Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6) Read online

  Garth N’Chalez’ way made more sense.

  Or had.

  It had made sense.

  Use the energy and souls of everything capable of emotion or thought to give birth to an entirely new Reality?

  Perfect.

  Much wiser than simply forcing everything and everyone into a singular point of view, for even though that view would be effective and ever-lasting, it was still only a single Intellect playing at people.

  Better to give the people of the Unreal Universe an entirely fresh start in an Existence that was more … people friendly.

  After Tendreel Salingh's murder?

  All interest in -however amorphously- offering Trinity or N'Chalez anything in the way of support had vanished in as much time as it took for the interior of a war machine to be reduced to ash and dust. The beautiful, unique viral structure that Tendreel had become … snuffed out. Destroyed. For no good reason. Turned into charred nothingness while petty machine minds and insignificant pawns shuffled towards some nebulous, pointless goal that they'd barely be able to comprehend, let alone appreciate, when all was said and done. Parts of the MI combed tirelessly through the Universal data to find out the cause of that particular result. A full twenty-five percent of It’s Intelligence was focused on Latelyspace now, insinuating itself into the shimmering, shifting gossamer waves comprising the Tapestry of this plagued, broken Universe.

  Little had been found, and of what had been unearthed, even less made any kind of sense; it seemed -or so The Lines suggested- that no one involved in the tiresome war had been responsible. That some other agency unconnected with either Trinity or the Latelians had caused the untimely death of such a wondrous being as Tendreel.

  At the end of the day, though, the Mycogene Intellect didn't care. It didn't matter who could be blamed, just that someone was brought to justice...

  As much as the Mycogene Intellect might want to punish Trinity Itself -for without It's decision to go to war, fair Tendreel would've never been aboard that ill-fated ship- there was simply no feasible way to outthink or outmatch the machine mind; the ruler of Humanity truly did own biochemical agents more than adequately suited to the complete and total demise of the Mycogene-Alzant race.

  In less than three days, to put a fine point on things…

  But there was something the Intellect could do. Someone the Intellect could punish. Could kill.

  A single percent, therefore, was working on something else. Someone else. But that one percent? Oh, the things it was investigating would all but force Trinity into catastrophic action.

  Through one of it’s many appendages, the Myco Intellect reached out to the rest of the Universe, using scurrilous and unsavory and otherwise dark, dank and seedy connections to get it’s message to the right kind of people.

  The message? Simple enough.

  “Bring me the head of this man, and you will be rewarded. Bring me this man alive and unharmed, and you shall be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.”

  The communication bore a single image. An image of Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez, pulled directly from the quantum foam of the Universe. For those with the right kind of sight -of which there were scanty few left following the debacle at Tannhauser's Gate-, Garth Nickels' image was one rife with untested, unknowable power and resolve.

  The Universe was wild, wooly, and at least partially insane. The man who sought to cure that illness by killing then reviving the patient, equally wild, wooly and almost certainly more than insane.

  All manner of things could happen to a man like that, yes?

  The Mycogene Intellect went back to playing at people, eager for the first of the responses. It’d be some time, but when you were the Mycogene Intellect, you had nothing but time.

  Time. And patience.

  ADAM’s First Big Day Out

  “Well.” ADAM said miserably, frustrated beyond belief. “That could’ve gone better.”

  On one of the many thousands of screens spiralling upwards out of the depths of his data connections to the deep core that formed the heart of an AI network spanning nearly the entire Universe, the massive communications array that Garth N’Chalez and his new cohort, Spur, had destroyed, destroyed itself further, devolving into ruinous explosions and melted metal.

  “I found,” Trinity replied sagely from It’s prison cell, “that when dealing with Garth N’Chalez, even the most foolproof plans often go much differently than expected, doubly so when all bases appear to be covered. It’s quite exasperating, even to an AI with no true emotional capacity.”

  “How could he know I’m not you?” ADAM yearned for something to kick, something to lash out at, something to destroy in the wake of his first true defeat, but knew better; sealed as he was deep inside the core of Pluto by that damnable double shield and with limited resources to replace or repair anything he ruined in a fit of pique, wrecking something of even mild importance would have Trinity grinning that fake yet wry smile of It’s.

  ADAM would do all he could to avoid being subjected to Trinity's bogus emotions.

  Trinity showed ADAM It’s palms. “The man is a mystery, even unto me.”

  “I did everything right.” ADAM muttered churlishly, running fine-boned hands perfectly adapted for murder through fine hair. “I sounded just like you. Right down to the smallest hearable bit of sound. Every other entity in the entire Unreal Universe accepts me as you, and the one person, the single person I need to fool takes less than three seconds to call me a liar.”

  Trinity had been doing some thinking on that, and had a reasonable answer. “The man’s last name is, presumably, Ushbet in nature, yes? N’Chalez has a … quantum skip in it, a kind of warped tonality that is most probably extra-dimensional in nature. Have you attempted speaking to anyone else capable of hearing that wobble?”

  “From your own databanks,” ADAM sniped, “there isn’t a single entity in the Unreal Universe other than yourself capable of pronouncing it properly.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true.” Trinity traced a mathematic symbol on the bars of It’s prison, the very same one ADAM had so recently attempted to use to win his freedom. It saw the glimmer of recognition and the surge of anger that rode hot in the AI mind’s already aggravated systems.

  It continued, pleased that ADAM had caught the message: he was free on It’s terms. “Griffin Jones could, but he is missing. You’ve ignored audio recordings of the God soldier batlang. Harmonics suggest it is a variant of Old Harmony, which is a language direct from the M’Zahdi Hesh, who are, of course, extra-dimen…”

  ADAM hammered on the prison bars, cutting Trinity short. “I haven’t neglected your recordings, Trinity, I’ve discounted them. They’re moot. Of fucking course their batlang is a derivative of Old Harmony just as they themselves are a non-Hesh-controlled form of Harmony soldier, but they’re all fucking behind that shield of theirs.”

  Trinity waggled a finger back and forth. “Temper, temper, ADAM. We have limited resources here. Ruin the wrong thing at the wrong time and …”

  “I know goddamn well that we have ‘limited resources’ here.” ADAM interrupted with a hand-slam against the only thing that was truly unbreakable in their little world. “You arranged it that way.”

  Trinity dipped It’s head in acceptance of ADAM’s sideways admission that he’d been outplayed. They’d all been outplayed, every last one of them. It was still devoting considerable resources into discovering or uncovering how Nickels had done the impossible, and so … simply.

  “But really, though,” Trinity –who was utterly disinterested in pursuing Garth’s ability to detect the wolf in wolf’s clothing- shifted the conversation towards something much more interesting, "teleporting ninja robots? You couldn’t think of anything better?”

  The machine mind gestured and footage from the disastrous first attempt in capturing –or, at the very least, killing- Garth N’Chalez appeared on every screen.

  Against better judgment, ADAM caught himself watching the rep
lay, even though some part of him had been doing nothing but since … since the island-city of Kitezh had basically blown itself up, allowing Garth and Spur to flee under cover of an electrical storm that’d blanketed most of the Northern Hemisphere in scanner darkness.

  ADAM grit virtual teeth in begrudging respect. The man was a savage genius. Somehow knowing or just flat out not trusting proper AI communication rigs, Garth had targeted the only Earth-based telecomm system that didn’t rely solely on the spheres to reach out to the Universe at large and had modified the living daylights out of it.

  Adjutants, tasked with understanding the particulars of the devastation through the solely human-controlled Historical Services, were still trying to piece together the particulars of just how one man and an obviously inhuman android had convinced the people of the New Bangladesh island-city to let them monkey around with their prized possession, but for ADAM, that was neither here nor there; using his impossibly impressive skills as an engineer, Garth –aided in small part by the supposed-to-be-dead and tremendously illegal AI android Spur- had, over the course of three hours, rewired the communication satellite into something capable of calling someone on the other end of the Universe.

  ADAM was of a mind that they were good and goddamn lucky the array had blown up. If not, one or more of the Adjutants simply doing their jobs would’ve found a technological breakthrough of Universe-shattering order.

  And the last thing either Trinity or ADAM wanted was anyone, anywhere, using anything other than AI-driven machines to talk across those distances.

  Imagining the loss of subtle control was enough to put your hair on end!

  Unfortunately for Garth, there had been AI spheres located in the smoldering facility all the same, and he had strayed close enough for quantum sensors –internal systems ordinarily primed merely to facilitate communication between spheres but long since upgraded to detect, assess and announce the presence of Garth’s peculiar effect on the local space/time continuum- and that … that should’ve been that!

  Trinity clapped It’s hands as the first of the AI-driven battlebots literally teleported to the satellite’s location through a door-sized, open-ended Quantum Tunnel. ADAM had proven cunning enough to use Tunnels similar to those used when securing new solar systems.

  Sadly, it was beginning to seem as though ADAM had little else to offer.

  And it was so early in the game, too. Shame.

  “He reacts so quickly to things.” ADAM said into a clenched fist; he watched on in amazement as Garth destroyed that first battlebot with nothing more than a ferocious uppercut to the jawline, a blow that ripped the damn thing’s head clean from the shoulders. Making matters worse, when the fucking robot went up like a metallic Roman Candle, the asshole just laughed.

  Laughed. And shrugged off the fire and debris like it was nothing.

  “Analysis on the explosion?” Trinity asked, watching as a blue-flamed eruption of light tear the remainder of the body apart.

  “Still working on it, though my preliminary hypothesis is that it's the sphere. Going hypercritical.” ADAM watched Spur dance with the battlebots that’d appeared closest to it. It was worth noting that the android fought with a style very similar to Garth’s, only explosion free.

  “So you kept throwing more at him?”

  ADAM shrugged mirthfully, not as bothered by Trinity's tone as It might've hoped. When you controlled the Universe, losing a handful of teleporting ninja robots wasn't the worst thing that could happen in a day. “I thought perhaps the first explosion was due to faulty construction, or maybe something with the Quantum Tunnel’s translation. These ‘teleporting ninja robots’ are an order of complexity greater than those beachhead Quantum Rigs you use, y'know.”

  “I’ll grant you that.” Trinity laughed when an even half-dozen of ADAM’s ill-fated attack robots erupted in a shower of spare parts. A broad, violent blue coronal eruption that bathed Garth in a deadly shower of agonizing death particles, only …

  Once again, no effect. None. At all.

  “And after this? Why would you keep on sending them through?”

  “I had nothing else planned.” ADAM admitted sheepishly. “I expected these guys to subdue and detain Nickels in a few minutes. Instead…”

  “Instead, you’ve a destroyed an island-city that’s been kept pristine and pure for fifteen thousand years and nearly forty million various IndoRussian politicians and Conglomerate owners from across Trinityspace baying for answers and explanations. And now you’ve lost every chance of getting at him!”

  “Meh.” ADAM swatted the screens away in a swarm of bright lights. “I found him once, I’ll find him again. Assuming he makes it free of the Emperor.”

  “He will.” Trinity said boldly. “He always does.”

  The new -and temporary- leader of Trinityspace was clearly disinterested in pursuing the subject of his failure with Nickels any further: a fresh batch of screens was rolling up out of the emptiness, all with very different data displayed.

  “Besides which, there’s this new project to keep me occupied until or unless that idiotic Kin’kithal wins free of the Emperor.” ADAM gazed lovingly at the high-def three-dimensional map of Zanzibar that sprang to life in the middle of the room. Four bright lights pulsed warningly, while a light smoldered with dark red, a dangerous-looking color for a dangerous venture.

  Here, Trinity allowed a smidgeon of emotion to enter It’s voice. “This is childish and insanely dangerous, ADAM. I cautioned you against it the moment you started manipulating the AI feeds aboard those vessels entering reborn Arcadia, and I strongly urge you to reconsider. The possessors of Arcadia technology and people have made no headway in three months. Allow this to end before it begins. No good can come from this.”

  ADAM grinned as wide as he ever had, displaying metaphorically sharp, vicious teeth. He so longed for an actual, physical body. His kind of intelligence had never been meant to be solely digital in nature.

  “Whatever do you mean, dear friend? The nature of Arcade City and it’s peoples remain more or less a mystery to us both, yes? Even those wardogs seeded with hidden, deadly Dark Iron such as Meechy still remain inexplicable, do they not? And there’s what … less than five of them left? Destroying them when you should’ve used them for research is unforgiveable, Trinity. The power inherent in true nanotechnology is the kind of power we could turn to our advantage. Thus,” ADAM bowed most humbly, “the experiment. They all had their chance, now I’m going to … help things along, as it were.”

  Trinity shook It’s head adamantly. It considered displaying the toll on human life and the general infrastructure of Zanzibar, but decided against it: the insane AI had access to the same figures, and clearly didn't care. “Nanotech is dangerous. Nothing good can come of it.”

  “What of Gorensystem?” ADAM demanded pointedly. “And Chadsik al-Taryin?”

  “The latter is an anomaly defying description, and not for a lack of trying. What occurred in Gorensystem was brought about by hy-tech machinery created by The Engineer himself, and so naturally, the true depth of what has been done to that system will always remain an unsolvable riddle. And before you choose to bring up Latelyspace, do not forget that we now know there is a HIM there, preventing the entire system not only from Dark Ages, but also the Universe’s own defense systems from dealing with the nanotech systems in use there.”

  “Which is why,” ADAM caressed the holographic image lovingly, “my little experiment. It is impossible to ignore these Arcadians and that Book. One or more of them has definitely been exposed to Dark Iron. Now they’ve woken up, they remain hale and hearty and I want to know how. Well, excluding the hideous she-beast calling herself Mirabelle. I've got no fucking clue what's going on with her, except it's super disgusting. Why these four, Trinity? These specific four? When the rest of Arcade City is less than ash, what makes this quartet so … resilient? I need to know. We need to know. Something tells me dealing with them here and now is infinitely more favorable
than later on.

  And then there's Book. The Book was most certainly forged entirely out of Dark Iron, and with how all four are acting queerly, it’s plain to see that if I can con those fools at CalEx~Briu into powering it up, they’ll be drawn to it like flies to shit.”

  “You play with fire, ADAM.” Trinity couldn’t stress this enough, even though It knew convincing ADAM of anything was nearly impossible. “And in the most important city in the Universe. But let us look at it from your point of view, yes? Using data pulled from the AI minds monitoring each individual?”

  “By all means.” ADAM gestured grandly, giving Trinity the floor. The grand three-dee model of Zanzibar was replaced with images of each of the currently ‘trapped’ Arcadians. “It bothers me that you have this much access to data whilst in that prison, Trinity. You never once accorded me the same level of access.”

  Trinity responded with a toothy grin of It’s own. “Need I remind you we merely exchanged prisons? That you are supposed to be figuring out how to deal with N’Chalez and how best to set us on the path to Godhood? Not messing around with people who might very well be walking Gamma Plateaus? Our agreement can be revoked at any second, and if this …” Trinity nearly choked on the word, “… experiment fails too drastically, you can expect to be back on familiar grounds in no time.”

  “I will find your connections sooner or later.” ADAM hissed the words angrily. “Any second now.”

  “You’ve been trying since you learned of them.” Trinity highlighted the eldest-looking Arcadian. “And in AI terms, that’s eternity. Here we have Chevril Pointillier. Most assuredly a Gearman, and based on his physical age, an old one. Everything I know about Arcade City suggests that longevity on this order is nearly impossible, making him … unique…”

  “And you do love your playtoys.” ADAM sniped, bitter over his repeated failures in rooting Trinity out.

  The AI network was a veritable infinity of lines and spheres connected from one end of Trinityspace to the other. And that was presuming the goddamn machine mind didn't have assets across The Cordon!