B3 Chapter 14 - Zero

Foreign environments were always impactful on magical equipment, especially ones that had been hacked together from the scraps of two already specialized suits. Syl found that his vocal synthesizer didn’t quite appreciate the conditions around them. It could still produce sound, but it garbled to near-uselessness when he projected it outside of the suit instead of just through comms.

“Unlikely to be able to communicate with him,” Syl commed to Bianca.

“No need to worry about that,” Zero said. “I’m listening.”

Of course he was. Syl had placed regular amounts of encryption on these pressure suits, but a regular amount might as well have meant nothing at all to someone experienced enough. Besides, he’d done a bit of a hack job of it, not bothering to spend that much time perfectly integrating the Red faceplate with Incarnate suits.

“Then maybe you wouldn’t mind explaining where we are,” Syl said. “Or what this place is.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that both of them had enough flux cycling through their bodies to keep themselves afloat, it was likely that the sheer force of the ongoing dust storm and turbulent atmosphere would have knocked them away. The gravity was less intense than Earth’s as well, though the magical density was substantially thicker.

The temperature was easily the second most noticeable difference. Though their suits were temperature regulated, Syl could see on his heads-up display that temperatures were in excess of two hundred Celsius.

“By pre-Integration American references, this planet is named Kepler-138b,” Zero said. “It closely orbits an M1-type red dwarf star. Exposed to so much solar radiation that natural life never developed here. Currently colonized by the machines.”

Syl sorted through his memories. Though he hadn’t created many projects meant for outer space thanks to the nature of flux—at least, what he and the world had believed the nature of flux to be—there had always been some sense of wonder as to the wider world out there past the base violence of one planet.

Pride had been created as a result of extensive Aurian experimentation, the result of packing dozens of memories from strategic- and paragon-class mages into one mind. When they went far back enough, there was preserved knowledge from times past. Times when humanity had looked to the stars and wondered what was there instead of assuming that there was only one world with value.

“The constellation Lyra,” he said, placing the memory. “218 light-years from Earth.”

“Correct,” Zero said.

The original Sinner’s form was faintly visible through the dust. Unlike the other two magicians, he was standing on his own two feet, apparently completely unaffected by the surrounding environment. As far as Syl could tell, he wasn’t even wearing a pressure suit of any kind.

That in itself wasn’t the most surprising, given what he knew of Zero now. He was integrated enough with the machines that his body was probably more metal than organic material, his nerve and brain patterns etched into the artificial matter that he’d used to save himself.

“The Gate took us here?” Bianca asked.

“Indeed it did,” Zero replied. “I believe we have yet to be formally introduced.”

“Alexander Petrov,” Bianca said flatly. “Zero. Twelve point eight million casualties. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Crown Princess of Auria Bianca the First,” Zero said in turn. “Paragon-class by any metric other than the official value. Crippled by a flux pairing process that permanently destroyed your ability to expand your flux pool but empowered by having a second pool to draw from. You are known.”

“You have a lot of information for a dead guy,” Syl said.

“I take an interest in my peers,” Zero said. “Your nation does not secure its records very well from those who have a true desire to find them.”

“My nation no longer exists,” Syl said. “And now that we’ve gotten introductions out of the way: why are you here? This planet doesn’t support life.”

“I’m curious about that myself,” Bianca said. “I assumed you had an interest in keeping humanity alive. The group you created certainly does.”

“My fellow Sinners can handle themselves,” Zero said. “As to humanity—those who cannot protect themselves do not deserve to be protected. Those who cannot evolve will not be saved.”

Syl tilted his head. “That phrasing sounds familiar.”

He manifested his flux freely, running a single spell process to keep it visually distinct, and he traced out a specific complex, multidimensional pattern that he was sure Zero would understand.

We evolved.

Will you?

Judgment is coming.

The last message the machines had carved into the surfaces of the pieces of the moon before they’d hurtled the entire thing at Earth. Zero was eerily mirroring it with his sentiment now.

“Guilty as charged,” the Sinner said. He held up a finger, and the storm around them stopped, curving to avoid a cleared-out bubble of space, giving them more room to see each other and what was under them.

It was more of them. The so-called rock that Zero stood upon was crawling with microscopic robots, though some of them were larger than others. As Zero’s command rippled out through the area around them, a good chunk of the earth simply rose up into dull grey pillars, manipulating flux and causing the arid winds to slow to a stop.

Off in the distance, visible as the winds died down, was a titanic construct taller than any Earth city was wide.

“A planet colonized by the machines,” Syl said. “Maybe made of them now too. So that’s what they’ve been doing instead of coming to Earth.”

“Places like this are where I’ve been instead of traveling the planet myself,” Zero said. “You understand why I’ve been busy.”

“What is your purpose in coming here?” Bianca asked. “This is a dead planet.”

“Only on the surface.”

“How did you get here?” Syl was a good bit more curious about that. He doubted Zero would have the answers, as the other man had never really been much of an engineer, but he’d spent more time with the machines than anyone else alive.

Much to his surprise, Zero did seem to have a response ready for that. “Gates aren’t isolated instances. When one is created, it is typically in a flux-dense area, correct? The conditions for it are correct, but they also further their own conditions by increasing that density. It is of the same principle that allowed me to free cast for the first time.”

Despite it not being the purpose of their venture here, that did intrigue Syl. While he had a method to simulate a free cast in the form of his memory casting, that was nothing like real free casting. It was a different approach to the same problem and offered some benefits in speed and power, but it was much less versatile and required a fairly complex calibration process for each spell there.

“You haven’t exactly been public with that principle,” Syl said.

“I did die before I could explain it.”

Bianca snorted. “You had decades to do so but never did. I don’t think you’re as open to sharing discoveries as you claim to be.”

“You should know the value of keeping yourself the strongest, Pride.” Zero’s address was to both of them. As much as Syl was the one who had actually owned that title, the original Sinner had the insight to understand that the only reason he worked as effectively as he did was his second half.

“I don’t need to resort to anything as pathetic as hiding my developments to win,” Syl replied. “Look at the world there. The only reason not everyone uses my technology is because they refuse to or can’t understand it. Watch any effort to fight back against this so-called evolution of yours—“

“Not mine,” Zero said. “The machines’. I simply agree with their goals.”

“—and you’ll find my fingerprints all over it,” Syl finisher, the voice synthesizer program not pausing for Zero’s sentence.

“Fair is fair,” Zero agreed. “We may share different values. As I was saying, however…”

The explanation was dense and technical. While Alexander Petrov hadn’t been a magical engineer, his understanding of combat magic had been one of if not the single highest amongst magicians of his era and possibly history.

He ultimately described it as something similar to what Syl had observed from Cascadian innates. The theory amounted roughly to certain areas having better environments for Gates; there, it was possible to manipulate the area into spawning one. That was theory that Syl was somewhat familiar with, though he knew that human attempts had always been unsuccessful.

New information came when Zero revealed that the same effect could apparently be reversed while within the Gate, creating an exit somewhere else there were favorable conditions—which meant any world that had undergone an Integration like Earth had. Apparently, that number wasn’t limited to one planet. Judging from the current state of Kepler-138b, it wasn’t even limited to planets with life.

In essence, the machines had forced their way into creating Gates and generating new flux environments and then extended their reach beyond.

“Gates, you have to understand, are not just reflections of one space,” Zero said. “You have been in many before. You know this. They are, for lack of a better word, shared places. Intersections. Commonalities between different magic-dense areas.”

“Different worlds,” Syl surmised. “Thus allowing for exits to punch out farther away from our world than all of humanity has travelled in its entire existence combined.”

“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

“Then if you have access to the resources and better technology to make use of it,” Bianca asked, “why stay on Earth? Why come back?”

“Don’t give me the evolution bullshit,” Syl said. “It isn’t about that. Not for humans, at least.”

Zero’s posture changed. Even through the voice synthesizer, it was clear he was able to tell that Syl was implying something deeper.

This entire time, Syl had felt like something was off. It was true that he’d met Zero fewer times than he had fingers on one hand, but a strange feeling that had persisted from Taiwan stayed with him now.

“Are you trying to say something to me, Pride?” Zero asked.

“Only if you’re trying to tell me the truth,” Syl replied. “For as long as you want to keep your veil up, I’ll maintain mine.”

“Oh?” Zero asked, smiling wide. “Do tell.”

Syl shrugged. “I have an educated guess. I don’t have a fantastic reason to explain it to you.”

“If your guess is close to the mark, I’ll share a little from my end as well,” Zero said. “Is that fair?”

“Is this a child’s game?” Bianca scoffed. “This is supposed to be your race too, you know.”

“I’ve always had a fondness for games,” Zero replied.

“Then let me tell you what I believe,” Syl said. “I think you did die on March 11th, 61 AFI. I’ve reviewed the footage. I’ve seen the sunken country. You claimed that you found a way to continue on in the moment of your death. That you found a way to persist in the nanobots of a banished Taiwan.”

“I have said all this, yes,” Zero said. “Anything new?”

“I don’t think that’s what happened at all. I don’t believe that Alexander Petrov exists as his own extant being anymore. When you died, you didn’t somehow preserve yourself with technology. Whatever piece of the AI escaped Taiwan and made it to the moon and back found you. Maybe it needed you. I don’t know. Either way, it subsumed you. Recorded your brain patterns, your nerves, everything you’ve showed me.

“But the human is dead. There is no Zero. The Sinner that stands before me now is nothing more than one facet of the same intelligence that humanity tried to seal in Taiwan four decades ago. A simulation.

“A ghost in the machine.”

Bianca whispered the last words as Syl synthesized them, her thought process in sync with his as always.

Zero grinned wider.

“It would explain why you want humanity to evolve,” Bianca continued, picking up the thread Syl had left open. “You must have gained a lot from Zero. Things that nobody—not even your hive mind—was able to find. You want more.”

A silence passed between them that seemed to stretch on forever.

In the distance, the city-sized machine ignited with light.

“Well then,” Zero said. “Shall we discuss what happens next?”