David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

“Think of it this way,” Maggie said. “Suppose you take a person’s memories, his personality, and you download that into an AI. Even though that person may die, his or her personality, experiences, and ambitions live on, right?”

“Right,” Gallen said.

“Then imagine that we download those memories into a clone. In our parlance, we say that the person is revivified, right? The person is still alive, still the same in all important ways.”

“Right,” Gallen said, obviously not certain where Maggie was going.

“But imagine for a second that those same memories are downloaded into an android, a machine that thinks and feels in every way as if it were human. Is it still the same person?”

“No,” Gallen said. “An android is still just an ambulatory storage facility.”

“But the android doesn’t know that. Many people have been downloaded into machine bodies, and they seem to like it. They aren’t troubled by disturbing dreams, they don’t have to deal with the emotional side of life. In short, to them life seems better without dealing with emotional issues.”

“Yes, but such people lose their humanity,” Gallen said. “In time they forget how to feel, how to relate to other humans.”

“So they end up going to Bothor,” Orick said, “where they don’t have to deal with regular folks. We’ve been there.”

“Well,” Maggie said, “some theorists say we can’t travel to other dimensions in our physical bodies, but we could create artificial bodies in another dimension, then download our personalities into those new bodies. It wouldn’t be much different from being an android.”

“No,” Felph said. “You’ve got the analogy right, but you’ve just missed it. If I understand the Qualeewoohs, they consider this life to be the experiment. They say they existed as dim matter before this world, and they’ve come here to gain experience in our dimension. Their goal is to take that experience back to the dim worlds. There are lessons they can learn here in mortality they can’t learn elsewhere.”

“Such as?” Orick asked.

Felph shrugged. “I don’t really care. It has to do with self-testing, preparation for greater knowledge. Qualeewooh mumbo jumbo.”

“If the Qualeewoohs are telling the truth,” Maggie said, “have you considered the possibility that they really are creatures who’ve somehow traveled to this dimension? That the ‘Waters of Strength’ might just be the ticket home?”

“Odd as it sounds, I’ve considered that,” Felph said, “but it appears to me that they evolved here. I can’t credit that theory.”

“But you’re convinced the Qualeewoohs have learned to transport their consciousness between dimensions?” Maggie asked.

“I … am persuaded that they’ve done something,” Felph said. “What that is, I can’t guess. But when I wear a Qualeewooh spirit mask to bed at night … You know, the Qualeewoohs have never revealed the secrets to making those masks. The masks seem to be made of nothing special-skin, metals, a few plant fibers and paints,” Felph’s voice grew silent, and he bit back his words as if afraid to speak them. Still, he spoke, and his voice was both frightened and respectful, “but even using the same materials, I cannot duplicate the effect. There is something about a Qualeewooh having worn the mask that makes it viable, that makes it receptive to messages. It’s almost as if … by communicating from one Qualeewooh to another, the mask itself becomes a living thing, an ear that still hears, though its master has passed on.”

Zeus had been watching this whole exchange, but as Felph fell into his reverie, Zeus got a chill down his back. He knew people who used the masks. Several local hermits would not steep at night without the masks on their faces, for they said the voices of the Qualeewooh Masters soothed them, even though they did not always understand the words spoken.

Yet in the past, Lord Felph had refused to let Zeus wear a mask. Like many other things, he considered it to be dangerous. The masks often had mind-altering effects on people. Zeus considered. I should wear one tonight .

Lord Felph suddenly looked up, just as a fireball crossed the sky, lighting the heavens. “You know,” Felph said, “it’s damnably late. Why isn’t Herm here?”

Hera, who had kept her hand on Zeus’s knee for the past few minutes, suddenly moved it higher up Zeus’s thigh. “I asked some of the droids to find him and invite him here for dinner,” Hera said. “But that was hours ago.”

Felph glanced at the servant Dooring, who’d just come to bring dessert. “Dooring, what did Herm say when you invited him to dinner?”

“The droids couldn’t find him,” Dooring answered. “As far as I can tell, he isn’t in the palace.”

Felph raised a brow. “Has he left the grounds?”

“The perimeter droids didn’t record it,” Dooring answered. “We are searching the palace grounds.”

Lord Felph looked about at the group, and Zeus could tell by his mannerisms, by the minor trembling in his jaw, that Felph was worried. He looked pointedly to Zeus. “You don’t have anything to do with this, do you? Did you have a fight with him?”

“No!” Zeus said too loudly, surprised at the accusation in Felph’s voice. “No!”

Felph half leapt from his chair. “Look me in the eye and tell me. If you killed him by accident, in a fit of passion, that is one thing. But if you murdered him in cold blood-”

“I swear,” Zeus said. “I had nothing to do with this!”

“He’s telling the truth,” Arachne told Felph. “He had nothing to do with this.” Felph took her defense of Zeus at face value, making no more accusations.

“Last I saw him,” Zeus said, “he had a gun, for hunting skogs.”

Felph tensed. Hunting skogs was dangerous. He ordered the droids, “Use fliers. Search the tangle.”

It didn’t take Felph’s droids long to find Herm. In an hour, the droids retrieved the corpse from the canopy of the tangle, where it lay in plain view.

A droid bore it to the garden. Athena took a glow globe from her pack to inspect the remains.

Maggie wasn’t prepared for the horror. Herm’s head was lopped off. Gone the handsome green eyes, the aquiline nose, the perpetual, secretive smile. Gone the glorious mane of dark hair. Gone, too, his left wing and lower leg. They’d been eaten-along with certain organs. Blood smeared everywhere. The corpse smelled no better than it looked.

If Maggie felt unprepared for Herm’s demise, she felt equally unprepared for others’ reactions. Athena remained stoic, stared at the body as if imagining every detail of how he had died.

Hera sobbed, falling to the ground, seeming unable to move, muttering Herm’s name. Zeus raged, shaking fists, crying for vengeance. Yet rather than running into the wild, searching for Herm’s killer, he held Hera tenderly. Zeus seemed in shock, on the verge of collapse, yet he helped Hera back to their room.

Maggie wondered if she should help Zeus and Hera. They had never faced death before. Born with the promise of immortality, they faced death with all the profound comprehension of adults, coupled with the complete emotional naiveté of toddlers. Maggie felt astonished at the debilitating combination.

But the most astonishing reaction came not from Felph’s children, but from Felph himself. He went to the headless corpse, sprawled on the lawn, and lifted the remains, cradling them as if Herm were a child.

The image of Felph, face pale in horror, eyes wide in shock, on his knees, cradling Herm’s corpse in the ethereal light of the glow globe would stay with Maggie the rest of her life.

“Herm!” Felph sobbed. “Herm! My beloved! What’s happened? What?” He spoke to the corpse as if it might answer. Felph’s shock, more than his children’s, surprised Maggie. You killed him , Maggie wanted to say. You wiped his memories from your Al, destroyed his clones. If not for you, he’d be alive.