LYNX
Dropping my pitch stick into the pot, I step back to examine my work. The black pitch lines create a mosaic that zigzags across Quancee’s face, but all of the empty squares are now filled with glued-together panes. I feel her smiling at me. “Do you feel a little better? Stronger?”
The sensation is like the languid fluttering motion of autumn leaves falling to the ground . . .
“Glad to hear it.” I smile and stroke her panes.
As I look around, I realize it’s darker in here than I’ve ever seen it. When I first entered this chamber with Arakie three summers ago, the entire upper portion of one crystal wall was gone, lying in shards at my feet, which allowed the cerulean gleam cast by the paleo-ocean to fill the chamber and flicker from Quancee’s panes. It was stunning, like translucent blue wings beating all around me. With the shards glued back in place, however, the only illumination now comes from Quancee herself. Her sickly yellow glow reminds me that she’s slowly fading into oblivion before my eyes.
As grief constricts my chest, invisible tendrils of emotion reach out and touch my heart. Her presence is feather-light but filled with love.
“I’m all right,” I whisper. “Just worried about you.”
When I turn to walk back to the fire, I hear boots shishing in sand along the shore of the paleo-ocean. His steps are unmistakable, for he moves like a hunting wolf, each step carefully placed and barely audible. How long has he been out there?
When my shoulder muscles go tight, the firelit air quivers.
“No,” I softly answer. “I’m not going to run away with you. I’m staying right there.”
Quancee vanishes, and I sense her melt into the vast distances between now and then. Her abrupt flight leaves me lightheaded for a moment.
As Jorgensen enters the tunnel outside and stealthily approaches the doorway to this chamber, I call, “What do you want?”
“I just want to talk, Lynx.”
I walk over, grasp my spear where it leans against the wall, and carry it back to my fire. Kneeling, I rest the spear on the floor at my side and stir the simmering pot of bison stew that rests in the coals.
When Jorgensen stands in the doorway, he’s frowning. He shoves his hood back and examines the panes I glued back into Quancee’s face. “Well, that’s appalling. You’ve made an ugly mess, haven’t you?”
I continue stirring my stew. The rich fragrance of bison meat rises with the steam. “Maybe, but Quancee says she feels stronger.”
“It just says that to coddle you. That pine pitch you’re using as glue restricts the flow of energy.”
“Well, it has to feel better than having pieces of her body lying broken on the floor.”
“I doubt it.” Jorgensen leans one shoulder against the doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest. “Have you learned nothing about how this computer entangles superpositions to create qubits? By now, you should at least have a basic grasp of how energy—”
“Quancee wouldn’t lie to me. She does feel better.”
He laughs. It’s a low, demeaning sound, as though I am even more dim-witted than he assumed. “I thought you’d read the Rewilding Reports? Of course it would lie. It’s been deceiving humans for centuries.”
He has the strangest blue eyes. The color mimics nothing in nature.
“That’s not true,” I reply. “Volume Epsilon speaks about Quancee’s kindness and sense of wonder. It never says—”
“That’s a very early volume. The detailed discussions of her ability to hate and punish those who opposed her were chronicled in Volume Omega. Have you read Volume Omega?”
Angrily, I reply, “You know I haven’t. It’s been missing for centuries.”
“Well, I have read it. Do you want to know what it says?”
I use my spoon to dip up a chunk of bison, and blow on it to cool it, before I say, “I’m not sure I can believe anything you tell me, Vice Admiral.”
“I’m going to tell you anyway. It was the subject of a great deal of discussion just before the war, because no one could explain Quancee’s shift in behavior. At one point, the device was innocent and childlike, joyous to learn everything it could. But toward the end of the war, it grew into something absolutely terrifying. It began to wield its powers in monstrous ways. For example, when it became displeased with Premier Elektra, her advancing army simply vanished into thin air.”
Startled, I say, “Vanished?”
“Just disappeared from the face of the earth. Arakie speculated that Quancee had moved the army to a different time and place, but Elektra said they were all dead.”
The blood pulsing in my ears is deafening. “If Quancee did that, she was trying to stop something horrifying before—”
“It was done to punish the Premier for ordering Quancee to be reprogrammed.”
“I don’t believe it. Quancee is incapable—”
“You’re a fool.” Jorgensen throws up his hands. “Well, I’ve done the best I can to warn you. I suppose it’s up to you now.”
I blink down at my stew pot. “You are free to leave at any time, Vice Admiral.”
Jorgensen does not leave. Instead, he flicks a hand at me and chuckles. “No wonder John Arakie liked your species so much.”
“Why is that?” I reach for my wooden cup and dip it full of stew.
“Your intelligence level, huge eyes, heavy brow ridges, and long cranium reminded him of his long-dead pets. He was very fond of pets. Dogs especially. He was a true sentimentalist. He always gave Quancee the benefit of the doubt, which turned out to be a cataclysmic error that cost billions of lives.”
Cautiously, I take a bite of the hot stew, and let the delicious flavor of long-horned bison distract me from Jorgensen’s smirk. He enjoys tormenting me when I don’t agree with the ‘truths’ he reveals, particularly when it concerns my beloved friend, Arakie.
Jorgensen strolls across the chamber and sits down cross-legged on the other side of the fire. His protruding chin shows a slight stubble of gray whiskers. I’ve never seen this before. Ordinarily, he uses a sharpened iron knife to clean his face. Not only that, his graying brown hair hangs over his cheeks in greasy strands.
“Will you be staying long?”
“Depends, Lynx. Did you ask Quancee about her death wish?”
I leisurely chew a bite of stew and swallow, forcing him to wait. “Not yet.”
Faint amusement turns his lips. “I am not your enemy, Lynx. We could be the best of friends if you would allow it. After all, we both want what’s best for Quancee.”
“Do we?”
“Yes.” He props one fist on his knee. “Remember when you asked me if I could repair it? Here’s the thing, Lynx. If it wants to die, I may be able to salvage enough parts to reconfigure—”
In shock, I blurt, “You want to tear her apart? Is that why she’s afraid of you?”
The fire crackles suddenly, and sparks whirl toward the ceiling.
“It is not afraid of me.”
“She is! She flees every time you are close.”
Jorgensen exhales in frustration. “Listen, I don’t know if you can understand this, but it’s impossible for Quancee to be afraid. You’re imagining it.”
“How could you possibly know—”
“Try to concentrate,” he orders. “Fear is about the future, and Quancee knows time doesn’t exist. Everything that ever was or ever will be is happening right now. They’re just different coordinates in space-time, and it uses those coordinates like stepping stones to understand and calculate probabilities.”
“Yes, I kn-know,” I stammer. “Arakie taught me that reality is a four-dimensional space where everything, past, present, future, is just there. But I—”
“Look.” Jorgensen leans forward. “Quancee is a conglomeration of parts put together in a way that allows it to be useful to humans. That’s all it is. But it’s malfunctioning. If I can dismantle it, I may be able to construct a smaller version—”
“You mean she—she’s sick. Yes, she’s told me. I’m trying to heal her.”
His jaw vibrates with grinding teeth. “It’s not ‘sick.’ Quancee requires error correction. It’s hanging on the precipice of quantum decoherence, and there’s no way I can explain to your species what that means. You simply don’t have the brain capacity to understand such complexities. You have to trust me. I know what’s best for her. You don’t. But you’re the caretaker. You need to grant me access to her systems, or I can’t stop it. You must let me salvage what’s useful before it’s too late.”
At times like this, I fear he’s right. I don’t have the same mental abilities that he has. Arakie taught me everything he could before he died, and Quancee has taught me infinitely more, but I still struggle with concepts like entanglement, time, and decoherence.
Setting my cup down, I draw up my knees, prop my elbows atop them, and massage my temples. Where is Quancee? I can’t feel her at all. It’s as though she’s passed beyond the wasteland to whatever lies over the next hill. Is that where qubits hide—in the geometry of infinity just beyond eternity?
I look back at Jorgensen. “I won’t let you kill her.”
“It’s not alive, Lynx. You just think it is. Your animistic worldview is the problem. You think everything has a soul and it will love you back if you only—”
“You can’t tear her apart!”
He sits back and firelight flickers over his curious expression. “Tell me something? Are you and Quancee ‘lovers’?”
My mouth gapes. “I don’t even know what that means. Of course I love her, and I know she loves me, but it’s impossible for us to be lovers.”
“It seduced Arakie, too, you know.”
An eerie sensation of danger comes over me. “No, I don’t know. He never told me that, though I’m fairly sure he loved her, but—”
“You simple-minded fool. You’re in love with an illusion, and it’s going to kill you and every other archaic hominin on the planet.”
Vice Admiral Jorgensen rises to his feet, gives Quancee a speculative glance, then turns and walks to the door.
“Why don’t you just kill me?” I call to his back. “Then you’d have unfettered access to her.”
The ancient hinges squeak as he props a hand on the door. With his back to me, he answers, “Honestly? I’m afraid to. Even in her weakened state, there’s no telling what Quancee might do to me.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning”—he turns and glances at me—“it’s a weapon. Understand?”
He walks away, and I hear his feral steps softly moving through the sand outside.
This is our relationship: he comes, tells me I’m inferior and stupid, and leaves.
I listen until the sound of his steps fades entirely before I relax enough to pick up my cup of stew and try to finish eating, but my hand shakes as I lift my spoon. Dropping it back into the cup, I exhale hard and study the dimly lit panes that surround me.
I have read every reference I can find about Quancee. I realize my understanding of her is limited, but my experience tells me far more than a book ever will, for I feel her goodness. All of my decisions are based upon that perception.
But I am not blind. Deep inside me questions hover, I just refuse to ask them. To do so would be unforgiveable treachery. She is absolutely vulnerable with me. I will not betray that. She has been betrayed by so many humans in her long life.
“Where are you?” I softly inquire.
Nothing.
Then, slowly, images glitter . . .
Here.
From the coordinates of a long, long time ago, the lids of silver eyes slip open, and I hear the scrape of scales as she gathers together all the golden threads that curl in the darkness around her and shapes them into wings to fly home to me.
I smile. She knows I love these fanciful creatures she invents.
When her crystal panes flicker and brighten, I know she’s returned to me, and I feel warm.
“I missed you.”
The chamber suddenly feels very old. I sit for a moment, listening with my ears and soul. Every book on the rear shelf is outlined in brightness, every dark corner quivering with shadows, as they have done for centuries.
“Yes,” I answer with a nod. “He scares me, too.”