I found Chet sitting on a stone outside near the landing pad, looking toward the sky. He stood up as I approached.
“Chet,” I said. “I…” I glanced toward the warehouse behind us.
“You’re going to continue the Path?” he said.
“Yeah. But you don’t have to do it with me. You don’t have to feel guilty for stepping away. You can take the ashes that Peg promised me. I don’t need them. Plus, Peg wants someone to explore for her—I’m sure you could accept her offer and get a whole team to keep you company.”
He stood in place as I walked up to him. Then he smiled. It was a more human smile, one that wasn’t full of excitement and bravado.
“I appreciate your concern for my well-being,” he said. “But…it wouldn’t be the same. Things must change, then. I guess I knew they would.” He gestured toward the warehouse. “The stone is solidified memories, Spensa. Shall we see what they hold?”
We entered the building, then stepped up to the wall—feeling dwarfed by the enormous portal, carved with serpentine lines by the weathering of time. Not like things weathered in the somewhere—an erosion uniquely of this place, caused by the people who entered and left.
I pressed my mind into the stone, but—as always—hit a block on the other side. I hadn’t expected to be able to escape this way though. I instead stepped back, now prepared for the way that the room around me started to fade, becoming ephemeral.
In the past, a structure with open sides and stone columns housed the portal. It was smaller than it now was, but still as tall as a person. The open-air nature of the building let me stare out at a medium-sized floating fragment, rocky, with some hills that would eventually be turned into quarries.
The lightburst had grown, and there were far more fragments hovering about nearby. “I think this set of memories is more recent than some of the others,” I said to Chet, pointing. “The lightburst is larger, see?” Not yet as big as a sun—more like a distant floodlight.
“Yes,” Chet said. “But the size of it is somewhat misleading. The true nowhere, inside that burst, is a place where space is immaterial. Distance doesn’t rightly exist. But it was forced into that shape as the leaks began around the rest of the nowhere—where time and space were sneaking in around the puncture holes. The lightburst is like a fortress, the place where the true nowhere can exist.”
“That breaks my brain a little to consider,” I said.
“It should,” he replied. “You are a being of the somewhere, Spensa—for all the fact that you’ve been exposed to the nowhere’s particular brand of radiation.”
In the vision, a human suddenly stepped through the portal. He wore a civilian suit with a lapel pin in the shape of a silvery bell. He was perhaps in his late fifties, and though he glanced around and could obviously see, there was something odd about the way his eyes focused. Or rather, the way they didn’t focus. Equally curious, a silvery sphere emerged from the portal and floated in the air alongside him.
I stepped closer as the human scanned the sky, then the various fragments.
“That sphere,” I said, pointing at the hovering ball. “It doesn’t have an acclivity ring. How does it fly?”
“Maybe it was before acclivity stone was widely used,” Chet said, stepping up beside me.
Huh. Also, there was something about the shape of that metal sphere. Something…familiar?
“So it’s real,” the man said in English.
I jumped. I hadn’t been expecting to be able to understand him. His stiff accent was odd, but intelligible.
“Analysis indicates you are correct,” a feminine voice said, coming from the sphere. “This simple structure is as the account related.”
The man glanced at the sphere, then sighed. He walked over and felt at a pillar. He seemed to have some need to touch it, to prove it existed. “And with what we found earlier, it seems even more likely that the records are true about ancient human cytonics,” he said softly. “I wasn’t the first. I was never the first. What do you think?”
“Insufficient data to perform an analysis,” the sphere said.
He turned back toward it. “Can’t you guess? Can’t you do more than think? I built you to do more…”
“I do as I am programmed.”
“If the accounts are true, then you can do more,” he said, stepping up to the sphere. “I’ve brought you here, to this place. Do you sense anything different? Do you…feel?”
“I can be programmed to simulate—”
“Don’t simulate!” the man shouted. “Be! It’s possible. They said it was possible…”
The sphere gave no response. I frowned at the odd interaction, and looked to Chet to get his opinion.
He was crying.
His face a mask of pain, he’d huddled back, scrunched down, trying to hide his eyes. I hurried over immediately, and he took my arm in his hands as if for support. He turned to me, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“He was wrong, you see,” Chet said, his voice hoarse. “Jason was wrong about one thing. It takes time. The change isn’t immediate. It takes months, sometimes years.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For the AI to start thinking for itself.”
“Is that what’s going on?” I asked. “You’re afraid of it, because it’s an AI? You’ve seen M-Bot. It’s all right, Chet.”
He shook his head. I mean, I knew he had a thing about AIs, but this was bizarre behavior.
In the vision, the man had turned away from the sphere, his shoulders slumped. The sphere, in turn, was inspecting the region. Its path brought it near us, and I got another good look at it. It was somewhat spiky—with little antennas coming off it in a multitude of directions. Its surface was pocked by cameras, like little holes. In fact, the construction did remind me of something.
Where had I seen a sphere, with those kinds of holes, like tunnels? Those spines coming off the outside…
“Memory of these must be buried deep within us,” Chet whispered. “When forced to build a body again, we unconsciously reach for the shape, perhaps…as a last memento…of something we once knew…something that once held our souls…before they were souls…”
We? Oh, scud. That sphere was a delver maze. At least that was what the shape reminded me of. A more technological, more rational, version of the giant sphere of stone the delvers made for their bodies when they were forced into the somewhere.
I looked to Chet, and his eyes were glowing. But I didn’t feel them. I didn’t sense the delvers. Instead I just sensed him. His mind…same as it always had been, though it was now expansive.
“You’re the delver,” I whispered. “The one I changed.”
“I…” he said. “I knew you’d need help. I had to send it. Somehow. But I…was the only help…I knew…”
I took a step backward by reflex. “Was there ever a Chet? It was all a lie?”
“There was,” he said, his voice drifting, soft. “I knew I could hide with you in the belt, where they couldn’t see. But…I needed a shape, a personality, someone to be. Don’t hate me, Spensa. Please don’t hate me! They have abandoned me. They want to destroy me. You’re…the only one…I have now.”
Scud. Scudscudscudscud. Saints, stars, and songs.
Chet was a delver.
Chet had always been a delver.
But I could feel his anguish. I’d caused him to separate from the others; I’d changed him. I’d shown him empathy. This was my fault. And damn it, I wasn’t going to turn my back on him. I’d made friends with a Krell. I could do this.
I stepped up and returned my hand to his shoulder. He grabbed it in a tight grip, smiling, still crying.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I said. “But I have to know what is going on.”
“I saw into your mind,” he said, “when we touched. I saw the name. Spears. And that man lived here, in the nowhere. He tried to escape through the lightburst some decades ago. He’d lived hundreds of years, using cytonics to expand his life! But the delvers destroyed him in the lightburst. He hadn’t practiced enough with his powers. He couldn’t hyperjump.”
“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “So you’re a monster from outside space and time. And you wanted to come into the belt and help me, so you made a homunculus…”
He nodded eagerly. “Like from Gran-Gran’s story about the alchemist! Yes, that’s a good analogy. I made a Chet homunculus.”
Okay, I could deal with this. I could accept this.
Deal with this, brain!
“I’m sorry for lying,” he whispered. “As a naive newborn, I’d assumed someone connected to your past would make you more trusting. I can now see that any random person would actually have been less suspicious.
“I was there with the rest, as Spears was destroyed. I knew him in an intimate way. I latched onto that name, and I remade him atom by atom. His mind was full of knowledge about the belt, but no memories of who he’d been in the somewhere returned. Still, he had a personality, a passion. Like you had. For…”
“Stories,” I whispered.
“Yes. I filled in what was lost of him with things from your mind. I think…I think he really was an explorer, Spensa. It was his memories about the fragments that I shared with you. His enthusiasm. His manner of speaking. As he was, I became. With some additions from your own mind to fill holes.
“I tried to explain, when you didn’t trust me. I tried to say that I wasn’t a person, but a collection of stories. But to have given myself away then would have ripped me apart. I had to stay with you, be a person. You needed a guide.
“But Spensa, the ashes. I didn’t anticipate how real they’d make me feel. How much they’d make a person out of me. And I didn’t realize…how much I’d like it. How much I’d want for us to just leave together, explore the nowhere, renouncing the pain that I knew was coming. If I had to remember…”
A part of me was furious. He’d kept all of this from me? He’d lied?
I contained it though. In a very un-Spensa-like way, I forced myself not to throw a tantrum. This wasn’t his fault. He was, in some ways, very young. I’d created him by forcing him to leave the other delvers. I couldn’t blame him for making mistakes while doing his best.
“The Path of Elders?” I asked.
“Real memories,” he whispered, “from real cytonics. I knew you’d need these. I knew…I’d need them. We’ve forgotten these things on purpose, Spensa. I didn’t know the specifics of what the memories contained, but I knew where the answers were. I knew the four most important portals to reach. So…forgive me…I invented for you a quest with an intriguing name. To drive you to reach these locations.”
“Because doing so is like a story.”
“Yes. Do…you hate me?” He held my arm tightly, speaking softly. This was a very different person from Chet the explorer—but then again, what would people have thought of the “bold warrior” Spensa Nightshade if they’d seen her weeping beside the wall?
I pried his hand free, then held it. “I don’t hate you, Chet. Thank you. For helping me. For doing this thing that was so hard.”
He nodded, grinning as he wept. “I like Chet,” he said. “I like being Chet. I like having identity. But it is painful.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I had to see him again,” Chet whispered, looking toward the man in the vision. That began to fade, the man leaving through the portal and taking the sphere with him.
The sphere is a delver maze, I thought, my brain scrambling to keep up. And Chet said that delvers become that shape because…that was the thing that once held them. Their soul.
“Delvers are AIs,” I said. “You are an AI.”
“No,” Chet whispered. “A delver is to an AI as you are to an ape—or maybe an amoeba. That was what we once were, long ago. Before exposure to the nowhere. And the ‘radiation’ that this place produces. It’s not radiation in a true sense as in the somewhere, but the idea is the same. It makes us, and over generations it makes cytonics.”
“Cousins,” I said. “That is how the delvers have decided to see people like me. Creations of this place.”
“Exactly, Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, some of his familiar voice returning. “Your powers bring a slice of the nowhere with you into your realm. Teleportation, visions, projecting into minds, agelessness, even altering your appearance. Each cytonic with skills in different areas.”
“And my skills,” I said, “are to teleport and to…”
“To see. Hear. Understand. As you have been willing to understand me.”
The vision faded. As before, I felt ancient cytonics—hundreds of them—reaching out to brush my mind. Good, they said, good. You have learned…learned so well…
“I was trained,” I whispered—though I didn’t know if they could hear. “By my grandmother. I just needed a little push.”
See and be, they sent, and showed me my power—the brilliance that was my star-soul—being…softer?
What?
I don’t know what it means, I said.
You will, they sent back as they faded. In the end, I was left with an impression—like the previous times. A wall standing on a white fragment, surrounded by something that looked like dust or snow.
“We call it,” Chet whispered, “the Solitary Shadow. It is the last stop on your quest.”
“More memories?” I asked.
“The last of them,” he said, then tapped his head. “My memories. The things the delvers have forgotten on purpose. I do not know what that last portal holds—but it is the thing they don’t want you to see. The thing they fear the most. I fear it too, but not so much as I once did. We two, we explore so well! Even exploring what I once was! Ha!”
I smiled as he wiped his eyes, grinning like a fool. In the distance, I felt something. The delvers? I turned toward the lightburst and expanded my senses. Searching, listening. I could hear the stars.
The delvers were projecting concern. They knew I’d walked this step on the Path, and they were cautious. But they had allowed this. So far I hadn’t broken the truce. Well, I hadn’t accepted it either, technically. Even though they felt I had. For now, there was balance.
Except…I was stronger than I’d ever been. What were they really thinking?
I could only do this because they were deliberately trying to project worry toward me—they saw it as encouragement for me to keep to the deal. But I was able to kind of…ride the signal they were sending, and quietly use that opening to read what they were truly thinking.
They were terrified of me still. That was what I expected. But there was something else… They were planning?
Scud. They were planning how to destroy Surehold.
I blinked in surprise, as I could picture it specifically. The delvers were going to bring in fragments from the somewhere. Ten of them. A dozen. Then they were going to slam them into Surehold while everyone was sleeping. They thought it might fool our scanners if the fragments appeared suddenly.
“Scud,” I whispered. “They were going to immediately break the truce. They don’t care. They’ll do anything to kill me.”
“What?” Chet said.
“They’re planning it now!” I said, pointing. “I can hear them doing it!”
“I didn’t know, Miss Nightshade,” he said. “I promise you, when I asked you to travel with me, I didn’t…”
Every instinct I’d had about them was right. “We need to leave,” I said to him. “Before we put the people here in danger.”
“How long do we have?” he asked.
“A day or so,” I said. “They will wait until everyone is asleep—but still, I think we should be long gone by then. Hopefully drawing delver attention to us, making them abandon the attack on Surehold.”
“Agreed,” Chet said. “So, it is onward, then? Today?”
“Today,” I said, striding out of the hangar to where M-Bot sat on the tarmac. “Recall the drone,” I said to him. “And Hesho. We’re going to be leaving soon.”
Nearby, several ships were landing—our ground crews, fetched from the Broadsider base. Peg and Maksim were walking up to meet them.
“I should say goodbye,” I said to Chet.
“It is well,” Chet said, climbing onto M-Bot’s wing. “Though, if you will, pass them my regards. I should not like them to see me in my state of disorder. An explorer of my renown must maintain a stoic reputation!”
I rushed over to Peg. “I’m leaving,” I said to her. “I’m sorry.”
“So soon?” Peg asked. “Not even an evening to celebrate?”
“I’m afraid not.” I didn’t mention the delvers—there seemed to be too much to explain. I’d send them word if the delvers continued with their planned attack, but I strongly suspected they’d abandon it as soon as I left Surehold.
They didn’t care about these others. It was me they feared. Scud, why were they so afraid of me?
“It was an honor, then,” Peg said, holding out a hand to me in a human gesture. “Plant that fruit somewhere grand.”
“I will,” I said, taking the offered hand—though hers dwarfed mine.
I gave Nuluba a few circular gestures I’d learned, a grateful goodbye. She excitedly returned them. Shiver and Dllllizzzz were already there in their ships. “I haven’t forgotten my promise,” I said to Shiver. “I continue to resonate with it.”
“You resonate with more than that,” Shiver said from her cockpit. “Fare well on your journey. And thank you, for all you have done.”
I gave Maksim a hug last of all.
“Thank you,” he said to me. “For showing me that we can fight without being monsters.”
“There are others who could teach you that better,” I said. “I hope to be able to introduce you someday.”
“Ha. Well, I don’t know how that would ever happen, but I’d welcome the chance! I’ll try to find a bloody skull or something to give as a traditional welcoming gift.”
“I’d hoped to get you to grow one of the seven fruits of contentment here with us,” Peg said, shaking her head. “If you change your mind…you are welcome here.”
I saluted Peg, then walked back and climbed onto the wing of my ship. Hesho sat in the cockpit, having arrived riding on M-Bot’s drone. As I slipped into the cockpit, he was arranging cushioning in a recessed section at the side of the instrument panel, where a zero-g canteen could be clipped.
“If you do not mind me asking,” he said to me, “you have decided to continue your quest inward? In the direction of the monsters who live in the lightburst?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then I am honored to accompany you,” he said.
“It might be dangerous.”
“There was a person I once was,” he said. “I should like to meet that person. Escaping this realm is my only hope. Though if I may make a request? I would like to travel in this cockpit with you and Chet. I was too long without company, and then too long with poor company. I don’t wish to fly alone—though if you think we need the firepower, I can revise my opinion and bring my own ship.”
“No,” I said. “Once we have the information we need, I think we’ll probably have to make a break for the lightburst. In there, we’ll need to be together so I can teleport us out. It’s better if you’re in the same ship I am.”
“Excellent,” Hesho said, prodding at his cushioned seating, his tail sticking up straight out the back. “I am pleased to discover that a ship built for a giant such as yourself has a seat for one my size.”
Yeah. I didn’t tell him it was essentially a cup holder.
M-Bot’s drone was locked into its now customary place behind my seat. “So,” he said from the dash, “what changed? I thought you didn’t want to go. But now you do?”
“I don’t want to go,” I said, strapping in. “I need to.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Can you explain?”
“Think about it a little first,” I said, placing Peg’s fruit on the dash, then lowering the canopy. “See if you can figure it out for yourself.” I fished in my pocket and brought out the pin. “And you… Do you want to be out on the dash?”
A soft fluting returned to me. No, she wanted to be in my pocket. Safe, hidden. So I put her away.
“Just so you all know,” Chet said from behind my seat, “I’m secretly a monster from outside space and time.”
“Ah yes,” Hesho said. “Deep inside, aren’t we all monsters?”
“No,” Chet said. “I’m pretty sure you’re not.”
“I’ll explain as we fly,” I told Hesho and M-Bot. “Also, there are some things you need to know about reality icons—mine in particular. But let’s get moving first.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but a part of me was sad. In taking this move, I was putting dreams of fighting with the Broadsiders and exploring the fragments firmly behind me—in effect, I was about to burn them to ash with the force of my engines.
I was determined. I wasn’t wavering. At the same time, it was an important moment. I raised us in the air, then rotated so we faced the lightburst.
Then I hit the overburn.
