I am brooding. Seated at the center of the Observation Sphere, staring out at a telescopic view of an embryonic universe, I should not be feeling this way. I used to stay seated in the same position for decades, hardly moving as I watched novas blossom into golden clouds and new craggy moons as they turned about their volcanic planets. Passing eternity together, Qod and I would talk about the lives I lived, reminiscing over the happy events that could never be changed and would happen all over again. Being in the Observation Sphere has always been a joy.
But today I am unable to resist my base instincts; I keep turning in my seat, looking this way and that, expecting to see Keitus Vieta’s wide, unblinking eyes watching me from the stars. Every blue flash is a flicker of light from the jewel in his cane, and every streaming gas cloud morphs into his beckoning finger.
I wish I could draw on Dominique’s optimistic nature and quash this paranoia, but in the last months of her life, her gentle soul was soured by that man’s influence, and the wound for me is still fresh. How long will it be before Keitus Vieta becomes just another memory?
“You’re quiet, Salem.”
“I know.”
“You don’t want to talk?”
“About what?”
“About why you aren’t talking.”
A splash of red erupts to my left as Galaxy Saphian-9g spawns its first star—Livio’s skull bursting against the corner of the table.
“I’m … frightened. And angry.”
“Why? Is this about your quest? Dominique didn’t have the answers you were looking for?”
“No, she didn’t. Her necromancy had something to do with Vieta; it was nothing to do with a genuine ability to speak to the dead. Dominique didn’t understand the technology, but somehow that man was able to store or replicate neural energy and create some kind of … rudimentary gestalt intelligence based on the character patterns of the dead. Dominique could only think of it as witchcraft.”
“Fascinating. It sounds similar to Soul Consortium technology.”
“Perhaps. But this was different. He used trace energy found in objects associated with the victims, not the victims themselves.”
“I don’t know. He described it as the release of power when something ends prematurely, like a kind of aura generated by living things that discharges into familiar objects when the person dies.”
“That type of energy does not exist. Never has.”
“Like him? Keitus Vieta’s not supposed to exist either, is he?”
We go quiet for a moment, and I stare at a green cluster of spidery clouds erupting below us, zoom in to watch the starlight forming from supermassive balls of gas.
“He is the cause of your fear?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“And that’s why you’re angry.”
“Of course it isn’t.” But it is. I’ve never given up on anything, not ever, but this fear is suffocating me. “I’m angry because … because … Look, it doesn’t matter why. Can’t you just get rid of this anger for me? A light cerebral dampening is all I’ll need.”
“I suppose you want me to remove your fear too?”
“Yes, get rid of that as well.”
“You know I won’t.”
“Why not? Do your pathetic rules even matter anymore? There’s only you and me here. Who’s to say what defines me as a human?”
“You want to argue about this again? I suppose at the very least it will clear the air.”
The anger is swelling into rage, and I get out of the seat, feeling the gravity fields prevent me from falling. “Clear the air? You don’t even breathe air. So what in the name of Tanzini’s robes do you even know about being a human? You don’t! And for that matter, I don’t really breathe air, either. Nobody has needed oxygen for billions of years, so what did that make them? Were they human? Am I?” I stare around at the universe, wishing there was a face I could be screaming at.
“Finished?”
I wave my hand dismissively and slump back in the seat. “Human or not, both of us have emotions.”
“Yours aren’t real,” I mutter.
Qod’s voice softens. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Whether it’s perceived as good or bad, a life has no meaning without emotional content.”
“Then just let me keep the good.”
“Do I need to remind you of the Valhallan colonies?”
I decide not to reply. Qod knows I don’t need to be reminded. Not long before embarking on my search for meaning beyond death, I spent eleven thousand years experiencing the life of a man who lived on Ganaethis, the largest of the Valhallan pleasure planets. They broke away from the ruling powers during mankind’s Seventh Golden Reign and decided to reconfigure their DNA to prevent any negative emotion from influencing their lives.
The results were catastrophic: natural disasters, crime, invasion, and even death could not shake them from their inevitable stagnation. With no possibility of threat to their happiness, there was no passion in their resistance against tribulation, and death followed for almost all of them. The survivors survived, and that was all they did.
“At least we were happy,” I tell her.
“To what end? Is being happy all that matters?”
I considered that question for a long time after that experience and eventually determined it wasn’t. Permanent happiness drives human beings to a tortuous paradox; something deep in the mind rebels, and we cannot endure it. But when the revelation came, it took me to a place of fathomless dissatisfaction. It was the lack of any sane resolution to this problem that drove all my peers and eventually me to this quest—to look for an answer beyond death.
“That’s what I thought,” Qod says. I know she understands my silence. “You need your fear. Without it you won’t do what needs to be done.”
“I won’t go back in there.”
“We’ll see.”