The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) by Richard Fox Page B

success in a sea of failure. If this one lost coherency like the others, he could always make another copy, but the scientist at the Minder’s core hated inefficiency.
    Night fell over the laboratory. Keeper appeared as a star-filled nebula stretched across everything above Minder.
    +Report.+
    Great success, master. After much trial and error, I can access the primitive’s overt memories and will have the blacked-out segments recovered in the next two rotations through a parallel reconstruction and synaptic fusion. My models show 99.999% certainty of success.
    +You annoy me with projections?+
    The distribution of the primitive’s memories is chaotic, inefficient, and laughable by the standards of perfection attained by our transition to photonic existence. To fully exploit this resource…I must engage in direct contact.
    +You will be erased once the mission is complete.+
    As is our law. But, given that this is a scan and not an actual member of a polluting species, perhaps an exception—
    +Erased.+
    Yes, master. The next phase begins forthwith. I will quarantine myself from the other Minders…oh, you’ve already done it. Thank you.
    Keeper vanished.
    The Minder floated toward the last fully functional scan and spun around on its axis.
    You had better be worth the end of my immortality.
     
    ****
     
    Torni opened her eyes and found herself in a sunlit glade. The smell of pollen and the chill of a nearby snow-fed brook washed over her. A white robe covered her body as her bare feet played in moist grass.
    Wind rustled through tall birch trees. A dove flew into the air from a tall branch.
    She remembered this…a summer spent in Falun with cousins.
    “Is this to your liking?”
    Torni whirled around, her hands up high to guard from attack, her body settled with knees bent, muscles taut, her instinct to fight triggering a cold burst of adrenaline through her system.
    A man in his mid-twenties stood before her, clad in the same white robe. Fair hair and sapphire blue eyes accompanied a gentle smile.
    “What is this? Where am I?” Torni asked.
    “Your mind often comes here. It is a source of comfort, relaxation. But judging by your autonomic response to my presence, I see this location isn’t helpful,” he said.
    “You have exactly five seconds to start making sense or I will beat you bloody.”
    “Yours is a…delightful…species.” His lips pulled into a slight sneer, then broadened into a smile. “But you deserve an apology. You fell victim to a terrible misunderstanding in our drone programming, one we are just beginning to correct.”
    “You’re…Xaros?” Torni felt the blood drain from her face.
    “I am no more one of those drones than you are a worm,” he said. “After your ship, the Breitenfeld I believe, visited Anthalas, it triggered a contingency program. The human presence on Anthalas was impossible without the ability to travel faster than light. Examining local space around that planet after your—and the Toth’s—departure revealed you used wormhole technology. Very dangerous wormhole technology.”
    “What? Where the hell am I?” Torni dropped her arms and spun around, looking for some kind of escape. There was a cabin…over the brook and next to a well. She ran to the sound of the running water. Her feet pounded the grass and her lungs burned as she sprinted onward, but the tree line got no closer.
    “Torni,” the man said and she felt the tension gripping her chest ease away. She turned around and found him in the same place. “We have much to discuss.
    “I attempted this interaction many times before. Yours is the first not to fail to psychosis or de-coherence.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    He raised his hands up to his head and took a step toward her.
    “I am the Minder, and I need you to help me save what’s left of humanity.”
     
    ****
     
    Minder and Torni sat in the grass, he with his hands wrapped around his knees, she pulling tiny weeds from the soil