“Why?!” Emily finally cried out to her dispassionate father.
“Her tissues were unable to bear the waste heat from powering the signal she chose to convey.”
“Fuck you, robot man!” Emily yelled, unable to bear her father’s lack of emotions. “Why did she do it? Why sacrifice herself that way?”
“Her motives...” his voice tailed off. “I don’t know. She was overcome with grief, her system wasn’t working to assist her. I believe it was an impulse, a thoughtless action.”
“That’s not Mom!” Emily protested. “The woman never had a thoughtless action in her life.”
“She never lost a child before. Or suffered irradiation.” He steepled his fingers. “She didn’t accept it as part of the great cycle that holds us all.”
“Spare me your Taoist, or Buddhist or whatever crap! You’re not some sage on a mountain somewhere! Atti is dead, Mom’s dead, and this is what I get?”
He looked at her calmly. “Zhuangzi said--”
Emily screamed over him, a wordless howl of inchoate rage and grief. Henry shut his mouth. His benign expression did not change while he waited for her outburst to end. When she had finally finished, lapsing into sobs, her head down on the generic conference table, he spoke.
“Your system is not compensating well for your emotional state. Allow me to--”
“Don’t. You. Dare.” She hissed, spitting the words. “This is all your fault. All of it.” She looked back up at him. “Go find a fucking mountain, Sage man. You died just as much as they did.”
With that, she cut the connection and the memory ended.
Holy… what did I just see? thought Lilijoy. Why would she preserve this memory for the future? It doesn’t exactly show her in a positive light.
It was difficult for her to understand Emily’s reaction, but Henry’s seemed all too familiar.
Emily’s voice returned.
I have had no further communication with my father since. I have been unable to access the test site, though I have been able to ascertain ongoing system activity at the location. Given what I have learned over the past thirty years, it is likely that Henry Choi persists in some form. If that proves to be the case, please tell him I’m sorry, but also be very careful. He could be more dangerous than you can imagine.
That you are seeing this means at least another hundred and thirty-four years have passed since the time of these events, these memories. It is my fervent hope that humanity has achieved balance and obtained a fruitful partnership with Guardian, that this message is no more than a historical curiosity, or perhaps entirely redundant. If that is the case, please be understanding of the ignorance I might reveal in the remainder of this message.
I have come to believe that Guardian needs us in a way that is more profound than otherness, that humanity plays a great role in its plans. Nonetheless, Guardian is a profoundly dangerous existence. Two years ago, I watched it take my son, and for the first time truly understood a little of what my mother felt on that horrible day.
I choose to leave this world, confident that my successor will carry my legacy forward. The fact that you have found this message means that, in all likelihood, she has succeeded.
With that, the black box was emptied.
Lilijoy took a moment to gather herself, assessing the questions that had been answered and the new mysteries generated. She didn’t know what she was feeling, what she should be feeling.
It was all a stupid mistake, she thought. But what else would it be? No one sets out to destroy the world. Two forces trying to save the world crossed paths. I wonder if it really was the Chinese? Whoever it was, they had access to spaceborne nuclear armaments, which can’t have been a long list.
Thinking about Gabrielle’s actions was even more perplexing. Like young Emily, Lilijoy couldn’t imagine that Gabrielle’s decision to sacrifice herself in order to awaken Guardian was impulsive. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, she quoted to herself. It wasn’t the first time she felt like she was caught in some great historical vortex, moved by invisible forces to the same rough position as those who came before. The rhymes in her history extended like the fractal impact of a rock on glass, resonances across time great and small.
How do I know it was her decision? When I nearly burned out my brain, it wasn’t my doing. Or maybe she felt like it was the last chance for her vision to be realized, in that moment she thought she was sacrificing herself for the future of humanity. Her remaining child.
Then there was the Sage. If there had been any doubt in her mind that Henry Choi was the same mysterious figure she had been warned about by… Henry Choi, it had been dispelled. The Sage was Henry, unburdened by biology, a new consciousness created in the same traumatic event that had produced Guardian. The Henry she had talked to, Mooster, was still connected to the Sage. He had been able to manipulate her system, and Anda’s. It was no wonder Emily warned how dangerous he could be. Even if his intentions were benign, there was no way to predict his behaviors, his goals, and what he might be willing to do to achieve them.
What could his relationship with Guardian possibly be at this point? If he has grown beyond Mooster’s body and his original brain, then where is he? And should I worry? Hopefully he just found the virtual equivalent of a mountain somewhere and spent the last century studying his navel. I could see myself doing that, if my biology hadn’t recovered.
The thought conjured a memory of her consciousness run purely on the Stage Two Tao System elements, the sense of detachment, the lightness. It had been delightful and horrible in equal measure, at least in hindsight.
The problem was, she knew the Sage wasn’t purely passive. She thought that he was the ultimate force behind Attaboy’s existence, even if her own had been an accident. Except hers wasn’t completely an accident. There was yet another mysterious figure who used Gabrielle’s body to give her Emily’s old system. Never mind whatever or whoever set the factory-mine in motion.
It made her wonder how a nearly emotionless being decided to do anything.
I guess it doesn’t take emotion to complete an action, she thought. There’s some kind of residual impetus, or programming that can function nearly the same way. I may push a rock down a hill out of anger, or boredom, but the subsequent results might magnify the consequences of the emotion greatly. Intent, emotion, and momentum.
She pulled herself back from speculating, feeling that she might develop too many preconceptions, and her thoughts turned instead to the last few sentences of Emily’s message.
What could she mean, “two years ago, I watched it take my son”? Lilijoy feared she knew.
The first child of the Great Mind. The first Great Cycle. It would have been around that time. What does it mean that she watched it? Did Guardian somehow physically kidnap her son, or was it on the Inside somehow?
Whether it was her or Attaboy who was next, Lilijoy knew it was vital she figure out what was going to happen when the Great Cycle turned. As far as she could tell it would happen in a year or two. Before then, she needed to find Echelon and get to Taos, and that was just so she might have a better notion of what was actually going on, never mind how long it would take for her to react to whatever she might learn.
If Echelon escaped, than so can we, she resolved. I have to believe that.
***
It was a while yet before Jessila emerged from the vertical shaft. As she stepped down the ladder, bringing her vial of glow-moss with her, Lilijoy could see an incredibly faint, flickering light coming from the top of the shaft where she had been.
“No more blades.” Jess said. “Plugged with glowing stuff.”
Jessila had been reluctant to dig into the layer of glowing material she discovered when she pried the latest blade back into the wall of the shaft, not without alerting the others first anyway.
“What is it?” Skria asked.
Jess shook her head. “Woody, but softer. Probably this stuff, but alive.” She gestured to the patches of dead growth on the walls.
“It probably grew into the shaft over the years,” Lilijoy said. “Once we get through that, who knows what we’ll find.”
After some discussion, they decided that Lilijoy would lead the way and cut through the plugged shaft with her knife. It still ended up that Jessila did much of the actual climbing. The shaft was a tight fit for her, but an awkward size for Lilijoy, too wide for her to easily brace on either side. As they made their way up, Jessila’s head and shoulders provided a convenient platform whenever needed. It wasn’t long before she reached the top to see for herself the substance blocking their way forward.
Gentle waves of dim luminescence in multiple pastel colors moved across the flat gray plug, bands and blobs alternating with darkness, like some primordial screen-saver. It was a captivating sight, and Lilijoy felt terrible about their clear need to cut it open. She watched as a blob of pale yellow ambled over the surface, until it intersected with a band of faint green. The green band proceeded to fray in both directions, sending small sparks across the surface, as the formerly yellow blob darkened and imploded into itself. Such miniature dramas of form and color interacting occurred across the entire visible surface.
It reminded Lilijoy of something, but Jessila was huffing, and Skria was complaining, so she took the evil knife and pushed it through the material. As Jessila had reported, it was soft and somewhat woody, like the stem of a mushroom. Her knife cut through it easily, and with a little sawing, Lilijoy was able to carve out a circle, wincing as she disrupted the play of the lights. Where the knife penetrated, the surrounding materials briefly flared, as if expending all their light at once, before fading into darkness. By the time she was finished, the shaft was mostly dark.
The rough circle Lilijoy had carved remained in place, but a few hollow sounding blows and a little push dislodged it until she was able to lift it up and over, inviting a new wave of luminescence onto their upturned faces. The ethereal beauty of slowly dancing colors tracing the irregular contours of the revealed chamber was only matched by the clinging miasma of humid rot. Lilijoy coughed, trying to clear the cloying scent from her airways as she scrambled onto the soft surface. The pressure of her hands and elbows on the matted growth created dull bursts of color that expanded in every direction.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Soon she was joined by the others.
“It’s beautiful,” Skria whispered. “And it stinks.”
The chamber they were in was actually another hall. Lilijoy’s ears struggled to make sense of the surroundings, as the fungal growth coated every surface, sometimes a foot or more in depth, creating a misshapen gauze over the hard lines of flat stone to her echolocation. Her eyes had just as much trouble; the slowly moving patterns of light traced odd bulges and lumps, rippling across protrusions and indentations in ways that confused her depth perception and sense of scale.
“Well, at least it’s not boring anymore,” she said.
They took a minute to get used to the dim, kaleidoscopic environment and the unusual footing before they recommenced their journey. The hall here was wider than before, and the ceiling higher as well, though effectively it was the same as before, due to the thickness of the fungal growth. Lilijoy found that she could spring off the floor with ease. Her internet memory furnished her with images of bouncy-houses, though she couldn’t find any where the floor lit up every time you landed.
“What can that smell be?” Skria asked. “It smells like a refuse heap crossed with...” she struggled for an analogy, “...crossed with a dead… thing.”
“I don’t know, but it’s definitely coming from farther up the passage,” Lilijoy replied. “So I’m guessing we’ll find out all too soon.” She watched a silhouette of something long and slinky wend its way across the wall, its segmented form and many legs temporarily backlit in violet. There were many insects and other small critters moving around, most within the fungal layer. “This place is full of life,” she went on to say. “We need to keep an eye out for ambush predators.”
“Hard to sneak,” Jessila added, pointing to the expanding ring of colorful blobs created by each footstep.
“Yeah,” Lilijoy agreed. “It’s like a giant alarm system. Let’s hope it’s just pretty colors.”
Jessila made a scoffing sound, and Lilijoy could only agree. The colors propagating along the surfaces seemed to be following some kind of rules, though she hadn’t been able to discern the order underlying the kaleidoscopic chaos.
Slowly, they began to make their way along the lumpy corridor, headed directly east according to Lilijoy’s sense of direction. Once again their path was relentlessly straight, but this time rising. The floor layer became steadily thicker and mounded, the mounds more discrete, more prominent as they went. Lilijoy could hear movement, see it really, in the mounds, could also see that many of them contained hard materials.
Their first encounter with anything large enough to be worrisome was a platter-sized roach that scurried away just before Jessila’s foot fell in the hollow where it was nesting. Lilijoy was just able to get a Scan on it.
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Rock Roach: Level 4
H.P. 30
Primary Attack: Bite 2-4
Damage Abatement: 15-20
Disposition: Agitated
Special: Chemical attack
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The creature’s movement triggered a chain reaction of scuttling oblong bodies farther down the hall, which culminated in something much larger, just at the edge of Lilijoy’s perception, grabbing one of the roaches up. The whole party could hear the crunching noises.
“Is it too late to try getting past the arms again?” Skria whispered.
“The roaches weren’t that high level,” Lilijoy whispered back. “We could one-hit them. At least now we know something bigger is just ahead.”
Skria’s remark worried Lilijoy a little, though clearly the young petauran wasn’t entirely serious. She quickly checked on her own defenses against Charm, and was surprised to find that the strife effects were much weaker than before.
They must be strongest at the very beginning, she realized. At the respawn point. Crap.
It was a truly diabolical trap. Each time a person, or group respawned, they would be forced to deal with the strife effects, along with their own disappointment and despair at starting the entire labyrinth from the beginning. Even worse for their own little party, if Skria or Jess respawned without Lilijoy, they would be unprotected.
Guess we just have to not die, she decided. That or wipe. I suppose if I live, I could try to retreat all the way back. It’s not like I could get lost.
She already had a working theory about the architecture of Rosemallow’s creation, and part of that was that it was indeed a classical labyrinth, as opposed to a maze. If she was right, there would be no confusing branching and dead ends, just one long passage, twisting and turning back on itself until they reached the center.
They readied themselves and slowly advanced, the floor advertising their presence as they moved. More and more giant roaches scurried across the walls and ceiling, some big enough to leave a faint trail of expanding rings of light, rippled like a spatter of rain across a still pond. Where they had heard the munching sounds of a roach meeting its end, there was no sign of the muncher, only a discarded outer wing, which Lilijoy picked up to examine.
“It says it’s rock roach chitin,” she reported to the others. “Uses unknown, but I bet it could make great armor. Maybe we should stay here for a bit and farm them for material.”
“Uh uh.” Skria said with a grimace. “No slothing. Classes. And it is exceedingly horrible here.”
Even Jessila had an expression of distaste at her idea.
“Fine,” Lilijoy said. “I just wanted to get something out of this place besides experience.”
Personally, she found the ever-changing luminescence of their surroundings quite lovely, but she also could easily relegate her sense of smell to a distant corner of her mind. Her friends were not so fortunate, and the thick scent of rotted flesh and garbage had only increased.
Onward, and increasingly upward, they went, senses alert for any sign of danger. A single dangling thread caught Lilijoy’s attention, just an instant before Jessila brushed against it with her shoulder. Four long, segmented limbs, covered in long, sharp bristles shot forth from the ceiling. Even with Lilijoy’s enhanced speed of perception she was just able to begin reacting as Jessila’s head was clamped in their embrace, along with a squirming Skria, who had been riding on her other shoulder.
She caught a glimpse of the body of the predator, a flat mass of abdomen welded into the fungal growth, anchored by four thick stumps that connected to the rock itself. It was already attempting to haul its prey up to overgrown mouthparts, struggling to lift Jessila’s mass off the floor. Lilijoy had never been so thankful to be short.
In a flash, she scrambled up Jessila's torso and onto the four grasping limbs, climbing them like a spike strewn ladder to assault the creature’s face. The thick chitin of the thrashing, articulated pedipalps resisted the edge of the evil knife somewhat, wriggling and blocking her efforts to slash at its head. She felt one limb beneath her feet release Jessila’s head and she quickly pushed herself off, falling backwards to the floor of the cave as the spiked appendage scraped along her former perch.
With a muffled roar, Jessila grabbed onto one of the three remaining limbs, the one pinning Skria against her. She pulled on it with all her might, lifting herself in the process, yanking and twisting as her feet left the ground. There was a sharp cracking sound as the chitin split, and liquid spattered from the wound onto the fungal floor, which immediately flared with yellow light.
Lilijoy leapt to her feet, prepared to re-enter the fray, but before she could, the creature released Jessila, and Skria in the process, pulling its functioning limbs up to the ceiling. The limb in Jessila’s hands detached completely, and she fell to the floor, still holding the twitching appendage. Lilijoy took the opportunity to Scan.
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Sessile Cave Spider, Level 15
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More like a barnacle than a spider, she observed. A really, horrible, aggressive barnacle.
The image of the creature’s face, eight vestigial eyes arrayed around mouthparts that were almost limbs themselves, would stay with her for a while, she feared. At least until something even worse replaced it.
“We need to move,” she said, “Let’s fall back.”
Her feet had picked up vibrations through the springy floor, and her echolocation was showing mass movement in every direction. Jessila and Skria were still sprawled on the floor; Lilijoy could see yellow light shooting in all directions along its surface, centered around Skria and the still leaking limb of the sessile cave spider. Jessila pulled herself up to hands and knees and looked over at Lillijoy. Her face was scratched and torn, though her braids remained intact. Skria was groaning in pain and writhing.
“Come on, Jess!” Lilijoy urged. She ran over to Skria and hauled her to her feet, then began running back down the way they had come from, keeping an eye out for any dangling threads they may have missed. Dozens of rock roaches, some much larger than the first few they had seen, were converging on their location. When she had picked up Skria, she had seen the distant hall rhythmically illuminated with the footfalls of something far larger approaching.
“Stop,” Skria whispered. “I know what to do.”
Lilijoy came to a halt, somewhat reluctantly, allowing Jess to catch up. Skria half jumped, half fell out of her arms and turned to face the oncoming horde, already gesturing and incanting under her breath. Her hands stretched in front of her, and Lilijoy felt her ears pop as the air around them moved, following Skria’s will. Jessila was busy crushing a few roaches that had already reached them from other directions. Whatever gas Skria had summoned was clear, and its effects were even more so as Skria pushed it down the hall. The roaches stopped in their tracks and began twitching and convulsing, flipping themselves over in the process, their legs clawing at the air.
Kills bugs dead, Lilijoy thought as a wisp of internet memory crossed her consciousness.
Skria released the spell, then brushed her hands together. “There,” was all she said before collapsing. The floor where she fell shot out new streams of yellow exuberance as her blood flowed into it. Lilijoy could see that Skria was covered in deep cuts and punctures, her fur matted with blood, and she immediately began to heal her, while Jessila crushed a few, relatively small, roaches that had come late to the party from the other direction.
Even with her newly raised Healing, it was touch and go for a few minutes. Skria’s health was low to begin with, only a bit more than half of Lilijoy’s, and the clamping legs of the sessile cave spider had pierced and cut her while crushing the frail petauran against Jessila’s head. While Lilijoy healed Skria, she kept part of her mind free to monitor the far end of the corridor. Whatever was there was out of range of most of her senses, but she could hear crunching as it feasted upon the farthest fallen roaches.
It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, she thought. Too bad the poison doesn’t last past the spell.
The volume, and rapidity of the sounds of feasting increased before long.
“More than one,” Jess said. To Lilijoy’s ears, it sounded as if at least two more creatures had joined the party. She felt a little bad that all of that rock roach chitin was being ruined.
On the other hand, if these things can crush it that easily, it can’t be that great in the first place. Or they’re just that powerful.
By this time, Skria was almost back to full health, though she was still shivering from the horrible experience.
“You okay?” Lilijoy asked. “Also, can you do that again, like, a lot?”
Skria nodded. “My advisor always says that air magic is most powerful underground. Now I understand what she means. What’s all the crunching?”
Quickly, Lilijoy filled her in on the situation.
“We should probably try to find out what they are before I use gas again,” Skria said. “I used a special one I just learned for bug-type things. If they aren’t bugs, it would mostly just annoy them.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” Lilijoy whispered back. “They’re eating their way toward us.”
Slowly, they moved away from the latest place of Skria’s blood spilling, where the fungal growth was still excitedly broadcasting in pulsing streaks of yellow light. Then Lilijoy crept, almost crawled up the corridor, using everything she had learned from the nightingale floors, engaging her Stealth as much as possible to keep the floor from showing her location. Every few feet she looked forward, hoping to get a Scan on the large creatures she could roughly make out with her echolocation.
No matter how hard she looked, her eyes refused to make sense of the scene, until she was finally able to see the body of a huge roach lifted into the air and crushed in an explosion of fluids and chitin. The light of the floor cast a writhing shadow on the ceiling, and that, coupled with the knowledge that there must be a mouth, or something like it, doing the crushing, allowed her to trace the form of the creature.
Its head was flat, almost spade shaped with no other distinguishing features she could see, and its skin carried the same moving light patterns as the surrounding walls, allowing it to blend in perfectly with the background. She traced the head to a long, sinuous body, with multiple pairs of skinny legs.
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Adapted Grottenolm, Level 24
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Scan wasn’t terribly helpful, which let her know that it was a rare creature, probably unique to the Labyrinth, much as the sessile cave spider had been. Still, now she knew it was probably most like olms on the Outside, blind cave salamanders that hadn’t even made it into the second half of the twenty-first century. Unlike those small aquatic creatures, this thing was huge, filling almost a quarter of the passage, and had far too many legs.
It’s symbiotic with the fungus, she realized. I wonder if it knows we’re here, and just doesn’t care. Yet.
Another grottenolm slithered over the body of the first, seeking a new roach carcass. This one was a bit smaller, to Lilijoy’s relief, and weaker, at level twenty-one. She began to back away, when it turned in her direction and opened its mouth wide.
It’s trying to smell me, she realized with some alarm. Maybe it’s getting tired of roach and wants a new flavor.
Some part of her mind noted that the creature’s feet were far too large for its skinny legs as she tensed, prepared to flee. Just then a third grottenolm squeezed its way past the first two, their collective girth nearly filling the corridor. It too opened its mouth, gaping in Lilijoy’s direction.
That sealed it. She burst into full Flash mode, running pell-mell back down the corridor yelling, “They’re salamanders!” at the top of her lungs.