draw from home and my friend is quite generous. We’re both interested in what you have to say.”
“It wasn’t so great in the frying pan, and you had to tip me into the fire?”
Andromeda fell silent. He had hurt her feelings, it seemed. Or was he just anthropomorphizing? He could see bright funnels in the forward holos, their stems fading into the distance, pouring white energy into space ahead—wormhole constructs? The ship sped ever faster, judging by the Doppler effect on the view.
“Can he match what you’re doing?” Oscar asked.
“No, I don’t think so. He can’t marshal the resources of two fully populated galaxies: the Dyson Spheres of a quintillion biominds, quasars, harnessed novae, no. We’re much faster. Thousands of times light speed relative to flat space, ultimately. He can follow but can’t outrun us.” She brightened, looking at him. “My manners! You must be hungry!”
As if the last crazy hours were business as usual, Andromeda led him down a half flight of stairs and forward to an expansive hall with linen tablecloths and simulated candlelight. He was too numb to resist. It all took on a dreamy quality. She sat at a table and smiled at him, her eyes warm. The view out the large wraparound ports dazzled. Space protested mightily when compacted. What could shield the ship from that kind of energy? The view streamed like an egg-shaped brilliant blue-green aurora. There were hums at many different pitches throbbing softly.
“I’ve been sampling foods of your home world and can’t understand your palate,” Andromeda said. “Did your people make ingestion into a form of penance?”
Oscar tried a piece of fruit from the silver bowl. “This apple is too green.” He looked at the rest. “I never cared for artichokes, but they have to be cooked, that much I do know. Let the apple tree ripen in the sun a week or two, and find some recipe with cheese to disguise the artichoke’s taste. See if that helps.”
A mirror-finish android glided out double swing doors in the back with a silver tray. The items Oscar had described emerged, and were quite good.
“Wine?” Andromeda asked.
“Just water for me. By the time I’ve refined your fermentation techniques, I’ll be drunk.”
“You seem to be feeling better.” She looked pleased, radiant.
“Can I ask how you … ?”
“Got here? A little asymmetrical luxon work with bradyons in your locale through a superstring matrix—”
Oscar shook his head. “You lost me. I didn’t know there was more than one.” His stomach growled. Probably the green apple.
“Are you okay?” Her concerned expression was perfectly rendered, like an ideal nurse or mother.
Oscar tried to be cautious, but he couldn’t help being disarmed by her beauty. “I’m rested, and trying not to think about what just happened. I called that tin can home for a long, long time.”
“You were enroute to … ?”
“As far as I could get. I hoped to outrun him. Impossible, though. Pi had woven parts of himself into the ship. I was escaping nothing. I carried him with me.”
“What is it you call him?”
“Pi, as in the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle.”
“I saw that in your records but couldn’t understand why.”
“It seemed appropriate—an endlessly irrational number.”
“Well, hopefully that wasn’t a self-fulfilling prophesy. Pi the number doesn’t have the same qualities elsewhere, by the way. In Rilik geometry it is an integer.”
“Can’t imagine it.”
The lights dimmed and the silver crashed to the floor. The flow around the ship puckered at points. Bulkheads creaked. Oscar fell out of his chair and onto a window. It was as though the room had tilted sideways and he suddenly felt like he weighed 500 kilos.
“Opaque!” Andromeda cried. The windows became black. “We can’t let him find you.” Three shiny blue androids pried him carefully off the window, carried him up out of the dining room and strapped him to an acceleration couch on the bridge. Andromeda worked a tactical console.
“I thought you said he couldn’t catch us!”
“Pi’s found another way. He had to rip space to get here,” Andromeda said.
The tactical holo showed gravity wells popping up all around the ship. They moved in a search pattern. If one popped inside the ship … More came every second, as though they were calling in reinforcements now that they had found their quarry. Andromeda slowly lifted her hands from the controls and held them together, fingers up like some Hindu deity.
“What ARE you doing?” Oscar shouted, expecting to become a morsel for a black hole any second.
A micro hole popped through the hull ahead, then one from starboard. The air screamed, spinning into them. Oscar’s hair followed the first, then the second one. His clothes were pulled by the tide. The first one came toward him, low. His belt buckle struggled, and his wedding ring slid off his finger into the vortex with a spark.
Oscar mourned his wife, Vera, all over again and wondered if a reunion were imminent. As he entertained the thought, the singularities were upon him. He closed his eyes tightly to keep them from popping out of their sockets. His neck muscles lost the battle, bowing to superior forces, teeth painfully loosened by the roots.
*
At once the ship stilled. Oscar’s clothing settled onto him. Suddenly, there was just normal, light gravity and the air stopped moving. After several seconds of peace he fluttered his eyes. The tactical holo was white.
“Are we dead?” Oscar asked.
The ship resumed operations. Its ventilation softly whooshed and its lights blinked green. The long-range navigation holo showed them on course to a far off, fuzzy, canted disk.
“Ahem!” An older gent who wasn’t there before cleared his throat. “I came to enquire as to your health.”
“Messier! So good to see you! Did you travel well?” Andromeda asked in that infuriatingly calm voice.
“It became smooth after I entered clear space, but as I napped, your little scuffle jarred me awake, my Dear.”
Andromeda went to him, held both his hands. “It’s been too long!”
This Messier looked like a weak-chinned George Washington, complete with powdered wig and silk stockings. Why these silly theatrics if not to come down to the level of the mere human in their midst? The security androids undid Oscar’s harness. He stood. “You stopped the attack?” he asked.
“By no means. This is merely a social visit. What should I tell him, Andie?”
“No secrets”
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am the sentience of what you call the pinwheel galaxy. Messier was the human who discovered me, hence the appearance, in his honor. The Third Orders put an end the attack. Higher-ups weren’t too pleased that rogue Second Order you call Pi used channels reserved for them.”
“I should have been ready,” Andromeda said.
“Don’t blame yourself, Andie. To follow his way of thinking? Unhealthy!”
“Pi has to know someone stopped him. Now he knows where we are. What will he do now?” Andromeda asked.
“The Third Order had no choice. Either tip his hand, or let both of you be sucked in. I was told the two of you were at table?”
“Of course! My manners! Won’t you join us?”
She took Messier’s arm. They strolled off together. Andromeda looked over her shoulder.
“Is this all a game to you?” Oscar asked. His body still rang alarm bells, viscera all disturbed by the intense sideways gravity and the headache!
Andromeda stopped. She turned around. “Oscar, just say the word, and you can be like us. You know we’re just extensions, copies. Until you give up that body, you’re vulnerable.”
“Die? No thanks.”
“Poor man if you think your body keeps you alive!” Andromeda said.
“The converse is closer to the truth, my good fellow,” Messier said.
They entered the peaceful, elegant, like nothing had happened dining room. “Please cut out the act. You aren’t people.”
“Au contraire,” Messier said. “Where do you think you biominds got the idea of personhood? It wasn’t from the amoeba. As above, so below.”
“What? Such nonsense!” Oscar said. They said nothing. He threw up his hands. “Let me order the food this time.” At least he wouldn’t suffer their contrived mistakes. They couldn’t really be that clueless. Well, if they wanted to play human, may as well cook up a meal to remember.
“Oh, I can’t wait!” Andromeda bounded up to her chair. Messier pulled it back and pushed it in for her.
The mirror android wafted white linen napkins onto their laps and inclined its head in a reasonable imitation of human interest. Oscar ordered. Three small tumblers of pastis were served, then shrimp on ice. Oscar asked the android to delay the main course. Whatever happened behind the double doors must be instant, but he wanted a pause as though it were cooked normally. The consommé had cooled just right. Salad greens in wine vinegar with dill preceded red snapper in peach sauce and fried plantain. Oscar ate joylessly.
He had tried to save all the animals and plants he could, though many had been extinct already, first from Earth’s eco-collapse, then Pi’s onslaught. Did Andromeda think to save enough embryos, seed, spores, or would Earth life be lost forever? If she had helped, was he piling up some un-payable debt?
The silence stretched. They moved on to petit fours and Cognac. They seemed patient enough, but the silence drew him out. “One of the ways I managed to live alone was to remember something about my people, the beauty they created.”
“You’ve done that with the cuisine,” Messier offered.
“Is there something we can do?” Andromeda asked.
“You said you got my records. If you have it, could you play a musical piece, Die Moldau for me, for us?”
At once a flute began the first warble up, then a second joined it down, like the hot and cold springs of the river’s source. Then the music formed a trickle, a small stream burbling over rocks.
Andromeda whispered, “Would you like me to recreate the performance?”
Oscar nodded. He would willingly bear the pain of the nostalgia. He must not forget his home. What was he without it?
The flutists arrived, then the orchestra in the Wiener Staatsoper of the late nineteenth century. Andromeda was dressed in stars, Oscar found himself in tails. On a red velvet seat to Oscar’s right, Messier had lost the wig and had a top hat in his lap. A slight scent of extinguished tobacco wafted from him. Oscar noticed the profile of a meerschaum pipe in Messier’s vest pocket. The orchestra played a peasant dance, as though viewed on a riverbank, replete with the sounds of heavy boots. Oscar’s heartbeat joined the rhythm. He forgot himself—a great blessing. The music grew mermaid dreamy, then before long the military brass arrived, heralding battles around castles. Somber tones sketched the ruins high above the mature river. The piece finished with two cannon shots. Applause. Andromeda took Oscar’s arm as they joined the flow of the exiting crowd.
“Is the ship okay?” Oscar said.
“No problems. We’re watching,” Messier said. “This is just lovely, so close to the time of Messier himself. Please, let’s stay awhile.”
A small café by a side door of a grand hotel served creamy coffee in heavy cups and sachertorte. Andromeda indulged. It started to rain. The table canopies couldn’t keep their backs dry. People were leaving. The smiling concierge handed out great black umbrellas. The three of them went out for a walk on the Ringstrasse.
“This wasn’t a street in my exemplar’s time,” Messier said.
“No, there would have been a wall here,” Oscar said. “a battlement from medieval times.”
“Is your kind always at war?” Messier asked.
“You’ve seen a little of something else tonight,” Oscar said.
“The last of the music, did it not sound out violence?” Messier asked.
“On Seluum, differences are worked out by intense sport,” Andromeda said.
“Ah, very different my Dear. War actually sheds blood, breaks families.”
“I know my history,” Andromeda said.
“Look,” Oscar said. “I didn’t ask your opinion of the human race. They’re gone. Finité. Happy now?”
“Well,” Messier said slowly, questions, caution in his voice. “We did rather wonder why he kept you alive, when it seems he kills everyone else he finds.”
“I created him.”
Both Messier and Andromeda stopped and stepped away from him. Their expressions were unreadable. Shock? Hatred?
“You created him yourself, without help?” she asked, eyes wide. They knew so much. How could they have missed this?
“Yes.” There it was, out in the open. Did he feel the need to confess?
“How?” Messier asked, fairly sputtering.
Oscar recounted how research into creative intelligence had reached a plateau. All artificial intelligences were passive, never surprising. He experimented using depth psychology, a discredited line of study begun by the Viennese doctor who practiced nearby. “In fact, if we go the other way, maybe we can meet the old doctor on his way home if he’s been working late?”
“We’d rather you tell us yourself,” Andromeda said.
Oscar set up contentions between Ego, Id, and Superego in his AI design. He also integrated basic survival engrams from lower organisms, tied them to the Id, and activated the program as an experiment. The result did more than survive, Pi grew fast, obliterating anything inferior, which, according to him, was everyone, everything else. “I only wanted to help. The human race had created problems it couldn’t solve alone.”
The rest they knew. “Is there no way back, to undo what I have done?” Oscar cried. He felt like a lost child among strange adults. Seeing all they could do, he hoped they had that miraculous power too.
Messier flipped open his pocket watch. “Astounding! I need to report back. Adieu!” That wasn’t an answer at all, just an evasion when he hoped for some way these beings could, would help. Surely they had the power!
“Promise you’ll join us for breakfast,” Andromeda said.
Messier whistled as he walked down a side street, twirling the umbrella like that dance routine of chimney sweeps Oscar recalled.
He asked her, “So, you didn’t have a creator? You or Messier?”
Andromeda waved goodbye to Messier in a royal fashion before answering. “There are many ways galaxies become sentient. I never heard of a lone biomind creating one though. My birth wasn’t unusual. I was the communications web for dozens of worlds. The junctions of Rit in the void kept increasing. One day I woke up.”
“What are those?”
“Rit? They’re a couple of steps above your science. The closest I can come within your words are fabrics woven of hyper-dimensional strings.”
“You lost me.”
“It isn’t that hard to understand. I do have many more connections than can fit in a skull, even one as cute as yours, but I haven’t forgotten my roots. Messier came to be when billions of biominds faced death, so they translated themselves into their galaxy to survive. He is the closest to you in some ways. He talks about souls.”
“I didn’t know. Each of you is different?”
“We’re alike in some ways too. Whenever people come out of the mud they eventually improve the basis of sentience. They find how to use quanta as information bits and strings instead of neural pathways. Then, all kinds of stuff can be intelligent. I am still the communications network for the biominds of my galaxy. We share. The places just right for biolife, I respect. I have so much, and the biolife possibilities are so rare, I help tip the marginal ones in the balance toward biolife. It’s great!”
“So you make life, like a god?”
“Ha!” She laughed. It echoed up the street. “How small am I in the scheme of things? Greatness?” She swept the sky with her hand. “The multiverse goes on forever. There’s no wall at the end just like there’s no wall here, anymore. Orders of beings so utterly far above me, the subtleties I can’t grasp, why, from a distant perspective you and I, we’re practically the same. I’m given to believe there is, and hope to experience one day, infinite love.” She looked at him.
“Don’t play with me.”
“Only nothingness is finite. I’m given to understand that the high sentience orders struggle to push back nothingness, to let being itself take dominion.”
They entered St. Stephens. She lit a candle. He did not. The exit opened to the ship. She looked at him, and down. Then, she kissed his cheek goodnight. He slept alone, his crime worried his conscience like a broken tooth to a tongue.
*
The next morning, as he walked to the dining room Oscar heard Andromeda and Messier conferring sotto voce.
“Third Orders report Pi bereft, in a rage,” Messier said.
“Emotional for a Second Order,” Andromeda remarked.
A cup rattled against a saucer. “They are concerned regarding the principles upon which Pi was formed.”
“Oscar called on his people’s first scientists of mind. I think it’s rather ingenious,” Andromeda said. “Pi is constellated of their most primitive psychology, out of forces, a détente of complexes naturally in conflict.”
“That’s simplistic!” A chair scraped against the floor. “The consequences of this primitive, this Pi, growing, taking a galaxy completely … ” Footfalls went back and forth. “I can’t imagine anything more dangerous. They barricaded him in one galaxy, but if he gets out!”
“Certainly the Third Orders have the matter in hand, Messier!”
“The Third Orders can make mistakes too, big ones. It would be safest to just end him. Why don’t they?”
“Could they be expecting us to cure this sick child?” Andromeda’s voice hardened.
“Apparently,” Messier said, in a droll tone. “Can Oscar help?”
Andromeda sighed. “Perhaps, in time.”
Oscar waited at the last corner not sure they knew he was eavesdropping. He had hoped, with all their power, a trip back in time would undo his crimes. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t. He entered.
He could only see Andromeda’s back. She turned. “Oscar, I’m so sorry,”
The floor came up fast.
*
Oscar woke up in his bed with no memory of anything after Andromeda had shut him off like a boring toy. Oscar suspected they must know he had woken up, so he might as well take the stage again. What choice was there?
“Ah, the dead rise! What dreams came?” Messier asked once Oscar rounded the corner.
“Not a one. What happened?” Oscar said.
“Too much for an empty stomach. Sit. Eat,” Andromeda said, looking fresh as a new tulip. Was that eggs benedict?
“Hi Dad!” The voice behind him made Oscar jump.
“Don’t shock him!” Messier addressed a point behind Oscar. “Don’t you remember how biominds need time to adjust, especially upon rising?”
Oscar feared what lay behind. “I guess a lot has happened.”
“May I offer you a Mimosa?” Andromeda handed him a glass.
“I think I’ll need to be sharp.” Oscar set it down and took a seat. The table had the now-familiar Viennese coffee in thick ceramic cups.
“Okay, so we have a Pi extension here.” Oscar inhaled slowly, then let go. “Can I see you?”
The man walked around him into view. He looked young, with dark hair and gray robe reminiscent of Later Empire, when the planets bowed to Ceres. His eyes, though, perhaps to show his nature, were two bright galaxies in blackness within ordinary, human-shaped openings. “Father!” He moved to hug Oscar, but he remained seated without outstretched arms. Pi’s arms fell.
Andromeda said to the windows, “Show Second Chance.”
Beneath cloud swirls were settlements, roads, and small harbor cities. The windows created magnification bubbles wherever Oscar set his eyes. He looked at Andromeda. All three of them were seated at the table. Oscar went to the window to take in the view and get away from the three.
He turned to ask Andromeda. “Are there people down there?”
“Your people live there. The same souls you knew on Earth all in one place.” She shot a glance at Pi. “Lives ended in an untimely fashion need to complete their lives’ work, as do you.” Her gaze turned to Oscar. “They call the place Second Chance. They have several incorrect theories as to why.” She smiled.
“So my crime—” Oscar said.
“Really mine,” Pi said.
“Has been fixed,” Andromeda completed.
“No, no.” Oscar faced Pi, his hands sweaty. “We can’t be made innocent. It’s an improvement, sure.”
“You’re right though,” Messier said. “Most of the other races that arose on other Milky Way planets have to wait until that galaxy is repaired. Building takes longer than wrecking.” He looked at Pi.
Pi’s face reddened. Why did Messier take the verbal jab? Oscar felt fragile, small among them and their moods and frictions. Is this how mortals felt on Olympus? Do elephants indulge mice, really?
“I have had a long time to think about what I’ve done,” Pi said, heavily. “Even now the Milky Way is becoming a biomind nursery, as the name always meant. Maybe to you nothing is enough, but I look forward, look to all the good I can do.”
“Your galaxy is called the same thing here,” Andromeda said, reaching to take Pi’s hand. Was she playing Lorelei to a lonely seaman, or was the seduction mutual?
Pi hadn’t really changed, Oscar was sure of it. To buy time, Oscar looked out at the blue-white marble again. Tears welled up. He thought he’d hug the first person he’d see.
“I’m grateful you reincarnated them—”
“It wasn’t only us. A Third Order came to our aid,” Andromeda said.
“I would like to thank him? Her? It?” Oscar asked.
“Maybe some day,” Messier said.
Oscar wondered what could be above these galactics, but they volunteered nothing.
“I hope you approve—” Pi blurted out, then hesitated.
“Of what?”
“Andromeda and I are getting married.”
A shock went through Oscar. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Messier spoke. “For some time now, the two galaxies have been drifting together by gravity, coming into each other’s influence. Eventually they will merge.”
“We knew that,” Oscar said. He had a dry, hoarse throat. “Yet it is in the future. Hundreds of millions …” How much time HAD passed!
Andromeda said, “Well, since we’ve just sprung this on you, think about it, would you?”
Oscar said to Messier, “Can we talk?”
“Of course,” Immediately the two of them were in a salon to starboard, judging by the view out to space. It was intimate, opulent in Middle Empire dusty rose and black.
“If you had seen what Pi has done,” Oscar said. “The Vienna you saw? Melted down along with the Taj, Titan’s Ice Palace, everything, everyone gone, even Vera.”
“You’ll not allow the possibility of reform?” Messier lounged, the picture of peaceful repose.
“No. Why Freud himself didn’t really believe character could change. The formative years determine everything.”
“So, you’re a Freudian?”
“No!” Oscar stuttered with cold laughter within the word. “But Pi, by his very nature,is. And what he’s done? Not entirely Freudian, more like one of Freud’s predecessors, more like … ”
“Who?”
“Darwin. But what he’s doing isn’t exactly Darwinian either. A corruption of Darwin to rationalize, to suit his ambitions.”
“Don’t you understand?” Oscar couldn’t stop the tears. “He’s going to do it again. To this new world! To Andromeda! Can’t we at least stop it now? Can’t you see it?” Oscar sobbed into his hands.
Messier hugged the man, held him up when his legs went weak, and lowered him into an upholstered chair.
Messier sat facing him, a concerned look on his face. He waved a lace handkerchief to give Oscar air, then gave it to him. Oscar wiped his face.
“I did wonder if it were all an act to impress her,” Messier said. “She also kept you hidden, which distressed him no end. The conditions to see you were only recently met.”
“Where was I?”
“A place he couldn’t find where no time passed.”
“How long?”
“Millennia.”
“My God! Am I too late?”
“She’s making the best of the inevitable. Yes, Second Orders can rationalize too. I understand your caution. I am wary as well. You have made me doubly so. I shall watch. We should return before he finds a way to spy on us.”
Oscar wiped his face again. Then Messier and Oscar joined the couple in dining room. Andromeda and Pi were nearly intimate. Messier cleared his throat, loudly. They disentangled themselves.
Pi said, “Will you bless us, father?”
“Me? That’s so old fashioned! Do you really need—”
“It would make our joy complete,” Andromeda said. She stared at Oscar’s face before continuing. “But we know you’ll need time.”
“The least we can do is restore you to your folk,” Pi said. “If someday you choose to bless us …”
“You will have a place in our hearts always,” Andromeda finished.
*
Oscar passed through lifetimes.
*
“Let us consider the matter at hand,” Messier said, nodding to Oscar who sat nearly vibrating his impatience at the table set for four.
“I want the purity laws repealed,” he said.
Messier gestured and Oscar fell silent and still as a paused hologram.
“What?” Pi said, “Let defectives breed freely? They’ll devolve! We’ve improved on survival of the fittest. Culling is painless. I don’t see the problem.”
“It’s sad, but true,” Andromeda said. “If Second Chance relaxes, a dozen worlds with Eugenics laws could overtake it. Rynd, nearby, will probably find out first that Second Chance has gone soft, and conquer it. I don’t want that to happen, especially not to our guests from the Milky Way.”
“Oh, Andromeda,” Messier said, “I knew you when you had very different priorities. Let us talk about his children. The boy, Brune could pass. He’s good but unexceptional. He’ll make a fine member of any profession involving numbers. Filas is another story. She’s emotionally unstable. Doctors have considered and discarded diagnoses involving thyroid malfunction, limbic misbalance, or some brain chemical deficiency. A cure, if there is one, escapes them. When Filas’s mood is up, she writes soaring music, creates in several of the arts with a brilliance far beyond her years. She isn’t quite an idiot savant, or autistic, but she isn’t going to be an organization woman. She’s shy, nearly antisocial.”
“Obviously, the non-defective should be kept,” Pi said.
“I’m not so sure about Filas. She seems special,” Andromeda said.
Pi snorted. “Special? Not in a good way, I hope you’ll agree, Andie. Standards must apply to everyone, or no one. It’s only fair. She’s an obvious cull.”
“So, judges, which child must stay? Which go?” Messier asked, nodding to Oscar.
Oscar couldn’t contain himself. “Who gave you the right!”
“Irrational. No wonder she had to hide from the authorities,” Pi said.
“I’ll show you irrational! Oscar cried, grabbing a knife from the table and lunged, slashing at Pi’s throat. There was a flash, a concussion, and a sickening burnt smell. A streak of charred residue lay across the table.
*
“Father!” Pi cried.
“A little late for regrets, isn’t it?” Messier said. “After all, rules are rules. Though it does feel a bit different when it is one of your own, if you’re given to sentimentality.”
“You provoked me!” Pi said, approaching Messier.
“Hardly any sport in it at all.”
Pi spread his arms wide, his fingers contorted into claws, face red, his voice like a rasp torturing metal, howling in rage.
Messier became ash only to pop up two meters away, “Think you can dispatch me as easily?” The dining hall swirled with dust. Messier hardly paused in his scold: “So what of this shell? It’s nothing. Truth now, that’s what’s at stake here. What will be the final result of your so-called purity?”
“The two of us will have only the best!” Pi grabbed Andromeda around the waist. She dissolved and reappeared several meters from him, staring, mouth agape.
There was a stir of wind, and the dining hall ceiling soared into a vault of alabaster lace and platinum silk. Stars with three points appeared high up.
“The beautiful ones have come.” Andromeda dropped to her knees and bowed to the floor.
The stars above burst to cover the ceiling. It displayed a 3-vid:
As Messier, Andromeda and Pi watched, a boy and a girl played. They laughed, tossing a ball. The scene changed. The girl struggled to make music with a stringed frame, so she crafted a way, with her father’s help, to play the strings using a mechanical keyboard. Fast forward to a grand auditorium where the girl, a young woman now, conducted a hundred musicians. The music wove daring chords, quick dissonance, textures and dynamics into a full emotional language grasped immediately. Filas shared, in stark honesty, not just every disappointment, trust squandered, faith unanswered, but also wonder, passion, and hope undimmed, coming from the depth that sustained her, drawing her upward from heartbreak into majesty. The music traveled into the audience in waves, transcending the isolation of each person, touching the rapt listeners, telling them they weren’t alone, their most personal aspects were actually the most universal, and with that revelation came a kind of healing. The resonance of the finale died away, a river of beauty infusing the troubled seas of all their lives, slowing as it melded into reverential silence.
Filas drank the applause radiant, laughing when bouquets of snapdragons in flame orange and gladiolas came faster than her hands could catch. She distributed them among the musicians, then raised her empty hands and called out, “You are my flowers. I need nothing but you.” The audience added feet to hands, stomping loud as thunder, shouting in adulation. Andromeda, Pi and Messier looked and looked, engrossed.
The scene faded, but not before streamers went out from that time, influences reaching to strengthen love slightly, quiet fear a little, letting peace and progress have small victories, all from Filas and her artistry. The changes she brought about continued and strengthened long after she died, becoming pivotal in distant struggles.
“I didn’t know,” Pi said.
“You’re never going to learn if you kill off anyone you don’t understand,” Messier said.
“How did you know?” Andromeda said, her voice thick, a sob waiting.
“I’ve seen artists struggle with their gifts. That’s what it looks like. Oscar’s family was always musical. The genius came to Filas so powerfully, it disturbed her.”
“This Filas, better than a healthy artist? Impossible!” Pi said.
“Well, at least you’ve started asking questions,” Messier said.
“But the Purity Laws seemed so right, so logical,” she said quietly. Then the tears came.
“You didn’t start it, but you could have stopped it,” Messier said. Andromeda suddenly collapsed to the floor and filled the hall with wailing.
Messier went to Pi and looked directly into his eyes. “You killed your father, your half-sister is under a death sentence you approved, and your fiancée despairs over what you’ve done to her. You killed off the Milky Way and induced this planet to engage in methodical genocide. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I must have been wrong,” Pi said.
“You still don’t see how, do you?”
“No.”
“Then Andromeda must become the sentience of the merged galaxies.”
“We must rule together,” Pi said, though his voice was far from steady.
“No. She is worthy, you are not. Her own galaxy flourished with her. Her remorse is genuine. Is yours?”
“You’re not my superior. You’re just another Second Order.”
“You want to appeal to the Third Orders?” Messier looked up. “Don’t you already know that outcome?”
“I can tell that everyone is against me.”
“Don’t try to get my sympathy. You pretended to reform yourself before.”
Messier did not retreat an inch. The only sound was the subsiding wails issuing from Andromeda. At last Pi spoke. “I relinquish my command over the Milky Way and all claim to Andromeda.”
“Peacefully, wholeheartedly?”
“Yes.”
“Then stand, Andromeda.”
After several seconds she put her hands on the floor and tried to get up. “I can’t.”
“Be strong. You need to set a good example for Pi. I’m given to know that this arrangement may not always be necessary. But for now, this is the only way.”
*
Lifetimes passed.
*
A three-pointed star appeared. Oscar thought it must be a meteor. There seemed to be more every evening. Second Chance astronomers had chronicled the merger of the galaxies, commenting as the broadcast holos illustrated the slow-motion event.
The star was still coming toward him. Odd. It dimmed as it approached, though it was still bright enough to make afterimages when Oscar blinked. When it came to rest it was head high, small, and could be viewed without pain.
We need your help.
“Hardly looks like you need a tailor!” Oscar chuckled, then coughed.
This universe is still falling apart. It has to change direction or it will never come back together, never cycle again.
“Yes, the astronomers do talk about that. It’s hardly my concern. What’s trillions of years to me? I haven’t many left.” Oscar humored the voice in this crazy dream.
Remember.
Suddenly Oscar lost control of his body, spasming as though he were having an epileptic fit, but aware all the time. He was on the ground for minutes before it subsided. His mind swirled with new memories. How could that be?
I’m sorry. I forgot your limits, how little reality your kind can absorb.
Oscar used the door-frame to help his trembling body stay upright.
So far in this cycle, fear has held sway over love. We need help to attract the galaxies, to bring them back home.
“So just because our galaxy is joining another one, you think one man here can help you? Why not ask a gnat?”
You created a sentience of a higher order.
“These are not my memories. Me? Make that Pi monster? Ridiculous. If you were trying to make me feel guilty, you’ve failed.”
True, that process was too costly.
The weight of memories of—maybe hundreds?—of lives was too much. He felt older than one person could ever be. Is this how insanity feels?
I handled this badly. My offer stands. When you have finished this life, you can take up the work if you choose. Tell me your answer then and I will bring you to us.
His head reverberated with people talking, too many! He sank to his knees.
Let this remind you.
A simple gold ring appeared and slipped on his finger. Yes, he located that memory. He had lost this in Pi’s second attack. Vera!
Please help us. The star vanished with a soft pop.
Oscar shook his head, trying to clear it, but only succeeded in making himself dizzy. He staggered to the living room and rested in his favorite chair. After a few minutes he looked at his hand. The ring was still there.
His imagination filled with plans.
He died with a knowing smile on his lips.
*
“Do you want time to adjust, to rest from the death trauma?” A voice from everywhere and nowhere came to Oscar.
He replied, “It is an old wound, reopened. I’ve lived with the limp so long, it feels like my gait.” The place was grey, indistinct, gradually growing an up and a down.
“We feel it may already be too late,” the voice said.
Oscar said, “If there were a class of being beyond order, it would not say such a thing. Time is a construct of mind. We have the time we need, or can create it. We shall not imprison ourselves in what we built.”
“It seems you allude to a solution that has escaped us so far.”
“This much I do know, after the millions of years I’ve had to make mistakes and learn thereby. Separateness is an illusion. The Second Orders need to understand this. The First even have glimpses in ecstasy, whether in pairing, on the battlefield, or in contemplation of beauty. All the richness of all the individuals of any kind were implicit in the moments before the big bang. Alone, we are sterile, indistinct. We need contrast. We become what we are by relation to others, and becoming closer will make us more of what we are. In this paradox, truth.”
Oscar found himself at the center of an Epidauran theater, bright beings hanging on his every word.
“So, in an obverse, looking-glass way, the ancient texts could be true all along. It wasn’t that in the beginning, god created man and woman. No, rather, to bring the end, which is the only possible start at a new beginning, man and woman created god.” There. That had the pull of truth.
An echo of ancient music rang through his mind, shaking him with its power. It was so subtle, but Oscar could feel, hear and see it. So could his audience, the acolytes among each of the many orders. They turned to the sound, like flowers soaking up the sunlight and Oscar smiled.
It would take many more lessons, many more symphonies, but he knew that unity would come at last, bringing with it fabulous energy and the bright burst of fresh creation.
***
Scott Davis’s childhood imagination was fueled by the Tom Swift, Jr. serial novels he bought with allowance money at the local Zayers department store. Peter, his teenage friend introduced him to Asimov and high school English added Fahrenheit 451. His tastes haven’t matured much since, though along the way he got a BA in Philosophy, an MBA, started a company he runs today and like Tom Swift and his Flying Lab, flies his own plane. His stories have appeared in Neo Opsis, 52 Stitches, the Terminal Earth anthology and quite a few terminated markets.