PART FOUR
> “One of them is Wisdom. One of them is Strength. One is Will, and one is Transformation. Without them, I see no Glory.”
- forgotten fragment of the prophecies of Ah Jun
----------------------------------------
The Death Architect gazed at the frigid depths of outer space.
To those who were ignorant, space was nothingness. Her asteroid was so distant from any star, its rocky surface resembled the barest hint of a shadow. It blended with the emptiness beyond.
The temporal stream was likewise invisible.
She had programmed a glowing fringe in her display to suggest the drifting rift in the fabric of space-time, coded to resemble something like an aurora borealis. That gave her the ability to track its motions. The universe was in motion. Galactic arms and globular clusters and solar systems all had their own motion, and there was cosmic radiation to consider, as well as the spin and pull effects of gravity, mass, and velocity. If one wanted to use a temporal stream, one needed to pinpoint its ever-changing location in all dimensions, with accuracy down to the nanosecond. One needed to enter at an exact trajectory and within a specific range of velocities if one wanted to reemerge in the correct place. Otherwise? Those who failed suffered immediate and crushing non-existence.
She had readied all of the mathematical formulas needed to target this nearby temporal stream. She had to adjust her calculations as the cosmic radiation and deep space medium changed.
The Death Architect is great.
The Death Architect is mighty.
The Death Architect is the best (the best) THE BEST.
Distant melodies sang inside her head. She had never needed the affirmations of idiots, yet her loyalists praised her. They reached out to anyone who shared their devotion.
And they attracted more idiots.
Many Torth yearned for civilization (the Megacosm). They refused to join the Conqueror as kneeling penitents. They survived in small bands, or in large survivalist groups, and they wanted their old comfortable lives back.
The Death Architect has plans!
The Death Architect is wiser than the Conqueror!
The Death Architect is guaranteed to win!
Some rogues refused to join that chorus. Some Torth refused to take orders from a pubescent child, no matter how smart she was. Others simply disliked the Death Architect. They thought she was too secretive. Some preferred to place their trust in thought leaders who habitually revealed their ideas. Several million followed the Clement Serpent, a Servant of All who had rallied a lot of survivors on Tenth Ocean. More than ten million followed the Null Distraint, adding ships to her rogue armada.
But most survivors were tired of running.
Every time they scanned for fellow survivors, they sensed that the cult of the Death Architect was bigger and stronger than the last time they had checked. Her worshippers swirled with certainty.
She is not marred by anger, fear,
love, friendship,
or other slave concerns!
She is perfection incarnate!
Various rogues wondered if they dared resist such a smart leader. What if they would miss the opportunity of a lifetime?
So they joined the death cult.
In duos or trios, in tens or even in thousands, they joined her faction. Distant Torth clicked into orbit around strong minds who, in turn, orbited the massive mind of the Death Architect. Every day, every hour, brought more.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
And at last, they no longer felt like a loose collection of skeptical individuals. They were a constant thrum that never slept. They shared a unified purpose.
They were a nation.
They were becoming greater than a minicosm. They were her Necrocosm.
Move that magnetic rocket nozzle to here, the Death Architect directed one skeletal branch. Destroy that streamship, she directed another twig. Do not give the enemies a chance to get suspicious.
She had eighty million hands and eyes.
She inhabited hundreds of hub solar systems.
She was a sentient version of the galaxy, more aware of the cosmos than anyone who had ever existed before her. She tracked death launchers on a superluminal network. She oversaw factories of killer drone swarms that would serve her whims. She made it her purpose to study astrophysics and celestial forces as no one else had ever legally been permitted to do, until now.
Relativity didn’t matter. The limitations of time and space and distance were mere inconveniences. Just as with the reconstituted Necrocosm, all of her death launchers were tied together in a quantum matrix of “now.” They would shoot their payloads at the exact same instant, no matter where they were in the galaxy.
DEATH TO THE ENEMIES! her orbiters sang as they followed her myriad of murky instructions.
We trust you, Great Mind!
When will You strike down the Conqueror and his forces?
The Death Architect wished she could allow some displeasure to dribble out of her mind. Her orbiters should never question her or speculate about her purpose. The small-minded fools ought to know better.
But she felt nothing.
Anyway, the future was preordained. She had ordained it.
Soon.
That was all she gave them.
Then she dipped out of her frail and newborn Necrocosm in order to think freely.
Her nemesis, the Conqueror, was crippled by his slave-like fondness for people. Cherise. Varktezo. Kessa. The boy Twin. The girl Twin. The Climbing Storm. The Pink Screwdriver. The Shrewd Awareness. Azhdarchidae. Abhaga. The Shapeshifter. The Giant. And so many other idiots. The supposedly victorious super-genius was collecting quite a harem of obligations.
He would never unshackle himself from all those obligations.
He was like a rich Blue Rank weighed down by too many jewels and slaves. Ownership could become a burden. Even if the Conqueror deduced the Death Architect’s ultimate plan, his so-called friends would slow his thoughts and deeds. They would give him too many excessive variables to consider.
And his time would run out.
The Death Architect took a moment to appreciate the spartan minimalism of her lair. She’d had the foresight to reinforce abandoned rigs and stations with black titanium hulls, and to protect them with mirrors and traps. This small fortress used to be an abandoned mining rig. Its water recycler was inefficient. There were few lights. No air fresheners. No luxuries. The quarters were cramped.
But from afar, the old rig was nearly impossible to spot, hidden within the dark crevice of an asteroid. It floated in a vast field of similar rocks.
Not a single other sapient knew about this lair. Whenever the Death Architect wanted a shipment of supplies, she used superluminal coms to deliver an encrypted map to a worshipful pilot. Once the pilot delivered cargo to the intake receptacle of her hideaway, she released her battlebeasts into that airlock, so they could hunt and kill and eat the pilot. The Necrocosm was too fragile to endure death screams, let alone to probe the secrets of a dying mind.
She would do it again for her next shipment.
The Conqueror wasn’t going to find her.
Her battlebeasts chewed in the corner cell. They were so hungry, they were reduced to gnawing on bones. They had already eaten the last of the experimental albinos.
Ugly noises did not irritate the Death Architect. Although she would never admit it in public, she did not actually comprehend the difference between ugliness and prettiness, or good versus bad. Why tag raw data with value judgments? Weren’t judgments inherently worthless?
Data was neither bad or good. It just existed.
And everything was just data.
She provided for her battlebeasts by feeding them cargo pilots and the remains of scientific experiments. That was expedient. But they were hungry again, so she needed to order another delivery.
Unless she decided to end the universe right now?
The Death Architect lowered her eyelids and fixed her gaze upon the faraway temporal stream. She stopped breathing. She went perfectly still.
Biometric sensors measured the dilation of her pupils and the expansion and contraction of her chest. That data was conveyed, through superluminal relays, to the death launchers.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Sleep would not set off the chain reactions meant to destroy all of creation. But perfect stillness would. Deathly stillness. When she died, everything in the universe would be unmade. Everything and everyone would follow her into death.
Four seconds.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight…
The Death Architect purposely shifted her gaze and lost her stillness.
It was tempting to wait out the ten seconds to end it all right now, but she was not quite ready. Not yet. Her killer drones were nowhere near delivery. Her death launchers were not all fully rigged or properly tested.
Anything less than perfection would open up a possibility that the Giant could flicker across the galaxy and stop the ultradense payloads.
She still had a little more work to do.
The Death Architect ascended into her Necrocosm, where millions of minds swirled around hers, fawning, eager to help her achieve perfection on a project they were unable to comprehend.
Soon, she assured her multitudes. Soon You will All know what I am working on.