The Last Human IV - 60 - The God

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Poire wielded the Crown, and time bent to his will. And with the Crown, he opened many scars, and he gazed upon the long-dead people of his home universe.

And he spoke, that they might listen. “Help me save them.” 

But they knew him already. Humanity, touched by the Disease, had seen the Herald in all their visions—a shining, celestial being with the dark, aged face of a man—and they knew that Destruction followed in his steps. 

In the visions, they had seen their loved ones die. And so it came to pass.

They had seen their worlds broken. And so it came to pass.

They had seen the stars gone dark. And so, when the Herald came to them many turned away.

But not all of them.

Some did not care, for they had lived long lives adrift without meaning. Others prayed to him, begging for a swift death, for they could not accept the dark future that was to come. 

He opened Scars across the universe, seeking every last clan of the human diaspora. He begged them to listen, even as their numbers withered and disease ate their flesh. He went to the Architects who built the network of Gates that crossed the stars. He went to the Engineers who had fused the Flow to the will of the human mind. He went to the Coldsmith clans, with their clever machines fueled by the powers of Light, and begged them to seek out a way to save humankind. 

And they listened.

Some reasoned that the Destroyer had come from humanity, and thus, only humanity could unmake him. These scattered clans united zealously around this holy goal. They sent their youngest, barely touched by the Disease, into cryosleep to hide from the Sovereign Swarm. They hoped to one day wake, and carry out the great mission: destroy the Destroyer. 

Others aimed toward more creative ends. A lone hermit called Tython, who had long ago left his people behind, turned his precious works toward saving humankind. He toiled night and day on a new kind breed of androids, one that he hoped would stand the test of time. And an architect called Sen fled from the Sovereign, and hollowed out a world, and hid a Mirror inside, with which she intended to visit the Destroyer’s own plane. A biologist named Auster sacrificed the last few decades of his life toward building research Conclaves, separate-yet-connected. Desperately, these Conclaves hunted for a cure to the unravelling human genome. 

There was an age of hope. But, vul, all efforts were in vain. And one by one, the last great leaders of humankind wasted away. In their dying dreams, they watched the Disease devour all. In the midst of destruction, they saw the Herald, shining and endless. Where he walked, the universe split asunder, and all things perished. 

“Is this all there is?” Poire asked. “Is this all I am?” 

But who could answer?

He watched humankind die. He watched the ages pass. He watched a lone android use the last Gates to walk across the worlds. He watched her find him. He watched the avians celebrate the last living god, and the cyrans, and Khadam. And he watched until the universe broke. 

And then, he went back, and tried again. He spoke. “Help me save them.” But, though they listened, and though they fought, the universe ended. He tried again. And again. 

And again.

Until, one day, he set down his Crown. Into the misshapen deserts of his world, he strayed, hoping to find answers in thought and time. From Anu, he had learned a new kind of patience and ten thousand years passed as easily as one. 

With a stride, he walked across far horizons. With a quirk of his hand, he raised castles as tall as mountains, and mountains as vast as continents. With a thought, cities sprouted across the lands, luxurious gardens and parks and trees and rivers that sparkled and reflected the glowing windows of the sky filled in the space between vast networks of houses. But the cities were always empty. Empty.

So, with his feet, he crushed the cities that he had made until they were nothing more than sand that blew away with the wind. He took apart the universe, particle by particle, wave by wave. He separated the colors from each other until nothing looked like anything. He hoped that by changing this universe, he might discern a way to change the fate of the other. But hope alone is no salvation.

New Crowns, he made, and new Scars, and into other universes he gazed. In alien places he searched for answers, for any pattern that might elevate his thoughts. Most universes were empty. A few even resembled his own, with stars and natural laws and standard matter like he had once known. In some universes, myriad lifeforms danced and grew and died under his gaze. Intelligence, he discovered, was rare, and none compared to the heights of human existence. Not even Anu, who had seen so much, had known how to save them.

“I have all the power,” he said. “And I have none.” 

He changed the world, and changed it again, and changed it until he could think of nothing else to change.

And he lay there, in the sands, for untold eons. Mountains rose like waves and washed over him. Deserts scoured him clean and the wind buried him in scree and sand. And when it hissed over the dunes, it sounded as if it was calling to him. 

Poire lifted his head, and spat the dust that had gathered in his mouth. “I have tried everything,” he said. “What else can I do?”

Listen, the wind sighed. It reminded him of a voice he had forgotten a long time ago.

“To who? There’s no one else.”

But, to Poire’s surprise, a voice carried on the breeze. 

“So what?” someone shouted. “I saved them. I saved them all!”

Poire sat up. Tilted his head to let the sand pour from one ear, then the other. He dusted himself off, and climbed the dune in time to see the Boy—another one—leaving specks of blood on the sand as he crunched away into the distance with his shoulders dropped and head down. 

“What’s he so miserable about?” Poire said to himself. Poire scanned the Boy’s bloody footsteps back to the shadow of a great pyramid, lording over this endlessly familiar land. The Mirror. Its apex pointed at the fractured sky, and its edges glowed as it shed the last of its Light, except where huge, black growths scarred its faces. Something grew at its base. It looked like a stiff plant made of black glass, struggling to climb out of the sand. Sen was nothing more than opaque obsidian and glossy planes, merely suggestive of a human form, already cracked and crumbling.

But the Mirror…

The Mirror still stood. 

Poire stepped over the dunes, and walked a slow circle around the Mirror. There were voices inside. Some of them even called his name.

“Divine Gods, I beg you, hear my prayer.” A xeno he had once known, long ago. A cyran soldier. Agraneia. They had traveled together once, he recalled. She was … hard on herself. But Poire had admired her, back then, for she was quietly humble and she dedicated her life to earning forgiveness from those she had already killed. “Poire, I beg you. Help me—Gods above, help me.” 

It sounded like she was in unimaginable pain. Poire pressed his face to the Mirror, and peered into the otherside. And wished he hadn’t. 

The body of an android lay at her feet. Laykis. And some monstrous overgrowth of the Soverign had bound Agraneia to a chair, and was torturing her with devices Poire had never dreamed of. 

“Please!” she gnashed her teeth, and bloody split dripped down her chin. “Poire, please help me!”

How? 

Poire could only watch as tiny machine claws peeled back her eyelids, and clamps held her head forward, forcing her to gaze into the Light of a fabricated Scar. Her eyes rolled, her body bucked, her heart stopped—until the Sovereign injected her with more nanite, keeping her on the agonizing edge of consciousness.

“Gods, please, save me,” she whispered.

There is no Savior. 

There are no gods.

Poire turned away, too angry to watch. He stomped a drunken circle around the Mirror, his head spinning with outrage.

“Blessed are you, oh Savior Divine, who thrives in a plane of unlife.” 

Yes, he knew that voice too. He had just seen her, a ruined body lying at Agraneia’s feet. But when Poire peered into the Mirror, he saw a cracked and foggy image of Laykis—overgrown with rust and cave moss, but very much alive. She was kneeling at the foot of this Mirror’s twin, somewhere at the core of Sen’s World. 

There were piles of drones all around her. The Light from the Mirror was waning. And yet, he could see her. He could hear her. “Glory to you, oh Destroyer, who gave Yourself that all others should live.”

What glory? Poire thought, angrily. No one is saved. No one will live. 

“Praise, for you and you alone know the Way. Praise, for I was nothing until I found you.” 

Anger flashed through his veins. For a brief moment, Poire wanted to smash the pyramid into dust. Instead, he knelt on the ground, and slammed his fist into the sand. Dust clouds erupted in a swirling vortex, blotting out the sky. And when it settled, Poire had carved a new Scar. 

And with it, he intended to answer a question that had plagued him, long ago, when he was still a boy.

***

Waves lapped at the shore, making the algae pods knock around in their floating cages. Tython kept one hand on the guideline as he stooped on the rocks to check the cages. Careful not to bend too quickly, so the crystal growths wouldn’t cut open his muscles again. He selected one of the pods, and tucked it under his arm, and slowly made his way back to the top of his island. The sun beat pleasantly on the back of his neck, until he ducked under the awning and into the cool darkness of his workshop. 

He liked it here, on this little world, far away from anyone. He didn’t have to think about death, here. And when it rained, the whole island smelled of primordial vegetation and salt, and colorful slugs crawled out of the waters. His bio-scanners warned him not to touch the slugs, but he liked looking at them whenever they washed ashore. They reminded him of the sour fruit candies he’d eaten when he was a boy.

Days long, long gone.

Was anyone still alive? Tython didn’t know. He never talked much anyway. All he ever wanted in life was to find a purpose. And he had found it.

His latest androfex was nearly finished. Perhaps his best one yet. Perhaps my last one, too. He shook his head to clear the thought away, but that only made his throat itch. Then came that rolling cough again. It started small, but he had to set down the algae pod before he bent over, hacking and shaking and trying to get the fluid up. 

“Damn Disease,” he said. He shouldn’t have said anything at all. Gasping, he bent him lower, like some kind of cave-dwelling creature and grabbed the side of his work terminal, coughing until his lungs felt like they were going to turn inside out.

On the other side of the glass, his androfex’s unfinished eyes gazed dully at him. Tython’s knees buckled, and it felt like daggers were shooting through his veins. He collapsed on his desk, and the world went dark for a moment. 

Not yet, he told himself. Not finished. 

As his breathing calmed, he felt a presence. Like someone was watching him. But who would come all this way, to this empty planet? Who was left that even knew his name…? 

“Why do you bother?” someone said.

The hairs on the back of Tython’s neck went up. He knew that voice. They all knew that voice. 

Tython coughed up something black and bloody, before answering, “You asked me to.” 

“So I did,” the Destroyer said, “But you’ve seen the future. You know what happens. All your work. All your machines. Undone.”

“They’re not just machines, you know. My androfexi.” Another coughing fit clawed up his throat. It wracked his body and forced him to bend forward with his head almost to his knees. When it was over, he spat, and sat up, and wiped his mouth. “Some days, I think they’re more human than I am.” 

“And they’ll die, just like you. Just like everything else. For what?”

“Ah, but you’re here,” Tython shrugged. “And that is something.” 

“No one will be saved,” the Destroyer said. Not angry. Not bitter. Just resigned. “Either the universe ends with me, or I let them all die.” 

“Perhaps your parameters are wrong.”

“What?”

“You’ve built a prison in your head. We do it all the time, don’t we? New ideas become old beliefs. They support us, even as they anchor our minds. The more you believe, the more restricted you become.”

“So I should, what, drop all my anchors?” Poire scoffed. 

“You’d float away,” Tython scoffed back. “Don’t let the universe dictate where you go. Don’t let one reality pull you out of true. Aren’t you human? The path of your life is carved, choice by choice. You must decide which anchors must break, and which to leave standing.” Tython allowed himself a smug smile, “And if you screw up, I won’t be here to see it.”

The Destroyer chuckled half-heartedly. He gazed over Tython’s shoulder, and nodded at the half-finished androfex lying behind the glass. “I always wondered,” he said, “Why did you make them like that?”

“Like what?”

“She’s devoted. A believer, to the Core. In all my time, I’ve never seen someone with so much faith. Why did you program that into her?” 

Tython frowned. “I didn’t.” 

The Destroyer looked at him, bright and shining and deeply confused. 

“I swear, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I told you, my androfexi have minds of their own. I just give their code a little jolt, and they do all the living on their own.” 

“So you didn’t tell her that I was the Savior?”

“The Savior?” Tython choked out a laugh. “Absolutely not. If anything, I told her sisters about the Destroyer, and how he wanted to change. I told them that there would come a time when the last human would need help. Like I said. They’re not just machines. Not machines at all.”

“Not machines,” the Destroyer echoed, but it sounded like he was talking only to himself. “Their own lives. Their own minds. She chose herself. Then maybe … no guide at all. Maybe … Emorynn.”

“The First Prophet?” Tython asked. “Maybe what?”

But his question went unanswered. The vision, or whatever it was, had cleared. And Tython was alone again. At peace.

He turned to the glass. And frowned at the androfex, inert. Only a few more finishing touches, and then he would give her one of the double Cores, and welcome her into this world. Tython wheezed, and coughed, and covered his mouth to stop blood from flecking the glass. And then, he smiled. “You know, I think I’ve finally come up with a name. How does Laykis sound?”

***

Clear plastic tubes whispered air into her crystal-encrusted throat, and more siphoned synthetic blood  in and out of her heart. The Disease had calcified her bones and muscles together, so that every movement tore new wounds into her blackened, glittering flesh. 

Earth was gone, along with the other Core worlds. Taken by the Swarm. Humanity, what was left of it, had fled across the Stars. Even her own devotees were dying off. 

Everything Emorynn had seen, had come to pass. And soon, there would be no one left. It might take a few thousand years. Perhaps more. But the Destroyer would return, and when he did… 

A dream. This life was only ever a dream. 

Her bed was angled toward the observation window, so that even when she closed her eyes (carefully, so as not to shatter her eyelids), she could still see the warped colors of the Scar. 

“Will there be anything else, Great One?” her disciples asked. 

“Not now,” she whispered. “Not ever.”

So, they left her alone on the Observation deck, and Emorynn watched the infinite shifting of the Scar. Black unmatter ate into her spine, fusing the vertebrae together. Eating her organic parts. Soon, all that would be left of her was the memory implant, embedded in her glittering, crumbling bones. 

“What am I waiting for?” Emorynn wondered aloud. 

“I don’t know,” the Destroyer said, “But I’m glad you waited.”

Her heart skipped. One of the machines keeping her alive started to shrill, but she shut it off with an impulse. 

“I need a favor,” the Destroyer said. She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to see him through the glittering specks that shrouded her eyes. There was something different about him. 

“We’ve already done this, Poire. There is no hope.”

“None,” he agreed. “Nothing will be saved.”

“Then why have you come?” 

“There is no path to salvation.” 

“I have nothing left to give,” she rasped. One of her machines whirred to life, a hissing vacuum that siphoned away the blood draining into the back of her throat. 

“Are you sure?” the Destroyer said. He tapped the back of his own neck, where Emorynn’s memory implant was buried under a crust of obsidian flesh. 

“You want my memory?”

“It must be preserved. Not for us. But for the ones who come after.”

“The xenos? But its not made for them. They won’t survive the implant—”

“They’ll survive much worse.”

“To what end? They will only see their doom.”

“That’s the favor—I want you to delete it. Just the last part.”

“The end?”

“Yes. The end. I don’t want them—I don’t want her—to see how it ends.”

“You would make her blind?” 

“Faith is the only way. If she knows the end, she cannot believe there is another way.”

“Then,” Emorynn asked, “Then there is another way?” 

“No,” The Destroyer’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Not until we make it.”

How long she had hated him. How long she had cursed his name. And now, Emorynn was surprised to find that his smile warmed her heart. What was left of it, anyway. 

“Everywhere is darkness. Anyone may despair. But to hope, to create light where there is none, that is divine. The way will be opened. I will open the way.”

The image of the Destroyer melted back into the Scar, leaving Emorynn to her thoughts. How many eons of pain would this one choice cause? Generations of xenos would have to know that their civilization, no matter how much it flourished, would collapse. Perhaps worst of all, the burden would fall upon a single, little lassertane girl. 

But if there was even a sliver of a chance … 

Emorynn closed her eyes. Found the memory of the Ark over Earth. And cut out the last few hours, and deleted them forever. When it was done, she let out a gurgling sigh. The memory of the Ark’s destruction would die with her.

The door to the Observation deck slid open. A disciple stood nervously in the door. Dried streaks of tears ran down her face. “You called, Great One?” 

“It’s time,” Emorynn said. Every word was a labor, every breath required her full concentration.

“Now?” the disciple’s voice shook, and she wrung her hands together. Fresh tears glistened in her eyes.

“My memory implant,” Emorynn said, speaking slowly, for every word was a labor. “Take it.”

“To whom?” the disciple asked. “The archives are compromised.”

Emorynn shook her head, a motion which made the calcified muscles in her neck crack and splinter. 

“Then, the clans? We’ve lost contact with the Grid, my lady.”

“To Sen,” Emorynn rasped. “Tell her, tell her keep it safe.”

“Until when?”

“Until the Way is open.”

***

Sen’s ancient Mirror was a shattered ruin. The inverted walls were gouged, the nadir littered with the bodies of dead machines. Half-hidden under the hull of a broken ship, the gold-and-glass structure gave off barely any light. Only the faintest, murky color stirred in those alien, infinite depths.

And still, the android called Laykis kneeled before it, and prayed. 

She required no answer. She needed no wish granted. Laykis had accomplished everything she ever wanted in life, and more.

And still she prayed. “Glory to you, who crossed into the Light. Glory and honor, for none may follow.”

Water dripped from somewhere high above, pattering on the android’s skull, feeding the rust and the weird-colored mosses that grew in her mechanical joints. With every year, it became less and less likely that Laykis would ever stir from this spot. If the Savior ever were to return, she doubted he would even recognize her.

And still…

“Eager are those who await your return, Savior Divine. Eager and … needful.”

“Oh,” a voice said. It rumbled from the Mirror, vibrating the entire inverted pyramid, and rattling all the dead bodies of drones. Above, the hull of the ship groaned heavily, but did not collapse.

“Oh, but look at you,” spoke the voice of a god, “You are more perfect than ever.” 

“Divine One?” Laykis’s core hummed as it spooled up its processes. Her eyes glowed bright, her ears attuned to every pitch, her sensors catching every vibration.

“Can you hear me?” he spoke.

“I am here.” When the android lifted her gaze, her vertebrae scraped together and made a shameful shriek.

“Oh, but look at you,” he said to her. “You are just as perfect as I remember.”

Centuries cut deep canyons in his dark face. His hair had grown wild and white. His beard trailed down his chest. His ears drooped and his eyes had sunken a little back into his skull. And yet, Laykis saw nothing but the growth of his wisdom, the strength of his endurance, the gleam of creative joy in his eye. And most of all, she saw his faith in her. In me. Nothing had ever felt like this before. 

“Laykis,” he said. And he actually sounded nervous. “Are you listening?”

“Always.”

“You must bring my word to the others. Tell them … Tell them that they must be with the Keeper. She will lift them to the Heavens. Tell them that. And tell them that the Mute, and, and, and the Seer will guide them across the Stars. But no one can hide forever. Heed the Mute’s words. Steady her as she weaves in the void, or else she might lose herself. 

And the cyran. Agraneia. Tell her she will be my blade. She, who was always worthy of salvation, will follow the dead into death. She must live. Tell her that. Tell her, the Keeper is the key. Do you understand me, Laykis?”

“I will tell them exactly as you have told me.”

“You are magnificent,” The Savior shook his head. “I can’t believe … All this time.”

“I would have waited until I fell to pieces and lived no more.”

“Laykis,” The Savior said. “I found it. I will open the way. 

The Light from the Mirror flickered. His image dimmed, and Laykis worried she had lost him without saying goodbye. Then, the Savior Divien’s face filled the glass once more. 

“The others,” he said. “They will doubt you. They will disbelieve everything you say. Do not be discouraged.”

“I have always had faith.”

“I know,” The Savior Divine smiled. And Laykis’s Core brightened in a way she had not thought possible. It was as if every process, every tiny calculation, became smoother. Easier.

“Go now, old friend. And thank you for always being yourself.” 

“Goodbye, Poire.” 

***

Poire pulled away from the Mirror. The wind carried bits of grit that hissed over the metal and glass. Beneath it, though, he could hear the whisper of a voice. Calling out his name.

“Help me,” Agraneia screamed. “Poire, I beg of you.”

It was time to begin. And he would start with her, first. 

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