[Log 3.4]

[The Old Guard]

Five hundred houses, and I hadn’t even counted a quarter of the city. Not even the outskirts. Even if I only assumed the minimum of 2000 houses and an average of three people per house—which was unlikely, as the houses close to the palace were significantly larger and more opulent—it had been 30 years. Probably more. Way more.

A breeze swept over the city and carried more ash and smoke up to our vantage point. A few buildings collapsed as I watched, mind reeling. More than 30 years… where are my friends? Why hadn’t they gotten me out yet? Oh god if something happened to Chris while I was out… Fuck, did something go wrong when they joined me? Is that why they can’t talk?

My breath came faster, tasting the burning city. Tension set in my shoulders. This was because of the rebels. They set us back a decade. They crippled Chris. All because they don’t even make a token effort to—

“I understand, Sultana, that this must be a lot to process, and if I should—“ Zephyro began, but I cut him off with a curt motion.

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, making an effort to take another breath and keep the tension under control. He did not deserve this. I didn’t need to stay angry. I was not that person anymore. “Go on, please. You said my body is gone. That’s a metaphor, right?” And if it is gone, and more than 30 years have passed, how am I still here?

“Sultana…” he began, faltering. But when I held his gaze, he eventually continued. “no, it is not. Please forgive me.” He broke eye contact first. A calm feeling settled over me. Every muscle in my body tensed. Is this who you want to be? It wasn’t, but in moments like these, it felt like it was the only thing that could keep me going.

When I didn’t respond, Zephyro shifted, clearly uncomfortable. He opened his palm again, and another screen faded into reality in the air before us. It looped a stuttering 2-second recording of a dark corridor and someone hurriedly walking beside a large, closed metal box. Large enough to contain a body. Maybe two. The box was being pushed by another person off-screen, and movement on the edge of the recording suggested there was at least one more person present. The quality of the video was horrible, though. I couldn’t even make out any details on their clothes, other than that they were made from some dark blue, possibly black fabric. Forget about faces. But seeing a box didn’t prove anything. Could have been materials in there, technology looted by the Rebels?

“I took this into my personal memory from the archives before they burned, oh Sultana. I do not know how they moved past the perimeter, when it happened, or even when I noticed your body was gone. Though I am certain I knew at some point, I lost the memory, along with many others as the archives fell.” The archives must have been some sort of long-term memory bank in the physical world. Zephyro seemed to have stored all non-essential data—memories—on it, and when the server got destroyed, he lost most of his memories. From what I understood of data storage, it was a small miracle he even remembered who he was, but I guessed that information was either integral to his system, or he had a smaller backup holding crucial data somewhere else.

I didn’t even begin to think about how that worked. That was Chris’ job.

“All I know,” Zephyro continued, “is that one of the Old Guard recorded this, and they were fickle in their reports, even before they stopped responding altogether. It is a calamity, Sultana, but I suspect they are all feral now.”

“The Old Guard?” I shifted on the throne, feeling restless.

“Yes, Sultana. Old machines built by the Maker. Most of them are little more than beasts, only constrained by the Maker’s mandate.”

I was pretty sure “the Maker” referred to Chris, which meant the Old Guard the defense system they had set up. I noticed I had been gripping the armrests of the throne so hard it hurt, and I let go. If the turrets were still active, then at least the heart of the bunker was semi-safe. That was good. I needed more time to plan.

“Can you show me more of them? The Old Guard?” I asked, trying to see if my hunch was correct.

Zephyro nodded and the picture hanging in the air glitched, then changed to show a video of very sophisticated-looking robot hands opening a large hatch and stepping through. There was a loud alarm—old-school, with frantic bells, like Chris liked to use—and a torrent of bullets shot from one corner of the room. As the robot went down, I caught a glimpse of a jerkily-moving automated turret scanning the cramped corridor with a flickering red light. I recalled the turrets Chris had built to keep us safe in the inner complex, and this was clearly one of them. It looked wrong though, like someone had tried to add some new features and didn’t know how to weld, or where “up” and “forward” was. Needless to say, it did not make me feel any safer. My shoulders started to ache from trying to keep my arms in place.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“The Old Guard guards the holiest chambers, so we never dared to disturb them, but when you went missing, Sultana, I approached them nonetheless and tried to make a deal.”

“Wait, a deal? These are sentient?” I asked.

“Very few of them, but yes. And humbly, I would barely call it sentience. They only want one thing and that is to multiply or grow in strength so they can multiply more effectively. It makes them easy to trade with, but they don't seem to understand their holy purpose.” He made another sweeping motion and more windows opened. Several of them closed again immediately, and some display large error messages and flickered out after a few seconds. Zephyro grunted. Whether in pain or frustration, I could not tell.

“I hope you can forgive us for stepping into the Palace, Sultana, but we needed to know. Dealing with the Old Guard was easy, once I had made contact. For a bit of scrap and a few superconductors, and after verifying my allegiance to your cause, one of them revealed to us the path to your resting place in the chamber of genesis.” Zephyro sounded a little more breathless than before, as if still awestruck by the experience. “When we entered, however, we found it empty. Unfortunately, another Old Guard, most zealous in his defense, attacked us when we set foot in the chamber, and we had to overpower him by showering him with your Blessing, for we did not want to harm him. I hope you will forgive me for squandering your Gift, oh Sultana, but you see, it was well spent! The Old Guard opened up to us, and in its ancient wisdom, your true resting place was revealed. You can not imagine the relief I felt as we emerged and sealed the inner sanctum to keep you safe once more.”

My head was still spinning. It was almost too much information at once, and I still had so many open questions. “Hold up,” I said, massaging my forehead. In passing, I noticed that my hands looked much younger than I remembered. Again I was struck by the color of my skin, like rich caramel. Whose body am I wearing now? No. That was irrelevant.

“What do you mean, ‘true resting place’?”

Zephyro pointed towards the screen in the middle of the cluster hovering before us. It showed the lab, completely covered in dust. The shelves had collapsed, and I could see several bullet holes riddling the walls and casings strewn over the floor. What happened here? A holdout, perhaps? Did those rebel fucks really breach the bunker? And if they had gotten in there, was Chris— There was an electric tension in my chest again, and I forced myself to breathe. The operating chair Chris and I had slapped together for our first test was still dominating the center of the room but it was empty. There was no blood to be seen. No body either, living or otherwise.

I took a deep, shuddering breath of dry, warm air.

“Alright, I see the lab, I see the equipment, I don’t see myself. But you said there was some sort of hidden resting place, right? Where is it?” I forced myself to keep on topic. Chris probably hid us in there, made sure I am safe.

“At first, I did not notice it either, Sultana. It is a secret hidden most intelligently, as befitting your magnificent wisdom. Indeed, it was only your Blessing that gave it away. The Old Guard crave it, you see. They call it ‘The Logic’. Like us, it gives them life and strengthens them, but in their madness, they waste it on frivolities, senseless modifications of little value. They also take more than what is allotted to them by your Grace, which is haram, forbidden.

“This is the wise Old Guard who revealed it to us.” Zephyro continued, and another picture changed to show one of the early model security cameras we had installed in the lab. I remembered attaching it together with Chris, directly above the door. They’d held the ladder while I climbed up because they were afraid of heights. I had to hold the screwdriver in my mouth, and everything had slightly tasted like metal for hours.

The camera had been a clean-looking brass case with a lens when we had installed it together, but now cables, LEDs, uncovered gears, and misshapen computer chips covered it like a fungus. It looked like a mutated old-school movie camera, with lenses sprouting in all directions and a speaker hanging underneath looking like a caricature of a mouth.

“Like many of the Old Guard, it built itself a method to search for ‘Logic’, craving to devour more of it than was allotted to it by your grace. In its case, it was a visual filter.” He nodded toward the screen showing the lab, and it glitched again.

Except it’s not a glitch.

The screen still showed the room in its chaotic half-collapsed battlefield state, but now hundreds and thousands of strands of soft cyan light were swirling around an object in the middle of our view. Several of them formed a bundle of light that led out the door, like one of those long-exposure pictures of passing cars at night.

“What is that?” I asked, breathless.

“As I said, it is a filter to visualize your Blessing, Sultana. And a Blessing it is! I know the Old Guard call it ‘Logic,’ but I also know this is heresy. As you know more than anyone, its presence can be felt anywhere, everywhere. It can not be understood, beyond that it comes from you, and it gives us life. What else can it be but a Blessing, a miracle you delivered onto us from God?”

I barely heard him. My eyes were glued to the picture on the screen, where all the cyan threads converged on the console next to the operating suite. It looked like strands of glowing silk, weaving into larger and larger threads, all channeling toward the middle like being pulled into a loom that can craft the fabric of existence out of light. I still didn’t know what this substance was, but I suspected it was some sort of nano-swarm or something, perhaps a side product of when I advanced memOS. In the end, it didn’t feel important. Not compared to what it funneled into, a lone object in the middle of the picture.

Connected to that console, at the dead center of the vortex of glowing blue light, sat Chris’ old laptop. The first one I made for them. The one where they had glued the crude logo I’d drawn on the top cover.

Zephyro followed my eyes and as I turned to him, disbelieving. He nodded, amazed beyond belief, and also a little sad, like someone remembering a memory they can never truly have again.

“Yes, Sultana, we found you, slumbering securely in the sacred machine. It was a good disguise, and it held for a long time.” He paused, and sighed, closing his hand. The picture flickered out.

“But now I have failed you, and so your safety is fleeting, and your sleep must end.”