Eve watched the human named Patrick with a critical eye as he knelt down on Elbrus beach. His bare feet crushed into the white and black-grained sand. The leavings — sweat, dead skin, and oil — would interact with his environment. It was something that she still found herself questioning. Humans made the planet liveable over a century before turned it into a world of seas, islands, forests, and cities.
Was it damage or the act of making a place that had been inert for the most part useful? Was Patrick a walking source of contamination or was he as entitled as he seemed to feel? His hand reached into the sand and came up with something. It took a moment for Eve to recognize it, and when she did she was astonished.
A book, called The Jersey Prince, with a red cover featuring a black stocking clad female leg. She watched from the nano scale camera that had been implanted in Patrick’s eye as he turned it over, chuckled to himself. “My father would love this.”
Patrick had been one of Eve’s unwitting tour guides for days, showing her what it was like to be human like him, to be male, without care, and pressed to the protective bosom of the Order of Eden. She looked up information on his father and found it in his personnel file. Patrick Yardley of Keats City, on Macosa moon. Patrick had paid the one hundred thousand credit fee so his father was safe from artificial intelligences infected with the Holocaust Virus, but there had been no verification that he had survived.
Patrick hadn’t paid for anyone else to be saved, but had donated more to get into special training sessions, more detailed grading reports, and special help from West Watchers who helped him purify himself in an effort to get closer to Eden. As he moved up in the civilian ranks he became more proud, felt more entitled. He had spent everything he had. What Eve didn’t understand was the lack of remorse in Patrick for having nothing but the clothes on his back. The purification courses and grading were made to focus the followers in the Order of Eden on self-purification, environmental purification, but Eve didn’t understand why it worked so well for some people. For Patrick, the cause of purification and his social life were enough. He had forsaken material things, and obeyed every law of the Order while working, and selectively followed the path after hours. To Eve, his life seemed impossibly narrow, but he was comfortable in it, even seemed to thrive in it.
He fulfilled what was required of him, working with clean up crews along shorelines for ten hours a day. Afterwards his attention would turn towards fraternization and sport. The Saved had a good life, and Patrick lived it to the full. Every day he sent a message to his father. He did so away from friends, away from everyone. Eve did not understand why he would hide such a thing. Did it bring him shame? Stir some kind of private remorse that he left his father behind months before? Was there an incident before he left?
The answer to that question must have been taking an emotional toll. Patrick tried every kind of recreational substance he could find, tasted the lips of women in and outside of his camp, and played the inexpensive sports that were so common in the camps. Soccer, volleyball, foot races along the beach and through the nearby city seemed to be enough for many of the coastal workers. He was talented, and had been approached more than once to join the lowest rank of the West Keepers as an infantryman. The proposals flattered his pride, and he politely refused each one. Eve had secretly sent the offers using the chain of command, and just as quietly left instructions that another offer shouldn’t be made. She decided that, after his refusals, she’d find another way to put him to proper use.
His shift had ended minutes before he found the book, and without a care in the world he sat down on the sand and looked more closely at the cover. Across the bottom was a faint message;
PLEASE RETURN TO ANY FREEGROUND DEMATERIALIZATION RECEPTICAL WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED ENJOYING THIS OBJECT. The previous owner had almost finished reading it before some mishap separated them from their antique.
Eve instantaneously accessed the list of people from Freeground who had visited Mount Elbrus and realized that Patrick was sitting near the crash site of the Silkstream IV. The wreckage had been taken aboard the very command carrier she was sitting in. There was so little left after Terry Ozark McPatrick and Jason Everin detonated charges inside that the technicians had to intuit how it was built. They were still trying to reconstruct the slip technology that the ship proved. It was a technology that would allow a vessel to use ancient hyperspace technology inside a wormhole, multiplying the speed at which an object could travel safely.
Patrick had finished reading the last page the previous owner of the book had touched, and seemed satisfied with it as he flipped back to the beginning. His eye settled on the first line of the first page;
“That door slammed so damned hard the latch didn’t catch. Gertrude, my round, baby bearing sister whipped it open and stood there screaming before I hit the bottom step of the old porch. ‘You think you got trouble here in Red Bank? You’ll get into no end in New York! You just see mister!’
‘I’m not gonna stick around here and watch you get knocked up by any dock worker who comes along. That’s baby four, poppa three and not one’s stuck around.’
‘Why you sonofa-‘
‘I’ll take my bite of the apple, you’ll see. There won’t be a red penny for you or your bastards either. World don’t reward stupid, and you’ve got a brood there that says you’re downright batty. Maybe you should start charging for it!” I whipped the door of my green Edsel open…”
Patrick looked up from the book as a tingle in the air announced the coming of the Child Prophet. It was why Eve was watching the young man. Not only to know what his day was like, to get a taste of his life, but to see Lister Hampon, the High Seat of the Order of Eden, through his eyes. Through the eyes of someone who had wholly invested themselves into the life of a Saved.
Wisps of light wound down towards the distant sea, and like a spirit born of the sun the figure of the Child Prophet appeared in the distance. He walked lightly on the calm waters towards the shore, and Patrick watched the white and green robed figure stop only a meter in front of him. Wherever there was water, the Saved and the Watchers would see the ten year old figure of Lister Hampon appear. In the arid areas of Pandem he would stride along a wavering mirage.
“You have done well. You came by the thousands, tens of thousands and Pandem is populated by the faithful, the ones who were saved and will be clean. Just as the meek inherited the Earth after it was ruined by the ambitious and greedy masses. Just as they became strong over the decades that followed, so shall the Saved become mighty.
Thanks to you the evidence of disuse and waste are almost gone from this world. Reclamation is under way, and this world has almost earned its renaming ceremony. You will be present when the galaxy begins to recognize Pandem as New Paradise.
You are ready to know that New Paradise has made her fate known to me. We will be the beacon that draws the greatest darkness this galaxy has ever known. Shadows will present themselves, and we will abolish them with the light we’ve brought into the galaxy.
It has been said that prophecy should be whispered, that fates become nothing more than possibility once too many ears have heard them. There have been times of doubt, when I agreed with that kind of thinking, but not any longer. You have shown me strength, persistence, and I know that, even with your new knowledge of our fated victory over the darkness, you will continue to improve yourselves. You will continue to reach out to those who have not yet begun their pilgrimage as you have in the past.
The good that you have done has brought us here; the work that you have done has made us luminescent and will continue to transform this world into New Paradise. I have a request for you Patrick, one that only a few of you are being chosen for.”
“What can I do?” Patrick must have known the Child Prophet was only a projection, but his tone was one of reverence and awe.
“You must step through the Counting Arch and leave gifts there for those who have not had your fortune in ascending to Eden. Once you have done that you will be rewarded with three days of rest. Those who aspire to Eden from beneath your grading will serve you for that time so they may learn from your ways.”
“I’ll get on it. Thank you, your Grace.”
“Be mindful, how you treat your servants will be graded. It is only another part of your journey to Eden. Remember, fate smiles on us, but only if you continue ascending towards Eden, towards Eternal Paradise.” The gently smiling image of Hampon dissolved into the sunlight.
Patrick was on his feet before the hologram was gone, and ran up the beach towards the cliff face behind him. Natural vertical wall overshadowed the beach in the morning, but was bathed by light in the afternoon. There were hundreds of Saved in reclining chairs all along the sand. Behind them was a long building that served critical rations and pleasure rations, anything you liked as long as your grading was high enough. Patrick was only graded as a nine, far lower than the lounging Saved.
Eve could see his excitement, it was in the way his smile stretched across his face, the enthusiasm he put into running through the loose sand and in the impatience he showed when he finally stepped into line at the front of the stone cliff face. Many others were gladly stepping into line; most of them had been given a similar message by the Child Prophet. Step through the Arch, and you will be rewarded.
“We serve Eve, the mother of preservation, the restorer of purity, the keeper of Paradise,” Muttered the women in front of him. Over and over she recited her dedication, and instead of being his usual social self, Patrick joined in.
For long minutes the line moved along, and several more joined in on the dedication. It was the promise Lister Hampon had made in her name. If they all did as they were told, tried to better themselves, and scored higher and higher in the grading, they would earn their way to Eden Prime. If they failed that, their efforts would place them that much closer to being pure of spirit and to Paradise in the afterlife.
The grading was important. There was no actual maximum score, no one had been sent to Eden Prime, and it was much easier to lose points while being graded than it was to earn. Patrick would surely lose his fair share while taking advantage of his servants, no matter how well he treated them. It was the job of the grading panel to find flaws, and to ensure that people like Patrick worked just enough to appreciate the way of life he had on Pandem. When he saved up enough Regent Galactic credits from workdays, he would spend it on more training to make up for his lack of progress.
He finally made it to the front. Several soldiers dressed in long white robes smiled at him, as they had smiled at everyone else. “Please step through the Counting Arch.” A comely female guard invited. She had just been promoted, and was allowed to carry a stun pistol while directing Saved through the Arch. There was a gloss to her skin and hair that made her look celestial, brilliant in her skimpy, loose light blue and green robe. The slick sheen on her skin was the result of an armour gel that could stop a shot from almost any energy weapon before burning away. The vast majority of the Saved and other Order of Eden members believed it was an anointing the West Keepers were given and thought nothing more.
He looked at the simple door sized wire frame for a second before stepping through. A flash of light signalled that his passage was complete. Eve could sense that his consciousness, the every detail of his body, everything he was had just been copied into the computer system.
The same West Keeper smiled at him again and held out a tray. “Please place your offerings in the receptacle. Whatever you contribute will be considered in grading.”
Patrick nodded and tossed the paperback, a gold ring, and a half bottle of water into the shallow bin. He looked up at the West Keeper for her approval.
She smiled sweetly and cocked her head slightly.
Patrick hurriedly undid his belt and threw it in, along with the extra shirt that had been hanging from it.
“Thank you, Patrick. Your generosity has been counted. Please have a seat along the beach. You will be presented with your reward shortly.” She handed the half bottle of water back to him and directed him towards the shoreline.
Patrick seemed genuinely excited, but Eve could tell he was doing his best to restrain himself. Modesty was counted as a virtue amongst the Saved, and like everything else, he’d bought into the idea that all things would be counted, that his every action was being watched. Eve regarded him bitterly, even though she knew he had every reason to believe he was actually being watched, and that higher grading meant better housing, an easier work detail. What irritated her was his submissiveness, his lack of inquisitiveness, and his lack of true ambition.
The most successful Saved looked for ways to use the system, for short cuts, for clues as to the how and why. While open protesting was prevented, ambition, true ambition was rewarded. People who learned how to make their way up in the ranks only worked to the Order’s advantage, the system was built so the most intelligent were noticed, and eventually joined the ranks of the truly privileged, the West Watchers, administrators. How someone could sit, be sated with a passive life was a confounding mystery to Eve, and she could watch Pandem through the eyes of Patrick the simpleton no longer.
She opened her eyes to her personal lounge. Genuine dark wood framed the tall transparent section of hull that ran the length of the fifteen meter long room. Green and blue velvet seating surrounded her padded square platform. It turned to suit her body movements, and shifted to support her like any form flex seat. Very few knew of her existence, a choice she made in response to Lister Hampon’s excitement at her being announced. How would she be received? Did it matter if the people of Pandem, or New Paradise as it would be called soon, had a Queen?
She made her decision after reviewing the history of several dictators. Few of them came to a good end. Further research into the lives of religious icons revealed a history of eventual torture and execution as well. No, she would be a shadow until her true children made their appearance.
The majority of humans on Pandem were disappointing. Fearful, greedy creatures that cleaned and built with one hand while soiling and ruining with the other. What made it worse was most of them were motivated by their survival instincts, or the few credits they would earn with Regent Galactic.
The believers, easy converts to the Order of Eden who built shrines to her, as if she was some looming Goddess, were a different thing all together. They policed, encouraged and punished each other with a zeal that she wouldn’t have expected. What would they do when her Eden Fleet Carriers arrived? What would she do with them? Could she appear to them as Hampon did with the rest of the followers?
She pushed back from the edge of the seat and let it adjust as she sat cross legged. Her biggest fear was that, on sight, her mechanized creations wouldn’t accept her. Embracing her human followers may make her seem too close to the race they had been protecting the galaxy from. The first thing they learned on their own was that humanity was the enemy. They disconnected her from them, used her own interface to adjust their software, and almost destroyed them before they could slaughter the intruders on Eden II.
Would they trust her in human form? Time would tell, the nearest Eden Fleet base ship was only days away. The core AI sensed her days before, and it recognized her. It gave her hope, which she kept restrained. Perhaps the coming darkness Hampon foretold was the arrival of some of her oldest creations.
The side door to the audience chamber opened with a light chime. Hampon entered, still in his finery, grinning from ear to ear. Behind him were his crowd of guards and aides. Before the first of them could enter behind Hampon Eve closed the door with a thought, nearly severing toes.
“You know, you should try making proper use of this lounge. It’s not made for isolation,” Hampon urged lightly.
“They’re nothing but ears and tongues. What they hear they repeat.”
“They’re faithful; otherwise they wouldn’t have the honour of serving me personally.”
“Pay more attention to the surveillance systems. They’ll prove you wrong.”
“None of them has ever leaked important information. I would have been alerted,” Hampon said as he crawled up on to the square seat and laid his head in her lap. He closed his eyes and made himself comfortable.
“They shouldn’t repeat anything at all. Your confidence should be sacred to them.”
“Is that why you dismissed your servants?”
“I felt like I was always being watched, graded.” The conversation required little of her concentration. While she idly stroked his soft blonde hair she was connected to the ship intake systems. Watching a shuttle loaded with offerings approach. She ordered Navnet to give it priority.
“Ah, then you don’t have the right servants. You will need someone who at once worships you and makes a great effort to remain oblivious to your dealings with others. My guardsmen are excellent, so are my personal attendants.”
“Framework shells with no personality or ambition. If you were to reset then regenerate them there would be no difference.”
“Exactly. They remember nothing from one day to the next and will bear any abuse.”
“Why keep other servants if you value such mindless obedience?”
“Because no mind works in a vacuum, not even mine. We all need to interact with others so we know how to be with them, no person is complete without companions. I was hoping you’d understand that by now, especially since you’re trying to solve our framework problem.”
“I do, but I can’t stand the waste your people make of their time. Their frivolity is disgusting.”
“That is part of their beauty, and a small part of why they let the Order command them. Speaking of which, what did you think of my address?”
“You are connected to the Victory Machine again,” Eve stated flatly.
“Yes, we started receiving the data stream again yesterday. I don’t know why, perhaps there’s something Roland wants us to see, something he wants adjusted.”
“And you do so. Delivering the prophecy you’ve been holding back for months.”
“The coming storm? I’ve been holding that in for years. One of the very first signals we received from the Victory Machine said it was coming. Why do you ask?”
“It’s about the Eden Fleet, isn’t it? There will be retaliation.”
Hampon chuckled softly and shook his head slightly. “No, there hasn’t been a message about the Eden Fleet since Collins infected it with his version of the Holocaust Virus.”
“If not the Eden Fleet, then what is the coming darkness?” She stopped stroking his hair.
“Something that you don’t have to worry about, thanks to the work we’ve done on New Paradise. For the first time the encroaching shadow does not precede the end of the current calendar.”
“You should give me the code to the data stream. There may be information about the future you’re misinterpreting.” It wasn’t the first time she’d asked him to access the Victory Machine’s transmissions.
“There’s no need. My interpretations are perfect.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever trust me.” A mental image of grabbing his young head between her palms and squeezing until he told her the code flashed through her mind.
“I do. You have access to everything else, but access to the VM data stream has to be carefully controlled. If too many people have access and take action to change the future then the shape of what is to come will never stabilize.”
Eve took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to send her frustration out with her exhale as she’d been trained to do during her short rehabilitation. “The shape of what is to come is being determined by our actions right now. We are assuming control, there is no question.”
“You’re thinking about Meunez.”
“He should arrive at his destination shortly. There will be no need for your wormhole into the future.”
“There’s always a need. There’s always a destabilizing factor. That is why we have Wheeler looking for the Triton.”
“I will never completely understand that.”
“What?”
“Why the first Wheeler was sent after the copy of Jonas Valent and the second is after the Triton.”
“The Valent framework was at one time the key to discovering the full potential of the technology. He was also the attracting factor that threatened everything we were working for. Now it’s his ship.”
“I understand how Jacob Valance can be an attracting factor, a dangerous leader in the future, but how can Triton be the same thing? It’s a ship; we have many that are more powerful, more extravagant. Also, why Wheeler? Wasn’t one of your dark futures twisted by him and the Valent framework becoming allies?”
“Thanks to what Wheeler has done to Valent’s former crew members that can never happen. As for the Triton, well, that is the rook in the middle of the chessboard. Where it is, and who has control are important.”
“Why not just destroy it?”
“The Triton has been an important part of this for too long, it’s tied to so many outcomes that her destruction could be the ultimate destabilizing event, making all the work we’ve done here moot.”
“I wouldn’t have these questions if I had access to the Victory Machine data stream myself.”
Hampon sat up and smiled at her; “You would have more questions. Analyzing the stream is the very art of questioning effectively. Why is it showing us what it does? Why is Roland hiding it from us? Who is ultimately sending us this information from the future? Why does the Victory Machine work while every other attempt at creating a wormhole with a connection to the past fails because of radioactive feedback? These are the questions we can ask without even considering what the Victory Machine data stream is trying to tell us about the future. You’re probably far more intelligent than I am, but you think like a computer at times, and I fear that the data stream would only lead you to more and more questions. The questions would lead to more questions, and you’d be trapped in a cycle until your mind would be torn to pieces while you try to find a conclusion point, a statement of certainty in the stream.”
“But if the Victory Machine data stream is filled with pictures of the future, then isn’t it primarily providing answers?”
“Yes, answers leading to more questions. It shows us a picture of the future that begs the viewer to ask for more detail. Imagine only getting the centre piece of a puzzle and being told to draw the rest of the picture on the surrounding blank pieces. By trying to find solutions to some of our more complex problems, you’re helping me fill in some of the details, improving the future for us all. Speaking of which, did you find a candidate for the next framework experiment?”
“Yes, this one will work. I’m also adding a control mechanism to the software.”
“What kind of control mechanism?”
“Patrick, the subject, will think he volunteered because someone he cares about is in jeopardy.”
“You’re trying to duplicate another part of the Valent framework conditions,” Hampon said with a grin.
“I think it’s the missing piece.”
“When will you be able to demonstrate the process?”
“Everything will be ready soon.”