The Human Experience

Nine-Quarter P, day 35, 3416.

Lovers say love is forever. Soldiers say allegiance is forever. Helms say thoughts are forever.

But the only thing that is truly forever is death. In death, the loves you held, the allegiances you made, the thoughts and feelings you thought and felt – there’s no proof that they ever existed at all.

Perhaps they never did.

“You need to eat something,” Del said, brandishing the spoon at Star-King Serasta. The man resolutely turned his face away, the muscles in his jaw clenched tight. Just because he couldn’t speak and could barely move didn’t mean he couldn’t be an ass.

Del threw the spoon back into the bowl of soup. “You think I like being your nurse? Look, I know you’re confused, I know you’re frustrated that you can’t do things by yourself, but suck it up already. If you don’t eat, you’ll never regain your strength.”

For a moment the Star-King just glared at her, thoughts simmering with indignation. She realized he wasn’t accustomed to being addressed so informally by a plebeian, much less being told to ‘suck it up,’ but all the bowing and deference and “My Liege” bullshit Jesreal’s people had offered hadn’t yet made him take a bite of food. Right now he wasn’t the Star-King: he was an idiot who wasn’t fighting for his life because he was too proud to let others feed him.

Finally, when Del refused to back down from his defiant gaze, the stubborn man opened his mouth. He had trouble with it, but Del rammed the spoon in anyways.

She smiled as he swallowed the soup as if it was vinegar. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? With some luck soon you’ll be swearing at me left and right for treating you like a toddler.”

Serasta offered a pained grin. His face had filled out a little since he’d regained consciousness, and truth was Del was starting to imagine him as the awe-inspiring figure he’d been. He still slept most of the day, and they were keeping him on liquid foods since he had trouble opening his mouth past what it took to get a spoon inside. Jesreal’s people had him doing intense physical therapy. Sometimes Del heard them arguing over whose turn it was to complete the unpleasant task – Serasta was irritable, confused, and less than cooperative during sessions. Jesreal said he just hated being helpless. He was, supposedly, a nice guy.

And proud. His most strenuous physical therapy wasn’t what he practiced with the therapists – it was when he wheeled himself to the bathroom, swatting away those who came to help him and spending an hour in there at a time, probably struggling to lace up his pants.

Del set the soup bowl on the bedside table when Serasta looked too exhausted to continue. He began nodding off as he usually did after five or more consecutive hours of consciousness, but Del coughed loudly to wake him. “You know,” she said, ignoring his sleepy frown, “your brother was with you when I came to free you. He visited you almost every day.”

Serasta closed his eyes again, pretending to sleep, though his brows were tense.

“And Jesreal says Orcadis restored your thoughts on purpose with the thought-wave detector. That means they planned to wake you. It would’ve been much safer for them to kill you, but they didn’t.”

The Star-King didn’t stir. Del tentatively shook his shoulder. “Extend them the same mercy, Your Grace. They’re ruined anyways. Let them live out the rest of their days in exile.”

No longer able to feign sleep, Serasta snapped his face toward her on the pillow. Tears of rage burned in his eyes. That look was so intense she had to let his shoulder go. It said more than words ever could.

Del rose to her feet, taking up the bowl of soup. “With your permission, My Liege,” she said coldly, bowed, and turned to leave.

Energy washed over her. He was getting better at forming articulate thoughts. She read a question in the wavelengths – a question of loyalty. Why was she protecting Enver and Orcadis if she’d brought them down with her own hand?

Del turned back to him. “That’s simply what I do,” she said. “I protect weak, helpless things.”

The Star-King’s nose wrinkled. He emanated scorn. Somewhere in the ballpark of those bastards are not weak and helpless, she guessed.

“Look.” Del stuffed the tray back on the end table, crouching by the bed so she could be eye-level with the Star-King. “Something doesn’t add up here. I don’t think Orcadis and your brother evacuated in that spaceship because of what I did – you know, stealing you and everything. They can’t stay out in space forever, can they? Jesreal says they haven’t landed at the Delmira receiving base. They’re just...orbiting the planet. They know they’ll have to come back and face your wrath at some point. Why not leave quietly? Why trap themselves in such a conspicuous place? There’s no way they can land in secret.”

At first she’d thought the apocalypse prophecy had suited Orcadis perfectly. He’d probably conjured some story about the Thinkers’ evil apocalypse plans to give himself and Enver an excuse to launch into the safety of space. But it didn’t make sense. Why the spectacle? The Star-King’s abandonment had left the earth in disarray. Vangarde was in anarchy – not a single member of the aristocracy remained to rule. Riots were forming everywhere. Looters had broken into the Iron Keep, the king’s palace. She’d even heard some Thinkers saying levels five and six of Fort Neoma had been reduced to rubble. And of course the empire would be furious. Its government had abandoned it without so much as a word.

Things in Inaultis were almost as bad. The oligarchy had opened up the emergency caves beneath the mountains, playing a controversial lottery to determine who entered. Even Akkút had succumbed to the panic. The Akkh had broadcast a national message claiming that all was well, that they should leave the Vangardian ‘pagans’ to their superstitions and not let their terror become infectious. But the people had seen the leaders of an entire empire pack up and leave the planet based on these religious ‘superstitions.’ It was no wonder they were on edge.

So again Del had to wonder: why not leave quietly? Sure, Enver and Orcadis were the most high-profile people on the planet, but trying to sneak away would surely have been easier than such an elaborate and devastating lie. The Vangardian Empire lay in ruins. The Inaultis had spent billions on stocking and preparing the caves. If Serasta had hated them before, the entire celestial-worshipping world would hate them when it found out its apocalypse was a hoax. They’d be torn apart limb by limb if they ever set foot on earth again. It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t Orcadis. For all his faults, he’d never compromise the planet like this.

Serasta’s dark eyes twinkled. He wasn’t dismissing her concerns. He’d known the two traitors probably better than she had. He knew their grand escapade didn’t make sense.

If...trying run away...why...take soldiers...took noble families...still loyal?

“Exactly!” Del insisted. “Why take all the people who’d turn on them if they found out Enver was a fake? Soldiers, nobles – these people are sworn to you. And Orcadis took all his Helms. It’s almost as if they really did think apocalypse was coming.”

The door burst open and Jesreal stood framed in the doorway, terror dilating in her green eyes under the light of an overhead torch bracket. “They did,” she breathed.

She stumbled toward them, a crumpled parchment in her clenched fist. Del jumped to steady her. “Jesreal, what happened?”

“I doomed them all,” she moaned, forehead against Del’s shoulder. “I was so focused on saving the Infected that I didn’t even think about the Helms! Oh, why? How could he betray me like this?”

“Who betrayed–?”

“Kaed! My son!”

Del pulled back, gazing stunned at Jesreal. Of course Jesreal had been Orcadis’s wife! It was so obvious – whom else had she thought the woman could be? Her own stupidity in the matter shocked her. The chirurgeon frowned as though she couldn’t imagine what Del was gaping at. Torchlight ghosted across her face, making her expression appear even more haunted.

“We were working together to help the Infected,” she explained. “Orcadis forbade him to speak to me, but we’ve been secretly communicating for turns. We’ve been planning this since he got Infected. Well, not this...it wasn’t supposed to be this way!”

Del took Jesreal’s shoulders when the woman began to shake, lowering her on the edge of Serasta’s bed. “From the beginning,” she said quietly.

Jesreal took a deep breath. “We planned to send the Voices to Amaris on Alignment day. Not by sending all the Infected people to Amaris, but by detaching their Voices from their minds and transferring them to another source of radiation. For that reason I slaved to acquire a chunk of the Amaris moon – to bring Amaris to the Infected. My team and I appealed to the Akkh. We showed him the research we’ve compiled on the Amaris moon’s radiation and its properties, we told him we could end the epidemic with some funding. Finally we got permission to go to Amaris and bring back a pure sample of the moon-rock.

“The moonstone we brought back has enough radiation to support thousands of Voices for a brief period. The Voices aren’t stupid – they don’t transfer from people’s minds to the Inaulti rock formations or the Basin, for example, because they know once they use up the radiation there they’ll die. They need mobile hosts – like people – to hop between. But I gained the Infected’s trust. My Voice told the others that my intentions were true. I became the Liberator. I gathered all the Infected and brought them to the Fist, where their Voices could transfer to the moonstone on the eve of Alignment. Then the Voice-laden moonstone was to be loaded into the shuttle, and the shuttle launched on Alignment Day to Amaris. It’s not a solution, but it was the only way I could think of to save the current Infected. Every ten or twenty turns, the Infected would have to be gathered at the Basin, their Voices deposited into a moonstone, and the stone sent to Amaris.”

Jesreal swallowed, rubbed her forehead with a pale hand. “Kaed’s role was to stop Hector from reaching the Basin and telling Orcadis what I’d planned. I feared he’d bomb the Basin if he ever found out where we were hiding. Well, my son did keep Hector from the Basin, but that’s not all he did. He stole the moonstone and replaced it with a fake, then slipped away from the Basin to tell Hector the Thinkers were sending some bombed ship to Amaris. When Hector saw the ship blasting off during the Alignment, he must’ve called Orcadis and told him to prepare for evacuation. Our rocket is headed for Amaris with useless cargo! The real moonstone, the one with thousands of Voices inside of it, is on the Helms’ evacuation ship.”

Del’s head swum from the information. Attack him when he doesn’t expect it, Kaed had told Hector once. So the boy had been swallowing turns of resentment for this one moment of spectacular revenge. “What purpose could that possibly serve?” Del breathed.

“A bigger one than you’d think. The moonstone holds a stupendous amount of radiation, but there are thousands of Voices feeding on it. It’ll only last them a week tops. That’s why they all had to transfer at once, and as close to the launching date as possible – I didn’t want them to run out of radiation and die before the rocket reached Amaris. Now, when the Voices consume the moonstone’s radiation, they will spread through the ship. People will get Infected at a startling rate. Having a single ship saturated with so many Voices will be disastrous. We may see several Voices fighting over one mind. Whereas people usually go catatonic in a turn or so, now it may happen in a few days. These are all the Voices that formed in a decade concentrated into one ship, by the stars!”

Jesreal had to stop and catch her breath, the colour having leeched from her face. Del gave her time, though she remained painfully aware that Jesreal hadn’t quite reached the purpose of all this yet. Turning the Helms into vegetables would accomplish...what, exactly?

“When they realize what happened, they’ll head for Amaris,” Del assured her.

Jesreal shook her head, squeezing the crumpled parchment in her hand. “Kaed blew the engines. He launched all the escape pods! The ship is rotating uselessly around the earth. They’re trapped!”

Her panic spread to Del now. She shot Serasta a nervous glance and found his forehead creased with the same worry. “Why, Jesreal? What was Kaed thinking?”

“For you to understand that, you need to understand what the Voices are. First and foremost, they’re a different manifestation of energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thoughts are no different. Humans form them by combining the brain’s energy with the Amaris radiation. When they are thought, the energy is released into the universe. Regular people aren’t equipped to sense this ‘thought residue.’ Helms are. That’s why they guard their thoughts with their lives. They know a bad thought doesn’t stop existing when it’s no longer in the mind – it exists as energy floating off into the universe. Helms fear this residue can be harvested by others, used against them. That’s what the Voices are. They are loose strings of thought, knitted together with others from all over the world, strings winding and growing until they become conscious themselves. They are almost humans without bodies. Only the Helms can form them, because exposure to large quantities of Amaris’s radiation gives their thoughts something akin to free will. It not only lets you read others’ thoughts – it brings your own thoughts to life.

“Kaed’s reasoning was that without Helms, no more loose thought-strings would be released. Indeed, new Voices will stop forming. The existing ones will continue to survive, but they can be slowly collected and transferred to Amaris, like I was trying to do with this batch. It...it works, but by Delmira’s love, so many people have to die! One thousand Helms and the whole of Vangarde’s aristocracy...”

Hector and Orcadis...

“Jesreal!” Delia jumped with the lightning-strike idea. “The ship I came in: is it equipped to leave the atmosphere?”

“I...I guess so,” Jesreal said, her voice weak from hyperventilation. “Enver’s so paranoid he probably has an emergency route to the Delmira base pre-programmed into every one of his ships.”

“Get it ready.”

“W-We can’t do anything! The ship can only hold five or six at most.”

“Load the ship with rocks from Lady’s Fist.” Del ran her fingers along the dark stone wall, embedded silver flecks glinting in the torchlight. “Get the most radiation-concentrated rocks you can find.”

“It won’t be enough!”

“Maybe not, but it can buy them a little time while you and Orcadis try to fix the engines. Meanwhile you can send a pilot to Amaris for another moonstone.”

“Digging gear...space-suits...it’ll take days to assemble a team to send to Amaris!”

“Maybe, but it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

The technicians had stabilized the ship’s rotation, though the entire thing now ran on emergency power. Fires were still being staunched, the wounded were being treated. Gods knew why. Eventually the ship would fall down to earth, wouldn’t it?

“Your knowledge of astrophysics is lacking, Mr. Savage,” Belred said when he heard him voicing his concerns to Queran. “The ship is in orbit around the earth, like the moons. Do they fall to earth? Essentially they are falling, but their high velocity keeps them stable. Without air resistance and an atmosphere to slow them down, they remain as you see them.”

“You can take your knowledge to Pyrrhus’s Pits, for all it’ll help us now,” Hector snapped. He shivered, breath leaving his lips in puffs of steam despite the residual heat from the fires just put out. Orcadis was conserving power. Just prolonging their goddamned deaths. And to think Hector had specifically requested his father to be brought on the ship!

Belred allowed a tolerant smile. “We are working on reviving the engines. It may take time, but I assure you provisions will last for at least a quarter, even with the greenhouse gone. The ship is well stocked, and we’ve sealed off all dangerous sectors. There is no danger now. We’ll be off to Delmira as soon as this unfortunate accident is behind us.”

“Unfor – Delmira? Accident? Your fucking knowledge is lacking, Belred! Kaed didn’t do this by acc–!”

A large hand clamped down on his shoulder. Hector turned, flinching when he saw the angry red burns down one side of Orcadis’s face. His entire left arm had been bandaged, and ointment shone on the more minor singes down his abdomen, visible through his open tunic. There was something else, too. Were those scars down his front claw marks?

Orcadis led him down the corridor, away from Belred and Queran. “You do not want anarchy on this ship, Hector,” he said quietly.

Hector? Since when? “You mean you didn’t tell them? Are you insane? We can’t still go to Delmira when there’s no apocalypse!”

“Why not? You were always an outcast. They all were. Every Helm came to me because for one reason or another society shunned them. We never belonged, Hector. Not in this world. Delmira is...quiet. I think I’d like a quiet life.”

Sweet mother of suns, he’s finally lost it. Hector shrugged Orcadis’s arm away, ignoring his pained winces. “You can’t just run away from society. We’ll die at that godsforsaken lunar base, Orcadis. And what happens when everyone notices Amaris hasn’t blown up?”

“We’ll say the Radiant Thinkers’ bomb failed. Many will want to leave, to go back to earth, but it will be too late then. The ship won’t have the fuel for a trip back to earth.”

“There’s no way–!”

Orcadis wheeled, his eyes burning embers. “There is no going back, Hector,” he hissed. “We abandoned Vangarde. They’ve probably elected a new government by now. If we set foot on earth again, we’ll be food for the dogs. You don’t understand. The Star-King and I, we’ve...made mistakes. Unforgivable mistakes.”

You mean like being responsible for the Voices? Wasn’t that what Kaed had said, that without the Helms Voices would stop forming?

“So you’re going to make these thousands of people pay for your mistakes.” It wasn’t a question.

Orcadis looked away.

A man’s screams grew audible down the hall. They got louder, until finally the young noble burst from around the corner. His terror-brimmed eyes locked on Orcadis and he darted behind the Greathelm, clutching his bandaged arm without mercy.

Orcadis’s face didn’t register pain even as blood seeped through his bandages. “Marquis La’Strom?” he inquired, patience evening his tone.

“V-Voices! I heard Voices near my chambers!”

Stunned, Hector reeled. “There are no Infected on board, it’s impossible.” Well, except for me, and I haven’t heard my Voice since boarding the ship...

“Perhaps people were speaking outside your room, Marquis.”

The nobleman shook his head, releasing Orcadis to tug at the high-collared shirt beneath his vest. “These were in my head. They’re Voices, I tell you! Do something!”

Orcadis’s large chest filled with a suppressed sigh. He’d always hated nobles. “I’ll look into it, Marquis.” And he swept off in the direction the young man had come. Hector followed, curious.

They didn’t get more than a few paces before being nearby bowled over by a torrent of fleeing soldiers.

“What is the meaning of this?” Orcadis barked, but nobody heard him over the hands they held suctioned over their ears. The Greathelm looked at Hector, frowning. “Really, for trained soldiers to scatter like that? Embarrassing.”

Well, when it came down to the Voices, everyone ran. What good were spears and swords?

Orcadis and Hector took the hall faster, past a fork in the path, making their way toward the sound of panicking voices. They emerged into the lesser nobles’ refectory. Shards from plates littered the floor, silk tablecloths were askew and blotted with fine foods, decanters bled wine on the floor. The few people still inside swatted the air in a frenzy, shaking themselves like crazed bulls trying to get bullfighters off their backs. In their panic they crashed into tables and tripped over chairs that were nailed down.

Hector stepped inside. The wall of Voices hit him like a physical force. He staggered back, heart seizing even though he knew he was already Infected. Surely it would be fine to go in there?

Orcadis pushed past him and strode into the room, breaking through the Voice-wall without so much as a twitch. One young boy sat huddled in the corner, sobbing. Orcadis flung him over one shoulder, grabbed a shrieking noblewoman by the hand, and took them from the refectory. Hector tried to push back his senseless fear. He was already Infected! What did he have to lose?

So he forced himself into the Voice-clogged air. To his horror, Voices coiled around his brain like so many leeching snakes, layers of them wrapping one over the other, squeezing his mind until he could feel the thoughts bleeding from him. It wasn’t like the Swarm that had gotten him Infected – this was so concentrated than he couldn’t hear individual Voices. There was only a deafening, mind-numbing buzz that seemed to devour him.

Slowly it receded. The death-grip on his mind abated and he remembered himself with a jolt, brain throbbing so hard he clutched his temples to keep it from exploding. Hector gasped, surroundings morphing back into existence before his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d forgotten to breathe. He found himself leaning against the wall, the refectory doors shut before him, Orcadis holding him up by the shoulder.

There were more Voices in that room than Hector had imagined possible. “You...why didn’t they a-affect...?”

Orcadis tapped the side of his head. “More radiation. Now come on – doors won’t hold them forever.”

Hector could barely think as he stumbled back up the corridor behind Orcadis. He felt as if someone had administered a massive jolt of electricity to his brain, leaving it stunned. In those few seconds, those parasites had done more damage than his single Voice had done in a P-turn. His head still pounded, but thankfully, mercifully, nothing seemed to have stuck.

The rest of the refectory’s occupants had scattered, all except the weeping child Orcadis still carried in his arms. He set the boy down against a wall once they were a safe distance from the refectory, then gently took his shoulders to make him look up. “Are you hurt, child?”

“G-Greathelm,” the boy wailed, his eyes swollen and desperate. “There are four of them i-in my head! They’re telling me bad things! They say you made the Voices!”

Orcadis released him like he was diseased. Hector felt the ship’s chill pressing deeper into his bones.

When he turned around he saw a group of Iron Helms goggling wide-eyed at their Fist.