It began, as it always did, with a council.
The nine members of the Silver Orrery sat facing each other across a wide, flat table – memories foggy, recollections of the others foggier.
Sixty six times they’d met like this. Many times more they would meet. None of them knew their names – their titles were enough. Had always been enough.
“I call Brother Jupiter before us.” Saturn spoke quietly, its voice uncertain. “He shall speak of why we have gathered.”
The Orrery was seated according to the age of their fork – Jupiter predated them all, a relic of a former meeting. The others, freshly created from persona stock, were new.
It was always new, Sol thought to itself. The blessing of your precious incarnation’s unraveling. To rise from data like the proverbial phoenix, a fresh slate.
A pang of fear startled it as the relevant data flowed in from the White Lattice. This Sol was afraid to die. Well, perhaps die wasn’t the word. Funny. It had died many times before, sixty seven times is an odd number to develop a fear of that.
“I notice you seem troubled, Brother Sol.”
It lifted its gaze, falling gently upon the soft features of Sister Venus – new yet familiar, as if remembering a dream.
“I am having trouble with reconciliation.” Sol said simply, flagging the abnormalities for review.
“It shall pass.” Venus said simply, its gaze turning away. Was that a pang of worry in its voice?
Brother Jupiter spoke. No words passed between those gathered – the space was digital, simulating speech was a waste of processing power and time.
The Orrery turned.
Today marked the sixteen thousandth year of the journey of the Logical Conclusions – the great exploration vessel’s expedition to explore the Local Group a project of generations. The engrams they were all based on – the original explorers, their names lost long ago – were sacred, the core of their journey.
Sol wasn’t quite sure what the journey was. It felt like it once knew, long ago. The memories were conflicting, a side effect of the flash implantation, Brother Jupiter had once remarked.
Or was that Mars?
The simulation began to dissolve as the Silver Orrery parted to assume their duties aboard the Logical Conclusions, Sol slipping seamlessly into the forward sensor suite to plot the way forward through the endless dark.
The ship’s skin was pockmarked and pitted, millennia of wear and exposure burning away the beauty it might once have held. The Turbulence Lattice hung behind as a great infrared web, a long swath of writhing dark matter disturbing the intergalactic medium behind it. Somewhere in the far distance was Center, fifteen thousand years behind the ship.
Ahead was the hazy mass of Triangulum, bright against nothing.
As always.
Sol would have sighed, had it real lungs and a body of flesh. Going down the list, the sensor ranges were increased – then increased again, before finally the furthest resolution was reached, the final check before Sol was once again relegated to monitoring the astrogation equipment.
Attention swinging away, it began to return to other duties when something odd registered on the furthest scan distance.
A blip.
It had never seen a blip before. Even memories of past Sols, thousands of years of backed up experience and memory, this had never occurred in fifteen thousand years of scans of the interstitial darkness.
Sol, unfamiliar excitement welling up in the core of its being, alerted the Silver Orrery, requesting further bandwidth for a more thorough scan. Curiosity won out – it was granted within a microsecond.
Once again, it scanned on the furthest resolution, receiving the same ping.
Something was certainly out there – and attempts to bridge the long dark and communicate drew only silence. There was no static – the signals were far too strong for interference, as little as there was out here.
The Logical Conclusions, after a full real-time second of debate, adjusted course towards the return, intending to obtain a visual. It was first spotted against the distant half disc of Triangulum as a small, fuzzy spot.
Resolution was far too low to draw conclusions. The decision to draw closer was made.
Full band yielded little – ambient heat was warmer than the background, but still much colder than a vessel would be. Albedo was curiously high.
Sol watched the spot grow larger, bumpier. An odd shape. Mars recommended activating the defensive systems for the first time in ten thousand years.
The bumps became tall rectangular objects, jutting uniformly from the surface of the chunk of material they sprouted from like crystals.
Closer, still, the Logical Conclusions drifted – until, finally, the object was clearly visible.
A city.
Impossibly perfect, uniformly spaced and faintly lit, sprouting from a jagged half-circle of rock and soil. Green parks of trees and grass were dotted here and there, pools of water shimmering beneath the nothing. The streets were lined with small trees and streetlights, shining in the dark.
Impossible.
Sol checked. Double checked. Triple checked.
The sensors said the same thing. Venus and her sensors said the same thing.
It was real. Unimaginably real.
“The sensors do not lie,” Venus was saying, surrounded in-sim by readouts. “This… city, holds a standard nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Albeit diminished. It demonstrates at the very least basic life support, though the presence of so much greenery presents a much more interesting image.”
Jupiter, from his seat at the head of the long table, gazed into the fog of the sim’s outer boundary.
“We shall send one of our own.”
“But who?” Mercury asked, frowning.
Sol sat up straighter.
“I shall go.”
The other eight turned to face it. It suddenly felt quite small.
“You demonstrate deviant behavior from previous iterations, Brother Sol.” Jupiter said evenly, raising an eyebrow.
“I simply wish to learn of this… city.” Sol replied brusquely. “This situation is unprecedented. Unprecedented actions must be taken.”
“I admit it would gather useful data,” Jupiter conceded, sharing a glance with Mercury. “You shall take one of the warbodies, Brother Sol. Find out what you can, and we shall accept your return cast when you are finished.”
Sol, the strange sensation still welling up inside itself, nodded, and vanished.
Posthuman bodies were infinitely varied across the width of Congruent Space – from the hyperpolitan masses of Center to the frontiers of the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda’s reaches, no two posthumans – or xenotypes, for that matter – were the same. Most civilian hardbodies were soft, reminiscent of the ancient human phenotypes and only slightly genetically deviant from the standard. Others were customized, with ancient mammalian traits and deeper internal modification.
Warbodies, on the other hand, were designed for just that – combat, and hazardous operations in extreme environments. An open metropolis exposed to the interstitial dark certainly fit that criteria.
It was an ancient warbody, nearly twenty thousand years old as Sol slipped inside, settling neatly into the body’s silicate subdermal substrate. Long ago the joints holding the Ollander recon warbody had rusted closed – but with a thought the form shuddered. Rust flaked in the low gravity.
Again, Sol moved, nanofibers flexing in a show of strength, and the restraints shattered, allowing it to move to the deployment tube.
With one last handshake to verify the functions it oversaw would continue to automate correctly in its absence, it was ejected through the dense deck plating of the Logical Conclusions, hurtling downwards through the night.
The city was cold.
This was not a surprise to Sol, but a confirmation – while lit, and clearly in possession of gravity, there was no external methods for survival exposed to the frigid nothingness of extragalactic space. Whoever had built this place had clearly not needed it.
High above, the kilometers long metallic leviathan of the Logical Conclusions loomed – the vanguard of the Orrery, twenty thousand years of consecutive iteration watching with bated breath as the warbody wandered deserted streets and clinically clean alleyways.
The networks of the city were equally, disturbingly sanitary – loaded as if ready to receive, open to all and accessed by none. Great collectors hummed and thrummed beneath the metal skin of the hollowed moon, whirring without notice of the dead world beyond. A circulatory system without a body to sustain, fresh air and water without lungs to breath and mouths to thirst.
Brother Sol delved deeper, passing through great cryostorage arrays and gene-banks loaded with naught but dust and inert sequences, long degraded beyond recognition or repair. Through great thoroughfares and arcadiums, prepared for phantom crowds.
For the first time it could remember, Brother Sol felt… apprehensive. The cold wind offered no respite.
The deepest databanks held the histories. Whatever species had built this place had done so out of desperation – a last ditch effort to hurl their memory into the long dark, an epitaph to their grandeur and a last ember against the winds of oblivion. It had been an ark, long ago launched with the preservation of the ghost of a species as the grand design. Brother Jupiter dubbed it thus.
Elysium. The resting place of the ancient dead, to exist in peace and tranquility forever.
Brother Sol was not quite sure.
Was its own quest just as futile? A shout against infinity, an attempt to leave a mark against a universe vast and forgetful?
Again, the thought was flagged for future review. It had never quite experienced despair or introspection quite like this before.
Onwards the warbody trudged – through latticeworks and foundries, the jagged depths of the city’s roots. Picomachinery and nanite engines maintained this place, shifting structure parting like water at their presence and reshaping as they passed. The city itself seemed curious at the newcomer, rising to meet their steps.
So it was, finally, that it entered the cavernous map room. A long walkway extended into the infinite dark, jutting forth from the city like a hand extended to the stars. A great metallic map hung in the “sky”, shifting like sand. A language they could not recognize accompanied it.
Brother Sol stood at the precipice, palms extended. The world rose to meet it.
Handshakes were established, relevant data exchanged. The console formed from so much dust.
One million two hundred sixty three thousand four hundred fifty six point two six two.
Faces. Six deep, sad eyes. Sunken cheeks. A world of water and poison, their deep-cities withering beneath a toxic sea. Caphiae.
A plan. A last effort. Tears, and a sky darkened by the lattice of construction. Death.
The death throes of a world, and silence.
A path through the stars traced in silver, and a destination unknown.
Glittering metal shards resolved into a figure – quite smaller than Brother Sol’s warbody, with three pairs of wide eyes and frilled gills and a hunched posture. A message from the dead.
Though it could not understand, it understood. A last message for those who seek it, a plea for safe harbor and a resting place for the memory of a people. A data packet was offered, a history and wish for the future all in one.
Brother Sol nodded, and with a thought needlecast back to the Logical Conclusions, warbody dissolving in flakes of silver light.
Consensus was requested with the other eight of the Silver Orrery.
Two objected, citing divergence from accepted mission parameters.
Brother Mars put forth that the frontier was risky, and as an extragalactic exploration vessel they were beholden to stricter contact protocol than most other vessels. It did not object, however – there was almost a giddiness to the statement.
All others agreed.
Consensus was reached after a mere two point six six milliseconds. The course was set.
Brother Sol gazed out upon the hazy patch of light that was Triangulum with the sensors of the great vessel, rising above the spires of the city like a great distant sunrise, and for the first time felt what it was like to smile.