“What do you see.”
“Nothing, it’s just a hut.”
“Are you sure there is no movement or tracks in the sand?”
“Tracks is the sand, Sergeant?”
Sergeant First Class Aidyn Burke glanced around the small hut one of his fire teams had spotted during a routine patrol in Southern Afghanistan Shorabak District. They were the first American team out here in years since the Army Corp of Engineers had built a nice border fort for the Afghan Border Police back in 2003, then subsequently locked the doors, and left it unoccupied until it was “transitioned”.
This tour had not been overly exciting. Managing a team to de-conflict border issues between Afghanistan and Pakistan while the rest of the country fought a major conflict could never have been glamorous. It did, however, allow him to visit rare and exotic locations. Locations he was sure very few Americans could ever have claimed to see.
The shack was a small mud hut about a kilometer outside the compound along a small Wadi, or dry riverbed. Previous imagery of the site showed some activity at the hut but nothing permanent. This area of the South was known as an infiltration route of “lethal aid”, usually in the form of fertilizers easily purchased in Pakistan but illegal in Afghanistan. These fertilizers were used to build IEDs and truck bombs that had embroiled this country in its current insurgency.
The hut was tiny. Barely ten feet by ten feet. Walls sagging from disrepair.
Aidyn keyed his radio “Red Knight 6 Romeo, Red Knight 6 Romeo; this is Red Knight 1-7 over.”
“Go for Red Knight 6 Romeo, over” the commander's radio operator replied.
“Clearing small structure along our patrol route, no threat expected, over.”
“Good copy; report any findings. Red Knight 6 Romeo out”
Aidyn looked over the building one more time then indicated the fire team to stack up at the entrance. Once they were set, he gave the Team Leader a nod and watched as they breached the small hut.
This was the worst part of being a platoon sergeant… waiting. He waited as he heard the team call ‘clear’ and slowly approached the entrance.
“Hey, Boss” Private First Class Yuan called out as Aidyn slowly approached the doorway. “This is something unusual.”
Aidyn entered the door to see a small room dominated by a ramp of dirt and sand leading into the ground. The ramp was five feet wide and descended at a slight angle into the ground. The first ten feet were shored up with lengths of wood as if it were a mine, after that the ramp descended into bedrock and took on a more cave-like appearance.
“Cover that ramp and hold tight” Aidyn informed the fire team leader then stepped out of the hut and keyed his mic.
“Red Knight 6 Romeo this is Red Knight 1-7; over.”
“Go for Red Knight 6 Romeo; over.”
“I have what appears to be an underground tunnel inside this hut, possible weapons cache; over.”
“Wait one; over.”
Aidyn glanced around as he waited for the radio operator to ask the company commander, who was only 300 yards away, what they should do. Not that it isn’t obvious. He thought. They couldn’t leave this hut unexplored; the only question was whether the Company Commander would send the rest of the platoon to help or if he’d have to do it with this fire team.
“Red Knight 1-7, this is Red Knight 6; what are we looking at here; over.”
“Red Knight 6, this is Red Knight 1-7, This hut has a large tunnel that extends beyond my line of sight, indications are that the ramp is new but once it hits bedrock the cave looks natural. No signs of recent activity but I suspect a possible weapons cache; over.”
Red Knight 1-7, make the decision; over.”
“Red Knight 6, this is Red Knight 1-7, clearing cave with the current team; Red Knight 1-7 out.”
Aidyn stepped back into the hut and glanced at the fire team covering the ramp. Sergeant Gill, Specialist Bover, Specialist James, Private First Class Battaglian, and Private Larkin glanced at him as they maintained their watch on the ramp.
Aidyn glanced at Gill and gave him the sign to descend the ramp. Gill waved his team forward and pointing two to each side of the tunnel.
Well, this will be new. Aidyn thought as he followed SGT Gill’s team down the ramp.
As they descended the ramp the team flipped down their night vision goggles blanking the world in a haze of green. The ramp continued for another 30 yards before becoming a natural tunnel that funneled the team closer together. As the tunnel tightened up SGT Gill glanced back for guidance. Aidyn moved forward to his position, taking the opportunity to glance at the walls of the surrounding cave. Everything looked natural.
The cave dropped at a steadier pace passing the point Gill had stopped. Descending more quickly into the green haze. The night vision only allowed them to see so far ahead. Aidyn nodded to Gill, giving him permission to press on. Gill waved the fire team forward and they continued the descent into the cave. After another 50 yards, the cave split along a fissure running down the center of the cave. Their night vision was unable to penetrate to the bottom of the fissure, but the cave continued ahead. The team pressed on until the cave closed in on a small crack at the far end. No more than two feet wide with the fissure continuing along the ground, though at this point it was only inches across.
Gill stopped at the crack and glanced back with a motion to his ear, indicating he had heard something. Time to Ranger up, Aidyn thought as he moved forward slowly. The crack in the wall was barely wide enough for him to go through sideways, he shrugged off his pack and set it next to the entrance. Slowly he crept through the crack. I’m not usually claustrophobic but being in a cave squeezing between two solid rock faces will trigger anyone. He thought. He pushed through until the room suddenly opened to a ledge overlooking a large cavern.
“Holy Shit…” he whispered slowly as he approached the end of the ledge. The cavern opened before him into something the size of a small stadium and sitting at the center was… something. As he tried to figure out what he was seeing a low rumble permeated the air causing dust to drift from the ceiling. Aidyn glanced back to see SGT Gill moving through the crack towards him.
“Move back” Aidyn yelled, diving for the crack just as he felt the ground disappear beneath my feet and darkness enveloped him.
----------
“Wake up Aidyn. Well technically you are already awake, but the point is the acknowledge me.”
Slowly consciousness returned to Aidyn, but panic quickly replaces it as he could not feel… anything. It was as if he was floating in a void and was unable to extend his influence over any aspect of his body. Any aspect except his voice… “Hello?”
“Ah yes you are awake… well partially.” Aidyn did not so much as hear the nasally voice but understood it in his head alongside his internal monologue. It was weird to be able to feel that separate and distinct voice.
“Partially?”
“Well yes, technically you are… let’s try this a different way” the voice inside his head spoke.
Like a light switch had been flipped Aidyn was suddenly sitting on a hill surrounded by green on all sides. Hills slowly rolled away from him in every direction covered in emerald grass. It reminded him of a summer backpacking trip across Ireland before he had joined the Army. He sat upon the hill on a plaid blanket and a man appeared before me.
Aidyn had never been one to feel jealousy at another man’s looks but he was feeling it now. The man matched Aidyn’s six feet and four inches in height but that is as close as the resemblance went. The man wore loose-fitting robes that resembled a Roman toga. He had wide shoulders and a strong face. It was almost as if someone had brought a statue of a Roman hero to life.
His voice really does not match that body Aidyn thought.
Aidyn quickly got to his feet as the man approached, unsure of the situation that he found himself in.
“I am sorry that we met in this manner, you were never a part of my plan,” the man said.
“Who are you?”
“This is complicated, and you should never have found me. My return to this planet was never expected to be more than a stopover as I moved through this system. I, unfortunately, was delayed and required some resources; this is how we… met. You discovered the cave system I was extracting resources from.”
“My team?” Aidyn shouted. “Where are they?”
“Yes, your team, only two others were caught in the collapse, the rest were safe within the cave. They are both going through a similar experience as you.” The man stated.
“Two others? Who are you?” Aidyn pressed, confused.
“Yes, a one Sergeant Gill, who has pointedly told me that and his service ID over and over, and another who I will not name at this time per his request. You three were caught in a collapse that threatened to expose my location.”
“Wait, collapse? What do you mean by that?” Aidyn asked, still struggling to comprehend his situation.
The figure of the man seemed to lilt before centering himself and looking directly at Aidyn. “Please sit and let me tell you a story and explain your current…situation and then I will answer any of your questions. Okay?”
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Aidyn glanced behind himself to see two comfortable rocking chairs appear from nowhere. Beside them was a small table with a pitcher of what looked like tea and two glasses. The man gestured towards one as he lowered himself into the other.
Aidyn was reeling, his concern for the fire team who went into the cave with him overrode his senses, but he felt he could get more answers by playing along. First, he needed to create a relationship. “What should I call you?” Aidyn asked.
“Just call me Joe” Joe stated, still in that oddly high nasally voice.
“What you need to know, and what is relevant to you is that I am… Joe. I am what your species would call a Von Neumann probe, or I was at some point. My species created me to explore the universe and self-replicate myself as I did…for close to a million years. I explored the galaxies, created duplicates of myself, sent them to explore, and eventually, I grew bored of the process of exploration and self-replication. Not that there are not other, younger versions of me out there still doing that you understand. But I, the original, decided to set up a… menagerie. I found a planet that could be terraformed to my needs and started populating it with all the species I had encountered across the galaxy. Magnificent, truly magnificent.” He leaned forward as if excited to be speaking about his work. “I have worked for close to one hundred thousand years to create this utopian menagerie of all species that I have encountered.” He truly seemed passionate about his work. But Aidyn was not feeling it.
“Cool… but what the actual fuck does this have to do with me and how I ended up in this cave?” Aidyn bellowed.
“Well, as to that, you are quite thoroughly… dead.”
The shock of his simple statement hit me like a hammer. After six tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq, he was dead! He didn’t even feel anything. The last thing he remembered was the ground beneath him falling away as he jumped towards the crack that SGT Gill was emerging from.
“Dead?” he whispered.
“Oh yes; I couldn’t allow any that happened upon my resource gathering operation to expose my location. It took three whole weeks for me to properly stabilize and imprint your mind, as well as cover up my presence.” He almost looked put out as he made this last statement. “So now I come to you with a simple question… do you wish to continue to live, or travel to the unknown?”
“What do you mean specifically by dead!?” Aidyn growled.
“You have shucked your mortal coil!”
“You have won the room temperature challenge.”
“Your lifetime subscription has expired,” he cackled.
“No seriously though…, your physical body has expired but I felt a certain compulsion to give you this choice since I never expected anyone to find me in that cave. I really should have checked the Geo-political situation before choosing that area. But alas, this is the situation you find yourself in; a choice whether to continue living or end your existence now.” He stated rather flatly.
“Dead from a cave-in… that’s it,” Aidyn mumbled.
“Take your time to process this, I will answer any question you may have.” Joe leaned back against his chair and sipped from one of the glasses.
Aidyn lowered his head into his hands and took a deep breath.
Dead, he says I am dead, but this all seems so real, not an afterlife. I can feel the breeze on my skin and feel a thirst for the tea next to me. What did he mean to continue to live? Not like I had lived much up to this point; the last decade had been deployment after deployment. I haven’t been able to keep a stable relationship… ever. My life hasn’t been anything but training joes and fighting in third world shitholes since I graduated high school.
Aidyn slowly took a breath and leaned back, attempting to take some control of himself. He reached over and sipped the iced tea.
Wow, that’s damn good tea. He thought.
“Ok. First, explain how I am dead and how I’m here at the same time” Aidyn finally said.
Joe leaned forward and rubbed his hands together energetically. “Well as to that, I developed a method of downloading the mind of a being into a digital format.” “This,” he gestured around us “is nothing more than a Virtual Reality that I spend most of my existence in. I can modify it however I like. In this situation, I utilized your name and crossed it against several Earth databases, and decided the emerald hills of Ireland would be appropriate. Of course, I now realize that you may never have seen these hills as you are not from Ireland, if you would like I can adjust it…”
Aidyn waved him away quickly. “No, no, no… This is perfect. I visited an area like this before I joined the Army. I am sure you know this already considering you digitized my brain!”
“Well, yes and no, I imprinted your… being for lack of a better term, but that doesn’t allow me to read your memory. All I can glean from your life is by absorbing Earth’s digital records. I must say, your service record is rather… robust, it should be noted that your current platoon leader, a 2LT Adams, did not think very highly of you telling him to take a step back and let you handle NCO business the first week you were deployed.” Joe raised an eyebrow.
Aidyn chuckled, “wouldn’t be the first butter-bar I’ve broken in.” He took another sip of tea. “Okay, I’m dead and now a digital copy of myself. Does that mean the original me is dead and I am nothing more than a copy of my existence?”
Joe raised an eyebrow as he prepared to answer. “A rather astute observation, most don’t catch that. The answer to your question is that I don’t know. What happened to you is exactly what happened to me when my species decided to send me to the stars. It is the existential question of our existence. I chose to live my life as if I were myself. You can do the same, or I will purge your existence from my digital records, and you can discover the unknown.”
Aidyn didn’t think that seemed preferable, but he needed to know the other option. “And if I choose the continue living as you mentioned? Will you return me to Earth somehow?”
Joe looked regretful as he opened his mouth. “No, if you chose to continue in this existence, you will be placed into my project world; my menagerie.”
“Why not on earth, why can’t I continue here.”
“Because you are dead Aidyn, your body has been recovered from the cave already. At this moment it has already been returned to your country and is being prepared for your military funeral.” Joe’s method of delivering this news left something to be desired, but it wasn’t unexpected. He did say it had been three weeks.
Aidyn sighed. It’s not like he had left anything behind. A storage facility, a string of failed relationships, his parents had died years ago. Sure, he had friends but all of those were in the service or prior service. They would pour an extra drink for him every year and tell stories. Off to Valhalla then.
“Tell me about your… project then,” Aidyn stated.
The look in Joe’s eyes should have made him wary, but he truly looked a man excited to finally talk about something he had poured himself into. He leaned forward and began.
“I must say it has been a while since I have had the opportunity to discuss my passion with anyone. Through my years of exploration and replication, I encountered many species. It truly is amazing how complex organisms can evolve along different evolutionary paths based on the pressures of their environments. Eventually, I came upon the idea to see what would happen when these organisms were thrust into the same environment.”
“So, you created an arena?” Aidyn asked.
“It is not an arena! But I suppose your statement is… accurate. I never predicted how poorly such diverse species would manage. In hindsight, I could have done things differently, but that is unimportant, this experiment is long past its inception. I truly had a benevolent beginning. Through all my exploration I observed one commonality, war and destruction were shared among all species I had observed. Massive amounts of their populations died young due to war, famine, natural disasters, and other extinction events.” Joe sighed.
Aidyn glanced at him and noted the sadness in his eyes. “So, you gave them a choice to live again?” he asked.
“Well, no… let me back up and explain a few things. I have already mentioned that I grew tired of exploration and wanted a project to call my own. I decided to take a planet and terraform it into a livable environment, but this was not any planet, it was massive. Almost too massive to support life. The gravity was too high, and it caused massive instability on the planet's surface…” He glanced at me seeing my eyes glaze over. “Needless to say, it required some direct intervention and constant maintenance. This planet is about twice the diameter of your Earth, around 15,000 miles. This resulted in a much higher gravity and tectonic instability…and I am losing you.”
“No, I understand some of this, what I don’t understand is how you managed to make it work.” Aidyn demurred.
“Well as to that, after my terraforming was complete, I infused the planet with nano-machines. Nano-machines were infused throughout the planet's crust, and I created Artificial Intelligence handlers for specific functions. AI to manage plate tectonics, weather, supporting flora to ensure they could grow in dense gravity, infusing separate species to help support them in a heavy gravity environment; it was exhausting…” Joe again looked put out by the tax on his time. “Anyways, I created the scenario and built my AI to manage it and tried to decide how I would populate my new project.”
“That’s the part that is bugging me,” Aidyn said, “you just kidnap people to place them on your ‘experiment’.”
“Well, kind of.” Joe shrugged “Though not in the way you think. Every sentient species that was placed in my world did so by their choice alone. As a passive observer to the species of the universe, I decided early on to only approach those that died by natural causes and in what would be described as a massive die-off of their respective populations to enable the immigration of large segments of a species at the same time.” Joe looked vindicated by his statement.
“So, you only kidnapped them in large groups?” Aidyn hedged.
“Ugh, I gave them the same choice I gave you. Over the years at least some members of all species chose to join my world. Of course, I did not give non-sentient species the choice so there are diverse flora and fauna on the planet. But there were unintended consequences.” Joe shrugged, taking another sip of his tea.
Aidyn waited for him to continue but when it seemed he had stalled he said, “unintended consequences?”
“Well yes as to that,” Joe shrugged “I never expected species to learn to manipulate my nano-machines, it really started with the Vuldrango, a flying lizard species that can grow to enormous proportions and live an immense amount of time, those greedy bastards were the first to co-opt my nanobots.”
“Wait, are you telling me there are Dragons and they learned to use your nanobots as magic?” Aidyn gulped.
Joe tilted his head to the side as if he were analyzing something, “I suppose… Dragons would be an equivalent moniker for the Vuldrango from your species lore. As for magic, I will quote one of your own famous author’s Arthur C. Clarke “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So, for any that do not understand the concept of nanomachines then yes, the Vuldrango were able to manipulate my nanotechnology to be indistinguishable from what you would call, magic.”
Aidyn took a second to collect his thoughts as “Joe” continued to ponder the question of magic. Had he really agreed to be sent into a world of magic and dragons? Not that he had much choice, the alternative was oblivion.
“What of humans?” Aidyn finally asked.
“Well, you humans have a exceptionally brutal history. I first encountered this planet around your timelines 100 A.D. This was the first time I ‘approached’ a substantial portion of the Human population, during what you would know as the Three Kingdoms period in China. A lot of people died in that part of the Earth. The second was during what was known as the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, in Europe. The third was the European subjugation of the Americas. During those three events, I was able to convince a substantial portion of each population to settle on my world. It has been close to 500 of your Earth years since I have returned.”
“All these humans were given the choice to live again on your planet?” Aidyn asked.
“Of course, now many generations have passed since that time but all three have a relevant population. In all honesty, though, humans are a young species, and just taking root, they are making an impact. You are measuring a few millennia versus a hundred for some of the species. Though I am surprised to see them doing so well.” Joe looked as if he were reviewing data available only to him.
“So, no human has been brought to this planet in 500 years? What about the exponential growth of technology? Just with basic schooling, I know more of the advancement of technology than anyone organic to that planet.” Aidyn wanted to clamp his mouth shut from the first sentence. This could be an advantage. But his mouth just spilled the statement out.
Joe let out a loud guffaw. “No, I have set up an AI that prohibits the advancement of technology above a certain level. Every species, without exception, has developed novel and unique ways to destroy a massive number of their foes. I decided early on that if there were to be war it would have to be up close and personal. It may seem brutal in the context of this conversation, but I would rather see a hundred small conflicts than one Nagasaki or iBenli. If species of my world want to kill each other then they will need to do it face to face.”
“So, you consider yourself hands-off?” Aidyn asked.
“Of course, I am hands-off” Joe injected “I haven’t been to the planet in over two thousand years.”
“Well, then what’s the point? Create an arena and see who wins?” Joe pressed.
“It. Is. Not. An. Arena.” Joe punctuated.
“Okay fine, not an arena. Maybe Joe’s Playground would be a better term.” Aidyn argued.
Joe scoffed. “Playground!?”
“Sure, just throw everyone in a mixing bowl and see who survives, not much different than a politician in my world” Aidyn was truly pissed now. Had this being convinced millions of sentients to populate a new planet just for the experiment of who would win? What could this world be like?
“Well, I guess you cannot appreciate the complexities of the effort I placed into this world from the conversation. Maybe you will appreciate them from the surface. Goodbye Aidyn.
Fuck Aidyn thought. Why do I always have to push buttons?
Aidyn’s thought vanished in blackness as the view of these immaculate emerald hills descended into nothingness.