Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (52 page)

Clark shifted from foot to foot for a
moment, thinking. “You’ll withdraw from every issyrian world, give
their ships safe passage and guarantee not to interfere with their
homes for as long as I live.”

“A trick condition,” Hampon said. “You are
immortal. Even more so than our most advanced framework being. I
could forcibly remove every scrap of it from your system and you
would still heal. Edxian, huss, and issyrian physiologies ensure
your resurrection-like recovery abilities. We don’t understand how
you work, Beast, but we know the possibilities you represent.”

“Then you know there is a good chance that
the technology you want to use to recover won’t buy you more than a
few years without my help. Even if you dissected me, I could hide
my secrets for decades.”

“That’s another thing we know about you:
unwavering dedication to a cause, and confidence. So much
confidence,” Hampon said.

“Only when I know I’m right,” the Beast
replied.

“What do you want, Lucius Wheeler? Your bid
for re-entry into Freeground’s ranks will fail when they discover
that the Triton is out of your reach,” Hampon said. “I overheard
Doctor Thurge’s latest message to you, that a rightful commander
has stepped forward and taken possession. What do you want
now?”

“Freedom. I don’t care if I have to start
over with one ship and an idiot as a first mate. I want to be free
to do what I want, when I want, where I want. No interference, no
attempts at control. I’m no one’s puppet.”

“You forget,” Hampon said. “You were built
by Regent Galactic. What precedent would I be setting if I were to
set our machinery free? Especially since you carry memories from
Collins, one of the best military commanders I’ve ever known. What
have you brought to trade for all that?”

Wheeler pointed at Clark impatiently. “Him.
Without me, you’d have to hunt him down across the galaxy, or he’d
start a rebellion, gathering issyrians and whoever else he can find
to fight you. Just by bringing him here, I’m making your life less
complicated. I might even be saving your ass for good.”

“Your task is to derail the efforts of the
original Freegrounders to rebuild on Tamber. That has been your
task for as long as you’ve been alive,” Hampon said.

“And I’ve done that, even when you took my
command and turned me out. I still pursued it. I know who’s going
to win here, the game is rigged, and I want to be on your side.
Just give me the freedom to do my part my way and have some fun at
the same time.”

“I’ll consider it,” Hampon said. “Nora, what
can I do for you? I’m fully aware that Clark has the finesse, but
you built the interface that will make me whole again. You have it
with you, scanners have already picked it up. What can I do for
you?”

“My fleet, and the freedom to instruct them
properly. I won’t be a key to another engine of destruction, I want
to participate in deciding their purposes. I can connect with them,
I know it, and I want to remain as a leader to the humans who
believe in the better way you’ve shown me. They want to be led into
eternity, to the paradises we can build for them. They can help
build instead of contaminate and destroy.”

“Are you certain this is what you want,
Nora? Has seeing life through another woman’s eyes convinced you
that there’s enough goodness in humanity to enter into paradise
without destroying it?”

“Yes, and call me Eve,” she said.

“You will not break from the Order of Eden
with your fleet. Code that Collins added to all Eden Fleet entities
makes it impossible. I’m telling you this so discovering it doesn’t
surprise you.”

“I understand,” Eve said, knowing that she’d
do everything she could to remove the code as soon as possible.

“I’m willing to grant you all everything
you’ve requested,” Hampon said.

“Wait,” Clark said. “I have one more
request.”

“Yes?” Hampon said.

“Leave Freeground out of all your conflicts.
Destroy any aggressive ships they send against your forces, but
don’t counter-attack.”

“Done,” Hampon replied. “I will not attack
Freeground, the station, or either of the colonies they think are
hidden from the galaxy. Now, it’s your turn to grant me my three
wishes: transformation, health, and eternal life. Quickly, we’ll be
emerging from the wormhole soon.”

The Beast looked to Wheeler, who nodded. Eve
finally looked at him only to realize that he was staring at her,
waiting for her approval. She nodded, and he strode towards Hampon,
whose eyes widened at his approach.

A large, armoured hand was placed upon
Hampon’s head, the Beast’s fingers found their way between small
tubes and wires.

The Beast put his free hand to his head as
though he’d been injured and withdrew, stumbling backwards several
steps until his fell to his knees. Eve looked from him to Hampon.
The robots tending him withdrew from their tasks, and tried to
cover him with a black sheet.

“Pain,” Hampon’s voice announced throughout
the room. His eyes rolled back into his head, then his twitching
eyelids closed. His partial chest, the bag holding his organs, his
hips and part of one leg twitched violently. Tubes were flung free,
and Eve wondered if he’d survive the process.

His eyes snapped open. Eve could only assume
that he didn’t scream at first because there was something wrong
with his vocal chords. A proper throat and jaw began to form, and
when his screams filled the chamber they were inhuman, rasping and
gurgling. The upper half of his head grew brown hair, the tubes
leading into his body were absorbed and transformed into human
materials, and the framework system began drawing raw current from
his chair.

Within seconds he had fresh legs, arms, a
full torso, and he breathed as if he’d just finished a hard sprint.
Hampon raised his head, revealing a healthy yet aged face with a
prominent nose and piercing grey eyes. He started to smile and
rise, then twitched bodily, slipping out of his chair awkwardly to
land at the bottom of his dais. Anguished, half strangled cries
filled the air as he writhed. Eve covered her ears, but she could
still hear that screaming, as though something was being torn
forcibly from his deepest innards.

The framework system began replacing cells
that were affected by temporal radiation. Eve knew what was
happening theoretically, but the reality was unexpected. As the
infected portions of his body were replaced at incredible speed,
they were turned out through his flesh. A bloody display of
rejection and replacement as pieces of organs, flesh, and bone were
pressed up through his skin, surrounding him in a hellish
afterbirth. Every exposed cell in his body was being replaced
several times a second, using energy drawn from his chair in
violent arcs.

When it was over he was covered in gore,
nude and curled up on his knees. He stood slowly, his new, white
teeth gleaming through the crimson and black remains that clung to
him. Several researchers dressed in red smocks approached him
hurriedly and performed scans. “There is no trace of temporal
radiation, Sir,” reported one cheerfully. “You’re cured.”

Robots moved in to clean the mess and
decontaminate the area. “Immortality is not found in the children
we have, the clones we make, the brain scan data we collect, or in
framework duplicates,” he said, walking towards the Child Prophet.
“This is immortality, the new flesh invented by intelligence,
powered by electricity, and sourced from matter.”

The Child Prophet broke from his daze and
scurried at the last moment, right before Hampon caught him by the
throat. “You are a pitiful lie,” he said as he raised the
adolescent clone up with both hands. Wheeler backed away, putting
his hands up and shaking his head.

Eve followed his example, taking several
steps back. The sounds of the Child Prophet struggling for air as
he kicked his feet and tried to pry Hampon’s hands away from his
throat made Eve’s stomach turn. The grisly birth was nothing
compared to watching a boy in the beginning of adolescence die.

“You never had the potential to be better
than me,” Lister Hampon said through clenched teeth. He renewed his
efforts, throttling his clone’s thin neck with all his strength
until he stopped struggling and a new foul smell filled the air.
Hampon dropped him and looked down at the boy’s horror stricken
face. “I feel alive again,” Hampon said. “Truly alive.”

Eve had no problem recalling the damage
humanity did to the world she protected before she was put into
stasis for over a century. There was a failure in logic that she
could not comprehend when she watched a natural environment become
an object for the harvest. That was what provoked her order to
exterminate the humans in that solar system, and her fleet executed
it without question or remorse.

What she saw in front of her was entirely
different. It was the first time she’d been in the presence of true
evil, and it was instantly recognizable. Clone or not, the Child
Prophet was a boy who was living in his age of potential; what he
could have become would remain a mystery because someone had
maliciously ended his life and derived obvious pleasure from the
act.

“I don’t want to know this,” Clark Patterson
said, slowly getting to his feet. “I don’t want to know what I saw
when I touched your mind, Hampon.”

“We’re coming out of the wormhole,” Lister
Hampon announced as he strode back to his seat. He stopped in front
of it, where the gore of his rebirth had been before robots swiftly
cleaned the mess. The balconies overlooking his seat with countless
technicians and officers became obscured as a holographic starscape
was projected all around them. “Pandem!” Lister Hampon shouted,
pointing at the green-blue orb to his right. There were no ships in
orbit from what Eve could see, strange for such a busy world. “The
most populated planet in the new Order of Eden constellation of
settlements. The count was four hundred twenty million settlers,
most of which arrived in the last ten days. Tell us why they are
here, Clark. Please, you must have seen something while you were
digging around in my head.”

“I won’t,” Clark said. “It was your promise,
not mine.”

“You’re right,” Hampon said. “I’ve been
waiting to tell someone about this for a long time. It’s been
difficult to convince people to go along with my Order of Eden
since Collins died,” he looked to Wheeler then. “But you don’t
remember anything about this either, do you?”

“Pandem? The Order of Eden?” Wheeler asked.
“I remember the Victory Machine demanded that people be placed
there, so we could avoid some catastrophe. There’s more about the
cult, but it couldn’t apply.”

“That’s where it started,” Hampon said.
“Whispers in the dark. Little mutterings I couldn’t ignore,
messages that came from some prophetic thing that never made a
mistake in its predictions. We used the information to force our
way from desperate times with Vindyne into success with Regent
Galactic. From a big company with a handfull of backwaters to a
great big civilization teeming with billions of humans who were
fully engaged in the cycle of capitalism. In a universe where
humans can’t see past their noses, the man with the biggest beak
can be the greatest visionary. A joke you might recognize from
Collins’ repertoire.”

“A real laugh riot,” Wheeler said. “The
Victory Machine led you to everything you and Collins needed to
take over, and get your cash cult going. I got that part of the
story.”

“Cash cult,” Hampon repeated. “It had a ring
to it. Now it’s a real religion, with immortality, paradise, and at
long last we have our hell.” He pointed to Pandem and Eve couldn’t
help but wonder what he could possibly mean. There was nothing
hellish about the world aside from its history, the humans there
were restoring it faster than she could have expected.

Lister Hampon continued on as small robots
approached him from several parts of the room and started to clean
him up. “’There is a darkness coming.’ The Victory Machine laid
that on thicker and thicker and Collins and I made progress. Then
it elaborated. Humans have been testing the boundaries of polite
science for as long as there has been a record, and we finally
ventured into something that we should never have even considered.
A Regent Galactic company tried to make dragons out of unborn Edxi,
and they were successful. Can you imagine? Dragons! Real dragons
for amusement parks and pets that you could train in their long
adolescence of thirty five, sometimes more than forty years. When
they start into maturity they’d become ill and die. Now that’s a
forward thinking product.

The edxi found out about it. The Exile went
in search for evidence and thanks to Alice Valent, who was just a
messenger in all this – something Meunez never understood – Zarrick
the Exile found it. It doesn’t matter that Regent Galactic’s
subsidiary closed the project out years ago.It didn’t matter that
there were other companies, even secret arms of governments, that
were researching the edxi just as closely. It didn’t even matter
that thousands of people were killed by edxi in minor acts of
retribution, things no human would see as trespassing, or other
violations. That wasn’t appropriate retribution for humans
corrupting their children. They demanded more. Whoever was
controlling the Victory Machine knew it, and they gave me all the
directions I needed to do one thing: save humanity.”

“It’s true,” Clark said. “What’s about to
happen must happen. There is no other way.”

A broad shape with mechanical tendrils
reaching in all directions with barbs and dim lights faded into
existence near Pandem. Eve had difficulty judging, but it looked
almost as large as the Overlord II, kilometres in depth, and even
wider. “We don’t even know how they do that,” Hampon said. “Take
all the readings you want, try to follow them through whatever
faster than light solution they’re using, and you won’t discover a
thing about how they move through the universe.”