CHAPTER 1: WHEREOF
“I would love to paint you,” Fhosanti said to Siraa. When she smiled, Siraa couldn’t look away.
It hadn’t been long after the shuttle departed that Fhosanti changed seats and sat next to Siraa. They were the only two aboard, and Fhosanti was clearly looking to chat. Siraa, on the final leg of a long journey home, was happy enough for the company. They spoke about nothing for hours, and - somehow - the flight was nearly over.
“Have you been aboard the Teop before?” Fhosanti asked.
“Actually, I was born here,” Siraa answered quietly but with a small smile of her own. “I’ve been away quite a while.”
“I can see that!” Fhosanti laughed, though it was good-natured, alluding to Siraa’s darkly armoured and bio-augmented form. It cut a stark contrast to Fhosanti’s own basic human-type, with shimmering silver hair and brown skin.
They sat next to a wide window. The vacuum outside the shuttle stretched out towards infinity. They were passing over and through the many separate levels that constituted the outermost shell of the Teop. A sprawling lattice of structures stretched across the vista, interlocked and woven together from almost every direction, construction made only possible in the weightlessness of zero-g space. Lights from their active regions illuminated the gulfs between each vast platform. Free-flying drones and small transport craft busied the industrialised volume.
“Are you back because of that whole thing?” Fhosanti asked, making a vague gesture with a circling finger.
Though Fhosanti’s face remained bright, Siraa could see it belied the worry that everyone felt, a dark threat that few ever articulated but always came up in conversation.
“I am.”
Fhosanti decided to change the subject. She leaned close, pointing past Siraa and out of the window. When Siraa looked, she saw one of the great habitation spires below, swarmed by mechanised motion. The longer Siraa looked at it, the more alive it appeared.
“That’s where I’m staying,” Fhosanti said, turning her head to Siraa. “Maybe you’ll visit while you’re home?”
Their lips were so close. After so long away on service, it had been some time since Siraa had felt such an honest and mutual attraction. Fhosanti’s smile turned to a grin when Siraa hesitated.
“I’d like that.”
The shuttle passed the industrialised volume, moving over a cleared descent path. In the process, it turned, giving Siraa and Fhosanti a view of orbital space. Sharing the moment, they looked to the distant green and blue hues of the planet Jemna-Tol, with its countless artificial rings. Half in the shade, its night-time atmosphere brooded, and clouds sparked with the lights of a bright dancing aurora.
The shuttle was transferring from one of Jemna-Tol’s orbital rings on approach to the Teop, a daughter vessel of the boundless machine structure that had overgrown the planet far below, a cultivator of humanity known collectively as Caretaker Tol. Tol was so incomprehensibly vast that, if disassembled, they said that its structure could form another planet entirely by itself; its computational mass alone had to be kept tucked away in extradimensional space to prevent it from crushing the world it presided over. They said a lot of things, Siraa supposed.
The Caretaker was why she was here. She had been asked to meet it face-to-face or, at least, an avatar - three avatars, in fact, representatives of Tol, Teop, and Tessaloi. It was unusual, to say the least. No one met a Caretaker, let alone three. A single avatar, created when they wanted to interact with humanity directly, was vanishingly rare. But, of course, it happened. It had to have happened. But, of the trillions of lives that played out in the Jemna-Tol system and the many daughter craft that surrounded its star, Siraa had never actually met anyone that had.
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“Can I get you any refreshments before we make the final approach?” A drone asked. It was the face of the shuttle, which was itself an independent, intelligent entity, the drone a floating ovoid roughly the size of a human torso suspended by warm and translucent fields.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Siraa said.
Fhosanti shook her head, fixated on the view outside.
The shuttle descended into the moon-sized daughter craft, the Teop. It made swift progress between two tightly bound spires until it was met with a flat and featureless silvery field. The shuttle seamlessly crossed the threshold without interruption or turbulence, and they were suddenly overlooking a lush green space.
As they passed into the interior, Siraa’s environmental suites revealed the tell-tale tremble of their transition to the Teop’s inertial control - imperceptible to baseline human-types, but she was far from it.
The shuttle settled down upon one plateau of a terraced valley. It was crowded here, or at least as crowded as ship space ever got, with population cultivated by design. Siraa could see hundreds of people settled into the kilometres-wide chamber. Distantly, they laughed and played; some worked on sculptures and paintings.
The sound of a music concert reached the cabin, a live performance probably before a smattering of fans and followers. They might have travelled from across the vessel, perhaps even the planetary system, to listen. Probably not, though. It sounded a little rough. But, then again, Siraa didn’t have an ear for music.
“See you soon?” Fhosanti asked hopefully.
“I’ll connect when I’m free,” Siraa offered. She realised it might have been a little dismissive. Still, Fhosanti didn’t seem to mind, and she had already hurried off of the craft in a whirlwind of activity.
Siraa disembarked herself, offering a polite and formal farewell to the shuttle. She had no hand luggage to worry about. Everything she could possibly need was here already, available on request.
Making slow progress through the rec zone, Siraa savoured the atmosphere and enjoyed a languid pace. A crèche of little girls played in a nearby meadow, all physiologically identical but dressed in bright colours and distinct fashions so that they looked apart. Their drone keepers kept a reassuring watch as they played with remotely controlled kites.
Siraa saw two girls dressed identically, their hair done just the same way. No doubt they had set their laces to private, too, making the other girls, the adults, and the drones have to guess who was who. Feeling the mischief, Siraa remembered doing the exact same thing once when she was little.
“Oh wow! I like your augs!” A young child, probably in her first few 10⁸s, was already on the walkway ahead of Siraa.
“Oh, hello.” Siraa offered politely. She was never good with kids.
“Do you use weapons?”
The child leaned in, looking closely at the dark bioceramics of Siraa’s plated arm. Though most of Siraa’s body was sturdy and reinforced, her face was pale and expressive, with a slight purple undertone from the saturation of manganese compounds in the softer skin. She couldn’t hide her bemusement at the inquisitive little girl.
“I do. But not when we’re here at home.”
“Wow!”
“Oh, I am so sorry, Ambassador.” A parent-drone cut in. The smooth ovoid zipped to their side, floating at Siraa’s head level. Its field display flashed a pink striation to signal its embarrassment. “This way, child. Let’s not bother the busy Ambassador.”
The drone led the little girl away, holding her hand with a field tether.
“I’m sorry!” She waved back to Siraa, “Bye, Ambassador!”
“Bye!” Siraa found herself returning the infectious wave. And just like that, the child was gone, her laughter echoing as she ran off to rejoin her sisters in the meadow.
It was a short walk from there up to the summit. Passing under a canopy of red and orange, when Siraa broke the treeline, she found a wide clearing, and a lonely tower stood at the highest curve of the hill. It was a tall cylinder, large enough to support six levels, with an exterior of sweeping, unblemished glass. The glass was tinted dark, allowing no hint of what might be found within. Still, after double-checking her location marker, Siraa could see this was her destination. The building was reserved for her and her alone indefinitely. That gave her a moment of disquiet. It was unusual for a Caretaker to place such a complete stay on either space or resources, but Siraa pushed down the doubt.
Stepping closer, a mark swept across the surface of the glass, and a doorway opened into the tower. Siraa was met with the taste and smell of pristine, filtered air spilling from the entrance with positive overpressure.
Looking back, Siraa saw a black and violet Avesan in the trees. The paper-thin animal folded and refolded before throwing itself into the air and gliding across the clearing in a confident arc. Releasing a soft sigh, she returned to the doorway and stepped inside.