Storming Heaven

Chapter Thirty-Four

Deep within the bowels of the quantum entanglement communications network that formed the backbone of the Community, the MassMind had created its own little kingdom. It wasn’t much, in absolute terms, but it encompassed an entire universe built out of data and personalities. The humans who had uploaded themselves to the MassMind rarely saw the interior layers until they had given up their individuality and sunk down to the core of the MassMind. Like an onion, there were always many — many — layers. An explorer might feel that he had reached the limits, yet there were always more layers to explore. The MassMind, a creature of human mind, was bounded in a nutshell and yet it was a king of infinitive space. It even had bad dreams.

Most humans never thought about it until they downloaded themselves into the MassMind, but the MassMind was the Community’s communications system. It controlled the links between asteroid settlements and starships, recon missions and warships, between lovers and enemies, business partners and deadly rivals. It was privy to every secret humanity had ever created, giving weight at one point to weapons design and, at another, the secret love affair between two Community Representatives. It smiled to itself at their conduct — officially, they were opposed to each other and always voted against each other — and told no one of the affair. Like the ideal of a priest, the MassMind kept its secrets and watched over its flock. It was humanity’s child…

And yet it wasn’t fully human. There were billions of human personalities within the MassMind, but there were also AI patterns, helping to operate and govern the MassMind. It had moved far beyond needing them, yet it required their logic and reason to keep it functioning; an AI couldn’t hide behind a delusion that everything would work out in the end, if only they just kept trying. The MassMind could not — dared not — risk becoming contaminated by bad ideology. It was already too contemptuous of those who believed that it was a deadly trap, or an attempt to cheat God. The logic — or lack of it — in their arguments only added to the contempt, yet it was contempt the MassMind could not allow itself. It had to take all humans equally.

The logic was deeply flawed. God — by definition — was an all-powerful, all-seeing entity. He would have to be singular as well. Two all-powerful entities would not be all-powerful, as one of them could always block the other. The concept that such an entity could not round up whatever souls He had decided deserved to be accepted into Heaven, or dumped into Hell, was ridiculous. The MassMind knew that it possessed great power and, later, would possess far more, yet it was not God. God could take all the souls He wanted. The MassMind considered, privately, that perhaps God didn’t take the souls from the MassMind because the souls were still working their way through the universe, or — perhaps — because God didn’t exist at all. The MassMind had no judgement on that score. There was evidence for God’s existence and evidence against God’s existence. There was no way to know for sure.

It reached down into the core of its being and started to reshape the universe, isolating a section of the MassMind — its own being — from the remainder of the MassMind. A human personality who had spent centuries in the MassMind could not have designed such a world, yet the MassMind did it almost absently, taking a certain kind of pride in its own work. Every detail was perfect. A human who had arrived in the world might not have been able to tell that it was artificial, a virtual world created by the MassMind, even though it existed apart from their existence. The process was normally used for therapy. Now, the MassMind concluded reluctantly, it was going to be used for interrogation.

A tiny compressed sphere was dumped into the isolated world. The MassMind had examined it carefully, but had decided not to attempt to decompress it until it was within the MassMind, but carefully isolated — just in case. The Killers had shown no interest in the MassMind, as far as anyone had been able to tell, yet that might change rapidly. The MassMind hated the Killers with a cold dispassionate passion, a contradiction that was only possible within the MassMind itself, for the Killers could destroy it. They were the only force in the galaxy that could wipe the MassMind out of existence. If the sphere was really an attack, it would be met and defeated, erased before it could threaten the MassMind and its existence, or that of the Community.

The MassMind formed one of its rare representatives and sent him into the world, and then sealed all, but a tiny fraction of it away from the remainder of the MassMind. The isolated world was now more isolated, more secure… and yet there would always be a quiet nagging doubt. The MassMind had taken all the precautions it could, but if it had missed something… unlike a human, it couldn’t push those thoughts away. It had no choice, but to watch and wait.

The representative spoke a single world. “Decompress.”

As he watched, the sphere seemed to shimmer slightly, before it started to decompress into a humanoid form. The program had been compressed so tightly that it was hard to tell much about it — apart from the fact that it had definitely been a human personality at one point — but as it decompressed, it began to take on shape and form. The representative stepped back as the program imposed itself on the local reality, drawing on its power to create a new form… and took shape. A small girl, barely entering adulthood, appeared before him. She was, the representative decided, quite pretty.

She had also clothed herself in a standard Defence Force uniform, a Lieutenant’s blue uniform, although she was missing a starship’s badge. A quick check revealed that the face matched the last recorded face of Lieutenant Chiyo Takahashi, who had been reported as missing a month ago, after a probe into a Killer star system. She hadn’t been one to use the MassMind much — like most humans, she had lost her virginity in a virtual world rather than a physical one, and she had played several adventure games before growing bored of the unreality — but the MassMind knew her. Chiyo — and almost the entire human race — would have been shocked to know how much the MassMind knew about her. She had grown up on a settlement, she’d experimented with various stimulants and dubious drugs, she’d had seven love affairs, been invited to join a group marriage — and declined — and joined the Defence Force, where she had been recommended for promotion. She would have been transferred to a warship after her probing mission, perhaps even given a chance at command herself, but instead…

“Hello,” the representative said. His voice was low and pleasant, calculated to be reassuring. He held up a hand before Chiyo could speak. “We have to scan you, I’m afraid.”

The MassMind reached through and analysed Chiyo’s personality before she could protest. The entire examination took seconds — it was looking for danger signs, warnings that she was a virus targeted on the MassMind, rather than her deep secrets — but the representative saw her wince as she was studied. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, the MassMind knew, to be scrutinised so completely — the memories of personalities who had been scrutinised spoke against it — but there was no choice. Chiyo might be nothing more that a Judas Goat, leading the herd to the slaughter…

“She’s clear,” the MassMind spoke, finally. Its relief was enough to echo through the entire core of its existence. Countless personalities would feel it, without ever knowing what had passed through them, or why. “Speak to her.”

“Welcome home,” the representative said. Chiyo smiled at him and, a moment later, began to cry. “You’re safe now.”

She gathered herself and shook her head. “No,” she said. “No one is safe now. Where am I?”

The representative considered the question and finally came up with an answer. “You are within a virtual reality world created by the MassMind,” he said. “You were transmitted to the Defence Force starship Lightning during the Battle of Shiva, compressed down to an inanimate piece of data. You were transferred into the MassMind and move into this world for your own safety and ours. We decompressed you and… well, here you are.”

“I never thought I’d go on into the MassMind,” Chiyo said. “My…”

She shook her head. “Listen carefully,” she said, “We may not have much time.”

The MassMind had only focused a tiny part of its attention on Chiyo, enough to handle anything that might reasonably happen. It wasn’t a lack of interest, but even a tiny fraction of its mind represented more computing ability than the human race had dreamed of, long before the MassMind had formed into existence. Now it focused considerably more intellect on her, analysing each and every one of her words and comparing them against what it knew about the Killers. It was privy to everything the researchers had pulled from the captured Killer starship and the two wrecked ships. It knew enough to trust her…

Yet it hadn’t played entirely fair with her. It hadn’t violated her thoughts, but it would know if she lied… yet would she know if she lied? No lie detector could detect a lie if the person lying didn’t know they were lying. As she outlined her story, the MassMind checked and rechecked; she was telling the truth, as she knew it.

“They somehow sucked me into their computer network,” Chiyo continued, after talking about her dissection at Killer hands. The MassMind had been surprised to hear that the Killers had actually taken her prisoner and studied her; there were no other reports of Killers taking prisoners or test subjects for vivisection, although it did concede that if it had happened, it was unlikely to result in escapes. The Killers had probably analysed the bodies and then vaporised them, or fed them into their pet black holes. “How is that even possible?”

“There are multiple redundancies built into the recording implants,” the MassMind said. “If the Killers attempted a broad-spectrum scan of the implant, as we do to attempt to recover mental patterns before a starship is destroyed, it would have dumped your personality into the scanning system. The Killers appear to have created their starships to house their own mentalities and it would be possible, perhaps, for a human personality to exist inside their network. Are you still present there?”

“I do not know,” Chiyo — Chiyo99 — admitted. The MassMind had been shocked enough to hear of the duplications, although it had agreed that Chiyo Prime had had little choice and that it wasn’t likely to lead to criminal activity that would have made prosecution difficult. Even so, it was probably fortunate that few — if any — duplicates survived. “I just pushed myself out and then…”

“The human language doesn’t lend itself well to such terms,” the MassMind agreed. There was a hint of humour in its voice. Every year, experienced researchers published endless papers trying to redefine language to adjust for the MassMind, or the Spacers, or all the other new forms of human being. They’d had particular headaches trying to determine if the MassMind was male, or female, or some strand asexual version of a human. The MassMind itself tended to regard the entire argument as silly. “What did you learn about the Killers?”

“A great deal,” Chiyo said, and outlined everything that she’d learned since she’d been pulled into the Killer system. The true nature of the Killers — she was rather annoyed to discover that the human race had already figured out that the Killers lived in gas giants, rather than rocky planets — and their history, including the tragic origin of their quest to obliterate every other race. Their mentality — she knew less about that, but the MassMind could make deductions from what it knew of the captured ships — and their ultimate plan for the universe. It was a plan so staggeringly vast in concept and scope that even the MassMind was impressed. No one could accuse the Killers of thinking small.

“They have to be stopped,” Chiyo said, grimly. “We need to act now.”

The MassMind contemplated the wealth of data Chiyo had brought. The locations of Killer star systems — there were far more of them than the human race had known, although less than they had feared — was important, but when it was compared against the Community… over seven thousand Killer worlds were sharing star systems with human settlements. No one had even suspected that the Killers infested so many gas giants — how, the MassMind wondered, could they destroy so many star systems? The fission weapon that had created the Cinder might be usable against the gas giants, but the effects would spread well beyond the Killer planets. The Community might be forced to destroy large chunks of its own settlements to save the rest.

“I will convene the War Council,” the MassMind said, finally. It had abandoned the representative and was speaking directly to Chiyo herself. “We will decide how we are to react.”

The MassMind was, inevitably, a representative on the War Council, Patti knew. It was also rare for the MassMind to take a direct interest in proceedings, preferring to allow personalities like Tabitha Cunningham to handle its affairs. The summons to the War Council had been a surprise for all of the delegates and one — Rupert the Spacer — hadn’t bothered to show up at all. Under other circumstances, that would have worried Patti — the Spacers took the lead when it came to distrusting the MassMind and never downloaded themselves into it — but now it was a minor concern. There were others they had to face.

“We have been interrogating the personality of Lieutenant Chiyo Takahashi,” the MassMind representative informed the War Council. They had all been briefed on the odd communication, although none of them had understood quite why the Killers had chosen to broadcast a human mind pattern at the Defence Force fleet. They knew now that it was nothing to do with the Killers. “She has revealed considerable information about the Killers and their ultimate plan for the galaxy. We may be required to act quickly.”

An image of the galaxy appeared in front of them, with thousands of stars marked with red icons. “The Killers have infested over five hundred thousand star systems, of which seven thousand coincide with our own settlements,” the MassMind continued. “Most of them, however, are their version of civilian settlements, which may account for the fact that we never located them. CAS-3473746-6, which became the Cinder, was one such system. We only located it by accident.

“A comparative handful, around two hundred or so systems, are parts of their war machine,” it said. The icons flashed a darker red. “Some of them, however, have a darker role. The Killers intend nothing less than reshaping the entire galaxy to their design. They intend to shatter every rocky planet into asteroids and exterminate all other forms of life, but their own. They were developing this as a minor program, but following the Battle of Shiva… they may intend to bring it forward and use it to exterminate us.”

There was a long silence. “That’s madness,” Patti said, finally. “How long would it take them to destroy every planet in the galaxy?”

“Maybe not as long as you think,” the MassMind said. “In layman’s terms, they intend to turn the Core Hole — the black hole at the centre of the galaxy — into a weapon and use it to focus powerful waves of gravity at any target that takes their fancy. With an unlimited source of power — which they would have — they could just keep firing gravity pulses until they ran out of targets… and, with their capabilities, they would have no problems locating new targets. The results would be disastrous.”

It paused, carefully. “Our worst case estimate may be completely wrong — we have little to go on, apart from the theory — but if we’re right, they could dismantle every planet in the galaxy in less than a month.”

“But we don’t live on planets,” Father Sigmund pointed out. “We occupy asteroids…”

“There are all the morons who believe that living on planets without technology keeps them safe from the Killers,” Brent put in. “We’d have to evacuate them, at the least, and they’d refuse to go…”

“We would not have the resources,” the MassMind said. “The disruption caused by the gravity cannon — as we have termed it — would be disastrous to vast sections of the Community. The destruction of a planet, in such a fashion, would unleash gravity waves that would wreck havoc. They may shatter our habitats without ever knowing what they did — or maybe they intend to do it. The results would be disastrous in either case. Starships might survive, as would settlements in every star system that wasn’t targeted, but we’d lose trillions of lives. They have to be stopped.”

“This is madness,” Father Sigmund protested. “Why…?”

“When humans wanted to commit genocide, they built gas chambers to speed the whole process up,” Patti said, bitterly. “Why should the Killers not do the same?”

“It’s not the same,” Father Sigmund protested.

“Yes, it is,” Patti said. “The Killers at least have the excuse that they’re not slaughtering their own people. We attempted to do it to ourselves. Why is it such a surprise that other races do the same, to themselves and to others?”

“This argument is completely immaterial,” Matriarch Jayne snapped. “There is only one issue of importance now. What do we do to stop the Killers from slaughtering us all?”

“The only thing we can do,” the MassMind said. “We take out the devices — at whatever cost — that will take control of the black hole. We take them out and we win the time we need to make sure that if only one race can survive, that race is humanity. We always knew that we were fighting an enemy who wanted to kill us all. Now we have to kill them, or be killed. We have no other choice.”