darkness. In so doing I might find— must find—some reason for my existence, something greater than myself; something to serve. I was no longer human—indeed, some might think I had more in common with the energumens and other heteroclites than I did with my former ancestry. And yet something in me sickened at the thought of the world being wrenched from mankind and given over to its monstrous children. I turned to the nemosyne, took her shining metal hands within my own, and squeezed them, hard enough that their outer casings crackled like thin ice beneath a boot.
“If you do not consent, I will take you by force, Nefertity. Even within this shell I am still an Aviator. I know how to disable replicants and reprogram them. Then you really would be nothing but a hollow unit; but I would need nothing more than that for my purposes.”
She pulled away from me. I let her go. Where my steel hand had grasped her, her delicate outer skin glowed cobalt; but my human hand had left a black shadow upon her translucent membrane. Her voice was low as she replied, “Even with Metatron, the Aviator Imperator could not control the entire world.”
I laughed: a single sharp retort like a branch snapping. “I have no desire to rule the world, Nefertity—”
And I raised my metal hand until I could see my face reflected in the palm’s silver crater. A crimson mask of smooth plasteel, distorted into the semblance of my former, human visage. Only the eyes remained of that soft strata of flesh: eyes pale as melting snow, the blue all but leached from them even as all compassion and frailty had been leached from my soul. I spread my fingers until I could gaze out between them, past where Nefertity turned away in disgust; past where the first cold rays of sunlight struck the harsh earth. In the half-light three fetches lurched from shadow to shadow, shambling back to their crude homes. Miles distant, fougas would be returning to their hangars after seeding the countryside with viral rain. Somewhere miles above us the energumens rewove the tapestries their human parents had begun.
“It is a world that has already been twisted and burned and poisoned beyond all hope. It is a world already made in my own image,” I said at last, and lowered my metal hand. “I fear it is a world that is ready to die.”
And I cried out, a wailing shriek that sent the last night creatures scuttling into their holes, and shook the branches of the huisache like a cold wind. Then I turned away, my thoughts falling once more upon that game I had played decades before with Aidan Harrow and the others at the NASNA Academy. I knew now what I had not known then, that there was something that I feared—
The immortality I had been cursed with: the aeons that lay before me while I lived on and watched the world, my poisoned yet enduring world, drop from the faltering hands of humanity into ever deeper horror and decay.
3
Children of the Revolution
I N A STIM CHAMBER on HORUS colony Helena Aulis, the energumen named Kalaman sat and dreamed of the Malayu Archipelago.
It was not a dream, precisely. The hammock with its net of sensory enhancers covered him, an iridescent cocoon that birthed dreams like moths. All around him the air shimmered with holofiled images of white empty sands, shallow water the color of a bunting’s wing, coils of brown and green and yellow vines like the scaled ropes of the venomous fer-de-lance, a serpent not native to the Archipelago but so aggressive that it had long since exterminated its smaller and less assertive cousins. The entry to the chamber had been programmed to form a waterfall that spilled into a pool on the floor and filled the room with a sound like heavy rain. The smell of hot sand tickled Kalaman’s nostrils, and the pungent odor of leaves rotting in the water-filled and rusting body cylinder of a server left behind when its masters fled the island for the relative safety of Jawa.
Here on the HORUS colony of Helena
“If you do not consent, I will take you by force, Nefertity. Even within this shell I am still an Aviator. I know how to disable replicants and reprogram them. Then you really would be nothing but a hollow unit; but I would need nothing more than that for my purposes.”
She pulled away from me. I let her go. Where my steel hand had grasped her, her delicate outer skin glowed cobalt; but my human hand had left a black shadow upon her translucent membrane. Her voice was low as she replied, “Even with Metatron, the Aviator Imperator could not control the entire world.”
I laughed: a single sharp retort like a branch snapping. “I have no desire to rule the world, Nefertity—”
And I raised my metal hand until I could see my face reflected in the palm’s silver crater. A crimson mask of smooth plasteel, distorted into the semblance of my former, human visage. Only the eyes remained of that soft strata of flesh: eyes pale as melting snow, the blue all but leached from them even as all compassion and frailty had been leached from my soul. I spread my fingers until I could gaze out between them, past where Nefertity turned away in disgust; past where the first cold rays of sunlight struck the harsh earth. In the half-light three fetches lurched from shadow to shadow, shambling back to their crude homes. Miles distant, fougas would be returning to their hangars after seeding the countryside with viral rain. Somewhere miles above us the energumens rewove the tapestries their human parents had begun.
“It is a world that has already been twisted and burned and poisoned beyond all hope. It is a world already made in my own image,” I said at last, and lowered my metal hand. “I fear it is a world that is ready to die.”
And I cried out, a wailing shriek that sent the last night creatures scuttling into their holes, and shook the branches of the huisache like a cold wind. Then I turned away, my thoughts falling once more upon that game I had played decades before with Aidan Harrow and the others at the NASNA Academy. I knew now what I had not known then, that there was something that I feared—
The immortality I had been cursed with: the aeons that lay before me while I lived on and watched the world, my poisoned yet enduring world, drop from the faltering hands of humanity into ever deeper horror and decay.
3
Children of the Revolution
I N A STIM CHAMBER on HORUS colony Helena Aulis, the energumen named Kalaman sat and dreamed of the Malayu Archipelago.
It was not a dream, precisely. The hammock with its net of sensory enhancers covered him, an iridescent cocoon that birthed dreams like moths. All around him the air shimmered with holofiled images of white empty sands, shallow water the color of a bunting’s wing, coils of brown and green and yellow vines like the scaled ropes of the venomous fer-de-lance, a serpent not native to the Archipelago but so aggressive that it had long since exterminated its smaller and less assertive cousins. The entry to the chamber had been programmed to form a waterfall that spilled into a pool on the floor and filled the room with a sound like heavy rain. The smell of hot sand tickled Kalaman’s nostrils, and the pungent odor of leaves rotting in the water-filled and rusting body cylinder of a server left behind when its masters fled the island for the relative safety of Jawa.
Here on the HORUS colony of Helena
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