17
“TWENTY YEARS.”Tyrus repeated the words, stunned.
But Orthanion didn’t even look the slightest bit abashed at the ridiculous, impossible condition he’d just laid upon us. “In twenty years, I will grant you this request.”
Tyrus looked down at the ground, a vein in his temple pulsing. “Why not just say no?”
“Because I’m not refusing you,” the Interdict said, and he spoke as though he earnestly believed it—as absurd as his condition was. “When you return to me twenty years older, I will know a seasoned Emperor is asking this of me. I will do as that Emperor Tyrus requests. I’ll know he fully understands the implications of his request. I will also know that the love between you is long and enduring enough that I make the proper choice for you both.”
With a short, curt nod, Tyrus said, “In that case, I must return to the matter of—”
“The scepter. Yes. Which my vicars rightly object to granting to you. At this time devote your energies to winning their goodwill, and perhaps they will think otherwise. Or again, you can wait but twenty years. . . .”
Tyrus let out an incredulous laugh. “Wait, so in twenty years, again, you’ll grant me power over the scepter—just in case I’ve not won the vicars by then? Most Ascendant One, do you realize how you are imperiling this Empire? If I must mobilize thousands of ships for an evacuation or a relief effort, I will not be able to do so. The Chrysanthemum will begin shutting down ship by ship without service bots, and with no security. . . .”
“It is challenging. Such is the life of an Emperor. I know this well.”
“Do you.”
“I am not idle here. I am likely the most learned of scholars you will ever encounter. I speak from a position of informed knowledge.”
“How can you possibly?” Tyrus said. “You are completely detached from the rest of this Empire. In any possible sense.”
“It’s a position that gives me objectivity you do not have. Clarity of thought you do not even realize you lack. I assure you, twenty years is a short time to wait. You see two decades as a great stretch because you are very young. Too young to even realize how young you are, and far too inexperienced to make such a drastic request of me. Tell me.” He jerked his head toward the side. “What do you see out of that window?”
Tyrus didn’t look. A muscle in his cheek ticked. “The black hole. Why?”
“You should look a while longer,” said Orthanion. “There isn’t just the black hole there. There is a stream of energy emitted by it every so often. A quasar. Now, the pulsar is a star being torn apart by the black hole, but the quasar—it is what emerges from the black hole. It’s most breathtaking. I know it’s there because I spend a great deal of time gazing upon that black hole, so I’ve seen the brilliance of that quasar. . . . But time is required. Time and care, and then it may be glimpsed. In such a way, my experience grants me insights you lack, for no reason other than your youth. I have simply been around longer, so I have seen more than you have.”
“That is the problem for everyone at some point,” Tyrus said with an edge in his voice. “The way to overcome inexperience is to learn, to read, to discuss. Tell me what you think I am overlooking and give me a chance to make my case about whether I am missing it or not.”
The Interdict pursed his lips in thought. “Very well. My primary issue is, you ask me to give personhood to a creature. This entire Empire was founded upon a belief in the purity of humanity as it was crafted by nature. You are the Emperor and you are asking for something that challenges that fundamental value at the core of our existence. Do you know why we are nowhere near Earth right now?”
“Our ancestors left for more pristine frontiers. Earth was a ruin.”
“Ah, so the propaganda has become so effective, even the Emperor believes it,” said Orthanion, with some satisfaction in his voice.
Tyrus just stared at him, as bewildered as I was.
“Here is the true story, one that my predecessor as Interdict believed was best left behind: Earth is very much habitable. Our home planet is intact and human beings still live there. May live there still, if they haven’t decided to go elsewhere.”
I felt a wash of shock, trying to understand that. And Tyrus opened and closed his mouth. Then he said, “They’re . . . they’re all still about? Out there, alive—they are there?”
“Yes, the mother species never left Earth. We branched off. The reason we separated and are now nowhere near Earth is because those we abandoned had rejected the sanctity of humanity.”
Tyrus rocked back a step. Then, for lack of a chair, he lowered himself onto the ledge by the window. “So there are two entirely separate civilizations of humans,” he said.
“Oh, two at the very least,” the Interdict said. “Likely more. I wouldn’t necessarily call them ‘human,’ however. Not anymore.”
“What did they do?” Tyrus asked quietly, fascinated despite himself. “What was so bad?”
“They did what we do with beauty bots. What we do with study, with any number of activities undertaken for enhancement of self: they improved. Not through genetic manipulation, as with your Nemesis—for oddly, they always had a taboo about genetically engineering humans. No, they undertook a much more extreme form of self-improvement: they hybridized themselves with machines.”
“Hybridized? What—I don’t—” Tyrus said.
The Interdict pointed to his temple. “They started off installing computers in their brains to make themselves smarter. Then more. Bionic eyes, limbs, tiny machines to supplement their immune system. They embraced the artificial. And I don’t mean they did so the way we would use a med bot, or a beauty bot. They did the equivalent of implanting a beauty bot under their skin, a med bot in place of an arm. They removed the natural and inserted the unnatural. Tell me, if you replace one neuron—a single cell in your brain—with a mechanized duplicate, are you still you?”
Tyrus didn’t answer.
I spoke instead: “Obviously, you are.”
“Ah, then if you replace five?” said the Interdict. “Ten? A hundred? A thousand? One million? If you take every bit of your brain and you duplicate it electronically, and replace yourself with that duplicate . . . Tell me, at what point are you no longer you? At what point are you something else entirely?”
Neither Tyrus nor I spoke. There was no answer to such a question.
The Interdict spread his palms. “And there you have the reason we are out here, and Humanity Prime—as you might call them—remains on Earth. They became something that was no longer human. Our ancestors were but twenty thousand people in the beginning, and they chose to be done with those unnatural improvements. They ventured out here and devoted themselves to returning to their natural state. Now, without those machine minds, some things certainly became more difficult. Technology such as this”—he gestured about us—“is virtually impossible to duplicate or figure out with a standard human mind. You need the machine men to create such things.”
Tyrus gaped at him a moment. Then, soberly, “You are saying that we didn’t make any of this.”
“It was all crafted before departing Earth, or by the first generation to settle here. They were cleverly built. You are looking at ancient machines that have repaired and sustained each other for thousands of years. The first generation knew their descendants wouldn’t have their same intellectual capabilities. There are limits to human intelligence in a natural state.”
A dimness came over Tyrus’s face. He seemed to look inward, and I knew what had just occurred to him. So much of what he’d planned for the future when it came to repairing malignant space and restoring the sciences depended on the assumption we could learn once again what our ancestors knew.
The Interdict had just suggested otherwise.
“Our ancestors knew they were giving up those staggering minds,” said Orthanion, “and they did it willingly—to save their souls. That is why we must honor the legacy of those twenty thousand founding mothers and fathers and act as they would have wished. The Empire’s body is in your hands, but its soul is in mine. Today, I will protect it. In twenty years, if you return and have the same request, I will abide by it. Now go and catch your gravital window. This is a short one.”
Tyrus was speechless. This wasn’t one of the responses we’d prepared for.
But the Interdict was walking away, and I didn’t know what to do. I just knew this couldn’t stand, it couldn’t. . . .
So I slammed the flat of my fist over the back of the Interdict’s head, knocking him unconscious before he could leave us.
“Nemesis!” exclaimed Tyrus as the Interdict collapsed.
“What?” I said. “He wasn’t cooperating. Think of it: he’s been living here in this beautiful place removed from everything for so long. Let’s take him onboard the Hera and make him see the state of the galaxy.”
Tyrus opened and closed his mouth several times. I’d already knocked the man out; it was too late to take that back.
“Maybe we are not machine men,” Tyrus said, speaking almost to himself, “but we can try. He won’t stop us from trying to recover what we’ve lost.” He darted a glance out the window, and a wicked gleam came into his eyes. “We’ll take him on the Hera, but . . . but I’ve a different destination in mind. One that will speak to our Most Ascendant One in a way he’ll never forget.”
Then he strode over and drew me into a hard, reckless kiss. We grinned savagely at each other, and possibility electrified me.
Then we kidnapped the holiest man in the Empire together.