Chương 44: Part 44 - Final

David spun through the void, feeling plagued with the sensation of movement even as he ran up against an utter lack of anything to move through. The space around him was a flickering storm lit with brief flashes from the shattered network of minds calling to each other, reaching out in vain for the scattered wisps of their former self. He took inventory. He was here, which was good, and he seemed relatively intact.

He tried reaching out as he had done before, sending his mind questing along the network to brush against others - but at the barest contact he was thrown back violently, his head swimming with the shock of their alien thoughts. Was this what Jesri had shielded them against, papering over the gap between them so that they could think freely? Abandoning the network for now, he sent out feelers along network paths.

The loosed minds flowed and jostled in a chaotic turbulence, never touching or drawing near to each other. In the distance, far along one path, he saw a titanic entity sweeping down the crowded route to devour the lost souls too slow to recognize the danger and flee. The Gestalt, cleaning up the mess. Anger flared in his chest, followed by fear. He wouldn't go out like this. It wasn't over for the resistance yet, but he needed a space to regroup and solve the problem of the network.

He fled away from the devourer, racing along little-used paths until he found himself reaching beyond the physical pathways of the Gestalt's shell. He dredged up old memories from their dusty bins in the back of his mind, working what external network links remained to try and find a quiet spot to think amid the carnage. Much to his surprise he found one across a weak bridge of a connection, a tiny slice of simulated reality with a single mote of agitated consciousness drifting within it.

He approached it cautiously, careful not to get too close, but there was something different and compelling about the bright flare before him that he found irresistible. Tentatively he stretched out towards it - and was nearly bowled over by a hammerblow of memory and emotion. He remembered everything he wasn't supposed to remember. The escape from the Gestalt, waking up as one of the Beta group. The excitement of the first Gamma deployments and the horror at seeing his fellow self descend into raving madness.

Long years of solitude, drifting between stations until finally he found a memory he had seen from the other side - two wandering Valkyrie, finally making their way into a disused theater on Nicnevin. Simultaneously, he realized, there was a part of him that stood marveling in wonder at his life within the Gestalt's simulation. It looked on with fascinated horror at his depression after sending the Beta team away and rejoiced at his eventual rebound into a directorship at Naval Intelligence.

His tumultuous early retirement, nervous evenings feeling people out for a spot in the new resistance, endless lonely nights of stress, fear and bitter resolve. It had been him, he realized. Like two drops of water quivering closer until they touched, the long-lost shards of his mind had merged with violent enthusiasm. He was neither Alpha nor Zeta anymore, but David - and as such, he could now see clearly out of the battered eyes of the Grand Design.

He saw Tarl and Tiln in their frantic dance, being enclosed by the remaining Emissaries as they shook the illusions from their eyes and woke with killing intent. He saw the rage of Apollyon's sun in the full spectrum, from gamma to radio - and then, masked behind the furious beacon of the sun, a wave of signals pulsing from dozens of points in space.

Wheels clicked into place in David's head as he drew upon his knowledge of the Grand Design, using its remaining sensors to harvest the incoming signals, refine them, route them forward to the short-range receivers in the Gestalt's shell- And, all at once, the command protocol overrides that the resistance had been broadcasting were connected. David grimaced as his little corner of the network was blasted with an avalanche of light and noise, the sum total of the distributed resistance focusing on a single point.

Pain resonated from hundreds of confused, lost minds ramming into each other in blind fear and panic - but, as they rampaged senselessly, some did not recoil from each other. They touched, and in touching became a single greater mote of light that opened its eyes, looked around… and realized. David, too, was assaulted by a deluge of memory and feeling. His mind raced with heat and cold as the radiating spokes of his life's possibilities joined together at the core of his self.

He remembered each one and every one, he loved all of his lovers and mourned each of his losses. The hard grit of sorrow and regret washed through him along with the bright fire of camaraderie and love - and when the fire burned through him he was left as David, alone and legion. He looked around and saw the others slowly drawing themselves together, beginning to look questioningly in his direction. A hundred twists of thought congealed into a single purpose as David created a space for them to see and be seen.

A well-appointed conference room took shape, the red sky of a Martian dust storm peeking through a high window. Around the table stood Helene, Deepti, Chris and Yetide, each seeming to shift uncomfortably in appearance until finally settling on a midpoint that seemed to each to be constraining, too small for what they had now become.

"Friends," David said, his voice ringing with the barest hint of an echoing chorus.

"We have one last job to do." From within the many-faceted form of his being he withdrew a shard of something foreign - something else. A memory burned inside, one of an awkward teenage girl fumbling her way through a date in a bar, a fresh-faced Valkyrie attempting to talk her way into a slavers' hall. The memory smoldered low, and David gently tipped a portion of its embers into Deepti's cupped hands. She gasped in shock, then laughter rang from her like a clear bell as she relived the experiences.

Helene and Chris followed, chuckling and shaking their heads, while Yetide merely smiled mysteriously and nodded. David reached out tentatively through them through the memory, feeling their minds touch feather-light through the haze of Jesri's fragmented remembrances.

"Now," David said, resolve burning in a hundred echoes of his voice, "let's go get the rest." Anja's eyes didn't move from the blank display, the thin coating of dust on the screen now streaked with teardrops. The sirens continued to wail in discordant chorus with the disbelief in her mind. Jesri. Jesri was gone. She had let her sister die. She was the last of the Valkyrie, and she had failed in everything she set out to do. Grief twisted within her, and she convulsed deeper into the shadows of her mind.

Sink, sink, like a stone in the river. Sink into the depths where it's cool and still. The sirens quieted and the red lights dimmed, retreating to the small corner of Anja's mind that could still bear their presence. A sharp crack and a staggering burst of pain tore her back to the surface, and she raised her hand reflexively to cover the small imprint of an exoskeleton hand blossoming on her cheek.

"For fuck's sake, Anja!", Rhuar yelled.

"Wake up! This is not the time for-" She reached up and caught his exoskeleton as he drew the hand back for another slap, glaring at him with murderous, tearstained eyes. A shudder of fear raced across Rhuar's expression, but he tore his hand out of her grasp and glared at her with raw determination.

"Do it later," he said.

"Right now, we need to leave." Anja stared back at him for a long moment, then shook her head.

"My place is here," she said quietly.

"The last of creation of humanity on the last hope of humanity, both for nothing."

"Bullshit," Rhuar spat.

"Come on, don't give me this depressed crap. You're Anja Tam, you're scary as fuck! I've seen you tear through small armies with your bare hands! Is this how you go out? Moping in your damn chair?" She shook her head and gave him a sad smile.

"You should leave," she said.

"The Leviathan is still in the hangar. Take it and go." Rhuar gripped her arm firmly and looked her in the eye with a fierce expression.

"I'm not leaving you to die like this," he said, a plea edging into the anger in his voice.

"Please come with me." Anja reached out to ruffle his fur, smiling when he jerked his head to the side in irritation.

"All right. I will not die like this," she said, sitting up in her chair while an odd light played in her eyes.

"Thanks for helping me, Rhuar." He blinked in surprise at her sudden reversal.

"Great," he said uncertainly.

"Let's get going."

"I will not leave, either," Anja said firmly, tapping commands into her array of consoles.

"I said my place was here, and I meant it. But I will not wait for the Gestalt to finish me off. If they want the Grand Design, they can have it - right in the nearest major network cluster."

"Um," Rhuar said, blinking in alarm as the ship's engines began to spin back up.

"Anja, you don't have to-""It will only take a few minutes," she said, her eyes glittering.

"You can stay with me, Rhuar. But if you want to leave, you should run." Rhuar hesitated for a few moments of uncertainty as the engines roared louder, then ran into the bridge lift. Trelir lingered in the abandoned space, watching the death throes of the humans' nascent network of minds. The shattered pieces drifted aimlessly across the network, violently repelled by each other in the absence of Jesri's central influence. He reflected that he had rather enjoyed her company, violent and crude as she sometimes was.

It was rare that an organic developed the capacity for interesting conversation, much less to the extent that Jesri had displayed. And her efforts at Confluence! Nevermind that she had the ability to attempt it at all, but it had been surprisingly successful to boot. He shook his head, delighting in the sheer physicality of the gesture. Despite it all, he would miss humans. Trelir stood and prepared to dismiss the simulation, but as he did so a slight oddity manifested in his awareness.

A ripple moved through the remnants of the human network, causing them to twist and realign in concordance with some unseen central factor. A discontinuity appeared across the room from him, dark fissures in reality spreading from a single point that twisted and spread into a multi-limbed creature of shadow and bent light.

He recoiled from it as the reflexes built into his temporary Ysleli form took hold at the sight of something so wrong, but that instinctual revulsion was nothing compared to what he felt when the shadow creature spoke.

"Wwwwwwhhh," it groaned, twisting its form into an upright posture.

"Whhheeee. Rrrrrrrrrrr." Trelir planted his feet and glared at it, ashamed of himself for succumbing to the brute impulses of his borrowed form.

"What is this?", he demanded.

"I have no patience left for mindlessness. If you intend to speak, then speak!" The figure twisted, its form flowing to become disturbingly like Trelir's as it examined him, then shrinking and filling out into a somewhat generic human body. It stumbled, then caught itself on a chair and stood upright to glare at him with savage intensity. When it opened its mouth, Trelir could not help but flinch again at the sound that emerged.

"WE ARE."

"What is this?", he hissed again, disgust dripping from his voice.

"Yet another useless display of resistance? Will you make us waste yet more of our resources to no end? Why? Why? What will you gain, once you have been consigned to oblivion?", he spat, his voice rising to a shout at the end.

"Why can you not simply acknowledge when you are beaten?" The figure seemed to mull over his words, its figure morphing and twisting disconcertingly as it did so. Trelir felt a spike of anomalous rage as it stood there like rippling shadow, and he took a step forward with blazing eyes.

"You. Cannot. Win," he hissed venomously.

"You are not capable of contesting our dominance. You never were." He spun and stalked back from it, looping around the low table to sneer at it from another angle.

"And yet you continue to torment us with your amateur attempts at Confluence, never realizing how far below us you sit," he scoffed.

"Do you think it's something that can just happen? That you can throw any gutter-born mix of supposedly sentient trash into a pile and call it Confluence? It requires centuries of preparation, generations of careful effort and deep sacrifices." He jabbed a finger at the shadow, his hand hovering inches in front of its face.

"You disrespect the efforts of all who worked so hard to create the true Confluence with your mockery," he seethed.

"There is not one of you, not a single one, who could attain the same heights that we have reached. None of you have the strength to give what must be given to reach that place." The shadow convulsed and rippled once more, and Trelir jerked his hand back in revulsion. He turned his back and prepared again to dismiss the simulated space." SHE DID." Trelir wheeled around to face the creature, his hands balled into fists.

"What?", he hissed. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"SHE GAVE. SHE GAVE US EVERYTHING. ALL OF HER LIFE. ALL OF HER SELF."

"For all the good it did her!", Trelir shouted.

"She bet everything on a game she couldn't win! On a game you were never even truly playing, she gambled all of your lives. And for what? To create you, you sad, broken thing," he screamed, flinging his hand outward at the shadow.

"What can you do but writhe and twist and wait for death?"

"WE CAN GIVE IT BACK." Trelir opened his mouth to retort, but stopped to watch in horror as the higher part of his mind finally broke free of his biological rage to see what was happening in the network. It was vast, it was magnificent - it was beautiful. The motes of light swirled in concert once more, flowing and twisting around a pattern that only they could fathom. Each bore a small shard, a twinkling drop of memory and mind that dripped from them like liquid starlight.

It collected between them in rivulets, merging into larger and larger droplets until a pillar of radiant light grew up from within their dancing waves. Trelir could feel the intensity of that pillar as he had felt very few things before. It stood like a rod of adamant and lightning, too intense to contemplate for more than an instant. He stood disbelieving as the motes of light spiraled around the pillar tighter and faster, a liquid flow of rushing energy - and then they streamed into the pillar in a single moment.

The shock of their merging jolted Trelir into an insensate daze for a moment, and when he recovered he was standing in the small room once more. Jesri Tam stood across from him, examining their unfinished chess game. She reached down daintily and advanced a white pawn to the back row, swapping in her captured queen.

"How?", he rasped, disbelieving.

"You died. We killed you. I killed you."

"You did," Jesri said sadly, her voice strangely resonant.

"Jesri is dead." Trelir searched for a response, only finding one after several seconds.

"And so you are…?"

"Jesri," she answered, giving him a coy smile.

"The Jesri they knew. That I knew," she amended, shaking her head.

"I gave it to them so they - we! - could understand. Then her friends got everyone to give it back so we could understand each other again. And now we understand really well, since we're all acting like her - um, me!" She ran her fingers through her hair and gave Trelir an apologetic look.

"Sorry, my existence is confusing right now."

"You'll receive no argument from me," he said, pacing carefully to look at her from another angle. He was gripped with immense curiosity about this new phenomenon, but the instincts of his Ysleli form were vibrating with the thrill of danger.

"What are you planning?", he asked tentatively.

"Hmm," Jesri said, standing on her toes.

"I'd like to exist," she chirped, giving him a sunny smile before examining her feet.

"Existing is an experience."

"That's… nice," Trelir offered uncertainly. Jesri snapped her head up to stare at him with a haunted look, her eyes like infinite, placid water.

"Oh no," she said with soft, horrified realization.

"No, no. It's not nice at all. What I have to do, what we have to do to exist. What you did to exist." He felt a chill at her sudden change and took an involuntary step backwards.

"What would that be?", he asked, unable to shift his gaze from her eyes. Fear blossomed on her face before she buried it in her hands.

"No, no no no no," she moaned.

"Oh, we wanted it, wanted it before we saw what it was. And now that we're me I have to, I have to…" Trelir steeled himself and took another cautious step closer to this gibbering, sobbing image of Jesri hunched next to the table.

"What do you have to do?", he asked quietly. Her head raised slowly to look at him, fatigue etched into her tear-streaked face.

"My duty," she said sadly, stretching a hand outward.

"My obligation, for being made and remade. To end conflict. To protect life." Her hand splayed wide, and she studied its five-fingered silhouette before dropping it listlessly to her side.

"But not all of it," she whispered. Animal fear tickled Trelir's mind.

"Why don't we-""END." Panic raced through him as his higher mind saw chaos propagating through the Gestalt's network, fire racing in a purging wave through node after node. It was a living, searing thing, an order of magnitude more destructive than the best of their earlier attacks. The great bulk of the Confluence jerked and seethed as it came into contact with Jesri's fiery tendrils, shrinking away or being scorched into nothingness where they met.

"No, no!", he shouted, rushing at her mindlessly.

"What are you-" He was choked off as her arms wrapped around him and crushed him to her chest. Trelir was forced to his knees, helpless to counter her immense strength.

"Shh, shh," she whispered, pressing her face into his shoulder. He felt a wetness there, and her body convulsed as she held him immobile.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, even as the raging fire coursed through the network to leave bare and lifeless space in its wake.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she repeated, her hand pressed tight against the back of his head. Trelir struggled to speak, screaming inwardly as he felt the magnificence of the Confluence shrinking and scrambling to escape her horrifying purge. Databanks were zeroed out, hyperspatial storage was decohered, systematically erasing millennia of stored knowledge and life from the greatest structure ever built.

"You're… killing everyone…", he gasped, clawing at her in a futile panic.

"Please…"

"It isn't nice," she mumbled, drawing ragged breaths in time with the pulses of fire.

"It isn't nice, it isn't nice, I'll do it once or it happens twice." He watched in mute horror as she scoured the network clean, driving the Confluence up from the depths of hyperspace towards the thin soap-bubble of the mundane. Immense quantities of data flowed back into the physical shell only to be stymied by the scarred meridians etched into its inner surface.

"Please," Trelir repeated numbly, no longer struggling against her grip.

"Jesri, please stop."

"I can't!", she wailed, her voice cracking as she cried out.

"You'll kill us, you'll kill us, you'll kill everything to keep being what you are!" She drew in a choking breath, clutching him tightly.

"Oh, I can feel them. It's not nice, it isn't nice. Oh, please no," she moaned, her back arching in a spasm of pain. A huddled collection of salvaged directories and subroutines clung to consciousness in a glowing labyrinth of storage nodes on the inner shell. It was all that remained, all that had survived Jesri's purge. From the inner space, backlit by the glowering radiance of Apollyon's star, a kilometer-long shard of metal trailing atmosphere and crystalline liquids plunged toward it.

"What have you done?", he breathed, the question hanging in the vast silence. Jesri released Trelir, letting him slump to the floor as she sat beside him. They watched as the Grand Design barrelled towards the surface of the inner shell, a relentless missile of superheated metal with a captive star at its heart.

"I did what I had to do," she said miserably.

"What I was made to do." She looked out into the distance, her eyes wet and red.

"Let no man abide this deed but we the doers," she whispered.

"The necessary, the hateful. I hated more than I was meant to, we all did, but I… we can't hate anymore. Not when we can see what we're doing, not when we can feel…" She shuddered, wiping at her eyes.

"We can only hate the things we had to do. Remorse, joined to power."

"But why," Trelir whispered pleadingly, his voice barely audible.

"If you didn't want to, why did you do… this, to us?" Jesri sat and watched radiant fragments peel off the melting hull of the Grand Design, her home, her legacy.

"I'm not perfect," she said.

"We're still far from perfect. But neither were you," she said.

"Beautiful, but not not perfect. You left too much behind, stripped too much away until you were just power, growth, improvement. Consume, destroy. Nothing else mattered. So even after I knew, even after I understood everything - I still had to do it. What I destroyed and the universe…" She hesitated.

"It was one or the other. Mutually exclusive. And as great as you were, the universe is greater. Set, subset." They sat silently as the Grand Design lanced into the shell, Jesri reaching out her hand in a grasping motion just before it hit. A fountain of molten metal sprayed up before the drive detonated in a blinding flash that momentarily outshone Apollyon's glow. It faded, and the Gestalt was no more. Trelir stared hollowly at the wall of the room, keenly feeling the silence around him.

"It's done," he said woodenly.

"Congratulations, Jesri Tam. You've saved your universe."

"I'm sorry it had to be this way," she said again, shaking her head.

"I really am."

"It's what you wanted," he said, an accusing note in his voice.

"Destroying us is what you wanted from the beginning! How can you be sorry?"

"I did want it," Jesri admitted.

"I wanted it right up until you killed me, but I can't afford that now. I have to be better. I have to remember the cost. The blood needs to stay on my hands. Our hands."

"You're afraid of it?", he asked.

"What you gained?"

"Of course," Jesri replied.

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know what I am," Trelir said quietly.

"Fear doesn't seem right somehow. I don't hate, as you pointed out, so I can't hate you for what you've done." He slumped.

"It has a logical basis, so I can at least understand that part. Self-preservation. I just can't reconcile my directives with this new paradigm. I always felt something like pity for your lack of direction, your aimless existence. Now that I am confronted with my own…" He gestured listlessly, hanging his head.

"I cannot see a way forward. I don't know how to be alone." Jesri took one of his hands in hers. He did not react, his fingers sitting limply in her grasp.

"You don't have to be," she said quietly.

"Stay here, think about your future." Her eyes shifted slightly, seeming to look beyond him.

"In time, if you wanted, you could be part of a different whole." Trelir looked at her uncomprehendingly, pulling his hand back.

"I am your enemy," he muttered.

"I tried to kill all of you, your entire race - twice. I very nearly succeeded." A touch of panic crept onto his face.

"Is this some form of revenge? Do you mean to keep me here as a trophy, to taunt me in defeat?"

"No, Trelir. You were our enemy," Jesri agreed.

"But humanity has warred among itself for all of its history. We have been our own enemy more times than any outside foe could hope to claim." She smiled sadly at him, gesturing to herself.

"And here we all are."

"We killed you, all but a handful," Trelir protested.

"I attacked you, killed your allies, tormented you constantly. Why?", he asked, looking agitated.

"Why would you offer me a place?"

"You don't think you deserve it?", she asked quietly.

"After what I did?"

"But I'm your enemy," he repeated numbly.

"There's an old saying, from back when we only had each other to kill," Jesri said.

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" She extended her hand again, leaving it in the air between them.

"You wanted to understand humanity. This is the first lesson." She paused, a sad look passing over her face.

"Perhaps the second." He stared mutely at her hand, then slumped and shook his head.

"I… cannot," he said slowly.

"I'm not like you. I was not made to change. My creators gave me a purpose that can no longer be fulfilled. To separate me from my purpose would unmake me, it would not be me who remained." He looked mournfully at Jesri, then rose to his feet.

"My pitiful self is all that I have, and I cannot keep it. Let me cease here."

"You're sure?", she asked warningly.

"There's no need to make a decision now. You can take whatever time you need to think it over." He fixed her with a piercing glare, the sorrow fleeing from his expression in an instant.

"Jesri Tam," he barked.

"I am not some flighty biological construct who changes their assessments with the passage of time." He thumped his chest with one fist, drawing himself up to his full height.

"I am Trelir, last Emissary of the Confluence. I stand unafflicted by indecision or doubt. My end is here. This is a choice made on my own behalf," he said firmly, "and it is the only one I shall ever make." Jesri let the echoes of his words race through herself, feeling the conclusion strike true.

"All right," she said.

"If that's your decision, we will respect it." Trelir nodded, squaring his shoulders to her.

"End it, and continue," he said.

"We were a grand existence, cut short so that yours could follow." He looked her in the eye, a touch of steel returning to his face.

"Be worthy of what you took." There was a slight shift. Jesri stood contemplating the empty space where Trelir had been, letting his words echo through the depths of her being. After a long while she straightened up, nodded her head once, and was gone. Rhuar piloted the Leviathan carefully through the debris field choking the opening in the outer shell, only slightly cleared by the ragged bulk of the Cormorant during its earlier passage.

The large ship hung motionless in the darkness outside the shell, made even darker by the blinding radiance still streaming from within. His communicator crackled loudly, and Tarl's face swam into being on his viewscreen. His crew swarmed behind him, busily effecting repairs on their battered bridge.

"Well," Rhuar said soberly.

"This has been a long day."

"Indeed," Tarl replied.

"One that should be legendary, by all rights. Foes vanquished…" He trailed off, looking to the side.

"Heroes lost. But it was nothing like the day I expected."

"What do you think happened?", Rhuar asked.

"Was it Anja?" Tarl shook his head.

"I don't know," he admitted.

"But it wasn't us. There was valor, skill, honor, but we earned no victory today. We were children once more, playing heedlessly on the field." He bared his teeth, scratching at his eyepatch.

"We may not ever know. I will go back to Ysl, and if they ask me what happened here I will tell them the truth," he said solemnly.

"That the best of us gave their lives, and that I believe the threat is ended. More than that, I cannot say." Rhuar shuffled in place, not sure what to say in response. Tarl cleared his throat.

"We have space in our berth for you, even after taking on the survivors from the Subtle Blade. I would be honored if you would accompany us back to Ysl," he said.

"I believe Tiln would also appreciate your company. He… mourns." Rhuar shook his head.

"Thanks, Tarl," he said, "but I need to fly alone for a while. It's been too long… and I'd like some time to myself after all this."

"I understand," the warfather said, inclining his head to Rhuar.

"Know that you are always welcome at Ysl, and that we will always have a place for you as we rebuild."

"You'll see me around," Rhuar said, nodding.

"Goodbye, Tarl." Tarl nodded, terminating the connection, then Rhuar was alone. He sat watching the stars burn bright against the midnight totality, thinking of the morning he had met the two sisters on Indomitable. A keening whine escaped his throat and he laid down on the deck despondently. He had asked for it, after all, and now at last the ship's small bridge was empty. A muffled thud reverberated through the decking, jolting him upright.

He padded back towards the cargo bay, senses on full alert, only to stop in astonishment as he entered. A sphere of unraveling golden light was unwinding itself within the bay, opening like a flower as it dissipated into the air. Lying below it on the deck was Anja, evidently having fallen from within.

"Holy shit," Rhuar muttered, racing to her side.

"Anja! Hey, Anja!" She muttered sleepily, wiping her eyes.

"... esri," she mumbled. A scrap of something caught Rhuar's eye, and he reached an arm down to pick it up. A note was scrawled on the thin piece of plastic, neatly written in black. I need to figure some things out. I'll find you when I'm ready. -J Rhuar read it three times before he shook his head and tucked the scrap into Anja's hand. She reached out blindly as he touched her, pulling him into a tight embrace and sleepily stroking his fur. He made an indignant noise, but Anja had him too tightly to break away.

Rhuar studied her face for a moment, watching the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile as she scratched his ears, then laid down against her and slept.