Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (2 page)

Before anyone could get too close, Roman
felt the familiar crushing force embrace him. The instant before he
lost consciousness, he found himself growing eager. It felt like he
was once again on the right path. All the previous choices he’d
made while influencing events seemed to fall neatly in place behind
the new direction he was taking. Seeking out Ayan the Second and
gifting her with purpose, setting her up in the centre of the human
struggle would be a fitting final act.

To the surprise of the hundreds of people on
Aegis Street that morning, a surge of light brought about the
disappearance of the man in the old hazard suit. Some thought he
was vaporized by some kind of localized explosion, others assumed
he was some kind of street performer, while even more still forgot
about the incident by noon.

One onlooker knew exactly what it was.
Gabriel Meunez watched playback of the incident minutes later from
the Regent Galactic central control room. His mind was flooded with
energy readings and his wasted mouth stretched in a broad grin. The
Victory Machine was hiding on one of our own worlds, he thought to
himself. Citadel was right to entrust Roman with guardianship over
it all this time. He must be near death if he's exposing himself
now, though. Hampon had been frantically searching for him ever
since the transmission frequency changed. If I hurry, I might be
able to obtain the Victory Machine for myself.

An irrational lust rose in Meunez as he
considered the thought of being connected to a machine that could
not only see into the future, but calculate how to change it. Ever
since they discovered the Machine's frequency when they were
working with Vindyne, it had been an obsession of Hampon's, and
Meunez never had to ask why. The power that came with such a device
was obvious.

If he hadn't been distracted by his brush
with Alice on the Overlord II, he suspected he would have shared
Hampon's obsession. As he sat in the control chair, connected to
the entire Regent Galactic network through numerous cables affixed
to the cybernetic portion of his brain, he weighed the advantages
and disadvantages of going after the device personally.

All the while, he focused the computing
power at his command, entire planets worth of networked processors,
on discovering the destination of the crush gate style wormhole
Roman had taken. Even with all that power, he was unable to
determine the wasted man's destination with a great deal of
accuracy, but the general directionality determined without a doubt
that Roman was headed in Pandem's general direction.

"So he goes to see either Hampon, Eve, or
the enemy settling in the Rega Gain system. I'm going to find you,
Roman. I'm going to find you myself, so no one can get between me
and the Victory Machine." He took a deep, painful, shuddering
breath in preparation for what would come next.

One hundred and five worlds were within the
scope of his vision, with all their recruitment centres, shopping
complexes, temples, concourses, and trillions of points of access.
The nirvana of direct contact, instant access to information was
coming to an end. He would have access, but without the nest of
cables surrounding him, it wouldn't be certain or as quick. He
would have to settle for limited, wireless contact, but he vowed to
make the most of it.

His work in Regent Galactic space was
complete. Eve would be more than satisfied. He had even managed to
tame the virus she'd implanted in his mind. Gabriel Meunez
re-tasked the thing and sent it out into the Regent Galactic
network with a pure purpose, one that it served brilliantly.

It assisted him in directing the general
policies of over a hundred worlds, driving trillions of people to
embrace the Order of Eden and invest their currency and themselves
in the advancement towards Eden itself. The Holocaust Virus had
struck every world under Meunez's control, only this time he
orchestrated the destruction with the help of Eve's version of the
virus.

A halftime machine-versus-machine derby at a
Crush League Rugby tournament turned into a blood bath when every
mechanised being turned on the audience. Thousands were killed,
none of whom had purchased their membership with the Order of Eden.
In Yimporo Square, automated vendors and security androids suddenly
began an all out assault on the crowd during the Morrison Music
Festival. Only one Order of Eden believer was superficially
injured, but thousands who hadn't paid their hundred thousand
credits were slain.

His most recent demonstration of Eve's
updated Holocaust Virus was seen across all of his worlds, as sky
transports carrying non-Eden registrants simply fell out of the
sky, killing most of their passengers when they hurtled towards
other unregistered civilians like guided missiles. It was clear to
those who didn't ponder the reasons behind the attacks for too long
that you had to raise the funds required to register with the Order
of Eden and join the Enlightenment Program or be killed by the
Holocaust Virus.

In Eden the people found protection, peace,
and enlightenment while they travelled the path to paradise. Actors
were promised great advancement to appear and publicly offer
testimony. Several citizens actually recorded a journey to Eden
Prime for all to see. They were perfect examples of good followers
who spent incredible amounts of time and currency on progressing
down the path to paradise. Each was sure evidence that it was
possible to reach paradise during their lifetime using the tools
provided. The world they were delivered to was a terraformed jewel
in the Axet solar system. No one would ever know that their entire
Ascension to Eden experience was an elaborate show.

The protesters made it interesting. They
gathered in places they thought machines couldn’t go or see. There
was no such place. They claimed to use electrical tools that
couldn’t contain an artificial intelligence, but they were moronic
to think that even simple tools were out of reach. Either he, or
Eve's Holocaust Virus, would reach out and orchestrate their
destruction by finding ways to assume control. While the bulk of
the resistance tried to live out of his sight, others endeavoured
to get their message out to the people. He’d twist their words,
turning one well-known expression - Hate Fate - into Fate Hates and
place it on wanted posters. The rewards for turning in those
individuals who fought the Order would go towards a follower’s
Ascension, a valuable step forward for anyone who yearned to enter
paradise. The protestors were foolish to remain on Regent Galactic
worlds; anywhere else would have been safer, but they believed that
Regent Galactic had to be convinced as well. Little did they know
that the board of directors were dead, that one man and the virus
itself had complete control. The Order of Eden had infected the
Regent Galactic worlds, and there was no curing them.

Over thirty percent of the population
endeavoured to ascend to Eden, while over forty-two had paid their
registration fee. Those were numbers he could live with and he knew
that, in his absence, the mass slavery would continue. The ultimate
quest to own what no one could hold in their hands, a place in
paradise, would be undertaken by billions more.

People who couldn’t afford to register
robbed until they could and then worked themselves to the bone for
penance. The ones with nothing worked the hardest, sacrificed the
most, and he hated them more than anything he’d ever seen. They
were useless as anything but workers, and he made sure they were
pressed the hardest.

Yes, he had fulfilled his mission. Yes, Eve
would be proud. He surveyed the worlds under his control for a
lingering moment, and allowed himself a moment of pride. Regardless
of all his work, the changes he'd made, and the power he'd come to
enjoy, to remain in that chair at the centre of Regent Galactic
space was to be put aside. He was where Hampon and Eve could watch
him, neatly out of the way.

He had lost track of Alice completely, and after
weeks of hoping that he'd glance some sign of her as he
reconfigured the core Regent Galactic worlds, he found nothing.
With the new Holocaust Virus trained to work in his stead, and the
Victory Machine in the open, he would be a fool not to reach for a
new destiny. Perhaps if he could not find Alice in the
ever-expanding digital universe, he could find her in time. A
person could not go swiftly backwards in a timeline, but it was
possible to look, communicate, and to transport data both ways. If
he could not find her using the means he had, he would bring her
forward in time from where he last saw her.

That pang in his heart was what drove him to
finally let go of all the power he'd become attached to. His new
understanding of the universe and sense of what must be would be
concentrated on locating the Victory Machine and taking it for
himself. "I will take it and reconnect with the networks of the
universe, conduct existence like a symphony. Alice, whether as an
AI or in person, will be at my side."

In the weeks of existing attached to the
vast Regent Galactic network, Gabriel Meunez had forgotten to watch
over his physical wellbeing. When he finally did, he saw nothing
but a wasted thing in a state of slow decay. His cybernetic mind
had expanded outside of his skull, and pain wracked his joints from
nanobot contamination. Blood toxicity overworked his biological
maintenance implants, and he didn’t have long left. He could either
move entirely into a computer system, or transfer as much of
himself as possible into a form made specifically for his
needs.

He chose the latter, knowing that most of
his personality had moved out of his biological mind, and into the
mechanical. He sent a signal to a darkened gallery in the Kraken
and watched as his new body was swiftly constructed. After only a
few moments, the new framework, with cybernetic assistant nodes to
increase his pace and depth of thought and several backup modules
to preserve his being, was ready.

The Kraken descended towards the city of New
Versailles, its nine kilometre width casting a shadow over the
forest of sky scrapers. In a quarter of a second all that was
Gabriel Meunez was transmitted up to the gargantuan ship’s new
Genesis Hall.

Gabriel felt hollow at first, as if he were
missing a critical element that made him who he was. All the
information was there, he’d made the transfer to the bare framework
that awaited him, but there was still something missing.

He watched from inside as the materializer
and nanobot systems initiated, creating flesh, supplemental bone,
and sinew from raw energy. The second phase of his data transfer
began as soon as his human brain was constructed, and the
compressed image of his old human mind was transplanted. The
connection between active cybernetics and living brain was made,
and Gabriel opened his eyes. It was like taking a deep breath after
nearly suffocating.

The Lauren Star’s white light bathed the
massive octagonal Genesis chamber and cast long shadows to his
left. There were technicians waiting for him, and they helped him
dress. In the polished deck he could see his reborn face, youthful
and smiling. Straight white hair framed that comely visage and was
long enough to tickle the back of his neck. His body had come out
fit, sculpted to match the current style of taught muscle, and
health. He would have to eat and exercise, do all the things that
humans did. He would be as Alice was, dedicated to being connected
with their environment in both ways, through the physical and
digital.

His servants helped him into simple leggings
with a hidden emergency vacuum suit built in, a long tailed,
loosely fit dark green shirt that tended to open at the front, and
a green jacket that had no sleeves or sides. Two panels hung down
to his shins in the front and it flared out into a wide tailed
back. It was adorned with silver thread, like something the
monarchs of old wore. When they had him dressed, one white suited
servant stepped in front of him and unrolled a full-length
mirror.

“That will do,” he managed to say, though
the words felt strange. It had only been weeks since he’d used a
mouth to speak, but it felt like years and it would take some
getting used to.

He glanced around the room and smiled even
more brightly at seeing all the identical faces. There were three
identical men and four identical women, all of them version one
framework constructs made to serve his every personal need. Looking
past them, he looked to the stadium sized Genesis Deck, where
twenty thousand framework cubicles housed silver skeletons, all
ready to be born, all ready to serve in whatever capacity he
desired.

“Inform Command: we are to set course for
Thamba, meet our new Caran Enterprises fleet, and then proceed to
Pandem. We will make an appearance and begin tracking my target.”
He passed his own orders to the Command level several decks down,
but it felt good to announce his intentions. There was something
particularly robust about filling the air with words that would
change the universe.

“Break’s over in fifteen minutes,” said
Technical Crewman Sitte over Ashley’s work band. She was easy to
work for, an issyrian who preferred to remain in the form of a
human woman. Ashley had half a day with her crew of workers, or
knuckle draggers as they had come to be called. They were moving
components and high tolerance metal beams from the tall pile of
salvage from the command ship they’d captured, the Enforcer
1109.

The pieces were too small for the loader
suits to bother with, but too big for most people outside of a
vacsuit with muscle augmentation to budge. The work detail was all
part of the Samson crew’s effort to mix in. The worst thing was,
they all had to keep their suits sealed, showing no identifying
features. Even though Ashley knew the air would be rich with the
fragrances of grease, cheap burnt fuel, and garbage, she wanted
nothing more than to retract her head piece and experience the open
air.